by N. Godwin
Blue howls louder, and in the calm before the storm, I find charity and will myself to go back outside under the carport and coax the stubborn, chatty-cat out of his fears and into calm. I will myself mightily because I can smell the scent of scorched earth and musky effervescent winds off the impending storm moving closer. But I will tend to Blue and soothe his fears so I can get some work done in peace. I commit to tend his care, nothing more.
The carport light isn’t on and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust as I look outside the kitchen screen door. I spot Blue crouching in a dark shadow under a grocery cart full of surfing gear, and I allow pity into my heart when I see him curled up all alone, trembling and crying. There is such a melancholy in his pitch that I can’t help caving-in and stepping outside the kitchen door. I lean back against the door frame and pause. I close my eyes and inhale, listening to the sound of the crashing waves across the street
There is something in the air… I inhale again because the scent is calming and fragrant, faint and evocative of a precious elusive moment I struggle to place, but can’t. I open my eyes and stare at the cat, the only possible source.
“I can smell you, you know,” I tell the noisy cat. “Ssh, don’t answer,” I say with a chuckle. “I know what you want, you know. You want what they all want. You want me to take you upstairs to my room and hold you in my arms and love you, but that is never going to happen. Understand? So, let’s get this over with right here and now. I will hold you and love on you once, and only once. And I will never love you. Understand?” I ask getting down on my hands and knees in front of the shopping cart as I pat the pavement with my hand. “Aw, sweet Blue,” I say. “Sweet pussy, pussy, pussy, come out and play,” I coax the cat, who has at least finally stopped crying.
A sudden gust of wind comes out of nowhere and blows the hem of my dress up around my ears as the cat moves slowly towards me. I giggle because of the fragrant sensation. I curl my fingers at Blue and giggle as he moves towards me.
“You can trust me, kitty cat,” I say, reaching for him, “everybody does.”
This night crowd has slowly turned in to our my favorite usual patrons; the crowd of engineers from the Navy Lab, the day-folks who work the mechanics of the beach, the contractors, the shop owners, the happy tourists, and, my favorites, John and Alan down from the amusement park.
We especially like it when John and Alan come and play because they can even make Eunice laugh and that’s saying something. Alan’s the religious one. Listen for a minute and you can tell. He’s number 12 on my list. John is the one with a gaggle of girls always around him on account of he’s seriously beautiful. He is number 8. Needless to say, I’m very fond of these sweet, silly dudes because, like Horst and Freckles, they are our truest friends.
Before John can tell me a joke, in comes Bud, Otis, and Bubba, the three wise fishermen, numbers 9, 10, and 11 respectively. Even Randy likes these guys because they smell like fish, eat like pigs, and tip like it was payday. Bud is my favorite. He seems to know everything. He’s ageless; he could be thirty-five or seventy because he’s so covered in leathery wrinkles and skin cancer scars he could be a throwback from Long John Silver for all we know.
Otis never got married. He’s too ugly. Cross my heart. He likes to come up behind tourists and ask “Ain’t I the ugliest son of a gun you ever saw?” We’ve decided he’s far and away the ugliest son of a gun we’ve ever seen; a go-funny eye (as Randy calls it), colorless hair, and a bulbous nose with craters where zits used to be. He’s got this great laugh though and an awesome sense of humor to match.
Bubba is their naked-yahoo-of-a-brother on that lawnmower. He’s the cute one with absolutely no sense what so ever, not a smidgen as far as I can see. We know he can talk but we’ve never been able to figure out what language it is that he mutters. He’s been married five times.
“Doin’ okay, sugar?” Bud asks me as Bubba hands me a still-kicking snapper by the tail. I nod and take the large slimy fish over to the kitchen sink. “Saw your daddy yesterday. Tells me you’re still singing in the choir.” I nod as he inspects me for a moment. “I really am gon’ bring my grandson to have a good look-see at you next time he comes down from Atlanta. You two’d make beautiful babies. Yes siree, you’re gon’ go far, Jimmy-Sue.”
“Gonna marry herself a banker,” Otis offers.
“Mayb’ che alrhdy as?” Bubba says.
“Yes sir, I do believe our Jimmy-Sue here’s the prettiest little thing this town’s seen in forever.”
Oh yeah, I’m pretty. Drop dead gorgeous they say. Historically a face like mine could grace the cover of Vogue or launch a thousand ships to war. Strangers always do a double take. Sometimes tourists will even snap a picture of me without even asking.
I used to hate it, being stared at like I was naked or deformed. Now, I just accept it as part of God’s mysterious plan. But still, you can’t deny the irony in all this incredible bone and muscle wasted on someone like me... It’s amazing how flesh can determine your life. I swear they let me graduate high school because of how I look. People never cease to amaze.
I look at the faces gathered around the café, our living room, and wonder about the zenith and nadir of their day to day. I wonder about their lives outside in the real world when they’re away from the DemiMonde and the beach, where they’re far away from me. I know, like me, they have hopes and aspirations and, unlike me, they have dreams of love and desire and other sinister machinations that go bump in the night. Well, nobody’s perfect, so bless their hearts.
I bite my bottom lip as I do my finale check of each individual face of those on my list (except for my spontaneous number 13, of course) and wonder again how the heck I will ever know who the right one is, and wonder, further still, how in the ever-loving Hades all this is really supposed to work?
Secretly, I guess I’m waiting for that superlative celestial sign, the one to end all other celestial signs. I know that sounds silly. It is silly, absolutely, okay, but just remember that’s how these things usually work. However, unfortunately, to add to the confusion, there is still all this white-noise and hated static reverberating between my ears as I study their faces again, straining to channel their elusive emotions and catch a small glimpse into their tainted souls. I close my eyes, straining and wondering if I can comprehend any other sound right now, anything at all beyond static. And, darn-it all, I hear it again. There! But not entirely, it’s true. Just a minute warbled blurb really, a gust of wind inside my head, nothing more. And I’m pretty sure it’s telling me what I don’t want to hear, again. It’s reminding me that exactly three months from today one of the contenders on my Labor Day List, with little else in common besides mortal sin and me, is supposed to die. And I’m the chosen-one who has to off this poor sinner for the glory of God and yada-yada, because, after all, wouldn’t you just know, that’s the infuriating way my stupid luck usually works.
A Sunday in the Life of Jimmy-Sue Maddox
Ever notice how anyone named Katrina is always chubby or how nobody ever likes someone named Nancy? Face it, a Nancy is usually a she-dog. Renees are usually pretty uppity, too, and have you ever once wanted to spend a Saturday evening with anyone named Harold?
Of course not!
What exactly is up with Harolds, anyway? Can they not see and feel what the rest of us do? Have these heathens always been living on the same planet or have they just emerged from hibernation after a long voyage in space (because I’m convinced their parents were aliens from infinity and beyond or spawns of Satan from below—both seem a distinct possibility, you see).
It must be some kind of divine directive sent down from above, signifying that this child, this Harold, is marked for cruelty; void of humor, or compassion, or charity.
Face it, we all harbor some lingering prejudice somewhere deep down, despite our best efforts to the contrary, and I’ll admit to that prejudice now, the Harold one. Harolds stomp on my foot and gnaw on my last nerve! They’re the zombies among us; a
ll waiting to suck the life force right out of you the moment you drop your guard. I can stomach just about anything anymore; Andrew or Asahab, your holy-book-thumping pedophiles, or your deranged brother Jose, or even Tanicka, your grouchy social worker in a too tight polyester suit, but Harolds just piss me off!
Harold is the truest wolf in sheep’s clothing. Cross my heart! Never trust a Harold. They will betray you and screw with your mind (and, worse still, they can’t accessorize for caca!).
Let us pray. I close my eyes with the rest of the congregation and recite the Lord’s Prayer on cue.
So… here I am. Again, just like every Sunday I can ever remember. If I combined all the various compulsory activities of my youth with the Sundays of the present, I figure I’ve been right here at least ten thousand times in my life and it still scares the holy beJesus out of me. It does, it really does.
I keep my eyes open even though I shouldn’t and decide, for about the millionth time, to study the gaudy confines surrounding me. My eyes linger on the forlorn faces of the sculpted Gothic cherubs looking down over us gloomily, with eyes that I swore as a child could move. The church’s dark, angry colors bounce from one frightening relic to the next in waves before my eyes, its doomed paintings and murals of man and beast, each more terrifying than the last, study us back with futile condemnation. The stained-glass windows, imported from some gloomy decommissioned monastery in Istanbul are the only windows in the building and all a frightening biblical scene of wrath and vengeance. From its walls to its altars and beliefs are dripping in icons and ideology right out of the dark ages, so help me God.
The outside front of the church that can be glimpsed by unwelcome eyes through overgrown trees and bushes and weeds is windowless with beige nondescript aluminum siding in bad need of painting, and has an ever-changing fire and brimstone portable sign by the broken mailbox beside the road. This place isn’t exactly a shining beacon of fellowship. Nevertheless, I believe God has put us here for His purpose; the saint, the sinner and the fool.
When I’m finally comfortable enough to close my eyes to pray, I bite my bottom lip and frown because I feel an ever-so-slight and odd tingling sensation emanating up through the floor. Suddenly, like a bolt of electricity, the sensation runs up my shoes, up into my groin and stomach and chest, and I tremble from the novelty of this sensation. I tilt my head realizing there is something odd in the air today, something weird and out of place.
I swear I even smell something different in the air, something foreign yet eerily familiar; just a hint of rain maybe or damp soil? Musky… I breathe in deeply, slowly and contemplate the subtleties as I inhale again, smiling as this phantom scent stirs a memory too vague to recall. I realize that odd vibration is still charging up at me through the floor, announcing something amiss and daring me to find its source.
And darn-it all to Hades and back, isn’t Sunday supposed to be a day of rest for everyone? It’s clearly written.
I feel a little discombobulated and sigh as I open both eyes and begin to scan the faces of the congregation, wondering if everyone can feel this charge and smell this infusion of oxygen? You’d never know it from their pious expressions, even though this vibration is getting more urgent and accompanies an invisible rush of a cool, refreshing air that has no possible origin (since there is no air to be found inside these windowless walls).
This under current is unlike the other power surges this place is known to house, spookier even, and that’s saying something. I think it must be evil, which is confusing on too many levels I don’t want to debate, and I am a little dizzy so I close my eyes quickly and remind myself of my best qualities; how I’m either a big dumb chicken or else I’m a loony bird. One or the other, or both. I’m keeping score you know and so far the odds aren’t pretty.
I glance around again because surely someone has to notice this odd current among us because it overcomes you, like a brush fire running with the wind at its back. My fingers are even tingling in alarm with a creepy kind of insight that’s telling me right up into my nose that something is altering at this very moment, and there isn’t a darn thing I can do about it.
I keep my eyes tightly shut and shiver from the cold sweat forming down my spine. I pray harder.
On cue, I stand with the choir and segue into hymn number 447. I startle as Nancy Pitman begins her shrill solo. I try hard not to giggle when her eyes roll back in her head, a stiff mezzo-soprano unfortunately reaching for first soprano, seeking heavenly fulfillment from her vocals cords while she twirls that stupid, white bow she wears every time she has a solo. Nancy likes to pretend that she is twenty again and even goes to the wrong Sunday school class, my Sunday school class. Everyone knows this, so it’s a moot point at best. Nancy married an orthodontist and hangs out with Renees and Harolds. I think they deserve one another.
Sometimes during the invitational I just sing watermelon, watermelon, watermelon over and over again. Nobody ever seems to notice. I once sang a solo using only mono-syllables that must have put them all to sleep because they’re eyes were closed the entire time.
The choir takes its seat as Brother James of the First Witness of the Ascension of Jesus Christ Church begins his sermon. My family has come to this very church from its very inception because it is Daddy’s belief that being a very literal believer of the Bible will not only keep you on the straight and narrow but also make you healthy, wealthy and wise. And no one is straighter or narrower than Daddy.
Submitted for your approval, the week after my father was born-again at age twenty-three, he inherited a considerable sum of money from a great-great aunt once removed from somewhere in France. That no-one had ever heard of this mysterious aunt has Daddy convinced she did not exist prior to his redemption, and therefore qualifies as “a bona fide miracle of our Lord given to a favored son.”
Another favored example involves health. According to Daddy, my older brothers each have some quasi-minor physical flaw that was caused by my mother’s disobedience to God, or to her husband, while she was pregnant. During their gestation Mama apparently gained more than thirty pounds with each (and Daddy has no charity for the sins of the obese) and was given to excessive displays of anger and hysterics. The hysterics account for my twin brothers’ asthma, and her weight gain caused my eldest brother’s disappointing height.
During my gestation, Mama took a seven month vow of silence and gained a mere eighteen pounds. For thirteen years after my birth my mother revealed in Nearer My God to Thee until my supreme confrontation with algebra reared its ugly head. Then Daddy was forced to back up and punt.
By December of my thirteenth year it was decided that although I looked like an angel and sang like an angel, I had the brains of a coffee table. Where before I had been perfect there was now some type of tribulation in the road ahead and I was cast into silence.
Luckily, Daddy’s wait for a sign was answered that Christmas Eve when the Lord laid His hands on Daddy and convinced him that, although I seemed perfect, I was still only a girl, after all. In order for Him to make me look like this He had to steal a tad from Peter to pay off Paul. One iota smarter or one shade less lovely and the world would have shifted on its axis and sent chaos throughout the universe.
After his cathartic encounter with the Almighty, Daddy patted Mama on the head and burned my algebra book, declaring God never intended for me to bother my pretty head with hellish homework. I spent the remainder of my education under my sheets with a flashlight.
Poor Daddy, he doesn’t quite get me, either. I think it pisses him off that God likes me better.
Contrary to popular belief, I believe that religion and science are both true and more important to our chemistry than familial agape. Our quest for how and why is as necessary to our biology as our quest for food and shelter. Some answers as to the elusive how have been around as long as the elusive why, and often their derisory answers are to be applauded for keeping lots of people happily occupied or terrified into submission. Without those forc
es at work, just think of all the maniacs who’d be walking around with nothing to hold their demented mortal souls in check.
Have you ever contemplated why evil is always headed straight toward the utterly helpless? I believe it’s because evil likes to hide in obvious places. For every decent yin out there, there’s an evil yang, trolling for our ideal with candy and a picture of a lost puppy. Evil is often aimed at the helpless because they are the purest form of innocence, and, face it, the easiest to harass. People who drown kittens and beat their dogs or wives are horrible but they’re not crazy, are they? No more so than you or I…They’re the cacophony of the cruelest music inside our minds; music most of us tune out. But these heathens choose to crank up the volume, all twenty gazillion of them.
By the way, I (being the eternal optimist that I am) don’t believe I’ve been absolutely disconnected. I think I’ve just been put on hold for now. Even still, receiving any kind of message from this garbled communication is murky at best. I can’t actually decipher diddlysquat. Garbled can be good on occasion though, very good in fact, so let it alone.
Garbled allows possibilities, such as the possibility that I simply have everything all wrong (which does sound a heck of a lot more logical), and therefore, hopefully I could have other options that don’t include me killing someone I care about.
I shudder and suddenly feel as though I am under attack from some unseen enemy. I can feel that strange tingle surging into me again and fan myself with the church bulletin as I close my eyes, contemplating the evil I’m going to have to face on some dismal, stormy night I have no doubt, whether I like it or not. I know it will be a stormy night because I’m afraid of storms and everyone knows evil likes having the advantage. Sometimes I can hear the evil in the distant thunder, like primal drums beating out some impatient erratic rhythm.