The Life of Hope

by Paul Quarrington

  SHOUTING: Genuine & Spurious, in All Ages of the Church, from the Birth of Creation, when the Son of God shouted for Joy, until the shout of the Archangel: with numerous extracts from the Old & New Testaments, and from the works of Wesley, Evans, Edwards, Abbott, Cartwright and HOPE; and giving Testimony of the Outward Demonstrations of the Spirit, such as Laughing, Screaming, Shouting, Leaping, Jerking and Falling Under Its Power.

  And finally (here’s where I part company with those twelve other scholars, uniformly old and wrinkled men who I’m sure wank every time they think about Hope and his followers) Hope allowed, even forced, his two most loyal disciples away. George Quinton built the house that I now live in, and he lived there with Martha until his death, by hanging, in 1889.

  Jonathon Whitecrow instructed me to think on the first experiments in complex marriage, and I did so. What became clear is that no mention of George and Martha is made. It is easy to assume, and those other twelve geezers do so, that George was by nature celibate and Martha for some reason faithful only to J. B. Hope. But a clue is to be found in The Theocratic Watchman, vol. xx, no. ix, in which Joseph Hope writes:

  Therefore, all of the so-called “perversions” of mankind are, indeed, just that, perversions of mankind, not of our Maker. In Genesis 4, Chapter 17, we are told “And Cain knew his wife.” From whence came this wife? There is no mention of a further supranatural Creation. Elementary logic dictates that Cain’s wife was fully his blood sister, but the Union is patently sanctioned by the Almighty. The notion of incest is, therefore, but man-made. It should little concern us; the matter of sanguineous relationship is irrelevant. We are all of us brother and sister.

  In fairness to the twelve geezer-scholars, I must add that they did not have the benefit of an antique cedar chest in their bedroom (conveniently picked open by sad Sara) where this particular issue was to be found, opened to the page in question, nestled in among a woman’s dress and a blood-soaked workshirt.

  The issue is dated some ten months before the birth of Isaiah Hope.

  1 How She Suffered At The Hands Of The Sybarite

  “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

  Rev. 22:1

  Perhaps these very words sprang into Gretel Dekeyser’s young and putrile mind on that hot summer’s day. Perhaps she was searching for communion with Her Maker. Slowly, with eminent pudicity, she removed her garments, naked only to the Eyes of the Almighty, and entered the lapling river. Little did she suspect that THE LECHER lurked nearby, his evil eye transfixed by her.

  To illustrate the utter lascivousity of the Libertine’s mind, allow me to list the following scientific datum, taken by Mineself with kindest permission of Dekeyser the elder.

  1) Gretel’s breast, at sixteen years of age, measured a mere 33 inches.

  2) Gretel’s nipple & aureole was 5/8 of an inch on the left, differing on the right by an additional 1/16 of an inch.

  3) her waist measured 24 inches.

  4) her hip/buttock measurement was 34 inches.

  Even a cursorous glance should inform that Miss Dekeyser, even one full year after the attack, was possessed of a decidely boyish figure, and, to a man of moral rectitudity, would scarcely have become an object of potential defilement. But HOPE, being of impurile gluttonousness, proceeded to take her. It has been suggested that Gretel Dekeyser did not combat her Abuser with utmost vigor. I believe this is because her immersion in the chilly water (not to mention the trancendant communion with Our Heavenly Father) left her somewhat light-headed. Moresomeover, J.B. Hope, for all his physical “smallness” (small in every sense save one) was ever a man of great strength.

  (A scientific note of interest: could it be that rampagent Bacchanalian bawdrage somehow promotes the production of muscle enzyme?

  And allow me to add a further small appendianium in my capacity as Witness: I did determine, during my scientific investigation of Miss Dekeyser’s corpus, that prior to the optative spoliation at the hands of the quenchless LECHER, her state of virginal pudicity was clearly irredemptive.)

  PART FIVE

  Alive With Peeps and Flutters

  Hope, Ontario, 1983

  Wherein our Hero Fulfills his Function as Gazetteer.

  “But why,” I demanded into the telephone, “are you telling me?”

  “It is you that he wished for us to contact.” The woman spoke as if she were snipping her words out of the National Enquirer.

  “Look, let me give you another number …”

  “No.”

  “It’s the number of a bar. Ask for Mona Drinkwater.”

  “Absolutely not. I suggest that personally you contact Mizz Drinkwater. That, after all, is why you were selected as the contactee.”

  “My name is the only name he gave you?”

  “That is the case.”

  “Look in the telephone book! How many people could there be with that last name?”

  “Again, sir, my suggestion to you would be as follows …”

  “That I do it myself.”

  “Precisely such.”

  “You know what, lady? You are heartless and cruel!”

  She stopped snipping her words. “And you know what, bubba? You are gutless! And just as cruel.”

  “What, do I know you or something?”

  “He put down your name, Mister Contactee. Get hopping.”

  I cradled the phone, and went to stare out the picture window in my homestead’s living room. It was too beautiful a day. I was pissed off at God, and staring at His creation, the gentle hills that had become my world, I felt like saying, “Enough, already. Enough.”

  I went out to the barn, where the moped was kept. Barn swallows had set up condos in there, and the ancient rotting structure was alive with peeps and flutters. Enough, already, enough. I strapped on my protective helmet, and the noise was blocked out. I climbed aboard my bike, rolled down the laneway, and then threw the lever that connected the tiny motor. Now my world was mechanical and fueled by gas.

  It took me quite a while to get into Hope, mostly because I navigated a route designed to take me quite a while. I should have used the time to rehearse a little speech, but my brain seemed devoid of words. I adopted the same mental stance as the high-flying hawk, whereby the universe was mysterious, distant and of no real concern to me. It works, if you happen to be a hawk.

  The Willing Mind was held in a shaft of sunlight, caught in some spacecraft’s transporter beam. The tavern looked preternatural. It looked like a paint-by-numbers that God had done one gloomy afternoon.

  I took a deep breath and pushed through the front door.

  I couldn’t believe it. The place was crowded.

  Not sardine style, of course, or even elbow-to-elbow, just crowded enough to fill up the tavern, somewhere between thirty and forty people. Four young guys were playing darts, three women were seated at a table, laughing and drinking tall drinks; twelve or thirteen guys, obviously just finished their shift at Updike International, had pulled four of the tables into a long row and were currently playing Colonel Puff, a drinking game.

  I pushed through these people to the bar.

  “Yo! Whaddya wanna drink?”

  The owner of this voice was not Mona, a fact that filled me simultaneously with relief and regret. The owner of this voice was a tiny man with a huge beard, extending in a scraggly way all the way down to his belly-button.

  “Beer,” I said, a stunned reflex reaction.

  “Beer.” The bartender winked at me. All of his features were grotesquely oversized, fashioned for a man twice as big. “Draft or bottled or what?”

  “Draft. Where’s, um, Mona?”

  “Day orf.” The man picked up a mug and tossed it into the air. It turned about seven times, and he caught it behind his back. “I’m Teddy,” he informed me.

  “Do you know where Mona is?”

  “If I know Mona,” Teddy replied, moving off toward the anti
que draft pump, “she’s out getting her ashes hauled.”

  I surveyed my fellow patrons at the long bar. The fellow immediately to my left was one of those sorts that life has slapped around and left permanently groggy and punch-drunk. He sipped strong drink and tried to think of ways of starting fights. Beside him was a woman, probably his lover. She downed tall glasses of fruity liqueurs. Beside her was Big Bernie.

  I rushed down and filled in the gap between them.

  “Hi, Big Bernie,” I said. “Hi, Little Bernie.”

  Big Bernie nodded bleakly. “Hi.”

  I bent down until I was closer to the stomach. “What’s the matter, Little Bernie? You mad at me or something?”

  “Just don’t feel much like talking,” the potbelly mumbled.

  “Oh.”

  “Me neither,” admitted Big Bernie.

  I realized, with a certain amount of disbelief, that the Bernies were asking me to leave. I turned away, but knew that it wasn’t that easy. “Bernie,” I said, “Jonathon died.”

  “That was a stupit thing for him to do, wasn’t it?”

  Little Bernie added a snicker and a sardonic, “Shit.”

  “Well, you know, I was the Contactee, that’s all. See you around.”

  Bernie seemed to soften. “It’s rough being a Contactee,” he said. “I’m not looking forward to it at all.”

  “Me neither,” put in his potbelly.

  “I’ll buy you a drink,” Big Bernie decided. “We’ll drink a drink to Jonathon. He was a good guy. Owed me about ten thousand bucks. Hey, Ted.” Big Bernie waved his pudgy index finger in the air. “More martoonis and shit.”

  “Is it your wife?” I asked quietly.

  “Is what my wife?”

  “Is your wife ill?”

  “Not as far as I know. My wife lives in Bolivia with a guy named, get this, Chichi.”

  I nodded knowingly. “Mine’s taken up with someone named Helmut.”

  When the drinks came Bernie threw a few bills in Teddy’s direction. “Keep it.”

  Teddy bowed subserviently. “Thank you, Mr. Updike.”

  Little Bernie muttered, “Grovel, dog” and was hushed by Big Bernie.

  “How’s business?” I asked.

  “Business is business,” said Bernie, sticking his fingers into his drink to retrieve the olive. “As long as there’s fish, people will try to catch ’em. So, okay, here’s to Jonathon. He was a good guy. He used to say a poem about when he was gonna be dead. It went, um …

  When I am dead, my dearest,

  Sing no sad songs for me.

  Plant thou no roses at my head,

  Or …”

  Big Bernie furrowed his brow.

  “Or tulips at my knee.”

  “ ‘Nor shady cyprus tree,’ twat-face,” corrected Little Bernie. “Right,” agreed Big Bernie, and then he proceeded. “Um …

  Be the green grass above me,

  With showers and dewdrops wet.

  And …”

  His stomach finished it for him. “ ‘If thou wilt, remember. And if thou wilt, forget.’ ”

  “I know the poem,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was such a big hit in barrooms.”

  “Jon-Jon used to talk about dying sometimes,” said Big Bernie, “on account of …” He fell abruptly silent, biting his lip. After a few seconds Bernie pointed at his stomach and whispered to me, “Little Bernie has cancer.”

  “I don’t have cancer!” countered the belly. “You got it! How many times do I have to tell you?”

  Big Bernie humored his stomach gently. “Whatever you say, Little Bernie.” He winked at me through his sunglasses.

  “That’s why you’re bald,” I realized.

  “I take the Little Bern to get his radiation treatments,” said Bernie, taking off his four-dollar toupee to demonstrate his gleaming bald pate, “and what happens? All my hair falls out.” Big Bernie giggled glumly. “It’s not fair, but hey, who said anything was fair?”

  “True,” agreed his stomach.

  “Let’s get pissed,” I suggested urgently.

  “Now there,” said Little Bernie, “is a novel idea.”

  Alchemistical Formulae

  Hope, Ontario, 1889

  Regarding the life of Hope, we don’t know the following: that he brutally raped the fair & virginal Gretel Dekeyser; that she was but 15 years of age; that Hope was 65, untoothsome and gnarly.

  Gretel Dekeyser stood on some rocks, her head tilted backward so that her face could be slapped by the sun. Gretel was naked. Joseph Benton Hope, standing across the water and angling for pickerel, studied her body with some slight interest. Gretel’s body was teenaged; swelling breasts and hips hung on ribcages, elbows and slightly bowed legs. Joseph felt a tug on the end of his line, so he took his eyes off the young woman and fastened them to his rod-tip. The fish, apparently, was gone away; Joseph sighed and raised his eyes again to the rocks across the way. Gretel had turned around so that J. B. Hope could see her backside. Joseph loved the geometry of buttocks, he loved their fleshy simplicity. Gretel’s other end was small, the cheeks hung rather low. Joseph wondered if his bait had been stolen. He raised his pole, flipped some line about the end, and saw his minnow wriggling. He sat it back in the water.

  Now Gretel decided to go for a swim. She held her nose and jumped from the rock, her body twisted awkwardly and shattering the surface of the water. Gretel and Hope were separated by some fifty yards of lake, but Joseph was still irritated, sure that the little girl would put the fishes off their feed. Remarkably, Hope felt a nibble at the same moment, so he pulled skyward, setting the hook, and flipped a little fish onto the ground behind him.

  He heard Gretel’s voice, “Too schmull.”

  “You’re too small,” Hope croaked. Joseph took the hook out of the fish’s mouth and looked at his catch. Joseph pretended he was judging its size, but secretly he was simply admiring the fish, the coolness of its skin, the mystery of the seemingly blind eyes. Hope returned the fish to the water.

  Gretel climbed out of the lake and fluffed water out of her hair. Gretel’s hair was a dull but healthy blond, the color of wheat. Joseph watched her breasts bounce. Gretel’s nipples were extraordinarily small, and very dark given her fair Dutch coloring. Hope was reminded of something, but he knew not what.

  Gretel lay down, on her stomach, her little rump presented to the sun for bronzing. Hope wandered over to his bait-bucket and grabbed a minnow. The fish writhed desperately, trapped by Hope’s bent fingers. Joseph ran his hook through the minnow’s back and then tossed it into the water. He looked down and saw Gretel roll over, her legs unfolding, revealing all. Gretel’s genitalia were large and frightening. Hope concentrated on his fishing.

  This was the first time Gretel had come so close, but she was invariably near the water when Hope went fishing. She never wore any clothes. When Hope saw Gretel he often recalled days from years ago, when the Perfectionists would go about naked. In those days, Hope recalled, they were indeed Perfect. He conjured mental images of Mary Carter De-La-Noy, Cairine McDiarmid, Abigal Skinner and Polyphilia Drinkwater. Young and perfect. Now, Polyphilia was wasted and shriveled, ghostly rattling bones; Abigal was fat, her breasts hanging down almost to her waist. Mary De-la-Noy was still pretty, but in a hard, chiseled way; and Cairine was dead, mauled by a bear, and Joseph often wondered whether she was worse or better served by nature than the others. Hope looked at Gretel Dekeyser. She was touching her own breasts.

  “The left,” said J. B. Hope, even though he knew that Gretel, like the other Dutch, spoke only a few words of English and understood less, “is the site of the propagative spirit, while the right houses the amative soul.” Joseph felt suddenly giddy. He stumbled a couple of feet, dropping his fishing pole, and sat down beside Gretel. The world was suddenly made up of old sea charts and alchemistical formulae. Joseph Hope laughed. “What could be simpler?”

  “Hmm,” Gretel purred, agreeing. Gretel took Hope’s hand and pulled it on to
her chest. Her nipple was erect, hard as a pebble. The sea charts disappeared, eaten away by emptiness.

  “The amative soul,” Hope continued, “is, in my opinion, almost universally undernutritioned.”

  Gretel moved Hope’s hand to her other tit. Joseph remarked to himself that this breast was slightly smaller. Gretel took one of her own hands and placed it over her mound.

  Hope wanted to tell her about phrenological sites, how they connected hematically with her intromittent organ. He opened his mouth and began to weep.

  The tears alarmed Gretel, and she made a motion to sit up. Hope pushed her back roughly, and Gretel was still. Hope worked at his trouser stays, and soon his root was free, standing out of his heavy, black pants. Gretel touched her fingers to it, and Joseph brushed them away. Tears spilled from Hope’s eyes onto the head of his penis.

  Joseph Benton Hope turned Gretel Dekeyser over and pulled her up onto elbows and knees. Hope noticed that her little breasts, tugged earthward by gravity, long and thin like a bitch’s, were off-putting. Hope drove himself into Gretel’s boyish haunches and was done not many minutes later. Then he lay on his back and gazed into the sky, which was empty. It was empty of clouds and alchemistical formulae.