I recalled my mother, old poems, and the callous grins of a hundred whores.
My whole life settled down onto my shoulders at once.
The guilty weight of it was too much to bear and I sank in the waves up to my knees.
That was all it took – that wet chill on my shins.
“Merde!” I muttered. “Damnation!”
I plunged down into the sea.
BOSCO FISHED ME OUT with his crook.
One moment I was descending into the sharky dark, and then in the next I felt myself snatched back toward the light.
I spluttered and gagged, gulping for air in the sloshing waves.
The big seaman reached down with his mighty hand and grabbed me by the scruff, heaving me over the side of the canoe so that I flopped onto the floor like a flounder.
The little boat’s crew consisted of half dozen of Eden’s men, and they set about poking and pounding me with their paddles. One fellow hooked me alongside the head with a blow so solid it nearly popped my eyeballs.
“Ahh!”
Driven by their righteous sense of the crime I had committed against them, those brutes would have no doubt beaten me to death had Bosco not intervened.
“Holdy up now!” he hollered. “Holdy up!”
Bosco snatched a paddle that was about to crack down on my skull. Then he rolled me over.
He was but a man-shaped blur to my punch-drunk vision, but I discerned a friendly white grin forming in the general area of his swirling black countenance.
“Well, it be you then, is it, goaty boy?”
I belched some brine and tried to smile. “Hello there, Bosun sir. However have you been?”
“A fairly piece better than you,” he laughed. “A fairly piece better than you.”
*****
My troubles only compounded back at the beach.
The natives gathered round, watching curiously as the same white men who had treated me with such veneration only just yesterday sorely molested me today. They threw me to the ground, called me rude names, and spat on my head.
I suffered their taunts and humiliations until Sweet Molly arrived with Adamiah.
Everyone grew quiet as my angry twin marched up and halted before me. The whole crowd grasped the general details of the drama that was unfolding and were holding their breath in anticipation of how Adamiah, the vanquishing hero, would now exact his revenge.
I was somewhat curious myself.
I huddled on my hands and knees like a whipped cur and regarded Adamiah’s feet. I could not look him in the face.
We remained in this stance for some time.
Waves lapped dolefully at the shore.
Somewhere a choir of gulls.
When his words finally came, they were quiet and resolute, slicing down through the air like the sharp edge of a knife.
“Get up!”
I took a breath and painfully stood, wiping the blood, sand, and spittle from my pate as I did. Then I raised my face to his.
“Thaddeus,” I mumbled. “Hello, friend.”
My intention was to remind him that he, too, had been living under the lie of an alias, but it proved a failed tactic.
His jaw clenched, and he shuddered, breathing hard through his nostrils.
I wanted to say something suitable, but my gift for argumentative gab had flown away. Guilt tied my tongue. I was stymied by the sudden sense of the betrayal and near trespass I had committed against this fellow before me.
We regarded one another for a long moment, me reeling with shame, him quaking with a deep-down seismic wrath.
His angry squint dropped to my chest. He reached over and thrust his hand inside my shirtfront, yanking the chain so that it snapped violently against the back of my neck.
“I believe that’s my locket!”
I nodded that, yes, it was indeed.
Adamiah leaned close to me and hissed through is teeth, “And that’s my white linen suit!”
BROTHER ACKLEY, FOR ONE, was pleased to see me back.
“I told you all!” He laughed like a maniac. “Didn’t I tell you he was just a snake in the garden?”
None of the others was in a mood to hear this. They were too undone by their near brush with calamity. Everyone came around to believing that God, in all of her overseeing wisdom, had saved the day. She had clearly orchestrated events with her at-the-last-minute delivery of Adamiah – the true Chosen One – putting everything in its proper order before I was allowed to marry Prudence and sully her virginal goodness with my dastardly badness.
All of Eden became convinced this was true. And I had to admit, at the risk of placing myself in the role of the nasty antagonist, this argument did somewhat hold water.
They swapped me out for Ackley at the Waiting Tree, binding my wrists behind me around the trunk. In a mean-spirited act of retribution, my captors did not offer me any clothes to replace Adamiah’s white suit. I sat in the sand, naked and disgraced and sunburned, somewhat worse for wear after my thrashing in the canoe. My right eye swelled shut, and a back tooth that had been knocked loose by a paddle blow had ultimately fallen out of its socket. I spit the molar onto the sand between my legs, the salt metal taste of my own blood filling my mouth.
*****
A summary trial ensued.
I was not allowed to attend or otherwise argue my case, but every so often someone would come around to tell me how it was playing out over at the church. These reports were sadistical in nature and lacking in any Christ-like sense of mercy and sugarcoated compassion. I had so egregiously insulted the powers that be that they were now taking great pleasure in every detail of my punishment.
Adamiah had no trouble proving who he was. His signature matched the one on the letters he had sent to Prudence. When the jury went to the holy jar to make a comparison with my own false autograph, it only became all the more apparent that I was evil incarnate. They realized I had drawn myself from the jar and had substituted Ackley’s name slip for my own. This covert move only served to further seal my fate. Although I had been posing as someone else, in their eyes, I was plainly the one God had intended to be pulled for the lottery.
The trial and its revelations continued throughout the day.
Nilsson and his men vouched for Adamiah’s identity but were otherwise reluctant to get involved. One supposed the good captain suspected the underlying queerness of the Shining Redemption and did not want to become enmeshed in the cult’s politics. He dispatched his men to deliver Adamiah’s dowry as quickly as they could. The entire crew set to work hauling crates and barrels from the ship and piling them above high tide mark. Although the goods had taken some abuse in the storm, they were all more or less still intact, and those Edenites swarmed over the payload like frenzied children tearing into presents on a Christmas morning.
I kept waiting for a sailor to come close enough so that I might shout out the injustice I was suffering at the hands of these whitewashed cannibals, but none came my way. After the last crates of Bibles and dirt were delivered, Nilsson and his men did not dally. They piled back onto their ship and, with the familiar clang of a bell, hoisted anchor and set their sails.
“And a heave!”
“Ho!”
It was with a wistful nostalgia for my easygoing seafaring days, mixed as it was with a considerable measure of anguish, that I watched Cloud sail away over the blue.
*****
Then came the procession.
One by one, my faultfinders marched past to taunt and otherwise deride me for my treacherous transgressions.
Twyla came first. It seemed the lady-girl had come around to feeling tranquilated about offering up her newborn for my special celebratory communion feast. After all, hadn’t the church been waiting eons for the Prophecy’s fulfillment? Such a great sacrifice as hers would surely be repaid tenfold in heaven. But with the revelation that I was not actually the Chosen One, and that she had served up her milk and womb-bun to the wrong man, the little lady was feelin
g sorely put out.
Twyla stood before me but could not speak. She only shook her head for a time and wept before wandering away.
Then came Force and Will. They, too, seemed unduly wounded. Had we not only just yester-eve been the best of friends? Now they were both sore as raw blisters. Somehow they knew that I had penisarily probed their wife, and this treason made them all the more spiteful. In an adolescent show of displeasure, Force opened his trousers and urinated all over me.
Mosiah tottered to my tree and regarded me. He giggled and hugged his arms around himself, drooling and muttering in a nonsensical babel. He seemed to be filled with a spirit, speaking in tongues, but damned if I could interpret what he said. The holy man had apparently crossed over to the other side of sanity. Whether Rachel’s brain-pickling punch or my perfidy had caused this, I could not say. Mosiah bent close to me and smiled, seemingly from another world. He chuckled and patted my head, like a halfwit petting his spaniel, and then sauntered away.
Most disturbing.
I was eager that Adamiah might come by, and that by way of our old friendship I might find it in me to convince him of the integrity of my foregoing actions. I had only had Prudence’s wellbeing in mind when I assumed his role. Was it not even somewhat admirable that I had so sacrificed my own life’s dreams in order to fulfill those of the lady? What nobler deed could be expected from a man? Obviously, I had no idea that Adamiah had survived the storm. And if he had actually been as drowned and decayed as I sincerely believed him to be, would he not have wanted his dear Prudence to live out her life in happiness, even if said happiness, like most religious tendencies, was based on ignorance?
Round and round I went in my head with this argument, refining its details in hopes of having it well polished when my chance finally came to plead my case. A handful of Edenites came by to ridicule me. Some young boys thought it great fun to throw sand in my face and point and hoot at my nudity. But Adamiah must have suspected I would attempt to sway him in my favor and sought to avoid me. Knowing that I was gifted as a silver-tongued serpent in such justificationary argumentalism, he refrained from a visit.
My only hope now was with Prudence.
SHE APPEARED IN THE gloaming.
Lovely.
Sad.
Tragic.
Stars were coming out in the darkling sky behind her and I distinctly recalled that evening Adamiah had first met her as a little girl out back by the ditch in Ohio. That precious memory felt as much mine as his. It caused an ache in my heart.
“Hello,” I said.
“Sir.”
Her voice came down like a cold rain.
I did not directly pursue conversation, as my tactic was to allow her to feel she was in control of the moment. All things considered, she most decidedly was.
The lady observed me for a long time, managing to avert her eyes from my undress while still holding me fixed in her scrutinizing gaze, searching, I suspected, for some inkling of redeeming value.
I felt myself growing evermore ashamed. When she remained silent, I could bear it no longer and began, warily, to speak.
“I am so sorry.”
She lifted her chin.
“You must understand, I never meant to cause you any hurt.”
Prudence did not answer, only stood rigid. I sensed she did not trust herself to speak as she was struggling to sort out the details of the bewildering situation in which she now found herself.
“Please believe me. I had no idea Adamiah had survived. Although it does not look so now, my intentions with you were always those of a gentleman.”
Still, she did not speak, only hovered in the weakling light.
I licked my lips. “Ma’am,” I ventured. “Prudence. All my life I have sought goodness and beauty. They have eluded me time and again. More often than not, this was due to my own failings as a man. I have been a pitiful excuse, too quick to veer onto a wrong path when one appeared in my road. It seems my compass got broke long ago.”
These words tumbled out of me spontaneously, if unsolicitedly. I could not stop myself. It felt good to confess this to the lady, somewhat purifying.
“But when I first saw you, Prudence, well, I started believing in angels. You were an answer to prayer. For the first time, I had proof of God. That whale. And this little island floating here in the middle of the whole big world. Only God could have brought us together by way of such a miracle. Surely She had blessed you and me with this opportunity for happiness.” I shrugged. “I suppose that hope blinded me to the lie I was building. But I saw no good reason to trouble you with the terrible truth of what had really happened out there on the stormy ocean. It seemed both our dreams were coming true, just in a different way than either of us ever expected. No doubt it was wrongheaded of me, but by my way of thinking, it made no sense for you to suffer the pain of losing Adamiah if I could so easily take his place.”
I paused. I detected, if vaguely, that Prudence was relaxing her guard against me. The sincerity of my confession was working in on her defenses. I resumed with a colloquial tone.
“But the one thing that was not a lie was the way I felt when you were with me. It was a surprise. I had given up expecting something so good from my sorry life. I would have tossed my whole deceitful story and come clean if it hadn’t been for my fear of losing what we had.”
I waited to say it, holding to the teetering moment, filled up with a fear the likes of which I had never known, and then – “I fell in love with you, Prudence.”
She peered into my eyes when I said it.
I returned her gaze, holding steady. “You know it is so.”
The lady visibly quaked.
“Surely you felt it in me when I was walking at your side. God doesn’t make a man so he can fake something as pure and powerful as that.”
Still, the lady remained silent, speaking only with her bodily bearing. By way of her posture, I detected a further softening of her judgment toward me.
“And what’s more,” I continued, “God doesn’t make a woman so as she can fake it either.”
She looked startled by this. Although the light was dim, I detected a glint of shock in her eyes.
I was tempted to back off at that point but knew I could not.
“Tell me if I am wrong, Prudence, and I will say no more. But if you even for one minute felt the same way toward me, well then, surely we must allow that God had a hand in it.”
She studied me.
“And not just for you and me alone,” I persisted, “but for the good of the whole Shining Redemption.”
Prudence stared at the ground and whispered, “It is true.”
I felt a flutter of optimism.
We held this attitude for a while, both of us turning in our heads how best to proceed. A whole world of possibility had opened up with our mutual confession of love, but the way forward was still rather cluttered with complications. What were we to do now? I did not necessarily want to live my life in a world of righteous cannibals, but something in me still longed for Prudence.
Waves lapped at the nearby shore.
The sky glittered with stars, their twinkling light falling down on us from the twilit heavens.
The evening felt fragile, balanced, filled with as much danger as hope.
Proceed with care, whispered my inner voice. Steady as she goes.
I felt a desperate notion hatching in my brain.
A transformation writhed within my persona.
And that is when I instigated what, at first glimmer, felt to be a brilliant idea.
“Say!” I said. “I do not for one moment mean to meddle with what you and your people are up to here in Eden, but don’t it seem that God is still working a miracle?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I am only suggesting that maybe God has put the answer right in front of us, and we are just being too blind to see what She has in mind.”
Prudence waited for me to explain.
I sensed an o
pportunity opening up before me like a door, flimsy, but real, and now I had only to get my foot in before it closed back up, and that meant delivering my argument with care and lucidity. I could sort out the details later.
“Do you not see? We are making it too hard. God obviously brought Adamiah back to us for a reason, and on just the right day.”
Prudence waited.
“God gave you and me time to get know each other and grow fond. That was no accident.”
Prudence agreed.
“Well, don’t you see? Adamiah and I are like two sides of a coin. We are practically the same person. Brothers. Twins. What he lacks I make up, and the other way round.”
“Yes?”
“Well now, doesn’t it look like God had it all planned out?”
“What?”
“Tomorrow is the first day of June. The day we have all been working toward. God brought him back just in time for the wedding.”
“Yes?”
“Prudence,” I laughed. “God must be saying Adamiah and me are both to be your husbands!”
This revelation smacked of the exact sort of absurdity Eden was built on. It was just outlandish enough that it could be offered under the old adage of God working in mysterious ways. I figured no faithful soul could argue against such a heaven-sent coincidence without coming across as sacrilegious. Such divine ironies literally littered the Bible – both the plagerized rewrit version, and the so-called original.
Prudence could not hide it. She was flattered at the notion. Humble and wholesome as she was, the lady was openly pleased at the notion of getting herself two God-given bedfellows for the price of one. Even in the starlight, I could see her blush.
“Oh,” she said bashfully. “I don’t hardly think that’s a good idea.” She bit her lip and grinned. “Do you?”
“It is God’s own idea, dearest. Who are we to doubt it?”
“Well…” She fiddled with her fingers. “It sure would soothe some troubles for everyone involved.”
Fortuna and the Scapegrace Page 28