“Shall we gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful,
The riiiiver,
Shall we gather at the river,
That flows by the kingdom of God.”
The last note of the last chorus faded off, and there was a moment of shuffling and coughing.
She waited. When they were settled, she spread her hands over them, as if in benediction. It was an evocative gesture.
“My dear little brothers and sisters in Christ.”
It was a haunting line. For a moment the gunslinger felt mixed feelings of nostalgia and fear, stitched in with an eerie feeling ofdéjà vu,and he thought:I dreamed this. Or I was here before. If so, when? Not Mejis.No, not there. He shook the feeling off. The audience—perhaps twenty-five all told—had become dead silent. Every eye touched the preacher-woman.
“The subject of our meditation tonight is The Interloper.” Her voice was sweet, melodious, the speaking voice of a well-trained contralto.
A little rustle ran through the audience.
“I feel,” Sylvia Pittston said reflectively, “that I know almost everyone in the Good Book personally. In the last five years I have worn out three of ’em, precious though any book be in this ill world, and uncountable numbers before that. I love the story, and I love the players in that story. I have walked arm in arm in the lion’s den with Daniel. I stood with David when he was tempted by Bathsheba as she bathed at the pool. I have been in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego. I slew two thousand with Samson when he swung the jawbone, and was blinded with St. Paul on the road to Damascus. I wept with Mary at Golgotha.”
A soft, shurring sigh in the audience.
“I have known and loved them. There is onlyone”—she held up a finger—“only one player in the greatest of all dramas that I do not know.
“Onlyonewho stands outside with his face in the shadow.
“Onlyonewho makes my body tremble and my spirit quail.
“I fear him.
“I don’t know his mind and I fear him.
“I fear The Interloper.”
Another sigh. One of the women had put a hand over her mouth as if to stop a sound and was rocking, rocking.
“The Interloper who came to Eve as a snake on its belly in the dust, grinning and writhing. The Interloper who walked among the Children of Israel while Moses was up on the Mount, who whispered to them to make a golden idol, a golden calf, and to worship it with foulness and fornication.”
Moans, nods.
“The Interloper!
“He stood on the balcony with Jezebel and watched as King Ahaz fell screaming to his death, and he and she grinned as the dogs gathered and lapped up his blood. Oh, my little brothers and sisters, watch thou for The Interloper.”
“Yes, O Jesus—” This was the man the gunslinger had first noticed coming into town, the one with the straw hat.
“He’s always been there, my brothers and sisters. But I don’t know his mind. Andyoudon’t know his mind. Who could understand the awful darkness that swirls there, the pride and the titanic blasphemy, the unholy glee? And the madness! The gibbering madness that walks and crawls and wriggles through men’s most awful wants and desires?”
“O Jesus Savior—”
“It washimwho took our Lord up on the mountain—”
“Yes—”
“It washimthat tempted him and shewed him all the world and the world’s pleasures—”
