Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption (17 page)

That was Joe. Always trying to be gruff and pretend he was some kind of bigot. Yet always the first one to stop and help—and to intervene if there was an emergency.

Once Casper asked him, “What were your sons like? Were they like you?”

“They weren’t like us,” Joe answered.

Casper lived on Joe’s money and Joe lived on Casper’s company. They’d sit out at night watching shooting stars and satellites, telling stories and singing around their greasewood campfires. They both liked Patsy Cline and Merle Haggard. Joe’s favorite though was Willie Nelson and “The Red Headed Stranger.” He had a smoker’s baritone without much range, but he sang well, and he loved hearing Casper do the Only Men hymns, often commenting when he heard something familiar from Okie folksongs of his childhood. “Their music traveled a long way,” Casper said, proud again to be bringing it to life in some dead lakebed under the moon. 
Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away.
 Casper believed some songs wouldn’t go quietly either.

“It’s hard to believe the lights of those stars,” Joe said one night near the old ghost town of Calico. “A lotta of ‘em are probably already gone. We’re just gettin’ the news now.”

“New stars are always being formed,” Casper said. He’d read that in a library.

“You can’t fool an old fool—‘specially not one who’s dying himself,” Joe answered. “You’ve only found the sunny side of the street because you’ve spent too much time with a wreck like me. You started off a dead star man—and now you’re valuing your Light of the World ways. Preach me that sermon again you did where all the women fainted.”

For all Joe’s militia infatuation with the End of Days and the Vengeance of God, he enjoyed hearing Casper tell some of the simpler and more hopeful stories of the Bible . . . like Zaccheus in the sycamore tree—or the heroic stories—of Joshua at Jericho, Samson and the honey from the lion’s carcass. He liked the Parables too—and the Proverbs. He was pretty good at those himself. “I’ve never trusted women. I don’t trust anything that bleeds three days a month and doesn’t die—but I loved my wife. I damn sure wish she hadn’t died first.”

For his part, Joe told stories about the War in the Pacific—fighter planes sunk in the water—sharks come to feast on the dead. “Those islands took a pounding, son. There’d be ordnance still being dug up there today. And the bones. Nobody’d ever find all the bones.”

When it rained, they retreated inside the Mobile Command Post to play gin rummy. Joe’s eyes flickered like broken bottles along a railroad track whenever he had a good hand. One night he took a sip of Coors and said, “You know my wife died of esophageal cancer? Ugliest thing I ever seen outside combat.” Casper reached out and put his hand on the old man’s. Joe didn’t pull his hand away.

Sometimes when they’d go to sleep, Joe moaned with pain. One day before dawn, when they were close enough to the Colorado River to smell it, Joe woke up and went outside. Casper thought he was just having a leak. When the old Okie didn’t come back, Casper went out to check on him. Joe was wandering around without his pants on—he seemed disoriented. “Do you feel more like you do now than when you started?” he asked.

Casper went back to the Airstream and got Joe’s camo fatigues and his Wile E. Coyote sweatshirt—the clothes that gave him strength.

Joe seemed to come to himself again—and then he started vomiting blood. Despite wrenching pain, the old man hung on to see the sunrise.

On a bright, chill Mojave morning, while the lizards were still doing push-ups to warm themselves, Casper shot Joe in the head, just as the old man begged him to do, when the agony became too much.

It made Casper think of Howard Hughes’ incoherence at the end. Joe had been as clear as the sky. He said, “You’re more than my dead sons come back—you’re a Rinder in the blood. Look after General Douglas MacArthur and help me get where I’m goin’. I didn’t teach you how to shoot to nail bunnies. Don’t make me cry like a baby. That’s no way for a Marine to go. I promised my wife I’d never take my own . . . life. I need your . . . ”

Blessing, Casper thought. “Which one?”

“The Colt .45,” the old man answered without hesitation. “John Moses Browning’s finest. Did I ever tell you I killed maybe 20 Japanese soldiers myself? Good men. Men we might’ve had a beer with today. I’m going to have to sit down now.”

Casper went in and got the pistol. The old man was wiping tears away in the early light. He’d vomited more blood.

“Four feet,” Joe said. “Remember what I’ve taught you—let the gun aim you. You’re the best natural shooter I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t heal you—we were just fakes.”

“Bullshit,” the old man barked, and spat out some bloody saliva. “Jesus H. Christ couldn’t have done more. Now finish the job.”

“We could still make it to a hospital,” Casper said.

“You could. I can’t. I want to be with my wife and friends. I’m sorry to leave you with a mess—every once in a while even a Marine causes problems. But you know where everything is. Look after General Douglas MacArthur. Let me bug out home.”

It’s a breathtaking thing to shoot a friend at close range, who’s trying not to cry—with his weathered face to the morning sun. It’s a soul-shaking thing.

Casper buried the body beside a stag horn cactus. Joe always said the world’s finest men were buried in unmarked graves. “May a new star appear,” he said when he was done. Then he wiped down the inside of the Airstream with ammonia and boiled water. Joe hadn’t gotten around to signing the truck and the trailer over to him—the old soldier had been caught by surprise by the finality of his illness. He’d been enjoying his last days too much to think about the End Times. Casper didn’t mind—he wouldn’t have had the heart to carry on their ways without Joe. He took his belongings outside, and General Douglas MacArthur in his cage. Then he drove the trailer over a cliff, with a small boulder on the gas pedal of the Chevy, wondering if it might explode. It didn’t. Not like in the movies.

Besides, given the way the old man died, he didn’t think it was safe for him to take the vehicle. Best just to walk away. But he did take the $1,000 in cash Joe had in the Stash Box. Casper wondered what they would’ve done when the money ran out.

A tall, slender albino walking down a desert road, carrying a ferret in a cage.

It was a long trek back to the river of the highway, but he caught a ride with the first truck that passed. A man named Hoss Sawyer, driving a Mack full of frozen shrimp bound for the endless buffets of Vegas.

Hoss was a big bellied redbeard, who smoked Viceroys and sang, 
“I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah . . . ”
 Casper was thankful and put up with the smoke and the flat notes because Hoss asked no questions about why he’d been legging it out in the middle of nowhere—with a ferret. Mojave truckers have made up their minds when the air brakes come on. He harmonized with the truckie—because as Rose had always told him, “A really good singer can make even a really bad singer sound all right. And you’re the best singer we have.” It was the only compliment she ever paid him.

Hoss took a great shine to General Douglas MacArthur, and that was a huge weight off Casper’s mind. “Oh, yeah,” Hoss said. “Me and the wife got a nice little place in Needles. We’ll look after him—don’t you worry your heart about that.”

Casper appreciated hearing that more than he could say. He always admired when a big man spoke of heart. It was like finding a clean bathroom. It eased some of the anguish about Joe to know a little part of them was going on to a new life—one that he couldn’t provide.

Hoss dropped him off at the bus station in Vegas and he said a tearful goodbye to the deaf ferret. Triple parked in the loading zone, Hoss opened the cage and with confidence took the animal out and wrapped him up in his thick arms. “Don’t have a doubt about this little fellow. Just look after yourself.”

Casper shook the meaty trucker’s hand and gave a last pat to General Douglas MacArthur. “You’re a Rinder,” he said to Hoss—and then feared that he wouldn’t be understood.

To his surprise, the big man answered straight out, “That’s how I was raised. Come from the dust, back to the dust—in between never rust. Maybe die behind this old wheel—but not today. Keep the wind behind you, brother.”

Casper only froze for a moment. Then a blow to the matador’s ample midsection knocked the man’s breath loose, and he shot past him, slamming the door behind. A kind of minotaur-silhouette stormed down the hall after Angelike, who, despite the bump, darted between the chicken tubs like a running back, heading for daylight, which in this case was the porch light seen through the open door. Then she made a sharp turn into an alcove, leaving the beast-shape charging past.

The reason for this sudden swerve was that she’d just seen the shadow of Hoptree Bark filling the doorway—the ancient having been summoned from the car (who wants to wait in a Buick LeSabre alone?) by the noise of the antics. Even through his cataracts he had a general idea where the door was. Perhaps he thought his roadmates were in some kind of danger (and there was good reason to think that). Perhaps he was back in his mind, heading on stage at some forgotten coffee house—or to a worker’s rally. But he was in the wrong place at the wrong time in this particular instance.

Due to the need to use his hands to feel his way forward, he’d kept his harmonica clamped in his mouth rather than stowing it in his pocket. He crossed the threshold just as the young girl broke to the side. The rampaging animal-form in apparent pursuit lacked her lateral agility and bowled into the old man, who by that time was blowing harp like a runaway train. There was nothing Casper racing up from behind could do.

Angelike found the hall light switch. On the floor beside them lay a bull’s head. Inside was the unconscious form of a boy with smooth white skin, who appeared to be sporting a jock strap made of fur. Underneath the boy lay Hoptree Bark.

“Holy Sheet!” Little Red cried, regretting the mean remarks she’d made.

Casper reached for the furred thong of the jock strap and dragged the boy out of the bull’s head. Then they heard an odd sound and saw that the old man’s false teeth had been pushed far back in his mouth, straining the skin to bleeding.

“He’s swallowed his damn harmonica!” the girl exclaimed—and indeed the sound he made did strongly suggest that was the case.

“He’s not dead!” Casper thought aloud. The albino wasn’t about to lose the old fool now. Not with the memory of Rick James and the Oldsmobile fresh in his mind. It was true that Hoptree wasn’t looking too good just then though. But despite the sickening sound of the collision, he’d only been winded. What had shocked him more was the fire at the end of the hall. There’s something worrisome about the undulations of flames indoors that cuts through the blur of even the milkiest cataracts—and the fact that he couldn’t see them clearly just added to the alarm.

It was the excited matador, set alight (having wrestled himself through the door of his chapel de toros—only to discover that he’d gotten too close to the votive candles and his traje de luces had caught on fire). This had the fortunate side effect of provoking the old man to expel both the harmonica and his dentures.

Casper and Angelike turned as one, expecting some new kind of attack, but the man in flames down the hall, seeming to grasp that his flesh was about to be cooked, turned tail, swishing through an open sliding glass door, across a patio lit by chains of Christmas lights—and leapt into a swimming pool—at the bottom of which lay tennis racquets and disintegrated hors d’oeuvres (as well as a Kawasaki motorcycle)—while the surface was covered with dogwood blossoms and Monte Cristo No. 4 cigar butts bobbing like expensive turds.

The plunge into the stagnant water doused the flames, as Enrique thrashed around like some sort of camp piñata come to life. Casper, who’d left Angelike to tend to Hoptree, came to his rescue with the long aluminum-handled skimmer, netting his head, dragging him sputtering and cursing toward the steps in the shallow end. The debauched, half-drowned figure at last hauled himself out of the pool, dripping slime. His little black hat floated like a pasteboard boat amongst the party favors—but the wild gleam in his eyes had softened and it looked like he’d regained at least some idea of what might be going on.

Angelike reappeared, on one arm leading their gnarled comrade, whose teeth had been reinstated, mouth bleeding, but who wasn’t as damaged as they’d first feared, although he looked even more disoriented than when they’d found him, strolling a few feet before the raging red wind back in Oklahoma. In her other hand she clutched the estoque she’d found embedded in a sofa.

“You crazy sonuvabitch! I oughta give you a Prince Albert with this thing!”

“Estoy perdiendo la paciencia,” Enrique grumbled—but when the girl made a thrust forward, he leapt back into the water.

“Don’t you unnerstand who I am, you douche bag?”

“¿Qué dice usted?” Enrique choked, his fat head with the smeared mascara and lipstick poking up out of the ooze.

“I’m Angelike! You whackjob. I used to be your niece. My auntie’s only. Now get outta that pool. I done had enuffa you! You see what you done to my friend?”

“Ah sí, ya veo. ¡Qué lástima!”

“Get outta there now! And tell us what you done to my aunt!”

Casper wasn’t sure if he should intervene or not. This was after all a family matter. And the last time he’d intervened . . .

Enrique obeyed and was just about out of the pool for the second time when his companion, the minotaur-boy, blundered onto the patio, for rammed onto his head once again was the bull mask, but turned around so that it was impossible for him to see at all—a punitive precaution taken by Angelike who’d also given him the fiercest wedgie she was capable of, which now lent to his movements a ruptured awkwardness that looked like it would be a long time wearing off.

The moment he appeared the girl looked ready to open his belly, but Enrique pleaded, “¡Déjalo! Por Dios, déjalo,” so instead, Angie gave him a schwack on his bare bottom, which sent him plunging into the drink, where the bull’s head bubbled up free, the young man spewing unctuous green water, an expression on his face that was at once ashamed and afraid for his life.

“Shelby!” the befuddled matador wailed (for his furry G-stringed young friend was none other than Shelby Verril of the polo-playing Verrils of Tyler, Texas, an Angus dynasty now with substantial interests in the Arab Emirates as well as prefabricated steel equipment sheds).

“How old rrr you?” the young hooker demanded, pointing the estoque as the lad extricated himself from the swamp of the pool.

“Twe-twe-tennnny wonnn!” he lied (although a part of him found it exciting to be threatened by a lower class younger pregnant girl with a sword).

“Good thing he ain’t underage,” she said fuming at Enrique.

Casper couldn’t help but note the irony of that remark, but remained silent.

“Now whatchyou done with my Aunt Hermione?”

“Se me olvida,” the matador hedged, discovering a half-empty bottle of Superior sitting on a hibachi. He drained the bottle and spat out a cigarette butt. “¿Quiéns son?” he said indicating the old man and Casper.

“I tole you, I’m Angelike—family—an’ I wanna know whair my aunt is. ¿Donde está mi tía?” she tried, dusting off old schoolbook Spanish. “¿Me entiende usted?”

Casper was impressed. He’d learned a little Spanish working in the fields. It made him think of Cameron Blanchard’s remark about Thomas Jefferson’s advice. Hoptree remained stone silent.

“He only spppeaks Spppanish when his head’s full of Palenque Blue. Give him some Bacardi and mango juice—that’ll settle him down,” Shelby lisped.

“Lissen here,” said Angelike turning to face the fop. “Somewhair inside that prissy get-up I heer a Texsus aksent, an’ I tell you, it’s a disss-grace to see a son of the Lone Star State decked out like you.”

On a sunbathing chair she noticed a silk cape—not the brocaded 
capote de paseo
 the matador wears into the ring for show, but a fighting cape, a 
capote de brega
—kirsch red on one side. She speared it and flipped it to the youth. “Best cover yerself ‘efore he gets another look at yer purty lil beehine.”

“Jamás le he visto,” Enrique grumped deceitfully.

“Poppycock!” snipped the catamite. “I met him at the Snake Dance club on Lavaca (this too was a lie—they’d hooked up at a men’s toilet block in Pease Park). He’s only the matador—I’m—the bull!”

“¡No me hagas reír!” Enrique scoffed with a whinnying laugh.

“Bitch!” Shelby yelped.

Enrique flew at him, hands struggling to wring the boy’s neck.

Angelike was about to apply the estoque when Casper discovered a less final solution—a Laser Wash jet spray screwed onto a garden hose. He twisted the spigot, squeezed the finger-friendly trigger and gave them both what Hogerty might’ve called “a bracing blast of hydro-powered home cleaning reality.” They collapsed to the pebblemix apron around the pool, scratching at each other (which was intensely erotic for both of them).

“Well?” said Angie waving the estoque. “Whatchyou done with my aunt?”

“We killed her!” Shelby trilled. “We had a pool party and barbecued her! We gnawed her to the bone!”

Casper could just see the Medicine strip that might’ve yielded.

The boy writhed in hysterics, which prompted the incensed girl to prod him with the estoque, and then insert it in the band of his jock strap. She broke the elastic and flipped it into the pool. “One more peep outta you, an’ I’ll be roastin’ a weenie on this.”

“Y a mí me trae un tenedor, por favor,” Enrique quipped.

Shelby cringed and blushed to feel himself getting hard.

“I’ll say it agin. Whair is she?”

“She’s gone!” Shelby sang.

“I can see that!” the girl retorted. “Whair?”

“L-L-ous-i-anna!” the boy cried.

“¿Cuándo?” Angelike tried, staring at Enrique.

“Hace un momento. Hace mucho tiempo,” Enrique replied with a fart.

“Lissen,” Angelike said. “Yer lil frien’ got himself somethin’. An’ itz reddy too. I’ll make him do you—right heer in fronta us. Zat what you want? Bent over that lawn chair like a prom queen?”

“No!” Shelby squeaked, with a pre-ejaculatory pearl on the tip of his glans.

Casper was disquieted by this development. Fortunately, Angelike bashed out one of the Christmas lights.

“By God!” shouted Enrique, waking from his daze. “You’re—Angie! Little Red! I understand now!”

“You do?”

“Yes,” smiled Enrique, rising and inspecting his burnt, wet costume with chagrin and at least a good imitation of surprise. “I can see that something very unsociable has happened. My apologies. Time to come inside.”

Angelike and Casper didn’t know what to say. Hoptree’s mouth was still bleeding, his face puffy—and he still wasn’t saying anything.

Shelby, who’d lost his erection, found a frilly white French nightgown. Enrique exchanged his ruined matador costume for a burgundy smoking jacket à la Cesar Romero in 
Passport to Danger
, and proceeded to try to make his uninvited guests comfortable in the main lounge area, which wasn’t easy, for the room was lined with mirrors, while arranged across the floor were life size examples of fake granite and marble statues in the form of Greek and Renaissance male nudes.

“Nos vemos en el espejo,” Enrque sighed, waltzing his image around the leering room. “You will no doubt find it difficult to respect me,” he said, pausing to light up a cigar. “But I was very brave once—muy macho—showered with gifts and roses. I had a great apartment on the Reforma. I went marlin fishing in Mazatlán.”

“What happened?” Casper asked, curious in spite of himself.

“Los toros dan y los toros quitan,” came the resigned reply. “It’s an old saying. The truth is I began to have visions. On the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin in Huamantla, I saw Our Lady in the sky—30 feet high. Soon after I became like a burriciego—a bull with bad eyesight.”

Hoptree stirred at this remark.

“I saw many bulls,” their camp host and assailant continued. “With great heads breathing fire. I froze in the middle of a veronica—then I ran! To the jeering of the crowd. Men spitting beer at me.”

Casper had to admit some sympathy for this.

“But there were so many bulls I couldn’t get away. I was gored. You see?” Enrique said, lifting the Sri Lankan silk to show a gash in his rubbery flesh.

“A cornada. A horn wound. I became a nulidad. El Camelo, they called me. A fake. El santo de espaldas! It was then that I discovered drugs. Not before, as many said. I found my bravery again—only to lose it forever in prison. Years of buggery and bad food—all for a bit of simple possession with intent to sell.”

“Sorry to heer that,” Angelike smirked. “But what about my auntie?”

“A noble woman—once,” Enrique replied. “Although she never came to visit me when I went to jail—and she did try to shoot me once. You see, when I got out I had nowhere else to turn—I discovered that due to a legal technicality, we were never properly divorced.”

“You meen you blackmailed her.”

“That’s unkind,” Enrique chided. “I merely reminded dear Hermione—who I don’t believe you’ve seen or written to for who knows how long—that I was still alive, and despite my change in sexual orientation—at least on paper—still her husband. Given the largesse of the oil company in buying the tract of swamp she inherited from that Cajun fur trapper—who by the way was a much bigger drug smuggler than I ever dreamed of being—my reappearance prompted her to rethink. In the end, the decision was that I should receive the deed to this house. So here I am. Your aunt, meanwhile, left about a year ago.”

“Sonuvabitch! Left for whair? Louisiana?”

“Yes,” Enrique nodded. “Back to the swamp—or what’s left of it. Some little fishing camp called Prophecy Creek down around New Iberia. I tried calling—the number of some bait and tackle place she gave me—but a retard answered. I offered her the chance to stay, but I think she was put off by the sight of me wearing a dress. She was always a little butch you know. Then of course there was the issue of the young men—the harnesses and the Xavier Cugat, the King of Rumba records. So she left to pursue her dream.”

“An’ jes what’s that?” Angelike wheedled, corrosive with contempt.