* * *
The crowd at Dubuque, Iowa, that evening jammed the intramural soccer field at the university. Parked cars and pickups almost plugged the streets. It was several times the size of the LaCrosse crowd; people had seen or heard about what had happened there. The bus pulled into a laundromat driveway a block and a half away; that was as close as it could get. Dove, with only Knowles, one other security man and two officers, walked through the crowd. It was louder than the LaCrosse crowd—some people were even boisterous—but an aisle opened. Again the rest of the tour group stayed on the bus.
And again before he left, people had gotten out of wheelchairs and off of pallets, had thrown away crutches, walkers, white canes . . .
The number of people healed there was not explicitly known—estimates varied from a hundred to two hundred and fifty; the crowd was estimated at from three to five thousand. In ten minutes, Dove, Knowles, and the others were back on board, but it took twenty minutes for the bus to work its way to the highway.
While it rolled southward on US 61, Lor Lu spent considerable time on the phone with city and county authorities, particularly regarding healing sites convenient to highways, where crowds were less likely to cause traffic jams. He also called network and local television stations, giving them information and suggestions for the public, to reduce crowd problems.
So far the tour crew had had little to do. Lee was the exception. She rode next to Lor Lu, in the seat across from the driver. She’d finally been thoroughly briefed back at the Cote, Lor Lu reviewing with her the things she’d be doing on her communications laptop. It was loaded with a huge number of broadcast stations, shopping mall managers, motels, restaurants . . . and every law enforcement agency, large and small, in fourteen states. Rather quickly, she was handling the more routine logistical and liaison work. Lor Lu handled major decisions, overall integration, and emergencies.
* * *
After Dubuque, instead of stopping at a motel or rest area, they drove through the early evening to Maquoketa. There a substantial crowd waited in a theater parking lot, and several dozen more were healed. Then the 69-year-old Bar Stool turned east toward the Mississippi again, and drove to another theater parking lot at Clinton, Iowa. There perhaps a thousand waited to see Dove, with a hundred to be healed. When the bus left Clinton, Bar Stool’s backup was at the wheel.
Bar Stool and Lee weren’t the only non-Tours staff pulled from their jobs for the tour. There were also seven case facilitators, selected and prepared by Dove as healers. One of them was Jenny Buckels. Beginning at Dubuque, these support healers had moved around the back fringes of the crowds, healing such things as astigmatism, bad backs, arthritic fingers—whatever presented itself. An enterprising citizen with a camcorder had followed one of these secondary healers as she did her work, and when the bus left, interviewed several of the healed. One of them claimed that before his healing, he’d been unable to bend far enough to touch his knees. Now, beaming, he demonstrated that by bending his knees just a little, he could touch his feet. “My wife,” he said, “won’t have to put my socks and shoes on for me anymore.”
He hadn’t joined what he referred to as “the sick and wounded” up front, because “that’s for people in worse trouble than me. All I had was some pain and inconvenience. With no more wrong than that, I didn’t want to trouble the messiah.”
The amateur video cubeage was sold to Davenport’s NBC affiliate, and broadcast nationwide on the news. It showed the backup healer’s aura, which photographed as mostly pale blue mistiness, with areas of pink and green.
* * *
Meanwhile the bus had driven on to Davenport, where a midnight healing was held in a mall parking lot. Most of the sick and disabled there hadn’t seen the Clinton healings; they’d already been gathering hopefully for their own. But they’d seen the LaCrosse and Dubuque healings.
It was the largest crowd yet, despite the late hour. Police had cleared a place near the entrance for those who’d come for healing, but the crowd was so large that many onlookers could hardly hope even to glimpse Dove.