The Manhattan Prophet

by Jake Packard

  In a world gone insane, these Native Americans had seen it before and chose a simple, ancient way to raise their children. They liked it remote and inaccessible. The Great Spirit had the way back prepared for them. Everything is interconnected.

  Jack Storm, the mayor of New York the city, had taken control of New York the state, from the ex-governor, because the state had no funds and no ability to raise taxes, and therefore no real economic power. It did not offer much of a consumer base to the multinationals, which now thought of survival as direct market share. Without commerce, the rural provinces in this snowy area would wither, rot, and die.

  But Jack came from a different sort of man that ran the corporations. He would not sit back and bear witness to the problems of his neighbors without reaching out with a helping hand. Besides, he did have his city to look out for, and its watersheds extended deep into those mountains. Being a wise man beyond his years, he made many well-publicized arrangements to cover the clandestine ones that really counted, which gave the progeny of Hiawatha much greater autonomy than at any point in time during their centuries of relationships with unscrupulous white people.

  Even though the Iroquois wanted self-sufficiency they refused to be fools to reality. Jack soon became a friend. He gave them as much aid as he could in return for uncontested access to watershed areas, and for the safe house here on the southern shore of Cranberry Lake. Hidden in the mountains, he could use this place to transfer his government in case of another imminent attack from a weapon of mass destruction. The log house up on the bluff rising from the lake could house his staff as well as provide systems for him to direct his government from this great distance. And, he could wait out the intensity of any future nuclear, biological, or chemical attack on New York City.

  As the helicopter settled back down onto the earth, Maria saw a few dark-skinned men dressed in simple, warm clothing come out of the house and head towards the helicopter.

  Sam cut the engines as Maria stepped out of the chopper. The motor noise faded and the city people found themselves snared in winter silence. Maria felt the stillness as foreign, yet inspiring. Chatter, noise, and chaotic bustle filled her ears and life in New York. But this beautiful and unblemished place settled around her with a soft hush.

  A nimble man leading the others scampered down the path from the big house, followed step for step by a little boy. The man carried himself with the boldness of youth and the vitality of a great life force. But, he had the countenance of a sage, with skin weathered by the years. His bright brown eyes briefly met hers and twinkled with the light speed of the morning star.

  “Deganawida,” Jack called to the Iroquois chief who looked deeply into the mayor’s eyes, and then pulled him in with a great fraternal embrace. They pulled away, searching for the vast strength of character they always recognized inside each other.

  “Mayor Storm, my good friend, I am honored once again by your presence.”

  “My humblest thanks for this imposition at such short notice, Chief Deganawida. I hate to have to burden you with our world’s sudden and dangerous problems.”

  “Not at all. I have been waiting for you.”

  “How are you and Desidera, and your seven children and sixteen grandchildren?”

  Deganawida chuckled as he thought of his growing little nation. “They are all well, Jack. This is my littlest one, Tadodaho. He already chases after the older ones. He will be the one to grow up to be the mightiest hunter and serve his clan well.” He put his hand on the boy’s neck and pulled him close. Tadodaho smiled, and leaned into his grandfather’s embrace.

  “But I am concerned about you, Jack. There is something in your eyes, like a dark shadow descending.”

  Pellet butted in. “Chief Deganawida, excuse me, sir, but our time is limited and our guests must be waiting.”

  “Aah, General Pellet, always so officious.” Deganawida, never hiding his annoyance or his personal feelings about anything, turned towards Pellet. He looked deeply into the General’s eyes and mumbled something in a language no one knew, but the meaning everyone could understand. Returning to English, he remained true to his gracious protocol. He smiled, “Everything in its time, General. Come inside. You are my guests. Let’s get warm.”

  They ascended the stony path back up the bluff to the log house. Once inside, the warm natural interior of wood and stone comforted them. As pleasant young Iroquois men and women attended to their winter coats, Maria could see through a wall of bulletproof glass into a room with a long wooden conference table, around which sat the most powerful people in the surviving technological world.

  * * * * *

  The Little Gypsy

  If Bullmoose obsessed over her before, after that night with the little Gypsy, he became rabid.

  She left in the nautical twilight before sunrise immediately after the famous sex scene on the beach. Bullmoose lost sight of her as she skipped past the temple where her goddess-like form blurred into the Indian Ocean mist. He agonized over her that entire next day.

  Clink-clink-clink, a dancing Natraj off to a countertop in Kyoto.

  Time scraped itself by, like crossing a street barefoot covered with broken glass while trying to avoid an incoming bus. One hundred degrees in the shade of the palms, Bullmoose, sweaty and flushed, jotted lyrics like a madman into one of his ragtag notebooks. He strummed a few chord changes on his guitar, trilled a few notes, and slapped the body of the Martin in beat to the invisible band playing in head. But he just couldn’t get his B string in tune. He tightened it, and loosened it, and tightened it again. Sweat poured off his body onto the guitar in the struggle. The string snapped. He cussed and swore as he unwound it from its tuning peg, knowing now why they call them the blues.

  When the heat of the day became unbearable, he took a long swim in the Bay of Bengal, being careful as he walked upon the hot sand to avoid the little holes of shit left by his fishermen neighbors earlier in the morning.

  Around sunset Pranan came by to give him a ride to Cathy’s, and he could immediately see on Bullmoose’s face how the harmless fantasy for a mystery woman had progressed overnight into a crazed and frothing animal-like disease. As they drove into town, Bullmoose sat in the bouncy Ambassador, babbling and spilling his heart out.

  Along the dusty highway they passed a ten-foot-high chain-link fence topped off with loops of barbed wire that surrounded a compound. Groups of little children sat inside at splintery wooden tables chiseling large chunks of stone. Clink-clink-clink. Pranan gave the little slaves a lingering glance and tried to relate this living metaphor to his querulous buddy riding shotgun and bitching about everything. Life could be much worse, Pranan tried to explain, than being in romantic love on a southern Indian beach when you are young, carefree, and without a responsibility in the world. Bullmoose could not hear.

  He started drinking shots early in the day and worked up quite a buzz. Later that night he played particularly crisp and strong music. None of the drunks at the bar could actually tell the difference that he performed with only five strings.

  Once in the jolly madness he looked up and saw the orange man dancing by himself in ecstasy. At one point the orange man knelt in front of Bullmoose and air-guitared along with the song, occasionally looking up to the sky as if immersed in reverent prayer.

  Bullmoose could only think about the little Gypsy. He looked for her in the bushes by the path to the ocean, no, by the post with the burnt-out lantern near where the lightweights threw up their cheap Indian vodka, but no. Maybe by the kitchen where the freshly dead fish caught by his very gastrointestinal regular neighbors stared back at those who were about to eat them. No, she did not appear there, either.

  In the murky hours between closing time and dawn, Pranan let an inconsolable Bullmoose out of the Ambassador near his little sweet spot in the sand, Clink-clink-clink, off goes a Brahma to Berlin.

  He couldn’t believe only twenty-four hours ago she slept here with him, her head on his chest. It seemed so much l
onger. He listened for her closely in between the sounds of the stones and the sounds of the sea, but he heard nothing but clink-clink-clink. He began to feel a gnawing apprehension that maybe he would never see her again. Maybe he never really did see her; maybe he hallucinated the entire thing, a byproduct of living in India, a mere manifestation of a love goddess in the chimerical madness of Mahabalipuram.

  As a waning crescent moon cleared the horizon over the sea, as if from out of the point of exact nothing between the waves and the breeze, she appeared. His eyes brightened, his pulse quickened, his blood rushed, and peewee Bullmoose stood at attention They moved closer towards each other, their faces within inches of their intimate breathing space, her eyes moist, twinkling, their lips finding each other. They locked into a long and immersive kiss, as deep as the universe has ever gone to spawn a space where life could reproduce itself.

  They clutched each with reckless desire as they fell to the sand. They made love all the rest of the night, near the temple on the beach in the town where young children fashioned the likeness of gods with their indentured and innocent little hands. Clink-clink-clink.

  This continued with ignorant bliss for a couple of weeks. Every morning Bullmoose woke to find her long gone, and he spent the rest of his day lonely for the girl he hardly knew except for the nightly excursions through each other’s body to find each other’s soul that always occurred shortly before the Bengali dawn. By day he’d kick around town smoking weed with Pranan. Or he would make idle chatter with the orange man, who always eyed Bullmoose in a strange, intoxicated way. At night he sang a few songs at Cathy’s, made some jokes, did some shots, all in anticipation of that magic time twixt the night and the day when his every romantic fantasy came true on the sacred beach by the temple made of sand.

  Sometimes after lovemaking they lay spooned, her thick black hair blowing in the sea breeze into his grateful nostrils. He listened to the waves and the clink-clink-clink and could swear he sailed to the root of all creation where he became Brahmin, at the heart of human consciousness he morphed into Vishnu, and around a pageant of newborn galaxies he partnered with the cosmic dancing Natraj.

  An avatar prancing in shit.

  Lying on the beach, their limbs and fragrances entwined, their breathing in and out warming each others skin, their continual arousals, peaks and then peace, he seemed to forget two sure things you can always count on: nothing stays the same, and you never know what’s going to happen next.

  It all changed the day Pranan finally brought him a new B string from a music store in Madras. He restrung his guitar and took it down to the temple and played in E minor for an hour or two by the ocean. The orange man sat close by, occasionally clucking some anonymous supplication to the endless motion of the eternal sea. But when he returned to his little spot near the jungle, he found all his belongings, what little he had, scattered about. His guitar case lay ripped and splintered, as if some mad ninja karate god brought an undue vengeance to this little spot Bullmoose called home. Perplexed but not pissed off, because he always carried his stash of weed and his pipe with him everywhere he went, and because he lost so very little that could not be replaced, he just wrote it off to dogs, or vandals, or beggars. Every paradise has to have some thieves running in the night.

  But the little Gypsy did not show that night at Cudalore Cathy’s. Neither did Pranan. In fact, Cathy’s remained completely empty. Highly unusual. No philandering ex-Nazis at the bar or heaving Samurais by the lantern post. Totally empty, and that never happened before. Cathy, always the businesswoman, tried again to sell him a good-natured suck and fuck, but when Bullmoose politely refused she laughed and gave him a grilled grouper to eat, a blanket to sleep on and sent him home, making a joke about his stepping in shit, which should have been funny due to the constant reality of his life on the beach that he worked hard to avoid. But Bullmoose did not laugh.

  Back at his spot, he took off his sandals and spread the blanket over the sand awaiting his lady, his moonlight goddess, his Scheherazade of a thousand nights. Clink-clink-clink.

  The stars shined especially bright on this clear night of the new moon. Fantasizing about making love in weightless space, smoking a bowl, he drifted off into the most vivid of abstracted sleeps.

  He entered a restaurant, empty of people, noticeably so. Unattended banquet tables covered in lime green linen, adorned with rich pewter table settings, filled the room. He felt as if he had arrived too early for an elegant yet offbeat medieval ball. Suddenly, out from the kitchen, burst four clean-cut waiters, all with short haircuts, They looked like his high school football team; wait, they were his high school football team: Knuckles, Pea-Brain, Elmo and Zanzanelli. They smiled at him with obvious recognition. Then, in unison, they looked at each other, shook the tension out of their fingertips, leaned backwards and started to sing in perfect harmony, like a barbershop quartet. They sang the song he wrote in the heat of the day after his first night with the little Gypsy. “Only you can make me feel this way” . . . Over by the window with the sun streaming in on a bed of pastel flowers, her back turned towards him, lay a dark-skinned, long-haired beauty, her lustrous black tresses draping over the luscious curves of her lean and naked body . . . “Only you can take my breath away” . . . where did Pea-Brain, who slept through all his classes in high school, ever find the talent to learn to sing that well? Then Bullmoose found himself sitting on the bed behind the dark goddess, so close he could smell her exotic perfume. She turned to look at him and voila’, the little Gypsy with her athletic breasts bared and her face partially covered with a pink silk veil smiled at him. The Bullmoose johnson started to look for a way to escape from his underwear. “Only you can wake with me each day” . . . and the way the sun reflected on the back of her head, sending spectral cascades of color refracting off the long pearl earrings that dangled in the locks of her ebony hair, she became Parvati, the consort to gods . . . “Only you can make me feel this way” . . . and finishing as strong as they had started, his high school buddies took a deep and appreciative bow, waved goodbye as if they would see him tomorrow in homeroom and exited stage left. Yo Zanzanelli, it was good to see you here in India my bro’, and good luck on your new job as a consultant sanitation removal specialist.

  The love goddess little Gypsy parted her ruby lips as if to say something, but Bullmoose could not hold himself back. Before she could speak he reached down and grabbed her beard and kissed her with the greatest of yearning and starving passion. She started to squirm, trying to pull away, gagging and choking, and what was with that beard?

  He woke up as Pranan pushed Bullmoose’s face away and they both spit into the sand, “Yucchh.”

  “Oh, Jeez, sorry man, I was dreaming! I thought you were my love goddess,” Bullmoose said.

  “Your love goddess? You pathetic dumb fuck! It really is time for you to wake up.” Pranan spit again onto the sand with great disdain.

  “Hey, dude, I said I was sorry.”

  “Fuck you. You really don’t know how sorry you are.”

  Pranan never talked to Bullmoose like that before. “What’s up with you, man? I mean, I really don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “I’m talking about your little Gypsy, you sick, turkey shit. She belongs to old man Durga who owns this entire town and who now has everybody and every stone statue in this area on his side looking for you to cut your balls off. It’s going to be like a lynching, like something your country used to do regularly to black people.”

  “Hey, wait a minute. If this guy has anger issues, man, like if he can’t keep tabs on his old lady, what the fuck, someone has got to check her oil, and I know you know what I’m saying, my fellow male chauvinist pig. It’s like the future now, dude, its 1971. Ya’ know what I mean? Hasn’t he heard about woman’s lib?”

  Turned out old man Durga had not. And it turned out Durga did not marry the little Gypsy, he fathered her, his daughter from a third wife who he adored, who died giving birth to her. And it tur
ned out she just turned thirteen. And Bullmoose had gotten her pregnant down on the beach dotted with the little holes of shit surrounding the sacred temple made of sand at the center of the universe. Daddy Durga, the richest and most powerful man in town, who couldn’t give one twink about female liberation, now came after Bullmoose’s balls with a vengeance, and a posse.

  Bullmoose, getting it, moved forthwith, making haste, following after Pranan. They stuck to the shadows of the palms along the beach until they reached the Ambassador. Bullmoose threw his guitar in the back seat as Pranan fired the little tin car up. It roared like a mighty lawnmower, and they took off out of there, albeit a bit on the slow side, but being the only automobile in town it had to be faster than anything Durga could chase them with.

  So far everything remained quiet, but rule number one, nothing stays the same. Only a single road ran out of Mahabalipuram, and it had to go by Durga Works.

  The morning sun shone like a searchlight in the sky. Out on the highway up by the Durga compound, they saw a big ominous cloud of dust rise into the air. As they got closer they could see that a huge flat back wagon filled with little statues of Hindu gods had just left the gate at the statue factory. It filled up the road, creating a roadblock, because Durga knew who had to drive by. Bullmoose imagined himself strapped to one of those wooden worktables while little Hindu children hacked away at the personal statue of his manhood that caused all this panic in the first place.