Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption

by Kris Saknussemm

  In Houston they stopped for gas and drinks in a neighborhood of Pentecostal churches. Angelike paid for the fuel too, which set Casper wondering just how much money she really had. Then he chastised himself for being petty and suspicious. She wanted to pull her weight. There was a reason why he’d found her—although in fact, he remembered, she’d found him.

  Her appearance worried him though, and her remarks about her past worried him more. It made him wonder what had happened to his mother. Most of the time when he’d thought of her while growing up, it had been with resentment at being given up. He hadn’t thought of the fear she’d faced—or perhaps the painful circumstances that had led to her pregnancy. Little Red gave him a new window into the past. A new kind of Medicine. It scared him to think what lay ahead for her.

  The cranes of Port Arthur rose up like angry wading birds, the air heavy with diesel fumes and humidity. Only Hoptree seemed unconcerned and continued his tour, moving on to inarticulate brachiopods. Angelike missed the harmonica.

  They passed Klan flags . . . dead armadillos in the road, iridescent lakes and orange gas flares. It was haunted for Casper, who kept looking for the migrating manger of Poppy and Rose’s old bus.

  He hadn’t been in this country for a long time, and yet it all came back to him. He’d been moved during the Hurricane Katrina crisis when it was announced that Fats Domino was missing from his home in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. Many people at the moose head bar he was in at the time had expressed surprise that the man was still alive. That was the thing about America, as Joe often said. No attention span, no memory.

  In Lake Charles, smoke from the tire plant and the gas rigs hung like a pall. They stopped for po’ boy sandwiches. Down in the brown water of a small river some Holy Rollers were having a baptism. The people swooned and shouted “Hallelujah!” “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God!” the preacher said and then the people on the bank started singing. It raised many spirits in Casper’s mind, and he might’ve gotten lost on a memory tour of his own, had he not noticed how drained and anxious Angelike looked. Sometimes she seemed to clench herself—and they were having to stop at rest rooms more often now. They got back on the road.

  The miles and meanderings of Hoptree’s mumblings blurred. When would this latest fit end and the socialist folk song harangue begin again? All their hopes of finding haven and maybe a handout in Austin had been dashed. Now they were headed for swampland and strangers. Casper consulted the Medicine Bag.

  GHOSTS OF CIVIL WAR DEAD APPEAR AT CHILI COOK OFF

  They passed half-naked black children—cabins strewn with wire fish traps—black women selling alligator gars and cypress oil by the side of the road. A flecked billboard rose out of the kudzu and wisteria. It said HOP IN AND HELP THE HANDICAPPED - 1 mile on Right. Through tupelo branches, he saw a sign for ROYS and turned again. The sand road curved off along a creek where the low water smell of mud mixed with engine oil and fried fish. A piece of cardboard tacked to a stake announced THE FROG CAPITEL OF AMERICA.

  Out of an island of saw grass and palmetto they saw a shack and trailer with a screen porch on which was sheltered a deer head and a wild boar. Nearby was a barn with letters painted on the metal roof that said FROGS, and beyond that, old canoes, bits of cannibalized outboard motors—and a couple of men, one black, the other Cajun skinning gar and boiling crawfish in a drum. A tawny boy with a face that looked like a gator had gotten to it stepped through the trees. Next to him, a very old black woman sat in a wheelchair not much newer than Jessie, stabbing at the ground with a pointed rake.

  18

  In Heaven there are Frogs and Honest Strangers

  It had been a busy, ornery morning on the Bayou St. Jude. Ananda Rogere had woken up after sunrise, which was unusual for her, feeling hung over, unaccustomed as she was to Cutty Sark binges. Mrs. Nedd had found a brown recluse under her pillow and felt it was a sure sign of bad luck. A running feud between Red Richeaux and Luis Ramirez had led to the mistaken cutting of one of the Rogere trap lines, and Ananda continued to worry about the big freezer being out of commission. What if the man on the telephone didn’t come to collect Hermione? Who was he anyway? There were hurricane warnings in the Gulf—and the air was already filled with the sour mud smell of sedimentation and dead fish. The last thing she needed was the stench of rotting bait and fire ants everywhere—especially when an important man from the Professor Chicken franchise was paying them a visit.

  While on vacation, one of their franchisees had stopped by the Frog Museum and when shown some of the live specimens the bayou produced, got an idea for offering an exotic line of Cajun Frog Legs on a trial menu basis. Now one of the company’s senior executives was coming to make an inspection to see how many frogs they could supply. Old Cab Hooly’s wisdom was catching up with America. Eventually, everything connects.

  Ananda just hoped that some of the other swamp rats wouldn’t be hanging around—especially that Link Duquette with his stories about the giant footprints he’d found on Squaw Island—the so-called Murker. He was the one she felt was responsible for getting her husband all hopped up on the rumors—got him out hunting for it. Then of course when he didn’t find it, he had to have a little nip and then another—and then he thought he did see it and took aim, but it turned out to be Merrit.

  That’s why it was called the Murker. No one had ever seen it fully. No one who’d survived anyway. Lots of folks had heard it, or thought they had. There just didn’t exist that definitive close range photographic evidence. Not like Hermione’s heroic efforts with the Golden Needle Beak Woodpecker. The Murker remained a shadowy superstition . . . like the Lizard Man of South Carolina. A little too tangible for the locals to dismiss, but just another oddball tale to the outside world. World Weekly News stuff.

  But as the morning slid by with no sign of the chicken executive, she became more concerned. The extra income from the frog legs business would come in very handy . . . although she hadn’t yet told Merrit that it would mean the sacrifice of some of his special friends. No sense in getting the boy upset over something that mightn’t happen. He had enough troubles as it was. As to the chicken man, well, she hoped he was all right and had just gotten lost or was running late. It was awkward when troopers came in to investigate the disappearance of outsiders . . . stirred up a lot of mud that should stay settled.

  On top of all these concerns, it was her scheduled turn to borrow Molina Romineau’s video camera and she didn’t want to miss it.

  Each month when Mrs. Romineau went to Lafayette for dialysis, Ananda borrowed the camera, which had an auto-adjusting tripod and a remote control director so that she could film herself without assistance. Ever since the shooting accident, Ananda had “nabbled” over what would become of Merrit. They owned the Bait ‘n’ Tackle business outright, so with the help of some of the locals, Merrit could survive after she was gone. But she feared he’d be lonely and that even the solace of his private froggy kingdom wouldn’t be enough. So, she’d started making a series of videos that he could look at after she died, the premise being that she was speaking to him from Heaven.

  That may sound a bit farfetched, but even a quick glimpse at Merrit suggested this plan had a middling chance of success. If people were going to talk to you from Heaven, it stood to reason they might try to reach you by television . . . and if they looked sort of like they had before but more beautiful and glamorous . . . and Heaven made you think of snow globe paperweights . . . well, then . . . that was good enough.

  As Ananda Rogere’s TV was a long way from new, the segments, when she managed to find a moment when Merrit was elsewhere and could plug in the camera to check her handiwork, did look as if they were live telecasts from Heaven (at least they would if you were partially brain-damaged). There was, however, an inherent set design problem. If she was speaking from Heaven, it couldn’t look like the verandah of the Bait ‘n’ Tackle store. Even Merrit would’ve seen through that. So, sh
e created a little set for herself in their outhouse, draping the walls with gauze and tinsel. Each month she borrowed the video camera and acted as tech crew, director and talent. The plan was that the LaRou’s or the Mordinaro’s would, in her eventual absence, present these to Merrit as “messages” from her, explaining that the distance to Heaven created technical problems that prevented interactive communication, but that she was always watching over him.

  And she tried hard to keep an eye on him in this life, which was a good thing, for the sight of the boy was somewhat disconcerting to those in the Buick LeSabre, causing even Hoptree to pause for a moment in his remarks regarding soft-bodied metazoans.

  Thinking the sound of the car indicated the arrival of the Professor Chicken executive, Ananda rushed out, having just undressed the outhouse and changed costume.

  Casper wasn’t surprised to find that the voice in the night belonged to a sinewy mixed blood woman in her 40’s with eyes like a raccoon’s, hands cracked from a life of hard work, and a definite odor of gasoline, fish scales and the heady cheese they used as catfish bait. Ananda, on the other hand, was quite impressed at the Buick’ occupants, especially Hoptree Bark, who looked like he could’ve been born on a bayou and was a white bookend to Mrs. Nedd (who was at that moment very pleased with herself, having just speared a “wrasslin’” crawfish with the pointed end of her rake). Ananda was very eager to learn more about the strange trio, but mieux vaut les étrangers choisir l’heure pour conter leur histoire is more than a saying in Cajun country.

  Despite Hoptree’s announcement that, “The chances of any organism being preserved as a fossil are very slim,” cordial introductions were made—although Merrit kept making his frog sounds, which unsettled Angelike as much as his head scar . . . and when he grasped that they were related to “Miss Hermione,” he insisted on giving them a FREE tour of the Frog Museum . . . a destination that struck Casper as bearing an uncanny correlation to Hoptree’s lecture tour.

  Maybe this is somehow all meant to be, he thought. What else did they have left? Some mad mission to the mosquito-ridden neverglades to get a body out of a fish freezer, without any plan what to do with it then. How could that possibly be the right thing to do? Because they had no money and nowhere else to go? Atonement for Rick James? Why was it important to see to the sanctified burial of some dead stranger whose one claim to fame had been convincing the world that a kind of woodpecker most people had never heard of and experts thought was dead, wasn’t? The Resurrection and the Life.

  But first you have to die, and it wasn’t long before that ticklish topic came up. Ananda felt embarrassed about having put the body in the freezer. Perhaps it would’ve been better for everyone if Hermione had been found by the fire ants instead of Fish & Wildlife.

  Angelike didn’t feel up to looking at her aunt just then. Casper felt obliged to take charge, leaving her to mind Hoptree, who had just made the observation that, “In an unstable world it’s good policy to be a deposit feeder.” Mrs. Nedd took exception to this. “I ain’t no feeder. Al’as toted my own sack. I’m 160 years old.” Casper couldn’t tell if she’d taken an interest in Hoptree or was going to use the rake on him.

  He discovered from Ananda that after Hermione had been found, they came upon an envelope she’d left in the mouth of the boar head. After the letter from the medical clinic, she didn’t have the heart to slit this one. She’d assumed it was a kind of will and since family had been located, it seemed only right to leave it to them to open—which Casper did.

  With the exception of a couple of thousand dollars in cash for Ananda, the letter left the remains of Hermione’s estate to the non-profit bird and wildlife protection organization she’d founded called the Campephilus Society, based in Washington D.C.. It also conveyed her request to be buried on the island where she’d spotted and photographed the famous elusive woodpecker. There was no mention of Angelike, which didn’t really surprise him. She hadn’t heard from her niece in several years. And as the girl had said, she was a bit of a nut.

  Casper asked Ananda if there was anywhere they could stay and was shown to the “guest quarters” in back of the Frog Museum, which Ananda insisted on making available to them for free. “Tout le monde as besoin d’un coin où reposer sa tête.” Casper was relieved. Consider the lilies of the field, he thought. Everything she’d described over the telephone was as she’d laid it out, including Mrs. Nedd and her rake. I wonder what Hoptree will make of her, Casper mused . . . .when and if he gets out of the Museum of Natural History.

  What Casper didn’t know was that while he’d been asleep back in Austin, Angelike had gone rummaging in Enrique’s bedroom and found a money belt containing what she believed was about $7,000. She needed all she could get, and with the matador secured in the punishment room, she figured he wouldn’t be able to stop her—he might not even notice it was missing for a couple of days. In his drugged out condition he mightn’t ever know it’d been taken at all.

  What the girl didn’t realize was that the belt had another compartment that contained the proceeds from a recent drug sale and brought the total up to $57,000, an amount of money that even a dead man would miss.

  That night, the word was made flesh—or rather catfish, with a lot of cayenne (which was preferable to boudin). Afterward, they moved out to the screened porch and while Ananda shelled squabnuts, she speculated on what had happened to the chicken man. Casper thought back to Boone Burgers.

  It was at this point that Mrs. Nedd made her first sustained, audible commentary since their arrival. “I ’as Abe Lincoln’s love child,” she said. “I ’as at Gettysburg with ‘im . . . but I couldn’t be seen to know ‘im. Hid me away. You think the War Between the States ended? Hell no.”

  “Now we are engaged in a great civil war,” Casper replied.

  “Damn right!” the old woman said, pounding her rake. “Pass me one of them there nuts.”

  Ananda seemed to take no notice of this exchange, no doubt having heard such things many times before. There was also the rise of the music to consider.

  It came from the gospel church nearby—people singing and a crudely amplified electric guitar. As he listened, Casper realized that they hadn’t seen Hoptree since leaving the kitchen, where he’d been waffling on about dinosaur eggs found in the Flaming Cliffs of the Gobi Desert. It made him uneasy.

  Of course he would’ve been a lot uneasier if he’d known that at that same moment a black Cadillac was heading east out of Houston with Enrique Cruz at the wheel, a 9 mm automatic on the seat next to him.

  19

  Goodnight Missus Pepper

  (and Thank You for the Squirrel Brains)

  Earlier, back in Austin, the swollen-faced Shelby Verril had dragged himself out of bed and discovered Enrique still restrained in the contraption that Casper and Angelike had found in the punishment room (which went under the brand name of “The Jo-Jo Boy”). There, the boy toy’s malicious sense of mischief drove him to hike up the Glinda gown and torture the helpless matador. For two full hours Enrique bucked and bounced the graphite frame of the Jo-Jo Boy until it sounded like it would smash apart or fall through the floor. And all because Shelby kept tickling the matador’s hairy bottom with a flamingo feather.

  Then the young Texan made the mistake of taking pity on the matador and released him, believing erroneously that his victim was exhausted. The wealthy young playmate soon found himself as the Jo-Jo Boy, fucked first by the livid Glinda, then by one of the horns from the bull mask—so vigorously the horn broke off and lodged deep in his rectum (later requiring emergency surgery and an embarrassing call home to his parents). The matador, still in his Good Witch costume, tore the house apart in his search for more drugs, discovered that his money belt was missing—bullwhipped Shelby to the bone while cursing his thieving slut of a former-niece—then changed clothes, handcuffed the boy and drove him to Bee Cave Road and shoved him out.

  Back at the house, Enrique couldn’t find the blowback-operated air-cool
ed submachine gun which a queer Navy officer turned illegal immigrant-smuggling prawn trawler captain had traded him for a rim job and a canister of China White, but he did manage to locate a loaded Luger. He was soon flying high on tequila and a dangerous new meth-amphetamine known around the Austin tattoo parlors as Spider Monkey—speeding his black Cadillac in a psycho-sweat of revenge, Xavier Cugat the King of Rumba playing at peak volume.

  Of course, sitting on the screen porch at Roy’s Bait ‘n’ Tackle, Casper had no reason to believe that evil was only a few hours behind. And despite some vague sense of guilt about ripping off her ex-uncle—neither did Angelike.

  Mrs. Nedd was fast asleep with her pointed rake laid across her lap. Ananda finished shelling and while Merrit was securing boats and feeding frogs, she recounted the story of her “broadcasts from Heaven,” which Casper found intriguing—although he kept getting distracted by the music and voices coming from the gospel church. It sounded like Lightfoot Solomon Michaux and his Happy-Am-I Choir. He was certain Hoptree had wandered over there, despite his cataracts—but he was reluctant to interrupt their host who chatted on as if they were family she hadn’t seen in years. The thing was—he thought he heard Hoptree’s normal voice amongst the others—but with the frogs and the laboring of the compressors, he couldn’t be sure. Plus he was very tired. So many questions, so few answers.

  Merrit returned making his frog sounds and Ananda announced in a French patois that it was time for him to go to bed. Once he’d chirruped his way to wherever it was that he slept in the plywood trailer (which reeked of mold, smoked fish and gun oil), Ananda presented some of her “productions.” Mrs. Nedd stirred, stabbing at an imagined crawfish, and then took to snoring—louder than all the frogs.

  Ananda brought out a humble security guard sized TV and plugged in the borrowed video . . . and there she was—in the gauzy outhouse of Heaven—wearing a plastic shower curtain over a gold bathing suit she’d bought at Catfish City, with a kind of hat she’d made out of a gill net, gesturing with a plastic bubble wand she’d painted with glitter (she looked a little like Glinda the Good Witch). Casper applauded and elbowed Angelike to close her mouth and to do the same.