Christopher Unborn (73 page)

The pins split apart under the impact of the ball with the stars on it and a nine-year-old boy, as green as the forest, retrieves the wooden ball and returns it to the man with the long, ash-yellow hair tumbling down his back and wearing the black jacket: The boy goes back to the platform and sweeps away the splinters with a broom

Will Gingerich running out of the jungle under a permanently navy-blue sky

I in my mother's belly one month before my happy arrival in the world a Mexican boy like me but he already born and I not yet he picking up the broken pieces of clay the broken earth varnished blood-red the boy picks up the pieces of idols vessels ceramics and patiently replaces them with another twelve figurines and the man with the title
THE PRIEST OF DEATH
written across the back of his black leather jacket again throws the ball and breaks only ten of the twelve figurines and then turns his fury against the promontory where the
CAT HUTS
are crowded together: he looks at the ruins-to-be of the prefabricated shacks set to self-destruct in September they've been here since April replacements have not arrived he turns and looks with a resigned ardor at the eternal ruins of the Totonacas how long is this going to go on I thought we were going to clean this up in six months and get out I thought we would never have to request more
CAT HUTS
because we weren't going to be here in this clearing between the pyramid and the temporary housing for the invading Army more than six months what frightens the tiger?

the officers' city on the hill is surrounded by concertina wire, the entrance is flanked by twin machine-gun towers and a sign legible at a distance of a quarter of a mile:

RESTRICTED AREA. USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED

I, Christopher, do not understand why the Priest of Death again tosses the ball, sending it spinning against the clay figurines, and this time he rolls a strike because within a month I will be
BORN
and now I must take more and more account of the presence of the
OTHER
, that
OTHER
to whom I speak even if he doesn't speak to me and I only have you,
READER
, to understand finally what I intuit outside my chamber of genetic echoes you must tell me for example that … Reverend Royall Payne looks one day with his eyes of burnished steel at his intelligence officer, Professor Will Gingerich, and he says in his most truculent tone stroke my chopper Prof go on just feel how smooth its sides are close your eyes and tell me please if it doesn't make you as hot as I am to wipe out these greasers in a single day, which I could do by firing my portable Minuteman 92 against Jalapa and make pickled jalapeños out of those spicy jalapeño chicks hahaha tell me the truth egghead why are we in Veracruz?

Will Gingerich's terror as he flees through the jungle has an echo: the jungle of red suns and blue nights tells him it isn't possible you can't come back to me there is no possible reconciliation none none The Priest of Death little Christopher is a veteran of the Contra wars in Central America, Grenada, and Vietnam his name is Royall Payne (Reverend Royall Payne) and he's a fundamentalist preacher who made a fortune by refusing merely to preach comfortably and only practicing his preaching under the protection of a pleasure dome built by the contributions of the faithful in a southern city, instead he decided to put his anti-communist, fundamentalist crusade into practice and be present on all the battle fronts where the red menace is being confronted: when Royall Payne returns from his sanguinary tourism in praise of the Lord, multitudes crowd the entrance to his pleasure dome in Savannah, Georgia (it was a beautiful Southern port with a muggy, sugary Caribbean atmosphere until Payne turned it into the seat of his fundamentalist crusade, surrounded it with gas stations built in the shape of tabernacles, turned the mansions into motels and filled the labyrinthine streets and plazas with shops that sold the Bible on cassette—read by Reverend Payne—Bible videos—acted out by Reverend Payne, his family, and his associates—rubber baby bottles stamped with the picture of Reverend Payne blessing the city and the world, and plastic bottles of holy water to put into the formula so that children would learn from the cradle on to recognize the preacher who would guide them toward their reunion with Jesus, outwardly Protestant but actually Catholic the Reverend, since he sells holy baby bottles and also sells holy enemas the extremes meet but, brothers and sisters, be very careful not to mix up the orifices), his only condition being that wherever he was there be television cameras the Reverend would never abandon the faithful but instead of appearing every Sunday on TV wearing shiny shantung or costly double-knits and Cardin shirts or lizard Lacoste shirts like the other TV preachers, now utterly displaced by the energy of the most Fundamental of Fundamentalists, he would always appear in battle dress wearing his black jacket with
THE PRIEST OF DEATH
emblazoned on the back like the prophets of the Old Testament, the OT in the Reverend's personal shorthand, his fax machine to the Almighty his direct line to Divine Grace: he marched out to battle just as Joshua had tumbled down walls and crossed rivers and made the sun stop in its path across the sky and now they don't let him carry out his mission, they force him to be content stroking the metallic body of his Apache attack helicopter, as smooth as the cheeks he shaves four times a day, petting the decals tenderly stuck onto the fuselage and being satisfied with climbing up to the cockpit of his chopper and sermonizing his intelligence officer, Professor Gingerich, the greenish boy who sets up the Totonaca figurines on the board, the inimitable ruins of El Tajín, the parrots, the tigers, the river:

GOD IS PLEASURE
! shouts the Reverend to his intelligence officer in this wasteland of Veracruz as long as we carry on His work on earth He rewards us pleasure is only odious when we do not deserve it when we seek pleasure before we seek the Lord but if we first seek the Lord we shall always find Him He is only absent when we do not seek Him out all we have to do is seek Him to find Him and the nothing is a sin
NOTHING NOTHING
is impossible and everything is possible is permitted in the name of the Lord everything is permitted to him who has found the Lord and the voice of the Lord has said: Go forth and be my soldier exterminate my enemies and then I shall receive you and you will have the pleasure which I am! says the Reverend to Professor Gingerich of Dartmouth College and Will Gingerich realizes that the Reverend is surrounded by a luminous, orange-colored square and the feline purring of a TV camera (a tiger in the jungle): If you turn your back on Jesus, Jesus will turn his back on you, concludes Royall Payne, followed by organ music and a list of thanks to the program's patrons and an announcement that this program reaches your home via satellite thanks to a subsidy from the Union Carbide Corporation from somewhere in Veracruz: now you know why we're in Veracruz! Close-up of the Reverend's fists and slow fade:

Royall Payne jumps off his designer helicopter picks up a towel to wipe off his sweat lathers up his cheeks picks up his razor and reminds Will Gingerich you are here to tell Washington what it wants to hear nothing else don't work so hard don't even leave your
CAT HUT
just write your weekly report saying there are Communists in Veracruz Soviet agents Cuban bases even if it isn't true: modern intelligence consists in telling your superiors what they want to hear: the rest of the time, well, there's a case of beer over there and in Cardel there are very pretty girls if you don't mind dying of some venereal disease but what can stop sex, eh, Professor? Go on tell me what can stop it. I'll tell you: the fear of God, but you, an agnostic secular humanist, what do you do, Professor? Screw and die!

The helicopters that still work leave the jungle clearing near El Tajín in search of nonexistent targets / they see a nosegay of roof tiles and they drop a bouquet of napalm / they seek out the thickest places in the forest / the mangrove swamps the rotten vines / the wavy fronds of the palm trees and they open the valves of Agent Orange to exterminate all greenery /a chemical, dark-red cloud to defoliate the jungle / an orange-colored juice to defoliate its inhabitants: they come back late from their incursions when the tiger opens his golden eyes and begins his nocturnal prowling / they withdraw to their
CAT HUTS
and open their refrigerators and drink Iron City beer and tear open their cellophane bags and eat pretzels Doritos and individual-sized pizzas: then they drop a nickel into the beer bottle and try to see while they laugh and make jokes about Thomas Jefferson's being a shithead, if what they say about Iron City beer is true, that it can dissolve a nickel, but they don't know that the orange pesticide is dissolving them and they that now are twenty, thirty years old and then go home with medals and beer bellies and hearts swollen with patriotism to Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Lansing, Michigan, years later will wonder why is my pancreas my liver my fucking brain my colon my rectum dissolving?

they don't wonder about this now now they go out on patrol carrying their Backpack Nukes: this is a green knapsack which contains a nuclear device equivalent to 250 tons of TNT and they go down to Villa Cardel spend a jolly Saturday in the cantinas where half of those who enter do not leave alive but they emerge safe and sound: who's going to mess with a Detroit black six feet tall and carrying 250 tons of nuclear explosives? or with a Puerto Rican from the island of Vieques armed with / who walk in shouting
THIS IS RAMBOWAR
! and later on they decide to visit one of the bordellos they've been in all of them except one: the one that belongs to the old Chinese / he's put them off / but they have bet each other that before leaving Veracruz they are going to screw every available woman and they're about to reach 175 days here so they know that in four more days they'll be transferred so that there will never be any official record of their ever having been in Veracruz they walk out singing happy tunes by Stephen Foster and Irving Berlin America America from sea to shining sea: the Oriental guardian of the Celestial Empire fans himself and rocks smiles at them and invites them Amelica? flum sea to shiny seamen? you go in now see mos' elotic woman flom sea to shiny seamen smiles the diminutive Deng Chopin inviting the gringo soldiers in with his long mandarin pianist's fingers and the boys from Detroit or PR look at each other, elbow each other with a joking air of complicity and they enter the Celestial Empire giggling Will Gingerich doesn't know it but he's delirious and in every one of the jungle's shapes he sees a frightened tiger he imagines he's a big sports hero a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals a fullback for the Los Angeles Rams the oldest winner at Wimbledon he's delirious but not even that can diminish his fear they're going to come back they're going to get him he walks in circles through the jungle they're everywhere and he nowhere; the navy-blue sky splits open: the moon parts the veil and sticks to the sky like a silver decal: Will Gingerich flees and the Reverend Payne argues: why are we in Veracruz? Caressing the metallic body of his Apache attack helicopter, as metallic as his cheeks shaved four times a day, caressing the tenderly applied decals on the Apache each decal a star with a skull in its center and surrounded by statements in which only the geography varies:
I WAS IN VIETNAM. I WAS IN GRENADA. I WAS IN NICARAGUA. MEXICO NEXT
: Reverend Payne begins to pound desperately on the fuselage of his helicopter scratching the decals saying with a hoarse voice: Why are we in Veracruz? and Gingerich trying to quiet him down telling him we're here to protect the oil installations in the Gulf of Mexico without which the free world would be strategifucked … and the Reverend interrupts him with an open, hard slap on the body of the helicopter that echoes like a gigantic can of Campbell's soup allowed to swell monstrously in the boiling humidity of the jungle: the truth! shouts the Reverend the truth! We've got to terminate this country that exports greasers who are invading us like the plague of locusts that destroyed Pharaoh's power! Michigan is not growing South Carolina is not growing Georgia isn't growing, not even your own home state Texas is growing, Professor, we aren't having kids but all these greasers grow and grow and cross over and cross over and they'll end up coupling with our own daughters and mothers and wives who have emerged like Venus from the Caucasian genetic pool Are you listening to me, Professor? haven't you heard how often they call each other motherfuckers? well I want to send them back to their mommas air-mail with my faithful Minuteman 92 kill them in their father's seed before they enter their mother's belly repulsive filthy greasers invaders of other people's clean white American property / camping out on our green lawns Are you going to allow it, Professor? But you're opposed to abortion, Reverend, how are you going to halt the demographic explosion of the Hispanics if you are an apostle of the anti-abortion movement in the good old U.S.A., but they are not U.S. of A. nor are they good nor are they old said the Reverend in a horrible explosion of rage, throwing himself on the unarmed figure of Professor Will Gingerich and killing an unborn child is not the same as killing a grownup Mexican with a mustache to keep him from procreating, it isn't the same, Prof, admit it! Will Gingerich, assaulted by Reverend Payne, lands face-down next to a slow river surrounded by burning tigers

there is only one room in Deng Chopin's bordello: it is divided by a vaporous but stained gauze curtain stained with what only God knows / semen from an onanistic Chicano, bat shit or beer or guacamole it's impossible to tell: the tiny Oriental lets the men in invites them to undress and then silently approach the canopied bed, which in turn is wrapped in complicated mosquito netting arranged like theater curtains, without waking up the sleeping woman: she is the sleeping beauty that's the secret of this celestial house, that there is
only one prostitute
here and she makes love
asleep:
asleep? The two gringos laugh and Deng Chopin closes his eyes significantly and invitingly: asleep and the two soldiers nudge each other and laugh finally Nat what we always wanted none of these pigs let us listen Macho Nacho making love at the same time you from the front and me from the rear then we trade places why not smiles Deng Chopin: only in Caldel can you carry out your illusions he invites them to undress and take off their backpacks ah no laugh Nat and Macho Nacho never, we can be naked but we never give up our
BACKPACK NUKES
even for a second they laugh but don't you worry now Chink man, the only rockets that be gonna go off here are when my buddy and I come inside your sleepin' beauty they cackle Deng Chopin fans himself doesn't laugh only raises his eyebrows and goes back to his rocker on the main street of Villa Cardel: Now Entering Little Saigon