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up out of his pocket. It was a quarter. All he needed was a dime. He could not
go back down there, he might not make it back again. He used the quarter, and
dialed the number of a man he could trust, a man who could help him.
He remembered the man now, knew the man was his only salvation.
He remembered seeing him in Georgia, at a revival meeting, a rural stump
religion circus of screaming and Hallelujahs that sounded like
!H!A!L!L!E!L!U!J!A!H! with dark black faces or red necks all straining toward
the seat of God on the platform. He remembered the man in his white
shirtsleeves, exhorting the crowd, and he heard again the man s spirit
message.
Get right with the Lord, before he gets right with you!
Suffer your silent sins no longer! Take out your truth, carry it in your
hands, give it to me, all the ugliness and cesspool filth of your souls! I ll
wash you clean in the blood of the Iamb, in the blood of the Lord, in the
blood of the truth of the word! There s no other way, there s no great day
coming without purging yourself, without cleansing your spirit! I can handle
all the pain you ve got boiling around down in the black lightless pit of your
souls! Hear me, dear
God hear me...I am your mouth, your tongue, your throat, the horn that will
proclaim your deliverance to the Heavens above! Evil and good and worry and
sorrow, all of it is mine, I can carry it, I can handle it. I
can lift it from out of your mind and your soul and your body! The place is
here, the place is me, give me your woe! Christ knew it, God knows it, know
it, and now
I
you have to know it! Mortar and trowel and brick and cement make the wall of
your need! Let me tear down that wall, let me hear all of it, let me into your
mind and let me take your burdens! I m the strength, I m the watering
place...come drink from my strength!
And the people had rushed to him. Allover him, like ants feeding on a dead
beast. And then the memory dissolved. The image of the tent revival meeting
dissolved into images of wild animals tearing at meat, of hordes of carrion
birds descending on fallen meat, of small fish leaping with sharp teeth at
helpless meat, of hands and more hands, and teeth that sank into meat.
The number was busy.
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It was busy again.
He had been dialing the same number for nearly an hour, and the number was
always busy.
Dancers with sweating faces had wanted to use the phone, but Eddie Burma had
snarled at them that it was a matter of life and death that he reach the
number he was calling, and the dancers had gone back to their partners with
curses for him. But the line was still busy. Then he looked at the number on
the pay phone, and knew he had been dialing himself all that time. That the
line would always always be busy, and his furious hatred of the man on the
other end who would not answer was hatred for the man who was calling.
He was calling himself, and in that instant he remembered who the man had been
at the revival meeting. He remembered leaping up out of the audience and
taking the platform to beg all the stricken suffering ones to end their pain
by drinking of his essence. He remembered, and the fear was greater than he
could believe.
He fled back to the toilet, to wait for them to find him.
Eddie Burma, hiding in the refuse room of a sightless dark spot in the
netherworld of a universe that had singled him out for reality. Eddie Burma
was an individual. He had substance. He had corporeality.
In a world of walking shadows, of zombie breath and staring eyes like the cold
dead flesh of the moon, Eddie Burma was a real person. He had been born with
the ability to belong to his times; with the electricity of nature that some
called charisma and others called warmth. He felt deeply; he moved through the
world and touched; and was touched.
His was a doomed existence, because he was not only an extrovert and
gregarious, but he was truly clever, vastly inventive, suffused with humor,
and endowed with the power to listen. For these reasons he had passed through
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