Song of Susannah - Stephen King [110]
* * *
Eighteen
What she needed to do came to Susannah in a flash. She withdrew from Mia (if the woman couldn’t get a taxi with the help of that magic turtle, she was hopeless) and with her eyes squeezed shut visualized the Dogan. When she opened them, she was there. She grabbed the microphone she’d used to call Eddie and depressed the toggle.
“Harrigan!” she said into the mike. “Reverend Earl Harrigan! Are you there? Do you read me, sugar? Do you read me? ”
* * *
Nineteen
Rev. Harrigan paused in his labors long enough to watch a black woman—one fine-struttin honey, too, praise God—get into a cab. The cab drove off. He had a lot to do before beginning his nightly sermon—his little dance with Officer Benzyck was only the opening gun—but he stood there watching the cab’s taillights twinkle and dwindle, just the same.
Had something just happened to him?
Had…? Was it possible that…?
Rev. Harrigan fell to his knees on the sidewalk, quite oblivious of the pedestrians passing by (just as most were oblivious of him). He clasped his big old praise-God hands and raised them to his chin. He knew the Bible said that praying was a private thing best done in one’s closet, and he’d spent plenty of time getting kneebound in his own, yes Lord, but he also believed God wanted folks to see what a praying man looked like from time to time, because most of them—say Gawd! —had forgotten what that looked like. And there was no better, no nicer place to speak with God than right here on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth. There was a singing here, clean and sweet. It uplifted the spirit, clarified the mind…and, just incidentally, clarified the skin, as well. This wasn’t the voice of God, and Rev. Harrigan was not so blasphemously stupid as to think it was, but he had an idea that it was angels. Yes, say Gawd, say Gawd-bomb, the voice of the ser-a-phim!
“God, did you just drop a little God-bomb on me? I want to ask was that voice I just heard yours or mine own?”
No answer. So many times there was no answer. He would ponder this. In the meantime, he had a sermon to prepare for. A show to do, if you wanted to be perfectly vulgar about it.
Rev. Harrigan went to his van, parked at the yellow curb as always, and opened the back doors. Then he took out the pamphlets, the silk-covered collection plate which he’d put beside him on the sidewalk, and the sturdy wooden cube. The soapbox upon which he would stand, could you raise up high and shout hallelujah?
And yes, brother, while you were right at it, could you give amen?
STAVE: Commala-come-ken
It’s the other one again.
You may know her name and face
But that don’t make her your friend.
RESPONSE: Commala-come-ten!
She is not your friend!
If you let her get too close
She’ll cut you up again.
The Writer
11th Stanza
One
By the time they reached the little shopping center in the town of Bridgton—a supermarket, a laundry, and a surprisingly large drugstore—both Roland and Eddie sensed it: not just the singing, but the gathering power. It lifted them up like some crazy, wonderful elevator. Eddie found himself thinking of Tinkerbell’s magic dust and Dumbo’s magic feather. This was like drawing near the rose and yet not like that. There was no sense of holiness or sanctification in this little New England town, but something was going on here, and it was powerful.
Driving here from East Stoneham, following the signs to Bridgton from back road to back road, Eddie had sensed something else, as well: the unbelievable crispness of this world. The summer-green depths of the pine forests had a validity he had never encountered before, never even suspected. The birds which flew across the sky fair stopped his breath for wonder, even the most common sparrow. The very shadows on the ground seemed to have a velvety thickness, as if you could reach down, pick them up, and carry them away under your arm like pieces of carpet, if you so chose.
At some point, Eddie asked Roland if he felt any of this.
“Yes,” Roland said. “I feel