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supper. I want you to lead our grace tonight, so’s to scour the scum the name of Jezebel may have left in your mouth.”
    “My mouth’s spic and span, thank you, Bud.” She opened it wide and held it open for a while, close to his face, to see if looking into her pink yawn would set off his tic. It did. “Jest tell me, who all did this ol’ hussy fornicate with?”
    Buddy stepped back. Something about the way she said “fornicate” unnerved him. “Patsy now.”
    “Well, who , Bud?”
    When he spoke again it was in his pulpit voice, his saxophone voice, his blue flame voice, although the jaw tic that Patsy had inspired caused him to miss occasional stops and to blur the higher registers. “It is written in the Book of Revelation, chapter two, verse eighteen, that God Almighty sent a message to the church in Thyatira—”
    “Where?”
    “Thyatira.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “It don’t matter! It don’t exist anymore. God said unto them, ’I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest a woman named Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication.’”
    “So, she didn’t do the fornicating herself. She tried to get other folks to do it.”
    “Patsy, you’re missin’ the point. Jezebel was a prophetess of Baal. She was a pagan fanatic, she was a filthy idolator who led the Is-raelites away from Jehovah. For twenty-seven years, that woman used her power as queen to try and overthrow Jehovah and replace him with the idols of her native country.”
    “What was the king doing all this time?”
    “Ahab was under her thumb. It’s the same ol’ story. A connivin’ woman influencin’ a weak man to commit crimes he never woulda had the gumption to commit by hisself.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “She wanted to convert Is-ra-el to Baal worship. I’m talkin’ the golden calf, Patsy. You know what I’m talkin’? I’m talkin’ strange shrines in the woods. I’m talkin’ nekkidness and orgy and human sacrifice. Little children by the hundreds sacrificed to some stupid, smelly dairy animal. Babies hacked to pieces on a greasy altar in the moonlight—”
    “Gross!” Patsy suddenly held the plumping pork chops in vomitus regard. “I don’t wanna hear about dead babies.”
    “Oh, we hear a heap of ugly things when we speak of Jezebel. Her lies sent an innocent neighbor to a horrible end so that Ahab could annex his vineyards.”
    “Hubby’s little helper went too far, you say? But tell me now, Bud, where does the makeup figger in?”
    “The makeup?”
    “You know, the painted woman thing. Isn’t that what she’s remembered for?”
    “Patsy, have you never seen a baboon’s bottom?”
    “I thought we agreed not to spoil our supper.”
    “A baboon’s rump is redder than your apron. Sometimes there’s yellow and blue thrown in. Why does your baboon have a colored rump? To attract other baboons to mate with it. Why did Jezebel color her face? I’ll wager you can make the obvious connection.” He paused. He returned the saxophone to its case.
    “Taters are done, I see. Maybe I should call Verlin in. Monday night football, he’ll be wanting to eat and scat.”
    Later in the week, Patsy had telephoned Ellen Cherry in Seattle and catalogued, as faithfully as she dared, Jezebel’s vices.
    “Neat,” Ellen Cherry had said. “I’m delighted to learn that I’ve been compared to a heathen fornication instructor, a husband corrupter, and a baboon’s ass, all in one lump.”
    Patsy, who had purposely omitted the part about diced babies, cautioned her, “You’ve got to accept some of Buddy’s preaching with a grain of salt. Granted, he’s a man of God, but ol’ Bud has got . . . ambition .”
    “Mama, you say it like he’s got a disease.”
    “Well, ambition’s not as bad as AIDS, I reckon. But it can be a whole lot worse than the measles.”
    THEY WERE MAKING GOOD TIME. Saying adios to the rock stacks. Boomer hated to leave them