Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption

by Kris Saknussemm

  Their profit margin expanded with the sale of Rejuvenation, a pseudo patent medicine they mixed up in the kitchen in Joplin (it was really just an aniseed flavored bit of alcohol mixed with aspirin and Spanish fly, which is derived from a green beetle).

  Beyond Rejuvenation sales, money came from straight donations, those buckets passed around—and a special project to help Nana, an Indian girl born with a parasitic head. A confronting forensic photograph blown up to the size of bulletin board spurred on this latter initiative. It was in fact an old carnival gaff that Poppy had harvested and turned into a poster. This was great, but the kicker was always Rejuvenation. Poppy and Rose could never transcend their patent medicine beginnings. Leopards don’t change their spots.

  This is also where their “lusty vitality” came into play. Rejuvenation was how an aging couple had given birth to Reverend America, a miracle child of God. For men who couldn’t get it up like they used to and women who were infertile—this was the answer. Poppy knew, in his old carny way that the real truths of life can’t be escaped from, even in a revival tent. They in fact become amplified there. What was all the rolling around and groaning, if not sex finding another outlet?

  Although Casper would come to feel both used and deserted by Poppy and Rose, he had to admit that they taught him many things.

  Poppy bought him a secondhand bicycle from a black man without teeth in Topine and later taught him how to ride it on a red clay road outside Intercourse, Alabama. “People are suspicious of a boy who can’t ride a bike,” he said.

  Although he’d never have much facial hair, Casper appreciated Poppy carefully tutoring him in how to shave with a straight razor. It linked him to a forgotten past.

  Even fig-leaf Rose gave him what she could—teaching him how to sing. “You don’t slur the notes—you release them. You have to learn how to sing as only you can.” He’d think of that many times in his life. Releasing the notes. Singing as only he could.

  From them, he learned to appreciate cornbread and chitlins—burgoo and beer cheese. He learned to not hide his light under a bushel and how to read a map—and he spent enough time staring at one of America to hold it clear in his mind even when it had long since blown out a window into a rice field in Stuttgart, Arkansas.

  He learned how to think on his feet and what the Prophet Isaiah meant by the strength in sitting still. He learned not to go looking for the left-handed monkey wrench—and he learned that just because you’re a trickster doesn’t mean you can’t be tricked too.

  Put not your faith in princes—and never, ever trust anyone wearing a coonskin cap.

  8

  What are We Going to Do

  Pulling into Joplin, Casper heard the alarm that rings when the past is near. What had he hoped to find?

  The Greyhound had made the 280-mile run from St. Louis in better time than expected, but it was still early in the morning. The delay in Indianapolis had thrown off his scheduling. He’d thought of hiking out to sleep beside Berina’s grave in Ozark Memorial Park Cemetery. He’d spent many nights in graveyards over the years and found them quite peaceful. But more and more people had started getting the same idea and the “bone farms” had become truly scary places now. He also didn’t like the idea of Berina seeing him without a home and short on money again. The last time he’d been with her, when she was healthy, they’d gone on a picnic to Wildcat Glades and then to Route 66 Carousel Park.

  “You know what?” she said. “I haven’t let myself eat fried chicken since I lived in Chicago. Today I want to eat fried chicken, and some rocky road ice cream.”

  Plan B was an on-site trailer in the KOA Campground, but at this hour he was inclined to just crawl into some bushes in Landreth Park. The bus station is on West 2nd Street and that wouldn’t be too far to walk, with not many people around. Now actually arriving at his destination, he was at a loss for why he’d come.

  He’d been a long time traveling after Joe’s passing. He’d tried to get work on a horse ranch outside Parker, Arizona—and then went looking for Hercules—but found the old brave had died in Phoenix years before. Not enough Medicine, and of course no health insurance. He’d never known the old man’s Indian name—just that he did exquisite sand paintings and said, “What you don’t make or find, you gotta be given.”

  So, he started east, visiting places he’d wanted to see since he’d first heard of them. There was trouble one night in Boise, but he’d left the man breathing. He’d been pleased with Glacier National Park, and the Corn Palace in South Dakota. It reminded him of the pictures in the religious primers back in Charleston.

  It had been in Minneapolis that he’d met up again with Betsy. She’d been more fun than Boston on St. Patrick’s Day in the old days, but she’d developed MS and walked with a cane now. He couldn’t get her to throw her cane away. Still, she served him a wiener schnitzel and let him have a hot bath. He’d become pretty adept at sneaking into campgrounds and trailer parks for showers when he wasn’t staying in them, but a slow hot bath was a deep luxury.

  Rightly or wrongly, she gave him what turned out to be the twisted hope that he might have a son, living in Hartford, and so of course he went. It turned out to be a wild goose chase and the disappointment nearly sent him spinning back into the Lonely Room—as well as almost getting him busted. He only escaped because a chain link fence fell down at the right moment. If the boy she’d named Noel had been his son, he was two years dead and didn’t seem to be missed by many.

  From there he’d gone down to New York, wanting to see Times Square again. When he’d worked on the Montrealer, he’d occasionally slip down to the city to play with the whores on Eighth Avenue. He liked coming into Penn Station. Once he’d walked all the way to Battery Park, but mostly he’d gone north for the girls and the lights. He’d treat himself to a Swiss cheese burger and a martini at the Howard Johnson’s in Times Square—or a huge pastrami sandwich from the Carnegie Deli around the corner. One of his work mates from the train, named Jerky had a place in East Harlem where he’d stay.

  The Ho-Jo’s was gone—he found the Port Authority had been totally revamped and 42nd Street was another world. The peep shows had all been cleaned up. It seemed just a raucous hive of tourism now. He didn’t think something like that should be tampered with—Times Square belonged to the world. Which then struck him funny, because back in Reverend America days he’d often railed about the evils of the place—brass idols, false prophets and filthy dreamers of dreams—knowing nothing at all about it except in his imagination—Sodom and Gomorrah turned into ashes. Standing on the corner of 46th and Broadway watching the shimmering lights and giant faces, it seemed symbolic in a different way now.

  That was where and when he’d met Utensil. “We’re all tools of the System,” his signboard read—“but some of us are appliances.”

  Short, bald and dressed in a smelly powder blue polyester leisure suit he’d obviously scavenged from a dumpster—he was like so many that Casper remembered from the institutions—yet somehow filled with an unmistakable joy in being. He seemed too full of energy and life for any living room—he needed Times Square.

  Amidst the sidewalk portrait painters and caricaturists, Utensil offered an “Emotional Consultancy” service that he claimed would help you “find your inner appliance.” Many of the rubbernecking tourists looked at him with a tinge of anxiety, but he was no ordinary panhandling loon, and he seemed to have won over even the beat cops, who nodded at him with respect, as if he were some celebrity.

  His tagline to passersby was, “We must do lunch.” Casper found himself unable to resist and paid for an “Appliance Reading,” which indicated that he was a Cuisinart soft serve ice-cream maker. But perhaps the ragamuffin ambassador for the Midtown Gotham night had some other skills, because without any word from Casper, he left his signboard and dirty pillow and ushered the albino over to 7th Avenue—and during a break in the traffic, he urged him into standing on top of a manhole.

  “This is it,�
� he said. “This is my power point. Right here. But, see—the thing about a power point is that you can’t stay on it.”

  An armada of taxis was on their way south from the Park toward them. They were forced back to the curb.

  “My tip to you, my friend, is to return to your power point.”

  This had struck Casper as profound advice—or at least surprisingly sensible, given the open-air asylum of Times Square. He’d left Manhattan a few hours later under a flatiron sky and began the pilgrimage back to Joplin, the place that Reverend America had come back to whenever a faith and fire tour was finished.

  But of course traveling and arriving are two very different things. Now old memories and images flooded his mind. The bandstand in Schifferdecker Park . . . the red boomerang sign for the Capri Motel. He pulled a slip from his Medicine Bag.

  CHILLING PREDICTIONS FOUND IN ANCIENT SCROLLS

  A KCS coal train clanged through town a few blocks away . . . the lament of the whistle, which at that distance was more like a horn, echoed off the storefront facades, sending him back. Grand Falls City Park . . . Range Line Road. Their neighbor, old Silas Cave, who played the musical saw.

  Joplin was once a classic Main Street town. Faded ads for “Buggies” could be seen on the red brick buildings. Thomas Hart Benton has a famous mural in City Hall—maybe people still throw flowers from the Redings Mill Bridge for luck.

  The community had grown up around lead mining camps, and then the discovery of zinc, which was called “jack.” There were wild lawless times in the days of the saloons, gambling halls and cathouses—but the mineral money funded imposing civic architecture and ornate Victorian mansions once—the streamlined modernist grandeur of the Union Depot. The railroad, and most importantly, Route 66, made Joplin a great American crossroads. Once.

  It’s certainly a place of legends—like the Hornet Spook Light, just out of town—a mysterious ball of floating fire that appears on the dark country roads around midnight. Some link it to the double suicide of a pair of Quapaw Indian lovers—or an old miner who lost his family to an Indian raiding party and is forever searching for them with his lantern. A bolder tale relates to an Osage Indian chief who was decapitated and is still hunting for his head.

  It was in Joplin that Bonnie and Clyde had once famously hidden out. They left behind their camera, which gave us the pictures that became so notorious. Casper had always liked these local myths.

  Now he was back and wondering what to do with himself. He supposed he should’ve been hungry—but he wasn’t. Not for food.

  Joplin has been renowned for eating since Route 66 days. Steak-burgers and shoestring fries, Fred & Reds for chili, or their famous concoction, Spaghetti Red. Truckers and sightseers made that greasy spoon known throughout the country—even the world. And in the good times, Poppy and Rose had taken him to Wilder’s Steak House downtown. He remembered the neon cocktail sign, down near the discount furniture store on South Main Street, where he’d first gotten drunk, back when he was going mad.

  At the start, they’d lived in a modest house in tree-lined Vandalia Street (which was where Berina’s aunt’s house had been), north of downtown. Back in the shrubbery there were still pits and mineshafts, and a place called Rum Jungle, where he’d later smash goldenrod skeletons with Summer and she’d whisper in his ear like wind in green corn. “Oh, Matty.”

  That area had long been cleaned up, but he’d read in a little library in Ohio about how the economy had created a whole new set of problems. A tent city had sprung up under the Seventh Street Viaduct, and when those homeless people were routed from there, they took refuge in the woods of the Frisco Trail, which dates back to the Cherokee Trail of Tears.

  When the Reverend America money started to come in, the family had moved to a larger place on Moffat Avenue, closer to the historic Murphyburg district with its grand Victorian homes, which was where Berina had her boarding house. He didn’t have the heart to go by there. Too many ghosts—too many recollections of Summer’s voice, the way she’d turn her head because of her injured eye. In what place of darkness shall I seek the light?

  The town was suspiciously quiet, except for the distant whine of the interstate and a few late night cars. The air smelled just as he remembered it—a mix of railroad iron, diner grill and highway asphalt, with a hint of grape drink spilled on pavement. The deep after midnight smell of sad America.

  The air was warming, with the first hint of summer already moving like a shadow over the country to the south. He started walking, trying to connect with the past. Memories of going to the 66 Speed Bowl with Summer—the spit and detonation—a full moon dissolving like a pill into water—twisted scrap and mufflers farting like shotguns, boiling radiators and steaming tires—Cougar Martin laying it down on the backstretch, spraying dirt—men in overalls, pick-ups flashing their lights—the PA system missing every other word—foot-long hot dogs bloody with ketchup and slick bags of jam-filled doughnuts—John Deere caps, permed hair and painted nails . . .

  He felt that creeping sense of lostness you do when you return to a place you know, and then realize that you only think you know it. He made it a block away before hobbling back to the depot to see the eastbound bus arrive and depart, a couple of shadows emerging. The waiting cars pulled away. Soon he was alone again.

  So, he was startled when a female voice behind him asked, “Hey Mister, you want a blow job? Good price.”

  When he whirled around, he was surprised to say the least by the figure behind this street level inquiry. As tall as he was, she was short, with flaming red hair, shoulder length, and the kind of freckles on her nose you might’ve seen once on a corner newsboy. At one very quick glance, he’d have said she was just a child. Despite her diminutive height, however, a second look couldn’t fail to take in her grown up figure—of the kind that requires a serious over the shoulder boulder holster. Under a fake Wal-Mart leather jacket that smelled of Poison, that was all she was wearing—pink frilled, like hastily made cupcake icing—with a little black skirt and ripped black nylons.

  Along with the spike heeled shoes she’d given up on, and a wrinkled purse, she was carrying an attempt at a suitcase, but it might’ve been better used to carry bottles out to the recycling bin. Her gothic eye makeup was smudged and it was obvious from the streaks on her cheeks that she’d been crying. A closer inspection indicated she was carrying more baggage than in her hands.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Sheet,” she spat, through a mouth full of gum. “Get a new line.”

  “What?” Casper balked. He could smell that it was Black Jack gum.

  “Never mind. I just thought you might want some—and you don’t look like y’all know how to get it no other way.”

  She made a move to get past him, but he reached out for her (as it would turn out, in more ways than one).

  “Are you a prostitute?” he asked, unable to help himself.

  “Mister, I can be whatever your greasy ass wants me to be. Your daughter, your girlfriend. If you want me to be twelve, I’m twelve. If the cops come, I’m eighteen. Most of ‘em have done me anyways. Don’t worry about that shit.”

  Her accent confused him. It was a mix of black and cracker. She said “greazy” like many Missourians . . . but he heard Texas too. Not quite Southern, but not Midwestern either. A crossroads voice in a crossroads town . . . nearer to dawn than midnight.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said, setting down his knapsack.

  “Mister, I sucked enough cock to know that wuddn’t your question. You was askin’ about my age and a whole lotta shit that ain’t your biz. OK? You’re lookin’ down on me and not just ‘cause I’m short.”

  “I’m not looking down on you,” Casper insisted, looking down at her.

  “All I can tell you is I wuddn’t born yesterday,” the molten redhead replied.

  “I believe you,” Casper answered. “But it looks like someone else is going to be born soon.”

 
; “That what you’re worried about? Gentleman? Well, jes take it easy in the saddle, son. Me and mine will be cool.”

  “You need money,” Casper said, wondering if the girl could be fifteen, which would make her about the age his own mother had been when he’d arrived. Mink Shoals. Joplin. People always arriving.

  “Sheet. Man, you’re a genius. Like who doesn’t? I jes offer to give you head—and you work it out like that—I need money. You call me a whore and you’re surprised about money. Do you want your dick sucked or not? We can talk about the big show once that gets rollin’. This is the Show Me state, case you haven’t heard.”

  “You’re trying to leave town,” Casper said. “You need bus fare and you’re broke. I know the bus you’re waiting for. It’s westbound and it won’t come for a couple of hours now.”

  “How you know I wanna go west?”

  “West or maybe south,” Casper answered. “West is south on this line. The eastbound just came through. And you don’t look like someone headed east.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re running away and most of the time people don’t run east.”

  “Motherfuckin’ genius. You want that head job? Or are you some head case?”

  “Some would say that,” Casper answered. “I’ve been institutionalized on more than one occasion, and you shouldn’t be out in front of a bus depot talking to someone like me at your age and in your condition at this time of night.”

  The girl was taken aback by this but resumed her attitude.

  “Don’t you worry about me, kiddo. You think I’m scared a-you ‘cause you’re old and geeky and—and—so white? I don’t scare easy, Mister.”

  “That’s always a problem,” Casper observed.

  He was about to ask where the girl wanted to go and how much money she had—when a car came to a jolting halt right in front of them. The suddenness of it amidst the night quiet threw them both onto the alert.