Cursed Be the Child by Mort Castle

it? She wanted him to be afraid, as afraid as the pathetic hopefuls who’d sought his help and were deceived by their own fear and his conniving.
    As Evan Kyle Dean took the pulpit for his sermon, Emerald Farmer stared at him and wondered if he could feel the boiling waves of her loathing.
      “I want to talk to you about God,” Evan Kyle Dean said. With a half-smile, he paused to set up the tag line. “Seems only right. After all, I am a preacher and this is the Sabbath, the day He has set aside so we might worship Him and contemplate His commandments.” The words were flowing smoothly. Evan hoped this time it would be right. It had not been right for months, and, he had to admit, it was getting worse—much worse.
    Six feet tall, angular as an archetypal frontiersman, Evan Kyle Dean at 40 still looked like a country boy. Five years earlier, when he’d first met with Marvin Michelson, founder and president of the Christian Communications Consortium, to discuss the program that would become Witness to Wonder, Michelson had told him “You’re a natural for TV, Brother Evan. You have the right image.”
    “How’s that?” Evan wanted to know.
    “You look like you could be Andy Griffith’s younger brother.”
    Live and in person, Evan Kyle Dean seemed more craggy and rough-cut than he did on television. There were grayish circles beneath his eyes that make-up would have camouflaged were he before the camera. And he was doing something he never did on TV; he was sweating. There was a chill ring of perspiration just under his collar, a film on his upper lip and forehead.
    He felt cold, felt he had to keep his muscles tight so that he didn’t start shaking uncontrollably.
    He was freezing and, it was grimly funny, he thought, that Marvin Michelson had called him “cool” at that initial meeting. “You see, Brother Evan, you’re a cool personality, in the McLuhanesque sense of the word. Low-key and nonthreatening. That makes you well-suited to video and the electronic ministry.”
    “I’m sorry,” Evan said. “I don’t understand.”
    “You communicate, Brother Evan,” Michelson explained. “You don’t shout at people.” Michelson grinned. “Just between the two of us, Brother Evan, the CCC’s somewhat overstocked with screamers, even though they give us the deep South demographics and contributions that keep our stations on the air. Let’s say, though, you’re a young man from a cosmopolitan city like San Francisco. You’ve been to college, you’re married, doing well at your job, but you sense there’s something missing in your life. You with me so far, Brother Evan?”
    “I think so.”
    “So you’re ready to ask God into your heart, and, then you happen to turn to a CCC station after the late night movie. Here’s a man bouncing around like he’s on a trampoline. He’s got a plaid sport coat that can cross your eyes permanently. He’s condemning everything from women’s liberation to the Catholic Church. He thinks we ought to nuke the Russians to show them what the Lord thinks about godless, atheistic communism. And he’s yelling at you personally like he’s caught you stealing his car, having sex with his wife, and selling dope and dirty magazines to his little girl. Somehow I can’t see that as the way to bring the word of God to our San Francisco yuppie, can you?”
    “It’s not my way,” Evan said quietly.
    “I know,” Marvin Michelson said. “You talk to people.”
    Evan Kyle Dean blinked. Somehow he’d slipped away—again. Talk to people! That’s why he was standing in the pulpit of True Witness Church. He said, “I want to talk to you about God.” He waited a moment. “Seems only right…” Then he stopped altogether. There was a block of ice pressing down on his Adam’s apple as he realized he was repeating himself.
    He tried to recover. “Quite an echo in here, isn’t there, brothers and sisters?” There were a few smiles on the faces of his brothers and