Danny Gospel

by David Athey

  5:34 p.m. A young boy in Beijing glances up from his rice bowl and grins at the girl outside the window.

  8:24 p.m. A husband with his eyes closed reaches for his wife's hand during a scary movie in Madrid.

  3:58 a.m. An old weathered man in the Arctic Circle smiles warmly at his old weathered wife.

  10:01 a.m. A young man in Iowa says, "I love you." And a young woman in New York is silent.

  The bartender reappeared. "Tap water or spring?" Transfixed by the clocks, I said, "How are we inside of time, and how are we outside?"

  "Tap water or spring?" the bartender repeated. "What do you want?"

  The clocks swirled in my mind.

  The bartender waved his hand in front of my face. "Are you still with us? I don't have time for this. Listen, I really don't have-"

  A woman's voice sang out, "I have time!"

  The voice sounded familiar, yet strange.

  I turned to see a woman with wild red hair, fiery blouse, hot pink skirt, and torrid orange stilettos. A cigarette dangled from her scarlet lips.

  "Plain Jane? Look at you."

  She curled her fingers and stared at the reflections in her ruby fingernails. "I have been looking at me," she said, nodding her approval. She stared at the dry blood on my flannel shirt and pointed at me with her cigarette. "Look what the cat dragged in."

  Another woman's voice rang out. "Is that Danny Gospel? Hey, Danny!"

  I craned my neck to see Melissa. I only knew her in white-the peasant dress and the bathrobe-but now she wore a black cocktail dress, so tight that the designer must have used a single strand of night sky to weave his magic around her curves.

  I wondered: what's with all the flesh tonight? Don't the women know that the weather turned cold? They could catch their deaths.

  The bartender asked, "How can I help you?"

  Jane flicked cigarette ashes at the floor. "Two bottles of Harp for the girls. And spring water for Danny. Put everything on my tab, Bubba."

  "Okay," Bubba said, "but my name is Frederick. Did you see the latest issue of The Atlantic? My poem-"

  Jane laughed. "Whatever, you'll get your tip. Now, Danny, we were just talking about you. Some new rumors are floating around. Come sit with us."

  Before I could decide if that was a good idea, Jane dragged me around the pool table and over to the corner booth.

  "Hey," I said, "take it easy. What's gotten into you?"

  "Don't be shy, Danny," she said, shoving me across from the scantily clad Melissa, whose eyes widened at the sight of blood on my shirt.

  I shrugged. "Cat."

  She nodded, fully understanding. "My new Musie has already swiped me. See the scratches on my wrists?"

  Jane started humming the chorus of "Cat Scratch Fever" while the bartender, apparently the only person working that night, appeared with our drinks. "For the ladies, here are your Harps. And for the gentleman, cool clear water."

  Jane winked. "Thanks, Bubba."

  "I'm Frederick Madison," he said, "and I'm featured in The Atlantic." He frowned proudly and scurried off to serve other customers.

  Melissa swigged her beer and then pulled out a Swiss army knife. She opened the blade, sliced through the air, and stabbed down hard on the table. For years, poets and other customers in the Foxhead have wielded blades of all shapes and sizes, carving temporary immortalities into the tables. Most of the graffiti is typical: various initials heart other initials; a few people rule; and on our table, there was a crude but lovely scraping of Van Gogh's Starry Night.

  "One last star in the swirls," she said. "There. Now it's finished."

  "It's wonderful," I said.

  Melissa beamed, her black dress and gold skin shining across the table. She pointed the knife at me. "Danny, you never told me the story about your scar."

  I looked down. "Can we talk about it some other time?"

  Melissa hesitantly agreed, and gently placed the knife on the table, the blade pointing at herself.

  Jane sighed and tossed her cigarette to the floor, right where a group of revelers stood with their drinks. Jane extended her plain leg and snuffed out the cigarette with one stomp of the orange stiletto.

  A tall blonde swayed dramatically and said, "Ex-cuuuse me, Miss B!"

  "Only God could excuse someone like you," Jane said.

  The blonde's boyfriend, all muscle inside of a white cashmere sweater, glared at the cigarette butt and then at me, and said in a challenging voice, "Are we cool?"

  "Sorry about that," I said, not wanting any trouble.

  The muscle man smirked. "So, we're cool?"

  "Yeah," I said, analyzing his weak spots and noticing the overripe Adam's apple, "we're cool."

  The blonde hissed in my direction, "Sooo not cool. Flannel shirt and overalls. Beyond retro. Loser!"

  "At least his chest is real," Jane said.

  The muscle man's face grew pensive, as if considering the validity of the comment, and then his brow unfurrowed and he laughed heartily. "A real chest! That's funny."

  Everyone in their group agreed, laughing, except of course for the blonde. "That's sooo not funny," she said. And she dug her nails into the cashmere sweater and dragged the muscle man toward the bar. "You better make it up to me, Kendal. I want an Irish car bomb."

  I whispered into Jane's ear, "You've never caused trouble in your whole life. What's happened to you?"

  She lit another cigarette. "I met Melissa."

  "So? I've met her, too. And I didn't start acting crazy in public."

  Jane raised an eyebrow. Melissa raised an eyebrow.

  "Okay, okay," I acknowledged. "But you girls have gone off the deep end. Last week, you were fine. And now you're ... you're ... this."

  "It's called a makeover," Melissa said. "I just walked into dulcinea on a whim and started talking to Jane about clothes and men and terrorism and the end of the world, and we decided to change our lives."

  "Make over our lives," Jane said. "You understand that, Danny."

  I nodded sympathetically. "Yeah, I understand."

  Melissa sipped her beer and started bobbing to a blue tune that was jazzing from the jukebox. "I just love Miles Davis."

  "Me too," Jane said, bobbing along. "Man, they have the best jukebox in here."

  Heads were bobbing throughout the bar, which was now almost full, and I joined in, enjoying the call of the muted trumpet.

  When the blue tune was over, the next song was "I Go Walking After Midnight" by Patsy Cline, and I felt as if the whole crowd in the Foxhead was in the moonlight with me, searching, searching for-

  "Danny," Melissa said, "have you written any songs?"

  "Huh? What?"

  "Religious songs," Jane said. She blew on her Harp bottle as if it were a musical jug. "You've always said you were going to write hymns."

  "Spirituals," I said. "I've always wanted to write something as good as the spirituals. But I haven't suffered enough."

  "Danny," Jane said, taking my hand, "you've suffered-"

  The bartender and his racing stripes appeared with another tray of drinks. "On the house," he said. "Say, that Patsy Cline song reminds me of the poem I published in this month's Atlantic."

  Jane and Melissa looked away, hoping he'd take the hint. I gulped some more spring water and said, "Tell me about your poem, Frederick."

  The bartender glanced around the busy bar and convinced himself that nobody needed him. He squeezed into the booth beside Melissa. "My poem was inspired by my cousin's wedding in Greece. The ceremony took place in a domed church on a mountain overlooking the Mediterranean. I don't have a religious bone in my body, but I loved the artfulness of the ritual. The entire service was sung. I didn't know a wedding could be sung! And the bride and groom were crowned with flowers. Imagine that, my pregnant cousin Lorraine and her swarthy plumber-the king and queen of the world!"

  Several customers waved for Frederick from the bar. "Excuse me," he said, scooting back out of the booth. "I better get back to ser
ving."

  "Bubba," Jane said, flirting, "you're my third-favorite author."

  "Bubba," Melissa said, teasing, "you're my secondfavorite author."

  Frederick replied, in all seriousness, "I will be signing copies of The Atlantic at the Prairie Lights Bookstore next Saturday. I'll see you all there."

  Despite Frederick's problem, it was good to be in a place where literature is considered sacred. And I asked the ladies, "Who is your favorite author-for real?"

  With her red blouse glowing in the smoky room, Jane expressed her newfound admiration for Dostoevsky. "I just started reading The Brothers Karamazov and it seems to be about everything," she said. "Love, hate, faith, doubt, kindness, cruelty, men and women, and everything with a passion."

  Melissa swigged her beer. "Hmm. I cast my vote for Emily Dickinson. She wasn't as extreme as Dostoevsky or as fancy as Shakespeare, but sometimes I think about her when I'm alone on the farm, notebook in hand, staring out into the sky. Emily reminds me of the largeness and loneliness of the soul."

  Jane said, "You should call Ethan."

  Melissa sighed. "Oh, Ethan ... with his mismatched arms and asymmetrical head ... Hmm. Maybe." She reached out and spun her knife. The blade whirled with light in the middle of the table, eventually slowed and stopped, and ended up pointing at me.

  Melissa asked, "Who is your favorite author?"

  I sipped more spring water and thought about people like Dante, Chesterton, Flannery O'Connor, and a host of others who loved words and the Word.

  Jane tapped her ruby fingernails on the table. Tap, tap, tap. "Tell us," she said. Tap, tap-

  "My grandmother," I said. "She wrote wonderful little stories. Every person she created was heroic and foolish and struggling to do God's will. Her characters were heavenly, and stuck in the Iowa soil, just trying to be normal and happy."

  Jane and Melissa enjoyed their Harps and I gulped my water, and we sat quietly for a while, listening to the conversations rising and falling. The jukebox, awaiting the next round of quarters, flashed and blinked in silence.

  Melissa said, "Danny, do you still have your grandmother's stories? You should try to publish them."

  I shook my head. "Everything is gone. When my brother sold the farm, the people in charge of the auction burned several boxes they thought were full of junk, including Grammy's notebooks and an heirloom wedding dress."

  "Those auctioneers are criminals, stealing from their neighbors," Melissa said, fingering her knife.

  Jane rubbed my shoulder. "Danny, you really have suffered."

  "Look, turn around," Melissa said, pointing at the TV above the bar. "They're showing a picture of that poor old man, the Alzheimer's patient who wandered off."

  My eyes filled with tears. "Jack Williams," I whispered.

  "They found him," Jane said. "Turns out he wasn't in the reservoir, after all. Thank God, he's alive!"

  "Yes, he's alive," I said, wiping my cheek. "But I don't think the doctors can keep him alive."

  "You know him, Danny, right?" Jane asked. "Didn't Jack Williams live near your farm?"

  "Yes, he was a good neighbor."

  In the next booth, someone whispered loudly, "Do you remember that music group made up of farmers, the Good News Family or something? Danny was in that, but everyone died and he went crazy. Or I should say, crazier. Then his fiancee left him and moved to New York. Since 9/11, Danny has been terrorizing half of Iowa, driving through farms and stalking people."

  "Maybe," I said to Jane and Melissa, "we should go somewhere else. Maybe we could find some good live music."

  One of the guys at the pool table shouted, "Will! It's your game! C'mon, shoot 'em up!"

  My stomach felt sick.

  "Will! Where are you?"

  From the far side of the bar, a stocky guy in jeans and cowboy boots came strutting. The guy had pale blue eyes, a clean strong jaw, grinning teeth, and a self-inflicted buzz cut.

  Jane and Melissa rolled their eyes, amused.

  I was not amused. Because this strutting grinner was Will Bentley, the guy who had messed with my girl.

  It's interesting how a horrible memory often begins with a scene of bliss. On a summer day, Rachel and I were sitting under a tree near the reservoir.

  "Why did the Lord create the leviathan?" Rachel asked, her toes wriggling in the spillway creek.

  I smiled. "Just for fun."

  Rachel nodded, her wild hair sparkling. "And why the brontosaurus?"

  "God loves to move mountains. So He gave the mountains some feet."

  Rachel laughed and reached for my hand. "And why did the Lord create a man?"

  I pulled her close. "Man was made to walk in the Garden."

  "Is that all?"

  "And to farm the Garden."

  "Sounds boring."

  I leaned in for a good kiss.

  "Now you're talking," Rachel said.

  It was one of the few good days that I had after my father's death. My fiancee did her best to get me through the summer, helping with the farm and everything. But when the season changed to fall, and the crop was failing, Rachel no longer wanted to talk about marriage. And then came the auction and my move into the trailer park, and a cold winter, with Rachel hardly ever talking about anything except New York. And then on Valentine's Day, she wept over my beautiful poem and dumped me.

  I didn't speak to her again until the second week in March, when the snow was melting. I called her on the phone and kept the conversation light, telling her strange stories about working at the post office. She actually laughed. And something inside of me blossomed and I couldn't help myself. I began talking about the farm and having a normal happy life.

  Rachel responded, "I want to be happy, as well. You know how much I love you, Danny. But I can't stay in Iowa."

  "And I can't leave."

  There was a horrible hush.

  "Danny. I'm returning to New York at the end of the semester."

  "I know."

  "And I'm going to stay there."

  "I know."

  Yet something way down in my heart kept telling me that Rachel and I had a future.

  Perhaps I shouldn't have followed my ex-fiancee the morning of her last day in Iowa, when she visited the reservoir. In my wishful-thinking mind, I thought Rachel was driving out there as a sort of pilgrimage to recall how we'd played with the big questions and answered them with a kiss.

  I followed her red Jetta from a distance and then parked my pickup beside her car after she'd walked up the trail toward the spillway. Silently, I climbed out of the truck and searched through the trees where Rachel had disappeared; and when I was almost to the clearing, I saw the shimmer of her white blouse. I took a step closer and saw her kissing another man.

  Will Bentley. On the lips? Or just on the cheek? What did it matter? The damage was done.

  Rachel saw me out of the corner of her eye and didn't say a word. She didn't even wave or acknowledge my existence.

  I thought she might at least phone me later and try to explain. But she just delivered her leased Jetta back to the dealer and flew to New York.

  After that, it was wretched enough living in the same town with Will Bentley. But he made everything worse by moving into a house on my mail route. Sometimes he'd appear at the window with puckered lips. He'd kiss the glass, and wink, and laugh.

  Certain men would have killed him. But I wasn't certain men, so I just dropped most of his mail into the black metal box and walked away.

  "Jane and Melissa," I said, sliding out of the booth, "please excuse me."

  "Where are you going?"

  I climbed on the pool table, my head in the cloud of smoke near the ceiling.

  Will Bentley glared. Jane and Melissa smiled nervously. Other people, including the blonde and her muscular boyfriend, pointed and murmured.

  "I'd like to recite a poem," I said, swaying. "I just made it up, with help from King Solomon. The poem is called `Song for the Woman of My Dreams."'

&nbs
p; A hush fell upon the tavern.

  "Behold," I said, "You are beautiful.

  "Your eyes are new-born stars. Your hair is the swishing of Pegasus' tail.

  "Your teeth are pearls of good prices.

  "Your lips are red roses with no thorns.

  "Your cheeks are halves of a pomegranate, like the good kind you get at the Farmers' Market.

  "And your neck is a leaning tower in Babylon, making everyone babble about its beauty.

  "And your breasts, if I may say so, are two happy fawns, dappled with freckles because of your sunbathing.

  "As the day breathes heavily, I will travel the roads of myrrh and frankincense and gravel.

  "Come down from Heaven, my love, with wings or just the way you were.

  "Let us kiss one another and become the lovers that enter the Garden again."

  Jane and Melissa whistled and clapped their hands.

  The blonde said, "That was really cool. And really hot."

  Will Bentley scoffed.

  "Encore!" Melissa shouted. "Encore!"

  "Okay," I said, swaying. "Here's one called `Song for the Woman of My Dreams, Part Two."'

  Several amazing words were dancing on the tip of my tongue when Will Bentley jumped up and joined me on the pool table.

  "You're the mailman for Brown Street," he said. "You're the stupid mailman, right?"

  "Yes, Will. I sometimes deliver some mail on Brown Street."

  "Well, I'm missing several bills, Danny Boy. What did you do, throw my mail in the garbage?"

  "Don't worry about your bills. When my angel marries me and turns the world into Eden again, everything will be free. No more debts."

  Will slid closer to me and assumed a grappling position, reaching out with thick arms. "Tell me what you did to my mail, or else I'm gonna throw you against the floor. And when the bill collectors start calling me, I'm gonna direct them to your hospital room."