Done with minor wonders, the program moved upscale to the collective miracle – each heart’s desire – preceded by collection plates.

“Do you believe?” Malcolm had shed his brother’s skin to pace the stage with his own charisma. “Say, amen.”

“Amen!”

“Then give all that you have. Every dollar in your wallet, every dime in your pockets. Give everything you have and you shall receive more than all your gifts combined. Do you want a miracle? Say amen.”

“Amen!”

Piles of cash were growing in the plates. People in the first row were indeed emptying their wallets as they chanted the name of Babe and fixed their eyes on his billboard image. They prayed to Babe now. He was a god, and Malcolm was his priest on earth.

“It’s time to demonstrate your faith. Do you want to buy a miracle?”

“Amen!”

“Then empty those wallets. Give no thought of the morrow.”

As Charles recalled, Christ had said this last phrase to Judas, but only to deter him from passing the hat at a similar gathering.

“Let go of that cash, and it will come back to you a hundredfold and then some. You will live in the light of faith and every good thing in life will be yours. I guarantee it. In proportion to your faith, you will receive your heart’s desire.”

Now Charles had found the escape clause in the warranty of Malcolm’s covenant. If the miracle did not occur, then the petitioner was obviously lacking in devotion and belief. Not Malcolm’s fault, and no refund for those of little faith.

“I want you to dig in those pockets and come up with all your bills and coins. This is where it begins. If you lack the faith, you have wasted your time here. Open those wallets and pour your faith into those collection plates for God’s work. As we help one another, we participate in the flow, and it flows right on back to us. It’s a holy circle, you cannot stop it, you cannot prevent it from flowing back to you – so long as you believe. You must demonstrate your faith. You must walk out into the night with nothing but your faith. Say, amen!”

“Amen!”

“You women!” He stomped his foot on the stage. “Empty out those purses. I say dig for that money. You don’t want to get home and discover that you have held back a single coin. Your faith will surely crumble to dust, and you will be dogged by the misery of this lost chance for all your days.”

Charles looked araund him. Well, the curse was a nice touch. Two seats away in the third row, a formerly reticent woman was digging deeper in her bag. And to his left, and one chair down the second row, another woman had emptied the contents of her purse into her lap. Tissues and gum wrappers spilled to the floor. Charles stared at the store of pharmacy bottles in the spread apron of her skirt. Her hands were malformed, ugly knots of flesh. She was young for such an advanced case of arthritis – such desperation.

He looked into the faces of the surrounding believers. Hunger was here, an ocean of it. People all around him were rising to their feet and groaning with the power flowing through them in Babe Laurie’s name. They shouted their amens, and Charles felt an electrical current which shocked him and hooked him up to his fellow man, as surely as if they had all been touched by the same jolt of Saint Elmo’s fire.

“Do you believe?”

And the crowd roared with one voice, “I believe!” screaming as one devout petitioner with one desire.

They were plugged into Malcolm, charging him with light and energy – all save Charles, who detached himself to sit with his fears, at odds with the enormous animal roaring and rearing up all around him. At any moment, the crowd might discover the unbeliever in their midst.

He knew all the darkest things about crowds – mobs.

Malcolm was gathering size, growing with the love of the multitude, towering over them on the stage, energy flowing out to them through his extended fingertips. They fed one another, Malcolm and the faithful.

The elbow of a fervent prayer knocked Charles’s head to one side, and now he saw Henry Roth standing in the wide center aisle, searching the faces of the front row, where he knew Charles would be seated. Charles only had to stand up to be noticed above the people of standard sizes. Henry waved to him, and his hands began to speak, to tell Charles that he must come away and right now. There was a great urgency in Henry’s hand movements and in his eyes.

When they had cleared the opening in the canvas and traveled as far as the parking lot, the lights of the tent went out behind them. Charles stood in the center of the road. He could imagine what was going on in the blackness of that vast space. Unity would be displaced by fear in the dark, and that would grow to panic.

Henry pulled on his sleeve and formed the letter H. His hand moved up and down quickly to say, “Hurry.”

As they moved into a jog, Charles looked back over one shoulder at the silhouette of the tent against the evening sky. The crowd was dispersing to its individual parts, each seeking the way into the light. He watched them pour from the tent opening, ant-size and antlike. And then the tall poles caved in on one side, and the canvas structure listed like a great wounded animal, deflated by the sudden flight of Malcolm Laurie’s flock. Headlights came on in pairs, and a slow caravan of cars led away from the tent, moving toward the highway.

As Charles and Henry cleared one block of Owltown, the lights at their backs went out, and the night snapped shut behind them. The same thing happened on the next block.

And whose little miracle was this? Oh, just a guess, a shot in the dark – could it be Mallory?

Of course she had done it. She had hacked into the computer of a local utility company. He could think of no other explanation for the timing and selectivity of the power failure – and Henry’s appearance at just the right moment.

So, in addition to joining Henry’s list and the sheriff’s list, the Lauries now had Mallory’s attention as well. What a worthy opponent for a family of evangelists – Our Lady of Cyberspace. That irresponsible brat. Someone in that tent might have been killed.

Charles stopped at the windbreak of tall trees and turned back. Car headlights illuminated the fleeing mob. Henry pulled at his sleeve again, and they moved through the streets into Dayborn Square. As they passed the fountain, Henry slowed their pace to a comfortable walk. When they stepped outside the boundaries of the square, all the streetlamps and window lights went out, and Charles felt somehow responsible.

He cast his eyes over the woods on the other side of Upland Bayou and wondered what tree she perched in, watching their progress, switching off the lights behind them.

When Charles and Henry had crossed the bridge, the lights came on again, and the distant telephones of Owltown began to ring, all of them, ringing constantly, until one by one they were taken off their hooks as people returned home, almost as if their phones were calling them back to their houses and trailers.

As they were crossing the bridge over the bayou, Charles said, “Poor Malcolm. The collection plates never finished the first row.”

Henry smiled. “Then he didn’t make the cost of raising the tent. The first row is stocked with relatives.”

Herd instinct? Of course. Family members put all their money in the collection plates, and the rest followed suit.

A gunshot exploded in the woods beyond the bridge. Henry seemed unconcerned.

“It’s only Fred Laurie shooting owls again. I saw him go into the woods. Or maybe it’s Augusta shooting Fred Laurie. It’s a big mistake to fool with her owls.”

Fred Laurie searched the woods, his brown eyes alighting on each dark shape that moved. He raised his rifle and squeezed the trigger again. He crept closer to his target, and now he could see it clearly. He had killed yet another leaf – shot it straight through the heart. This was the third such bit of vegetation he had murdered while his brothers were playing to the crowd back in Owltown.