The front flaps of the tent wall were tied open, and nobody collected an admission fee. People were free to walk in and out of the tent, if the thick crowd allowed it.
She eased her way inside. The tent was packed full, everybody cramming in to stand under the shade and listen to a preacher on the stage at the far end of the tent from the entrance. He was a white-haired, pudgy man in a gray suit, dabbing his sweaty double chin with a handkerchief, his eyes bugging as he shouted at the audience, who responded with shouts and cries of their own.
“The devil is not some character in a radio program or a child’s picture book!” the preacher shouted, and a number of audience members shouted back, agreeing. “The devil is real, brothers and sisters. The devil walks among us, wearing masks! He can come in any form at all! But when he does, you’ll know him! You’ll know him because he tempts you with gold! With fornication! With sin and worldly pleasures...but those pleasures are false! Yes, they are! And those tempting, earthly pleasures will fall away, and you’ll see they come drawing hellfire behind them! Yes, sir! The Lord is great...abh ah loch tay moota howklo tarris be hock bot a mok nay hapa tah...” His eyes closed and he raised one shaking arm, clutching the handkerchief in his fist.
Juliana didn’t understand what the preacher was saying, but lots of people in the crowd started making similar nonsense words. Some waved their hands high and closed their eyes, while others went into convulsions, crashing into those around them and finally flopping on the dirt like dying fish. Many of them simply screamed or howled. She didn’t know what to think as the crowd seemed to turn rabid.
“Isn’t this wonderful?” A hand seized Juliana’s arm, and she gasped. It was the woman from the wagon, with kids and husband in tow. The husband carried the boy with the crippled leg. With the heavy crowd, Juliana hadn’t penetrated far into the tent, and now the family had caught up with her.
Juliana looked down at where the woman clutched her—fortunately, her sleeve protected the woman from a rapid, painful death, but Juliana didn’t feel comfortable about it.
“Is this the preacher does the healing?” the husband asked. He bounced the little boy in his arms, and the boy cried out in glee.
“Is he?” the woman asked Juliana.
“I don’t know,” Juliana answered. “I hope so.”
The preacher went on and on, getting louder, stomping the stage, sending the crowd into hysterics. The kids from the wagon joined the rest of the audience in screaming, howling, and flopping around, except for the smallest boy, who just watched from his father’s shoulder, unable to join the fun.
Juliana couldn’t believe how long the preacher continued. The sound of rain battered the tent top, and people drenched from the downpour pushed their way into the packed tent. Soon the crowd was twice as large, and the air in the tent turned steamy and foul with the odor of so many bodies.
After a long, long time, and much more speaking in tongues, the first preacher finally staggered offstage, exhausted, while the audience cried and clapped.
A tall, gaunt man carried a woven basket onstage, followed by three other men. From their look and their ragged clothes, Juliana thought they might be mountain people. The gaunt man addressed the audience while the other three lingered behind him.
“The Lord says, if we have faith, we may take up serpents without fear,” the man told the crowd. “For even the sting of the serpent is nothing next to the power of God.”
The audience chattered excitedly.
“We have come to show the power of faith as a testimony.” He lifted the lid from the woven basket, and the crowd pushed forward to see. “For the tempter comes in the form of a serpent, hissing lies into our ears...But we show him that only the Lord is our master!”
From the basket, he lifted out a pair of thick, long rattlesnakes, one in each hand, both of them shaking out a warning with their tails. Screams erupted from the audience, and a number of people near the front tried to push their way back, by they were trapped in place by the rest of the crowd.
The gaunt man stalked slowly across the front lip of the stage, holding out his arms while the deadly rattlers coiled around him. The crowd gasped and shrieked.
Behind him, his three cohorts approached the basket one by one, each taking one or two rattlesnakes and letting them wrap around their arms and necks.
Juliana’s heartbeat raced as she watched, waiting for one of them to suffer a fatal bite. In the carnival, the show would have been a fraud—the snakes would be a harmless species that only looked dangerous, most likely, or their venom would have been removed—but she’d heard that the snake-handling preachers used fully lethal wild snakes.