Between the Bridge and the River (34 page)

Potter had them climb the creaking and broken stairs into the dilapidated church. The windows were smashed and the light, swampy rain drifted through the holes in the roof. The pews were smashed and broken into one another, and a battered and rusty drum kit lay in ruins near the door.

Standing at the far end of the church in the pulpit, aged and badly damaged but still upright, was the Reverend Alexander Pinker-ton. He was a dark and sinister shadow framed by the ridiculously theatrical rays of moonlight that shone into the church through the broken stained glass behind him.

T-Bo thought the whole thing was like a bad dream. A very fucking bad dream.

“Who are you?” demanded Pinkerton.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. T-Bo grasped for a story but Fraser spoke.

“We are beautiful and flawed children of God, as you are. We are headed to the meeting of souls in Birmingham, Alabama, where we will spread the good news among those gathered there. You may join us if you like. We have chocolate biscuits.”

Pinkerton seemed confused; he peered into the darkness at Fraser.

Then he climbed down from the pulpit and walked up to him, stopping only when their faces were inches apart.

“You have seen the Holy Postman?” said Pinkerton.

“The French guy?” said Fraser.

“Yes! Yes! The Frenchman, the Frenchman!” Pinkerton started jumping up and down happily, and the others looked at one another with discomfort. T-Bo snuck a glance at Potter, who seemed as baffled as he was.

“He’s not a postman, he’s a policeman. They have blue uniforms,” Fraser said.

But Pinkerton wasn’t listening. He ran to the back of the church and dug under some old blankets and brought out two gallon jugs of moonshine and held them aloft.

“Praise Jesus! Praise Almighty God! Free at last! Free at last! This calls for a celebration,” he cried.

Everyone sat in a circle, except, of course, the unfortunate Mr. Day, who was laid down on a pew, and the jugs were passed around. Everyone was expected to drink in this ramshackle communion, and Potter followed the whisky around the circle with his rifle to make sure there were no heretics. As the Oreos were broken and taken and the whisky jugs were passed and the powerful brew took everyone in its grip, the Reverend Pinkerton told his tale.

He said that many years ago he had mistakenly invited two demons into the Church. They had taken the form of young boys and one of them could sing like he was a member of God’s angelic choir. The demons were clever and tricked the Reverend into trusting them, then they raped his wife when he was out doing God’s work.

One of the demons had hit his wife with a household appliance and knocked her out. When she awoke her soul had been snatched away and she was rendered a heathen, she spoke in garbled tongues for three days about needing to have her physical needs met, then she fled to the north.

The last the Reverend had heard of her, she was working as a cocktail waitress in Atlantic City and was an active member of a devil-worshipping group.

The Reverend told that he himself had been struck with the same household appliance that had been turned against his wife, and he had fallen into a deep coma as if he were dead. In his coma he had a vision of a man he called the Holy Postman, who told him— in a French accent, no less—that he should stop annoying innocent snakes and look for something else to handle, maybe something in a dress.

When he awoke the Reverend was confused as to the meaning of the vision, and all these years, as his parishioners had died off or left, he had pondered over it. Everyone said he had lost his mind and all had deserted him except the ever-faithful Potter, who never would leave the graves of his wife and child. The two men had lived in the forest in the church and worshipped together every day.

Every day the Reverend would preach even though there was only Potter to listen. Every day Potter would pray over the graves of his loved ones. They made holy moonshine to ease their pain and to barter with locals for food and toilet paper. He no longer felt the lure of the deadly things and had changed the name of his church from the Christian Reformed Fellowship of Born Again Snake Handling Pentecostal Baptists to the Christian Reformed Fellowship of Born Again Snake Handling Pentecostal Baptists (Reformed)—as in they didn’t handle snakes anymore.

The Reverend told the gathered drunken congregation, whom he preached to at gunpoint, that tonight he understood his vision. Fraser was the “something in a dress” and he had come to lead all of them out of the darkness.

Potter asked Fraser if this was true, and Fraser smiled his big bloody grin at him and said, with a little difficulty because of the illegal-booze intake, that yes, it was.

Potter, tanked to the gills, put the gun down, fell to his knees, and cried, “Thank you, Jesus.”

T-Bo, Vermont, and Cherry, who were also shitfaced by that time, cheered and cried. Then everyone, excepting Mickey Day of course, stood and held hands and said the Lord’s Prayer, led by the Reverend himself.

Soon after, the cheap booze forced them all into unconsciousness.

Fraser was caught up in a hurricane—he dreamed of disillusioned crusaders and ugly witches, he dreamed of revolutions and murders and clockmakers and lies, he dreamed of dead movie stars and religious fanatics and Moorish generals, he dreamed of the death of his old friend George and he wept and shook and sweated. Then he got up. He left the others asleep on the floor and broken pews and he walked outside the ruined church and into the Florida night.

He walked by the bank of a still pond in the moonlight. He could still hear the bullfrogs croaking. He looked like his old self. His bruises were gone, his mouth uninjured, and he noticed he was wearing the suit he wore to funerals or business meetings. His shoes were shined and his hair was combed and he smelled of deodorant and toothpaste.

He looked at the dark water, where he could just make out the shapes of creatures that stirred, surfaced, and submerged, sending ripples out toward him. To his right he saw a broken antler lying by the path. It seemed to be a signpost and pointed him in a direction away from the dark mire. He headed in the direction indicated and after a few hundred feet he happened on his old friend.

“Carl!” he cried delightedly.

“Hello, Fraser.” Jung smiled, and the two men embraced warmly.

Jung led Fraser to a couple of striped deck chairs he had set up in the woods.

They sat looking out into the dark forest and Jung lit his pipe.

“I’ve come to say good-bye,” said Jung.

“Why?” said Fraser.

The old man puffed a big blue smoke ring out into the night. “I can’t treat you anymore,” he said. “It’s not you. It’s me.”

“What are you talking about?” squeaked Fraser. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“Look, Fraser, we both know this can’t go on. It doesn’t make sense. I’m dead. I’ve been dead for years.”

“I’ve gone completely insane, haven’t I?” groaned Fraser. “It’s brain damage from the beating I took or the moonshine whisky or both.”

Jung thought for a moment. “No,” he said at last. “You are certainly not the man you were but you were never particularly enamored of him anyway.”

“True,” said Fraser.

“You have deserted the realm of cynical reason, and there will always be a part of you that is suspicious of that. Debate is healthy, only evil does not question itself.”

“I had such dreams, such vivid, nonsensical dreams, they felt real. I thought I was dead, I thought my old school friend George had needed my help. It’s all crazy shite, isn’t it?”

“
Crazy shite
is not a clinical term that I am familiar with,” said the doctor, smiling, “but I will tell you something. I admire you.”

Fraser was thunderstruck.

“Me?” he said. “I’m a disgraced, runaway, alcoholic minor television celebrity with brain damage. You are one of the most revered and respected healers and teachers in history. What could you possibly admire in me?”

“Your tenacity,” said Jung. “It took me until I was an old man and could smell death before I finally shook off the mental and spiritual chains of the frightened engineers and referees who attempt to control the thoughts of us and our fellow pilgrims. You have been thrown to the ravages of the collective unconscious and you survive with questions and innocence and self-doubt. You have been mauled by fear and poisonous self-judgment but have not succumbed to it. You live your life as it arrives.”

Suddenly Jung and Fraser both were dressed as dashing Cossacks and had glasses of chilled vodka in their hands. Jung raised his in a toast.

“To my friend Fraser Darby,” he said. “You, sir, are interesting!”

Fraser laughed and they clinked glasses, but before Fraser could drink he was back in the church sitting on the floor screaming.

He was awake and he was blind.

SAUL WAS AWAKE
and could see the concern on his brother’s face. He could also see the doctor, the one with the wart on his cheek who smelled of mouthwash and nicotine. He saw the cute nurse and the ugly nurse and he saw that the window in his room was open. He looked at them blankly for a moment, then said, “Where’s Roscoe?”

They reacted with surprise and the cute nurse said, “I told you.”

Leon came forward and leaned in. “Can you hear me, buddy?”

“Of course I can hear you,” said Saul, his voice quiet and raspy from lack of use. “You’ve got your big ugly mug right in my face.”

Leon smiled, tears rolling down his cheeks. He hugged Saul. “Oh fuck, Solly. I thought you were gone, buddy. I thought I’d lost you.”

“Cut it out,” growled Saul. But he was delighted. His brother had not hugged him like this in years. He tried to hug him back but only his left arm would move, and even then just an inch or two from the bed.

But it did move.

The doctor asked Leon to stand back so that he could examine Saul. He peered and he prodded and he took out his little stick and pressed it on Saul’s tongue; he didn’t really know what he was looking for but he wanted to impress the cute nurse. When he was finished
he leaned back and said, “Hmmmm, inconclusive,” in the way he had seen on TV and in the movies. “We’ll need to perform more tests.”

The cute nurse got a little damp. This was a real man.

“How do you feel, Solly?” Leon asked.

“I’m changed, Leon,” said Saul. “I feel like I’m born again.”

Saul had thought he had been in his state of stasis for a month or two; he was horrified and shocked to find he had been down for almost a year. A year of his fucking life spent in a bed with nothing to do but blink and poop. He felt cheated. Why him?

In the time that Saul had been incapacitated a lot had happened in his life and the life of his brother.
Oh Leon!
had been canceled and Candy Chambers had sued Saul for fifteen million dollars for emotional and physical abuse.

Saul was horrified at this. Candy Chambers was a hooker whom he had paid. Leon agreed but said that their lawyers had told him that she had a good case and the action would certainly generate a lot of hostile publicity. Plus a long, drawn-out legal battle could cost that much anyway, so they advised Leon to settle out of court, which he had done for ten million.

Saul nearly had another stroke but that was not the worst of it.

Leon admitted to Saul his involvement with the Church of Brainyism and said that he had invested in the Church’s new head quarters on Hollywood Boulevard. It should have been a safe investment, the property alone was worth so much, and then when the renovations were finished they were going to rent out rooms to Boondtist pilgrims who were visiting town. It should have been a gold mine but the developer, Harry Crenshaw, a longtime elder of the Church, had absconded with the money. The Church itself was blameless, said Leon, a lot of people had been burned, including the Grand High Boondtrah himself.

Saul asked him how much.

Twelve million.

In the time that Saul had been out of commission Leon had lost twenty-two million dollars; Saul’s medical expenses and the bills for fresh fruit and flowers every day drove the number up to twenty-four million.

Leon sat on the edge of Saul’s bed and wept with shame.

If Saul could have gotten out of the bed and killed Leon, he would have done it, but instead, realizing the limitations of his condition, he said, “It’s okay, I’m back now. I’ll take care of everything.”

Leon nodded.

“No more Brainyism, okay?”

Leon nodded again.

Saul thought that to be involved in something called Brainyism, it might help if you had a fucking brain instead of being a fucking singing cock. But he didn’t want to hurt his brother’s feelings and he knew he still needed the skinny prick, probably now more than ever, so he didn’t say anything. Instead, he yelled at the nurse to bring him a phone.

Saul had all the accountants and managers and lawyers who took care of and mishandled his and Leon’s fortune when he was incapacitated fired. He toyed with the idea of suing the bastards who had allowed Leon to make such a fucking mess of things but he kept thinking about Roscoe.

There was something urgent and dire about the fat man’s warning to leave Hollywoodland.

Saul was haunted by the thought that if he stayed in this town, things would not only get as bad as they were before but somehow worse, although he had a little difficulty imagining what that would look like.

Leon hung around the hospital all the time, sheepishly trying to take care of his brother even though he couldn’t think of what to do, so he just sat in Saul’s room next to the bed and flipped through the channels on the TV while Saul mulled over his next move. Saul’s speech had returned and he had partial use of his left arm and that was about it. Occasionally, he thought he felt some tingling in his penis but he surmised this was just wishful thinking, like the phantom itches an amputee feels in the missing limb. The doctors said he might or might not improve, that the test results had proved inconclusive. Saul took from this that they didn’t have a fucking clue.