Between the Bridge and the River (7 page)

In short, Route 66 was a symbol of what White America is really nostalgic for: a time that never existed.

Saul and Leon were, of course, White American. They used history, their country’s and their own, and any suitable religious doctrine to suit their own ends. They were survivors. Like roaches.

Saul and Leon were barkers at the carnival tent catering to the low-income end of America’s spiritually disenfranchised. (Historically, it is better for religions to cater to the poor because there is always more of them. They are more desperate, so therefore will cough up as much money and devotion as they can, plus their life on Earth is unpleasant enough for them to buy the idea that things might actually improve after death.)

Saul and Leon fell into the arms of the Lord for the first time almost immediately on leaving the orphanage. They had traveled by night, south from Atlanta, through Macon County to northern Florida and the little town of Crawford’s Creek.

This is true hillbilly country.

Hillbillies are much maligned, as most of them place hospitality and kindness above cynicism and wit and therefore are deemed intellectually inferior by the cynical and witty who occasionally pass through their domain on the way to somewhere noteworthy and sophisticated. Hillbillies don’t mind this, of course, because they place hospitality and kindness above cynicism and wit and therefore the cynicism and wit of the cynical and witty is wasted on them. No real harm done.

However, the cynical and witty often think this is just ignorance and, as with all cynicism and wit, there is some truth in it.

There is a streak of anti-intellectualism, a deep mistrust of smart folks, running through America’s rural population, which is understandable when you realize that intellectual capitalist scientists applied farming methods that led to horrid diseases in the livestock.

Diseases caused by animals eating reconstituted organ parts of their own parents in the name of smarter economics.

Therefore the country folks like to keep things simple, so they don’t respond well to metaphor or allegory.

This can lead to problems when approaching ancient enigmatic scripture, which is almost entirely allegorical.

For example, in the Bible it says:

And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name they shall drive out demons; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. (Mark,
chapter 16
, verses 17–18)

People who embrace the concept of allegory would argue that this passage means basically accept God—the notion of a benign spiritual entity that controls an essentially ordered and pragmatic Universe—and you’ll feel a lot more comfortable, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. That you’ll be in much better condition to help those around you, and by being of service to those others, not only will they be helped, but you will too. That faith is the lifeblood of the soul, and the world is a lot more dangerous and terrifying without it. Or something like that. What this passage is almost certainly
not
advocating is the handling of real poisonous snakes and drinking real poison, especially as it was written in a time and place where you could hardly walk a mile without tripping over a couple of utterly deadly toxin-injecting serpents.

Also, there was probably no talking snake in the Garden of Eden, and for that matter, the existence of an actual place called the Garden of Eden seems unlikely (this, of course, does not count the nightclub in Hoboken of the same name).

God is probably fine with people eating apples, Eve wasn’t actually made from Adam’s rib, and Jonah wasn’t really eaten by an actual large fish. (Although it is probably true that the people of Sodom loved it in the pooper.)

It is worth noting that one of the most prominent snake-handling cults, the Church of God with Signs Following, was founded by George Went Hensley, a Pentecostal minister who died tragically, if predictably, from a snakebite.

This being said, the congregation of the Christian Reformed Fellow ship of Born Again Snake Handling Pentecostal Baptists (not associated in any way with the Hensley group) were a godsend to Leon and Saul. It was from these snake handlers that Saul’s true vision would eventually come. They would be his inspiration for the powerful moneymaking juggernaut the Holy United Church of America, where Leon’s charisma and astonishing singing voice and Saul’s duplicity and greed would finally be joined in a spectacular marriage of Religion and Show Business. Of course, churches don’t spring up overnight.

It began like this.

After they left the orphanage, Saul and Leon were technically on the run. Not actually on the run because:

1. Saul was already too fat to move at anything more than an amble.

2. No one was really looking for them. Runaway teenagers are not a high priority for any law enforcement agency.

However, because they were under eighteen—Leon was seventeen, Saul sixteen—they were still wards of the state, so if they got into any kind of trouble, or were reported to the police by any well-meaning do-gooders, then they would be sent back immediately. Which, frankly, on a couple of dark nights, they both secretly wished for.

The orphanage they had escaped from was not in any way Dickensian, it was a rather sweet two-story Victorian house in Duluth, a middle-class suburb to the north of Atlanta. The home itself was comprised of twenty-three children who were separated into male and female dorms. The whole operation was run by a Mrs. Wolf, a kindly old gray beast who, due to a botched harelip surgery as a child (in an orphanage herself), had the rather alarming appearance of someone who was snarling all the time. In truth, she rarely snarled, she understood the fears of the youngsters in her charge, she had been through it herself. She was patience on a monument.

From the moment they arrived at Mrs. Wolf’s house when they were eleven and twelve years old, Saul and Leon were inseparable. They had not been quite as close when they lived with their mad mother but
when she was removed, and when she died, they clung to each other like never before.

Mrs. Wolf was sensitive to this and placed them in bunks together, Saul on the bottom for obvious reasons. The children were taken to school in a clapped-out yellow bus driven by Ted Casey, who made sure every child who got on his bus, from the youngest to the eldest, got a Tootsie Roll lollipop. The kids adored him. Tootsiepop Ted, they called him. A few years later, long after Saul and Leon had gone, he became famous as Atlanta’s most notorious serial killer when his double life was exposed. Every two or three months, depending on the position of the constellation Orion in the night sky, Ted would rape and kill an African-American prostitute and eat her eyes.

Still, he was good with the kids.

High school is tough enough on anyone, an absolute rule of the Universe being that if high school is not a buttockclenchingly awkward, emotionally difficult, and unpleasant time of your life, then the rest of it will be a crushing disappointment. Academic success is desirable, popularity (the only thing that most students really desire) is not. Those who excel socially in high school are truly damned. The home-coming queen does indeed bear the mark of the beast.

The irony is, of course, that this information is generally not available to high-school students, and was certainly unknown to the kids on the orphanage bus. Called The Bastards by the rest of the student body, they were as popular as Jewish tailors in 1930s Hamburg.

There was no way that one of The Bastards could ever be popular. No amount of athletic prowess or street smarts could save you from this leper colony. It was worse than being retarded or having Jehovah’s Witnesses for parents, or even having retarded Jehovah’s Witnesses as parents.

The Bastards took this stoically, they knew their place, so they shuffled from class to class, heads down, eyes averted. Except Leon. Even then Leon knew what he had. He walked with his head up and looked other students in the eye, which got him beaten up a lot but he didn’t care. He had a sense of destiny, he had a great schlong, and The Voice. But he kept his pants and his mouth shut, biding his time. The legendary timing of his father.

Saul, being fat and a Bastard, had the most horrendous time. His misery was compounded by alarming red acne that covered his face every few months. No one ever knew, not Ted, not Saul, not Leon, not Mrs. Wolf, no one, that Saul’s acne attacks always coincided with one of Tootsiepop Ted’s homicides. A coincidence that passed by the whole waking world.

With such a horrible high-school experience, the boys were set for greatness when Leon nearly blew the whole thing.

The Universe came to a fork in the road and for a second it was Saul’s turn to drive.

Saul’s Astronomy Club had been meeting in one of the classrooms off of the senior study hall for three months. The kids in the club were for the most part like Saul, outcasts in one way or another, either hideously disfigured by acne or extremely smelly, or had stutters or embarrassing parents. These were the kids on the outer rim of the high-school universe. The Plutos in the nerd galaxy. As most astronomy clubs are, this one was less about star gazing and more about solace and company for these poor souls who huddled in mutual consolation around high-powered optical equipment.

The Astronomy Club met in the evenings for obvious reasons. On one evening, as Saul was picking at a weeping doubleheader on his cheek and looking at Orion in Taurus through a Pathfinder 40x telescope and Lashanda Brightwell, Ted’s fourth victim, lay cooling in a dumpster behind the International House of Pancakes in Buckhead, Leon was in detention in the senior study hall for failing to complete an essay on the American Civil War.

In a strange twist of fate, Deborah Thornhill and Julie Peters, the two most beautiful, most popular, and most desirable girls in school, had also received detention, for smoking in the girls’ bathrooms. If that weren’t enough, Django Ryerson, the beatnik muso kid who just oozed cool and even had a little soul patch beard, was also in lockdown for saying, “Because no one else gave a shit, man,” when Mr. Hancock asked him why the Hittites had developed the world’s first sophisticated metropolitan sewage system.

The other regulars of detention were also present: Geary McFar-lane, a painfully thin young man with the body of a consumptive with
rickets, who was always in trouble for his undiagnosed narcolepsy; Todd Bledsoe, the graffiti artist; and Millie Watson, who was forever writing articles in the school paper denouncing the fascist junta the teachers were part of.

Mrs. Cameron, who was meant to be supervising this punishment session, had left to take another long phone call from her hysterical sister in Des Moines, who had just broken up with her husband for the eighth time in two years. She told the students to continue to read quietly, and for the most part they did so apart from Django, who was noodling on the ancient upright piano that Mrs. Cameron used to murder Broadway standards for her drama group.

Django’s genius transcended the old instrument’s failings and he made it sound cool, like they were in a speakeasy or the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria.

Leon, lost in the music, gazed out the window, across the soccer field to the school fence and the woods beyond. He watched a jet travel across the clear winter sky, and even though it was only six
P.M.
, it felt like all the world was asleep but those in the room and the pilot of the jet. Leon thought of his mother, as he did often in quiet moments, his love for her still a pain in the pit of his stomach.

In the half-light bleeding out of the window, he watched a fat bee hover above a purple thistle underneath the sill.

Django’s soft playing had a powerful impact on everyone there, everyone felt good. Cool. Relaxed. Somehow, air-conditioned. Before Leon knew it, his father stirred in his soul and the voice was out, unconsciously doo-be-doing over Django’s tinkling.

The others looked over at Leon. He was still lost in reverie, not really aware he was singing out loud. He had forgotten where he was.

Django, with the ease of a born musician, played along instinctively, feeling that something weird and groovy was occurring.

Leon turned and looked directly into the eyes of Deborah Thorn-hill. He kept on singing, feeling the passion his father had felt for Ava when they first met.

Deborah flushed crimson. She felt an amyl nitrate–like rush. Her heart went boom boom. Leon almost buckled under his embarrassment,
similar to the time he had inadvertently called Mrs. Cameron Mom when he had been asked a question in the middle of a daydream. He nearly stopped but he saw something in Deborah. The unattainable girl, especially to him, one of The Bastards, the outcasts.

He saw what his voice had done to her, he knew that it had gone to places on her body that he wanted to go with other parts of his body. He saw surprise and the beginning of something else.

Fuck it, he thought. Here goes nothing.

He opened up and Django went right along with him. An old standard about how champagne was no thrill and cocaine was boring.

This kind of song was not what most teenagers wanted to hear at that point in the history of popular music but the effect of the combined talents of Django and Leon knocked over that prejudice with ease. The sheer cool of what they were doing, the corniness of the number, made it even better.

Saul heard his brother singing from the room next door. So did the rest of the Astronomy Club. They left the telescope and walked cautiously as if toward a landed spacecraft, in the direction of the voice.

What he saw made Saul’s blood run cold with terror.

The kids in detention were already under Leon’s spell. By the time Mrs. Cameron came back from her phone call, the Astronomy Club, the detainees, and Mr. Petrov, the effete Russian janitor, had gathered round the piano where Leon stood next to Django.

Leon had moved through “It Happened in Monterey” and was on “Summer Wind,” singing directly to Deborah, who was already wet.