Rare sight in a close-built, top-heavy city—space. A wide open lot, extending along One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Street almost from Lenox to Seventh Avenue; baring the mangy backs of a long row of One Hundred and Thirty-ninth Street houses; disclosing their gaping, gasping windows, their shameless strings of half-laundered rags, which gulp up what little air the windows seek to inhale. Occupying the Lenox Avenue end of the lot, the so-called Garvey tabernacle, wide, low, squat, with its stingy little entrance; occupying the other, the church tent where summer camp meetings are held.

•  •  •  •  •

Pete and his buddy, Lucky, left their head-to-head game of coon-can as darkness came on. Time to go out—had to save gas. Pete went to the window and looked down at the tent across the street.

“Looks like the side show of a circus. Ever been in?”

“Not me. Pm a preacher’s son—got enough o’ that stuff when I was a kid and couldn’t protect myself.”

“Ought to be a pretty good show when some o’ them oldtime sisters get happy. Too early for the cabarets; let’s go in a while, just for the hell of it.”

“You sure are hard up for somethin’ to do.”

“Aw, come on. Somethin’ funny’s bound to happen. You might even get religion, you dam’ bootlegger.”

Lucky grinned. “Might meet some o’ my customers, you mean.”

•  •  •  •  •

Through the thick, musty heat imprisoned by the canvas shelter a man’s voice rose, leading a spiritual. Other voices chimed eagerly in, some high, clear, sweet; some low, mellow, full,—all swelling, rounding out the refrain till it filled the place, so that it seemed the flimsy walls and roof must soon be torn from their moorings and swept aloft with the song:

Where you running, sinner? Where you running, I say? Running from the fire— You can’t cross here!

The preacher stood waiting for the song to melt away. There was a moment of abysmal silence, into which the thousand blasphemies filtering in from outside dropped unheeded.

The preacher was talking in deep, impressive tones. One old patriarch was already supplementing each statement with a matter-of-fact “amen!” of approval.

The preacher was describing hell. He was enumerating without exception the horrors that befall the damned: maddening thirst for the drunkard; for the gambler, insatiable flame, his own greed devouring his soul. The preacher’s voice no longer talked—it sang; mournfully at first, monotonously up and down, up and down—a chant in minor mode; then more intensely, more excitedly; now fairly strident.

The amens of approval were no longer matter-of-fact, perfunctory. They were quick, spontaneous, escaping the lips of their own accord; they were frequent and loud and began to come from the edges of the assembly instead of just the front rows. The old men cried, “Help him, Lord!” “Preach the word!” “Glory!” taking no apparent heed of the awfulness of the description, and the old women continuously moaned aloud, nodding their bonneted heads, or swaying rhythmically forward and back in their seats.

Suddenly the preacher stopped, leaving the old men and old women still noisy with spiritual momentum. He stood motionless till the last echo of approbation subsided, then repeated the text from which his discourse had taken origin; repeated it in a whisper, lugubrious, hoarse, almost inaudible: “ ‘In—hell—’ ” paused, then without warning, wildly shrieked, “ ‘In hell—’ ” stopped—returned to his hoarse whisper—“ ‘he lifted up his eyes. . . .’ ”

•  •  •  •  •

“What the hell you want to leave for?” Pete complained when he and Lucky reached the sidewalk. “That old bird would ’a’ coughed up his gizzard in two more minutes. What’s the idea?”

“Aw hell—I don’t know.—You think that stuff’s funny. You laugh at it. I don’t, that’s all.” Lucky hesitated. The urge to speak outweighed the fear of being ridiculed. “Dam’ ’f I know what it is—maybe because it makes me think of the old folks or somethin’—but—hell—it just sorter—gets me—”

Lucky turned abruptly away and started off. Pete watched him for a moment with a look that should have been astonished, outraged, incredulous—but wasn’t. He overtook him, put an arm about his shoulders, and because he had to say something as they walked on, muttered reassuringly:

“Well—if you ain’t the damndest fool—”