The citizens of Poughkeepsie sat on wooden benches, on cushioned seats under citybuilt canopies, on lawn chairs and blankets, and all through the branches of trees. Those who came later ended up standing as the crowds piled in tighter and tighter. The Mount occupied an area south of the city. North of it stood the mayor’s Mansion, a glass-walled pavilion where every year the city manager mimed the beheading of the mayor as an appeasement to any Malignant Ones hovering about the town. To the south of the hill, along the riverbank, stood a row of concrete shelters set up for pilgrims on their way north to the national parks in the Adirondack Mountains near the Canadian border. For the past weeks, ever since the announcement of Lightstorm’s coming, the city had kept the shelters closed for fear that out of town pilgrims would try to take spots reserved for residents. Today, both the shelter area and the mansion grounds would fill up with the overflow of the crowd. East of the shelter, but still south of the Mount, began the strip of malls and shopping centres that dotted the Highway of the Nine Wonders between Poughkeepsie and Wappingers Falls.
To the east of Recital Mount, just the other side of the highway, lay a town recreation centre, with a swimming pool ringed by concrete water guardians. Past the pool began a golf course whose location near the Mount produced low scores, thereby attracting players from as far away as New York City and Connecticut. Several years before Lightstorm’s day in Poughkeepsie a golfer playing out of bounds next to the highway sliced his ball over the road to hit an out-of-work gardener looking through the fence surrounding Recital Mount. The gardener decided that God had chosen him for a Speaker, and for the next few weeks he predicted various developments for the local area, including the discovery of mineral deposits under the civic centre on Market Street. For a time he maintained a certain fame, with investors coming up from New York, until the city hired an earth sensitive from Denver to tell them the best place to dig up the foundation and begin drilling. Her report found nothing but granite and one or two captured spirits from before the Revolution. The gardener/prophet tried to insist that Ferocious Ones had taken away the deposits as a punishment for Poughkeepsie’s sins and would restore them if everyone followed him in a month of prayer, fasting, and sexual excess. Only a few people, mostly teenagers, paid any attention. The investors returned to New York, the sensitive had to sue to get her fee, and the gardener, evicted from his house by an angry city council, moved to Wappingers Falls where he set up a small temple of penitence in a former movie theatre around the corner from the bridge over the falls.
On the north side of the Mount, southwest of the mayor’s mansion, stood a walled complex of residences maintained by the Poughkeepsie Teller’s Committee in an official ‘poverty’ so splendid the Chamber of Commerce used to feature sketches of it on the cover of its investment brochures until a court order forced them to stop. From here Lightstorm would begin his march up the Mount to the platform.
To the hill’s west, like a green and silver cat forever stretching in the sun, flowed the Hudson River, ‘our ancient mother’ as Maryanna Split Sky once called it, bounded by cliffs and forests and homes and railroad tracks. On that day the water churned with fish who’d gathered to hear the master whose fame had spread to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the sea. Many years ago the Army of the Saints, released by the victory in Poughkeepsie from its headquarters in New York, had sailed up the river in barges covered with white and yellow flowers (a journey enacted weekly in Spring and Summer and sold to the public as the Boat Ride to Poughkeepsie). The Malignant Ones who had fled the technophile bombs had hidden in the river. Now they floated in the water, ready to devour the boat. To protect the Founders the Living World sent a group of children into the river, their mouths filled with stones to throw at the enemy. A Ferocious One in the form of a beautiful woman rose up before them. To each child she appeared as the child’s mother, purified of weakness or jealousy or rage, shining with love. The children dropped their stones and swam to the woman, whose kiss sucked the souls from their bodies. Her own greed defeated her. She swelled up so large that the Army saw the bloated body and discovered the trap. Sadly, they could not help the children. Though they punctured the Malignant One the children’s souls fled into the water before the Founders could restore them.
In Jennifer Mazdan’s time you could still hear children crying every night after eleven o’clock, a wailing that made it impossible to build housing along the riverside. Sailboats, barges, and tourist boats would sometimes get bits of souls tangled up in their rudders, causing the boats to spin in circles until the children came loose again.
Some time around one in the afternoon Lightstorm emerged from the residence. He travelled up the hill in the grand manner, sweeping the path with the folds of his recital skin. Bills and coins lay all over the tiles, offerings of the people who’d managed to make their way through the crowd. The gesture of ‘cleaning the road’ with his sleeve demonstrated the Teller’s non-interest in personal gain. (After the Recital the faceless Workers from the residence would come and pick up the money in baskets the shape of squatting pigs.) As he climbed the hill Lightstorm thought of the satellite hook-up that should have been carrying his voice across the continent. He wondered whom his chairperson had found to replace him. He glanced over at the privileged hicks (presumably the mayor and the City Council if that’s what they had here) sitting under parasols on velvet-covered benches right along the pathside. Right alongside. He’d be lucky if they didn’t try to touch him. Their mouths hung open as if they expected him to feed them their dinner. The hicks might decide they’d got a little richer food than they wanted when they discovered just what picture their imported star was planning for this feast of theirs.
The fact was, the Tellers didn’t like doing ‘The Place Inside’ any more than their listeners liked hearing it. Telling it could leave you depressed for weeks. According to Judy Whitelight, Gail Morningsun over in Brooklyn had once needed a bleeder to drain off the scum of guilt left over in her from the end of the Picture. When he’d heard that about Gail, he remembered, he’d said ‘What could you expect from someone who went around saying “our people” need us to give them back the “beauty” in their lives?’ Now—now he wished he could leave the hicks gaping down each other’s mouths and go home to New York for a long soak in the pool in the courtyard.
‘The Place Inside’. He needed that as much as he needed this exile up the Hudson in the first place. Misery. That was the Inner Meaning of the Picture. He thought Great work, Li Ku. Just what I need. A Picture that teaches misery. Dedication to insanity was more like it.
Somehow the story contained—something—you couldn’t really say what, except that it had nothing to do with the official meaning. But who could understand Li Ku? No one liked her. Even in the Revolution they called her the Insane Founder. They almost killed her that time she dragged in those tattooed followers of hers to spit at Rebecca Rainbow’s feet.
Finally Lightstorm got free of the rows of ‘distinguished’ hicks. At the top of the Mount he sat down in a highbacked chair made of polished mahogany with nicely cushioned seats and snakes inlaid in gold along the arms. Hopelessly garish, but at least they’d given him something decent to sit on. If only they’d thought of some shelter from the sun.
He stroked the chairarms, thinking of the time John Thundervoice had accepted an invitation to go out to Utah (Utah! Lightstorm could hardly believe such places existed) for the Day of Truth. He’d returned in shock with tales of frozen food and a Teller’s chair that was little more than a stone bench. ‘They think it’s still the Time of Fanatics out there,’ he’d told Allan. ‘I mean, what could I do? Jaleen Heart-of-the-World used to kneel on stone with bare knees. So I couldn’t say anything. But that was the Revolution, for God’s sake. I mean, we fucking won these battles. Someone should tell those people that the goddamn Revolution is over.’ He’d gone on like that for months.
Lightstorm looked out at his listeners. There were so many he could only see the tops of t
heir heads. Even the ones nearby, even the local Tellers sitting on the tier below him, appeared to have lost their bodies, become abstractions of faces. Suddenly he decided to give the Picture everything he had, to let it all out like he hadn’t done in years. He took a deep breath, then slowly turned his head from side to side. The hicks would remember this Day of Truth for the rest of their squealing little lives.
He laid his hands on his belly like someone who’s eaten a big meal. And then he began the story of ‘Too Pretty For Her Own Good’ and her lion lover.
2
That morning Jennifer Mazdan had woken to a loud clamour outside her house. It was the Day of Truth and the Spiritual Development Agency had sent out its crews of ‘sweepers’ to clear the area of destructive spiritual configurations. She lay in bed and listened to the noise—the detection machines with their bells and sirens, the sweepers’ whistles, their hoarse voices (they tended to hit the hives last, since everybody else left before sunup to get a good place) shouting back and forth and up and down the street. She groaned and got to her feet, scratching her right breast and then her side. She couldn’t tell if she was just dirty or the mosquitoes had found a hole in the screen door.
She half smiled, her mouth too groggy to grin. Maybe the itch was just the first signs of possession. Wasn’t that how it started with Mike’s aunt, what was her name, Margaret? Itching all over, then the next thing she knew she was eating rocks and spitting out gold. Jennie laughed. Mike said his uncle had refused to turn Margaret in, hoping to sell the nuggets. Only, when he brought them in they burned right through the jeweller’s tray or whatever it was he put them in. Poor Uncle Jack. The jeweller turned out to be an amateur meta-psychologist and knew right away how Jack had come by the gold. When the SDA came to defuse Margaret—apparently lights were going out all over Poughkeepsie, and some brass band down by the civic centre had started spraying the audience with oil from the bells of their horns—they found Margaret bouncing around the walls like a ping-pong ball. Mike said she nearly bit off some woman’s nose before they could net her and drive out the Ferocious One.
Jennie sighed. She was thinking about Mike again. Almost three years and she was still…One of these days she’d have to go down to that place by Ellenville and get scourged for all the guilt she was piling up violating the annulment. As the noise in the street came closer Jennie looked at the clock. She winced. Ten past six. She still couldn’t understand what had made her volunteer to work on the morning of the Day of Truth. It wasn’t the money, at least she didn’t think it was. Not that she couldn’t use the bonus.
She got herself up and waddled over to the window. About to yank open the dark brown curtains she realised she had better put something on. Marjorie Kowski was probably staring out of her window across the street, hoping the sweepers would find some cobwebs in someone along the block. The last thing Jennie needed was to parade nude for Marjorie Kowski. Ever since the annulment Jennie was sure Marjorie was making up stories of frustrated Ms Mazdan seducing everyone in sight, from the retired cop down the street to the Holy Sister who rode through the hive on her bicycle, blessing the neighbourhood.
She grabbed her yellow bathrobe from the dream stick at the end of the bed. For a moment she squinted at the wooden guardian. She’d never liked that grinning face and bulging eyes. There were two guardians for the bed. The stick supposedly scared away evil dreams hiding in the sheets. Above the headboard a doll with a blank face lay under a tiny blanket in a wooden box. By setting a good example the guardian would bring Jennie a restful sleep. She rubbed her neck, stiff every morning this week. Some rest.
Holding the robe closed with one hand she pushed aside the curtain over the bedroom windows. Outside, the sweepers, in their nylon jumpsuits and plastic helmets, were coming up to her corner. Some checked their instruments while others slashed the air with long poles wrapped in copper strips. Jennie remembered how Mike’s niece Glissie (short for Glissander of all things—idiot parents) used to love this ceremony almost as much as the Recital itself. She’d stayed with Mike and Jennie once the night before the holiday and the next morning had stood up on the couch and shrieked every time the sweepers blew their whistles.
The thought of the Recital relaxed Jennie a little. She wondered how Allan Lightstorm had ever decided to come to Poughkeepsie. At work people talked of nothing else, coming up with the craziest ideas and rumours and justifying them with every authority they could imagine, from cousins in the mayor’s office to dream visions of Lightstorm receiving commands from the Founders to go to Poughkeepsie. Jennie herself couldn’t imagine why someone who’d appeared on the cover of Time would even think of coming to a place like this. ‘Ours not to reason why,’ her supervisor had said. ‘Ours just to jump for joy.’
Then why wasn’t she jumping? All week, since the announcement, Jennie had slumped through work, tired, aching, then dragged herself home at night to sit and stare at the TV or even go to sleep right after dinner. She couldn’t figure what was wrong with her. She’d even gone down to the company infirmary, wondering if she was anaemic or something. Nothing. Blood bright and sparkly. The nurse had spent the whole time chattering about Allan Lightstorm moving to Poughkeepsie and setting up a blessing centre for the Mid-Hudson Valley Mystery Society.
The sweeper team advanced to the stretch of road in front of her and Ron Miller’s bits of lawn. Jennie was glad she didn’t work for the SDA. It was already so hot she’d begun to sweat in her bathrobe, and they were stuck in those protective suits. Mid-Hudson Energy didn’t pay much, but at least you could wear shorts.
Jennie took a step back from her window as the crew hesitated in front of her house. Why were they stopping? Was there something wrong? For some reason she thought of her father’s death, and her grandmother explaining how ‘Daddy’ (she’d never called him that, it was always ‘Jimmy’) had gone to the Living World.
The sweepers moved their arms in wide loops, swinging their detectors like swords, first at the sky, then down at the ground. And then they went on walking. Not even a step onto her property. Jennie sat down on the bed, then let herself fall so that the top of her head extended over the edge of the mattress. She was all right. No destructive configurations. No possession by ‘Being or Beings unknown’ as the courts described it. Whatever else was wrong with her Jennie was clean.
She got up and closed the curtains again, then took off the robe to stand in front of the narrow mirror on the closet door opposite the bed. She looked so tired, her breasts starting to sag, her face all drawn and thick looking.
Old. She was getting old and she wasn’t even thirty. It wasn’t fair. She stepped closer. She was getting a double chin, just what she needed. Tilting her head back, she stressed the neck muscles. Maybe she should sleep with a strap. Did anyone actually do that? Did such things really exist? Maybe Lightstorm could peel the years off her. Like Ingrid Burning Snake did to those people in the old age home. She tried fluffing her hair, but it didn’t help. She should have left it long. It was supposed to be bouncy, that’s what the girl at the beauty parlour had called it, but the sides just hung there and the top stuck up like an ornament.
Maybe she should go somewhere. Vacation. That’s what people did in the Summer, wasn’t it? Get restored by the Day of Truth, and then take off somewhere. But where? And who with? She didn’t want to go alone and she couldn’t think of anyone to ask.
She put on a pair of faded tiger-striped panties (special for Allan Lightstorm, who’d once claimed the tiger as a personal totem), pleated Bermuda shorts rolled up a couple of times to look sexier, and a V-neck T-shirt with small cap sleeves, blue to match the shorts. She glanced at the clock. If she didn’t get going soon she’d have trouble making her rounds and still getting to the Mount in time for the recital, reserved place or not. Maybe Lightstorm would fix her up. Every year after the Day of Truth the TV was full of stories about cripples dancing, blind people painting portraits of the Tellers, impotent men fathering triplets.
&n
bsp; She wondered what picture Allan Lightstorm had chosen to tell. Maybe the river story, or the origin of fire, or maybe First Teller creating the world out of her own body. Jennie had always loved that one as a kid. She would hold on to her father’s hand and Jimmy would promise her that they’d fly together through the roof.
Feeling a little more excited she went into the small bathroom. As she sat on the toilet seat she remembered how Mike used to complain if she came in to talk to him while he was shaving. ‘Wait’ll we get a bigger house’ he used to say.
In the kitchen Jennie made a face at the dishes piled up in the sink. She plucked a bowl and soupspoon from the sink, ran hot water on them, then wiped them dry with a dish towel spotted with chicken grease. Got to do a wash, she thought as she filled the bowl with Spirit Bits, roasted oats shaped into faces. Supposedly they represented divine Beings and would give you a sacred infusion as you ate them. Grinding God with your teeth. The back of the box contained a crude portrait of Francesca Heaven’s Pride, part of a series on the major living Tellers. Jennie glanced at it then left the box on the counter to open the refrigerator for the skim milk. When she’d wet the cereal she stared at the coffee pot, wondering if she had time, or energy, to make a fresh pot. With a twist of her mouth she plugged it in, remembering just in time to take out last night’s grounds so the coffee wouldn’t recycle itself. She should get a drip pot, she knew. Everybody had them. But there was something Jennie liked about the old-fashioned electric percolators. She liked the sighs and whispers it made as it bubbled the coffee. They reminded her of a Teller her father had once taken her to hear. Still standing she mumbled a thank you to the food and began to spoon the Spirit Bits into her mouth.
Unquenchable Fire Page 3