Sophia

by Michael Bible

  I think about all the lost puppies in the world. All those sad endings. There are men here giving firm handshakes to the new guy. What’s the agenda for the millions of early morning meetings? How many husbands are right now saying to their wives, I’m sorry I don’t love you anymore?

  Eli, I knew your sister, Molly. I could never tell you that I loved her once. She was sad and we were on a youth group trip to the woods. I came to her bed in the girl’s bunkhouse through the window. I lay with her and felt her breasts and kissed her. She was a kind, slow kisser. It was something I wanted to do over and over. We lay on the grass and synchronized our breathing. I took her breath and she took mine. We were kids, Eli. It was the woods and the darkness and stolen cigarettes. I had no real need for Christ, but he was there swirling around me in the form of doves. Now she is dead, buried on a hillside under a dying oak.

  The Mohawks believe St. Isaac practices black magic. They tomahawk him in the neck. His wife is there and embraces him until his body is cold. Then the Mohawk chief takes her to his teepee and shows her his wisdom and she becomes his wife.

  Darling wears knee-high socks and roller skates. We go to the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet out near the crumbling Kmart. There is a Zen river with a tiny bridge and a soft-serve ice cream machine. I have taken many painkillers and have a gin but I am steady. Darling with her sapphire eyes, she is my sweet distraction. Then later, in my arms, she whispers, We’re easy as pie.

  The Holy Ghost is pale with brown pussy hair. I ride her, watch her breasts bounce in the moonlight. It is dirty but I hold her tender in the sky.

  Tuesday and Finger and I are on the boat.

  We’ve come to tell you we’re getting married, says Tuesday.

  Bullshit, I say.

  We want your blessing, Finger says.

  Eli then, no lie, church bells start to ring in the distance.

  I’ve marched into the Starlight and gotten down on my knees and started singing that Righteous Brothers song to Darling. This worked in Top Gun, but I am beat up by her father, the owner.

  I only sang to her, I say.

  Why do you have to dress that way, her father says. Why can’t you be normal?

  Isn’t that the question we’re all asking ourselves.

  He punches me in the throat.

  I am harassed daily on my bike by a roving gang of fifth graders. Such raw disappointment at every turn. These kids will soon become frat boys then lawyers then alcoholics then die of heart attacks on the golf course with wives they don’t deserve.

  I order a pizza to my boat. The woman driver has a bad smile. She reminds me of the girls that roam behind IHOP. I love her instantly.

  You’re beautiful, baby, I say.

  It’s fifteen dollars.

  For sex?

  For the pizza, asshole.

  Soldiers try to shoot St. Devo, but their guns won’t fire. He takes their weapons and blesses them and gives them back. They shoot him five times in the face and he dies with the Lord’s Prayer on his lips.

  I creep up to Darling’s place one night and knock on her bedroom window.

  Come in, she says. My father’s not home.

  I climb in. This house has the grand staircase and the high ceilings of the Old South, a big bathroom with a bidet. There’s a stuffed tiger in her father’s room.

  So what do you want to do now, she says.

  That’s a big tiger, I say.

  Yes, it is, she says.

  Eli, I follow you and Nono to the movies. I watch from the parking lot with opera glasses I bought at Dick Dickerson’s pawnshop. Nono points at the car and you start walking my way. I get out.

  What movie are you going to see, asks Nono.

  I’m not going to the movies, I say.

  Then what are you doing here, she says.

  Free country, I say. Then run away.

  At the Starlight there’s a tourist with a soul patch talking to me about his nude drawings. He is affecting an accent from Eastern Europe. He is here with his lover, a man with tiny glasses. There is a postcard in this town for everything and he has collected them all. The quiet alley where we used to shoot dice is now a Chuck E. Cheese’s. What can I do but watch the blond girls with fake tans, fake tits, fake lips, fake hips, fake diamonds, fake everything. But still the sky is pink over the spire of the church and the werewolves lock themselves up at night.

  What can I say of Satan, the restless fallen angel warming his hands on a dead man’s campfire? Eli, the wizards drink the communion wine. They are father and son. Al and Hal Malchow. They’ve written a fantasy novel together, though young Hal can barely read.

  They throw things at us, too, they say.

  Who?

  The little preppies on the hill.

  St. Baker is killed and eaten in Fiji. His pith helmet falls to the ground and spins in the dust. The locals play drums with his bones. The sky is purple and Bible black. They give thanks to their God and make Baker’s killer a saint.

  Outside the Starlight the peace is destroyed by a gun-wielding teen. He is high on morphine to ease the pain of killing. A victim to himself. The cops push back the rubberneckers. Maloney, shouts someone in the crowd. You can talk him down.

  I get on the bullhorn.

  Kid, think about your mother, I say.

  Who is that, he says. Who’s talking?

  I’m the pastor.

  My mother said you order sex on the beach shots and sit down when you pee.

  The crowd erupts with laughter.

  Falsehoods, I say. Put the gun down.

  She said you’re filthy and you jerk off all day on a boat.

  A huge roar from the crowd.

  Listen, I say, put the gun down or they’re going to shoot your head off.

  I’d rather die than listen to this asshole, he says.

  A sniper shoots him right between the eyes.

  St. Maria is eleven and fights a farmhand from raping her, saying it is a mortal sin. He stabs her and she is operated upon without anesthesia. Her last words are, I will think of you in paradise. Ten angels surround her.

  The pain is everywhere as I dream on my boat. There is deep sweet melancholy in my slumbering. I see all. I see the wizards near the peach tree. I see Tuesday and Finger laughing on jet skis. I see Bill and Hillary and Monica having a threesome. I see ships in bottles and fields of white cotton. I see the crazed frat boy gunned down in the street. I see the chess pieces falling and the fifth graders with their piss balloons ready. I hear the Sunset Limited round the bend. I see St. Matthew driving my Saab and I see ponies running through the mountains. I see the blossoming of ten thousand wildflowers and the flocking of birds.

  Nono comes to the boat. I wake up and there’s a cig still burning in my mouth.

  I want to tell you about my life, she says.

  OK, I say.

  I was born in a prison in China and I killed my mother with my birth. When I was fifteen I heard a song by the Beatles on an American channel from Taiwan coming through a guard’s radio and dreamed of escaping. After many years of planning, I did escape to Japan on a raft. It took forty-three days and there I married a wealthy architect, but I left him in time. And then I met a famous British actor and moved to Tangier, but left him, too. Finally, I married a starving poet and we lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Then I came to the South to bury my best friend from my days in Africa. I could not heal her so I am staying here, living her life in her honor.

  What does that have to do with Eli, I ask.

  I love him.

  I look at Nono’s soft lips.

  Why do you love him?

  Because I loved a rich man and wasn’t happy. I loved a famous man and wasn’t happy. And I loved a poor poet and I still wasn’t happy. I’ve gone everywhere, seen everything. Eli makes me happy.

  I load a pipe with hash.

  6

  This hate has gone on long enough, pride is reaching epic levels. These mini bros on the hillside are major mischief-m
akers countywide, exploring violence and lighting farts. These monsters will grow up to lay off people and beat their children and force them to play sports against their will. I call over an officer of the law.

  I am covered in urine from their balloons, officer.

  This happens to be my nephew, says the officer.

  OK, but I’m covered in urine.

  Sounds like a personal problem, he says.

  I am a man of the cloth, I say.

  He tasers my scrotum.

  If a summer day goes wrong it can break you. A girl in Tupelo took an overdose of sleeping pills because her day at the pool wasn’t fun enough. But autumn is coming, season of dark poets, my best time. Football will be back and cold beer and pumpkin-launching contests. I will take Darling to the first game in her gingham dress and sweater. We will drink champagne we can’t afford at the restaurant we both hate and walk out on the bill. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Hail Mary. Go team. Go.

  I can’t read the news anymore. It’s a racket, Eli. All I need is the Lord’s Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance and have the band play “Dixie” when I die.

  Darling has taken my hand as we walk home and I have taken hers, my heart growing ten thousand. I spend the day cleaning the boat, then drive the Saab to my old house where the tall grass grows around the For Sale sign. I drive to the country to see the cotton. Wise Jane gardens in the pleasant morning in her van Gogh straw hat. We talk flowers.

  These flowers, she says, are called naked ladies. When you pick them they make a good noise.

  How do I do it?

  You snap their necks.

  Wise Jane has a pot of the good chicory coffee and her sweet dog Willie is at my knee.

  What happens when they all run out on you, Wise Jane? I thought I used to know.

  St. Elizabeth is shoved into a pit of snakes by soldiers. They throw grenades in the pit, but hear her singing hymns. They throw three more but she still sings. Finally they set her on fire. The snakes crawl into the woods and breed more snakes and the snakes grow to eat soldiers’ children in their sleep.

  I go to Tuesday and Finger’s new apartment on the north side and watch them through the window. It is a comfortable condo with brand new carpet and a video game room. Tuesday has given over to the money now like Finger. She wears furs and high heels and eats at restaurants with no prices on the menus, like the one with the shark tank. Finger sells stocks online and plays high-stakes poker in Atlantic City. I call Tuesday.

  Remember when we made love in the sanctuary, I ask her.

  Yes, she says.

  I hang up.

  You could count the bricks in the schoolhouse, Eli. It was something to see. No one taught you anything, you just read Shakespeare in the basement with a joint in your lips. The bad boys put your head in the toilet and made you tongue-kiss a dog. And the teachers slapped you across the mouth for writing with your left hand. Remember, Eli? Remember Mulberry Street School and the tiny room where they put the kids like you?

  I dream the Holy Ghost drives a bus while I give her head. I dream about an accountant in a Wild West town twirling his empty pistols for the love of a girl who’s run away with an outlaw. I dream all the doctors heal and the firemen fight fires and the policemen police and the nurses nurse and the wrestlers wrestle and the dog sitters sit and the kidnappers nap.

  I see the teenage electric fiddle player who plays the Beatles. She’s in college now with large breasts that do not sag. She loves an MMA fighter with tattoos covering him. This man is unemployable with his face full of ink. A gentle man who likes to hear the crack of bones. I’m doing the backstroke now in the ice-cold water under a faint day moon with my eyes full of the red vineyards of France. I never told you but I have dreams of going there. To the place where love began.

  Al and Hal the wizards are here. They hate the pain of this world so live in another. I envy their happiness with fantasy and play.

  Hello, Al, I say. Hello, Hal.

  Maloney, we’ve got a battle plan.

  I am at a banquet with ghosts. White Mike Johnny and the frat boy with the gun are pouring wine for everyone. John Lennon and Joan of Arc bicker about the kind of turkey Napoleon bought. There are peaches everywhere. I am waist high in peaches. Boom is seated at the head of the table with his prayers and his pony.

  I’ve got kids raining pee down on me, Boom, I say.

  Every woman’s a feminist until they need a jar of pickles opened, he says.

  What does that mean?

  Money, says Boom.

  Money?

  Dick Dickerson comes to the boat with a loaded .45. He has no real talents or memories or cares. He’s gone on junk and Everclear.

  I want Tuesday, Dick Dickerson says pointing his weapon.

  Well she ain’t here, I say.

  Declare God doesn’t exist or I’ll kill you, he says.

  I take his gun with judo and make him walk the plank.

  I come to the Starlight for the first time in months and prop my boots up on the table.

  You’re not allowed in here, the cook says.

  I love you, I say. I wish I could remember your name.

  My father was a famous eye man, looked into the soul for a living. My mother a sweet librarian who hid the dirty books on the top shelf. A man orders a latte but he pronounces it luh-tay. The radio keeps predicting rain but there is never rain. Darling is on my mind now. Her sapphire eyes.

  St. Miguel’s last request is to be allowed to pray as doves swoop down and touch his lips. The firing squad shoots him twelve times but he won’t die. They put a bullet in his head and as it passes through he thinks of a little girl he saw eating ice cream on a winter day and how stupid and courageous she was.

  I’m up in a tree with my opera glasses, scratching my balls, waiting. Down below the middle schoolers reveal themselves. I watch them stalk their victims. Like in nature, they prey on the weak. A kid in a neck brace with a lisp is in their crosshairs. They shoot M-80s at him till he falls and they steal his Subway sandwich. One of the bullies has a popped collar and a silver watch and the hair of Matt Damon. Then I see Dick Dickerson. What is he doing? He talks to the boys and points around. A yellow Hummer rounds the corner playing Aerosmith. He gets in.

  Eli, I watch you and Nono through the window of her organic market. You seem happy, content. You are my friend and she is your lover. What’s my problem with other people’s happiness? I see you dancing, I see you eating pink beet soup. Why can’t I have this ease, Eli? I stalk Tuesday and Finger, too. They are playing Xbox and smoking bongs. Jumping on the bed with joy. Darling catches me in the tree looking in their house.

  What’s up, doc, she says.

  I fall out of the tree.

  Darling, what are you doing here?

  I’ve been stalking you.

  Stalking me? Why?

  I might be in love with you, she says.

  Good to hear, I say.

  The days pass without much terror. I’m content with my ship and its amenities, microwave, cable TV. Darling makes me breakfast and I smoke my pipe. It’s good to be out of bed and in the air again watching the birds eat the fish and the hawks eat the birds. We go to town in the Saab and buy things from the market. Taking a woman to a market to buy fresh food is the right thing to do. In the parking lot on the way back to the car, I hear something over my shoulder.

  Maloney, the voice says. It’s Dick Dickerson. I have Eli.

  Have him?

  He’s in my basement. Tuesday, too.

  St. Toro is shot by soldiers, falling into his sister’s arms, saying, Long live Christ the King. He is deaf and the stars become his ears.

  Finger and Tuesday’s condo, new shag carpet and a Lamborghini in the garage. I knock on the door and when Finger opens it he punches me in the face.

  You took her, he says.

  It’s Dick Dickerson. He’s taken Eli, too.

  Why should I believe you?

  Why would I come here if I had taken her? To get my face pu
nched?

  I’ve got my plans spread out on the table in the breakfast nook. Darling is on the deck nude, trying to rid her bikini line. She is a kind, petite brunette. Her eyes are the color of Starry Night, her long brown legs won’t quit. She’s had no college education but won’t stop reading everything she can. This summer she took down the big Russian novels and the French poets. Finnegans Wake in two weeks.

  I think I’ve almost figured all this out, she says. Joyce is overwrought. Faulkner is sappy. Nabokov, a confusing bore. Hem-ingway, a closet homo. Fitzgerald, don’t get me started.

  Darling, we’ve got to get to work if we’re going to save ev-eryone.

  OK, she says, let me finish this chapter.

  Eli, Dick Dickerson has you but don’t worry. The stars and moon are lining up and the baffling roads are leading somewhere. Yes, Eli. Do you feel a bit of the sword that pierced His side in you? Some of Adam’s rib? Some of Eve’s naughty mouth? The thud on Goliath’s head? Do you hear the confusing music of God’s love played from David’s lute?

  I go to Al and Hal. They are playing some infernal video game about conquering lands and defeating kings.

  What the hell is this, I say.

  You have to try it, Hal says.

  Dick Dickerson has Tuesday and Eli.

  They lower their hoods.

  Let’s get to work, I say.

  Darling is a French Jew filtered through generations of redneck and Aztec. You can still see that darkness in her skin. Love is poached eggs and the Sunday newspaper and slow, hard sex.

  Maloney, what if we do nothing, Darling says.

  What do you mean?

  What if we didn’t go after them? Isn’t that what he wants us to do?

  I don’t follow you.

  We could be together on the boat and leave Eli to escape.

  I look out over the water. Darling is dark and good.