was helped from the town meeting hall, still ranting about ungrateful Philistines who would rue the day.
Montgomery became Ilium, just the same.
Twenty-two years passed.
Came a fast-talking revival preacher who for some reason bypassed Derry and elected instead to spread his tent in Ilium. He went by the name of Colson, but Myrtle Duplissey, Haven's self-appointed historian, eventually became convinced that Colson's real name was Cooder, and that he was the illegitimate son of Albion Cooder.
Whoever he was, he won most of the Christians in town over to his own lively version of the faith by the time the corn was ready for picking-much to the despair of Mr Hartley, who ministered to the Methodists of Ilium and Troy, and Mr Crowell, who looked after the spiritual welfare of Baptists in Ilium, Troy, Etna, and Unity (the joke in those days was that Emory Crowell's parsonage belonged to the town of Troy, but his piles belonged to God). Nevertheless, their exhortations were voices crying in the wilderness. Preacher Colson's congregation continued to grow as that well-nigh perfect summer of 1900 drew to its conclusion. To call the crops of that year “bumpers” was to poor-mouth them; the thin northern New England earth, usually as stingy as Scrooge, that year poured forth a bounty which seemed never-ending. Mr Crowell, the Baptist whose piles belonged to God, grew depressed and silent and, three years later, hanged himself in the cellar of the Troy parsonage.
Mr Hartley, the Methodist minister, grew ever more alarmed by the evangelical fervor which was sweeping Ilium like a cholera epidemic. Perhaps this was because Methodists are, under ordinary circumstances, the most undemonstrative worshippers of God; they listen not to sermons but to “messages,” pray mostly in decorous silence, and consider the only proper places for congregation-spoken amens to be at the end of the Lord's Prayer and those few hymns not sung by the choir. But now these previously undemonstrative people were doing everything from speaking in tongues to holy rolling. Next, Mr Hartley sometimes said, they will be handling snakes. The Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday meetings in the revival tent beside Derry Road became steadily louder, wilder, and more emotionally explosive. “If it was happening in a carnival tent, they'd call it hysteria,” he told Fred Perry, a church deacon and his only close friend, one night over glasses of sherry in the church rectory. “Because it's happening in a revival tent, they can get away with calling it Pentecostal Fire.”
Rev. Hartley's suspicions of Colson were amply justified in the course of time, but before then Colson fled, having harvested a goodly crop of cold cash and warm women instead of pumpkins and taters. And before then he put his lasting stamp on the town by changing its name for the final time.
His sermon on that hot August night began with the subject of the harvest as a symbol of God's great reward, and then moved on to the subject of this very town. By this time, Colson had stripped off his frock coat. His sweatsoaked hair had tumbled in his eyes. The sisters had commenced getting down in the amen corner, although it would be yet a while before the speaking in tongues and the holy rolling got going.
“I consider this town sanctified,” Colson told his audience, gripping the sides of his pulpit with his big hands-he might have considered it sanctified for some reason other than the fact that his honored self had chosen it in which to spread his tent (not to mention his seed), but if so, he didn't say so. “I consider it a haven. Yes! I have found a haven here that reminds me of my haven-home, a lovely land maybe not so different from the one Adam and Eve knew before they went picking fruit from that tree they should have left alone. Sanctified!” Preacher Colson bellowed. Years after, there were members of his congregation who still spoke admiringly of how that man could shout for Jesus, scoundrel or not.
“Amen!” the congregation cried back. The night, though warm, was perhaps not quite warm enough to completely explain the blushes on so many feminine cheeks and brows; such flushes had become common since Preacher Colson came to town.
“This town is nothing short of a glory to God!”
“Hallelujah!” the congregation yelled jubilantly. Breasts heaved. Eyes sparkled. Tongues slipped out and wetted lips.
“This town has got a promise!” Preacher Colson shouted, now striding rapidly back and forth, occasionally flicking his black locks back from his forehead with a quick snap that showed his cleanly corded neck to good advantage. “This town has got a promise and that promise is the fullness of the harvest, and that promise shall be fulfilled!”
“Praise Jesus!”
Colson came back to the pulpit, grasped it, and looked out at them forbiddingly. “So why you want to have a town which promises the harvest of God and the haven of God-why you want to have a town that speaks of those things named after some dago is more than I can figure out, brethern. Must have been the devil working somewhere in the last generation is all I can figure.”
Talk about changing the town's name from Ilium to Haven began the very next day. The Rev. Mr Crowell protested the change listlessly, the Rev. Mr Hartley much more strongly. Ilium's selectmen were neutral, except to point out that it would cost the town twenty dollars to change the Papers of Incorporation on file in Augusta, and probably another twenty to change the municipal road signs with the town's name on them, not to mention the letterheads on town documents and stationery.
Long before the March town meeting at which Article 14, “To see if the town will approve changing the name of Incorporated Maine Town No. 193 from ILIUM to HAVEN,” was discussed and voted on, Preacher Colson had literally folded his tent and stolen into the night. Said folding and stealing took place on the night of September 7th, following what Colson had for weeks been calling the great Harvest Home Revival of 1900. He'd been making it clear for at least a month that he considered it the most important meeting he would hold in town this year; perhaps the most important meeting he ever held, even if he should settle here, something he felt more and more often that God was calling him to do-and didn't that news just make the ladies” hearts go pitty-pat! It was, he said, to be a great love-offering to a loving God who had provided the town with such a wonderful growing season and harvest.
Colson did some harvesting of his own. He began by cajoling the attendees to give the largest “love-offering” of his stay, and finished by plowing and planting not two, not four, but six young maidens in the field behind the tent after the meeting.
“Men love to talk big, but I guess most of “em pack derringers in their pants no matter how big they talk,” old Duke Barfield said in the barbershop one evening. If there had been a Stinkiest Man in Town contest, old Duke would have won hands down. He smelled like a pickled egg that has spent a month in a mud puddle. He was listened to, but at a distance, and upwind, if there was a wind to make this possible. “I heerd o” men with double-barrel shotguns in their pants, and I reckon it's so every once “n” agin, and once't I even heerd tell o” some fella had him a three-shot pistol, but that fucker Colson's only man I ever heerd of who come packin” a six-shooter.”
Three of Preacher Colson's conquests were virgins before the invasion of the Pentecostal pecker.
The love-offering that night in the late summer of 1900 was indeed generous, although the barbershop gossips differed on just how generous the monetary part of it had been. All agreed that, even before the great Harvest Home Revival, where the preaching had gone on until ten, the gospel-singing until midnight, and the field-fucking until well past two, there had been a great outpouring of hard cash. Some also pointed out that Colson hadn't had many expenses during his stay, either. The women damn near fought for the privilege of bringing him his meals, the fellow who now owned the hostelry made him the long-term loan of a buggy… and, of course, no one at all charged him for his nightly entertainments.