“Oh, well, rats. Antoine didn’t have any luck either. Mom and Tex weren’t at the Lake George Super 8 either, and the desk clerk wouldn’t tell them who was staying there. They checked the Silvery Moon again also, and they are all heading over to Cobleskill now to meet Quentin and the other Rdq boys who are on their way to Crafts-a-Palooza. They’re going to perform an exorcism on the crafts store, they said. I told them not to bother, really. But they wanted to help out in the way they know how.

And what harm is there in it, anyways? They should be over there any minute now if you want to watch.”

ChAPteR twenty-seven

Marylou rode with me in my car, and we parked along the highway about a hundred yards from the crafts store. Hungry and worn out, we had picked up a couple of Big Macs and a bottle of water at McDonald’s and sat and ate while we waited for the show to begin.

“Oh, I’ve never eaten one of these before,” Marylou said.

“This time of day I am generally pecking at a ladylike nibble of fois gras.”

“Are you enjoying your burger?”

“It tastes predigested. As if it had been marinating in someone else’s stomach chemicals.”

“If you say that, you are arguing with success.”

“I wasn’t criticizing, just pointing out.”

We chatted for a while about Palm Beach life and about the Saratoga social scene during the summer racing season. Marylou reminded me that Rita Van Horn had also been an aficionado of the race track, and this gave me an idea as to where Hunny’s mom and her friend Tex might have been spending recent days, if in fact it was her old pal from Texas who had carried Mrs. Van Horn away to parts unknown.

At seven nineteen, the Radical Drama Queen convoy arrived.

The strip mall lot was nearly empty, except for three cars in front of Crafts-a-Palooza and four or five down at Subway. There were no cops around. The Brienings apparently had not reported the fake Sarah Palin book event, and they must not yet have discovered that the lock on the back door had been broken and their desk and files rifled.

Shoemaker’s little Fiat led the way, and it was followed by what looked like a twenty-year-old Ford Econoline van, and then Antoine’s Chevy Malibu with the twins and two of the Rdq boys in it.

186 Richard Stevenson

“Well, won’t this be fun!” Marylou said.

“Yes, and if you want to join the party, go ahead. I think it’s better if I stay out of it to minimize the chances that the Brienings will connect this with Hunny.”

“I hate to go dressed like this. But I don’t want to miss out either. So tood-lee-oo, Donald. I’m sure I can ride with the Rdq ladies if it becomes necessary to beat a hasty retreat. And if Clyde and Arletta recognize me as Sarah Palin’s publisher’s rep, I’ll just tell them I’ve gone all mavericky like my boss.”

Marylou had another swig of water and then strode across the tarmac to the Rdq crew, who were out of their vehicles now and were decorating themselves with objects they were lifting out of a number of what looked like burlap sacks. The August evening light was weakening now, but the parking lot lights were coming on automatically and I had a clear view of the proceedings.

The exorcists dressed themselves not in Christian priestly garments but in feathers and what appeared to be fresh vegetables.

Some wore pole bean vines with the beans dangling, and others cherry tomato vines. A couple of the Rdqers draped themselves with floral wreaths, daisies and day lilies and cosmos and zinnias.

One wore a vest that seemed to have thousands of M&M candies glued to it. Two wore the saffron robes of Buddhist monks, and it was they who brought out from the van several sets of drums and some smaller objects that were too small for me to identify from my vantage point.

Antoine and the twins were in attire that was normal for them.

Antoine wore jeans, a big Mexican blouse and his long rhinestone earring. Tyler and Schuyler were in shorts and T-shirts with big pictures of bare feet on the front, in anticipation perhaps of their careers as podiatrists.

Shoemaker himself, in his Brooks Brothers shirt and Jack Wrangler necktie, had a bullhorn in hand, and it was on his apparent signal that the group formed an arc around the entrance to Crafts-a-Palooza and immediately began drumming and chanting. I could hear ringing and tinkling too, and I soon saw that many of the exorcists were ringing Buddhist prayer bells and CoCkeyed 187

somebody had a triangle and another cymbals. Davenport the astrologer appeared with a conch shell and began to accompany the various percussionists with mournful lowing sounds from his sea horn.

The men swayed back and forth in front of the crafts store, and as they did so people began to trickle out of the store and out of Subway to see what was going on.

It was then that Shoemaker lifted his bullhorn and began to recite: “We freemen of all colors of the spectrum, in the name of God, Ra, Jehovah, Anubis, Osiris, Tlaloc, Quetzalcoatl, Thoth, Ptah, Allah, Krishna, Chango, Chimeke, Chukwa, Olisa-Bulu-Uwa, Imales, Orisasu, Odudua, Igzeahbeher, Kali, Shiva-Shakra, Great Spirit, Dionysus, Yahweh, Thor, Bacchus, Isis, Jesus Christ, Maitreya, Buddha, and Rama do exorcise and cast out the evil which has taken hold of Crafts-a-Palooza and of its human-form proprietors Clyde and Arletta Briening. Clyde and Arletta are inhabited with demons of greed and incredible rotten meanness, and in the name of all the gods of the universe and the municipality of Cobleskill and the state of New York, we cast those satanic entities OUT! OUT! OUT!“

Now the drums began to beat faster and the bells to clang and jingle, and as the exorcists swayed with the rhythm of the percussionists, they all shouted along with Shoemaker, “Out! Out!

Out! Out! Out, demons, out! Out, demons, out!” Davenport blew on his conch shell, and now many of the RDQ men began to repeatedly lift their arms heavenward, as if to hoist the strip mall into the air. Plainly they intended to levitate Crafts-a-Palooza, and make it shake its evil spirits out of the structure, the way the thousands of National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam protestors tried to shake the demons out of the Pentagon in the fall of 1967.

I spotted no evil spirits spurting through the roof of Crafts-a-Palooza into the evening sky, but I did see several customers exit and trot toward their cars, and they were followed outside by Clyde and Arletta Briening. The Brienings stood goggle-eyed outside their store’s front door. Clyde had his glue gun in 188 Richard Stevenson

hand, and Arletta brandished a cell phone that she seemed to be barking into.

Some people ambled down from Subway to watch the spectacle from a distance, and others pulled in off the highway.

Some of the exorcists kept up the chant of “Out, demons, out!” while others took up a new refrain now, “Hari, hari, hari, hari, rama, rama, rama, rama, Krishna, hari Krishna, hari, hari, rama, Krishna.”

Now a flashing cop car pulled in, a local Cobleskill cruiser with a lone officer at the wheel. He moved slowly toward Crafts-a-Palooza, apparently puzzling over this probably unprecedented scene outside a Cobleskill strip mall. He halted thirty or forty feet from the exorcists, left his flashers on, got out, paused, then walked toward the Brienings.

The Rdq boys kept up their drumming and clanging and chanting and their so-far unsuccessful attempts to cause the mall to rise shuddering into the air.

As the cop spoke with the Brienings, another vehicle pulled in, a van. A man with a videocam got out and immediately began recording the occasion. I guessed he was the local stringer for one of the Albany or Schenectady TV stations.

The television videographer’s timing was to prove significant, for it was soon after his arrival that Shoemaker included in his exhortations some specifics that turned out to have serious consequences. Hollering into his bull horn, Shoemaker let loose with, “End the greed! End the cruelty! End the persecution of Hunny Van Horn. The demons inhabiting Crafts-a-Palooza and inhabiting Clyde and Arletta Briening must be exorcised, must be sent flying away, must be stopped from stealing Hunny Van Horn’s billion dollars that he legitimately won in the New York State Lottery…”