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Marvin had started off as a country singer, singing old Conway Twitty and Johnny Cash songs.
He had done regular live concerts from San Quentin jail until the civil rights people got him under the Cruel and Unusual Punishment clause.
It was then that Marvin got religion. Not the quiet, personal kind, that involves doing good deeds and living a better life; not even the kind that involves putting on a suit and ringing people’s doorbells; but the kind that involves having your own TV network and getting people to send you money.
He had found the perfect TV mix, on Marvin’s Hour of Power (“The show that put the fun back into Fundamentalist!”). Four three-minute songs from the LP, twenty minutes of Hellfir
e, and five minutes of healing people. (The remaining twenty-three minutes were spent alternately cajoling, pleading, threatening, begging, and occasionally simply asking for money.) In the early days he had actually brought people into the studio to heal, but had found that too complicated, so these days he simply proclaimed visions vouchsafed to him of viewers all across America getting magically cured as they watched. This was much simpler—he no longer needed to hire actors, and there was no way anyone could check on his success rate.43
The world is a lot more complicated than most people believe. Many people believed, for example, that Marvin was not a true Believer because he made so much money out of it. They were wrong. He believed with all his heart. He believed utterly, and spent a lot of the money that flooded in on what he really thought was the Lord’s work.
The phone line to the savior’s always free of interference
He’s in at any hour, day or night
And when you call J-E-S-U-S you always call toll free
He’s the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life.
The first song concluded, and Marvin walked in front of the cameras and raised his arms modestly for silence. In the control booth, the engineer turned down the Applause track.
“Brothers and sisters, thank you, thank you, wasn’t that beautiful? And remember, you can hear that song and others just as edifyin’ on Jesus Is My Buddy, just phone 1-800-CASH and pledge your donation now.”
He became more serious.
“Brothers and sisters, I’ve got a message for you all, an urgent message from our Lord, for you all, man and woman and little babes, friends, let me tell you about the Apocalypse. It’s all there in your Bible, in the Revelation our Lord gave Saint John on Patmos, and in the Book of Daniel. The Lord always gives it to you straight, friends—your future. So what’s goin’ to happen?
“War. Plague. Famine. Death. Rivers urv blurd. Great earthquakes. Nukyeler missiles. Horrible times are comin’, brothers and sisters. And there’s only one way to avoid ’em.
“Before the Destruction comes—before the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride out—before the nukerler missles rain down on the unbelievers—there will come The Rapture.
“What’s the Rapture? I hear you cry.
“When the Rapture comes, brothers and sisters, all the True Believers will be swept up in the air—it don’t mind what you’re doin’, you could be in the bath, you could be at work, you could be drivin’ your car, or just sittin’ at home readin’ your Bible. Suddenly you’ll be up there in the air, in perfect and incorruptible bodies. And you’ll be up in the air, lookin’ down at the world as the years of destruction arrive. Only the faithful will be saved, only those of you who have been born again will avoid the pain and the death and the horror and the burnin’. Then will come the great war between Heaven and Hell, and Heaven will destroy the forces of Hell, and God shall wipe away the tears of the sufferin’, and there shall be no more death, or sorrow, or cryin’, or pain, and he shall rayon in glory for ever and ever—”
He stopped, suddenly.
“Well, nice try,” he said, in a completely different voice, “only it won’t be like that at all. Not really.
“I mean, you’re right about the fire and war, all that. But that Rapture stuff—well, if you could see them all in Heaven—serried ranks of them as far as the mind can follow and beyond, league after league of us, flaming swords, all that, well, what I’m trying to say is who has time to go round picking people out and popping them up in the air to sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them? If that’s your idea of a morally acceptable time, I might add.
“And as for that stuff about Heaven inevitably winning … Well, to be honest, if it were that cut and dried, there wouldn’t be a Celestial War in the first place, would there? It’s propaganda. Pure and simple. We’ve got no more than a fifty percent chance of coming out on top. You might just as well send money to a Satanist hotline to cover your bets, although to be frank when the fire falls and the seas of blood rise you lot are all going to be civilian casualties either way. Between our war and your war, they’re going to kill everyone and let God sort it out—right?
“Anyway, sorry to stand here wittering, I’ve just a quick question—where am I?”
Marvin O. Bagman was gradually going purple.
“It’s the devil! Lord protect me! The devil is speakin’ through me!” he erupted, and interrupted himself, “Oh no, quite the opposite in fact. I’m an angel. Ah. This has to be America, doesn’t it? So sorry, can’t stay … ”
There was a pause. Marvin tried to open his mouth, but nothing happened. Whatever was in his head looked around. He looked at the studio crew, those who weren’t phoning the police, or sobbing in corners. He looked at the gray-faced cameramen.
“Gosh,” he said, “am I on television?”
CROWLEY WAS DOING a hundred and twenty miles an hour down Oxford Street.
He reached into the glove compartment for his spare pair of sunglasses, and found only cassettes. Irritably he grabbed one at random and pushed it into the slot.
He wanted Bach, but he would settle for The Traveling Wilburys.
