Killing the Buddha

by Peter Manseau

  But Velmajean demurred. She felt better at home. “Honestly, Reverend. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have a floor to mop or some dusting to do. Keeps me in my right mind, if you know what I mean.”

  “Okay. For now, Sister Velma. I understand completely. But you might start thinking…. There may come a time when you absolutely have to be in moresecure quarters.”

  With her permission, he had enlisted members of the church and a professional security team to guard her home. He could not stress enough, he told her—her hand resting in his palm—how much he was concerned about her safety.

  With studied finesse, he pulled from his leather valise a sheaf of impeccably typed pages—itineraries, schedules, flowcharts, contracts—and he told her about the Plan. It was a dizzying outline of the church’s, i.e., the Reverend Spike Horowitz’s, plan to help Velmajean Swearington Hoyt “manage” her miracles. There was talk of power of attorney, profit-sharing (“with the church, of course”), of media deals and S corporations.

  “I’m certain, Sister Velma, that this is the Lord’s plan for you. To show that His power is here among us. And we must act quickly. The telecast is already scheduled for next Sunday.”

  “Telecast?”

  “Yes, both network and cable.”

  “I know I shouldn’t ask this question—shouldn’t ask it ever—but do you have any idea why me?”

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to behold.”

  Velmajean simply fixed him with a cold stare, more than a little weariness knit across her brow.

  To his credit, the Reverend cast his eyes down and sighed, as if to acknowledge the fact that Velmajean Swearington Hoyt was in no mood for easy Bible quotations. “Sister Velma, I have no idea. Maybe a reward. Maybe a curse. Maybe it will be revealed to you, to us, one day. Maybe it will go down as another of His mysterious manifestations. Another episode of Unsolved Mysteries.”

  He gave her that underwear catalog smile, and she felt better. Not because of the charisma but because of his seeming honesty. She felt a smidgen less alone.

  The day didn’t approach quickly. It seemed she was a prisoner in her own home, which was at least now spotless. There was no doubt in her mind that the Reverend Spike had her best interests at heart, and was about God’s work. A panel of doctors and scientists and skeptics had been invited to examine, in advance, and to testify to the global public afterward, as to the states of the infirm, followed by the laying on of hands, and the reevaluation of their situations.

  “And what if the Lord is offended and decides not to heal them?”

  “I have faith He will, Sister Velma.”

  Was it better to work miracles quietly, to heal the sick, fix the wrongs of the world? Or lead the masses to the Holy of Holies? That was the debate roiling through the late-night radio talk shows and Internet chat rooms and cable programs, and in the mind of the Deacon Wilford Brown, late of St. Thomas Baptist Church, when he came to call.

  Dusk had just inked the air when one of the bodyguards told Sister Velmajean there was an elderly gentleman out front who said he was an old friend and insisted he had to see her.

  He was in a wheelchair and rolled by his niece, Hettie, whom he had called from the bed of his nursing home in Raleigh, telling her she had to take him to see the woman he had known from the cradle.

  Wilford Brown was now eighty-seven and had lost a leg to sugar diabetes. Velmajean had known him all her life, and for as long as she could remember he had been chairman of the deacon board of their now-erstwhile congregation.

  “Sister, girl,” he greeted her with wide-open arms. He felt frail in her arms, though all his life he’d been a tall, sturdy, bullish mechanic of a man. His fingers were still sausage thick, though she could never remember them being so immaculately clean.

  Over decaf he inquired about her family and her health while his niece watched TV. He seemed loath to jump right into the business that had brought him to Piney View Lane, Velmajean could see. But could it be more obvious?

  “I’m a little worried about you, baby girl. Looks like you got ahold of something—or something’s got ahold of you—and it’s running away with you. Is all this talk true?”

  “I can imagine you’ve heard a bunch of mess, but a lot of what they say is true.”

  “That little girl? The one in the car crash?”

  Velmajean nodded.

  “The barbecue?”

  Again she nodded yes.

  The old gent took a long silence, rubbed his face, and looked away. Velmajean felt more than a bit uncomfortable. Requests always made her feel uncomfortable.

  But what he said next took her off guard: “And what do you reckon Reverend Bryant would say about all this foolishness?”

  “Foolishness?”

  “Oh, come on, Velmajean. All this mess with the TV, and that jack-legged, wrassler-looking, no-good, lying car salesman of a preacher got his claws all up in this. What do you think I’m talking about, baby girl? I’ve known you all your born days, and the Lord knows I figured you to have more sense than to let yourself be used like this.”

  “If anybody’s using me, I’ll tell you: It ain’t Reverend Spike Horowitz.”

  “Listen at you. ‘Reverend Spike.’ Is you blind?”

  “The Reverend might be…unconventional, but he’s sincere. I know it in my heart. He’s for real. I really do believe that.”

  Wilford snorted. “Unconventional.” It was as if the word were a sour taste on his tongue.

  The crash through the window was not what Velmajean would remember. She heard the glass sunder and tinkle on the floor, the wood split and crackand splinter as the body hurtled through her kitchen door. But the way Wilford jolted and then tried to get out of his wheelchair, and the look upon his face when he realized he was trapped, made her want to cry. Velmajean did not scream, but the deacon’s niece did—How did she get to the kitchen so quickly?

  The man was wearing the same black overcoat, now slightly torn, though it was his face, sans sunglasses, that she fixed upon. Whereas before he’d had a kindly visage, he now seemed to be frothing, and his bloodshot eyes leered. He smelled awful, like spoiled milk mixed with overcooked cabbage. In fact, Velmajean soon realized he was wearing the same suit as well, now torn, leaf and straw mottled.

  Wilford hollered at first. Then said, “Get,” as if he were shooing away a puppy.

  The knife sliced through the air, not with a singing sound but with a bat wing’s flap. Twice he slashed at Velmajean, who just stood there afraid to leave Wilford and fighting the overwhelming need to pee, and pee bad.

  The other thing that surprised her was the sound the gun made. Nothing like the loud bang she had heard at the movies or on TV. More a pop, like a firecracker.

  On the floor the stranger convulsed and held his wounded shoulder, the blood—prune juice dark—fanning out caterpillar speed onto her yellow tiles.

  The security guard told her to stay away, but it seemed so patently, so light-bulb clear what she had to do.

  As she bent over him, her hand moving toward the bleeding spot, her former African chief, her fantasy Secret Service agent, stared at her and mouthed: “Who said…Who said…who said…”

  “What? What are you saying?”

  “Who said it was from God?”

  Ending 2

  Wilford’s niece’s high, piercing scream seemed to go on forever—How did she get into the kitchen so fast? Velmajean had only seen the knife flash, once, twice. And then he stood still, staring at her. That pain was on the outside, as if she had received a long paper cut on her belly. On the inside was only a dim pressure, and a throbbing, and then a pouring. In some dull, still-functioning, stubborn place inside her brain, she understood in a crystalline way that she was in shock. And she had to pee, and pee bad.

  He stood there staring at her, and she wondered why she had ever judged him as being beautiful. His jet lips, now parched, ashy, and cracked, moved, but it was only after the pop of
the security guard’s gun brought him to his knees that she finally made out what he had said to her: “Who said it was from God?”

  Ending 3

  The security guards—the paid one, Fletcher Cross, a fat white man with cherry cheeks, and a young man from church, Buzz Terrington, bear-big and the color of a fine leather jacket, and with a penchant for video games—tackled the intruder simultaneously. Limbs and fists flew in such a blur that Velmajean soon turned away. Wilford’s niece had wheeled him from the kitchen as he called out to Velmajean in confusion and fear, “Are you okay? Velmajean? Velma?”

  After wrecking the dinner table, two chairs, the coffeemaker—the glass carafe simple exploded—and the cabinet door under the sink, the two bodyguards subdued the smelly man.

  His face bloody, tears wetting his cheeks, he snarled and struggled to get away. It was not at all clear to Velmajean that these two men could hold him down.

  “Call the police!” Buzz said. “Nine one one!”

  “I already did,” Wilford’s niece said from the doorway. “They’ll be here any minute. Hold him!”

  Velmajean took a step forward, trying to see the man’s face clearly, to understand. He fixed her with a glare so intense it almost made her cry. He spit at her, making her jump back.

  “Who said it was from God?” he hollered. “Who told you that lie?”

  Ending 4

  Apparently the guards had warned the man. They would later tell the police they had called to him as he ran toward the house, but he would not stop. Fletcher Cross, licensed to carry a gun, fired only once.

  Now the floodlights were on, and in the middle of Velmajean’s deck lay writhing her Secret Service agent, her black angel-helper, her once-vision, now nowhere near angelic: he wore the same thick coat, the same suit, tattered now, smelling like rotten cabbage and piss. Buzz Terrington held him down, but he gave little resistance, instead growling like a wild animal.

  “Shut up,” Buzz yelled. “Keep still. An ambulance is on the way, you dumb shit.” Velmajean could smell the fear on the other two guards, who had come round to watch.

  The man had been shot in the shoulder and was holding it with his right hand. The hand was wet with blood, and between grimaces and snarls, the strange man sucked air as if it were hard to breathe.

  Heedless of any potential danger, in fact convinced of some plan, divine or otherwise, Velmajean made her way to the fallen trespasser.

  “Don’t touch me!” The man’s words were distinct, clear and loud. “Don’t you come near me, you whore.”

  “Wha——”

  “I know who you are.” The man winced but tried to slide back from Velmajean. He began to cry. “It was not meant to be like this.”

  Heartland, Kansas

  There is no fear of God before their eyes.

  PSALM 36:1

  PAGANS aren’t supposed to tell their Craft names to strangers, but Candy Ayres, also known as Elowen Graywolf, was a “crone,” already a senior witch and a grandma at forty-seven, which meant that even though she couldn’t twiggle her nose to make the dinner dishes disappear, it was in her power to grant an exception with the help of a little magic.

  “That’s m-a-g-i-c-k,” Elowen told us.

  “What’s the k for?”

  “Keep David Copperfield Away.”

  No hocus-pocus for her, no card tricks. To cast the spell needed to let us in on her magickal identity, Elowen simply shook her hands and shook our chakras and, presto chango, right there in a Denny’s in Durango, Colorado, we were initiated as observers into the outer edges of her witch group, the Salene Circle/Dark Moon Coven/Fort Riley Pagan Association.

  Durango was not where Elowen lived, but that was where her husband had been transferred for Wal-Mart management training, so that was where she was for the time being, and it suited her—there were nearly as many pagans in Durango as there were in her hometown, Miltonvale, Kansas, where 20 out of 240 families practiced a faith that monotheistic America might describe, at best, as “Other.”

  Elowen’s daughter, Kim, worked at the Durango Denny’s with an all-Pagan waitstaff, their Mormon manager keeping an open mind so long as the witches kept the customers’ coffee mugs full. There were gothic types with pale skin and pentagram necklaces, there was a gray-bearded regular at the counter who said he’d learned the Craft in the Navy during the Korean War, there was a clean-cut jock working the register who said he practiced “Syrian magick.” When we asked him why, he shrugged. “I dunno. That’s just what my family has always done.” And there was Kim. Elowen had three children, but it was only her eldest who was her “witch daughter,” just as Elowen had been witch daughter to Kim’s grandmother, and her grandmother to her mother before her. It goes like that, generation to generation and, in Elowen’s family, green eyes to green eyes. Elowen’s own were emeralds set in rosy skin beneath platinum white hair, cropped to bangs in the front and falling like an avalanche over her shoulders. Kim had eyes of a darker shade, more like the green of a bottle. Her mother was stout and strong, but Kim still held the shape you could tell her mother had once owned: lean and smooth—which you’d better be if you’re going to go around calling yourself Willowdancer, which Kim did. She had two names too.

  Willowdancer was twenty-five, twice-married and twice-divorced with two kids, Zoë, two, and Ian, five. Magick, she said, was mostly just common sense. “Wear rose petals around your neck for thirty days”—a beginner’s love spell—“and I don’t care how ugly you are, someone’s going to start associating you with sweet things.” Most of the witches burned at the stake in the Middle Ages, she said, were just really good cooks. Or they were curious, like her: As a teenager, Willow had tried out Christianity, only to be kicked out of three churches for asking too many questions. She’d run away from home, hit the other end of the virgin-whore spectrum—“literally,” she said—and survived to join a religion that didn’t bother with such distinctions. She’d made it to the promised land and found her mother there, waiting for her all along.

  Naturally, she was a bit defensive, protective of her family and of their beliefs. She sat in on our lunch with Elowen as if she was a lawyer at a deposition. Were we trying to “save” her mother? she wanted to know. Elowen answered for us: “They can’t, dear, I’m already Christian, in my way.” Were we Catholics? Elowen answered again: “Kim, don’t be rude. They clearly don’t know what they are.”

  “Do you even know what a Pagan is?” Willowdancer asked.

  “Of course they don’t, dear,” her mother said. “Paganism is kind of a silly term. There are too many different kinds of magick to use just one name.”

  Elowen proceeded to draw for us an umbrella labeled PAGANISM, with a spoke for each of its subsets: a curving line for Shamanism, another for Druidism, one for Wicca, one for witchcraft, and finally, confusingly, one for Paganism as well. She looked over her diagram, carefully rendered on a Denny’s napkin, and then declared that it wouldn’t tell us much.

  “I guess you’ll just have to see for yourself,” she said.

  Willowdancer groaned, rolling her eyes.

  “Honey, they can’t understand without seeing.”

  “There’s nothing to see,” Willowdancer said.

  “I disagree, dear. There’s lots to see.”

  Elowen shushed her daughter and insisted we be their guests at the Heartland Pagan Festival, an upcoming camp out for witches and assorted other heathen in rural Kansas, on a big patch of land a group of Pagans owned collectively, a nation unto itself amidst miles of corn punctuated by equal numbers of grain silos and church steeples. Willowdancer agreed we could come, promising to show us around and make sure we saw the right things.

  This is what we saw: There were many, many witches, not to mention troll-people—those who believe they are “part troll,” the way some people say they are “part Cherokee”—as well as vampires and halflings and full-blood Vikings, radical faeries and mischievous elves, and strutting around in kilts and tartan, communic
ating by walkie-talkie, some big, bad-ass druids providing security. Some of the druids were bikers; many of the magick people were military: lifers and grunts and NCOs. There were also construction workers, Jiffy Lube mechanics, a major contingent from Kinko’s. They came to the festival in campers and rusty RVs and souped-up Chevy two-tons; they camped in pup tents and under tarps and in some cases under trees; they brought toddlers and teenagers and their grandmothers.

  All told, there were well over a thousand Pagans gathered for the festival’s opening ritual, standing in a circle around the makings of a serious bonfire, a cabin-size column of heavy timber which the “keepers of the flame”—sooty, muscular, bare-chested men with axes—had been hewing and stacking for days, and which they had topped with an enormous, hollowed-out log carved with a bearded face, a likeness of the “Horned One” to whom they prayed. There were also worshipers of the witch goddess Hecate, and of the Norse trickster god Loki, more popular among gay Pagans than his straightarrow brother Thor. There were devotees of the Ancient Mother and of the Roman war god Mars, of the Green Man and of Isis, of Herne the Hunter and of the Bitch Goddess, she of uncountable mammaries. There were women in black velvet robes and men with great, gnarled staffs, and despite the mist of precipitation, the fog of cold breath, and the two days of rain and mud—a lot of mud—that had preceded the opening ritual, there were naked Pagans everywhere. Some whose nudity seemed like a gift to all who beheld them, others whose raw nakedness was just plain raw. There were drums, constant, unrelenting. And there was chanting, some like the barking of congested seals, some like the singing of drunk midwestern angels. Bells tinkled, a little boy riding on his mother’s shoulders shouted “Yay!” with genuine joy, and through the throng of revelers the prayer of a man standing in front of the bonfire-to-be filtered out to the margins.

  “Desire! Warmth! Light!” he called.