The people insisted that Teagardin and his wife go first, so the chubby boy grabbed two plates and proceeded around the tables, sniffing at the food delicately and uncovering dishes and sticking his finger into this and that for just a taste, putting on a show for the two Reaster girls, who giggled and whispered to each other. Then all of the sudden, he stopped and passed his still-empty plates to his wife. The pinched mark on her arm was already beginning to turn blue. He looked toward the ceiling with his hand held up high, then pointed at Emma’s pan of chicken livers. “Friends,” he began in a loud voice, “there’s no doubt we’re all humble people here in this church this evening and you all have been awful nice to me and my sweet, young bride, and I thank ye from the bottom of my heart for the warm welcome. Now, they ain’t a one of us got all the money and fine cars and trinkets and pretty clothes that we would like to have, but friends, the poor old soul that brung in them chicken livers in that beat-up pan, well, let’s just say I’m inspired to preach on it for a minute before we set down to eat. Recall, if you can, what Jesus said to the poor in Nazareth those many centuries ago. Sure, some of us are better off than others, and I see plenty of white meat and red meat laid out on this table, and I suspect that the people who carried them platters in eat mighty good most times. But poor people got to bring what they can afford, and sometimes they can’t afford much at all; and so them organs is a sign to me, telling me that I should, as the new preacher of this church, sacrifice myself so that you all can have a share of the good meat tonight. And that’s what I’m going to do, my friends, I’m going to eat those organs, so you all can have a share of the best. Don’t worry, it’s just the way I am. I model myself on the good Lord Jesus whenever he gives me the chance, and tonight he has blessed me with another opportunity to follow in his footsteps. Amen.” Then Preacher Teagardin said something to his red-haired wife in a low voice, and she headed straight for the desserts, wobbling a little in her cardboard high heels, and filled the plates with custard pie and carrot cake and Mrs. Thompson’s sugar cookies, while he carried the pan of livers to his place at the head of one of the long plywood tables set up in the front for eating.
“Amen,” the congregation repeated. Some looked confused, while others, those who had brought some of the good meat, grinned happily. A few glanced at Emma, who stood near the back of the line with Lenora. When she felt their eyes on her, she started to swoon and the girl grabbed her by the elbow. Arvin rushed forward from where he was standing in the open doorway and helped her outside. He sat her down in a grassy spot under a tree, and Lenora brought her a glass of water. The old woman took a sip and started to cry. Arvin patted her on the shoulder. “Now, now,” he said, “don’t you worry about that pus-gutted blowhard. He probably don’t have two nickels to rub together. You want me to talk to him?”
She dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her good dress. “I never been so embarrassed in my whole life,” she said. “I could have crawled under the table.”
“You want me to take you home?”
She sniffled some more, then sighed. “I don’t know what to do.” She looked toward the door of the church. “He sure ain’t the preacher I was hoping for.”
“Hell, Grandma, that fool ain’t no preacher,” Arvin said. “He’s bad as them they got on the radio begging for money.”
“Arvin, you shouldn’t talk like that,” Lenora said. “Preacher Teagardin wouldn’t be here if the Lord hadn’t sent him.”
“Yeah, right.” He started to help his grandmother up. “You see the way he was gobbling them livers down,” he joked, trying to get her to smile. “Heck, that boy probably ain’t had nothing that good to eat in a coon’s age. That’s why he wanted them all for his own self.”
33
PRESTON TEAGARDIN WAS LYING ON THE COUCH reading his old college psychology book in the house the congregation had rented for his wife and him. It was a little square box with four dirty windows and an outhouse surrounded by weeping willows at the end of a dirt path. The leaky gas stove was full of mummified mice, and the cast-off furniture they had provided smelled like dog or cat or some other dirty creature. My God, with the way the people around here lived he wouldn’t have been surprised if it wasn’t hog. Though he’d been in Coal Creek only two weeks, he already despised the place. He kept trying to look upon his assignment in this outpost in the sticks as some sort of spiritual test coming directly from the Lord, but it was more his mother’s doing than anything else. Oh, yes, she had fucked him royally, shoved it right up his ass, the old shrew. Not a penny more allowance until he showed his mettle, she had said after finally finding out—the same week she was getting ready to attend the graduation ceremony—that he had dropped out of Heavenly Reach Bible College at the end of his first semester. And then, just a day or so later, her sister had called and told her that Albert was sick. What perfect timing. She’d volunteered her son without even asking him.
The psychology course he’d taken with Dr. Phillips was the only good thing that came out of his college experience. What the hell did a degree from a place like Heavenly Reach mean in a world of Ohio Universities and Harvard Colleges anyway? Might as well have purchased a diploma through one of those mail-order places advertised in the backs of comic books. He’d wanted to go to a regular university and study law, but no, not with her money. She wanted him to be a humble preacher, like her brother-in-law, Albert. She was afraid she’d spoiled him, she said. She said all kinds of shit, insane shit, but what she really wanted, Preston understood, was to keep him dependent on her, tied to her apron strings, so he’d always have to kiss her ass. He had always been good at figuring people out, their petty wants and desires, especially teenage girls.
Cynthia was one of his first major successes. She was only fifteen years old when he helped one of his teachers at Heavenly Reach dunk her in Flat Fish Creek during a baptism service. That same evening, he fucked her dainty little ass under some rosebushes on the college grounds, and within a year he had married her so that he could work on her without her parents sticking their noses in. In the last three years, he’d taught her all the things he imagined a man might be able to do with a woman. He couldn’t begin to add up the hours it had taken him, but she was trained as well as any dog now. All he had to do was snap his fingers and her mouth would start watering for what he liked to refer to as his “staff.”
He looked over at her in her underwear, curled up in the greasy easy chair that had come with the dump, her silky-haired gash pressed tight against the thin yellow material. She was squinting at an article about the Dave Clark Five in a Hit Parader magazine, trying to sound out the words. Someday, he thought, if he kept her, he would have to teach her how to read. He had discovered lately that he could last twice as long if one of his young conquests read from the Good Book while he nailed her from behind. Preston loved the way they panted holy passages, the way they began to stutter and arch their backs and struggle not to lose their place—for he could become very upset when they got the words wrong—right before his staff exploded. But Cynthia? Shit, a brain-damaged second-grader from the darkest holler in Appalachia could read better. Whenever his mother mentioned that her son, Preston Teagardin, with four years of high school Latin under his belt, had ended up married to an illiterate from Hohenwald, she nearly had another breakdown.