“That’s him. Lazy as twelve pigs. Use to lie abed till noon. Wife kept a market garden. Never paid his doctor’s bills. Yes, sir! George Pert! He got a cancer of the bowel, poor devil. Sick. Pretty far gone. I went in one day and found preacher Squires sitting by the bed. ‘Well, Mr. Pert,’” (Horne’s voice assumed an amusing clerical solemnity) “‘Are you trusting in the Lord?’ George nods his head. ‘Yes’ says he, ‘I’m so sartin o’ salvation, that if only one person in Beulah is going to heaven I know it’s me!’
“They’re a nosey bunch, here!” Horne continued, as he wound a bandage on Mauney’s hand. “Self-satisfied! Let your light so shine—good! But don’t focus your light into a red-hot spot to burn out your neighbor’s gizzard. Last night Steve Moran came into the office and sat down. ‘Doctor’ says he, ‘I just came in to see if your feet were resting on the Rock.’ Says I, ‘Steve, you blackguard, you owe me five dollars from your wife’s last confinement, fifteen years ago. If you don’t go to hell out o’ here, you’ll be resting in a long black box!’”
Mauney was surprised how much people talked about the revival. Enthusiasts carried out from the meetings, by their words and manner, an infectious fervor that directed the curious attention of others to the thing that was happening night by night in the Beulah church. Finally, on Sunday evening, he decided to see it for himself and drove to town. The church sheds were filled to overflowing so that he tied old Charlie to a fence post in the yard. Through the colored windows he heard the voluminous roar of voices lifted in the cadence of a hymn. The church was crowded. The vestry at the entrance was full of waiting people and, through one of the doors leading to the auditorium, he glimpsed a sea of heads. At the farther end of the great room, in a low gallery, sat the choir, facing him, and below them on the pulpit platform three preachers were seated in red plush chairs. The seated congregation were singing an unfamiliar hymn whose rhythm reminded him of march music he had heard bands playing in Lockwood. Ushers were carrying in chairs to accommodate the overflow.
David McBratney, carrying an armful of red hymn books touched Mauney on the shoulder.
“Here’s a book,” he whispered, proffering one. “I’ll get you a seat in a few minutes. Glad to see you here, Mauney.”
McBratney’s face glowed with a strange luminosity, puzzling to Mauney, and his speech and manner were quickened by nervous tension. Presently he led the way to a chair in the aisle.
At the end of a stanza one of the preachers jumped suddenly to his feet and interrupted the organ.
“You’re not half singing!” he shouted angrily. “You can do better than that. If you haven’t more voice than that, how do you expect the Lord to hear your words of praise? Now, on the next stanza, let yourself out. Ready!”
He raised both arms high above his head and, as the organ commenced, brought them to his side with such force that he was compelled to take a step forward to regain his balance. His words had the effect he desired, for a deafening volume of sound rose and fell quickly to the lilt of the march-music, suggesting to Mauney the image of neatly-uniformed cadets with stiffened backs and even steps, moving along Lockwood streets on a holiday.
When the hymn ended, a soft hand touched Mauney on the arm and, looking to his right, he saw Jean Byrne seated in the end of the oaken pew directly next to him. She was just letting her closed hymnal drop into her lap.