Revival by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781476770406
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2014-11-10T05:00:00+00:00

VIII

Tent Show.

It was seventy miles from Nederland to the Norris County Fairgrounds, which gave Hugh and me plenty of time to talk, but we said almost nothing until we were east of Denver; just sat and looked at the scenery. Except for the ever-present smog line over Arvada, it was a perfect late summer day.

Then Hugh snapped off the radio, which had been playing a steady stream of oldies on KXKL, and said: “Did your brother Conrad have any lingering effects after the Rev fixed up his laryngitis, or whatever it was?”

“No, but that’s not surprising. Jacobs said the cure was bogus, a placebo, and I always thought he was telling the truth. Probably he was. That was early days for him, remember, when his idea of a big project was getting better TV reception. Con’s mind just needed permission to get better.”

“Belief is powerful,” Hugh agreed. “So is faith. Look at all the groups and solo acts we have lining up to make CDs, even though hardly anybody buys them anymore. Have you done any research on C. Danny Jacobs?”

“Plenty. Georgia’s daughter is helping me with that.”

“I’ve done some myself, and I’ll bet plenty of his cures are like your brother’s. People with psychosomatic illnesses who decide they’re healed when Pastor Danny touches them with his magic God-rings.”

That might be true, but after watching Jacobs operate at the Tulsa fairgrounds, I was sure he had learned the real secret of building a tip: you had to give the rubes at least a little steak to go with the sizzle. Women declaring their migraines were gone and men exclaiming their sciatica had departed were all very well, but stuff like that wasn’t very visual. They weren’t Portraits in Lightning, you might say.

There were at least two dozen debunking websites about him, including one called C. DANNY JACOBS: FAITH’S FRAUD. Hundreds of people had posted to these sites, claiming the “cancerous tumors” Pastor Danny removed were pig’s livers or goat guts. Although cameras carried by audience members were forbidden at C. Danny’s services, and the film was confiscated if one of the “ushers” glimpsed someone taking snaps, plenty of photos had leaked out just the same. Many of them seemed to actually complement the official videos posted on C. Danny’s website. In others, however, the glistening goop in Pastor Danny’s hands certainly did look like goat guts. My guess was that the tumors were fake—that part of the show just smelled too carny-from-carny to be anything else. But it didn’t mean everything Jacobs was doing was fake. Here were two men in a boat-size Lincoln Continental who could testify to that.

“You had sleepwalking and involuntary movements,” Hugh said. “Which, according to WebMD, is called myoclonus. Transient, in your case. Also the need to poke things into yourself, as if down deep you still wanted to be riding the needle.”

“All true.”

“I had blackouts where I talked and moved around—like booze blackouts, only without the booze.”

“And the prismatics,” I said.

“Uh-huh. Then there’s the girl from Tulsa you told me about.

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