Cemeteries of Tacoma. Washington (Images of America Series)
Author: Kris Anderson Reisinger
Date: 2011-07-11 00:00:00+00:00
Description: During the mid-19th century, coffins were built with a drawstring bell to serve as an alarm in case one had the misfortune of being buried alive. It is believed that several such coffins reside in Tacoma’s cemeteries. Fortunately, there are no reports of bells ringing in the middle of the night. Tacoma has numerous Victorian cemeteries that house renowned pioneers, like Thea Foss, Angelo Fawcett, and Brig. Gen. John W. Sprague, a hero of the Civil War who cofounded Tacoma and served as the city’s first mayor. Several cemeteries are dying to tell their story and have not seen a visitor in over
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing SC

Copyright © Kris Saknussemm 2014

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or part in any form. For information, address Sanford J. Greenburger Associates at 55 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10003.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Print ISBN: 978-0-7867-5595-0
ebook ISBN: 978-0-7867-5596-7

Distributed by Argo Navis Author Services

Reverend America

Kris Saknussemm

For Breece D’J Pancake and John Kennedy Toole

Contents

- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Colophon

- 1 Now We Are Engaged
- 2 Rocky is the Road
- 3 The Lonely Room
- 4 Favorite Shows
- 5 All the Way Down
- 6 Normal
- 7 Sins and Wonders
- 8 What are We Going to Do
- 9 From Bend in the Road to End of the Road
- 10 Little Red
- 11 The Real Hoodoo
- 12 Don’t Hang Your Hat on the Wind
- 13 In the Time of My Dying
- 14 Austin City Limits
- 15 Rinders Highway
- 16 The Hallucinogenic Matador
- 17 Hop in and Help the Handicapped

- 18 In Heaven there are Frogs and Honest Strangers

- 19 Goodnight Missus Pepper
- 20 Murkers and Lurkers
- 21 For Reasons That Escape Me
- 22 If I Don’t Come Back
- 23 Making Your Way To The Moment
- 24 The Hour of Lead

- About Author

Portions of this book first appeared in Playboy, Nerve.com, The Antioch Review, Retort Magazine, Ragazine, The Café Irreal and the Southern Humanities Review.

And I saw Heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew but he himself.

Now We Are Engaged

Seen from a distance—fence stringer gait, battered knapsack, faded jeans, Caterpillar cap, close-cropped hair. At close range—a scary white—certainly very white drifter. One who’s known the phlegm and dandruff of others—scabies cleanser—sour milk farts of men who haven’t changed underwear in a month—bucktooth women whose yeast infections give off a palpable scent. And worse. Here’s a man who’s done work you wouldn’t last a day doing. Ever picked grapefruit in 110-degree heat? Or punched the charge gun into a pig skull as they come down the concrete chute? Many people know there are towns in Kentucky called Soft Shell, Dwarf and Monkey’s Eyebrow. Some people have been there. A shadow escaped from a body. A Crossroads Man.

It hadn’t been a good Friday. The bus had developed engine trouble. Indianapolis. Another palace of strangers. Another golden calf city.

“I hate you,” the woman said.

She appeared to be wearing a hat made from a cake box.

“You don’t know me,” Casper replied. “But I like your hat.”

“I hate you, I hate you. Have a nice day,” she smiled.

Like Mrs. Toffler at the State Ward.

He spotted the police at the far end of the station and slipped into the entryway. Fortunately, an interracial couple was arguing near the door and a drunk was panhandling aggressively, so no one took all that much notice of him. The areas around bus stations and train depots were good that way. Of course that’s the first place they come to look—if they are looking for you.

Outside was a taxi rank and young black kids were hustling for them.

“Yo, White Knight. Whass up?”

“I gotchyou, Sunshine. You goin’ someplace, my man?”

They’d given him the look. If you’re a 6’3” gaunt albino pushing sixty, you can pretty much count on it. Another reason why he kept his hair short and wore a cap. All those people over the years checking to see if he had pink eyes. Calling him Leper, Paleface, Ostrich, Easter Bunny—Casper. He could never be sure what blacks would say. Sometimes being so pale made him seem in his own category.

He thought he needed to stay clear of the station for a while. There was always that night in Boise to think about—and who knew what was made of Joe’s trailer at the bottom of the gully if it had been found? There’d be another bus in a couple of hours. The black kids were all over him—not like the ravens come to nourish Elijah—like hungry, petulant crows. A kid who might’ve been sixteen snagged Casper’s daddy longlegs arm and led him to a well-traveled Oldsmobile. “This isn’t a cab,” Casper said, clutching his precious knapsack.

“Gypsy cab, man. Half price. Where you wanna go?”

Casper saw the cops come out. The only thing he knew about Indianapolis was the Speedway. The kid caught his glance at the uniforms and jumped in with him. The driver was also black, a couple of years older. The car lurched away. A sign for the Speedway. They went in the opposite direction. They all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man and his brother with a net. The vehicle slowed. He saw chained up storefronts and a green El Dorado without wheels. Long strips of silver gaffer tape held the jagged starfish of a shattered window in place. The car stopped. The kid pulled out a gun, the kind that might go off in your hand when you robbed your first liquor store. Casper stared into the barrel, then glanced down at the floor. Cigarette butts—a mud-stained girlie magazine. The magazine page that lay open said:

JOHN WAYNE - AMERICAN

In more than 150 films, he captured our essence. Our strength. Our values. Now, you can own a precisely detailed re-creation of the .45 automatic pistol he carried in all those great military films. It’s distinctive, satisfying and absolutely safe. Celebrate the legend. Order yours today.

Casper smiled. The boy thought he was smiling at him and tried to break his nose with the gun. The driver was just thinking that he shouldn’t leave the shakedown in such young hands when a bullet occurred in his brain like an extremely clear idea.

“We must sever the wicked from among the just,” Casper told the younger boy, as he held him still, one hand slowly crushing his trachea while the boy’s body began to squirm. Despite his corpselike appearance Casper had immense strength in his hands.

He wiped them down on the John Wayne ad, noting the large artificial breasts of the woman on the opposite side. How pathetic that someone would try to rob him. He’d come out of a Greyhound Bus station for God sakes. That’s how desperate people were now. He’d just gotten lost in the past for a moment. He heard traffic—rap music. Then it was quiet. It was one of those neighborhoods where people were good at minding their own business. Made him think of an old stove in a room off Pioneer Square in Seattle.

The drawer to the griller was slightly open and he saw layers of silver foil glued to the metal tray with what smelled like dried lamb fat. But there was something else he couldn’t quite see. Then it moved. He heard a scrunch of foil and the entire white G.E. stove erupted in cockroaches.

He wondered if behind the windows and the chained up doorways now, there were people waiting to scurry out at him—and he trembled, remembering that building. The dank maroon carpet. The toilet that always had the inexplicable odor of beef bouillon. How long ago had that been? He’d seen and smelled so many places like that—in Buffalo, Joliet, Akron—the fleabag beside the strip club in Portland. That was where the knife fight had happened.

Once he’d been in a place where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. Some people laughed or cried all the time—and there were those who threw their feces. They shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm. An orderly named McHale would make you suck his nightstick if you didn’t want a beating—Mrs. Toffler always cursing and smiling—

Then Berina Pinecoffin saved him. He was taken to a place where the air smelled like cedar and lemon. What Joe Meadow later told him about Rinders proved true.

One day they let him out of his clean white room. He went to work in a stockyard with sheds full of dripping sheepskins, blood turning black in the air. Other jobs followed—burning for burning, beast for beast. The Philistine cities swirled around him like leaves. Detroit, Kansas City, Baltimore. But no good ever came to him in those places. They are the flesh and this city is the cauldron. So, he drifted out west to the redemption of work on the land, returning to Joplin to visit Berina Pinecoffin when he could.

For a long time this life had worked. Until she died and the work ran dry. Then he started wandering once more, traveling on the money he’d saved—he was a good saver. Just not a savior.

One afternoon in Lake Havasu City, after he left the couple with the reptile museum, he’d met Joe Meadow. Joe told him America was going to collapse soon, but he was prepared. “Organization and preparation is the key.” Which is why he was planning on bugging out to the Ozarks. Joe was always talking about “bugging out.” But for all his hoo-haw about Arkansas, he liked the desert and the high prairie. And Casper knew Joe liked having him around.

“I’m six foot of fightin’ muscle,” Joe said. “I just shrunk.” He still had a full head of hair and huge, lined, work-heavy hands hurt in their youth by cash-for-bucket labor in breathless nut orchards and soggy asparagus rows. But they remained dead steady holding a rifle, and gentle, almost tender in squeezing the trigger. “You have to be easy, son,” he’d say. “It’s hard to learn how to be easy.”

Of course Joe would also say, with relish, “You know, when the bottom falls out—and it damn sure will—it’s going to be a bumper to bumper shooting matching on the highways. Only those hunkered in the hills with plenty of ammo are going to see the dawn of a new day.”

Joe’s face had a stern Saxon blankness—until he smiled. Then it was like the sun coming up over Zabriskie Point. He was a child of the red dirt and he had some grains under his fingernails yet, even after a lifetime in the golden west. Like the old cars he admired, there weren’t many people like him left, and they’d never come again. Casper forgave him his anger. Joe had paid for it in tears and back sweat long ago. Besides, anyone who’s kind to you—well, only the kicked dog truly knows comfort. Joe never made it to the Ozarks—he died early one morning just east of the Colorado River.

Groping now at noonday down that wino street in Indianapolis with his road-worn pack over his shoulder, Casper found himself vomiting coffee, and what tasted like gall and wormwood into a trashcan.

A car drove by. Faces shouted something through the window that he couldn’t hear. He was thinking about the Oldsmobile. About the police. The incident in Hartford was nothing. They could’ve been looking for anyone here. He’d just gotten skittery. Then he heard more voices. Outside his head. Hadn’t the angels spoken to even foolish Lot?

Up 38th street, he saw a gang of tough looking young black men bottled up in a doorway. They spotted him and he wished for a moment he’d kept the Saturday Night Special. But there were too many. He knew that if he was going to get past them, a Rinder would have to intervene.

A car skidded to a stop. A real taxi cab. The driver was a black man whose head was shaved. He sported a fantastic handlebar moustache. “You need a ride!” he said.

“No,” Casper replied, wary at first. Help me, somebody. I call on the righteous to come forward.

“Trust me, you do,” the black man said.

Casper stopped walking and looked ahead at the gang. Everything connects. Then he looked at the bald black cab driver with the flamboyant moustache. The nest down the street came to life. He eeled out his long right arm for the car door and slung his valuables inside. The instant he was in, the driver smoothed the tips of his mo and screeched down a cross street as an empty bottle burst on the sidewalk behind them.

“Cameron Blanchard is who you have to thank for saving yo’ ass,” the man announced. “Now I ask you, what sort of name is that for a man as dark as I am? I should have a name like Balthazar Washington, right? I am a black man.”

The man behind the wheel was the blackest American Casper had ever seen—as absolutely black as he was white.

“Cameron is Scotch Gaelic for ‘crooked nose.’ Have you ever seen a nose less Gaelic? Never mind. I can see you’ve been studying long in the University of Life. Nothing to be ashamed of. There’s always been more to learn in Har-lem than at Har-vard. You feel me? The School of Hard Knocks is where you find the best knockers—not to mention those big-butted women that still know how to cook. Traveling light’s just all right.”

Casper did travel light. He kept a small bedroll in his knapsack and always washed and aired his clothes whenever he could. His teeth stayed clean and his Red Wing boots got a rub down wherever he was bunking down that night. He wasn’t averse to discarding and foraging clothes with the seasons. What he carried with him was what mattered. Stuff never fit him all that well anyway. He prized sturdy, comfortable shoes, underwear and socks that dried fast—the rest he picked up as he needed. Simple dark clothing and deodorant was the rule. Now that it was getting warmer, he’d be sloughing off his old pea coat soon. They drove on in silence, heading south. Casper noticed that although the cab was old and heavy, it smelled clean, as if it was well cared for. The driver with the amazing moustache cleared his throat.

“Did you know that Thomas Jefferson, our first Secretary of State, advocated that all Americans learn Spanish—and that for many slaves that was their first language here?” he announced suddenly.

“No,” Casper said. But now he’d never forget. Although he did know the Only Men were influenced by Spanish music. It didn’t occur to him to wonder why the cabbie had offered this information seemingly out of the blue. He knew from long experience that people are always talking to themselves, and a good bit of what passes for conversation is really just moments of this inner discussion overheard.

Cameron nodded. “Near the end of his life, the old man of Monticello remarked ‘I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.’”

“You know a lot about him, for a—”

“For what, for a black man?”

“I was going to say cab driver.”

“Brother, cynicism is one thing, ignorance another. Black people always get so worked up when they talk about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, because they owned and fucked slaves. Jesus to George Washington Carver! One of the reasons they were leaders then is because they owned and fucked slaves.”

“You approve of—slavery?” Casper gulped, although he was pleased that the man hadn’t made any albino comments. Maybe he had a thing about albinos. Casper had met women who did. One working girl in Spokane had been convinced albinos were very well hung. He remembered her disappointment.

“Read my thick lips,” the man replied, without any hint of animosity. “Course I don’t approve of institutionalized dehumanization! Course I don’t approve of castrations and lynchings! I will not equivocate—I will not excuse. I’m just saying that for one man, like Thomas Jefferson, to attempt to undermine a social and economic institution—of any kind—may go as much against the principles of democracy as the evil institution in question.”

“But Abraham Lincoln—” Casper began, although he wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about. The only thing he really knew about slavery was the Only Men.

“Yass,” the black driver said twirling his moustache. “Not at all the simple hero white America would have us believe. His stance against slavery evolved over several years. When he was in Congress he voted against abolitionist policies, believing that the new territories should be places where the Poor could better themselves. And there’s substantial evidence to suggest he was at times mentally unstable. The great Unionist and peacemaker, he was at the helm during the bloodiest gang war in American history. Let’s not forget that.”

“So—you think he was wrong?”

“How could it be wrong to stop the most systematic campaign of degradation ever perpetrated?”

Casper was confused. He realized he hadn’t mentioned where he wanted to go. He didn’t know where he wanted to go, or if it was safe to go back to the bus station. That was silly—of course it was safe—or had been—that was just foolish panic. But now he had the Oldsmobile to worry about—although he didn’t think anyone had seen him, and the shot hadn’t been loud. Shots got fired all the time in that neighborhood. That’s why they’d taken him there.

“I’ll tell you a true-blue American story,” Cameron continued. “One year, this company gave out masks to the schools at Halloween. Witch’s masks, Frankenstein masks. My school got Abraham Lincoln masks—I shit you not. They dumped ‘em on the black neighborhoods. But if that’s all you get, that’s all you got. So we went trick-or-treating, me and my friends—Darnell, Yussef, Chilly. We went to this store on the corner that used to be run by black folks but had been taken over by Greeks—and Chilly—he took him some Tootsie Rolls—cause it was Halloween, right? The old Greek behind the counter raised the alarm like he’d been robbed at gunpoint and the cops came after us. Two white buzz cut cops chasing four young black boys wearing Abraham Lincoln masks. You talk about the Fugitive Slave Law—one of those cops took a shot at us! Woulda hit us too if he hadn’t been out of breath.”

“I don’t understand . . . ” Casper sighed, thinking again about John Wayne’s fake .45 and how dirty the inside of the Oldsmobile had been compared to Cameron’s legitimate cab.

“You ever been chased by folks tryin’ to kill you? The real issue is how can a white man understand a black man?” Cameron Blanchard boomed, twirling his moustache. “‘Now we are engaged in a great civil war,’ as ole Abe said. We are still engaged. We are met on a great battlefield of that war—right now, you and I. The question is whether we can come to understand each other. What if Lincoln was no more humane than Stephen A. Douglas, just a better speechwriter? What if his fixation on preserving the Union was the result of a psychological imbalance and not some high-minded ideal? How can you tell the difference between John Brown raiding the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry and Timothy McVeigh blowing up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City?”

“But Lincoln freed—the slaves,” Casper said. “Didn’t he?” And some would say John Wayne won War World II, he thought.

“Freed? Brother, freedom is an elusive concept. You’d call me free and yet you should’ve seen the look of fear and distrust on your face when I pulled up. What is freedom when you’re looked at by your fellow men that way?”

Casper was sorry he’d flashed the fear face. He knew the man was a Rinder—he’d just been shaken by the Oldsmobile incident.

“Did I look at you like you went around killing black men like some slimy white devil?” Cameron said. “What I’m talking about is taking issue with what you’re taught. You don’t want to end up thinking that Toni Morrison is as significant a writer as William Faulkner or that Chet Baker was as good a trumpet-player as Miles Davis.”

This last observation put Casper more at ease. Music was something he knew, and he was quite certain that Chet Baker, while an interesting enough albeit limited singer, and a sweet horn player in a Santa Monica pier at sunset sort of way, wasn’t the master of invention and discovery that Miles was. On that they could definitely agree.

“I’m from Gary,” Cameron Blanchard continued. “Home of the Jackson Five. Never knew my father. Momma died of a brain tumor when me and my brother were still very young. Got farmed out to a foster home. As soon as I could, I farmed myself out to the Army. The Army has a soft spot for de colored folk. And colored is right! Started to shit green Jell-O in perfect squares. I got the hell out. Cleaned office buildings at night. This old cat that worked with me—he had a stroke one night—he left me two things when he died. The 1977 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and Webster’s Third International Dictionary. It was like a B-vitamin shot for my brain. I got fired for reading on the job. So I took what I could get—just so I could read. I traveled in my books. Started to learn my way around the public library the way people know the inside of their refrigerator. And speaking of that—you eaten?”

“I—had—a coffee this morning.” Where had that been? Columbus?

“Short of funds?”

“I’m—undergoing a period of enforced simplification,” Casper said. That’s what Joe would’ve said. Poppy would’ve said he’d gotten “unfinancial.”

“I know a place where the food’s so cheap it’s free.”

“Where’s that?” Casper said, becoming suspicious again. He looked like a man who could get by on locusts and wild honey, but he was hungry now.

“My house,” Cameron Blanchard smiled.

“You’d—you’d invite—me—to your house?”

“I would and I have.”

Cameron turned off his Dispatcher. The Blanchards lived a few minutes away, in a freestanding row house in what real estate agents would describe as a “mixed” area. The interior was cheerful though, with swaths of bright cloth with African designs thrown over furniture and tables. Masks and wildlife photos decorated three walls, while a massive plywood bookshelf that had been painted canary yellow took up the other. There was a musty odor that Cameron explained was due to the fact that many of the books in his collection had been salvaged from a storm-damaged library. In an alcove stood a stereo system and more shelves full of vinyl jazz records.

“My wife’s a nurse,” Cameron said. “She’s resting because she’s going to do a double shift. We’re grateful for the work. But I’ll rustle you up a pork chop and gravy snack with some peach cobbler. Make yourself at home.”

Casper glanced about, trying to get the pictures to connect. He thought of the bus station again and whether or not the cops had just been passing through on a regular inspection. That’s what happens when you become afraid. Trouble finds you.

Cameron came back into the room and asked, “Do you know how many black marine biologists there are?”

“No.”

“Ever heard of a black dendrologist?”

“You mean a scientist who studies trees?”

“Damn straight. You see what I’m saying?”

“N-no.”

“I’m talking about life! The Garden of Eden is believed to have been in Africa if it existed at all. Black people have always been close to the Earth. The black experience in the New World is first and foremost a rural, agricultural experience—that’s what slavery was all about—planting cotton, picking cotton, walking dem rows behind a pooping ole mule. And yet, today—you think of how black people live and where we live, it’s in the cities—it’s as prisoners in prison, or as prisoners in the urban graveyards. That’s why I’m a black greenie. An ethnoecologist. Shit! The chops are burning!”

Cameron dashed off in the direction of the kitchen again, his fabulous moustache seeming to brush the sides of the hallway. Casper wasn’t sure whether he should follow or not, and so took a step back toward the street. From a room with its door ajar came the sound of a computer keyboard tapping. On a couch covered in tapestry cloth sat a young black boy with very short hair and large eyeglasses. The boy looked up from his computer. “What’s the most dangerous animal in the South American rainforest?”

“I—I don’t know,” Casper stammered, caught off-guard. “A lion?”

“South America. Lions live in Africa, where black people—the original race comes from,” the boy said, his eyes mooning behind his lenses.

“A snake?” Casper knew something about snakes.

“That’s a much better answer,” the boy agreed. “There’s lotsa dangerous snakes in South America—from pythons and boa constrictors to the venomous bushmaster. But maybe the most dangerous beast is the golden anteater. The golden anteater lives on termites collected on its long, sticky tongue. It climbs slowly, and sometimes sits still for days at a time. But it has knife-like claws that can rip open stomachs.”

“Right,” Casper said. He’d just been caught off-guard. He knew about lions.

“Yep,” the boy said. “I learn something new every day. Do you?”

“I—have—today,” Casper conceded.

“Come and get it,” Casper heard Cameron give a muffled call. “I see you’ve met Goodricke.”

“Smart kid.”

“Yeah,” Cameron frowned, leading him into the kitchen. “That’s why we’re home schooling him. I worry about him every time he steps outta the house. Wants to learn karate. Shit, he needs to learn karate.”

Casper sat down at an old Formica table and began devouring pork chops slathered in gravy, with biscuits and tart, jelly rich peach cobbler. The events of the day seemed more than he could swallow.

He was still swallowing when Cameron drove him back to the Greyhound station on South Illinois Street without charge. As a “movin’ on” present, he gave Casper a mildewed copy of The Canterbury Tales. There was no sign of the police. Storm in a teacup. He went to check when the next bus to St. Louis would be boarding. He had a good hour to kill.

He tried to read some of the book his fateful host had given him, but he couldn’t make sense of it. He tore off the back cover and wrote the words GOLDEN ANTEATER on a strip of it and slipped it into his Medicine Bag. Then he placed the book on the seat next to him. He appreciated his unlikely savior’s gesture, but it was just fine to leave the gift behind. Like the magazine in the Oldsmobile, someone would find it. Pages always blew somewhere. People, who knew? Only God can say why—or where their journeys will end. And, hell . . . maybe God doesn’t know either.

Rocky is the Road

For a while he sat in the bus station in a daze, watching the TV that strobed above the area cordoned off for women and children passengers—no sign of the police. He kept thinking of John Wayne—and Joe Meadow. Joe had three sworn enemies in life: Harry Truman, who’d fired General Douglas MacArthur, which was why Joe had named his darting caramel colored ferret General Douglas MacArthur. The other two were Roy Rogers and John Wayne.

“John Wayne was no hero—he was an insult to all of us who bled on the beaches and the fields of the Old Country. Pasteboard blowhard. I watched Ed Hemminger torn to smithereens by a Jap mine. I held his hand—only it wasn’t connected to him anymore. Don’t talk to me about John Wayne. And that kiddie show cowboy—Roy Rogers. Roy Slye. From Cincinnati. No cowboys in Cincinnati. You know what we should do? We should drive to Victorville, and break into that Roy Rogers Museum and steal Trigger.”

Stealing Roy Rogers’ celebrated stuffed horse was a frequent theme of the old man’s. It came up as often as, “Bankers and Jews are destroying this country.”

“What are we going to do with a stuffed horse? A famous, stolen stuffed horse?” Casper wanted to know.

“Don’t you get all rational and sneaky on me. I’m talking about a principle.”

Joe was very big on principles—and fundamentals. He’d jaw endlessly about blacks always having their hands out for welfare money and how Mexicans were “invading America from the South and every damn direction.” But when they were camped beside Mono Lake, the Dead Sea of America, they came upon a celebrity African-American couple bogged in the soft calcium carbonate sand, and Joe was out of his Chevy Tahoe (that pulled the Airstream, which he liked to refer to as the Mobile Command Post) at the drop of a hat. He got the planks down from the roof and got the couple back on the road within minutes. He might’ve talked about how “It’s gonna rain shit and corruption,” but if ever they pulled into a trailer park and Hispanic children were running wild, Joe would only say, “After the first beer, you don’t hear the neighbors.”

Once the old man had taken Casper out to shoot his 30.06 Remington bolt action and his Colt .357. They were on a stretch of borax quarry highway, riddling a derelict Frosty Boy stand. Always licked, but never beaten. They finished that campaign and sat amongst the tanglebush eating the cold cut sandwiches Joe had made, when he spotted some rabbits. “Wild meat, son, wild meat.”

Casper thought of Cab Hooly. “You want me to get the Mossberg?”

“Naw, naw. That’d be unfair,” Joe said. “Any rabbit worth eating you shouldn’t be able to get in shotgun range of—and you don’t want a load of solder in your dinner, son.” The veteran proceeded to knock down three for three with the Remington at forty, fifty and fifty five feet. “Like fish in a barrel,” he laughed. “C’mon, I’ll teach you how to skin ‘em. People don’t know what they’re missing not liking good bunny.”

The only others sitting there with Casper in that part of the Indy bus station were a 13 year-old girl and some older woman with big fish eyes. A Tea Party candidate wobbled on the television fuzzily tuned to Fox News. Casper’s forehead ached. America felt like a building primed for demolition—and having slept in several of those over the years, he knew the feeling well. Nation shall rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines and pestilences and fearful sights and great signs . . . Then on the TV—chickens exploding from too many hormones. He pulled out one of his Medicine strips.

BOY GETS NEW SKULL

Whenever the welter of information from the outside world got too much for him, he consulted his Medicine Bag. An old Navaho man called Hercules (with two teeth as purple as Navaho corn) had taught him about Medicine—how you had to make it or find your own. This appealed to him over his Reverend America Bible, for he knew so many of those words too well. The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but the things which are revealed belong unto us. He’d shuffle up the Medicine strips like fortune telling cards, and it was uncanny how they seemed to shed new light on the situations he found himself in.

Old issues of the World Weekly News were his inspiration. He liked reading about baby dragons preserved in formaldehyde—or the Bat Boy of the Lost World Caverns. He felt it was important to know that a panel of experts had proven that goblins lack genitals and that a World War II bomber had been found on the moon. Read in conjunction with the Holy Bible, his tabloid Medicine strips created a curious harmony. In one text, you had merpeople—in the other, a generation of vipers. It was actually hard to tell the Scriptures apart. He particularly liked the stories where people had pieces of their severed bodies reattached.

GRIZZLY BITES MAN’S HEAD OFF, DOCTORS SEW IT BACK ON

Wasn’t that just like Jesus healing the man with the withered hand? His Medicine strips were his pearls of great price—his Book of Uncommon Prayer.

But the magic didn’t work every time. The message about the boy getting a new skull at first lifted him. Then it brought back the images from the Oldsmobile.

If he felt the message of the Medicine was too strong or not clear enough in its offering, he thought it was acceptable to consult the oracle another time.

JEALOUS HUBBY BLOWS AWAY SIAMESE TWINS FOR ROMANCING HIS WIFE

That was better. Specific mention of gun violence. A clear signal about retribution. Those Siamese Twins had it coming. This was an interpretation he could live with. He didn’t feel that flaming coals would be heaped on his head. Not for what had happened that morning. If God were still looking down, then he also knew what had been done to him. He stuck by his Medicine Bag, just as the WWN had stood by the women from Euclaw, Wyoming who’d given birth to demons.

The only other thing that made him as happy as his Medicine Bag was Black Jack Gum. He didn’t chew it himself—but he liked the thought of it. It had a distinctive smell. He knew exactly the first time he’d ever caught a whiff—the Gascozark Hills Resort in Hazelgreen, Missouri. There was a biting, bittersweet quality to the flavor. He didn’t like the taste—but later, in small town dusty libraries, Black Jack showed him that all things fit together, if you can just find the Ikey Heyman. (He learned that term from his would-be father—the name for a hidden friction brake on a wheel of fortune game.) Like Cameron Blanchard, he was a treasure hunter in libraries, but he had to keep his collection sized to fit in his knapsack. “You can only hold so much water in your hand,” Old Joe said.

Black Jack gum all went back to the notorious Santa Anna, soldier, revolutionary, dictator, turncoat and opportunist, who was the man to bring chicle to the United States when in exile as the former President of Mexico. Chicle, a natural gum from a Central American evergreen, had been chewed for pleasure and energy by the Mayans. Santa Anna ended up selling his load, hoping to finance a return to power, to a man named Thomas Adams, an inventor who hoped to use it to make vulcanized rubber for carriage tires. When those attempts failed, he boiled some down and created what would become the first chewing gum ever sold in America.

Adams’ innovation caught the attention of William Wrigley, Jr., the industrialist who started offering chewing gum as a lagniappe to increase sales of his baking powder and soap. When the gum he gave away started becoming more popular than the products he was trying to sell, Wrigley knew he had to change the orientation of the company—and so an empire was founded on something as trivial as chewing gum—which to Casper seemed like the heart of the whole American story.

The taste of the gum was like sarsaparilla, which brought to mind the lost days of the 1930s, all the way back to the Old West. One day, he found that Ray Bradbury had written a story called “The Scent of Sarsaparilla”—and that made him remember that Rock Hudson had starred in the TV version of Bradbury’sThe Martian Chronicles—and had also been the star of Ice Station Zebra, which had been the favorite film of the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, who watched it continuously on a loop.

Hughes then became a focal point of interest for Casper, who, while never having completed high school, had a kind of magpie curiosity about things, and so whenever he could, he tried following the threads. Hughes was the ultimate wonder boy gone strange. From building a motorized bicycle to counting the size of peas with unclipped fingernails and straggly hair—he was the embodiment of all that had gone wrong.

RKO Pictures, Hughes’ film company ended up being bought by the General Tire and Rubber Company, which linked everything back to what Santa Anna’s chicle was intended for before it was turned into chewing gum.

Casper took particular interest in how Hughes’ delusions had taken hold. Designing a special bra for Jane Russell to wear during the filming of The Outlaw. Along the way he discovered what, to him, were some significant facts about the world. An octopus has three hearts—the average hedgehog up to 5,000 spines. With seahorses, it’s the males who give birth. Now he knew about the golden anteater.

He kept all this harvested information written on slips of paper and shuffled it into his Medicine Bag—along with a postcard from the partially blind Summer Shield, his turtledove. The apple of his eye.

“You know why I like you?” Summer once asked. “Because I don’t know why I like you. Makes me like you all the more.”

He’d given her the penis bone of a raccoon love charm—what they call “coon dongs” in the South. The postcard was a colored photo of the Giant Bowling Pin in Waynesville, MO—out in front of the old Ted Williams Steak House (which also once had a Giant Steer). The restaurant was long gone, and had turned into a place that advertised

CATFISH CHICKEN

He liked the idea of Catfish Chicken. That’s what America was so good at. See Anatomical Wonders! Girl to Gorilla. Summer’s message read, Come home.

There had been women in his life (mostly of the Spearmint Rhino/Motel 6 variety). Summer he really remembered—although sometimes she seemed too large in his memory to be true. Like a Giant Girlfriend outside some curio shop. She’d given him a miniature replica of Jesse James’ hideout in the Meramec Caverns—and while that had been lost long ago, he kept it in his memory, and it had led him to find out that Jesse James’ last words were, “That picture is crooked.”

Joe Meadow’s last words had been like a cold morning sun coming up over Canaan. He wondered what his own last words would be.

He noticed a woman passing by wearing a facemask. He went out to get some air. There was still time to wait for his bus. No one remarked on the book he left behind.

All the black kids and the cabs had disappeared. He’d put the Oldsmobile behind him. No one was going to shed tears about those two. But the racial element unsettled him. What would Berina have thought?

Casper crossed the street and walked down a block. Then he spotted a woman who’d stopped by a short brick wall. She was carrying a baby in her arms. She plopped down on the wall and cursed—and began beating the baby’s head against the bricks. He couldn’t help rushing over.

“Goddamn it!” she said.

The moment he drew even with her, he had the distinct feeling that there was more than one thing wrong.

She seemed to catch a fright upon seeing him. Then she gave an odd laugh.

“I bet this looks strange,” she twittered. “But the damn thing won’t cry.”

Casper was glad she realized banging the baby’s head on the bricks looked strange. But he was puzzled. She didn’t look obviously insane and was rather well dressed. Then she handed him the baby. “What do you think?”

When he took hold, he wasn’t sure what to think. It was a doll, but to call it a doll didn’t do it justice. It was a scientifically perfect replica of a real human baby—with smooth, authentic textured skin. Real in every way—except not.

“It keeps malfunctioning,” the woman said. He made her to be in her late 30s, educated, neurotic and predisposed to medication of various kinds—but not an addict or outright crazy.

He’d never seen such a realistic doll before. It seemed too substantial to be classed as a toy. It reminded him of an exercise in one of the better psych wards he’d been in—where they were given infant CPR training mannequins to look after. He sensed the telltale presence of therapy.

“I bet you thought I was hurting my baby,” the woman said. “Well, I guess I sort of was. I just get so frustrated when it doesn’t behave the way it’s supposed to. It’s supposed to cry at set intervals.”

“What happens then?” Casper asked.

“Then I comfort him—Tommy, that’s his name. He stops crying. He’s my surrogate—and—I ain’t even a good mother to him!”

She burst into the kind of tears that even very crass people find hard to hear. Casper began to revise his earlier assessment. “Always keep reading people,” Poppy had told him. “Remember, the surprises are our job.”

(If only Poppy had followed that advice himself when it came to the squirrel man.)

“Tell me more,” Casper said.

“I—lost my baby—my real baby,” the woman hiccupped, seeming to bring herself under control.

“You mean you left it somewhere?” Casper asked.

He thought that might offend her, but she actually laughed. “I like you,” she said, and held out a small nail polished hand. “I’m Suzanne.”

“Casper,” he said.

“Suzanne with a Plan they called me in high school. Most Improved. I just forgot what my plan was.”

“That’s easy to do,” Casper said, with as close to a smile as he’d get. “So, you had a baby—”

“Yeah,” Suzanne nodded, her face cracking, voice sickening back toward tears. “He died. Immune system thing. Congenital. He got to see the inside of me—and then an oxygen tent. I’d guess you say he was allergic to the world.”

“And this?” Casper asked, holding up the doll by an arm.

“My shrink recommended it. I was a single mom—it was a turkey baster job. I lost Brian, that was his name—and I pretty much just lost it. So, I got Tommy—to help me cope. Only Tommy doesn’t work so good either. And look at me.”

Casper felt the back of the plastic infant and removed the embedded panel. He took out the batteries, brushed the terminals and reinserted them. The doll began crying, the limbs moving. The woman’s eyes lit up.

“You’re a miracle worker!” she said, reaching out for the doll.

Casper held it back. “How long ago did Brian die?”

“Th-three years ago,” she answered. “I know—I should—but—”

A bus had pulled out of the terminal. It made a gearshift and was picking up speed. Casper pitched the doll under the wheels as it cried. It was crushed flat.

Suzanne made a jump and gasped—but Casper dropped his knapsack and caught her in his arms all in one motion. She broke into sobs on his lowered shoulder and made a move to hit him, but then collapsed deeper into him.

“Shhh,” he said. “It’s going to be all right. Sometimes you have to let go to go forward. Three years? With a doll that doesn’t work? A doll? That doll could never work—don’t you see that?”

She sobbed. “I—know.”

“Are you working?” he asked. Meaning did she have a job.

“Just picking up my unemployment check,” she sniffled.

“All right. This is what you do,” he said, taking out a $10 bill. You go home, and on the way you buy yourself some ice cream—I recommend rocky road. Then you run yourself a hot bath at home and watch an old movie with your ice cream. It won’t cure your sadness—but it will help. And tomorrow—tomorrow may be the new day that it should be. That it can be.”

Suzanne with a Plan pulled back and stared at him. “Are you some kind of therapist?”

“Maybe,” he answered. “Time to start thinking about that Plan anway.”

The woman gathered up her handbag and shuffled off with a numb expression on her face—as if she’d been struck by a bus, but were somehow better for the collision. When she rounded the nearest corner, Casper dashed out into the street and retrieved the pancaked doll. He took it to a trashcan and laid it to rest, not sure if it was a good thing or not that Suzanne had forgotten it so completely. But he’d never been one to judge. He’d been judged too many times his own self. He only hoped she’d follow the advice about the ice cream. “Rocky is the road to real salvation,” Berina had always said with a wink.

Poor Suzanne was going to have to find more than a Plan. She needed a new favorite show. But somehow Casper had hope for her. He’d picked up many skills in his time in the wilderness, but the one thing outside of singing that he knew he was good at was listening to strangers. They came like the wounded and the downtrodden had flocked to Jesus. They still came as of old, and their words always seemed to connect with something that was happening to him, as if they were messages from his Medicine Bag brought to life. He’d learned long ago that if you listen closely enough to strangers, you end up hearing your own story, however strange it may seem. Everything’s connected. That’s why Rinders know when to appear.

The Lonely Room

Casper’s real name was Mathias Gaspenny, although he had difficulty relating to it because of all that had happened to him—including the need on many occasions to deny it or to use other names.

He didn’t own a laptop, although he’d taught himself how to use a computer in libraries along his way—just like Cameron Blanchard.

He didn’t carry a cell phone—for financial reasons—and because he didn’t want to be reminded of all the people he didn’t have to call.

Once he’d found one in a trashcan on Virginia Street in Reno. It rang. A telemarketer. He lobbed it into the Truckee River.

ears back, when he’d been performing, he was known as Mathias True—Reverend America. The handle “Casper,” as in the Friendly Ghost, came in jail.

Gaspenny is a German name, like many that had gotten mangled into some Anglo-Saxon approximation in the rugged anthracite hollers of West Virginia where he’d been born. As far as he knew, he’d taken his first breath in Mink Shoals in the drab frost bound month of March 1952, a blink-once town in Kanawha County, on the Elk River—although his mother (believed to have been but 15 when she gave birth) turned him over to a Methodist-run way house on the outskirts of Charleston the very next day.

Charleston is of course much larger than Mink Shoals, and is the state capital (one of those that people get wrong, thinking that the answer is Wheeling—and the answer is never Wheeling). But that’s not to say it’s a city as such. It was then the kind of place where rumors circulated about the Mickleburtons, a family of melonheads who ate tomcats and sucked on the windshields of lovers’ cars. He spent the first five years of his life there in the custody of the church. He never met or heard from his birth mother and knew less than nothing about his blood father.

His first memories were of an austere shingled house . . . four or five other children at any given time—scoldings—a hot water bottle he used to hold when he cried. Sometimes there was marble cake—and once Dowdy, the fixit man brought in some venison that he’d killed and dressed. “You’re one of the Fortunates,” he was told.

Plops of sticky oat porridge in the morning (that “fought back” as Dowdy put it)—with cane syrup if you were lucky—gravy and tooth breaking biscuits at night—cabbage rolls—sauerkraut—horseradish sauce.

Squirrel was often served. The adults savored the brains. More often than not though, the meat was from tins of old war surplus—Spam and Rado, a heavy smelling sardine paste that came in a bright orange can. It tasted bright orange—with so much salt you needed dripping bread and a glass of water with every bite—along with an amber jelly at the bottom that he imagined had been squeezed from the belly of the Snaggletooth Fish that the mountain people mythologized.

All manner of fun modern food was out of the question, along with television, picture books, board games and bedtime stories. The only radio they were allowed to listen to was Reverend Quintus Jones’ Sunshine Gospel Hour, where they learned to sing “Jesus comes to us alone, Jesus comes as one Unknown.” The Bit-O-Honey Little Rascals life of other children doors away was as remote as the far side of the moon. There were no jawbreakers, Milk Duds or wax fangs on Halloween. On Thanksgiving there was never a golden bird packed with stuffing, with pumpkin pie and whipped cream afterward. They had a “Prayer Loaf” (the less said the better), canned pear crumble and cottage cheese. Christmas morning brought nothing bright like a robot or a silver cap gun. The Lord’s birthday meant new underwear and a Hope candle—and if there had been sufficient donations during the year, a slice of brown sugar glazed ham and flaccid carrots. If not, corn beef and Jell-O salad.

The children shared the same room, with metal frame cots that were always cold. Every day they got a bristle bath with no model boats or toy frogmen to distract them. Anuses and genitals were inspected. Lotion to repel head lice applied. Using the toilet was a matter of strict observation and control. Wetting the bed provoked “wrist basting” (implemented with what a street away was understood to be a spatula, perfect for flipping griddle cakes and piling them on plates of oily link sausages and huckleberries). Anything perceived to be an act of willful disobedience or “uproar” met with a bare bottom “blistering.”

In fact, the spankings weren’t that severe. As intended, the real punishment was the humiliation of bending over exposed before the others, gripping your ankles and trying not to topple forward. The one gray woman who really was mean was only there his last few months. The other ladies called her “The Duchess.” The Duchess insisted that you buckled your knees together when “adopting the position,” so that the brown eye was visible to all. She was a big one for seeing the brown eye.

Something “devilish” such as a tantrum or unexplained crying fit, required a cold ducking, and the heavy steel bucket that was used was hung in plain sight from a tow hook in the sleeping quarters as a continuous warning every bit as ominous as the bloody Christ nailed to his Cross that hung on the opposite wall.

For any infraction more grievous than this, you went to the Lonely Room—a chamber next door to the dorm area that could’ve been converted into a game room or rumpus room—but which had been left stark white with a low watt bulb, the only object inside, a dog bowl filled with water.

Day to day, life at the way house consisted of sleeping, bathing, eating, praying, and adjourning to the Lesson Room, a parlor fitted out with a blackboard, a liver spotted globe, and shelves of Christian periodicals and Bible stories for children, the only illustrated books they were allowed to see (along with Bibles and copies of The Book of Common Prayer).

The lambs and camels—men in gleaming robes and Roman soldiers shimmered into rich fantasies of travel and adventure. Casper seized on them the way other boys might’ve embraced Bat Masterson, the Flash or Y.A. Tittle. These color-saturated pages with their cribbed fables and watered down Biblical passages opened the world to him, making him hungry for the salvation of amazement.

The strangest inhabitant of the Lesson Room was the globe, because the only time he remembered it being used, there were but three places on it: the Holy Land, America and West Virginia. The word “Earth” had to be managed with caution (as in Heaven and Earth) and any discussion of the planets was off limits because that might lead to talk of alien invasions. The important thing was that God had made everything. Anything hinting at “the marvels of science” was forbidden. Concerning matters like electricity, the usual answer had something to do with the government via the grace of God. The Lesson Room was just another Lonely Room in spite of its furnishings.

Even the slightest reference by one of the older kids to swordfights or Space Patrol meant excommunication for a full day to the white silence. There was no jungle gym or monkey bars—no bats or balls. The children were let outside in a fenced-in area behind the house to scuffle and sing “Skip to My Lou,” the one non-religious tune they were free to enjoy. Flies in the buttermilk, shoo fly, shoo.

After lunch and before the afternoon nap, they were marched around the block in single file. It was a big block of somber houses, many imposing and decaying nearby, others more working class around the corner. Twice a day there was a prayer meeting and every afternoon a singing lesson, when they’d struggle through “A Door Was Opened in Heaven.” Casper much preferred the hymns of the Black Sojourners, the Only Men, as they were called—early traveling preachers who’d often once been slaves—“Time of My Time” and “When I Faced the Devil Down”—those seemed real and heroic songs to him. The lyrics were simple and yet the music was more rousing. He’d later come to realize that what he responded to was more interesting chord progressions and always a time signature change in the chorus. He took to the singing, savoring every moment.

The lessons took place in the foreboding brick church next door and required crossing past the brick and stone home of the pastor—what the Baptists down the street called the Pastorium, but the Methodists referred to as the Manse—although the term Rectory would’ve been more apt.

The sanctuary was stone, brought to life only by the rose colored light that streamed through the stained-glass windows. They attended every church service and the prayer sessions, sitting with lips sealed in a pew at the back.

Coober Titch, who wore flood pants and had a perspiration problem, was the organist—after Loralia Meegus had “given up the ghost.” He played the hymns an octave too high for even the choir to sing. Great is thy faithfulness . . . great is thy faithfulness.

There were many funerals in the church, sometimes open casket affairs, which stirred nightmares amongst the children (especially when Dowdy told them that coffins were like Mexican jumping beans, with the bodies always trying to get out). Often there were mining accidents—not big ones that made the national news, just quiet tragedies—and the women bathed the soot from the bodies of the dead miners out in the back of the kitchen.

Once one of their own died. An older boy named Everett, who had no hair and walked on metal crutches. A spastic girl named Amelia was sent grunting somewhere else—perhaps to the State Orphanage, which they were shown photographs of to make them feel blessed. But Casper made friends with a blind girl named Carina and taught her how to clap in time, singing, “I took Jesus as my savior, you take him too.” Music came easily to him.

It was in the church where they were all baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, for lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

From the beginning he was raised on the Bible, cod liver oil, the broom and the bucket. But he learned to sit up straight, to spell and to write, some basic arithmetic, to wipe himself, and to accept Jesus as his savior. As it turned out, his saviors proved to be an older couple with a dubious past and even more questionable motives. But he found a way out of the way house at least. As his adoptive father often told him later, “Any way is often the only way.”

Favorite Shows

It was from his friend Hogerty in an institution called Glendell, that he’d learned about people’s favorite shows. The other patients called Hogerty the Art Director. The first time they exchanged words was in line for their meds.

“Do you remember the commercial with the elephant being massaged with Spanish Extra Virgin olive oil?” Hogerty asked him.

“No,” Casper said. He could imagine a commercial like that, but he didn’t recall seeing one. “I’ve never watched much TV.”

“What about Chunky’s Loaded Pizza—‘fuel-injected with double cheese’?”

“Sorry,” Casper shrugged. “Are you—were you—are you in advertising?”

That’s one of the delicate issues in an institution. You’re never sure whether to refer to people’s lives outside as still going on.

Hogerty leaned in closer. “They blackballed me. That’s why I’m here. I found out the truth.”

People in institutions are always finding out the Truth—but this was somehow different.

“It was a very unusual advertising agency,” Hogerty continued. “The Wink Group. I discovered that the ads we were making weren’t what they appeared to be. They weren’t ads intended to create awareness or interest in products at all—they were—are—designed to destabilize thought patterns. Each pixel in each frame is in fact a complex mandala of images which disrupts neural firing and triggers momentary retrograde amnesia.”

Casper remembered whistling pheeewee out loud, not really understanding, but still impressed.

“The Wink Group isn’t run by . . . people,” Hogerty whispered. “They’re another species.”

“Another species?” Casper asked.

“Yes. They’ve been in hiding.”

“Where?”

“All around us,” Hogerty replied under his breath. “They perceive mass communications on a higher level. What appear to us to be individual commercials are really pixels in a giant 4-dimensional commercial. I found out that the achievement of their goal—the Big Commercial—will be the inception of the Media Creature. This new life form—a sentient Artificial Intellect—will become a Planetary Entity.”

Casper stepped back. He didn’t understand what the man was saying one bit, but it was beautiful. To him, it seemed beautiful.

“Ask yourself—whatever happened to famous brands like Tquish, ‘The tangy treat that’s always on the tip of your tongue.’ Or Sox detergent, ‘Gets clothes so clean you’ll never know you’ve worn them.’”

“I’ve—never heard of those products,” Casper said.

“You see?” Hogerty nodded. “That’s the ingenuity of what they’re doing. That’s what’s so insidious.”

Hogerty brought everything suddenly into focus for Casper. As his newfriend said, “Hard to get a new perspective in a small room. The trick is making the room bigger.”

All you had to do was find out what someone’s favorite show was to understand them. Once he’d cottoned on to that everything became clearer. He stopped getting into so many fights. People nodded. He realized everyone had a favorite show—not just the residents, but the staff and doctors too.

For years he’d look in telephone books, and then online when he learned how to use a computer, for any reference to the Wink Group. He never found a trace—but as Hogerty would say, that only showed how good they were. He had faith, and Casper understood that. The Wink Group had their business, faith had once been his.

The pork chops and cobbler that the cab driver Cameron Blanchard had served him had soothed his head and stabilized his nerves. Thank God the eccentric Rinder had happened by when he did. Things could’ve gotten ugly. Well—uglier than they already were.

But he hadn’t lived so long or come so far to be shot by a throw-down in the back seat of a late model car. He’d just gotten confused for a moment. All he could keep in frame was the John Wayne ad, which may have been the work of the Wink Group.

He concluded that the worst thing was not being able to remember the faces of those . . . he’d . . .

KILLED

Had he ever really killed anyone before?

He crossed another street and came upon an unemployment line.

There were people of all colors and variations—their faces fixed into masks. They were waiting in line, as a line, yet still striving to be individuals. Hoping—hoping—hoping—one after the other, just as they did in the jubilee lines of the revivals—quaking in surrender, awaiting the touch of Heavenly flame from the White Angel. Only these people looked as though they’d lost complete faith in everything. They all had that brother can you spare a dime look.

Casper wondered what would happen if he started preaching again, just a little there and then. Could he move this intractable throng? Could be part the sea of their resignation? Did he still have the power?

Everywhere he went there was fear and trembling amongst the money changers and the seller of doves—angry rabble rousing about recession, secession, government gridlock—people begging—soup kitchens overworked, boarded up homes . . . FOR SALE signs blooming wild right out of the pavement.

He cast back in his mind to what he knew of the Great Depression—images that had come down mostly from his library readings. He’d spent many of his happiest hours in libraries, ever since Berina Pinecoffin first took him to one. He could pour through old Aperture magazines and gaze at the photographs that Walker Evans took for the Farm Security Administration. Those bleak black and white portraits came back to him now. Then it occurred to him. What if the Great Depression had never really ended? People just thought it did. Father Coughlin had become Fox News. Babyface Nelson a Muslim terrorist. Billy Sunday had mutated into a Dr. Phil franchise. Hogerty would’ve been pleased. If Casper had said it aloud it would’ve been what his adoptive parents called “good patter.” And it’s the patter that matters.

All the Way Down

Casper’s adoptive parents were figures straight out of the Great Depression, proud to say they survived on “shit, grit and mother wit.” They were both in their late fifties when they first took charge of him, and how they finagled that he was never sure. Perhaps because it was another era and fewer questions were asked—and attitudes are different in the South. He was just a runt of the litter ward of the church, and they were both exceptionally believable and indeed professional liars.

Although he came to love them, he also came to hate them. They were more like animal trainers than family. But until he met Berina Pinecoffin, they were all the family he had.

His lost dog found father had used so many aliases over the years, Casper was never sure what his real name had been. Calhoun, Brixton, Sheridan—Benny, Lucas, Amos—the man and his masks blurred—and with those evolutions, his wife’s name underwent those same parallel changes.

If pressed, Casper would’ve said his guardian father’s real name was Mungo Appleton, and that he came from the little town of Dime Box, Texas. His wife was called Miss Rosalie, but when she was telling fortunes, she went by Zantia. When they started playing the church circuit together, she became Sister Rosalie. As to her maiden name and place of birth, Casper had no idea. He was taught to address them simply as Poppy and Rose.

Poppy was a pale, tallish, string bean of a man, with a feminine hump of tummy and arms that seemed to operate from the elbows, although he was dexterous in the wrists and fingers and could do many card tricks and sleight of hand “mystifications.” He had a thick head of hair the color of crusted bacon salt that crusts on bacon and teeth white as piano keys. “Always look after your teeth,” he told young Mathias. “Your teeth and your shoes. Even when people don’t think they notice ‘em, they do.”

Poppy had grown up on the road with various carnival troupes, and any reference to his personal ancestry was shrouded in calculated mystique (read flapdoodle). The one clear comment about a father that Casper could recall indicated that he’d been a 24 Hour Man for one of the regional circuses—the person responsible for traveling in advance, drumming up interest in the next town along the route.

Something unfortunate seemed to have happened to this familial link and there was never any allusion to a mother—so however it came to pass, Poppy was taken in by the carnival world and had been trained from an early age to be a “talker” in front of midways and sideshows throughout Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. His formal education had been negligible to nonexistent, but he’d gained some intense experience of life. He’d been a carpet clown (one who works the audience)—he’d run duck pond games—the Hanky Pank—the Fast & Loose. But he’d always excelled at “freezing the Tip”—hooking thecrowd. Some have the gift of the gab—Poppy liked to say he had the “gift of the grease.”

His speech remained peppered with carnival slang. Newcomers, novices, greenhorns and all those easily hoodwinked were “First of Mays.” Wannabe’s and those lacking backbone or “gristle” were “Forty Milers.” “John Robinson” was code for putting on a short show, either because of trouble or slow business. “Playing to the haircuts” was what you wanted to avoid most of all. That meant people were leaving and all you were seeing was the back of their heads. That meant dark nights camping out amongst pulpwood trucks blasted by hunters—canned tuna and a U-No bar to share.

A good haul on the other hand might mean breaded chump chops or chicken fried steak, okra and black-eyed peas, followed by a slab of coconut cream pie. And best of all—the possibility of watching television in a motel room. Casper remembered with astonishment watching The Beast with Five Fingers with Peter Lorre. Cartoons were better still. They impressed him more than the stained glass in the church back in Charleston. The only thing more remarkable to him was the sounds he so often heard.

Living in such close quarters, often sharing those cheap rooms, sleeping in their bus or camping in canebrakes or behind some Chesterfield Kings billboard, he was nightly exposed to the noises of his guardians’ lovemaking. As he grew older and gained experience of the world, he came to recognize that they had amuch more passionate life than most married couples their age.

But it was an awkward thing in the early days, and it left him with a lot of kid questions. The answers he got sounded like the explanations of electricity back in Charleston. Because Rose was well past menopause there were never any bloody rags in their wash—no sign of tampons. When they asked him where he thought babies came from and he replied “from God,” the answer stood uncorrected. In fact, they seemed quite pleased.

The only hint of anything shady about Poppy was his fondness for phrases such as becoming “unfinancial.” Other than that, the man was about the most likeable fellow you could meet. He had an untrained but lilting tenor and could do an excellent imitation of Will Rogers. He played the banjo. He was an adept mechanic and swift at all manner of minor repairs, often with improvised materials (he had the Rinder’s Knack as Joe would say). Yet despite these fluencies and a hearty constitution (he only drank milk and Dr. Pepper, never smoked or chewed, and always rose early to allow time for a slow, meditative shave with a well maintained straight razor), he never outgrew his thimblerigger upbringing.

Rose, meanwhile, was fair-skinned with dyed dark hair, petite and pleasantly wrinkled. She applied rouge with precision, but always appeared confident enough to present a natural weatheredness to the world. Her eyes however, were almost black and penetrating, and could give her an occasionally sinister Ida Lupino intensity. Wherever and however it was that she’d grown up, she’d learned the art of “dukkering” or gypsy fortune telling. (One notion put forward by a policeman they once ran afoul of was that she was actually Irish and had been part of a nomadic band of tinker con artists.)

There was something unaccountably cold about her though, especially in regards to any act of mothering. Despite the blatant sexual relationship with Poppy, she always kept her body well covered around young Mathias—and she insisted that he keep himself clothed in her presence. Whenever necessity forced his nudity upon her, she’d turn away, as if suddenly splashed with shame.

Neither Poppy nor Rose could keep their stories straight on how they’d met, but one way or another Rose had become a psychic. She did crystal ball gazing, read Tarot cards and the Ouija, or what she called the “talking board.” Casper gathered that they’d made a life in one town after another, running a mixture of scams and semi-legitimate quackery/fakery ploys—only moving on when they thought the well had run dry or the locals had wised up. (As it turned out, it would be their move from physically direct conning to the use of wider reaching media like the mail that would catch them out.)

They both knew patent medicines, and old bottles of Dismal Swamp Chill & Fever Tonic were still in evidence in their claptrap bus, which became little Mathias’ principal home, more or less.

Poppy had once sold Dr. Sanden’s Electric Belts, a so-called “male invigoration” aid, as well as a variation on Vin Mariani, a 19th century cocaine infused beverage that kept resurfacing. Impotence cures, reducing techniques, communication with the dead—whatever worked best in the moment. Casper would later find out that they’d been accused of a $50,000 uranium stock swindle and formally arrested for the Vitalitonium, a whimsical looking machine they claimed was capable of bringing an end to: rheumatism, arthritis, nervous indigestion, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, falling arches, bags under the eyes and sagging busts.

What they’d done with the money they derived from their bilkings and milkings remained a mystery. There was a family myth about a house in Daytona Beach. But if there was any truth in it, the details must’ve been well tangled in false names, because nothing of it ever came to light.

They maintained a small neat house in Joplin, Missouri as their base camp, and it was in Joplin that Casper, as little Mathias, would be befriended by Berina Pinecoffin and where he’d meet his first and one true girlfriend Summer Shield. It was also where he was exposed to the first and only continuous schooling he’d ever know. Most of the time, however, he lived on the road with Poppy and Rose.

From the moment he entered their lives, the focus was on the Bible, and together they studied it with religious intent—just not Christian intent. There was a new fervor of religious sentiment in small town America, at least in the South, and Poppy and Rose wanted to capitalize on it. He was given the stage name of Mathias True. Poppy became the Reverend True and Rose, Sister Rosalie. Initially they were just a Christian novelty act, performing at churches and Odd Fellows Halls, and whatever gospel festivals they could get into. But they had bigger plans. Mathias True would be the rock they’d found their church on.

Again and again they quizzed him on key Biblical passages. He had to know the Ten Commandments, the Twelve Tribes of Israel and the Twelve Apostles without thinking. He had to be able to recite the books of the Bible in order and to have all the Parables close to hand. Over franks and beans, they crammed on Christian doctrine—the Trinity and the Hypostatic Union, Salvation by Grace, the Resurrection and the Gospel. Sometimes with his mouth full he’d be forced to repeat, “Jesus is God in flesh, who died for our sins, rose from the dead, and freely gives the gift of eternal life to those who believe.” Burp. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

The Virgin Birth proved awkward (as it has for many), because if babies came from God—what was so special about Mary? And what was all the begetting about? Poppy responded with a rather complex “rattling off” of all sorts of animal associations: bulls and cows, roosters and hens—supporting his absurd lecture with gestures and hand signs that made the young Mathias wonder if the man wasn’t having a spell. When at last the words “penis” and “womb” were trotted out under the duress of further bafflement (of course no vaginas), the matter only became foggier. Because the boy had been exposed to Poppy’s wizardry with cards and gaming tricks, it prompted the question, “So, it’s like slipping the pea under another shell?”

In all the years he’d spend with them, this would be the single time he recalled hearing Rose really laugh. It began as a girlish sniggle, with an attempt to gulp it back down—and then returned in force, erupting into a full-bellied horselaugh that brought tears to her eyes.

Then—just as suddenly—her mood shifted when he asked, “Why don’t you have children?”

He’d actually asked this question before but not in such a cornering way. His cauterized upbringing, and the way they’d plucked him from charity wardship had always allowed answers along the lines of children being things you picked up on market day.

They were parked alongside the Missouri River, running high—but the atmosphere in their old bus went as desolate as the sand hills of Nebraska.

“We tried and tried,” Rose answered, while Poppy fumbled with the Bible. “I’m barren. We’ve read about that.”

It was, he’d come to realize, one of the simplest and truest things they ever told him. He saw that they desperately wanted children and a normal life, but they didn’t know how to find it—and like the fortune they were always chasing, they probably wouldn’t have known what to do with it if they did. They never once said, “We’ve got you now.”

Essentially, they’d taken him in because of his distinctive complexion and his early religious training. What manner of child shall this be? How they’d found him, they never said, but they’d been hunting for a while. They wanted an unusual looking boy—someone just peculiar enough to capture attention but not so odd as to put people off—and a child that could pass for their own late-in-life Godsend. He needed to be clever, capable of taking instructions—and he needed to be hungry and alone, so they could mold him.

He met every requirement. He was unusual looking—and they had him grow his hair long to accentuate his albino appearance. He could rail about Cain and Abel, King Solomon and David. Where was Elijah when the chariot of fire came? Under a juniper tree. And he could sing. He had natural flare for music and that very rare ability in a voice to tell a story in time with music—to in fact never be out of time.

Sister Rosalie put all her psychic skills to work and also made shrewd choices in the music played—classic hymns and Old Time spirituals that people could comfortably sing. They also had an ace up their sleeve. Poppy had picked up a very hard to find songbook of the Only Men in Baton Rouge, the lost breed of itinerant black Methodist singers who roamed the South in the years after the Civil War until the turn of the century. They were cross pollinators, who mingled primitive blues with Christian hymns, and little Mathias had been exposed to some of their compositions in Charleston. He could sing those as if he’d written them himself. He speaks to me when I call Him—He bathes my poor head down—and the river that lies before me—He promises I won’t drown.

They were heroes to him. Buried in history like the black cowboys and the buffalo soldiers, they were ministers of a uniquely American gospel, equal parts preachers, traveling musicians and by necessity—gunslingers. Now the family had a rare extended collection of their vagrant body of work, which no other group they knew of could claim.

With Rose’s mentalist skills and phenomenal musical ability—Poppy’s hucksterism and likeability—Casper would query down the years why they never went out to California or back to New York. They just didn’t seem the kind of people to do that. The Rockies were as far west as they could go, Virginia as far north on the east coast. They were children of the heartland and the South. Poppy could rhapsodize about the bright lights and bustle of Radio City Music Hall, but the idea of actually going to Manhattan and bathing in those lights and the swoon of traffic was unthinkable.

The man was a dyed in the wool yarn spinner and prevaricator, but with only one grave exception that Casper ever knew, he had a ruthless acuity when it came to cutting to the chase of someone else’s patter. When it came to the Bible, “This is a father-son story,” he said sharply. He took the view that the key to the Christian message is the anguish in the garden of Gethsemane—Peter’s denial, the betrayal of Judas, the Trial, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection—period. “This is good drama and something everyone can understand,” he said. “Who hasn’t been done over and who doesn’t want to be reprieved—to not die?” To him, all the “flipjack” of miracles, archangels, cherubim and the many mansions in the sky was smoke and lights. “Of course someone who can walk on water’s goin’ to get burned,” he’d say. “Show business is tough. I’ve known folks who could turn sticks into snakes and water into wine and they got crucified too, believethat. The strange deal here is that the guy doesn’t use his magic to get away—he lets himself be sacrificed. You can’t get past that. The father sets up the son, and the son wears it. It’s a blood debt for human rebellion, starting with Adam and Eve, and the son ends up being more the father than the father. That’s the hope for mankind—that the vicious jealous Father God will treat us more kindly because his Son has been down amongst us and knows the game from the inside. And the Son has leverage with the Old Man because it was him bleeding on that Cross.” (Poppy would’ve never accepted that this was a theological position, to him it was just getting the story straight.)

He personally enjoyed all the apocalyptic thunder and blood, and saw great theatrical power in it if you had a big budget—but when it came to the question of actual religious belief—almost everything else in the Bible—Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist even the Virgin Birth, was a lot of fluff that got in the way of the big tent. “Too many talkers before the main show.”

He particularly disliked Paul and found most of the New Testament outside the Gospels, even some of the fine passages from say 1 Corinthians, which he himself read beautifully, to be extraneous. “This whole deal comes down to just one emblem,” he’d state. “A bleeding man nailed to a cross. Folks can’t picture God the Father—or if they do, they end up seeing Moses sitting on a fancy throne. But they can see that Man on the Cross all right—and they can damn well imagine what it would be like to hang on one themselves. That’s the show in a nutshell. Never forget the show. It’s about bringing Galilee to Gatlinburg and Calvary to Corpus Christi.”

One of the things they’d do is pour over maps of the South and circle the towns with Biblical names and make sure they understood the significance of the names and would have something specific to say to the people there. “Always know where you’re going and remind people where they are. People who aren’t travelers are always forgetting where they live,” Poppy said. Casper would find that true all his life.

In a naïve and uneducated way, Poppy instinctively connected with what the average person can actually relate to in the Christian message—fear and hope. He certainly hit the nail on the head in what evangelicals want to believe. There’s no need for theology or interpretation. Why not then focus on the core story?

If Poppy had his way, he’d have boiled the Bible down to Genesis, the Gospels and Revelation—but he’d have emphasized the Gospels, and his assertion that “the star attraction doesn’t get enough time on stage” was one that Casper would often think about in later years. He’d come to wonder if the old carny didn’t have more religious yearning inside him than his short order-dog track lingo let on.

For Rose, the matter was even simpler. Music. She’d have never admitted her passion for it but it was transparent the moment she played. She had a fluidity and sensitivity unusual to find in anyone not famous—moving effortlessly between organ and piano—two very different instruments in their touch. And then she’d sing. Her voice was a thing to behear—one of those celestial sopranos that cracks you open and reforms you stronger in a single bar. For her age, it was a remarkable instrument. Why she hadn’t pursued this avenue more fully before remained as much a mystery as the woman herself.

A lover of fancy baroque speech, Poppy saw that what would work for them was the exact opposite approach. Theirs would be a carefully rehearsed innocence. “Just a struggling family redeemed in Christ.” He grasped how effective a few archaic words such as covenant, blasphemy and dominion could be if mingled into extremely plain talk. Planned mistakes could also be used to their advantage, to build identification—because he knew from long experience that most people are afraid of speaking in public. That’s why they come to hear others. All performances are a kind of faith healing ritual, he maintained. Just never forget the three to one.”

The three to one rule was a theory of his that Casper came to see made great sense. When you’re speaking to people, tell them three things they already know or you’re fairly sure they’ll agree with up front—then tell them something that may seem new and bold. When quoting Scripture, quote three well-known passages—and then slip in an obscure one they might not know. When asking rhetorical questions, pose three easy ones first—and then throw in something curly.

Well before they launched into faith healing and became serious in their evangelism for money, Poppy developed a format they’d never diverge from: Welcome, Wonder, Fear, Shame, Hope, Light and Glory. It was a disciplined pattern of presentation that proved highly effective across a wide range of audiences.

Poppy excelled at the curtain raising Welcome. Even when they were just principally singing and playing, they always began by confessing their failings. Poppy would pull out a deck of cards and do a nice trick, and then lament that the reason he knew how to do such a thing was his lust for gambling—which the grace of Jesus had helped him cure. Sister Rose (who Casper never once saw touch a drop of alcohol) would trot out an empty bottle—“My last,” she’d say with world-weary conviction, “Praise Jesus for showing me the light.”

As Poppy reasoned, people like to hear about other’s misfortunes and trespasses—and because gambling and alcohol problems are so widespread, they always struck a lot of individual chords while drawing the audience as a whole into identifying with them. “We’re just simple country folk like you. We’re just a struggling family who has been redeemed in Christ—rinsed in the blood of his anguish—saved by the mercy of his love. We want to share that great Good News.”

As Poppy pointed out, there was no way for anyone to argue with this. He and Rose always dressed very simply. They looked and sounded like simple people—and how could anyone question the confession of their faults? When it came to little Mathias, they pushed the edge harder.

At first the boy was dressed in a white linen suit like a miniature Colonel Sanders, and with his white hair grown long, he had a noticeably alien presence. He was introduced as the “miracle child” they didn’t think they could have so late in life. That explained him being an albino in many people’s minds. But Poppy went one step further still and cast him as a “damaged miracle”—because he’d been born a cripple. Out came an ingeniously doctored photograph of a boy who looked like he could’ve been Mathias True, wearing heavy caliper supports on both legs, standing with the aid of crude, insectile looking wooden crutches. The specter of polio was still very real in the South in those days, and that one photograph had a lot of resonance.

“God took those braces off my legs,” little Mathias would chime in. “Only God could do it—because I believed. I don’t believe because God allowed me to walk—I prayed and He answered me. I used to walk like this”—and he would do the well practiced stuttering cartoon shuttle step he’d been taught. “Now—I can do this—” and he’d then do a quick soft shoe and sing a bar of “God’s Been Good to Me”—while Sister Rose would immediately take up the more serious “Oh Glorious Redeemer.”

Instead of coming in with guns blazing, as most preachers of the day felt the need to do, they arrived in humility with the kinds of problems and shortcomings audiences in Licklog, Tennessee could understand all too well.

Poppy’s plan stressed this delicately crafted almost direct counter to any hint of show business finesse (which of course only a showman could conceive)—and once that groundwork was laid—then they’d run the Cut Back. That was the three to one moment when they really did surprise people. After lulling them into sympathy—making them think “these poor bumblers”—bam, they hit them right between the eyes with some show biz something they weren’t expecting. “What we need is theater folks can’t help but believe in—so that means they can’t see it as theater until it’s too late.”

Music was their great strength. They had the pathetic looking organ (which had the logistical advantage of being able to be wheeled around)—contrasted with Rose’s exceptional talent. There was Poppy’s folksy banjo (and he was good enough to occasionally sound like a beginner) balanced by his striking tenor. Then there was little Mathias’ voice, which under Rose’s tutelage became something like unto a weapon. (For slower, connective mood building music, Rose would improvise, often vocalizing along to the music as if under some spell. Her hummed version of “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” would haunt Casper’s dreams.) Finally, they had the special asset of the Only Men songbook to call upon.

Music was the glue that held them together. It gave them an advantage in getting dates and allowed them to appear alongside other evangelists initially without seeming to compete with them. But the most vital benefit of all was that it provided a means of integrating Mathias True gradually, of letting him get his “stage legs under him.”

Poppy knew just how charged and weird things could get in some of the environments they wanted to work. The white fever of hysteria—fainting and rolling—the moment when snakes would come out of the baskets in some of the backwoods places. The speaking in tongues.

They wanted young Mathias well grounded in the act and comfortable before the groping hands and wide-eyed sod kickers. “No one learns carnival in a day,” Poppy said. “But you’ve got carnival in you,” he told the boy.

They started off playing at planned revivals, providing wholesome Christian entertainment based on their music. Then Poppy got a hold of a mailing list of churches and started pitching. They worked their way onto the bill at minister’s conventions in Memphis and Atlanta. They’d come to have their own PA system and tent one day (hiring locals to help erect it, just like in the circus), but their beginnings were as basic as the image they sought to present.

The term they used for the network of small towns they targeted wasn’t the Amen Trail, but rather the Kerosene Circuit, from the days before electricity was uniform—and it carried with it a concealed empathy for those sentenced to the “widow’s weeds and wishbones.” Their feet were made of clay too—and there was a genuine ministry to their conniving, which Casper came to see is why it worked.

Poppy had posters printed up, which would be placed in beauty parlors, barbershop windows and grocery stores.

GOOD CHRISTIAN FAMILY MUSIC

They’d pass out flyers to kids walking to school in the mornings—and to teachers. And if that wasn’t enough, Poppy made a sandwich sign for little Mathias True to wear and wander the main street that said

HELP ME AND MY FAMILY HELP SAVE YOU.

“That kid’s a goldmine,” Casper once overheard Poppy say to Rose. “One look at him and you’re won over. Pure carnival.”

Little Mathias gave himself over to his new life—anything was better than the Lonely Room. If his schooling was irregular, he didn’t mind, because in schools he was abused for his appearance, while on the road he was seen as exceptional and interesting.

He soon got over all stage fright and became more integrated into their act. (Of course, he didn’t have much choice.) He quickly had at least fifty Biblical passages memorized, and his love of news made it easy for him to absorb intelligence sourced from the local papers that Poppy made a point of getting hold of before each meeting (remembering his father’s 24 Hour Man ritual).

The turning point came one night in northern Louisiana. Rose had just finished playing “Jesus Loves Me Because He Told Me So,” when Mathias True got what Poppy called “the Big Idea.” Casper would never be sure what inspired it—it seemed so simple later—but it would put them on the map.

When the last organ notes died out, he spontaneously sang the chorus a cappella and then leapt forward into the audience, straw underneath his feet. “Look at me!” he cried. “Jesus loves even me!” Then he shouted at the top of his lungs, “JESUS LOVES EVEN ME—A FREAK WHO COULDN’T WALK!”

Poppy and Rose were taken aback, but they knew good theater when it was in their face.

“I used to walk like this,” Mathias True whispered, shuffling as he usually did—and then he fell hard into a buxom woman’s arms. She had no choice but to stop his fall. Before she could recover, he bounced back and yelled, “But I fell—and was caught. I was raised up—and put back on my feet! Through the strength of my faith. You don’t believe in your own healing? Well, believe in mine!” He collapsed into a man’s arms, going completely limp. “God only gave me the power to walk again through faith. But I can’t do it alone. I need your help. I don’t ask you to believe in me . . . I beg you to believe for me. God’s healing grace is within me, but only you can make it live. Pass me around . . . like bread to share.”

Poppy and Rose were quietly thunderstruck by this impromptu, but they were fast on the mark on stage. “Bread to Share” is an Only Men hymn that’s really a twelve-bar blues number that makes for an infectious hand clapping counterpoint to a surging organ. Poppy’s rhythm was faultless. Rose let both hands loose—while Mathias True let himself be passed among the crowd.

When at last restored to the microphone, he knocked it over and called out, “We will all fall down together now—and be braced by our faith. Fall down to be raised up in His Name—so that you may know life everlasting in the light of His Holy Love!”

As cool a customer as Rose was, and as businesslike as Poppy could be, they knew the good thing when they heard it. This was the way forward—the next step up the ladder. Rose made a new special suit for the boy patterned after the American flag and he was rechristened as Reverend America, child-preaching sensation of the White Angel Fire & Faith Revival Mission. She star spangled a white top hat they found for him—a hat that he’d theatrically flourish and then set down on a stool, saying, “God loves America. Now America needs to show its love of God.”

Rose would play one stilted bar of “God Bless America” and then cut for the corn with ten fingers on fire doing one of the very few Only Men songs written by a woman—Sincere Egypt Harding, born with rickets into slavery on a plantation called Cade’s Island. Where were you when Jesus gave me—my life blood relief—now I’ll never know no sorrow nor no grief.

Poppy and Rose groomed the young star in his new role, rehearsing him for hours at the house in Joplin or in the back of their bus amidst the tooth ache trees and sparkleberry. He listened to tapes of Billy Sunday, Smith Wigglesworth, Billy Graham—and Herbert W. Armstrong’s The World of Tomorrow radio program. They took him to hear famous black preachers of the day like Marcus Garvey Clarke and Obadiah Wilson. His singing influences ranged from Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” to Sister Rosetta Tharpe—and they made him smoke Pall Malls to deepen his voice (which would provoke in him a lifelong hatred of the tobacco habit).

The Bread to Share gimmick worked every time and inspired Poppy’s ambitions. “I think we’re ready to try some healing, now—that’s where the real money is in this game.” Reverend America had “come into the carnival” faster and more fully than they’d hoped.

One night in Lubbock, he held a falsetto note . . . for what seemed like an eternity, Rose taking the organ down an octave to emphasize the height of the vocal. Then he bowed and said, “Let us all pray—let us pray—all the way down.” He got the entire gathering to kneel down with him. One solid minute of total silence. Not a single cough. “Not many can do that,” Poppy said. “I’ve seen many try.”

Normal

Suddenly it seemed so simple just to get on a bus to St. Louis. You can bury my body down by the highway side, so my evil old spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride.

His seatmate was a hipless peroxide blonde gone to dishwater and rat’s nest, of indeterminate age. Her name was Sharee and she had all about her the unmistakable aura of domestic violence and the correctional system. She said she came from Waterloo, Iowa and had done time for “hanging paper,” a quaint bit of slang for writing bad checks. Casper wanted more of those colorful sayings instead of watching her scratch her tattoos, all of which had a heavy metal darkness (with a sprinkling of redneck waitress).

She liked to talk, although she had a vocal tic suggestive of a switchblade striking taut newspaper, and she was eager to acquaint him with her “real problem.” She had it nailed down to her ex-husband, who’d killed himself when he discovered he had AIDS.

“For years I’d suspected,” she told Casper. “Shania’d get in the bath with him when he’d come home all muddy from the road crews—like dads and little girls do—normal families—but ‘cause I don’t know normal there’s difficulties.”

How true, Casper thought.

“Well, I went in one day and he had a position so one of her legs rubbed against his peter and he had wood. So, I called her out to have some juice and said to him, ‘It’ll have to go down now, won’t it?’ He was mad enough to piss blood.

“Then one night I seen him comin’ out of her room. Said she’d left her bedroom light on. I knew then that she’d had it on ‘cause she was scared of him. See, I’d taken to stayin’ up at night to watch him and tryin’ to sleep in the day, but sometimes I nodded out. I was on a lot of painkillers ‘cause he’d pushed me down the stairs at Mama’s place when he was drunk.

“Do you know he gave my Mama a poke when she was passed out one night? I swear to God—I hear this noise, thinkin’ he’s in the toilet bein’ sick? No way. He’s up in her room humpin’ her with her dress pulled up and she’s blacked out. I’m like what are you doin’? And he backhands me—pulls out and gives her one of those—abdominal snowmen. She woke up a bit then. You know what that son of a bitch said? Said she’d asked him up there. Said I was a cold fish and he could hide the sausage with her. She only passed out after he got on top. I tell you, when you don’t know normal—”

“Did he stop molesting your daughter?” Casper asked.

“Hell no! He told me I had two choices—either get out and just go away—or turn my back and let him have his fun with her—or start givin’ him service the way he wanted. You know—blow jobs and the back door.”

Casper didn’t think it wise to point out that that was actually three choices.

“So, I went to the priest,” she announced, taking a deep breath.

After all that was known about priests and child molesting, Casper wondered if that was such a good idea, but he had to admit that it seemed like a fair thing for a woman in her circumstances to do. Who else could she turn to? The police? She was trying to know normal.

“What did he say?” Casper inquired. As a former preacher, he had to say it was a tricky situation.

“That damn priest!” Sharee shouted, so loud that a couple of other people on the bus turned around. “He told me to go home and serve my husband! It was like, if he wants oral sex, suck him off. If he wants anal sex, let him. Better you do it than he goes to someone else. I said, ‘Father, I might take a dick in my mouth—I won’t let ‘em get me in the ass. That damn priest. I never asked him, but like how does he know he enjoys an asshole?”

Casper was confused. “The priest?” Maybe the story had taken a turn.

He was relieved when she cried, “No, hell no! My ex-faggot husband! But it was real nice he said—and I thought who else is he gettin’ it from? Is it Shania? Well, she wouldn’t fess. Then he told me it was Mama—she let him in the back door too. Jesus, so I’d have to be a whore in my own house to keep the man who was doin’ my mother off my daughter.”

“That’s tough,” Casper agreed. “What ended up happening to your daughter?”

“We went to the shelter and I told the police. Found out when he was doin’ her he put on women’s clothes. Had ‘em stashed in her closet. She hadn’t told me. Came out in the therapy. Counselor thought it made him feel less guilty if he was dressed up like a chick.”

Casper nodded. He’d heard that logic before. Such people always made him feel their lot had been sadder and harder than his. Didn’t matter either way. He knew all suffering had meaning. Any sorrow is sorrow enough.

The rest of Sharee’s story revolved around the suicide of her husband, who’d killed himself because in his further fall from grace and sanity, the street sex he’d had led to HIV and then he sickened with full blown AIDS. Sharee and Shania had moved from public house to little apartment as Sharee’s drug problems became shoplifting problems and then rubber check problems and jail time, then loss of custody—the child now being pregnant herself.

To Casper, it was like a passage of Scripture that could be recited from memory and it drove him to sneak his hand into the Medicine Bag.

SEX-STARVED FARMERS BUTCHER CELIBACY CULT

That captured the mood all right. The slips always held up a kind of mirror or made some comment.

How often had he heard stories like hers? Rancid fat, patchouli, insect spray, drain cleaner. Always third or fourth hand furniture from the Salvation Army or St. Vincent de Paul’s—dismal public housing units with dented front doors, tiny bedrooms with decals and stickers glued to the wall—Day Glo stars, unicorns, “Hang in There, Baby” cats—promissory notes, eviction notices, prescriptions, needles.

Alternatively, the storytellers might live in ramshackle trailers in peckerwood country. Or maybe it would be one of those cheap cigar lobbied hotels near the barber colleges and the blood bank, with too many flights of stairs up to the little firetrap rooms. Hardened toenails. Flakes of crusted snot. And the faces behind the desk—if there is a desk. Pimply young white men wearing wifebeaters to accentuate their BO . . . repellent Slavs in hound’s-tooth sports coats . . . porcine Ukrainians with beads of sweat on their upper lips—darting eyed Indians—sometimes a jabbering older black man in an Atlantic City short sleeve and a Stetson Whippet.

Those gatekeepers have about them the bloodlessness of the pawnbroker—the stone-eyed Korean storeowner, packing heat under the register. El Paso, Sunset Boulevard, Trenton, the Tenderloin in San Francisco.

Casper’s sympathies lay with the Sharees. Whether he’d found them in Topeka or Texarkana . . . they always seemed a little too real for their own good. Dignified in their wretchedness. Always searching for that Emerald City somewhere where they could pay their rent, pass the application test, get custody—land that job. Hoping for Hope. For a Rinder to come.

The lean, wasted blonde who wanted to know normal got off in St. Louis and Casper tipped his cap when she rose. It was evening and he’d gotten a glimpse of the river lights and the Gateway Arch. Indiana and the Oldsmobile seemed like another life—although Cameron Blanchard remained luminous and large. Like some new form Berina Pinecoffin had taken.

He got off to uncramp his legs, but declined going further than the Burger King, which was alive with black teenagers shoveling fries. He’d always liked St. Louis when he’d passed through in the old days with Poppy and Rose. Pork steaks, toasted raviolis and gooey buttercake. Once, they stopped at Ted Drewes Frozen Custard for a “concrete” after a Cardinals game. Now the city seemed to be more famous for carjackings than baseball and beer.

A TV flashed images of tornado warnings in Oklahoma—and a story about old folks homes going broke, the staff wheeling the decrepit out to the curb to see if anyone would take them in. It depressed him, and reminded him of his own situation. When you pay for everything in cash, you’re already on the edge. He’d turned to head back toward the boarding gate when a white man about his age with cold blue Richard Widmark eyes addressed him. He seemed to be carrying a very heavy suitcase.

“I was born in Pittsburgh,” the man said.

That explains a lot, Casper thought. But the expression on the man’s face wasn’t funny.

“My father was a machinist for the Allegheny Tool Company. We lived with a bunch of Poles and Czechs—always going off to raise hell in Germantown. The old man never touched a drop. He was a metal spinner—needed steady hands. No one knows how to do that anymore.”

Casper could hear the rising inflection of inner urgency in the man’s voice.

“He worked on this machine he’d rigged himself—a soft shaped steel plate and a drop hammer—shaping metal just by feel—varying the speed with a pedal at his feet. He could do anything with metal. Anything.”

“Clever man,” Casper said.

“Clever?” the man repeated, his voice cracking.

Casper was about to say that he had a bus to catch, but the man seemed so quietly distraught in a way he’d seen many times before. He reached into his Medicine Bag for some assistance. The slip he got a look at said . . .

PRIEST PLAYS STUD POKER WITH SATAN FOR DYING MAN’S SOUL

“What happened to your father?” he asked.

“Yesterday was his birthday,” the man replied, almost whimpering. “He’d have been 90. And he’d still be alive. But my business went bust and I couldn’t afford to keep him in the home. He had to go to a State institution. Do you know what those places are like?”

“I do,” said Casper.

“The way they treated him doesn’t bear speaking,” the man said through gritted teeth. “He died in the humiliation of his own waste in a bed no one bothered to change—and no one called me. If I hadn’t gone belly up, he’d still be alive. Now I’m so broke I’ve had to come here to live on my cousin’s charity. I used to be the logistics manager for a trucking company in Independence. There’s a joke! Independence. My wife and daughter died in a head-on seven years ago. The old man was all I had—and I let him down.”

Let not your heart be weary, for tomorrow will come for you, Casper thought. It was an Only Men hymn Reverend America had often sung. “You didn’t let him down. Sounds like you did all you could.”

“That’s not good enough in this country anymore!” the man almost shouted. “But thank you for listening to me. You have the questionable honor of being the last person I’m going to speak to.”

“What do you mean?” Casper asked, feeling that twinge.

“I can’t go to my cousin’s with just the shirt on my back—because there’s not much more but this suitcase. I filled it with bricks in Kansas and I’m headed for the river. I just needed to talk to one person before I go. I chose you. Thanks.”

“Wait a minute,” Casper said, his voice hardening as he grabbed for the suitcase—feeling that it was indeed unusually heavy. “So you’re going to kill yourself?”

“I can’t keep going,” the man gasped.

“Well,” Casper shrugged. “That’s just piss dick poor. You heaving yourself into the Mississippi with that bag of bricks is the disgrace to your father—not how he died. I knew an old man—and a woman too—who’d beat you over the head with that suitcase. God isn’t the author of confusion, and you can’t blame it all on what’s wrong with the country either. But here’s the deal. Before you try to take your miserable life, you owe me one thing.”

This seemed to set the man off balance. He wasn’t expecting this.

“You go on and throw your life away,” Casper continued, pulling out one of the last of his precious $50 bills. But before you do, you pay your debt. I want you to drag that dead weight of yours into a cab and go to Ted Drewes and have a frozen custard. They’re still open. Chippewa and South Grand. Any cab driver will know how to get there. It’s famous.”

The man’s face washed over with disbelief.

“I’m serious,” Casper rasped, “Ted Drewes. You go and have a concrete there on me or you won’t find any cool dark peace down in the river—you’ll find the fires of Hell. Maybe you did betray your father. But you betray a stranger on your last night and you’ll regret it more than you can know. Get along now. Go to die, if you have to—but go have that frozen custard first. You owe me.”

The man took the money with a look of raw incredulity on his face. Casper didn’t wait to see or hear more. The last thing he wanted to watch was that man lugging his suicide out into 15th Street.

Remarkably, he got a seat to himself on the bus on to Joplin, when the boy with the bleeding mole beside him got off at the first stop. That fifty bucks? He liked to think of it as an investment. Hopefully not of a Boone Burgers kind. He’d learned long ago as Reverend America that not everyone can be cured. But that didn’t mean you gave up. You always hold out for sunrise, blood though there may be.

Sins and Wonders

Damnation and salvation came as easy as music to the young Reverend. He could do the Valley of Dry Bones and he knew the Mighty Clouds of Joy. Speaking in tongues had to be worked up to, but it could be pushed along by Poppy faking a fit (stammering out the words to an Albanian drinking song). He got so he could testify to beat the band—and the flame took off. Lumber City, Georgia, Pickens, South Carolina—Paducah, Bean Valley, Hurricane River Cave. People took him for an ordained minister, so, he performed baptisms on the shores of Bull Shoals Lake and a full immersion wedding in Lake Pontchartrain—after Poppy had given him a crash course in how to swim.

Hard times were performing to sparse attendance due to inclement weather or some competitive event, like a tractor pull. It was always much easier to get hyped up before a crowd, and Casper would often think of that in years to come—how difficult it is to sway an individual, but how smooth it can be to work a whole audience.

A couple of well-timed lunges and raised arm pleas, his patter, and his singing—that was what people came for. “An evil generation seeks a sign!” he’d cry out—and then hold up a copy of a newspaper from the nearest big city. He learned how to both shout and whisper into a microphone—and where there was no PA system, his little voice, which wasn’t little at all, could be used to great effect to draw the people closer. That gave Rose and Poppy a better chance of targeting individuals ripe for healing, and a subtle system of eye contact and code words could alert Reverend America. Soon they had their own PA and could’ve had their own road crew if Poppy hadn’t been stingy and suspicious of outsiders.

They claimed they didn’t believe in what they were spouting—but each time they “soaked the wood ducks” they said a prayer. (Soaking became an important image for young Mathias, as one of the principal family activities beyond performing was doing laundry together in a steel drum—and while doing that, they always sang.)

Outside of their music together, there was little tenderness, which isn’t to say there wasn’t teamwork. No hugs and kisses—but there were pats on the back—and he was never struck. They didn’t celebrate his birthday—but they didn’t acknowledge their own either. Instead, they’d lash out with mashed potatoes and chicken fried steak when there was a “good haul.” And he was given occasional “boosters” when he’d performed especially well. Christmas and Easter became important, but only for professional reasons. The one hint at a traditional family occasion was Thanksgiving, which they commemorated by getting invited to another family’s dinner—Poppy and Rose were skillful at that. Once they were treated to a banquet of bush turkey and home cured country ham in red-eye gravy by a mountain family in Tennessee with fourteen children. People living in a split log and tarpaper house, with excelsior for insulation. Mathias True gave the blessing.

Together they’d end up traveling as far north as Southern Ohio, east to Newport News, south into the palmetto groves of Florida, and back into southern Colorado. They mainly worked the fundamentalist evangelical churches—Oneness, Wesleyan Holiness, Higher Life—the Assemblies of God. Baptists were good with the money and there were some charismatic pockets of Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists—even a few Catholics (rare, but monied).

They could draw a crowd with Seventh Day Adventists and some Brethren—but their biggest successes always came with the more extreme audiences like Church of God and the snake handlers of the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus’ Name. About the only religious group Poppy and Rose had any genuine scorn for was the Mormons. (“Never trust a Moron,” Poppy said, although, along with the Grand Ole Opry, they all enjoyed listening to broadcasts of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.) They did well in the Delta and the Smoky Mountains. Often the smaller and poorer the hamlet, the more money they made. Healing became what they were known for.

Now, you may be of the mind that faith healing is just an out and out con—but as Poppy would say, “That’s because you’re looking at the game from the wrong end of the table. Healing isn’t the con—faith is the con—and people fool themselves in that. We’re not fooling people. We’re freeing them to believe fully in what they already do—or what they say they believe in. Healing? Who doesn’t want to be healed? There’s always something wrong. Complaining is what people love to do the most. Gratitude is the shortest-lived sentiment there’ll ever be.”

In his view, “The trick is to make folks believe the real cause of their problem is a secret that they’re hiding from themselves—and that’s so often what the case really is if you think about it. All we do is convince them that they need to let that secret out. They need to demonstrate their own healing to prove the trueness of their faith. If they don’t, they show weakness before others—and short of death, that’s what everyone fears the most.”

Understood this way, you can see why faith healing works—or rather, how they so astutely made it work—from Alpine, Texas to Jacksonville. The healer identifies or creates doubt concerning the real infirmity. It’s not someone’s palsy or a torn retina that needs to be healed. The infection, the warts, the neuralgia—these are just symptoms of anemic faith. Once the afflicted person has been cast in this light, publicly, they naturally buck up. People who have been using disability as a means of gaining sympathy are suddenly caught out. People with genuine, serious maladies, who have garnered sympathy, are equally caught out. Instead of the spotlight being on the healer to work some miracle, the scrutiny turns upon the invalid to demonstrate the strength of their faith. It’s their weakness of belief that underlies their disability or illness. What’s more, their weakness means the healing energy in the room is diminished so that others may not find their cure.

Done skillfully, most people in the heightened atmosphere of a worship service, and especially in a larger camp meeting, never perceive this subtle shift in the dynamic.

Since most human ailments have some crucial psychological aspect to them (even the most obvious and dramatic physical injuries or conditions)—when primed with the right psychological message, the problem lessens—inner resources are galvanized. Should the relief wear off later (as it inevitably will), the sufferer now has a new suspicion about the reason why and is more inclined to keep quiet or exaggerate the earlier benefits they received. “Yeah, the knee’s gone crook a little bit, but it’s so much better than it was before. I can’t tell you how much less ache there is. Gettin’ a good night’s sleep again.”

In the heat of the moment though, they will testify to total blessed relief. “That’s why it’s called faith healing,” Poppy shrewdly pointed out. “We heal their faith—we don’t heal through faith.”

And of course, when the organ’s playing madly and people are wailing—babies crying—folding chairs tipping over—the smell of sawdust and salon perfume thick in the air, the local preachers liquored up (ministers prefer gin because it has less odor than whiskey)—men clutching at their wives, who are mewling and shaking with all the passion of their sexual frustration oozing out in front of everyone—and then an albino child in a coat of many colors yells and sings like a mutant angel—each testimony of Praise Jesus relief fuels the white fire of faith. So the club footed jig, the stooped straighten—and the white fire sweeps through the room setting every soul alight. Each witness makes the next more certain.

Once there was a woman in the Carolina woods with a huge spongy goiter. Reverend America felt fear and disgust even looking at it—and that was the hinge. He knew how he’d been looked at—he could see in her eyes how ashamed she was. He put his hand tenderly on the obscene growth and caressed it. Then he kissed the goiter and said, “Sister, you are perfect in God’s sight, hold your head up high.” The effect was as miraculous as if he’d made the great lump disappear. For a moment he had. Everyone saw that woman in a new way—and she saw herself anew.

In White Oak, Kentucky, a puffed up angry woman brought in a dribbling Downs syndrome boy of about fifteen and demanded, “Here! Can you cure him?” Her voice was pure challenge. One glance revealed she sought no relief. She had no faith. She wanted to cause a fuss—to be noticed. She was proud in her bitterness, crying like Job in his misery—and the boy, who was distressed at being dragged into view of everyone, showed signs of beginning a meltdown tantrum.

Reverend America took his Star Spangled hat and put it on the boy’s head—and held up his hands for Patty Cake. Yes—even that boy knew Patty Cake. A wounded smile of pure delight broke out across his face and the entire congregation murmured, feeling the warmth of it. Reverend America said, “Only God can heal—only God knows when to heal . . . and only God can know how the healing should be done. Sometimes, Sister, we can have our lives saved by his divine wisdom and not see the gift.”

Zing. If the woman had been hit with ten thousand volts of electricity, the result couldn’t have been more intense. All her pride, which had been rage and a sense of abandonment, turned upon itself and she fell to her knees in tears. She suddenly had shown herself to be a bad mother—spiteful, ungrateful—and then Reverend America knelt down and redeemed her. He held her trembling hand and wiped the tears from her eyes, and said, “Let’s pray together. Let’s all pray for the shining gift you’ve been given.” Rose came right in on the organ, singing “Thankful Am I,” and as the old saying goes, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Curiously, their approach worked especially well on what might seem to be the toughest audience of all—the hardened Doubters. “Doubters carry signs,” Poppy said. “You can spot ‘em immediately, and there aren’t many.” It was true. “Mostly, the folks who don’t believe don’t come. Almost everybody wants to be hornswoggled in some way—that’s what makes it real. But we like Doubters because they fall hard and make a big noise when they do.”

They were in fact easier to distinguish than a lawyer from a hog farmer—and they often raced into the trap set for them merely by holding up their hands and identifying themselves to all when called upon. “Who here doubts that miracles can be worked in this place in the name of Jesus?”

For those canny enough not to fall so quickly under the hostile gaze of the assembled, it didn’t matter—there was no escape. They weren’t aware of the sign they carried (very few of us are), but Reverend America was—and Poppy and Rose were always there to signal him in case he missed what they thought was the most appropriate victim.

Then out came old Jessie.

Jessie was a barbaric antique wheelchair Poppy had found in Martins Ferry, Ohio. Just looking at the spokes and wires made you feel paralyzed in some deep inner way. It was a great prop and it turned the Doubter’s challenge back against them. “Come sit in this chair for a moment.”

There for a showdown, to prove the shysters wrong, of course the chosen Doubter had no choice but to comply. And then, “they were cooked like a dinner,” Poppy would chuckle.

Reverend America would wheel them around, close in amongst the other people—all the resentful faces looking down now. There’s something about sitting in a wheelchair Poppy realized, that’s instantly debilitating. It’s not like any other kind of chair—and this wheelchair was downright fear-rendering. “Could it be that this is the way God sees us all?” Reverend America would ask. “Crippled in our faith—needing to be pushed? We’re not only a burden for the Lord our God, but to those with real pains to suffer, real trials to endure.”

A sudden jerk of Jessie and the increasingly uncomfortable “volunteer” would invariably plunge forward onto the floor. Snap. Before the Doubter could regain equilibrium of any kind, Reverend America would holler, “Rise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!” And of course, the Doubter would rise—but now having been turned into an example—a part of the show. People would actually cheer and Rose would instantly come in with one of the most boisterous songs, and before the Doubter had a chance to respond—whether an attempted joke or a scathing remark—the gathered would drown the unfortunate out. They’d seen a wheelchair bound person fall and rise. No one could change that. The Doubter would only find scorn in pursuing a case against the healers.

What to do with someone who actually arrived in a wheelchair—someone who maybe really couldn’t walk—someone missing a leg or an arm? Use your head. Any traumatic injury of that magnitude leaves psychic scars—focus on those. Someone confined to a wheelchair almost undoubtedly has other health issues if they’re an adult. If they’re young, they’ve been given a blessing you have to help them see. What about those who can’t see? Well, maybe they can and they’re the ones who are faking.

Once in Bonespur, Mississippi, Reverend America pulled the wool from everyone else’s eyes when he exposed a teenage girl pretending she’d lost her sight. He didn’t need any help from Poppy and Rose to spot her—he remembered Carina from the way house in Charleston—how she held her head, how she moved. He kept a wide range of trinkets in the many pockets of his red, white and blue suit—joy buzzers, feathers, a ping pong ball—little things that might come in handy. Without warning, he tossed the ping pong ball at her—she ducked. “Most people don’t rehearse enough,” Poppy said.

But whether the people were shams or genuinely suffering—psychosomatically affected or just wanting some attention—outside Abilene or Swannanoa—the process was always the same. After the bread of Reverend America’s body had been shared, Rose would crank the music up to a slow building frenzy, beginning with Only Man Josiah Darkwater’s archaic blues song “Not Dead Yet,” which steals the chorus from the old English hymn “Joy Forever,” but twists it into something you might overhear in a luncheonette in Marietta—while Reverend America would call upon his tobacco smoked voice to speak solemnly of the blood—showing everyone a Mason jar full of chicken blood, which he’d pour very slowly into a polished white alabaster bowl, always letting people in the front row or nearest to him get a good whiff of it—the smell of life and death.

Then he’d sing with a purely improvised, ecstatic passion over three octaves—of Christ’s suffering on the nails—while Rose would bring it in, and slowly raise, what may well be the first piece of transcribed instrumental music by a black American, a young house nigger known simply as Tall Jim, called “The Beauty of My Salvation.” Tall Jim was a freedman, not a slave, who reputedly could speak three African languages and had learned French and Spanish before mastering English. He was burned alive in front of a hundred white witnesses just below St. Louis in 1845 for the crime of teaching his employer’s daughter how to play their expensive 18th century harpsichord. He’d composed the piece late at night after the family was asleep and was never able to play it openly. But he was able to transcribe the music and it circulated secretly, eventually becoming an inspiration for the Only Men.

As Rose said so simply, “If this don’t raise hairs, we’re preaching to the dead.” She threw everything she had at that number and would always weep in the final movement, barely able to finish with the gentle onslaught of the last change—and then, pulling herself together, she’d drive the piece home in a fury of musical love. Only then, the littlest, whitest and last of the Only Men would sing the words . . . For though I be forsaken—I will never, ever yield—your faith will be rewarded—only faith can be your shield.

Then it was time for the healing to begin.

Call the sufferers to come forward and be exposed to the scrutiny of the assembled. To come forward means they’re already hyped up and in a suggestible state. Never allow them to declare their problem. You’ve got to cold read it or impose upon them the matter to be cured. A sharp take on hands, age, clothing and posture, says a lot. Facial defects, gestures. Maybe a little pepper to bring on a sneeze. “You could be contagious. Let’s pray for us all.”

In the midst of chanting and ranting—stirring music filled with strangers and rivers—a few people rolling in the sawdust or in the aisles, just because that’s what they came to do, it’s not that hard to make a handful of others forget for a moment they’ve lost a limb or have a heart defect. That’s why most of them have come—to forget for a moment. Maybe their sight won’t be restored—but they can be given a vision—And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it.

Six chosen healings was always the number. “Remember, we’re not doing this for our health,” Poppy would say. “Let ‘em come to the next show.”

Their bold close would always be with someone who had an obviously incurable disability. Cerebral Palsy, mental retardation—an amputee—whatever was the worst the audience could offer and could not under any circumstances be faked. Reverend America would put his hands right on the soft spot—raise up his voice to God and call for the healing miracle. And it always came—because of all that had come before. “Some miracles require more faith to see.”

Six precisely orchestrated theatrical moments with handpicked members of the audience—then bang. Reverend America would clap his hands and bow, and say—Almighty God, from whom no secrets are hid, we thank thee for thy healing grace. Cleanse now the thoughts of our innermost hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love thee and magnify thy Holy Name through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Rose would bring up the organ and the young albino minister would shout, “Now who here is ready to be saved—and be Born Again? Do you know how to say Hallelujah?”

“Hallelujah!”

“I can’t hear it!”

“Hallelujah!”

“I can’t hear it!”

“Hallelujah!”

“Jesus, can you hear it?”

“Hallelujah!”

Then the dizzying crush would form, as Reverend America would go forth into the audience, people falling over at the touch of the White Angel—grasping for the hem of his garment. He’d part the sea and cross the river of hands flailing—faces squished into tearful smiles of ecstasy and release—the human sweat smell—the organ reaching the pitch of mania—the word made flesh.

“I’ll tell you, that boy’s got courage,” Casper once heard Poppy say to Rose after a show. “There’s carnival—and then there’s courage. He’s a goddamn wonderworker he is. He could convert the Philippian jailer and Luther crawling up the Roman steps in one night.”

And the good young Reverend wasn’t averse to a little comedy at his own expense. One night in Yazoo City, he repaired an attending minister’s hearing aid and got a good round of applause for saying, “Thank you, Jesus for letting me solve some problems all on my own.” Poppy made him some macaroni and cheese after that one, and said, “Kid, damn it, if you can teach this stuff—God knows I’ve tried. Jolly Bob Rawls would’ve been wet proud of you tonight.”

No other mention was ever made of who Jolly Bob was—Casper assumed he’d been some kind of mentor to Poppy. But for the first time it occurred to him that he hadn’t been the first child/protégé they’d tried.

They kept up their musical standard, performing with the Honey-creepers in Bowling Green and opening for Mahalia Jackson at a moonlight concert in Jackson. As the money and expectations rose, they adopted new theatrical tricks. They employed flash powder for a bit of “startle.” A new track and field starter’s gun was good for making a point. A handkerchief soaked in ether was helpful when it came to forcing a plump matron to “faint for Jesus.” Poppy managed to secure a canister of nitrous oxide and the mood of everyone that evening lifted considerably. Reverend America always kept Wolf Mint in his left pocket, an herb that produces a cool tingling sensation when applied to the skin. In the right pocket, he had Reddy Steady, a preparation made of ground jalapeño chilies and salve for a bit of the burning touch of the Lord.

They introduced a chloroformed rabbit that would appear to wake at the Reverend’s call to the House of Heaven. One night though, near Valdosta, the creature escaped the bus and was mauled by a blue tick hound. They had much more success with a white mouse Poppy procured from a pet shop in Jonesboro. Dubbed Lazarus, the little fellow proved amazingly enduring—and was easily passed from hand to hand with great effect (even Rose couldn’t abide him being thrown in the river when he finally failed to revive—and so he was buried beneath a dogwood tree).

Along the way, Reverend America learned how to deal with occasional hecklers. The family response was always tight and sharp. Any sermonizing would stop cold. Rose would begin popping the organ in a syncopated beat. Poppy would hand clap—and Reverend America would search the crowd for the culprit, stretching out his right arm and pointing when he’d found the source. “Satan takes so many forms today,” he’d say. “Come down here brave Satan. Take the microphone from humble me so that we may all hear you clearly. So that we may recognize you for you who are—and what you will never be—SAVED. Or,” Reverend America glared around the room, pausing for effect, “can God save even Satan? Let’s see if we all have enough Heavenly Power here now to call the Devil out. Come down to me Satan for I stand with Jesus beside me. Come down—or I will cast you back to your dark fire.”

As he became more expert in manipulating a crowd, his sermonizing became more dramatic and extreme. He gave people the throne, the elders and the beasts—a war of angels and dragons. From little bib overall burgs like Bear Branch, Thousandsticks and Sipwater—spicing up the local church services, performing in high school gyms or revival tents in dusty fields and sunflower patches, around sawmills and spud farms—they moved onto bigger venues. They worked famous Holy Roller churches, seminaries, creepy tidewater hospitals, old folks homes—NASCAR tracks and minor league baseball parks.

MIRACLE BOY HEALING SERVICE

*Brain tumor – Woman given only days to live by doctors and paralyzed by operations is able to walk and doctors cannot find a trace of the tumor!

*Smashed Leg – Boy in car crash has pin in his leg which leaves it shorter than the other. While praying it suddenly grows!!!!!!!!

COME SEE THE BLIND HAVE THEIR SIGHT RESTORED

FIND YOUR FAITH

CASH DONATIONS TO THIS VITAL MINISTRY WELCOME

So it went, as they rattled through the Bible Belt, from the soybean fields of Iowa all the way south to Brownsville and over to Spartanburg—until some times it seemed to little Mathias that he really did have the healing touch—that he was Reverend America, Jesus meets Uncle Sam.

People, you’re going to see limbs grow back—legs grow back, eyes put back into sockets—it’s going to be a sign of the miracle working power of God. And nobody’s gonna be able to discount it!

Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? Do you want to be saved here, tonight?

I can’t hear you people—and if I can’t hear you, He won’t hear you. He wants you to cry out to him. He wants you to scream.

He died for your sins and that’s all the scream you can give? He died on the Cross so that you might live forever in Heavenly light if you but follow the path of his devotion. C’mon now, scream for the Lord of Hosts!

Scream for Jesus. Let him know you love him as he wants to show his love for you. He’s aching to accept you, if you accept him. Are you ready to be saved—to be healed—to be made whole in Jesus’ name?

C’mon down here then, whether you have to crawl. If you’re sick, lame, blind, or just lost in the wilderness, find your way down here to me. Because I’m not just Reverend America here on my own with my family. You are my family—and I’m here because Jesus is with me. Jesus loves this great country. He loves hardworking people like you who are weary and stumbling. He wants to save you—tonight and for all time. This is Redemption Night.

Who’s going to let me touch them and say, “Satan, I bind your evil power by the blood of the Lamb. Tonight we loosen the mighty power of the Holy Spirit in this place. I tell you—the rustling’s in the mulberry trees. Little Diddie Tagrow in Birmingham is walking tonight when she couldn’t before. Lorrimer Steele in Natchez isn’t going to die of cancer. He’s going to live forever in the divine peace of Christ’s great blessing.

Come on down now as my beautiful mother sings “Washed in the Blood.” Come down to me so that you may be raised up in glory to Him. Come home to Reverend America.

It was good patter as Poppy said, written one night in Arkadelphia rain—and of course it just got better with each performance, as little orphaned Mathias Gaspenny became ever more Mathias True.

Their profit margin expanded with the sale of Rejuvenation, a pseudo patent medicine they mixed up in the kitchen in Joplin (it was really just an aniseed flavored bit of alcohol mixed with aspirin and Spanish fly, which is derived from a green beetle).

Beyond Rejuvenation sales, money came from straight donations, those buckets passed around—and a special project to help Nana, an Indian girl born with a parasitic head. A confronting forensic photograph blown up to the size of bulletin board spurred on this latter initiative. It was in fact an old carnival gaff that Poppy had harvested and turned into a poster. This was great, but the kicker was always Rejuvenation. Poppy and Rose could never transcend their patent medicine beginnings. Leopards don’t change their spots.

This is also where their “lusty vitality” came into play. Rejuvenation was how an aging couple had given birth to Reverend America, a miracle child of God. For men who couldn’t get it up like they used to and women who were infertile—this was the answer. Poppy knew, in his old carny way that the real truths of life can’t be escaped from, even in a revival tent. They in fact become amplified there. What was all the rolling around and groaning, if not sex finding another outlet?

Although Casper would come to feel both used and deserted by Poppy and Rose, he had to admit that they taught him many things.

Poppy bought him a secondhand bicycle from a black man without teeth in Topine and later taught him how to ride it on a red clay road outside Intercourse, Alabama. “People are suspicious of a boy who can’t ride a bike,” he said.

Although he’d never have much facial hair, Casper appreciated Poppy carefully tutoring him in how to shave with a straight razor. It linked him to a forgotten past.

Even fig-leaf Rose gave him what she could—teaching him how to sing. “You don’t slur the notes—you release them. You have to learn how to sing as only you can.” He’d think of that many times in his life. Releasing the notes. Singing as only he could.

From them, he learned to appreciate cornbread and chitlins—burgoo and beer cheese. He learned to not hide his light under a bushel and how to read a map—and he spent enough time staring at one of America to hold it clear in his mind even when it had long since blown out a window into a rice field in Stuttgart, Arkansas.

He learned how to think on his feet and what the Prophet Isaiah meant by the strength in sitting still. He learned not to go looking for the left-handed monkey wrench—and he learned that just because you’re a trickster doesn’t mean you can’t be tricked too.

Put not your faith in princes—and never, ever trust anyone wearing a coonskin cap.

What are We Going to Do

Pulling into Joplin, Casper heard the alarm that rings when the past is near. What had he hoped to find?

The Greyhound had made the 280-mile run from St. Louis in better time than expected, but it was still early in the morning. The delay in Indianapolis had thrown off his scheduling. He’d thought of hiking out to sleep beside Berina’s grave in Ozark Memorial Park Cemetery. He’d spent many nights in graveyards over the years and found them quite peaceful. But more and more people had started getting the same idea and the “bone farms” had become truly scary places now. He also didn’t like the idea of Berina seeing him without a home and short on money again. The last time he’d been with her, when she was healthy, they’d gone on a picnic to Wildcat Glades and then to Route 66 Carousel Park.

“You know what?” she said. “I haven’t let myself eat fried chicken since I lived in Chicago. Today I want to eat fried chicken, and some rocky road ice cream.”

Plan B was an on-site trailer in the KOA Campground, but at this hour he was inclined to just crawl into some bushes in Landreth Park. The bus station is on West 2nd Street and that wouldn’t be too far to walk, with not many people around. Now actually arriving at his destination, he was at a loss for why he’d come.

He’d been a long time traveling after Joe’s passing. He’d tried to get work on a horse ranch outside Parker, Arizona—and then went looking for Hercules—but found the old brave had died in Phoenix years before. Not enough Medicine, and of course no health insurance. He’d never known the old man’s Indian name—just that he did exquisite sand paintings and said, “What you don’t make or find, you gotta be given.”

So, he started east, visiting places he’d wanted to see since he’d first heard of them. There was trouble one night in Boise, but he’d left the man breathing. He’d been pleased with Glacier National Park, and the Corn Palace in South Dakota. It reminded him of the pictures in the religious primers back in Charleston.

It had been in Minneapolis that he’d met up again with Betsy. She’d been more fun than Boston on St. Patrick’s Day in the old days, but she’d developed MS and walked with a cane now. He couldn’t get her to throw her cane away. Still, she served him a wiener schnitzel and let him have a hot bath. He’d become pretty adept at sneaking into campgrounds and trailer parks for showers when he wasn’t staying in them, but a slow hot bath was a deep luxury.

Rightly or wrongly, she gave him what turned out to be the twisted hope that he might have a son, living in Hartford, and so of course he went. It turned out to be a wild goose chase and the disappointment nearly sent him spinning back into the Lonely Room—as well as almost getting him busted. He only escaped because a chain link fence fell down at the right moment. If the boy she’d named Noel had been his son, he was two years dead and didn’t seem to be missed by many.

From there he’d gone down to New York, wanting to see Times Square again. When he’d worked on the Montrealer, he’d occasionally slip down to the city to play with the whores on Eighth Avenue. He liked coming into Penn Station. Once he’d walked all the way to Battery Park, but mostly he’d gone north for the girls and the lights. He’d treat himself to a Swiss cheese burger and a martini at the Howard Johnson’s in Times Square—or a huge pastrami sandwich from the Carnegie Deli around the corner. One of his work mates from the train, named Jerky had a place in East Harlem where he’d stay.

The Ho-Jo’s was gone—he found the Port Authority had been totally revamped and 42nd Street was another world. The peep shows had all been cleaned up. It seemed just a raucous hive of tourism now. He didn’t think something like that should be tampered with—Times Square belonged to the world. Which then struck him funny, because back in Reverend America days he’d often railed about the evils of the place—brass idols, false prophets and filthy dreamers of dreams—knowing nothing at all about it except in his imagination—Sodom and Gomorrah turned into ashes. Standing on the corner of 46th and Broadway watching the shimmering lights and giant faces, it seemed symbolic in a different way now.

That was where and when he’d met Utensil. “We’re all tools of the System,” his signboard read—“but some of us are appliances.”

Short, bald and dressed in a smelly powder blue polyester leisure suit he’d obviously scavenged from a dumpster—he was like so many that Casper remembered from the institutions—yet somehow filled with an unmistakable joy in being. He seemed too full of energy and life for any living room—he needed Times Square.

Amidst the sidewalk portrait painters and caricaturists, Utensil offered an “Emotional Consultancy” service that he claimed would help you “find your inner appliance.” Many of the rubbernecking tourists looked at him with a tinge of anxiety, but he was no ordinary panhandling loon, and he seemed to have won over even the beat cops, who nodded at him with respect, as if he were some celebrity.

His tagline to passersby was, “We must do lunch.” Casper found himself unable to resist and paid for an “Appliance Reading,” which indicated that he was a Cuisinart soft serve ice-cream maker. But perhaps the ragamuffin ambassador for the Midtown Gotham night had some other skills, because without any word from Casper, he left his signboard and dirty pillow and ushered the albino over to 7th Avenue—and during a break in the traffic, he urged him into standing on top of a manhole.

“This is it,” he said. “This is my power point. Right here. But, see—the thing about a power point is that you can’t stay on it.”

An armada of taxis was on their way south from the Park toward them. They were forced back to the curb.

“My tip to you, my friend, is to return to your power point.”

This had struck Casper as profound advice—or at least surprisingly sensible, given the open-air asylum of Times Square. He’d left Manhattan a few hours later under a flatiron sky and began the pilgrimage back to Joplin, the place that Reverend America had come back to whenever a faith and fire tour was finished.

But of course traveling and arriving are two very different things. Now old memories and images flooded his mind. The bandstand in Schifferdecker Park . . . the red boomerang sign for the Capri Motel. He pulled a slip from his Medicine Bag.

CHILLING PREDICTIONS FOUND IN ANCIENT SCROLLS

A KCS coal train clanged through town a few blocks away . . . the lament of the whistle, which at that distance was more like a horn, echoed off the storefront facades, sending him back. Grand Falls City Park . . . Range Line Road. Their neighbor, old Silas Cave, who played the musical saw.

Joplin was once a classic Main Street town. Faded ads for “Buggies” could be seen on the red brick buildings. Thomas Hart Benton has a famous mural in City Hall—maybe people still throw flowers from the Redings Mill Bridge for luck.

The community had grown up around lead mining camps, and then the discovery of zinc, which was called “jack.” There were wild lawless times in the days of the saloons, gambling halls and cathouses—but the mineral money funded imposing civic architecture and ornate Victorian mansions once—the streamlined modernist grandeur of the Union Depot. The railroad, and most importantly, Route 66, made Joplin a great American crossroads. Once.

It’s certainly a place of legends—like the Hornet Spook Light, just out of town—a mysterious ball of floating fire that appears on the dark country roads around midnight. Some link it to the double suicide of a pair of Quapaw Indian lovers—or an old miner who lost his family to an Indian raiding party and is forever searching for them with his lantern. A bolder tale relates to an Osage Indian chief who was decapitated and is still hunting for his head.

It was in Joplin that Bonnie and Clyde had once famously hidden out. They left behind their camera, which gave us the pictures that became so notorious. Casper had always liked these local myths.

Now he was back and wondering what to do with himself. He supposed he should’ve been hungry—but he wasn’t. Not for food.

Joplin has been renowned for eating since Route 66 days. Steak-burgers and shoestring fries, Fred & Reds for chili, or their famous concoction, Spaghetti Red. Truckers and sightseers made that greasy spoon known throughout the country—even the world. And in the good times, Poppy and Rose had taken him to Wilder’s Steak House downtown. He remembered the neon cocktail sign, down near the discount furniture store on South Main Street, where he’d first gotten drunk, back when he was going mad.

At the start, they’d lived in a modest house in tree-lined Vandalia Street (which was where Berina’s aunt’s house had been), north of downtown. Back in the shrubbery there were still pits and mineshafts, and a place called Rum Jungle, where he’d later smash goldenrod skeletons with Summer and she’d whisper in his ear like wind in green corn. “Oh, Matty.”

That area had long been cleaned up, but he’d read in a little library in Ohio about how the economy had created a whole new set of problems. A tent city had sprung up under the Seventh Street Viaduct, and when those homeless people were routed from there, they took refuge in the woods of the Frisco Trail, which dates back to the Cherokee Trail of Tears.

When the Reverend America money started to come in, the family had moved to a larger place on Moffat Avenue, closer to the historic Murphyburg district with its grand Victorian homes, which was where Berina had her boarding house. He didn’t have the heart to go by there. Too many ghosts—too many recollections of Summer’s voice, the way she’d turn her head because of her injured eye. In what place of darkness shall I seek the light?

The town was suspiciously quiet, except for the distant whine of the interstate and a few late night cars. The air smelled just as he remembered it—a mix of railroad iron, diner grill and highway asphalt, with a hint of grape drink spilled on pavement. The deep after midnight smell of sad America.

The air was warming, with the first hint of summer already moving like a shadow over the country to the south. He started walking, trying to connect with the past. Memories of going to the 66 Speed Bowl with Summer—the spit and detonation—a full moon dissolving like a pill into water—twisted scrap and mufflers farting like shotguns, boiling radiators and steaming tires—Cougar Martin laying it down on the backstretch, spraying dirt—men in overalls, pick-ups flashing their lights—the PA system missing every other word—foot-long hot dogs bloody with ketchup and slick bags of jam-filled doughnuts—John Deere caps, permed hair and painted nails . . .

He felt that creeping sense of lostness you do when you return to a place you know, and then realize that you only think you know it. He made it a block away before hobbling back to the depot to see the eastbound bus arrive and depart, a couple of shadows emerging. The waiting cars pulled away. Soon he was alone again.

So, he was startled when a female voice behind him asked, “Hey Mister, you want a blow job? Good price.”

When he whirled around, he was surprised to say the least by the figure behind this street level inquiry. As tall as he was, she was short, with flaming red hair, shoulder length, and the kind of freckles on her nose you might’ve seen once on a corner newsboy. At one very quick glance, he’d have said she was just a child. Despite her diminutive height, however, a second look couldn’t fail to take in her grown up figure—of the kind that requires a serious over the shoulder boulder holster. Under a fake Wal-Mart leather jacket that smelled of Poison, that was all she was wearing—pink frilled, like hastily made cupcake icing—with a little black skirt and ripped black nylons.

Along with the spike heeled shoes she’d given up on, and a wrinkled purse, she was carrying an attempt at a suitcase, but it might’ve been better used to carry bottles out to the recycling bin. Her gothic eye makeup was smudged and it was obvious from the streaks on her cheeks that she’d been crying. A closer inspection indicated she was carrying more baggage than in her hands.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Sheet,” she spat, through a mouth full of gum. “Get a new line.”

“What?” Casper balked. He could smell that it was Black Jack gum.

“Never mind. I just thought you might want some—and you don’t look like y’all know how to get it no other way.”

She made a move to get past him, but he reached out for her (as it would turn out, in more ways than one).

“Are you a prostitute?” he asked, unable to help himself.

“Mister, I can be whatever your greasy ass wants me to be. Your daughter, your girlfriend. If you want me to be twelve, I’m twelve. If the cops come, I’m eighteen. Most of ‘em have done me anyways. Don’t worry about that shit.”

Her accent confused him. It was a mix of black and cracker. She said “greazy” like many Missourians . . . but he heard Texas too. Not quite Southern, but not Midwestern either. A crossroads voice in a crossroads town . . . nearer to dawn than midnight.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said, setting down his knapsack.

“Mister, I sucked enough cock to know that wuddn’t your question. You was askin’ about my age and a whole lotta shit that ain’t your biz. OK? You’re lookin’ down on me and not just ‘cause I’m short.”

“I’m not looking down on you,” Casper insisted, looking down at her.

“All I can tell you is I wuddn’t born yesterday,” the molten redhead replied.

“I believe you,” Casper answered. “But it looks like someone else is going to be born soon.”

“That what you’re worried about? Gentleman? Well, jes take it easy in the saddle, son. Me and mine will be cool.”

“You need money,” Casper said, wondering if the girl could be fifteen, which would make her about the age his own mother had been when he’d arrived. Mink Shoals. Joplin. People always arriving.

“Sheet. Man, you’re a genius. Like who doesn’t? I jes offer to give you head—and you work it out like that—I need money. You call me a whore and you’re surprised about money. Do you want your dick sucked or not? We can talk about the big show once that gets rollin’. This is the Show Me state, case you haven’t heard.”

“You’re trying to leave town,” Casper said. “You need bus fare and you’re broke. I know the bus you’re waiting for. It’s westbound and it won’t come for a couple of hours now.”

“How you know I wanna go west?”

“West or maybe south,” Casper answered. “West is south on this line. The eastbound just came through. And you don’t look like someone headed east.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re running away and most of the time people don’t run east.”

“Motherfuckin’ genius. You want that head job? Or are you some head case?”

“Some would say that,” Casper answered. “I’ve been institutionalized on more than one occasion, and you shouldn’t be out in front of a bus depot talking to someone like me at your age and in your condition at this time of night.”

The girl was taken aback by this but resumed her attitude.

“Don’t you worry about me, kiddo. You think I’m scared a-you ‘cause you’re old and geeky and—and—so white? I don’t scare easy, Mister.”

“That’s always a problem,” Casper observed.

He was about to ask where the girl wanted to go and how much money she had—when a car came to a jolting halt right in front of them. The suddenness of it amidst the night quiet threw them both onto the alert.

The car was a bland fleet rental type of worn white Buick LeSabre, about as unthreatening and as un-anything as a car could be. But out of it leapt an unexpected figure that the girl seemed to have been expecting. He was a paunchy black dude in his mid-twenties, decked out in ropes of gold plate, a fake eel-skin jacket, and an attempt at diamond stud earrings that were likely made of glass. Casper’s instant reaction was pity.

“What the fuck you doin’, bitch?” the intervener snarled, striding around the front of the Buick and onto the curb.

Casper moved instinctively to cut the triangle between the new arrival and the girl. Beyond the corndog and beer potbelly, the guy was but five feet six and had a look in his eyes of the rabbit waiting to hear the .22.

“I’m leavin’ yer ass and this stupid town,” came the girl’s reply.

Casper tried to remember which movie that was from. Everything she said seemed to come from some movie he couldn’t quite remember. It was kind of refreshing.

“I’m Rick James, bitch. You don’t go leavin’ me!”

Casper chuckled. He knew that line.

“Whatchyou say, motherfucker? I am Rick James!”

“Shut up, Rickie,” the girl called. “That’s his real name, man,” she said to Casper.

This broke it open for him. It was late, he was tired, he’d come a long way back to a place he wasn’t sure why was so important anymore, the girl had tossed him for a loop—now the image of this wannabe pimp-hustler . . .

“Your name is actually Rick James? And you’re . . . driving . . . that?”

“Shut up, man. It’s a rental. My ride’s in the shop. Brothers took some shots at me.”

“Bullshit, Rickie,” the girl sneered. “You hit a fucking streetlight drunk. Leave me alone, you loser!”

“Is this your pimp—or your boyfriend?” Casper asked, regaining control.

“You owe me money and you ain’t gettin’ no more pussy,” the girl said, which seemed to answer both questions.

“Don’t get up in my grill, bitch! Get your ass in that car.”

“No way!” the girl huffed and made a move to defend herself with one of her spiked heels.

How many times had Casper seen something like this in and around a bus station? There would’ve been an element of true comedy about it—except the girl was so young—and pregnant—and had been crying.

“Why don’t you just get back in your car and drive away before somebody sees you,” Casper suggested. “You don’t want to lose your reputation.”

“Shut the fuck up, Prince Charming. What are you anyway, some kinda vampire?”

“He duddn’t have a reputation to lose,” the girl fired. “And don’t believe everything you hear about black dicks neither.”

“I’m an albino,” Casper replied—and to him the words seemed to echo in the streets like the KCS train—but the other two took no notice.

“Bitch! You left me with a dead white dude to deal with. Don’t make me deal with another one!”

Casper’s ears pricked up at this. That was always the thing about these confrontations—they escalated.

“Who’s dead?” he said to the girl.

“Damn orthodontist. Heart attack. Tole him I should be on top.”

Lord have mercy, Casper thought. Why was an orthodontist doing the nasty with a pregnant teenage hooker? Sadly, the question answered itself.

“He’s dead—he died?”

“Damn straight—and I had to handle it,” Rick James shot back.

There was something about this character that struck Casper as almost endearing. Maybe his hopelessness. But pimps were one of the few kinds of people he really did hate. That they may do evil with both hands earnestly. The girl was way too young. Only a predator would be her pimp, however ridiculous.

“You owe me!” Rick James insisted and lurched forward to grab the girl.

Casper stepped between. “Don’t do that,” he cautioned. “The cops’ll be cruising by soon—and you’ll just have more trouble.”

“Fuck you!” Rick James growled.

Despite his spindly frame, Casper had the advantage of reach, and despite his age, quickness. He flashed out his long right arm open-handed and bopped the pimp in the forehead while the other’s swing was still in the air. He’d intended merely to stop the man in his tracks, to suggest the ill advised nature of further aggression, but he was upset about the plight of the girl—and the anecdote about the orthodontist had infuriated him. He struck with more force than he’d reckoned. The pimp’s neck twisted, his left knee buckled—and down he went, smacking his head on the curb. And the wicked shall be silent in darkness.

All the traffic nearby seemed to have lulled. A trace of blood appeared, leaking down into the gutter. The pimp’s inflated body was stone still. Casper looked around to see if anyone else had seen the hit.

“Sheet! Mister, where you learn to do that?” were the first words out of the girl’s mouth. Casper didn’t think that question should be answered just then. Her next remark he felt was more to the point.

“He’s fuckin’ dead!”

Casper reached down to check the body, but he’d known the moment he heard the skull crack on the curb that there was trouble. He hadn’t expected the guy to topple like that. Cows in the cornfield, what’ll I do?

“Damn trick knee,” the girl exclaimed. “He was always bucklin’. But he can’t be dead!”

Oh, but he could be, and he was, Casper thought—and he would’ve loved to think there was some extenuating explanation beyond the sheer force of his strike, but that didn’t change the result. Accidental homicide . . . self defense . . . no matter how you looked at it. Casper stared down at the body in disbelief. After years of peaceful living, he’d killed three people in less than twenty-four hours.

And the foulest part of it was that he’d killed three black guys. He didn’t have any prejudice. He’d never participated in any racial antagonism even in the darkest days of jail—when it would’ve been strategic to do so. He’d seen firsthand how things got done in Tishomingo and Harlan Counties—St. Landry Parish. He’d spent more than one night in Vidor, Texas. It sickened him. And there was something about an albino killing a black that made it all seem worse. What would Monroe and Jerky have thought? What would Berina Pinecoffin have said? A return to his power point and here he’d just taken another life. His head spun and the girl just stood there like a figure of speech, eyes glazed with tears.

They were very blue, he saw—as blue as her hair was red. The light of the body is in the eye. They reminded him of swimming pools seen from the air . . . he’d only been in an airplane a couple of times in his life . . . flying over Albuquerque once. He had to get a grip . . . the street began to blur . . . any second someone would come by . . . they’d been lucky so far . . . the girl was talking to him . . . “What are we gonna do?”

Casper groped down into his Medicine Bag. The thought had crossed his mind that what he’d believed was the merciful and right thing to do with Joe had somehow placed a curse on him.

SERIAL KILLER’S BRAIN DISSECTED TO LEARN THE SECRETS OF EVIL

He’d never liked that strip. It was like the Queen of Spades.

From Bend in the Road to End of the Road

With Poppy and Rose, he’d stayed in gaudy railroad hotels, Route 66 motor courts and endless campgrounds full of grizzled rodeo men and seasonal farm workers. They’d visited Bible camps and religious schools . . . county fairs and some big city gospel festivals. There were also quite a few country radio appearances—some of the stations seeming to operate on but a tin can and bailing wire.

Without trying to attract publicity outside the insular world of the true believers, their fame grew. Or rather, Reverend America’s fame grew. The months went by and he kept outgrowing his red, white and blue suits. He was always needing new shoes.

There were many triumphs—like one thick night in the Blue Ridge Mountains when he’d told the congregation, “Dry souls are kindling for Satan! Only God can make it rain,”—and the clouds suddenly opened up. The collection pails overflowed. Just as they did the night in the piney woods of East Texas when a shoosh owl flew in through an open church window in answer to his call for a sign. They never achieved Reverend America’s dream of returning to the church in Charleston, but with brazen confidence, they appeared at a muscular dystrophy fundraiser in Knoxville—and he did once shake the hand of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Perhaps his personal finest moment though was actually after a service in Pulaski, Tennessee, the town where the Ku Klux Klan was originally formed. They’d been forced to put on their meeting in the poultry pavilion of the local agricultural show because the Primitive Baptist Church where they were scheduled had been struck by lightning (which not surprisingly provoked some local comment). Even after the storm had passed, it remained fiercely humid and the atmosphere was tense inside the big steel shed that was filled with cages piled on top of each other in long rows under naked bulbs—the bars of the cages laced with red, blue and beige ribbons—and in each cage, a prize rooster or hen.

Reverend America had put on one of his finest shows that night, and the buckets had brimmed—but he’d taken off his Stars ‘n’ Stripes tie in the furor and was sent back to get it. The pavilion was dark by the time the loss had been discovered and he feared facing the birds in their grilled boxes. Rose was adamant that he go. He didn’t even know if he could find the tie, but like a good performer, he remembered where the light switch was. He expected to hear the sounds of the birds scratching in their cages . . . but when he neared the still open sliding door, he heard a very different sound.

A girl’s voice—in fear and struggle—rising to a scream—then smothered.

Casper had only a vague understanding of sex still at this point, but what he did know meant that it shouldn’t be sparked with fear. He called upon his big show Reverend America voice and exclaimed, “Let there be light!” Then he hit the heavy switch and filled the caged air with tungsten harsh brilliance.

He recognized both the fatback-and-suspenders man and the young sassafras blonde from the meeting. She’d been Born Again that night. A fury rose up inside him.

Startled by the light, the man, who was well into his fifties with a pastry flat tire around his belly, leapt off the girl and in doing so must’ve put his back out, for he fell to the hay strewn floor with a sharp cry and couldn’t seem to right himself or pull up his pants. The girl’s eyes filled with shock and gratitude, but she didn’t hesitate in tugging up her panties and trying to restore her dress. Still wearing his red, white and blue suit, Casper gestured toward the door and off she ran without a word, barefoot.

Seeing the pig-like man wallowing in the hay in pain made Casper even angrier. He felt filled with the Spirit of the Lord and stepped forward. The man tried to get up to grab him, but only injured himself more in the effort. Reverend America seized his opportunity—and one of the empty cages. The sharp edge slit a deep gash in the man’s cheek and drove him flat onto the floor. He continuously tried to rise, squeezing fistfuls of hay . . . but Reverend America kept hitting him with the cage. At last the flabby man went still and gave out a gurgling, exhausted breath.

Other than scrapping in the back yard in Charleston, it was the first violence Casper could recall—and he felt the vindication of divine retribution. He dragged the pants and drawers off over the man’s shoes and threw them near the door. Then he went to one of the hen’s cages . . . a Third Place finisher. He removed the safety pin backed beige ribbon and pierced the man’s flabby right butt cheek with it. The man howled and shuddered at this—but another strike from the cage brought him quiet again. Casper picked up the man’s underwear and trousers and turned off the light, stuffing the clothes in one of the oil drum garbagecans on the way back to the bus. “I couldn’t find my tie,” he told Poppy and Rose. “I think someone must’ve taken it as a souvenir.”

Of course, given the show business nature of their enterprise there’d been some disasters too. Old speakers that exploded, tents that collapsed. There’d been a flood in North Carolina and a pulp mill fire in Georgia—once a man with a gun Reverend America had to talk down.

But as he aged, things began to shift. Their reputation preceded them. Some of the bigger time evangelists became jealous. (Blessed are you when your enemies persecute you.) There were inquiries into the chemistry of Rejuvenation, and this old staple that had worked so well began to be replaced by the sale of Reverend America merchandise. The odd regional newspaper headline brought in warm bodies, but it created notoriety that also drew more attention from the authorities, most importantly the IRS. State troopers started taking longer passing glances at the brand new bus they were able to buy. Poppy claimed he directed some of their income into a Padre Island development. When the bottom fell out, Casper would wonder about the truth of this claim. But they did buy a nicer house in Joplin.

The categorical change came when he entered puberty. They’d about fished out the smaller holes and were in need of breaking through to the major leagues. Poppy had had surgery on his eyes and Rose had had an emergency hysterectomy. They needed a new ruse, and for the first time, they didn’t have one.

Things reached a head one night in Cuba, a little town on the border of Mississippi and Alabama. Poppy caught Reverend America with his pants down. Casper couldn’t remember how he’d come to be experimenting that way. Maybe he’d been doing it for a while but just not so blatantly. In any case, that night marked a change in the family’s direction.

When back home in Joplin, Rose returned to fortune telling and psychic readings. When on the road, they started working larger towns. Talladega, Macon, Charlotte, Raleigh. Casper spent hours signing photographs of himself taken at one highly successful meeting in Tuscaloosa. Poppy had Reverend Americastamped on erasers and gave them to schoolchildren. There were buttons and school bags printed up—postcards offered to churches and Bible schools—and of course signed Bibles. Poppy had ideas about a piggy bank and a series of religious comic books—he spoke to record producers in Nashville and Muscle Shoals. It was clear to young Mathias True that he wasn’t young enough anymore. The sand was running down on their faith healing days, and his guardians were intent on cashing in where they could.

It was in this welter of anxiety and change that the first signs of disturbance in Casper’s mind manifested. He’d had nightmares as a child, and the memories of the Lonely Room continued to hound him. When he’d first started preaching, some of the burning bush and sword of the Lord imagery had caused some distress. But it wasn’t until just after he was caught masturbating that the real visions began.

It was at this same time that Poppy crossed paths with the man in the coonskin cap. His name was Cab Hooly, and he talked a good game. He said he came from Richmond, Virginia, but his “corporate headquarters” was in Louisville. What he really had was a second story office in an old red brick building, a shoebox full of papers, two telephones and a big-breasted blonde to appear as his secretary.

On the surface, you’d have to say he had an interesting idea, and like all true con artists, he could wax lyrical about it (it’s just that all he had was an idea). Times were changing (aren’t they always?). America was getting out on the road—and the American family was experiencing an unprecedented prosperity. People wanted new things. They wanted food faster and easier, especially when traveling. Most importantly, they wanted food fun. Suddenly, everything had to be fun. This was 1963. A rush of fortunes had been made in roadside dining. Cab Hooly thought his timing was perfect. He saw two major directions in American culture at the time. One road led to the future—to astronauts and spaceships—anything that suggested the big bright beautiful tomorrow more and more Americans were beginning to believe they were owed. The other road led back to the past—to history, tradition, certainty.

The geographic focus of his ambitions was the South. He saw that the futuristic themes worked well on the East and West Coasts and in some locales like Chicago. But they wouldn’t play in Dixie. He needed something that could be owned by the South but still belong to all of America. His answer was Daniel Boone—and the idea of Boone Burgers was born.

Hooly had been many things in his checkered life, including an accountant who’d once gone to prison for embezzlement. He’d sold cars and had brokered junk bonds. He was a lot like the self-invented and much disguised Poppy, which is maybe why the old carnival trouper didn’t spot the resemblance.

Hooly’s dream was to amass a fortune in real estate across regional towns in the South. He figured if he could launch one successful restaurant, he could sell the franchise idea and use that revenue stream to fund more property purchases. He’d end up being a landlord many times over, with the franchisees taking all the risk to run the businesses and paying him for the privilege. All he needed was one start-up place to work as the model and the suckers would fall all over themselves to sign on.

Of course he’d conned himself into believing that they wouldn’t be suckers, they’d be realizing a one-of-a-kind American opportunity. The problem was he had no intention of investing any of his own money, and had no idea how to run a restaurant, let alone a chain of them. Small matter for a beguiling big talker.

Hooly went to see a Reverend America faith healing show when they came to town and came to the conclusion that Poppy and Rose would be perfect business partners. They appeared to be flying high financially and that money had to be invested somewhere. Boone Burgers was the solution. So, he invited the family back to Louisville and laid it on. He rented office furniture, bought the blonde a new dress, put the family up at a hotel, and pitched like Poppy on the midway.

He’d secured a lease on a property in a good location (which he claimed he owned outright). All he needed was the seed money to build the first restaurant. They could get in on the ground floor. He showed them sketches of what he wanted the frontier themed restaurants to look like and explained why cute waitresses in coonskin caps would be popular—he even wore one himself. He showed them pictures of a vacant lot he had his eye on in Pigeon Forge. He had suggested menus drafted up. What they’d be offering would be wholesome American food like corn on the cob, grits, dumplings, chain link pork sausages—Southern food for Southern people, with the novelty element of a lost style of cuisine for Northerners.

What he was particularly proud of was the Squirreler—hot juicy patties of fresh squirrel meat. “The taste of old time America.”

The squirrel patties won Poppy over. Who else was serving squirrel patties? Poppy had a fondness for squirrel himself and couldn’t believe others wouldn’t too. After all, you had to have a gimmick if you want to stand out.

Rose was skeptical about Hooly, but Poppy took the bait. This was their chance to secure a long-term investment that would free them from the road. Contracts were drawn up, papers were signed, and the family began pouring money into the first Boone Burgers restaurant in Louisville and the shell of the franchise, along with what they thought was the purchase of the land in Pigeon Forge. Poppy began thinking of himself as an American entrepreneur lighting out into the frontier of finance and success.

Hooly meanwhile had been playing this same game with several others in other towns. While he may have had some dim hope of pulling off the empire, he was fleecer enough to sock away the money that came in, with just enough left over to keep up appearances of some kind of progress. All his investors believed they were the sole partners, with the first and best options regarding new restaurants.

But nothing really got done. Money flowed in but no restaurant was built. There were always complications. Planning permits. New regulations. For Hooly, it was starting to look a lot easier to take what he could and then head down to South America. The moment he’d started actually trying to launch a legitimate business with any sincere vigor, he discovered all that was involved. Nevertheless, ground was broken at the Louisville site and building contracts were produced. Of course, more money was asked for.

Reverend America preached and laid on hands like never before—and all that cash went straight into Hooly’s coffers, while he stalled the builders for payment and showed the family ever brighter ads that would never run, beautifully flow charted business models and customer service credos.

Oh, he had big dreams, including a booth at the 1964 World’s Fair, where Reverend America would put on a coonskin cap and plug squirrel patties with the faith healing conviction that had brought him regional renown. This would be different though. They’d be alongside the Disneytronic Abe Lincoln, Scott Paper’s Enchanted Forest, The Wonderful World of Chemistry—riding the Carousel of Progress, while pointing the way back to America’s proud frontier heritage. Hooly even boasted about being able to get the Yankees and the Rockettes to come and eat Squirrelers.

Every night Rose and Poppy would argue. Poppy was blind and fell deeper into the trap. Hooly became his own victim too—to the point where it would’ve been impossible to know how sincere his ambitions had ever been, and how much of a scam he’d planned from the start. The notion that con artists start off with a clear strategy doesn’t hold up. Self-delusion affects everyone.

And delusions were what young Mathias True was starting to have a lot more of. He was starting to believe he wasn’t just a minister of God—he was the Voice of God. And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, neither crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

The lure had always been there from the start. In some ways, if he hadn’t fallen pray to it, the power of his performances wouldn’t have grown. But now, coming into sexual maturity, the conviction sharpened, and with it came the first sustained audio and visual hallucinations.

Sometimes he’d see auras . . . soft blue haloes or swollen red masses of gelatin. Other times he saw chancre sores and glutinous diseased shapes, like bleeding cheeses. He heard choirs of angels . . . the hideous cries of people burning to death forever. Always these visions provoked more fervor in him. He’d moved well beyond needing prompts from Poppy and Rose. Speaking in tongues came naturally now. He shook as if possessed. It gave Poppy and Rose the willies.

They were on a swing through southern Texas when Reverend America’s behavior crossed the line. He preached an enflamed sermon to the death row inmates at Huntsville Prison—and then two nights later in front of a full gospel choir in Crystal City, the no longer little Mathias True openly took on the mantle of a Messiah. He went into a kind of spell and appeared unrecognizable. Poppy saw the signs of impending doom. This was so far beyond their novelty act beginnings, the old carny didn’t know what to make of it. He saw the possibilities all right. Here was a chance at the big time for real. But when it came down to it, he didn’t think they had what it takes to start a new religious sect.

He also, wisely or not, believed this bizarre new phase had been brought on by puberty. For that, he felt he had a solution, and to be fair to him, it was one that he’d been treated to when he’d been that age. Many would not approve of his thinking, certainly not the audiences they’d been working—but Poppy came from old sideshow ways and he believed in certain rites of passage.

He took the volatile Reverend America across the border to Nuevo Laredo, into Boy’s Town, a Zone de Tolerencia—a walled compound southwest of International Bridge 1. Dusty streets, white adobe alleys lit up with broken neon and cheap Chinese lanterns, always at least one lane choked with goats, pigs and burro carts, old American cars, drunken soldiers and factory workers . . . Mexican men openly carrying revolvers on their belts. This was where you’d hear chattering cab drivers hustling the fabled Donkey Shows, a few of which did take place, although mostly it was just a way to lure soused marks to a place where they could be robbed. (Perhaps in an Oldsmobile.)

If Poppy hadn’t been so besotted with Boone Burgers dreams, he might’ve considered that taking a young boy in a vulnerable mental state out of the charged religious world he was used to and plunging him into the promiscuity of border town Mexico, with its colored lights, frying tortillas, and girls with dark eyes—might not have been the best plan. But he thought it was a treat and a ritual journey that would stir the boy out of the cloud of unknowing that had enshrouded him . . . and so over the border they went.

Neither Casper nor Poppy would ever be sure what happened that night. It was in a cinderblock bunker with rows of cement-floored rooms that stank of stale perfume, with a plumpish girl of maybe 15, who was called Dolores, but who looked like a full blooded Indian—in a cubicle with a lurid velvet painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the wall.

Poppy was out on a patio drinking a lemon Coke and swatting flies, listening to a fistfight between some gringos on the other side of a chinked mud brick wall.

In losing his virginity, some black vision took hold of Reverend America. For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.

It would be a very long time before he’d perform again with a woman. The girl wasn’t outright strangled that hot cantina night—but it was close enough to cause a commotion that wasn’t easy for them to get out of. Even in the shadowland of whorehouse Mexico, some things aren’t tolerated. Only an old carnival man who was quick on his feet could’ve pulled off their exit. It left them both shaken, with Poppy ever more certain that the young faith healer was losing his grip, just when the game was getting serious.

And therein lay the real problem, for Poppy still thought of Reverend America as a game, but for Mathias True it had become the truth.

They headed back to Louisville en route to Joplin and Casper’s fall from grace would soon be complete. Cab Hooly, wanting to reassure his patrons about the launch of the restaurant had scheduled a press conference on site. He was hopeful of playing both sets of tricks—building local interest in case he could deliver the restaurant opening—and grifting his patrons out of one more substantial injection of funds, in case he needed to bolt.

The blonde was pregnant, he was behind on his leases—the cost of processing even a small batch of squirrel patties (and then paying off the health inspectors to allow what he’d just discovered wasn’t legal meat to sell) had left him with the first acidic gnawings of a peptic ulcer and a yearning for a quiet beach in Brazil.

Nevertheless, he went ahead with what he thought was a good angle. Get Reverend America in to do a blessing of the site and serve up some advance promotion. It was a way to get a regional celebrity in front of the brand for free, and it would reassure the family the whole deal was legit. It could even spur the enterprise forward into reality, and wouldn’t that have been a nice surprise? A successful event and he could ease the short-term debt pressure and maybe get to the next level with all his investors. Just keep everyone from meeting each other, but make them all feel special. Grease a few palms down at the newspaper and the local TV stations. It was the albino kid who’d provide the entertainment—and like Poppy, that’s what he thought the kid was doing. Show business.

He had no idea of what had happened down in Nuevo Laredo, and Poppy wasn’t saying anything—not even to Rose. With so much already invested—and still the hopes of a big pay-off—Poppy had no choice but to go ahead. Distraught though he’d been that night in the brothel, Casper seemed to recover once back in Louisville. Reverend America appeared in control when the people started to gather on site at the barely begun Boone Burgers restaurant, a couple of pert young things strutting about in coonskin caps, and even one of the town’s TV stations on hand. It wasn’t a bad turnout for such a half-assed affair. Cab Hooly was a good promoter at least.

Imagine his surprise when the young evangelist announced to camera that the fires of Hell awaited them all, but that he could save them, because he could bring back the dead. He was a faith healer no more. He could cure death itself. He then ate a squirrel patty and retched. It wasn’t the media scenario Hooly had envisaged.

Before anything could be done, the albino minister insisted they all march down to the nearest cemetery, where he could demonstrate his powers by commanding the graves to open and the corpses to revive. “I will bring forth a congregation of the Dead Come Back to Life—who will live forever in me!”

In one sense, it was a fine moment in local broadcasting, but the association of squirrel patties and cadavers was regrettable.

THREAT OF ZOMBIES IN LOUISVILLE

This wasn’t the headline Hooly had hoped for. The more wound up the crowd grew, the more emphatic Reverend America became, until squirrel patties started being thrown and the whole charade devolved into an old-fashioned food fight, which then collapsed into the anarchy of a parking lot brawl. Cab Hooly saw what was happening and slipped away while the debacle was still in progress. The next morning, there wasn’t a sign of him left on the continent of North America.

10

Little Red

Somewhere Casper thought he heard the strains of “I’m a Hoochie Koochie Man,” and in the distance he picked out the shutterbug lights of a cab. There were some drunken voices down the street. He had to think. The little redhead kept blabbering. He felt that same rush of adrenalin he’d known before a Reverend America meeting, the fear of something unforeseen—then that Only Men moment of winning them over—of taking them into the trance.

“Quick,” he said. “We’re going to load him in the trunk. We’re going to wipe down the curb with his coat. And we’re going to drive somewhere where there’s no one around where we can work this through. Now shut up and help me . . . move! People are coming.”

Remarkably, the girl did as he said without fuss. The keys were pulled from the dead pimp’s pocket, the trunk opened, the body loaded, the curb wiped down as best he could—and they got in. Then paralysis. He remembered Poppy and Rose had owned a Studebaker Commander Starliner. What happened to all those great American cars? The girl started crying again and he snapped out of it. They had to go.

It had been a while since he’d driven a car, let alone owned one. Joe’s truck was the last wheel he’d been behind. But if Jesus could descend from the Mount of Olives on an ass, he could drive a Buick LeSabre. He regained composure and got them on the move. The question was where—and when would the girl stop crying? He hadn’t expected her to come with him.

“Look,” he said, trying to keep his mind on the streets, eyes peeled for police. “I’m sorry. I just meant to keep him from hurting me—and you.”

“I ain’t cryin’ ‘bout him. He’s an asshole. Hurt me plenty.”

“Is it about the orthodontist?” Casper asked, trying to remember his way around.

“He was a fuckin’ prick!” the girl shrieked. “Always made me sing to it.”

Sing to it? Casper wondered. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know more about that—and he had to stay focused. They had to get rid of the body and then decide what to do. It occurred to him he couldn’t drop the girl off on her own. She’d just witnessed him commit some kind of homicide. She was in fact the only witness, as far as he knew. But more than that, he was concerned about her, which is why he’d stepped in to protect her. His first thought was that she could’ve been his daughter. His second thought triggered lost questions about his mother. It was amazing how everything could change. Here he’d come back to his power point to find some kind of sign—then bam—he’d gotten more of a sign than he bargained for. He’d gotten an accomplice, and he hadn’t had one of those in a long time. “So, what are you crying about?” he tried, cruising past what he thought might be an unmarked cop car.

“Don’t you be an ugly pitbull too!” she wailed. “I’m—I’m cryin’ ‘bout everything. All right? Can’t a girl just cry?”

The way she said that almost made Casper run a red light.

He started thinking about driving into the countryside where he knew there were several hog farms. At this time of late night/early morning, they might be able to get close enough to drop the body in one of the pens. But there could still be some evidence left over . . . and even a pimp deserved better than that. Plus, he didn’t think the girl would have the stomach for it. He wasn’t sure he did either.

Then he had a dim notion about one of the old lead or zinc pits. There were some pretty deep shafts around. The problem was most of the good ones were protected now for safety reasons. The other ones he remembered posed access problems. He’d have to lug the body a fair distance, risking being seen. There might well be homeless people camped in those areas. Besides, the police were on to this sort of thing. Once the body started to smell, there’d be an investigation. No doubt someone like Rick James would be easily identified unless the body were defaced, which was too sickening a thought to consider. That could link back to the girl. With the Oldsmobile incident, he’d been all right to just walk away. The police weren’t going to care or wonder about victims like those two—and Indianapolis was a much bigger city. If he’d just been on his own now, he might’ve found a dumpster and driven the car to the next town and bought another bus ticket.

But he wasn’t on his own. Something had clicked. It was like the first time he’d met Berina. Like Summer come back. Rick James deserved what he got if he’d been hurting her. He was glad he’d protected her. Who knows what the pimp would’ve done if he hadn’t been there?

He found he knew his way around all right and had been shaken out of his weariness. There had to be a solution to the body problem, and when they crossed the train lines as the red signal lights began to blink, he realized what it was.

A slow freight was inching into town—Joplin’s a train town if there ever was one. This was a much bigger one than the KCS coal run before, and he knew from the past that it would have to come to a stop in passing through the train yard, but the length of cars meant that much of the rolling stock would lie, for a few moments, unprotected on a siding. The area was famous with hoboes since old Rum Jungle days. All they needed to find was a boxcar they could open. Bulls and the guard dogs could only keep an eye on so much train.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” he explained. He wasn’t sure he was going to get through the girl’s bawling, but his clear flat voice seemed to steady her. He thought it best that she stay in the car. He could drive in close enough for him to handle the body, once he’d found an open car. He was surprised when she asked. “You gonna strip him? Rickie was a shithole, but I’d feel better doin’ it.”

Casper didn’t know what to say to this, but no wasn’t the answer. The girl had some decency as well as pragmatism. He pulled over in the shadows of some willow trees that seemed to think summer had already arrived, even though it was only Easter. The branches gave them cover while he popped the trunk and let the girl do as she’d asked.

She was a while though and he was beginning to worry, when she appeared back at her door with a tied up bundle (which made him wonder if she’d done this kind of thing before). “I got all his bling and shit—wallet . . . everything. What do you want me to do with it?”

“Leave it in the trunk,” Casper said. “We’ll get rid of it later somewhere else.”

“Mister, just so you know, he had $200 on him and I’m keeping it. He owed me way times that, and I’m damn near broke.”

“Keep it,” Casper told her. It struck him as an honorable thing for her to tell him, but he bet it was more like $400. He was wise to harlot wiles. “Put the stuff in and close the trunk.”

The pulling twin diesel was grinding down, the piggies bucking to a halt behind. He figured he had about fifteen minutes at the outside.

He needed all of that. Dogs yelped in the distance. Guard dogs? A police siren sounded and then went silent. All the refrigerator cars were locked. A flatcar wouldn’t do. He finally found a rail-worn Burlington Northern he could get into. It was filled with plastic wrapped pallets of sheetrock—no doubt made in a foreign country. The last one he’d ridden in had been a Great Northern. Made him wonder how far this car had traveled, where it would end up.

Once he had his target picked out he shambled back to the car for the body. He was getting too old for this kind of caper. Opening the trunk, he noticed the girl had left the pimp’s underwear on, which seemed respectful. He didn’t think it right to get her to help him carry the body. The weight was blubbery and reminded him of all the farm work he wasn’t fit enough to do anymore. But there was no choice. If he had a heart attack, it was just meant to be.

That didn’t happen though. He couldn’t falter or stumble. He still had the girl to look out for, and neither one of them was out of the woods by a long shot. It was the most exhausting physical thing he’d done since digging Joe’s grave, and sweat broke out all over him. Scene upon scene poured through his mind as he picked his way down the dark line amongst the vertebrae of the train. Boxcar doors aren’t low to the ground. It was all he could do to get Rickie up inside—the head clunking—the legs seeming to kick back. Rigor hadn’t set in yet of course, so the whole mass was just spongy yet anvil leaden weight. But he got the body in—and in some attempt at respect, he nestled the white Y-front underwear clad corpse in amongst the packed shipment, as if for warmth. He felt bad for the ones who’d discover this extra freight in whatever city finally. Still, it was better than the hogs or an old mineshaft. And there was something right about going on a journey—he thought it would suit his own end, whenever that came. This train is bound for glory.

Perhaps just not for Rick James. But as the girl had said, he was an asshole. Casper straggled down and closed the door, and tiptoed back to the car. She was still there and had stopped crying.

He eased the Buick around the corner and onto the highway, heading west, thinking of how he’d sent General Douglas MacArthur on such a happier adventure. He pulled off at an exit five miles down and parked in the darkness away from a floodlit lot of farm machinery. The events of the last hour had almost cured him of all his homesickness and memories. He had new problems to face, and maybe that’s the best remedy for confusion. He stripped out the carpet from the trunk, with the pimp’s clothes and jewelry wrapped up in it, and stuffed it in a concrete drainage conduit. Then they drove in silence two more exits down. He made it past a strip of closed fast food places and pulled over in a light industrial zone. Beyond them lay the farm fields, the rising smell of summer on the way. Inside the car, it was just them.

“So,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“They call me Little Red. But my name’s Angelike. Angel-Leek-ay.”

“Is that your real name?” Casper asked—and then wondered what right he had to ask about real names.

“Listen, Mister. You may think I’m trash—but I’m from a good family once.”

This was no Sharee. He wanted to hear more. But he knew enough to let her tell her story in her own time.

“You wanna know why I’m workin’ the streets—and hooked up with Rickie?”

“I’m more interested in why I hear a bit of Texas mixed in with Missouri in your accent.”

“That’s ‘cause I’m from Texas, genius. Dallas. My father was a dendrologist. I bet you don’t know what that is.”

“How about $200?” Casper asked. “It’s a scientist who studies trees.”

The girl laughed. “Sheet. Maybe you are a genius. I wuddn’t a-thought.”

“Why? Because of how I look?”

“No, Mister. Not many people know is all. Guess you’re not many people.”

“So, what happened?”

“You want my full life story?” she jibed, smacking her Black Jack gum.

“How much of a life story can you have at your age?” Casper retorted, although he was instantly sorry. “How old are you really?”

“I’ll be sixteen next birthday . . . comin’ up soon.”

He was pleased that she answered that question. He waited.

“Daddy got a job at the university in Maine. Plain Maine. Nothin’ but pine trees and fuckheads with guns. My mother was already a drunk and that pushed her over. Two bottles of vodka a day. She liked younger guys. One day he caught her ridin’ one—shot’em both and then himself with the new rifle he’d bought. Out on my ass.”

“How old were you then?”

“Ten . . . goin’ on twenny. I was already into mama’s booze and pills. There wuddn’t nothin’ else to do up in the woods. Shit borin’ for real.”

“What happened then?” Casper asked, and wished he could wipe the smudges from her face. She was quite pretty when she didn’t pout or frown.

“I went to live with my auntie down in Austin. That was all-ight—a lot better than those fuckin’ woods. She was good to me—but she’s a crazy pot smokin’ gal and had troubles of her own. I got wilder and started sniffin’ Tulio with this guy called Swivel. You know Tulio?”

“It’s an industrial corrosive solvent,” Casper answered.

“Goddamn genius,” Little Red smirked. “Swivel was my first. Bad boy, but good to me. Then we got into trouble stealin’—got put in this dee-tention center for juveniles. That was a major bummer, but I met Bobby P, one of the overseers. I thought he was a good dude. He got me outta there—brought me here to Joplin to live with his mother in foster care—he was from here. Said he was gonna adopt me—but that’s not what he had in mind when he came back to visit. I was on the streets soon as he got heavy—and that’s when I met Rickie. He took me in and looked after me nice at first. And then the real shit started for real.”

It was as Casper suspected, a variation on the theme of his own life, but as always, the question is . . . What Now?

She had a particular slant on that. “You wanna fuck me?”

“No, I don’t,” Casper said, just shy of being appalled. “You’re young enough to be my daughter—you could be my granddaughter.”

“Can’tchya do it? I could help.”

There was a hint of plea in her voice that unsettled him.

“That’s not the point, don’t you see? That would make me no better than Rickie and the orthodontist.”

“Well, what about for free . . . ’cause . . . ’cause I need some . . . lovin’ . . . ”

Then she broke down.

When she reached across the seat to hug him, it was all he could do not to cry himself. He could’ve been a serial killer—and in fact he sort of was. But she wasn’t afraid. She was just in need of a Rinder, as he so often had been.

He let her sob it out all over his work shirt, the eye makeup, the labored breathing—the bump. He felt her young, big boobs smushed up against his chest—and for a moment there was nothing more he wanted—even with the bump. Then it hit him. He saw again the monster that had emerged that night down in Mexico. It at last peeked out and showed itself—in his own eyes in the rearview mirror.

It wasn’t a monster at all. No bejeweled woman drunken with the blood of saints sitting upon a scarlet beast with seven heads and ten horns. It was the sorrow of his own lost mother—a girl he’d never known. Just a girl. Never having seen her . . . having only been inside her . . . all she’d been was blame and abandonment . . . filtered through stained glass. Then Rose’s disaffection and distance. He’d been overwhelmed by a river of emotion . . . hate, hope, loneliness, longing, guilt, revenge, love. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. It was so simple—but he’d never seen it before clear and sharp. It had been too simple and huge to see. All those Mary Magdalene nights . . . he’d been searching for a phantom mother. This girl Angelike brought it all out into the open . . . on a late Missouri night . . . after an accidental murder.

“Why can’t I get some lovin’ when I need it?” she whispered, and in the distance he heard the hoot of the train that was taking Rick James west.

“Shh,” he said, holding her. “It’s going to be all right.”

She pulled back. “Yeah? How? I need help I can’t get.”

“I’ll help,” he said. And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins. “What can I do?”

“I wanna goddamn fuck! It’s all I’m good for—and . . . I don’t know what to do! Rickie—he was a dickwad—but he was gonna help . . . with the baby.”

“You were trying to get away,” Casper pointed out. “He wasn’t going to help you. He made you put out to other men and didn’t pay you. He gave you that bruise on your neck.” Their abominations were according as they loved.

She grabbed at her jacket to cover the blue finger mark. “That’s why I wanna go to Austin! I know my auntie will help. She’s a black sheep too.”

“How do you mean?”

“My daddy’s sistur—Hermione. She ‘as a hippie before they ‘as famous. Ran off when she ‘as in high skool—ended up down in Mexico. Met this matador who smuggled drugs. Married him on the beach. He got gored—and then got busted. She came back to the Atchafalya swamp—in Loo-eeze-ee-anna. Shacked up with this Cajun. Caught nootrias. Like big rats. They skin ‘em and sell the fur.”

Casper had once eaten a nutria. Cab Hooly talked about serving them.

“Cajun died doin’ stunts for some two-bit movie these coked-up wops from LA made. Left her a deed. One day an oil company gave her a whole lotta money. She moved back to Texas and bought a big white house. Still owns some bayou, though.”

“When’s the last time you saw her?” Casper asked.

“When I’as living with her—before I got busted. She couldn’t get me back ‘cause of the matador’s drug record.”

“She’s still alive? You want to call her? Tell her you’re coming?”

“She don’t have a phone.”

“She go broke?” Casper asked. This was starting to sound fuzzy.

“I tole you—she’s rich. Lives in a big ole house like the Governor’s Mansion. She just don’t believe in phones and technology and shit.”

“I see,” Casper said. “So, you were going to take the Greyhound to Austin? Only you don’t have any money.”

“Thas why I was gonna blow you!” the girl exclaimed. “Duh!”

“You have money now,” he pointed out

“But I don’t have—” and then she broke down crying again.

Her tears stabbed at him. “What about this,” he said. “What if I drive you to Austin? You save your money. You’ll need all of that and then some.”

Casper rolled down his window to let some of the trapped breath steam out, and was perturbed by the change in the air. The wind was rising. There’d been a pressure drop. The scent was one he remembered well. People called it Tornado Fever.

11

The Real Hoodoo

And their carcasses were torn in the midst of the streets. After the Boone Burgers fiasco, Poppy fell into a deep funk and the family returned to Joplin to reconnoiter. The media had gotten wind of Reverend America all right, but not the way the old carnival talker had intended. They managed to survive a roasting in Louisville, but the headlines were the writing on the wall as far as Poppy was concerned. An earnest young Chattanooga newspaper reporter, who was trying to make a name for himself, was niggling them about evangelical scams, and even worse, the IRS was on their trail. They’d always been ones to render unto Caesar—they just weren’t very good about paying their taxes. More importantly, the young faith healing star in the firmament was no longer the child novelty he’d once been. And he may have become schizophrenic. Plus, Cab Hooly had taken them to the cleaners. The Carousel of Progress was a dead dream. The White Angel fire had drowned in bad ink.

Not the sort of people to put much faith in the witch doctoring of psychology (having done a little too much witch doctoring themselves), Poppy and Rose avoided any form of diagnosis let alone treatment for the young Reverend. Instead, they turned to their Joplin neighbor, a black hoodoo specialist that Rose had psychically perceived as the “real deal.”

As quacky as Rose’s mentalist abilities may have been, it could well be there was some truth to them—because the woman in question was the real deal—just not in the way they thought.

Berina Pinecoffin was at that time in her late forties. She put ice cubes in her coffee, read Agatha Christie novels, and could do a fair version of Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” while she kneaded her own bread dough. Although she looked like a mastiff and at first meeting seemed like the kind of person who would bite your head off and suck on the bones, she was far from severe once she’d gotten to know you. She’d become Casper’s constant defender. In those days of visitation, she was a door of hope. Many would be the times he’d wish their relationship were official.

She’d grown up an only child after her younger brother was lost to cot death. Unlike Casper’s upbringing, however, she was doted on, and the mirror opposite in their backgrounds was never lost on her.

She’d come from a somewhat prosperous middleclass black neighborhood to the west of Chicago, which had allowed her exposure to animals and gardening. Her father had trained as a dentist and held a position of modest prestige with both blacks and whites. Her mother had been a singer and had made a little money of her own, but her chief calling was hoodoo consultations and supply, which was where Berina had picked up her knowledge.

With the continuing influx of blacks from the South, hoodoo provided a tonic for homesickness and a way of staying in touch with folk traditions. Berina always downplayed the mumbo jumbo aspect, stressing instead what she considered the practical common sense side. “What’s the difference between praying you get a job and casting a spell? You want your lover to come back, you damn sure better cast a spell.”

Her mother had come from the Delta and saw an opportunity in the City of the Big Shoulders. She wrote a Hoodoo Health & Love advice column in the black owned Chicago Defender and ran a mail order business from their house, until her wares proved so popular she decided to set up a shop in town.

“Papa was a man of science, Mama was a smart witch,” Berina said.

Tired of pulling teeth, her father decided to try his hand at business too and opened the Hoodoo Lounge, a nightclub on the South Side of Chicago. Little Walter and Muddy Waters would go on to play there, along with Albert King. But even in the early days it did so well that her father died in a bungled after-hours robbery attempt, both dumb young culprits shot with the old man’s .38 before he bled out.

Berina had been in college by then, with the hopes of becoming a teacher. Upon her father’s murder, she left school and began helping her mother run the club. It turned out she had all her father’s acumen and more, and the club became so successful the real gangsters moved in and encouraged her to move on—but on her own terms. She cashed out of the Windy City when her mother died, with a lot more pennies than most black women of the day, and she was prudent in how to pile up some more. She moved to Joplin and helped look after an aging aunt, inheriting her house when the old lady passed.

She then purchased a large older place, running it as a boarding house, which she kept full of traveling salesmen and two unmarried ladies who’d retired from the high school as permanent residents. Her garden and domestic skills helped make the boarding house run, while giving her a degree of self-sufficiency. To complement this, her line of hoodoo magic supplies was a practical, mail order-based income stream. It was no con for her—it was a business, to be taken with a grain of salt—along with perhaps some crab shell powder and a black cat bone. She sold vigil candles, herb bags, worry dolls, hot foot dust and anointing oil, from Oakland to Mobile. And she became a beacon to Reverend America.

She was the first one to explain sex fully to him—to put it into the context of love and survival, which was ironic because she was celibate most all the time he knew her and seemed to need no help herself until the very end.

She was open and earthy about bodily functions, and straight honest when he asked her questions. “I can’t have kids ‘cause I fooled around with the wrong man when I was young and hurt my insides. I coulda gotten hitched at least twice since—but the men, they wanted children. A proper black man who really wants a family isn’t easy to find. I wasn’t goin’ to put a spell on ‘em just for my own gain. But the main reason I never got married after that is that I’ve never met a man as good as my Papa.”

Usually, she was gently stern with him, but even that was very different from the prim reservations of Rose. Every so often her girlish excitement would take over, or her native affection, and she’d let a “Honey chile” slip out and give him a squeeze.

She gave him a little understanding of hoodoo—she taught him how to make a mojo hand. But whenever the subject came up, she’d tap his chest and say, “The real hoodoo’s always in here. Don’t you ever forget that.”

More importantly, she introduced him to the hoodoo of what a library is and sparked his lifelong love of learning odd facts.

“You have to be so quiet in here,” he said.

“You have to be quiet in your voice, but your mind is free to make a joyful noise,” Berina replied. “Just learn to listen a new way.”

That was some of the best advice he’d ever be given—like Reverend America coming back to him.

She got him back into school. She gave him the self-confidence to withstand the gibes he got there, and she’d tutor him herself in the evenings, exhausted though she may have been, so that he could regain some of the ground he’d lost academically while on the long path of White Angel Fire and Faith.

Together they’d struggle through mathematical word problems. If Mr. Sweeney has five towns to visit in Kansas and sticks to the speed limit, driving six hours a day, how many days will he need to visit them all?

“I’ve been through Kansas,” Casper would pipe up, “I preached in three of those towns.”

“Keep your mind on the homework, mister,” Berina would answer. “Or there’ll be no butterscotch brownies for you.”

Concerned that he wasn’t getting enough to eat at home, she indulged her own enjoyment of cooking, making him “naughty” foods like pickled pig’s feet, chopped sirloin in cream sauce, meatloaf in brown gravy, and apple pie with custard. As savvy as Poppy and Rose were with cooking on the road, after the Boone Burgers catastrophe they went back to meager ways not much above the Spam and Rado Casper had known in Charleston. Often there wasn’t more than a hock or a celery stick in their house.

Berina taught him patience (“A watched clock never boils.”), introduced him to jazz (he’d heard a lot of blues, bluegrass and country music in his time on the road), and she gave him his love of gardening and things that grow. Together they planted bearded irises, trillium and lavender in her back yard—and he was entrusted with the task of watering all the indoor succulents. “A little green inside goes a long way,” she told him.

For his part, he taught her one thing, which turned out to be a great source of happiness and fulfillment for her. Like many black Americans, for many reasons, Berina had never learned how to swim. And it had always bothered her. Casper had learned how to swim the hard way. Poppy had thrown him into the Pearl River. “We can’t have a Reverend doing baptisms, if he might drown!”

Casper had discovered how to swim, just as he’d learned to survive—out of pure necessity. He wasn’t a great swimmer . . . “But I’m very bad drowner,” as he put it. So, they’d go out in attempted secrecy on Saturday mornings, driving in Berina’s forget-me-not blue Rambler to Shoals Creek, the moment it became warm enough to dip.

“Don’t you be lookin’ at my fat thighs,” she’d say—wearing a bumblebee floral one-piece she’d bought with great embarrassment on Main Street. He’d laugh. She had the inner confidence to be laughed at, which was what he needed most of all. That was the thing he worried about most then—being laughed at.

And while watching the barn swallows and the red-winged blackbirds, he taught her how to float . . . and she let him handle her body in a way that Rose would’ve never allowed. She got so she could paddle, then actually stroke. She came to love the water the way she loved her garden. In all the long days that he’d be gone, she’d come to escape to the local creeks whenever she could in summer. He’d helped her conquer a deep fear. Learning to float. Such a simple thing. But it meant a great deal to her. He was so pleased to see her pride in her growing confidence. He’d given something back, and that giving would return to him in more ways than he could ever say—when Poppy and Rose slipped out of his life and he was once more alone.

“You release that boy into my custody as of this morning—this paper says so.”

“Are you family?” the authorities asked.

“I’m damn family enough and this paper proves it. It’s all I need in this world to convince the likes of you. You put one more hurdle in my way and I’ll take you with me when I go over it. I want to see him now, and we’re going to leave according to these papers.”

The other meeting ground they had was music. Berina’s hands had become arthritic early, but she kept up the discipline of playing her polished upright grand piano that she’d brought with her from Chicago every day. She talked with pride about the famous musicians who’d passed through the family club and had given her lessons. She was good, Casper had to admit—but hearing her play always made him reflect on what a fine, subtle artist Rose was. She really had a gift, without seeming to expend any effort. It made him grieve to think of it, how good she was and yet how little she seemed to care. She preferred her Ouija board and Poppy’s penis—which puzzled him all the more because she was so puritanical about matters of the body generally. Just as with some applied effort, Poppy could’ve become a true stage magician, Rose could’ve become a concert pianist or a professional organist. Something more than Boone Burgers and his breakdown had gone wrong in their lives.

One night in West Virginia, not far from where he was born, he asked Rose about her music and how she’d learned. She dodged the latter question entirely and to the former, replied with a faraway smile, “There’s always, somebody better.” Casper never repeated that to Berina, because it would’ve made her lose all respect for Rose.

Together he and Berina would sing “Divine Love” and “Shall We Gather at the River.” He knew rivers and sang of them as if he did . . . the Tugaloo, the Ogeechee, the Sapelo and the Altamaha—the Rio Grande and the rivers of Eden. The first time they ever sang together she said, “Boy, you got some silk and rock salt in you. Where you learn to sing like that?”

“I was Reverend America,” he answered. He’d learned to sing, literally for his supper, in JESUS LOVES YOU trailer towns amidst white trash and black cabins. As Poppy said, you couldn’t get the pot to bubble over with just hellfire and damnation—the winepress of the wrath of God—or even the succor of the Beatitudes. Their closing number was always Rose’s version of “The New Jerusalem,” her long fingers working out on the sticky keys to an early African-American written melody that stands with Bach. Casper would hear that in his sleep for years to come.

More than anything else though, Berina gave him some new credence just in being. If she thought his behavior was ever strange (and sometimes it truly was), she gave no sign of being offended or afraid. Who wouldn’t be a little odd, growing up as he had? Berina Pinecoffin wasn’t one to judge anyone who met her standard of trying to better themselves. She called him Matty. Summer Shield did too.

Summer was an impish dust brunette who lived two doors down from Berina’s boarding house. Her eyes were the aqua blue of Black Jack gum packs, but as a child she’d been blinded in one by a splash of hot grease from her mother’s frying pan, so one was cloudy, one was clear. The disability didn’t seem to affect her spirit, although it forced her to turn to speak to you. The first words she ever spoke to him were, “Why, you could hide behind a streetlight.” He liked her instantly. She had a lovely simple fragrance of muskmelon. The last thing he’d ever say to her in the flesh was, “I wish I could’ve healed you,” meaning her bad eye. She turned to him with the clear one and said, “You heal me every time we meet.”

Her father ran one of the local hardware stores and was a devout Catholic, which meant that they came in for some prejudice. Persecution would’ve been too strong a word, but Casper had seen how it worked—the business suffered as a result and they only lived in the big house they did because her mother had inherited it.

Her mother was some kind of invalid who remained confined to the home. Summer would later say she was afflicted with “Took-to-Her-Roomatism.” The presumed cause of the obscure nervous disorder was a hushed up attack by a door-to-door notions salesman, but Berina was of the view that the salesman was a fiction. “There’s a lot more to that family than meets the eye, pardon the expression.”

Whatever the cause, the consequence was that Summer was forced to be eldest child, only daughter and virtual mother to the family, which made Casper appreciate all the more the time she took to spend with him.

The four brothers were put to work in some way at the store. Summer, being a girl, found work doing chores for Berina, which is how Casper met her. She was two years older and half his size, and her devotion and the support she lent to his emerging masculinity balanced the nurture that Berina provided. Looking back, he saw he might well have slipped into the netherworld much sooner than he did without their care—and he might never have escaped.

Summer loved cherry sno-cones, Mint Velvets and Wayne Newton—especially his song “Red Roses for a Blue Lady.” Casper, Matty, bought her a bouquet of long stem roses on her first birthday they shared together—April Fools, “My favorite day,” she’d say. Later, he’d always try to do the same if he had money. He’d at least send a postcard, one of the novelty ones she liked—like jackalopes or giant trout. Failing that, an old Reverend America one. He worried that if she didn’t hear from him, she’d think he was in jail or institutionalized—and there’d be some gut hurt truth in that.

Come the end of school in June, when the two had finished their chores, they’d seek refuge near Turkey Creek, in the place the locals called Rum Jungle, because hoboes slept there. She’d slip a Shasta daisy from Berina’s garden behind one ear and pack them a picnic of cream soda, devilled eggs and boysenberry pie. They’d hold hands and stare at the sky. Come dusk, they’d fish for fireflies, listening to garter snakes slithering through rusted cans. Casper never once made a move to fondle her breasts or do anything that wasn’t chaste. He couldn’t bring himself to—not after Mexico. Even the coon dong he gave her was seen as innocent, because it came from Berina’s chest of charms.

Summer had a wispy yet still hardy alto and loved to sing. Out of the blue she’d chirp a line of Billie Holiday, like “I’m goin’ to lock my heart and throw away the key.” Then she’d giggle. He loved singing “Skip to My Lou” with her, and he taught her to harmonize on Only Men songs like “In the Dark of the Road.”

He greatly missed the music he’d made with Poppy and Rose—not just their official performances, but those times camped beside the Rivers of Babylon in the Chickasaw plum and weeping willow, with not a harp in the trees, but Poppy’s banjo, Rose singing like Eve at the beginning of the world.

Once the White Angel Fire and Faith Mission was defunct, they stopped playing and singing cold—as if it had never mattered to them. Whenever he’d try to get Rose to play with him at home, she’d look at him with her séance eyes and say, “Not tonight.” He wondered if she was punishing him. She knew how much the singing meant to him.

Summer always brought a pack of cards with her so they could play Crazy 8’s. “I’m just crazy about Crazy 8’s.” Some people around town thought she was a bit simple—but everyone seemed to believe on the basis of how she’d helped raise her brothers that “she’d make a good wife.” Casper often thought of that when he’d fall asleep back home, hearing her calling him Matty in his dreams.

On occasion he noticed small violet bruises on her wrists and once up under her ear. He didn’t see how she could’ve gotten them from the work at Berina’s, but when he asked her about them, she’d laugh him off. “Don’t you worry about me, kiddo.”

But he did worry—and those words of Berina’s about the deceptive nature of her family always stayed with him. She was hiding something—but whether it had to do with her father or the brothers, or her strange mother, she never let on.

One time when they were lying in Rum Jungle, Summer started up from the sparrow grass with a sudden exclamation. She’d just gotten her period. She was so ashamed. Her pistachio green sundress was stained, her white cotton drawers soaked through. He held her. When she started to cry, he said in his Reverend America voice, “Let not your heart be troubled, for you are a child of God and his blessing is upon you.” He handed her some of the paper napkins she’d brought for their picnic and said, “We’ll rinse out those drawers in the creek. I’ve always been real good at laundry.” He gave her his shirt to wrap around her waist and walked her home in his T-shirt.

The problem was he didn’t live with Berina and he only saw Summer for a few precious hours each week. His life still lay in the hands of Poppy and Rose, and upon the financial calamity of Boone Burgers, his guardians had become more pressured. Poppy had even started to drink, which was so unlike him.

Casper was blamed for all their woes. They turned any recriminations they might’ve aimed at each other on him, and what had previously just seemed slippery became outright wrongdoing. They tried serious mail swindles. Losing all that money to Cab Hooly, it seemed like they had lost their minds, and the seeming neatness and insulation of their means of deception made them lose perspective on the risks they were running. In using the international mail, they’d steered into the territory of federal crime. When the final crisis came, it was like a trap springing shut.

Casper was fifteen when his adoptive parents were arrested on multiple counts of fraud. For all the skirmishes with the law in the past, this time it looked like the charges would stick. At Poppy’s insistence, Rose got away, and for years Casper believed that any day he’d hear from her—that she’d slipped down to Costa Rica and would summon him to join her. That never happened, and he later found out through an old bail bondsman contact that she’d likely died in a hotel in Panama City from a barbiturate overdose about two years after she fled. If that woman wasn’t her, it was someone very much like her, and no other word ever came. Like Hooly, she just disappeared. Her organ—that they’d hauled so many miles—she left behind covered in dust. It was confiscated like all the rest of their things and sold at auction.

12

Don’t Hang Your Hat on the Wind

West is south from Joplin, skirting the Arkansas line into Oklahoma. Casper and Little Red were just under two hundred miles from OK City on I-44. They could make that near sunrise, maybe rest a bit—then head down through Ft. Worth to Austin. All he had to do was keep it nice and easy—nothing to attract attention from the highway patrol. The car was a legitimate rental and when he checked the glove compartment, he found that the agreement had two more days to run. It would be another twenty-four hours at least after that before even bulletin was put out. Dev Neon had printed up a fake Nevada driver’s license for him—he thought that would hold up if they got pulled over. Little Red was another story.

“I know the drill, Mister. I’m your niece, all right? Ain’t no one gonna believe daughter. Not the way you look. ‘Sides, I done this shit more times than you I bet.”

Casper was pleased that this was true. He’d never had the belly for the young ones. He turned on the radio, hoping to get some news about the twisters. They were headed into the gauntlet. A CD came on instead. “Only the Lonely.” Poor Rick James, he thought. What would the brothers have said about him listening to Roy Orbison?

They merged onto 44 (what Missourians call “farty fahr”). He punched out the disc and the weather report confirmed what he feared. Little Red . . . Angelike seemed unperturbed. Maybe it was all catching up to her.

“I’m . . . sorry for what happened,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“I was there, I saw it,” she answered. “He’d have beaten me up and you know it. He’d been wailin’ on me a lot ‘cause I stopped workin’ with the bump. I only found out a bit ago. He had one other fat black chick named Shantrelle that he was hustlin’ but he wasn’t any kine of real pimp. Used to be night manager at KFC. Got fired for drinkin’. I wuddn’t be with you if I thought you was the killin’ kine. I’m stupid, but no fool.”

Casper turned those words over. Then went to turn off the radio.

“Leave it on if you like,” she said. “You mine if I play with myself? It relaxes me. I mean we’re friens right? Havin’ just dumped a body and all.”

Casper changed the station and a song came on that he liked. Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery . . . make a poster of an old rodeo . . . just give me one thing that I can hold onto . . . ’cause belief in this livin’ is just a hard way to go.

Angelike gave out a dry cry when the song finished. He kept his eyes on the white lines of the road. It was a better cry than her tears. Several miles passed in silence—and then she said, “So, frien—uncle . . . am I gonna keep callin’ you Mister, or do you have a name? I’d believe you if you said you didn’t. And you did scare me some back at the depot.”

He cracked a thin smile. “You can call me Casper.”

“Like the Frien-ly Ghost?”

“Not the Holy Ghost.”

“Word. You always been so white? I guess that’s a dumb question. I mean—I don’t know. That wuddn’t what scared me.”

“What was it?” he asked.

“You just don’t look . . . like you come . . . from anywhere.”

Out of the mouths of babes, Casper thought. That summed up a lifetime of stares and averted glances.

“You traveled a lot?”

“Walla Walla, Washington . . . Hutchison, Kansas . . . Modesto, Saginaw, Decatur, Durango, Sugarland, Texas. I’ve been in every state in America except Alaska, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Delaware—and Maine,” he replied. “I’m not sure Delaware actually exists—I think it’s one of those urban legends. I’ve been across Canada, down in Mexico—and once on a vacation to Puerto Rico. Only vacation like normal people I’ve ever had.” He thought of Sharee.

“Where you learn to deal like you handled Rickie? He didn’t even see that comin’—and you’re no pup. Soldier?”

“I’ve been in jail—and worse places—and I’ve worked with a lot of tough folks.”

“So, what brought you to Joplin—other than the ole Hound Dog?”

“I used to live there,” Casper answered. “I came back thinking I’d find some answers.”

“‘Stead you found me.”

“You were the one who found me,” he replied.

“Laugh out loud. All right, so, you save my ass—you’re drivin’ me to Austin in a stolen car, takin’ all these chances, when you already been in trouble . . . how come you don’t want me? Is it the bump? You think I’m dirty? I got condoms. I got a pill left if you got trouble gettin’ hard. No dude ever knocked me back ‘cause I’s too young. Rickie, he made money off me—when he wasn’t on top of me his own damn self.”

“Like you said,” Casper murmured, “I’m not like others. I don’t think that’s what you need now. What you need is a ride to Austin—and I’ll take you there.”

“I’ll take you there,” she sang. “You know that old soul song?” Casper had once sung with Roebuck “Poppa” Staples and his daughters in Lexington.

“I love old soul. I used to love to dance! I’d dance and sing my ass off when I was young.”

Casper half-smiled, half-grimaced. When I was young. There was a little girl in her that hadn’t been killed off. He wondered whether the Charleston boy was still alive in him—the miracle child who became good ol’ Reverend America.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m running low on money too. I’m hoping maybe your aunt can help me out,” he said.

“Good try, Mister—Casper. I think you’re just a helpin’ kine of fool. But if pity works for you, it works for me.”

“It’s not pity!” Casper flared.

“Calm down, honey,” she said, her voice deepening. “I didn’t mean no diss. Like you said, everything’s gonna be all right.”

They drove in silence for quite a while then and the girl nodded out. Sometimes she seemed to spasm in pain, but didn’t wake. Casper was left looking through a windshield darkly . . . the long black runway of the interstate . . . semi-trailers and cars with license plates from all over America—until the lights of Tulsa—clean sharp buildings downtown, donkey oil rigs still on the fringe. When Joe was drunk he used to sing that old Gene Pitney song . . . I was only twenty-four hours from Tulsa. Cracking the window, he caught the whiff of nitrogen and ozone—tornado perfume.

What in God’s name was he doing, trying to save a teenage hooker? She was probably a drug addict too. At any moment he’d expected her to break out a pack of menthol cigarettes—and that would’ve been it. He hated smoking worse than pimps or police. But no, she just chewed her Black Jack gum, which scented her purse like the Poison. He took a gander while she was dozing—a little Troll Doll key ring slipped in beside condoms and a packet of lube.

He changed the station on the radio, keeping it down low while she slept. It was just an evangelist reaching out to the lost souls of the night. But he heard the voice of Reverend America . . . We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of any eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

The sky turned gunmetal blue and then a time-lapse eerie red that reminded him of the color of her hair. He’d snuck a couple of gazes at her breasts and felt bad about it. But it yielded some forgiveness for the orthodontist. There was in fact nothing he wanted more than to lower her seat back—but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The bruise set him thinking of Summer, all that he’d never known about her, and all that he wanted to share. Touch me, Reverend America, touch me in the name of Jesus.

She stirred awake when they made the outskirts of Oklahoma City. He tried to remember the last time he’d been there—and thought of the bombing tragedy that had been eclipsed by 9/11. He checked the weather reports again. There’d been a major strike just due south. He took an exit where there were some fast food places and pulled into an Arby’s parking lot.

“I’m going to take a bit of a nap—then we’ll grab some food when they open,” he said. “They’ll have tornado sirens here. If you’re still around when I wake up, we’ll head south and hope we don’t get blown away.”

He undid his safety belt and went out like a light. There were some dreams at first—faces and fragments from the faith healing days . . . Berina, Summer . . . Old Joe out in the mesquite with General Douglas MacArthur . . . and then just darkness like the Oklahoma highway they’d come in on.

He woke up, wondering where he was. Where his knapsack was.

“Whoa Mr. Casper—the world’s still here. And so’s your bag.”

He glanced around—she was still there. And she had food—he could smell it.

“I got you a Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit—thought that would be more your style than a wrap. And some black coffee. You look like a black coffee man.”

“Th-thanks,” he mumbled, still trying to get his bearings. From the light of the sky it seemed much later than he’d expected . . . a forbidding gray streaked across the blue, huge cumulus thunderheads down to the south.

“You call that a nap?” the girl joked. “I coulda done a tour of the town.”

“How—long have I been out?” he asked—he thought his shirt smelled more of her perfume than before.

“Four solid hours. Y’all needed it, I could tell.”

“What have you been doing?”

“I had to get walkin’. I quit smokin’ for the baby—when I found out—and sometimes the gum just don’t cut it.”

He noticed she’d zipped up her jacket and shed the torn nylons. She held up a foot. “Lost the chase me-catch me-fuck me shoes and got some cheap sneaks. Eat yer food. I had mine ages ago.”

He tore into the breakfast fodder. It tasted as good as Cameron Blanchard’s pork and peach mangle.

“Good to see a man like you with some appetite—for something,” she remarked—and then winked. “Who’s Berina? You were talking in your sleep about her . . . and Bible shit.”

“Uh,” he struggled. “She . . . was a woman who saved me.”

“Lover?”

“No,” he managed after a slurp of coffee. “More like the mother I never had.”

“So, I have her to thank. She taught you good, Mr. Casper. They got them some clean bathrooms in there.”

He took her advice, took his pack and took his time. Since they’d bought food, he didn’t worry about being stopped. It felt good to wash up and the toilet was clean—something that’s often hard to find in Men’s Rooms on the road. He brushed and flossed his teeth—polished his Red Wings, and changed his socks and underwear.

“Let’s roll then,” he said when he got back to the car. “It’s later than I thought.”

“There’s news about twisters where we’re goin’. Maybe we should hang?”

“We need to get rid of this car soon. We need to get farther away from Joplin—and we need to think about getting you to a hospital for the baby,” he responded. “The twisters can’t be predicted. I say we run for it.”

“You’re drivin’ and savin’,” she said. “You want some money for gas?”

Minutes later, fueled up on both counts, they were heading south on I-35, one of the greatest American roadways that runs from Duluth all the way to Laredo.

“I hate hospitals, man,” she said.

“We all do,” Casper answered, thinking back to the infirmary in jail.

The sky had gone white, and he wished he knew more about this aunt of hers—that there’d been more contact of late. After going looking for a son he turned out not to have had or was in any case dead in Hartford, he was afraid they were chasing butterflies. He didn’t have much choice after Rick James—he had to get out of Joplin. She, however, needed someone to foot her hospital bill . . . and a whole lot more. He kept the radio on for news about the tornadoes . . . there was talk about a super cell building. But it was better than squawkback about the broken economy and the healthcare system. Deeper into the ruins of One Flag, One School, One Bible country they rolled—the land Old Joe came from. Rinder Country.

They passed through Moore and then by the exit for Norman . . . Goldsby, Purcell, Wayne. The names of the towns on the water towers reminded him of Poppy and Rose’s aliases. But would’ve happened to him if they hadn’t come along? He’d never been able to answer that question. He could’ve ended up like Dowdy, the church handyman.

Paul’s Valley . . . Wynnewood . . . he talked with Little Red over the radio as the miles turned over. She asked him about the “Bible shit” and he told her a little about Reverend America. She told him more about Swivel and Bobby P.

Casper stopped looking in the rearview mirror for state police, although he couldn’t help notice Angelike fidgeting in apparent discomfort. She didn’t make any remark though. She just chatted—she was good at small talk—and sometimes she sang a bit of a song he didn’t know. She had a lovely, yet childish voice. At one point, she reached back and opened her bag and tugged out a t-shirt. The fake leather jacket came off and Casper caught an eyeful of round teenage breasts before the white cotton slipped over them. She laughed.

“Good to see ya take notice. I knew you wanted to jump my bones. Y’all just too decent. Ain’t known many like that. Forgive a girl, eh?”

“I forgive you.”

“What are ya gonna do . . . in Austin?” she asked.

“Let’s get there first,” he said, pointing out the window. To the east they saw a towering mass of red and brown dust that still had substance. “It’s just good the road’s not closed. That one must’ve leapt the highway.”

There was a sudden flittering of rain and then almost phosphorescent clanging hail. They were in the midst of old cotton land, the greedy farming practices that had killed the soil and caused the Dustbowl crisis. Then oil had been discovered and all around them still were derricks, somnolent mechanical beasts pumping in narcotic rhythm. Into Carter County. Lightning blazed over the Arbuckle Mountains and wind buffeted the Buick. The sky was red and lowering—then through Ardmore, it went Valley of Decision dark.

Ardmore’s a Santa Fe railroad town built on oil, home to Michelin—and it’s seen its share of twisters. But what Casper and Angelike saw then was a real frightener. It was the kind of tornado that’s called a wedge—but this was a wall. Pure black cloud, with traces of red dust like blood. The radio crackled with warnings and advisories for people to take cover . . . a refuge center had been set up in the WinStar World Casino. The air pressure changed even inside the car. “Holy sheet!” Angelike blurted, clutching her stomach. Casper turned off into town. It wasn’t safe in amongst buildings, but it was safer than being in the open. The cars and trucks on the street were driving fast, tornado sirens sounding.

He turned down Washington and sped for a parking lot. He knew they needed to be in amongst some structures but still somewhat in the open. He found a Best Dollar lot and drove to the far end. There were a few cars left. The earlier twister just north had gotten people mobilized. The sirens continued. Then the colossus hit—with a full-jacked freight train reverberation that seemed to be both coming up out of the ground and just above their heads.. And I will darken the earth in the clear day.

Red-brown chunks of field and road whooshed and boomed in a black-cold angry gale laced with flying fire—taking with it streetlights, signs and roofs. Plate glass exploded and window frames whisked away like cards. Trees ripped loose from their roots. A length of rain guttering smashed into the side of the Buick . . . the vehicle rocked . . . whole sections of street awnings whipped and bounced, no better than snapped spokes of umbrellas . . . plasma televisions blew by and seemed to vaporize . . . some cars in the parking lot tumbled . . . while lumber and even steel struts shot overhead as if they were toothpicks. The Voice of the Whirlwind . . .

And then, just as suddenly as it had emerged on the near horizon, the behemoth was past, dwindling in a wreckage of smoke and fluttering debris. Flaps, shutters and shards of town struck the pavement or wisped down like newspaper ash. The sirens whined on. Angelike was hysterical and Casper realized they were squeezing each other tight, as if they could keep from being seized by the storm. He felt the bump again. Everything’s connected, even as it blows apart, he said to himself. To her he said, “Shh, now. It’s gone.” So was a good bit of Ardmore and the surrounding countryside.

He got out to inspect the car, still shaking inside. The whole world seemed to have changed. He tried to focus on the car, their vehicle of deliverance. A side panel had been sheared in, but the fuel tank hadn’t been hit and the tire was still intact and free of the wheel well. Boy, they’d been lucky. Many other cars had been demolished—and then he turned—and spied one lying upside down on the store roof.

“This is the storm belt. It’s running west to east. I think if we can get south now, we’ll be all right. You OK?”

“I ain’t never seen anything like that,” the girl answered, her voice numb, her face still scrunched like a test pilot on a rocket sled.

“Me neither,” Casper said, and it was true, except in dreams and hallucinations.

He fired up the Buick and weaved their way out between the clutter of the parking lot, people scurrying, voices rife . . . the streets a havoc of insurance claims. There’d be a serious body count with this one. He spun the wheel, dodging between the scrambling figures.

But the route back to the interstate was blocked with fallen trees and littered concrete—police cars and emergency vehicles everywhere—lights flashing. He had to turn around and get there another way. There were streets with no one on them—and others congested with traffic and panic. Rescue crews and firemen were already on the job. Several fires had broken out and pieces of buildings kept collapsing. As they drove, they felt more and more grateful. A motorcycle had been implanted in the side of a house and the sides of many houses had either been stove in or torn loose altogether. More than a few houses, Casper suspected, weren’t standing or had yet to land. It had been a vengeful, Godlike thing.

Shops and city buildings had fared a little better, but there was rubble everywhere, dust thick all around. He picked his way through the shambles, trying to find an open street, when they passed the old folks’ home.

It wasn’t some kind of retirement complex like where he’d once mowed lawns—it was a nursing home, a convalescent hospital—or at least it had been a few moments before. Now? It wasn’t good. Some of the roof had been split off, the rest had crumbled down. This was the sort of place that he’d been hearing about—where they were shoving the oldsters out onto the street. He thought of the man in St. Louis. In the aftermath of what Jeremiah would’ve called a “destroying wind,” it looked like a lot of their work here had been done for them. There were no ambulances around, no rescue crews—and yet when he stopped the car and rolled down his window, he could hear people calling for help. He put the car in park and shut off the ignition.

“Duddn’t take a mind reader to see you’re set on helpin’ more strangers,” Angelike said, shaking her red mane.

“C’mon,” he said. “There are people trapped in there.”

He said that knowing that those people had been trapped in there before the tornado. He turned Angelike around and sent her back to the car when he got the first hint of how bad things really were. It wasn’t just the damage from the twister that was to blame.

There was a pungent smell of urine and tainted food. It appeared that all of the staff had fled and left the patients, or rather inmates, on their own. The facility was desolate of any authority and the destruction was intense.

He helped one crone reinstate her oxygen supply—struck by the expression of terror and surprise in her eyes. He wasn’t sure what else he could do, except call the fire department or one of the real hospitals. There were many others that were past all help. Some of the healthier, more mobile ones appeared to have been buried under a section of roof. A couple of wards had been obliterated, leaving only limbs and medical hardware. Bedpans, meal trays. He checked the pulse of a lean effigy of a man—who made him think of what he might look like in death himself one day. Then he noticed the full-to-bursting catheter bag. This had been a place of living death and maybe the tornado had been an act of grace. He knew the man had died of heart failure only moments before.

He pulled some ceiling panels off a couple of others, brushed off a woman in a wheelchair that made him think of old Jessie. The old lady wanted to call her family—he gave her some water. But the scope of the problem was much more than he could resolve. The facility should’ve been inspected and condemned well before any tornado attack. The walls were flimsy, the construction unsound—still from the look of the bathrooms and the kitchen, the real horror was the absence of any standard of care. He wished all the residents could’ve been raptured to Kingdom Come. He sought out a telephone. As he’d surmised, the line was dead. Then he heard the car horn honking. The girl was priority one.

He raced back outside through the remnants of the facility just as the rest of the roof went down and the street-side wall gave in. A minute more and he’d have been spattered. Angelike was still pounding the horn, the pleading of it just another voice of distress amongst many—but hers was the voice that called him. The moment she saw him, she pointed.

Another twister had formed, as often happens in the path of a big brute. This was a very different kind—a tight funnel touching down and then rambling . . . staggering. Black liver blood and paving sand. Casper hadn’t run anywhere since the cops had chased him in Hartford, but he sprinted then—and took the old man out in a dive—the wheeling pillar just passing by—like a thousand snakes groping for their legs—vacuum cleaners mouthing their pant legs—pellets of shredded street pelting them.

Without stopping to think, he grabbed the old man up and ruckered him back to the car. Across his chest and around his neck was some kind of tape recorder and headset. Unlike most of the other denizens of the home, he was fully dressed—a rumpled oversized checked shirt and threadbare secondhand trousers—with a still thick head of silver hair and a face that was as worn as tornado stricken clapboard. Casper stuffed him in the back seat, jumped in and spun a wheelie U-turn and then a hard right down another street, heading toward the interstate but behind and south of the funnel.

“Holy moly,” Angelike let out. “You still run as good as you fight. Bad?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Those people were fucked before all this.”

“So, you do swear?” she said. “That’s good to hear. What about him?”

Casper swerved around some wrecked vehicles and put on the parking brake. “You all right?” he asked the old man—not having any idea what to do with him. “I said, you all right?”

“My name is Hoptree Bark and I’m 151 years old,” the man replied.

“Sheet!” Angelike scoffed. “I believe his ass.”

“I’m a communist rabble rousing, labor organizing, folk singing legend,” the old man informed them. “I was born during the Civil War—I fought in World War I. I’ve sung the blues and ridden trains.” Then he proceeded to sing . . .

Then the moon arose and the stars came out

He was ditched on the Gila Monster Route

“Oh, great,” Angelike said. “You bagged us a real basket case.”

“I take exception to that, Miss,” the old man quipped. “I may be ten times your age, but I’m as lucid as lemonade. I just happen to have a diagnosed psychological condition called Benjamin Franklinism.”

“What’s that?” Casper asked, noticing that the legend had thick, blurry cataracts in both eyes. With the headset on, no wonder he was unaware of the second tornado.

“I have a propensity for veering into the realm of aphorism and saw,” replied the ancient, which reminded Casper of both Poppy and Joe.

“Like how do you mean?”

“There are only two things in the world that smell like fish, and one of them’s fish . . . when you put the ball in the air only three things can happen and two of them are bad. That, and I remain incredibly horny—do you know old Ben stayed porking right up to the end? I also occasionally go kite flying.”

“Kite flying?” Casper queried.

“A cerebral sojourn,” the old man explained. “An adventure of the imagination. You would too if you’d been stuck in that place.”

“I can understand that,” Casper said. “What’s that around your neck?”

“This, my young friend—if I may be so bold—is what passed for our entertainment in that foul establishment—did you see my establishment? Donated malfunctioning headsets from the Museum of American Natural History. A self-guided tour through the ages.”

Casper slipped on the headset and heard a synthetically bland, cheerful voice . . . “Welcome to the Hall of Early Mammals.”

“Can you believe it?” the old timer sniggered, and threw the device out the window. “Some folks got the Japanese version. No cable, no records, hardly any books—and they wouldn’t let me have a guitar, so all I had was this,” and he pulled from the chest pocket of his shirt a tarnished Marine Band harmonica in the key of G.

“Do you know what they’d do to keep us entertained in winter? They’d wheel us down, even those of us who can walk just fine, and they’d let us fish in the municipal pool. They’d put blankets over us, and there we’d sit. A bunch of old men with fishing poles, nothing to catch. Some wiseass therapist thought that would be fulfilling. Give the old bastards something to think they’re doing! But I’ll be damned if a turtle didn’t get in that pool one day and Bill Heffernen, bless his fool heart—he got up out of his wheelchair and dove in after it. Don’t know if he was trying to catch it, or just felt kinship.”

“What happened to him?” Casper asked.

“Oh, he drowned. But it was a good way to go out. We all threw our poles in. I hope the turtle got away. Bill’s turtle. He got his sign.

“And now, how are we going to free the working class? Have you read Marx? Are you members of a union? All this fear of socialism! What we need is communism! Equality! Dignity for the common man! I don’t suppose you have a club sandwich? Why did you knock me down? Did I tell you I was 151 years old? I’m a folk singing agitator. I’m a legend. My name is Hoptree Bark. I’m bitter and ill-scented, but I have many medicinal purposes. Hehe.”

“Do you know where you are now?” Casper asked.

“I’m in a car,” the old man replied.

Casper glanced at Angelike.

“You’re drivin’ and savin’. He can’t go back where he come from.”

Casper put the Buick in gear and headed through the remnants of Ardmore.

“If you want something done, give it to a busy person,” the old man chirped. “If you want something done right, do it yourself. My name is Hoptree Bark. I’m 151 years old.” Then he launched into the old folk song “Sourwood Mountain.”

13

In the Time of My Dying

Poppy managed to wiggle on the federal charges, but was convicted on other felony counts and sent to State Prison, where he developed severe depression and was fatally stabbed by a fellow inmate over a domino game within a year of his incarceration.

The last words he said to Casper were, “Remember what I told you about your teeth and your shoes. Don’t worry about me—I had this coming. Just don’t you become a wood duck. When you’re clear, you’re the best there is. I thought I was good. You’re in your own class Only Man.”

Overnight, the bottom of Casper’s world fell out, and there was nothing Berina could do to save him then—although she tried every avenue. When the full scope of Poppy and Rose’s frauds was learned, no one in authority was keen to offer much sympathy, and the system came down hard on Mathias True.

Underage and without legal family, he was put into the care of a youth authority. His albino complexion and peculiar demeanor made him the butt of jokes and bullying. When he fought back, he went overboard. His anger and resentment at losing his parents—the deeper disorientation of never having known his real family—and the growing awareness of how his youth had been martyred on the altar of deception—all served to make him intractable.

Yet he actually started longing for the Reverend America days. He missed people fainting when he touched them—the magnetic electric power he had. He missed the calico and denim awe when he’d thrust out his hands and plead, “I pray to the divine majesty and mercy of the Lord of Hosts to help me save these wayward souls here tonight.” He missed the pulled pork, deep fried okra and apple butter. But most of all, he missed singing together with Poppy and Rose as only they could. He managed to slip the sacred Only Men songbook to Berina before he was taken away.

He took to resisting all regimentation and looked down on his peers. Worse—the hallucinations returned. He was bounced around and eventually relocated to a facility in faraway Michigan, where he knew no one and felt utterly isolated. He ended up breaking another boy’s nose and had to face Mr. Krepp, the administrator.

Julius Krepp liked boys—that’s why he worked with them. He especially liked unusual looking, sensitive boys who weren’t cut out for a life of strip searches and total lockdowns. He always put it politely, even though he could crush them as he liked. All he asked for was submission. Respect. Surrender. Then he’d sign the good paper.

He was a squat, receding hair-lined man in his early 50’s, with shining rimmed eyeglasses and the habit of blinking too much. Always a little too well groomed for such a job, he had immaculately manicured fingernails and smooth, almost waxen skin. Beware men with unusually soft hands.

Mathias True expressed the deepest contempt he could—with his teeth. And so, Krepp, when he got out of the hospital, took his revenge. He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a large country: there thou shalt die.

Like a prince of eunuchs, he sent the boy into the lion’s den of a serious correctional facility with older men. Just as he intended, the failed minister wasn’t there for forty-eight hours before he was treated to a Michigan Bank Roll.

A “Michigan Bank Roll” is old gambling slang for a roll of what could be $1 bills or even blank paper wrapped inside a $100 note to create the illusion of a wad of money. But that’s not what the term means in places like where Mathias was sent. It happened in the kitchen, where his head was forced down into a pile of slippery potato peels.

Voices and shadows . . . snouts and ears of limestone cave bats . . . tarantulas all over his body . . . teasing him . . . tickling him . . . until their claws came out and bit in deep . . . their eyes incandescent . . . fur and scales like phosphorous . . . tongues wet and long with the lust for violence . . .

“You’re gonna bleed like a bitch!”

“Hold that skinny motherfucker down. I’m first in.”

Shared like meat.

The idea isn’t just to desecrate the victim’s dignity on a one-time basis—it’s to eliminate the possibility of dignity. Ten is the magic number, but five will do. One grabs the hair or neck. A blade of some kind isn’t only held to the victim’s throat, some blood is drawn, so that there’s no question what will happen should a Mr. Krepp instinct take hold. A third stands by to defend against arms moving, legs kicking. The closest equivalent to a broken bottle that can be found in custody is always visible, as a reminder of what could be applied if needed.

“Right up your fuckin’ ass, you punk ghost faggot!”

With these parameters in place, the object is to deploy the group in continuously sodomizing the sissy, while forcing him to simultaneously choke on another cock.

“Spit on him! Spit on him!”

Discipline and order must be maintained to enact the full emotional and physical mutilation. The goal is to have one attacker pumping hard while the victim is forced to gag on another member. Then, when the fucker is about to climax, he trades places, jerks the victim’s head back, inserts his penis into the mouth and ejaculates deep down the unfortunate’s throat—with a nice aftertaste of rectal mucus, some blood and possibly shit.

“Suck your ass you freak!”

Casper came close to requiring a colostomy bag and was in the infirmary for two weeks, hallucinating great horned creatures.

The ordeal did have one beneficent side effect though—it brought to the fore his incipient madness. He discovered deep things in darkness. He’d lost whatever faith in God he’d ever had, but he’d found his own religion. Survival. He was free to be insane and that insanity protected him.

At first, the word that went around the cells and the mess hall was that the ritual rape had gone too far—they’d broken him. Yet he didn’t seem broken in the way they’d intended. He remained undefiled—and yet defiant. Not many can quote verbatim all the Four Gospels. Fewer still from the Books of Prophecy. And he could beat the Hell and Heavenly light out of Revelation. Come gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men.

His fiery furnace visions, powered by the strength of his oratory made even the bluntest and roughest men decline further molestation. “Ye worship ye know not what!” he’d scream in the cold, cold showers. (Imagine the atrocity of being young, naked and so white, with leering, drooling men beating off and blowing jets of snot out their noses at your feet.) He summoned forth the Angel of Death from the scrub hollows and the possumshaw holly of the past. He roared of the Beast and the Vials of Wrath. And he sang. He sang for his life. It would be the last place he’d sing for many years.

Several of even the most predatory inmates were outright scared of him, and while his mind flamed with hate, he wasn’t so addled as not to realize the leverage his apparent lunacy gave him. With his natural sense of training and long history of manipulation, the spirit white punk became a figure of respect, verging on awe. It was in that place that he was rechristened as Casper. Saint Psycho. The Creature Preacher. He lived morning by morning. Night times reminded him of the poultry pavilion, and the tears would well up—until he began shrieking with laughter and ranting of the fire. His words never stopped him from thinking of Poppy though. He’d learned the old survivor hadn’t survived his ordeal via the prison grapevine and it opened up all the old wounds. Memories of the card tricks and the vittles in the pines. They’d never been a father-son team cheating at a soapbox derby—and they’d have been so good at that. They were good cheaters.

The case of Rose was even more poignant because he kept expecting her to rescue him. For the second time he’d been abandoned by a mother, and the thought of that cut deeper than the Michigan Bank Roll. Still, he endured the two blurred years it took Berina to go through proper channels to have him returned to Missouri and put in the care of a State psychiatric facility. As she’d done in the wreckage of Revered America, she saved him the best way she could. And she’d continue to do so.

But in the moment, the mental institution hardly seemed like an improvement. There weren’t the gang fights and the race driven drug and cigarette wars to contend with—but there was no less noise, with men and women crying or laughing all night . . . contorted rubber faces peering out . . . hands attached . . . people like Mrs. Toffler, saying the most obscene things with the politest expressions on their faces. And although the guards were called orderlies, they were every bit as brutal and cunning. One in particular, a burly impotent Irishman would regularly rape and beat both female and male patients with his baton, always running it along the whitewashed cinderblock walls to announce his impending arrival.

But being closer to Joplin meant Berina at least could visit, and she was quick to see the infernal nature of the place. She called on all the hoodoo she knew to get Casper released and into local outpatient care. The authorities attributed his “improvement” to the carpet-bombing of medication he received. The drugs eliminated any libido and caused near constant diarrhea, but he appeared a star example in their eyes.

Although Berina couldn’t erase the memories, she managed to get this early part of his criminal record expunged, as he’d been underage when taken into custody and had never been formally charged. This didn’t prevent him from getting into trouble again though. He was later arrested for burglary, for which he served an absurdly harsh two-year sentence. “Boy, you do that again and I will whup you upside your head so hard you’ll never know Saturday from Sunday.”

She still stood by him, but the days behind bars further hardened his heart. He’d learned, however, some lessons from his earlier confinement. How to drink pruno. How to keep a loose head. How not to get cornered.

The combination of imprisonment, insanity and his Reverend America phase would have several lasting impacts. It froze him in time, like Poppy and Rose—sealing him in a bubble of Joe Louis, wingtips, Lana Turner sweaters and Milton Berle. To him, rock’n’roll would forever remain Elvis and Buddy Holly—he missed the Beatles completely.

But the heavy medication he was exposed to did bring an end to the hallucinations. He was let out, and the go to the ant work ethic Berina had instilled in him stood him in good stead, even when the jobs were dull. He worked and wandered, traveling the country as he’d done with Poppy and Rose. He learned how to drive a bulldozer in a pine plantation one summer, cleaned acid vats, and decked chain on an Ohio River tugboat. His goal was to one day rejoin Summer, who’d stayed on in Joplin and become a nurse. But the jobs and the cities swept around him like the dandelion down she used to blow. He lost his way again. He’d been in one of the cleaner, more expensive institutions that Berina paid for when the news of Summer’s death reached him. She’d been hit crossing the street. On her blind side. By an ambulance, ironically. She’d never gotten married and was still living at home. She’d been saving herself he’d heard—for something. The loss brought back the darkness—yet still he endured. Berina managed his release. He’d learned the favorite show idea.

Once more out of the grave and into the fire. Without a high school diploma, he had to take what work he could—often despairing, pointless jobs . . . slaughterhouse, rest home, factories, changing tires. The places he’d lived were just as heartless. Squares of loneliness with steam heat dripping off the walls, a spring jutting out of a stained mattress . . . smears of sputum dried under matchbook-shimmed tables . . . damp, stinking pillows. He never sang in those days.

It’s not easy when you have both a criminal record and a history of mental health problems. Never to be called the courteous “Sir.” Forever grateful for a clean toilet. He was often forced to forge signatures and invent names—just as his former guardians had done. He knew how to come by fake ID and how to make up stories. He was only one coherent person to Berina.

Then she called on some old family connections and got him a job working for Amtrack on the Empire Builder. He started washing dishes, the sole white man in the kitchen. All those rolling miles—from Union Station in Chicago to Milwaukee, St. Paul . . . then the haunted towns of North Dakota . . . to Whitefish . . . through the mountain darkness of Idaho, at last to the coast and the ferries of Puget Sound.

He kept his nose clean and became a chef’s assistant, working for Big Black Monroe back east on the Montrealer line, slinging the hash alongside a tiny, wiry black guy called Jerky. Monroe had a Jewish wife and six children in Montreal. Jerky lived above a barbershop in East Harlem when he wasn’t on the train. Not being able to afford living at either end of the line, Casper took a creaking floored hotel room in White River Junction, Vermont. He liked the icicle sharp steeples of the New England churches. It was there he met Betsy.

Poor Betsy was a May Day in bed, but had pubic hair that was as rough as a Brillo pad, which she tried heroically to soften with lanolin, and Casper joked that with a little rosemary and garlic, she’d have been the perfect lamb roast. He called her “Lambkin” and he started singing again. In his Medicine Bag was a Polaroid some stranger had taken of them sharing a submarine sandwich out in front of a Mohawk gas station.

But love will make you do funny things—and not having much experience that way, Casper gave up his good job for the hope of a life with her. They went back to her small Wisconsin hometown and served as caretakers of a summer camp. Then he got into a fight in town one night. He couldn’t remember how it started—only how it ended. He had to cross over into Canada. For man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. For years he lived illegally, being paid in cash. He worked on a Cree Indian Reservation. He studied wheat fields. But still he snuck back to see Berina.

The final time he returned to Joplin, he stayed to look after her as she’d done with him. Leukemia. She’d fallen on hard economic times too—the only way a sensible, hardworking woman like her could’ve found that fate. Love. For the first time since her young filly days, stout and now speckled with age, she’d given her heart to a man. A traveler who’d been staying at her boarding house for years. One of the few loyals who’d stuck with her despite deals at the local motels she couldn’t match. A white man named Exeter Crowe.

Casper was too late coming back to find out the details of how he’d worked his wiles. Like Cab Hooly, he just absconded one day—and with him went most of the money Berina had worked so hard to save. Casper made her peppermint tea and read to her from the Reader’s Digest. It nearly tore his heart open to hear her, near death, weeping in shame about not having more money to leave him. He never forgot those last moments in the hospital. No longer the lovely smells of jasmine, honeysuckle, crumbed cutlets and fresh bread that had been her life. Just disinfectant and rubber gloves—Salisbury steak and cranberry slop.

“I wish to God I were a real healer,” he said.

“Boy, you don’t even know. You took on the pain of too many too young. You been damn good to me,” Berina said.

“You’ve been family to me,” he replied, sucking himself in.

“Then honor me by being a father to yourself. I’m talkin’ ‘bout a Berina promise here.”

“Berina promise.”

“Always be yourself. You got a lotta them to be. Hold my hand now—and let me go.”

“I’ll hold your hand . . . but . . . ”

“You hold my hand, and I’ll do the going. Just keep my hand warm when I can’t. A little warmer, a little longer.”

He looked after her to the end and saw to a dignified burial. The house had been refinanced to pay for her treatments. There really wasn’t much that she had to leave him—not after Crowe’s snakery. Still, it was more than Poppy and Rose had bequeathed—with none of the bitterness and aftershocks of their departures. Berina’s death was almost beautiful, if it hadn’t been so . . .

The sorrow nearly sent him under—and then, just like when he’d been tortured in jail, something clicked inside him. He couldn’t let Berina down. She’d saved him all she could.

He headed to the agricultural land. He worked small places, sometimes spreading onions on the fields to hold down the soil between plantings. He labored on big properties, driving combine harvesters, 16 row cultivators and moldboard plows. When those jobs dried up, he went further west and did the backbreaking work of picking raspberries and artichokes alongside wetbacks. There were leeches in the lettuce fields, rattlesnakes in the tomato vines. The phosphate fertilizer could make you sick. Still, he thrived.

Sometimes he’d wander back to the skid row barbershop streets of Denver, Omaha, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, or the Central Valley of California. He lived in hotels with crippled old cowboys inching along on chrome walkers, and occasionally slept with strip show girls, or ones he picked up at truck stops when he had a car (and he did have cars some times—a deuce and quarter, a pick-up and a Volkswagen microbus).

He did love women, and he sought out their company whenever he could. But what did he have to offer women who were real in the world? They wanted money and men of stature. He was just tall. And even with the hookers and the bar maids, there was always the fear that the specter of that night down in Mexico would return. He was a funny looking man. He had no choice but the harlots. He told God not to watch, and prayed the devil beast wouldn’t come back.

But as his body aged, it began showing signs of the strain. Work was harder to find. All the smaller farms were gone. Everything was big and commercial. Questions got asked. If he had any trouble, he tried to remember all that he’d learned about survival.

He met the little old loose-limbed Navaho man, who went by the nickname of Hercules, in Arizona, where he learned about Medicine and pulled together the fragments of the past he still retained. Old Hercules gave him a new way to think of the fragments—and sometimes giving someone a new way to think about old things is the greatest gift you can give. It was more than just finding a new bag—he’d found a new form for the past—a new way for it to relate to the moment. As Hogerty would’ve said—he’d made the room bigger. Still, at night he’d slip back into the old Lonely Room . . . back to the jail and the asylums . . . to flaking Paul Bunyans . . . Dillinger hideout log cabins covered in lichen . . . camp meetings . . . Joplin.

Stiff in the back after what he worried might be one of the last harvest seasons where he could find employment, the loneliness overcame him—and he headed out into the loneliest place he knew—the Great Basin desert of Nevada, where he could be alone with the stars and the bones of long dead monsters—like the kind the World Weekly News had always been rediscovering. It was on the highway between Searchlight, Nevada and Las Vegas that he met Rip and Daphne Tucker, the owners of the New Western Matrimonial Parlor Plus SNAKE PIT & MUSUEM. He ended up staying with them until things got too weird.

What did the MUSEUM display? Typewriters, barbed wire, salt and pepper shakers, plows, guns, beer steins, carriage lanterns, birds’ eggs, clocks, badges, shells, padlocks, saws, bottles, cacti, fruit crate labels, road signs, horse drawn vehicles and duck decoys. “This superb collection” was housed in “three separate modern facilities” (corrugated iron sheds that baked in the heat and were icehouses in winter). The real attraction though, the hot ticket the Tuckers had, was their reptile enclosure. “Do you think it’s all right we call it a snake PIT?” Rip was forever asking. “You don’t think that cheapens it do you? I don’t want to cheapen it.”

The PIT Rip didn’t want to cheapen contained skinks and geckos, an iguana, a chuckwalla (perhaps the fattest, ugliest reptile ever), and a substantial clan of rattlers, including sidewinders and diamondbacks—plus a frilled dragon from Australia. Casper was calm around snakes from his church days.

Rip’s tagline whenever a family did happen to wander through was “Immensely grateful you stopped in.” Then he’d dangle white mice by their tails, drop them into the PIT and stir the serpents with his long cane with the noose on the end. Casper thought of the long-suffering Lazarus. “You see, they’ll strike the mouse and sink their fangs in, injecting the venom. Then their jaws, which are hinged to swallow objects much larger than themselves allow them to take the mouse in, where peristalsis forces it through the digestive system. Enzymes start breaking down the fur and dissolving the claws. Yes sir. Immensely grateful. Immensely grateful you folks stopped by.”

Between mice ranching, admission to the SNAKE PIT & MUSEUM, and marriage services, the Tuckers could barely feed themselves let alone pay Casper much. But he lived with Rip and Daphne for almost two years. Until their sexual interests began to weigh on him.

There was no accident in them having reptiles around—and a wedding chapel. Their behavior would lead Casper to do some research in the library in Henderson—and to his surprise he’d find out that their proclivities had names. But it was the food and mess fixation that would be their undoing. Arachibutyrophilia is the name he learned, and you well might not believe what it means.

Problems arose when they invited another couple to join them and the other female to participate unknowingly had a severe food allergy to peanut butter. In a matter of a few moments, once smeared with the chunky goo, her breathing stepped up toward hyperventilation and even when scrubbed down with wet towels, her skin took on the bubbled texture of a salted cane toad. Casper remained clear headed enough when called on to avert an accidental homicide, but the next day he was gone—and that was when he met Joe Meadow.

14

Austin City Limits

The old man who called himself Hoptree Bark and insisted he was 151 years old didn’t stop talking. “Karl Marx said, ‘Capital is dead labor, which vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more labor it sucks.’” When he wasn’t sloganeering, he was singing. He covered “John the Revelator,” “Wildwood Flower” and “Where the Shades of Love Lie Deep.” Casper was sorely tempted to sing along because he knew those songs, but he didn’t think that would send the right message.

When the old man wasn’t singing, he was blowing his harp—and when he wasn’t playing the harmonica, he regaled them with stories of strikes in the Pennsylvania coal mines, where he claimed to be from—all punctuated with a patter that went something like . . . “God is love, time is money . . . man can’t live by bread alone . . . does anyone have a club sandwich? My name is Hoptree Bark. I’m 151 years old.” When questioned about how he came to be in Ardmore, all that could be ascertained was that it had something to do with a woman and a house he’d once bought on the proceeds of a minor hit record—before the U.S. government sabotaged his career because he was a communist sympathizer.

Angelike would occasionally pipe up, “You ain’t no 151,” which always inspired another lecture on the dignity of the common man and the sanctity of the American Labor movement. It was all Casper could do to keep his mind on the road, and of necessity, the radio had to stay on for further weather reports.

The onslaught of twisters had torn a path of devastation all around them. Whole streets had been struck and houses laid to waste in several towns. Crumpled cars had been hurled, tanker trucks blown up—livestock swept up in stairways of whirling dirt. And then there were those stories of chance survival. A cat found in a tree in a flattened neighborhood. A washing machine landing a mile from its leveled home, the clothes all clean. He groped into his Medicine Bag.

DOUBLE DECKER BUS FOUND AT THE SOUTH POLE

Everything was connected, even as it flew apart.

In the back of his mind was the question of what to do when they arrived in Austin. The important thing was getting the girl back with her family before the baby was born. His life would sort itself out—it was her he was worried about. She seemed to have faith in this relative—that was all he had to go on. What to do with Hoptree was more than he could think about. At least the old timer was still warm and vertical and out of that hellhole of a nursing home. No man left behind.

They stopped in Ft. Worth to scarf down some chili dogs (which provoked in Hoptree some fearsome flatulence). Perhaps the buffalo wings would’ve been a better choice.

Casper kept the radio on for more news of the tornadoes. Even if Angelike had lied about the money Rick James had on him, she didn’t have much—and he knew just how little he had left—which meant they were running out fast. Of course old Hoptree barely had his wits about him let alone any cash, and certainly no credit cards. This put another edge on their arrival in Austin. It wasn’t just for Little Red and her baby’s sake, he was going to have to put his hand out to this mysterious aunt himself, and he didn’t like the thought of that. Heaven only knew what the old man was going to do. It was hard to know if his accepting attitude of his circumstances was brave—or just another sign of dementia. Maybe it was a blessing. Who wanted a clear head in his situation?

He at least provided them with some shelter in public. What must they have looked like to others? A tall, pipe cleaner thin albino of crusty drifter middle age, a hoary wrinkled gnome—and a redhead spitfire who maybe stood five feet, with a big set of knockers and a bun in the oven. As oddball a trio as they were, they couldn’t avoid drawing some stares (although that would lessen the farther south they went), but the old man’s presence gave them the illusion of some kind of a family.

This was the New Depression after all. People were out on the rivers of the roads in search of whatever opportunities they could find. A bigger storm had touched down than just some twisters. The weather reports on the radio alternating with the constant hate back radio bore witness to the parallel upheavals. Casper tried to keep his mind on the highway. Hoptree’s gentle harmonica steadied him. It annoyed Angelike.

“Stop with that damn thing!” she bitched.

“I will when you stop smackin’ that blasted chewing gum of yours—like some cud munching heifer!” the old man replied.

“Don’t think I don’t know what that is. I got good dollar from men a couple centuries younger than you. You wearing a diaper?”

“I am not. I think you should be.”

“Oh, yeah?” the girl demanded, jerking her head around to face the back seat. “When’s the last time you got it up? Can you remember? Or are you too looney tunes . . . got Oldtimer’s Disease?”

“Alzheimer’s,” Hoptree corrected. “My condition is called Benjamin Franklinism. And I was quite the ladies’ man at the Home. One of the advantages of being a stud in those stalls. You get to service a lot of mares.”

“In your wet dreams,” Angelike quipped. “Limp as wet laundry. You can’t cut no mustard. Most you do is lick the jar—and with a buncha old ladies, that’s just gross.”

“For your information, little miss saucy mouth . . . I happen to have a firm erection right now. And if you cared to inspect, you’d also find that I’m hung like the proverbial horse.”

“Stop the car! I am so outta here you be talkin’ like that.”

“Because you’re a professional?” the old man asked. “Why should you be offended by that kind of talk when you’re a whore—and a very young sad whore at that. I’m sure you’ve heard and seen worse. But not seen better!”

The girl burst into sobbing at this, even though the old man’s tone was much softer than his words, and his words no more than the banter she’d been giving him. Casper felt a twinge in his heart for her. She had every reason to cry. A shit life. Pregnant by some faceless anyman—or Rick James. She’d seen the worst of men and no doubt a lot of cheap motel rooms and back alleys. He knew what smelling those kinds of places did to you.

Still, it was more than just not liking to hear her cry. They couldn’t afford that kind of thing in public. The slightest hiccup now and they could all be sunk. There was always a chance that if taken in for anything, the authorities could trace him back to the Oldsmobile—and both Angelike and him back to Rick James. It didn’t matter that it had been self-defense. Once they had him in custody, they could actually pin anything they wanted on him. He’d seen how it worked. They had to stay straight and make it to Austin. “Stop it, children,” he called. Hell, they were all children . . . and Texas brought back so many memories, with its dead flowers of windmills and blue norther battered chinaberry trees.

They made a short stop in Waco for Angelike to pee and wash her face. All Casper could think of was the assault on the compound of the Branch Davidians—the FBI and ATF burning the cultists alive. He was glad to get back on the road. And the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.

The rest of the drive was quiet. Maybe they were all just too worried about what lay ahead. But when they reached the administrative heart of the Great State-a Texas things didn’t work out as he’d hoped. Angelike couldn’t remember the neighborhood where her aunt lived so they drove around for hours, scouring everywhere west of I-35 from the Laguna Gloria Art Museum to the Barton Creek Square Mall.

Finally, out near the lake, they located an antebellum-replica of imposing size and intimidating darkness that the girl insisted she recognized. The attempted mansion seemed atavistic by contrast to the Spanish-style haciendas and suburban ranch houses they passed. Angelike was elated but it was hard to be optimistic. Whoever lived there, it seemed unlikely they’d be pleased to see a long-forgotten niece, flat broke, round with child, with who knew what hidden health problems, wearing a dirty skirt. But the girl wasn’t to be dissuaded and padded in her discount sneakers between the colonnades to let the brass knocker bang against the oval faceplate of the door.

Hoptree, after a long silence, had rediscovered the harmonica when the porch burst alight like a Molotov cocktail. It was only the halogen globe in the lamp above the door but all at once, reflecting off the white paint, it flung out into the juniper bushes a demonic fireshadow of Angelike—and things became confusing.

A corpulent figure wearing what looked like a Mouseketeer’s hat, emerged with considerable velocity, and as Casper had been expecting a middle-aged woman, it was several seconds before he was able to process what he was seeing—and hearing—for the figure kept shouting, “Cuidado!” and “Fuera!” and swinging an estoque, a bullfighter’s sword. It was then that Casper grasped that the reflections he was seeing were in fact beams from the porch lantern playing off the spangles and brocades of a matador’s suit—which in this case was straining at the seams to contain a bloated, rouge-faced figure who might’ve been male, or a female impersonating a male, but who was clearly descompuesto.

“Anda!” the figure beckoned, as Angelike leapt off the porch. “Ay yi yi!” he swiped his muleta. He made a charge for one of the colonnades, hacking at it with the sword like a fat schizophrenic Zorro—only to seemingly freeze in fear and barrel back into the house.

Hoptree had stopped playing the harp, while Casper had almost stopped breathing, thinking that at any second the sword wielder was going to skewer the young girl and then lop off one of her ears as a trophy. Strangely enough, she seemed to have composed herself, and regaining the porch exclaimed, “Enrique!”

“Who’s Enrique?” Casper asked rushing to her side.

“Enrique Cruz. My uncle!” she announced. “Well, sort of. He’s the matador who got busted for drug smugglin’.”

“I thought you said your aunt took up with a Cajun in Louisiana.”

“Enrique musta got outta jail and come back to her. I think he’s high outta his mind. Used to eat mescaline and peyote like Pez.”

“A bullfighter—tripping?”

“‘At’s why he got gored.”

Casper noticed that the front door had opened a crack.

“Jamás iré!” the voice hissed and a bloodshot eye peeked out. “¿De qué se trata? ¿A quién quiere ver usted?”

“We didn’t mean to frighten you. We’re looking for the owner,” Casper said.

“¡Es mío! Me dijo! ¿Qué le pasa a usted? ¡No tengo dinero!”

“It’s me, Enrique. Angelike,” Little Red tried. “Hermione’s niece.”

“Dispense usted!”

“Hermione’s my aunt. Remember?”

“No creo que haya tenido el gusto.” The voice broke off into a maniacal gurgling as the effeminate matador fled deeper into the house, leaving the door ajar. Before Casper could say anything, the girl had disappeared inside, too. Fearing for her safety, he left the old man in the car and followed her into the house—which stank.

The first main room he came to appeared to be empty. On a Salvadoran butternut table were many cream-colored pills with jaguar heads impressed into them, as well as a baggy of dark green marijuana. On the floor were pizza boxes, dirty women’s underwear, old revistas de toros and Mexican wrestler fanzines. There was no sign of Angelike or the deranged matador, just a faint golden light seeping from under another door. It was unlocked. Votive candles glowed atop a side table of horseflesh mahogany. Bullfight posters from Tijuana, Monterrey and Mexico City—and shelves full of papiermache skulls, old wax flowers and portraits of the Virgin Mary.

Casper was just turning to leave when that peculiar voice whispered, “No tan de prisa,” and in another room Angelike screamed for her life.

15

Rinders Highway

A bespectacled trucker named Walt Abrams had picked Casper up in a Peterbilt two miles down from the REPTILE PIT & MUSEUM the morning he’d said goodbye to the Tuckers. “There aren’t many Jewish truck drivers,” Walt said. “I’m a lost tribe all by myself.” That notion appealed to Casper. In all his years hitching rides and talking with truckers he couldn’t recall ever meeting a Jewish one—not a long distance hauler anyway. He’d always been fond of truckers. They were the only people who’d never looked at him askance or seemed to show any signs of fear that he might be crazy. He never knew why.

“My brother’s a gynecologist in Short Hills, New Jersey,” Walt informed him. “My mother thinks he’s the bee’s knees—admires him more than the rabbi. But I wouldn’t trade the open road for all his open legs. I like seeing the sun come up like a big runny egg. You’d never guess in a million years where I live.”

Casper knew most big riggers pretty much lived in their trucks—just to keep the bills paid. “A houseboat,” Walt said with an obvious degree of pride. “That sticks in my brother’s craw like you wouldn’t believe,” he chuckled.

Casper noticed there weren’t the usual Tammy Wynette or Lynryd Skynrd CDs in the cab instead it was mostly classical music, jazz and Spanish foreign language lessons. “If you have the time, apply your mind—that’s my motto,” Walt said.

He was on his way back home to Lake Havasu where he had his mooring. He sang along to the opera aria he had on. “That’s the Barber of Seville,” he said. “I don’t care if my brother’s got 6,000 square feet, I’m a singer at the wheel! I live on a houseboat! Haha!” Casper was grateful. After the peanut butter incident, Walt seemed like a breath of fresh air.

He got dropped off at a Terrible Herbst gas station. There was an old man filling up his Chevrolet 4WD that was pulling a gleaming Airstream trailer. When Casper came back from the Men’s Room and was trying to think what to do next, the old ramrod approached him.

“I think it’s a travesty about the London Bridge being here,” he announced. “I mean, what the hell? This is America. How do you feel about the End of the World? Preparation and organization—that’s the key. You look like you could do with a BLT. My name’s Joe Meadow and I fought at Guadalcanal. I think you should meet General Douglas MacArthur. He’s my sidekick. Every American hero needs a sidekick.”

Casper knew right away the old man hadn’t properly spoken to anyone in several weeks. And he was indeed hungry—where else did he have to go?

General Douglas MacArthur proved to be a slinky, nougat tan ferret with eyes that reminded Casper of Rose. He had a cushioned cage but had free range of the Airstream, the “Mobile Command Post” as Joe called it.

“Fuck the BLT, why not have a juicy T-bone and a beer with us, eh?” the old vet said. “We only bite when the moon’s out.”

So a very special friendship began. Joe did the cooking; Casper washed the dishes and cleaned “the head.” “Chain of command, son,” Joe said. He was headed back up into Nevada, where there was “room to think” . . . although he made a point of harping on the fact that his End Game was “bugging out” to the Ozarks. “Harrison, Arkansas, son. A highly defensible position.” Casper knew it well from Reverend America days. Just as he knew Toad Suck, Smackover, Umpire and Okay.

Joe called the ghost planet landscape of Nevada, “Early Man Country”—and he’d be proven right, for together they’d find petroglyphs and the ancient throwing sticks called atlatls. Once near Berlin Ichthyosaur State Park, they watched a single engine Cessna drone over the sage where they were camped and something plummeted out. When they went to investigate, they found a .44 caliber Bulldog.

“There’s a story behind this,” Joe said. “You bet your butt. Every gun tells a story. Helluva a recoil on these things.”

Joe knew a great deal about guns and their stories. He’d not only sold them for years, he’d been shooting them all his life and was a marksman, whether with a handgun or a rifle. (He only liked his shotguns for the noise.)

He also had a soft spot for Roadrunner cartoons. “I just love that Wile E. Coyote. Every time a box of Acme Corporation products arrives . . . dehydrated boulders, earthquake pills . . . I’m always hopin’. When I hear the real coyotes howl at night, I don’t know whether I want to shoot ‘em or be one.”

Joe was a decorated Marine who admired vulture black muscle cars and stacked strawberry roans—he’d just gotten old and probably knew the moment he arrived in the desert that he was sick. He never once said how old he was, but Casper figured he had to be 85—and it was a “damn miracle” he’d made it that far. For years he’d worked in an airplane factory in LA until he was running it but not getting paid enough for the responsibility. When both his twin sons died in an airplane accident over the Salton Sea, he took early retirement, and moved to Riverside with his wife. He’d been a hunter so he opened up a gun shop. He did well. He outlived his old war buddies. Then his wife grew ill and died on an operating table.

Casper never got the full story of what happened, but Joe blamed the hospital for negligence. Doctors were “lower than whale shit at the bottom of the ocean.” Perhaps long held but suppressed prejudices emerged then. Or maybe another loss just broke him open. But he slipped into that Right Wing cul-de-sac of beliefs that are associated with gun nuts and survivalists. Still, Casper never believed that this was what the man held true. He may have had manuals lying around the Mobile Command Post (which General Douglas MacArthur would lounge on) with titles like Hunter-Killer Team Techniques and Ambush of Supply Routes, but he’d lapse into fairly fluent Spanish when he was drunk, and cackle over his imagined plot to kidnap Trigger from the Roy Rogers Museum—or to piss on John Wayne’s star on Hollywood Boulevard. “America’s no place for real heroes anymore, is it?” he’d ask the ferret, cradling the animal in his arms. “Our time is over. Soon we’ll be just dust on the wind.”

General Douglas MacArthur came very close to becoming dust on the wind one afternoon near a place called Mercy Creek (which, as Joe put it, was “as dry as a school marm’s crotch”). Allowed to frisk around in the sunshine, the ferret pursued a rabbit into a hole. Joe was at first very pleased with the “killer instinct”—but when the ferret failed to return, he became agitated and starting tweeting on the pennywhistle he believed he’d trained the animal to respond to. Tweet! Tweet! No General Douglas MacArthur. The old man’s face took on a graven cast.

“Damn it!” Joe moaned. “He’s killed a rabbit and gotten trapped in a tunnel.”

“What’ll we do?” Casper asked.

“We’ll have to dig him out. There’s Marine in that ferret. No man left behind.”

And so Joe got out the pickaxes and shovels. Believing in impending Armageddon, he carried with him just about every tool and implement known to man, along with nine handguns (both pistols and revolvers) . . . the Remington, a Winchester and a Savage rifle, a Mossberg and a Browning shotgun, an air gun for varmints (and for “perimeter security” should he ever camp in a trailer park)—and a Colt AR-15 assault rifle for “more serious matters.”

“Do you really need all these weapons?” Casper asked once, knowing from his travels that such an arsenal wouldn’t even rate a mention in the hills of Arkansas or the woods of Michigan. Joe’s logic was impeccable.

“How can I be a gun nut if I don’t have a few guns?”

In now high afternoon sun, they started digging. Of course rabbit burrows are complex things that go off in all directions. They dug and they dug, but they couldn’t find the ferret. After two sweaty hours, Joe started to get really nervous. Casper realized how dire the situation was because the old man hadn’t once mentioned stopping to have a beer, which was his normal line on the half-hour. (Whenever in the company of other people, or what Joe called “mouth breathers,” beer was considered a vital “counterinsurgency measure.” Despite racking up gobs of lung gunk, he kept shoveling away side by side with Casper. The albino was impressed—he’d done a lot of shovel work in his time.

“We’re barking down the wrong hole,” Joe declared finally. “There’s only one strategy to adopt now. We’ll have to risk collateral damage.”

“You don’t mean . . . ”

“Yep. Plan C. General Douglas MacArthur would approve. It’s tricky, but he’d rather die being exfiltrated than left in the hellhole of an enemy tunnel.”

The Plan C that Joe was referring to was C-4. “Premium quality plastic explosive, son, with a detonation velocity of 26,000 feet per second, more powerful than TNT.” The compound (naturally a highly protected and regulated substance) had been secured in exchange for an Uzi and a very rare German dueling pistol from a mining company engineer, along with some gelignite, and all the blasting caps, detonators, fuses and timers any civilian could ever need, which along with the weapons, Joe kept stored in a secret locker in the floor of the Mobile Command Post. This was in fact a key reason why Joe had yet to bug out officially to the Ozarks. While his firearm collection was relatively modest, he had all the demolitions bases covered. He might well have been in good company with the bazookas and grenade launchers of the Christian paramilitary troops, but explosions simply weren’t as much fun in the woods, he felt. “You need to be under the big blue, son. I like to see the dust blow. I was born in the shadow of the Red Devil, and I need that dust.”

Joe’s fascination for all manner of munitions and incendiary devices was profound. He had many military handbooks (which he insisted General Douglas MacArthur was well versed in too) with phrases such as . . . Exact rear-center detonation of the charge is essential for uniform distribution of shock waves and proper propulsion . . . highlighted in yellow marker. He was also skilled at improvising his own devices and kept a barrel of gunpowder handy for small-scale amusements such as pipe bombs, claymores and Bangalore torpedoes. Casper had seen him cave in an abandoned mine to nice effect . . . and to the old soldier’s great delight, a termite ridden outhouse, the remnant of some forgotten ranch, went sky high over a wave of borate dune—the surviving toilet seat seeming to head into orbit. “Old Wile E. would be proud of that one,” Joe said.

But trying to extract a ferret from an obviously large and intricate warren via plastic explosive posed “a severe field expedience challenge.”

“I can read your mind like a sieve,” Joe said when he saw Casper shaking his head. “We just have to put ourselves into the enemy’s mindset—we need to think like rabbits.”

If anyone had ever been thinking like a rabbit, Casper mused, this was it.

“We can see where we’ve dug . . . so that says to me that General Douglas MacArthur is in a compromised position somewhere between those points. That means if we set the charge at the exact center of our holes, we have the best chance of getting him free.”

“But what if . . . ” Casper tried.

“Then he’ll have died with valor, knowing we didn’t give up on him. Even worst case combat scenario, we may still get the body back for proper burial.”

Casper was on the verge of pointing out that the ferret was already buried—that was the whole problem—but he knew that would only spur Joe into a sermon on principles and fundamentals. The old man had his favorite show, and dirt was going to fly. Joe knew just what to do. “Stand by,” he said at last.

He used his best remote electric stuff—it was somewhat disturbing to see how proficient he was. Then he led Casper back out of what he thought would be the range of the blast. “I feel we should say a prayer,” he said. Casper actually agreed with him there. “Would you do the honors?” Joe asked.

Even Reverend America had never been called upon to bless an explosion, but he had in his time put the healing touch on many animals that had been brought to meetings. Usually by children. He recalled the jittering fear and incomprehension in an old epileptic dog’s eyes. He’d always wanted to have a dog, but the closest he got was the rabbit that got mauled and Lazarus the mouse. Some inner voice had called him to slip the dog a tablet of aspirin. They were much larger grain then, and in the South they came mixed with a powerful whack of codeine, over the counter. He made it look like he was breathing out the Devil and no one noticed that he forced the pill down. Within but a few minutes the dog stopped shaking and seemed at peace. The boy who’d brought it in, no older than himself, burst into tears of thankfulness. No cure, but a little relief. Now was no time to tell the old man he didn’t believe. Joe believed in him, and for some reason he recalled that the real General MacArthur’s corncob pipes were made in Missouri, which connected everything once again.

He looked up into the sky, opened his arms like wings . . . and said with Reverend America conviction, “Blessed be the loyal, for they shall never be left behind. Blessed be the brave, for their courage inspires others. Blessed be those who never give up, for they shall find a way. Grant us good fortune in this humble effort to save a life. Set our ferret free!”

BOOOOOOM!

The blast was like nothing even Joe had imagined. The Airstream was bombarded with clods—rabbits flew, some still alive. A dead one landed on the roof. Dust rose up two hundred feet or more and was a long time settling. Joe started screeching on the pennywhistle and staggering down into what was now a sizeable crater with one of the shovels. He sifted, he prodded—he tweeted.

“I don’t think he can hear you anymore,” Casper called at last.

“I know,” Joe replied, and Casper could see the old man was battling hard not to weep—and losing.

“That’s because I think the explosion’s deafened him. I have him right here.”

Joe turned around . . . and it was like the sun coming up again on the same day.

“The little fellow blew clear over here . . . but . . . he seems all right.”

Casper had never seen Joe run, but the old Marine did then. And he was right about the ferret being deaf . . . but that didn’t mean a thing to Joe . . . and it didn’t stop General Douglas MacArthur from enjoying a dinner of milk fed veal and a bowl of lukewarm chicken soup that night. When Casper woke up the next morning, he saw the heavily groomed ferret snuggled in the old man’s arm in his bunk. Over scrambled eggs and Canadian bacon, Joe said, “You know, it was your blessing that did the trick. What did they call you again?”

“Reverend America,” Casper said.

“You’re damn right,” Joe said.

Joe drank Coors Beer. “Coors is an honest beer,” he insisted. And he smoked two packs of Old Gold cigarettes every day. He had a frightful pulmonary hack in the mornings that suggested he was well on the way to emphysema, but that didn’t deter him. Casper hated cigarettes with a vengeance since Poppy and Rose had made him smoke to deepen his voice, so the old man was forced to puff away outside—often under the extendable canopy in bad weather. “I could get pneumonia out here, you know,” he’d complain.

Joe liked his steaks virtually raw, so lighting the portable barbecue was really a formality. Fortunately, Casper liked his steaks very rare. Where the heat came in handy was with Joe’s hash browns. He took Tater Tots, boiled them, then mashed them in a skillet with Tabasco sauce, slivered Spanish onions and a grated zucchini. “Zukes are good for the colon, son.”

Casper wished Joe had thought a bit more about his colon a bit earlier. Whatever was ailing him, it had to do with the gut. Often the old man would double over in pain. Then he’d light up a coffin nail. Casper felt a sympathetic anguish—and the hash browns always brought to mind Poppy, frying up a mess of offal and greens in a stand of pencil pines, the sunset fading over the Saint Mary’s River like wine in the water.

Joe came from Dustbowl migrant stock and was proud of it—a sharecropping family from Bowlegs, Oklahoma. “We was dusted, busted, but never rusted,” he’d say. He called Casper High Pockets because he was tall, and Casper always appreciated that the old man never made any reference to him being an albino.

Out in the Promise Land west, Joe had started work early, picking snap beans. Raisins in Fresno. Table grapes in Delano. He knew what almond trees sound like, ticking in the heat. He could talk spinach, hops, barley or feed corn. But Casper liked hearing him talk about the Dustbowl days the most. How they’d called jackrabbits Hoover hogs.

It was Joe who gave him perhaps the most valuable Medicine of all. Rinders.

“Us tin can tourists—that’s what we called ourselves—we headed west in old jalopies, mostly Chevys and Model A Fords. They were hell on wheels—that’s where that expression comes from—sored your ass, beat your kidneys, jarred your teeth. But like us, they didn’t give up. Them rattle traps were made the true American way. Simple and strong—and if something did go wrong, it was easy to fix ‘em. That’s where the word Rinder comes from—and it’s all but forgotten now.

“You could use a piece of pork rind to repair an axle bearing or a ruptured radiator. Wouldn’t solve all your troubles, but it would get you to the next town. That’s what Rinders are. They’re folks who stop to help you—to give you that one little thing you need to keep you going on your own. And they’re also a part of you—a part you didn’t know you had that gets the job done when the rain’s falling and the chips are down. Thought a lot about Rinders during the War, son. Shit island beaches all covered in blood. Takes a Rinder to drag the living from the dead.”

Casper would never forget those words—first spoken to him on the edge of the magnesium mine in Gabbs, Nevada. Having grown up with the Sermon on the Mount—and having preached those historic words himself, Joe’s wisdom struck him as an American highway version. As Hercules had reinvented his tatters of memory, so Joe shone a new light on those figures in his life who’d kept the darkness back—who’d kept him going. He became devoted to the old man. There was still fight in his heart. Still the feisty Rinder spirit in him on good days. And on good days there were golden eagles . . . and the pale green explosion of the palo verde in spring.

They made friends with a Basque sheep rancher who’d drenched his flock with a luminous dye the aqua color of Black Jack gum packs so that they glowed at night to keep the coyotes away. They met rock hounds and polygamists, bounty hunters, parole violators, Hell’s Angels, photographers, nudists, cactus thieves and UFO believers. When they’d camped just east of Walker Lake, their neighbor was a man who called himself Dev Neon, a massive former pro wrestler covered in Sole-dad prison tats for a drunken rampage he’d gone on after he caught his wife polishing another man’s knob.

Why she’d have wanted to do that was a question Joe always joked about. (Dev liked to walk around in the nude but for a pair of old Chuck Taylor’s.) “Now don’t hit anyone with that thing, Chief,” Joe would snicker.

Dev lived in a tin and cement sheet shed he’d made, with solar panels for power, and a shy young Paiute woman from Pyramid Lake named Mona for company. Dev insisted his “love of the sun” was a “healing thing”—a means of “spiritually” curing the hundreds of razor cuts all over his chest and arms. “They came at me one night,” he said of his time in prison. “A pack of those rabid bastards. Just lucky one of the screws was a fan. He made it good—or I’d still be there.”

Casper never said anything about what had happened to him behind bars. Only God needed to know the details—and it didn’t seem God cared much.

Joe took him out into the cholla and the ocotillo hunting mule deer—sometimes a javelina. “You don’t aim the rifle, son. You aim yourself. I never taught my own sons to shoot. Taught ‘em how to fly a plane—and that’s what killed ‘em. Safer plonking at old road signs or bringing down a nice white-tail.” Casper thought back to Dowdy in Charleston and the blood rich taste of fresh venison.

They had good times in spite of the old man’s crotchety ways and sometimes hateful banter—which it didn’t seem that even he believed. “When the End comes—and it damn sure will—the cities will be death-traps and it will be duck season for those who are fortified.”

“Like we are right now, sitting out in the open,” Casper said one evening as the sun went down over Salt Wells, telephone poles running like thin men into the wasteland.

“Don’t you get rational with me,” Joe snapped. “I’m talking principles. I’m talking fundamentals. Mobility is a viable defensive and offensive strategy. Continuous evacuation, constant preparation for attack.” Then, as he blew Old Gold smoke at the pink clouds, he said, “This would be such a damn beautiful country if there were no people here—just highways. The cities would be empty, it would be fantastic. Ghost towns of America. Ghost cities. I could live here.”

“You do live here,” Casper pointed out.

“Not for much longer, son,” Joe said.

But Joe was tough, as Casper learned one night under a fat, full gasoline colored moon. They’d pulled into Hawthorne, Nevada, the unlikely home of the Naval Underwater Warfare Center—ammunition dumps dotting the lunar outskirts, like a cross between huge gopher holes and launch ramps. After a dreadful meal of Swedish meatballs at a checker cloth attempt at a café, they headed to the El Capitan, the only game in town. Joe wanted to play the one-armed bandits. The place was full of cigarette smoke, the beer on tap was watered down Bud, and a man with a brass hook for a hand buttonholed them to complain about taxes and the government—but Casper humored Joe. The old man clapped like a child every time any coins rang down in the apron of the slots, as if he’d beaten the machine personally.

Then a palomino blonde in her late thirties in an apricot knit dress shimmied over and started giving Casper the eye—and the suggestive hair flicks. Did it matter if she wore a retainer? Joe gave him a nudge. It had been a good bad while since he’d last been laid. She was obviously hot to trot.

“I got a room at the Best Western,” she said over her spritzer. “Wanna walk me home? This town’s kind of scary for a girl on her own.” Joe gave him a nod. “We’ll meet up in the morning.”

So, he went back with her (she took out her retainer and put it on the nightstand). She said she was a sales rep for a cosmetic company, and she was heading to Reno for a convention—lived in Utah. They were starting to get seriously friendly—when the motel door crashed open and a man with a juice splash birthmark on his face and a tomahawk in his hand careened into the room.

“Leave me alone!” the woman yelled at the man—who Casper couldn’t help feel some empathy for—that birthmark was the kind of thing people would always stare at. But he understood what was going on now. Angry husband. No stranger passing through. She’d just wanted some playtime. The guy was fifteen years younger, pretty big, mad drunk—and had a tomahawk. The pillow beside him didn’t seem like quite the right response.

“I’m gonna kill both of you!” the man spat. Then suddenly Joe appeared in the bashed in doorway.

“I wouldn’t try that, friend,” the old man said, leveling the favorite handgun in his collection, the Colt .45, at the birthmark man. He’d taught Casper to recite the Colt’s credentials like a catechism—just the way Poppy had once drilled him on the Bible. The M1911 is a single-action, semi-automatic recoil-operated handgun designed by the great John Moses Browning.

“Where did you come from?” Casper called from the bed.

“Once a Marine, always a Marine,” the old man answered. “I got a nose for trouble. And I saw this pocket pool fool follow you.”

“Fuck off! You old gimp,” the man snarled—yet standing back.

“That’s easy to say while you’re still breathing,” Joe laughed. “I think you should thank me for saving you from my friend sticking that tomahawk up your ass. I’m giving you a chance to run like a rabbit. Take it.”

“Shut up, you old fuckface!”

“Sticks and stones,” Joe clucked. “I’ll get off three rounds before you can move and you’ll be a part of that wall with the chambermaids picking up pieces of you for weeks. This is Nevada. I’m a licensed gun owner—and you’re brandishing a deadly weapon. I’ll walk, and you’ll never be buried in one piece, because even in three seconds I can choose my shots.”

“He was gonna screw my wife!”

“And probably better than you,” Joe replied. “He didn’t know she was anyone’s wife, because she damn sure doesn’t tell anyone she’s married to you. That’s your problem to solve. Now, put down that hatchet and jump off the balcony.”

“What?”

“You heard what me and the .45 said.”

“I’ll . . . I’ll break my legs!”

“Tuck and roll, friend. I can shoot you where you stand whether you put down your little toy or not. It’ll be in your cold dead hand when the police come. You’ve got five seconds. A running jump over that balcony outside—or you die in this room.” Joe stepped farther into the room and aside from the door. “Should I take a head shot, Miss?” he asked. “Or do you want me to do the groin first?”

The birthmark man threw down the tomahawk with a squeal and shot through the motel room door, hurtling over the balcony. The sound of his landing was gruesome. Joe marched outside. “I told you friend . . . tuck and roll!”

He poked his head back in the door. “Sorry to have disturbed you love birds. I’ll see that he gets dragged down the main street and set on fire with appropriate ceremony. You hear that simpering? Pathetic. One storey. He’d have never made it in the Marines. But Miss—what’s your name again?”

“L-linda . . . ” the woman answered.

“Linda, remember I’m Joe. And I’m the guy, come the morning, who’s going to personally throw you off this same balcony if you don’t give my friend the best night of his life. Honky tonk angels are one thing—but you’re just a cheating, scheming small town slut with a busted marriage you’ve got to fix. Your lying has caused some inconvenience tonight. Cheaters pay up and sluts put out. Now, good night kids. I’ve got a fire to light.”

“D-don’t hurt him!” Linda bawled.

“Get over it,” Joe quipped. “And don’t get any more of your mess on my friend. If a smile’s not on his face come morning, you’re taking a header. Oh, I think I’ll take your hubby’s little plaything. Probably still room for it up his ass. Linda—I’ll be back to review your scorecard come Reveille. Nightie night.”

He closed the sledged open door behind him and Casper, who’d been too stunned to utter a single word since his first outcry, heard the old man shout, “Jesus Christ, you’re still in the parking lot! Tuck and roll I said. This is a Best Western. Have some dignity. You don’t want to die in Nevada crying like that.”

They froze in silence for quite some time, then Linda made a move to go down on him—but he brushed her off.

“No, please, honey,” she said. “Please. Let me. I don’t think your friend’s for real—but I know he’s your friend for real. Jesus. And . . . you know . . . everything he said is true. I am a slut. Some people know how to do things. I’m just a good fuck—that’s all there is. My husband? Used to be the best guy. Got laid off—took to drinking. Tried to sell pot—ended up smoking it. The soberest he’s been in months was tonight. What was I supposed to do?”

“Then why do you stay with him?” Casper asked.

“Who’s going to pick him up off the floor? Who’s going to change the sheets?”

“So, you do love him?” Casper asked. She’d have to love him with that birthmark.

“If love’s changing the sheets and getting someone off the floor, yeah. But please . . . let me do you. I need it. I’m not scared of the old man. But I am a good lay. Please . . . let me . . . have . . . ”

Some validation, Casper thought. All God’s children. She was no slut.

Casper found Joe as he expected, drinking coffee at McDonald’s the next morning—there was no way he’d go back to the café of the night before.

“All good?” Joe asked. “How’d she do?”

“Somewhere between a V-8 stock car race and a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout,” Casper replied. “Thanks.”

“I’ve had my fun, son. You’ve got more in the tank. As long as I’m warm and vertical, I’ll always have your back.”

“You always carry the .45 out on the town?”

“Didn’t I tell you? Boy Scouts are prepared, Marines are sacks of blood and trouble.”

“Did you have your bonfire—or did you buy him a Big Mac?”

Joe laughed. “Marines solve problems, they don’t cause problems. I decided our friend Justin—that’s his name—might benefit from making the acquaintance of General Douglas MacArthur, so I hauled his ass back to the Mobile Command Post for a patty melt and a good talking to. He’s seeing things a new way this morning.”

That was Joe. Always trying to be gruff and pretend he was some kind of bigot. Yet always the first one to stop and help—and to intervene if there was an emergency.

Once Casper asked him, “What were your sons like? Were they like you?”

“They weren’t like us,” Joe answered.

Casper lived on Joe’s money and Joe lived on Casper’s company. They’d sit out at night watching shooting stars and satellites, telling stories and singing around their greasewood campfires. They both liked Patsy Cline and Merle Haggard. Joe’s favorite though was Willie Nelson and “The Red Headed Stranger.” He had a smoker’s baritone without much range, but he sang well, and he loved hearing Casper do the Only Men hymns, often commenting when he heard something familiar from Okie folksongs of his childhood. “Their music traveled a long way,” Casper said, proud again to be bringing it to life in some dead lakebed under the moon. Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away. Casper believed some songs wouldn’t go quietly either.

“It’s hard to believe the lights of those stars,” Joe said one night near the old ghost town of Calico. “A lotta of ‘em are probably already gone. We’re just gettin’ the news now.”

“New stars are always being formed,” Casper said. He’d read that in a library.

“You can’t fool an old fool—‘specially not one who’s dying himself,” Joe answered. “You’ve only found the sunny side of the street because you’ve spent too much time with a wreck like me. You started off a dead star man—and now you’re valuing your Light of the World ways. Preach me that sermon again you did where all the women fainted.”

For all Joe’s militia infatuation with the End of Days and the Vengeance of God, he enjoyed hearing Casper tell some of the simpler and more hopeful stories of the Bible . . . like Zaccheus in the sycamore tree—or the heroic stories—of Joshua at Jericho, Samson and the honey from the lion’s carcass. He liked the Parables too—and the Proverbs. He was pretty good at those himself. “I’ve never trusted women. I don’t trust anything that bleeds three days a month and doesn’t die—but I loved my wife. I damn sure wish she hadn’t died first.”

For his part, Joe told stories about the War in the Pacific—fighter planes sunk in the water—sharks come to feast on the dead. “Those islands took a pounding, son. There’d be ordnance still being dug up there today. And the bones. Nobody’d ever find all the bones.”

When it rained, they retreated inside the Mobile Command Post to play gin rummy. Joe’s eyes flickered like broken bottles along a railroad track whenever he had a good hand. One night he took a sip of Coors and said, “You know my wife died of esophageal cancer? Ugliest thing I ever seen outside combat.” Casper reached out and put his hand on the old man’s. Joe didn’t pull his hand away.

Sometimes when they’d go to sleep, Joe moaned with pain. One day before dawn, when they were close enough to the Colorado River to smell it, Joe woke up and went outside. Casper thought he was just having a leak. When the old Okie didn’t come back, Casper went out to check on him. Joe was wandering around without his pants on—he seemed disoriented. “Do you feel more like you do now than when you started?” he asked.

Casper went back to the Airstream and got Joe’s camo fatigues and his Wile E. Coyote sweatshirt—the clothes that gave him strength.

Joe seemed to come to himself again—and then he started vomiting blood. Despite wrenching pain, the old man hung on to see the sunrise.

On a bright, chill Mojave morning, while the lizards were still doing push-ups to warm themselves, Casper shot Joe in the head, just as the old man begged him to do, when the agony became too much.

It made Casper think of Howard Hughes’ incoherence at the end. Joe had been as clear as the sky. He said, “You’re more than my dead sons come back—you’re a Rinder in the blood. Look after General Douglas MacArthur and help me get where I’m goin’. I didn’t teach you how to shoot to nail bunnies. Don’t make me cry like a baby. That’s no way for a Marine to go. I promised my wife I’d never take my own . . . life. I need your . . . ”

Blessing, Casper thought. “Which one?”

“The Colt .45,” the old man answered without hesitation. “John Moses Browning’s finest. Did I ever tell you I killed maybe 20 Japanese soldiers myself? Good men. Men we might’ve had a beer with today. I’m going to have to sit down now.”

Casper went in and got the pistol. The old man was wiping tears away in the early light. He’d vomited more blood.

“Four feet,” Joe said. “Remember what I’ve taught you—let the gun aim you. You’re the best natural shooter I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t heal you—we were just fakes.”

“Bullshit,” the old man barked, and spat out some bloody saliva. “Jesus H. Christ couldn’t have done more. Now finish the job.”

“We could still make it to a hospital,” Casper said.

“You could. I can’t. I want to be with my wife and friends. I’m sorry to leave you with a mess—every once in a while even a Marine causes problems. But you know where everything is. Look after General Douglas MacArthur. Let me bug out home.”

It’s a breathtaking thing to shoot a friend at close range, who’s trying not to cry—with his weathered face to the morning sun. It’s a soul-shaking thing.

Casper buried the body beside a stag horn cactus. Joe always said the world’s finest men were buried in unmarked graves. “May a new star appear,” he said when he was done. Then he wiped down the inside of the Airstream with ammonia and boiled water. Joe hadn’t gotten around to signing the truck and the trailer over to him—the old soldier had been caught by surprise by the finality of his illness. He’d been enjoying his last days too much to think about the End Times. Casper didn’t mind—he wouldn’t have had the heart to carry on their ways without Joe. He took his belongings outside, and General Douglas MacArthur in his cage. Then he drove the trailer over a cliff, with a small boulder on the gas pedal of the Chevy, wondering if it might explode. It didn’t. Not like in the movies.

Besides, given the way the old man died, he didn’t think it was safe for him to take the vehicle. Best just to walk away. But he did take the $1,000 in cash Joe had in the Stash Box. Casper wondered what they would’ve done when the money ran out.

A tall, slender albino walking down a desert road, carrying a ferret in a cage.

It was a long trek back to the river of the highway, but he caught a ride with the first truck that passed. A man named Hoss Sawyer, driving a Mack full of frozen shrimp bound for the endless buffets of Vegas.

Hoss was a big bellied redbeard, who smoked Viceroys and sang, “I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah . . . ” Casper was thankful and put up with the smoke and the flat notes because Hoss asked no questions about why he’d been legging it out in the middle of nowhere—with a ferret. Mojave truckers have made up their minds when the air brakes come on. He harmonized with the truckie—because as Rose had always told him, “A really good singer can make even a really bad singer sound all right. And you’re the best singer we have.” It was the only compliment she ever paid him.

Hoss took a great shine to General Douglas MacArthur, and that was a huge weight off Casper’s mind. “Oh, yeah,” Hoss said. “Me and the wife got a nice little place in Needles. We’ll look after him—don’t you worry your heart about that.”

Casper appreciated hearing that more than he could say. He always admired when a big man spoke of heart. It was like finding a clean bathroom. It eased some of the anguish about Joe to know a little part of them was going on to a new life—one that he couldn’t provide.

Hoss dropped him off at the bus station in Vegas and he said a tearful goodbye to the deaf ferret. Triple parked in the loading zone, Hoss opened the cage and with confidence took the animal out and wrapped him up in his thick arms. “Don’t have a doubt about this little fellow. Just look after yourself.”

Casper shook the meaty trucker’s hand and gave a last pat to General Douglas MacArthur. “You’re a Rinder,” he said to Hoss—and then feared that he wouldn’t be understood.

To his surprise, the big man answered straight out, “That’s how I was raised. Come from the dust, back to the dust—in between never rust. Maybe die behind this old wheel—but not today. Keep the wind behind you, brother.”

16

The Hallucinogenic Matador

Casper only froze for a moment. Then a blow to the matador’s ample midsection knocked the man’s breath loose, and he shot past him, slamming the door behind. A kind of minotaur-silhouette stormed down the hall after Angelike, who, despite the bump, darted between the chicken tubs like a running back, heading for daylight, which in this case was the porch light seen through the open door. Then she made a sharp turn into an alcove, leaving the beast-shape charging past.

The reason for this sudden swerve was that she’d just seen the shadow of Hoptree Bark filling the doorway—the ancient having been summoned from the car (who wants to wait in a Buick LeSabre alone?) by the noise of the antics. Even through his cataracts he had a general idea where the door was. Perhaps he thought his roadmates were in some kind of danger (and there was good reason to think that). Perhaps he was back in his mind, heading on stage at some forgotten coffee house—or to a worker’s rally. But he was in the wrong place at the wrong time in this particular instance.

Due to the need to use his hands to feel his way forward, he’d kept his harmonica clamped in his mouth rather than stowing it in his pocket. He crossed the threshold just as the young girl broke to the side. The rampaging animal-form in apparent pursuit lacked her lateral agility and bowled into the old man, who by that time was blowing harp like a runaway train. There was nothing Casper racing up from behind could do.

Angelike found the hall light switch. On the floor beside them lay a bull’s head. Inside was the unconscious form of a boy with smooth white skin, who appeared to be sporting a jock strap made of fur. Underneath the boy lay Hoptree Bark.

“Holy Sheet!” Little Red cried, regretting the mean remarks she’d made.

Casper reached for the furred thong of the jock strap and dragged the boy out of the bull’s head. Then they heard an odd sound and saw that the old man’s false teeth had been pushed far back in his mouth, straining the skin to bleeding.

“He’s swallowed his damn harmonica!” the girl exclaimed—and indeed the sound he made did strongly suggest that was the case.

“He’s not dead!” Casper thought aloud. The albino wasn’t about to lose the old fool now. Not with the memory of Rick James and the Oldsmobile fresh in his mind. It was true that Hoptree wasn’t looking too good just then though. But despite the sickening sound of the collision, he’d only been winded. What had shocked him more was the fire at the end of the hall. There’s something worrisome about the undulations of flames indoors that cuts through the blur of even the milkiest cataracts—and the fact that he couldn’t see them clearly just added to the alarm.

It was the excited matador, set alight (having wrestled himself through the door of his chapel de toros—only to discover that he’d gotten too close to the votive candles and his traje de luces had caught on fire). This had the fortunate side effect of provoking the old man to expel both the harmonica and his dentures.

Casper and Angelike turned as one, expecting some new kind of attack, but the man in flames down the hall, seeming to grasp that his flesh was about to be cooked, turned tail, swishing through an open sliding glass door, across a patio lit by chains of Christmas lights—and leapt into a swimming pool—at the bottom of which lay tennis racquets and disintegrated hors d’oeuvres (as well as a Kawasaki motorcycle)—while the surface was covered with dogwood blossoms and Monte Cristo No. 4 cigar butts bobbing like expensive turds.

The plunge into the stagnant water doused the flames, as Enrique thrashed around like some sort of camp piñata come to life. Casper, who’d left Angelike to tend to Hoptree, came to his rescue with the long aluminum-handled skimmer, netting his head, dragging him sputtering and cursing toward the steps in the shallow end. The debauched, half-drowned figure at last hauled himself out of the pool, dripping slime. His little black hat floated like a pasteboard boat amongst the party favors—but the wild gleam in his eyes had softened and it looked like he’d regained at least some idea of what might be going on.

Angelike reappeared, on one arm leading their gnarled comrade, whose teeth had been reinstated, mouth bleeding, but who wasn’t as damaged as they’d first feared, although he looked even more disoriented than when they’d found him, strolling a few feet before the raging red wind back in Oklahoma. In her other hand she clutched the estoque she’d found embedded in a sofa.

“You crazy sonuvabitch! I oughta give you a Prince Albert with this thing!”

“Estoy perdiendo la paciencia,” Enrique grumbled—but when the girl made a thrust forward, he leapt back into the water.

“Don’t you unnerstand who I am, you douche bag?”

“¿Qué dice usted?” Enrique choked, his fat head with the smeared mascara and lipstick poking up out of the ooze.

“I’m Angelike! You whackjob. I used to be your niece. My auntie’s only. Now get outta that pool. I done had enuffa you! You see what you done to my friend?”

“Ah sí, ya veo. ¡Qué lástima!”

“Get outta there now! And tell us what you done to my aunt!”

Casper wasn’t sure if he should intervene or not. This was after all a family matter. And the last time he’d intervened . . .

Enrique obeyed and was just about out of the pool for the second time when his companion, the minotaur-boy, blundered onto the patio, for rammed onto his head once again was the bull mask, but turned around so that it was impossible for him to see at all—a punitive precaution taken by Angelike who’d also given him the fiercest wedgie she was capable of, which now lent to his movements a ruptured awkwardness that looked like it would be a long time wearing off.

The moment he appeared the girl looked ready to open his belly, but Enrique pleaded, “¡Déjalo! Por Dios, déjalo,” so instead, Angie gave him a schwack on his bare bottom, which sent him plunging into the drink, where the bull’s head bubbled up free, the young man spewing unctuous green water, an expression on his face that was at once ashamed and afraid for his life.

“Shelby!” the befuddled matador wailed (for his furry G-stringed young friend was none other than Shelby Verril of the polo-playing Verrils of Tyler, Texas, an Angus dynasty now with substantial interests in the Arab Emirates as well as prefabricated steel equipment sheds).

“How old rrr you?” the young hooker demanded, pointing the estoque as the lad extricated himself from the swamp of the pool.

“Twe-twe-tennnny wonnn!” he lied (although a part of him found it exciting to be threatened by a lower class younger pregnant girl with a sword).

“Good thing he ain’t underage,” she said fuming at Enrique.

Casper couldn’t help but note the irony of that remark, but remained silent.

“Now whatchyou done with my Aunt Hermione?”

“Se me olvida,” the matador hedged, discovering a half-empty bottle of Superior sitting on a hibachi. He drained the bottle and spat out a cigarette butt. “¿Quiéns son?” he said indicating the old man and Casper.

“I tole you, I’m Angelike—family—an’ I wanna know whair my aunt is. ¿Donde está mi tía?” she tried, dusting off old schoolbook Spanish. “¿Me entiende usted?”

Casper was impressed. He’d learned a little Spanish working in the fields. It made him think of Cameron Blanchard’s remark about Thomas Jefferson’s advice. Hoptree remained stone silent.

“He only spppeaks Spppanish when his head’s full of Palenque Blue. Give him some Bacardi and mango juice—that’ll settle him down,” Shelby lisped.

“Lissen here,” said Angelike turning to face the fop. “Somewhair inside that prissy get-up I heer a Texsus aksent, an’ I tell you, it’s a disss-grace to see a son of the Lone Star State decked out like you.”

On a sunbathing chair she noticed a silk cape—not the brocaded capote de paseo the matador wears into the ring for show, but a fighting cape, a capote de brega—kirsch red on one side. She speared it and flipped it to the youth. “Best cover yerself ‘efore he gets another look at yer purty lil beehine.”

“Jamás le he visto,” Enrique grumped deceitfully.

“Poppycock!” snipped the catamite. “I met him at the Snake Dance club on Lavaca (this too was a lie—they’d hooked up at a men’s toilet block in Pease Park). He’s only the matador—I’m—the bull!”

“¡No me hagas reír!” Enrique scoffed with a whinnying laugh.

“Bitch!” Shelby yelped.

Enrique flew at him, hands struggling to wring the boy’s neck.

Angelike was about to apply the estoque when Casper discovered a less final solution—a Laser Wash jet spray screwed onto a garden hose. He twisted the spigot, squeezed the finger-friendly trigger and gave them both what Hogerty might’ve called “a bracing blast of hydro-powered home cleaning reality.” They collapsed to the pebblemix apron around the pool, scratching at each other (which was intensely erotic for both of them).

“Well?” said Angie waving the estoque. “Whatchyou done with my aunt?”

“We killed her!” Shelby trilled. “We had a pool party and barbecued her! We gnawed her to the bone!”

Casper could just see the Medicine strip that might’ve yielded.

The boy writhed in hysterics, which prompted the incensed girl to prod him with the estoque, and then insert it in the band of his jock strap. She broke the elastic and flipped it into the pool. “One more peep outta you, an’ I’ll be roastin’ a weenie on this.”

“Y a mí me trae un tenedor, por favor,” Enrique quipped.

Shelby cringed and blushed to feel himself getting hard.

“I’ll say it agin. Whair is she?”

“She’s gone!” Shelby sang.

“I can see that!” the girl retorted. “Whair?”

“L-L-ous-i-anna!” the boy cried.

“¿Cuándo?” Angelike tried, staring at Enrique.

“Hace un momento. Hace mucho tiempo,” Enrique replied with a fart.

“Lissen,” Angelike said. “Yer lil frien’ got himself somethin’. An’ itz reddy too. I’ll make him do you—right heer in fronta us. Zat what you want? Bent over that lawn chair like a prom queen?”

“No!” Shelby squeaked, with a pre-ejaculatory pearl on the tip of his glans.

Casper was disquieted by this development. Fortunately, Angelike bashed out one of the Christmas lights.

“By God!” shouted Enrique, waking from his daze. “You’re—Angie! Little Red! I understand now!”

“You do?”

“Yes,” smiled Enrique, rising and inspecting his burnt, wet costume with chagrin and at least a good imitation of surprise. “I can see that something very unsociable has happened. My apologies. Time to come inside.”

Angelike and Casper didn’t know what to say. Hoptree’s mouth was still bleeding, his face puffy—and he still wasn’t saying anything.

Shelby, who’d lost his erection, found a frilly white French nightgown. Enrique exchanged his ruined matador costume for a burgundy smoking jacket à la Cesar Romero in Passport to Danger, and proceeded to try to make his uninvited guests comfortable in the main lounge area, which wasn’t easy, for the room was lined with mirrors, while arranged across the floor were life size examples of fake granite and marble statues in the form of Greek and Renaissance male nudes.

“Nos vemos en el espejo,” Enrque sighed, waltzing his image around the leering room. “You will no doubt find it difficult to respect me,” he said, pausing to light up a cigar. “But I was very brave once—muy macho—showered with gifts and roses. I had a great apartment on the Reforma. I went marlin fishing in Mazatlán.”

“What happened?” Casper asked, curious in spite of himself.

“Los toros dan y los toros quitan,” came the resigned reply. “It’s an old saying. The truth is I began to have visions. On the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin in Huamantla, I saw Our Lady in the sky—30 feet high. Soon after I became like a burriciego—a bull with bad eyesight.”

Hoptree stirred at this remark.

“I saw many bulls,” their camp host and assailant continued. “With great heads breathing fire. I froze in the middle of a veronica—then I ran! To the jeering of the crowd. Men spitting beer at me.”

Casper had to admit some sympathy for this.

“But there were so many bulls I couldn’t get away. I was gored. You see?” Enrique said, lifting the Sri Lankan silk to show a gash in his rubbery flesh.

“A cornada. A horn wound. I became a nulidad. El Camelo, they called me. A fake. El santo de espaldas! It was then that I discovered drugs. Not before, as many said. I found my bravery again—only to lose it forever in prison. Years of buggery and bad food—all for a bit of simple possession with intent to sell.”

“Sorry to heer that,” Angelike smirked. “But what about my auntie?”

“A noble woman—once,” Enrique replied. “Although she never came to visit me when I went to jail—and she did try to shoot me once. You see, when I got out I had nowhere else to turn—I discovered that due to a legal technicality, we were never properly divorced.”

“You meen you blackmailed her.”

“That’s unkind,” Enrique chided. “I merely reminded dear Hermione—who I don’t believe you’ve seen or written to for who knows how long—that I was still alive, and despite my change in sexual orientation—at least on paper—still her husband. Given the largesse of the oil company in buying the tract of swamp she inherited from that Cajun fur trapper—who by the way was a much bigger drug smuggler than I ever dreamed of being—my reappearance prompted her to rethink. In the end, the decision was that I should receive the deed to this house. So here I am. Your aunt, meanwhile, left about a year ago.”

“Sonuvabitch! Left for whair? Louisiana?”

“Yes,” Enrique nodded. “Back to the swamp—or what’s left of it. Some little fishing camp called Prophecy Creek down around New Iberia. I tried calling—the number of some bait and tackle place she gave me—but a retard answered. I offered her the chance to stay, but I think she was put off by the sight of me wearing a dress. She was always a little butch you know. Then of course there was the issue of the young men—the harnesses and the Xavier Cugat, the King of Rumba records. So she left to pursue her dream.”

“An’ jes what’s that?” Angelike wheedled, corrosive with contempt.

“Bird watching,” grinned the matador. “The Golden Needle Beak Woodpecker—supposedly extinct. She found one again in the bayou—which she has perhaps already wasted the remainder of her fortune on trying to turn into yet another Bird Sanctuary and Wildlife Reserve. It made the news, but nothing will come of it. She’d have done better to have moved into the basement and turned a blind eye to the fiesta. When the oil company’s legal department has dragged the case out so long the damned woodpecker has become extinct again, she’ll be sorry. That’s one of the things I learned in prison. There are times to roll over.”

Casper frowned.

“Yeah,” spat the little red fireball, and would’ve tried to stab her uncle in the gut had Hoptree Bark not found the matador’s flamenco guitar.

The old man, who hadn’t said a word since his frontal with Shelby, began with Fernando Sor, Opus 6, Number 11 in E Minor. From there he moved on to Francisco Tárrega’s “Recuerdos de la Alhambra,” fingering the rich 19th century Spanish guitar music like a virtuoso. It was amazing to hear the sounds he was able to produce with no apparent effort—but then he made a subtle shift into another stream of music altogether . . . and began to sing in a tired but compelling voice, as lost as old chestnut leaves down an empty street . . .

Behind a Western water tank a dying hobo lay

Inside an empty boxcar, one cold November day

His comrade sat beside him with low and drooping head

Listening to the final words the poor dying hobo said

I am going to a better land, where everything is bright

Where hand-outs grow on bushes, and you can sleep out every night

His voice grew weak, his head fell back, he’d sung his last refrain

His partner swiped his coat and hat and caught the eastbound train

The old man had been telling the truth, or a kind of truth, Casper thought. He could’ve been famous. Or should’ve been. Fool people well enough and maybe you are who you say. That’s what Poppy said.

He felt a warm rush of loyalty toward his fellow strangers and pilgrims. He glanced at Angelike and saw that she too was entranced. Even Shelby Verril III, whose parents would’ve hemorrhaged to have known he was in the same mirrored room as a gay Latino drug addict and an illiterate doll girl prostitute and unwed mother-to-be—let alone some superannuated hobo musician and a reedy albino with blood on his hands—was swaying back and forth in his nightgown playing air guitar along with Hoptree—who’d cut loose on a “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” romp. Then he stopped cold.

“He’s dead!” Shelby cried.

“Bravo!” Enrique clapped languidly, thinking the old man was joking.

“Hoptree . . . ?” Casper tried, reaching out . . .

“He ain’t dead!” Angie insisted, taking a deep breath. “He—he’s jes . . . Sheet! He is dead! Damn you!” she yelled at Shelby, reaching for the estoque.

She found the sword and came at him, filling the walls with distortions. The more Shelby scrambled, the more ferocious she became, chopping at the nudes with the steel blade, slashing the foam heads of the David’s and Adonis’ so that they bounced on the floor or bounded into the mirrors.

Shelby took off for the sewage and safety of the pool again, which he never reached because he tripped and found himself on the floor with a sprained ankle, his nightgown hiked up over his head, exposing his creamy pale bottom to the girl’s wrath. He would’ve been run clean through had not the old man whirred back into life and announced in a digitalized accent, “You’re now standing in the Fossil Fish Alcove, where we will find jawless fishes called ostracoderms, which appeared during the Ordovician.”

“Es más inteligente de lo que parece,” Enrique remarked (who while no one was watching had swallowed a capsule with the emblem of a toucan bird on it).

“That’s the self-guided tour voice!” Casper exclaimed. “From the Museum of Natural History. He’s gone kite flying.”

“Kite flying?” Enrique belched, think the drug was coming on especially fast.

“It’s a special kind of senior moment,” Casper answered.

“I think y’all are having a senior moment!” Shelby howled from the floor, struggling to cover and right himself at the same time. “I don’t know what that old coot’s saying, but it wasn’t my fault!”

“Naw,” sniffed Angelike, smacking him across the back with the blade so that he once again collapsed on all fours. “You didn’t even see him, ‘cause you had a mangy ole bull’s head on and yer dick strapped up in a fur thong. Wait ‘til your college buds hear ’bout that! I took some pictures on my cell phone when you was out,” the girl snickered. “You’ll be dragged by a pick-up down Guadalupe Street—and skinned alive under a pecan tree.”

“Welcome to the Osborn Memorial Hall dedicated to odd-toed ungulates or perissodactyls, which became the horses, rhinoceroses and tapirs . . . ”

“¡Por Dios!” Enrique cried, feeling a rush of colorful adrenalin.

“What the fuck’s he sayin’?” Angelike demanded, pricking Shelby’s ass.

“He’s having a flashback to those recordings he’d listen to,” Casper replied. Angelike looked poised to give a sword paddling. Fortunately for Shelby, the telephone the girl didn’t think the house had, rang.

The interruption allowed the sop to regain his feet, while it sent Enrique flurrying off into another part of the house. Angelike stood rock still. Hoptree Bark was now talking about the Warren Mastodon. It was left to Casper to answer the incessant phone, as if the call was for them. Which it almost was. Because even some very odd things are connected.

17

Hop in and Help the Handicapped

Roy’s Bait ‘n’ Tackle wasn’t called that for nothing—or maybe it was. There’d never been an actual “Roy” who owned the establishment—the name had been chosen because it inspired confidence. It was at least better than “Hosea’s Bait ‘n’ Tackle” or “Quimby’s Bait ‘n’ Tackle,” which is what it might’ve been if Ananda Rogere’s husband had named the business after himself.

Hosea Quimby was a white native Louisianan who’d grown up accepted by both his Cajun and black neighbors because he could do three things very well. He could fix any outboard motor made. He could pierce the eye of a baitfish with an Eagle Claw fish hook blind drunk in the dark without losing any of his own blood—and he could shoot—normally quite well (providing he wasn’t blind drunk and it wasn’t dark). Inside the modest residence (more of an old plywood trailer) that abutted the business, rising out of the saw grass and palmetto beside a sludge-colored marsh called the Bayou St. Jude, a prize pronghornantelope head taken in Texas stared down from the wall beside a huge tusker, and a steel gun rack which only a short while ago had secured a Franchi Falconet over-and-under and a Marlin 444 with a Leupold variable scope, one of the most powerful lever action rifles in the world.

On a workbench inside sat a reloading press and scales, cartridge cases, primers and tubs of powder. Ananda Rogere had left everything just as it was the day that her husband took his last shot and blew a considerable portion of his head off on a little island back in the swamp (which meant that the fire ants found him first). She even kept the name ROY’S and sometimes imagined there really was a Roy, who was one day going to return from Key Largo, grateful for how she’d minded the store in his absence. He’d save her from the cross she had to bear, which consisted of her sixteen year-old son Merrit, who two years before had been permanently brain-damaged by a bullet intended for some unknown swamp creature (which the locals referred to as the Murker). The bullet had been fired from her husband’s single shot bolt action rifle, which ended up being thrown by Ananda into the tea-colored slurp after Quimby had turned that same gun on himself (a year to the day following the accident with Merrit). Then there was Mrs. Nedd to consider, a desiccated black woman, who claimed to be 160 years old and had lived alone in a snakeskin and cypress wood cabin until a boating accident (involving Quimby, a bottle of alligator wine, and a Mercury 55 horsepower speedboat) had left her confined to a wheelchair, which isn’t easy living on a bayou—and so Ananda felt obliged to take the dear hag in, providing her with a small pointed rake to ward off the crawfish which she insisted were always coming to attack her.

It was this same beleaguered Ananda Rogere who was on the other end of the telephone when Casper answered, and in the background he could hear the sweaty night sound of frogs, as this woman, who was more than half-way through her third tumbler of Cutty Sark, not sure who she was speaking to and uncertain who it was she’d wanted to speak to, tried to make him understand that the reason she was calling was that the shotgun was gone from the rack.

Merrit, semi-vegetable that he’d turned into, had taken time off from what since the accident had become his all-consuming hobby, curating arguably the largest private collection of frogs (toy frogs, beanbag frogs, plastic frogs, glass frogs, plaster frogs, cement frogs, giant frogs, miniature frogs, real frogs) to help “Miss Hermione,” thinking that she wanted a gun for protection, living as she did, despite her money, out on that rusty barge in a Quonset hut made of timbers from an old slave cabin, with nothing in the way of comfort but an Irish linen pillowcase stuffed with Spanish moss.

Casper’s ears pricked up at the mention of Miss Hermione, and five very confusing minutes later he was able to grasp that Angelike’s aunt had persuaded Merrit to remove the shotgun from the gun rack and to locate a box of shells. Hermione then took the weapon and the ammo and adjourned into what remained of the cypress, in her little aluminum fishing boat with the Evinrude motor.

The conversation grew even a bit more confusing then, as someone else at the other end, perhaps Merrit the Frog Boy, momentarily intervened. But eventually, Casper was able to fathom that after Miss Hermione’s disappearance, a letter had arrived for her from a medical clinic in New Iberia—which, since Ananda served as the local postmistress, she’d opened—to discover a grim oncology report and a warning that “Miss Hermione” was on the verge of becoming very ill.

So it was that Casper was finally able to piece together the reason that lay behind the call to what Ananda believed to be a former husband of the woman she’d known on and off for twenty years, and who she’d come to be very fond of. Hermione, while she’d never have demeaned the Quimby-Rogere’s by giving them any money outright, was the principal benefactor of the Little People’s Frog Museum (with the advertisements done with a paint roller in marine whitewash and Army surplus green, which read HOP IN AND HELP THE HANDICAPPED—an expression Ananda favored, as she reckoned phrases like “Intelligence-Challenged” were the sort of modern foolishness that had encouraged her to stay on the bayou all these years, where folks whether they be coonass, black or cracker, called a spade a shovel and a crappie a sacalait).

Hermione, not knowing that she had cancer when she left Austin, had come back to the bayou to fight the Evolution Oil Company, to turn all of St. Jude’s Parish into a wildlife reserve to protect the reemergence of American species thought to be extinct, specifically the Golden Needle Beak Woodpecker and secondarily, the Checkerboard Terrapin. What she hadn’t counted on was that the Evolution Oil Company had, at least in strategic commercial terms (in the wake of an unfortunate oil spill), decided it might be time to start living up to their name and look around for some ways of redefining themselves in the marketplace. The upshot was a dramatic shift in their regional business focus, whereby they proposed turning their drilling platforms into wetland observation towers with interactive multimedia displays dedicated to the rose spoonbill, the scarlet ibis, and the lost animals that had found their way back into the food chain.

Where once had been fishing huts, Army Corps of Engineer levees and Jax beer bars full of riggers, pipeline workers, fishermen, loggers, mudbuggers and mosspickers—the new Evolution vision called for ecotourism units to rival anything the Everglades or Okeefonokee could offer—filled with vacationing executives and their families (and the occasional celebrity)—buying toy crawdads, t-shirts, CD’s, cookbooks and barbecue aprons—while watching egrets regurgitating minnows through personally fitted stereovision helmets with real-time expert commentary in any of 10 languages. Hermione’s confirmed sighting of a Golden Needle Beak Woodpecker had been greeted with such enthusiasm there was even talk at board level of trying to replace the silhouetted chimpanzee with a graphic of the woodpecker as the company’s new logo.

Her real enemy it turned out was ENTERTAINMENT WORLD, a Disney subsidiary intent on turning southwest Louisiana into a giant theme park called ACADIA.

There’d be re-creation Cajun huts, serving sanitized Cajun food—playing sanitized zydeco music (not the sawdust and shells chankychank that mixes so well with boiled crawdads and beer). The black people would all be physically remarkable with exceptional singing voices and an easygoing graceful dignity (black guests could select an optional aura of wisteria and gumbo, while whites could choose bacon fat and Octagon soap). You could pole off with laconic crawfishermen in pseudo-cypress pirogues into the engineered mist. Visit Greenpeace-approved mink and nutria farms. See big-breasted, fiery-eyed Cajun beauties feeding raw meat to gators. At least that was the plan.

Now they thought they were sitting pretty because their most vocal opponent, in discovering that she had terminal cancer, had elected to bow out with the help of a great Southern icon, the 12 gauge shotgun, and the way looked clear to pay off the cash strapped fuel company and put the woodpeckers and terrapins on the payroll.

For Ananda it was a bitter development, although Hermione didn’t leave behind a brain-invalid son and a wheelchair-bound old black woman to be looked after. Still, it couldn’t help but conjure up dark memories of Quimby. But while his body had been found first by fire ants, Hermione’s corpse had been discovered by a Fish and Wildlife inspector out looking for turtle poachers—and had been returned to the dock at Roy’s Bait ‘n’ Tackle and was now wrapped in polyethylene in Ananda’s largest freezer, housed in the back of the barn-boat shed that served as the Little People’s Frog Museum - Admission $5 adults, $2 children, Handicapped (Any Kind) FREE.

Hence the Cutty Sark induced telephone call in the middle of the night. The only next of kin Ananda had any idea of was Enrique in Austin. Did he want to come and collect the body for proper burial? Would he come and collect the body—or at least remove it from the big freezer, normally dedicated to blue cats and lunker bass? It was a long shot, she knew. But out of respect for Hermione, she was bound to try. And she did have hopes of getting access to her freezer again soon. Was there someone else that she could call?

“No,” said Casper, once he’d finally grasped the complex state of affairs. He took down the details of where the little hamlet of Prophecy Creek could be found, and the woman’s telephone number, explaining that representatives of the family would be there late the following day. Then he hung up and the woman and the frogs were gone.

All the while this had been going on, Angelike had been braced with the sword, listening to the noises Enrique was making upstairs. It was late now and the well-to-do Austin suburb was quiet but for the occasional house alarm or barking guard dog, so that the crashing sounds seemed particularly loud—not to mention the rumba music. Shelby, not wanting to incite further anger from the girl, sat bleeding on his nightie trying to take in what Hoptree Bark was saying, which seemed to have something to do with the Ahnighito Meteorite, discovered centuries ago by the Eskimos in Greenland.

Despite the fact that he was being sucked into this imaginary guided tour, Shelby’s natural concern about further humiliation and possible impalement made it hard not to think of making a run for the front door. Angelike meanwhile, had one ear out for her ex-uncle and one on Casper’s elliptical conversation. She knew the subject of the call was Hermione, but that it wasn’t her aunt calling, so that meant something was wrong.

Casper saw that she suspected the worst and so decided not to beat around the bush. “I’m sorry to say your aunt died,” he said. “That was a friend of hers in Louisiana. She was calling Enrique because she didn’t know any other family. Your aunt found out she had cancer. Too late for treatment. She took her own life.”

“H-how?”

“Gun.”

“Really?” the girl swallowed, eyes widening. “What kine?”

“A Franchi Falconet 12 gauge. But she did make a confirmed sighting of a Golden Needle Beak Woodpecker. Just like the matador said.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I think it meant a great deal to her. The woman wanted to know if you wanted to claim the body for burial.”

“So, whair is she? The morgue?”

“The woman owns—a bait and tackle business.”

“My auntie’s in a fish locker?”

“The woman’s tried hard to do the right thing. She has a business to run and a brain-damaged son to look after—and an old woman who . . . ”

“How you fine out all that?”

“Never mind. I thought you’d want to go. I said we were coming.”

“Sheet. Everybody’s dyin’ on me.”

Casper sagged at this, but managed to say, “I’m still here.”

The girl gazed up at him just as Hoptree was introducing the Willamette Meteorite, weighing 31,000 lbs., discovered in 1902 by a Welsh miner named Ellis Hughes, who with the help of his son secretly excavated it and dragged it to their property.

Shelby decided this was the time to make a break—but he didn’t spot the David head lying on the floor, which he booted barefoot. It arced up straight at the hallway entrance just as Enrique reappeared—no longer dressed in his smoking jacket but wearing a faithful replica of the Glinda the Good Witch costume worn by Billie Burke in The Wizard of Oz. Mind aflame with color and confusion—the kicked head hit him squarely on his own with such force he went over like a statue.

Shelby fared no better, pitching forward and falling heavily, breaking his aquiline polo family nose.

“So, do you want to go?” Casper asked, uncertain how these latest developments had changed things.

“Yeah,” Angelike answered, although she had no idea what to do with another dead body, especially since she didn’t have much money and was going to give birth any day. “I can’t let her lie in no fish freezer. But what we gonna do with ‘im?” she asked, pointing at Hoptree.

“We’ll have to take him with us,” Casper said. Did it matter if the old man was lost in the American Museum of Natural History? There was room in the Buick, and he was their responsibility. He’s my responsibility, Casper thought. No man left behind.

“Somebody help me!” wallowed the bloody Shelby Verril.

“Hush yer mouth!” Angelike ordered. “I’ll run that sword through yer butt yet.”

Shelby went quiet and they escorted him to the guest wing to be deposited on a lacy 4-poster bed for examination. Casper concluded that it would be unwise to take him to the hospital at this time of night. His injuries weren’t all that serious. For Enrique’s own good they decided to restrain him and were surprised to discover a soundproofed room with just such a purpose in mind. Manacles dangled from the walls—chains and a kind of high tech pillory designed to put the lower half of a person’s body in a compromised position.

With both their “hosts” accounted for, Casper suggested they try to get some sleep. It had been a long day’s drive and the trip to Louisiana would be more of the same. Their money was running low, time was running out on the pregnancy—and Hoptree Bark had meandered into a commentary about the skulls of Cenozoic equids.

Casper wiped down his Red Wings and threw himself on the couch that had earlier been stabbed by the sword. Angelike shut off the light and went to find somewhere she felt comfortable enough to sleep in, as the smell in the room had gotten to her. Hoptree remained on his remote view tour, immersed in Oligocene terrestrial sediments.

He was still talking when Casper woke up, but had shifted his focus to ancient insects. Shelby remained in the princess bed, too seedy from the debauches of the day before and too much in pain to do anything but groan. Enrique was thundering like a bull bent over in the pillory, so they put a bowl of water down where he could lap it and decided to shut the door and leave him there for his young playmate to release later. The bowl of water made Casper recall the Lonely Room. Some things stay connected.

They drove to a diner out near Bergstrom Air Force Base for breakfast, Hoptree regaling them with information about platypodid beetles in Dominican amber. Angelike paid. Then they merged onto Highway 71 and headed south to I-10. On the radio they listened to more reports on the tornado damage behind them—and warnings about a Caribbean hurricane headed for Galveston.

In Houston they stopped for gas and drinks in a neighborhood of Pentecostal churches. Angelike paid for the fuel too, which set Casper wondering just how much money she really had. Then he chastised himself for being petty and suspicious. She wanted to pull her weight. There was a reason why he’d found her—although in fact, he remembered, she’d found him.

Her appearance worried him though, and her remarks about her past worried him more. It made him wonder what had happened to his mother. Most of the time when he’d thought of her while growing up, it had been with resentment at being given up. He hadn’t thought of the fear she’d faced—or perhaps the painful circumstances that had led to her pregnancy. Little Red gave him a new window into the past. A new kind of Medicine. It scared him to think what lay ahead for her.

The cranes of Port Arthur rose up like angry wading birds, the air heavy with diesel fumes and humidity. Only Hoptree seemed unconcerned and continued his tour, moving on to inarticulate brachiopods. Angelike missed the harmonica.

They passed Klan flags . . . dead armadillos in the road, iridescent lakes and orange gas flares. It was haunted for Casper, who kept looking for the migrating manger of Poppy and Rose’s old bus.

He hadn’t been in this country for a long time, and yet it all came back to him. He’d been moved during the Hurricane Katrina crisis when it was announced that Fats Domino was missing from his home in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. Many people at the moose head bar he was in at the time had expressed surprise that the man was still alive. That was the thing about America, as Joe often said. No attention span, no memory.

In Lake Charles, smoke from the tire plant and the gas rigs hung like a pall. They stopped for po’ boy sandwiches. Down in the brown water of a small river some Holy Rollers were having a baptism. The people swooned and shouted “Hallelujah!” “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God!” the preacher said and then the people on the bank started singing. It raised many spirits in Casper’s mind, and he might’ve gotten lost on a memory tour of his own, had he not noticed how drained and anxious Angelike looked. Sometimes she seemed to clench herself—and they were having to stop at rest rooms more often now. They got back on the road.

The miles and meanderings of Hoptree’s mumblings blurred. When would this latest fit end and the socialist folk song harangue begin again? All their hopes of finding haven and maybe a handout in Austin had been dashed. Now they were headed for swampland and strangers. Casper consulted the Medicine Bag.

GHOSTS OF CIVIL WAR DEAD APPEAR AT CHILI COOK OFF

They passed half-naked black children—cabins strewn with wire fish traps—black women selling alligator gars and cypress oil by the side of the road. A flecked billboard rose out of the kudzu and wisteria. It said HOP IN AND HELP THE HANDICAPPED - 1 mile on Right. Through tupelo branches, he saw a sign for ROYS and turned again. The sand road curved off along a creek where the low water smell of mud mixed with engine oil and fried fish. A piece of cardboard tacked to a stake announced THE FROG CAPITEL OF AMERICA.

Out of an island of saw grass and palmetto they saw a shack and trailer with a screen porch on which was sheltered a deer head and a wild boar. Nearby was a barn with letters painted on the metal roof that said FROGS, and beyond that, old canoes, bits of cannibalized outboard motors—and a couple of men, one black, the other Cajun skinning gar and boiling crawfish in a drum. A tawny boy with a face that looked like a gator had gotten to it stepped through the trees. Next to him, a very old black woman sat in a wheelchair not much newer than Jessie, stabbing at the ground with a pointed rake.

18

In Heaven there are Frogs and Honest Strangers

It had been a busy, ornery morning on the Bayou St. Jude. Ananda Rogere had woken up after sunrise, which was unusual for her, feeling hung over, unaccustomed as she was to Cutty Sark binges. Mrs. Nedd had found a brown recluse under her pillow and felt it was a sure sign of bad luck. A running feud between Red Richeaux and Luis Ramirez had led to the mistaken cutting of one of the Rogere trap lines, and Ananda continued to worry about the big freezer being out of commission. What if the man on the telephone didn’t come to collect Hermione? Who was he anyway? There were hurricane warnings in the Gulf—and the air was already filled with the sour mud smell of sedimentation and dead fish. The last thing she needed was the stench of rotting bait and fire ants everywhere—especially when an important man from the Professor Chicken franchise was paying them a visit.

While on vacation, one of their franchisees had stopped by the Frog Museum and when shown some of the live specimens the bayou produced, got an idea for offering an exotic line of Cajun Frog Legs on a trial menu basis. Now one of the company’s senior executives was coming to make an inspection to see how many frogs they could supply. Old Cab Hooly’s wisdom was catching up with America. Eventually, everything connects.

Ananda just hoped that some of the other swamp rats wouldn’t be hanging around—especially that Link Duquette with his stories about the giant footprints he’d found on Squaw Island—the so-called Murker. He was the one she felt was responsible for getting her husband all hopped up on the rumors—got him out hunting for it. Then of course when he didn’t find it, he had to have a little nip and then another—and then he thought he did see it and took aim, but it turned out to be Merrit.

That’s why it was called the Murker. No one had ever seen it fully. No one who’d survived anyway. Lots of folks had heard it, or thought they had. There just didn’t exist that definitive close range photographic evidence. Not like Hermione’s heroic efforts with the Golden Needle Beak Woodpecker. The Murker remained a shadowy superstition . . . like the Lizard Man of South Carolina. A little too tangible for the locals to dismiss, but just another oddball tale to the outside world. World Weekly News stuff.

But as the morning slid by with no sign of the chicken executive, she became more concerned. The extra income from the frog legs business would come in very handy . . . although she hadn’t yet told Merrit that it would mean the sacrifice of some of his special friends. No sense in getting the boy upset over something that mightn’t happen. He had enough troubles as it was. As to the chicken man, well, she hoped he was all right and had just gotten lost or was running late. It was awkward when troopers came in to investigate the disappearance of outsiders . . . stirred up a lot of mud that should stay settled.

On top of all these concerns, it was her scheduled turn to borrow Molina Romineau’s video camera and she didn’t want to miss it.

Each month when Mrs. Romineau went to Lafayette for dialysis, Ananda borrowed the camera, which had an auto-adjusting tripod and a remote control director so that she could film herself without assistance. Ever since the shooting accident, Ananda had “nabbled” over what would become of Merrit. They owned the Bait ‘n’ Tackle business outright, so with the help of some of the locals, Merrit could survive after she was gone. But she feared he’d be lonely and that even the solace of his private froggy kingdom wouldn’t be enough. So, she’d started making a series of videos that he could look at after she died, the premise being that she was speaking to him from Heaven.

That may sound a bit farfetched, but even a quick glimpse at Merrit suggested this plan had a middling chance of success. If people were going to talk to you from Heaven, it stood to reason they might try to reach you by television . . . and if they looked sort of like they had before but more beautiful and glamorous . . . and Heaven made you think of snow globe paperweights . . . well, then . . . that was good enough.

As Ananda Rogere’s TV was a long way from new, the segments, when she managed to find a moment when Merrit was elsewhere and could plug in the camera to check her handiwork, did look as if they were live telecasts from Heaven (at least they would if you were partially brain-damaged). There was, however, an inherent set design problem. If she was speaking from Heaven, it couldn’t look like the verandah of the Bait ‘n’ Tackle store. Even Merrit would’ve seen through that. So, she created a little set for herself in their outhouse, draping the walls with gauze and tinsel. Each month she borrowed the video camera and acted as tech crew, director and talent. The plan was that the LaRou’s or the Mordinaro’s would, in her eventual absence, present these to Merrit as “messages” from her, explaining that the distance to Heaven created technical problems that prevented interactive communication, but that she was always watching over him.

And she tried hard to keep an eye on him in this life, which was a good thing, for the sight of the boy was somewhat disconcerting to those in the Buick LeSabre, causing even Hoptree to pause for a moment in his remarks regarding soft-bodied metazoans.

Thinking the sound of the car indicated the arrival of the Professor Chicken executive, Ananda rushed out, having just undressed the outhouse and changed costume.

Casper wasn’t surprised to find that the voice in the night belonged to a sinewy mixed blood woman in her 40’s with eyes like a raccoon’s, hands cracked from a life of hard work, and a definite odor of gasoline, fish scales and the heady cheese they used as catfish bait. Ananda, on the other hand, was quite impressed at the Buick’ occupants, especially Hoptree Bark, who looked like he could’ve been born on a bayou and was a white bookend to Mrs. Nedd (who was at that moment very pleased with herself, having just speared a “wrasslin’” crawfish with the pointed end of her rake). Ananda was very eager to learn more about the strange trio, but mieux vaut les étrangers choisir l’heure pour conter leur histoire is more than a saying in Cajun country.

Despite Hoptree’s announcement that, “The chances of any organism being preserved as a fossil are very slim,” cordial introductions were made—although Merrit kept making his frog sounds, which unsettled Angelike as much as his head scar . . . and when he grasped that they were related to “Miss Hermione,” he insisted on giving them a FREE tour of the Frog Museum . . . a destination that struck Casper as bearing an uncanny correlation to Hoptree’s lecture tour.

Maybe this is somehow all meant to be, he thought. What else did they have left? Some mad mission to the mosquito-ridden neverglades to get a body out of a fish freezer, without any plan what to do with it then. How could that possibly be the right thing to do? Because they had no money and nowhere else to go? Atonement for Rick James? Why was it important to see to the sanctified burial of some dead stranger whose one claim to fame had been convincing the world that a kind of woodpecker most people had never heard of and experts thought was dead, wasn’t? The Resurrection and the Life.

But first you have to die, and it wasn’t long before that ticklish topic came up. Ananda felt embarrassed about having put the body in the freezer. Perhaps it would’ve been better for everyone if Hermione had been found by the fire ants instead of Fish & Wildlife.

Angelike didn’t feel up to looking at her aunt just then. Casper felt obliged to take charge, leaving her to mind Hoptree, who had just made the observation that, “In an unstable world it’s good policy to be a deposit feeder.” Mrs. Nedd took exception to this. “I ain’t no feeder. Al’as toted my own sack. I’m 160 years old.” Casper couldn’t tell if she’d taken an interest in Hoptree or was going to use the rake on him.

He discovered from Ananda that after Hermione had been found, they came upon an envelope she’d left in the mouth of the boar head. After the letter from the medical clinic, she didn’t have the heart to slit this one. She’d assumed it was a kind of will and since family had been located, it seemed only right to leave it to them to open—which Casper did.

With the exception of a couple of thousand dollars in cash for Ananda, the letter left the remains of Hermione’s estate to the non-profit bird and wildlife protection organization she’d founded called the Campephilus Society, based in Washington D.C.. It also conveyed her request to be buried on the island where she’d spotted and photographed the famous elusive woodpecker. There was no mention of Angelike, which didn’t really surprise him. She hadn’t heard from her niece in several years. And as the girl had said, she was a bit of a nut.

Casper asked Ananda if there was anywhere they could stay and was shown to the “guest quarters” in back of the Frog Museum, which Ananda insisted on making available to them for free. “Tout le monde as besoin d’un coin où reposer sa tête.” Casper was relieved. Consider the lilies of the field, he thought. Everything she’d described over the telephone was as she’d laid it out, including Mrs. Nedd and her rake. I wonder what Hoptree will make of her, Casper mused . . . .when and if he gets out of the Museum of Natural History.

What Casper didn’t know was that while he’d been asleep back in Austin, Angelike had gone rummaging in Enrique’s bedroom and found a money belt containing what she believed was about $7,000. She needed all she could get, and with the matador secured in the punishment room, she figured he wouldn’t be able to stop her—he might not even notice it was missing for a couple of days. In his drugged out condition he mightn’t ever know it’d been taken at all.

What the girl didn’t realize was that the belt had another compartment that contained the proceeds from a recent drug sale and brought the total up to $57,000, an amount of money that even a dead man would miss.

That night, the word was made flesh—or rather catfish, with a lot of cayenne (which was preferable to boudin). Afterward, they moved out to the screened porch and while Ananda shelled squabnuts, she speculated on what had happened to the chicken man. Casper thought back to Boone Burgers.

It was at this point that Mrs. Nedd made her first sustained, audible commentary since their arrival. “I ’as Abe Lincoln’s love child,” she said. “I ’as at Gettysburg with ‘im . . . but I couldn’t be seen to know ‘im. Hid me away. You think the War Between the States ended? Hell no.”

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war,” Casper replied.

“Damn right!” the old woman said, pounding her rake. “Pass me one of them there nuts.”

Ananda seemed to take no notice of this exchange, no doubt having heard such things many times before. There was also the rise of the music to consider.

It came from the gospel church nearby—people singing and a crudely amplified electric guitar. As he listened, Casper realized that they hadn’t seen Hoptree since leaving the kitchen, where he’d been waffling on about dinosaur eggs found in the Flaming Cliffs of the Gobi Desert. It made him uneasy.

Of course he would’ve been a lot uneasier if he’d known that at that same moment a black Cadillac was heading east out of Houston with Enrique Cruz at the wheel, a 9 mm automatic on the seat next to him.

19

Goodnight Missus Pepper

(and Thank You for the Squirrel Brains)

Earlier, back in Austin, the swollen-faced Shelby Verril had dragged himself out of bed and discovered Enrique still restrained in the contraption that Casper and Angelike had found in the punishment room (which went under the brand name of “The Jo-Jo Boy”). There, the boy toy’s malicious sense of mischief drove him to hike up the Glinda gown and torture the helpless matador. For two full hours Enrique bucked and bounced the graphite frame of the Jo-Jo Boy until it sounded like it would smash apart or fall through the floor. And all because Shelby kept tickling the matador’s hairy bottom with a flamingo feather.

Then the young Texan made the mistake of taking pity on the matador and released him, believing erroneously that his victim was exhausted. The wealthy young playmate soon found himself as the Jo-Jo Boy, fucked first by the livid Glinda, then by one of the horns from the bull mask—so vigorously the horn broke off and lodged deep in his rectum (later requiring emergency surgery and an embarrassing call home to his parents). The matador, still in his Good Witch costume, tore the house apart in his search for more drugs, discovered that his money belt was missing—bullwhipped Shelby to the bone while cursing his thieving slut of a former-niece—then changed clothes, handcuffed the boy and drove him to Bee Cave Road and shoved him out.

Back at the house, Enrique couldn’t find the blowback-operated air-cooled submachine gun which a queer Navy officer turned illegal immigrant-smuggling prawn trawler captain had traded him for a rim job and a canister of China White, but he did manage to locate a loaded Luger. He was soon flying high on tequila and a dangerous new meth-amphetamine known around the Austin tattoo parlors as Spider Monkey—speeding his black Cadillac in a psycho-sweat of revenge, Xavier Cugat the King of Rumba playing at peak volume.

Of course, sitting on the screen porch at Roy’s Bait ‘n’ Tackle, Casper had no reason to believe that evil was only a few hours behind. And despite some vague sense of guilt about ripping off her ex-uncle—neither did Angelike.

Mrs. Nedd was fast asleep with her pointed rake laid across her lap. Ananda finished shelling and while Merrit was securing boats and feeding frogs, she recounted the story of her “broadcasts from Heaven,” which Casper found intriguing—although he kept getting distracted by the music and voices coming from the gospel church. It sounded like Lightfoot Solomon Michaux and his Happy-Am-I Choir. He was certain Hoptree had wandered over there, despite his cataracts—but he was reluctant to interrupt their host who chatted on as if they were family she hadn’t seen in years. The thing was—he thought he heard Hoptree’s normal voice amongst the others—but with the frogs and the laboring of the compressors, he couldn’t be sure. Plus he was very tired. So many questions, so few answers.

Merrit returned making his frog sounds and Ananda announced in a French patois that it was time for him to go to bed. Once he’d chirruped his way to wherever it was that he slept in the plywood trailer (which reeked of mold, smoked fish and gun oil), Ananda presented some of her “productions.” Mrs. Nedd stirred, stabbing at an imagined crawfish, and then took to snoring—louder than all the frogs.

Ananda brought out a humble security guard sized TV and plugged in the borrowed video . . . and there she was—in the gauzy outhouse of Heaven—wearing a plastic shower curtain over a gold bathing suit she’d bought at Catfish City, with a kind of hat she’d made out of a gill net, gesturing with a plastic bubble wand she’d painted with glitter (she looked a little like Glinda the Good Witch). Casper applauded and elbowed Angelike to close her mouth and to do the same.

“You know . . . ” Ananda reflected, pleased to have an audience for her secret project at last. “It’s a funny thing, but when you go tryin’ to make a Heaven, you find you’re already livin’ in it—and you don’t want to leave.”

Mrs. Nedd gave a deep snort at this and almost tipped out of her wheelchair.

Casper admired them. Living in what many Americans would call Third World poverty, finding meaning in accordion music and fresh caught fish. He thought of Walt Abrams, who believed the secret lay in a houseboat and seeing the sun come up from the cab of his truck. “There are some tough ass people still left,” Joe said. “The ghosts of Roy Rogers and John Wayne can’t take us all.”

The music and the voices from across the marsh rose in volume. They heard what sounded like a big woman boisterously witnessing—then from out of the haze of Holy Ghost fervor, that brought back so many memories, came a smoky-possum guitar—and the unmistakable voice of the old rail riding, rabble rousing, WPA era Hoptree Bark.

“Ole Fartful!” Angelike exclaimed. “I knew it was too good to last.”

“I’ve got to go find him,” Casper told Ananda. “Is it safe to go over there?”

“Bien sur. Why wouldn’t it be safe? ‘Cause they’s black?”

Casper winced. “No, I mean the swamp. It’s dark.”

“I gotta flashlight. Jes be careful what y’all drink over there.”

“I’ll be careful,” Casper said. “You stay here,” he told Angelike, who now appeared so bloated and uncomfortable, it didn’t look like Jesus himself could’ve gotten her to move. I should get her to a hospital, he thought, but he knew she wouldn’t go before her aunt was buried. But the money? As if reading his mind, Ananda announced that she had an idea where the girl might go to “lay in” close by, which would still provide her with some degree of medical safety on a pay-as-you-could-afford basis. “Pas de probleme.”

The swamp was alive with night shapes and sounds. Owls hunting water snakes, coon hounds, fish splashing—or something splashing. Casper stumbled on an overgrown path through mangrove and creeper, stunted cypresses and moonlight-ghastly brides of willows. How in hell had Hoptree had managed to make it over there with his poor eyesight?

No one took much notice of him as he threw his shadow up against the wall of an old boat shack. Twenty or so people, mostly black, stood around the fire or sat on bait tubs and oil drums. They were dressed in simple clothes with a strong smell of sweat and polyester, Aqua Velvet and gardenia perfume. Some were drinking and swaying, others singing—but all were listening to Hoptree Bark, who sat in a plastic deck chair on the rickety porch of a shed not much bigger than a privy, bottlenecking an old electric guitar, a small fuzzbomb amp at his feet and a couple of extension cords leading into the “church”—or so Casper learned.

The actual structure in question—on second and third looks—was still an old Astrocruiser Greyhound Bus, one of the select few designed by the great Raymond Loewy, after his forays with Studebaker.

1964 was the year the elite special edition bus had been unveiled at the New York World’s Fair . . . where little people in little Ford convertibles could ride through the Time Tunnel to visit spacemen or cavemen, and there were giant insects made of Chrysler car parts. That was where Reverend America was going to eat squirrel patties with the Yankees and the Rockettes.

The bus had been sculpted to look like a streamline cross between the luxury of a zeppelin and the thrust of a rocket ship. The smooth molded metal conjured both nostalgia for Art Deco and the visionary hopes of the Space Age. The one that confronted Casper, however, had had its sides ripped off and a porch built on, and was faded in places, rust blooming over it like algae—more than a couple of bullet holes in the windows, which sent out deformed ripples in the tinted glass. It made him think of Poppy and Rose’s first bus. He had a strange sense of having come full circle.

The vehicle was sunk up to its empty wheel wells in root and vine, stuck in the spit of land as if it had fallen out of the sky, although the truth was it had washed up in a flood. Some people thought it had been chartered by a gospel singing group that went missing back in 1983, lost between Opelousas and Shreveport. Others said it had been spirited out of a car museum by Katrina, then set loose again during another season of high water.

Wherever it came from, the Bayou St. Jude was where it had stopped—which was seen as a blessing since the old termite-eaten temple it replaced had burned to the ground the year before. Through fire and flood had appeared the old Astrocruiser, filled with water moccasins and frogs, like an abandoned ark that had found its way to land. The congregation of the Prophecy Creek Gospel Temple had taken it for their own and fit it out as best they could, running power over from one of the cabins on the spit, with a diesel generator as back-up, which had just started chugging away.

A cloud of mosquitoes and midges swirled in the murky yellow of a bare bulb over Hoptree’s head. Beside him, a milk chocolate-colored woman with tinted hair and a Jamaican-style Mother Hubbard dress was thumping away at an old Jensen keyboard—which made an odd counterpoint to the generator—such that one might have thought that it was the generator she was actually playing. The old polecat meanwhile, seemed to have left the Eocene ungulates behind, and had a bottle of Snapple between his knees and a look of signifying concentration on his face, as he sang low and rough . . .

I’m going there to see my Father,

I’m going there no more to roam;

I’m only go-oing over Jordan,

I’m only go-oing over home.

No one paid Casper any mind at first, weird looking white men having a habit of materializing with anything from a burlap bag full of bullfrogs to a deer carcass slung over their shoulders. Everyone turned though when he began to sing along . . .

I want to wear that crown of glory,

When I get home to that good land;

I want to shout salvation’s story,

In concert with the blood-washed band

Casper remembered the man with the Wolfkill Feed and Fertilizer cap, who’d lost a hand, and expected him to grow it back in the name of Jesus. Reverend America had sung him that song, and held the stump in both his own small hands. “The Lord has the whole world in his hands. That’s the miracle.”

Hoptree Bark squeezed the slide down the neck, plucking and stroking the guitar. The black people sucking crawdaddies were surprised when Casper followed him note for note—lamenting like a drowning steer—then whispering almost—the two of them together—like frightened children praying.

A breeze broke the stillness of the smoky air, becoming a rush of premonitory hurricane wind, and a large black woman scented with vanilla, contained in a voluminous curtain of frangipani-print dress appeared beside him. One glimpse of the way she looked at Hoptree was all Casper needed to know that she was sweet on him. As very old as he was—and white. As old enough and large as she was—and black . . . there was no mistaking that look.

“Go daddy!” she brayed with a big smile. “You play, honey! Ooh Lord.”

She wobbled happily when she spoke, balancing two heaping paper plates of fried chicken and sweet potato pie, one of them clearly intended for the old Rooster. But Hoptree was in that moment too deep into the music. Casper went over to his traveling companion to make sure he was okay. Only a little while before he’d been reminding everyone that, “Drying out is a severe problem for adult animals.” Look at him now, thought Casper.

“You a frien’ a his?” the large woman asked.

“Oh, yes,” Casper answered as Hoptree bent a note just as Only Man Josiah Darkwater might’ve done.

“I’m Mizz Odessa Pepper,” the woman nodded, still holding her two plates—then realizing that it looked awkward, she offered one to Casper, who politely declined—and then realized it was impolite not to help her, and so he took it and set it down at Hoptree’s feet, whereupon a redbone crunched a chicken leg.

“He shore can play,” Odessa smiled.

“Yes, he can,” said Casper. “Has he been over here long?”

“Came over during the service. We had two today, on account of some hoodoo about the hurricanes.”

Casper understood. Just because you believe in one thing doesn’t mean you can’t believe in another. He also noticed all the beer bottles.

“Good Lord musta led him through the darkness,” she said. “His poor eyes.”

So that was the trick. Old dog probably made out he was totally blind.

“Whose guitar is that?”

“Valentine Tate’s. Once Val heard him play harp . . . ”

“You didn’t notice anything—different about him—before?” Casper asked.

“Sech as?”

“He didn’t say anything about the Childs Frick Collection of Invertebrates?”

“How much you been drinkin?”

“Never mind,” Casper said. “He just sometimes gets a little . . . ”

“Nothing that Odessa couldn’t fix,” she said, offering him some pickled squirrel brains. “I whopped him upside the head with a bait shovel.”

“Oh,” said Casper, wondering why he hadn’t thought of that. The squirrel brains sent his mind flashing back to Cab Hooly—and further . . . to the old way house on the iron hard street in Charleston.

“Stopped him talkin’ like some white man with somefin up his behine—no ohfence. Remined him-a the Lord’s callin’ to get behine the mule. I thought he ‘as makin’ funna us-all so I whopped him. Lord can he play! Send a shiver down my spine.”

“Yes,” Casper agreed, accepting another squirrel brain like a communion wafer.

Spent at last, Hoptree managed to hand the guitar in the general direction of Valentine Tate, who had a wicked knife scar on his face. Casper threw his paper plate in the fire and helped the old man up.

Odessa Pepper waddled them to the edge of the firelight, all the while explaining that she was a widow now—and making it very clear where she lived—not some lowlife double-wide, but a proper house—with aluminum siding, lemon yellow curtains and a brand new refrigerator her son, who worked as a helicopter pilot in Morgan City, had bought for her.

“He sed y’all were down for a funeral tamorrow. You bring ‘im over afffer that, y’ hear? I make the best banana marshmallow pudding in this Parish.”

Casper thought again of Cameron Blanchard back in Indiana. She sauntered back to the campfire wearing a smile almost as wide as her hips.

He considered switching on the flashlight, but he found that he could maneuver, albeit slowly, by just following the old man’s instincts. And them that shall lead must follow.

“You’re feeling all right?” Casper asked, inching forward. “I was worried about you.”

“Every man should!”

“Seriously, I don’t think you should just slip off like that around here.”

“I didn’t have a choice, son. That Mrs. Nedd!” Hoptree exclaimed. “Groped me! Got a good handful too.”

“Oh!” said Casper. “I was wondering what you might think of her.”

“That’s she’s too damn old for me! I got my eyes on the prize.”

“Watch out!” Casper hissed, but the old man hit the slender water oak dead on and fell back into his arms like an exhausted child.

20

Murkers and Lurkers

By the time Casper was able to cart the old man back to Roy’s Bait ‘n’ Tackle, only a couple of hurricane lanterns in the trailer were burning. Ananda had put fresh linen on the rough dorm style beds—Angelike on one side of a thin beaverboard wall, the two men on the other. The young girl and mother to be was already asleep, “plumb done,” as their hostess put it. Again, Casper wondered what would happen to them. How had all the roads led here—and what did it mean for the future?

Hoptree descended into a snoring stupor just one step down from Mrs. Nedd the moment his bumped head hit the chicken feather pillow. Ananda had waited up, after wheeling the old woman to bed, hoping to have a word with Casper about Angelike, but she saw that he was tired.

Meanwhile, Enrique had just passed through Beaumont, Texas and was an hour away from being pulled over for speeding by a Louisiana State Trooper, who in his Spider Monkey mania the former matador would shoot in the head with the Luger and then dump in the swamp by the light of the gas flares, his lilac silk panties stained with groin sweat.

Ananda’s suggestion was for Angelike to have the baby under the care of a Creole woman with the unlikely name of Emily Dickinson. She’d been a senior surgical nurse at the Tulane Medical Center and now owned an old motel originally built by the Evolution Oil Company for the rig workers. She’d done a lot of midwifing and ran a rural clinic for folks who didn’t have the money for New Iberia—or for the bayou people who didn’t trust doctors. Casper didn’t know what to say. They couldn’t stay at the Frog Museum. None of them had medical insurance. There was no money at hand—or at least none that he knew of.

Ananda saw again how weary he was and told him they’d speak more about it in the morning—when she hoped she’d get access to her big freezer again.

The Museum had that damp Masonite smell that reminded him of trail shacks and bunkhouses. On his side of the wall Hoptree sounded like the Wabash Cannonball, a small lump from the tree rising on his forehead to complement the damage from the bull run. On the other was Little Red, moaning in her dreams. Casper thrashed around in the tomb hard plank bed recalling words from Isaiah . . . For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretcheth himself on it . . .

When he closed his eyes, he saw Joe, unshaven, hawk-faced, accepting but unbowed even in death . . . and he remembered Berina Pinecoffin’s last words to him. “Just keep my hand warm when I can’t. A little warmer, a little longer.”

Out in the water swam something large, occasionally breaking the surface with a slurp. The legendary Murker? His head cleared as a hint more breeze reached his face through the dusty grease of the window screen. (Summer would’ve called it greaze.) He got up and watched the shapes the moonlight made—glimmering mats of floating hyacinths. He’d always loved the moon. The moon’s an albino too, he used to think.

Most of the Spanish moss and the turtles were long gone now. The once vast wilderness of egrets and swimming deer had been under threat for so long it would take a miracle for it to recover, and yet—in pockets of swamp some of the old magic remained. He remembered the litany of American extinctions Hoptree had recited at one point, a curious counterpoint to the diatribe on the radio about healthcare reform . . . the Cave Lion, the Dire Wolf, the Giant Beaver and the Short-Faced Bear. Then the kite flyer had started in on the birds . . . the Carolina Parakeet . . . the Passenger Pigeon (which of course also meant the end of the Passenger Pigeon Mite) . . . the Great Auk . . . the Ivory Billed Woodpecker . . . and then the Golden Needle Beak Woodpecker.

Now that death sentence had been revoked. Thanks to Miss Hermione. When he thought of it like that, she didn’t seem so dithery or selfish—and she may have been trying to save more than the woodpecker’s future. In protecting the land rights, she was also defending the homes of her friends and neighbors. That didn’t seem screwy. She may have had more upstairs than he first thought. People often did—if you could see things from their side.

Casper pulled on his clothes and Red Wings, and walked around the back of the Frog Museum, finding a connecting door that led inside. Seen at night, with but a few beams of moonlight pouring down through a jerry-rigged skylight, there was an intensity to the establishment that he found inspiring—like being inside his Medicine Bag. He located Ananda’s flashlight in his pocket and clicked it on.

Amongst shelves of old toy frogs made of anything from plastic to tin—beanbags to hand puppets—were little snippets of pictures of Merrit as a child—the Frog Boy with his friends—long before the tragic bullet the drunken Quimby had fired. How odd, Casper thought. He’d spoken in Reverend America days of a plague of frogs—and here he was in a paradise of them.

In two net-covered ponds there was a mass of real frogs—running water pumped in and out—dribbling from the mouths of cement frogs—while several hundred stuffed carnival prize frogs dangled from fishing lines knotted to the rafters overhead. Like many things, it was more interesting because of the dark. There was no question, brain-damaged or not, Merrit could be proud of what he’d achieved—just like Ananda’s broadcasts from Heaven. It made Casper wonder how he was going to leave his mark.

All his life seemed to be but mustard seeds on the wind. He’d tried to be kind, even when circumstances seemed to have forced him to do something criminal. He’d never attacked, only defended—himself or others. He’d always worked when he could and prided himself on not expecting charity—being generous with whatever he had. He’d lost whatever faith he’d had in God a long time ago, and yet he’d kept looking for it. Believing he’d find it. Believing a Rinder would come to lead him home.

Still, the one time in his life that he was sure he’d done some real good in the world was as Reverend America—when he was a sham and a con artist. That was the irony he’d never been able to outrun. So high you can’t get over it, so low you can’t get under it, so wide you can’t get around it. Faith is always a con, he realized. He saw again the old scenes of Poppy and Rose, wayfarers with their bus of dreams and schemes pulled over in country very much like this.

He saw himself in the American flag suit leading a wide-eyed choir of mill workers and chicken pluckers in “There is a River.” They’d never been to the Bayou St. Jude, but they’d been close many times. Reverend America had never known strangers because he’d only known strangers and the children of strangers. He’d bathed in the flood of them and so had come to baptize many. Despite the mosquitoes, he lay down outside on the boat dock, listening to the frogs—and every so often—a gurglish swish.

He was awakened by Merrit, just as the sun was rising in a colorless sky that smelled of impending rain, surprised at how little he’d been bitten—as if something had been watching over him. The head-challenged teenager carried a shovel. Ananda, hoping to have her freezer scrubbed out and operational again as soon as possible had dispatched him to boat out to Hermione’s island to dig the grave so it would be ready for the ceremony.

Only a few miles away, Enrique was also waking up—behind the wheel of his Cadillac, after belting down a tad too much Thorazine and tequila, following the disposal of the trooper’s body in the methane glare. He’d driven like a fiend for what seemed like quite a bit of rumba. When he did at last make it into bayou country, he got lost several times before stumbling onto a narrow overgrown road where he came upon some giant webbed footprints beside an abandoned rental car. The sight of these tracks provoked the self-medication. Before the next heinous dose kicked in, he tried to get his blurred bearings. When he did, he saw a faded wooden sign with the words ROYS BAIT followed by the ghost of an arrow and a childlike rendering of a smiling frog. Enrique smiled too, and reloaded the Luger.

Angelike looked tired and scared upon waking. Ananda’s idea of moving them to the old motel that the nurse named Emily Dickinson ran sounded like a good one—the best hope for a successful birth under the circumstances—and Lord only knew what sort of complications Angelike’s lifestyle might throw in. Emily Dickinson had delivered more than her share of babies, often under difficult conditions, Ananda explained. In the modestly equipped clinic she ran, she could provide Angelike with at least some hygienic security and professional assistance. The young girl was too worn out to argue and agreed to go on down to the motel once they’d buried her auntie.

After beignets and couche-couche, and some chicory coffee, Casper and Merrit, who continued to make his frog noises, lifted Hermione out of the fish freezer and into a pirogue, which they towed behind one of the Rogere’s motorboats. Angie leaned against Hoptree, glad that the old man’s mind and normal tone had returned, although his voice remained strained and the bumps on his head sizeable.

There was a relaxed attitude to burying Hermione outside an approved cemetery. The Fish and Wildlife inspector had filed his report—Emily Dickinson in her capacity as the Parish Health Officer had signed the death certificate. Laying a refrigerated corpse to rest on a willow bar island of wild licorice and Cajun lily was all in the nature of things on the Bayou St. Jude. No one batted a walleye.

So, off they went . . . Casper, Angelike and a hoarse and stiff Hoptree Bark in one aluminum boat, pulling the funeral pirogue with Hermione behind, with Ananda, Merrit and Mrs. Nedd (who was out of sorts) in another.

The wind had stilled and the rain held off. The bayou was unusually low for the time of year. That was always the thing about living close to the land—you had to live with it. But soon the crawfish would be burrowing to hatch their young. Things would go on, in the green tree and in the dry.

They reached the mangrove-rooted shore, where Casper and Merrit almost broke their legs trying to get Mrs. Nedd’s wheelchair out of the boat, and because the antique contrivance offered no traction in the silt-sand, they were obliged to carry her all the way to the graveside like some kind of partially embalmed African queen. Casper recalled all the times he’d tipped people out of old Jessie.

Next they brought up Angelike (waddling not unlike Odessa Pepper), then Hoptree, who managed to play a gutsy, moving harp in spite of the injury his mouth had sustained in the collision with Shelby Verril (who back in Texas had just been informed that in addition to a broken nose, his bladder had been infected when he’d been sodomized with the fake bull’s horn) . . . and finally the guest of honor herself, no longer wrapped in polyethylene, but tucked into a mildewed Sears & Roebuck Pup Ranger sleeping bag that Merrit had had since childhood.

“Does this island have a name?” Casper asked as they laid Hermione in the grave that Merrit had dug, along with her favorite pair of bird watching binoculars.

“Naw,” said Ananda. “It’s not a big one where folks go offen ‘cause Hermione saw the woodpecker on it and tried to keep folks off. Maybe we should call it Woodpecker Island. She’d like that.”

“Hmm,” Casper said as he tried to think of the appropriate words to farewell this stranger he’d never met. People expected something to be said, and it was more than Angelike could manage. Why did everyone turn to him? His mind was blank, and the more he scanned the group gathered around the grave, the emptier he felt his brain become. Heavy, brittle lines like . . . they die, even without wisdom . . . were of course all wrong—and it didn’t seem right to impose upon a non-believer—a wild child and pagan free spirit at that—the more joyful and uplifting promises of the door of salvation, whether he believed in them himself or not. Resurrection just didn’t sit well with a shotgun victim—and summoned up old tabloid headlines like . . .

GHOULS TURN WEDDING INTO SMORGASBORD OF TERROR

Then he thought of Old Joe and the sunrise. This seemed like a peaceful place to have arrived—even if it took the violence of a shotgun blast to get there. Not many women take their own lives with firearms, he knew. Hermione wanted to be sure. Would’ve taken courage to do it. One of the simpler, quieter lines from the Good Book crossed his mind. It didn’t mean much on its own, but on this island at this moment, it did . . .

And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands . . .

The trees did seem to clap their hands. Wetland pine, cypress, willow, cherry bark oak—and one the locals called thicketine. There were no proper fields here—or rather the fields were a blend of cane, saw grass, marsh, and slow moving stream. The word “bayou” may in fact be a French approximation of a Choctaw word that means small stream. The whole landscape was fluid, as life is . . . poised between sky and water . . . the jambalaya and elegies played out like a cakewalk of shadows between two ever changing mirrors.

Somewhere an unseen bird sang out—like a pennywhistle—then a rat-tat-tat-ta-toom. Casper wondered if it was the famous woodpecker come back from the dead to say goodbye. How many things, and creatures too, that are thought to be gone forever, live on in secret, waiting for the searcher with the pure heart for them to reveal themselves? He cleared his throat, like a singer waiting to come in on the rhythm section’s cue.

“And all the trees shall clap their hands,” he said. “So should we today, for though we’re here to mourn a death, we’re also here to celebrate not just one life, but all Life. This is as fine a place as any I can imagine to end a journey and begin a new one. I’ve traveled a lot in my days, from Savannah to Sacramento—and I’ve met many people who seem to have never moved far from the first house they lived in. But everyone I’ve ever met has been a Searcher. There’s good reason to believe the woman we’re saying goodbye to today found what she was looking for—and I don’t just mean proof that an animal thought to be long dead is still alive and may even be watching us right now. I mean she found what we’re all searching for . . . friends . . . the family we find or make. It doesn’t matter how we come together—and it may not be for us to understand.

“Hermione can rest now. From what I can see, she found a strong family . . . and a sense of purpose . . . and the fact that chance or destiny—or maybe even God has brought her niece here at this time says that it was the right time.”

He paused for a moment, wishing to himself that Hermione had left something to Angelike. But looking around at the faces of the gathered, he saw she’d left something to them all. She’d deeded the land rights to her foundation and left with it a fighting fund to resist the oil company if need be—and the Disney interests. She’d looked after her family as best she could—from the woodpeckers and the terrapins, even to wizened Mrs. Nedd.

“Today,” he continued . . . “Is another chance to appreciate the wisdom of chance. I think if Hermione had met Angelike, after all the years in between—if she knew about the baby . . . it just would’ve been harder for her to do what she felt she had to do.

“I never got to meet her, but standing here on this little island that was important to her, I feel the presence of a life well lived—not death. I see her life reflected in the faces gathered here now. I think her timing was as it needed to be . . . and she’s left a legacy to help carry on the work she lived for, and to look out for the lives of others. Like the trees, we can clap our hands. Like the birds, we can sing . . . because it’s natural to do so.”

A gravel-throated Hoptree Bark launched into a scratchy yet still clear rendition of “Across the Waters,” which brought Angelike to tears. They weren’t tears of grief—they were almost happy—the recognition that this was indeed a fitting end—even noble.

Casper recalled the lyrics to the hymn like some ghostly lullaby and started singing along, harmonizing with the old man without even trying. If the tune was melancholy, the mood of the assembled wasn’t . . . and certainly not the rambunctious percussion of the unseen bird, which though faint and mingled with the flow of the water, seemed near enough to hold in hand. When the last tones had faded out, they gave Hermione a cypress wood cross, and Merrit left one of his prize garden statue frogs on guard to protect her spirit.

After the burial, Ananda produced a smoked catfish to share amongst the mourners. It was a small enough cat as it was and then Link Duquette and his cousin showed up—and Valentine Tate motored Odessa Pepper out to pay her respects and to be near Hoptree just in case one of the bonne a ríennes or “no-account wimmen” got any ideas. Casper took the fish and managed to serve everyone, which was a minor miracle and then they left Hermione to her island—all except for Link who was hung over from rotgut and had fallen asleep.

21

For Reasons That Escape Me

When they arrived back at Roy’s and had off-loaded Angelike, Mrs. Nedd and the rest, Hoptree sought out Casper for a confidential throaty word, although Casper thought it may have been to avoid Mrs. Nedd.

“Mighty nice eulogy,” the old man coughed. “You’re a natural.”

“Nothing natural about it,” Casper shrugged. He consoled himself for the swindles of yesteryear by recalling that he’d always believed he was doing some good, telling some truth.

“No,” Hoptree insisted, shaking his silver head. “You’ve got a gift. It’s like singing in tune. You can’t fake it—at least not in person. Folks can hear it right away. You speak with authority. You’ve been places . . . seen things. You know things.”

“A lot I wish I didn’t,” Casper replied, thinking back to the Oldsmobile and Rick James. So many dreams and nightmares.

“We all can say the same,” the old man answered. “But you can speak to people so they’ll listen. I can tell you were a preacher—but I know for damn certain you’re a leader.”

Casper made a sound that wasn’t quite a word.

“You may balk at that like a white donkey,” Hoptree frowned. “But you can’t run away from it like the other things you’ve been running from son . . . no matter who’s chasing you.”

Casper got stuck on that word “son.” He knew it was just an expression, but it occurred to him that as nutty as Hoptree was, he was as close to a father figure as he’d had since Joe, and a lot more peaceful. Hoptree was summer breeze by comparison. Even if his mind did go kite flying.

“You’re feeling better,” Casper said.

“I am,” the old man acknowledged. “Did I cause any problems?”

“Nothing that couldn’t be explained.”

Hoptree chuckled. “I feel I should be ashamed—but I’m not. I remember the tornado . . . and squabbling with Little Miss. And wishing I had a sombrero.”

“You took a nasty knock when that kid collided with you—worse than the tree.”

“Who?” the old man asked, feeling his lump.

“Shelby. The matador’s little friend.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t remember, Austin? The crazy matador? Angelike’s ex-uncle?”

“Nope,” said the old man. “Was he talking about fossils?”

“You were talking about fossils,” Casper replied. “What do you remember?”

“The funeral.”

“And before that?”

“Odessa.”

“Good. And you remember the twister.”

“What twister?”

“You just said you remembered it!”

“When was that?”

“Never mind—what else do you remember. Before Odessa.”

“Growing up in Birdsong, Mississippi.”

“You said you grew up in Pennsylvania.”

“Actually, I didn’t grow up in either place—although I sort of did in both.”

Here we go again thought Casper.

“You see . . . ” the old man said. “I was born in Birdsong, Mississippi. But I never lived there. I took the spirit of the place in by osmosis.”

“I don’t understand,” Casper said, hoping this might lead somewhere he could.

“My father was an unusual man,” Hoptree said, scratching his scraggly chin. “By the way, I hate to tell you—I’m not 151 years-old. Although I’m pretty sure Mrs. Nedd is—and then some. Jesus, her breath!”

Casper almost grinned. “I’m glad we cleared that up. How old are you really? 149?”

“You’ll be disappointed to learn I’m in this wretched condition at the still innocent vintage of 89 last birthday. Just old enough to be a fool and a liar, not wise enough to be good at either. But I’m working on it. And I wasn’t kidding to Missy about the erection.”

“So you remember that?”

“Son, you get to a certain point and you remember every erection. I think Ben Franklin said that. And you sure as hell remember every chance you get to use one—I said that.”

Casper almost laughed. It struck him as rather wonderful, the old man’s childlike acceptance of the situation they were in now. Maybe their arrival on the bayou made more sense having been on an extensive imaginary tour of the American Museum of Natural History. It couldn’t have been any more confusing at least. “What were you saying about your father?”

“What was I saying? Oh, yes. Both my parents were unusual. Both of them came from money, or at least culture. My father was an investment banker in New York. We lived in a brownstone near Gracie Square. But they were outsiders in their social circles. What he loved—and my mother too—was music. Not hifalutin music—down to earth stuff. They got out of Manhattan every chance they could—collecting music and song material. Old ballads, cowboy songs, field hollers, church stomps and spirituals. Like John and Alan Lomax.”

“Who?”

“Famous musicologists. Father and son. They collected songs for the Library of Congress. Visited ranches and rodeos, prison farms and levee camps. They discovered Lead Belly. My parents made some discoveries of their own. Nobody quite as famous, but a lot of good stuff . . . children’s game chants . . . chain gang rhythms. They went down to the old turpentine camps. They began collecting fragments of sheet music left by traveling black preachers—a mix of early blues, old hymns and hybrid songs these fellows—and one or two women too—wrote. They were called the Only Men and my folks put together a songbook of their work so it wouldn’t be lost forever. Their dream was to start their own phonograph record company. Oxcart Records. That’s what led them to Birdsong. There was an old mulatto man living there. Played a cardboard guitar and a bunch of instruments he’d made himself. Half Delta plantation Negro, half hillbilly—with Tennessee whiskey and Indian war paint for blood. He claimed to be the last living Only Man. He called himself Hoptree Bark, which is why I later took to calling myself that in his honor.”

“What happened to your parents?” Casper asked, deciding not to ask his old friend what his real name was, and to say nothing about what he knew of the Only Men.

The old man shook his head. “Their dreams never came true. Everything went to hell in a hand basket when the Great Depression hit. The first Great Depression I should say. You’ve heard about the Wall Street men jumping off window ledges because they were ruined? Well, not all of them jumped. Some of ‘em got pushed.”

“Your father was pushed—out a window?”

“Folks were angry. Just like in more recent times, lots of people thought the fancy pants financiers got everyone into the shit. Of course nobody took any responsibility themselves. However it happened, dad ended up splattered on the cobblestones and any hope of Oxcart Records went with him. Broke and widowed, my mother had a nervous collapse. Tried to drown herself in the bathtub the day she let the servants go. Our maid was just leaving when she found what had happened. Mother survived, but she was taken away to what was called then a ‘Ladies Refuge’ on Long Island. A loony bin with azaleas. Her parents still had some money and foot the bill for a while. But then they died and she ended up in much less pleasant conditions upstate in Elmira, which is where she passed—alone, living on charity, out of her mind.”

“What happened to you?” Casper asked.

“That’s a damn good question, son. Whenever I can remember, I ask it all the time. Short answer is I was taken in by aunts in Rochester—and they raised me well, although they were both much older than my parents and not in very good health. They encouraged my interest in music. They bought me a Cleveland Greyhound trumpet—that was my main instrument at first—before I started plinking the ivories. I played the “Star Spangled Banner” at Niagara Falls once. Then they died within a month of each other and I was put in an orphanage, and after that a church run place for boys.”

Casper couldn’t find the right words to respond. They stood in silence for a moment, staring out over the dock. The sky had gone the color of dried bone and the air was thick with female rain scent.

“For reasons that escape me now, but I’m pretty sure had something to do with a young tart named Milly, I made it out to Pennsylvania the moment I was old enough to hit the road on my own,” the old man said.

“The trumpet got hocked, and I’ve grieved about that ever since—but I’d switched over to the guitar when my aunts died, because I didn’t have regular access to a piano anymore. I played in bars and on street corners. Milly ran off with a carnival showman who passed through. I took to drinking and moping—I think I slept in a kindling box one summer. But there was work to be had around those parts then, if you didn’t mind the thought of getting killed for it. When I got too skinny for my clothes I decided I better make some money. I got a job in the mines and started singing folk songs at worker’s rallies . . . got involved in the labor movement, became a socialist and then a communist . . . got my head kicked in a few times. Those affiliations and my eyesight, which wasn’t so good even back then, kept me out of the War—and in some ways I feel cheated about that—that might’ve been the last war fought in good conscience.

“But it didn’t take me long to work out that singing about coal mines was a lot better than working in ‘em. You start to hear timbers creaking and get a whiff of tunnel gas in your sleep—wake up in a cold sweat. So I left the pits and began a life as a folk singer. Didn’t turn out half-bad at first. I lived in the Village in New York. Played with Pete Seeger and Josh White. I wanted to meet Woody Guthrie, but he’d been institutionalized by then. Got married—had two kids.

“Then the communist connections got me for real, just when things were looking good. Ruined my career, and I crawled into a bottle for a decade and lost my family. I dropped my bundle, son. Shameful. Spent ten blank years as a bum in a drunk tank or in a psych ward. Ten years I could’ve been making music. I’m afraid it’s the music I missed the most. I was never much good as a father.”

Casper somehow doubted that. “What happened to your family,” he asked.

“No idea about my wife. She left us all. My daughter I fear went the same way as young Missy. Lost all contact ages ago. My son went the other way and became a proud, cruel version of my father—just without the love of music or anything other than himself. Still, I have to admit he at least tracked me down. He was the one who got me into that fishbowl where you found me. I’d bought a place in Ardmore years ago when I had some money—a bolt hole. Played there once in a band and liked the town—although it’s a real good place for not ever mentioning Karl Marx. When things fell apart, I went back and taught music there for years—never played again professionally. Trouble was I outlived two more wives and all my friends. Then I fell for this mail sting—some con artists. Lost my house, started mumbling and kite flying and my son put me in the home. Home! The money went faster than the time though. Then he had a heart attack at his big desk. I think they’d have put me out on the street if that twister and you hadn’t happened by.”

“What twister?” Casper asked.

“You’re learning, son,” the old man winked through his cataracts.

Just then Merrit blundered out of the trailer huffing and ribbiting as if the place was on fire. “Scweehd gunna harvit! Schwoon! Aswayby! Thawayby!”

22

If I Don’t Come Back

They were finally made to understand that Angelikes’s contractions had started. Ananda had dispatched Merrit to borrow Delanor Berube’s fast power boat (which had been impounded in a drug raid and bought by the crawfisherman at auction with money he’d made drug smuggling). Casper found the young girl cursing, “Feels like I gotta shit a basketball!”

Ananda wheeled Mrs. Nedd over to talk to the boar head. Hoptree they left in the care of Odessa. Then Merrit churned the water into froth as live oak, boscoyo and ibis flew past—so fast none of them noticed the other boat that had slipped out from behind Woodpecker Island just in time to see them leaving the dock. A familiar boat, but with a stranger on board. A strange looking stranger at that.

Angelike was breathing erratically, in a lot of pain. Casper and Ananda were busy trying to reassure her—so they didn’t see the old moss-slick crawdadder with a Johnson 20 bolted on the back, which Luiz Ramirez kept tied up beside his mud dauber shack. Naturally they didn’t see the man in it—who’d just scared the bejesus out of a sodden Link Duquette—and who before that had left Luiz Ramirez lying in a pile of yellow-tailed shad with a large knot on his head. But he saw them. Their wake was easy to trace and there were only so many channels the bigger craft could navigate. Enrique squeezed his right hand white on the throttle—his mind a jungle.

Emily Dickinson’s clinic was an overgrown motel built back in 1969 for oil and gas workers of the Evolution Oil Company. The highlight was the ruin of a four-lane bowling alley now festooned with lewd orchids. An entire wing had been smothered in kudzu and wild grape. But the rooms where Ananda led Angelike, with the help of Casper, were as clean and white as Emily Dickinson could make them, with a table laid out in waiting, with an extension for stirrups.

Dish-faced, carob-skinned and petite, the former Crescent City R.N. had been born on the bayou and was unstintingly pragmatic, whether examining a prostate, irrigating a wound or landing a largemouth bass. Ananda was relieved to find her in residence, as emergencies often called her away.

Hooker Barr, who’d lost four fingers to a drill rig and had turned to drinking a kind of moonshine you could burn in a Coleman stove, sat waiting to be tested for diabetes, while Altana Celine paced, waiting for a boil on her butt the size of a crab shell to be lanced. Emily Dickinson took one look at Angelike and put her two other patients on hold. “Good Lord, girl—you cain’t hide that! Come on in here where I can lookatchya.”

Angelike seemed calmed by the quick hands of the light skinned black woman, who began easing her out of her clothes, and mopping her face. “You the father?” she asked Casper, who was at a loss for words. It didn’t matter. Emily Dickinson was one of those women who believed that when it comes to giving birth, men only get in the way—and she scooted him out the door so she could deal with the situation in the sacred company of her own sex.

Father? He felt like a child again. This may have been an eerily similar version of his own arrival into the world. Young desperate mother . . . fear . . .

Casper waited outside with Merrit (who thankfully had gone quiet), catching occasional yeaks of pain from Angie and remonstrances from Ananda and Emily Dickinson to keep breathing and push, push! The sky was metallic, the wind rising, carrying the distinctive smell of southern Louisiana where it’s never certain where the Gulf ends and the so-called land begins.

Enrique pulled in above the motel, hidden by trees, hallucinating a slithering mass of liquid green reptiles between him and his money. He shoved the barrel of the Luger down his pants and felt his sweaty little penis begin to stiffen. An egret creaked from a branch into the chalk air.

Casper heard a terrible cry from Angelike—then a series of distressed exclamations from Ananda—followed by one from Emily Dickinson. She emerged wearing latex gloves coated with blood, hollering for her son Myron, who banged out of the manager’s residence like a muscular 13 year-old version of Cameron Blanchard’s son Goodricke. Despite his thick glasses, he gave the impression of being a good shot with a .410. His mother gave him some instructions Casper couldn’t hear and the boy ran back to the office.

“Gawdd! Gimme some fuckin’ druggs!” the young mother screamed.

There was more yelling. Angelike yowled in agony and the door was shut again. Then opened. The sense of panic seemed to grow. Casper’s heart pounded. Emily Dickinson made a phone call to the hospital in Lafayette. Something had gone wrong. Casper heard Angelike crying. He was paralyzed, listening to a scared young girl trying to give birth to a baby that he suspected was already dead.

“It’s a boy!” he heard Ananda say—but there was nothing from Emily Dickinson—and then muffled panting from the distressed mother. Casper had a bad feeling. Angelike called out. He could tell Ananda was holding her down, shushing her.

“Wanna see ma baby!” she grunted. “Wanna see my son!”

“Quiet, honey. You gotta rest easy,” Casper heard Emily Dickinson say.

A moment later she emerged with a look on her face he hoped to never see again. It was there for just an eye blink—a radiance of such sorrow and compassion. She handed him a bundle, her gloved hands glistening with gore. Angelike was hemorrhaging. The baby was dead. She wasn’t to know just yet.

Merrit had gone off by the boat. Casper appreciated that. He couldn’t have opened the thin sopping blanket with anyone else looking on. Even so it was almost a minute before he had the courage to look—the baby some Lonely Room part of himself wished had been his—and what also seemed to be a broken mirror reflection of his own life.

But it wasn’t. He was born whiter than white—alive. This child was black, and stillborn. A tiny face like an alien Buddha. The bump. He thought back to Suzanne’s bizarre doll in Indianapolis and stowed the bundle out of sight, trying to wipe his hands.

The door opened again and Emily Dickinson came out and called for Myron. A moment later, Ananda and Myron emerged carrying Angelike on a stretcher. The girl was wrapped up like a mummy, just her head poking out. She looked so small and tired—worse than tired.

“Lissen . . . I—I give ‘im a name,” she choked. “Casper.”

“That’s a good name,” Casper said, trying hard to smile, wondering what she suspected, what she knew.

“Could—could he have—yore lass name—too?” she whispered, her breath like dead leaves. “If—if I doan come back—?”

“You’ll come back.”

“You lie. You’ll look—take care of ‘im?”

“He’ll be fine here until you come back.”

“But you’ll look after ‘im?” she choked.

“Yes,” Casper answered. “You have faith, all right?”

“You look after ‘im . . . an’ you—you give ‘em that belt I got—that snakeskin belt—you—that belt . . . ”

“Yes,” Casper said.

“Remember me.”

Emily Dickinson had called on the bayou telegraph to get Odessa’s son to fly out in a pontoon helicopter to take Angelike into the hospital in Lafayette. Emily Dickinson knew when to fold and cut her losses. The girl had major complications—but there was still a chance seeing that she was young and tough. Just a chance. “But she needs the hope of that chile,” Emily Dickinson warned Casper as the copter appeared. “And I doan want you to worry ‘bout the money. I got a favor to call in in a big pinch—and this is a pinch.”

Casper tried to nod as an emotional Ananda patted his hand. “Personne sait ce que demain amène, pas meme demain lui-même.” He didn’t understand what she said, but he knew what she meant.

The helicopter’s rotary drone stirred the birds and trees—and churned up the water, attracting the attention of something big that had been swimming in the bayou close by. It solved the problem of Enrique Cruz—who didn’t end up killing Angelike and regaining his money.

Resigning any hope of his diabetes test that day, Hooker Barr and the 300 pound Seminole woman he’d met when he was gatoring in Ft. Myers set off to lay some new trap lines, just as the matador was sneaking around the back of the old motel to break into the clinic and accost poor Angelike. The sight of the hefty Indian and the man with the mangled hand put Enrique in mind to steal back to where he’d hidden Luiz’s boat and wait until they were gone. Then, just as he was cursing himself purple, the helicopter came and he had no choice but to slip into the water to hide until they’d taken off.

Over the whizzing thud of the blades he didn’t hear the swoosh in the slow stream, and was never seen again. Perhaps the Murker, not having been satisfied with the meal of the chicken executive, needed to feed once more. Perhaps something else happened. But Enrique Cruz disappeared from Louisiana without anyone ever knowing he was there or why (for his Caddy was boosted later that day by a couple of kids from St. Martinville), leaving behind only the unsolved attack on Luiz. So it often happens in life. Sometimes great calamities are averted without us even knowing they were a threat—our attention always focused on the apparent crisis at hand, innocents on the periphery taking a blow meant for us.

23

Making Your Way To The Moment

Emily Dickinson shouted to her son over the copter, “Myron! You keep an eye on things.” To Casper she just glanced, as she stepped into the helicopter with Angelike. He wondered if he’d ever see the girl again. Didn’t she have doubts why the baby had been left behind? Didn’t she know? Of course she did. She’d all but said so. You can’t fool people really. She was allowing herself to be taken and hoped for. As young and alone as she might feel, she was being looked after as best as could be arranged—and she knew it. She knew they were counting on her to fight for her life. They were all in her care, in truth.

It was several minutes after the helicopter had taken off before the bayou recovered—as if a miniature hurricane had come and gone. When the air grew still again he smelled the stormy ozone once more—and stared down at the bundle he’d hidden in what was a kind of bulrushes. He knew the job had to be done fast or he wouldn’t be able to do it. Another body.

Angelike had mentioned a belt—a snakeskin belt, which he found among the things Ananda had brought. He wanted to bury the child with something of hers and there wasn’t much to choose from. He took a pack of Black Jack gum and the little Troll Doll off the key ring. He hadn’t seen the belt before. Little did he know what was inside. He didn’t even think to look for the amount of money that she thought it contained—let alone the total. It was a Medicine thing to him—something important to her.

And so it often is, too—that just like the horrors that skirt our path without our knowing . . . there are many blessings that never find us . . . good news we don’t hear because of more pressing things on our minds. Perhaps the real blessing is that we aren’t aware of how much life, for both great advantage and dark consequence, passes within a hot breath without us suspecting.

He took the belt, the gum and the doll, borrowed one of Emily Dickinson’s boats and a shovel, and made for Woodpecker Island once again. The sky looked as thin as paper, sunless and without time. He beached the boat among the mangroves where the crawfish burrow, tiny bubbles rising in the brown water, and made his way with his tragic cargo to where they’d laid Hermione. The cypress cross and the cement frog stood as if they’d been there for a while. Only the different shadings of the sandy soil gave a clue as to the freshness of the grave. He began to dig.

He’d never had the chance to say goodbye to Poppy and Rose—only to Berina and Joe. At least he’d buried Joe himself.

There’s something therapeutic about digging a grave. He could feel his hands begin to blister a little. Hard work—right down in the mud and the sand with the bugs and the roots. Down to earth. That expression takes on a new meaning when you’re digging a grave for a child who never saw the light of day.

Made him think of his villains—and all his nights of healing. Hapless Rick James, and the boy and the driver back in Indianapolis—how easily he’d killed them. Yes, it had been self-defense. Just as it had been mercy to put Joe Meadow out of his misery, with no doctor within miles. But it had still been killing. It’s never easy to dig a grave. Poor Summer—like a dog in the street.

He put his back into it and when the damp hole was deep enough, he laid the little body in, wrapped in what passed for swaddling clothes—the Black Jack, the doll and the snakeskin belt, which to him was filled with a magical power, because she’d asked for it. Then he did weep . . . for all the people he’d met—all the travelers, the hopers and the nohopers. For Poppy and Rose, Berina and Summer, for Hogerty and Joe, Dev Neon and Hercules, Rip and Daphne, Sharee and Utensil, Walt, Hoss . . . Betsy, Linda—Suzanne. For all those he’d hurt and those he’d tried to help—for those who’d helped him. And most especially for the too-young mother who’d . . . .

He started shoveling the earth back into the hole, remembering back to what Angelike had seemed like when he first met her. So proud, even though destitute. The calamities and inconveniences he’d been afraid she was going to cause. Like a barrel bomb in a toilet bowl. Now he missed that pocket rocket bit of jailbait more than he could say. She’d turned out to be a Rinder true.

He finished filling in the grave and went back to the motel covered in vines. Emily Dickinson had yet to return. Myron offered to make him a shrimp sandwich, which he gratefully accepted. Then the boy showed him to one of the motel rooms. Merrit pulled up to the dock later with his knapsack that had been left at Roy’s—along with Hoptree. Casper went out to talk to his silver-haired comrade at the edge of the water.

“She’ll do fine,” the old man gruffly insisted. “That little girl’s as rough as bags and twice as tough. She’ll pull through.”

“The baby didn’t,” Casper said.

“I heard,” Hoptree answered. “She’d had a bit of a bleed before. Didn’t want anyone to know, I guess. Child lived hard.”

“She named it—him—after me.”

“Onto a better life!” the oldster sighed.

“You getting churchy now?”

“Odessa heppin’ me to see the light,” Hoptree smiled. “She makes the best banana marshmallow pudding I’ve ever et!”

“She’s sweet on you,” Casper said.

“I ain’t sayin’ nothin’,” Hoptree grinned—and Casper realized that if he’d had his eyes closed, he would’ve thought the silver fox was black. Whether it was something he’d learned through his music or a life of beginnings, suffering and being saved—Hoptree had a knack for mingling with whatever environment he found himself in. Even a tornado.

The old man stared out over the breeze-wrinkled water. “So, what do you think ‘bout this Dickinson gal—the nurse?”

“She’s good,” Casper affirmed. “Just was more wrong than she could handle. I should’ve made Angie go see a doctor the moment I met her.”

“Son, you couldn’t get that little lass to do a damn thing she didn’t wanna do! And you can’t blame yourself for the life she led. You’re just high hattin’ yourself if you do. I think you’re the kind who’s helped more people than you remember and been helped by many. Now, it’s time to help yourself.”

“What do you mean by that?” Casper asked, put out.

“Look atchyou!”

“You can barely see through those cataracts.”

“I can feel,” the old man answered and held out his worn right hand and pressed it to Casper’s face. The hand was neither smooth nor rough—but experienced, alive unto itself. And scented with vanilla.

Hoptree laughed loud and clear. “You think she’s too young for me!”

“Or you’re too white for her!” Casper replied. But the notion of racial difference didn’t seem to carry any weight on the bayou.

“There,” said Hoptree, clapping his hands, as if about to begin a song. “That’s what you don’t do enough of. Using those smiling muscles God gave you. You walkin’ around like a haint—never thinkin’ about a home. Hell, you look like you got more past than old Mrs. Nedd. We’ll be asking you about Appomattox soon. Gotta make your way to the moment. Leave the Oldsmobile and the trailer out in the desert behind—whatever happened.”

These last words hung in the air like anxious birds.

“You were talking to yourself while you were driving,” the old man said. “You thought I was off with the woolly mammoths—but you were off with the ghosts and the shadows I suspect.”

Casper gave a light shiver. “Did Angelike hear?”

“She was out. And you didn’t make enough sense to give away any secrets. No need to turn any whiter than you already are.”

“I’ve done bad things,” Casper said.

“No doubt,” Hoptree agreed. “But running from them doesn’t do anyone any good, least of all you. Everyone’s guilty of something. If you want to make good, then let the past go and start looking ahead. That’s the gift the little girl’s given us. Given us both. You just did the driving.”

“You’re right there,” Casper said.

“This here is a good moment,” the old man declared.

Hoptree’s inflection had turned crisp and worldly, but his words were dust of the road honest. They reminded Casper of a Mexican field hand he’d seen once in a row of sugar beets, going down to an irrigation canal and using a stray hubcap to take a drink.

“I don’t think she’s coming back.”

“I know,” the old man answered. “I’m just saying that you need a home. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. You might have one here, if you let yourself see it.”

“How do you mean?”

“That’s why I asked you what you think of Miss Dickinson. Odessa reckons she can help me work out a way to get these cataracts removed—and she thinks she’d let you stay on. She needs an extra hand. Even got some funding to help pay for it, so I hear. You could earn your keep. Odessa says she’s a widow too.”

“What do you mean too?”

“Like Odessa. But I do hear she’s a fine lookin’ woman. Then again, I don’t see so good, as you say. Although that may change.”

Casper knew what the old man meant, and that it came from his heart—but it still annoyed him. “I’ll think about it,” he replied.

“And you could join the church. No prejudice with these folks—they’re all too much in each other’s barbeque for that.”

“Yeah,” Casper agreed, thinking back to the night before when he was welcomed like no black stranger would’ve been greeted by whites in the South—sitting around a campfire with people offering him crawfish heads.

“You might even think about the preacher’s job. I’ve already told them you’ve got the way, although they picked up on that themselves. And with the funeral, well, word gets around quick. No money of course—but folks would respect you. Ole Luther Box ain’t gonna be ‘round forever.”

“I don’t know if I feel religious just now,” Casper gruffed, peeved by Hoptree’s slide in and out of his folksy dialect.

As if savoring this discomfort, the old man poured on the molasses. “I’ll tune up my fiddle, I’ll rosin my bow, and I’ll make myself welcome wherever I go. Preachin’ ain’t zackly ‘bout religion with these folks. Iss ‘bout singin’ an’ playin’—heppin’ eachotha in hurricanes—and havin’ children.”

“Did you say children?” Casper prickled. The remark seemed either terribly insensitive just at that point—or so alarmingly optimistic as to be deranged. “You don’t mean to say—you think you can father a child?”

“I hadn’t thought about that yet—but I got me a woman. That’s a damn good start.”

“Not Odessa?” Casper gasped, with his mouth open as wide as it could go and still allow him to talk.

“I don’t mean Mrs. Nedd,” the old man laughed—and then whispered . . . “Odessa’s asked me to move in.”

“You’re joking!” Casper squawked.

“I am not!” Hoptree insisted, feigning being miffed.

“You mean to say . . . you already . . . ”

“Son, you may think it crass of me while Missy was facing such trials—but I tell you, you don’t have to be 151 to know time gets away if you don’t grab it.”

“That sounds like just what you did!”

“Like I said before, you get to a certain point and you think about making hay whether the damn sun’s shining or not. Wise Ben would agree.”

“So—you’re—shacking up with her?”

“We’re gonna play house and see how it goes. Maybe a baby. Haha.”

“But she’s way too old! You’re beyond too old. Don’t you know that?” The old weasel’s exuberance was getting on Casper’s nerves.

His words got up Hoptree’s nose now.

“Why are you always talking about Old—and Can’t? You’re young enough to be my son. You should still be thinking about Can. You’ve got too much blood in you to be a ghost. Can’t find a red bird, a jay bird’ll do—skip to my lou.”

God, thought Casper. That’s what Angelike would’ve said. It was the way she behaved anyway. She’d been taken off in a helicopter, bleeding, in agony, separated from her newborn dead child, thrown in amongst strangers every bit as much as he was, not knowing what the future held—or if there would be any future to hold—having just lost the one possibility of family and help she’d counted on—and still she showed no sign of giving in.

“I’ll think about what you’re saying,” Casper promised, feeling warmth and affection for the old henhouse raider again.

The old man touched his steady right hand to Casper’s shoulder. “I gotta get back. Wouldn’t want Odessa to think I’m out on the prowl! You don’t need to worry about me anymore. She keeps that bait shovel handy.”

Casper tried to smile.

“The only thing I did was wrong was to stay in the wilderness too long,” Hoptree recited. “The thing we did was right was the day we started to fight. Keep your eyes on the prize. We’re going to need all the help we can get in the great struggle against the corporate forces of Big Money around here. The dignity of the common man is at stake against the interests of capitalist greed. Organizing and preparation is the key.”

“I had an old friend who used to say something like that,” Casper replied.

“You’ve got an old friend right here,” Hoptree said. “And don’t you go kite flying and forget it. You stick around and I’ll learn y’all some gitar. I can play everything from Doc Watson to John Lee Hooker.”

“Do you happen to know ‘The Red Headed Stranger’?” Casper asked.

“From Blue Rock, Montana. Know it by heart,” the old man answered. “I may even teach you some Hoptree Bark. The real Hoptree Bark, I mean.”

“You’re pretty real yourself,” Casper said. “You’d be a good teacher. Stay out of trouble now.”

“You mean, stay in the moment,” Hoptree replied.

“That’s what I said.”

Merrit boated the old man back to Roy’s where Odessa was waiting for him with a plate of hush puppies, polk salad and some blackberry pudding. Casper went back inside his room, lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.

He had a dream . . . about Summer. He saw her walking out of her house—the family home she’d remained in, even as an adult. She stepped in front of the speeding ambulance.

In all the years since, it hadn’t occurred to him that her death wasn’t an accident . . . or perhaps it had—he just hadn’t been able to see it. Cloudy, then clear. He’d never known the secret of her family life. She’d always kept that well hidden, just as Little Red had guarded the snakeskin belt. Maybe she hadn’t been run down. Maybe that was her way out of the small room Hogerty had talked about.

The knock at the door startled him up out of the depths of the past. It was Emily Dickinson. Three hours had gone by.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Truth?” Emily Dickinson answered, and he realized that despite her weariness she was a very attractive woman. She smelled good too—like a mix of pralines and cantaloupe. “Gurl’s got problems on top of problems. Should’ve done a Cesar. Gonorrhea in the past, scarring, she done it hard—and been busted up by someone—but I think you knew that.”

“I did. The man who did that learned his lesson. Is—is there any good news?”

“She fightin’.”

“I—I want to thank you for all your help,” Casper said.

“Doan think I did much. Not enough anyway.”

“Yes you did. Don’t high hat yourself, you can’t save everybody.”

“High hat myself?” Emily Dickinson frowned, and then gave a wan smile.

“I didn’t mean any disrespect,” Casper said.

“I know you didn’t. You all right?”

“I—I’m OK, thanks. I appreciate you letting me stay here.”

“Doan worry ‘bout that. You can help out—if it comes to that—for a while.”

“She’ll make it?” Casper asked, although it occurred to him that Angelike might already be gone. Just as Emily Dickinson wouldn’t let him tell her the truth about the baby, maybe the truth was being held back from him now.

“You keep yo head up.”

“Can I see her?”

“Not jes yet. Let the chile rest.”

“She is still alive?”

“You keep yo head up like I sed. It’ll be all right. You can stay here long as you like. We doan have much—but Myron could use a hand.”

“He’s a fine boy—young man. I heard your husband died. I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Police officer in Nawrleans,” she said, lowering her head. Casper noticed how smooth her skin was. “Whole city like St. Louis Cemetery. And that was before Katrina.”

“You’re from here, aren’t you?”

“Ought nevva to’ve left. Nevva will now. Where you from?”

“West Virginia, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, the Greyhound Bus.”

“Whattya do?”

“I was raised to a be preacher . . . but then . . . long story.”

“Well, Myron’s got some red beans on. You come over an’ join us for supper. I got some homemade ice melon. Come by when you’re ready.”

He did, and enjoyed the simple meal. He especially appreciated not being questioned further about his past. These people seemed to get a read on you and take you as they found you, like all the good people he’d ever met.

The quarters that Emily and Myron had taken for themselves consisted of a small but clean cottage adjacent to the motel. After they ate, Casper helped Myron wash up while Emily went to soak her feet. Myron wanted to try out for the wrestling team. His eyesight didn’t keep him from hunting—but it made him self-conscious. He had great strength and quickness for his size—probably wrestling was a good idea, Casper thought. The mother and son seemed to get on well, although underneath their fondness he sensed the ever-present vacuum left by the lost father / husband. He admired their courage.

Then he headed back to his room, the storm smell seeming nearer now, jags of heat lightning in the distance.

24

The Hour of Lead

Inside his room there was news of a hurricane potential storm ravaging the remains of the Gulf shrimp fleet. What didn’t these people face down with bravery? Oil spills, storms, floods. The old television screen fluttered. He kept thinking of Angelike, wondering if she was going to be all right—wondering if she was awake—wondering if she was alive. He consulted his Medicine strips.

MAN DROPS DENTURES OVERBOARD THEN FINDS THEM IN A FISH SIX MONTHS LATER

He took that as a hopeful message. He moved to turn off the TV and stopped dead when he saw the commercial that had come on. It was an elephant being massaged with Spanish Extra Virgin olive oil! His mind flashed back to Hogerty and the mysterious Wink Group. My God, he thought . . .

That now seemed like a happy memory and set him mulling over what Hoptree had told him. What business did he have thinking about preaching in a black gospel church—or to anyone for that matter? He’d killed a black boy not much older than Myron. He’d killed two other men and should be in leg-irons at Angola.

The answer came back to him out of the past. Survival. Hoptree had walked in the path of the whirlwind and had been saved. So had he. Many times over. He’d gone on because a Rinder had come. Be not too quick to judge the tasks set before thee, for in the appointed hour, despite your burdens, you shall be called upon to stand up in your heart. He’d written those words himself.

He realized that Hoptree was right, he could find a home here. A home at last. That’s what Angelike had given him. He pulled the Only Men songbook from out of his pack. Beyond the last of the Reverend America Bibles, it was the only thing he’d salvaged from his days with Poppy and Rose. Like her organ, Rose had left it behind without a thought. Poppy never mentioned it once during his trial or the last time Casper had spoken to him, even though they’d spent hours with it—years—and had made a lot of their money because of it. He hadn’t looked at the cover in a long time. He seemed to see it now for the first time.

Glory’s Bitter Road

The Lost Songs of America’s Negro Troubadour Preachers 1845-1898
Collected and Arranged by Warwick and Mercia Field – NewYork, 1927

He laid it on the bed—this he would keep, because it wasn’t his to let go. Then he took his precious Medicine Bag and went outside. The wind had died down and the moon came out from the clouds. He laid his Medicine Bag in the water, watching the strips melt away. Time to find or make some new Medicine. The last words he saw were GOLDEN ANTEATER. Then he waded in himself, fully clothed as he had in his religious days. Another baptism. “Create in me a clean will if not soul,” he said, as he let his old Reverend America Bible sink out of sight. “For the rebellious dwell in a dry land.”

There was a sound in the water nearby. Perhaps the Murker, feeding on the old headlines. The wind picked up and plucked at loose metal. He went back inside, brushed his Red Wings and said a prayer for Little Red . . . and for the others. The dead, the damned, the doomed . . . the undaunted. He stripped and slept better than he had in a long time.

The next morning the storm had passed. He helped Myron set a trap line and he caught his first lunker bass. Emily Dickinson went off to see how the patient was doing, or so she said—after lancing Altana’s boil and testing Hooker Barr for diabetes (he didn’t have it—yet). The day after, Emily Dickinson once again insisted that Casper let the girl rest. So he caught a catfish and cleaned out her boats. He learned how to make a fricassee. The following day he motored back up to Roy’s and with Merrit’s help disassembled the LeSabre, chopping and spray painting panels, grinding off serial numbers, harvesting what components could be sold, ditching the rest. Despite his infirmity, the boy worked well, and he sang softly while he worked—some Cajun French song Casper didn’t know. He had a peculiar but good, true voice. No questions were asked, and Casper got so he could sort of understand him. He learned some things at least. A bullfrog was a wowmaron, a dragonfly—a zirondelle. And a schneille seemed to be a kind of fuzzy caterpillar that bites and causes fever.

When they were finished with the car, Merrit made a momentary departure and returned carrying something in a secretive, important fashion. It was just an ordinary drawing pad—but on it was a series of rather fine sketches—mechanically lush line drawings in superb detail, but done with a freehand freshness and organic energy. They presented a half man-half frog creature—with both a kind of defiant aristocratic bearing and the embattled look of the hunted fugitive.

“M-muuurker,” the boy said behind his hand. “No tell.”

How appropriate, Casper thought, that the boy would envision the legendary World Weekly News creature as part man, part frog. Then again, if the Murker had showed itself to anyone on the bayou, Merrit seemed the perfect choice. He felt privileged the boy had shared this private vision with him. Who are your friends if you can’t share your visions with them?

Come Saturday, Luther Box was feeling poorly and Aura Ryder, on behalf of the congregation, came and asked Casper if he had a mind to fill in. He was eating pain perdu. He said he couldn’t presume to take the place of Reverend Box. Well then, wondered Aura, would he care to give a message as a layman—to make a guest appearance? And after much thought, he said yes he would. He was bound and determined to visit Angelike that afternoon, to see how she was doing, because he still wanted to believe—needed to believe. But that night . . . Emily Dickinson told him the truth. There’d been a massive hemorrhage and a critical drop in blood pressure. In trying to elevate it, the girl had gone into cardiac arrest. The doctors had done what they could and brought her back twice with the paddles. But there was internal bleeding from an injury. She slipped away under anesthesia when they were prepping her for surgery. The body was being returned from Lafayette the next day. It was finished.

Angelike had died on her sixteenth birthday. She’d made the sunrise.

The knowledge released some long held reservoir of pain. But she was free. Emily said she’d wanted to be buried on Woodpecker Island. She’d died believing her baby was alive and might’ve found a father or some protective spirit who would look after him. Casper’s tears hardened into the same resolve he’d found in the past.

The next morning he showed up outside the old Astrocruiser—thinking back on his long exile. How ironic that he should be welcomed by Cajuns and the ancestors of slaves—outside of the Jews, two of the most displaced peoples of the world. He felt their welcome calling him out of the wilderness. He felt called.

That word had often been on his tongue in days before. He’d used it every night in fact. And now it had come back to him on the Rinder’s Highway of his life. It hadn’t been just Poppy and Rose who’d made him Reverend America. He’d wanted to be a healer. Not just a tent show spellbinder—but a genuine figure of inspiration and teaching. If he’d used the language of Christ and the Bible, that was just like the bean can radio stations they often played. A medium. The message—the underlying message then, and the crystal sharp message now was—we survive through love—and love is hope. As long as you have hope, you have love to give—which will come back to you on the wind in its own storm time. “Fool folks good enough, you are who you claim to be.”

The southerly had risen again and more hurricane warnings were sounding along the Gulf coast. He could see the weather driving the birds—great flocks of pelicans and egrets against a sky the color of milk spilled on stainless steel. But he wasn’t thinking about the weather, he was thinking about Angelike—and Hoptree—Odessa—Emily and Myron—Ananda and Merrit—even gnarly old Mrs. Nedd. And he was thinking what he was going to say to the congregation of the Prophecy Creek Gospel Temple. It was the first time he’d faced anything like a congregation since the dark days. Yet it seemed time. He’d never had a chance to be a Radar Boy or a Young Wrangler—but he had been Reverend America.

Everyone filed onto the bus with its torn out seats and spider webbed windows. Odessa Pepper sat next to Hoptree and nodded at Casper who stood where the driver’s seat had once been. They’d all heard about Angelike.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. But there were no hills here, there were only people, the darkest and brightest miracle of all. Blessed are they. The true hoodoo.

“I want to thank you all for having me,” he began. “As you know, many of the teachings of the Bible are pretty confusing. James says that faith without works is dead—yet Paul writes in Ephesians, ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves—it is the gift of God—not of works lest any man should boast.’ Can’t get more contrary than that. Can we save ourselves through the sweat of our care? Or must we, in blindness, depend on mercy for our redemption?

“I’ll tell you what I say—what the Bible of the Road has taught me—what my Sermon at the Wheel is to you today.

“In the Empire of the Greedy, there’s the perpetual celebration of the self-assured. In the Republic of the Generous, there’s always the smell of food cooking . . . in anticipation of the strangers soon to appear. If they ask for an egg, would you give them a scorpion? We’re all vagabonds in the earth. So, we must choose our fellow travelers well—by always seeing to the needs of strangers. Upon their safe arrival hinges our own. Home isn’t something you find—it’s what happens when others reach their destination in you.

“You’ve recently welcomed three strangers into your lives. Three white strangers. Three of the most utterly lost white people you could ever find.”

He glanced at Hoptree. The Rock Candy Mountain balladeer smiled back.

“After this service, we have another funeral to attend to—one of those strangers that we need to lay to rest. But I know none of you see her as a stranger—and that’s what sets you apart—and it’s why I can tell you the truth about myself.

“I used to be a preacher. I can still quote Scripture till the cows come home. I did it for money. Some would say I’d lost my way from the beginning . . . but I certainly lost my faith along the way. I’ve done bad things in my life. I’m a sinner and a criminal, and I’ve been locked up on more than one occasion. If you wanted to turn me over to the authorities right now, they’d find a way to lock me up for good. I deliver myself into your hands that way.

“So, I’m not going to talk to you about the Pearly Gates in any kingdom to come. Kingdoms don’t strike me as anywhere I ever really wanted to be. I’d always be wondering who was doing the dishes.

“Instead, I want to talk to you about something you all know too much about. That’s what good preachers do—they tell people what they already know—they just give it new meaning. I learned that many thousands of miles and moments ago.

“I want to talk about survival in this life—about helping others here and now to find the courage to carry on. I want to talk about the cruelty we’re all guilty of. Of being brave enough to get down in the mud and wrestle with our demons as only we can.”

“Ayymen!” Valentine Tate shouted, swallowing a slug of brandy.

“And through the courage of that combat, to make peace with our Murkers—to redeem ourselves by taking responsibility for our own complexity—the puzzle of sorrow and anger that often seems so far beyond our understanding that we tire and take our hands off the wheel of our own destiny—then try to wash them of any blood we leave behind in the wreckage. I say, let’s put our hands back on the wheel, right here today, and steer. Because we’ve all got a long way to go. Can I get a witness? Can even I—even now—get a witness?”

“Amen!” people shouted, as they had in days gone by. “Yass, brotha. Amen! Amen!”

“After the service, we’re going to have the funeral—but tonight we’re going to have what I think you call around here a fais do do. Laissez les bon temps rouler. Because the soul we’re sending forward loved to sing and dance—and now we’re going to sing too—in honor of her—and in needful hope for ourselves.”

Then, without pausing he began to lead them. It wasn’t a tune about shining angels. He knew in his heart that Angelike had said her goodbye, leaving him entrusted with her faith in life—not knowing the truth—but still believing. Faith is indeed a con. But without it, where do we find the fight and the grace to carry on?

He’d never see her alive again—and yet, she was alive in him. He was the real child she’d given birth to. A stranger met in the Lonesome Valley.

He launched into the simplest of the Only Men hymns, called “We Will Cross the Bridge”—written by the first known freed slave to become an independent Methodist preacher—John William Oxcart . . . “Dedicated to the memory of the American Composer Known as Tall Jim.” Cameron Blanchard would’ve approved.

When darkness is upon you

Just close your eyes and see

When darkness is upon you

You will find the light in me

In all lives there is a river

All travelers must go cross

And though your heart may quiver

The gain is greater than the loss

Souls that keep the road

Can never be denied

Helping others with their load

To strangers we are tied

There is a bridge that leads to glory

We build it with our hope

Only we can tell God’s story

So the bridge will never slope

We will cross the bridge together

No one walks that way alone

We will cross the bridge together

And together we’ll find home

He started by himself—the whitest man in that bus, and for miles around. But Hoptree was right—he had the gift. He’d known serpents and dungeons. He spoke with his own authority. Everyone joined in. They belted it out—and as they did, Aura Ryder kicked on the generator and came in on the Jensen. Valentine Tate picked up the electric guitar and Hoptree played the harp.

The flood blistered ark of the bus and the gopherwood shacks all around them vibrated with the life of the song. It wasn’t about Christ on the Cross or some throne in the clouds. It was about something bigger, quieter, and they sang as loudly as they could, sending the music out on the wings of morning, over the water and high up into the falling air.

The pale minister with the dark past heard his own voice rise above the rest—the voice trained in tents and hardwood churches overlooking ravines of rust eaten iron stoves. He heard it come forward like a spirit when the stone of the past is rolled away. A spirit consecrated to wander, and in wandering to be reborn. Could he be moved? Could he be moved to remain—to put down roots? Or was he forever a mustard seed on the wind, a Rinder haunting the crossroads just this side of Burma Shave and Damascus? There was no more sermon left to say—only the one kind of prayer he’d never finally lost faith in. He sang as only he could.

Kris Saknussemm is the internationally acclaimed author of eleven books that have been translated into many languages, including Zanesville, Private Midnight, Enigmatic Pilot and the short story collection Sinister Miniatures. His shorter work has appeared in Playboy, Nerve, The Boston Review, The Hudson Review, The Antioch Review, New Letters and elsewhere. More information is available at www.krissaknussemm.com.