Sophia (6 page)

You took her, he says.

It’s Dick Dickerson. He’s taken Eli, too.

Why should I believe you?

Why would I come here if I had taken her? To get my face punched?

I’ve got my plans spread out on the table in the breakfast nook. Darling is on the deck nude, trying to rid her bikini line. She is a kind, petite brunette. Her eyes are the color of Starry Night, her long brown legs won’t quit. She’s had no college education but won’t stop reading everything she can. This summer
she took down the big Russian novels and the French poets. Finnegans Wake in two weeks.

I think I’ve almost figured all this out, she says. Joyce is overwrought. Faulkner is sappy. Nabokov, a confusing bore. Hem-ingway, a closet homo. Fitzgerald, don’t get me started.

Darling, we’ve got to get to work if we’re going to save ev-eryone.

OK, she says, let me finish this chapter.

Eli, Dick Dickerson has you but don’t worry. The stars and moon are lining up and the baffling roads are leading somewhere. Yes, Eli. Do you feel a bit of the sword that pierced His side in you? Some of Adam’s rib? Some of Eve’s naughty mouth? The thud on Goliath’s head? Do you hear the confusing music of God’s love played from David’s lute?

I go to Al and Hal. They are playing some infernal video game about conquering lands and defeating kings.

What the hell is this, I say.

You have to try it, Hal says.

Dick Dickerson has Tuesday and Eli.

They lower their hoods.

Let’s get to work, I say.

Darling is a French Jew filtered through generations of redneck and Aztec. You can still see that darkness in her skin. Love is poached eggs and the Sunday newspaper and slow, hard sex.

Maloney, what if we do nothing, Darling says.

What do you mean?

What if we didn’t go after them? Isn’t that what he wants us to do?

I don’t follow you.

We could be together on the boat and leave Eli to escape.

I look out over the water. Darling is dark and good.

Give up the pilgrimage? The rescue? Sainthood?

Yes.

Too late, I say. It already happened. It’s always been happening.

I wait to enter the Holy Ghost until the sun goes down behind the black hills. There are diamonds in her eyes. There is blood on her tongue. Darling is there with her robin’s blue dress and hood of white.

You will have a child, she says to Darling.

What if I don’t believe in you, Darling asks.

You don’t have to.

St. Arnold writes a letter to his family the night before he is beheaded and tells them to give his prized donkey to the people of the village and his prayer rug to the beggar and his sandals to the washerwoman. The next day the letter is burned with all his effects and his head is cut clean off.

The world drifts back into football season. All the good colors are back, strawberry and chrome yellow and Carolina blue.
The coeds have broken out the fur boots and let their pussy hair grow. We have a planning meeting for the mission to rescue you, Eli. Nono and Finger and Al and Hal and Darling.

Let’s call the cops, says Finger.

We should try talking to him, says Nono.

Spells, say Al and Hal.

I want to go back to the boat, says Darling.

I give the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V and everyone leaves the room.

The night before the raid I am somber. Reflecting, I lie on my boat with my fisherman sweater and pipe. I dream of a city, Eli. A city where everyone has a beautiful car. Not like this town we live in, Eli. It’s destroyed us slowly, bit by bit. I dream of this city where there are no firemen because the fires put themselves out. Where there are no ambulances because all the people heal themselves. Where there is no illness of the mind. There are only longings in this city. Longings to be back where the old world was broken. Where sin surrounds everything. In this city I dream of, no one wears their sunglasses inside. I am the black sheep of dark horses. You are Eli, my last friend.

I call Snowball, the albino.

How fast can you get to Mississippi, I say.

How much you got?

Last of my savings, five thousand.

For five grand I’m free on Friday.

Eli, the cafés are empty and red leaves are everywhere and the trees are full of lightning and we are stealth in the night. I have stolen a horse and rented a Confederate general costume from the Halloween store in the poor people’s mall. We gather at Nono’s and have wheatgrass shots. Synchronize your watches, friends. I have my rifle with scope, Finger has his pawnshop sword. Nono has organic pepper spray and Al and Hal have robes and long wizard staffs. Darling is in the corner.

I don’t like this, she says.

Take a grenade.

Why should I?

What’s it gonna take?

I make tender love to her but nothing helps.

Twelve-year-old St. Marie’s parents poison her for proclaiming Christ was the father of her child. They shove the poison down her throat. She made ballerina shoes all day and saw the light of Christ in a thimble. She wasn’t a virgin anymore. The father was a Romanian man from the traveling show. She wanted forgiveness for the baby inside her and she begged for it as she closed her eyes and swallowed.

Eli, we’re at the lower soccer field at the middle school. Al and Hal get in the hot air balloon piloted by Snowball. They put up the hoods of their robes. I give them the thumbs-up.

See you on the other side, I say.

Dick Dickerson lives in a compound. The sun is starting to creep below the hills looking like a thrift store painting. I ride up on my horse. I have named him Forever. Through my opera glasses, the house is quiet. I call Finger from my radio.

I’m nearing the door now, he says.

Go, I say. All go.

Two flares go off from the hot air balloon and I put some heavy fire on the house. Snowball drops the rope. Al and Hal repel down into the courtyard. I see a light in the window.

Eli, the heavens are open with loving blue pouring down. All the days of the calendar spiral and bend. We are weak, loving warriors doing our best. There will be a child, says the Holy Ghost. A child to save America. She must be born inside the lady of freedom.

There are mortars flying from the windows and Snowball is dropping bombs from the balloon. Fire at will. Finger is pinned down behind an old sharecropper’s cabin. I ride Forever through the gate and Nono and the Malchows flank right. There, in the top-floor window is Dick Dickerson with his robe open and his privates flapping in the night. I fire off three rounds but he vanishes behind the velvet curtains. Here come the bullies out the door, Eli, and I put some rubber bullets along their chests. One gets a throwing star off and it whizzes by my face so close I feel the breeze. Al and Hal come in with their staffs and hold them down and cast spells.

Finger, have you found anything, I call.

There is a whole mess of rooms in this place, Reverend, he says.

I ride Forever through the front door.

Dick, I shout. Give it up.

Fighting surrounds the house. Windows breaking and the red shrieking bombs. Dick Dickerson appears at the top of the stairs nude. There is the smell of gasoline.

Maloney, he says. So glad you could make it.

What do you want, I ask.

I want the love you have, he says. The fire you have.

He walks down the stairs and begins to play Bach on the piano. Then lights a match and the whole house goes up.

Forever and I ride out into the flaming night.

The whole neighborhood burns. I watch the McMansions come down. Beside me is Finger, former dumpster diver turned stockbroker. Next to him is Nono, a woman of great adventure. And then Al and Hal, former wizards, who finally felled their bullies. Where’s Snowball, I ask.

Got a little rocky up there, he says from behind me. Had to bail.

I give him a hit from the pint of Jack Daniel’s in my general’s coat.

The good stuff, he says.

Where’s Eli and Tuesday, Nono asks.

I don’t know, I say.

Eli, I scream. Tuesday!

Then a sound. Is that you, Eli? A low howling coming from the deep woods. We all run to an open patch. You are standing there holding Tuesday’s hand.

Where have you been, Eli?

Looking at the moon, you say.

The days are shorter and the Confederate daughters weep under men on stone horses. A hurricane named Honey is swirling off the gulf. When you were gone, Eli, I smashed all my ships in a bottle. Out there above the cotton are dead stars whose light we still see.

Virgin birth can scientifically happen. But this means nothing. Or it does but I don’t know what it is. Christ said there would be no more kings but there were kings.

Tuesday comes to the boat, Eli. She is with child and wears a ring from Finger. They were married on a weekend to Gatlinburg.

Thank you, she says.

For what?

You took me from the brink, you taught me.

Tuesday, I was grasping in the dark.

And you loved me and I spit it back in your face.

I know, I say.

She comes to me and is warm there in my arms, forgiven.

They cut the bottom of St. José’s feet and make him walk toward the cemetery. He does not give in. At times they stop him and say, If you shout Death to Christ the King, we will spare your life. José only shouts, I will never give in. Moments before his death he draws a cross in the dirt and kisses it. In the town square is a girl jumping rope and a butcher draining blood into the street. The girl trips and the daisy falls from her hair into the blood. The yellow trees shiver in the yard and the dog’s barks sound like I love yous.

My boat rocks in the water. I am moving through the world in my mind. Intellectuals destroyed the imagination and Christians destroyed the fun.

There’s a knock at the door. It’s Darling. She’s angry but still has the smile from deep within. There are strawberries on the table in a cold white bowl.

I came to get my things, she says.

She gathers her lace underwear and records and books.

I’d like to start over if I could, I say.

Start what over?

Everything.

The firemen are testing their fire trucks shooting water all night like a waterfall of diamonds. The marching band on campus plays “Bang a Gong.” There is a bit of hope left, slim as it may be. Elvis died on the crapper, they say. John Lennon gunned down in the street. It doesn’t matter where and when you die, Eli, it matters how you get there. I see Finger on the street with his new suit and short hair.

Hi, Finger, I say.

He laughs.

I think I’m going to play pool at that bar, he says.

OK, I say.

We challenge the girls in tight jeans to a twenty-dollar game and let them win. I put a quarter in the jukebox. We drink whiskey sours. There is sun in the forecast.

St. Bart goes to the firing squad barefoot in order to be more conformed to Christ. A doctor to the poor, he even once saved the life of his future executioner. This is a country with no money and beautiful trees. The cherry blossoms rain down on the executioner’s face and he wipes them away.

I go to Nono’s market to buy flowers for Darling and there you are, Eli.

Good morning, I say.

Morning, Maloney.

Eli, how are you?

Good, how are you?

I’m well, Eli.

There is a pause.

You laugh. I laugh. We laugh. I’m not really sure why we are laughing but we are laughing.

The Holy Ghost licks me head to toe. I want to ask her questions but I’m mute with pleasure. There are doves flying out of my heart in figure eights.

Eli, your wedding to Nono is a sight. You ride Boom’s pony down the aisle and Willie dog is the ring bearer. Wise Jane makes some sort of psychedelic hooch and we enter the other side with love on our minds and eat ourselves stupid. Romantic spells are placed upon bride and groom by Al and Hal. Tuesday and Finger make love under a dogwood like it was the first time the act was ever performed. Darling is in the corner of the field looking north to a great unknown like a moonstruck goddess.

You’ve reached the voice-mail box of Reverend Maloney—well-tempered cavalier and reluctant spiritual guide, first mate on Christ’s holy ship and lover of females in every state of the former Confederacy. I’m usually tripping the light fantastic on Wednesdays so I might not return your call till Thursday. Have a blessed day—leave a message after the beep.

Beep
.

Sir, this is the Lafayette County sheriff. Seeing if you wouldn’t mind coming down to talk about the disturbance at Dick Dickerson’s last week. We’re two doors down from First Baptist across from the Afro-American’s barbershop. Thanks.

Eli, your dear friend and supporter is summoned by the powers that be. Might there be an escape on the horizon?

You should learn something about the right to remain silent, you say.

Silent, I say, is not my normal position.

The rains come quickly in the fall like a silver curtain drawing closed at the end of a beautiful play. Battleship clouds over a small layer of thin blue. A purple twisting wind like a river, right over the house, threatening. Darling enters stage left in the drama of my life.

I’m pregnant, says she.

Well, well, well, I say.

That’s it? That’s your response?

Well, well, well, well, well.

Here the will of God is done as God wills as long as God wills. St. Gerard is bilocated preparing Darling a little office of our lady at the same time he crosses the red vineyard praying in the room of tears. America of iron and steel, America of rivers and trees, America of digital hearts and minds. There comes unto you a child.

Gazing into the abyss, I try to keep my balance. Bishops of the night, hear my heart as it goes out into the rattling darkness of the city to dream unspeakable things. The Holy Ghost strokes my loins and we engage thousands of mystics in prayer.

Ramshackle police station in the center of town. A coffee-stained table and a one-sided mirror in a small room like every noir movie. Sheriff cleans his glasses with his tie.