The Mohawks believe St. Isaac practices black magic. They tomahawk him in the neck. His wife is there and embraces him until his body is cold. Then the Mohawk chief takes her to his teepee and shows her his wisdom and she becomes his wife.
Darling wears knee-high socks and roller skates. We go to the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet out near the crumbling Kmart. There is a Zen river with a tiny bridge and a soft-serve ice cream machine. I have taken many painkillers and have a gin but I am steady. Darling with her sapphire eyes, she is my sweet distraction. Then later, in my arms, she whispers, We’re easy as pie.
The Holy Ghost is pale with brown pussy hair. I ride her, watch her breasts bounce in the moonlight. It is dirty but I hold her tender in the sky.
Tuesday and Finger and I are on the boat.
We’ve come to tell you we’re getting married, says Tuesday.
Bullshit, I say.
We want your blessing, Finger says.
Eli then, no lie, church bells start to ring in the distance.
I’ve marched into the Starlight and gotten down on my knees and started singing that Righteous Brothers song to Darling. This worked in Top Gun, but I am beat up by her father, the owner.
I only sang to her, I say.
Why do you have to dress that way, her father says. Why can’t you be normal?
Isn’t that the question we’re all asking ourselves.
He punches me in the throat.
I am harassed daily on my bike by a roving gang of fifth graders. Such raw disappointment at every turn. These kids will soon become frat boys then lawyers then alcoholics then die of heart attacks on the golf course with wives they don’t deserve.
I order a pizza to my boat. The woman driver has a bad smile. She reminds me of the girls that roam behind IHOP. I love her instantly.
You’re beautiful, baby, I say.
It’s fifteen dollars.
For sex?
For the pizza, asshole.
Soldiers try to shoot St. Devo, but their guns won’t fire. He takes their weapons and blesses them and gives them back. They shoot him five times in the face and he dies with the Lord’s Prayer on his lips.
I creep up to Darling’s place one night and knock on her bedroom window.
Come in, she says. My father’s not home.
I climb in. This house has the grand staircase and the high ceilings of the Old South, a big bathroom with a bidet. There’s a stuffed tiger in her father’s room.
So what do you want to do now, she says.
That’s a big tiger, I say.
Yes, it is, she says.
Eli, I follow you and Nono to the movies. I watch from the parking lot with opera glasses I bought at Dick Dickerson’s pawnshop. Nono points at the car and you start walking my way. I get out.
What movie are you going to see, asks Nono.
I’m not going to the movies, I say.
Then what are you doing here, she says.
Free country, I say. Then run away.
At the Starlight there’s a tourist with a soul patch talking to me about his nude drawings. He is affecting an accent from Eastern Europe. He is here with his lover, a man with tiny glasses. There is a postcard in this town for everything and he has collected them all. The quiet alley where we used to shoot dice is now a Chuck E. Cheese’s. What can I do but watch the blond girls with fake tans, fake tits, fake lips, fake hips, fake diamonds, fake everything. But still the sky is pink over the spire of the church and the werewolves lock themselves up at night.
What can I say of Satan, the restless fallen angel warming his hands on a dead man’s campfire? Eli, the wizards drink the communion wine. They are father and son. Al and Hal Malchow. They’ve written a fantasy novel together, though young Hal can barely read.
They throw things at us, too, they say.
Who?
The little preppies on the hill.
St. Baker is killed and eaten in Fiji. His pith helmet falls to the ground and spins in the dust. The locals play drums with his bones. The sky is purple and Bible black. They give thanks to their God and make Baker’s killer a saint.
Outside the Starlight the peace is destroyed by a gun-wielding teen. He is high on morphine to ease the pain of killing. A victim to himself. The cops push back the rubberneckers. Maloney, shouts someone in the crowd. You can talk him down.
I get on the bullhorn.
Kid, think about your mother, I say.
Who is that, he says. Who’s talking?
I’m the pastor.
My mother said you order sex on the beach shots and sit down when you pee.
The crowd erupts with laughter.
Falsehoods, I say. Put the gun down.
She said you’re filthy and you jerk off all day on a boat.
A huge roar from the crowd.
Listen, I say, put the gun down or they’re going to shoot your head off.
I’d rather die than listen to this asshole, he says.
A sniper shoots him right between the eyes.
St. Maria is eleven and fights a farmhand from raping her, saying it is a mortal sin. He stabs her and she is operated upon without anesthesia. Her last words are, I will think of you in paradise. Ten angels surround her.
The pain is everywhere as I dream on my boat. There is deep sweet melancholy in my slumbering. I see all. I see the wizards near the peach tree. I see Tuesday and Finger laughing on jet skis. I see Bill and Hillary and Monica having a threesome. I see ships in bottles and fields of white cotton. I see the crazed frat boy gunned down in the street. I see the chess pieces falling and the fifth graders with their piss balloons ready. I hear the Sunset Limited round the bend. I see St. Matthew driving my Saab and I see ponies running through the mountains. I see the blossoming of ten thousand wildflowers and the flocking of birds.
Nono comes to the boat. I wake up and there’s a cig still burning in my mouth.
I want to tell you about my life, she says.
OK, I say.
I was born in a prison in China and I killed my mother with my birth. When I was fifteen I heard a song by the Beatles on an American channel from Taiwan coming through a guard’s radio and dreamed of escaping. After many years of planning, I did escape to Japan on a raft. It took forty-three days and there I married a wealthy architect, but I left him in time. And then I met a famous British actor and moved to Tangier, but left him, too. Finally, I married a starving poet and we lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Then I came to the South to bury my best friend from my days in Africa. I could not heal her so I am staying here, living her life in her honor.
What does that have to do with Eli, I ask.
I love him.
I look at Nono’s soft lips.
Why do you love him?
Because I loved a rich man and wasn’t happy. I loved a famous man and wasn’t happy. And I loved a poor poet and I still wasn’t happy. I’ve gone everywhere, seen everything. Eli makes me happy.
I load a pipe with hash.
6
This hate has gone on long enough, pride is reaching epic levels. These mini bros on the hillside are major mischief-makers countywide, exploring violence and lighting farts. These monsters will grow up to lay off people and beat their children and force them to play sports against their will. I call over an officer of the law.