Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption
Page 21
“You know . . . ” Ananda reflected, pleased to have an audience for her secret project at last. “It’s a funny thing, but when you go tryin’ to make a Heaven, you find you’re already livin’ in it—and you don’t want to leave.”
Mrs. Nedd gave a deep snort at this and almost tipped out of her wheelchair.
Casper admired them. Living in what many Americans would call Third World poverty, finding meaning in accordion music and fresh caught fish. He thought of Walt Abrams, who believed the secret lay in a houseboat and seeing the sun come up from the cab of his truck. “There are some tough ass people still left,” Joe said. “The ghosts of Roy Rogers and John Wayne can’t take us all.”
The music and the voices from across the marsh rose in volume. They heard what sounded like a big woman boisterously witnessing—then from out of the haze of Holy Ghost fervor, that brought back so many memories, came a smoky-possum guitar—and the unmistakable voice of the old rail riding, rabble rousing, WPA era Hoptree Bark.
“Ole Fartful!” Angelike exclaimed. “I knew it was too good to last.”
“I’ve got to go find him,” Casper told Ananda. “Is it safe to go over there?”
“Bien sur. Why wouldn’t it be safe? ‘Cause they’s black?”
Casper winced. “No, I mean the swamp. It’s dark.”
“I gotta flashlight. Jes be careful what y’all drink over there.”
“I’ll be careful,” Casper said. “You stay here,” he told Angelike, who now appeared so bloated and uncomfortable, it didn’t look like Jesus himself could’ve gotten her to move. I should get her to a hospital, he thought, but he knew she wouldn’t go before her aunt was buried. But the money? As if reading his mind, Ananda announced that she had an idea where the girl might go to “lay in” close by, which would still provide her with some degree of medical safety on a pay-as-you-could-afford basis. “Pas de probleme.”
The swamp was alive with night shapes and sounds. Owls hunting water snakes, coon hounds, fish splashing—or something splashing. Casper stumbled on an overgrown path through mangrove and creeper, stunted cypresses and moonlight-ghastly brides of willows. How in hell had Hoptree had managed to make it over there with his poor eyesight?
No one took much notice of him as he threw his shadow up against the wall of an old boat shack. Twenty or so people, mostly black, stood around the fire or sat on bait tubs and oil drums. They were dressed in simple clothes with a strong smell of sweat and polyester, Aqua Velvet and gardenia perfume. Some were drinking and swaying, others singing—but all were listening to Hoptree Bark, who sat in a plastic deck chair on the rickety porch of a shed not much bigger than a privy, bottlenecking an old electric guitar, a small fuzzbomb amp at his feet and a couple of extension cords leading into the “church”—or so Casper learned.
The actual structure in question—on second and third looks—was still an old Astrocruiser Greyhound Bus, one of the select few designed by the great Raymond Loewy, after his forays with Studebaker.
1964 was the year the elite special edition bus had been unveiled at the New York World’s Fair . . . where little people in little Ford convertibles could ride through the Time Tunnel to visit spacemen or cavemen, and there were giant insects made of Chrysler car parts. That was where Reverend America was going to eat squirrel patties with the Yankees and the Rockettes.
The bus had been sculpted to look like a streamline cross between the luxury of a zeppelin and the thrust of a rocket ship. The smooth molded metal conjured both nostalgia for Art Deco and the visionary hopes of the Space Age. The one that confronted Casper, however, had had its sides ripped off and a porch built on, and was faded in places, rust blooming over it like algae—more than a couple of bullet holes in the windows, which sent out deformed ripples in the tinted glass. It made him think of Poppy and Rose’s first bus. He had a strange sense of having come full circle.
The vehicle was sunk up to its empty wheel wells in root and vine, stuck in the spit of land as if it had fallen out of the sky, although the truth was it had washed up in a flood. Some people thought it had been chartered by a gospel singing group that went missing back in 1983, lost between Opelousas and Shreveport. Others said it had been spirited out of a car museum by Katrina, then set loose again during another season of high water.
Wherever it came from, the Bayou St. Jude was where it had stopped—which was seen as a blessing since the old termite-eaten temple it replaced had burned to the ground the year before. Through fire and flood had appeared the old Astrocruiser, filled with water moccasins and frogs, like an abandoned ark that had found its way to land. The congregation of the Prophecy Creek Gospel Temple had taken it for their own and fit it out as best they could, running power over from one of the cabins on the spit, with a diesel generator as back-up, which had just started chugging away.
A cloud of mosquitoes and midges swirled in the murky yellow of a bare bulb over Hoptree’s head. Beside him, a milk chocolate-colored woman with tinted hair and a Jamaican-style Mother Hubbard dress was thumping away at an old Jensen keyboard—which made an odd counterpoint to the generator—such that one might have thought that it was the generator she was actually playing. The old polecat meanwhile, seemed to have left the Eocene ungulates behind, and had a bottle of Snapple between his knees and a look of signifying concentration on his face, as he sang low and rough . . .
I’m going there to see my Father,
I’m going there no more to roam;
I’m only go-oing over Jordan,
I’m only go-oing over home.
No one paid Casper any mind at first, weird looking white men having a habit of materializing with anything from a burlap bag full of bullfrogs to a deer carcass slung over their shoulders. Everyone turned though when he began to sing along . . .
I want to wear that crown of glory,
When I get home to that good land;
I want to shout salvation’s story,
In concert with the blood-washed band
Casper remembered the man with the Wolfkill Feed and Fertilizer cap, who’d lost a hand, and expected him to grow it back in the name of Jesus. Reverend America had sung him that song, and held the stump in both his own small hands. “The Lord has the whole world in his hands. That’s the miracle.”
Hoptree Bark squeezed the slide down the neck, plucking and stroking the guitar. The black people sucking crawdaddies were surprised when Casper followed him note for note—lamenting like a drowning steer—then whispering almost—the two of them together—like frightened children praying.
A breeze broke the stillness of the smoky air, becoming a rush of premonitory hurricane wind, and a large black woman scented with vanilla, contained in a voluminous curtain of frangipani-print dress appeared beside him. One glimpse of the way she looked at Hoptree was all Casper needed to know that she was sweet on him. As very old as he was—and white. As old enough and large as she was—and black . . . there was no mistaking that look.
“Go daddy!” she brayed with a big smile. “You play, honey! Ooh Lord.”
She wobbled happily when she spoke, balancing two heaping paper plates of fried chicken and sweet potato pie, one of them clearly intended for the old Rooster. But Hoptree was in that moment too deep into the music. Casper went over to his traveling companion to make sure he was okay. Only a little while before he’d been reminding everyone that, “Drying out is a severe problem for adult animals.” Look at him now, thought Casper.
“You a frien’ a his?” the large woman asked.
“Oh, yes,” Casper answered as Hoptree bent a note just as Only Man Josiah Darkwater might’ve done.
“I’m Mizz Odessa Pepper,” the woman nodded, still holding her two plates—then realizing that it looked awkward, she offered one to Casper, who politely declined—and then realized it was impolite not to help her, and so he took it and set it down at Hoptree’s feet, whereupon a redbone crunched a chicken leg.
“He shore can play,” Odessa smiled.
“Came over during the service. We had two today, on account of some hoodoo about the hurricanes.”
Casper understood. Just because you believe in one thing doesn’t mean you can’t believe in another. He also noticed all the beer bottles.
“Good Lord musta led him through the darkness,” she said. “His poor eyes.”
So that was the trick. Old dog probably made out he was totally blind.
“Whose guitar is that?”
“Valentine Tate’s. Once Val heard him play harp . . . ”
“You didn’t notice anything—different about him—before?” Casper asked.
“Sech as?”
“He didn’t say anything about the Childs Frick Collection of Invertebrates?”
“How much you been drinkin?”
“Never mind,” Casper said. “He just sometimes gets a little . . . ”
“Nothing that Odessa couldn’t fix,” she said, offering him some pickled squirrel brains. “I whopped him upside the head with a bait shovel.”
“Oh,” said Casper, wondering why he hadn’t thought of that. The squirrel brains sent his mind flashing back to Cab Hooly—and further . . . to the old way house on the iron hard street in Charleston.
“Stopped him talkin’ like some white man with somefin up his behine—no ohfence. Remined him-a the Lord’s callin’ to get behine the mule. I thought he ‘as makin’ funna us-all so I whopped him. Lord can he play! Send a shiver down my spine.”
“Yes,” Casper agreed, accepting another squirrel brain like a communion wafer.
Spent at last, Hoptree managed to hand the guitar in the general direction of Valentine Tate, who had a wicked knife scar on his face. Casper threw his paper plate in the fire and helped the old man up.
Odessa Pepper waddled them to the edge of the firelight, all the while explaining that she was a widow now—and making it very clear where she lived—not some lowlife double-wide, but a proper house—with aluminum siding, lemon yellow curtains and a brand new refrigerator her son, who worked as a helicopter pilot in Morgan City, had bought for her.
“He sed y’all were down for a funeral tamorrow. You bring ‘im over afffer that, y’ hear? I make the best banana marshmallow pudding in this Parish.”
Casper thought again of Cameron Blanchard back in Indiana. She sauntered back to the campfire wearing a smile almost as wide as her hips.
He considered switching on the flashlight, but he found that he could maneuver, albeit slowly, by just following the old man’s instincts. And them that shall lead must follow.
“You’re feeling all right?” Casper asked, inching forward. “I was worried about you.”
“Every man should!”
“Seriously, I don’t think you should just slip off like that around here.”
“I didn’t have a choice, son. That Mrs. Nedd!” Hoptree exclaimed. “Groped me! Got a good handful too.”
“Oh!” said Casper. “I was wondering what you might think of her.”
“That’s she’s too damn old for me! I got my eyes on the prize.”
“Watch out!” Casper hissed, but the old man hit the slender water oak dead on and fell back into his arms like an exhausted child.
20
Murkers and Lurkers
By the time Casper was able to cart the old man back to Roy’s Bait ‘n’ Tackle, only a couple of hurricane lanterns in the trailer were burning. Ananda had put fresh linen on the rough dorm style beds—Angelike on one side of a thin beaverboard wall, the two men on the other. The young girl and mother to be was already asleep, “plumb done,” as their hostess put it. Again, Casper wondered what would happen to them. How had all the roads led here—and what did it mean for the future?
Hoptree descended into a snoring stupor just one step down from Mrs. Nedd the moment his bumped head hit the chicken feather pillow. Ananda had waited up, after wheeling the old woman to bed, hoping to have a word with Casper about Angelike, but she saw that he was tired.
Meanwhile, Enrique had just passed through Beaumont, Texas and was an hour away from being pulled over for speeding by a Louisiana State Trooper, who in his Spider Monkey mania the former matador would shoot in the head with the Luger and then dump in the swamp by the light of the gas flares, his lilac silk panties stained with groin sweat.
Ananda’s suggestion was for Angelike to have the baby under the care of a Creole woman with the unlikely name of Emily Dickinson. She’d been a senior surgical nurse at the Tulane Medical Center and now owned an old motel originally built by the Evolution Oil Company for the rig workers. She’d done a lot of midwifing and ran a rural clinic for folks who didn’t have the money for New Iberia—or for the bayou people who didn’t trust doctors. Casper didn’t know what to say. They couldn’t stay at the Frog Museum. None of them had medical insurance. There was no money at hand—or at least none that he knew of.
Ananda saw again how weary he was and told him they’d speak more about it in the morning—when she hoped she’d get access to her big freezer again.
The Museum had that damp Masonite smell that reminded him of trail shacks and bunkhouses. On his side of the wall Hoptree sounded like the Wabash Cannonball, a small lump from the tree rising on his forehead to complement the damage from the bull run. On the other was Little Red, moaning in her dreams. Casper thrashed around in the tomb hard plank bed recalling words from Isaiah . . . For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretcheth himself on it . . .
When he closed his eyes, he saw Joe, unshaven, hawk-faced, accepting but unbowed even in death . . . and he remembered Berina Pinecoffin’s last words to him. “Just keep my hand warm when I can’t. A little warmer, a little longer.”
Out in the water swam something large, occasionally breaking the surface with a slurp. The legendary Murker? His head cleared as a hint more breeze reached his face through the dusty grease of the window screen. (Summer would’ve called it greaze.) He got up and watched the shapes the moonlight made—glimmering mats of floating hyacinths. He’d always loved the moon. The moon’s an albino too, he used to think.
Most of the Spanish moss and the turtles were long gone now. The once vast wilderness of egrets and swimming deer had been under threat for so long it would take a miracle for it to recover, and yet—in pockets of swamp some of the old magic remained. He remembered the litany of American extinctions Hoptree had recited at one point, a curious counterpoint to the diatribe on the radio about healthcare reform . . . the Cave Lion, the Dire Wolf, the Giant Beaver and the Short-Faced Bear. Then the kite flyer had started in on the birds . . . the Carolina Parakeet . . . the Passenger Pigeon (which of course also meant the end of the Passenger Pigeon Mite) . . . the Great Auk . . . the Ivory Billed Woodpecker . . . and then the Golden Needle Beak Woodpecker.
Now that death sentence had been revoked. Thanks to Miss Hermione. When he thought of it like that, she didn’t seem so dithery or selfish—and she may have been trying to save more than the woodpecker’s future. In protecting the land rights, she was also defending the homes of her friends and neighbors. That didn’t seem screwy. She may have had more upstairs than he first thought. People often did—if you could see things from their side.
Casper pulled on his clothes and Red Wings, and walked around the back of the Frog Museum, finding a connecting door that led inside. Seen at night, with but a few beams of moonlight pouring down through a jerry-rigged skylight, there was an intensity to the establishment that he found inspiring—like being inside his Medicine Bag. He located Ananda’s flashlight in his pocket and clicked it on.
Amongst shelves of old toy frogs made of anything from plastic to tin—beanbags to hand puppets—were little snippets of pictures of Merrit as a child—the Frog Boy with his friends—long before the tragic bullet the drunken Quimby had fired. How odd, Casper thought. He’d spoken in Reverend America days of a plague of frogs—and here he was in a paradise of them.
&nbs
p; In two net-covered ponds there was a mass of real frogs—running water pumped in and out—dribbling from the mouths of cement frogs—while several hundred stuffed carnival prize frogs dangled from fishing lines knotted to the rafters overhead. Like many things, it was more interesting because of the dark. There was no question, brain-damaged or not, Merrit could be proud of what he’d achieved—just like Ananda’s broadcasts from Heaven. It made Casper wonder how he was going to leave his mark.
All his life seemed to be but mustard seeds on the wind. He’d tried to be kind, even when circumstances seemed to have forced him to do something criminal. He’d never attacked, only defended—himself or others. He’d always worked when he could and prided himself on not expecting charity—being generous with whatever he had. He’d lost whatever faith he’d had in God a long time ago, and yet he’d kept looking for it. Believing he’d find it. Believing a Rinder would come to lead him home.
Still, the one time in his life that he was sure he’d done some real good in the world was as Reverend America—when he was a sham and a con artist. That was the irony he’d never been able to outrun. So high you can’t get over it, so low you can’t get under it, so wide you can’t get around it. Faith is always a con, he realized. He saw again the old scenes of Poppy and Rose, wayfarers with their bus of dreams and schemes pulled over in country very much like this.
He saw himself in the American flag suit leading a wide-eyed choir of mill workers and chicken pluckers in “There is a River.” They’d never been to the Bayou St. Jude, but they’d been close many times. Reverend America had never known strangers because he’d only known strangers and the children of strangers. He’d bathed in the flood of them and so had come to baptize many. Despite the mosquitoes, he lay down outside on the boat dock, listening to the frogs—and every so often—a gurglish swish.