Fortuna and the Scapegrace

by Brian Kindall

  The church grew, and I was born. When I got to be a little older, God gave me a dream where she told me you was coming to be my husband and someday take my papa’s place. I knew it all those years ago!

  “His name will be Adamiah,” the angel foretold, “and he will be out back by the ditch.”

  But after a while, some men started causing us trouble. They started up a rumor saying Papa’s church was of the Devil. They didn’t dare let us get a foothold there in Ohio because then it would become clear they had tricked everyone with their lies and their rewrite of the Bible. So that’s when God told us to head out west.

  Those was hard times. We wandered in the wilderness, nearly starving, just like the Israelites. Many of our members drifted away from the church. Only the truest believers stayed with us. We settled for a time on the prairies. And then we settled in the mountains. But something was always guiding us forward, so we up and moved on.

  Finally, we came to a tent settlement at a river ford out in the Territories. Menfolk from all over the world was gathering there on their way to California to hunt for gold. Papa wasn’t interested in such silly avarice, but while doing some trading for provisions, he saw something that he knew must have been sent from divinity.

  It was the same white light that had shined out of my ma when the angel was in her. Papa was the only one who could see it. He knew it was a sign from Paradise, and so he went to it and, sure enough, it was coming from one of the only women around for a hundred miles. She was a Jezebel, lifting her skirts for any man who would pay her a dollar. But Papa could see she was holy and had something just for him that was real sweet and special, and so he went with her to find out what it was.

  Now this woman was from a far-off land and didn’t speak no English. But my pa could understand her meaning just as clear as you please. She spoke in the same tongue as my ma had used when she was filled up with the spirit. He found out from where she came. It was an island out in the ocean. An out-and-out Eden. Papa stayed with her for a while, and then God made him real drowsy so that he fell asleep and went into a dream.

  This dream was wonderful, like being a babe held in the arms of God Herself. God cooed and sung a lullaby to my pa while he rested and suckled, and then she told him he needed to go to the place where the lady was from. She said, “You need to take your people there and rebuild my church and get back to my old ways and make them new.”

  Prudence finished her story and smiled.

  “And so.” She spread her arms to the lagoon. “That’s just what Papa did.”

  IT MADE A SORT of sense.

  When I rolled it over in my thinker.

  Yes, to be sure. One had always wondered – especially when reading the baffling stories of the Old Testament – by what hidden logic God made his decisions. All that righteous annihilation of humanity! All those practical jokes played out on his most ardent devotees! But now, upon learning that He had always been a She, well, was not that sort of mysterious and unfathomable wisdom just exactly what came to mind when a man privately pondered the underlying qualities of a woman?

  Yes, I could see how it might be just as the angel had proclaimed.

  Prudence then set about teaching me the Shining Bible. Once again, the story of our origins began with Eden, but this time around it was Eve, created in the image of God Herself, who was the first hominid to reside in that garden paradise.

  “Adam was born later on from Eve, and then they became the first man and wife, bringing forth all the rest of us to follow through the ages.”

  “Oh. Interesting.”

  (Admittedly, there was something comforting to me personally about such traditionally frowned-upon mother-son affairs being arranged and endorsed by God that, along with the intoxicating figure, voice, and fecundatory fragrance of the lovely maid indoctrinating me, might well have been the reason for my initial willingness to so readily consider this weirdish credo as truth.)

  Prudence then went on to tell me how Adam and his mischievous pet snake had tricked Eve into eating of the fruit that God had set aside for herself, and so that was where it all went topsy-turvy for our species.

  From there it just kept tumbling on. It turned out that pretty much all of the important men in the Bible were actually women. Abraham. Noah. Moses. And all the disciples to boot. Only a handful of fellows, Satan and Jesus among them, got to keep their manly roles in the reshuffled drama. All the others had gotten swapped around through the ages by those mischievous, self-serving old boys rewriting God’s Word.

  I found my skepticism soon wearing thin. Sure, at times Prudence’s doctrine seemed no more than a broad huggermuggery of amusing discrepancies, but then, truth be told, I had always felt somewhat that way about the King James version, too. After all, I reasoned, what religion, when regarded with wide-open eyes – from Olympus to Mecca and beyond – came out looking like anything more than the product of some feverish child’s nightmare? Why should this account be any less true than any other?

  “But so then,” I asked, “since God is female, why would she choose me – a man – to lead her church?”

  “Well now, Adamiah, God has placed the burden of your sex’s sins on your shoulders. You have no doubt been chosen because of your upright character and willingness to stand in for all the nasty menfolk of the world. Only a repentant and virtuous gentleman like yourself could rightfully play midwife to the rebirth of the Shining Redemption. You’re the go-between from how it went wrong to how it’s to be set back right.”

  “Heh-heh.” I thought about this. “If a person didn’t know any better, it could almost look like I was being punished.”

  “Oh, no! It’s more like how Christ sacrificed himself and took on all the world’s sins when he was nailed up on the cross. It’s a privilege and an honor.”

  Prudence laced her fingers in my own, giving our digital conjoinment a little shake. Although I’m sure this was meant to be a reassuring gesture, it did little to alleviate the trepidation roiling in my gut.

  I peered into the cloudless sky. It was a perfect day, but the breeze had changed so that the tropical air carried the slightest whiff of something rotten.

  I wrinkled my nose.

  Then I had an optimistic thought.

  “Say, dear one. There are surely many things I need to learn about the church.” I laughed and shook my head. “I feel like a tyke being schooled in scripture by his mama.”

  Prudence beamed with pride and squeezed my sweating hand.

  “For instance, I was wondering about something you said when we were back with the elders.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, if I heard you straight, you introduced Lamia as Will and Force’s wife.”

  “Uh-huh. I did.”

  I laughed uneasily. “Well, by any way I turn it, that comes out sounding like Lamia’s got herself two husbands.”

  “Why, yes, she does.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s just a basic part of Originalism, Adamiah. Three and even fourfold relations between men and womenfolk is just the way God meant it to be. That’s one of the things that got twisted in the Bible before my ma and pa fixed it up.”

  I will not lie. My first reaction to this information was one of pubertal enthusiasm. Perhaps it was my own boiling virility, so caged as it was within the limits of my recently reacquired virginity, but I felt confident in that moment that I was entirely capable of servicing as many wives as God wanted to throw my way. Hoo-boy! A harem! But then I remembered the particulars of Lamia’s connubial circumstances and said, “Well, surely Lamia’s case is irregular.”

  “Whatever do you mean by that?”

  “Why, I just mean, she’s the Matriarch, so it stands to reason that she might have multiple mates. It’s her blessed privilege. But surely, when one considers how it works in nature – what with cocks and hens and such, or with bucks and does – the other way round is more natural.”

  Prudence’s look of incomprehension indicated
that she was not following the thread of my rationale.

  “What I mean to say,” I chuckled, “is that generally such polygamous arrangements have the male getting to have himself more than one female. That’s surely how it’s meant to be.”

  The sudden clenching of Prudence’s jaw gave me to know that my roundabout reasoning had hit its mark. And unfavorably. Although she had been heat-flushed before, Prudence now turned an unambiguous shade of angry red.

  I gulped. “Am I wrong?”

  “Why, Adamiah Linklater!” She tossed off my hand. “That’s just the kind of wickedness Papa’s church is trying to turn around and make right.”

  “But…”

  She blew through her teeth. “Lamia’s our shining Queen Bee! She and our ladies have many mates because that’s what’s natural by God’s way of thinking.”

  “Oh, well, I didn’t mean…”

  “You can’t be piloting the church with those sinful notions in your head.”

  I stammered while Prudence chewed my ass.

  “Heaven’s sakes, Adamiah! God told me you was a special boy. But now you’re acting just like all them other fellows.”

  She stood, smashing her restored Bible to her chest.

  I scrambled in my brain. “But…”

  She stamped her foot. “If you’re going to be my husband, you better get it square how things is supposed to work.”

  “Prudence,” I pleaded, and reached out to her, but she whirled away, breathing hard, glaring out at the water.

  I stood but did not dare to move her direction for fear she might turn and punch my nose. I was in a panic, but strange as it might sound, all this aggravation between the lady and myself did little to assuage the niggling condition in my trousers. It seemed that friction – even of the argumentative variety – was stimulator enough to intensify my already heightened masculine yearning for this riled female before me.

  While in this lightheaded state of being, I tossed away my good sense and measured how best to move my advantage toward the possible penetrative perpetration of my most zealous manly desire.

  Simply pounce! I summarily decided, and I was about to do just that when, once again, I was stopped cold by that bothersome voice of reason.

  Careful, Fool! Do not fling your fortune all away!

  I nearly burst to pieces with the pressure of my pent and stifled want.

  I went momentarily blind.

  I staggered a step to the left.

  Goddammit!

  I puffed and then adjusted myself.

  At last, once my poise was more or less realigned, I stepped forward and, prudent as a eunuch, I gently placed my palm on the woman’s shoulder.

  She tensed.

  “Darling,” I pleaded. “Please forgive my stupidity.”

  She remained aloof.

  “Men are such loathsome beasts,” I continued. “Lowly and despicable, to be sure. Treacherous and conniving. And I fear that – although God has told you otherwise, and no doubt knows more about such things than we do – I’m no better than any other of my wretched gender.”

  I felt the woman’s ire dissipate ever so slightly.

  “I know it’s wicked of me, dearest, but when I realized I might have to share you with another man, well, I turned jealous as a schoolboy.”

  She turned and looked at me.

  I was doing my best to appear filled up with remorse and tenderness. I smiled bashfully and lifted my shoulders with a charming little shrug.

  “Oh, Adamiah.” She shook her head. “That day will most likely come sometime. I might have to have me more than one husband. That’s just how God wants it to be. We must abide by Her covenants. But you’re the only one I ever dreamed of.” Prudence coyly cast down her gaze. “Why, once we’re married up, you alone will have the privilege of being the first man to ever pass through my garden gate.”

  The mention of said garden gate was nearly enough to kill me dead on the spot, but I somehow maintained my civility, and only smiled.

  Prudence then stepped my way and let herself fall gently forward. She tipped back her head, closed her eyes, and bunched her lips into a succulent rose blossom.

  I did not take her in my arms; I did not dare.

  Instead, I clenched my fists at my sides, sucked a breath, and then, with an unpracticed self-control, I bent downward and pecked my mouth chastely against her own.

  Oh, Sweet Jesus!

  Her eyelids fluttered like butterfly wings.

  “Oh, Adamiah,” she whispered. “It’s going to be so good.”

  “Hoo-yah” was all I could manage in reply.

  We hovered like that for an eternal moment.

  Floating just above the ground.

  Savoring our foretaste of ecstasy.

  With my little ol’ beanpole squeezed betwixt my thwarted desirous person and the hulking righteous mass of the Holy Bible of the Shining Redemption.

  THAT NIGHT, TO NO great surprise, I had another of my disquieting dreams.

  Whether it could be entered alongside the divinely bestowed slumber-visions of my fiancée and her oracular father is something I have since pondered inconclusively.

  At any rate, this time round, I was under water.

  On the seabed.

  With Prudence.

  Naked as the day I was born.

  She, too, enjoyed an unfettered state of nudity, allowing her delicious feminine bounty a much-needed liberation from its long-held vestal confinement.

  Yellow minnows darted all around our heads like cherubs.

  Waterweeds swayed on the tender current.

  A rather urgent and innocent delight pervaded the overall setting and its players.

  At long last, the lady and I were canoodling newlyweds, frolicking in one another’s arms, fumbling and generally progressing toward our joyful connubial rapture, when, malapropos, someone tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Huh?” I thought and peered back to see who it was. “Oh!”

  “Hello there, Adamiah,” he said.

  I was greatly astonished, if not a tad perturbed.

  “Oh, well, hello there yourself, Adamiah.”

  He appeared wan, his eyes flat, his mother-naked flesh puffed and sickly blue.

  “I see you finally met our Prudence.”

  “Why, er, uh, yes. I did indeed.”

  Our words came out wet and hollow, like what one might imagine a conversation to be like between a pair of crabs, or sea stars.

  “Say,” I said, “I thought you were dead and gone.”

  He laughed. “Oh, no.” He shook his head so that bubbles leaked from his ears. “I’m just living myself an underwater life.”

  “Adamiah?” (This was Prudence speaking.) “Is that you?”

  Adamiah gently pushed me to the side and I floated up. “Why, yes, dear one. Here I am.”

  Prudence appeared overjoyed to see him. “Oh, Adamiah. You have found me at last.”

  They gazed poetically into one another’s eyes.

  I cleared my throat and tried to laugh. “Well, friend, it is awfully fine to see you again.” I hovered above them. “But my new bride and I were just making love, and so maybe you could come back around for a visit later on, after we have finished up.”

  “Oh, no, Adamiah.” Prudence giggled. “Adamiah’s here to join in with us.”

  “But…”

  “That’s right,” said Adamiah.

  “But…”

  Prudence then took hold of my doppelgänger and pulled him down. They started in kissing and petting.

  I tried to swim back down to them, but only drifted higher.

  I put forth greater effort, kicking my feet, and pulling down through the water with my arms.

  But I just kept drifting upward.

  I examined myself, trying to understand what the trouble was, when I was surprised to note the state of my phallus. “Whoa-ho-ho!” It had swelled to a fantastic immensity and seemed made of cork. I kicked and swam downward another time, but I
could not overcome my member’s unreasonable buoyancy.

  I watched helplessly as Adamiah moved into position on top of Prudence. Her gaze met mine over his shoulder and I reached down to her, but she only grew ever farther away. At last, with the telltale grin of a gardener who has just swung wide her gate, the lady leaned back, her blue eyes rolling rapturously into her head.

  I sighed and gave up my struggle, rolling over and letting my distension carry me up, up, and up through the water.

  The sea was littered with dead disciples.

  Moonlight filtered down through their bobbling corpses.

  Up and up I ascended.

  Pushing their bloated bodies out of my way as I went.

  Up.

  And up.

  Until I neared the surface and heard that inimitable scriptural sound of sandal soles slapping on waves.

  *****

  Upon opening my eyes, I found Christ regarding me from his portrait at the foot of my bed.

  “Oh,” I mumbled. “Bonjour.”

  He made no perceptible reply, so I then stretched, perfunctorily fondled myself, and broke wind.

  “Good Lord!”

  The resultant stench was alarming. I lifted the sheet and peeked at my belly, somewhat concerned. Whatever was happening in my insides?

  No sooner had I finished my waking procedural than Beulah knocked on the door and entered with a tray of food.

  “Good morning, Brother Linklater.”

  I sat up in the bed. “Good morning, Sister. How are you this day?”

  “Oh, fine, just fine.” She placed the tray and cup on the side table. “Happy to be dwelling in Her holy light.”

  I smiled and nodded.

  Gaunt was perhaps too innocuous a term to describe the crone’s overall appearance, as she seemed to have traveled well beyond the parameters of that word’s general definition. She hovered at my bedside, smacked her papery lips, and let her gaze rove my body with what could have been best described as a look of hunger. Whether or not this was a mistaken interpretation on my part, I found it disturbing to be so thusly assessed.