Pass the Possum, Please

"That's it? You're just going to walk out and leave me?"

"Look," Ardmore began, and he actually sounded slightly solicitous, "you're just nervous; it's stage fright. Everybody gets it at first, but you'll get over it. What you need is a prop, something to draw attention away from you while you're up there."

"A 'prop?' Where in hell am I going to get a 'prop' this late? The service's supposed to start in an hour." It was Arliss' turn to redden.

"Let me think a minute, sonny." Ardmore was squinting hard and rubbing his forehead with two fingers.

Arliss waited impatiently while the clock on the counter ticked ominously, and, then, Ardmore's eyes popped open as if to announce an epiphany.

"Do we still have that barbecued possum the widow Whitson brought us the other night?"

"Hell, yes, we still have it. You don't think anybody was actually going to eat the nasty thing, do you?"

"Where is it, then?"

"In the fridge; in a two gallon zip lock baggie, behind your case of Coors."

"Good. Now, here's what you're gonna do. You take that baggie with the possum in it, and you put it in one of those brown paper grocery sacks. Got it?"

"Yeah. Then what?"

"Then, when the congregation's all seated and expectant like, you're gonna walk in there carrying that grocery sack, and you're gonna set it right down on the altar in front of all of 'em. Believe me, there won't be an eye in the house that won't be stuck like glue on that sack."

"Okay, but what about when I start talking? Even this bunch of hayseeds isn't stupid enough to stare at a grocery sack for a whole sermon."

"That's the best part, kid. When they start getting restless and shifting their eyes back toward you, all you got to do is walk over and pick up the sack and shake it at em. Then, you tell em that the contents of that sack was brought to us at grave peril by our loyalest and bravest supporters, folks who's willin to lay down their lives doin the Lord's work. By then, they'll be sittin on the edges of them seats with their mouths hanging open, trying to guess what's in that bag."

"Oh, great, they'll probably take after me with pitchforks, when I tell 'em it's just a barbecued possum."

"Hell, you don't tell em that, boy; you're gonna reach inta that sack and real slow like start pullin that possum out and you're gonna tell them what you got in that sack is one of them dead baby whatchamacallits."

"A 'fetus?'" Arliss shrieked in disbelief. "You actually expect me to pull a barbecued possum out of a grocery sack and tell them it's a fetus?"

"Of course I do," Ardmore answered, nodding his head matter of factly. He had, after all, spent most of his carnival years running the shell game or one of the endless variations of it, so such slight of hand feats were second nature to him, and he had boundless confidence in the gullibility of common folks.

"Maybe you could get away with it, old man, you got plenty of experience at snookering people."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, sonny, you're not going to pass the fucking thing around for 'em to play with; you're just going to wave that baggie full of possum back and forth for a few seconds and then put it back in the sack. Of course, you can pull it off."

"I don't know; what makes you so sure?"

"Look at what you got going for you, boy. The light's so bad under that tent you couldn't recognize your own mother if she was standing right in front of you, and the first row of seats is at least ten feet from where you'll be standing. Besides, best part of all is that ain't a one of them hicks ever seen one of them, uh, ah..."

"'Fetuses?'" Arliss volunteered helpfully.

"Yeah, right, whatever," Ardmore answered impatiently. "Now, look, it's late and I got to go take care of Mrs. Merriweather, or you and me'll be walking to our next gig. You do like I tell you, and you'll be fine. Understand?"

"Hell, yes, I understand. I understand I got about as much chance of passin off a barbecued possum for a fetus as you got of humpin that old bag outa all her worldly possessions."

"Don't overrate yourself, L.D., you got less chance, but you also got no choice."

"How come, I don't have any choices around here?"

"Don't make me spell it out for you, boy. I cut you loose and you're through. Me? I don't need all this setup. I could make a livin off a flat rock; I know how to get by. But, you? You wouldn't last five minutes on your own, cause they ain't no call for ex-tilt-a-whirl operators, now are they?"

"I might do better than you expect, Ardmore."

"You surely might, sonny, and tonight's as good a time as any to start doin it."

"Oh, hell, fuck it. I can't do worse than make a fool out of myself, I guess."

"Getting less than two hundred in the plate would be a lot worse."

"Jesus, Ardmore, get the hell out of here, if you're going. I got enough to worry about what with having to wave a fucking baggie full of barbecued possum around in the middle of my first sermon, I sure don't need to be worrying about finances, too."

"You do the first thing right, boy, and it'll take care of the second," Ardmore advised as he pulled on a slightly stained white satin jacket. "Now, you come out and help me jump the pickup off the Winney's battery so's I don't get dirty."

Later, like a lifetime later, or so it seemed to him, Arliss found himself sitting in the Winny, staring down at a truly pitiful collection of coins and crumpled dollar bills scattered across the dinette table, nursing his third beer and wondering what in Hell had gone wrong with his sermon. Well, Ardmore, ole buddy, he ruminated, I not only made a fool of myself tonight, I came up about a hundred and eighty short of the two hundred you told me to get, so I guess you could call this a pretty piss poor night. His recriminations were interrupted by a soft knocking on the Winney's flimsy door and, only half believing his ears he did a double take in the direction of the sound. He heard it again, and, without getting out of his chair, he leaned across the kitchen and threw open the door.

"Yeah?" he snapped inhospitably, unable to see the visitor standing in the shadows.

"Hello, Brother Tate, remember me?" Jackie Alright stepped into the light and looked at him expectantly.

"Oh, yes, ma'am, I surely do," he replied a little wistfully; the vision of her bared, congested nipples fogged his mind for an instant. "It's Mrs. Alright, isn't it?" he asked, recalling the sweeping, bold signature on her checks in the collection plate.

"That's right, but if you let me in, I'll let you call me Jackie like everybody else."

"Oh, sure," he sputtered. "Come in, come in. Please. I'm sorry I forgot my manners. It's just..."

She didn't wait for his explanation, but stepped quickly into the tiny space inside the camper. Soft light bathed her curves and lit her face and for an instant Arliss fantasized that maybe God had beamed Shania or someone even better into the Winny after all.

"What can I do for you, Mrs. Alright?" he asked politely, abandoning that fantasy.

"For starters, you can stop with the 'Mrs,' that's all over with now. My divorce was final day before yesterday."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And, for seconds, do you have another one of those?" she asked, indicating the open can of Coors on the table.

"Oh, sure. Coors is about the only thing around here that's not in short supply. Help yourself; they're in the fridge.

Jackie snapped the tab with a crimson nail and gave Arliss a smoldering look over the rim of her can as she took a sip.

"Looks like the collection plates came up nearly empty," she observed casually as her gaze shifted from his face to the table.

"I guess you could say my first sermon fell a little short of having the desired effect," he shrugged, and then he looked at her warily and asked, "You aren't from the bank are you?"

"No," she laughed. "I own the Ford dealership over there, behind you, or half of it, anyway; repossessing Winnebagos is not in my repertoire."

"Whew," he grinned, "that's good news, and the dealership thing explains those two hundred dollar checks you've been writing us every night."

"I want you to do well and keep up the good work. That's why I stopped by, to tell you how much I liked your sermon tonight."

"You did? You sure fooled me, Miss Alright. You walked out in the middle of it along with most of the rest of them. There weren't six left in the congregation when I quit."

She took another sip and licked her lips with the tip of the pinkest tongue Arliss had ever seen. "I slipped out with the others to powder my nose, and I just can't stand to use those Portolets you've got out there, so I went to the dealership and it took me a while to get back."

"So you weren't mad like the rest of them?"

"Of course not, silly," she laughed again, tipping her can.

"May I?" she asked, reaching to open the refrigerator without waiting for an invitation. "I haven't had a beer in so long, I've forgotten how good they taste. Guess, I've got some catching up to do on lots of things." Her tone hinted at the purgatory of self-denial she had endured during the many months her divorce was pending, but he was enmeshed in his own misery and missed it.

"Help yourself. The thousand bucks you've put in the plate this week entitles you to all the beer you want."

"Thanks. I'll write you another check for the collection I missed tonight."

"Forget it. I'll still be short two hundred. Ardmore's done come to count on your checks; says I'm supposed to squeeze another two hundred out of the hayseeds on top of yours."

"If you would rather have cash," she said solicitously while reaching for her purse, "you could fib a little and tell him I didn't come tonight."

"Naw, but thanks for the thought. He would just start thinking I'm some sort of Billy Graham and want me to do it again at the next stop. It would just postpone my downfall."

"You know what went wrong tonight, don't you?" she inquired gently.

"I'm not sure. I thought things were going okay for a while, but then, all of a sudden, everybody started squirming around and whispering and pretty soon they started getting up and leaving. I haven't figured out why."

"I think you lost them with that possum in a poke trick." Jackie hid behind her beer and tried to stifle a giggle.

"Possum?" Arliss yelped defensively. "What possum?"

"The possum in the baggie you tried to pass of as a fetus, that's what possum." Her eyes twinkled, and she had to cough to conceal a chuckle.

"Oh hell," he gasped. "Ardmore swore ain't none of them hayseeds ever seen a fetus, so wouldn't none of them know the difference."

"Yeah, but what Ardmore didn't think about was that every one of those hayseeds has seen a barbecued possum in a baggie, most of them a couple times a week. Times are hard and folks got to eat; possum's regular fare on most tables around here."

"I'm gonna be sick."

"These folks may be simple, but they aren't dumb, and they sure don't like anybody trying to put one over on them, especially when it comes to usin Jesus to trick them out of what little money they have. That's why you lost them tonight."

"I think I'm gonna kill Ardmore when he gets back tomorrow."

She lowered her eyelids to slits, and he could almost see flames dancing in her pupils as she watched him over the rim of her can. "You almost lost me, too; before the possum trick. Did you know that?" Her voice had a smoldering quality.

"No, ma'am," he replied in bewilderment, shaking his head.

"It was the part right after fornication, when you laid into sodomy for being a sin worse than killing babies. You called it an 'abomination.' Remember?"

"I remember."

"I like sodomy." Her voice was smooth as silk and calm like she was reading off that morning's shopping list, and her eyes never left his.

"You what?" he croaked in disbelief.

"I like sodomy," she repeated patiently, pronouncing the word with such relish he imagined it was a chocolate melting on her tongue. "More to the point, I like being sodomized. You might even say it is one of my favorite things, of a sexual nature, that is."

"My God, Ardmore's right.

"If he told you that I like the feeling of a man being inside me there, then, he is right," she purred.

"No, no, not you specifically," he protested, "just women in general."

"I only know what I like; what feels good to me." She finished her beer and set the empty can on the table.

"Oh, my God."

"I don't think God cares much one way or the other what I do with my body or let anybody else do to it. Do you?"

"Well, uh, no, uh, yes, ah, I mean, aw, hell, I don't know. It's supposed to be a sin, isn't it?"

"You've never done it, have you?"

He blushed, turning beet red and couldn't answer for a minute. Then, he reached for another beer and while she wasn't skewering him with those piercing eyes, he sputtered, "That hasn't got anything to do with it."

"Knowledge and understanding have everything to do with it, Arliss," she said. "You shouldn't be so quick to condemn those who like doing things you haven't tried."

"I wasn't condemning the people, just the act, and I don't have to kill someone to know it's wrong and a sin."

"Oh, sweet Jesus, save me from narrow-minded preachers," she groaned playfully. "There you go, weighing murder and sex on the same scale like they were somehow similar."

"They're both sins," he protested lamely.

"Are they really?" she answered archly. "What's so sinful about a woman giving her body, all of it, to a man?"

"I mean the sodomy part."

"Are you sure about that? I don't remember God passing out a laundry list of sexual does and don'ts, do you?"

"Well, not exactly," he conceded. He had exceeded the limits of his theological underpinnings long before this point in the conversation and was beginning to feel the sands of logic shift under his feet.

"Nice suit," she remarked, changing the subject. His coat was hanging on the back of a chair beside the table and her fingers caressed the fabric as she spoke.

"Thanks," he replied relieved at having been excused from defending his sermon. "It's not mine, not to keep, anyway. It's just out on approval; Ardmore says it goes back to the store on Monday."

"But, you've worn it already, and the tags are off," she observed.

"Ardmore does it all the time. Gets a suit on approval, wears it a few times, then sews the labels back on and takes it back. Who's to know the difference, he says."

"The way he sweats when he's preaching, I'd say just about everybody within ten feet of any suit he's worn would know the difference."

"Brother, are you right about that. I keep tellin him to take a bath but he just says that wading in the Holy Water during baptisms is all the cleansing he needs."

"Ah, that reminds me. I do have one a favor to ask of you; it's another of the reasons I came tonight."

"What's that, Miss Alright? I'll do whatever you want."

"Is that a fact, Arliss?" she purred steamily, and he felt the temperature in the camper rise about ten degrees.

"Yes, ma'am, anything."

"I want you to baptize me."

"Me? Tonight?"

"Yes, you, tonight, and stop calling me 'ma'am,' I'm not that much older than you. It's just Jackie, okay?" She was fingering a strand of pearls that dangled from her neck into her cleavage like a crumb trail for his eyes to follow through the forest of his uncertainty. His eyes swept her curves, and he tried to imagine her emerging from the baptismal tank soaked to the skin with one of those cheap, nylon baptismal gowns stuck to her like Saran wrap.

"That's not my department, Jackie. Come back tomorrow and Ardmore'll do it for you."

"I don't want Ardmore; I want you. Don't I have the right to choose?"

"Well, yes, I guess so, but Ardmore has more experience. I've never done a baptism."

"It's not, like, complicated or anything, is it? Surely you know how. Hell, I've seen enough of them this past week, I could probably do my own, but it wouldn't be the same."

"Yeah, I know how. I've seen a thousand, I guess."

"That's my boy. You gotta lose your virginity sometime and tonight's as good a time as any. You'll never find a more willing partner, either."

His mouth dropped open, and he gaped at her in astonishment until she winked and said, "For the baptism, Arliss, the baptism."

He inhaled with a sigh she took to be relief, and said, "Okay, I'll do it. If that's what you want, I'll do it."

"Good boy," she said, purring again. "Now, give me one of those baptismal gowns yall use so I don't ruin my dress."

Arliss waited in the shadows just under the edge of the tent while she changed. The dealership lights had turned themselves off, but the moon was up, and he could see its reflection wavering in the dark baptismal waters. In a few moments, he saw a wink of light as the Winney's door opened and closed, and then, there she was, floating toward him across the grass like a wisp of white smoke.

"Arliss?" she called out to him.

"Over here," he replied, and she turned toward the sound of his voice.

"It's so dark, I can't see you."

"It's not so bad; your eyes will adjust in a minute," he replied softly, moving to intercept her and guide her to the tent.

His hand on her arm was firm but gentle, and the touch set her to tingling. She put her hand on his and leaned against him in the dark. Her full curves, warmly indistinct beneath the billowing gown, brushed against him. "You'll have to lead me, Arliss," she breathed in a whisper, "I can't see a thing."

He felt the heavy swell of her breast pressing his arm and the wide sweep of her hip tight to his own as she leaned against him for reassurance. She stumbled on the uneven ground, and he quickly circled her waist with his arm. She blinked and squinted and leaned closer to his warmth.

"Don't let me go," she said, clutching his hand.

"I won't," he replied, hoping she wouldn't notice the catch in his throat.

"Are we almost there?"

"Almost."

"Oh, yes, there's the tent," she giggled, as her sight returned, but she still clung to his arm. Then, she lifted her face and smiled at him, "You saved me; I was so blind, I could have wandered off into the night and been lost forever."

"And have me miss the chance to baptize the prettiest woman that's ever come to a Joyful Uprising revival? Not a chance I would let that happen."

"My, you are a sweet man," she chuckled, "but still, maybe I shouldn't have told them to turn out the dealership lights."

"I wondered why they shut down so early," he replied puzzled.

"A girl's got to be careful about being seen too clearly when she's soaking wet," she laughed.

"I hear that," he chuckled. "Ardmore says some of em come up so ugly he wants to push em back down and hold em under till the bubbles stop coming up, and it's only the powerful hand of God that stops him, but I don't think you'll have a thing to worry about on that account."

"Well, thanks, I guess," she said, smiling at his awkward compliment, "still a little darkness won't hurt anything."

"Maybe, but the moon's coming up pretty quick," he observed as he led her under the edge of the tent.

"There it is; I can see it now," she chirped excitedly as the outlines of the tank took shape in the dim light. She stepped toward the tank, pulling him after her by the hand.

She reached the tank and plunged her hand into the black water. "Wow!" she exclaimed, "That's warm."

"The air's cool; makes the water feel warm."

"I want to get in," she said, kicking off her shoes.

"Be my guest. I'll be with you soon as I unlace these boots."

"Do you wear combat boots with all your suits?" she asked as she mounted the makeshift steps along side the tank.

"No, ma'am, just this one," he laughed. "They tone it down some, don't they."

"I would say so; makes you fit right in with the congregation." She stepped lightly across the platform at the top of the steps and tested the water again with her toes.