A Touch of Infinity (4 page)

“Ten thousand.”

“He fills it?”

“Every night. You wouldn't believe it, Mr. Blunt, but they drive two, three hundred miles to be here. He has a loudspeaker setup, and sometimes he has an overflow of two, three thousand can't get into the tent. So they sit in their cars, just like a drive-in movie.”

“Admission?”

“Just two bits. He won't turn away the poor, but then he takes up a collection.”

They parked, and Blunt then told the chauffeur to wait, while he made his way on foot to the tent. There must have been two or three hundred ushers, men and women, organizing the crowd and handing out leaflets and song sheets, the men in white suits, the women in white dresses. It was an enormous, businesslike, and well-conducted operation, and some quick arithmetic told Blunt that the nightly take, out of admission and nominal contributions, should approach a minimum of five thousand dollars. By his standards it was not tremendous, but it marked Joe Jerico as very much a man of practical affairs, however metaphysical his profession might be.

Blunt paid his quarter, entered, and found himself a seat on a bench toward the rear, sandwiched between a very fat middle-aged old woman and a very lean old man. Already the tent was almost filled to capacity, with only a rare space to be seen here and there; just a few minutes after he arrived, the meeting started with a choir of fifty voices singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” A second and a third hymn followed, and then the house lights went down and a battery of spots fixed on stage center. The backdrop was a black cyclorama, the curtain of which parted for Joe Jerico to step into the spotlights, not a tall man, not a short man, straight, wide-shouldered, with a big head, a great mane of graying hair, and pale gray eyes like bits of glowing ice.

No introduction; he plunged right in with a voice that had the timbre of an organ: “My text is St. John, eight, twelve. ‘Then spake Jesus unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.' Do you believe? So help me God, I hope not. This is no place for believers. This is for the unbelievers, for the lost, for the misbegotten, for the devil-pursued, for the lost, I say, for you come in here and you come home and you are found! Open your hearts to me …”

Frank Blunt listened, intent and thoughtful, less touched by emotion than by admiration for the man's masterly command of the crowd. He played them as one plays a great instrument, as if indeed he was the extension of some mighty force that operated through him. His voice, naturally deep and full timbred, magnified by the public address system, touched with just sufficient trace of a southern accent, battered his audience, grabbed them, held them and used them.

Frank Blunt observed. He listened as the charge of emotion built up; he nodded with appreciation as the sinners went forward to be saved at the urgent, pleading command of Joe Jerico, and he admired the smoothness and the fine organization of the collection, just at the right moment of emotional completion. He ignored the slotted box as it went down his row, and accepted the hostile glances of those beside him. He sat and watched thoughtfully, and when it was over and the emotionally filled crowd, so many of them in tears, filed out, he remained seated. He remained seated until he was the last person in the huge tent, and then an usher approached him and asked whether he was all right.

“My name is Frank Blunt,” he said to the usher. “Here is my card. I want to see Mr. Jerico.”

“Mr. Jerico sees no one now. He is understandably fatigued. Perhaps—”

“I'm here now and I wish to see Mr. Jerico. Take him my card. I'll wait here.”

Frank Blunt was not easy to resist. He had issued orders for so many years and had been obeyed for so many years that people did his will. The usher took the card, walked the length of the tent, disappeared for a few minutes, reappeared, walked the length of the tent, and said to Blunt:

“Reverend Jerico will see you. Follow me.”

Back through the tent, through the black curtain, and then backstage past the curious glances of the ushers, the choir singers, and the rest of the large staff Joe Jerico carried with him; and then to the door of a large, portable dressing room. The usher knocked at the door. The deep voice of Jerico answered, “Come in.” The usher opened the door and Frank Blunt entered the dressing room. The room was an eight-by-fourteen trailer; it had taste, it had class, and it had Joe Jerico in a green silk dressing gown, sipping at a tall glass of orange juice.

Blunt measured it with a quick glance, as he did the man. There was nothing cheap or modest about Joe Jerico; his work was no work that Blunt had ever encountered before, but the tycoon liked the way he did it.

“So you're Frank Blunt.” Jerico nodded at a chair. “Sit down. Tomato juice, orange juice—we have no hard liquor—I can give you some wine.”

“I'm all right.”

No handshake, neither warmth nor coolness, but two men eyeing each other and measuring each other.

“I'm glad you made it this time,” Joe Jerico said finally.

“Why?”

“Because it gives you time for repentance.”

“I didn't come here for repentance.”

“Oh?” Jerico's eyes narrowed. “What then?”

“The doctors give me a year. They're liars. It's in the nature of the profession. If they gave me less, they figure I'd fire them.”

“What do you give yourself?”

“Three to six months.”

“Then I'd say you need repentance, Mr. Blunt.”

“No, sir. I need life, Mr. Jerico.”

“Oh? And how do you propose to go about that?”

“What do you know about me, Mr. Jerico?”

“What's on the record, more or less.”

“Let me fill in then. I began my career by buying a college dean. I found that if the price is right, you can buy—and there are no exceptions. I have bought judges, city councilmen, district attorneys, jurors, congressmen, and senators. I bought the governors of two states. I have bought men and women and thoroughbred horses. I took a fancy to a princess once, and I bought a night in bed with her. It cost me twenty-five thousand dollars. I bought the dictator of a European country and I once had occasion to buy a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He cost less than the princess, but he was more profitable in the long run.”

He said all this, never taking his eyes from Jerico's face. Jerico listened with interest.

“You're a forthright man, Mr. Blunt.”

“I don't have time to crap around, Mr. Jerico.”

“What do you propose?”

“I like you, Mr. Jerico. You see the point and you come to it. I want to live. I propose to buy off God.”

Jerico nodded, his pale eyes fixed on Blunt. He remained silent, and Frank Blunt waited. Minutes of silence passed, and still Frank Blunt waited patiently. He respected a man who considered a proposition carefully.

“You're not dealing with the principal. You're dealing with an agent,” Jerico said finally. “How do you propose to enforce the contract?”

“I'm not an unreasonable man. I'm sixty years old. I want fifteen years more. I've made arrangements with a man whose line of work is the enforcing of contracts. If I die before the fifteen years are up, he will kill you.”

“That's sound,” Jerico agreed after a moment. “I like the way you think, Mr. Blunt.”

“I like the way you think, Mr. Jerico.”

“Then perhaps we can do business.”

“Good. Now what's your price?”

“How much are you worth, Mr. Blunt?”

“About five hundred million dollars.”

“Then that's the price, Mr. Blunt.”

“You're not serious?”

“Deadly serious.”

“Then you're insane.”

Jerico smiled and spread his hands. “What's the alternative, Mr. Blunt? I could suggest the reward that awaits a man who has lived well—but no one takes any money with him to that place. You want it here on earth.”

“To hell with you!” Blunt snorted. But he didn't get up. He sat there, watching Jerico.

“I didn't come to you,” Jerico said softly. “You came to me.”

Silence again. The silence dragged on, and this time Jerico waited patiently. Finally Blunt asked:

“How much will you let me keep?”

“Nothing.”

“A man doesn't live on air and water. A million would see me through.”

“Nothing.”

“Well, I've heard it said that I have more money than God. Now it's reversed. The fact is, Mr. Jerico, that you drive a hard bargain, a damn hard bargain. I don't need money; I have a credit line of twenty million. You have a deal. Suppose we let the lawyers get together tomorrow.”

It took seven weeks for the lawyers to finish the legal arrangements and for the papers to be signed. On the eighth week, Frank Blunt suffered a stroke. He was taken to the Dallas Colonial Nursing Home, which Joe Jerico immediately purchased, installing his own staff of doctors, nurses, and technicians. A year later Frank Blunt was still alive. A mechanical heart had taken over the function of his own weary instrument; a kidney machine flushed his body; and nourishment was fed to him intravenously. Whether or not he was more than a vegetable is difficult to say, but the report issued by Joe Jerico, who visited him once a week, was that he lived by faith—a testimony to faith.

By the third year, Joe Jerico's weekly visits had ceased. For one thing, his home was in Luxembourg—re the tax benefits—and his fortune was increasing at so lively a pace that he abhorred the thought of airplanes. He found his eighteen-thousand-ton yacht sufficient for his travel needs. His revivals had decreased to one a year, but whenever he was in America for the occasion, he made certain to visit Frank Blunt.

Frank Blunt died in 1971—fifteen years to the day from the time in Joe Jerico's dressing room when they had shaken hands and closed their deal. Actually his death was caused by a malfunction of the artificial heart, but it was only to be expected. So much had happened; the world had forgotten Frank Blunt.

Joe Jerico received the word on his yacht, which was lying in the harbor at Ischia, where he had come to spend a few days at the Duke of Genneset's villa, and he was late to dinner because he thoughtfully took the time to compose a message of condolence to Blunt's family. Jerico, at fifty, was still a fine figure of a man, comfortable indeed, but he had by no means lost his faith. As he told the young woman who accompanied him to dinner:

“God works in strange ways.”

3

A Matter of Size

Mrs. Herbert Cooke—Abigail Cooke—was a woman with a social conscience and a sense of justice. She came of five generations of New Englanders, all of whom had possessed social consciences and devotion to justice, qualities not uncommon in New England once the burning of witches was gotten over with. She lived in a lovely old Colonial house on fifteen acres of land in Redding, Connecticut; she forbade any spraying of her trees, and she gardened ecologically. She believed firmly in mulch, organic fertilizers, and the validity of the New Left; and while she herself lived quietly with her teen-age children—her husband practiced law in Danbury—her heart and small checks went out to a multitude of good causes. She was an attractive woman, still under forty, an occasional Congregationalist, and a firm advocate of civil rights. She was not given to hysterics.

She sat on her back porch—unscreened—on a fine summer morning and shelled peas and saw something move. Afterward she said that it appeared to be a fly, and she picked up a flyswatter and swatted it. It stuck to the fly-swatter, and she looked at it carefully; and then she began to have what amounted to hysterics, took hold of herself, thanked heaven that her children were at day camp, and, still unable to control her sobbing, telephoned her husband.

“I've killed a man,” she said to him.

“You what? Now wait a minute,” he replied. “Get hold of yourself. Are you all right?”

“I'm all right.”

“Are the children all right?”

“They're at day camp.”

“Good. Good. You're sure you're all right?”

“Yes. I'm a little hysterical—”

“Did I hear you say that you killed a man?”

“Yes. Oh, my God—yes.”

“Now please get hold of yourself, do you hear me, Abby? I want you to get hold of yourself and tell me exactly what happened.”

“I can't.”

“Who is this man you think you killed? A prowler?”

“No.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No. I can't.”

“Why not? Abby, are you all right? We don't have a gun. How on earth could you kill someone?”

“Please—please come home. Now. Please.”

In half an hour Herbert Cooke pulled into his driveway, leaped out of his car, and embraced his still shivering wife. “Now, what's all this?” he demanded.

She shook her head dumbly, took him by the hand, led him to the back porch, and pointed to the flyswatter.

“It's a flyswatter,” he said impatiently. “Abby, what on earth has gotten into you?”

“Will you look at it closely, please?” she begged him, beginning to sob again.

“Stop crying! Stop it!”

Convinced by now that his wife was having some kind of a nervous breakdown, he decided to humor her, and he picked up the flyswatter and stared at it. He stared at it for a long, long moment, and then he whispered, “Oh, my God—of all the damn things!” And then, still staring, he said to her, “Abby, dear, there's a magnifying glass in the top drawer of my desk. Please bring it to me.”

She went into the house and came back with the magnifying glass. “Don't ask me to look,” she said.

Herbert placed the flyswatter carefully on the table and held the magnifying glass over it. “My God,” he whispered, “my God almighty. I'll be damned. A white man, too.”