"I wish I could. I'm sorry, Poppa. Not this evening, but soon.

Okay?"

"That will be nice," he said.

"And we won't have to talk about Claire at all, will we?"

It startled her. Sometimes he seemed to be aware of what had happened to him, and to remember all the past. She had spent the Sundays of her life listening to the sweet thunder of his voice. For most of her life he had known everything worth knowing.

She went to him, bent and kissed his lined forehead, patted his silk-clad shoulder. She glanced at the television screen. A man on a horse had a rope around the horns of an immature bull and he yanked it off its feet and ran to where it lay fallen.

"Don't you want the sound on?"

"No. They talk so fast I don't know what they're saying. I just like to watch them. I like to watch them do things."

She had to hurry to keep her date with John Tinker over in the projection room in Communications. He and Finn Efflander were there, waiting for her.

"Why am I in on this particular viewing, gentlemen ?" she asked.

"We need another opinion on this one. We think he's a new tiger. And we need one to hold the show together," John Tinker said.

"You do nicely, Mag. And I am getting a little bit better as time goes by. But Doctor Macy just does not have the spark, and neither do our visiting clergymen. We've got to try to fill the hole the old man left. We've got to get the people crying and carrying on."

6 "Who is this so-called tiger?"

"The Reverend Tom Daniel Birdy from down near Pensacola. Don't laugh at the name, sis. I sent a crew down there with the best portable equipment we could find."

Finn Efflander started the professional tape and stood by to adjust the volume before coming back and sitting on Mary Margaret's right. The picture was good. But the Reverend Birdy was picked up in the middle of a thoroughly pedestrian sermon. He read hesitantly from the Bible. He was a big brown rawboned man with coarse black hair, a broad face and features that made her wonder if there was some American Indian in his lineage.

"But he isn't at all"..."

"Just sit quiet, Mag. Please. Trust us."

Within a few minutes, Tom Daniel Birdy got down to the primary business at hand, the business of saving souls.

"I know what you've been doing in your dumb, sorry lives," he roared, glaring at his congregation. The sudden loudness made Mary Margaret jump.

"Ever' one of you. No exceptions. You and you way over there in the pink necktie. You've been having sick, rotten little thoughts." He was down from the pulpit, pacing back and forth behind the rail.

"Sick, dirty little pictures in your lonely mind. You're ashamed of yourself and you're so glad nobody can see into your head. How do you know nobody can? God can! You've got the anxieties, ever' one of you out there. Money worries eat on you. Job worries. Husband and wife worries. In every black heart there's a little voice asking questions. They gone catch me? They gone find out? Some of you are saddled with old folks, mean as snakes, and you are trying not to hate them because they're your folks, but you hate them anyway and you feel the guilts for hating your own kin. Some of you got kids worthless as crabgrass, prowling the streets, stealing and fighting and fornicatin' in parked cars with other kids worthless as they are. What's gone become of my kids? you ask.

What's gone happen to my job? What's gone become of me anyways? I got more than I can carry. I'm all bent over double and stupid from the load of sweat and worry and hate and guilt and all the anxieties I got to carry around every living minute of every day, giving me the bad dreams and the bad sweats at night. The years are crowding on by and I'm running in place.

Running my heart out and not gaining one simple inch. Is this all there is? Is this what it's all about?"

He stopped pacing and leaned back and smirked at them. It was a knowing and evil grin on his big rough dark face. A wheedling smirk. He lowered his voice to a husky, secretive rasp.

"And you been doin things! You been grunting away at it in dark places, sweatin' and gaspin'. Pleasuring yourself, taking what isn't yours to take. Grabbing flesh and grabbing money while your soul leaks out of you like spit down a drain. In the back of your mind there is this oily slippery little thought that keeps saying to you, now maybe those preachers were right.

Maybe there's a devil and a hell and eternal fire and all that.

But nobody has ever proved it, have they? Nobody has ever come back to tell us all about the weird wild crazy sound of ten billion souls in an agony that never ends, all of them sizzling and screaming at once, screaming for all the rest of eternity, their throats wide open, the eyes starting out of their heads.

"I'M HERE TO TELL YOU ABOUT IT! BECAUSE I.

CAN HEAR THE SCREAMIN'll"

He dropped his voice again.

"Now how can it be possible that you black-hearted sinners and you are ALL sinners just as I am, because the thought is the same as the deed how can you shed all that daily anguish and pain and guilt and worry and fear, and sidestep that deep red pit of hell you've earned for yourself ?"

He made use of silence. He shook his head slowly.

"The answer is SO simple. The answer is SO easy. It's laid right out for you, right here in this Book. Want to know how it works?

You have to walk all the way up here to me, carrying that big sick stinking load on your back. You got to come up here and give one big terrible heave of your shoulders and you turn that big load that's killing you... you turn that load over to the good Lord. AND HE WILL TAKE IT ONTO HIS SHOULDERS. He always has and He always will. You take all your burdens and you take your immortal soul and you put them right into His hands and you say, LORD, I'VE HAD

ENOUGH OF THIS! I PURE GIVE UP! I CAIN'T.

HANDLE IT NO MORE BY MYSELF! I'M YOURS FROM.

HERE ON IN AND FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY!".

He smiled fondly at them all, and said in a soft voice, "Know what's going to happen? He's going to TAKE that load of fear and guilt and dirt and sickness off you. And all He is ever going to ask you in return is you got to live by HIS BOOK, by HIS RULES. The rules are easy. Any fool can follow the Ten Commandments if he puts his mind to it. His mind and his heart and his soul. BELIEVE every God-given word in this sacred Book. LIVE every day in His way, for His glory and for your own eternal joy in heaven. You will stand free, my friends. You will be born again, with no more guilt in you than a newborn child. You will be SAVED, and there isn't never going to be another thing that can happen to you on this side of the grave that can make you afraid, or unhappy, or guilty, or miserable, or sick at heart. NOTHING!

"I'm God's agent standing right here before you. He give me the right to tell you how to drop those burdens and help you drop them. So get yourself on up here, those of you new here today, those of you who got too scared and shy to try it last time you were here. TRY IT! IT WORKS! Those of you who've already been saved, you look around you now for the ones that want to come up and can't quite make up their mind, and you take them by the hand and bring them up to the Lord and you will be doubly blessed. Come on along! That's the way. That's it. One after the other. You been walking all your life, but you never took a walk that's going to mean so much, now and in the hereafter. Come scrub your soul. Scrub your life clean. Find the way life should be, and never has been for you. Gather in close, all of you. Bless you. Don't try to hold the tears back. They come natural, out of gratitude to the Lord.

They're a true part of being reborn. Thank you, God. This is more souls than I had any right to expect. You've answered my prayers again. Now let's all bow our heads in a prayer of thanks for being able to heap all our burdens on the Lord God."

John Tinker stepped up and shut the tape off and turned to face her, arms folded. "Well?"

Mary Margaret realized she was sitting bolt upright on the edge of her chair, hands knotted in her lap, teeth biting into her underlip. She made herself relax and lean back.

"Wow," she whispered.

"That was what I said too," John Tinker told her.

She frowned.

"He's very crude but he's very, very strong.

That's because he's absolutely sincere. He really knows that it's going to work. And he makes it work. Fantastic! I know that my faith is just as strong as his, but I can't project it like that. He's acting but at the same time he isn't. He's fabulous, Johnny."

"And who does he remind you of ?"

"Of course! Poppa, when we were little. He wasn't as crude but he was just as strong. He could make them cry. He could make them flock up to be saved. He could make them believe.

Where has this man been? Why haven't we heard of him before?"