The Manhattan Prophet

by Jake Packard

  In one corner of the parking lot, a white woman in a black overcoat and work boots, with long gray hair braided down her back, stood adjacent to a crowd control titanium shield carried by the squirrel killers surrounding the area. She tried to turn around, and in doing so, pushed in too close to the soldier, who confused, pushed her back. From that spot of contact, the mob began to ripple and grow more excitable.

  “In a world that most think is reverting back to the darkest of Dark Ages, Salem’s words are giving people the hope which they might need just to survive. This phenomenon of a synchronized spiritual feeling has turned into spontaneous popular movements in regions all over the world. Now it seems, according to spokespeople of many of the multinational corporations and major city-states, we may be seeing the beginnings of a worldwide movement coalescing in ways hard to predict.”

  A couple of Latino hotheads in the crowd start shouting. A few black boys next to them joined in, pointing. Others in the crowd, Indians, stanis, Asians, whites, responded and kicked up the amplitude of general chaos to another level. Maria’s mic didn’t pick it up, so the world never heard it, but Pellet did. “Steady now, Hays,” he said into his headpiece directing his cameraman. “Keep that frame. Keep your angle.” He flicked a button on his watch, changing channels. “Look lively, boys, stay stern but calm and relaxed. You know what you’re doing. In a real fight, nobody can measure up to us. We know that. You’ll have your chance when I give the word.”

  “No place feels the physical effects of Salem Jones more than New York City,” Maria continued, “where hundreds of thousands of people have migrated over the last few months in anticipation of today’s event, Salem’s release from prison and his first visitation amongst the people, both his followers and his detractors.”

  The mass of people moved in unison, swelling wavelike against the perimeter. The soldiers stood behind their six-foot-high mob-control shields, each braced to each other and the men behind them, making a wall of formidability, waiting for Pellet’s ultimate command. Even the heavily loaded suicide bombers at the battle of Jericho were thwarted by these when they threw themselves upon them, a few months before Jerusalem.

  “Red Unit, take two steps forward, on my count, but do not move from behind those shields. This is to show we mean business, but that does not involve punishing people, yet.” A click on his wristwatch back to see the broadcast and Pellet shouted, “Hays! Tilt your camera back up to that podium on the double or it’s to Kansas with your ass.”

  Mystified by his lapse of concentration and the drifting of his camera, Branford pulled the frame away from the melee fomenting below and zoomed back in to the front of the prison. At that exact instant the heavy doors started to swing open.

  The doors creaked.

  Beams of bright white light streaked out.

  The entire planet paused and took a collective breath.

  Everyone, from the president of Euro-Bell to the lowliest nomad left alive in the Arabian Peninsula watched those steps at Rikers Island on their individual mobile devices.

  Jack stared at his screen, rigid. Voices started singing.

  Sam tapped his fingers on the tabletop, sounds of the Mayor’s breathing in his earpiece.

  The General turned to see in first hand the radiance emanating out the doors.

  Herbie glanced up into the blood-red morning sun. From high up he heard a soft celestial soprano skipping up an octave, and then down a fifth, and up another, and starting all over again . . . whirling around, gaining momentum, repeating its melody, mantra-like but never the same.

  Maria continued her report, but she too turned to watch history. She could almost taste the forthcoming interview. “The light is so bright, you can barely see the warden who is up on the podium, flanked by dignitaries representing North America’s city-states and regional confederations.”

  “Sam, where is Salem Jones?” Storm said into his mouthpiece.

  Sam shot back, “I don’t know, Jack.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “Give it a second, Chief. Maybe he’s camera shy. He’s accelerating rom zero to worldwide recognition in one second. That’s tough velocity for anyone to get used to, even a twenty-first century super-shaman.”

  Maria pushed on. “The moment we’ve been waiting for is now upon us. The world waits for Salem Jones to emerge from prison a free man.” Maria gasped. An electric pain zapped through her eardrums. Herbie watched her lips flap but could not hear her in his headphones.

  “Where did she go, Sam?”

  “You got me, Jack. This is strange.”

  “Damn it, what’s going on?”

  Shadowy figures emerged from the ardent white light.

  A grizzly and tattooed man stepped forth.

  He peered at the confused petty commissioners on the podium.

  He studied the crowd with a calm expression.

  Something in the distance of the riotous scene caught the inmate’s eye, but then he looked back upon the men on the stage. The inmate said something, and then shook his head. He stepped back into the light, retreated into the prison, and the doors closed shut.

  A rock flew from the crowd. It hit the warden. Bedlam ensued.

  A wall of titanium shields bore down upon the crowd of believers.

  Tear gas billowed.

  People screamed in anger and fear.

  Loudspeakers boomed with warnings to stand down under threat of arrest by every homeland security law ever enacted.

  Herbie blinked his eyes again and rubbed them upon seeing a black-hooded man pointing to the back of the parking lot?

  Then the gunshot. A little nine-millimeter bounced off the shields like a salivary spitball. High-powered assault rifles in the hands of well-trained sharpshooters perched on the surrounding rooftops replied. Bullets pierced bodies, shattered bones, and crushed organs. Blood flowed, lives snuffed.

  The silent TV image then went dead.

  Sam shouted into the phone, “Jack, what’s this? What’s happening? Jack?”

  Silence.

  “Jack, are you there? Jack! Talk to me. Talk to me! This is no time for that. Jack! Come back!”

  The Mayor sat frozen in his icy-blue room, like his digital picture. He stared at vacant screens, fascinated by the fluting whirling in his head.

  Up by the bridge just past the parking lot, looking back upon the violence, Salem Jones pulled the collar of his long trench coat up to his ears to protect against the unnatural cold. He turned away from the prison where he had spent his entire life, and walked onto an idling Q101R. He sat in the back of the half empty bus to Queens Plaza, and headed steadfast into the violent and pulsating sprawl of an endangered New York City, on this the winter solstice, the first day of the Prophet.

  * * * * *

  Part 2

  First Day of the Prophet

  Bullmoose

  According to old Bullmoose there are four rules in this world that you can always count on. Number one: nothing ever stays the same. Number two: everything is interconnected. Number three: you never know what’s going to happen next. And, number four: there is no limit to the glory and the grace of God.

  Of course, what Bullmoose meant by God wasn’t in the traditional sense of any religion. To him it meant any super being of any kind who you wanted to believe in. The supreme being who you could attribute the creation of the world and mankind, or who you could pray to when things were tough, or who judged your life and sent you to heaven or hell or whatever. A full egalitarian, Bullmoose didn’t have firm beliefs in popular religions or cults of any kind.

  To be fair, Bullmoose also didn’t give much credence to the popular scientific theories that attempted to explain the universe. He couldn’t decide whether it was arrogance or ignorance that gave some so-called experts, by the logic of some abstract language invented by mathematicians, the authority to proclaim that the beginning of time was some fifteen billion years ago, when a theoretical big bang of absolutely nothing created absolutely
everything, all in less than a millionth of a second. He’d just grunt and say “Uh-huh, cool man.” Then he’d ask, “So tell me, what was before that? And what before that?” He reveled in the human mind being too small to comprehend the infinite and always.

  Maybe it was that generation he was born into more than a hundred years ago. Another time, another American war. Bullmoose did his part to avoid Viet Nam. He prevailed upon himself to smoke as much weed, drop as much acid, and engage in as much free love as possible to help protest his country’s imperialism in Southeast Asia. In part, that’s how Herbie’s father was born.

  It was during the second act of an outdoor rock concert at Watkins Glen Racetrack, when the skies burst open over the Allman Brothers, who had just lost their bass player on a highway near Macon, Georgia. The rumors about what happened to his head after the motorcycle hit the truck were hard to stop.

  They found each other wandering in the mud soon after the downpour that turned hundreds of thousands of once-happy hippies into miserable, drenched, tie-dyed rag dolls. Innocent and unsuspecting, but wanting to get out of the rain, she led Bullmoose back to the Volkswagen van that her blue-blooded parents bought her as a graduation present from the Ethel Walker School for Girls. It was the first time either one of them ate LSD and they spent the evening finding out some very interesting things about each other. It was right around midnight, when the Allmans were jamming away in some furious fashion, that the unique double helix of DNA that was destined to grow into my Dad was merged together with fervor. Grandma and her famous forty-one orgasms. All purple.

  The next morning, after an Oreo and Tropicana breakfast, on her way to find a place to pee, she saw my grandfather, Herschel Lipton, for the first time in the light of day. There he was off in the distance, with a halo shining over his head. Avoiding the long lines at the men’s Portapotties, he squatted in the woods holding onto a birch tree for support, and dumped down hill so it wouldn’t fall back into his tighty-whities. With a regal flair, he kicked some leaves over the evidence and sprinted off through the forest. She watched him cut across the racetrack, his long auburn ponytail blowing in the breeze, carrying with him his sacred and inseparable bong. To her, he seemed like a prince, no, a king, a king of the woodland wilds, a king bull moose, prancing eternal in his pristine forest.

  The name Bullmoose stuck, but the man, not so much. By the time Grandma realized her pregnancy, the relationship between the two had progressed into a deep mutual love destined to live forever, but without the traditional attachments. Bullmoose loved having a son, but felt too young to commit to the responsibility. Not that he ever grew mature enough so that he could commit, but he certainly couldn’t have then. Besides, he still had to become a rock star, and he knew that he and his guitar were destined to change the world in ways unfathomable. However, he did stay involved with his family, but more so as a grandparent to Herbie than a father to his son Henry, especially after the tragic sequence of events around my birth.

  Grandma was unusual in that she never minded any of Bullmoose’s random comings or goings. She actually enjoyed the freedom and being alone, always letting him share her room when he was around, and never asking too many questions. Grandma didn’t need any training in Buddhism; she was the original Zen master, one of a kind, no attitude, truly non-judgmental. She didn’t have to get the enmity out of her heart, there never was any let in. When asked about her strange relationship with Bullmoose, she’d smile, shrug with a convincing moonstruck glow, and simply say that you can’t be too careful with the ones you love. It was advice that was always on the tip of her tongue. That seemed funny to Herbie because, with Bullmoose, she didn’t seem careful at all. But for her it worked.

  Once, when Herbie was a only a squeaky pre-teen, Grandma showed him the scrapbook with the picture from the 1970s of Bullmoose in handcuffs being led away by a squad of policemen from the famous Fenway Park in Boston. It was an image Herbie could never forget, Bullmoose leering as if he were a matador basking in the glow of some bloody bull carcass.

  Those being the days of the Curse, and Bullmoose being a true-blue Yankee fan living in the Red Sox Nation, he felt invincible even in their house. One afternoon at the ball game when the world was so much younger and more innocent, he watched the Bronx Bombers crush them inning after inning. Drinking a lot of beer and doing whatever drugs that were passed around in the hot sun, Bullmoose soon found himself at odds with some of the locals in the bleachers sitting near to him. These guys seemed to take great umbrage at something he said in a disparaging way about the team they loved, and they retaliated in an appropriate way for inebriated Red Sox fans. They hurled him over the railing. He fell fifty feet down into the mezzanine, but somehow landing on his ass unscathed in an empty seat near the first base line. He just stood up, cool, calm and collected, and without missing a beat, continued his harangue of the entire stadium. Especially its uncomfortable seating, which he could now attest to firsthand better than anyone, and most certainly the awful sour-tasting beer, which later he admitted he drank too much of, and of course the people, Red Sox fanatics, who he claimed looked silly in their flannel shirts in the middle of summer, and smelled too much like patchouli oil. The fans pounced on him again.

  The next thing he knew he was on the field at Fenway running helter-skelter, zigging and zagging through the infield, trying to escape a swarm Boston’s finest.

  Hence, that all-American mug shot in Grandma’s scrapbook of Herschel Lipton, aka Bullmoose, tracked down upon the field of glory and being escorted to a downtown state penitentiary reserved for Yankee fans and other similar miscreants. There he waited patiently until a lawyer from the ACLU came with a barefoot Grandma and seventy-five of Grandma’s single dollar bills for bail money. The singles were rolled up and bundled with a rubber band where they had been hiding behind the Graham Crackers that had gone stale months ago in Grandma’s pantry. Her shoes were found near the pantry later the same day.

  Right after Bullmoose’s spectacular ejection from the stadium, the Red Sox rallied in the bottom of the eighth and went on to beat the Yankees, which started an end of the season comeback that led them to the American League Pennant. Bullmoose would always feel connected to that achievement. According to him, without that incident at the ball field that day, which obviously was the igniting spark to that memorable baseball season, none of the glory that happened to the Red Sox that year would have happened.

  All this proved once again the four count-on-able rules of the universe. Number one: nothing stays the same, in baseball as well as in life; number two: everything is interconnected, evidenced by Bullmoose ending up as the most valuable player that season for a team that he was born to hate; and number three: you never know what is going to happen next, and for the Yankees there will always be next year. Most importantly, because Bullmoose was just drunk enough that day to survive being himself, it proved rule number four: there really is no limit to the glory and the grace of God.

  * * * * *

  Herbie sat alone in the editing room with the stories of his grandparents swirling in his memory. Now at their journey’s rest, he missed them, but luckily gone before the blast. He felt it strange that he thought about them after this unnatural, psychic day.

  He took a pint from his pocket and took another pull to pass the time as the Intel chips did the math, rendering today’s video onto the system for him to edit. Waiting for the hard drives to do their work, he began to wonder what Maria was doing right now, which surprised him because he never thought about her before except at work. Today seemed to bring about a new way of thinking about things. As he washed down the of the tequila with some lukewarm lime Coke, he heard the doorknob turn and the door to the editing room scrape open He stashed the flask in his backpack under the editing console.

  “What in the beJeezuss is your cracker ass still doing here? I thought you’d be home tying one on by now.” Branford always delighted in the opportunity to launch into a monologue. “You trying to score s
ome overtime brownie points from those Jew bastard slave masters of ours? I always thought Marty and Ira kept you around after rehab just because part of you is descended from the same damn tribe as those mother-fuckahs. So Herbie my man, I’ve been wonderin’, how many tribes of you guys were back there in Genesis when you first started stealing land from the homeys?”

  Herbie decided to ignore him and kept staring at the computer screen.

  “You don’t have to answer, I know. Twelve. But ten got lost and ended up in Germany where they started that holocaust in Europe over a hundred years ago. And then they landed again in freaking Israel, which brought about the fucking Exchange, and it’s lucky we still have a planet, even though it is in such shitty shape. It’s always you Jews that keep fucking up the whole world.”

  Herbie swiveled around on his chair in front of his editing console and stared at him.

  “I thought you already took off for that radioactive slum you live in, white boy, to get your drunk on.” Branford continued, staring back at him with his usual rancor, but Herbie detected a subtle hint of weakness, and he thought he knew why. So he called his bluff.

  “I’m doing a little something, big guy, that might shed some light on this morning’s mystery.”

  Branford shoved his head into Herbie’s personal space by the computer. “Shit, Herbie, you smell like a fuckin’ Mexican distillery.”

  “You wanna slug, Chief?” Herbie asked with faux innocence etched on his face. “Best homemade tequila since Mexico lost the copyright to the agave.”

  Brandford just snorted and stared at the computer, intent on the little icons on the screen. Each one indicated a video clip, thumbnails of the podium set up at the entrance to Riker’s Island, and of the crowd in the parking lot.

  “What the fuck? You’re in my files, you dipshit asshole.” Branford had an uncharacteristic sheepishness to the sound of his voice. Herbie heard some genuine guilt trying to hide. This added to the strength of the evidence he sensed he would find in those complex equations almost finished compiling on his desktop.