Fortuna and the Scapegrace

by Brian Kindall

  Hmm now, I deliberated. Let us consider the clues.

  Straight away I recalled the passage to which Adamiah’s Bible had been opened on that first day we talked in his cabin.

  Oh!

  Surely that had been no haphazard!

  As I reviewed that Old Testament tale, I remembered how God had instructed Onan to bring forth a child by way of his brother’s widow. But Onan had failed to properly deliver his seed and had, instead, spilt it onto the ground. This was evil in the sight of the Lord and had subsequently prompted said Lord to strike Onan dead.

  Onan’s circumstances seemed eerily similar to my own. After all, could it not be said that the old Adamiah had been, of a sort, my brother? And whereas I was more than willing to take up where Onan had erred, righting that procreative wrong and delivering my own seed to the assigned feminine plot, there was one obvious impediment – I was not yet married to Prudence. Any such pre-connubial implantation would likely be deemed a sin according to the Bible-based rules of Eden and its over-watching god. I had only just been granted a reprieve from my former life’s many transgressions. Surely it would be extra foolish to start up so soon at adding misdeeds to my newly blankened slate.

  It is one final test, I warned myself, to see if you are worthy of Prudence’s purity. Keep your standpipe dry, Mister Linklater, and not only will you have her as your wife, but you might even find yourself avoiding the pit hole of hell.

  The promise of a pending paradise was impetus enough (in that moment, at least) to keep me from repeating Onan’s blunder and masturbatorily mollifying my perpenprickular knob’s rigidified throb.

  BY AND BY I recovered enough to leave my bed. My ribs were still tender, and I was wobbly as a moppet, but I was eager to visit the wonder-world into which I had been resurrectified. I donned my white suit, hung my locket about my neck, shot Christ a wink, and stepped out for a tour of the Shining Redemption.

  Prudence met me at the front door with a pair of leather shoes.

  “I borrowed them from my brother Will.”

  After thanking Prudence for her thoughtfulness, I forced them onto my feet. They looked right enough from above, but truth be told, I had not worn proper shoes in so long that they felt painful and confining, as if I had somehow managed to squeeze them on backward. Still, I figured they were the mark of a sophisticated man – something I greatly aspired to be – and so I would just have to get used to their toe-pinching stiffness.

  “A perfect fit,” I said.

  Prudence appeared pleased, and then hooked her arm in mine, waving her paper fan at the tropical air through which we strolled.

  *****

  Now this far-flung garden was not nearly so grand as its ancient namesake. Quite the contrary. I most certainly did not want to seem ungrateful to my heavenly benefactors, but I suppose I had hoped to inherit a mighty kingdom punctuated with sparkling waterfalls and lined with pathways of gold. It looked to be a bit more careworn and humble than I had pictured it in my mind.

  Well, I self-consoled, we all have to get our start somewhere. Perhaps New Eden, like New Me, held a latent potential that would be gloriously revealed in time.

  The land, as much as I could see of it, was low-lying. Back in San Francisco, I had viewed some traveler’s watercolors of the South Sea Islands, all featuring emerald peaks looming over wide blue harbors. But this particular example was not like that. Near as I could tell, the most elevated plat did not rise up much more than ten feet above the mark of high tide. This lent a somewhat uneasy aspect to the setting. The restless Pacific was such an immediate presence, its waves ever pawing at the shoreline. Sure, the island was most likely anchored to the ocean floor, and it did not rock or sway, but the overall feeling was not all that much different from being onboard a ship.

  Thirty or so buildings were scattered willy-nilly among the bending palms. These were mostly houses, Prudence told me – domiciles for the devout. With a few odiferous privies on the perimeter. The shacks looked to be thrown up with an inelegant hotchpotch of imported and local materials. The roofs were poorly thatched with palm boughs, and the walls were fashioned with ratty mats of woven fronds. Each home had an open barrel positioned under its eaves, put there, I reckoned, to catch rainwater.

  As we moved through the village, it occurred to me that I had been lodged in one of the finer buildings of the lot. Mine was built entirely from mill-cut lumber and cedar shingles, no doubt hauled in from elsewhere. Most of these other sheds did not appear to have plank flooring or multiple rooms or even solid wooden doors. Only three or four were fashioned thusly, their privileged inhabitants most likely forming the Shining Redemption’s elite leadership. The rest of the collective looked to be the swayback progeny of civilized buildings fornicating with palm trees.

  We walked through their midst.

  Some attempts at gardening could be seen here and there between the homes, offering up vines of shriveled okra, or a few leafless bean plants, but generally it looked to be just as Adamiah had told me – the island was largely composed of sand. If it was ever going to bring forth any kind of a vegetable crop, Eden was going to need a big delivery of some good old-fashioned dirt.

  Except for some ratty chickens darting across our path, we had not encountered anyone on our promenade, and I was about to ask my ladylove where everyone was hiding when we came round a corner to large gathering of Edenites.

  A boy pointed our direction. “It’s him!” he announced. “It’s the Chosen One!”

  The whole mob turned our way.

  *****

  It was surprisingly disturbing to be called out like that.

  It felt to me more of an accusation than a blessed annunciation.

  Sure, I suppose I was indeed the Chosen One, just as the lad had said. And I likewise supposed that, all in all, that was about as lucky a nickname as ever there was. Who would not want to be so favorably hailed? But for just an instant, something inside of me shuddered with a foreboding dread. Something deep and buried and knowing. I could not say exactly what it was. Perhaps I right then for the first time sensed the weight of the responsibility attending the position in which I now found myself. Surely even the Savior must have wondered, in his shakier moments, just what the hell he had gotten himself into. Maybe I was not ready to be fortunate. Maybe I had lived so many lonesome, ill-starred years that I had grown accustomed to my constant state of woefulness. I do not know. It was confusing. Maybe, at last, I was just intimidated by that somewhat gruesome throng of pilgrims pivoting so expectantly in my direction.

  They were about sixty people, most of them holding what appeared to be strips of charred flesh. They saw me and broke into a bloom of oleaginous smiles.

  Then they cheered.

  Not in any intelligible way. Or even with what one might call a decipherable word.

  It was more of a shared and affirmative grunt – a primal hallelujah simultaneously issued forth from three score mouths stuffed with meat.

  Prudence pressed my arm, and whispered, “This will be your congregation.”

  “Heh-heh,” I managed, and then smiled and raised my hand, wiggling my fingers in greeting to the horde.

  As we strode forward to meet the good people of Eden, I assessed their collective demeanor. They appeared to be mostly Caucasians, with a few stragglers on the perimeter whom I took to be Polynesians in western dress. The men looked to outnumber the women two to one. A dozen children of varying ages were scattered throughout the crowd. The white folks were generally rawboned and bent, the men all sunburned in the face, the women all flushed beneath their bonnets. The natives, by contrast, appeared to be more full of figure and robust of deportment. Their hair was blue-black, their skin the toasted color of cinnamon. The whole group stood round a smoldering pit of coals over which was erected a rack draped with long slabs of sizzling meat.

  They seemed hesitant and shy at our approach, but one young woman stepped boldly forward from the group and opened her arms.

  “W
elcome at last, Brother Linklater.” Her beaming face was besmeared with grease, her teeth full of gristle, but her carnivorous frowziness did not keep her from embracing me. She held on for what seemed an undue duration, and as she did, it occurred to me that the young lady had a proverbial bun cooking in her womb oven. Her apron bulged tight against my middle. At last she let me go, and then peered into my face with an unmistakable expression of heartfelt appreciation.

  “Thank you so much for coming to us,” she said. “It’s truly a miracle, you showing up here the way you did, and bringing us the manna.”

  “The manna?”

  “Why, yes.” She laughed bashfully. “That’s what we’re calling it. Just like with the Israelites in the wilderness.” She pointed into the distance.

  I turned to look and saw, far down the beach, what the girl was indicating – the dead whale.

  The great beast had been peeled and hacked, its white rib bones looking like the gunwale framework of a ship. Much of the flesh had been carved away from the carcass, but at least half of it still remained. Entrails and blood littered the surrounding sand. The scene glistened, red and gory, in the hot sunshine. A cloud of birds circled above the carnage, with another bunch swarming over the cadaver and pecking at it with their beaks. The behemoth’s head and tail had not been butchered out, and the black skin covering those extremities was streaked white with guano.

  “You’ve brung us a sacrifice to take place of our usual way of getting one.” The gravid lass bobbed her bonnet. “You surely brung it for our communion time.” Her expression turned worried. “Didn’t you?”

  I regarded the earnest young woman before me, and then the others all waiting hopefully at her aft. I was a bit nonplussed, trying to grasp just what communion the lady-girl was referring to, and what, then, was expected of me. This, I recognized at last, was a sort of introductory trial, a chance to make a positive first impression.

  I swallowed.

  I drew a deep breath.

  And then, after mustering my wits, I spread my arms to my would-be flock.

  “Yea!” I called for all to hear. “Verily, verily, I have been sent unto you along with this meaty gift, that ye might have communion and be comforted to know that God holds you, the chosen folks of the Shining Redemption, in a favorable light.” I gestured to the dead whale. “Eat of this manna with delight and gratitude and prayerful hearts! For it is through your appreciation of the Chosen One, and the food, that ye will be rewarded with evermore bounteousness and good favors from heaven, er… or… as it happened to occur this time round, from the sea.”

  I saw by the many astounded grins before me that my theorhetorical pomposity was having the desired effect. Someone shouted, “Praise be to the Chosen One!” And then the whole tribe of zealots answered with a miscellany of general praises and holy affirmations.

  Emboldened by this, I lifted my hand in beatitudinal fashion to quiet the crowd. Then I spoke to the impregnated pilgrimess before me.

  “What is your name, sister?”

  “Why, I’m Twyla.”

  I nodded, and then laid my hands on her swollen belly in the manner of one checking the ripeness of a melon. I stood for a moment, softly squeezing her bulge, my palms pulsing with the life bumping inside her.

  Twyla’s lips quivered.

  “Bless thee, sister, and your unborn child, too. For by the well-trod gateway to and fro your fruitful womb, God will surely see fit to populate this hallowed garden of New Eden.”

  I let go of her and stepped back, gazing with my best effort at serenity into the young lady’s perspiring countenance.

  Her eyes grew large and then slightly crossed.

  Her arms cradled her midsection.

  Her cheeks puffed.

  And then, with all the spectacle of a sea wave crashing onto the shore, Twyla’s amniotic waters burst forth from between her legs and splashed around her ankles.

  The group stood gape-mouthed, most of them still holding meat, their stares fixed on the damp plot of sand under Twyla’s feet.

  “Another miracle!”

  The crowd swarmed around me, patting at me in an adulatory manner, praising me as if I were a true demigod.

  (Who could say? Maybe I was.)

  Twyla was led away to a hut to give birth.

  The others continued to worship me and introduce themselves and touch the hem of my garment.

  It was a bit overwhelming, although enjoyable enough. I had never before been so openly adored.

  I looked around for my Prudence and spied her speaking with a man at the edge of the trees. He was watching me as Prudence talked. I met his gaze over the distance and lifted my chin in greeting. He did not nod back in reply. His overall reaction to me did not seem friendly.

  The man said something curt to Prudence, and then he turned and disappeared into the grove of palms.

  Prudence peered my way. She wore what I took to be an expression of concern at first, but when she saw me she smiled warmly and waved for me to join her.

  My angel!

  I was loath to leave my fawning flock, but when a woman summons her man with such a come-hither mystique, said bedazzled man is helpless to do elsewise but obey.

  “IT’S TIME FOR YOU to meet my father and brothers,” said Prudence. “And the Matriarch.”

  She led me down a sandy path to where a white steeple poked up like a mast above the palms.

  We then came to a wide clearing.

  Prudence gestured across the way with her fan. “This here will be your church,” she explained, “once Father relinquishes it to you after we’re married.”

  I must say, next to the ragtag hamlet supporting it, this building was quite impressive, even moderately magnificent in its size and unexpected splendor. It was not a cathedral exactly – nothing along the lines of Beauvais Cathedral by any stretch – but, relative to its primitive surroundings, it was an outright bastion of far-flung sanctity.

  Clad entirely in whitewashed clapboard, the edifice shined brightly against the glittering backdrop of the sea. It looked like a mislaid iceberg, or a ghostly ship. Tall stained glass windows interposed its walls. These were not crafted into scenes from the Bible, as per usual with a church, but were merely decorative abstractions of colored glass, as if rainbows had been splashed against the bulwarks. Most stunning.

  A wide gangplank led up to the church’s heavy front doors, but to the back of the building was attached a sizeable antechamber.

  “They’ve been waiting on us,” said Prudence. “I’ll have to show you the sanctum later on.”

  She led me round back and stopped before the door. She looked into my face and sighed. “Well,” she whispered. “Be sure and don’t let them put you off. They can be sort of ornery. You remember, Adamiah, you’re extra special to God. I’ve known it always.”

  I nodded like an anxious lad being sent out to play with ruffians.

  Prudence squeezed my hand, and then, after rapping her knuckles on the door, she pushed it open and we both ducked inside.

  *****

  The room was cool as a morgue. It was hard to say right off whether this was on account of the insulatory qualities of the room’s lapstraked walls, or because of its cold-hearted occupants. My eyes did not immediately adjust to the dimness, but I instantly felt the weight of the occupants’ icy glowers.

  Prudence led me into the chamber.

  The shadows slowly converged into the figures of three men and a woman, the details of their persons taking form before me in the gloom.

  The woman was the only one wearing a smile. She sat on a big velvet throne behind a long table and was dressed in a plush regal gown that seemed otherworldly, considering just where in the world we actually were. I quickly sized her up as beyond her childbearing years, but yet still desirable enough in a pinch to be worth a good tumble in bed. Over her shoulder on the wall hung a large picture of what I at first took to be a painting of a vagina dentata. But then upon noting the compass rose in the bott
om corner of the picture, it occurred to me that it was instead a map of the puckered and oblongular atoll island on which we now were all convened.

  On either side of the woman sat two men of about my own age – my future brothers-in-law. They were beardless and square-jawed and did not regard me with what one might call a welcome-to-the-family sort of expression. One of them was glaring jealously at my feet.

  Lastly came Prudence’s father – the right venerable founder of the Shining Redemption himself – Brother Mosiah Merriwether. He was old and thin as rope. His gray and white beard spilled onto his chest like dirty snow. His hands lay folded on the table before him, his fingers twisted into a knot ball of rheumatic knobs and nubbins.

  Prudence held my arm and presented me to the theocratic foursome.

  “Everyone,” she said, “at long last, I would like you to meet the boy I knew out back by the ditch in Ohio. This here is Adamiah, Papa. Adamiah Linklater.”

  Prudence fairly thrust me forward.

  The old man said nothing, just scrutinized me with a sour look that caused me to feel somewhat like a pimple on a sow’s ass.

  The confidence I had been enjoying fast flew away, and I was rather gripped with a panic. At a loss for else to do, I stepped forward and offered the man my hand.

  “Enchanté,” I let slip like a Francophonic bonehead. “Uh… Mighty pleased to meet you, sir.”

  The man regarded my outstretched paw, but he made no move to reciprocate my affable gesture, and so I stood there awkwardly, not knowing exactly what to do next. Although the room was chill, I began to sweat.

  “What happened to the ship?” asked a brother. “And the supplies you was supposed to bring to Eden?”

  I retracted my hand and turned my attention to Prudence’s surly sibling. I faked a smile.

  “And you are?”

  “Why, this is my brother Force,” said Prudence.

  “Of course.” I wagged my finger comparatively between the two brothers. “I just couldn’t tell which was which. After all, I’ve not seen any of you since we were youngsters.”