Fortuna and the Scapegrace

by Brian Kindall

  I took the cup and sipped the coconut milk. It was somewhat viscid and sickly sweet. “Hey,” I said. “I do appreciate your bringing me this tasty breakfast beverage, Sister, but if it’s not too much trouble, I sure could use a cool draught of some good old fashioned water.”

  “Sorry to say, Brother, but there’s none to be had.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  “We ain’t had no rain in several days now. All the cisterns is been dipped dry.”

  “There’s no well on Eden?”

  “Nary a one. We’re too close to the level of the sea to draw up anything but salt.”

  “Well then, when do you expect the rain to start up again?”

  “Hard to say. It’s usually regular as the day. It’s a mystery it’s stopped.”

  The thought of no fresh water made me suddenly even thirstier than I was before.

  “At least,” said Beulah, “there’s no end of nut milk to be had. God saw to that sure blessing for her people.”

  “Mm-hmm.” I peered into my cup. “Well, thank you kindly anyway. Let’s pray God decides to turn the spigot back on soon.”

  “Amen, Brother.” She stepped to where my white suit was hanging on the back of the door. She took it down, brushing with her bony fingers at its many stains, and then draped it over the chair. “Well, I’ll let you eat now, and get yourself dressed. Sister Prudence said to tell you she’d meet you at the learning place. She’s going about her duties with the heathens first but will be there directly.”

  Then she left the room.

  The hag’s presence had somehow managed to temporarily flaccidify my groin daisy’s pesky tumescence, and it was with no small degree of relief that I sat at my breakfast table for the first time in days, like a civilized human being. The food was two boiled eggs and some longish sort of bruise-spotted plantain. I peeled and nibbled a bit of an egg, but a whiff of the aforementioned stench wafted through the window right then and any hunger I might have been suffering left me quick as a twinkle.

  “Whew!”

  I was relieved to find that the offensive stink was not originating within my own gutworks, but that seemed little consolation for its olfactory overwhelmment. I tried to hold my breath and eat, but it was no use.

  I could not stomach the food.

  *****

  Once outside, the odor only grew worse. I stood on my stoop and observed the Edenites moving to and fro across the cluttered yard.

  “Gaw bwess, bruwwa,” said a bearded passerby. His voice came out comical on account of the hanky pressed to his nose.

  A lank and freckle-faced boy was passing close by and I stopped him. “Say, young believer, what’s the cause for that foul smell?”

  He unpinched his nostrils and said with a shrug, “That’s what’s left of the manna, sir. It’s gone rotten.”

  I thanked him for the information, and he hurried on his way.

  I set off across the yard. My feet were blistered and sore from being forced into Will’s shoes, but only the underlings of the tribe went unshod, and so even though it greatly pained me, I kept them on as a way to uphold my preeminence.

  Various members of my flock greeted me as I limped through the settlement.

  We all exchanged pleasantries and blessings as if the air were sweet as May morning flowers, but our smiles twitched, and our eyes watered, and one feared committing some odious social faux pas if one did not keep the chit-chat brief and quickly move along.

  I traveled past the fire pit where the communion feast had been served a few days prior. The whale’s remains appeared in the distance – a giant puddle of skin and flies and bone-laden putrefaction. Even the gulls were repulsed by it now, and there was something about the grim and lonely spectacle that caused a surprising poignancy to well in the area of my heart.

  Sad, I thought. Sad.

  Prudence was not yet at the learning place when I arrived. I loitered for a while, watching the shark fins zigzagging in the lagoon, but the stink was still strong here, and so, in an effort to find better breathing, I took a stroll along the atoll.

  Palms and sand and sea.

  Sand and sea and palms.

  A few invisible songbirds twittered in the overhead branches, and of course one assumed the underwaters beyond the shore were well-peopled with fishy kith, but overall the setting appeared to be elementally limited.

  The cloudless sky was a continuum of rarified blue.

  I noticed footprints pressed into the white sand. Most of these were of bare feet, but one pair had been made by someone wearing dainty shoes. The alternating wedge shapes marked a deliberate path through the trees, and I found myself drawn to follow them.

  I walked a long ways.

  It was like a sort of game to see where they led.

  The air grew fresh and delicious.

  At last I heard voices and came to a clearing with a group of palm-thatched huts and lean-tos. I stopped behind a tree and spied on the scene.

  My first impression was one of utter awe. Perhaps it was in my having just come from New Eden, what with its shabby shacks and ragtag environs, so revoltingly imbued as it was with rotting whale, but the village before me now, by contrast, appeared to be a veritable utopia. The snug little buildings – their materials and arrangement – looked to be a natural extension of the island and sea.

  A perfect painting.

  A harmony of parts.

  A dozen long canoes were drawn up above the beach, each one decorated with geometrical designs and a single stylized eye peering out from either side of the prow. Some native men were polishing the boats’ gunwales, or mending nets and singing, their brown skin shining in the sunlight as they worked. Beyond them, a group of naked children were swimming and diving in the bay. Their agreeable squeals drifted with the sound of the waves.

  And then I saw the ladies.

  They kneeled in a circle, preening, chattering, adorning one another’s dark hair with red flower blossoms. They wore only skirts, their shoulders bare, the lobes of their honey-gold breasts joggling with gleeful unencumberment. At their center, a separate but integral part of the picture – like an astral caesura inserted into this pastoral work of poesy – knelt Prudence.

  Oh, was she ever exquisite!

  Civilized, yet primordial.

  Chaste, yet ardent.

  Fully clothed, but, one felt sure in one’s soul, quite naked underneath.

  It is hard to say just what I mean, to explain just what a wholly holy personage she appeared to be.

  Prudence laughed with the other ladies and her liquescent voice caused my entire being to swoon.

  Oh, I thought.

  Oh!

  It was then and there, at that window of paradise, that I was seized with a revelation that caught me unawares.

  “You, Brother,” I gulped inadvertently, “are most hopelessly in love.”

  OF COURSE, IT WAS not the first time I had felt Amour’s soft fingers plucking at my heartstrings.

  My past life as Didier Rain had been strewn with manifold infatuations.

  But now, while admiring Prudence in that beatific scene, I realized the error in all those other heart-floppings and penis-spasmings of my bygone days – whereas I had often believed myself to be in love before, this time I truly was!

  How, one might understandably inquire, could I ever be so sure?

  I asked myself the selfsame question as I stood there peering into that Polynesian sea of femininity, so festooned as it was with lips and flowers and bobbling breasts – all distractions that would have otherwise exploded my attention. But now I found myself solely fixated on my blue-eyed betrothed. She alone, amidst all that fleshly potential for fulfillment, held me rapt. She was the ultimate prize. Those other ladies served only to exalt her rarified beauty. For I realized Prudence was a manifestation of all that I had ever longed for in a counterpart, indeed, all that any man could ever dare hope to hold. She was an absolute conjoinment of the purest dichotomy available in the worl
d; she was the focalized point in all the cosmos upon which the earth’s most sublime animalized carnality met and merged with the utmost of all existing spirituality.

  A demigoddess.

  An angel.

  A perfect rhyme.

  Not your standard stuff of brothels.

  And she would be mine in little more than a fortnight!

  Happy, grateful tears blurred my vision.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, to God, to Chance, or to whomever else might be guiding the twisted workings of my life’s lucky turn.

  *****

  Prudence soon left the natives and I met her on the path, still somewhat reeling with wonderment and joy.

  She kissed my cheek in greeting and led me away from the village.

  After a while, I asked, “Who are those swarthy people?”

  “Why, they’re the original inhabitants of Eden, the forgotten ones, the first children of Eve and Adam that no one ever hears nothing about unless they’re to read the Restored Word. Those folks have been here since in the beginning, back even before Cain and Abel.”

  I admit, I was so enchanted by the seraph leading me through the palms that I did not for an instant question her story’s historical factuality. I was like a trusting youngster with his mama. If she told me it was so, then to my mind it surely was.

  “The sorry thing about them,” she continued, “is how they’ve lost their way. After Adam and Eve was cast out of the Garden, their original children went astray.” Prudence smiled sadly. “Now they’re all savages bound for hell. I visit them most days, trying to shine some light on the truth for them, hoping to save their lost souls.”

  “Do any of them ever join up with the church?”

  “Only a handful so far, and they’re more curious about seeing the inside of the sanctuary building than they are in avoiding damnation.” She looked at me and explained, “We don’t let nobody inside the Ark lest they become members and put on civilized clothes.”

  She led me along the lagoon.

  “I tell them they need to be careful not to do no sinning. I warn them about the pit of darkness that waits for them if they don’t change up their ways, but they just laugh at the notion of such a place.” She shook her head. “They don’t figure they’ve done nothing wrong enough to deserve ever being sent there. Why, they don’t none of them feel guilty about nothing at all!”

  “Well…” I peered back over my shoulder in the direction of the tranquil little village. “It’s probably hard for them to give up the pleasures of the paradise they already enjoy on the promise of some waiting paradise they have no proof is real.”

  “But don’t they got to know in their hearts the wrongfulness of their ways?” Prudence stopped and stared earnestly into my face. “Even the most wayward child feels the difference between good and evil on the insides, just like me and you.”

  I considered this.

  I scratched my jaw and studied the ground.

  She made it sound so simple.

  “Well,” I mumbled philosophically. “Maybe they just don’t have the same sort of soul compass we do.” I held up my palms. “I guess that’s why God brought us here – to guide them to the light.”

  Prudence smiled and dipped her head in agreement to my wise and altruistic way of thinking. She took my hand and led me off the path, stepping over logs and ducking under branches.

  “Say,” I said, “Those folks seem like friendly sorts. What’s something they do that’s such a horrible sin anyways?”

  “Oh, well, for one thing, they fornicate right out in broad daylight, as if it were a natural thing to do, just like beasts of the field, laughing and carrying on for all the world to see.”

  “Ho! Terrible.”

  “They put their faith in fairytale stories, too, and pray and sing to the moon and the waves and such.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And they eat fish.”

  “Oh,” I said, suppressing my bafflement that this last practice was wicked. It made sense to me that living on a sea-bound island meant eating what’s most available, tasty, and swimming all around. “Remind me again why that’s wrongheaded of them.”

  “On account of how fish is angels.”

  “Angels?”

  “That’s right. When God got herself forced under the water by the evils of men, the fish down there became her angel folk. They’re her little friends and holy helpers. Someday, when Jesus comes back to save the world, the fish will rise up and join Him and God in Heaven for the Last Judgment. And then we’ll live happy ever after.”

  How could I argue with something so reasonable?

  Prudence then went on to tell me how it was so good of me to bring the manna whale to the island so the Edenites could have some meat.

  “Even though they live under the water, the whales and dolphins breathe air and make milk for their young ones. They’re the go-betweens – somewhat fish and somewhat animal – and so God says it’s just fine to eat them up whenever we get the chance.”

  “Of course,” I said. “That makes perfect sense.”

  Prudence explained to me that the closest thing to meat the pilgrims ever had in their daily fare was chicken eggs, on account of how the island’s thin pasturage could not support any cattle.

  “We’re hoping to get a goat herd started up sometime, so we can butcher up the kids for communion. They’re the only creatures can live off nothing but palm leaves and twigs and such as we have here.”

  (I recalled Angeline’s penchant for hemp.)

  “Until then…” She trailed off and stopped walking. “Well…” She let go of my hand and smiled uneasily. “No matter how frightful it might seem to us sometimes as Her followers…” Prudence hunched her shoulders and sighed and stepped away from me. “No matter how it sometimes don’t seem right to our mortal minds.” She turned to face me, her eyes shining with inexplicable tears. “We just have to make do as God ordains.”

  I found myself taken aback by my lady’s sudden emotion.

  Whence had her sorrow sprung?

  Then Prudence pointed past me, tilting her head in a gesture indicating that I should turn and look.

  I did, and I discovered myself at the edge of a small graveyard. A dozen or so wooden markers jutted in haphazard fashion from the sand, all inlaid with epitaphs.

  Here lie the bones of Paul Turner, read one. Through his great sacrifice we will carry on.

  Another read – Here lie the bones of Douglas Prickett. Through his great sacrifice we will carry on.

  I read another, and another, and so on. Except for the names, they were all the same, and all men. But then I came to the one marker that stood out somewhat from the others, as it was bigger, and placed centrally to the elegiac monotonum.

  Here lie the bones of Wilhelmina Merriwether…

  My eyes widened. “Hey!” I said, and turned back to Prudence, pointing with my thumb over my shoulder.

  She nodded sorrowfully and snuffled.

  “Oh.” I turned back to the grave.

  By the example of her original sacrifice we will carry on.

  I was confused. Something about Adamiah’s account of his bawdy encounter with Prudence’s mother was not lining up straight in my thoughts. How had a San Francisco whore gotten herself buried in such a hallowed plot beneath such a reverential, if somewhat macabre, inscription?

  My best judgment told me that Prudence was not the one to ask.

  Instead, I stepped over and put my arm around her shoulder.

  Prudence wiped her nose on my lapels, fondled my locket, and softly sobbed.

  “Your mama was a nice lady,” I consoled, and kissed away her tears.

  Prudence leaned back and blinked at me. “You knew her?”

  I nodded, recalling that morning long ago. “I met her only once,” I said, “when she crossed over the ditch to borrow some sugar.”

  THE DEBUNKMENT OF ADAMIAH’S story about going to bed with Prudence’s mother caused a disturbance in my more or
less steadfast faith. That we were all puppets in some divinely manipulated stage play had seemed such a relatively reliable fact. But seeing Wilhelmina’s grave, and subsequently realizing that she had most likely never been a cathouse prostitute, dealt a blow to the seemingly divine coincidence that had served as such a catalyst for Adamiah’s life-changing revelation back on that rainy night in San Francisco, and, by extension, my own involvement in said magical storyline. It now appeared that the only coincidence Adamiah had experienced was in lying down with a strumpet of the same name as his would-be mother in law.

  The poor fool.

  It seemed a shame that my innocent friend had spent his last days so troubled by remorse for a sin he had not actually committed.

  Contemplation of Adamiah’s folly caused me to question some of my assumptions about the role of heavenly guidance in my own life. If he had been mistaken, I reflected, perhaps I had been as well.

  Believing in coincidence as proof of God, I further considered, might just be a flaw in our species’ general makeup. For doubtless it was this very defect that ensured the survival of the world’s myriad, oftentimes absurd, religions. Maybe belief was a collective hoax we humans were playing on ourselves. Maybe skepticism was a more appropriate approach to existence. And maybe, in my own case, some smiling goddess had not placed the coin in my pocket that had led me to the favorable situation I believed myself to be in now.

  “Zounds! Maybe you are not, for all the indicators you believe to be telling you otherwise, the Chosen One!”

  That my faith could prove so precarious might appear unfounded in hindsight, but on that day, I was fairly plunged to the nadir of moral despair.

  Woe! I thought. Woe!

  *****

  The rainless days dragged on.

  The sultry rainless nights.

  Would our wedding day ever arrive?

  Time felt to be traveling as sidekick to a snail.

  Although my rib bones had more or less healed, my feet had become so bunched and bunioned inside Will’s shoes that I enjoyed no relief from physical torture. Add to that the condition of my engorged and stoppered gargoyle, and I was generally uncomfortable at all hours of the day. Indeed, the seismic seminal force building in my loinish reservoir seemed to be approaching a threatening magnitude. I feared that once the moment of our nuptial merging finally arrived, poor Prudence would be in mortal danger, as the release of my virile overspill might prove too formidable a tide for the little lady to endure.