Traveling Preacher Rag

Strutting, crouching, dipping, slouching.
Dragging the microphone,
he makes his way across the stage.
Brother Wade is hot tonight.

Bible held high, his message is dry.
The white hot hell he preaches
brings on a singed longing
from the funeral fan waving,
thigh spreading sisters.
Salvation is in the air.

On this red dirt hot Alabama night,
next to the cotton fields, stands
a brown canvas tent filled with sinners
just praying for a breeze.
The tent wilts with the people
as this man of God,
sweat beading off his forehead,
marks his territory.

Brother Wade’s brow is furrowed
with a dark eyed righteous stare
that beams out across the breathless crowd.

“What is Hell like?”
he shouts, bolting upright.
“I’ll tell you what it’s like.
Imagine the hottest spot on the sun.
It’s ten times hotter than that!
And for all eternity the damned
will sizzle and fry
and never once feel relief.
That’s what Hell’s like.
And what of your loved ones?
If they’re there you’ll never know.
Because God will change their form.
And they won’t be able to tell you
who they are
because of the eternal misery
set upon them.
And even if you could
make out their forms
this white hot Hell
will be so dark
you won’t be able to see
your hand
in front of your face.”

There is one in the crowd who is not
concerned with this Hell.
You see her there on the second row.
Lydia Slocum hasn’t broken a sweat.
She sits there oddly fresh.
The only beads on her
string down and disappear
in her abundant cleavage.
The very cleavage
where Brother Wade buried his face
while making a pastoral visit
earlier in the day.

Three states away
Sister Wade stares at the screen door
back of her kitchen.
She would be at Wednesday evening
prayer meeting
except for the desperate longing
that has crept into the pit of her stomach
and has her in a bind.
He never let
her go
with him on his travels.
Said there wouldn’t be anything for her to do.
It would be lonely and all
like where she sat now
was any kind of comfort.

Traveling preachers
take up salvation
and leave wives behind.
He told her when she married him
it would be
a difficult life.
She would have to share him and all.
That didn’t bother her.
God’s calling
was to be answered with eagerness.
Somehow she thought she would be
a part of it all.

Instead there were long
stretches of time
all throughout the year
where he would disappear.
His calls home became infrequent.
The Lord became all the more
demanding of his time.

Back in Alabama
the tent began to sway.
Flaps snapped.
Corners pulled at the rebar
holding them in place.
Colors and changes
filled the firmament.
The brothers and sisters
read the sky
and saw trouble was coming.
Some figured it arrived
days before
when Brother Wade
parked his Chevrolet
in front of
the Red Door Motel.
Every time this man
came to town
the sisters became
addled and restless.
The brethren lost sleep.
No one would call it
by its name.

God’s heaven spoke.
An angry sky
turned
yellow and green.

The brothers began
pulling out the stops,
sending the women folk
running to the shelters
in nearby fields.
The cloud that came up,
funneled and furled,
extending its reach
to the vehicles
parked on the grass.

No one had time
to look behind.
The winds
had no mercy.
Folding chairs took wings.
The tent lifted
and made like a sail.
There was a mighty roar
and a darkness
came over the land.

The huddled mass
burned candles
in one shelter.
The rain began
fast and hard.
Brothers began to shout.
The door to the shelter
though tightly shut,
began to let water in.
It filled the hole to waist high,
the candlelight faded.

The storm was passing
above that dark hole
when came the voice
of Lydia Slocum,

“Master, the tempest is raging!
The billows are tossing high!
The sky is o’ershadowed with blackness,
No shelter or help is nigh;
Carest Thou not that we perish?
How canst Thou lie asleep,
When each moment so madly is threat’ning
A grave in the angry deep?”

The door opened and light shown.
Brothers and sisters
began to climb out
and look about.

Tatters of tent and chairs
clung to what was left of trees.
The fields were littered
with hymnals and funeral fans.

Brothers Wade’s Chevrolet
was tilted up,
trunk lodged in a drainage ditch,
the hood ornament looking skyward,
as though stalled by the rapture.
Inside the car
sat the man of God,
hands frozen on the wheel,
eyes opened in a
heavenward gaze,
his heart stilled.
On the seat lay his bible,
Inside, the outline
to a sermon yet preached.

Tom Slocum reached across
the body of the man whose soul
was the only part of him
with the common decency
to take its leave.
He took the sermon
from the pages
of the leather,
manhandled King James
and tucked it in his work shirt pocket.
Then he and Lydia walked home.
Tom’s truck was amongst the fatalities.

Two days later
a somber Lydia
opened the basket of laundry,
Tom’s work shirt on top.
From the pocket
she pulled the sermon outline
and read the scripture
over its title.
Numbers 32:23
“But if ye will not do so,
behold, ye have sinned
against the Lord:
and be sure
your sin will find you out.”