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Though the days were still too short to bake the chill from the ground, the air was balmy. Many natives
claimed that this was their favorite time of year before the cloying mugginess of summer in Delaware
and its attendant noxious bugs made their appearance.
You are my sunshine& the mariachi band sang.
Shielded from this glorious day by the canopy over the dais, Clay carried on with his prophet duties
while entertaining a petite but wiry woman of fifty or so. She wore a safari jacket and khaki pants over
her still shapely, but hardened figure. Her severe expression, framed by her graying hair, betrayed her
disdain. Beatrice Howe had worked for People magazine for over fifteen years. A staunch feminist, she
usually covered women s issues but had asked for this unusual assignment for its religious implications.
She never missed a chance to cross swords with the Catholic Church eager to duel with them on the
Church s views on abortion, women in the clergy, and other cultural issues.
The foundation of the dais was constructed of crates that supported plywood decking that had been
stripped from a Salem billboard. Atop the smiling face of the happy smoker sat the Barcalounger that was
the throne of the resident prophet. To keep the admiring throngs from swamping the platform, snow
fence had been nailed around three-fourths of its perimeter. A battered couch, rescued from a roadside
trash heap, rested at stage left of the recliner in Tonight Show fashion so that guests could join the prophet
for special audiences. Behind Clay s seat, there sat a derelict avocado-green refrigerator. No one knew
from whence it came it had just appeared one night. Though no longer able to function in a cooling
capacity, it served as a cupboard that held whatever the prophet s attendants wished to keep on hand.
The trailer that was home to Clay s three Malaguan compadres had been moved from the migrant
worker camp at Pardoe Farms and now sat at the prophet s back abutting the shrine. Besides a treasure
chamber, it also served as Clay s break room during his long days of drinking.
When Beatrice finished taking in the shantytown style architecture she asked, Mr. Stool, what
qualifies you to be the religious leader of all these people?
What did you say your name was again?
Howe, Beatrice Howe.
I had an Aunt Beatrice once. We all called her Aunt Biddie. D ya mind if I call you Biddie?
Beatrice was taken off guard by the naively presumptive question. She hesitated before responding,
reflecting on this man. What he stood for. What she wanted from him.
Clay Stool was taller than she had imagined. And for such a dissolute man, he appeared to be in near
athletic shape. She couldn t decide if he was handsome or not. But his face had character especially the
eyes. They were a disarmingly warm and friendly brown, standing out from the bluish gray of his
irregularly shaven face. When he looked up at her from under his sombrero, she felt that his eyes were
not really focused on her.
But she tried not to let it bother her, for Clay Stool was just a target. Her mark. The key to her
story. People relate better to a story when it is about an individual central character rather than an
impersonal organization like the church. Beatrice planned to use the magnitude of chicanery she assumed
was being perpetrated at this shrine, to make Clay Stool the personification of religious exploitation. With
a drunken schizophrenic as protagonist, this story had Pulitzer Prize written all over it.
The target of her investigation was in reality an itinerant laborer whose liquor induced visions were
nebulous at best and devoid of a coherent message, but she had been waiting for the right story and could
sense that this was it.
Beatrice concocted a simple, but comprehensive, agenda. First she would photograph the so-called
prophet while he sat in his recliner drinking himself into oblivion. Then she would interview him. Get his
inebriated and befuddled responses on tape. Document the squalor his disciples lived in while giving away
their worldly goods to this charlatan. And if that was not enough, she had a back-up plan.
Her photographer had no sooner taken a head shot of the putative prophet for the article, when
Beatrice moved in to ask Clay a series of leading and insinuating questions
What do you do with the offerings?
Other than what I drink, I don t know what becomes of any of this stuff& if you re wond rin about
any of these here gifts, you might want to speak with my compadre, Hector.
Do you really expect people to believe that getting drunk allows you to communicate with a being
in another dimension, or heaven, or wherever?
Sure, why not?
She wasn t quite ready for Clay s matter-of-fact demeanor. She liked it better when the guilty party
squirmed. So, she approached Clay from another direction.
Mister Stool, according to your medical records, after becoming catatonic during combat, you spent
over two decades in the psychiatric ward at the VA hospital in Elsmere, Delaware. The doctors there
diagnosed you as delusional and suffering from an organic psychosis. They said you often heard voices and
hallucinated.
Yep. You re right as rain, little missy, I was in the hospital for quite a spell. And I d have never
made it through them years there without the help of those voices. They was good company. But the folks
at the hospital finally let me go and told me that I was cured I got papers from Doctor Brown to prove
it. The hospital did me a world uh good. That s where I learned my trade sweeping. I picked up
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