The Trinity Game

The only other car down there wasTrinity’s red SUV, which had sat unused for days and was starting to look a little dusty.

    They were now alone in Trinity’s dressing room, Samson and Chris just outside the door and a half dozen cops along the hallway. Trinity sat at the makeup table, deepening his tan, powdering the shine from his forehead.
    The room had an abandoned look, Daniel thought. No, not abandoned…more like a snapshot, a still life—one moment, captured in time, made permanent, no matter what else followed. There was the bottle of Blanton’s, three-quarters empty, sitting as Trinity had left it days earlier. The mountain of prayer requests and letters, dirty canvas mailbags that started at the east wall and took up a third of the room. The powders and crémes and brushes and makeup pencils on the dressing table, and the little round lightbulbs surrounding the mirror.
    Trinity put down the sponge he was using, removed the sheet of tissue paper from his shirt collar, straightened his white tie, and slipped into his shiny silk jacket.
    “Ready?” said Daniel.
    Trinity nodded, headed for the door. Then stopped and said, “I want you to know something. I got a feeling something bad might happen out there…”
    Daniel started to speak, but Trinity silenced him with a gesture. “No, I’m still going out. But just in case…I need to tell you. And I’m not looking for anything back. Just want you to know. I love you, Danny. Whatever I am, whatever I was. I always did, never stopped.”
    “I—uh…I…” Daniel stared at his uncle, settled for, “Well, thank you.”
    Trinity grinned, opened the hallway door.
    “
Rock ’n’ roll
,” he said. And strode, shoulders back, chest out, into the unknown.

    Tim Trinity had never heard five thousand people make so little sound. He stood in the darkened wings, stage-right, waiting for his cue from the floor director. A small monitor on a plywood crate showed the master feed from the control room.
    The director had done exactly as Trinity instructed. There was no opening jingle, cross-fading into canned church music; no video montage of happy, successful Christians; no sparkly
Tim Trinity Prosperity-Power Miracle Hour
graphic sweeping across the screen. Instead, the simple title card—A MESSAGE FROM REV. TIM TRINITY—faded up over black, stayed for fifteen seconds, and faded back down.
    He turned to Daniel, “Wish me luck.”
    “Good luck.”
    The floor director counted down
4–3–2–1
with his fingers in the air and pointed at Trinity as the stage lights came up to blinding intensity.
    The crowd roared as Trinity took center stage. He flashed his toothy smile, made calming gestures with both hands.
    “Please, thank you for your enthusiasm, but no cheering. Please, really…”
    The crowd fell into obedient silence.
    He rested his hand on the blue leather Bible perched on the Plexiglas lectern, found the camera with red light glowing, and looked directly into its unblinking black eye. He cleared his throat.
    “I know y’all want me to tell you about this…” a glance back to Daniel in the wings, “…this
gift of prophecy
that God seems to have bestowed upon me. But before I talk about that, there’s something I need to make absolutely clear, so we will have no misunderstanding about who, or what, I am.”
    He picked up his Bible, stepped in front of the lectern. “I am not—” He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again. “I am not…well, I’m not sure what it is God wants from me. I do think he’s fixin’ to reveal something important to the world, but I do not know what it is. I am not in control of the tongues, He is, and when they come upon me, I have no knowledge of what I am going to say or what I am saying. Sometimes I think God speaks to me, but he has not yet seen fit to give me direct orders.”
    His eyelids grew unbearably heavy, and he allowed them to fall closed.
    Lord, I am a blank slate, an empty vessel…
    I invite you now to speak through me…
    Forward, backward, sideways, it don’t matter…
    I beg you, do it now…
    Please, television hates dead air…
    His eyes popped open and he said, “Paul was wrong, and James was right…” He wanted to open his Bible to James 2:26 and give the page a dramatic
thwack
. But that was the old Tim Trinity, and the new Tim Trinity’s hands would not play along.
    So he just opened his mouth again, and heard himself say, “Faith without works is dead.”
    He stood for a