The Islands of Divine Music

by John Addiego

  What do you mean, I can’t call you Paulie? You’re not a kid anymore?

  No. I got the word that, from now on, I am Paul.

  Who said it? Samantha wanted to know.

  The Lord told me. Clear as I’m talking to you right now.

  Great, Angelo said, clapping his hands, the line is finally moving. He grabbed Samantha’s shoes, and she climbed onto his neck above the knapsack. Her little hands were wet on his balding scalp.

  You think God talks to you? she asked.

  Yes. He stood an arm’s length from them, next to the line, and stared at Samantha. Angelo noticed the way the young couple in front of them, an attractive pair in matching spandex bicycle outfits, glanced at each other and chuckled. Now and then He does, Paul said.

  Are you my uncle who came back crazy from a war? The spandex couple covered their mouths.

  Honey, he wasn’t crazy, what your mama and I said is he was addicted to a drug when he came back, which makes people feel crazy, but he got well. I’m sorry, Paulie

  Paul. No, it’s okay, because she’s right. I was crazy after ’Nam. I was obsessed with death and getting high. I was a junkie until Jesus healed me on the island, and that’s when I started doing the Lord’s work.

  The line surged forward several yards, and Angelo didn’t know, as they neared the door, whether he should encourage more conversation in this vein or beg off. Excuse me for asking, he said after an awkward lull, but which Jesus are we talking about, Paulster? Jesús, or Jesus?

  I’d like to talk with you about that.

  Daddy always yells Jesus when he’s mad, Samantha said. Or Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.

  Paul stared soberly at the girl a moment, too long a moment for normal, then bellowed laughter. Your father is the funniest person I know. What does he do for a living? Does he write jokes?

  He writes ads. We bought our house, Mom’s and my house now, on a deodorant ad.

  Never mind that, Angelo said. Sweat crept across his brow. Spandex guy’s eyes rolled back, and Angelo asked him if he’d ever considered using a deodorant himself, and the guy turned away. Samantha told her uncle, in a very loud voice, that her father had written these ten words and gotten paid a pile of money: Because it’s never too late to make a first impression.

  Paul stroked his white beard and gazed above Samantha’s head. Angelo thought he looked like an Italian John Muir, or an old Civil War vet photographed at the fifty-year reunion at Gettysburg, some geezer who would hold a megaphone to his ear. Finally he said that it didn’t make any sense to him at all.

  It’s not supposed to make sense, exactly. The spandex people squeezed inside. It’s supposed to sell deodorant, and they paid me enough to put a down payment on a house. Listen, you want to join us?

  Samantha climbed down from her father’s shoulders and touched her uncle’s huge belt buckle, a battered plate of brass with horses on it. Did you know, she said, that this is the turn of the century?

  Paul stared at his little brother. No, he said. I didn’t know that.

  The two men began the story of the Jesús they knew for Samantha’s benefit, the Jesús with their last name, not the famous guy who’d died on the cross and started Christmas decorations and Easter-egg hunting, Angelo said. He told his daughter that her great-grandfather had left her great-grandmother for a young Mexican woman, who’d given birth to Jesús, here in North Beach. After the old man died, this Jesús and his mother took off for migratory farm work and disappeared until he was about eighteen and wandering around San Francisco, kind of like your Uncle Paulie seems to be doing now, when he ran into our sister and got reconnected with the family.

  Paul.

  Paul. That was what, thirty-three, thirty-five years ago? So, he becomes kind of an Indian cult leader, and our aunt gets him a job cleaning the church with me.

  You cleaned up a church?

  Part-time, while I was going to college and doing guerrilla theater with a bunch of wacky friends.

  You did gorilla theater, dressed up as gorillas?

  You could say that and get away with it, yes. Political monkey theater, mostly about Dick Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Anyway, Jesús: technically, he was our uncle, or step-uncle, even though he was younger than either Paulie or myself.

  Paul.

  Right. You know, you’re lucky God didn’t name you Ali Bagman or something, like this friend of Sam’s mom. This way you don’t have to change your ID or anything.

  Was the church dirty?

  The church was filthy, you wouldn’t believe what slobs those Catholics were. Gum stuck to the bottom of the pews, mud on the kneeling pads. Hey, Paulie, Paul, you okay?

  His brother was standing now in the middle of the crowded restaurant, his eyes closed. He didn’t answer at first, and Angelo and Sam exchanged looks. Then he said he needed to get going, but he’d come by their mother’s house later tonight. Yes, tonight. Angelo stood to hug him again, but Paul was off, his head down and cocked to one side as if he were listening for something.

  Okay, Angelo yelled. Tonight. I’ll tell Ma.

  Their mother’s house in the East Bay depressed him, and he rarely stayed there for long. A palpable decrepitude was what Jennifer had said of the place, and he wondered now if the way his mom lived had contributed to Jenn’s decision to leave him. It was a shrine to loss, a place to remember lost children and lost marriage, and symbols of these losses lay about under dust and cobwebs. High school portraits of Angie’s brother Paulie and sister Penny, the two that had been missing or drifting aimlessly for over thirty years now; a chipped dining room set and yellowed curtains from the World War II years when his folks had married; his late sister Mickey’s bedroom, left intact, arrested in a childhood of Down syndrome that had lasted nearly thirty years. Only he and his little sister had escaped complete ruin and left recent photos of grandchildren and new cars from their homes five hundred miles north and south of here. While the photos of Angelo and his sister Janine (whose homosexuality remained secret to their parents) turned gray-templed and bruised-eyed making babies and mortgage payments, the others remained forever young on the mantel.

  I haven’t seen Paulie in a year, his mother said. She sighed heavily over her wineglass. I won’t hold my breath. I’m so glad you boys got to see each other, at least.

  Sam called her mom, then gave the phone to Angelo. Jennifer sounded upset, and for a nanosecond of conscious thought Angelo allowed that her sadness was regret, for leaving him, for not being there with her husband and daughter on vacation. No, it had to do with dairy products. Didn’t he remember how dairy-sensitive Sam was? Had he forgotten the respiratory infections, the nights they’d stayed up holding her over a vaporizer? He hadn’t forgotten. In fact, the memory of sitting up in bed with little Sam and Jennifer made his eyes water. Are you going to make sure she eats something green tomorrow?

  I think her grandmother just gave her some green gummy worms.

  Angelo, be serious for a change.

  Sam slept in Penny’s old bed, and Angelo made like a doctor with a thick German accent and listened to her breathing. Du must stop eatink der cow’s milch, kinder!

  How do you eat milk, dummy?

  I don’t know, but it is verboten!

  Dad, please? Seeing the old uncle had made her ever more curious about the mysterious aunt from whom her middle name came, that beautiful young woman above the fireplace who was the family fugitive. Angelo told her a few things about his sister as he rubbed his daughter’s back and listened to her breathing. Penny was the smartest one in the family. That might not be saying much, however.

  Can the sarcasm, please, Dad. What’s a fugitive?

  It means you’re on the run from the law. Anyway, the reason she’s a fugitive is because her crime was taken very seriously by the government.

  What does the government care? Sam yawned. It wasn’t like she killed somebody, right?

  Right. Well, somebody did die by accident when she and some people burned a bunch of property
. Anyway, the government cares a lot about certain things, especially during a war.

  That’s dumb, Sam said before falling asleep.

  A few hours later, while Angelo was watching Letterman, the doorbell rang. His brother stood on the porch, eyes huge behind glasses held together by electrical tape. The old place, he said.

  Angelo offered him a beer, but Paul said he was clean and turned it down. They sat and watched TV for a half hour before Paul spoke again. You ever wonder if Jesus really is God, and if he’s still alive?

  Which Jesus are we talking about this time?

  The one with our last name. Angie, I think I’m close to finding him.

  Oh, Christ, Angelo sighed. You mean, you don’t think Jesús died?

  You think it’s possible he came back to life?

  Came back to life. Why would you think that?

  Paul paced in front of the set. Angelo felt a little bit afraid of him, and he thought of things to hit his brother over the head with, should he go ballistic. The padded footstool. The remote. Paulie, Paul, did he really cure your addiction that night on the island? Wait. Let me get another beer, and then you tell me about it, okay?

  The Jesús that Paul remembered was a natural leader among the Indians who occupied Alcatraz Island. He wasn’t a fiery speaker exactly, but when he spoke about pain and oppression it made your skin crawl, it made the ground underneath you fall away, and you felt this timelessness and selflessness that were a lot like the heroin Paul had been addicted to. And he was physically beautiful, and his touch had an electrical charge and heat on your scalp. That was how the healing started, during the circle drum when Paul was already in a kind of trance from the singing and the rhythm, there on the island at midnight. Their sister Penny was there, like some disciple, and Jesús came up to Paul and placed his hands on his head, and a place in his forehead opened up and let the demon of addiction out and let the source of God’s healing in.

  He opened your third eye, so to speak. Angelo muted the TV. The screen filled with the face of a young man with hair like meringue.

  I don’t believe in that third eye stuff, Paul said.

  Or, whatever, he let out the bad and let in the good, or something.

  Drugs are demonic energy sent to us by Satan. Paul paced again. Our country, this whole fucking world, we are so filled with Satan’s seductive drugs!

  That oversized book of pictures of classic cars, which the boys had gotten their father as a joint Christmas gift over forty years ago, its cover so sun-bleached now that the Stutz Bearcat was reduced to the ghost of a rolled fender and a few spokes, might stun his brother if he smacked him over the head with it.

  Their mother walked in. She gave Paul a hug and castigated him for never coming to see her. What, is it so hard to come across the bay and see your old mother?

  I don’t live in the city, Ma, I’m just visiting.

  Where do you live now?

  On that same hippie farm in the Southwest. Sunshine Farm.

  Sunshine Farm. Jesus. You were a baby when you left, and you never really came back, Paulie, and I still blame myself for signing that paper.

  Pop signed it.

  You were underage! You were underage, and they let you go to Vietnam, those bastards. They ruined your life, and Penny’s life!

  My life’s not ruined, Ma.

  Yeah, right.

  Sure you won’t have a beer? Angelo asked. Some leftover gnoc-chi? His mother and brother stood staring at each other. Oh, Christ. He wanted to grab his daughter and drive back to LA. He wanted to find his brother a job and a therapist, his mother a husband or a roommate or a support group. He walked to the kitchen and opened the fridge, and a teardrop fell on his lens. He wanted his mom to love him as much as she loved Paulie and Penny, her first and most precious babies, her lost lambs.

  The next day they went to the city in Angelo’s station wagon, a functional-looking Italian American family, he thought, with the guys in front and the gals in back. A cousin’s granddaughter, a year older than Samantha, sat between Angelo’s daughter and mother and giggled most of the way. He dropped them off at Union Square, in front of Macy’s.

  Ma, please don’t let her put on so much makeup and perfume that some social worker busts my chops, okay?

  His mother laughed. She looked happy, perky in her dashiki. She told her boys to enjoy the ballgame, or wherever they were going. Angelo drove through the heavy traffic to the Mission District and found a parking place in a neighborhood of loud colors and Spanish advertisements. He fed four dollars into the meter. So, where’s this burrito joint? he asked his brother.

  Paul walked in silence, his brow knitted. Angelo had to work to keep up with him. They were walking through what Angelo might call a ghetto, and the boys he saw crowded around a car he would call gang-bangers. Thumping hip-hop blended with salsa, corny organs and melodramatic chords on synthesizers, the word amor in a sleazy echo repeated every few seconds, love, oh, careless love, he thought, mixed with rap cadences punctuated by butt, bitch, and fuck. His old soldier/junkie brother, the baseball star, Mr. Strong and Silent, whose exploits on the field had been their father’s favorite subject when they’d been kids, marched fearlessly through the valley of gangstas to a taqueria.

  All of the other patrons were Mexicans, apparently. Angelo bought them little tacos with radish and lime garnish. He drank a Corona while Paul stuck with water. Paul wanted to stay when they were done eating, so Angelo ordered another beer. A tall man with long white hair entered the restaurant, and Paul went up to hug him.

  Jim Littlebear, Paul said, this is my brother, Angelo. He knew Jesús.

  Not in the biblical sense, Angelo said. He chuckled and shook the man’s hand. Well. Can I buy you a beer? Some tacos?

  Jim Littlebear accepted a beer. He and Paul sat and stared at each other for some time, Mona Lisa smiles playing across their lips. Angelo tried to engage them in conversation. You guys should try these fish tacos. Where do you guys know each other from? You live here, Jim? You guys in the same outfit or something?

  Their silence became embarrassing to Angelo. He gazed out the window. He pulled out his laptop and checked his mail. He got within one digit of writing his wife. Jim Littlebear walked slowly to the jukebox, which had just finished a Mexican corrido, and dropped quarters into it. He smiled as the music started up again: Nights in White Satin. The Moody Blues made no sense to Angelo in a little Mexican taqueria. His brother and Jim Littlebear resumed their postures at the table, now and then closing their eyes and rocking their heads to the music. Both men were silent through the entire song. Angelo found the crapper, which seemed to him imported specially from Tijuana. He could hear the cheerful beat of another ballad from Northern Mexico, then Nights in White Satin again. Gag me with a patchouli stick, Angelo thought. When he came out there were three more people at the table, two of whom were Indian or Mexican women, the third a little white troll with a longer beard than Paul’s.

  My brother, Angelo, Paul said. Lorna Dee Hernández, Kathy Manslayer, and Roger the Lodger. I don’t know your last name, Lodger.

  That’s cool, nobody does, the little man croaked.

  Man slayer? Angelo asked.

  My brother knew Jesús, maybe better than I did because they worked together.

  The ladies nodded their heads and made oohing sounds. Lorna Dee was a dark, plump woman with short black hair and thick glasses. Manslayer had long silver-and-black hair which fell across her sharp cheeks. Something in the arc of her neck made him think of Jennifer. Roger asked if anybody besides him was hungry, and Lorna Dee called out to the waitress in Spanish.

  I guess we should start, Jim Littlebear said.

  Paul said that he guessed they were all as anxious as he was to see Jesús again. Angelo noticed that the younger woman, Lorna Dee, had a puzzled expression on her face as his brother spoke. Paul related the hands-on healing experience, how he’d been cured of heroin addiction.

  Amen, Angelo said. He raised his hands in
the air. He kept a straight face. A slow Mexican polka with quivering, nasal voices groaned in the background. Plates of beans, tortillas, and rice came to their table. The Lodger dug in.

  Lorna Dee’s brow remained knitted during Paul’s talk and continued its scowl through Littlebear’s description of Jesús preaching on Alcatraz. How Jesús had seemed aware of the troubled spirits of the former inmates, how he’d told riddles which you had to puzzle over until they hit you right here, and he struck himself on the head by way of punctuation.

  Hallelujah, Angelo said, raising his arms again, trying to catch Lorna Dee’s attention. Nobody seemed to notice.

  Lorna Dee raised her hand, like a kid in class, and Jim called on her like a teacher. Her maroon nails extended a couple of inches past the tips of her fingers. When Kathy called me, I thought we were going to talk about the newspaper articles, she said.

  Newspaper of Jesus, Angelo said, arms rising again.

  Kathy Manslayer touched his arm. They were all glaring at him now. Why are you here? When Kathy asked him this, Angelo blushed. It wasn’t just her neck, it was the shape of her eyebrows, especially now that she was mad, which made him think of Jennifer. He apologized, but Kathy kept glaring at him.

  Okay, he said, I am really sorry. I’ll try to be a better person.

  I wonder if you really knew him, Kathy said.

  Well, I did. We used to make each other laugh when we were supposed to be cleaning the Venetian blinds in the church rectory. You guys talk about him like he was God’s only begotten son, but I saw a very human side to him. He could imitate voices, for one thing. He did that Indian shtick as a gag in our guerrilla theater. Paulie, don’t you remember he was Mexican and Italian? He just looked like an Indian.

  The group at table sat silently for a moment. Even the music stopped, the whining waltzes and polkas about love. Kathy Man-slayer stared at Angelo. Finally she asked him why he was such a pessimist.

  I’m a pessimist because I don’t think our step-uncle, or whatever you want to call him, was the actual son of God?

  Negative, Jim Littlebear said. Heads nodded sympathetically.