Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [116]
“It’s not for us,” I said curtly. He did not press the point. When he left, Cynthia did. “I’d really like to go,” she told me. “I’ve heard about this evangelist, and I’m curious.”
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.” I knew that Cynthia, who had been reared in a devoutly Protestant household, was sincerely concerned about our spiritual welfare; despite my own antipathy toward religion and my stubbornness about her attending church, I respected this in her. Yet to go to a tent revival with people moaning and wailing and shouting…nonsense.
I been around holy rollers before. When I was a kid they’d come to town but weren’t allowed inside the Torrance city limits. Sometimes my friends and I would sneak out to the site at night, lie on the ground, and peek under the tent to watch these crazies make a spectacle of themselves—foaming at the mouth, groveling in the sawdust, screaming in a frenzy. Some of them even got on their backs and raised their hands and feet up to the Lord. That’s why they called them holy rollers.
We’d go back and tell the priest, and he’d warn us off. “They’re demon-possessed. Keep away.”
A few days later our neighbor asked us to accompany him again, and this time Cynthia decided to go on her own. We were getting a divorce anyway, so what was the difference? I went to a party instead.
Later that night, swaying from too much booze, I came home to find Cynthia beaming. She seemed different. She actually smiled and acted calm, and frankly it felt eerie and vaguely disturbing.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I went to hear the Reverend Billy Graham,” she said.
“And?” I said, bored but tensing for a fight.
“And it was wonderful. Not at all the way you’d imagine it.”
“How do you know how I’d imagine it?” I slurred, sensing danger.
“Oh, Louie. You know how I always say there’s something missing in our lives? Now I know what it is. For the first time I have peace in my heart.”
“Great,” I sighed, dismissing her. “That’s great. I’m tired. Let’s go to bed.”
“No, Louie. Listen to me. I’ve accepted Christ as my Savior.”
I didn’t know if I should cry, laugh, or yell. Cynthia was smarter than this. Only old ladies and kids fell for this nonsense. I said nothing.
Cynthia just smiled. I went to bed.
THE NEXT MORNING nothing had changed, except that Cynthia was all over me to go to a meeting. I wouldn’t bend. “You know how I feel about it,” I snapped. “Leave me alone. I don’t understand it and I don’t like it.”
“You don’t understand it because you don’t understand yourself,” she replied evenly.
Cynthia and our new Christian neighbor began to work on me, and all I could do was to stay as far away from them as possible. I figured they’d get the message that I wasn’t buying it and would give up. Eventually they eased off, maybe because Billy Graham was supposed to fold his tent and leave town by week’s end. But Saturday night Cynthia told me that Dr. Graham would be in town for another three weeks by popular demand, and she tried to persuade me again.
“Billy Graham doesn’t preach all the time,” she said. “He talks about many things, like how many scientific facts can be found in the Bible.”
“Science?” I asked. I should have known better. Cynthia knew science fascinated me. Once she’d piqued my curiosity, she didn’t let up.
That evening Cynthia asked me again to take her to the meeting. What could I do? Reluctantly I relented.
THE SIGN