Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption (20 page)

Earlier, back in Austin, the swollen-faced Shelby Verril had dragged himself out of bed and discovered Enrique still restrained in the contraption that Casper and Angelike had found in the punishment room (which went under the brand name of “The Jo-Jo Boy”). There, the boy toy’s malicious sense of mischief drove him to hike up the Glinda gown and torture the helpless matador. For two full hours Enrique bucked and bounced the graphite frame of the Jo-Jo Boy until it sounded like it would smash apart or fall through the floor. And all because Shelby kept tickling the matador’s hairy bottom with a flamingo feather.

Then the young Texan made the mistake of taking pity on the matador and released him, believing erroneously that his victim was exhausted. The wealthy young playmate soon found himself as the Jo-Jo Boy, fucked first by the livid Glinda, then by one of the horns from the bull mask—so vigorously the horn broke off and lodged deep in his rectum (later requiring emergency surgery and an embarrassing call home to his parents). The matador, still in his Good Witch costume, tore the house apart in his search for more drugs, discovered that his money belt was missing—bullwhipped Shelby to the bone while cursing his thieving slut of a former-niece—then changed clothes, handcuffed the boy and drove him to Bee Cave Road and shoved him out.

Back at the house, Enrique couldn’t find the blowback-operated air-cooled submachine gun which a queer Navy officer turned illegal immigrant-smuggling prawn trawler captain had traded him for a rim job and a canister of China White, but he did manage to locate a loaded Luger. He was soon flying high on tequila and a dangerous new meth-amphetamine known around the Austin tattoo parlors as Spider Monkey—speeding his black Cadillac in a psycho-sweat of revenge, Xavier Cugat the King of Rumba playing at peak volume.

Of course, sitting on the screen porch at Roy’s Bait ‘n’ Tackle, Casper had no reason to believe that evil was only a few hours behind. And despite some vague sense of guilt about ripping off her ex-uncle—neither did Angelike.

Mrs. Nedd was fast asleep with her pointed rake laid across her lap. Ananda finished shelling and while Merrit was securing boats and feeding frogs, she recounted the story of her “broadcasts from Heaven,” which Casper found intriguing—although he kept getting distracted by the music and voices coming from the gospel church. It sounded like Lightfoot Solomon Michaux and his Happy-Am-I Choir. He was certain Hoptree had wandered over there, despite his cataracts—but he was reluctant to interrupt their host who chatted on as if they were family she hadn’t seen in years. The thing was—he thought he heard Hoptree’s normal voice amongst the others—but with the frogs and the laboring of the compressors, he couldn’t be sure. Plus he was very tired. So many questions, so few answers.

Merrit returned making his frog sounds and Ananda announced in a French patois that it was time for him to go to bed. Once he’d chirruped his way to wherever it was that he slept in the plywood trailer (which reeked of mold, smoked fish and gun oil), Ananda presented some of her “productions.” Mrs. Nedd stirred, stabbing at an imagined crawfish, and then took to snoring—louder than all the frogs.

Ananda brought out a humble security guard sized TV and plugged in the borrowed video . . . and there she was—in the gauzy outhouse of Heaven—wearing a plastic shower curtain over a gold bathing suit she’d bought at Catfish City, with a kind of hat she’d made out of a gill net, gesturing with a plastic bubble wand she’d painted with glitter (she looked a little like Glinda the Good Witch). Casper applauded and elbowed Angelike to close her mouth and to do the same.

“You know . . . ” Ananda reflected, pleased to have an audience for her secret project at last. “It’s a funny thing, but when you go tryin’ to make a Heaven, you find you’re already livin’ in it—and you don’t want to leave.”

Mrs. Nedd gave a deep snort at this and almost tipped out of her wheelchair.

Casper admired them. Living in what many Americans would call Third World poverty, finding meaning in accordion music and fresh caught fish. He thought of Walt Abrams, who believed the secret lay in a houseboat and seeing the sun come up from the cab of his truck. “There are some tough ass people still left,” Joe said. “The ghosts of Roy Rogers and John Wayne can’t take us all.”

The music and the voices from across the marsh rose in volume. They heard what sounded like a big woman boisterously witnessing—then from out of the haze of Holy Ghost fervor, that brought back so many memories, came a smoky-possum guitar—and the unmistakable voice of the old rail riding, rabble rousing, WPA era Hoptree Bark.

“Ole Fartful!” Angelike exclaimed. “I knew it was too good to last.”

“I’ve got to go find him,” Casper told Ananda. “Is it safe to go over there?”

“Bien sur. Why wouldn’t it be safe? ‘Cause they’s black?”

Casper winced. “No, I mean the swamp. It’s dark.”

“I gotta flashlight. Jes be careful what y’all drink over there.”

“I’ll be careful,” Casper said. “You stay here,” he told Angelike, who now appeared so bloated and uncomfortable, it didn’t look like Jesus himself could’ve gotten her to move. I should get her to a hospital, he thought, but he knew she wouldn’t go before her aunt was buried. But the money? As if reading his mind, Ananda announced that she had an idea where the girl might go to “lay in” close by, which would still provide her with some degree of medical safety on a pay-as-you-could-afford basis. “Pas de probleme.”

The swamp was alive with night shapes and sounds. Owls hunting water snakes, coon hounds, fish splashing—or something splashing. Casper stumbled on an overgrown path through mangrove and creeper, stunted cypresses and moonlight-ghastly brides of willows. How in hell had Hoptree had managed to make it over there with his poor eyesight?

No one took much notice of him as he threw his shadow up against the wall of an old boat shack. Twenty or so people, mostly black, stood around the fire or sat on bait tubs and oil drums. They were dressed in simple clothes with a strong smell of sweat and polyester, Aqua Velvet and gardenia perfume. Some were drinking and swaying, others singing—but all were listening to Hoptree Bark, who sat in a plastic deck chair on the rickety porch of a shed not much bigger than a privy, bottlenecking an old electric guitar, a small fuzzbomb amp at his feet and a couple of extension cords leading into the “church”—or so Casper learned.

The actual structure in question—on second and third looks—was still an old Astrocruiser Greyhound Bus, one of the select few designed by the great Raymond Loewy, after his forays with Studebaker.

1964 was the year the elite special edition bus had been unveiled at the New York World’s Fair . . . where little people in little Ford convertibles could ride through the Time Tunnel to visit spacemen or cavemen, and there were giant insects made of Chrysler car parts. That was where Reverend America was going to eat squirrel patties with the Yankees and the Rockettes.

The bus had been sculpted to look like a streamline cross between the luxury of a zeppelin and the thrust of a rocket ship. The smooth molded metal conjured both nostalgia for Art Deco and the visionary hopes of the Space Age. The one that confronted Casper, however, had had its sides ripped off and a porch built on, and was faded in places, rust blooming over it like algae—more than a couple of bullet holes in the windows, which sent out deformed ripples in the tinted glass. It made him think of Poppy and Rose’s first bus. He had a strange sense of having come full circle.

The vehicle was sunk up to its empty wheel wells in root and vine, stuck in the spit of land as if it had fallen out of the sky, although the truth was it had washed up in a flood. Some people thought it had been chartered by a gospel singing group that went missing back in 1983, lost between Opelousas and Shreveport. Others said it had been spirited out of a car museum by Katrina, then set loose again during another season of high water.

Wherever it came from, the Bayou St. Jude was where it had stopped—which was seen as a blessing since the old termite-eaten temple it replaced had burned to the ground the year before. Through fire and flood had appeared the old Astrocruiser, filled with water moccasins and frogs, like an abandoned ark that had found its way to land. The congregation of the Prophecy Creek Gospel Temple had taken it for their own and fit it out as best they could, running power over from one of the cabins on the spit, with a diesel generator as back-up, which had just started chugging away.

A cloud of mosquitoes and midges swirled in the murky yellow of a bare bulb over Hoptree’s head. Beside him, a milk chocolate-colored woman with tinted hair and a Jamaican-style Mother Hubbard dress was thumping away at an old Jensen keyboard—which made an odd counterpoint to the generator—such that one might have thought that it was the generator she was actually playing. The old polecat meanwhile, seemed to have left the Eocene ungulates behind, and had a bottle of Snapple between his knees and a look of signifying concentration on his face, as he sang low and rough . . .

I’m going there to see my Father,

I’m going there no more to roam;

I’m only go-oing over Jordan,

I’m only go-oing over home.

No one paid Casper any mind at first, weird looking white men having a habit of materializing with anything from a burlap bag full of bullfrogs to a deer carcass slung over their shoulders. Everyone turned though when he began to sing along . . .

I want to wear that crown of glory,

When I get home to that good land;

I want to shout salvation’s story,

In concert with the blood-washed band

Casper remembered the man with the Wolfkill Feed and Fertilizer cap, who’d lost a hand, and expected him to grow it back in the name of Jesus. Reverend America had sung him that song, and held the stump in both his own small hands. “The Lord has the whole world in his hands. That’s the miracle.”

Hoptree Bark squeezed the slide down the neck, plucking and stroking the guitar. The black people sucking crawdaddies were surprised when Casper followed him note for note—lamenting like a drowning steer—then whispering almost—the two of them together—like frightened children praying.

A breeze broke the stillness of the smoky air, becoming a rush of premonitory hurricane wind, and a large black woman scented with vanilla, contained in a voluminous curtain of frangipani-print dress appeared beside him. One glimpse of the way she looked at Hoptree was all Casper needed to know that she was sweet on him. As very old as he was—and white. As old enough and large as she was—and black . . . there was no mistaking that look.

“Go daddy!” she brayed with a big smile. “You play, honey! Ooh Lord.”

She wobbled happily when she spoke, balancing two heaping paper plates of fried chicken and sweet potato pie, one of them clearly intended for the old Rooster. But Hoptree was in that moment too deep into the music. Casper went over to his traveling companion to make sure he was okay. Only a little while before he’d been reminding everyone that, “Drying out is a severe problem for adult animals.” Look at him now, thought Casper.

“You a frien’ a his?” the large woman asked.

“Oh, yes,” Casper answered as Hoptree bent a note just as Only Man Josiah Darkwater might’ve done.

“I’m Mizz Odessa Pepper,” the woman nodded, still holding her two plates—then realizing that it looked awkward, she offered one to Casper, who politely declined—and then realized it was impolite not to help her, and so he took it and set it down at Hoptree’s feet, whereupon a redbone crunched a chicken leg.

“He shore can play,” Odessa smiled.

“Yes, he can,” said Casper. “Has he been over here long?”

“Came over during the service. We had two today, on account of some hoodoo about the hurricanes.”

Casper understood. Just because you believe in one thing doesn’t mean you can’t believe in another. He also noticed all the beer bottles.

“Good Lord musta led him through the darkness,” she said. “His poor eyes.”

So that was the trick. Old dog probably made out he was totally blind.

“Whose guitar is that?”

“Valentine Tate’s. Once Val heard him play harp . . . ”

“You didn’t notice anything—different about him—before?” Casper asked.

“Sech as?”

“He didn’t say anything about the Childs Frick Collection of Invertebrates?”

“How much you been drinkin?”

“Never mind,” Casper said. “He just sometimes gets a little . . . ”

“Nothing that Odessa couldn’t fix,” she said, offering him some pickled squirrel brains. “I whopped him upside the head with a bait shovel.”

“Oh,” said Casper, wondering why he hadn’t thought of that. The squirrel brains sent his mind flashing back to Cab Hooly—and further . . . to the old way house on the iron hard street in Charleston.

“Stopped him talkin’ like some white man with somefin up his behine—no ohfence. Remined him-a the Lord’s callin’ to get behine the mule. I thought he ‘as makin’ funna us-all so I whopped him. Lord can he play! Send a shiver down my spine.”

“Yes,” Casper agreed, accepting another squirrel brain like a communion wafer.

Spent at last, Hoptree managed to hand the guitar in the general direction of Valentine Tate, who had a wicked knife scar on his face. Casper threw his paper plate in the fire and helped the old man up.

Odessa Pepper waddled them to the edge of the firelight, all the while explaining that she was a widow now—and making it very clear where she lived—not some lowlife double-wide, but a proper house—with aluminum siding, lemon yellow curtains and a brand new refrigerator her son, who worked as a helicopter pilot in Morgan City, had bought for her.

“He sed y’all were down for a funeral tamorrow. You bring ‘im over afffer that, y’ hear? I make the best banana marshmallow pudding in this Parish.”

Casper thought again of Cameron Blanchard back in Indiana. She sauntered back to the campfire wearing a smile almost as wide as her hips.