The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [206]
When his car stopped, Kyle had climbed in, thinking Carson just another trick. Then Carson had shown him another path; Kyle had been with him ever since. They were all so loyal—his flock, his followers.
“How long have you been with me, Mary?”
The stylist didn't pause in her work, but in the mirror he saw a smile appear on her lips.
“It'll be nineteen years this summer, Mr. Carson.”
Mary had been one of the very first to come to him. She had worked for him when he began his first show on a public cable-access channel, taping his sermons in an abandoned gas station outside of Topeka. First people had ignored him, then they had laughed at him. The ministers in their fancy churches had been so proud, so righteous. They had said he wasn't a true pastor, that he was a charlatan. They had thought, just because they had official pieces of paper on their walls, that they were better than he.
Well, he had left Kansas behind, and no one could laugh anymore. He commanded the Steel Cathedral. Two thousand people came every weekday to see him. Hundreds of thousands more watched his show. And his Saturday night broadcasts—like tonight's—were the most popular of all. You didn't need a degree to talk to God, to talk for him. All you had to do was believe.
“You're a good soul, Mary,” he said.
Her smile deepened. She was sixty, he supposed, but still pretty. She didn't seem to age anymore. Nor did young Kyle Naughton.
“Thank you, Mr. Carson.”
“You can go now, Mary. I'd like to be alone, to prepare myself.”
Without a word she set down the brush, then left the dressing room, shutting the door behind her.
Carson removed the towel that covered his shoulders—carefully, so as not to muss his crisp white suit—then gazed at himself in the mirror. He always took ten minutes before the show to himself. This was his time to gather his thoughts, his time to think about what he was going to say to his flock.
His time to listen to the Big Voice.
Carson would never forget the day he first heard the Voice. It had come in his darkest moment, just over four years ago. The unbelievers in Kansas had finally rallied against him. They had seized the cable-access channel that aired his show, claiming it was needed for use by the public schools. And no doubt they would indeed use the channel to teach their lies about evolution, and to show students those lessons in fornication they called sex education.
Despite his prayers, his last sermon was cut off in mid broadcast. He and his followers were escorted out of the recording studio by the police. It was over. As so often happened in this wicked world, the unbelievers had won.
Then the Big Voice had spoken to him.
At first he thought he was going insane. He had become weak in his despair, and he turned to alcohol, which he hadn't touched since starting his ministry. However, still the Big Voice spoke to him: deep, thunderous. Over those next days he had tried to shut it out, but nothing—not cotton in his ears, not loud music, not the pounding water of a cold shower—could stop it. Finally, he had lain down on his bed, and he had listened.
I will gather many followers to you, the Voice said, and though it was only in his mind, it was as clear as if it came over the radio with the sound turned up all the way. You will have a great flock at your command.
“How?” he had dared to whisper to the water-stained ceiling of the motel where he had holed up. His heart had ached with longing; he wanted to believe. “How can that happen now?”
You must believe in me, the Voice said. And you must do as I tell you.
He did. The first thing the Big Voice told him to do was to pack his things, to take what few followers would come with him, and to go to Denver, that he would find everything he needed there.
Carson didn't see how that could be true, but he did as he was told. Early on he realized that everything the Big Voice told him was true. It told him men in suits