Infowar circa 1850

17 Dec 2003

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"Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West" by Cormac
McCarthy

The Reverend Green had been playing to a full house daily as long as
the rain had been falling and the rain had been falling for two
weeks.  When the kid ducked into the ratty canvas tent there was
standing room along the walls, a place or two, and such a heady reek
of the wet and bathless that they themselves would sally forth into
the downpour now and again for fresh air before the rain drove them
in again.  He stood with others of his kind along the back wall.  The
only thing that might have distinguished him in that crowd was that he
was not armed.
  Neighbors, said the reverend, he couldnt stay out of these here
hell, hell, hellholes right here in Nacogdoches.  I said to him, said:
You goin to take the son of God in there with ye?  And he said: Oh
no.  No I aint.  And I said: Dont you know that he said I will foller
ye always even unto the end of the road?
  Well, he said, I aint askin nobody to go nowheres.  And I said:
Neighbor, you dont need to ask.  He's a goin to be there with ye ever
step of the way whether ye ask it or ye dont.  I said: Neighbor, you
caint get shed of him.  Now.  Are you going to drag him, *him*, into
that hellhole yonder?
  You ever see such a place for rain?
  The kid had been watching the reverend.  He turned to the man who
spoke.  He wore long moustaches after the fashion of teamsters and he
wore a widebrim hat with a low round crown.  He was slightly walleyed
and he was watching the kid earnestly as if he'd know his opinion
about the rain.
  I just got here, said the kid.
  Well it beats all I ever seen.
  The kid nodded.  An enormous man dressed in an oilcloth slicker had
entered the tent and removed his hat.  He was bald as a stone and he
had no trace of beard and he had no brows to his eyes nor lashes to
them.  He was close on to seven feet in height and he stood smoking a
cigar even in this nomadic house of God and he seemed to have removed
his hat only to chase the rain from it for now he put it on again.
  The reverend had stopped his sermon altogether.  There was no sound
in the tent.  All watched the man.  He adjusted the hat and then
pushed his way forward as far as the crateboard pulpit where the
reverend stood and there he turned to address the reverend's
congregation.  His face was serene and strangely childlike.  His hands
were small.  He held them out.
  Ladies and gentlemen I feel it my duty to inform you that the man
holding this revival is an imposter.  He holds no papers of divinity
from any institution recognized or improvised.  He is altogether
devoid of the least qualifications to the office he has usurped and
has only committed to memory a few passages from the good book for the
purpose of lending to his fraudulent sermons some faint flavor of the
piety he despises.  In truth, the gentleman standing here before you
posing as a minister of the Lord is not only totally illiterate but is
also wanted by the law in the states of Tennessee, Kentucky,
Mississippi, and Arkansas.
  Oh God, cried the reverend.  Lies, lies!  He began reading
feverishly from his opened bible.
  On a variety of charges the most recent of which involved a girl of
eleven years - I said eleven - who had come to him in trust and whom
he was surprised in the act of violating while actually clothed in the
livery of his God.
  A moan swept through the crowd.  A lady sank to her knees.
  This is him, cried the reverend, sobbing.  This is him.  The devil.
Here he stands.
  Let's hang the turd, called an ugly thug from the gallery to the
rear.
  Not three weeks before this he was run out of Fort Smith Arkansas
for having congress with a goat.  Yes lady, that is what I said.
Goat.
  Why damn my eyes if I wont shoot the son of a bitch, said a man
rising at the far side of the tent, and drawing a pistol from his boot
he leveled it and fired.
  The young teamster instantly produced a knife from his clothing and
unseamed the tent and stepped outside into the rain.  The kid
followed.  They ducked low and ran across the mud toward the hotel.
Already gunfire was general within the tent and a dozen exits had been
hacked through the canvas walls and people were pouring out, women
screaming, folk stumbling, folk trampled underfoot in the mud.  The
kid and his friend reached the hotel gallery and wiped the water from
their eyes and turned to watch.  As they did so the tent began to sway
and buckle and like a huge and wounded medusa it slowly settled to the
ground trailing tattered canvas walls and ratty guyropes over the
ground.
  The baldheaded man was already at the bar when they entered.  On the
polished wood before him were two hats and a double handful of coins.
He raised his glass but not to them.  They stood up to the bar and
ordered whiskeys and the kid laid his money down but the barman pushed
it back with his thumb and nodded.
  These here is on the judge, he said.
  They drank.  The teamster set his glass down and looked at the kid
or he seemed to, you couldnt be sure of his gaze.  The kid looked down
the bar to where the judge stood.  The bar was that tall not every man
could even get his elbows up on it but it came just to the judge's
waist and he stood with his hands placed flatwise on the wood, leaning
slightly, as if about to give another address.  By now men were piling
through the doorway, bleeding, covered in mud, cursing.  They gathered
about the judge.  A posse was being drawn to pursue the preacher.
  Judge, how did you come to have the goods on that no-account?
  Goods? said the judge.
  When was you in Fort Smith?
  Fort Smith?
  Where did you know him to know all that stuff on him?
  You mean the Reverend Green?
  Yessir.  I reckon you was in Fort Smith fore ye come out here.
  I was never in Fort Smith in my life.  Doubt that he was.
  They looked from one to the other.
  Well where was it you run up on him?
  I never laid eyes on the man before today.  Never even heard of him.
  He raised his glass and drank.
  There was a strange silence in the room.  The men looked like mud
effigies.  Finally someone began to laugh.  Then another.  Soon they
were all laughing together.  Someone bought the judge a drink.

Infowar circa 1850

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