Delbert Scroggins didn't give a damn what anybody thought about his ministry. Let them all talk, let the young punks drive by and give him the finger sign. Let the grownups laugh and snicker as he spread the Gospel from the streets of Westbridge.
None of it mattered to Delbert. He knew they were all going to Hell anyway, every last one of them. All of the people on the streets, all the people in the buildings and businesses and factories, they were all Hell bound.
Delbert knew The Calling had come not long after he gave up the bottle. He had felt the power of the Holy Ghost descend upon him, a power that shot through the top of his head and seized him by the very entrails. He had groaned and shaken with the power of it for over two weeks, until finally one morning he felt the forgiving hand of the Lord come to rest upon his weary brow. All of a sudden, the pain was gone, the guilt and the anguish had vanished from his soul.
Lord knows, he had borne a powerful load of guilt for years. As a scrabble dirt sharecropper, he'd never had much to offer his family but toil and hunger. All the burning summers of hoeing cotton had produced little more than enough to survive the next winter on, and he had spent most of that for the moonshine whiskey he favored back then.
And the girls, when he thought what he had done to them it was hard to keep the guilt from pouring back and drowning him. After the calling came he had begged their forgiveness, but it was slow in coming. Maggie, his oldest, would never forgive him.
"It ain't what you done to me, it's what you done to Peggy and Janie," she had spat at him bitterly. "I was 13 the first time you took me, after Mama died. But they was just kids and now you done ruint them for anybody else!"
Lord only knows what drives a man to do such things, he thought. And what was worse, sometimes the Devil still got in his bones. Sometimes at night he'd still get that powerful urge to take one of the girls. Afterward, he'd beg the Lord for forgiveness, for his weakness of the flesh. He knew the Lord forgave him because he could feel that warm hand of consolation upon his heart.
Delbert remember back to a time before Martha was taken from him. He'd married her right after he came home from Vietnam. She'd been a good woman, a hard worker who had taken what little he had to offer and made do the best she could.
In the five years since the cancer struck and quickly took her home to Heaven, Delbert had gone through a powerful change. It was a shame she never lived to see him give up the bottle; it was always a dream she had, that someday he would lay aside the whiskey and the beatings and become the man she thought he was when they married.
Yes, if Martha could see what had happened to him in the past two years, she'd be mighty proud. He knew that she would even understand about the girls, because Martha was that way. She knew that a man needed the close comfort of a woman sometimes. She never denied me that, no matter how drunk or crazy I was, he thought.
Now, he was left with the two youngest since Maggie ran off to Nashville and took up with a dance hall singer. She was doomed to hell fire sure as he was living, but that was something he couldn't help.
Peggy was 15 and Janie 13, and they did the best they could to keep house, cook and clean. When the evil urge struck him, he generally went to his youngest. She didn't turn away from him like Peggy did, she'd scoot over in the bed and make a place for him. When he put it in her, she'd grip him with her arms and legs and move her body. Lord forgive her, but the girl was pleasured by it. Afterward, praying away his own sins, he'd ask the Lord to forgive the child for finding such pleasure in the carnal. It was wrong for a woman to find that kind of pleasure in the animal act, the Lord had given man that for his procreation and his pleasure. The Lord had meant women to serve men, not be their masters like some of them blamed women's libbers! he thought.
If I was a big phony like Henry Hathaway, I could have a big church and a big flock, Delbert thought. I wouldn't have to preach on the streets and get laughed at by all these poor fools. People would take me serious, they'd lay aside their evil ways and come to see that God has placed his wrath on this community. They'd see that the Good Shepherd is taking away the people here before many of them are prepared to go; that's the awful part, all the ones dying that are not ready to meet their Maker.
"The end is drawin' close!" Delbert cried out from his station on the corner of Beech and Main streets in downtown Westbridge. "Armageddon is at hand and the will of the Lord will be done!"
A few passers-by slowed to look at the shabbily dressed man yelling out from the street corner. Occasionally, someone would stick their head of the courthouse windows to see what all the commotion was.
"It's just that crazy Scroggins fellow again," they would tell their cohorts with a grin. "I don't know why they can't arrest him for disturbin' the peace or somethin', the way he carries on."
"They ought to get him for more'n that, if what they say is right," said another. "I hear tell he screws his own gals all the time."
"Well, they ought to denut him if he does."
"That's too good for him, they should just burn him alive."
"If the Klan still had any power 'round here, he'd get what he's got comin', you could count on that. The Klan knowed how to take care of that kind of trash, even white trash. They'd strip the meat off his bones with a bullwhip, then ride the bastard out of town on a rail."
"Well, that was back in the good old days, before these niggers got so uppity. Wadn't for them goddamn Jews we wouldn't have no problems with niggers and white trash."
"Naw, we'd done all them sumbitches in by now. Way it is now, you can't even look sideways at a nigger without havin' the NAACP or somethin' gettin' up your butt!"
Back down on the street, unaware that his presence had made such an impression on two clerks at the courthouse, Delbert continued to spread the gospel. "I seen it in a vision!" he cried, spreading his arms wide. "I seen the wrath of God fallin' like poison rain on Westbridge, seen the poison seep into our land, seen the poison go into our bodies and kill us from within!"
Two youths in a fancy red sports car passed the park grinning wildly at Delbert Scroggins. One of them extended his middle finger and then accelerated away in a blast of burning rubber mingled with the loud hard rock music pouring from the car's fancy stereo system.
"You can make your evil signs and you can listen to the Devil's music!" Delbert cried out after them. "But you can't save yourself from the wrath of God! The end time is drawin' near, fall down on your knees and beg God for forgiveness before it's too late!"
Wiping his brow with a sweat-stained handkerchief, Delbert Scroggins wondered what to do next. Nobody seemed to listen or to care. It was like preaching to a brick wall.
"You'll all be sorry!" he screamed wildly, flinging his handkerchief into the gutter. "All you sonuvabitches will be sorry when Jesus comes any day now, when you have to look upon His pure face! You'll beg like dogs, but it ain't gonna do you no good, it will be too late!"
From his position about a half block away, Westbridge Patrolman Stanley Caulkins saw Delbert Scroggins toss his handkerchief into the street. Smiling, the officer started his cruiser and drove slowly down to where the wild man stood, waving his arms and yelling out his gibberish.
"You're under arrest for litterin'," the officer told Delbert. "We can't have crazy people litterin' up the streets of our fair city, now can we?"
"They took Jesus in too, they nailed him on a cross and tried to kill him!" Delbert yelled at the officer. "You can persecute me, but you can't stop me!"
Momentarily, Delbert Scroggins was locked in the rear seat of the police car enroute to the New Hope County jail. He sat quietly, breathing heavily.
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