Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption (12 page)

Whatever the cause, the consequence was that Summer was forced to be eldest child, only daughter and virtual mother to the family, which made Casper appreciate all the more the time she took to spend with him.

The four brothers were put to work in some way at the store. Summer, being a girl, found work doing chores for Berina, which is how Casper met her. She was two years older and half his size, and her devotion and the support she lent to his emerging masculinity balanced the nurture that Berina provided. Looking back, he saw he might well have slipped into the netherworld much sooner than he did without their care—and he might never have escaped.

Summer loved cherry sno-cones, Mint Velvets and Wayne Newton—especially his song “Red Roses for a Blue Lady.” Casper, Matty, bought her a bouquet of long stem roses on her first birthday they shared together—April Fools, “My favorite day,” she’d say. Later, he’d always try to do the same if he had money. He’d at least send a postcard, one of the novelty ones she liked—like jackalopes or giant trout. Failing that, an old Reverend America one. He worried that if she didn’t hear from him, she’d think he was in jail or institutionalized—and there’d be some gut hurt truth in that.

Come the end of school in June, when the two had finished their chores, they’d seek refuge near Turkey Creek, in the place the locals called Rum Jungle, because hoboes slept there. She’d slip a Shasta daisy from Berina’s garden behind one ear and pack them a picnic of cream soda, devilled eggs and boysenberry pie. They’d hold hands and stare at the sky. Come dusk, they’d fish for fireflies, listening to garter snakes slithering through rusted cans. Casper never once made a move to fondle her breasts or do anything that wasn’t chaste. He couldn’t bring himself to—not after Mexico. Even the coon dong he gave her was seen as innocent, because it came from Berina’s chest of charms.

Summer had a wispy yet still hardy alto and loved to sing. Out of the blue she’d chirp a line of Billie Holiday, like “I’m goin’ to lock my heart and throw away the key.” Then she’d giggle. He loved singing “Skip to My Lou” with her, and he taught her to harmonize on Only Men songs like “In the Dark of the Road.”

He greatly missed the music he’d made with Poppy and Rose—not just their official performances, but those times camped beside the Rivers of Babylon in the Chickasaw plum and weeping willow, with not a harp in the trees, but Poppy’s banjo, Rose singing like Eve at the beginning of the world.

Once the White Angel Fire and Faith Mission was defunct, they stopped playing and singing cold—as if it had never mattered to them. Whenever he’d try to get Rose to play with him at home, she’d look at him with her séance eyes and say, “Not tonight.” He wondered if she was punishing him. She knew how much the singing meant to him.

Summer always brought a pack of cards with her so they could play Crazy 8’s. “I’m just crazy about Crazy 8’s.” Some people around town thought she was a bit simple—but everyone seemed to believe on the basis of how she’d helped raise her brothers that “she’d make a good wife.” Casper often thought of that when he’d fall asleep back home, hearing her calling him Matty in his dreams.

On occasion he noticed small violet bruises on her wrists and once up under her ear. He didn’t see how she could’ve gotten them from the work at Berina’s, but when he asked her about them, she’d laugh him off. “Don’t you worry about me, kiddo.”

But he did worry—and those words of Berina’s about the deceptive nature of her family always stayed with him. She was hiding something—but whether it had to do with her father or the brothers, or her strange mother, she never let on.

One time when they were lying in Rum Jungle, Summer started up from the sparrow grass with a sudden exclamation. She’d just gotten her period. She was so ashamed. Her pistachio green sundress was stained, her white cotton drawers soaked through. He held her. When she started to cry, he said in his Reverend America voice, “Let not your heart be troubled, for you are a child of God and his blessing is upon you.” He handed her some of the paper napkins she’d brought for their picnic and said, “We’ll rinse out those drawers in the creek. I’ve always been real good at laundry.” He gave her his shirt to wrap around her waist and walked her home in his T-shirt.

The problem was he didn’t live with Berina and he only saw Summer for a few precious hours each week. His life still lay in the hands of Poppy and Rose, and upon the financial calamity of Boone Burgers, his guardians had become more pressured. Poppy had even started to drink, which was so unlike him.

Casper was blamed for all their woes. They turned any recriminations they might’ve aimed at each other on him, and what had previously just seemed slippery became outright wrongdoing. They tried serious mail swindles. Losing all that money to Cab Hooly, it seemed like they had lost their minds, and the seeming neatness and insulation of their means of deception made them lose perspective on the risks they were running. In using the international mail, they’d steered into the territory of federal crime. When the final crisis came, it was like a trap springing shut.

Casper was fifteen when his adoptive parents were arrested on multiple counts of fraud. For all the skirmishes with the law in the past, this time it looked like the charges would stick. At Poppy’s insistence, Rose got away, and for years Casper believed that any day he’d hear from her—that she’d slipped down to Costa Rica and would summon him to join her. That never happened, and he later found out through an old bail bondsman contact that she’d likely died in a hotel in Panama City from a barbiturate overdose about two years after she fled. If that woman wasn’t her, it was someone very much like her, and no other word ever came. Like Hooly, she just disappeared. Her organ—that they’d hauled so many miles—she left behind covered in dust. It was confiscated like all the rest of their things and sold at auction.

West 
is
 south from Joplin, skirting the Arkansas line into Oklahoma. Casper and Little Red were just under two hundred miles from OK City on I-44. They could make that near sunrise, maybe rest a bit—then head down through Ft. Worth to Austin. All he had to do was keep it nice and easy—nothing to attract attention from the highway patrol. The car was a legitimate rental and when he checked the glove compartment, he found that the agreement had two more days to run. It would be another twenty-four hours at least after that before even bulletin was put out. Dev Neon had printed up a fake Nevada driver’s license for him—he thought that would hold up if they got pulled over. Little Red was another story.

“I know the drill, Mister. I’m your niece, all right? Ain’t no one gonna believe daughter. Not the way you look. ‘Sides, I done this shit more times than you I bet.”

Casper was pleased that this was true. He’d never had the belly for the young ones. He turned on the radio, hoping to get some news about the twisters. They were headed into the gauntlet. A CD came on instead. “Only the Lonely.” Poor Rick James, he thought. What would the brothers have said about him listening to Roy Orbison?

They merged onto 44 (what Missourians call “farty fahr”). He punched out the disc and the weather report confirmed what he feared. Little Red . . . Angelike seemed unperturbed. Maybe it was all catching up to her.

“I’m . . . sorry for what happened,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“I was there, I saw it,” she answered. “He’d have beaten me up and you know it. He’d been wailin’ on me a lot ‘cause I stopped workin’ with the bump. I only found out a bit ago. He had one other fat black chick named Shantrelle that he was hustlin’ but he wasn’t any kine of real pimp. Used to be night manager at KFC. Got fired for drinkin’. I wuddn’t be with you if I thought you was the killin’ kine. I’m stupid, but no fool.”

Casper turned those words over. Then went to turn off the radio.

“Leave it on if you like,” she said. “You mine if I play with myself? It relaxes me. I mean we’re friens right? Havin’ just dumped a body and all.”

Casper changed the station and a song came on that he liked. 
Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery . . . make a poster of an old rodeo . . . just give me one thing that I can hold onto . . . ’cause belief in this livin’ is just a hard way to go.

Angelike gave out a dry cry when the song finished. He kept his eyes on the white lines of the road. It was a better cry than her tears. Several miles passed in silence—and then she said, “So, frien—uncle . . . am I gonna keep callin’ you Mister, or do you have a name? I’d believe you if you said you didn’t. And you did scare me some back at the depot.”

He cracked a thin smile. “You can call me Casper.”

“Like the Frien-ly Ghost?”

“Not the Holy Ghost.”

“Word. You always been so white? I guess that’s a dumb question. I mean—I don’t know. That wuddn’t what scared me.”

“What was it?” he asked.

“You just don’t look . . . like you come . . . from anywhere.”

Out of the mouths of babes, Casper thought. That summed up a lifetime of stares and averted glances.

“You traveled a lot?”

“Walla Walla, Washington . . . Hutchison, Kansas . . . Modesto, Saginaw, Decatur, Durango, Sugarland, Texas. I’ve been in every state in America except Alaska, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Delaware—and Maine,” he replied. “I’m not sure Delaware actually exists—I think it’s one of those urban legends. I’ve been across Canada, down in Mexico—and once on a vacation to Puerto Rico. Only vacation like normal people I’ve ever had.” He thought of Sharee.

“Where you learn to deal like you handled Rickie? He didn’t even see that comin’—and you’re no pup. Soldier?”

“I’ve been in jail—and worse places—and I’ve worked with a lot of tough folks.”

“So, what brought you to Joplin—other than the ole Hound Dog?”

“I used to live there,” Casper answered. “I came back thinking I’d find some answers.”

“‘Stead you found me.”

“You were the one who found me,” he replied.

“Laugh out loud. All right, so, you save my ass—you’re drivin’ me to Austin in a stolen car, takin’ all these chances, when you already been in trouble . . . how come you don’t want me? Is it the bump? You think I’m dirty? I got condoms. I got a pill left if you got trouble gettin’ hard. No dude ever knocked me back ‘cause I’s too young. Rickie, he made money off me—when he wasn’t on top of me his own damn self.”

“Like you said,” Casper murmured, “I’m not like others. I don’t think that’s what you need now. What you need is a ride to Austin—and I’ll take you there.”

“
I’ll take you there,”
 she sang. “You know that old soul song?” Casper had once sung with Roebuck “Poppa” Staples and his daughters in Lexington.

“I love old soul. I used to love to dance! I’d dance and sing my ass off when I was young.”

Casper half-smiled, half-grimaced. 
When I was young
. There was a little girl in her that hadn’t been killed off. He wondered whether the Charleston boy was still alive in him—the miracle child who became good ol’ Reverend America.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m running low on money too. I’m hoping maybe your aunt can help me out,” he said.

“Good try, Mister—Casper. I think you’re just a helpin’ kine of fool. But if pity works for you, it works for me.”

“It’s not pity!” Casper flared.

“Calm down, honey,” she said, her voice deepening. “I didn’t mean no diss. Like you said, everything’s gonna be all right.”

They drove in silence for quite a while then and the girl nodded out. Sometimes she seemed to spasm in pain, but didn’t wake. Casper was left looking through a windshield darkly . . . the long black runway of the interstate . . . semi-trailers and cars with license plates from all over America—until the lights of Tulsa—clean sharp buildings downtown, donkey oil rigs still on the fringe. When Joe was drunk he used to sing that old Gene Pitney song . . . 
I was only twenty-four hours from Tulsa
. Cracking the window, he caught the whiff of nitrogen and ozone—tornado perfume.

What in God’s name was he doing, trying to save a teenage hooker? She was probably a drug addict too. At any moment he’d expected her to break out a pack of menthol cigarettes—and that would’ve been it. He hated smoking worse than pimps or police. But no, she just chewed her Black Jack gum, which scented her purse like the Poison. He took a gander while she was dozing—a little Troll Doll key ring slipped in beside condoms and a packet of lube.

He changed the station on the radio, keeping it down low while she slept. It was just an evangelist reaching out to the lost souls of the night. But he heard the voice of Reverend America . . . 
We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of any eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

The sky turned gunmetal blue and then a time-lapse eerie red that reminded him of the color of her hair. He’d snuck a couple of gazes at her breasts and felt bad about it. But it yielded some forgiveness for the orthodontist. There was in fact nothing he wanted more than to lower her seat back—but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The bruise set him thinking of Summer, all that he’d never known about her, and all that he wanted to share. 
Touch me, Reverend America, touch me in the name of Jesus
.

She stirred awake when they made the outskirts of Oklahoma City. He tried to remember the last time he’d been there—and thought of the bombing tragedy that had been eclipsed by 9/11. He checked the weather reports again. There’d been a major strike just due south. He took an exit where there were some fast food places and pulled into an Arby’s parking lot.

“I’m going to take a bit of a nap—then we’ll grab some food when they open,” he said. “They’ll have tornado sirens here. If you’re still around when I wake up, we’ll head south and hope we don’t get blown away.”

He undid his safety belt and went out like a light. There were some dreams at first—faces and fragments from the faith healing days . . . Berina, Summer . . . Old Joe out in the mesquite with General Douglas MacArthur . . . and then just darkness like the Oklahoma highway they’d come in on.

He woke up, wondering where he was. Where his knapsack was.

“Whoa Mr. Casper—the world’s still here. And so’s your bag.”

He glanced around—she was still there. And she had food—he could smell it.

“I got you a Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit—thought that would be more your style than a wrap. And some black coffee. You look like a black coffee man.”

“Th-thanks,” he mumbled, still trying to get his bearings. From the light of the sky it seemed much later than he’d expected . . . a forbidding gray streaked across the blue, huge cumulus thunderheads down to the south.

“You call that a nap?” the girl joked. “I coulda done a tour of the town.”

“How—long have I been out?” he asked—he thought his shirt smelled more of her perfume than before.

“Four solid hours. Y’all needed it, I could tell.”

“What have you been doing?”

“I had to get walkin’. I quit smokin’ for the baby—when I found out—and sometimes the gum just don’t cut it.”

He noticed she’d zipped up her jacket and shed the torn nylons. She held up a foot. “Lost the chase me-catch me-fuck me shoes and got some cheap sneaks. Eat yer food. I had mine ages ago.”

He tore into the breakfast fodder. It tasted as good as Cameron Blanchard’s pork and peach mangle.

“Good to see a man like you with some appetite—for something,” she remarked—and then winked. “Who’s Berina? You were talking in your sleep about her . . . and Bible shit.”

“Uh,” he struggled. “She . . . was a woman who saved me.”

“Lover?”

“No,” he managed after a slurp of coffee. “More like the mother I never had.”

“So, I have her to thank. She taught you good, Mr. Casper. They got them some clean bathrooms in there.”

He took her advice, took his pack and took his time. Since they’d bought food, he didn’t worry about being stopped. It felt good to wash up and the toilet was clean—something that’s often hard to find in Men’s Rooms on the road. He brushed and flossed his teeth—polished his Red Wings, and changed his socks and underwear.

“Let’s roll then,” he said when he got back to the car. “It’s later than I thought.”

“There’s news about twisters where we’re goin’. Maybe we should hang?”

“We need to get rid of this car soon. We need to get farther away from Joplin—and we need to think about getting you to a hospital for the baby,” he responded. “The twisters can’t be predicted. I say we run for it.”

“You’re drivin’ and savin’,” she said. “You want some money for gas?”

Minutes later, fueled up on both counts, they were heading south on I-35, one of the greatest American roadways that runs from Duluth all the way to Laredo.

“I hate hospitals, man,” she said.

“We all do,” Casper answered, thinking back to the infirmary in jail.

The sky had gone white, and he wished he knew more about this aunt of hers—that there’d been more contact of late. After going looking for a son he turned out not to have had or was in any case dead in Hartford, he was afraid they were chasing butterflies. He didn’t have much choice after Rick James—he had to get out of Joplin. She, however, needed someone to foot her hospital bill . . . and a whole lot more. He kept the radio on for news about the tornadoes . . . there was talk about a super cell building. But it was better than squawkback about the broken economy and the healthcare system. Deeper into the ruins of One Flag, One School, One Bible country they rolled—the land Old Joe came from. Rinder Country.

They passed through Moore and then by the exit for Norman . . . Goldsby, Purcell, Wayne. The names of the towns on the water towers reminded him of Poppy and Rose’s aliases. But would’ve happened to him if they hadn’t come along? He’d never been able to answer that question. He could’ve ended up like Dowdy, the church handyman.

Paul’s Valley . . . Wynnewood . . . he talked with Little Red over the radio as the miles turned over. She asked him about the “Bible shit” and he told her a little about Reverend America. She told him more about Swivel and Bobby P.

Casper stopped looking in the rearview mirror for state police, although he couldn’t help notice Angelike fidgeting in apparent discomfort. She didn’t make any remark though. She just chatted—she was good at small talk—and sometimes she sang a bit of a song he didn’t know. She had a lovely, yet childish voice. At one point, she reached back and opened her bag and tugged out a t-shirt. The fake leather jacket came off and Casper caught an eyeful of round teenage breasts before the white cotton slipped over them. She laughed.

“Good to see ya take notice. I knew you wanted to jump my bones. Y’all just too decent. Ain’t known many like that. Forgive a girl, eh?”

“I forgive you.”

“What are ya gonna do . . . in Austin?” she asked.

“Let’s get there first,” he said, pointing out the window. To the east they saw a towering mass of red and brown dust that still had substance. “It’s just good the road’s not closed. That one must’ve leapt the highway.”

There was a sudden flittering of rain and then almost phosphorescent clanging hail. They were in the midst of old cotton land, the greedy farming practices that had killed the soil and caused the Dustbowl crisis. Then oil had been discovered and all around them still were derricks, somnolent mechanical beasts pumping in narcotic rhythm. Into Carter County. Lightning blazed over the Arbuckle Mountains and wind buffeted the Buick. The sky was red and lowering—then through Ardmore, it went Valley of Decision dark.

Ardmore’s a Santa Fe railroad town built on oil, home to Michelin—and it’s seen its share of twisters. But what Casper and Angelike saw then was a real frightener. It was the kind of tornado that’s called a wedge—but this was a wall. Pure black cloud, with traces of red dust like blood. The radio crackled with warnings and advisories for people to take cover . . . a refuge center had been set up in the WinStar World Casino. The air pressure changed even inside the car. “Holy sheet!” Angelike blurted, clutching her stomach. Casper turned off into town. It wasn’t safe in amongst buildings, but it was safer than being in the open. The cars and trucks on the street were driving fast, tornado sirens sounding.