Spellbinder

  Spellbinder

  A Novel

  Collin Wilcox

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Prologue

  AS HE WATCHES THE four TV monitors, the director’s fingers move delicately from the second camera switch to the fourth, ready to cut from the choir to a heads-and-shoulders, three-quarters shot of a young woman in the audience, lips parted, eyes fervent, chin lifted. Berger, on four, has been doing faces for eight shows. His eye is sharpening.

  “Hold it, Berger. You’re coming up.”

  In the earphones, Berger’s voice acknowledges: “Coming up. Roger.”

  The delicate fingers hover over the fourth switch. These split seconds are the moments that make directors, or break them. Will she hold the pose? The note of the choir swells as the second chorus begins. Timed earlier, each chorus takes seventy seconds. Figure forty seconds for the rapt young woman, figure thirty seconds for the end of the song, on camera two.

  The fingers descend, touch the switch. Over the number four monitor, a red light glows. Across America and Canada next Sunday, the anonymous woman’s face from the audience will fill the faithful’s TV screens. Will she blink? Burp? Scratch her nose?

  It’s a crap shoot, an all-or-nothing gamble: the reason directors perspire. And change jobs, statistically every twenty-seven months. And pop bennies. And worse.

  But there’s always the tape—the editor—the scissors. Of this thirty seconds, only twenty will show next Sunday. Margin for error, thirty percent. It’s a generous figure, a model for the industry. On The Hour, no expense is spared.

  “Come in closer, Powell. Back to you in thirty seconds.”

  On camera two, Powell is already refocusing. “Thirty seconds. Roger.” Powell is quick, but uninspired. His strength is backgrounds, not people.

  “Warnecke, come to the curtain, for Holloway.”

  On camera one, Warnecke moves to focus on the floor-to-ceiling draperies, iridescent gold. The drapes have just been installed at a cost of eighty thousand dollars. Did the gates of heaven shimmer so bright?

  “Ten seconds, Powell. Mark.”

  “Ten seconds. Mark.”

  “A little closer. Let’s see their teeth. Center on Rosemary.”

  “A little closer. Roger.” On the second monitor, the choir draws a deep breath in unison. Eyes are cast up. Bosoms swell against gauzy bodices, loosely cut, according to orders. The third chorus is beginning.

  Eyes moving between the clock and the monitors, the director’s fingers are poised above the camera-two switch. On number four, the young woman looks as if she’s seen a vision. Her job is almost finished. She hasn’t scratched, hasn’t seen the camera focused on her. Twenty-five good seconds—twenty-seven—thirty. Home free.

  The fingers touch the camera-two switch. For thirty seconds, it’s Powell’s show. The director turns up the sound, hears the last strains of “Listening to the Lord.” Words and music composed by Holloway’s son. Or so the faithful are told.

  On camera one, Warnecke is steady on the curtain. Thirty seconds. Twenty. Ten. The curtain moves. Holloway is in place: Polonius, behind the arras.

  One swordthrust, and millions would lose a messiah. The director would lose a job: fifty-five thousand, last year.

  “You’ve got it, Powell.”

  “Roger.”

  Head bowed over his old leather prayer book—a gift from his Daddy—Austin Holloway strides gravely toward center stage. Behind him, monitored by camera three, close circuited, the choir executes their slow shift to stage right. Katherine, the mother messiah, is moving on satin-slippered feet from the wings to stage left. Her attendants, once more, have not failed the faithful. Eighty minutes into the program, and Katherine Holloway is still sober, still functioning. Soon she’ll be taken home to bed and bottle. Remorselessly, artlessly, the closed circuit camera tracks her. On camera three, big brother watches.

  On camera one, Holloway is cut off at the waist, just below Daddy’s old leather prayer book. Behind him, tracked by camera three, The Son, Elton, moves to stand beside The Mother. Sixty-five thousand pairs of eyes in the Temple can see them. So they turn to each other, smile with a brief, false brightness and then hold hands.

  Mother and son …

  Madonna and child …

  One of them a drunk, the other a treacherous, bad-tempered liar, on probation for reckless driving. Original charge: felony hit and run. One of his victims will never walk again. The Ferrari was totaled. Twenty-seven thousand dollars, a mass of blood-spattered wreckage.

  On camera one, Holloway slowly raises his hand. The “final words” will now begin: words to live through the week by. Sometimes the final words take less than three minutes. Sometimes they take as much as fifteen, and once a full half hour. Anything more than five minutes means monumental cutting and editing problems.

  And, today, Holloway has hinted at something special. Translation: something longer, more ponderous. More pompous. During the past week, perhaps, God has called. Person to person.

  “Hold it, Warnecke. Don’t come in till I tell you.”

  “Roger.”

  Jaw set, eyes-of-a-prophet blue and steady, noble forehead freshly powdered, tinted hairpiece firmly set, Holloway lets the measured seconds pass. His timing has never been better. Berger has him from the left, in perfect profile, medium close-up. Powell is on the right, too far away. Still too timid.

  The words begin: slow, solemn, expertly paced. The faithful stir in their seats, hopeful of a high. They’re already hooked. With his first few words, Holloway has “gripped their hearts,” a favorite phrase. Today, despite rumors of bad health, Holloway is in top form. Obviously, he’s winding up for a major effort, pacing himself for something special. Minimum, this speech will run five minutes. Maybe more. Among the choir, feet are subtly shifting. They know, too.

  “Come in, Powell. Slow.”

  “Slow. Roger.”

  “Berger, go hunting. We’ve got time.”

  “Roger.” Camera four wanders out into the audience. Without being told, Berger is hunting old, wrinkled faces. They pay the bills, the old ones. For them, heaven is a necessity. Heaven and natural-acting laxatives. And Fixodent, too, for dentures.

  Ninety seconds into the final words, the director moves both camera one and camera two in close—slowly, smoothly. Reverently, one hopes. To keep the job—the fifty-five thousand, with bonuses this year—the cameras must move as if angels guided them. It was a Holloway axiom—spoken first in white-hot anger, later refined, finally catechized.

  But Berger is Jewish: a mustachioed angel with a girlfriend in West Venice. Elton The Son had once objected to the mustache. But not to the girl.

  Berger has found an old woman weeping as she watches. Fade to Berger—hold ten seconds, with Holloway’s voice over. Then superimpose Holloway, then come to Holloway alone, face and shoulders. The voice is rising now, coming on strong. Soon he’ll throw the show off balance, sure enough. On camera three, Elton and Ka
therine exchange a resigned look. They know. The old man has the bit in his teeth. Warnecke, meanwhile, has slipped the cross filters on camera one. On cue, he can make stars out of the spotlights, more perfect than the star of Bethlehem.

  But not now. Not until the final moments of the final words, now nowhere in sight. If the camera leaves Holloway for long, displeasure comes quickly at the videotaping immediately to follow. The final words are sacred—and Holloway’s vengeance is swift and sure. Fifty-five thousand, farewell.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, Holloway raises his arms in heavenly supplication—and reveals dark crescents of sweat staining each blue polyester armpit.

  But it’s all right.

  If Jesus bled on the cross, Holloway can sweat on camera.

  The director smiles at his dials.

  The manager sits behind a small plate-glass window set high in the Temple’s west wall, facing the stage. Loudspeakers are close beside him, one on either wall of the small viewing booth. A single TV monitor is before him. A spiral-bound notebook lies open on a narrow shelf beneath the window. With the blunt end of a Bic ball-point pen, in time with the choir’s tempo, the manager taps on the shelf. Half the notebook’s page is covered with his small, precise handwriting. Because he can get more on each page, the manager uses a fine-point Bic.

  Now he reverses the pen, writes Hips. Tits. on the next empty line. The notation above reads, Flow, Temp. N.G.

  It’s Elton’s doing, he knows: the with-it, hard-rock beat of the hymn, the hip-swinging, tit-tempting choir, eight white girls, four black. At age thirty-two, Elton is making his move. Steadily, cleverly, he’s shaping The Hour in his own image. It’s takeover time, and Elton is ready. One more Holloway heart attack, and Elton will inherit. His grandfather died face down in sawdust, surrounded by the faithful, wailing and rending their clothing. His father could die the same way, with his clip microphone crashing into the polished surface of the stage: an earthquake of sound in the Temple’s huge speakers. Instantly Mitchell, the bodyguard, would spring to the stage from his seat in the first row. Mitchell’s four somberly dressed assistants would be close behind him, doing the job they’d been drilled to do. While Holloway’s soul ascended, Mitchell and his men would protect the corpse. Elton, meanwhile, would advance with head bowed, step measured. During his passage from the wings to center stage where his father sprawled, Elton would take on substance, dignity, gravity. The short trip would invest him with everything he needed, everything the faithful required. Picking up Daddy’s prayer book, holding it high, Elton would preach over the corpse. All the rating records would topple, reruns thrown in.

  The manager blinks the scene below back into focus. The choir’s last chorus is almost finished. At stage left, Holloway touches the curtain, a cue. He’s ready. Sick or well, he’s ready. The show will go on. Never mind last week’s ominous electrocardiogram. Never mind the twitching left eye, the mouth that sags at the corners and distorts to the left when fatigue confounds him. Never mind the terrible pallor, then the grotesque flush. For those problems, cameras have filters, soft-focus devices. Makeup men have their potions. But whatever afflictions can’t be filtered out or covered up could be a plus. In the service of Christ, a messiah must sometimes seem to suffer. Thus, without his craggy features, Billy Graham might never have made it. So let Holloway sweat. Let him twitch. Let the lines and creases show, and the mouth sag at the corners. Just don’t let him die. Not yet. Not before Elton makes another mistake with another Ferrari.

  Did Daddy sweat and twitch and palpitate in the weeks and months before the sawdust chips ground into his face that summer night in Muncie, Indiana?

  Eyes piously raised, the chorus hits the last note, holds it, lingers lovingly with it, then lets it slowly die. Their workweek is finished.

  The curtain stirs. Holloway’s foot appears, the black shoe brilliantly polished, the ties tassled. A hand follows—an arm—the full figure, clad in blue doubleknit polyester, white shirt gleaming, wide tie too boldly patterned.

  If the grandfather wore a flamboyant frock coat and black string tie, the son would wear doubleknit. And the grandson, too, waiting in the wings with his mother, diaphanously clad in pale pink gauze, crisscrossed at the bosom, trailing as she walks—unsteadily.

  As the final words begin, the manager’s eyes circle the audience, making a ritual calculation. A slip of paper on the shelf beside the spiral notebook is inscribed with the figure 63,400, the attendance tally. The month is October, the seventeenth day. Most of the faithful have just been paid. October is a promising month, with no vacations to strain family budgets. No taxes due. No Christmas presents, or Easter clothing. In Washington, credit is loosening, inflating the economy in an election year. Therefore, beneath the 63,400, the manager notes $42,000. It’s his estimate of the take. For twenty-two years, each time Holloway has preached, the manager has estimated the take. At first, his estimates were wild, usually too high. Now, he comes closer than a computer.

  His eyes wander to the man standing alone in the center of the stage. Almost imperceptibly during the last minute, the houselights have gone dim. Three beams of light hold Holloway in their soft golden glow—all on cue.

  The final words are beginning.

  When the manager had first brought in a lighting expert, Holloway had objected. The spotlights and the footlights bothered him. He wanted to see his audience—to communicate with them, he said. Wanted to feel them. Touch them. But the TV crews needed lights. And, slowly, the manager had introduced the special effects, the dramatic highlights. As Holloway lost touch with the faithful, he became rich and famous: the first successful TV evangelist.

  In spite of himself.

  In spite of his canvas-and-sawdust background, his down-home delivery, his simplistic, jingoistic appeals. In spite of an alcoholic wife, a ruthless son, a disaffected daughter—and, somewhere, an illegitimate child.

  With his family life a disaster, Holloway still manages to appear the devoted husband and father. For an evangelist, it is essential. On stage, evangelism is a family matter. Unlike politicians, there are no divorced evangelists.

  From the loudspeakers, the final words are continuing, running too long. Although their sense is lost among the manager’s thoughts, their import is clear: Holloway is building up to something big. Some surprise for all of them, he’d promised, the audience and staff alike. When the introduction is finished and the meat begins, the manager’s attention will focus on the words, not the rhythm of their mesmerizing cadence. Holloway is in fine form—in perfect control, as usual. Sixty-three thousand souls believe him. Sixty-three thousand, plus one. Because Holloway, himself, still believes. At age sixty-three, he’s been preaching for more than fifty years. He’s cheated and swindled and raved at his enemies and fornicated with the faithful. But his vision of God remains clear and concise: and old man with a flowing white beard, eyes that never blink and a stomach that never sags. Holloway’s evocation of God is as natural and spontaneous and often as truculent as a small boy’s my-father-can-lick-your-father boast. They are a team, Holloway and God. A successful team, capitalized in the millions.

  Thanks mostly to the manager.

  Now he finally tunes his attention to the words coming over the loudspeakers. The meat, he knows, is coming up:

  “Every one of you in this great Temple,” Holloway is intoning, “and everyone at home, watching this service on their television sets, surrounded by their family, they all know how I came to the service of God. They all know how God first called to my Daddy, and told him to go out among the people and bring God’s word to everyone who wanted to listen. They all know how my daddy started preaching the gospel in a vacant lot. Yes, friends—a vacant lot, in Peoria, Illinois. Finally, after years of serving the Lord, and raising a family, and saving every cent he could from the collections on Sunday, my Daddy scraped together enough money to buy a tent. It wasn’t a big tent, friends. But it was a holy tent. It was a consecrated place. It wasn’t consecrated by any bis
hop, or any Pope, or anyone else who wore fancy robes, and preached from a fancy pulpit. No—” Holloway’s voice begins to tremble. As he lifts his eyes toward heaven, he blinks against tears. The manager glances quickly at the monitor. Yes, the cameraman caught the tears.

  “No,” Holloway is saying huskily, “that tent wasn’t consecrated by any of the princes of the church. They didn’t know it existed. And they didn’t care, either. But it was consecrated by the people. It was consecrated by the people who came here every Sunday, and knelt down in the sawdust and prayed with my Daddy for their eternal salvation, and life everlasting. It was consecrated by the little people—the ordinary people. They never earned much money, these people. And they never wore fancy clothes, either. Why, I can remember, as a boy, seeing them come in overalls, walking all the way into town from their farms, miles away. And I can remember something else, too. I can remember that, when I was eight years old, I began passing the collection plate. And I remember seeing those people—those simple, wonderful people—digging down in their worn pockets and dropping whatever they could into the collection plate, to help my Daddy do God’s work.”

  Eyes still raised, Holloway pauses, as if to control himself. He drops his eyes to the prayer book he holds in both hands before him. Then, in a low, solemn voice:

  “My Daddy died when I was only nineteen years old. He died under the canvas top the people had bought for him. He was preaching God’s word when he died. He was doing God’s work, just like he’d always done. Healthy or sick, rich or poor, hungry or not, my Daddy was doing what he’d always done. He was praying for sinners, trying to light their way to glory.

  “By that time, I’d already been preaching for eight years, friends. Yes—” Holloway nods out toward his audience, invisible to him as he stands in the glare of the three golden shafts of light. “Yes, friends, I began preaching when I was eleven years old. But it wasn’t until I was nineteen years old that I began my ministry. It wasn’t until my Daddy laid down God’s burden. Because when he laid down his burden and ascended to heaven, I knew that my time had come. The burden was mine. And I accepted it—accepted the challenge to do God’s work, even though I wasn’t truly a man yet.