Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption (4 page)

Casper’s adoptive parents were figures straight out of the Great Depression, proud to say they survived on “shit, grit and mother wit.” They were both in their late fifties when they first took charge of him, and how they finagled that he was never sure. Perhaps because it was another era and fewer questions were asked—and attitudes are different in the South. He was just a runt of the litter ward of the church, and they were both exceptionally believable and indeed professional liars.

Although he came to love them, he also came to hate them. They were more like animal trainers than family. But until he met Berina Pinecoffin, they were all the family he had.

His lost dog found father had used so many aliases over the years, Casper was never sure what his real name had been. Calhoun, Brixton, Sheridan—Benny, Lucas, Amos—the man and his masks blurred—and with those evolutions, his wife’s name underwent those same parallel changes.

If pressed, Casper would’ve said his guardian father’s real name was Mungo Appleton, and that he came from the little town of Dime Box, Texas. His wife was called Miss Rosalie, but when she was telling fortunes, she went by Zantia. When they started playing the church circuit together, she became Sister Rosalie. As to her maiden name and place of birth, Casper had no idea. He was taught to address them simply as Poppy and Rose.

Poppy was a pale, tallish, string bean of a man, with a feminine hump of tummy and arms that seemed to operate from the elbows, although he was dexterous in the wrists and fingers and could do many card tricks and sleight of hand “mystifications.” He had a thick head of hair the color of crusted bacon salt that crusts on bacon and teeth white as piano keys. “Always look after your teeth,” he told young Mathias. “Your teeth and your shoes. Even when people don’t think they notice ‘em, they do.”

Poppy had grown up on the road with various carnival troupes, and any reference to his personal ancestry was shrouded in calculated mystique (read flapdoodle). The one clear comment about a father that Casper could recall indicated that he’d been a 24 Hour Man for one of the regional circuses—the person responsible for traveling in advance, drumming up interest in the next town along the route.

Something unfortunate seemed to have happened to this familial link and there was never any allusion to a mother—so however it came to pass, Poppy was taken in by the carnival world and had been trained from an early age to be a “talker” in front of midways and sideshows throughout Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. His formal education had been negligible to nonexistent, but he’d gained some intense experience of life. He’d been a carpet clown (one who works the audience)—he’d run duck pond games—the Hanky Pank—the Fast & Loose. But he’d always excelled at “freezing the Tip”—hooking thecrowd. Some have the gift of the gab—Poppy liked to say he had the “gift of the grease.”

His speech remained peppered with carnival slang. Newcomers, novices, greenhorns and all those easily hoodwinked were “First of Mays.” Wannabe’s and those lacking backbone or “gristle” were “Forty Milers.” “John Robinson” was code for putting on a short show, either because of trouble or slow business. “Playing to the haircuts” was what you wanted to avoid most of all. That meant people were leaving and all you were seeing was the back of their heads. That meant dark nights camping out amongst pulpwood trucks blasted by hunters—canned tuna and a U-No bar to share.

A good haul on the other hand might mean breaded chump chops or chicken fried steak, okra and black-eyed peas, followed by a slab of coconut cream pie. And best of all—the possibility of watching television in a motel room. Casper remembered with astonishment watching 
The Beast with Five Fingers
 with Peter Lorre. Cartoons were better still. They impressed him more than the stained glass in the church back in Charleston. The only thing more remarkable to him was the sounds he so often heard.

Living in such close quarters, often sharing those cheap rooms, sleeping in their bus or camping in canebrakes or behind some Chesterfield Kings billboard, he was nightly exposed to the noises of his guardians’ lovemaking. As he grew older and gained experience of the world, he came to recognize that they had a
much
 more passionate life than most married couples their age.

But it was an awkward thing in the early days, and it left him with a lot of kid questions. The answers he got sounded like the explanations of electricity back in Charleston. Because Rose was well past menopause there were never any bloody rags in their wash—no sign of tampons. When they asked him where he thought babies came from and he replied “from God,” the answer stood uncorrected. In fact, they seemed quite pleased.

The only hint of anything shady about Poppy was his fondness for phrases such as becoming “unfinancial.” Other than that, the man was about the most likeable fellow you could meet. He had an untrained but lilting tenor and could do an excellent imitation of Will Rogers. He played the banjo. He was an adept mechanic and swift at all manner of minor repairs, often with improvised materials (he had the Rinder’s Knack as Joe would say). Yet despite these fluencies and a hearty constitution (he only drank milk and Dr. Pepper, never smoked or chewed, and always rose early to allow time for a slow, meditative shave with a well maintained straight razor), he never outgrew his thimblerigger upbringing.

Rose, meanwhile, was fair-skinned with dyed dark hair, petite and pleasantly wrinkled. She applied rouge with precision, but always appeared confident enough to present a natural weatheredness to the world. Her eyes however, were almost black and penetrating, and could give her an occasionally sinister Ida Lupino intensity. Wherever and however it was that she’d grown up, she’d learned the art of “dukkering” or gypsy fortune telling. (One notion put forward by a policeman they once ran afoul of was that she was actually Irish and had been part of a nomadic band of tinker con artists.)

There was something unaccountably cold about her though, especially in regards to any act of mothering. Despite the blatant sexual relationship with Poppy, she always kept her body well covered around young Mathias—and she insisted that he keep himself clothed in her presence. Whenever necessity forced his nudity upon her, she’d turn away, as if suddenly splashed with shame.

Neither Poppy nor Rose could keep their stories straight on how they’d met, but one way or another Rose had become a psychic. She did crystal ball gazing, read Tarot cards and the Ouija, or what she called the “talking board.” Casper gathered that they’d made a life in one town after another, running a mixture of scams and semi-legitimate quackery/fakery ploys—only moving on when they thought the well had run dry or the locals had wised up. (As it turned out, it would be their move from physically direct conning to the use of wider reaching media like the mail that would catch them out.)

They both knew patent medicines, and old bottles of Dismal Swamp Chill & Fever Tonic were still in evidence in their claptrap bus, which became little Mathias’ principal home, more or less.

Poppy had once sold Dr. Sanden’s Electric Belts, a so-called “male invigoration” aid, as well as a variation on Vin Mariani, a 19
^th
 century cocaine infused beverage that kept resurfacing. Impotence cures, reducing techniques, communication with the dead—whatever worked best in the moment. Casper would later find out that they’d been accused of a $50,000 uranium stock swindle and formally arrested for the Vitalitonium, a whimsical looking machine they claimed was capable of bringing an end to: rheumatism, arthritis, nervous indigestion, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, falling arches, bags under the eyes and sagging busts.

What they’d done with the money they derived from their bilkings and milkings remained a mystery. There was a family myth about a house in Daytona Beach. But if there was any truth in it, the details must’ve been well tangled in false names, because nothing of it ever came to light.

They maintained a small neat house in Joplin, Missouri as their base camp, and it was in Joplin that Casper, as little Mathias, would be befriended by Berina Pinecoffin and where he’d meet his first and one true girlfriend Summer Shield. It was also where he was exposed to the first and only continuous schooling he’d ever know. Most of the time, however, he lived on the road with Poppy and Rose.

From the moment he entered their lives, the focus was on the Bible, and together they studied it with religious intent—just not Christian intent. There was a new fervor of religious sentiment in small town America, at least in the South, and Poppy and Rose wanted to capitalize on it. He was given the stage name of Mathias True. Poppy became the Reverend True and Rose, Sister Rosalie. Initially they were just a Christian novelty act, performing at churches and Odd Fellows Halls, and whatever gospel festivals they could get into. But they had bigger plans. Mathias True would be the rock they’d found their church on.

Again and again they quizzed him on key Biblical passages. He had to know the Ten Commandments, the Twelve Tribes of Israel and the Twelve Apostles without thinking. He had to be able to recite the books of the Bible in order and to have all the Parables close to hand. Over franks and beans, they crammed on Christian doctrine—the Trinity and the Hypostatic Union, Salvation by Grace, the Resurrection and the Gospel. Sometimes with his mouth full he’d be forced to repeat, “Jesus is God in flesh, who died for our sins, rose from the dead, and freely gives the gift of eternal life to those who believe.” Burp. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

The Virgin Birth proved awkward (as it has for many), because if babies came from God—what was so special about Mary? And what was all the begetting about? Poppy responded with a rather complex “rattling off” of all sorts of animal associations: bulls and cows, roosters and hens—supporting his absurd lecture with gestures and hand signs that made the young Mathias wonder if the man wasn’t having a spell. When at last the words “penis” and “womb” were trotted out under the duress of further bafflement (of course no vaginas), the matter only became foggier. Because the boy had been exposed to Poppy’s wizardry with cards and gaming tricks, it prompted the question, “So, it’s like slipping the pea under another shell?”

In all the years he’d spend with them, this would be the single time he recalled hearing Rose really laugh. It began as a girlish sniggle, with an attempt to gulp it back down—and then returned in force, erupting into a full-bellied horselaugh that brought tears to her eyes.

Then—just as suddenly—her mood shifted when he asked, “Why don’t you have children?”

He’d actually asked this question before but not in such a cornering way. His cauterized upbringing, and the way they’d plucked him from charity wardship had always allowed answers along the lines of children being things you picked up on market day.

They were parked alongside the Missouri River, running high—but the atmosphere in their old bus went as desolate as the sand hills of Nebraska.

“We tried and tried,” Rose answered, while Poppy fumbled with the Bible. “I’m barren. We’ve read about that.”

It was, he’d come to realize, one of the simplest and truest things they ever told him. He saw that they desperately wanted children and a normal life, but they didn’t know how to find it—and like the fortune they were always chasing, they probably wouldn’t have known what to do with it if they did. They never once said, “We’ve got you now.”

Essentially, they’d taken him in because of his distinctive complexion and his early religious training. 
What manner of child shall this be?
 How they’d found him, they never said, but they’d been hunting for a while. They wanted an unusual looking boy—someone just peculiar enough to capture attention but not so odd as to put people off—and a child that could pass for their own late-in-life Godsend. He needed to be clever, capable of taking instructions—and he needed to be hungry and alone, so they could mold him.

He met every requirement. He was unusual looking—and they had him grow his hair long to accentuate his albino appearance. He could rail about Cain and Abel, King Solomon and David. Where was Elijah when the chariot of fire came? Under a juniper tree. And he could sing. He had natural flare for music and that very rare ability in a voice to tell a story in time with music—to in fact never be out of time.

Sister Rosalie put all her psychic skills to work and also made shrewd choices in the music played—classic hymns and Old Time spirituals that people could comfortably sing. They also had an ace up their sleeve. Poppy had picked up a very hard to find songbook of the Only Men in Baton Rouge, the lost breed of itinerant black Methodist singers who roamed the South in the years after the Civil War until the turn of the century. They were cross pollinators, who mingled primitive blues with Christian hymns, and little Mathias had been exposed to some of their compositions in Charleston. He could sing those as if he’d written them himself. 
He speaks to me when I call Him—He bathes my poor head down—and the river that lies before me—He promises I won’t drown.

They were heroes to him. Buried in history like the black cowboys and the buffalo soldiers, they were ministers of a uniquely American gospel, equal parts preachers, traveling musicians and by necessity—gunslingers. Now the family had a rare extended collection of their vagrant body of work, which no other group they knew of could claim.

With Rose’s mentalist skills and phenomenal musical ability—Poppy’s hucksterism and likeability—Casper would query down the years why they never went out to California or back to New York. They just didn’t seem the kind of people to do that. The Rockies were as far west as they could go, Virginia as far north on the east coast. They were children of the heartland and the South. Poppy could rhapsodize about the bright lights and bustle of Radio City Music Hall, but the idea of actually going to Manhattan and bathing in those lights and the swoon of traffic was unthinkable.