Ronan
Ronan Bon Young.
Beloved Husband of Evelyn Beryl.
Friend of this land. Now in God’s hands.
April 24, 1941–January 14, 2013
is how the small, incarnadine headstone reads as a group of white-haired and bent figures shuffle away from the freshly filled grave. It is a marker only, his body having never been found. The handful of mourners and the priest who officiated agree it is unusual, but it’s how Ronan would have wanted it, such was his love of this place and in particular the Loch and her deep, dark, and restless spirit. His stone lies in tandem with his bride Evelyn’s own marker, which Ronan set in place himself not four years earlier.
At the “local” later that evening, all who knew Ronan Young toast his memory and agree to a man that the Bonnie Bradana should be mothballed in a museum, so much a part of the local culture and legend has she become. But no one has the means, the real inclination, or the time, and the shared desire is more of a nod to Ronan and his beloved vessel than anything that will be acted upon. Instead the Bonnie Bradana will be left to gather cobwebs in a boat shed until the money for the berth Ronan had always paid in advance runs out and she is broken up for her cured wood or torn apart and cannibalized for whatever is still salvageable within her. But there is a petite, well-loved home and a modest bank account that needs to find an heir. Devin, Ronan’s older brother, has been dead these many years, but there is talk of a child that Devin conceived, who may still live somewhere in America and who, if living, should be located and informed of the humble windfall, being the only surviving family member. Both a local lawyer and a family friend are sending out smoke signals to the west trying to locate this child. Good people doing good deeds.
But the yin and the yang of the universe must always be in balance. There is no other way. Everything is a whole. A circle. Complete. With every gift comes something dark and with every misfortune comes the seed of an equal benefit. All seemingly opposite or contrary forces are interconnected and interrelated. There can be no front without a back. No up without a down. No zig without a zag. No black without white. No life without death.
And ten minutes’ journey from the hill on which Ronan Young’s memorial has just been placed, there is a gloomy and anonymous apartment in Inverness where a young man is piecing together, from homemade parts, a handgun that will be sold for one purpose. To take a life.
Horatio
If I think that’s all I’m going to get from the horny, but possibly slightly nuts, Reverend’s nympho, I am very much mistaken. She keeps on keeping on. She extends her hours of service to my sister, and I make sure first that Josie is treated well, bathed, taken care of and read to: the Bible from the Rev’s wife; Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and True Tales of the Loch Ness Monster from me. Then we get down to business, Mrs. Whiting and I—and that feels just plain creepy calling her Mrs. Whiting. She has already suggested, mid-romp, that I call her “Virginia.” That’s disturbing, too, because she’s older than me by more than a decade and a half and it’s generally uncomfortable all round to even call her anything, so I don’t. She teaches me things about the female body that I never would have even considered were possibilities, let alone my task and duty to attend to as the male sex partner. I get better at it, too, and although I’m still racked with guilt and a feeling of absolute phantasmagoria pervades every encounter, Woody is having the time of his young life. And he doesn’t jump the gun quite as much anymore, either. We (Woody and I) both learn about new and interesting coital positions as this wild sexual fruit-loop gives us both the instruction of a lifetime.
I feel a certain confidence as well, in social situations that previously intimidated me—at school and around the communal circles in general—now that I am actually having full-on, penis-to-vagina sex. And not just with some dopey girl from school, either, but with the genuine article: an adult, married woman! It just reeks of “grown-upness” to me. I do try, in my guilt, to talk myself out of the position I’m in, but Woody outsmarts me every time. He’s obviously better at debating than I am. At the end of every—dare I even call it “lovemaking”—session, she continually admonishes me to “keep it to ourselves,” and that “it’s our little secret.” Not sure why she keeps saying this, because I’m sure as hell not going to print up posters saying I’M OFFICIALLY PORKING THE REVEREND’S WIFE, SO SUCK IT! and hang them all around my school. I am a randy young boy/man and have since come to understand that most boys my age are open to screwing pretty much anything remotely female that shows them even the slightest affection of any kind whatsoever, but at this point I’m regrettably aware of the cuckolding nature of our trysts, and, sadly, I am also slightly in love. My mom would kill me. Then there’s the public shame to consider (though it would probably be mixed with a certain amount of bonhomie and back-slapping from my schoolmates).
So we, Virginia and I, continue to screw our brains out like teenagers on prom night. I even send her hackneyed “love” notes and pathetic little gifts through the mail. This is very dangerous behavior considering the situation, people involved, and ease with which the missives could fall into the wrong hands. She is quick to put a stop to it, hinting at possible embarrassing scenarios should we ever be “discovered.” My mind kicks into overdrive concocting these “embarrassing scenarios” that ultimately culminate in me being publicly hoisted on a long pointy stick with the sharp business end shoved up my ass and protruding through my open mouth while neighbors and friends scream, cry, curse, and throw old, rotten fruit at my corpse as my poor mother beats her breast in shame and ruin and flicks boogers at me. Then mom comes home early.
We are banging away on my little bed, she breathing heavily and leaking her lust all over my bottom sheet, when I hear the front door open with its characteristic squeak/honk.
We both tense, unable to actually make a move to hide the fact that we are seriously in flagrante delicto when I hear my mother yell, “Horatio, where are you? Mrs. Whiting?” Funny she should call out to both of us. I am shaft-deep in the aforementioned Mrs. Whiting and we are both butt naked. I leap off Virginia and pull on my pajama bottoms, already coming up with ailments that are possibly fatal and that have kept me in bed all day. The bitch is on her own. Well, not really, Mrs. Whi . . . Virgi . . . the reverend’s wi . . . damn it—nympho-woman jumps up, runs headlong into my closet that houses my cheap mismatched Abercrombie and Fitch outfits, and slides the door shut. (???!) As mother walks into my bedroom I see the Rev’s wife’s one-piece saintly garment lying on the floor where she disrobed in her wanton abandon. I give it a swift kick and send it sailing under my bed.
“What’s going on? You look flushed,” says mother with frightening intuition.
She should work for the CIA, I swear to God. I grab my stomach, mainly to hide the fact that Woody is “tent-poling” my pajama bottoms, and feign severe ill health.
“I’ve been throwing up all day,” I answer as convincingly as possible, given the circumstances.
“Where’s Mrs. Whiting?” She is relentless and seems determined to decipher the mixed messages she is apparently receiving.
Flying by the seat of my jammies, I stammer, “She had some kind of emergency at home. Left about an hour ago. I’ve been watching Josie,” I lie like a bastard.
“Humph,” she says, then, “What’s that awful smell?”
“What smell? I don’t smell anything.”
She sniffs the air, unknowingly breathing in randiness, lust, and the effluvium of human sexual secretions.
“I’m going to check on Josie,” I say, feeling bad for using my angel girl as an alibi, but I would hope she’d understand given the lay of the land.
“Just a minute, Horatio!” My mother’s voice freezes my blood.
“Something’s going on. What are you hiding?”
“God, nothing, Mom.”
“Don’t blaspheme,” she says, apparently taking a page out of my book on severe ADD. “I can hear breathing.”
I start to puff and pant like a fool in a vain attempt to distract her and make her think it was me.
“I told you I don’t feel good,” is my unrelated answer.
This woman has the ears of coyote, the mistrust of a jilted lover, and the instincts of a TV psychic! I am so screwed. She is eyeing my closet.
I turn and reach out a useless hand as she moves to the closet door.
“Mom! Stop!” is my best shot.
She slides it open and, God help us, there is the Reverend’s wife, naked as the day she was born but with a lot more pubic hair. She has the look, I would imagine, that a tuna might wear as a ton-and-a-half white shark roars in for the kill, and she is vainly trying to cover said pubic hair along with her rather small breasts as if my mother, not seeing the actual body parts, will say something other than what is about to come out of her mouth.
“Jesus CHRIST!!!!” screams Mom.
“Don’t blaspheme,” I try as a distraction.
She backs away from the closet, white-faced, stuttering, mumbling . . . she is obviously and understandably having real trouble computing this.
“What? . . . How . . . YOU HUSSY!!” this from Mom; I believe the term is from the 1800s. She’s starting to turn red now, which indicates to me that possibly a little anger is creeping into the equation. I am speechless. So is the Reverend’s wife, although I hear some serious rustling coming from my closet indicating that maybe she’s grabbing some of my teenage wardrobe to cover her nakedness.
“This is unconscionable!!!” says mother. I don’t know what that means but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean “It’s all good in the ’hood.”
The Rev’s wife takes a few tentative steps out of the closet (so to speak) and I see she is now wearing one of my T-shirts.
“It’s not what it looks like, Mrs. Cotton, honestly,” she fibs.
Sadly, Virginia has chosen a rather unfortunate article of clothing from my stash of wrinkled, faded T’s. It’s one I bought on a whim to boost my public image, wore once, was soundly laughed at by my peers, and was retired to my closet shortly thereafter. On the lower part of the shirt is a large, red arrow that, on me, points in the general downward direction of my crotch, but because of her smaller size is positioned precisely over Ground Zero. Written boldly across the front of the chest is the awkward phrase, “Sex Machine!!” It is an unlucky choice of cover-up, considering. The meaning is not lost on my, by now, apoplectic mother, either.
“Get out of my house!!! NOW!!” is the fair response from Mom.
“Mother, look . . .” I begin.
“You SHUT UP!!!!” is all I get.
Back to Mrs. Whiting. “Grab your whore clothes and leave my house this instant!” Where is she coming up with this shit?
The Rev’s now totally freaked-out wife is vainly searching for her “whore clothes,” scanning my bedroom floor, panic-stricken.
I dive under the bed and retrieve her dress from where I had kicked it in hopes of avoiding this unbelievably surrealistic scene.
Mrs. Whiting grabs it from me and runs to the bathroom, where this whole thing started in the first place. Mother turns to me.
“You disgusting, loathsome boy. THAT is the wife of my PASTOR!!! She was married to him before God and all his angels!! Wait until your father gets home!!!” I guess we resort to these clichés when real words fail us.
“Dad comes home? When?” is my insolent retort. I really have no explanation or excuse or defense, but I do resent the “loathsome boy” comment. She takes a swing at me. I duck.
Mrs. Whiting leaves the bathroom, dressed, and at a fair clip as she heads for the front door.
“I will be calling your husband!!!” my mother yells to her and the door slams shut with a ringing finality.
Mom storms out, probably heading to the liquor cabinet and only then, after mild fortification, the telephone. In an absolute fog I make my way to Josie’s room, sit on her bed, and tell her what has just happened. My girl does not judge, does not criticize, does not hear. But I feel safer with her. I always have. I always will. I decide to try to prevent the nuclear war that my mother’s phone call will instigate and wait until I think she’s had enough to drink for me to reason with her. She is pretty well buzzed by the time I approach her in the living room, and the conversation does not go at all well.
“Please don’t do this,” I try one final time as she reaches for the Phone of Doom. “I’ll never see her again. It’s over. I’m sorry I hurt everyone. I’m a terrible person, I understand that now.” I’m trying everything short of knocking her unconscious but she is hell-bent on ridding the world of the Devil and his minions and I leave the room as I hear her say “Reverend, it’s Julia Cotton. I’m afraid I have some very, very, very, upsetting news for you. I’ve just come from my son’s . . .” She halts as though being interrupted by the voice on the other end of the line. I stop to hear more. It’s too awful not to. But what I hear is definitely not what I am expecting to hear.
“The POLICE?!” my mother says with shock and disbelief. “They’re at your house now?!!”
My whole body goes numb and I feel like I’m floating.
The police?!! I didn’t know it was illegal to have sex with a reverend’s wife! Or maybe it’s just anyone’s wife. Mother has banged me over the head with the Ten Commandments since I was small enough to focus and I know “adultery” is definitely in there, along with murder and stealing, I just didn’t realize it was an actual punishable crime here on earth! I thought it was more like the “taking the Lord’s name in vain” or the “carved image” thing. And how did they find out already? Did they bug my room? Have they been spying on us with one those surveillance vans that have all the recording and video equipment inside, antenna on the roof, disguised as a plumber’s truck? Have they been filming, listening to (and possibly laughing at) all my pathetic thrustings and soft proclamations of love, in fact our entire illicit goings-on??? Will I be sent to prison?! I’ve heard all the stories of what they do to young men like me in prison. I think I’m going to faint. This whole deal just took a major step to the left and I am cold with terror. I hear mother hang up the phone with nothing more said. Then the words drift out of her like a bad dream neither of us can wake from. “The police are on their way over here.”
Woodydamnit!!! This is all your fault!
God
“Oh, crap,” utters the Omnipotent Supreme Being. But not because of my sad little situation. The Vee-Nung have just turned their beautiful and fragile planet into a permanent black hole. All those millennia to create the perfect orbital star and “Poof.” Gone like Mrs. Whiting’s whore clothes in a randy moment. The OSB looks at “Earth,” which could quite possibly be the next in line for de-beautification by its destructive, ignorant, negligent masses. It’s enough to make an Omnipotent Supreme Being weep. The OSB has watched as “Earth” has struggled to rid herself of the lethal virus that is causing the infection and gradual destruction of her body. But the more intelligent elements of that same lethal virus have thwarted her plans again and again. Well-meaning scientists, doctors, and geneticists have all nipped AIDS, Ebola, and SARS in the bud. Where’s the frigging Black Plague when you need it? The OSB does not, as a rule, interfere in the workings of the Universe, but on “Earth” it may be time to move another chess piece.
Bobby
We are beetling down the freeway to deliver Lexington Vargas to La Crescenta as the inadequate windshield wipers make a mockery of their name. Visibility is low. Keith Moon’s ghost still wallops the fragile roof, and I begin to wonder if this rain could actually punch holes in the flimsy ceiling and douse us all as we chug along at an astonishing forty-three MPH.
Both Lexington Vargas and Alice are deep into their own copies of Magnificent Vibration with the help of some hack, low-wattage interior lighting, which is making piloting the Kia in the rain even more difficult, but honestly, if I had my own copy of that book I’d be balancing it on my knees and reading it right now even as we care
en toward La Crescenta. Not a word from either of them except for the occasional, sigh, moan, or “Dios mio.”
What the heck is going on? I wish I hadn’t left mine back at the divorcee’s apartment complex I sadly refer to as “home.” I begin to hope that my sexual indiscretion with the whore of Babylon isn’t detailed too heavily in my version. But my head is also spinning at the greater potential meaning of the three of us coming together like this. Not to mention possible conversations with possibly God. I can come up with no reason or significance for any of it. And Alice has temporarily nixed the phone call that I am burning to make to the number in Lexington Vargas’s book. I think she’s scared. That’s a pretty reasonable reaction I guess, considering he’s the CEO of her company.
“STOP THE CAR!!!” suddenly screams the colossus in the backseat at the top of his quite prodigious lungs, and I react as though a SWAT team has just lobbed a stun grenade into the vehicle.
Magnificent Vibration Page 10