The Gospel Singer by Harry Crews

Author:Harry Crews [Crews, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

The crowd was still packed tightly around Enigma Funeral Parlor. But thankfully the man with the black skin did not seem to be about. More cars had arrived. Some of them bore candy-striped stickers on their front and back bumpers: see the freak fair—marvel at human wonders! Hiram’s brother Cash, who owned Enigma Seed and Feed, had sent out to Tifton for a cotton candy–making machine and across the street from the funeral parlor children sat on the edge of the wooden sidewalk eating tall pink sugar cones.

The Gospel Singer and Didymus stepped out of the funeral parlor and the swirling crowd stopped and turned to face them. Now that he had stopped singing over MaryBell, they seemed in a better mood. No one stood at the window looking into the funeral parlor any longer. They had shifted their attention to him. Many of them waved and a knot of teenaged girls suddenly chanted his name and squealed. There was music everywhere. All kinds of music. Car radios had been left on up and down the street. Many of the children held cotton candy pressed to their mouths and transistor radios pressed to their ears. The oiled, metallic voice of disk jockeys shouted through the streets of Enigma: YOU CRAZY MAD TEEN-ADULTS OUT THERE IN TRANSISTOR LAND GET READY FOR THE SWINGINGEST FLINGINGEST STOMPPINGEST ORGY OF SOUND EVER WHEN THE COLOSSEUM IN ATLANTA HAS THE SHOW OF THE YEAR! LISTEN TO THIS ALL-STAR CAST: MONSTER MAN AND THE BLOOD SUCKERS, ISAIAH MESSIAH AND THE MESSAGES, THE VIRTUE TRIO: HOPE, FAITH AND LOVE! AND MANY MANY MORE OF YOUR FAVORITES!

“Look at it,” said Didymus. “God’s love is immeasurable.”

Something especially shattering came on a transistor radio in the group of girls that had been shouting his name and they all turned to face one another, their bodies abruptly coming to life in a twisting, gyrating dance.

“Can there be penance large enough for this?” asked Didymus.

One of them was particularly pretty. She was wearing white stretch pants and her hair was black and hung in a ponytail to the small of her back. Her arms were round and pink. And while her feet did not move at all in the dance, her bottom, impossibly round and incredibly taut, shivered and rippled like water under a wind. The Gospel Singer’s vision narrowed to include only the quivering part of her that she now proposed in his direction by bending forward to swing her ponytail about her head like a windmill. She could not have been more than fifteen. The Gospel Singer’s teeth went quietly on edge and his throat dried. There in the midst of that shouting and waving it occurred to him that he had never had any woman in Enigma except MaryBell. He couldn’t because of MaryBell. She had been as ubiquitous as the air he breathed. He took a deep, comfortable breath and looked about. Gone! She was gone! He was free!

He had just raised his foot to take a

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