Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption (14 page)

Casper was too late coming back to find out the details of how he’d worked his wiles. Like Cab Hooly, he just absconded one day—and with him went most of the money Berina had worked so hard to save. Casper made her peppermint tea and read to her from the 
Reader’s Digest
. It nearly tore his heart open to hear her, near death, weeping in shame about not having more money to leave him. He never forgot those last moments in the hospital. No longer the lovely smells of jasmine, honeysuckle, crumbed cutlets and fresh bread that had been her life. Just disinfectant and rubber gloves—Salisbury steak and cranberry slop.

“I wish to God I were a real healer,” he said.

“Boy, you don’t even know. You took on the pain of too many too young. You been damn good to me,” Berina said.

“You’ve been family to me,” he replied, sucking himself in.

“Then honor me by being a father to yourself. I’m talkin’ ‘bout a Berina promise here.”

“Berina promise.”

“Always be yourself. You got a lotta them to be. Hold my hand now—and let me go.”

“I’ll hold your hand . . . but . . . ”

“You hold my hand, and I’ll do the going. Just keep my hand warm when I can’t. A little warmer, a little longer.”

He looked after her to the end and saw to a dignified burial. The house had been refinanced to pay for her treatments. There really wasn’t much that she had to leave him—not after Crowe’s snakery. Still, it was more than Poppy and Rose had bequeathed—with none of the bitterness and aftershocks of their departures. Berina’s death was almost beautiful, if it hadn’t been so . . .

The sorrow nearly sent him under—and then, just like when he’d been tortured in jail, something clicked inside him. He couldn’t let Berina down. She’d saved him all she could.

He headed to the agricultural land. He worked small places, sometimes spreading onions on the fields to hold down the soil between plantings. He labored on big properties, driving combine harvesters, 16 row cultivators and moldboard plows. When those jobs dried up, he went further west and did the backbreaking work of picking raspberries and artichokes alongside wetbacks. There were leeches in the lettuce fields, rattlesnakes in the tomato vines. The phosphate fertilizer could make you sick. Still, he thrived.

Sometimes he’d wander back to the skid row barbershop streets of Denver, Omaha, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, or the Central Valley of California. He lived in hotels with crippled old cowboys inching along on chrome walkers, and occasionally slept with strip show girls, or ones he picked up at truck stops when he had a car (and he did have cars some times—a deuce and quarter, a pick-up and a Volkswagen microbus).

He did love women, and he sought out their company whenever he could. But what did he have to offer women who were real in the world? They wanted money and men of stature. He was just tall. And even with the hookers and the bar maids, there was always the fear that the specter of that night down in Mexico would return. He was a funny looking man. He had no choice but the harlots. He told God not to watch, and prayed the devil beast wouldn’t come back.

But as his body aged, it began showing signs of the strain. Work was harder to find. All the smaller farms were gone. Everything was big and commercial. Questions got asked. If he had any trouble, he tried to remember all that he’d learned about survival.

He met the little old loose-limbed Navaho man, who went by the nickname of Hercules, in Arizona, where he learned about Medicine and pulled together the fragments of the past he still retained. Old Hercules gave him a new way to think of the fragments—and sometimes giving someone a new way to think about old things is the greatest gift you can give. It was more than just finding a new bag—he’d found a new form for the past—a new way for it to relate to the moment. As Hogerty would’ve said—he’d made the room bigger. Still, at night he’d slip back into the old Lonely Room . . . back to the jail and the asylums . . . to flaking Paul Bunyans . . . Dillinger hideout log cabins covered in lichen . . . camp meetings . . . Joplin.

Stiff in the back after what he worried might be one of the last harvest seasons where he could find employment, the loneliness overcame him—and he headed out into the loneliest place he knew—the Great Basin desert of Nevada, where he could be alone with the stars and the bones of long dead monsters—like the kind the 
World Weekly News
 had always been rediscovering. It was on the highway between Searchlight, Nevada and Las Vegas that he met Rip and Daphne Tucker, the owners of the New Western Matrimonial Parlor Plus SNAKE PIT & MUSUEM. He ended up staying with them until things got too weird.

What did the MUSEUM display? Typewriters, barbed wire, salt and pepper shakers, plows, guns, beer steins, carriage lanterns, birds’ eggs, clocks, badges, shells, padlocks, saws, bottles, cacti, fruit crate labels, road signs, horse drawn vehicles and duck decoys. “This superb collection” was housed in “three separate modern facilities” (corrugated iron sheds that baked in the heat and were icehouses in winter). The 
real
 attraction though, the hot ticket the Tuckers had, was their reptile enclosure. “Do you think it’s all right we call it a snake PIT?” Rip was forever asking. “You don’t think that cheapens it do you? I don’t want to cheapen it.”

The PIT Rip didn’t want to cheapen contained skinks and geckos, an iguana, a chuckwalla (perhaps the fattest, ugliest reptile ever), and a substantial clan of rattlers, including sidewinders and diamondbacks—plus a frilled dragon from Australia. Casper was calm around snakes from his church days.

Rip’s tagline whenever a family did happen to wander through was “Immensely grateful you stopped in.” Then he’d dangle white mice by their tails, drop them into the PIT and stir the serpents with his long cane with the noose on the end. Casper thought of the long-suffering Lazarus. “You see, they’ll strike the mouse and sink their fangs in, injecting the venom. Then their jaws, which are hinged to swallow objects much larger than themselves allow them to take the mouse in, where peristalsis forces it through the digestive system. Enzymes start breaking down the fur and dissolving the claws. Yes sir. Immensely grateful. Immensely grateful you folks stopped by.”

Between mice ranching, admission to the SNAKE PIT & MUSEUM, and marriage services, the Tuckers could barely feed themselves let alone pay Casper much. But he lived with Rip and Daphne for almost two years. Until their sexual interests began to weigh on him.

There was no accident in them having reptiles around—and a wedding chapel. Their behavior would lead Casper to do some research in the library in Henderson—and to his surprise he’d find out that their proclivities had names. But it was the food and mess fixation that would be their undoing. Arachibutyrophilia is the name he learned, and you well might not believe what it means.

Problems arose when they invited another couple to join them and the other female to participate unknowingly had a severe food allergy to peanut butter. In a matter of a few moments, once smeared with the chunky goo, her breathing stepped up toward hyperventilation and even when scrubbed down with wet towels, her skin took on the bubbled texture of a salted cane toad. Casper remained clear headed enough when called on to avert an accidental homicide, but the next day he was gone—and that was when he met Joe Meadow.

The old man who called himself Hoptree Bark and insisted he was 151 years old didn’t stop talking. “Karl Marx said, ‘Capital is dead labor, which vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more labor it sucks.’” When he wasn’t sloganeering, he was singing. He covered “John the Revelator,” “Wildwood Flower” and “Where the Shades of Love Lie Deep.” Casper was sorely tempted to sing along because he knew those songs, but he didn’t think that would send the right message.

When the old man wasn’t singing, he was blowing his harp—and when he wasn’t playing the harmonica, he regaled them with stories of strikes in the Pennsylvania coal mines, where he claimed to be from—all punctuated with a patter that went something like . . . “God is love, time is money . . . man can’t live by bread alone . . . does anyone have a club sandwich? My name is Hoptree Bark. I’m 151 years old.” When questioned about how he came to be in Ardmore, all that could be ascertained was that it had something to do with a woman and a house he’d once bought on the proceeds of a minor hit record—before the U.S. government sabotaged his career because he was a communist sympathizer.

Angelike would occasionally pipe up, “You ain’t no 151,” which always inspired another lecture on the dignity of the common man and the sanctity of the American Labor movement. It was all Casper could do to keep his mind on the road, and of necessity, the radio had to stay on for further weather reports.

The onslaught of twisters had torn a path of devastation all around them. Whole streets had been struck and houses laid to waste in several towns. Crumpled cars had been hurled, tanker trucks blown up—livestock swept up in stairways of whirling dirt. And then there were those stories of chance survival. A cat found in a tree in a flattened neighborhood. A washing machine landing a mile from its leveled home, the clothes all clean. He groped into his Medicine Bag.

DOUBLE DECKER BUS FOUND AT THE SOUTH POLE

Everything was connected, even as it flew apart.

In the back of his mind was the question of what to do when they arrived in Austin. The important thing was getting the girl back with her family before the baby was born. His life would sort itself out—it was her he was worried about. She seemed to have faith in this relative—that was all he had to go on. What to do with Hoptree was more than he could think about. At least the old timer was still warm and vertical and out of that hellhole of a nursing home. No man left behind.

They stopped in Ft. Worth to scarf down some chili dogs (which provoked in Hoptree some fearsome flatulence). Perhaps the buffalo wings would’ve been a better choice.

Casper kept the radio on for more news of the tornadoes. Even if Angelike had lied about the money Rick James had on him, she didn’t have much—and he knew just how little he had left—which meant they were running out fast. Of course old Hoptree barely had his wits about him let alone any cash, and certainly no credit cards. This put another edge on their arrival in Austin. It wasn’t just for Little Red and her baby’s sake, he was going to have to put his hand out to this mysterious aunt himself, and he didn’t like the thought of that. Heaven only knew what the old man was going to do. It was hard to know if his accepting attitude of his circumstances was brave—or just another sign of dementia. Maybe it was a blessing. Who wanted a clear head in his situation?

He at least provided them with some shelter in public. What must they have looked like to others? A tall, pipe cleaner thin albino of crusty drifter middle age, a hoary wrinkled gnome—and a redhead spitfire who maybe stood five feet, with a big set of knockers and a bun in the oven. As oddball a trio as they were, they couldn’t avoid drawing some stares (although that would lessen the farther south they went), but the old man’s presence gave them the illusion of some kind of a family.

This was the New Depression after all. People were out on the rivers of the roads in search of whatever opportunities they could find. A bigger storm had touched down than just some twisters. The weather reports on the radio alternating with the constant hate back radio bore witness to the parallel upheavals. Casper tried to keep his mind on the highway. Hoptree’s gentle harmonica steadied him. It annoyed Angelike.

“Stop with that damn thing!” she bitched.

“I will when you stop smackin’ that blasted chewing gum of yours—like some cud munching heifer!” the old man replied.

“Don’t think I don’t know what that is. I got good dollar from men a couple centuries younger than you. You wearing a diaper?”

“I am not. I think you should be.”

“Oh, yeah?” the girl demanded, jerking her head around to face the back seat. “When’s the last time you got it up? Can you remember? Or are you too looney tunes . . . got Oldtimer’s Disease?”

“Alzheimer’s,” Hoptree corrected. “My condition is called Benjamin Franklinism. And I was quite the ladies’ man at the Home. One of the advantages of being a stud in those stalls. You get to service a lot of mares.”

“In your wet dreams,” Angelike quipped. “Limp as wet laundry. You can’t cut no mustard. Most you do is lick the jar—and with a buncha old ladies, that’s just gross.”

“For your information, little miss saucy mouth . . . I happen to have a firm erection right now. And if you cared to inspect, you’d also find that I’m hung like the proverbial horse.”

“Stop the car! I am so outta here you be talkin’ like that.”

“Because you’re a professional?” the old man asked. “Why should you be offended by that kind of talk when you’re a whore—and a very young sad whore at that. I’m sure you’ve heard and seen worse. But not seen better!”

The girl burst into sobbing at this, even though the old man’s tone was much softer than his words, and his words no more than the banter she’d been giving him. Casper felt a twinge in his heart for her. She had every reason to cry. A shit life. Pregnant by some faceless anyman—or Rick James. She’d seen the worst of men and no doubt a lot of cheap motel rooms and back alleys. He knew what smelling those kinds of places did to you.

Still, it was more than just not liking to hear her cry. They couldn’t afford that kind of thing in public. The slightest hiccup now and they could all be sunk. There was always a chance that if taken in for anything, the authorities could trace him back to the Oldsmobile—and both Angelike and him back to Rick James. It didn’t matter that it had been self-defense. Once they had him in custody, they could actually pin anything they wanted on him. He’d seen how it worked. They had to stay straight and make it to Austin. “Stop it, children,” he called. Hell, they were all children . . . and Texas brought back so many memories, with its dead flowers of windmills and blue norther battered chinaberry trees.

They made a short stop in Waco for Angelike to pee and wash her face. All Casper could think of was the assault on the compound of the Branch Davidians—the FBI and ATF burning the cultists alive. He was glad to get back on the road. 
And the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.

The rest of the drive was quiet. Maybe they were all just too worried about what lay ahead. But when they reached the administrative heart of the Great State-a Texas things didn’t work out as he’d hoped. Angelike couldn’t remember the neighborhood where her aunt lived so they drove around for hours, scouring everywhere west of I-35 from the Laguna Gloria Art Museum to the Barton Creek Square Mall.

Finally, out near the lake, they located an antebellum-replica of imposing size and intimidating darkness that the girl insisted she recognized. The attempted mansion seemed atavistic by contrast to the Spanish-style haciendas and suburban ranch houses they passed. Angelike was elated but it was hard to be optimistic. Whoever lived there, it seemed unlikely they’d be pleased to see a long-forgotten niece, flat broke, round with child, with who knew what hidden health problems, wearing a dirty skirt. But the girl wasn’t to be dissuaded and padded in her discount sneakers between the colonnades to let the brass knocker bang against the oval faceplate of the door.

Hoptree, after a long silence, had rediscovered the harmonica when the porch burst alight like a Molotov cocktail. It was only the halogen globe in the lamp above the door but all at once, reflecting off the white paint, it flung out into the juniper bushes a demonic fireshadow of Angelike—and things became confusing.

A corpulent figure wearing what looked like a Mouseketeer’s hat, emerged with considerable velocity, and as Casper had been expecting a middle-aged woman, it was several seconds before he was able to process what he was seeing—and hearing—for the figure kept shouting, “Cuidado!” and “Fuera!” and swinging an estoque, a bullfighter’s sword. It was then that Casper grasped that the reflections he was seeing were in fact beams from the porch lantern playing off the spangles and brocades of a matador’s suit—which in this case was straining at the seams to contain a bloated, rouge-faced figure who might’ve been male, or a female impersonating a male, but who was clearly descompuesto.

“Anda!” the figure beckoned, as Angelike leapt off the porch. “Ay yi yi!” he swiped his muleta. He made a charge for one of the colonnades, hacking at it with the sword like a fat schizophrenic Zorro—only to seemingly freeze in fear and barrel back into the house.

Hoptree had stopped playing the harp, while Casper had almost stopped breathing, thinking that at any second the sword wielder was going to skewer the young girl and then lop off one of her ears as a trophy. Strangely enough, she seemed to have composed herself, and regaining the porch exclaimed, “Enrique!”

“Who’s Enrique?” Casper asked rushing to her side.

“Enrique Cruz. My uncle!” she announced. “Well, sort of. He’s the matador who got busted for drug smugglin’.”

“I thought you said your aunt took up with a Cajun in Louisiana.”

“Enrique musta got outta jail and come back to her. I think he’s high outta his mind. Used to eat mescaline and peyote like Pez.”

“A bullfighter—tripping?”

“‘At’s why he got gored.”

Casper noticed that the front door had opened a crack.

“Jamás iré!” the voice hissed and a bloodshot eye peeked out. “¿De qué se trata? ¿A quién quiere ver usted?”

“We didn’t mean to frighten you. We’re looking for the owner,” Casper said.

“¡Es mío! Me dijo! ¿Qué le pasa a usted? ¡No tengo dinero!”

“It’s me, Enrique. Angelike,” Little Red tried. “Hermione’s niece.”

“Dispense usted!”

“Hermione’s my aunt. Remember?”

“No creo que haya tenido el gusto.” The voice broke off into a maniacal gurgling as the effeminate matador fled deeper into the house, leaving the door ajar. Before Casper could say anything, the girl had disappeared inside, too. Fearing for her safety, he left the old man in the car and followed her into the house—which stank.

The first main room he came to appeared to be empty. On a Salvadoran butternut table were many cream-colored pills with jaguar heads impressed into them, as well as a baggy of dark green marijuana. On the floor were pizza boxes, dirty women’s underwear, old revistas de toros and Mexican wrestler fanzines. There was no sign of Angelike or the deranged matador, just a faint golden light seeping from under another door. It was unlocked. Votive candles glowed atop a side table of horseflesh mahogany. Bullfight posters from Tijuana, Monterrey and Mexico City—and shelves full of papiermache skulls, old wax flowers and portraits of the Virgin Mary.

Casper was just turning to leave when that peculiar voice whispered, “No tan de prisa,” and in another room Angelike screamed for her life.