Also by Michael Bible
NOVELLAS
Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City
Simple Machines
CHAPBOOKS
My Second Best Bear Rug
Gorilla Math
SOPHIA
Copyright © 2015 by Michael Johnson
First Melville House printing: December 2015
Melville House Publishing
46 John Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
and
8 Blackstock Mews
Islington
London M4 2BT
mhpbooks.com facebook.com/mhpbooks @melvillehouse
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bible, Michael.
Sophia : a novel / Michael Bible.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-1-61219-472-1 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-61219-473-8 (ebook)
I. Title.
PS3602.I24S67 2015
813’.6—dc23
2015019003
Designed by Adly Elewa
v3.1
I dreamed a knife like a song you can’t whistle.
—Frank Stanford
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
About the Author
1
I’m a nautical man on my small filthy yacht since the bank took my house. I should cruise around the blue world gazing at the jumping fish but I’ve become transfixed by a praying mantis praying on a piece of toast. The Holy Ghost touches my shoulder to say hello.
Not now, I say. This mantis is praying his prayer.
I’m a holy fool on the hunt for something worthy. I chase the saints of all religions and long to join their team. They call me the Right Reverend Alvis T. Maloney but things are becoming unstable in the Goldilocks zone. Dusk is a bonfire of wild sunflowers and across the night an archer aims his bow. That which has been is that which shall be. It’s Sunday morning in America. Twenty-first century. Year of the Dragon.
Eli, Eli. You are my last friend. You live with your brother Boom on the edge of town. You know the day of the week everyone was born on, a calendar savant in suspenders and a black trucker hat. Eyes like blue marbles, a Marlboro dangles from your lip. Your father tried to beat smarts into you and that pedophile baptized you in the Mississippi River. Be my Sancho, Eli, my man Friday, my Robin, my Dr. Spock drunk on the job. Your hat says, Easy come, easy go. I light your smoke.
Everything is always better ten years ago. They say we were once the great Southern Bohemia, now it’s people eating shrimp cocktail and complaining about the AC in the juke joint. Eli, you’ve fallen for a teenage electric fiddle player on stage playing “Hard Day’s Night.”
John Lennon was born on a Thursday, you say. John Lennon was a good man.
I take my meals at the Starlight Diner in town, a greasy spoon near the harbor where I keep my boat. In a back booth a woman calls her lover Daddy. A drunk fat man cries with his drunk fat son. I’m waiting for the narcotics to rush in. I’m waiting to regain the good heat. Eli, you’ve soiled yourself in the bathroom due to an excess of cocaine and Budweiser. Your suspenders are falling off. There are a thousand more jobs at the bullet factory. Alabama is beating LSU.
I’m the lazy priest of this town’s worst church, nearly defrocked for lascivious behavior with female parishioners. I want to die for the King of Kings but can’t quite get it right. I long to lounge with Him in that upper room but I’m losing the desire. I council Tuesday, who I’m in love with, when her mind goes wrong. She wears a single dreadlock in her hair. In the confessional I undo my clerical collar and fire up a spliff.
My fantasy is to commit suicide on the moon, she says. I would open my helmet and explode.
I see, I say puffing smoke.
My daddy was like Jesus. A carpenter and a Jew, dead at thirty-three. Except my daddy had a Tasmanian devil tattoo and a drinking problem.
Interesting, I say.
Puff puff.
Go on.
Jesus was the first Christian saint. A martyr for the cause of himself. He was crucified, dead, and buried. The third day he rose from the dead to sit at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. He spoke in nonsense stories on earth—mustard seed, camel through the eye, buried talents. Wept in the garden like a wuss. He is Man and God and Word. Logos and Agape. Selah. He died, but he really didn’t. Amen?
Big blue awful day out there. A woman in a burqa texts outside the open chapel window, a little boy shoots her with a water gun.
At the end we’re all just numbers, you say, Eli. Height, weight, credit score, IQ, social.
Very simple machines, I say. But things can be so complex. For example, could Tuesday and I just take it to the bathtub? Get wet and see what happens?
The cotton is coming in huge bricks on flatbed trucks and the clouds are God’s hobby sculptures—a heart, a lion, a gun. The man on the phone keeps yelling, Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking! There’s a new girl working at the Starlight. Skin of an Aztec, long hair falling down her back like a braid of black smoke. Her eyes are sapphire. She keeps returning my gaze.
Get me another gimlet, Eli. Make it a double. My shoe’s got holes and a mailman’s pounding on my door. The letter says the farm’s been sold and my uncle’s gone to heaven. Last of my family. You’ve got rib sauce all over your face, looks like blood. Like you’ve been shot.
Church picnic. Tuesday says she’s Joan of Arc. Her sword is silver.
I am the Maid of Orleans, she says.
Get off the roof, I say. The sausages are burning.
I am rubbing God’s beard between my thighs.
If you don’t get down, I will burn you at the stake.
Behind the abandoned hospital on a peach tree hangs one rotten peach. Two black wizards approach dumpsters behind the church, black hoods and staffs. They are cosplay people maybe worshiping a comic book. They cast spells on each other, high five, chest bump. They pretend the peach is forbidden fruit. They wear jester’s shoes and speak Elizabethan. They try to light the Sunday sports section on fire with their eyes.
The Ole Miss Rebels botch the winning field goal on homecoming. Yellow leaves are falling and that’s all I have to say about that.
Eli, you are one of my flock, but now we drink gimlets and eat painkillers on the square. Your father looked like Uncle Jesse from The Dukes of Hazzard. Your mother looked like that lady from Hee Haw. Your sister was a friend of mine back in high school. Me and Boom were drinking buddies in the late nineties. But now is now and then was then. The flag is always at half-mast.
St. James kneels and asks forgiveness and is stoned to death. Doves scatter as the rocks crack his bones. Their wings make the sound of gloved hands clapping. As a child he loved to fish at night. Alone with the stars and surf.
I like Elvis in Memphis, late period. Karate Elvis. Fat Elvis going through the drive-thru on his motorcycle. Letting the black girls touch his belt buckle after the show. TLC. Hawaii come back. The Jordanaires. The smell of the Jungle Room fills me—Quaaludes and sweat. Kung fu in the mornings and the evenings dying in the john.
Last century they drilled holes in heads. They gave the shock treatment to rid the voices. I tried to cure with gentle sermons. Things are different now. For instance, I robbed a blind man at a rest stop on the way to New Orleans. Then later a woman wit
h her jaw wired shut on the streetcar hummed “Hey Jude.”
Eli, it has come to my attention that Tuesday is sleeping with the owner of the army/navy surplus store. An ex-quartermaster in the merchant marines. Goes by White Mike Johnny. He wears an eight ball pinky ring and cell phone holster. Tuesday is reading Soldier of Fortune magazine in her kitchen. Painting her toenails camo.
Talk to me, I say. What does he got that I ain’t got?
He allows me to fire automatic weapons on the weekends.
But I will perform constant cunnilingus.
He has a ski boat.
I play the piano in the dark.
That’s another reason I don’t love you.
St. Peter is crucified with his head down and his feet up. I’m unworthy to be crucified in the same form and manner as the Lord, he says. Over the crowd he can see a woman in the marketplace. The wind has blown up her robe and he can see her bare white bottom and the trees are moving in the distance. Olive trees dying in the shade.
Boom is in the hospital again. Eli, you call him and hand me the phone.
Boom, I say.
I’m in pain, he says. Some pain.
I’m sorry.
Sometimes I have pain. And then sometimes I don’t.
OK, I say.
OK, he says.
I’ve seen to the sick and studied sin. I’ve sailed my boat around the Cape of Good Hope. I’ve fly-fished in Chile dropped from a helicopter. I’ve played nine holes before lunch. I know the right way to drive a sports car, when to fold ’em. But now life is just people with their eyes begging for answers I don’t have. Each day seems an easier one to let go, but still on and on. The lights never go off at the neighbor’s and there is never anything good to eat on this boat.
Here’s the problem with modern medicine, Eli. It keeps you alive longer but it’s not pretty.
Tuesday is in the river washing her hair. White Mike Johnny drowned last week and she mourns him. Clemson beat Auburn. A man dances on the roof of his Honda in the church parking lot, chugging Cutty Sark, blasting The Rush Limbaugh Show. The creek looks weird and fluorescent. The neighbor girls play Lewis and Clark, molest a male Sacajawea. Then a peach sunset.
Let’s talk about this country’s problem with love. Let’s talk about the silver-haired blowhards on the street making deals, getting ahead at the office. Best case you end up on a feeding tube watching reruns of Jeopardy.
I thought you were the shepherd, you say, Eli.
Yes, but they are still the lambs.
I’m a lion.
No, you’re not.
Well, I damn well fucking am.
What were we talking about before Jeopardy?
Love?
I’ve formed a little band called Roy G. Biv. It’s a noise band kind of thing with a man who just stands nude, a girl on trombone with unshaven legs, and a man with a bullhorn named Finger. We are on the bandstand at the bar after a bluegrass act and there are shouts of hate and we love the hate. The main purpose of the band is to be despised.
Tuesday’s broken me. I’m out here on the poop deck looking at blue blank sky. I can’t find a bright side to this. I call her.
We could’ve done some things, I say.
Like what?
Walked out of restaurants together, not paid the bill.
That’s love to you?
It’s a kind of love, yes.
I’ve sailed to New York in my mind. Nice to be out on the water and look out at the old Lady Liberty and the new phallic Freedom Tower, a sweet erection up to heaven.
St. Blanchard is caught between the river and the road then dragged back to town by all the women whose hearts he’d broken. They tie him to a raft, pile yellow roses, and light them on fire. They love him but want him to never break another heart.
A fugitive walks through the football stadium filling with snow. A trillion stars flicker in the theoretical multiverse. Eli, I wonder if Jesus ever had a wet dream?
A fat kid brought a sword to the snowball fight. I walk around all day with my sweater on backward. The Holy Ghost creeps in the shadows of my house. I am under my bed and she opens my drawers. A Chinese woman named Nono at the snowball fight wants to ask you something, Eli. She wants to know your name.
Eli, you say.
I’m Nono, she says.
You stare into her eyes.
I want to play chess today, you say.
I’ll play, says Nono.
Strip chess, says Eli.
Set up the board, she says. Your move.
I have a dream about Tuesday wearing nothing but a magician’s hat.
Come love me, she says. Abracadabra.
We can die out here of hypothermia, I say.
You never want to do anything where you might die, she says.
In the hospital Boom wears a fake mustache with his chemo bald head. There is a fire at the travel agency and the acrobat with HIV is doing somersaults in the graveyard. I feel like Charlie Chaplin I’m so weak in the knees. I am fading in and out of sleep. Thanksgiving was a bust.
There is bliss out there somewhere. Take this, the waitress with the sapphire eyes from the Starlight has entered the confessional. I light a spliff and we chat.
A bear dream visits sometimes, she says.
What is the bear doing?
Catching salmon in the river.
Are you the salmon or the bear in the dream?
I am the river.
Eating is the worst thing you can do to your teeth. Living is the worst thing you can do to your body. The best thing for your health is to never have been born.
I only love the ugly pretty girls. Too much beauty makes me sick. If a woman has no scars she doesn’t interest me. The greater the flaw, the greater the beauty. I grab a stool and listen to the old men place their orders at the Starlight. One can’t eat wheat and the other wants his toast dry. A woman in an eye patch screams for Albert but no one looks up. Maybe there is no one named Albert or maybe Albert is tired of answering her. The girl with the sapphire eyes takes my order. Cup of coffee, black. Two eggs, scrambled. She’s in a short dress, blue, intellectual. Her father owns the place. She steals philosophy from the bookstore and devours men. Her real name is Honeysuckle, but everyone calls her Darling.
2
Eli, everywhere I go, dirty looks. These people that pray in restaurants before their meals. These people with their ideas about ideas. Asking me for forgiveness? And what are these people’s great sins? Men forget to put the toilet seat down. Women use up all the hot water. All domestic hell breaks loose and they’re pounding my door. Keep a clean heart, I tell them. Whatever that means.
Failure is the most interesting trait. Like the story of the serpent and the two orchard thieves. Sometimes you’re like Texas, Eli, one vast contradiction. Sometimes you’re like nothing at all. In the confessional Tuesday says I am emotionally crippled. How can the lamb diagnose the shepherd? These days this preacher could use a nurse. A morphine drip and a kind bedside manner.
The big moon, Eli. The supermoon. The one you’ve talked about for so long. Only happens once every four hundred years and now it’s cloudy. Boom calls and says he’s half in heaven and Christ has sky-blue eyes. He says heaven is 72 degrees and has really good Italian food. Let’s head to the bar with the dueling pianos, Eli. Let someone sing that awful, beautiful song by Billy Joel and weep. I feel I could rob a Dairy Queen right now, but I’m too drunk to drive.
Boom will never go fishing on a lake again. He is close to death but cannot die. He has been dying for fifteen years. I was asked to give him ease in his final months but he just keeps on dying.
Seize the day, Eli. Break a leg. Put the pedal to the metal where the rubber meets the road. Pull my chain. Pull a fast one. Pull the wool over my eyes. Put a cork in it. Buy the farm. Bite the dust. Eat my dust. Kick the bucket. Sharp as a tack. Stiff as a board. Sweating blood. Sweating bullets. Happy as a clam. Raining cats and dogs. Buckle up. Buckle down. Play with fire. Go with the flow
. Easy come, Eli, easy go.
Things are so bad and then I remember the secular saints: Beethoven, van Gogh, the drummer from Def Leppard.
I am trying to keep to the root of things. There’s spit on the corners of my mouth. I’m reciting Lucky’s speech from Waiting for Godot.
It’s OK that you’re going mad, you say, Eli. But can you stop doing it so close to me?
Sports of all sorts, I say. All kinds of dying flying sports.
St. Simon is killed with a saw. At his wedding Jesus turned water into wine. His screams are heard a mile away.
Eli, I find you drunk and stumbling near the fire station.
I can’t make the parade tonight, you say.
The parade was yesterday.
Either way I can’t make it.
Tuesday has run away with a jam band called The String Cheese Incident. She is selling something named heady goo balls in the parking lot. She loves a man named Marlin, a roadie.
I’m in the high mountains, she says, where earth meets sky.
Do you remember the restaurant we used to go to? The one with the stuffed polar bear?
What about it?
It blew up.
The white roses outside the lady chapel are wilting from too much rain. Boom calls and says he has a good view of a robin nesting outside his window. He watches the mother vomit food into the baby’s mouth. Sometimes Boom says he can only smell. On his worst days, he says, olfactory is all he’s got. Then his senses will come rushing back strangely. I can feed him a peppermint and he can hear again. I can play him Beethoven and his skin will tingle. But the sound of a sneeze can put him in a coma for days. A full episode of Wheel of Fortune is a miracle. He is hoping in the spring he will see a baby robin fly.
Eli, let’s spend the better part of the afternoon drinking gin and playing chess. Two lost gentlemen seeking the daily fluff. We are on your back porch overlooking the cotton when two Canadians land a balloon in the field. They have champagne. We toast that they are still alive after their rough landing. We toast that you are Eli and I am Maloney. We toast that everyone alive is still alive.
Sophia Page 1
