"I don't know. They begin them themselves most of the time."
"This has got to stop right heayah. You run the church, or the church runs you. Let's lay some gospel down on their heads."
He noticed a blond girl, quite excited, her cheeks flushed with joy. For this occasion only, for his pudgy brown brother only, he would make an exception about the ugliest woman in the congregation. One had to take care of the good-looking ones too.
Reverend Walker flashed his broadest smile and stepped in front of the statue at which everyone was looking.
"Brothers and sisters," he boomed. He wished he had a pulpit to bang. He wished he had chairs to look at, faces to look back at him. But half these people had their heads down on the floor and the other half were only trying to look past him toward the statue.
"We got to move on to be right on," yelled the good Reverend Tee Vee Walker. "Man can't walk, man can't talk. If you pray, you pay."
People still didn't look at him. He thought that that should have worked. It hardly ever failed. One black preacher had even run for president by trying to reduce the nuclear-technological age to seven-year-old rhymes.
The reverend didn't know why these whites weren't responding.
If he couldn't get them with preaching, he would try singing.
His rich voice boomed out over the throng, calling for sweet understanding, bemoaning suffering, calling for trust. He liked the way he could bring it all up from his toes. But they still didn't respond. And it was good singing, too.
The Reverend Walker began to clap. No Walker had ever lost a congregation, not in four generations of preachers, and he wasn't going to be the first. He stamped his feet. He yelled some more at their heads, and no one even noticed him.
Then the pretty little blond girl smiled at him and nodded him into a side room.
The Reverend Tee Vee Walker did not miss that smile. So there were other ways to bring a congregation into line. He knew them all. He winked back and followed the girl into the room.
"Hi," she said.
"Hello there," said the Reverend.
"Can I just get this around your neck?" came a voice from behind him.
So these whites did groups. "Any neck you want," he said with a broad smile.
And there was number 108.
Ban Sar Din was waiting in his private devotion office when he heard a knock on the door. They were calling him to appear before Her.
Good, he thought. The reverend has finally gotten them into line.
But there was no Reverend Walker. Just a small group holding one of those silly yellow handkerchiefs. He didn't remember any groups going out now, but then again, they weren't telling him everything anymore either. He wondered what they had in the rumal this time. Loose change? He looked around the ashram, but saw no sign of the minister. Maybe he had done his job and left.
"She loved it," said one of the followers.
Ban Sar Din reached into his pocket. No cloth. He looked at the upturned faces of his followers. The crazies were going to kill him if he didn't have a fresh rumal. Maybe strangle him with their bare hands.
"We await, Holy One," said the kid from Indianapolis who had taken to calling himself the phansigar. There were several of them now.
"Right. Waiting," said Ban Sar Din. "Waiting is perhaps the fullest way of service to our holy Kali."
"Did you forget the rumal?" asked the kid from Indianapolis.
"Forgetting is a form of worship. Why does one remember? That is the question we must all ask ourselves," said the pudgy little man. He felt sweat forming in his underpants, and his mouth was dry. He tried to smile. If he smiled, they might not think he was getting ready to run for it.
He made a sign of blessing he had seen somewhere. Oh, no. It was the sign of the cross, and he carefully did the motions again, backward, as if erasing his previous moves.
"Thus Kali erases false doctrine," he said unctuously. If he ran for it, could he get away? he wondered. "You have forgotten the rumal, the holy blessed rumal with which we serve Her," said the yellow-haired girl from Denver. She was the one who frightened him most. He had gathered indirectly that she loved the death throes even more than the male followers did.
"Let us all praise Kali now," said Ban Sar Din. He backed toward the door. If he could get a jump on these crazy white kids, he might make it into the alley and then out of New Orleans. He could always lose weight and pick pockets again. And even if he failed, there was always jail. At least, he would still be alive. It was an incredibly appealing thought.
Ban Sar Din's little legs began running toward the thought before he could stop them. They were moving, and moving fast.
They were not fast enough.
Hands had his ankles, his arms, and he knew his throat was next. He felt his legs still going through the motions of running, but he was not going where he wanted to go. He was being carried to the base of that statue, which apparently was a new one, because it had more arms now than when he bought it. This was religion out of control, he thought, and somebody ought to do something about it.
"Kali. Kali." The chants began, first as two screams, then as drumrolls, and the feet began hitting the floor and the whole ashram building shook with the chant of Kali. Kali the divine. Kali the death giver. Kali the invincible, goddess of death.
The floor shook underneath his back from the stomping, and his fingers grew numb because his wrists were being held so tightly. He could smell the floor wax and feel the fingertips of young worshipers dig into his ankles.
The chant continued: "Kali. Kali."
It occurred to Ban Sar Din at that moment that if he heard the chants and smelled the floor wax and felt the pounding of feet, he was still alive. And if there was one thing he knew about the cult of Kali, it was that they never did the chanting before a death. It was always after a death had occurred. Of course, he did not know all that much about the cult. He had only bought the statue and given the white kids some Indian names.
Ban Sar Din felt something funny on the soles of his feet. At first it tickled.
"Please don't torture me," he cried out. "Have mercy."
"It's kissing," said the phansigar from Indianapolis. Bar Sar Din opened his eyes. He saw lots of yellow hair near his feet.
"Head north," he said.
"It is so. It is ever so," said the yellow-haired girl. "He does not have the rumal."
"If you say so," said Ban Sar Din.
"We were told you wouldn't," she said.
"Who told you? Get him out of here, whoever he is," said Ban Sar Din. "What does he know?"
They were all looking down at him. He pulled his feet away from the yellow-haired girl and rose. He pulled his upper tunic tighter around his body.
"Do you have the rumal for us?" asked one youth.
"Why do you ask?"
"Tell us you don't. Please," said the blond girl. Tears of joy filled her eyes.