Butterfly (46 page)

Once people heard the famous Reverend Danny speech, they wanted to see him in

person, to be close to this man who had prayed for Kennedy right outside the hospital.

They poured into his revival tent with their hopes and their wallets and prayed for a sign.

It was during one such meeting where people were packed wall-to-wall that it came to

Danny that what these folks needed was a miracle. So he gave them one. Bonner died and

Danny brought him back to life. He couldn’t believe how easy it had been. A faked death

and a staged resurrection. And they fell for it! Of course, Danny had to admit that it

couldn’t be pulled off by just any preacher. Too many had tried the faith-healing routine

and it didn’t work. The man himself had to have the power to make people believe, and

once he had that, then he could make them believe anything.

And Danny Mackay had that power.

He had manipulated that crowd into thinking they saw a man die and come back to

life; another crowd in another town a year later witnessed a similar episode. But Danny

was careful not to overdo it. Word spread and folks came in the hopes of witnessing the

miracle, but they didn’t always get their wish. Danny was parsimonious with his resur-

recting power. In the past six years he had raised the dead only three times.

But it was enough. He now had the publicity that he needed. There wasn’t a maga-

zine or newspaper in the country that didn’t carry a few words about Danny Mackay at

some time or another. He had been written up even in
Time
magazine, although he had

yet to make the cover—but that, too, would come. And publicity was what he needed

in order to get ahead. Which was why he was careful to cultivate a smoothness, a classi-

ness that could not be attacked or criticized. Many might doubt his dead-raising abili-

ties, but when they came to throw stones, they found a man who was disarmingly

good-looking, full of charm, and gifted with an elegance not normally found in hellfire

preachers.

Danny pulled up behind the enormous glass-and-cedar church and listened to the

choir belt out a hymn. Then he angled the rearview mirror and made a final check of

himself. As always, the look was perfect. His eyes were sly and sexy and they mesmerized.

And he knew the power of his smile. He flashed it out over his congregation and they

went wild for it, men and women alike.
All men will see what you seem to be,
Machiavelli

had written.
A few will know what you really are. The mob is always impressed by appear-

ances, and the world is made up of mobs.

Danny still read
The Prince.
Even though he practically had it memorized by now, he

often took the time to open it to a page and drink up the wisdom of the man who had

first inspired him seventeen years ago. In the time since, Danny had read many books. He

read anything he could get his hands on—books by or about men of power, their strug-

gles, their formulae for making it to the top. He knew what had made Napoleon and

Caesar great; he knew why some men became heroes and some drowned in oblivion.

Danny knew what mistakes not to make, the right things to do, and, above all, how to

manipulate people.

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He was ready for it again tonight as he slipped through a rear door of the church,

where seven thousand hopefuls were clapping to the rhythm of a hymn. And waiting to

receive the power of Danny Mackay.

Danny always started his sermon slowly, feeling the mood of the audience, sending

out feelers to test the waters, adjusting his preaching to suit the crowd. They were good

tonight. They were hot and ripe. Houston was entering a financial boom, and folks were

coming to the Lord either to expiate their guilt for making too much money too soon or

to pray to become the ones to make too much money too soon. Danny just told them

what god-awful sinners they were, and they sat there and took it, saying, “Amen,” and

“Praise the Lord.”

He got worked up; he got his audience worked up. He shouted and shook fists; they

shouted and shook fists. He shouted hallelujah, they shouted hallelujah. He cried, they

cried. They were putty in his hands. He felt good. He felt invincible. He strode across the

stage as if he were spanning continents for the Lord and slammed his fist as if he were

crushing God’s enemies, and the crowd got wilder and the smell of religious zeal and

repentance was thick in the humid air, and Danny filled his ears with the sounds of their

cheers and cries—he was drunk on their worship.

Under the glass roof he had built to his own design, as the stars of Texas shed a bene-

diction upon his congregation, Danny thought:
Only seven thousand tonight. But someday,

they will number more, many more…
.

And then, right in the middle of his performance, just as he was about to shift gears

and start letting folks in on his little secret about having God’s private ear, a shriek came

from the back of the church.

Thinking at first that it was an overenthusiastic penitent, Danny didn’t break his

rhythm. But then, all of a sudden, like the outward ripples in a still pond when a pebble

has been tossed in, people started to stand up and cry out in waves until they reached the

stage.

“Charlie!” a woman was screaming. “Charlie, get up! Oh God! Oh God, someone

help him!”

Chaos erupted as Danny’s Brothers ran to the back row, where they found a woman

kneeling on the floor with a man’s head in her lap.

“He’s sick!” she cried. “Something’s wrong with him!”

“Hold on there,” came another voice from across the church. “I’ll take a look at him.

Don’t move him.”

Danny turned to see a balding, heavyset man push his way through the gawking

crowd and drop to one knee next to the stricken man. “I’m a doctor,” he said to the silent

crowd.

“This man is probably just suffering from heat exhaustion. Step back, everyone,

please. Give him air.”

As the people widened the circle, Danny came down from the stage and pushed

through the onlookers.

The unconscious man looked awful. His face had a queer grayish cast to it; his lips

were blue. Danny watched as the doctor bent and pressed his ear to the man’s chest. The

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Kathryn Harvey

enormous church was silent. Seven thousand people watched in eerie stillness as they

waited for his verdict.

“What’s wrong with my husband, Doctor?” the woman said in a frightened voice.

He straightened at last, gave her a sorrowful look and said softly, “I’m awfully sorry,

ma’am. Your husband is dead.”

“NO!” She flung herself over the man’s body and sobbed hysterically.

Danny felt himself go cold. Had his preaching killed a man?

He glanced over at Bonner, who wasn’t looking too pleased. There were a lot of people

in the church. And it was an awfully hot night.

As everyone stood watching the woman rock the body of her husband, wailing and

keening, a few people started to shuffle nervously and send unreadable looks Danny’s way.

He felt the perspiration run down his back. His mouth went dry. And then he saw his

opportunity. “My brothers and sisters in Christ!” Danny shouted suddenly.

They all looked at him.

He raised his arms. “Let us pray for the soul of our dear departed brother here who has

surely died in God’s grace!”

“Amen,” someone said. And it was echoed by those around him.

“Let us kneel, brothers and sisters,” cried Danny, dropping down to his knees. “Let us

praise the Lord, who took our brother from among us on this very night and in the state

of grace. Surely this man was blessed to be called so!”

People knelt.

Danny, close to the woman and her dead husband, began to shout out his best, most

moving prayer. He felt a new strength surge through him, a strength more delicious and

uplifting than any he ever got from Chivas or women or food. It felt like the heat that had

raced through his veins that day back in 1963 when he had done his best preaching and

people had turned to him in desperation. Danny fed on people’s need. Their hunger gave

him fuel.

“As surely as I live and breathe, my brothers and sisters, this dear man’s death is a true

sign from God that we are here all blessed tonight! This is His sign that He is here in this

very tent with us and that He sheds his blessing on us all. Let us lift our hearts up now

and receive that goodness from God.” Danny stretched out his arms and laid a hand on

the weeping woman’s head. “Let us pray for our grieving sister here. Let us show her our

love. Let us reassure her that she has not been forgotten by God. Indeed, she has been

blessed by God!”

“Amen! Hallelujah!”

He then laid his hand on the dead man’s shoulder. “And let us pray for the hasty flight

of this fallen brother’s soul so that he might the sooner enjoy God’s precious nearness

and—”

The shoulder trembled.

“Nearness and—”

The shoulder jerked.

Danny looked down.

The dead man coughed.

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201

The woman straightened up and stared down.

Suddenly, the church was silent again. Every eye turned to the face that just moments

before had been pale and ashen with the shadow of death but was now pink in the cheeks

with lips that were no longer blue.

The man coughed again, his eyes fluttered open, he gazed up at his wife and said,

“What happened?”

“Lord God,” whispered the doctor. “That man was dead! I would stake my reputation

on it!” He ran a nervous hand over his bald head. “I’ve been practicin’ medicine for forty

years, and I know a dead man when I see one!”

Eyes moved from the doctor down to the revived man, back to the doctor, and

finally…to Danny.

He was still kneeling. He found himself looking up into faces white with shock. For

an instant he was confused. And then someone said, “Praise the Lord, Reverend Danny

has raised a brother from the dead!”

Pandemonium broke loose. Women fainted, men dropped to their knees. People

began to weep in earnest now, not in sorrow but in joy. They had witnessed the miracle

they had always prayed they someday would, the living proof that God really was there

and listening, concrete evidence that religion wasn’t just a false hope but a real, living, and

breathing entity that they could find hope and salvation in, and Danny Mackay had been

the one to give them that proof.

People started to grab for him, to touch the cuffs of his pants, to kiss the hem of his

white jacket. Bonner had to push through the mob, signaling to the other Brothers, and

they managed to cluster around Danny and somehow get him back up to the stage.

He was stunned. He was electrified.

The dead man.

It hadn’t been an act this time. It had really happened.

Danny fell to his knees, clasped his fingers under his chin and began a fervent prayer

to God. He didn’t shout it, he didn’t use flamboyant gestures or shake a finger heaven-

ward. His voice came out in a whisper. Everyone fell silent, in order to hear him. And

what they heard was the sweetest prayer of thanksgiving spoken in the sweetest voice they

had ever heard.

“I don’t believe it!” Bonner said as he came into Danny’s penthouse with the church’s

bookkeeping log. “This was your biggest take ever!”

Danny was sitting silently in a chair by the window, looking out at the soft Houston

night, his gaze deep and intense. He didn’t say anything when Bonner came in. He was

concentrating on the Houston lights, and upon visions only he himself could see.

Bonner looked at his friend. The two boys from San Antonio had come a long way

these past seventeen years—all because of Danny. Bonner didn’t mind being Danny’s

employee instead of a partner. Bonner conceded that Danny was much smarter than he;

he was proud, in fact, to be Danny Mackay’s closest confidant. Bonner had recognized his

friend’s power long ago, and knew he was no match for it. But what happened tonight,

well, that was something else.

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“What do you suppose happened, Danny?” he asked softly. “Do you reckon that old

doctor made a mistake?”

Danny’s hands were in motion. His fingers turned a match-book around and around.

Although he was slouched in an easy chair, his feet couldn’t keep still on the ottoman. He

was charged; he was on fire. “You heard those two reporters, Bon. You heard them inter-

viewing people who vouched for that doctor. They all knew him, they all trusted and

respected him. And the doctor had said that man was dead.”

Danny shifted his eyes to his friend; he looked at Bonner from under half-closed lids.

“Do you believe I raised him from the dead?”

Bonner swallowed. To tell the truth, he didn’t like thinking about what happened

tonight. And there were times when he was afraid of Danny. Like now, with all that ten-

sion just coiling up and Danny turning his head this way and that, and that matchbook

going around and around in his fingers. Bonner recognized the signs: it was times like this