by James Peters
The next couple of days I lived in a daze of delirium. Brief moments of wakefulness, freezing and convulsing as my feverish body fought the infection. From time to time, I’d wake to be given a broth and go to the bathroom. I found out later that during my delirium, I happily spoke in Galactic Standard for Gina and Henry. Apparently, I carried on full conversations that they recorded on a primitive tape recorder they borrowed from the banker in town. They said that they had to record this ‘miracle’.
On the third day, I started to rally. I found myself sitting up in bed for an hour or more at a time, feeling stronger and hungry enough to eat. They brought me a plate of scrambled eggs; I devoured them not knowing what animal they belonged to or how the eggs had been harvested. I’m sure there had to be some bloody ritual involved, but I didn’t care. My body needed the calories and I grew to like the taste. Gina always brought me the food, adjusted my pillows and she simply sat there, with me, like she cared. I saw a true kindness in her eyes that I’d never encountered before. She held my hands when I shivered and brought me a wet cloth to put on my head when my temperature spiked. I liked holding her hands; it gave me the inspiration to keep fighting. With her around, I found my mood improving and my situation started to appear tolerable.
On the fifth day, Gina brought her grandfather in to see me, and apparently he insisted on talking with me. She introduced him as Grampa Lyle and whispered to me to ‘humor him’ before she left us alone. I looked him over. If he had been born in the Empire, I’d guess him to be one-hundred-fifty years old. His hands appeared spotted and bent; his eyes dark and clouded. He had prodigious hair growing from his ears and nose, but none on his head. He smelled ‘old’; slightly musty with a bitter tinge.
While I looked him over, he did the same to me. He frowned a bit as if my appearance disappointed him. He finally broke the silence. “Gina tells me you talk funny. Go right ahead, say something funny.”
I’m supposed to humor him and say something funny. But what’s funny to a barbarian, stinky Grampa? I tried to think of a joke that would translate, but nothing came to me. Would he understand that Katochian women are known for their promiscuity? I had a joke about being hit by a bag of credits, but that probably wouldn’t translate right. I finally muttered, “A monkey bit my scrotum.”
Grampa Lyle stared at me for a moment, took a deep breath, and let out the largest guffaw of laughter I ever heard in my life. During his laughter, he broke wind ferociously; the smell horrendous, and that got us both gagging and laughing. The laughter grew louder as we laughed at each other. We finally paused for a moment; he wiped a tear from his eyes and said, “Wow. That’s not what I expected to hear from this angel Gina’s been going on about. I was expected to hear some ‘gloop gloo gobbledy gook’ the way she talked. Where are you from, boy? You have a strange accent.”
“Gloop gloo gobbledy gook,” I said.
We both laughed a little more.
“Seriously. Where ya’ from?”
“Sweden,” I said, recalling what Bobby the cop had said.
“Sweden? Oh my God! Swedish women are hot! You ever end up in a sauna with a hotty?”
Translating slang is always tough. I tried a noncommittal answer. “We have saunas, and they are hot.”
“That’s not what I asked. Them Swedish babes sauna naked, don’t they?”
“I don’t think it would be safe to bring a babe into a sauna,” I said.
“Hell no. Especially if I was in there!” Grampa Lyle said. “I’d like to get in there with a couple of them big blonde bimbos. That’s how I want to die. Smother me to death in blondes!”
“Big blonde bimbos?”
“Yup. I saw this movie once when I was in the navy. Ya’ see, this guy was a fish delivery boy, and he was sent to a sauna to deliver some smoked salmon. There were a couple of blondes in there, with boobies out to here.” He held his hands out way in front of himself. “Gretchen and Helga. Oh, man have I ever dreamed of Gretchen and Helga! Anyway, in this cinematic masterpiece It wasn’t just the salmon that got smoked if ya’ know what I mean! I tried to get transferred to Sweden after that; I begged and I pleaded with my superior officers, but they just kept sending me to one hell-hole after another. I never did meet a Gretchen or Helga.”
He looked toward the floor for a moment, then his smile reappeared as his eyes met mine. “But I had my share of Marthas and Eleanors.”
“I bet you have.”
I looked him over again. “Do you mind if I ask how old you are, sir?”
“I was born in eighty-two. I’ll be seventy-four in November.”
“I would have guessed a lot younger.” It was a lie. In the Empire, a seventy-four-year-old was closing in on middle age. Here, it was closing in on death.
“So tell me, Sonny, you got a special gal? Some girl that gets your motor running?”
“There was one girl I liked, but everything I did made me look like an idiot. She didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“What was her name, son?”
“Maven.”
“Maven. Not as good as Helga, but not bad. What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. We got separated. She may be dead.”
“Well I’ll tell ya’ something, and if you tell her I’ll swear that you’re full of crap, but Gina has her eye on you. She’s a good girl, not the best-looking gal in the world, but she’s got a good heart. A fella’ like you could do a lot worse.”
“She’s a lovely girl. Probably the sweetest I’ve ever known.” I thought about how a smile curved across my face when she visited, even when I felt horrible. But then an issue occurred to me. She’s not from the Empire. She’s what we would call barbarian, and in fifty years would look like this guy. I’d still have seventy years or more left in me. That is if I didn’t start aging like these people did, at twice the natural rate.
“What’s the matter, son? Are you shy? The way she talks about you, she thinks you got angel wings. Said you could talk the angel tongue.”
“She just heard me speaking naturally.”
“Funny about that, son. She played me a tape of your words. Didn’t sound like the Swedish that I know from that movie.”
“I probably wasn’t talking about getting my salmon smoked.”
“Ha! That’s true. If you weren’t talking sexy, I wouldn’t recognize it. But you sounded different. It sounded like nothing I’ve ever heard before.”
“I was on the edge of death. I probably just made random noises.”
“Could be. Or maybe you got the angel tongue. Only one way to know fer’sure.”
“How’s that?”
“Have Gina take you to the holy man. He’ll know.”
***
The next day, Gina came to visit me. She beamed as she looked at me. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” I couldn’t deny she was cute when she smirked. But I saddened at the thought of such a short life for a sweet person. The cruelty of the universe defined right there before me.
“What’s wrong?” she said, her smile dropping to a frown.
“Nothing. Just that I can’t ever repay you for your kindness.”
“Don’t be silly. We’re good Christian folks. We had to take you in and don’t expect anything in return.”
“That’s very kind of you. But I promise to make it all up to you somehow.”
As I talked, she straightened up my pillow and checked my scraps of food. She stared at the bacon. “Don’t you like bacon?”
“Wasn’t really sure what it was. Looked a little too…”
What, barbarian? I couldn’t say that.
“Animal-like.”
“Well, of course it’s animal-like. It’s bacon! Our own pigs of course. Pa butchered one last Saturday.”
“I’ll try it later. My stomach has been pretty weak lately. I think that medicine did something to my system.”
“I bet. That was veterinarian-grade antibiotics. It probably cleaned you out,” she said, “Give it so
me time. Your system needs to get back to normal.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and took my hand. “Did Grampa talk to you yesterday?”
“Yes…you know he did. You led him here.”
“Yes, I know. I meant did he talk to you about seeing the preacher man?”
“He did mention it. I think…” she interrupted me before I could finish with ‘it’s a crazy idea’.
“Great! Are you feeling up to going to town? I’ve called the Reverend and he has time to see you this afternoon.”
“Uh.”
“Excellent! Now get cleaned up. I left some of Pa’s dressier clothes on the dresser. He said you could wear them and doesn’t use them often. I think they’ll fit you.”
My stomach wanted to knot up as I prepared to meet this reverend.
***
We pulled up to the church; the sign read ‘Pentecost Church of the Divine Spirit’.
Under the marquee, it read, ‘This week’s Sermon: The Unforgivable Sin and Eternal Damnation - A Puppet Show for the kids.’
My stomach filled with great, pulsating butterflies churning at a thousand RPM as I approached the door. I found the office of Rev. David Goligoth.
I took a deep breath and rapped on the door. A thunderous voice, deep and strong, rumbled in the floorboards. “Come in!”
I took a deep breath, eased the door open, and saw Reverend Goligoth sitting in his desk chair. The reverend was, by human standards, a large man. He looked to be crushing the chair, or perhaps engulfing the chair. He stood and I followed him on his way up until I wondered if he’d hit his head on the low ceiling.
“Gina told me a lot about you. She says you speak in tongues, like some sort of soothsayer.”
My eyes leveled out, and I stared straight into his chest.
“I swear I’ve never said sooth.” I tried to joke, but he didn’t laugh. “She told me a lot about you too, sir,” I said, lying through my teeth. “All good.”
“I wanted you to come in here to find out what kind of a man you really are.” He reached a hand out toward me, large enough to crush my skull. He shook my hand and I felt as if either the bones in my hand would shatter or I would hit the ceiling. My mind raced. He’s a giant! The story of David and Goliath from the bible ran through my head. Don’t slip and call him Reverend Goliath!
“Good, good. Do sit down.”
“Thank you, sir.” It occurred to me that he hadn’t let go of my hand. I tried to pull it back, but he gripped it harder and raised his other hand. I sat there, uncomfortably holding the big man’s hand across the desk.
“What do you know about the serpent, son?”
“The serpent? Not much, sir. Not particularly fond of them.”
“Some people consider them inherently evil. I, however, disagree with that consensus. After all, why would God put a creature on this great Earth if it was simply evil? Let me introduce you to my friend, Ssssam.”
He pulled a plastic bin from his desk and set it on the desk, squeezing my hand even harder as I realized that the container must hold a large, probably venomous, snake.
“Pleased to meet you, Ssssam,” I said.
The snake, still in the plastic bin, snapped forward and tried to bite me. Its fangs hit the side of the bin, and a white venom dripped on the plastic wall. I watched it fall to the bottom of the bin, looking for a way to get me.
“It’s okay, Ssssam. You see, my boy, some folks think that the serpent is evil, but my friend serves a purpose. He is a fantastic measure of sin and lies. If you lie to me, he will bite you. Something as simple as your ‘pleased to meet you’ was enough for him to know you are lying. No one is ever pleased to meet Ssssam.”
“You are correct. It was just a figure of speech.”
“Well, be careful of your figures of speech. As long as you tell me the truth, we’ll have no problems. Now Ssssam does get a little testy with the ‘intentional omissions meant to deceive’, too.”
Goliath, no Reverend Goligoth, opened the lid and slid the snake onto the desk. “So, Gina tells me you aren’t from around here. I’m assuming she means you journeyed here from overseas. Please, do tell me about your travels.”
A cold sweat dripped from my armpits and I knew I had to walk a fine line between the truth and misrepresenting myself.
“Come now, Ssssam tends to be impatient.”
My voice cracked. “There’s not a lot to say. It was a small ship, only carrying a few people. It was a little crowded, but I got here.”
Sssam’s head moved a little back and forth, but he didn’t strike.
“Tell me about your travel companions,” he said.
“Well, there was this Rastafarian; Nicholai was his name. He was a drug runner, stoned most of the time. I didn’t care for him, so I mostly stayed out of his way. I tried to straighten him out from time to time, but he was more interested in smoking ganja than listening to reason.”
“Drugs are the Devil’s delight! I trust you abstained from them?”
I saw fire in his eyes.
“Oh, yes sir. I had nothing to do with the drugs, nothing whatsoever. I swear Mr. Golia - Goligoth.”
The snake’s eyes twitched, but he did not move.
“Good, good. At least you avoided that sin. Was there anyone else on the ship?”
“Yes sir, there was a lady. Her name was Maven Blackheart.”
“Maven Blackheart? And what did this Miss Blackheart do?” he said, spitting out her name as if he spoke of some whore.
“I don’t know exactly.” The snake raised up and my heart raced. “I thought of her as the pilot, but when we first met, she was a dominatrix. You know, black rubber corset, whip, domination. She wouldn’t tell me what she really did, I swear.” Ssssam flicked his tongue at me but didn’t strike. “I called her a pilot because that was the duty she took on.”
“So where did you meet this motley crew of sailors?”
“At a party.” The snake raised up, opening its mouth wide to display sharpened fangs. “An orgy. I wasn’t invited, so I crashed the party.” The snake closed its mouth.
“An orgy?!” His face turned a color of red typically reserved for tomatoes, radishes or pools of blood after a knife fight.
“I wasn’t a part of it.”
“Ssssam doesn’t disagree with your statement. So you were on this ship with a drug runner and this dominatrix. I trust that you remained chaste during your journey?”
Galactic Standard has very few homonyms, so my translator implant mistranslated ‘chaste’. “Yes sir, I was chased, and it was the most horrible and difficult time of my life. You see, there was this monkey…”
“A monkey?”
“A chimpanzee to be more precise. He was some kind of a sex-simian. Always running around in ass-less chaps, flinging poo at me. He was insane.”
“A sex-simian?”
“Yes, when I met him, he wore a pink tutu and the chaps. I said that they were ass-less, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did.”
“I don’t know exactly what he did, but he was clearly oversexed. I tell you, it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever experienced, being chased under those conditions. He also liked to puke on me.”
“You found the difficulty with the monkey and not the woman? The woman in the black rubber corset?”
“Absolutely. Maven pretty much ignored me the whole time. But Marco; that was the monkey’s name. He would get hyped up and jump in the shower with me. One time, he grabbed me and he flipped upside down, sticking his butt in my face.”
“Oh dear Lord!”
“Exactly. It was driving me insane.”
“That’s truly sick, young man.”
“I know. The sad thing is, sometimes I wonder what happened to that little bugger. We were separated when I arrived.”
“Let me get this straight. Did you have a relationship with the monkey?”
“What do you mean relationship? He puked on me regularly, flung his poo at me, and made it a point to make
me look stupid in front of Maven. Does that equal a relationship? One time he tried to insinuate that I had spanked him. I swore that I hadn’t, but she didn’t believe me.”
“She didn’t believe that you hadn’t spanked him?”
“No. She didn’t believe it. I mean, the evidence looked so damning. I ran after him, I was naked, and he pointed at his bottom and gestured that I had struck him. I swore that I hadn’t, but she didn’t believe me. I mean what would you say under those conditions?”
“My serpent friend here believes you on this matter. I supposed if I were you, I’d look her in the eye, and simply tell her.”
“Tell her what, exactly?” I said, glad to get him talking instead of me.
“I’d just say,” the reverend raised his voice, “I never spanked the monkey.”
Just then, Ssssam raised up and turned his head. To me it all seemed to happen in slow motion; I tried to say something as I watched the snake’s fangs dig into the Reverend Goligoth’s arm.
“Jesus Christ, not again!” He said.
“Are you alright, Reverend Goliath?”
“What did you call me?” He released my hand and crushed the snake with a quick grasp of his massive hand. “Nobody calls me that. Not since grade school have I been so insulted. Oh dear Lord, it’s all starting again. I can feel the toxin boiling in my veins. Not the venom from the snake, the poison in my soul. I remember it now, all the other kids screaming, ‘David is Goliath!’ and shooting dirt clods at my head with their slingshots. Oh dear, not the voices again! No, I won’t listen to you, you’re not the voice of God! God wouldn’t tell me to burn things! No! Now, all those years of therapy gone, wasted! You are a horrible, horrible little man! Why do you do these things? Are you touched by Satan?”
Realizing he had released my hand, I jumped to my feet and fled as he reached into a small refrigerator and fumbled with a box marked ‘Antivenom’, dumping a syringe on the desk. I ran outside and slowed to a dignified pace as I rounded the corner, toward Gina’s truck.