SKIMMING THE
GUMBO NUCLEAR "Facilis Descensus Averni" Chapter 19 Johnny Lee and Martin Lee were cousin to Jimmy Lee Jenkins. The disparate difference between the Reverend and his famous cousins was the fact that they were going to burn in a lake of fire for all eternity. And Jimmy Lee was saving souls in countries where they never heard of no little baby Jesus. In the covetous wooden structure of beams and girders holding the temple of the pious figure of the working people, Reverend Jenkin's came to the audience and the television viewers with a special show. It was timed perfectly with the newest twists in the monstrous dilemma for the folks who lived in a cauldron of plague and pestilence worse than bible times. The glow of hopeful clodhoppers of ungainly status except that they were members of the fastest cable ministry, was exuding into the stage where the grand piano and flowers and stagy setting was. Came the words: "Them doctors. They got all that schooling . . . (amen), but they don't know what Jesus and the holy book (and he kissed it and forced them holy water tears) prophesied in the last book of the New Testament. . . In that last book! Revelations!" The women and men gasped. The television camera focused in on one nubile creature crying in the full closeup shot of the camera. It leered and then oozed down her bodice into the Bible cradled in her luscious lap of the gods. Ricky Harrison was in front of the television after a bout with the Playboys and uninterrupted masturbation. The Reverend Jenkins was getting more than he. The rumors of Jenkins' wife's collection of fur coats and Jenkin's taste for chickies on Airline highway were bantered around. Louisiana had many dumbasses in its long lineage of hicks and hayseeds getting Uncle Earl's free lunch. Reverend Jenkins made his vast network on the hicks and hayseeds and the oily scum from North Baton Rouge. Reverend Jimmie Lee Jenkins spoke to the multitudes. They were the hayseeds with tithes for the ministry and Bible College. And the coats that Mrs. Jenkins wore and that mansion on Highland road up in the lush countryside. Jimmie Lee's advance men had done their research about the serpents. With venomous bared teeth, ready to lure Adam to take a bite out of Eve's apple. So he was sweating that bourbon from the night previous when he and the boys in the upper room had highballs. But God, them Catholics drank their asses off. He had a ministry in the millions. He was reaching all over the world, for Christ's sakes. So the multitudes were ready for that speech for them to pray for Wayne Langouis and Cornbread (real name James Lincoln Buchanan, born 1909 in Iberville Parish). They just knew the special preaching was gonna be about them serpents from the deeps that crawled out on Land. To spite the evolutionists and Charles Darwin. And all those people were gonna get cured from cancer. That was promised to them if they sowed a seed of a thousand dollars to the Jenkin's World Ministries, and God'll get them a motor home. Many times hungover Jenkins would ramble to the parable of the old widow woman. Well, he had to lay off the sauce and start taking antidepressants. His wife was practically estranged from him. Making him turn to street whores in the seedier side of New Orleans, down Highway 61 past the Pink Motel in Gonzales. All the way down to the Vietnamese run hotels that rented rooms by the hour. "Some of you folks out there seem to think . . ." He said, with cries yawping from the orifices of holy vessels. " . . . That we got us a cancer problem here in East Baton Rouge Parish." "But Jesus himself is gonna cure those cancer victims rotting away" The crowd got swirling into a whipped frenzy sooner than expected. News of the moment it was. Now a closeup shot of a woman crying, her harden leathery face with that hand hovering upward, like Jesus was lapping holy water out of her hand. And then an ex-biker who used to pull people's teeth out with a pair of griplock pliers he kept in his back seat of his Harley. When he needed a drink and this is what he could get tequila shots for. Now he was crying up a storm and all that was lifted him up. (choruses of love, lifted me, love lifted me) "We are a gonna whip that cancerrr!" Amen, they cheered. The crowd wavered with releases of anticipation. Unrehearsed charismatic healing through the rock-and-roll religion of Reverend Jenkins. "And these eel-thing monsters" The people cried OH LORD! "They are an abomination!" PAUSE. "An Abomination! I say rebuke the satanic serpents." "There was a serpent (pause) once." . ."and it was in a place called the Garden of Eden." . .(as Ricky Harrison saw this he thought of Eve riding out of paradise on the back of a tiger). "But why are they showing up here, do ya think?" Some lady with bandages next to a man who had so much chemotherapy he was blue. It was righteously gnarly. A surreal quality to it. He pointed out that blue faced man. "You whipped the cancer, didn't ya, Mister?" The man raised his hand and a tear welled up in the duct on television on the big screen. "And you were supposed to die, when?" "Yesterday." "Holy Jesus, Praise the lord! Hallelujah! Sweet Jesus. . ." he cried. He thought of his love pump aching to get inside the wellsprings of gushing life it self on that whoredog in the Vietnamese hotel on Airline Highway. Get my mind off it Christ, Goddammit! Not Now! "But about these eels. These snakes. They are a sign of things to come." "Antichrist is awaiting to take over, and our state is the first to come. Now those scientist fellahs, (haw) down there say these are from radiation and pollution. We know we got refineries all over here. But some of these fellahs don't think too much about religion and good old time healing and revivals and Jesus coming down and talking in your ear . . . Hallelujah, praise the lord! These scientists don't know there is gonna be a plague a coming soon, and we are all gonna go to the judgement day. What with Aids epidemic a coming soon, from the sickest of sexuality, (amen brother!) to these plagues and the diseases that some scientists fellahs way we are gonna be facing while they try and clean up their chlorine and nuclear radiation. . ." He looked at the blue man with radiation making him look like a bride to be, actually glowing. But more a putrid pallor of death turning slowly like a cadaver sitting in the ice cooler for an eternity. The Reverend pushed the last thoughts of thirty dollar chickies out of his mind. He felt genuinely serious about this latest bullcrud. He thought, there is gonna be a screwin plague. He talked to God once in a while when he could get a line open. And God told him, though he was a sinner, He knew that there was gonna be a big plague. He had a vision about evacuating the city. Like those plagues in the middle ages brought upon by the rats. He told this to the masses of yokel hayseeds and trash of various varieties, "People will be sprawled about the city in ruins. It will be like the Roman empire. Decadence and radiation and pollution will be the players in this game of death." "And you will be evacuating your houses and living in another state. For this state, known for its cultural significance and good country people, will be unfit for you good people to live in. You will move or die! Sayeth the Lord!" The folks in the audience were stunned as the Reverend said this spitting into the mike like Hitler's famous radio speeches. Leering into the camera with oozing sincerity like running pus. Some lady tried to run up there full blast to offer praise and get comfort. But the Reverend didn't signal for that particular grotesque event to take place. So some hired thugs grabbed the lady and placed their hands on her head like they were giving her the holy spirit all supernatural like and it would do a boogie dance up and down her little fragile spine. "Poor soul, the Reverend winced through partial cowardice at the sudden surprise of the hayseed. "I don't mean to scare y'all so much but God done told us there would be this stuff . . . He prophesied thusly" Then the folks came up to get that holy ghost in plain offering and doled out. It was intangible, that holy supernatural spirit. The shrieks of tongues issued forth from the gashed mouths of wailing and circumstantial terror. It was a death dirge of the people. They fully believed everything Christmonger told them. And Reverend Jenkins just thought about his latest piece of womanhood. He was gonna make a trip down there and get good ass. Get that prayer, it don't matter where. He was gonna split him some monkeylove. These asses wailing in his face made it all. It just hurt him so much when his lawyers kept telling him it wasn't his money. It was the ministries money. There were certain loopholes. The huckster hayseeds would continue to buy the troweled out sludge of his whopping record enterprise. Holy cloths, prayer blankets, payer requests at 5 bucks a head. He would be going to Bermuda with some fineass whores going down on him. Oh god help me, he thought. I am a sinner! If they only knew. That bitch wife o' his blackmailed him and told him so much a week a day. A chunk of money so large per diem and she wouldn't go to the presses. They were estranged you see. The woman was trying to turn him into a celibate apostle. Like they could be reverent and bask in the good glow of the ministry. Screw that sheeit! Reverend shook the spud heads hard calloused hands which generations ago had been sitting on stumps listening to Huey Long. Or toiled as sharecroppers and canewhippers for the fallow ground. Caught the catfish and ate seafood till they wanted to burst. Ate hog, every last bit of it! The people, dumb suffering idiots! All of em fatheads! He would lay his hands on em and take every last screwin dime from these ugly assed people. The more they worshipped in his ministry it seemed the more they worshipped his screwin' self. And that made him sicker with disgust. Time to get my screwin' bodyguards and hole up in the upper room with some lay secretaries. Take their blouses off, unhook that bra, and play AT&T with their titties. Smooth creamy pliant flesh of the devil! Amen to that brother, pass the bottle. Move 'em on over. Make room for the horniest man after horndog women that he bird-dogged and scrounged for. And all the time the millions of dollars kept pouring in like piss. He would harp on this plague crud! Oh yeah, he thought. This screwin state was for gods sake going breasts up and going to hell for sure. But he was gonna reap spud coin off these hog eating crudheads. Take their fuggin Exxon paychecks and sign it over to the Holy Ghost himself. The holy ghost had a savings account in Hibernia Bank so fat you could drown your fuggin self in the floating bond. Did he feel any remorse? Screw, I give em what they want. Suckers! The whole lot of 'em. He busted his ass as a preacher in a little church in Ferriday long enough; he deserved all this money. But the screwin lawyers say it's taxable now. That he could only use the money off his stupid screwin records and tapes. That huge whopping sum of moula was the people's. Feed a couple of pygmies in Africa. Say some Spanish prayers to the screwin' peons with some acne-scarred peasant translating the usual bullcrud speech, standard. And he would look good enough for those screwin' people trying to investigate him. As long as his Cadillac windows were tinted. And the screwin whoredogs on Airline Highway didn't go to the screwin cops about him getting off with those scabby bitches. He would be praying his ass all the way to hell, just like this screwing state! Hallelujah and pass the bottle!
Ricky Harrison despised the dribbling crud that oozed out of this suppurating hind end of a carcass that the Reverend Jenkins was. In the phosphor glow of 19051 Lobdell Avenue, in the cavernous little hovel, lay a man thwarted by the invectives of rhetoric and pixiestick welded structures all rusting since 1937. That issued intervals of toxic liquid ooze. That seeped into the skin shankers that wouldn't go away. Suppurating lesions of melanoma. Gamma rays like they were living in a moonscape, the very atmosphere undulating with ichorous vapors of veritable insidious atavism. Ricky Harrison was maturing from those rages of blinding fury. He had made a sort of pact with the somnambulist martyr, who was now going on interviews that materialized from the his good grades. So he overcame that innermost fury of his soul. There were other conundrums of sorts. His madre's death, buried in the fallow soil nest to the Broadmoor Shopping Center which now had triple coupons! The divine juxtaposition of shopping malls next to bone orchards and corridors of streets congested in the rapidly growing city. The quadrants of land festooned with yuppie growth children of American unoriginality. All that money floating around by Yuppies like his older sister in her turbo Volvo 740 station wagon, couldn't stop them from eventually succumbing (the mere thought of it) to the ever present but unseeing festering sores of dripping pipes and drainage and radiation. From murdering their spoiled rotten offspring. All the Ninja turtles and Metal Herculoids and Transformers couldn't make up for children with sicknesses unknown. Cloying corpses in their Big Wheel tricycles, to breathe no more.
Chapter Twenty At a yuppie nightclub were thirtyish accountants, alumni and lawyers, some rich. CPA's, doctors, engineers and on down the leveled line. All sat around like the cloned lost generation, none too brilliant but fitting in evenly to make those righteous yuppie bucks. All holding Manhattans, Whiskey sodas, wise power drinks. Scotch and sodas for men who were once fraternity boys seducing the female at frat parties, mixers, exchanges. To most of those, memories did not remain conscious in their progressive seriousness about women and greed. And all the other deadly sins inherited as one generation passeth into Lazyboy recliners and another generation cometh. To drink in the flowing of colored liqueurs that they couldn't even name. They didn't even know they were alive. But that was the beauty of it all. If one thought too much, one was misdirected, unfocused. The trick to the fawning of precious lust and management of money was to be unaware of oneself. But well built below the neckline and stouthearted like the split ends had to be in high school games now forgotten. Some of these suited and suspendered lawyers and consultants and types, spinning webs, were blissfully ignorant and uncaring, cruel. Over there in the corner was the ex-quarterback from Catholic High. The man's paunch stuck out as he related fond memories now extinct almost, to a silk stocking Karrie Kilshaw. Prowling about the town, so sexy and cherubic again. And turned into the full womanhood that was her destiny. The men swooned with the girls laden around. The frat rats, Atkinson and Tomer were there; less successful businessmen who still hung around each other. Atkinson was married now. To somebody that he must have found to his liking over the multitudes of lofty whores he plugged eons ago. It could be said that Atkinson poked a goodly percentage of coeds who were now yuppie mothers on the upward spiral. "You remember that guy Harrison? Ricky Harrison? He never really got initiated into the frat, right?" Tomer asked. He was not circling the airport anymore, but had cocaine running round his brain. "Harrison? That fruit?" "Well, he WAS your little brother!" Atkinson was eyeing the three hot babes in their business outfits. Succulent flesh beneath the outer garb. "That guy was a loser!" "Man! That's Karrie Kilshaw over there!?" Atkinson wondered how HEROES happy hour could hord together so many people whose lives intertwined at one point in time. In the time slips of radiating geography. "God Damn! She's still fine!" "Yeah. She married that guy from Bossier City. That wimp whose father owns a whole crudload of oil fields." "She married well!" "I still remember what it was like screwing her. It was after the Vandy game and she was with Don, the hairy ape." Tomer's eyes were glazed yet perked up viscerally. "The white ape. The guy with more hair than a flying wombat!" Laughter pealed out manically. The $3.00 longnecks were taking their toll on the fraternity trio. All sported the paunch. "A what?" Atkinson said. He eyed Karrie Kilshaw as two comely accountants eyed him. His wedding band was carefully tucked away in his shirt pocket. "I don't know how many people screwed Karrie." They mused on that for a while. Karrie's decadent silk stockings were evocative of Edmund Wilson's diaries of making it with chorus girls and flappers fifty years before. Karrie was flitting amongst the rich at play. The spoilt Richie Riches who had all got a good foot up from Daddy, or daddy's firm, or Uncle Fester's business. "Do you think she can hear us?" No, the question's, Radio, do you think she recognizes us?" Tomer said. "The old days. It's much nicer now. We all have money and charge cards, and respectable jobs. We never had any money." Almost a reverie of old times. Hell the new generation of youngster had found their vices of choice: Ecstacy, Pot, LSD acid. They would find God one way or another. In Heroes at the onslaught of the night looming about them, the music brought pleasure. The girls unflinchingly were on stage, taunting. Atkinson had really turned into a garden variety alcoholic. Don Juan had given way to no pollen spreading. His wife hated his drinking. He didn't talk much about when he had left many a Yankee coed pregnant in Ft. Lauderdale or Pensacola. Their love was still God and sixers, and a hatred for Ole Miss and 3.2 beer. "Karrie Kilshaw. She's so fine I would suck her daddy's" Radio murmured. "She's looking right at us." Radio eyed the hind end of a woman with button-down shoes and a button-down personality. Blessed be a woman's backbone. "Those legs, that body . . ." Karrie Kilshaw waved somewhere in their direction. "Oh crud. She waved. She remembers you, Atkinson." "So what the hell made you think of Harrison?" Radio mused. "Didn't even he screw her?" "No." "Yes he did. I remember that crazy story about when he puked. Don't ask me how I remember it, . . ." Tomer rejoined, "Because he was one of the first people who heard talk about those monster snakes." "I don't remember. All I remember either he puked." "but you nailed her after the Vandy game, right?" "I sure did," Atkinson said. "At least I have all those memories of snaking and dogging." "Hail fraternity!" "Amen." Then Karrie came by, getting another free drink. "Hey, Karrie," Tomer said. "Hey," she said. Those pearls of beauteous teeth shined as she reached around for some beer nuts. "Scotch and soda. Two." "I remember you." she said, pointing at Atkinson.
"No." "Well . . ." "You all were in Acacia right? Around 1977-1979?" "Right" they all chimed. "Whatever happened to Ricky Harrison?" "Oh, we don't know. He quit the frat a long time ago. I used to see him on campus. He must have finally graduated." "Uh." "I'm surprised you even remember him. Never even got initiated. He was kind of a strange guy." "I thought, well. Was he? I didn't think so. He was cute." "I saw him at Cortana Mall. He's gained a lot of weight." "Oh." The bartender handed her the two drinks and she stuck straws in them. "Well, nice seeing you," she said. "See ya Karrie." She walked away. That womanhood dangled inside that dress. Those legs just so. Wow, Cazart! "Who gives a screw where Harrison is. The guy was a loser," radio added. He bellied his fat ass up to the bar in his cheap ass suit. "He would have been my frat brother." "Screw i'm," Tomer resounded. "Screwim," they added. They drank a few more brews, but it would never be the same like those days of golden wonderment. They left and the bar hopped and hopped onward into that goodly dark night. And Ricky Harrison became forgotten even more so to those that one knew him when he was only in decline a little bit, not now. It was a microcosmic world. In a petri dish the culture was rampant. Not long after, Atkinson left to go home to his wife. Tomer went to go score some more coke. And Radio went to god-knows-where, probably to Tigerland bars to infiltrate his old stomping grounds as he was wont to do. Kendra showed up with Chuck. The waitresses were terribly pissed off by then. The suitors of the onslaught of middling years were already gone. The stranger crowd came in. Those crazy younger kids who got carded at the door. Kendra once again became the focal point. The place was buzzing with excitement regarding that blonde teutonic myth. She was decked out in a club dress. All pretty pouty and like an italian film starlet in "La Dolce Vita." Unfortunately Chuckles the doctor was no Dirk Bogarde or Mastroianni. He was yuppie scum not yet turned into watercressed gunk. Two cocktails for the couple of the night. Men starting standing around trying not to look interested by her. She was smiling at the ex pro-football black men, got a light from some fraternity boys with those Jerry Mathers fraternity caps on. And Chuckster was still unavoidably ignorant of the petulant looks being given and taken therein. Kendra, ignoring Chuckles the fantastic doctoring wonder, went home with a handsome boy-toy of the best type. Moused hair, filthy rich and spoilt, and recently divorced. "I will take you anywhere you want to go tonight. Rome, Paris, New Orleans, Caribbean, Venice, London . . ." "I'm just using you to get rid of Chuckles the doctor." The suave man with the expensive $1000 Italian sports coat, gabardine pants. Munching on mixed peppered nachos, he pointed at Chuckles. He was fuming in the corner, on the answering machine, taking a medical call from his beeper. "That guy there? Yes," she said. " He is your boyfriend?" " . . . Was." "Lets go to a place I know . . . " "What's that?" "How about the ritziest hotel in New Orleans?" "Landmark?" "No, silly, the Royal Orleans."
She didn't even finish her drink. She was maintaining that levelheaded rational thought. Deep down she knew this would be the best thing. Was she regressing into that silly coed from the undergrad days? One thing she knew; she would call Juan to get her things from out of Chuckles the golfing doctor's swanky townhouse. Chuckles started following them to the door. The suave gigolo, an investment banker, saw and picked up speed. he could handle this guy. They drove to the Crescent City past the Bluebonnet exit where the Jenkins world ministries was silent; all Bible students tucked away in scripture. Some skinheads had spray painted "JESUS SAVES" on the railroad trestle right next to the ministry from hell. And each "S" had a dollar sign like JE$U$ $AVE$." Kendra rode in the misty humidity down I-10 towards the spillway, thinking of tryptic headed venomous eel-monsters spreading a plague. Who knew it was just the beginning of the end? But for now she lay her head back and watched the moon follow her in the car window as they headed South to an ancient romantic city. The Louister (that's what she called him), had opened up some Asti Spumoni. She trembled as he poured with one hand and steered with another. She hurt. She was confused, not only about Chuckles the bonesetter who specialized in gunshot wounds, but the whole of the river parishes. She and Louisie sped along in the wake of the mist towards the High-rise. The superdome was in sight and the city sparkled like Xanadu. She would forget tensors and muscular distortion and respiratory irregularities and atrophied mutants. For she had severed surgically her latest unsuccessful relationship. She sipped the Spumoni and the pristine rush from her perfume mixed with Louis' Obsession. Looking at the sparkling waters of the swamp as the exits went whooshing by, she lay her precious head down and felt relief of the aching. The city opened up as they entered it; this was one kiln of strains of culminating beauty: Ionic, stucco, spanish wrought iron. The last thing she saw as the Porsche parked in front of the Hotel was the wet cement. She trudged doggedly up the steps to the penthouse elevator. Goodnight.
Chapter Twenty-One The next day Ricky Harrison made it to work. He was ready and fit, revived from the seven shots of thickly bourbon the night before. He wasn't rank smelling, nor sickly sweet with alcoholic blurriness. He felt a certain satisfaction, like the calm before the Hurricane. The first to greet him was Bobby Magee, who told him something he had dreamt the night before, after watching Reverend Jenkins show. "Ricky, there will be a mighty plague across the land." He gestured wildly with his hands, his eyes banjoed wide. "There will be 7 forms of pestilence, and people dying of diseases. The good Lawd done said it, He meant it." "Do you watch that Jenkins ministry show?" Ricky asked. As he sipped his coffee. "Yes, I watched it and a great sorrow came over me. These monstas all over the place. They are instruments of Satan! And . . ." "Wait, you don't have to convince me." Ricky smiled. A resolution of something had occurred inside him. A lifting of the burthen of the ichorous eels. For it was off his humped back, and on the backs of every swinging dong frat rat and leathernecked pipefitter in the tri state arena. "He done hovered over me and my wife's bed," Bobby MaGee said magically. Exaggerated in the upward lifting of his undulating belly of supernatural holy ghost in his recently transubstantiation of the blood of good Christ Jesus. "Well, I tell you. I have seen not that, but I have gotten up to see visions of those snake things sitting at the foot of my bed." Bobby's eyes opened wider, if that were possible. There in the dank warehouse with the FM radio playing Boy George, over and over. The cadences reiterative unending. The screaming, maniacal jostling and haw hawing from down the aisle. Pokey and the men were carousing and talking conventional concepts of everyday life, somehow fascinating. "You done seen those snakes. Eels?" Bobby Magee shuddered and flitted his eyes which were saturated with pink. Gorged, enlarged maps of tiny blood vessels, making his eyes appear runny; that was the holy ghost inside of him. Pot did the same thing, but Bobby bought more pot before he found the Lawd Jesus that he coulda bought a Cadillac. "Well, yeah." "That's a sign of supernatural heavenly hosts. The principalities are telling us from heaven that we are gonna go into some scary stuff. Make the rapture seem like a picnic. Judgement day almost on Earth." "But don't you think that Reverend Jenkins isn't smart? Don't you think he's a faker?" "He a white man." Bobby laughed. "Rich white man." They both laughed. "But see, the holy ghost is working through him, even if he is all rich and crooked. He don't even know it. See, he is just an instrument of the Holy ghost. it works through you too. Me. Even Joe Taylor!" "Well, I probably believe that." Joe Taylor walked up. "Y'all having a revival?" "No, Man you crazy!" "Jesus done told me to buy these tennis pumps." He looked at white bread Harrison. "Jethro here said Jesus done run through his joggin' shoes." Ricky laughed sincerely. These guys were the gold. Here in the underbelly of the laden reptiles, in the blood and guts of working stiffs. A soulful underbelly of oceanic tattered tears welling in this duct of plastibond array of hope. "Naw, I put super glue in Jesus tennis shoes," Ricky said, almost blurted, and it came off. It got Bobby Magee laughing. He realized he was laughing about God and stopped. "Now you oughta be ashamed o' yourself," Bobby said. "Saying things like that, blaspheming," he said smiling. Joe Taylor laughed. His eyelids were closed he laughed deep down there where men laughed together, striking that chord in a sea of trouble. "Blaspheming. Talkin' 'bout Jesus like that." Bobby MaGee said. "What you got to say for yourself, Ricky Harrison?" he said charmingly. Even through his good nature, the extending of it to all radiating points, he was not aware that he had that charm. Joe Taylor looked at him. He said, "Yea, Jethro, someday I'm gonna have a long talk with dat boy!" Then a smirk and the lips thinned and he lisped intentionally at the end, like it was the thing to do. The dozens mildly tested in the waters of the suburban blight. Bobby Magee, with the Holy Ghost in him whether it was real or not or whether it was around the corner and hadn't caught up with him yet. Ricky Harrison started to blush. "You know what I want to do?" "What's that, little man?" "Uh, you'd think it was crazy. See . . ." "What do you want to do?" "I want to quote Lord Byron to the warehouse employees one day." They grinned, not quite understanding. And then somehow they accepted the slanting possibility. "So what you are saying, Harrison, is that you want to quote some Poetry to the house black men." "A what? House black man?" Bobby MaGee laughed. "Y'all crazy, every single one a y'all." He was a simple man with a bevy of little kids all being taught about Jesus, and one on the way. He needed a raise. The lord would change that figure on the salary books, the hourly rate. "I just don't understand . . ." "He wants to quote Lord Byron to us." "Why?" "Cause you are my friends, and I have a literary bent." "You are my friends, and you are literary?" Bobby Magee. "Lets get back to work." Outside the shack Elward hauled the diesel flatbed through the manifold, the crud shack for the boys where they needed Melville or Byron to be told to them. All around the cosmic kiln, the day was growing weary and grey. Mottled were the concrete slabs and terminal was the horizon. Haze and gunmetal and flakes of dusty carbon were in the air. Tobacco ignited and aromas of that filled the sky. The funniest worker of them all, Wilbert, (without his teeth, they were in his back pocket), came out and shook Rick's Hand. "Ricky." "Ricky." "Yeah." "Are you . . ," Wilbert laughed. A long bellyful of soul that was all the way down deep. "What," said Ricky and laughed. "Are you my friend?" And Wilbert giggled and laughed and Ricky laughed. It must have been time to go soon, for Christ sakes. Elward came hopping outa that truck he was so freaked out. Even Rayhound dropped his cigarette (which he often told Ricky that regular tobacco smelt like weed, man) on the ground. It smoldered like Garbo had been smoking it or something, Harrison thought. All the men now looked at Elward and his crazy mustache like a catfish. His eyes flitted around. "Sheet, sheet, ma-aan, ma-aan." Pokey came up around the table desk from where he was normally perched, sucking a bellyful of Marlboro into his small frame. He spoke. "What's matter Elward? Route gettin' to ya?" "That ain't even CLOSE! . . . Ma-an." He shook his head now to and fro. "What, you almost got in a wreck?" "Naw mann! I can't even tell ya." "What the God Damn is it?" Christ, thought Pokey, his black hair and glasses melding to his face. "I was talkin wid that guy, the surfer guy. Bill, down at da what cha call it . . . Nuclear Plant . . ." "Yeah?" "He said something bout some dead people. Or half dead people. People that live out in Devils Swamp." "Nobody lives out in Devil's swamp, you know that!" Rayhound lit another marlboro and plucked it into his strong black handsome face. He was shaking his head now. "And he said there's dis whole village of people living, like a commune out there. In the trash and landfill, in the swamp." "Bullcrud!" Pokey said. "I been living here for all my life and anybody who used to live out there moved. 'Cause 'a all the refineries." "Bill, the California dude, said he heard from some dude that these people are strange." Strange, the way he said it. What emphasis to the back aisle of Com-tech electronic bullcrud sitting in dusty cardboard boxes. awaiting installment in the infernal machinery of nightmare of gunmetal air. "I'm telling you. You heard bout the plague." "There ain't no screwin plague." "Pokey, I heard everyone from that Reverend Jenkins ass to a news TV man tell about Cancer and those monster snakes. Disease, makes AIDS look like screwin' German Measles." Screw!, he thought. "Put me on a nuther route, Pokey!" "Screw no, Elward. You ain't afraid. You're a big boy now. . . " Pokey said humorously. Joe Taylor started dancing like Michael Jackson in "Billie Jean." "Crud man, you a crazy fool!" "Come on. My Padnah Ricky here'll do it. Come on Ricky . . . Get in the groove." "I ain't screwin' Huey Lewis. I listen to Requiems." "What da screw is dat?" Rayhound quizzed. "Sacred masses for the dead. Mozart, Verdi, Faure, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff." "Dis here lurch Jethro, Lurch. He crazier than all a you." "No this motherscrewer is smart. He knows the real music" Pokey said. Masses for the dead. Sheit. "Well, I tell you what. From what I think is gonna happen, there's gonna be a big screwin' requiem mass. For all the stupid mutherscrewers who don't move outa dis screwin hell hole!" "Amen to dat," Bobby Magee said. Joe Taylor raised his hand like a good Christian soldier. "Can I get with ya brudder?" Like a revival tent it was. Healing, stricken folks, pestilences, the book of revelations. Freak show. Mutants. Eels being chased out by patron saints. "I listen to Berlioz's "L'Enfant du Christe," Brahms Requiem, The Vespers, The Bells, Bach' Mass in D minor . . ." "What da screw is Jethro Harrison ranting bout now?" Even Elward wanted to almost laugh, though he was still rattled. "Requiems." "You a morbid son bitch. Screw a Brahms Bach!" Elward envisioned it. A small village of zombies. Zombies! Like he was screwin like Mantan Moreland in dat horror movie talkin about Zombies. Bamboozling zombies.
Chapter Twenty Two A village of dregs, glowing creatures half conscious. No mortality left, damned lost souls in a limbo of nether shadow. A rattling of that same solemn bell sounded a dirge. The death dirge. The marching of people down the streets. Seeking refuge from monstrous plagued rats slithering around the putting greens of Sherwood Forest Country Club. Coming out of the drainpipes where he used to play as a teenager, going subterranean from one gutter to another blocks away. That night at his hovel, the projects looked quiet and actually safe right under him. Next door through the wooden fence, looking out from the window, the lone window where no light penetrated anyway. The utter bleakness, the great nothingness, undefinable great sleeping blackness like nothing worse. What about this village of the damned? Cajuns living on hard times? The way Elward described the scene which he hadn't seen himself, but in his cajun creole head, that White Castle Plantation logic cogitating and ruminating like a Mint Julep in his noggin. Harrison managed to finally go to sleep that night, listening to Faure's requiem and Pavane. He wished this would be played at his own funeral, where he would soon be buried next to his madre. Behind the Broadmoor shopping center, where there were triple coupons in the offing. Now after seven shots and a cranky wanky for Karrie Kilshaw and a one-eyed wink of the trouser snake to the ole fraternity boys, he lay down on his dirty sheets and flicked the roaches away from his nest. Almost as if drinking bromide solutions, he saw hallucinations of eel-thingamajigs whistling in the hour of the damned. Ramses the Egyptian god told him to take a swig of cold water out of an old two liter bottle. He swigged the water to purge and screw up his electrolytes until he was revived, a new man. The next day at work, nigh on lunchtime past the long gone roachcoach, Joe Taylor challenged Ricky Harrison, college genius, to a game of chess. It was over near Joe's office, where Joe Taylor proceeded to whip the crud outa Harrison, otherwise known as Boris Spasky, rather Jethro or Lurch from the Addams Family. "Man, you're killing me man!" "Just keep playing, Jethro." "Man, you got my queen!" Mr. Grigsby walked in. The company rat. The mustached con-artist passing as dead wood in the not-so-burgeoning company. He happened to pass through when he saw Joe Taylor. "Hey, a chess match!" "Yea" Harrison said. "Who's winning?" "Me . . ." Joe added. "The Black Spock . . ," Harrison quipped. Remembrances of the three dimensional chess game from the old series came into mind. Joe Taylor laughed, particularly in front of Mr. Grigsby. Harrison tripped him out. "Oh, good move." Harrison quipped. Joe was serious when he made his moves. "I got you checked now . . ." Now Harrison calculated this quip would send Taylor howling. He said, "Black man, Please!" Joe Taylor screamed with laughter. Grigsby just kept on going, talking about what move Harrison could make. Taylor checkmated Harrison. Lunch was over. Everybody walked over to Pokey Tuminello's desk, Pokey behind it. Holding his chest. "Heartburn . . .God Damn Burger King." Joe Taylor went up to Rayhound and Bobby Magee. "You shoulda heard Harrison . . .We was just playing chess and he called me (his handsome face beamed . . . the Black Spock . . ." "You crazy, Harrison." "Then," then he said, "Black man please!" Rayhound kinda looked at Harrison funny. Elward drove in as usual. It was another day, another punchcard. "We gonna have a barbecue over at my house down at White Castle, on River Road." "Alright! Gonna have some Ribs now, yeah." Rayhound went into his weird African break dancing. "Man, Rayhound looks like he's got a muscular disorder.' Taylor and Elward laughed. "A muscle disorder. That boy's crazy." Harrison was becoming the charming discreet bourgeoisie of the warehouse set. "You invited too, Ricky. Can you make it?" Mike Green said. "Man y'all gotta bring ya own meat! Goddammit." Joe Taylor's college buddy who even once shared the same women and underwear. Mike Green's creole disposition never hurt him any. He was sweating up a storm. He used to bum ten bucks worth of gas off Harrison till payday. Harrison just put it on his father's Exxon card. "You gonna be able to make it?" "Uh, this weekend?" "Yeah" Elward added, the gamma rays still coming off him from River Bend nuclear plant. "You ain't gonna crap out on us. Even Rayhound is comin'. . . bring a woman." "I ain't got a woman." Harrison said. "Joe taylor and Mike Green'll drive you. Saturday. Be there." "Yeah. I guess so." "Come on Man!" Elward sonorously chided. "We gonna have Ribs, Fingers (pork fingers), Pork Chops." "Yeah." "Hotdog snacks, gospel bird, (chicken), steak!" "Joe, y'all can give me a ride Saturday?" "Yeah, li'l padnah." Joe took off on the forklift. They had to get the hell outa there; Friday evening. Mike Green went on busting ass knowing he was going to get Five Alive and Thunderbird all mixed up. "Alright, Big Harrison." Mike Green said. It was payday. Big Eagle flew for the boys not quite prepared for Harrison's Lord Byron. The monstrous plague could wait. Harrison handed Mike Green ten bucks, as Mike Green passed him a twenty. Harrison made change for him. Joe Taylor had a habit of keeping his gas tank low. "Goddammit, Joe, put some screwin' gas in da tank. I ain't pushing the car no more." "Alright, li'l' padnuh," Joe said, as he smiled and loaded some more wooden pallets. The forklift screeched its tires belching like carrion out of hell in the Dies Irae of the waning afternoon. "We'll see you tomorrow. We be coming round about 9 o'clock. You better be there." Mike Green added. Waving as Harrison loped to the Toyota that sounded like a log truck coming up the road because the muffler was about to fall off. Off to his apartment and more boredom of time spans, and pain endured. Specifically remembrances of his dead madre, his sisters, and his brother, who now had secured a job out of state. Ricky Harrison the failure. Chapters 23 thru 27 will be up on June 1st. Visit M.F. Korn's web site, May 1999 HofP |