My parents visit regularly, content to spoil their grandchildren. As they ready themselves to leave, Teresa and I always hear the beginning remarks of their conversation while they settle themselves into their car, snapping on seatbelts, checking lights, adjusting knobs and buttons.
“They still have those two erotic pictures of the bull man and the leopard lady in their bedroom. The children are getting older. Melinda’s going to start asking questions soon. They should put them away or sell them.”
“The children?”
“No the artwork, Bill. Don’t get smart with me.”
That damn war that tore apart families and killed so many ended in ‘75.
Chang stayed part of the Village scene, playing bass in his band ChaChang. I saw him one night on a TV show called the Midnight Special and heard he had toured briefly as the opening act for Linda Ronstadt. Clyde’s gone, no one knows where. Rebecca and I share a joint every now and then when I’m in the Village. She’s made a living giving massages and posing as a nude model for artists.
Teresa bumped into Janie, Officer Al’s wife, at the HooDoo once. She bemoaned the fact that Al was still patrolling the streets in his cruiser.
I don’t know what happened to Valentine, but after Mandrake died, the gallery was sold to a Reverend Jackman and turned into the Chapel of the Healing Life. Not recognizing the reverend’s name, I scratched my head in puzzlement when I received an invitation to speak to his congregation. Finally it dawned on me he was the guy who had once pulled a knife on me in the alleyway behind Mother Abel’s in L.A. and later brought the wheelchair-bound old scoundrel to my apartment for a healing. Those days as a miracle worker were far behind me and remembered with a sweet sadness. I’m glad I did something good for all those people. If I had the power, I’d do it all over again. I declined the offer by the Reverend, and not sure if I wasn’t being self-aggrandizing, sent him a generous donation instead.
When I think of Audrey and her baby, I hope or pretend they’re in the mountains of West Virginia, happy and sane. Maybe, like Jackman, something was healed inside her, and she changed her life of torment around.
I imagine Cecilia married some boyfriend sooner or later. Whoever she’s been with, they’ve probably had a wild ride.
Did Phuong return to her war-torn homeland? Did she continue in her profession of gathering secrets? It’s hard for me to place myself back in that situation with her and remember what I risked for our friendship. Destroying evidence and warning her that the feds were closing in was a step beyond protesting the war. Teresa dismisses the crime as petty, waving it away with a reminder that we were in the beginnings of a revolution against our government.
“And besides, look at what you went through for others. You were always taking risks. Odd, you chanced the wrath of gods and demons, jaguars and murderers, a furious girlfriend, but now the FBI seems more of the threat in your memory.”
“With the gods I didn’t have much choice. The murderers and beasts I knew could’ve ripped me apart, terrifying me beyond the chance to think. I’ll always be pleading with that furious girlfriend for absolution. With the FBI, well, I guess it’s because they can put anyone through a pain-in-the-ass process of humiliation, anxiety, and tricky traps that end up destroying reputations and removing freedom. All this with a snap of the finger. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on aiding and abetting an enemy of the state?”
“She was a good person. You did right.”
When the doorbell rang one summer evening and Agent Orville was standing on the other side of the screen door, I was baffled at first by the apparition from so many years before. But then a certain tension quickly surged inside me. Adrenaline, which had saved my life numerous times in fights and flights, usually against terrible odds, readied me to choose one or the other again.
“Mister Parker? Remember me, Ron Orville?”
“Of course.”
He held out a six-pack of beer. “I hope I’m not interrupting. I was afraid if I called, you would’ve refused to see me.”
The apprehension in me slackened. “What brings you here?”
He hefted the beer slightly. “It’s been about ten years. Remember? You invited me.”
Christ, if that wasn’t a strange evening. Ron Orville had had quite a life.
He started off by telling me Lola had been released, walking out of prison with a bad limp after serving six years.
“Your ear okay?”
“Talk, I can hear.” For a brief moment I thought he was going to apologize for peppering the area around me with bullets on that horrific day we had last seen each other, but instead he tilted his head back, drained his drink, and said, “What a relationship we had, huh, Deets?”
As we went through his Heineken, I hated to see the broken red veins on the agent’s cheeks and nose. He was obviously a heavy drinker. Oddly, I felt guilty for introducing Beelzebub into his life. He slugged back the bottles, his stories becoming more confidential and incredible. It struck me he was a fellow survivor of the mysteries of Monster Alley.
I learned J. Edgar Hoover had personally terminated Orville from the FBI following the shootout with Lola’s cadre. After I left him on the afternoon Nurse Pumpkin had been obliterated by Beelzebub, Orville ditched the ambulance and “the eyeball that thing spit out.” He had then written up his report using a fictitious name for me and destroyed any photos of the aftermath of the gun battle that contained my image.
Orville’s version of my release, plus the disappearance of an ambulance and its driver had been investigated quietly. When his superiors suspected his report had been falsified, they pressured and threatened him. Desperate and still crazed from what he had witnessed, he told them what happened to Pumpkin and how a bizarre time glitch had saved him, all the while managing to keep my name out of it. The Bureau sent him off to a rehabilitation and counseling center. When he didn’t recant his bizarre tale, Hoover covered up the impending scandal, but not after glowering and cursing at him for half an hour, then pointing at the door with a fat cigar.
“After I was canned, some spooks would come around to my house, asking me questions about Beelzebub. They followed me for months. It then struck me that if they’re so interested, maybe others are too.”
“What’d you do?”
“Ever hear of Z.Z. Dupree, the paranormal investigator and author?”
“I don’t read much about that stuff anymore. I’m mostly into history and fiction, but yeah, bookstores are full of his work. He must make a bundle of money.”
He wiggled his eyebrows, his head bounced up and down playfully, and he spread his arms slightly as if presenting or revealing himself.
“You? No shit.”
“Yeah. If you ever want to tell your story, I know people who’d publish it.”
Man, you just never know, do you?
A few years back, during the trial of Patty Hearst, the famous heiress turned revolutionary, I recounted my experience of being held captive by guerrillas for a TV documentary about political kidnappings. There’s a section in the film where I scratch at a lump on my arm, explaining it was from an old jungle spider bite. What the audience would never know is, at that moment, I was bluffing my way through the interview as my mind wandered, from wondering if Vladimir survived and returned to Berkeley, to trying to forget how the heft of that grenade felt as I planned to kill my captors.
Every time Teresa and I discuss visiting Venezuela to see the Santa Paloma ceremony or hike into the Andes, too many issues get in the way. “I’m happy with my family. I don’t want to go see a village where I’ll be freaking out, thinking I’m everybody’s great, great relative, wrapping my head around three daughters that were born before me. And who really knows if they are mine anyway, what with all the idiosyncrasies of time travel? I’d be wondering if Cassandra had become an immortal tunnel hopper or gone totally bird, popping out
of some tree at me. I feel for her, I really do, but she was nuts. Drove me nuts. I feel like she didn’t belong anywhere and is probably capable of screwing everything up again. And what if Filomena is still dancing with the curandera? I think I want to stay away for now.”
And Teresa would add, “I don’t want to know any more about my dad. My understanding of family has changed since Melinda was born. You gave me enough answers to my questions about him. He killed a man and ran without bothering to stick around for me. How could a parent do that? And when I think about him trying to kill you, I understand he’s a freaking maniac. That’s all I need to know. What if we found him? I’m sorry, it’s terrible of me, but I don’t care to give him another chance.”
When I hear Teresa say that, I’m overcome with remorse, thinking of how I rejected Sam and my first child.
Sam became more of a mystery. Teresa and I decided to track our old friend down and help with any medical bills that must have accrued from the sex transformation procedures. It was impossible to find Sam. Not a clue.
Somewhere out in the world is my first son. Hopefully Sam is still alive, living life as the person she wished to be. Every redheaded man, woman, or child I see gets scrutinized with bold curiosity, but I have no idea what I would say if I believed them to be who I want them to be.
I picture Mai, lover of a half-bovid god, still living in her remote world hidden in the Andes.
The ancient divinity Pan entangles my thoughts and emotions. He relied on my skills, confided to me secrets only gods play with, both by using his family and his mushrooms, to navigate me towards the ruined tunnel. I find myself worrying if the deal I helped work out to end the battle between the gods is being honored in this universe where divine beings have no memory of their previous existence.
Is Pan’s plan for the planet in exchange for limited use of the tunnel by mortals in effect anymore? Could it have carried over from one universe to an updated version? I’m rooting for Pan as the crazies of the human race wreck havoc with industrialization, pollution, and overcrowding.
Despite the fact that Beelzebub informed me that my actions had been forgotten, I can’t help feeling slighted that Pan didn’t come by to greet me after Doctor Steel had apprised him of my appearance. Yet, when I look for hoof prints as I walk the fields and woods around my house, I find myself glad and breathing easier when I return home and haven’t found any sign of Pan’s presence.
And not a peep from Doctor Steel, Amelia or Jenny, Santa Pigeon, Stogie God, his three sacred buddies, or the old hag. Not even a boo or appearance in a dream by Johnny or Hank or Tuma or the ethereal Indian warrior. Sometimes I find myself imagining Monkey Man and Fish Man on some incredible mission, and I send them a silent greeting to wherever they may be, grateful for having known them. And what of Nando? Why do I grow depressed whenever I think of the long gone neanderthal, his bones surely turned to dust thousands of years ago? But then I laugh to myself, relishing in the knowledge that there are tricks to time, and he just might be on some jaunt in his gold coveralls a thousand years in the future.
I suspect all those spirits, gods, divine demons, immortals, or travelers I encountered along my path to the ruined tunnel still endure in some form today.
Not so for the mystery who sacrificed itself to bring order by ceasing to exist.
I don’t go a day without thinking of Shadow Creature. Sometimes on a quiet evening, it seems that the night’s darkness is whispering a low murmur that has always been, always will be. My memories coalesce into dreams of impossible dilemmas. I look to the stars spinning in the deep black for enlightenment. Their brilliance is tantalizing, but the great puzzle remains.
Today, as usual, Piddles is lying next to me as I write. I scratch behind her ear, then ask her what she’s been up to. She looks excitedly up at me, her tail flapping in anticipation of a walk outside. Despite her age, she has the energy of a much younger dog. It must be on account of her god residue, as I know she tunnel-jumps. I’ll find some odd object in the yard once in a while, like a lump of seaweed from a faraway beach or a chewed-on foreign newspaper that she must have hauled back from a hop.
When Teresa worries about Piddles’ travels or that our good dog might be in contact with whatever schemes, games, or wars the gods are involved in, I remind her, “She’s always been our guardian, born from dreams our first night together. Let’s trust she knows what she’s doing.”
It’s a comforting thought to believe she’s capable of being around in one form or another for a long time.
Earlier this morning, walking in a field with Melinda on my daily search for hoof prints or souvenirs Piddles might have collected, I turned to see Teresa, with Rita on her hip, smiling and waving from our porch. The space between us felt electric, full of love and light as palpable as the first time we ever touched. Little Johnny walked towards the garden, tossing a ball in the air, stopping to prattle at the now ancient Wimpy the cat, curled up in a sunbeam.
My eye wandered out to the hillsides as I ran through my daily ritual of checking if my ability to tunnel-see had returned.
I tapped out a Kool, stuck it in my mouth, struck a match.
“Daddy, I can’t breathe when you smoke. Look at your fingers. They’re yellow. How come you can color so good if your fingers are all icky? You’d probably be a better artist if your hand looked like a rainbow.”
I shook out the flame, tossed the cigarette, and she slipped her hand into mine.
Y’know, it doesn’t feel bad at all to be forgotten by the gods.
About the author
J. Davis Henry has made a living as an illustrator, graphic designer, and sign maker. His personal drawings are usually whimsical/cartoon animals. He lives near Philadelphia with his wife, Carol, and two cats.
Email: [email protected]
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Kent and Mary Donley for their friendship and encouragement, Mark Richards for his feedback, Tim Warner for his critical science, Jonathan Claudy (RIP, friend) for his commentary, and my wife, Carol, who put many long hours into reading, editing, and discussing The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker.
Dear Reader,
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Could you please leave a review? It should only take a few minutes and would be invaluable in convincing others that Book Three, Miracles is a worthwhile read.
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Miracles (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 3) Page 38