I turned back her way.
“My goodness, Adamiah!” She grinned and blushed and flapped her fan. “Papa’s right. That was truly something!”
I could muster no reply.
Mosiah rose from his seat and slapped me approvingly on the back. Then he hobbled down the step to his daughter.
I hunched.
I ached.
I itched all over under my skin.
A great frustration gripped me then as I realized I had just been delivered to the gate door of paradise, only to be blocked at the very brink of entrance.
Mosiah hooked his arm in his daughter’s, and then he beckoned me with his hand. “Let us walk, my son. We have much to discuss.”
I briefly contemplated the old man’s murder by bludgeoning and strangulation but managed to overcome the impulse before it got the better of me.
*****
Now whereas my sermon had roused all the other Edenites to a heightened romantic ardency, it seemed only to stimulate the old fart’s need to spew religion. We sauntered away from the church toward the compound. One supposed the patriarch wanted one last tour of his kingdom while still its king. Mosiah never once let go of Prudence during this promenade, and as it felt weirdly dangerous to touch the maiden while she was so intimately joined to her father, I fairly tagged along with the pair like an awkward pet dog.
The preacher palavered on and on about his hopes for Eden, occasionally quoting scripture, or offering up a hasty compliment to God in all her infinite wisdom. I seemed to have finally gained Mosiah’s hard-won approval. But although this private symposium was intended for my own edification, I would have been sorely pressed to offer a coherent summary of just what the hell he said. At that point, the inflammation in my membrum virile had so thoroughly disenabled my brain of its faculty to straight think that I could offer nothing in reply to the sage’s tutorial but an occasional nod, uh-huh, or tongue-tied grunt.
The situation was only made all the more insufferable by the chorus of muffled moans and titters emitting from the surrounding huts. It seemed all the married folk in Eden were enthusiastically engaged in the very three-way interaction I had so promoted with my sermon. We seemed to be strolling through an orgiastic garden of earthly delights. If Mosiah was at all aware of this, he made no indication. As he expostulated on the ultimate religious rebirth of the world, a telltale rhythmic thumping issued forth from a nearby shanty.
“Some fine day,” said Mosiah, “after we have shed Her light on all the corners of the earth, every living soul will have opportunity to participate in God’s holy celebration.”
Just as the nearby thumping reached the apex of its spasticated crescendo, I peeked sideways at Prudence. I so longed to meet her eyes, to in some way connect with her on an intimate level. But she turned her gaze to the sparkling sea, her brow beaded with sweat, her fan quivering ambiguously at her deliciously glistening collarbones.
I was overcome right then by a sudden urge to howl like a wolf but was interrupted just before this desire’s fulfillment.
A swarm of children burst out of the nearby trees. The boys were shrieking and running; the girls were giving chase.
They galloped past us and the wild energy of their play caused Mosiah to laugh boisterously. “Oh-ho-ho!” he roared. And then he turned and patted his fingers against my chest. “There you have it, Adamiah! God’s own hope for the future!”
I affected a smile and nodded.
We watched the children run a big circle around the court.
One girl with yellow curls was closing in on a freckle-faced boy. She ran fast, her skirts swishing. The girl whooped and dashed after her quarry, twirling over her head what looked to be a sun-bleached femur.
We did not see how the chase played out however, because the whole herd of them disappeared behind a privy into a grove of palms.
“Ho-ho!” laughed Mosiah. “What fun!”
Next came Beulah’s girls. The bigger of the pair walked deliberately through the yard with long strides. The smaller one skipped behind to keep up. The bigger girl carried a naked baby backward under one arm. The infant was squealing like a piglet, and the sour squint on the big girl’s face gave one to know she found this noise unpleasant.
The smaller sidekick glanced our way. She shrugged and smiled and then stuck her fingers in her ears.
Mosiah replied with a smile and wave of his hand.
The girls moved out of sight behind some buildings, and Mosiah watched for a moment, bobbing his head and combing his mustache into two parts with the pink tip of his tongue. “Well, then,” he said.
Prudence stood at his side, fretfully chewing on the edge of her fan.
A rooster crowed somewhere nearby.
The baby’s cries faded into the distance.
I could not read the scene. I felt to be reviewing a dream that meant something I could not quite comprehend.
That baby, I surmised, must be Twyla’s newborn, but where the girls were going with it remained a mystery.
*****
After spending the afternoon making a dozen leisurely laps around the village, Mosiah finally led us back to the church in the early evening. The building gleamed white among the green swaying palm trees.
“You ain’t holy!”
Of course, this was Brother Ackley.
“You ain’t nothing but a devil snake!”
The man sat slumped in the sand at the foot of a tree. His legs were sprawled, and his arms were tied behind him.
“Don’t you pay him no mind, Adamiah.” Prudence reached over and squeezed my elbow. “He’s just upset about the drawing. The poor man don’t know what he’s saying.”
Mosiah ticked in his teeth and shook his head like a disappointed father. “Some men,” he said sadly. “They just don’t see how fortunate they are.”
“You’re phony as a slug nickel!” Ackley spat on the sand. His voice had grown hoarse from his ranting. “A goddamned fake!”
We gave audience to his denunciation for a moment longer, but as it lacked variety and lent a gloomy cast to our otherwise festive day, we soon redirected our interest.
Mosiah turned to me with a big grin and asked, “Are you thirsty, Adamiah?”
I had not actually been thinking about that particular component of my bodily neediness, but now I realized that yes, I was very thirsty indeed.
THE ANTECHAMBER WAS COOL and dim.
Beulah worked her way along the walls, lighting candles.
The vagina map wavered in the flickering light.
The room smelled of warm wax.
The holy jar had been placed back on its pedestal in the corner and it occurred to me I needed to scheme a way to sneak Ackley’s name out of there before the next drawing.
“Here we go,” said Mosiah. He finally let go of Prudence and enthusiastically scrubbed his palms together before grasping my sleeve and pulling me to where a long row of bottles sat glimmering on the table. After handing me a cup, he took up a bottle, popped its cork, and poured.
“A special treat,” he said. “A prize carried with us all the way from Ohio, kept locked away and protected in anticipation of this momentous day.”
He poured out a cup for Prudence, then himself. Then he held his drink toward the ceiling. “To Brother Adamiah Linklater – God’s own Chosen One and the newest pilot of Her church. May She shine Her light on you and preserve you in your eternal bond to dear Prudence.”
We tinked our cups.
No, the ironical echo in Mosiah’s salute was not lost on me. It surely did carry me back to Cloud’s cargo hold and my own celebratory toast to Erstwhile Adamiah on the eve of his fate-swapping demise. That eerie recollection became all the more powerful as we drank. My tongue buds tightened recollectively – for without a doubt, this purpley beverage was more of Sister Rachel’s notorious raspberry cordial.
We three stood gazing at one another as the potion trickled down our gullets. Prudence looked to have bitten into a lemon, but Mosiah
smacked his wet shaggy lips with Dionysian delight.
“Hallelujah!” He laughed and winked before tipping his cup into his beard and downing the remainder.
The preacher’s behavior seemed to have gone off course from his typically stoic character. I guessed the old clergyman was just so relieved to have lived long enough to see the prophecy’s fulfillment that he was high ready to relax his dignity. A lifetime of blessed struggle had surely earned the coot at least one night of justifiable revelry.
“Drink! Drink!” he urged and filled our cups once more.
I well remembered Rachel’s cordial’s magical from-out-of-nowhere powers, but I was suffering so enormously right then from my latest sexual bethwartment that I decided a bit of fruity medication might just soothe the tormentational testiness throbbing in my trousers.
We all threw back another cup of cordial.
And then another.
*****
The second bottle was well-nigh empty when Lamia came in with her connubial cohorts.
Mosiah opened another and served it all around.
We stood in a circle, clinked our cups together, and drank.
“Cheers!”
Will and Force leaned shoulder to shoulder. The telltale signs of copulatory satisfaction fairly exuded from their conjoined miens. Even their postures gave off an enviable whiff of post-coital appeasement. The boys were flushed with what looked to be gratified weariness, as if they both had just completed some immensely pleasing physical chore. Their shirts were untucked, and they slumped in a tellingly flaccid attitude of blissified relaxment.
Lamia had neglected to completely put herself back together, apparently just too strung out to bother. Her hair was mussed. Her baggy breasts were stuffed lopsidedly into her blouse, the buttons of which were only half fastened in a devil-may-care misalignment. But whereas her helpmates acted all played out and done for the day, Lamia wore the insatiable expression of a glutton who had just finished the main course and was now hunting some dessert. To this apparent end, the lady regarded me.
She ran her tongue along her teeth and grinned at me provocatively across the circle.
I felt like a slice of off-white sponge cake.
I would be remiss in not saying I was titillated by Lamia’s forthcomery. In the sensual glow of that candlelit chamber, she certainly looked to be of a vivacious, if vintage, desirability. But at that point in the evening I still maintained just enough of my pre-sozzled good sense to remain prudently resistant to any temptation that might scuttle my hopes for the unadulterated comfort and contentment I had been working so hard for these last long weeks of my virginal restraint.
A jizzle of juice sparkled on the matriarch’s cleavage. She smeared it off with her palm and then licked her hand, never taking her eyes from me the whole while.
Oh man!
I quick stepped over and took a bottle from the table, sloshed some drink in my cup, and guzzled it down. I felt myself slipping back into an old behavior pattern but could not stop. Given my history, it was doubtless a foolish maneuver, and arguably counter to my pact with God, but I sensed myself to be heading into an evening of prolongated torture, and the only available survival plan that my dim wits could immediately come up with called for the deliberate raspberry poisoning of my libido.
*****
The evening wore on.
The bottles emptied one by one.
I grew tipsy.
But although my overall physical person became dulled with liquor, the upturned manifleshtation of my libidinous longing remained a steadfast volunteer for any upcoming opportunities in submersible heroics. No amount of inebriant, it seemed, could quell the little beast’s enthusiasm.
I struggled to carry on coherent conversations.
Prudence hung at Mosiah’s side, doting in oversweet fashion, whispering affectionately about secret father-daughter subjects I could not hear.
Lamia had moved to her throne, sipping cordial and surveying the room like a cat watching for rats.
Somewhere along the way, Will and Force had become my great chums. All our former animosities had been miraculously expunged.
“Hell of a sermon,” said Force.
He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and breathed into my face.
“You’re the Chose One,” added Will. “No bout adoubt it now.”
I had to laugh at their dipsomaniacal doltishness. The two were obviously teetotalers, as the drink was working twice as hard on them as it was on me. And still, they swigged like boozy veterans.
“Well, I’m glad you liked my preach,” I said. “I’m look forward to working you with the church.”
We had dispensed with our cups at this point. As we moved into a less formal camaraderie, it seemed friendlier if we each just nursed from our own bottle.
*****
By the time Beulah and her girls came in with supper, my fellow Shiners were all three sheets to the wind. Admittedly, I too had progressed beyond borderline crapulence. Such were the sneak-up-on-you powers of Rachel’s recipe.
Only Lamia looked at all compos mentis; she sat watching me with a simper, twisting a finger round and round in a tendril of her tangled hair.
The room swiveled in a slow and continual revolution.
Beulah placed a big steaming pot on the table. Her underlings carried in the other banquetary appurtenances – bowls and spoons and such – and placed them alongside the pot. A silver pail sat off to the side and the crone patted it with her fingers and announced to everyone that it was, “For the bones.”
A fragrance of hot soup filled the chamber.
Will, Force, and Mosiah staggered to their seats behind the table, while I found a chair in the room and sat facing them.
Prudence – bless her intoxicated soul – had apparently become overpowered by the drink. She crawled onto the table on her hands and knees and then curled up before her father on his place setting. “Papa,” she mumbled with a smile, and then, sucking on her thumb, immediately fell asleep.
Mosiah rested his palm on his daughter’s flank, somewhat swaying and blinking his watery eyes.
The girls poured out another beverage into tiny crystal tumblers and distributed them all around.
I peered into my little cup at what appeared to be a dribble of milk. I was perplexed as to why the portion was so small and my quizzical expression must have given the smallest girl to know what I was thinking.
The pixie leaned close to my ear and whispered, “It’s for the special communion.”
I nodded thanks for the information, and then balancing a bottle of cordial on one knee, and my little cup of milk on the other, I waited for Mosiah to initiate the ceremony.
After a moment, he looked up from where he had been studying Prudence’s backside. He held up his tumbler and, more or less quoting Solomon, muttered, “I have drunked my wine with my milk.”
Lamia and her boys took this as a signal to down the contents of their tumblers.
“Amen.”
I followed suit.
I swallowed the milk.
I wiped my mouth on my sleeve.
And then, of a sudden, I found myself perched on a cloud with my mother.
IT LASTED ONLY AN instant.
The merest twinkling of an eye.
And yet, that fleeting jiff opened out, both forward and backward, to all of a cosmic eternity.
That dribble of mama milk had served as the catalyst – its maternal saccharinity.
There I was, after all these years, snuggled up once again with my dear maman. She held me balanced on her knee so that I could peer down from her lofty roost to the mighty blue ocean.
One could see whale shadows down there.
And flying fish.
One could see bright white gulls soaring in lazy circles over the waves.
I enjoyed the purest sense of innocence right then. A feeling I had long ago forgotten. It was as if it had been sleeping all along, and now was stirred awake. I was the original child
of Paradise, the first fruit come to ripeness, a guiltless happy Oedipus before his fortunes had ever been cast. For I was enjoying that time before Sin – a shameless space of purity hovering between dream and waking, between milk and wine.
Only poetry could explain it clearly.
But I had no words.
Just a primordial coo.
An embryonic babble.
A fishy blurp.
I was not yet the poet; I was still the poem.
I leaned forward, scanning the sea for Eden. But this change in my position caused a bubble to dislodge from my insides, sending up a disturbing tang of mother’s milk mingled with rancid raspberries.
“Brrrp!”
That blissful moment turned to ether.
And then I was back on earth.
*****
Beulah ladled from the pot while her apprentices served.
The smallest lass traded me a large spoon and bowl of soup for my empty tumbler.
I carefully placed my bottle on the floor.
All my moves became slow and exact, made with that deliberate care so often employed by someone who is feeling poorly or, as in this case, as skunk as a proverbialated drunk.
I balanced the bowl on my knees and looked to the others.
Mosiah was working his tongue all inside his empty tumbler and grunting, determined to lap up every drop. At last he handed it to the bigger girl and said with a sigh, “We must thank Sister Twyla for her tasty gift.”
Force and Will had passed out and lay with their arms thrown over the table, face down. One of them was snoring.
Prudence had rolled over, as supine and inert as a corpse laid out for a showing.
Lamia sat on her throne, blowing over a spoonful of hot soup. She winked at me and tipped it into her mouth, licking her puckery lips.
Mosiah gave a blessing for the communion meal but seemed too distracted and sleepy to give much of a damn.
“This…” He yawned. “…is my body.”
Fortuna and the Scapegrace Page 26
