Episode 33
You'll See Jesus First
Daylight brought no lasting peace to either Mercury Wells in general or the Paradise in particular. Though this time it wasn’t drunken drovers or Irishmen at the heart of the trouble.
Adeline Tibbets led the sisters of her congregation in a revival meeting of sorts on the street outside the Paradise. She was using the boardwalk in front of the pit of degradation as her pulpit. Her testimony was delivered with fire and conviction and a crowd soon joined the sisters to listen—for the entertainment and diversion if not enlightenment. A few men, still drunk from the night before, made to jeer at her until quieted by hard glances from the sisters. The even harder pick handles in their fists went a long way to improve the manners of the hecklers.
“Good liquor, clean women and fair tables,” she pronounced, an accusing finger stabbing at the words on the shingle hung over the tent opening.
“What good is liquor for but to steal a man’s senses and cause him to greater sin? How clean is a woman who will sell her charms to any man with the price? How fair is a game that always sends a man away penniless?
“These are lies, sisters. And brothers!” Adeline said, waving an open palm over a clutch of men in the crowd who shifted, uneasy at the unwanted attention. “The lies of the Prince of Lies! The promise of Satan himself and all within this scabby tent where men become as beasts and women as whores!”
The sisters murmured amens. Among them was the girl who was, only a week or more before, dancing naked on the bar of this very establishment. Now she wore the same modest white dress as the other sisters. Her hair combed and face scrubbed clean, she looked like a child. Her eyes were alight with the flame lit by Adeline’s words.
“This place of sin, this paradise,” Adeline said with the deepest scorn and derision, “is built upon the lowest floor of Hell. Its foundations rest on the suffering flesh of the damned who have heeded the promises and lies of the devil. But this house will not stand! This acre of Hell will be redeemed!”
Adeline ended her sermon by breaking into song, her voice sweet and clear in the early morning air.
When the last goodbye is spoken
And the tear stains wiped away…
She turned and entered the Paradise, parting a tent flap with her axe handle. The other sisters filed in behind, falling into “New Jerusalem” with her. The tent rang with their voices.
T.J. Bratt was not amused. Not at being awakened so early after going to bed. Not at his head still swollen with drink from the evening before. Not with discovering the dog-faced whore he’d chosen to lie with still in his bunk. And certainly not with his establishment infested with an army of pious bitches who showed no intention of departing.
He stormed out of his combination office/boudoir, taking only time to slip boots over bare feet, his further nakedness covered only by stained long johns.
“Stop that caterwauling! Stop it at once and get your fannies out of my saloon!” he pronounced in a voice that sounded to him like it was coming from the bottom of a well. The perils of cutting raisin jack with laudanum.
The women kept singing, lifting their voices higher to drown out the words of the vile man facing them.
“You are trespassers, and you will leave now!” he seethed between clenched teeth.
“We will do no such thing, Mr. Bratt!” Adeline proclaimed. “The Lord is not a trespasser. All is His kingdom, and we are free to spread his word within!”
“And thieves,” Bratt shouted and rushed into the clutch of sisters to grab the wrist of the terrified girl who once whored in the Paradise. He yanked her free of the women. The girl’s eyes grew wide in terror.
“You don’t own her,” Adeline proclaimed and brought down her axe handle onto Bratt’s wrist with an audible crack. He released the girl’s arm with a gargled cry.
“Damned I don’t! I paid fifty dollars for her in Waco. Paid to bring her here on the train,” Bratt said through twisted lips. He gripped his arm and winced, the flesh crimson and swelling. “She ain’t near worked that off. Her cunny’s as much mine as every bottle and jug in this place.”
“You will have her over my dead body,” Adeline said, and swatted at Bratt again. He stumbled back; eyes dark with fury.
“Bear!” he bawled. “Get your ragged ass on out here, Bear!”
The big man with the scarred face and mangled ears seemed to materialize from behind the roulette wheel. He stepped around the table; the stubby shotgun held easy in his fists.
“Now, unless you ladies want to meet Jesus this very morning then I suggest you hand back what’s mine and move along out of here,” Bratt said, his mouth curling up in a sneer.
“There’s every chance you’ll be seeing Jesus before the sisters,” Joe Wiley said, stepping in from the sunlight, his .44 raised at T.J. Bratt’s head.
“You can settle this, marshal. These women aren’t paying customers,” Bratt said, eyes locked on the deadly black eye of the revolver held steady at his nose.
“Of course,” Joe said, ignoring Bratt’s demands, “there’s long odds on it being Jesus you’ll see first. Unless He cares to come by and see you laying on the coals with the devil’s pitchfork up your ass.”
