Season 2, Episode 3 - "Ingram, TX (Divx)"
23 January, 2005
"In a single coast to coast broadcast, I will speak to more souls than Our Lord did in his entire lifetime..."After nearly a week in tiny Ingram, Tex., the night is quiet in the Carnivale camp, until Sofie wakes up, believing she smells smoke. Ben helps her look, but there is no sign of any fire. The next day, Ben asks Sofie to read his Tarot cards, but she dismisses the idea, says she has no ability and angrily tells him to burn the deck. She has been having trouble sleeping and doesn’t believe that the smoke she smelled was a dream. Ben has difficulties of his own. Despite pressure from Samson and Management, he has been unable to find any clues in a week of driving around the roads of Ingram. "Kerrigan didn't give me a road map," he says. Samson understands, but knows that unease is mounting. "Watch your back," he warns. In Mintern, a huge encampment has grown around the future home of the Temple of Jericho. Tommy Dolan complains that many of the supplicants are only there for a hot meal. "Then they will be fed," Justin says expansively. "They've come because they were called, Mr. Dolan. I need them all." Later, as Justin addresses his radio congregation, Iris glances at his notes for the sermon and discovers only a page of grotesque doodles, dismembered eyeballs and female genitalia. On the road, the tracker Varlyn Stroud has found his way to Babylon. With a Babylon Mining Company accounting book in his hand, he compares names against the names on a memorial to those who perished in the cave-in of '21. Crossing off the names of the dead in the ledger, he is left with just one: Henry Scudder. Still dressed as a cop, he heads to the telegraph office to wire Brother Justin that he is heading for New Mexico. At the Carnivale, things are not right in Ruthie's world. She awakes one morning to see Lodz outside her curtain, but finds no one there when she rises. Her snakes have been skittish lately, biting and killing each other. Then, during a performance, one of her them wraps itself around her neck and tries to strangle her; she is saved when Gabriel arrives. "Kill it, kill it," she screams, and her son batters the snake to a bloody pulp.Ben accedes to Sofie's wishes and burns her Tarot cards. But as he stares into the fire, he sees one that stops him in his tracks. Sitting in the middle is a card with an image of the Tattooed Man, on a Tarot marked "Le Passeur." He pulls it from the blaze and shows it to Sofie, but she says it's not a true Tarot card. "I've seen 'em all a thousand times," she says. "That's not one of them." At the cooch tent, Stumpy has Rita Sue and Libby working overtime with the johnnies. He's also pulling out all of the fundraising stops, including blow-off shows for kids. Later, when a rough character shows up to collect money from Stumpy, he tries to pass him off as an old friend, but Rita Sue is suspicious, and Libby overhears the man threatening Stumpy. Reverend Balthus, still incapacitated by stroke, is wheeled into Justin's home. "Welcome home, Norman," Justin enthuses, and he is soon spooning babyfood in his old mentor's mouth while tormenting him with his plans for the future. Justin's cohort Tommy Dolan continues his investigation of the fire at the Dignity Ministry. A waitress who saw Justin's car leave the scene is unwilling to talk, but Tommy wins her over with a heartbreaking story. He learns that the person driving the car was slumped down. "Could it have been a woman?" Tommy asks. "Might have been," the witness says. Driving the ranch roads around Ingram, Ben is stopped by a tree in the road and discovers a nightmarish camp. Positioned throughout are strange and decrepit artifacts-mangled mannequins, parcels of insects, literature about artificial human eyes. Searching, he trips a crude alarm and is quickly set upon by stooped men, howling like monkeys. One is firing rusty bolts from a slingshot. Ben fights, but is soon overcome as more men arrive. Hanging upside down, Ben is visciously flogged, while two tattered women go through his possessions. Finally, the moonshine-swilling leader calls out, "Leave some for the worms," and tells the man beating Ben to go bury him. Justin continues his psychological torture of Balthus, inducing the toothsome maid Celeste to service him while the paralyzed reverend watches. "I will show you things," he purrs. "Wonderful, terrible things." At the strange camp, Ben's captor finishes burying him alive as the others divide his paltry belongings. But when the leader sees Scudder's Templar watch fob, he leaps up and scrambles desperately to the burial spot. Frantically digging Ben out, they find him still alive. "This yours?" the man asks, holding out the fob. "We've been waiting for you."Back at the Carnivale, Ruthie again sees Lodz and follows him back to his trailer. But when she opens the door, she sees only Sofie, asleep. Ruthie tucks her in and leaves, not noticing the knob of the radio as it slowly rotates to tune in Justin's sermon. As his voice is heard in the night, Sofie's eyes slowly open.
