The elderly Hindu was frowning at the words in the dictionary. "Can they really do such a thing?" he asked.
Dorcas Ostlich nodded sympathetically. "I think so, Mr. Patanjali. They can, can't they, Clay?"
They were sitting on the floor of the large central room of the old Sweet farmhouse in the fading light of dusk. Clayton had agreed to drive Vernon and Ashvarinda back home after they left the town hall, and be now sat cross-legged and passed the third joint of the afternoon over to Sean Brenner, who was trying very hard not to look across at Vernon Sweet.
It was an odd little company. Dorcas to Ashvarinda's right, watching the worried old man with concern written on her face; Vernon Sweet sitting to the old yogi's left, smiling at Sean with blank, empty, reptilian eyes; Sean, his back partly turned from the little man, giving Clayton little looks and head nods indicating his desire to leave; Clayton happily drifting into a cannabis stupor; and Ashvarinda gazing down at the words in the crumbling old dictionary Dorcas had found in the kitchen when she was cleaning the house the day before.
"Eminent domain," Ashvarinda muttered, reading aloud the subsection definition of the word "eminent." He shook his head. "I have lived in America for fifty years, and never have I heard of such a thing."
"I don't think they do it too often," Dorcas said. "Only like when they're gonna build a highway or something."
He looked up. "So they can take our home away from us."
"Gotta pay you for it," Clayton said, billows of greenish smoke pouring from his mouth as he spoke.
"Tomatoes," Vernon said, staring at Sean.
Sean clenched his teeth and tried to ignore the deformed man as Ashvarinda said, "We have just cleared out an area near the house to plant a garden when spring comes. Vernon loves to watch plants grow."
"Looks carnivorous to me," Sean muttered. "Hey, Clay, let's go up to the trailer, okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, in a minute." Clayton yawned. He smiled at Vernon and said, "So you were in the circus." His smile was not a friendly one. It was perfunctory and somehow vaguely acerbic.
"Mean face." Vernon nodded.
Clayton's eyebrows rose. "Oh, really! You looked in the mirror lately?"
"Clayton!" Dorcas said.
Ashvarinda laughed. "No, no, mean face is the phrase Vernon uses to refer to the people who came to see him in the freak show. You must remember that the audiences were not friendly, not kind."
Clayton nodded. "Yeah, I guess not." He took another joint from his jacket pocket and lighted it, ignoring both Sean's pained look and Ashvarinda's unspoken disapproval. The aged Hindu came from a part of the world where opium and hashish were commonplace indulgences, and he knew full well what evil could come of them. Still, Clayton's karma was Clayton's karma, and Ashvarinda did not voice his thoughts. "So you're a yogi," Clayton said conversationally as he dragged on the joint and then handed it to Sean.
"I seek union with the Absolute through the discipline of hatha yoga," Ashvarinda replied.
"That means yes, right?" Clayton waited for Sean to hand back the joint, toked on it, and then asked, "What do you think of this Maharishi guy, the guy the Beatles are hanging around with?"
"Do you mean the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi? I know little of him," Ashvarinda said. "But as I understand it, he is seeking to introduce meditation to your people. If this is true, then his dharma is royal and his karma must be a well of goodness."
"Huh?"
"Hey, you got anything to drink?" Sean asked.
"We have tea," Ashvarinda replied. "Would you like some?"
He sighed. "Never mind."
"Drink? Drink? Medicine!" Vernon chirped. "Papa medicine! Drink drank drunk. Drink drank drunk."
Sean forced himself to look over at him. "What are you talking about, Grogo?" He used the pseudonym sarcastically and with undisguised contempt.
"Papa medicine," Vernon repeated, jumping to his feet. "Come see, come see! Drink drank drunk!"
No one made a move to rise and Vernon just stood waiting as Dorcas said, "I don't know much about Hinduism, Mr. Patanjali, except what we learn in school, about castes and stuff. I don't think anybody around here knows much about it. That's one reason why people seem so unfriendly to you. That, and this whole factory thing."
"The stranger is rarely welcome in the village short of rice," he said nodding.
"General store's got a shitload of rice," Clayton said, yawning once again.
"Oh, Clay, you know what he means," Dorcas said, and then turned back to the old yogi. "Do you, like, worship all sorts of gods and stuff like that?"
He shrugged. "We believe that all which exists is but a manifestation of the Absolute, and that the Absolute takes many forms as gods and men and animals. But there is only one God, as you would say it. And that one God is all that truly exists." He paused. "One of our ancient writings expresses it poetically, saying that the god Purusha fell asleep and dreamed the universe. Thus we are all shadows in Purusha'a dream, and life is an illusion."
Clayton nodded. "I always kind of suspected that this fucking town didn't really exist."
"Clay, come on, huh?" Dorcas said. "I'm interested in this."
"Yeah, you would be. They don't call you Dork for nothing." He paid no attention to the hurt look on her face as he said to Sean, "I'm dying of thirst. Let's go get some beer."
"Papa medicine, Papa medicine," Vernon repeated urgently. "Drink drank drunk. Come see, come see!"
Clayton's laughter was that of cruel amusement. "Come on, let's see what Grogo's getting all excited about." As he rose to his feet Vernon scurried from the room and ran from the house.
"Like talking to Lassie," Sean muttered. "Like you know he's trying to tell you something."
"Timmy, Timmy," Clayton cried, "the barn's on fire, the barn's on fire! Woof! Woof!"
Dorcas watched them follow. Vernon out of the house and then said, "I'm sorry about them, Mr. Patanjali. They aren't very nice sometimes."
He shrugged again. "That is their karma, not yours, Dorcas."
"Their what?" she asked, and he began to explain.
Outside, Clayton and Sean watched with amusement and impatience respectively as Vernon began digging into the ground with his bare hands. The little man had run over to a large old oak tree that stood some fifty feet from the porch, and he was now burrowing frantically into the hard, cold earth, saying, "Papa medicine, Papa medicine, drink drank drunk," over and over.
Clayton's brow furrowed as a thought occurred to him. "Hey," he said slowly, "you know . . ."
"You know what?"
He thought for a few more moments and then turned to Sean. "I read somewhere that moonshiners, like in Kentucky and places that like, bottle the shit and then bury it. Like to let it ferment or age or something, or maybe to hide it from the revenuers, you know?"
Sean emitted a curt laugh. "You think old Grogo's daddy was a moonshiner?"
"Could be. A lot of the old men around here make their own booze, like wine and beer and stuff like that. I don't know when Grogo's parents died, but he looks to be like seventy or something, so it must be a long time ago. Twenty-five years, maybe."
"Moonshine buried in the ground for twenty-five years? And you'd drink it? That's disgusting!"
Clayton shook his head as he watched Vernon scratch at the hard earth. "What's better, Sean, beer made last week or beer made last year? Wine made last year or wine made five years ago? Bourbon made five years ago or bourbon made ten years ago?"
Sean considered this for a moment and then nodded at Clayton. "You got a point there."
They smiled at each other and then jumped down on their hands and knees and joined Vernon in throwing handfuls of dirt in all directions.
They dug for a few minutes, and their fingers were raw and sore by the time Sean touched the neck of the earthenware jug that protruded from the three-foot-deep hole. Another few seconds, and he and Clayton pulled the jug out.
"Holy shit!" Clayton exclaimed.
"Drink drank
drunk." Vernon chortled.
"Yeah, I'll bet!" Clayton laughed. He struggled to pull out the cork, but it would not budge. "Hey, Grogo, you got a corkscrew in there someplace?"
"Drink drank drunk," Vernon repeated.
"Yeah, yeah, right, sounds great to me, too," Clayton said with strained tolerance. "Get me a corkscrew, or a knife. You understand, knife?"
"Knife," Vernon echoed, and then scurried back toward the house.
"And a cup," Clayton called after him. "Get us a cup."
"Cup!" Vernon cried happily as he ran up the stairs.
"What do you want a cup for?" Sean asked. "I don't think I've ever seen you drink out of anything except a bottle, except in bars."
"You ever drink moonshine?"
"No."
"Well, I have. And if this shit does to me what I think it's gonna do to me, I'll drop the jug if I drink from it."
Sean licked his lips. "Sounding better and better."
"There is a triad, not a trinity in the Christian sense," Ashvarinda was saying to Dorcas as Vernon rushed past them into the kitchen. "We believe that the Absolute manifests Itself in the form of three great gods, each of which represents one of the aspects of existence."
"But it's not like Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," Dorcas, said, trying to show him that she was following what he was saying.
"No," Ashvarinda went on. "We speak of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer."
"Cup! Cup!" Vernon sang as he ran past them again and bounded down the steps. He had taken a weathered old dipper from a nail on the kitchen wall and now handed it to Clayton proudly. "Cup!" he repeated.
Sean looked at the dirty, rusty ladle and said, "Real inviting, Grogo."
"Don't worry about it," Clayton said. "The moonshine'll strip it clean. Grogo, where's the knife?"
"Cup!"
"No, no, knife, knife."
"Cup!" Vernon insisted.
"This is harder than talking to Lassie," Sean muttered.
"Listen, Grogo," Clayton said. "We can't drink the medicine if we can't get the cork out. Understand? Cork must come out." He started laughing softly. "Naughty, naughty cork. Make bad cork go 'way."
"Cork!" Vernon agreed, nodding.
"Clay, let's just split, okay?" As Sean was speaking Vernon grabbed the jug from Clayton's hands and, placing it on the ground, bent over it and pressed his mouth to the cork. Sean was looking at Clayton and Clayton had turned to him and was about to reply, but a low gnawing sound, almost a very brief buzz, caused them both to turn to Vernon. The little man had apparently bitten through the entire neck of the jug, and he smiled at Clayton as he spat the piece of neatly sawed pottery out onto the ground. "Cork go 'way," he said happily.
"Way to go, Grogo!" Clayton laughed. "How the hell'd you do that?"
Sean stared at him. "Smile again, Grogo," he demanded.
Grogo smiled and Clayton asked, "Why'd you want him to smile."
Sean shrugged, still staring at Vernon. "His teeth looked . . . I don't know, funny for a minute, I thought. But I guess not."
Clayton studied the small, yellow, broken, and crooked teeth in the smiling, malformed mouth. "You guess not? Are you kidding?"
"No, no, I thought . . . I mean, for an instant I thought his teeth . . . " He sniffed. "Forget it."
Clayton already had. He had taken the jug and cradled it in his right arm, tipping it so that the contents could pour into the dipper he held in his left hand. The liquid had a slightly yellowish tinge and looked almost like brackish water, but the powerful smell that drifted up from the dipper made Clayton's eyes water. "Holy moley," he said. "I think we could put this shit in the gas tank of the jeep."
"You gonna drink it?" Sean asked.
"Drink drank drunk," Vernon said.
"Yeah, that's how it usually works, Grogo old boy," Clayton said, and placed the ladle to his lips. He took a very small sip, swallowed, waited for a moment, and then his face grew red as a beet and tears began pouring from his eyes. His trembling hands dropped the ladle and he fell to the ground, whining, shaking his head, clutching at his chest and stomach.
Sean dropped to one knee beside him. "Clay! Are you okay? Clayton!"
Clayton took a deep breath as some of the redness faded from his face. "Sean . . ." he gasped. "Sean . . ."
"You want a doctor? You want to go to the hospital?"
"Sean . . ." he gasped again, "that shit . . . that shit is fucking incredible! It's fucking great!"
"Yeah?" Sean asked, apprehension mingling with curiosity as he looked at the ladle that lay on the ground. "Maybe I'll try just a little . . . just a sip. . . ."
"Drink drank drunk. Drink drank drunk."
"Shut the fuck up, will you, Grogo?" Sean muttered. He poured a small amount of the fiery liquor and sipped it cautiously. A moment later he was sitting on the ground beside Clayton, and when he was able to speak again, he said, "Oh my God!"
"They don't call it white lightning for nothing." Clayton giggled.
"Clay, I think this shit could probably kill you."
"Oh, yeah, definitely. You gotta go slow with it."
Sean smiled stupidly. "Gives you a nice little buzz, though." He reached for the ladle and looked at it with distaste. "Grogo, you got something less disgusting than this? Like something that doesn't look like it's been used to clean up dog shit?"
"Cup!"
"Yeah, another cup. You got another cup?"
"Cup!" he sang, and then ran back to the house. He entered to find Ashvarinda and Dorcas deep in conversation, which he interrupted by saying, "Friends for Vernon!"
Ashvarinda smiled at him. "Yes, Vernon, it is good to make new friends."
"Cup!" He ran into the kitchen and began searching through the cabinets.
"And who is Krishna?" Dorcas asked, prompting the elderly man to resume the explanation of his religion. "You know, like with the Hare Krishna people in the airports?"
"Well"—he thought for a moment—"in your religion you believe that God took the form of a man, correct?"
"Yes, Christ."
"In our religion, we believe that Vishnu the Preserver does the same thing, frequently. We call these incarnations of Vishnu his avatars, and Krishna is his most famous avatar, though there have been many others."
"And what about that other god, Sh . . . what was his name?"
"Shiva," he repeated patiently. "Shiva the Destroyer."
"Yeah, Shiva. Does Shiva have avatars, too?"
"Cup!" Vernon cried as he ran past them and out again down the steps.
Ashvarinda Patanjali watched Vernon go and his lips barely moved as he said softly, "Yes. Shiva has avatars."
"That's more like it," Sean said, taking the cloudy glass from Vernon's hands. "It's dirty, but at least it ain't rusty." He poured some moonshine into the glass and took another sip. He and Clayton were still sitting on the ground, having reasoned that no purpose would be served by standing up before having another drink.
"Whoa!" Sean cried, falling backward to lie out flat on the cold ground.
"Agghhh," Clayton gasped a moment later. Sean took another sip, Clayton took another sip, then each took another, and another.
Soon they were both lying motionless on their backs, and Sean mumbled. "Hey, Clay?"
"Yeah?"
"I can't feel my feet or hands."
"Huh?"
"I can't feel my feet or hands."
"Weren't you paying attention in there? You don't have any. They're all an illusion. So are you and me."
"Yeah?" Sean laughed. "Well, this illusion's drunk on his ass already."
Clayton began to laugh uproariously. The quip was not particularly funny, but Clayton found it absolutely hysterical, and he rolled onto his side and doubled over. At last Clayton was able to say, "We better get going. If I drink much more of this, they'll have to bury me in that hole. I mean, this stuff is like unbelievable."
"Great fucking shit," Sean said as he struggled to ge
t up onto his hands and knees.
"Great fucking shit," Clayton agreed, staggering to his feet.
"Great fucking shit," Vernon echoed happily. Those words coming from Vernon Sweet seemed so incongruous and absurd that Sean and Clayton collapsed back onto the ground in laughter, and a few minutes passed before they once again made the effort to stand up.
"I feel like I just drank a quart of bourbon." Clayton smiled.
"Grogo," Sean said, "tell Dorcas we're leaving, okay? You know, Dorcas? Say bye-bye for us to Dorcas. You understand?"
"Bye-bye. Bye-bye."
"Yeah, hang loose, Grogo," Clayton said, and began stumbling toward the woods.
"Bye-bye. Bye-bye." Vernon watched them walk off into the forest and then turned and scurried back to the old cabin.
"That little freak drives me nuts," Sean muttered as he followed Clayton into the woods.
It was after dark by the time Dorcas returned to her father's house. Fascinating stuff, she thought as she opened the front door. I guess everybody wonders what's real and what isn't. I have, anyway. But maybe it's just that bad acid trip I had that makes me think about that kind of thing.
She closed the door loudly behind her and then went into the living room. She tossed her parka on the floor and then sat down on the sofa to pull off her boots. It had been snowing lightly as she trudged back through the woods from Vernon's house, and the snow on her hair had melted as soon as she was in the warm house. She considered leaving her braids intact to dry so that her hair would be all ripply when she undid them later, but they were so wet that they were dripping down her back and making her extremely uncomfortable. Better dry my hair, she thought as she rose from the sofa and walked up to her bedroom. I feel kind of chilly anyway. Don't want to get sick.
She unwrapped her braids and plugged in her hair dryer, and then stood motionless in front of the mirror, staring at herself. She smiled sadly. I look just like Lydia with my hair like this.
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