PART I
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
5
REVEREND SCARRITT WAS everything Trey thought a preacher ought to be: Only a little shorter than Trey, medium build, handsome, and finely dressed. He was much older than Trey expected, considering his daughter was only sixteen, and his duds weren’t as expensive as Trey’s but a preacher ought to at least pretend to be down-market.
The good reverend was also as fake as Trey. Trey, however, was used to being able to fool shady cats who were looking for any excuse to whack him, and the reverend was used to being taken at face value by men who were desperate for God’s grace and women who wanted Scarritt’s attention. That he was handsome made the job ten times easier. Trey was even willing to bet he had a side piece or two.
The missus was tall and willowy, wore fashionably feminine trousers, and had probably been considered a great beauty in her time. That had been quite a while ago for her, too, and time had not been good to her, making her look much older than her husband.
The good reverend definitely had a side piece.
The missus’s makeup was expertly applied. Her fashionably bobbed and permed hair was dyed blonde to cover the gray, although it was about time for her to get her roots done.
Then there was Marina, who looked nothing like either one of her parents, was nowhere near as fashionable, and where her mother was trying very hard to look young and stylish (she was stylish), Marina seemed to be trying to look old and stodgy.
In his head, Trey had already stripped Marina down, re-dressed her, cut her hair, and put some makeup on her. Then she’d be eye-catching, although up against Dot, she’d never—
Oh, for God’s sake.
Marina’s parents wanted to keep her hidden, which would make Trey’s job harder. Men with Trey’s looks (not to mention money) didn’t walk out with girls like Marina without an ulterior motive.
What he had to do was convince her parents he had seen something in her nobody else did. Well, he did, but how was he supposed to describe “interesting”? She caught his eye. He could look through all that camouflage and see what was there. But he couldn’t say that. They would shut him down immediately.
It had to be something else. Perhaps he could play the tutor role for a while and let that simmer a little.
“Come in, young man,” said Reverend Scarritt imperiously after shaking his hand, “come in.”
That surprised Trey a little. He’d have bet Scarritt would keep him standing in the foyer for a barely polite amount of chatter, ask a few polite questions, politely tell him to enjoy the night’s service, and politely give him the boot.
“Where did you meet Marina again?” he asked, directing Trey to a comfortable chair in the front parlor. “Mrs. Scarritt, Marina, could you excuse us?”
Trey looked around. It was a very nice front parlor, with charmingly worn furniture, gleaming millwork, bookcases full of very important-looking books and papers, and Bibles and bouquets of lilacs on every surface. It was exactly as cozy and modestly fine as a parsonage parlor should be.
“Kresge’s, sir,” Trey said. “Yesterday. I was walking by and heard Marina struggling with an assignment, thought I’d see if I could help, and found her to be smart and interesting.”
“Ah … smart, you say,” Scarritt said speculatively as if Trey were lying.
“Yes, sir. I enjoy the company of smart girls who are also polite and love God.”
“Ah … hunh.” The love God might have been too much. “And do you have a church?”
“No, sir. I’ve been looking for one, but haven’t found any preachers who move me with the Spirit.” Where was this shit coming from? Had he paid that much attention to his Sunday school lessons growing up? “I saw a bill for your revival after I met Marina. Things working mysteriously and whatnot.” Trey leaned forward and worried the brim of his fedora. “If you want to know the truth, sir,” he said earnestly, “I think God’s hand is in my having met Marina and I don’t question God’s hand. He’s blessed me too much to ignore his voice.”
Scarritt observed him speculatively, but Trey knew he was assessing the extent of Trey’s blessings. “You do seem to do well for yourself,” he finally said. “Selling insurance, Marina says?”
“Yes, sir. As I said, God’s blessed me.”
“And after a few minutes’ conversation you think you would like to see Marina on a more regular basis?”
“She expressed the same concern. But besides listening to God’s voice, I’m busy preparing a home for a future family. As I told Marina, we may or may not get along but I refuse to dilly-dally and I refuse to disrespect her and her parents by keeping my presence from you.”
Trey was laying it on thick, he knew, but Scarritt was nodding slowly like a wise man. This cat had been putting on a drama for easily conned folks so long he probably didn’t know what was real anymore or when he was the mark.
Scarritt was silent for a few more seconds, then said abruptly, “You’re welcome to stay for supper, Mr. Dunham—”
“Trey, please, Reverend.”
“Trey. And attend service with us this evening. I’ll pray on this and seek God’s will.”
• • •
TO TREY’S THINKING, supper was a goddamned catastrophe. The food was awful, the conversation was boring, and the reverend was a prick. What made him an insufferable prick was the upper-crust accent. Trey would like to emulate it but it sounded fake to his ears. He couldn’t pinpoint why. By contrast, the missus and Marina were so silent they might as well not have been there at all.
Trey was no stranger to a long con, but the beginnings of a new one were always rough. He was running up against the edges of his theological knowledge and he wasn’t even going to try bullshitting his way through it. He had to give examples of the other preachers’ methods that didn’t “move” him spiritually. He was congratulating himself on having scraped through that, only to be asked where he lived!
“I have a room off my office, but I decided to look for a little house perfect for a newlywed couple to grow into a family of three.”
“Where’s your office?”
Trey gave him the address he used when he needed a respectable one. It really was an insurance agency, and Trey paid the cat who ran it to be able to use the address, have packages sent, and have messages taken. But Trey had never given it to anyone who might drop in.
“I travel too much to justify the expense,” he explained when Scarritt asked him why he didn’t get a room.
“Ah. Frugal too.”
“I cut corners where I can.” That was the absolute truth.
Then came the questions about where he was from (“Minneapolis”), where he’d traveled (“Well, I haven’t been to China”), if he’d been to Italy (“Rome is very grand”), what his favorite place was (“Definitely Seville, in southern Spain”). The reverend was adequately impressed, which was a good thing because Trey was never going to admit he was a farm boy from a hick town halfway between Columbia and St. Louis, had never been anywhere but a library, and the only reason he liked southern Spain was because there was a chunk of it right smack dab in the middle of Brush Creek and he had a lot of reasons to be near Brush Creek, mostly having to do with mixing concrete and burying folks there. If the Country Club district was an actual representation of Seville, Spain, then Trey knew he’d like it. If he ever went. Which was not likely.
But Scarritt, it seemed, had been everywhere.
Trey didn’t believe half what Scarritt said. Either he was letting Trey weave enough rope to hang himself or he didn’t know Trey was bullshitting, which meant he was also bullshitting. Trey absolutely believed Scarritt had been to Europe, but not as a tourist.
Trey heard war stories all the time. Some men bragged, some men wouldn’t speak of it at all, and some men ended up drinking a lot of tears with their hooch.
“You were in the Great War, sir?” Trey asked politely.
“Yes,” Scarritt said shortly, which meant he wasn’t a cat who told war stories. He wanted to have the sophistication of having travelled to Europe on something other than a warship, doing something more sophisticated than digging ditches.
After three eternities and a second plate of awful food, Scarritt excused himself to get ready for the evening’s service. The missus and Marina would do their after-dinner chores and get ready. Trey was welcome to inspect the reverend’s library.
Trey was ready to inspect the bottom of a glass of whisky.
But books were Trey’s second favorite thing, so he made himself comfortable in front of the parsonage’s biggest bank of bookcases. A cat could tell a lot about another cat by the books he kept on his shelves, which wasn’t the same as what he actually read. But in this case …
Bottom shelf, books on baseball, boxing, and horse breeding and racing. Baseball and boxing, Trey understood. The horses said something Trey thought he understood, but couldn’t be sure.
Second shelf up, travelogues and reference books of many different countries.
Third shelf up, histories of the Great War, religious histories—a good portion of which were about Mormons—and biographies of famous people Trey would consider good people.
Top shelf, textbooks from the seminary—Baptist, looked like. Some Methodist and Lutheran. A bunch of Bibles, various types and editions, and an equal number of concordances.
Trey went back to Scarritt’s disproportionate anti-Mormon collection, which told him a whole lot more than everything else put together.
Mormons were a weird Christian sect with a twitchy trigger finger because it was Missouri law Mormons could be shot on sight. Trey thought the Extermination Order was a bit much for a few quiet people, but one of the things Mormons had a reputation for doing was spinning gold out of straw. Any group that large and that cohesive with money was to be feared.
Like … the Machine.
But the Machine and the Mormons co-existed like bees and flowers. They were the only honest men in town and teetotalers to boot. Boss Tom had Mormons in every position of money and booze control because they could be trusted with both, make money multiply like magic, and could also back it up at the point of a gun.
They claimed Jesus Christ as their savior, but they preferred the temple-clearing Jesus to the peace-and-love-preaching Jesus. They also had less love for the federal or state government than they did for the outfits. They had the money, firepower, and balls to take on the Machine and the Mafia. They wouldn’t win, but they’d do some serious damage before they got obliterated.
And Boss Tom would lose his trusted bean counters. They didn’t like the Machine, but they had families to feed like everyone else. Missouri simply didn’t bother with Prohibition much unless somebody was going to profit, and Kansas City was openly wetter than the Mississippi, so the Mormons didn’t feel obliged to obey a law the state and city didn’t feel obliged to obey which didn’t affect them anyway.
It was also telling that despite Scarritt’s obvious antagonism toward Mormons, he allowed Marina to run with Dot. His desire to keep Marina hidden from men’s gazes must run deep.
Then there was the fact that Pendergast wanted to steer clear of Dot’s bishop-daddy. It was just another reason Trey had to get Marina and Dot separated.
Trey searched the rest of Scarritt’s bookshelves for any fiction whatsoever, but there was none. Upon reflection, it didn’t surprise him. Too bad, too, because that was a topic upon which Trey could expound for days. In fact, once Trey got out from under the Machine and into a nice little house just right for a newlywed couple, the first thing he’d do would be to install a very large library and stock it to its gills.
Nobody knew that Trey was a country boy turned gutter rat who cleaned up good, with a thirst for money, which he could not get without knowledge. He didn’t want to be some ignorant mob boss, stupider than the men he ran just because he had money and didn’t mind putting people in concrete at the slightest thing.
Trey had put men in concrete (not at the slightest thing) (he wasn’t that hot-headed), but he was far more educated than almost everybody else in his circles.
Not educated enough. He had not yet read every book at the Kansas City Public Library and he had yet to read the latest Agatha Christie novel. Knowledge was power and he found power in everything. Even the most insignificant, forgettable books he read had nuggets he could use and he wrote these down in a little notebook he carried in his breast pocket.
It was only his extensive reading that made it possible to speak well in respectable circles, although his rube accent and bad grammar habits gave him away if he weren’t careful. He couldn’t afford to speak properly day-to-day and he hovered precariously between the two, sometimes slipping into one or another because at some point, it all blended, none of it sounded right anymore, and he got confused.
Then there were the words he mispronounced because he’d never heard them and seen them spelled at the same time. Tucson was not, in fact, pronounced tuckson. Fortunately, the very kind girl he was going with at the time gently corrected him before he made a fool of himself in front of anyone else. He stopped seeing her very soon after that, he was so embarrassed. He purposely mispronounced words he did know because his cohorts would accuse him of putting on airs, but then he’d forget when he needed to remember and …
Most days, Trey didn’t know which language to use, where, and with whom. It was all a jumbled mess in his head and mouth. It was exhausting, and he was almost to his limit, particularly because Scarritt’s speech was head and shoulders above Trey’s carefully practiced educated middle-class accent.
Trey was thinking about this when Scarritt walked in fixing his cuffs.
“You have an impressive library, Reverend,” Trey said, once again struggling with his accent.
“Thank you,” he returned absently. That was not a cat who read for pleasure, else he’d have puffed up like a banty rooster.
“Do you read fiction, sir?”
“No,” Scarritt said and Trey braced for a long explanation. “It’s a waste of time.”
That wasn’t what Trey had expected. “Oh. Not because it’s sinful?”
“My congregation reads the Bible. The second I preach against something that may or may not tempt them to sin, it will make it attractive. There is likely good to be found there, but just as likely sin and the last thing I want to do is whet an appetite to sin.”
Trey couldn’t fault the logic.
“And I would have to read it to find the good, but it has never interested me. Marina struggles with her literature assignments in school, and quite honestly, I’d be bored, too.”
Of course she was bored. It was assigned. Talking about themes and symbols and metaphors and whatnot killed any enjoyment whatsoever.
He was gonna fix that. Pronto. She may never like algebra, but dammit, he would make her enjoy reading so they could have something to talk about. He only had a few weeks to get this girl pregnant with proof, and it would be harder to do if he couldn’t talk to her.
And the first book Trey was going to coach her through was Elmer Gantry.
5
If you don’t want to wait 2 years to get to the end, you can buy it here.
I like it.
You and me both.
So true
Elmer Gantry
That’s just delightful.
😁
They also had less love for the federal or state government than they did for the outfits.
Contrast that to the security state-loving Mormons of today.
I try not to think about that.
Assimilation into the mainstream culture.
+1 pol op onies
Is this hyperbole?
No. It’s a long book. It will take 2 years to get through this at a chapter a week. However, I ran it past Swiss and he approved it.
I can’t decide if I want to wait that long. I bought it, we’ll see if I read it or wait for the drip, drip, drip.
Chinese water torture.
Mormon water torture
I usually don’t like drip, drip, drip but so far I’m not having the problem keeping up that I usually have with that format.
I agree. So far it’s working very well.
But I reached deep into my retirement account and scrounged up the $6 to give Mojeaux some love.
Of course, how much everyone else appreciates her giving this story to us is a personal matter.
Pony up, bitches!
😍
*high five*
So far, so good!
How long did it take you to write?
About 3 years.
I’m looking forward to when your links to the previous chapters are longer than the most recent chapter.
Hell yes, I did.
Then there were the words he mispronounced because he’d never heard them and seen them spelled at the same time.
I remember this part. It reminded me of the time I asked the clerk at Spenser’s if they had any Tarot decks (I pronounced the silent T) the asshole called his buddy from the back of the store and had me say it again so they both could get a good laugh at the stupid little kid. Assholes, it’s no wonder I hate people.
There was a raspberry wheat beer named after something the girlfriend said at a brewery. She wanted to try the framboise, which she pronounced fram-boy-zee.
Must be from Idaho.
+1 pol op onies
It’s no wonder they hate you, too. :-p
No, they were laughing because you wanted to buy Tarot cards (apologies to NA)
I still pronounce Hyperbole as Hyper Bowl in my head when I read it in print form. Goes back to childhood.
Spoiler! He does that later in the book in the middle of a rant, and his grandmother corrects him.
Glad I’m not the only one!
Nice Elmer Gantry reference. I never read the book, but love the movie. Burt Lancaster as Elmer is my all time favorite male acting performance.
I read Elmer Gantry in researching this book. It was amusing, but it had no real resolution. As for the movie, I’ve only seen the scene where he’s singing gospel. Lovely voice.
I’m a huge Sinclair Lewis fan, and I loved Elmer Gantry. But it was Main Street that really knocked my socks off and got me reading his other books. The man could potray hypocrisy in “respected” typical American phenotypes better than anyone I’ve ever read.
When I was young lad learning to read, one word that gave me trouble was thermometer. Which in my mind was Therm-O-Meter.
I thought “misled” was MY-zuld.
I insist it still is.
Huh. I pronounce it “ass-hole”.
ass-ho-LAY?
THE ass-ho-LAY
I still have this problem. And I too hate the assholes who make fun of a kid who is reading more than talking.
Omnipotent is the one I had problems with. Pronounced it with Potent as a whole word.
Her name isnt Penny Loap?
I had the same problem when, even as a college gradge-you-wait, I had read but had never heard the word “paradigm.” 🙄
On topic!
https://archive.ph/rFWtO/626cdd2d462817be97af30312cf3c48a58cf6ae1.jpg
NSFW.
https://archive.ph/WdQSh/13eea89b667dbfe668c67ca8315ad32f4e924f0e.jpg
NSFW.
https://archive.ph/s9Omu/529d02f8f4a0728c6ab606226856c524343d8c94.webp
NSFW.
https://archive.ph/zpMqE/523d2c17fad7b3b7ef6e9e4569000d57a31450e0.webp
NSFW.
I once had the pleasure of spending some quality time with a gal who closely resembled her.
Also, thank you for the license to leer in last night’s post. 👍🏻
Some thoughts on the proposed Da Vid amnesty.
https://beinglibertarian.substack.com/p/memes-of-the-week-3a6
I suppose some people would get amnesty in exchange for testimony.
ow, my nuts.
The Antifederalists were right all along.
Yup. It just took a little longer than they thought (though, you could are the alien and sedition acts proved they were right within their lifetimes…)
Brava on the Tucson reference! It is up there with saguaro, cholla or javelina.
Fuck. Now you have me thinking I’m pronouncing all those words wrong.
sa-gwar’-o
cola
jav-ah-lee’-nuh
How’d I do?
It’s Throatwobbler Mangrove.
sa-war’-oh
choy’-uh
hav-ah-lee’-nuh
You’ll appreciate someone asking me for directions in L.A. and throwing me for a complete loop saying they were trying to find Tor-ron-say [Torrance] Blvd.
The last one is pronounced “peccary”, isn’t it?
thanks for the story
You’re welcome! Thanks for reading!
I am enjoying the story
Full kudos to Paul Pelosi for even being capable of playing “hide the hammer” at his advanced age! I’m not yet 60 and I find the hunt rather less intriguing than it was even 10 years ago. There must be something in the Dems water.
Blood transfusions from young people.
I’ll catch up on the story tomorrow, MoJo. Enjoyable thus far. Protagonist will get his willy twisted before all is said and done, I’ll wager.
I read it. The best part was poor Trey not knowing how to properly enunciate words that he has read and yet never heard. Happened to me a time or two.
Morning Glibs.
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2022/11/us-senate-race-draws-three-presidents-to-pa-this-weekend-as-election-day-nears.html
The keystone state is important. The rest of you, not so much. 😛
The keystone state is
importantcursed.https://fox4kc.com/tracking-coronavirus/why-you-may-soon-have-to-pay-for-that-covid-19-test/
Lol, no I wont.
TANSTAAFJ
I’m so happy that Pfizer is going to jack up my premiums to… whatever they want, I would imagine.
There’s a big push here with radio ads for the flu shot. Im just paranoid enough to think they’re going to sneak in the CoVID-influenza combo.
Tho I dont know what the liability would be for a provider that gave you such a shot w/o telling you about the CoVID part.
None. FYTW.
https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/florida-doctors-no-longer-allowed-to-provide-hormone-treatments-surgery-to-transgender-minors
Florida, protecting children.
Where you people at?
Slackers.
I’m working.
No one here works. Except that one weird Canadian guy.
Yo!
Good morning all.
If some reason this morning’s weather feels and smells like the inside of a laundromat in Winter.
We’re not doing baconfest today. Our new vanity is getting delivered sometime after lunch.
1.6 billion. Yeah, I’m buying a couple tickets.
Pie, want me to buy you one to split?
suh’ fam
whats goody yo
Ok. I’ll be there. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I bought a couple of tickets.
If i win, i will make sure that this web space has everything.