The Freewayfayers' Book of the Dead

by John Okas

  When the party’s over, Sarah lies next to the smiling Swan and passes the noon hour in a quiet that is anything but peaceful.

  Harry’s Bedtime Smile

  Harry’s bedtime smile hardens on his face. He doesn’t wake up laughing. When Laudette comes looking for him to tell him one of his playboy buddies is there for their usual Sunday afternoon date for kick off at Behemoth Stadium, Sarah shakes him and shakes him, pushes him and slaps him. He does not wake up.

  The big Homer-built bed has yet another corpse lying in it. Harry’s heart has stopped, his brain is consumed by blood, and his soul is being sledded over the frozen inner springs by death’s dog pack to the sweet bye and bye, the playboy pad in the sky.

  The Black Widow

  While Laudette makes calls to track down the doctor, Sarah lies next to Harry. She has never been so close to death. It is eerie, but the satisfied smile on Harry’s face puts her at ease. He seems just asleep. She takes Crane Haddock-Watt’s translation of The Poongi Book of the Dead from the drawer in the night stand, leans her head forward nervously, puts her lips close to his ear, and starts to read. She wishes him all the brilliance of a trillion stars, a death that is a conquest over death. She tells him not to be afraid, but to go to the Light and stay there. Of course then there is the split pea’s contrariness: Poongi Book of the Dead be damned. Shmootist Sarah is only going through the motions of guiding her husband into the Light, faking it. Now that Harry is gone for good she misses him badly and wants him back. Also, she is a bit peeved at him for leaving her, and even a little jealous of him for finding satisfaction elsewhere, in eternity.

  Sarah knows that Harry loved her because of, rather than despite, her displays of false face and decadence. She goes to her vanity, combs her hair and puts on her makeup. Then she goes through her closet and emerges with an outfit that always made him stand up and take notice. Back in the bedroom she sweeps the floor in a long, black, quilted cape with a sable hem, underneath it a one-piece black silk jumpsuit. The black lace gloves add a diabolical touch: through the net, her nails glisten red as if they had been dipped in blood. Her face is partially hidden by a long black lace veil falling from a black satin fez. The items are elegant and formal: gifts from Harry, costumes for their intimate opera.

  She returns to his corpse, and softly kisses his cheek goodbye. Then, belying the text, she says with a seductive, breathless, milk-and-honey fluidity, “This world is a wonderland. Come back, lover, come back … be reborn ceaselessly.”

  To the physician who certifies it, the death of Harry Swan is not suspicious. He finds only natural causes, a massive rupture of blood vessels in the brain. But Laudette, superstitious and intuitive, is full of questions about the healthy man’s sudden expiration. She knows it is the couple’s custom to sleep apart, that Sarah never lets him get forty winks before she throws him out. What kind of coincidence is it, she wonders, that after the one slumber party Sugar has with Sir Harry he happens to wake up dead? Miss Lord knows the refined white lady can be sweet and deadly; she might just be guilty of loving her husband to death.

  Laudette wants to talk to Sarah, but for now she can only watch and weep, grief-stricken, as smiling Harry, a corpse wrapped in a sheet, is carried out.

  Up to now, Gloria, kept out in Penny’s Anteroom, has been composed, but when she sees the body being wheeled on a stretcher from her mother’s bedroom, she keens with sorrow, pulls back the sheet, and showers the cold face with tears and kisses, “Oh no, oh no, Daddy, Daddy, are you really really gone? How am I going to go on living, missing you the way I do?” And then, as if she had The Poongi Book bred in her bones, she cradles his head and whispers in his ear, “Goodbye, Daddy, sleep well, be safe.”

  Shortly the Black widow appears from the bedroom, combed and plucked to perfection, made up, dressed in her extravagant mourning clothes. Her veil hides the expression in her eyes but not her cool smooth beauty. Mourning becomes the peach. Acting every bit the rich and careless shady lady, she nonchalantly takes out a cigarette, inserts it into her silver holder, and puts it to her ruby lips. Both the doctor and the ambulance driver snap their lighters.

  Laudette shakes her head and grumbles to herself. Decency would expect Sugar to be wearing some basic black dress and sad face, with no makeup; and since she has no reason to hide her tears, she ought to be crying openly, mixing in some of the tears for Corn Dog she’s had to squelch. And what is this outfit she’s in? She’s dolled up in her Saturday night party girl best, while her poor husband is being fitted for a coffin. What the hell kind of tribute to Sir Harry is this, getting dressed to kill and wandering around here as if she were some movie goddess? She should look like a grief-stricken widow. Who’s she got to look good for, the undertaker?

  Sarah, Laudette, and Gloria come downstairs with the body and watch while it is loaded into the ambulance and dispatched to an uptown funeral home. When Harry is gone, it is the toughest moment in Gloria’s life. She looks to her mother to share the grief she feels. For a moment, Sarah’s jaded expression becomes softened with a tear. Then, breathing a sigh of resignation, she says to Gloria, “Oh, Baby … Mummy won’t be using the piano this afternoon. It will be free should you wish to do a little extra practicing.” Sarah turns on her heels and sweeps up the stairs to her rooms. Gloria wonders why her mother can share her thoughts and feelings with fifty-one strangers and yet not with her. She has to remind herself: Mummy is a fruit.

  The tall tan girl wanders aimlessly into the library, sits on the long leather couch there, puts her face to her long hands and begins to weep uncontrollably. She is grateful for the comfort of the warm arms of Miss Lord, who sits down next to her. The two cry together over their common grief. Now, Gloria experiences the utter finality of death. How can it be that she will never see her dear Daddy-o again? It seems impossible but it is true. Horrors! Yet the horror of it trips a self-protective mechanism. Everyone is born to die, she thinks. Only from the viewpoint of this life is life better than the alternative. When you go through that door, whether you cease to be or not, you are out of time. Imagining the world as it eventually will be, without her in it, Gloria is finally able to settle down. She sinks into an afternoon nap, right there on the couch in the library.

  The sitter lays three blankets on her Baby and retires upstairs to her bedroom to pray along with the radio ministry. But her prayers don’t bring her peace. After an hour she is boiling over with suspicions and blubbering bloody murder to herself. Indeed, it does not take a third eye to see that Sarah has a motive for killing her husband: substantial amounts of money, and power, should she so desire, pass into her hands upon his death. She has no alibi, quite the opposite, she was conspicuous in her presence with the deceased when he passed away. But the means is where the case gets sticky. The law will not acknowledge hocus-pocus as a murder weapon, as the Almighty certainly does.

  What do I believe? Guilty or not? The choice would be easier if Sugar would say some words in her own defense.

  Laudette finds the Black widow, sitting by the fire in the big easy chair in her bedroom, still smartly dressed, smoking cigarettes and staring off into space.

  “How are you doing, Sugar? I’m so sorry about poor Sir Harry. Anything I can do to help you now in your time of trial?”

  “Actually, I’m feeling a lot sorrier for myself, Miss Lord. Harry is gone free and clear from this life and I am still here in the darkness among the living.”

  “Oh? Sugar, there’s something in my head I don’t like.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I believe in the power of prayer. And if it’s a strong enough power to help, it must be strong enough to hurt, too—that is if you’re praying to the wrong god. I can’t help but thinking that you had something to do with Sir Harry’s passing. With your connections to the dogs and that Hairy Tuna, you didn’t wish for something you shouldn’t have, did you? Sugaree, look at me, tell me straight, were you messing with that devil again without the medium?”

 
“Miss Lord, why are you always bringing the devil into this? Evil to those who think it, you know that. There’s nothing I could do to Harry that wasn’t his fate, something his higher consciousness must agree to. I assure you, I didn’t kill him, and neither did Lord Z.” Sarah sighs. “But yes, I was calling dear Z and, yes, he did run into some kind of trouble on the air. Something happened but I don’t know what. I got a message from Double F Fife.”

  “Double who?”

  “Father Freeman Fetter Fife. He’s one of our commanders in the war effort. I know I told you about him. He’s been coming through Keinar at meetings for over two years now. But I never heard him on my own, until last night. I heard him like a little voice inside me. He told me that a body might be sacrificed to pay for a body. And Mother Goose was there and she agreed too.”

  “Little voices? Father Fife? Mother Goose?” Laudette groans. “Sugar, don’t tell me!”

  “Now let me explain, Miss Lord. You see, Harry was Lord Z’s stand-in in bed. Do you understand? Lord Z couldn’t come so I took Harry. I didn’t deceive my husband for a moment. He knew the situation, that for me sex was a form of meditation and union with the Horny God. Of course, he liked to deny the existence of the metaphysical plane. His silly male prejudice blinded him to the Light. But he did feel the power, indirectly. He understood the divine in me. I was trying to put my life on the line for my Lord but Harry volunteered his instead. What a gentleman! He dissolved into the ecstacy of soul-union, thence to eternity. As he stood for Z in love all these years he now rests in peace for Z in death. But he is not dead. Right now Harry’s in the Between, with Lord Z’s blessing in the fast lane—the speed of light is many times more serene than standing still—heading for an Incarnation of rewards his selfless act has earned him.”

  “Sugar, are you saying that you suggested to Sir Harry he pass on while you were engaging in the marriage right?”

  “No, death suggested itself to Harry. I was just there to deliver him to a happier state than merely a big sleep. He sacrificed himself so that a higher power than he could endure, and thus he became that higher power himself. Harry has saved the day. His death has great significance on the fruited plane. It was an act of bravery in war: he died for love, you see.”

  Laudette is not sure what power Sarah and her metaphysical allies have for combatting Nastiism, but, sure as the taste of a strawberry jelly donut, she knows men and women can affect one another in subtle ways. She guesses that the battle which took Harry was nothing else but the one between the sexes. Chalk up a victory for the worst in women.

  “But just say straight, did you use the Craft to witch him away? Say you didn’t do murder, Sugaree!”

  “A hint is not murder! Mother Goose egged me on, and Double F said there was no blame in letting Harry go. He has a license to kill from His Majesty, you know, and he passed it along to me.”

  “No blame for you? These little voices license you to kill? His Majesty? Sugar, am I hearing right? Sir Harry died so that filthy Monkey business you love so much could live?”

  “Oh, Miss Lord, there’s far more at stake than Lord Z. With him badly wounded, it’s going to be tough defending the higher ground against Rudolph’s evil masterminds, and at the same time get the upper hand on the Early Birds. You see, there is more trouble. Yes. And I think, in fact, this is not going to be the last body exchange. Right now, in the Deep Blue Sea—”

  Laudette is in no mood for a war bulletin. “Oh, hold on, bless my soul, Sugar, you’re worse than ever. Didn’t Keinar tell you to lay off that monkey stuff without the right qualified fruity plane personnel present? And what’s this about another exchange? I hope to heaven you don’t mean my body is next, because—”

  “Actually I was talking about my own.” Sarah extinguishes her cigarette, folds her hands in her lap and models a state of yogic concentration, trying to get a grip on herself before she speaks again. “Look, Miss Lord, I know I’m no saint. I’ve put on false faces, polished myself in a vain attempt to hide my ugliness. But I am trying to make amends for what bad I’ve done by doing something good. Lord Z has a plan to effect world peace, but it’s not all sunshine and clover. Our side has taken a casualty, Harry. But he’s a hero. He saved me and saved our Lord. And, even as we speak, I can see there is a human disaster of far worse size. Double F is bringing me pictures of trouble in the Deep Blue Sea, Kimrakazis are striking the Freeway Naval Base at Coral Bay.”

  “Your little voices tell you that?” Laudette asks furiously.

  “Oh, my intelligence sources are excellent,” Sarah says with complete assurance. “But not to worry. According to Mother Goose, the day the Freeway goes to war is the day the war is over for the rest of the world.”

  Laudette is horrified. What can she say about this moral decay in a masquerade of sanctity? She starts shaking Sarah. “Sugar, I don’t like these little voices of yours. What the Lord gives, only the Lord has the right to take away.”

  “Well you better tell that to the dogs of war, Miss Lord, because they were the ones who took my Harry up to Bhooti- Santa Heaven. I don’t feel any better about it than you do, but it happened, it had to be. It was Harry’s time. He’s better off now. Didn’t you see the smile on his face? He knew nothing and died happy. He was lucky. Now please, let’s pray together, each in our own way, for the safe transmission of our own souls after his, into the Eternal Light.”

  But Laudette will do nothing of the kind. One woman’s beatific vision is another one’s eternal bonfire. “I should have known better than to get mixed up with you. Sugar, you’re a sinner and a jinx, and I’m no better for aiding and abetting you. I curse the day I saw that Bleek Street Bugle ad for Madam Keinar. I should’ve let you fry! I pray the Almighty forgives me, if from now on I promise to mend my ways. Why, I’d quit this job today if Baby didn’t need me so much.”

  Laudette flees Sarah’s bedroom, crying and praying to Emanual X for his rays of forgiveness and strength. Heading for the kitchen, she hears Gloria playing the piano in the back parlor, playing as she never has before, with all her heart and soul. Laudette listens to her go through the slow movement of the Kreuszer concerto, not playing it by any means exactly, but turning her uncertainty into part of the music. She improvises long pedal tones and heavenly deep chords like those of the Requiem, and in imitation of her Uncle Early—and perhaps because she has the shade of the blues in her soul—she flattens a few middle notes on the wobbly triplets, using them as a basis for a blues inspired by the pain and beauty of her love for her stepfather. It brings a whole new flood of tears to Laudette’s eyes.

  All right, she thinks, you’ve got to suffer, if you want to sing the blues.

  Then Gloria turns a corner and goes into the Thirteenth Street Jam, an old ragtime fender bender she learned from her mother, a tune she knew her dear Daddy-o liked to dance to.

  Laudette remembers that the Reverend Jambalaya Jackson, who was born and raised in Louisport, brought the custom of jazz bands at funeral parades to Kingsborough. Whenever one of his Dunkards passed away, they’d all march down Sharpwood Avenue. The music would start as a dirge and end upbeat spreading a joyous noise through the whole neighborhood, telling the truth for the departed as well as those left behind: death is the beginning of new life.

  Oh, Baby! Oh, Sir Harry! Oh, me! Oh, my Almighty God!

  Laudette’s big soft heart melts, but her mind stays steeled with righteousness. Born again in the rays of Emanual X, Laudette’s first act as a saved woman is to take a firm and clear stand against evil, and expose sin wherever she finds it.

  Maybe I swore never to tell about Mister Corn Dog, but no one ever made me make a promise about Sir Harry.

  She enters the back parlor, sits with Gloria on the piano bench. Her presence is enough to provoke Gloria into another round of tears. “Baby, I’m glad I found somebody in this house to cry with. Old Laudette knows how much you loved your Daddy-o.”

  “I can’t believe I’ll never see him again!” Gloria moa
ns with a gut-wrenching sob. “Things will never be the same.”

  “Baby, I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but there’s even more to cry about than you think. Your mother’s gone off the deep end. She just about came right out and told me she was glad old Sir Harry is dead and she admitted she had a death wish for him on her mind when it happened.”

  Gloria is very sad, but she accepts the inevitability of the loss of life. Crafty herself, she does not believe for a moment that witchery can kill. The only spells, curses, and blessings that work are the ones we put on ourselves. “Lawdy, whoever is born has to die sooner or later. Maybe Mummy did wish it, but that’s no reason for it to happen unless the time was right. I mean it’s not as if she took a knife and killed him. And he did seem so happy and peaceful, didn’t he? He must have wanted it. So stop bothering yourself with this nonsense about murder and let’s cry in peace.”

  “These darn Black women!” says Laudette, “Day in, day out, they have next to nothing to do with one another. Then comes a family crisis and they stick together like pork and beans. One kills and the other swears by it!”

  Rejected, dejected, once again Laudette goes to her room to keep her own memorial vigil for Sir Harry. Again she turns on the radio ministry to pray, but the evening service is not there. The Commander-in-Chief of the Land of the Free, President Holland Fielding, is speaking. He has terrible news for the nation.

  “My fellow Freewayfarers, on this infamous day East made a surprise attack on West. Early Bird Kimrakazis from the Land of the Rising Sun bombed us when we least expected it.”