Crackpot Palace

by Jeffrey Ford

  I found that laughter dispersed him more quickly. One night I told the spirit I had plans the next day to travel west. But in the morning, I packed my things up quickly and headed due south, toward the end of the world. I tricked him. Eventually, the ghost found me here, and I see him every great while, pacing along the tops of the dunes that surround the valley. He can’t descend to haunt me, for the church I built protects me and the power of Saint Ifritia keeps him at bay. Every time I see him his image is dimmer, and before long he will become salt in the wind.

  The impromptu congregation was speechless. Father Walter slowly became aware of it as he stood, swaying slightly to and fro. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” he said, a phrase he’d actually heard from Colonel Hempfil. There was a pause after his delivery of it during which he waved his hands back and forth in the air like a magician, distracting an audience. Eventually, two of the sisters nodded and the honeymoon couple shrugged and applauded the sermon.

  Father Walter took this as a cue to move on, and he left the altar of the shrine and ran back to the church to fetch a case of whiskey that the Lord had recently delivered onto the beach after a terrific thunderstorm. The young couple produced a hash pipe and a tarry ball of the drug that bore a striking resemblance to the last knuckle of the middle toe of Saint Ifritia’s foot.

  Late that night, high as the tern flies, the young man and woman left and headed out toward the end of the world, and Sister North’s sisters loaded into their wagon and left for their respective homes. Father Walter sat on the sand near the bell in the churchyard, a bottle to his lips, staring up at the stars. Sister North stood over him, the hem of her habit, as she called the simple gray shift she wore every day, flapped in the wind.

  “None would stay the night after your story of murder,” she said to him. “They drank your whiskey, but they wouldn’t close their eyes and sleep here with you drunk.”

  “Foolishness,” he said. “There’s plenty still left for all. Loaves and fishes of whiskey. And what do you mean by murder?”

  “The driver in your sermon. You could have let him live.”

  He laughed. “I did. In real life, I let him go. A sermon is something different, though.”

  “You mean you lied?”

  “If I shot him, I thought it would make a better story.”

  “But where’s the Lord’s place in a story of cold-blooded murder?”

  “That’s for him to decide.”

  Sister North took to her shack for a week, and he rarely saw her. Only in the morning and late in the afternoon would he catch sight of her entering and leaving the shrine. She mumbled madly as she walked, eyes down. She moved her hands as if explaining to someone. Father Walter feared the ghost of the driver had somehow slipped into the churchyard and she was conversing with it. “Because I lied?” he wondered.

  During the time of Sister North’s retreat to her shack, a visitor came one afternoon. Out of a fierce sandstorm, materializing in the churchyard like a ghost herself, stepped a young woman wearing a hat with flowers and carrying a traveling bag. Father Walter caught sight of her through blue glass. He went to the church’s high doors, opened one slightly to keep the sand out, and called to her to enter. She came to him, holding the hat down with one hand and lugging the heavy bag with the other. “Smartly dressed” was the term the father vaguely remembered from his life inland. She wore a white shirt buttoned at the collar with a dark string tie. Her black skirt and jacket matched, and she somehow made her way through the sand without much trouble in a pair of high heels.

  Father Walter slammed shut the church door once she was inside. For a moment he and his guest stood still and listened to the wind, beneath it, the distant rhythm of the surf. The church was damp and cold. He told the young lady to accompany him to his room, where he could make a fire in the stove. She followed him behind the altar, and as he broke sticks of driftwood, she removed her hat and took a seat at his desk.

  “My name is Mina GilCragson,” she said.

  “Father Walter,” he replied over his shoulder.

  “I’ve come from the Theological University to see your church. I’m a student. I’m writing a thesis on Saint Ifritia.”

  “Who told you about us?” he asked, lighting the kindling.

  “A colleague who’d been to the end of the world and back. He told me last month, ‘You know, there’s a church down south that bears your saint’s name.’ And so I was resolved to see it.”

  Father Walter turned to face her. “Can you tell me what you know of the saint? I am the father here, but I know so little, though the holy Ifritia saved my life.”

  The young woman asked for something to drink. Since the rainwater barrel had been tainted by the blowing sand that day, he poured her a glass of whiskey and one for himself. After serving his guest, he sat on the floor, his legs crossed. She dashed her drink off quickly, as he remembered was the fashion in the big cities. Wiping her lips with the back of her hand, she said, “What do you know of her so far?”

  “Little,” he said and listened, pleased to be, for once, on the other end of a sermon.

  Mina GilCragson’s Sermon

  She was born in a village in the rainy country eighty-some-odd years ago. Her father was a powerful man, and he oversaw the collective commerce of their village, Dubron, which devoted itself to raising Plum fish for the tables of the wealthy. The village was surrounded by fifty ponds, each stocked with a slightly different variety of the beautiful fan-tailed species. It’s a violet fish. Tender and sweet when broiled.

  Ifritia, called “If” by her family, wanted for nothing. She was the plum of her father’s eye, her wishes taking precedence over those of her mother and siblings. He even placed her desires above the good of the village. When she was sixteen, she asked that she be given her own pond and be allowed to raise one single fish in it that would be her pet. No matter the cost of clearing the pond, one of the largest, she was granted her wish. To be sure, there was much grumbling among the other villagers and even among If’s siblings and mother, but none was voiced in the presence of her father. He was a proud and vindictive man, and it didn’t pay to cross him.

  She was given a hatchling from the strongest stock to raise. From early on, she fed the fish by hand. When she approached the pond, the creature would surface and swim to where she leaned above the water. Fish, to the people of Dubron, were no more than swimming money, so when Ifritia bequeathed a name on her sole charge, it was a scandal. Unheard of. Beyond the limit. A name denotes individuality, personality, something dangerously more than swimming money. A brave few balked in public, but If’s father made their lives unhappy and they fell back to silence.

  Lord Jon, the Plum fish, with enough room to spread out in his own pond and fed nothing but table scraps, potatoes and red meat, grew to inordinate dimensions. As the creature swelled in size, its sidereal fish face fleshed out, pressing the eyes forward, redefining the snout as a nose, and puffing the cheeks. It was said Jon’s face was the portrait of a wealthy landowner, and that his smile, now wide where it once was pinched, showed rows of sharp white teeth. A fish with a human face was believed by all but the girl and her father to be a sign of evil. But she never stopped feeding it and it never stopped growing until it became the size of a bull hog. Ifritia would talk to the creature, tell it her deepest secrets. If she told something good, it would break out into its huge, biting smile, something sad and it would shut its mouth and tears would fill its saucer-wide eyes.

  And then, out of the blue, for no known reason, the fish became angry with her. When she came to the edge of the pond, after it took the food from her hand, it splashed her and made horrid grunting noises. The fish doctor was called for and his diagnosis was quickly rendered. The Plum fish was not supposed to grow to Lord Jon’s outsize dimensions; the excess of flesh and the effects of the red meat had made the creature insane. “My dear,” said the doctor in his kindest voice, “you’ve squandered your time creating a large purple madness and th
at is the long and short of it.” The girl’s father was about to take exception with the doctor and box his ears, but in that instant she saw the selfish error of her ways.

  After convincing her father of the immorality of what they’d done, she walked the village and apologized to each person privately, from the old matrons to the smallest babies. Then she took a rifle from the wall of her father’s hunting room and went to the pond. On her way there, a crowd gathered behind her. Her change was as out of the blue as Lord Jon’s, and they were curious about her and happy that she was on the way to becoming a good person. She took up a position at the edge of the water, and whistled to the giant Plum fish to come for a feeding. The crowd hung back, fearful of the thing’s human countenance. All watched its fin, like a purple fan, disappear beneath the water.

  Ifritia pushed the bolt of the rifle forward and then sighted the weapon upon a spot where Jon usually surfaced. Everyone waited. The fish didn’t come up. A flock of geese flew overhead and it started to rain. Attention wandered, and just when the crowd began murmuring, the water beneath where Ifritia leaned over the pond exploded and the fish came up a blur of violet, launching itself to the height of the girl. Using its tail, it slapped her mightily across the face. Ifritia went over backward and her feet flew out from under her. In his descent, Jon turned in midair, opened his wide mouth, and bit through her leg. The bone shattered, the flesh tore, blood burst forth, and he was gone, out of sight, to the bottom of the big pond with her foot.

  She survived the grim amputation. While she lay in the hospital, her father had the pond drained. Eventually, the enormous fish was stranded in only inches of water. Ifritia’s father descended a long ladder to the pond bed and sloshed halfway across it to reach Lord Jon. The creature flapped and wheezed. Her father took out a pistol and shot the fat, odious face between the eyes. He reported to others later that the fish began to cry when it saw the gun.

  The immense Plum fish was gutted and Ifritia’s foot was found in its third stomach. Her father forbade anyone to tell her that her foot had been rescued from the fish. She never knew that it stood in a glass case in the cedar attic atop her family home. As the days wore on and her affliction made her more holy every minute, the foot simmered in Time, turning dark and dry. She learned to walk with a crutch, and became pious to a degree that put off the village. They whispered that she was a spy for God. Dressing in pure white, she appeared around every corner with strict moral advice. They believed her to be insane and knew her to be death to any good time.

  Mina held her glass out to Father Walter. He slowly rose, grabbed the bottle, and filled it. He poured himself another and sat again.

  “Did she make a miracle at all?” he asked.

  “A few,” said Mina and dashed off her drink.

  “Can you tell me one?”

  “At a big wedding feast, she turned everybody’s wine to water. She flew once, and she set fire to a tree with her thoughts.”

  “Amazing,” said Father Walter. He stood and put his drink on the desk. “Come with me,” he said. “There’s something I think you’ll want to see.” She rose and followed him out the back door of the church. The sand was blowing hard, and he had to raise his arm in front of his eyes as he leaned into the wind. He looked back and Mina GilCragson was right behind him, holding her hat on with one hand. He led her to the shrine.

  Inside, he moved toward the altar, pointing. “There it is. Saint Ifritia’s foot,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” said Mina, stepping up beside him.

  “Right there,” he said and pointed again.

  She looked and an instant later went weak. Father Walter caught her by the arm. She shook her head and took a deep breath. “I can’t believe it,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “But there it is. You mustn’t touch it with your hands. You must only kiss the toes. I’ll stand outside. You can have a few minutes alone with it.”

  “Thank you so much,” she said, tears in her eyes.

  He went outside. Leaning against the buffeting wind, he pushed aside the bamboo curtain that protected the shrine’s one window. Through the sliver of space, he watched Mina approach the altar. Her hands were folded piously in front of her as he’d instructed. He realized that if she’d not worn the heels, she’d never have been able to reach the foot with her lips. As it was she had to go up on her toes. Her head bobbed forward to the relic, but it wasn’t a quick kiss she gave. Her head moved slightly forward and back, and Father Walter pictured her tongue passionately laving the rotten toes. It both gave him a thrill and made him queasy. He had a premonition that he’d be drinking hard into the night.

  After the longest time, Mina suddenly turned away from the foot. Father Walter let the bamboo curtain slide back into place and waited to greet her. She exited the shrine, and he said, “How was that? Did you feel the spirit?” but she never slowed to answer. Walking right past him, she headed toward the outhouse. The sand blew fiercely but she didn’t bother to hold her hat and it flew from her head. Mina walked as if in a trance. Father Walter was surprised when she didn’t go to the outhouse, but passed it, and headed up out of the valley into the dunes. On the beach, the wind would have been ten times worse. As she ascended, he called to her to come back.

  She passed over the rim, out of sight, and he was reluctant to follow her, knowing the ghost of the driver might be lurking in the blinding sandstorm. He turned back toward the church, his mind a knot of thoughts. Was she having a holy experience? Had he offended her? Was she poisoned by the old foot? He stopped to fetch her hat, which had blown up against the side of the outhouse.

  That night his premonition came true, and the whiskey flowed. He opened Mina GilCragson’s traveling bag and went through her things. By candlelight, whiskey in one hand, he inspected each of her articles of clothing. When holding them up, he recognized the faint scent of wild violets. He wondered if she was a saint. While searching for evidence in the aroma of a pair of her underpants, Sister North appeared out of the shadows.

  “What are you up to?” she asked.

  “Sniffing out a holy bouquet. I believe our visitor today may have been a saint.”

  “She was nothing of the sort,” said Sister North, who stepped forward and backhanded Father Walter hard across the face. His whiskey glass flew from his grasp and he dropped the underpants. Consciousness blinked off momentarily and then back on. He stared at her angry, yellow eyes as she reached out, grabbed his shirt, and pulled him to his feet. “Come with me,” she said.

  Outside, the sandstorm had abated and the night was clear and cool and still. Not letting go, she pulled Father Walter toward the shrine. He stumbled once and almost fell and for his trouble, she kicked him in the rear end. Candlelight shone out from the shrine’s one window, its bamboo curtain now rolled up. Sister North marched the father up to the altar and said to him, “Look at that.”

  “Look at what?” he said, stunned by drink and surprise.

  “What else?” she asked.

  And upon noticing, he became instantly sober, for the big toe of the holy foot was missing. “My god,” he said, moving closer to it. Where the toe had been was a knuckle stump of sheared gristle. “I thought she was sucking on it, but in fact she was chewing off the toe,” he said, turning to face Sister North.

  “You thought she was sucking on it . . .” she said. “Since when is sucking the holy toes allowed?”

  “She was a scholar of Saint Ifritia. I never suspected she was a thief.”

  Sister North took a seat and gave herself up to tears. He sat down beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. They stayed in the shrine until the candles melted down and the dawn brought birdcalls. Then they went to his bed. Before she fell asleep, the sister said to him, “It happened because you lied.”

  He thought about it. “Nahh,” he said. “It was bound to happen someday.” He slept and dreamt of the driver’s wife and daughters. When he woke, Sister North was gone.

  Sist
er North’s Sermon

  Father—

  By the time you find this, I’ll already be four miles inland, heading for the city. I mean to bring back the stolen toe and make amends to Saint Ifritia. She’s angry that we let this happen. You, of course, bear most of the responsibility, but I too own a piece of guilt. It may take me a time to hunt down Mina GilCragson. I’ll try the university first, but if she’s not a scholar, I fear she might be a trader on the black market, trafficking in religious relics. If that’s the case the toe could at this moment be packed on the back of a mule, climbing the northern road into the mountains and on through the clouds to the very beginning of the world. If so, I will follow it. If I fail, I won’t be back. One thing I’ve seen in my sleep is that at the exact halfway point of my journey, a man will visit the church and bring you news of me. If he tells you I am dead, then burn my shack and all my things and scatter my ashes over the sea, but if the last he’s seen of me I’m alive, then that means I will return. That, I’m sure of. Wake up and guard the foot with your very life. If I return after years with a toe and there is no foot, I’ll strangle you in your sleep. Think of me in bed and in the morning when you shovel sand pray for me. There are four bottles of whiskey under the mattress in my shack. You can have three of them. I spent a week of solitude contemplating your sermon and realized that you didn’t lie. That you actually killed the driver of the hay wagon. Which is worse? May the sweet saint have mercy on you.

  —Sister

  Two days later, Father Walter realized he’d taken Sister North for granted, and she was right, he had killed the driver just as he’d described in his sermon. Without her there, in her shack, in the shrine, in his bed, the loneliness crept into the sand dune valley and he couldn’t shake it. Time became a sermon, preaching itself. The sand and sun and sand and wind and sand and every now and then a visitor, whose presence seemed to last forever until vanishing into sand, a pilgrim with whom to fill the long hours, chatting.

  Every one of the strangers, maybe four a year and one year only two, was asked if they brought word from Sister North. He served them whiskey and let them preach their sermons before blessing them on their journeys to the end of the world. Sometimes an old man, moving slowly, bent, mumbling, sometimes a young woman, once a child on the run. None of them had word from her. In between these occasional visits from strangers lay long stretches of days and seasons, full of silence and wind and shifting sand. To pass the long nights, he took to counting the stars.