Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption (21 page)

He considered switching on the flashlight, but he found that he could maneuver, albeit slowly, by just following the old man’s instincts. 
And them that shall lead must follow
.

“You’re feeling all right?” Casper asked, inching forward. “I was worried about you.”

“Every man should!”

“Seriously, I don’t think you should just slip off like that around here.”

“I didn’t have a choice, son. That Mrs. Nedd!” Hoptree exclaimed. “Groped me! Got a good handful too.”

“Oh!” said Casper. “I was wondering what you might think of her.”

“That’s she’s too damn old for me! I got my eyes on the prize.”

“Watch out!” Casper hissed, but the old man hit the slender water oak dead on and fell back into his arms like an exhausted child.

By the time Casper was able to cart the old man back to Roy’s Bait ‘n’ Tackle, only a couple of hurricane lanterns in the trailer were burning. Ananda had put fresh linen on the rough dorm style beds—Angelike on one side of a thin beaverboard wall, the two men on the other. The young girl and mother to be was already asleep, “plumb done,” as their hostess put it. Again, Casper wondered what would happen to them. How had all the roads led here—and what did it mean for the future?

Hoptree descended into a snoring stupor just one step down from Mrs. Nedd the moment his bumped head hit the chicken feather pillow. Ananda had waited up, after wheeling the old woman to bed, hoping to have a word with Casper about Angelike, but she saw that he was tired.

Meanwhile, Enrique had just passed through Beaumont, Texas and was an hour away from being pulled over for speeding by a Louisiana State Trooper, who in his Spider Monkey mania the former matador would shoot in the head with the Luger and then dump in the swamp by the light of the gas flares, his lilac silk panties stained with groin sweat.

Ananda’s suggestion was for Angelike to have the baby under the care of a Creole woman with the unlikely name of Emily Dickinson. She’d been a senior surgical nurse at the Tulane Medical Center and now owned an old motel originally built by the Evolution Oil Company for the rig workers. She’d done a lot of midwifing and ran a rural clinic for folks who didn’t have the money for New Iberia—or for the bayou people who didn’t trust doctors. Casper didn’t know what to say. They couldn’t stay at the Frog Museum. None of them had medical insurance. There was no money at hand—or at least none that he knew of.

Ananda saw again how weary he was and told him they’d speak more about it in the morning—when she hoped she’d get access to her big freezer again.

The Museum had that damp Masonite smell that reminded him of trail shacks and bunkhouses. On his side of the wall Hoptree sounded like the Wabash Cannonball, a small lump from the tree rising on his forehead to complement the damage from the bull run. On the other was Little Red, moaning in her dreams. Casper thrashed around in the tomb hard plank bed recalling words from Isaiah . . . 
For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretcheth himself on it . . .

When he closed his eyes, he saw Joe, unshaven, hawk-faced, accepting but unbowed even in death . . . and he remembered Berina Pinecoffin’s last words to him. “Just keep my hand warm when I can’t. A little warmer, a little longer.”

Out in the water swam something large, occasionally breaking the surface with a slurp. The legendary Murker? His head cleared as a hint more breeze reached his face through the dusty grease of the window screen. (Summer would’ve called it greaze.) He got up and watched the shapes the moonlight made—glimmering mats of floating hyacinths. He’d always loved the moon. The moon’s an albino too, he used to think.

Most of the Spanish moss and the turtles were long gone now. The once vast wilderness of egrets and swimming deer had been under threat for so long it would take a miracle for it to recover, and yet—in pockets of swamp some of the old magic remained. He remembered the litany of American extinctions Hoptree had recited at one point, a curious counterpoint to the diatribe on the radio about healthcare reform . . . the Cave Lion, the Dire Wolf, the Giant Beaver and the Short-Faced Bear. Then the kite flyer had started in on the birds . . . the Carolina Parakeet . . . the Passenger Pigeon (which of course also meant the end of the Passenger Pigeon Mite) . . . the Great Auk . . . the Ivory Billed Woodpecker . . . and then the Golden Needle Beak Woodpecker.

Now that death sentence had been revoked. Thanks to Miss Hermione. When he thought of it like that, she didn’t seem so dithery or selfish—and she may have been trying to save more than the woodpecker’s future. In protecting the land rights, she was also defending the homes of her friends and neighbors. That didn’t seem screwy. She may have had more upstairs than he first thought. People often did—if you could see things from their side.

Casper pulled on his clothes and Red Wings, and walked around the back of the Frog Museum, finding a connecting door that led inside. Seen at night, with but a few beams of moonlight pouring down through a jerry-rigged skylight, there was an intensity to the establishment that he found inspiring—like being inside his Medicine Bag. He located Ananda’s flashlight in his pocket and clicked it on.

Amongst shelves of old toy frogs made of anything from plastic to tin—beanbags to hand puppets—were little snippets of pictures of Merrit as a child—the Frog Boy with his friends—long before the tragic bullet the drunken Quimby had fired. How odd, Casper thought. He’d spoken in Reverend America days of a plague of frogs—and here he was in a paradise of them.

In two net-covered ponds there was a mass of real frogs—running water pumped in and out—dribbling from the mouths of cement frogs—while several hundred stuffed carnival prize frogs dangled from fishing lines knotted to the rafters overhead. Like many things, it was more interesting because of the dark. There was no question, brain-damaged or not, Merrit could be proud of what he’d achieved—just like Ananda’s broadcasts from Heaven. It made Casper wonder how he was going to leave his mark.

All his life seemed to be but mustard seeds on the wind. He’d tried to be kind, even when circumstances seemed to have forced him to do something criminal. He’d never attacked, only defended—himself or others. He’d always worked when he could and prided himself on not expecting charity—being generous with whatever he had. He’d lost whatever faith he’d had in God a long time ago, and yet he’d kept looking for it. Believing he’d find it. Believing a Rinder would come to lead him home.

Still, the one time in his life that he was sure he’d done some real good in the world was as Reverend America—when he was a sham and a con artist. That was the irony he’d never been able to outrun. So high you can’t get over it, so low you can’t get under it, so wide you can’t get around it. Faith is always a con, he realized. He saw again the old scenes of Poppy and Rose, wayfarers with their bus of dreams and schemes pulled over in country very much like this.

He saw himself in the American flag suit leading a wide-eyed choir of mill workers and chicken pluckers in “There is a River.” They’d never been to the Bayou St. Jude, but they’d been close many times. Reverend America had never known strangers because he’d only known strangers and the children of strangers. He’d bathed in the flood of them and so had come to baptize many. Despite the mosquitoes, he lay down outside on the boat dock, listening to the frogs—and every so often—a gurglish swish.

He was awakened by Merrit, just as the sun was rising in a colorless sky that smelled of impending rain, surprised at how little he’d been bitten—as if something had been watching over him. The head-challenged teenager carried a shovel. Ananda, hoping to have her freezer scrubbed out and operational again as soon as possible had dispatched him to boat out to Hermione’s island to dig the grave so it would be ready for the ceremony.

Only a few miles away, Enrique was also waking up—behind the wheel of his Cadillac, after belting down a tad too much Thorazine and tequila, following the disposal of the trooper’s body in the methane glare. He’d driven like a fiend for what seemed like quite a bit of rumba. When he did at last make it into bayou country, he got lost several times before stumbling onto a narrow overgrown road where he came upon some giant webbed footprints beside an abandoned rental car. The sight of these tracks provoked the self-medication. Before the next heinous dose kicked in, he tried to get his blurred bearings. When he did, he saw a faded wooden sign with the words ROYS BAIT followed by the ghost of an arrow and a childlike rendering of a smiling frog. Enrique smiled too, and reloaded the Luger.

Angelike looked tired and scared upon waking. Ananda’s idea of moving them to the old motel that the nurse named Emily Dickinson ran sounded like a good one—the best hope for a successful birth under the circumstances—and Lord only knew what sort of complications Angelike’s lifestyle might throw in. Emily Dickinson had delivered more than her share of babies, often under difficult conditions, Ananda explained. In the modestly equipped clinic she ran, she could provide Angelike with at least some hygienic security and professional assistance. The young girl was too worn out to argue and agreed to go on down to the motel once they’d buried her auntie.

After beignets and couche-couche, and some chicory coffee, Casper and Merrit, who continued to make his frog noises, lifted Hermione out of the fish freezer and into a pirogue, which they towed behind one of the Rogere’s motorboats. Angie leaned against Hoptree, glad that the old man’s mind and normal tone had returned, although his voice remained strained and the bumps on his head sizeable.

There was a relaxed attitude to burying Hermione outside an approved cemetery. The Fish and Wildlife inspector had filed his report—Emily Dickinson in her capacity as the Parish Health Officer had signed the death certificate. Laying a refrigerated corpse to rest on a willow bar island of wild licorice and Cajun lily was all in the nature of things on the Bayou St. Jude. No one batted a walleye.

So, off they went . . . Casper, Angelike and a hoarse and stiff Hoptree Bark in one aluminum boat, pulling the funeral pirogue with Hermione behind, with Ananda, Merrit and Mrs. Nedd (who was out of sorts) in another.

The wind had stilled and the rain held off. The bayou was unusually low for the time of year. That was always the thing about living close to the land—you had to live with it. But soon the crawfish would be burrowing to hatch their young. Things would go on, in the green tree and in the dry.

They reached the mangrove-rooted shore, where Casper and Merrit almost broke their legs trying to get Mrs. Nedd’s wheelchair out of the boat, and because the antique contrivance offered no traction in the silt-sand, they were obliged to carry her all the way to the graveside like some kind of partially embalmed African queen. Casper recalled all the times he’d tipped people out of old Jessie.

Next they brought up Angelike (waddling not unlike Odessa Pepper), then Hoptree, who managed to play a gutsy, moving harp in spite of the injury his mouth had sustained in the collision with Shelby Verril (who back in Texas had just been informed that in addition to a broken nose, his bladder had been infected when he’d been sodomized with the fake bull’s horn) . . . and finally the guest of honor herself, no longer wrapped in polyethylene, but tucked into a mildewed Sears & Roebuck Pup Ranger sleeping bag that Merrit had had since childhood.

“Does this island have a name?” Casper asked as they laid Hermione in the grave that Merrit had dug, along with her favorite pair of bird watching binoculars.

“Naw,” said Ananda. “It’s not a big one where folks go offen ‘cause Hermione saw the woodpecker on it and tried to keep folks off. Maybe we should call it Woodpecker Island. She’d like that.”

“Hmm,” Casper said as he tried to think of the appropriate words to farewell this stranger he’d never met. People expected something to be said, and it was more than Angelike could manage. Why did everyone turn to him? His mind was blank, and the more he scanned the group gathered around the grave, the emptier he felt his brain become. Heavy, brittle lines like . . . 
they die, even without wisdom
 . . . were of course all wrong—and it didn’t seem right to impose upon a non-believer—a wild child and pagan free spirit at that—the more joyful and uplifting promises of the door of salvation, whether he believed in them himself or not. Resurrection just didn’t sit well with a shotgun victim—and summoned up old tabloid headlines like . . .

GHOULS TURN WEDDING INTO SMORGASBORD OF TERROR

Then he thought of Old Joe and the sunrise. This seemed like a peaceful place to have arrived—even if it took the violence of a shotgun blast to get there. Not many women take their own lives with firearms, he knew. Hermione wanted to be sure. Would’ve taken courage to do it. One of the simpler, quieter lines from the Good Book crossed his mind. It didn’t mean much on its own, but on this island at this moment, it did . . .

And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands . . .

The trees did seem to clap their hands. Wetland pine, cypress, willow, cherry bark oak—and one the locals called thicketine. There were no proper fields here—or rather the fields were a blend of cane, saw grass, marsh, and slow moving stream. The word “bayou” may in fact be a French approximation of a Choctaw word that means small stream. The whole landscape was fluid, as life is . . . poised between sky and water . . . the jambalaya and elegies played out like a cakewalk of shadows between two ever changing mirrors.

Somewhere an unseen bird sang out—like a pennywhistle—then a rat-tat-tat-ta-toom. Casper wondered if it was the famous woodpecker come back from the dead to say goodbye. How many things, and creatures too, that are thought to be gone forever, live on in secret, waiting for the searcher with the pure heart for them to reveal themselves? He cleared his throat, like a singer waiting to come in on the rhythm section’s cue.

“And all the trees shall clap their hands,” he said. “So should we today, for though we’re here to mourn a death, we’re also here to celebrate not just one life, but all Life. This is as fine a place as any I can imagine to end a journey and begin a new one. I’ve traveled a lot in my days, from Savannah to Sacramento—and I’ve met many people who seem to have never moved far from the first house they lived in. But everyone I’ve ever met has been a Searcher. There’s good reason to believe the woman we’re saying goodbye to today found what she was looking for—and I don’t just mean proof that an animal thought to be long dead is still alive and may even be watching us right now. I mean she found what we’re all searching for . . . friends . . . the family we find or make. It doesn’t matter how we come together—and it may not be for us to understand.

“Hermione can rest now. From what I can see, she found a strong family . . . and a sense of purpose . . . and the fact that chance or destiny—or maybe even God has brought her niece here at this time says that it was the right time.”