Lady Chastity's Last Stand

The first time the Virgin Mary appeared to Brother Bearle, he swerved his $25,000 Prussian-blue Mercedes head On into a telephone pole. He was on his way home from the Beach of Faith, cruising along a black stretch of road, when the moon suddenly nudged a space between the clouds. Across the low dark backs of the dunes, he saw the delicate figure of a woman illuminated in the mist. She was standing by the ocean's edge, clothed in a white robe and a flowing pale-blue cape; her arms were lifting slowly toward him when the Mercedes struck the pole and he rocked violently in the tight space between the shoulder strap and the seat.

When his body came to rest, Brother Bearle stared uncertainly at the pole that seemed to be growing out of the car's radiator as if it, too, were part of his vision. He tried to blink it away, but it remained steadfast, pitched back toward the beach like a toppled cross. In a daze, he pulled himself from the car and stumbled out into the dunes, where the wind transformed the dry stalks of reeds into a choir of angels, their voices rising in high, flutelike sound around him, lifting him from the weight of his body until he became one with their song, suspended in a state of pure floating. He knew he was in the presence of heavenly forces, but when he finally reached the beach, there was no sign of the Virgin. The moon had rolled back behind the clouds, leaving him alone in darkness, with the thin strip of beach vanishing into mist on either side of him and a wind that made his eyes tear because it no longer carried the voices of angles.

Despite the enormous damage to his Mercedes, he saw the event as a benediction. He had always taken secret pride in the knowledge that his was the only evangelical ministry to give equal time to the Virgin and at long last he felt vindicated, the Virgin herself showing that she was pleased with his work. On the Midnight Faith hour, he provided a step-by-step account not only of the vision itself but of everything that had preceded it, in retrospect seeing the events of his day as part of a divine chain linking him inevitably with revelation.

"Ever since I founded the Bible School," he confided to the faithful in a voice continually breaking with the burden of his joy, "ever since I first dreamed of the Beach of Faith, I have been waiting for a sign from above, some ... indication that I have not labored in vain. What happened tonight was (continued on page 188)Lady Chastity(continued from page 177) God's way of saying thank you, Brother Bearle, thank you for understanding that the future of America depends upon the untainted and unsoiled purity of her women."

In the studio lit only by a single candle that burned behind the mike, he turned to the young man beside him, the most promising of his deacons. "Isn't that right, Brother Billie?"

"Amen!" Billie said.

"Amen, Billie!" Brother Bearle replied, as he did every night at exactly 12:30, signing off.

•

"We've got to be careful with this," Billie warned on the drive out to the Bible School several days later. But Brother Bearle was only half listening. He was thinking about how smooth the new Rolls felt in his hands. The Love Offerings had been so substantial since his vision that he had interpreted them as a sign that God did not want him to repair the Mercedes, that he was being programed for a grander, more prosperous future.

"What are you drivin' at, Brother Billie?"

"I mean, what if it was a mirage or a hoax?"

"Hogpie!" Brother Bearle fumed, resorting, as he often did when he was angry, to the slang of the Tennessee hill where he had had his first ministry. "I know what I seen. And what I seen was of dee-vine origin." He turned into the driveway of the Bible School, a converted Victorian hotel with balconies and turrets that faced out onto the ocean, and brought the car to rest in front of the pillared veranda.

Standing next to the bright gleam of the Rolls, Billie looked more anemic than usual, his thin tie fluttering in the wind between the lapels of gray polyester, his Adam's apple unnaturally large and pointed, almost a replica of his nose. Brother Bearle, by contrast, had a ruddy complexion and, though slightly overweight, had never felt better in his life. He took the steps two at a time and reached the top just as Sister Sharon glided through the screen door. Seeing her in her navy pants suit, her hair cut close around a face as wholesome as the morning itself, he found pleasure in the certainty that he couldn't have chosen a better spiritual mother for his girls. "You're looking mighty fine this morning, Sister Sharon."

A blush tipped each of Sister Sharon's cheeks. "You know I look forward to our Friday-morning inspections, Brother Bearle. And I do want to hear of your experience firsthand."

"Of course! Of course!" he said, leading her through the lobby with its stiff, high-backed Queen Anne chairs and hardwood floors, up the wide center staircase to the second floor, where the virginettes were housed, two per room. They began at the north end of the corridor, Sister Sharon preceding him into each room, the virginettes standing at the foot of their beds, not exactly at attention but straight and earnest in their tartan skirts and white blouses. He liked a clean-smelling room, untainted by odors of cosmetics or flesh, a room as fresh as the sea breeze itself; he liked to see each article in its proper place, beds crisply made, with spreads creased sharply beneath the pillows, the Bible prominently displayed on the nightstand between the beds. After the rooms, Sister Sharon led him into the communal lavatory at the end of the corridor. Here he was particularly critical, examining each stall for graffiti, wisps of pubic hair, un-flushed tampon wrappings; he sniffed for the slightest trace of feminine odor, peered into each of the three shower stalls for any evidence of deodorant soaps or body oils.

Afterward, he stood behind the lectern in the makeshift chapel on the first floor while the virginettes filed briskly to their assigned seats. Through the enormous French windows that he hoped eventually to redo in stained glass with the help of future Love Offerings, he gazed out past the broad marble-tiled terrace to the Skytower of Prayer now in the final stages of construction. Set on a concrete jetty, it rose 200 feet above the ocean to a circular Church in the Sky. The base of the tower was composed of arched steel plated with disks of mirrored glass to reflect the sun's light. From the roof of the elevated church, a thin spire of blue and yellow chrome lifted another 50 feet into the heavens. The dedication of the tower was scheduled to coincide with the commencement exercises for the Bible School's first graduating class, now only two weeks away, and the anticipation of the dual event, together with the vision on the beach, filled Brother Bearle with such excitement that he could find no words to begin his sermon.

In the bright light of the windows, his brown hairpiece looked a shade or two darker than his natural hair and as he leaned forward, his face appeared small and cramped atop the series of jowls that receded into his neck. "How can I tell you," he began in his deepest radio voice, "how can I tell you how beautiful she was--pale and ethereal, as pure as wind or clouds, raising her arms toward our true home in the heavens."

He stared out at the pale, innocent faces before him, his hope for the future, drawing in the subtle scent of Ivory soap and freshly starched blouses. "Oh, I know there are skeptics out there, cynics who will say the man is deluded, off his rocker; but I say to those doubting Thomases who require proof before they will believe, I say to them that the Lord's proof is in the heart, not in the hand."

•

Inwardly, however, Brother Bearle was not quite so confident. He knew he could not afford to underestimate the cynicism of the modern world; so, with a camera strapped around his neck and a flashlight in hand, he patrolled the beach nightly, murmuring prayers for a second vision.

On the seventh night of his vigil, the wind off the water so severe it kept his eyes constantly in tears, his prayers were answered. She stood on the dunes this time, several hundred yards from the Sky-tower, a blur of light cloth sketched like mist against the black sky. As he ran toward her, her robe billowed out around her and for a moment it almost looked as if she were naked from the waist down; but he immediately dismissed that possibility and attributed the distortion to his watery vision. Then he remembered the camera and slowed down. He forced his eye against the tiny viewer, saw nothing but the blur of his own tears and snapped. By the time he lowered the camera, she was gone.

He peeled off the print and examined it under the sharp glare of the flashlight. The entire photograph was black except for the gleaming-white border and a tiny gauzy blotch in the lower-right-hand corner. The blotch was far too small to be identified, but Brother Bearle recognized in its diaphanous texture and filmy edges an evocation of the Virgin's billowing robe.

The photo was reproduced the next day in the county paper, but the reprint was of such poor quality that the white blotch appeared even more indistinct than in the original. Brother Bearle lamented the fact that none of the national wire services picked it up. "If it was Oral or Marjoe, you could be sure it'd be front-page news," he complained privately to Billie.

But despite this, he was happier than he'd been since the days of his Bible Balloon Crusade, when he had taken 100 of his followers on a chartered plane to Germany. In Berlin, they stuffed nearly a quarter of a million balloons with portions of the Bible translated into the seven languages of the Communist world; for a week, they camped by the Wall, waiting for an eastward wind, Brother Bearle leading them in prayer and song, asking God to "breathe upon them a wind so mighty and direct the balloons would carry all the way to Russia." And when the winds came at last--a gale, really, churning and spitting out of a black, tortured sky--the balloons jerked away into East Germany in fitful gusts, bobbing and plunging like crazed and homeless birds.

He was remembering that moment several nights later as he walked with Billie on the beach, in his mind comparing the virginettes to the balloons, messengers of purity to be released into a world gone sour with godlessness and lust. They had almost reached the Sky-tower, which thrust heavenward from the jetty, dark and full of promise, when Billie spotted the flickering form of a woman cast in the dull, milky light of the mist. Not more than 100 feet from them, she stood high up on a reef at the point where it disappeared into the dunes. Billie dropped to his knees, bowed his head and murmured, "Mother of Blessed Jesus, forgive me," at the same moment that Brother Bearle saw the vision.

He was about to join his deacon in humbled prayer when the vision suddenly bent forward, gathered the hem of her robe gracefully in her right hand and began to lift the robe up over her knees. There was no mistaking it this time: She was naked beneath the robe and in the light, which was brighter now--a flashlight held in her free hand beneath the robe--he could see the full length of her legs and thighs. She held the robe just below her private parts and for a moment let it dangle there before raising it, the beam spotlighting her crotch, which was doubly naked, clean-shaven and as smooth as ivory. Then she abruptly released the hem, turned and fled back into the dunes.

"What in God's holy name?" Brother Bearle shouted, glancing quickly at Billie, who still had his head bowed, his hands clasped tightly, his body rocking back and forth.

"Praise the Lord!" Billie chanted, thinking his minister was calling for response.

But Brother Bearle was already halfway across the beach, his breath running out of him in short bursts. When he reached the crest of the dunes, his eyes cast around wildly before he glimpsed her on the far side, gliding spritelike across the lawn of the Bible School. He stood there dumfounded. His heaving breath brought him to the edge of nausea while his disbelieving eyes tracked her across the terrace, where she suddenly vanished behind the black-metal door of the service entrance.

•

"I want to testify," Billie pleaded before services on Sunday morning, as Brother Bearle, still reeling from shock, stared gloomily out the window of the office in his soon-to-be-abandoned clapboard church on the highway. "To atone for my doubt, as it were."

"Not today, Billie." Dreading the inevitable jeopardy to his Bible School if this ever got out, not to mention Billie's ridicule, he had decided to keep quiet about the latest vision.

"When?" Billie leaned toward him across the desk. His skin was no longer pale. A flush rose up through his cheeks, brimming over in his eyes.

"Let's see what develops."

Brother Bearle hoped that by some miracle nothing would, that with less than a week to go before the dedication, whatever perversity he had been targeted for would be redirected elsewhere. But later that night, just before he went on the air, the broadcaster on the 12-o'clock news roundup announced that only moments before, a young girl dressed like the Virgin Mary had exposed herself to a group of bathers at the Regency Hotel and then to a honeymoon couple on a moonlight stroll through the dunes.

When the weather came on, Brother Bearle was in such a state of agitation he kept hearing the words storm clouds again and again, as if the words themselves were a storm spinning and thrashing around inside his head. Finally, the light blinked to signal the end of the newscast and he gaped at the serpentine twist of microphone that seemed coiled for attack in front of him.

In his sermon, he decided to ignore the reports and go ahead with his prepared text, but the reprieve was all too brief. The next day, the front page of the county newspaper carried the story under the headline: "Lady Chastity Strikes Again!" This time, the national wire services did pick it up and within 24 hours, it was national news. Brother Bearle sulked through every radio and TV newscast he could find, read the coverage in the papers, flinching as each of the headlines sniped at him above the columns of print, the one that struck closest to his heart a front-page story headlined "Female Flasher Flaunts Faith"; and by the time he was ready to go on the air at midnight, he was churning with a rage of divine proportions.

"Some of you out there listening to me right now, some of you, yes, who call yourself the faithful, who call yourself 'born again,' some of you are saying to yourself right now: This man is a fool, this man has been made mock of. Why should we have anything more to do with him? But the holy Lord has given me the grace to forgive your faithlessness. That's right. I'm praying for you because you do not see that this perversity is not directed against one poor minister who has not lost his capacity to believe and is damn proud of it--but against each and every one of you who calls yourself a Christian.

"Right now, I know some of you out there are asking, 'Why should I bother to make a Love Offering to this man?' But we need your offerings now more than ever to continue our battle against the filthy hand of lust. I promise you no effort will be spared to root out the harlot responsible for this and I will personally see that she is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

"I'll get the slut," he murmured under his breath.

Aloud, over the air, he said: "Isn't that right, Brother Billie?"

"Amen," Billie replied, but in such a weak voice it was almost inaudible.

•

The first thing Brother Bearle did was move out of the Mediterranean-style ranch house he had built for himself and take a room on the first floor of the school. His fear of the reporters who roamed the dunes was so great he dared confide in no one, hoping to find whoever it was before she exposed herself again. He had only one real clue and he tried to pursue it with Sister Sharon on the terrace over tea.

He lowered his cup with an unsteady hand and cleared his throat. "Sister Sharon, this may sound like a bizarre question, but"--he scraped his cup on the saucer trying to find the groove, the hot tea spilling over onto his hand--"is there anything unusual ... ? Have you noticed ... ? I mean, when the girls are showering...." The phrase shaved pussy came into his mind and he winced, never before having entertained so crass a term.

"Yes, Brother Bearle?" Sister Sharon's eyes fluttered above the pink blush of her cheeks.

"Never mind, Sister." He smiled and patted her hand, inwardly troubled about how to proceed.

But the next morning, during inspection, as his eyes cruised the last of the three shower stalls, he noticed a sliver of plaster chipped away alongside the water pipe where it rose between the hot and cold faucets. When he poked his finger into the hole, more of the plaster fell away. An hour later, while Sister Sharon and the virginettes were at lunch, he returned with a screwdriver and hammer and knocked an eyeball-sized hole through to the storage room next door; and at 7:30 that night, he knelt in the darkness with his left eye pressed to the hole.

Because of the three stalls, he had only a 33 percent chance of spotting her the first night; but as the nights went on, he concluded, the odds would grow in his favor. The hole was inordinately well placed--a sign to Brother Bearle that this had been preordained--and (continued on page 264)Lady Chastity(continued from page 190) when the first one appeared, auburn-haired, the thin line of its lip pursed beneath the tangle of curls, it was directly at eye level. The shock of it just inches away forced his eyelid closed.

It had been years since he was this close to a naked woman, having given up sex for the same reason he founded his ministry: because of his conviction that women were the purest of God's creatures and so to be held above the baser desires of the flesh. He could not remember when he last had an erection; and in recent years, he had not even experienced that phenomenon in sleep he referred to as "the Devil's discharge." Kneeling there, he felt unclean, something dark and viscous as oil oozing through him. But he reminded himself of all that was at stake and his eyelid popped back open.

The shower nozzle snorted, then hissed, and it began to bead and glisten; a wiggling motion set in as thin rivers of soapy water were drawn downward into its waiting delta. He immediately saw the limitations: While the hole afforded maximum coverage of the genital region, that was all it afforded. He was pondering how he would redesign the opening while he watched it being lathered, transformed by the Ivory soap into a forest of snowy curls that made him feel cleaner, relieved of some burden. Then the winter landscape was replaced by a chunk of flesh, thigh or hip, turning slowly, until he recognized the conformation of a cheek and finally the crack itself dead center in his vision. In another moment, the crack was gone and a new one jiggled in front of him, darker and bushier than the first, so that he could barely detect the vault buried beneath.

For an hour they came and went before him, a chorus of varying sizes, colors and textures, all of them plumed. At 8:30, when the showers were turned off and he stared into the empty stall, he was exhausted--a strain that came from constantly reminding himself that somewhere up inside what he witnessed a soul existed--and he felt that he had undergone some disturbing change. He did not begin to understand it until breakfast the next morning, when he found himself trying to match what he had seen in the showers with the sleepy, innocent faces that dawdled over oatmeal. In the chapel, while he preached against the dangers of sexual pleasure, he kept seeing in his mind's eye the hair wet and beaded or pressed flat and slick with soap.

That night, not having decided whether to enlarge the existing hole or add another higher up (he was afraid either would give him away), he was back with his eye to the storage-room wall. A half dozen of them, one hairier than the other, twitched in front of him before he was eye to crotch with the object of his search. It stared back at him through the hole as bold and naked as a prophecy. He closed his eye and prayed for sustenance. When he opened it again, the skin, smooth and white as a baby's, seemed too bright to look at; yet he couldn't take his eye away. To his horror, the moist pink petals seemed to be winking at him and he had the uneasy sensation that, though separated by a wall, they were in collusion.

Just then, the bald space was intruded upon by a honey-gold bar of soap, oval-shaped and tapered smooth at either end. Through the hole, he could smell its deep, musk fragrance. Unlike the others, this girl did not dab daintily around the edges. She held the forbidden bar firmly and inserted its tapered head inside her, sliding it in and out, the steady slippery motion, like the movement of a hypnotist's chain, mesmerizing Brother Bearle until he felt something slide in his own crotch and he quickly pulled himself to his feet, afraid of what might happen if he stayed. Short of breath, he stumbled out into the hall, hoping to intercept the girl as she left the bathroom, only to find Sister Sharon staring curiously at him.

"Is there something wrong, Brother Bearle?" She reached out a solicitous hand to steady him, but he waved it away.

"Quite all right, Sister. Quite all right." He shook his head to clear the dizziness just as the bathroom door opened. Four girls came toward him wrapped in their white terrycloth robes, their faces pink and scrubbed. The door opened again and another bevy of girls came out smiling like cherubim.

"Good night, Brother Bearle, good night, Sister Sharon," they chanted choral style as they passed.

The next day, he was too busy with last-minute preparations for the dedication to give much thought to the disturbing occurrence of the night before. With the construction crew, he tested all of the Skytower's interior and exterior lighting, as well as the operation of the four outdoor elevators. At twilight, he conducted a complete dress rehearsal of the ceremonies. As he was scooped up in the bullet-shaped Plexiglas elevator, he watched Sister Sharon lead the virginettes in a torchlight procession across the beach. While he waited for them in the Church in the Sky, aloft in the marble pulpit that arched above the slowly rotating circle of rosewood pews, he felt the majesty of a man in control of his life. Behind him on a higher plane was the Wurlitzer, larger than the one in Salt Lake; and above that, higher still, the 12-foot statue of the Virgin. All around him, through the floor-to-ceiling glass, the ocean turned in his view, as expansive as his mood.

"Tomorrow," he told the virginettes when they were assembled before him, his voice more resonant and compelling than ever over the $100,000 sound system, "tomorrow, the Age of Lust will give way to the Age of Purification and the Virgin will be returned to her throne. The first of you will go into the world as crusaders to restore the true dignity of women, pure beings whom men will kneel before in respect and humility, not the wanton creatures of so-called liberation."

It was only later, after the virginettes had left and he was alone, staring down at the ocean that had turned a bruised-gray color under the darkening sky, that he began to worry again. Far below, a small craft bucked the tide. It was too fragile for the ocean's might and its hull kept dipping beneath the waves. He was reminded of the bar of soap disappearing inside the pink depths and he tried to obliterate the image, afraid that if it remained any longer, he, too, might be swallowed. But the hairless crotch remained in his thoughts, as vast and depthless as the ocean, demanding some adjustment he was afraid to make. In an effort to console himself, he turned to the Virgin who towered high above the Wurlitzer, hoping to find reassurance in the unearthly innocence of her expression and the thick white robe that shielded her private parts from the lechery of the world.

•

Candles in hand, wearing white-voile dresses, baby-blue capes and matching blue-tinted gardenias in their hair, the virginettes were lining up on the terrace. They seemed so pale and delicate, their movements mothlike in the warm summer darkness, that Brother Bearle was able to put aside the unpleasant business of the crotches for the time being. From his window, he watched Sister Sharon dart in among them as busy as a hen.

The lights of the Skytower had just been turned on: white floodlights at the base that made the mirror disks shimmer; blue neon rods, spoked like a wheel, that blinked from the revolving roof of the Church in the Sky; and above the church, pinpoints of gold stars that rose in clusters to the very tip of the spire. For added flare--an idea he'd gotten from the opening of a new McDonald's in the downtown shopping mall--he had had two searchlights installed on the beach, their thick shafts of light crisscrossing the dark ceiling of the sky.

Stiff in his rented tux, he was adjusting his hairpiece in the mirror when Sister Sharon called to him from the terrace. She was waving her arms frantically and pointing toward the sky. "There!" she shouted. "On the tower!"

The flasher, in her virginette dress and cape, stood up on the roof of the Church in the Sky. With the slow, studied gestures of a ritual, she was raising her dress up over her knees.

By the time Brother Bearle got down to the terrace, she had made one complete revolution, in the interim having removed her dress. She stood naked and poised, with the blue cape flapping behind her in the wind.

"Why, it's one of my girls," Sister Sharon was sobbing. "It's sweet little Susan Van Tassel."

"I'll take care of this." Brother Bearle's eyes flashed to the parking area, where the guests of honor, 500 of the Skytower's most generous donors, were being assembled for the procession. There was no commotion to indicate they had yet seen what was happening.

"What about the procession?" Sister Sharon wailed, rubbing her hands together.

"Start on schedule," Brother Bearle ordered as he rushed off, convincing himself there was still time to stave off catastrophe. But when he got down to the beach, he saw that a large crowd had already gathered around the base of the tower and the WKVD-TV news helicopter beat in the air above the spire.

Where the hell's Billie? he complained to himself as he pushed into the crowd, bullying people aside with the sharp, murderous tone of his voice. Where the hell are my deacons when I need them?

At the entrance ramp, Murf, the school custodian, detached himself from a group of security guards and came running toward him. "She said she just wanted to go up to say a prayer. She said she just wanted to say a little prayer before it got crowded."

Brother Bearle shoved past him. In the elevator, an instrumental version of Amazing Grace coming through the speaker in the cone of the capsule, he waited with as much dignity as he could manage while Murf fidgeted with the controls. Just before they lifted off, he spotted Billie's sullen eyes staring at him from the edge of the crowd. Their eyes locked. Then, without the slightest acknowledgment, Billie slipped into the surging mass of bodies and vanished.

"Infidel!" Brother Bearle muttered as the capsule was sucked upward, his body flat and rigid against the Plexiglas wall, like a man about to be executed.

When the capsule rocked to a stop and the door opened into the Church in the Sky, he stood there hesitantly staring at the empty pews, forgetting why he had come. Then, adjusting his hairpiece, which in his haste he had not fastened securely, he stalked up the center aisle. He crossed directly in front of the Virgin but refused to give her so much as a sideward glance.

Wind funneled through the sliding glass doors just inside of which he contemplated the narrow ledge where a workman's staircase twisted up onto the roof.

"Maybe we oughta get the police," Murf suggested, following his minister's gaze to the ocean 200 feet below.

But Brother Bearle swung himself through the doors and gripped the iron railings of the staircase. Far below, silver in the reflected light of the mirror disks, he watched the ocean swell in slow motion against the pilings. The rotation was beginning to make him nauseated.

"Stop this damn thing, will you?" he called to Murf, whose head bobbed inside the glass, his broad fleshy face apologetic, hangdog, before it turned away.

Brother Bearle started up the steps just as the KVD helicopter swooped in low over the roof. It dangled above him, nose tipped forward and swaying, rotors snapping at the air. An arm motioned from behind the windshield and a Porto-Pak was aimed at him and he flinched. With the wind pulling at him, he drew himself up so that he could see over the roof.

She faced toward the lights that aproned inland up the peninsula. Her arms were out at her side in the classic Virgin position, the cape lifted behind her in the wind, baring her ass. Then she turned and he saw that her face was unnaturally serene--drugged, perhaps, or hypnotized--and her lips slackened to a smile. Caught for a moment in the blinding path of the searchlight, she appeared truly unearthly and the power of all the nether world's perversity seemed written in the Gospel of her pink hairless privates.

He wavered back at arm's length over the ocean, but his rage gave him sudden strength and he pulled himself up onto the roof, where the wind was strong enough to rip the hairpiece free of his scalp. The chopper beat with such ferocity directly above him he felt he was being shot at; and far below, belonging to some world he was no longer a part of, the feeble lights of the procession curled along the beach.

"Why?" he babbled to her, reeling unsteadily, half-crazed and trying to remember the words of some prayer. "Holy Virgin Most Pure," he began as she took a step toward him and extended her arms to gather him in.

"Eat me," she said, her words straining against the clacking beat of the chopper.

In his confusion, he lunged for the ends of her cape and tried to wrap it tight around her. At that moment, the roof began to shake and she fell against him. He flapped his arms wildly to free himself and knocked her off balance; the roof jerked hard and ground to a dead stop, the motion shooting her backward over the edge. The cape billowed over her head like a parachute, with her body streaming like a delicate ribbon beneath it. When she hit, the cape fluttered on the surface of the water, held still a moment, then sank slowly in a glimmer of pale silver light.

•

"You can't blame yourself," Sister Sharon told him later that night, after the police had come and fished Susan Van Tassel out of the ocean and after the crowds had been dispersed and the virginettes put to bed. "The girl was demented. On the surface, she seemed perfectly normal, but underneath, Satan had devoured her soul."

"Yes," Brother Bearle said without conviction.

"Think of the others. Think how successful you've been with them."

But Brother Bearle, staring out at the Skytower, which was dark now, still un-baptized, and which looked less like a house of worship than like a dark metallic phallus hulking above the black ocean, seemed not to be listening.

"Lust kills!" he warned later on the Midnight Faith hour, Billie's vacant chair reminding him the truest measure of a man's strength was his capacity to endure adversity alone. "We must never lose sight of the fact that there is more--there must be," he added in a breaking voice, close to tears, "more to life than a mere groveling to the needs of mortal flesh." But even as he said it, all he could think of was Susan Van Tassel's pussy (he accepted the word without hesitation now) haloed in the flashlight beam the first time he saw it, as if the true meaning of life were only as wide as the space between a woman's hips.

On the way back to the Bible School, it seemed to dance inside his head, spotlighted and disembodied, having survived the destruction of her body: an orphan of the spirit world carving out its territory. Inside his room, it continued to haunt him, kept him sleepless and distraught, calling to its sisters in the rooms above, and in his unnerved state he thought he heard them responding, sighing like aggrieved captives through the stiff cotton panties the virginettes were required to wear beneath their pajamas.

In an effort to find some relief, he wandered out onto the beach, heading in the direction of the Skytower. He rode the elevator up and in the empty church lit only by moonlight, he called aloud to the statue of the Virgin. "Why hast thou forsaken me?" In a way he did not understand, he felt responsible for what had happened, that some flaw in his being had set in motion an entire chain of events leading to catastrophe. But he found no comfort in the silent image. Her arms were too far from him to offer reassurance.

In desperation, he climbed up onto the organ, his feet on the keys producing dirgelike tones, and then pulled himself up onto the platform where the statue waited. When he stood up, his head barely reached the Virgin's waist and he raised his eyes in supplication. The uneven light of the moon played across the pastel colors of her face, gave to her mouth a crooked smile: not a virgin's smile but a hooker's. Eat me, it said. He cried out in anguish, gripping the statue around the waist and burying his face in the plaster folds of her robe until he realized exactly where his mouth was pressed.

"Let me be born again!" he shouted in prayer and at last felt the movement of grace deep inside him. Closing his eyes, he gave over to it: The white robe seemed to part and he was being drawn through the warm tube to her womb, where his man's body lay fetal-curled, nourished from within, comforted in a way that touched off memories ages old; until he felt himself beginning to re-emerge, not with the diffidence of a child but with all the curiosity of a tourist, rubbernecking his way through the dark convolutions of the tunnel, touching and feeling all that there was to feel. As he saw himself near the opening, his body began to shake. The power of the grace surged through him, taking his breath away as it strained to pry him loose. Something clicked inside his groin, like a clock being wound. Trembling violently, he began to moan and in a final effort to free himself, he pushed out hard with both hands, in the process dislodging the statue from its mount and sending it tottering backward. When he opened his eyes, he found it shattered beyond repair on the floor below him, his cock intact and risen to take its place.

Breathing heavily, his body quivering with years of pent-up energy, he saw that his flaw had been the failure to understand the true purpose of his mission here on earth. In his search for guidance, he had ignored the voices calling to him from inside himself and so had failed to minister to the real needs of the faithful: beginning with Monica Brady in his kindergarten class, the first girl to expose herself to him, and including all the women at his revival meetings throughout the years who had prayed to him to heal their bodies as well as their souls. Turning now to face the congregation of empty pews, his own private Skytower reaching out toward the infinity of the dark heaving ocean, he felt ready for the first time, at the age of 50, to accept the world for what it was.

"As he ran toward her, her robe billowed out and for a moment it almost looked as if she were naked."

"Then the landscape was replaced by a chunk of flesh, thigh or hip, until he recognized a cheek...."