Toddy McDow, lost son of parents Fred and Denise, got his start traveling with the Barnes and Short Circus in the seventies. He graduated from the cotton-candy butcher's job to the persona of "Odie Dodie," accomplished con-man and short-change artist. He was good enough that you could count your change twice and still walk away happy, but be well short by even the simplest of finger-math.

Old man Short loved him, because he would collect half of what Odie would confess to being his take. On slow nights, Odie supplemented his piece of the action by rifling unlocked cars during the evening performance. People sitting in the big top were in trances, distracted by the cracking of peanut hulls and dazzled by spangled spandex wardrobes. They would later find that the Nikon and the kid's birthday transistor radio were missing---along with Babs' jumbo pack of cinnamon gum.

Odie would say that the stage for his con-man work had to be just right. He perched his little tent in the main aisle of the midway so that the streaming audience would have to part like the Red Sea when they came to his barricade. The left fork was channeled uncomfortably close to the tiger cages with the big sign that said "Danger---Cats Have A Four-Foot Reach." The alternate path led through fresh mud, created from mushy mounds of melting snow-cone ice and strategically placed animal urine.

Thus it was by default that they must hover for a while at Odie's spider web. Clinging to the chicken wire loops were futile knockoff Rolex watches, jewelry that turned green during Captain Kangaroo the next morning, and Japanese cameras that if examined carefully were leatherette-fiberboard, with a plastic lens.

Odie began his pitch, salted it with some early giveaways, and charmed Farmer Brown's missus with necklaces made of wax and pearlized foil. The pitch would be progressive, from the free gifts to the bargain-buys, with lots of funny circus stories woven in between. Bursts of laughter would fill the air and mask the drone of the diesel power- plant supplying Odie's island with rows of amber, bug-proof lights.

His test of crowd hypnosis was simple. "When I can get grown adults to sing two stanzas of Jingle Bells in the middle of a sweltering July night, they are mine."

And so it was, that in every little place he stopped, Odie made his mark on the education of the townies.

In time, Odie traded his funny circus stories for more and more Biblical references, and began to add scripture to his crowd-wailing. Sales picked up when he would clutch the Bible in one hand and the eggshell-thin Rolex with the other. His message was loud--- saying how the Lord wanted his people to "be on time for Judgement Day," and how his cameras "could capture the worldly evils for a picture book, to teach young Ned there."

People would weep on the way back to their cars at the shame of how such a righteous man of God had no church of his own from which to transplant his message to the souls.

Odie had so much success now that he took on a partner, Miss Tanya Riggs, the tambourine-chanking cur from Spanky Don Miller's sideshow band. He had his eye on her for some time, and noted that when she hit that tambourine on her thrusting sequined hip, farmers and accountants alike would naturally feel for their wallets. This was a good sign---how well he knew. The girl obviously had a connection with the audience's need to excuse their wantonness in a financial way, because her tip jar stayed full.

Slipping away from the sleeping circus in the dead of a June night, the new road of opportunity led them to Cleburne, Arkansas, where a pre-arranged delivery van awaited them. Dumped now was the trinket tent--- replaced by new purple and gold billowing canvas---with room for the twenty-two rows of factory-fresh folding pews. He shucked his sequined tux coat and top hat, donning a tight black shirt and a stiff white collar---the trademark preacher's neck band with no visible button. He had Tanya fashion her hair into a beehive, and to dress in a white choir robe with rose satin cuffs. It had a very low and entertaining neckline---her ample cleavage looking like the filled sails of a brigantine.

Cleburne's debut night brought in eleven hundred Dollars, split seventy-thirty---or 75/25 if Miss Tanya didn't count it four times. And as if in bonus territory, she sold forty red-Naugahyde Bibles---obtained from a hotel-motel supplier and marked up eight-fold. Each had been carefully pitched to contain Odie's autograph and a well-wishing salvation message, albeit rubber-stamped.

While most of Arkansas actually got raped in the course of the next six months, its victims resumed life feeling all the more virginal with their touch of exposure to Cleansing by Brother Odie. Through it all, Odie said that the melodic sounds of wallets snapping closed---a few bills lighter---was evidence of the Lord's beacon---guiding him on to the hordes of the unfaithful. "Hunnerts of them out there Lord, and your man Dodie can save 'em all."

"Shit, I believe he's starting to believe in his own red Kool-Aid wine," Miss Tanya would say of his nightly communions, muttering just beyond his earshot.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was only a six-page regional newspaper---The Clifton County Brigadier-Courier, but it had two lines of comics, and the quarter-page want ad that was written just for Odie and Miss Tanya's consumption.

"Milby-Mound, Texas, Wants Rainmaker---$5,000 Offered for Results."

At first thought, Odie wasn't so much attracted by the rainmaking proposition, as he was the people who wrote it. "Hell, these people are already singing Jingle Bells without me," he said gleefully to a hung-over Tanya, as they turned the big truck South on Texas FM Road 2662.

The Courthouse was weathered limestone, and formed the centerpiece where ten other buildings radiated out into tumbleweed-decorated streets. Seven of them were "Closed for Remodeling" or "Coming Soons'." The remaining three were the staffs of life---Police and Fire Station, Tinker-Bell Café, and lastly, the Brigadier-Courier and Justice of the Peace Court.

Odie's first impression was actually not his first. What was it about newspaper offices that always seemed to exude a lack of prosperity---like the next issue would be the last---yet somehow one more can always be put to bed? Why is it that every available resting place is stacked to the peak of one's reach, with browning back editions and nameless books and files?

And why is it always a staff of one---an editor with a paunch, his shirt half-tucked, and black-spotted at the belt line from protruding first-contacts with stray ink?

Odie Dodie and Miss Tanya, meet Silas Cannon---editor, publisher, procrastinating nose-hair-clipper.

The negotiation went smoothly---Odie being the only candidate for rainmaking. Also, it was a case of the perfect match---two of the you-have-what-I-want engines that drive the American Economy. Odie would only get paid with a one-inch rain-gauged result, and in trade, he prevailed on his requisite for the standard three nights of soul saving on the grounds of the Courthouse.

It was a thirsty throng, and not just for rain. Miss Tanya bulged in the right places for the mostly cotton-crop coin purses, and in the first two nights, nineteen people came to the foot of the pulpit when he and Tanya belted out the invitational, Cast Your Net, O Lord. The last of the nine cases of red Bibles got sold the first night, and twenty, cash-first backorders were taken from the always-trusting.

The first two nights' successes must have leached out into the dust-bowl country way past the dry banks of Moccasin Creek that divided the land into Robinson County. Night three was shoulder to shoulder. The overflow had assembled into lawn chairs and milking stools, and stretched out in masses as if waiting for the five fishes to be subdivided. Miss Tanya walked the crowds with her gold-painted lard bucket and ignored the stage, which was a pre-arranged tactic when crowds got past controllable collection distance.

Before the Rain Prayer segment even began, Miss Tanya had to empty the lard bucket not once but twice, dumping Odie's suitcase and pouring in coins and bills. Odie's only evidence of mortal connection, his baby blue Fruit-0f-the-Loom's, would gladly give way to the color of green.

"We done good." Tanya's favorite cliché---whispered ever so low, would sum it up.

With head bowed low and arms outstretched, he made the rain plea:

"God, you have forsaken these people---you have asked them to prove their worth and they have done so, in the manner in which you deemed, to toil in dust and parched land, and to see their crops wither and die for their faith."

"We know too well O Lord by your teachings, that it is not by our works that our prayers will be heard, but by our endless faith that you are a just God, a righteous God, and you can end this suffering at thy will."

"Make this land whole! Father we just thank you for these lessons you have conveyed to your people, and if it is thy will, bring forth your mighty sword and cleave the sky---make it leaden and heavy, and spill out your bounty of rain to this arid place of thy children."

"Amen, Dear God of Jehovah, Amen, and Amen," he ended.

The crowd seemed suddenly lifeless, as if all wind had expired from their lungs. The still evening air was broken only by sounds of locusts in the elm trees that lined the Courthouse Park. Slowly the faithful began to disperse, and Odie noted for the first time that the departing were not skipping in glee as was so long the accustomed outcome in his Jingle Bell days. They walked with humped shoulders, lawn chairs in tow, without so much as a sound, save for the clinking of car-keys in ready. A very different kind of exodus, he thought, but either way, the coffers were stuffed.

At two a.m., Miss Tanya poked her sharp fingers into Odie's ribs, shaking him out of his exhaustion. He grabbed for his trousers, as her poking was usually the signal that it was time to pack the canvas and get out of town before daybreak cast the light of truth on them. Instead, she was shouting blue-streak expletives about the heavens---her words being punctuated by the wind---as it began to rip the corner-gussets from the tent.

In a surge, the sky was engorged with lightening like so many illuminated blood veins, and the wind had begun to shake the tent like a beach towel, pinned only on one end to a bowed and strained clothesline. They furiously attempted to bring it down, grabbing at the guy-wires and jerking the car-axle tent stakes from their dirt anchorage. Pews had begun to collapse, and were being peppered by wads of hail that broke through the remaining canvas like bullets. The center pole began to twist, and Odie and Tanya braced against it with all their weight to shove it across the grass berm so that it would fall under its own weight.

A light flash shot over the Courthouse so bright that for an instant the night sky shone as day, with a green wall-cloud meeting the black as if a rising curtain. Paper cups were silhouetted against the sky like egrets painted on black velvet---ignoring the sheeting force of rain that attempted to drive them fiercely back to earth.

Explosion and fireball followed, directed at the steel center pole as if guided to a lightening rod. It all disintegrated in an instant---in one tick of Tanya's bedside Baby Ben---the work of unchecked force and power, pitted against plastic and Duck tape. In that brief exchange with nature, only the big truck remained---resting on its top as if a turtle helplessly flipped on its back---the object of a child's folly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Silas Cannon opened the door his office, pushing hard against the wooden panels, which were swollen tight from the soaking rain. Inside, the water had intruded in puddles that luckily were conveniently congregated in forgiven spaces.

His type was set in the hour, and the proof-press reeled off the rendition of the front-page text:

Milby Mound-- Tragedy greeted residents in this westernmost part of Clifton County as they awakened to news of two missing persons after torrential rains and violent weather passed through this thinly-populated farming community around 2:00 a.m. today. Department of Public Safety officials estimated that although not confirmed as tornadic, winds possibly reached eighty to a hundred miles per hour before the storm moved into Robinson County. There will be further examination of the only reported damage, which was confined to the Courthouse perimeter in downtown Milby Mound.

"We are certain we will locate them, hopefully alive," said Trooper Russ Hawkins, "but freaky winds like these have been known to carry people, livestock, and even small cars up to fifty or more miles, once airborne."

The missing are listed as Todd Lucas McDow,42, and Tanya Faye Riggs,27, both of Fayetteville, Arkansas. The pair were members of a tent-revival that had conducted services here for the preceding three evenings. McDow, a self-styled rainmaker and evangelist, was under contract to the City to produce rain, as has been previously reported in the Brigadier-Courier. In his negotiations with the City and County, McDow listed previous similar success with rainmaking in seven other locations, which were not verified, since the contract stipulated payment only upon measured rainfall.

While the area will surely benefit from the estimated five-inch deluge, citizens are saddened by the possible loss of life. Interviewed by this paper only hours before the last evenings' revival meeting, McDow is quoted as saying, "If I can't bring rain, then by the Lord's own hand, we'll have red Kool-Aid to pour on the fields, and we will multiply our cask a hundred-fold and a hundred-fold more."

Silas was still thinking---the newspaperman's stubborn curiosity---and pondering the outcome. All in all, it worked out even better than everybody hoped. Souls and fields were saved, and come to think of it .. the Kool-Aid.

He thought. 'If they're able, they'll be back to justly claim their money, and for sure they will come back for this---as he twirled a man's gold watch with diamond bezel between his inky fingers. The inscription on the back read, "To Odie: Real Rolex, Fake Man. ---Miss T.

"The Firmament of the Third Day" was previously published in The University of Washington's Carve Magazine, where was a third-place winner in their August 2000 fiction competition.

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