And now, with a little prompting from the barking men in the orange vests, the crowd began to chant a mantra.

“Babe, Babe, Babe!”

A gospel choir, dressed in deep purple robes and a mix of dark and light skin, assembled beneath the giant portrait and, a cappella, they sang to the chanting crowd, which took the part of a deafening, rhythmic chorus.

“Babe, Babe!”

“Oh, when the sa-a-a-a-ints – ”

“Babe, Babe!”

“ – come marching i-i-i-n – ”

“Babe! Babe!”

“ – Oh, when the saints come ma-a-a-rching in – ”

“Babe, Babe, Babe!”

The music of a Dixieland band preceded the musicians, who now marched onto the stage and took their place beside the choir, displacing the chants with rousing trumpets, one clarinet and a trombone. The crowd’s chanting dissolved into cheers and applause. The rhythm of the hand-clapping became a single clap of thunder. The brass sparkled, and the horns hit their highest notes.

The music ended before the song was done, heightening anticipation as the houselights dimmed. One spotlight illuminated a small circle on the billboard at the rear of the stage. The crowd screamed and clapped. The circle of light grew in size and intensity until it was a burning sun.

Too bright. Charles looked away for a moment, and then he turned back with the ‘oh’s and ’ah’s of the crowd to behold a petty miracle made of dry ice and boiling water, as a slow crawl of ground fog rolled across the stage.

And now Malcolm Laurie appeared at the center of the bright circle. His costume had more spangles than a matador’s suit of lights. The low boil of stage fog obscured his legs below the knees as he moved forward in the smooth glide of an artful dancer, and one could believe his feet were not touching the floor. The spotlight dimmed, but Malcolm glittered and gleamed. Smiling a row of dazzling white teeth, he raised his hand for silence. The screams died out in a sigh breathed round the tent.

The litany began, amplified by a wireless microphone and accompanied by the soft croon of the choir. “Brothers and sisters, are you tired of being poor? Say, amen!”

“Amen!” the crowd yelled.

“Are you tired of your misery? Say amen!”

“Amen!”

“I know what you’re wondering, brothers and sisters. Why? you ask, oh why has Babe Laurie died and forsaken you?”

The light blazed up in high brilliance. When it blacked out, Malcolm was gone.

Now the spotlight reappeared closer to the front of the stage, and Malcolm came walking out of the light. “Babe is not gone. He is here! My brother is with me. He is with all of us tonight.”

His hands reached out to the crowd, his fingers trembling, his voice soft as a lover’s. “Can you feel it? Can you feel his love? Open your hearts wide and hear me. I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my love.” He strutted from one end of the stage to the other, gazing over the flock, leaving the impression that he had made a profound connection with every pair of eyes.

“My beloved put his hand by the hole of the door.” Malcolm’s hand went to his heart as he sank down on one knee. “And I rose up to open to my beloved.” Malcolm stood up slowly. “My hands and my fingers dripped with sweet-smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.” His voice was softer, lower, saying, “I opened to my beloved.” He threw out his hands as though to embrace them all. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine. A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me: he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.”

Charles recognized the more erotic lines from The Song of Solomon, more or less intact, with verses out of order. Malcolm stole from the best as well as the least. Charles turned to an elderly woman seated in the row behind him. Her eyes were trained on the evangelist as though he were her lover. And of course, he was.

Malcolm glistened with sweat and sparkled with light. His honeyed voice rolled over the crowd. The preacher was giving the audience holy sanctioned sex. He was reaching out to all of them, men and women alike, stroking them with his eyes, his voice, touching all the soft places and exciting them to a roar of “Amen!” He was the image of a rock star, raw sensuality in the service of the Lord.

“Brothers and sisters!” Malcolm cried out. “I can feel Babe inside of me, filling my body with the fluid of love, the power of God Almighty. I got the power!” One closed fist shot out, angling toward heaven.

“Amen!” screamed the crowd with renewed fervor.

Charles stared up at the giant portrait and listened to them intoning the name of Babe, over and over, as their hands shot out and pulled back, again and again, in mimicry of Malcolm.

So this was the New Church, borrowing a bit from the Bible, a bit from Hitler.

Charming.

Malcolm was handed a glass pitcher and a crystal goblet. He poured a clear stream of water into the goblet, but the crystal vessel filled with rich red liquid, and a thousand people gasped for breath.

Malcolm had dared to turn the water into wine.

Charles had seen this done before, but never in religious context. The colored crystals had been hidden at the bottom of the wineglass in that portion obscured by the hand.

The man drank deeply, and then turned his back on the crowd as he looked up to the monster image of his brother. The glass went crashing to the floor. His arms rose in the crucifixion pose and his body began to shake with convulsions. The crowd was hushed. When Malcolm turned around again, he was altered in every way. His mouth was larger, pouting more lower lip, eyes wider, hair slicked back with sweat, and there was a cruelty in this new arrangement of his features.

He strutted from one end of the stage to the other, cock of the walk with the suggestion of a limp. At center stage, he ended his pacing. His jaw jutted out as he drew his body up, puffed out his chest, and arrogance exuded from every sweating pore of skin. His eyes were wild as he staggered to the rear of the stage and back again to the edge. His hands shot out in a gesture of supplication. And then, every spangle on the suit of lights left its own bright track in the air as he writhed and jerked his body in spasms.

“It’s Babe!” screamed a man in the front row. All about the tent was the sudden intake of breath, and then the release of a soft sigh. Utter silence now, all eyes were on the stage. The multitude was mesmerized by the resurrection and the light.

And now, abruptly, rudely, the show moved on to borrow a bit from the legendary P. T. Barnum, a more flamboyant showman than God. The professional geeks were being brought out on the stage: a woman whose arms flew about in an uncontrollable palsy and a man who walked on his hands and dragged his legs behind him. All that was missing was the dog-faced boy and the bearded lady. The band played them onto the stage, limping, crawling, shaking violently. The reincarnation of Babe Laurie laid his hands on them one by one, and then the band played again as the halt and lame danced off stage, healed and whole.

When the fakirs were gone, the less dramatic but genuine ailments came out of the crowd, imploring Malcolm to heal them. One by one, they were brought center stage. Malcolm pressed his hand to the forehead of a man supported by two canes. The man fell backward into the waiting arms of the body catchers. Malcolm dramatically broke the canes across one raised leg, and then the man limped back to his seat, un-healed and falling once before he reached the chair. No one noticed, no one cared. All eyes were riveted on the stage.

Then began the straggle of elderly arthritics, who seemed genuinely shocked when Malcolm laid his hands on their heads, compelling them to be healed in the name of Babe Laurie. One of Malcolm’s hands went to the small of an elderly woman’s back. He pressed on her forehead and she flew backward to the arms of the catchers as though propelled by lightning. She made her way down the stairs in shock, stunned and weaving from the assault. But her expression might be taken for exaltation, for her eyes were wide and brimmed with tears of pain.