Read Online The Resurrection of Mary Mabel McTavish by Allan Stratton - Free Book Online
Authors: Allan Stratton
Ads: Link
over, yanked up her free leg, and landed a boot to his chin. He reeled back, howling. She turned to escape out the driver’s side. A second stranger blocked the exit. He shone a flashlight in her eyes. She hoisted her bag from the cab’s floor and held it like a shield.
Flashlight chuckled. “We’ve got us a live one.”
“Godda beesh!” swore the madman.
Mary Mabel looked from one to the other. “Back off or I scream!”
“As if anyone would care. What’s your name?”
“None of your beeswax!” She cast a nervous eye at the maniac. To her relief, he’d shifted his attention to the glove compartment, rifling through a grab-all of maps, receipts, pencils, old toothbrushes, and crumpled sandwich bags.
“I admire your spunk,” Flashlight continued, “but you’re in a heap of trouble. Break and enter. Tell us your name or we turn you in.”
“Clara Brimley,” she answered warily.
“Liar. Not to worry, I’ve other ways to find out.” He emptied her bag and searched it, opening the cover of her Collected Work s. He read the inscription: “‘From the Library of Miss Mary Mabel McTavish..” His jaw dropped. “You’re Mary Mabel McTavish?”
“What’s it to you?”
Flashlight whooped like he’d hit the bingo jackpot. “Criminey, crackers, and tangerines!”
His monster pal joined in: “Ass an ee sha ruhseef!”
“You can say that again,” Flashlight said. “Miss McTavish, God has answered our prayers.” He saw her confusion. “My apologies. The name’s Floyd Cruickshank. And this here’s my partner, Brother Percy Brubacher.”
Life in the Vineyard
B rother Percy Brubacher would live to regret finding Mary Mabel in the Holy Redemption trailer-truck, would live to curse her name and all her works, fulminating from soapbox pulpits on Los Angeles street corners to the cell of the prison where he would be held on charges of kidnapping and murder. Yet at the time, finding Mary Mabel made Percy feel as close to Heaven as he was ever likely to get.
Now forty, he’d been undergoing a spiritual crisis. The promise of his first years evangelizing had turned to dust and he’d found himself in a pitched battle with the Forces of Darkness. “Help me, Jesus!” he’d scream in the middle of the night; but the Lord was not to be found in those lonely small-town hotel rooms with their peeling flowered wallpaper, mouse droppings, and tick-infested sheets.
Percy would leap out of bed in a frenzy and ferret from his suitcase the little black books in which he’d written up the history of his ministry, a literary labour undertaken as an assist to future biographers. He’d seek inspiration from page one, volume one, “The Day I Got the Call,” a recounting of the morning he’d stood, age five, in the alley behind his family’s bakery in Hornets Ridge, and served a communion of day-old Chelsea buns to a congregation of squirrels and chipmunks. As the rodents munched, tiny claws pressed together as if in prayer, the clouds had parted and a halo of sun had shone down around him, the sign of God’s anointing.
Percy’s mother encouraged his call, taking him to local meetings of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. He was an immediate sensation in his little blue blazer, grey flannel shorts, and bow tie, leaping to his feet as the Spirit moved, to preach away on the evils of drink. His father, a backsliding Baptist with a taste for bathtub gin, was none too pleased at his son’s denunciations. But as Percy reported, “The old devil said little, being generally passed out.”
While Percy’s religious vocation was attractive to rural women of a certain age, it caused trouble with the village boys, especially at recess, after he’d trumpeted their sins in front of the teacher. Percy didn’t mind. He wore his shiners proudly. “The badge of the Lord,” he called them. “‘For so persecuted they the prophets who came before me.’”
He took comfort from a postcard he’d received from
Flashlight chuckled. “We’ve got us a live one.”
“Godda beesh!” swore the madman.
Mary Mabel looked from one to the other. “Back off or I scream!”
“As if anyone would care. What’s your name?”
“None of your beeswax!” She cast a nervous eye at the maniac. To her relief, he’d shifted his attention to the glove compartment, rifling through a grab-all of maps, receipts, pencils, old toothbrushes, and crumpled sandwich bags.
“I admire your spunk,” Flashlight continued, “but you’re in a heap of trouble. Break and enter. Tell us your name or we turn you in.”
“Clara Brimley,” she answered warily.
“Liar. Not to worry, I’ve other ways to find out.” He emptied her bag and searched it, opening the cover of her Collected Work s. He read the inscription: “‘From the Library of Miss Mary Mabel McTavish..” His jaw dropped. “You’re Mary Mabel McTavish?”
“What’s it to you?”
Flashlight whooped like he’d hit the bingo jackpot. “Criminey, crackers, and tangerines!”
His monster pal joined in: “Ass an ee sha ruhseef!”
“You can say that again,” Flashlight said. “Miss McTavish, God has answered our prayers.” He saw her confusion. “My apologies. The name’s Floyd Cruickshank. And this here’s my partner, Brother Percy Brubacher.”
Life in the Vineyard
B rother Percy Brubacher would live to regret finding Mary Mabel in the Holy Redemption trailer-truck, would live to curse her name and all her works, fulminating from soapbox pulpits on Los Angeles street corners to the cell of the prison where he would be held on charges of kidnapping and murder. Yet at the time, finding Mary Mabel made Percy feel as close to Heaven as he was ever likely to get.
Now forty, he’d been undergoing a spiritual crisis. The promise of his first years evangelizing had turned to dust and he’d found himself in a pitched battle with the Forces of Darkness. “Help me, Jesus!” he’d scream in the middle of the night; but the Lord was not to be found in those lonely small-town hotel rooms with their peeling flowered wallpaper, mouse droppings, and tick-infested sheets.
Percy would leap out of bed in a frenzy and ferret from his suitcase the little black books in which he’d written up the history of his ministry, a literary labour undertaken as an assist to future biographers. He’d seek inspiration from page one, volume one, “The Day I Got the Call,” a recounting of the morning he’d stood, age five, in the alley behind his family’s bakery in Hornets Ridge, and served a communion of day-old Chelsea buns to a congregation of squirrels and chipmunks. As the rodents munched, tiny claws pressed together as if in prayer, the clouds had parted and a halo of sun had shone down around him, the sign of God’s anointing.
Percy’s mother encouraged his call, taking him to local meetings of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. He was an immediate sensation in his little blue blazer, grey flannel shorts, and bow tie, leaping to his feet as the Spirit moved, to preach away on the evils of drink. His father, a backsliding Baptist with a taste for bathtub gin, was none too pleased at his son’s denunciations. But as Percy reported, “The old devil said little, being generally passed out.”
While Percy’s religious vocation was attractive to rural women of a certain age, it caused trouble with the village boys, especially at recess, after he’d trumpeted their sins in front of the teacher. Percy didn’t mind. He wore his shiners proudly. “The badge of the Lord,” he called them. “‘For so persecuted they the prophets who came before me.’”
He took comfort from a postcard he’d received from
Similar Books
