Modesty was never my brother’s strong suit, but again, he’s not wrong. And I can absolutely picture him staying up late at night to watch televangelists, practicing their speech patterns and stage moves in a mirror, then convincing our dad’s Pentecostal sister Sally to take us to a tent revival. The hayseed preacher lets 9-year-old Billy have the mic, and Billy spins a sermon that gets the entire crowd on their feet hollering Hallelujahs. By the time he’s 15, he has his own church, and at 20, he’s got his own cable TV show and is on a first-name basis with televangelists like Creflo Dollar and Joyce Meyer.
I feel intensely dizzy again, and must close my eyes and swallow down the nausea.
“It would take some work,” I say once I find my voice again. “A lot more work than playing the stock m
