And the Ass Saw the Angel

by Nick Cave

  Pa’s boots marched toward the lumpen mass, his stride heavy with badness, and ah watched Pa prepare to kick this writhing shit hill all over the valley. But no, to mah amazement he didn’t even lift a leg to stomp on it – he just stood there, shuffling a little, pointing in one direction and then another, like he was looking for something. ‘Hanging on the wall, Pa… the chainsaw…’ ah found mahself thinking. ‘Get the goddamn chainsaw…’

  In time, a pink gash opened at one end, and from this bright hole the steaming zoophyte appeared to breathe, as the rain rinsed away the mud. Its lower region split to form a mammoth set of legs, and above these grew two pink flailing arms, one of which clung to a bottle made of stone. Her two hunkering pins kicked and crossed and folded as the gaping cavern in her face – for it was Ma – hollered and barked:

  ‘Pa-a! Paaaa! Git off dis chain!’

  As ah lay on mah back beneath the Chevy, mah eyes met with a wondrous discovery. A vast web hung above mah face, stretching right the way across the chassis, spun – judging from its great span – by an uncommonly enterprising arachnid. Ah swear ah had not seen a spider’s web spun outdoors since the rain had started two years before. And so damn big! And such a goddamn handsome specimen!

  It swam before mah eyes. It did. Everything seemed suddenly geocentric to the axis of this knitted floss – this hypnotical net – as, spinning around its spectral convolutions, whorl by tightening whorl, the spiral drew me to its darksome core, which loomed there above mah head. Darkness whelmed about me and mah eyes began to see nothing but deepening shades of night… drawing me down… unner… into its hexing heart…

  Ah wrenched mahself back and flipped on to mah belly again, breaking free of the trance that would have digested me like a fly, had ah not turned away.

  VIII

  All mah life ah have lurked about the periphery and watched – kept tabs on the hapless concatenations, the contretemps and the downright calamities of the people within mah dominion – Ukulore Valley.

  Ah was, you might say, a Voyeur to the Lord. All mah days ah have served as an informer – planted in the ranks of the enemy – gleaning what ah could from what ah happened to see or hear or sniff out. Yes, now that ah am well on the way to Paradise – mah rightful dominion – it gives me a certain pleasure to reveal this lifelong secret. By divine appointment ah was God’s snitch. Ah mean, no one can keep a secret better than a mute.

  Clearly ah was planted in the womb of mah mother to take the place of mah brother, who now sits and waits for me in Heaven, having been spared the trauma of life. Brother! Have they told you? Ah am coming home! Ah am coming home!

  This also explains why mah earlier actions were so impotent. Why nothing ever happened that was a direct result of mah doing. It was only in these latter years that mah divine orders were re-evaluated. It was only in the final years that ah was promoted from snitch to saboteur.

  But that is all behind me now.

  Though God has told me Himself that mah work on earth was of an incomparable standard, not all mah missions were free of misadventure. In fact, like Ezekiel, Daniel or Jonah, the very essence of mah success was rooted in great personal catastrophe – priceless information gleaned as from the pit, or the den, or the whale’s belly.

  One instance of this was a mission that found me forced to look into the dealings of Cosey Mo, the harlot of Hooper’s Hill.

  It was early evening and pissing rain, and as ah reached the crest of the hill ah came across a pick-up, its front lights on full beam, parked outside the little pink caravan.

  ‘Cosey has company,’ ah thought, making a mental note of the fact.

  It was safer to watch Cosey Mo at night, for, as she was wont to burn the midnight oil inside her caravan, ah could climb up on the wheel-guard and watch through the little round window without being seen from inside.

  Inside ah could now see a man’s muscular back and hind-quarters – an inky menagerie tattooed upon it – punishing the harlot, or the little that ah could see of her – a shogging thigh, an aureate splash of hair, a crooked and clipping arm and an arm outflung. As ah watched mah heart quopped longingly, for, even with the tumultuous downpour crashing all around me, ah could hear her trembling bleats – short and rhythmic – her cry in the night – O Cosey…

  Ah must have lost sense of things for a while, hypnotized by the gruesome menagerie that roamed the glistening contours of his body – a cobra with a rat caught between its fangs, a pouncing panther, wolves fighting, a unicorn etched upon his huge shoulders, a nuchal eagle passing judgement on the restless brood.

  So resolutely was ah conducting mah mission that ah did not hear the footsteps coming up behind me.

  ‘Okay sickboy, the show’s over,’ came a voice, thick with likker, and as ah swung round a six-inch steel blade pinned me to the wall. Ah could feel the blade pricking me lightly, nervously.

  ‘Climb down, sickboy,’ sneered a lean, unshaven cane-man, with a gold tooth and the letters H-A-T-E tattooed across the knuckles of his right hand, and across his left, similarly, H-A-T-E.

  ‘Don’t touch anything – leave ’em as they are. Ah want mah very mean friend to see you as ah found you. We’ll just wait around in the shelter here for him to finish…’

  Ah stood there shivering, suddenly cold, very cold.

  ‘This is a very unlucky day for you, sickboy. Mah friend Jock Snow,’ he continued, ‘why, mah friend Jock Snow is gunna tear your head off and shit in your neck.’ And we waited for what must have been ten minutes, every muscle in mah body shitting and a-shaking, and him with the gold tooth whispering, over and over again: ‘This sure ain’t yer lucky day,’ and every time ah tried to adjust mahself, he’d hiss, ‘Ah said leave them alone, sickboy.’

  Eventually Jock Snow climbed down the stairs, his shirt thrown over his shoulder. He had a great fucken grin on his face.

  Then he saw me. Then he looked incredibly mean. And very low.

  The last thing ah remember seeing was the face of Christ, a configuration of blues and greens, come floating towards me, his forehead studded with red pearls of blood, and ah remember thinking what overwhelming compassion resided in His eyes. Then something like a mule kicked me.

  Ah awoke to the aroma of lavender.

  Ah tried to open mah eyes but mah left eye felt like it had two angry leeches for lids, leaving me the merest slit to see through. Mah right eye simply would not open at all. Everything ah could see was bathed in a scarlet light and ah wondered where the fuck ah was. Was ah still in the land of the living? Had ah died and gone to Hell?

  Then a cool hand descended and touched mah brow lightly. It was attached to a pale, draped arm and the arm was part of the sweetly-scented body of Cosey Mo.

  Ah was helpless. There was nothing ah could do to defend mahself. Ah tried to stand but mah body protested with a thousand aches and algos, great and small. Ah watched her as best ah could – bathed in red – dabbing and stroking and patting me, and ah tried to figure out what she was up to – touching me like that all the time. Was she hexing me? Casting some terrible spell?

  Ah needed water and ah lifted mah head slightly and was about to at least mouth the word ‘war-tah’, when she said: ‘Drink this. It’s water.’

  ‘Don’t try to speak. Just lie back. It’s all right, I saw what happened. If it weren’t for me calling off those dogs they would have… Here, lie still – he’s one mean brute, that Jock Snow – ssshhh, don’t speak,’ she whispered, and pointing one fire-crowned finger, she gently pressed it to mah lips.

  Cosey Mo’s face was tinted in scarlet light, pinking her chrysal curls that tumbled down each breast as she leaned across me to dab at mah battered face, and despite the protestations of mah sorry body ah could feel the mollitude of her locks brush lightly across mah trembling thigh.

  ‘Sooo, you’re the peep… so, you’re the watcher,’ she said with a peculiar smile upon her lips. ‘That ain’t the first time, is it sweetheart? You’ve been here before.’ Then lowering
her voice she said, more to herself than to me, ’… those chicken-shit sons of bitches…’

  Her smooth white breasts swelled and shifted beneath the slippery satin fabric of her nightgown. Ah inhaled a sweet axillary sourness. With those two honey-hued orbs filling mah mind and her hushed voice saying, ‘Ssshhh, close your eyes now, sugar,’ ah guess ah fell away…

  IX

  Listen, ah don’t wanna speak ill of the dead but have ah told you that mah mother was a great whopping whale of a cunt? Well she was precisely that – a great whopping whale of a hog’s cunt with a dry black maggot for a brain.

  The slobstress was wont to play pedagogue when she’d hit the piss just enough to be able to stand and to speak. It was a woeful thing to see.

  One particular evening when Pa had retired early, Ma decided she wanted to teach me about mah heritage, mah ancestry, mah family tree and so forth. Ah was sitting in the hardback chair and we were playing this sort of game she used to enjoy.

  Weaving about in front of me with her brown stone bottle in one paw and an old plastic fly-swat in the other, she would first give the lesson, which could take anything up to an hour, sometimes two, and then she would shoot questions at me. If the answer was ‘yes’, ah was to raise mah right hand, and if the answer was ‘no’, ah was to raise mah left. If ah answered incorrectly and raised the wrong hand, she would deliver a stinging blow to the top of mah scalp with the fly-swat. If ah did not answer at all, which was often, as both mah hands had been tied to the front legs of the chair, she would swat me across the right ear or the left ear depending on which she thought was the correct answer.

  Sometimes, toward the end of the bottle, she would find she had forgotten the answer herself and then ah would receive a blow to both ears. When at last she couldn’t remember the question, or, for that matter, even the topic of the lesson, or eventually why ah was tied to a chair and she had a fly-swat in her hand at all, she would fly into a frenzy of slaps, swats, strikes, back-handers, flying tackles and stomps, until at last she would collapse exhausted in her armchair. Ah would then have to wait until Pa decided it was safe to enter the room and untie me.

  Anyway, ah don’t want to sink here and sling a lot of crap at a corpse – because that’s all she is now, a mess of maggots – oh yes, and a soul, a shrieking, burning soul. Ah wanna tell you what Ma revealed to me on this particular evening about mah ancestry, about mah blood line, on mah father’s side – strange things, things ah always suspected, about mah heritage, about mah blood. Yes, about mah blood.

  Ma roared, for she rarely spoke. ‘Your family tree, baw, on y’Pa’s side, is one very shady tree, and ah don’t mean it’s gotta lotta leaves growin’ on it neither. Ya Pa’s side is just one big fucken black twisty knot planted in the backest backwoods – I’m talking hill-stock, baw, and there ain’t no lower ass-ended inborn breed than that. That’s why ya Pa’s a half-wit – that’s why you’re not all there either, not countin’ ya dumbness. Ya know ya name ain’t Eu-crow? Ya Pa changed it when he left the hills. Ever hear of the Morton Clan? Well it weren’t healthy having Morton as ya tag forty years ago. Forty years ago they were hangin’ Mortons by the dozen. Hills were fulla them. Rounded most of ‘em up, but a few got away – like ya Pa. Blew his own ear off doing it. Them Mortons were the lowest inbred animals t’ever pleasure a pig! Their blood was black! Same’s yours. Sick black blood! Look at ya eyes. There’s some troubled blood in there. I seen it from the first. Troubled blood…’

  And so on and so forth, her monologue turning with the time and with the moonshine bad in her brains – bad talk, bad time, bad shine – right there before mah eyes – yes, right there before mah very troubled eyes. And ah would wait, sitting in the hardback chair, bent double at the waist and bound by the wrists to its wooden legs, like a witch on a ducking stool awaiting the inevitable ‘trial’ – mah test – awaiting the stings and stripes of that fat fairy’s wand, awaiting the eventual spilling of mah sick, of mah black, of mah sick, black blood.

  ‘Just as ah remembered,’ ah thought, with genuine relief, ‘red.’ Ah dug a fresh hole with mah good hand and returned the scissors to the ground at the foot of the gallows-tree. Ah mean, if this rain is washing up coffins and tombstones, then a pair of scissors was not gunna last too long in the ground unless it was anchored with something solid. Ah stomped on the sloppy grave as best ah could, knowing full well that this mud was not the burying kind.

  Perching on a root that rose like a blanched knuckle from the eroded soil at the base of the gallows-tree, ah took a large handkerchief and ah daubed at the dark pool of blood that swelled and slowly filled mah cupped hand. Holding the bloody rag up to the dim afternoon light the blood looked even redder.

  Convinced, ah rinsed both hand and handkerchief. Ah laid the latter over the scarlet bead that sprang from the hole in mah palm and knotted it back.

  ‘Ah will look again tomorrow,’ ah thought, knowing full well ah would pick the sick, black scab away tonight.

  Ah shinned the slabby climb, shack-bound and weary.

  X

  And then came the preacher, Abie Poe.

  The crack of his blue steel pistols shattered the massy scab of despond that had spread across the Ukulite community like some alien excrescence. All along Maine musty curtains fluttered and parted and the haunted faces of the once faithful hovered like so many blaked and unhappy moons. Apprehensively each one looked toward the commotion in the town square, surprised to see that one lone man on a horse was responsible for such a formidable alarum. Their murine faces twitched and cringed with each bullet spent as they strained to comprehend the nature of his business above the roar of his guns and the ceaseless, pounding rain into which he fired.

  Emptying his six-shooters in a wild salute, Abie Poe bade welcome to Ukulore Valley. He span his guns like propellers. He shot holes in Noah’s barber shop sign, and Noah’s dark habitude darkened still more. Two pot plants exploded into clouds of terracotta dust and blew a russet blanket over the windows of Joy Flockley’s haberdashery. He shot at Wiggam’s Wishing Well, and an ounce of lead wedged itself between two piled slabs of the wall, inches above a plastic bag containing a note that a pale and trembling hand had deposited there, in that ashlar surround, months before. The wall splashed a puff of dust. Stuffed into a window, the Wiggam family huffed. Abie Poe fired blindly into the sky. Drips sizzled on his rods’ hot barrels. Smoke curled in blue arabesques.

  Abie Poe sat astride an absurd pine-wood mount, under which his ancient horse swayed and strained. Poe reeled extravagantly, pivoting from the saddle, describing with his wiry torso a series of deep and sweeping arcs to the left and right, back and forth, wild and thrashing, and though it is true that the nag made no motion to move, it must be said that in all his perilous reeling, Poe never once left the seat of his mount.

  The mount upon which Poe pivoted was a makeshift contraption invented by Poe himself and patented in Salem, under the name ‘Poe’s Throne’. Although ostensibly a deluxe sedan, it was in reality two overweight ‘A’ frames with a home-made saddle of leather and possum pelts slung between, a built-up back-support, canvas side-flaps and a standard under-brace. Apart from the hide seat, the whole structure was built out of pine lumber and weighed close to twice the amount of any more conventional equivalent.

  But really, the crowning feature of this invention was a contrivance that Poe added a year or so after the patenting. It was a safety harness that secured the rider in the saddle at all times and which was indeed the very device that enabled the drunken gun-slinging Poe simultaneously to weave his wild way, sound both irons, and remain cleaved to his throne.

  If it had not been for ‘The Throne’, Abie Poe would not have been in this God-forgotten valley at all, for it was under the pretext of finding someone to manufacture the mount that he had up and left the lonely prairies of the west and headed south. Figuring that westerners knew too much about horses and had too little cash to be spending it on fancy saddles, Abie Poe took his desig
n to where everybody was ‘stinken rich or fucken stupid’. Or so he thought.

  But the south had proved no more sympathetic than anywhere else he’d wandered. No one was interested in buying the patent on a pine-beam mount, saddle and safety harness.

  Poe had found employment as a truck driver, tobacco picker, dish washer, poacher, rustler and housebreaker, none of which lasted further than the first pay packet.

  Hired as a salesman selling silver cutlery sets door to door, and utilizing his innate powers of persuasion, Poe would insinuate his way into the lives of the young wives who formed the bulk of his clientele, bullying them with soft nothings, flirting through a sham of oily compliments and guiding their trembling hands toward the dotted line which bound them lock, stock and barrel to contracts which they had no chance of upholding. Poe generously took their sexual favours in lieu of the instalments, and in doing so seated himself in a position of absolute control, whereupon he proceeded to extravasate them mercilessly for their all. Those years had seen Abie Poe slip his tongue into the most sordid pies.

  Seven years passed and Poe had found himself serving a term of four years for two counts of extortion and three counts of fraud in the scandalously over-populated Binbridge State Penitentiary. The last six months of his term he served in the prison infirmary, owing to a severely advanced infestation of Trichuris trichiura, more commonly known as whip worm.