The Off Season

by The Off Season (epub)

  Beside the boat basin, and not far from The Parsonage, Chinese seem equally determined. The Chinese only want to go home. Since that is impossible, the Chinese want revenge. Elders advise caution. Young hotheads advise storming The Parsonage and taking the Victorians hostage. The huge dragon is red and yellow and orange and emerald and black. It gazes, enameled and gorgeous, across the road, and across the saltwater swamp.

  Goody Friendship and the real estate lady cruise past in a ’47 Buick, heading for doughnuts at The Fisherman’s Café. Goody fondles the real estate lady’s knee as he makes notes for a sermon on the Yellow Peril.

  And, along the road, the first segments of the parade arrive. A drum-and-bugle corps from Seattle blinks in the light rain. Members wear spiffy uniforms of purple and gold. Misting rain chews at covers on drum heads. Nearby, another band of sleepy-eyed high schoolers, their instruments dangling, stumble with hangovers to their appointed meeting place. Their uniforms are black with stripes of crimson. They pass the Marine band, the Army band, the Navy band and are vaguely impressed. A dark gray bulk stands at the top of the hill—waves its trunk—for someone has brought an elephant. The elephant’s gray hide matches the gray mist, but it wears robes of red and yellow. Rumors circulate about an air show; and, in fact, above the horizon a snow-white blimp heads toward town. Its flashing signs advertise indulgences, slivers of wood from the True Cross, and holy water.

  The Sailor and the morose cop hold conference on the sidewalk before Janie’s Tavern. They do not flicker much, but they yawn and stretch after a long night.

  “Something smells jolly well filthy about this day.” The Sailor pulls at his black beard, watches Goody and the real estate lady enter The Fisherman’s Café.

  “Gunpowder.’’ The morose cop sniffs air sharp with cordite and the acrid scent of black powder. “There’ll be so many throbbing heads, things may proceed slowly.” The morose cop spits accurately at a discarded beer can. The beer can tinkles as it rolls in the gutter, like the tentative voice of a child who suspects it is lost. Along the street horses and hearses plod toward the top of the hill. Wheels rumble like tumbrels as horses hoof it with methodical pace. Steam rises in chill rain, while in the street and on rooftops TV crewmen set up cameras. The news anchor directs her cameraman to shoot at this—at that—at the other; and fine footage is taken of the broad beams of horses.

  “Some days are born ugly.” The Sailor turns to look through the windows of Janie’s Tavern. “Maggie is up and stirring. Seems in a bit of a snit. Frank looks dutiful.” The Sailor looks toward the hill where the pharmaceutical company stands in crumbles. The Sailor chuckles with satisfaction, while the morose cop shows a thin smile. “Crowds already gather there. I suppose Gerald is stationed up that way.” The Sailor watches the blimp hover above the boat basin, where crowds of sleepy tourists stand in admiration of the Chinese and their dragon. A Chinese gong sounds, then sounds again.

  “Maggie is not just having a snit,” the morose cop mutters. “Maggie is so mad she isn’t even flickering.” The morose cop steps away from the tavern because the entire front seems about to collapse.

  On top of the hill the parade assembles. There is a chowder­-and-marching society in green derbies, a pet contingent—children with dogs and gerbils—a number of Army tanks. Clowns bounce and flounce and mingle around floats. The floats—some fifty of them—carry pretty girls in long gowns, and the floats celebrate Miss Water Softener, The Irrigation Queen, and queens of truck stops, underground transit and bus barns. Motorcycle gangs cruise back and forth, their bikes popping among Disney characters; and majorettes already twirl silver batons before groups of country singers. Banjos plink as black balloons dance above the crowd. Everywhere flowers wilt in the cold as colleagues of Goody Friendship pass collection plates and pray for the heathen. The Martha Washington Brigade mounts its float. The tires on the float flatten. The Mothers Against Transgression and Sensuality do the same. The Loyal Order of Beagles dons doggie hats. A few stragglers from the Grand Army of the Republic adjust forage caps. The mayor and city council wave from a pink ’29 Duesenberg.

  “The stage is set most rapidly,” The Sailor says as he peers toward the hill. “Yet I feel movement behind me.” The Sailor peers in the other direction. All is silent there. “Something is happening, mate.” The Sailor peers upward at the bluff. Mice move up there, but behind the mice is other shadowy movement.

  “Probably only tourists,” the morose cop assures him. “Trying to find a grandstand seat.”

  And it may well be tourists, for tourists flow from everywhere. They step yawning and rubbing their crotches from hotel rooms and camper vans, or creakity from the backseats of cars. Tourists rise blinking from opium dens, cathouses; even basements where they have sought shelter. Sidewalks overflow. The Fisherman’s Café serves coffee, passes out doughnuts with black and silver sprinkles. The Fisherman’s Café cannot accommodate everyone. People crowd around Janie’s Tavern where Frank, accepting the inevitable, serves pick-me-ups and potato chips. The tourists chat and check their zippers.

  “There’s that preacher.” The morose cop points toward the small but approaching figure of Joel-Andrew, sandals aflap, making his way through the crowds. “I see Obed is with him.”

  The Sailor watches the pair approach. “The cat can be trusted,” The Sailor mutters. “The preacher, though, is sometimes flighty.” The Sailor seems lost in reminiscence. “I recall the day that preacher and I first met. We had a nice talk.”

  “He seems different, somehow.” The morose cop is not optimistic, but is interested. He looks toward the hill and pharmaceutical company. “The hostlers load the coffin on the hearse. Goody Friendship and the real estate lady depart for the boat basin. I reckon they are picking up the new messiah. The parade will soon start.”

  Chapter 32

  Little scatters of darkness spatted through the sky like latitudinal rain. Clusters of the stuff framed shapes of faces and shapes of things. The TV news anchor’s nose smudged with darkness. She gave an in-depth analysis of safe sex practices that depended on dildos fashioned after the faces of world leaders. Darkness made little frames around Goody Friendship, around the real estate lady, and it made an ornate Victorian frame around the figure of the new messiah as he stepped from the gorgeous tour ship.

  The messiah threw back his hood and tourists gasped with awe. No one—no, not a single tourist anywhere—or anyone else, anywhere—had dreamed the messiah would be Beauregard Shooter, world-famous basketball star. The elephant trumpeted, heralded, and stomped its great feet. The messiah dribbled, then clasped his hands above his head like a winning fighter.

  Many people were impressed, but, in memory, no one really knew anything was skewed. Then things happened quickly. A screaming Chinese mob, with skirmishers in baggy pantaloons, and companies of club-wielding foot soldiers, mounted an attack on The Parsonage. The Chinese carried smudge pots and buckets of boiling tar. Things were getting tacky.

  The Parsonage did not try to stand its ground. Instead, it took the all-seeing tower and Victorians for a ride. When we (and everyone else in Land’s End) looked to the morning sky in admiration of the approaching blimp, what we saw was the airborne form of The Parsonage cruising away from the frustrated cries of the Chinese.

  In the past, when The Parsonage moved, it did so quickly and silently. There would be a little burst in the atmosphere. Leaves trembled on trees. The Parsonage would shrug its way onto one lot or another, shove one or another Victorian house aside. The Parsonage had never before shown a propensity for aerobatics.

  The Parsonage—which still proudly wore its red-lettered “Strike Headquarters” sign—hung in the sky and slowly circled the blimp, while beneath both blimp and Parsonage Navy frigates cruised in tight circles of hard-helmed confusion. The huge lot of The Parsonage, sporting maple and cherries and apples and pears, was a small patch of winter landscape above the Strait. The trees were leafless, but chimneys in The Parsonage sent streams of wood smok
e across the sky. When The Parsonage moved, the wood smoke looked like exhaust from mighty engines. What with the deranged clanking and pealing of bells from the octagonal tower, The Parsonage gave every evidence of being the first engine in a celestial train. Starched Victorians leaned from windows of The Parsonage. A few of the ladies screamed, but the screams were only for show.

  The Victorians, now riding in The Parsonage, had planned the capture of August Starling at the opening of the coffin. Agatha was to arise and dance with Starling. When she had him close to the coffin, Victorian gentlemen would shove him in and lock the lid. The Victorians’ grand plan now lay in tatters; but, knowing The Parsonage as they did, they suspected they were not yet out of action. Meanwhile, in the basement of The Parsonage, Kune still attended Collette.

  Darkness followed the tail of the parade. One felt (and so it would develop) that when entering that darkness to the depth of two inches, one would be blind as if cast inside a slab of black marble. The darkness was like a tombstone rising into the firmament. Joel-Andrew, who stood alone except for Obed—and also, no doubt—Samuel and the ministerial association, who at the time were in concealment—recognized the true nature of the darkness. It was medieval, the stuff of witchcraft, of Inquisitions, of bigotry and intolerance. It was positive as the ebony face of history, the blackly laughing face of dogma and theocracy, the nighttime shine of satanic worship. A coven of witches might hope to create a small patch of such darkness, but no witch or warlock who ever walked could pull forth such saturating night.

  The parade, however, remained joyous. Before the enormous ebony coffin, the stately carriage of the grand marshal, August Starling, moved with the certainty of a capital ship. For the occasion, August Starling dressed in a mourning suit of deepest black. His boyish face displayed woe, but boyish charm also crossed his face in flickers of friendliness and compassion. August Starling looked like the confused dreams of gently but firmly raped children. He looked like the hoary reminiscences of aging burlesque queens.

  In the carriage with August Starling sat Beauregard Shooter, the new messiah, and the lady who sold stocks and bonds. The messiah waved. He scattered coupons and indulgences. The lady who sold stocks and bonds wept copiously. She wore an elegant black gown with a plunging neckline that tickled her navel. The lady mourned the passing of the dear departed, showed cleavage, was so sincere the roadway got slicky-slick with frozen tears as horses, people, the elephant and the Grand Army of the Republic joined in.

  Meanwhile, The Parsonage jived with the Navy. The Parsonage clanked its bells and flew in precise angles so that naval action would take out the blimp, or part of the parade. The missile frigates tracked The Parsonage with pom-poms, so busy aiming at The Parsonage that it did not notice a flotilla of tiny specks distantly approaching down the Strait. Waters of the Strait boiled, as if expressing school after school of five-ton sardines. The frigates founded themselves surrounded by at least half of the world’s remaining whales.

  The parade thumped along. As it passed the boat basin, the Chinese dragon rolled into the parade route where it snorted smoke to the bonging of gongs. Gongs sounded broad and stately in the midst of farewell music by a choir of porn queens. The dragon looked alarmingly lifelike, but surely the smoke came from smoke pots concealed beneath its framework. At the head of the parade, August Starling waved. A black and silver shadow passed over the parade, blimpish; a houselike shadow followed. Drums rolled, while clarinets squealed like impassioned piglets. The Parsonage cruised low and slow above the parade, its chimneys streaming smoke. The Chinese dragon snorted smoke in return. Nearly naked Chinese turned taunting faces upward, and roared Chinese curses. Victorians leaned from windows of The Parsonage. They stuck out their tongues and went, “N’yah n’yah.’’ Giddy and un-Victorian Bronx cheers trailed away as The Parsonage headed for the Strait and a showdown with the Navy.

  “I must know where everyone is placed,” Joel-Andrew confided to Obed as they watched the approaching parade. “We must protect those who cannot protect themselves.” Joel-Andrew and Obed stood before August Starling’s restored commercial building. The street seemed deserted, except high on ledges where cats wove dancing ribbons of gray and white. A rumpus progressed behind the doors of The Fisherman’s Café. From the boat basin came a desperate whistle as the tour ship signaled distress. Fleeing sailors and officers tumbled down the gangway, as the tour ship was abandoned to an attack force of cats.

  “Cats have captured the tour ship and The Fisherman’s Café,” Joel-Andrew told Obed. “I hope it is not a foolish move.”

  Obed smiled. He did not tell Joel-Andrew of the cats’ primitive plans and methods. He said nothing of tails wrapped in garlic, of claws tipped with silver.

  Obed turned to check the street. Maggie stood unflickering behind the window of Janie’s Tavern, while Frank polished the bar. Maggie’s eyes glowed dark as the eyes of storm. It seemed that Bev, together with the Suffragettes, the IWW and the World War I vet, hid in the bookstore. Jerome snubbed several TV cameramen as he made methodical notes from a third-floor vantage point.

  “O Lord,” Joel-Andrew prayed, “not one of us is innocent of very much, especially Your humble servant. But Lord, may we be given light to battle darkness?” Joel-Andrew, now carried by the decisions of fury, stood ready to wield the power of the Lord.

  Obed advised that Gerald engaged with the Chinese, while The Sailor and the Irish cop kept eyes on the dragon and the elephant. The morose cop monitored August Starling. Townspeople showed off new wardrobes, while tourists formed a great wave following the coffin. In addition, Obed pointed out with interest, a number of time jumps were appearing. At least, Obed pointed out, he hoped they were time jumps. In addition, Obed further pointed out as he hit the deck, there was a concerted beating of wings.

  More than a hundred squadrons of ducks swept overhead. The ducks quacked wonderfully as they headed toward the conflict developing on the Strait. The ducks showed off. That was especially true of the mergansers, who flew on their backs.

  Subtleties of light began to ascend. “O Lord,” Joel-Andrew prayed, “there is only one enemy. I beg You do not smite the multitude.” On the Strait, The Parsonage flashed only a foot or two above the waves. The Parsonage moved at enormous speed, accompanied by ducks. Shakes blew from its roof, cracks appeared in windowpanes. The Parsonage took some wounds.

  Light grew slowly; a theater of light, a concatenation. A helix of rainbows stood overhead as ball lightning and chain lightning dwelt above distant islands. Silver and blue light danced along edges of the helix. Three suns stood in the sky, while against August Starling’s backdrop of darkness beat the brilliant wings of angels.

  Angels cannot be viewed directly, for the human mind and eye become stunned. The wings spanned distances far greater than the wings of any aircraft; and although the TV news anchor reported them as northern lights, the report was in error. The crowd knew northern lights when it saw them, and these were not they.

  When cherubs occupied the ledges of downtown buildings, even cats ceased their dance. On the Strait, ducks strafed the Navy, the frigates turning gleaming white beneath great burdens of guano. The Parsonage cruised inches above the masts of fleeing ships, as Victorians pelted the Navy with sachet-scented hankies. The Victorians expended ammunition wantonly. Paintings of Presbyterian preachers crashed on flying bridges. Victorian loveseats exploded against cannons. As the ships fled, they passed the growing fleet of specks progressing down the Strait. Whales banged against the fleeing frigates, the ships bouncing like plastic toys in a bathtub.

  “I would tell people to repent,” Joel-Andrew explained to the Lord. “The problem is they pay no attention. That means I’ll have to use graphics, because they are unsure of what should be repented. It’s that sort of time in history, Lord.”

  Voices of tourists and townspeople chattered. “I knew August Starling was just super-duper,” a member of the Martha Washington Brigade confided coquettishly to a member of the Loyal Or
der of Beagles, “but I never dreamed he was this good.”

  Light rose beneath the beating of mighty and angelic wings as August Starling’s parade bumped forward. The hearts of tourists gladdened. This was a display of American might, and God was on the side of the Just. God was a winning quarterback, a colonel of infantry.

  The sky opened in the form of a rose window. Beams of stained glass-flavored sunlight, red, gold, orange, purple, blue poured onto the street. Cherubs sang in reedy voices. Broad sounds of Chinese gongs seemed no more than tiny punctuations to the controlled pianissimo of a heavenly choir.

  At Joel-Andrew’s back, time jumps intensified, and while the time jumps were colorfully macabre, they were not unbeautiful before the music of the choir. The crowd watched, and it seemed there was very little to repent. Asian women wept above emaciated babies, while children lay with blackened hands and faces beneath the scorching scent of napalm. Street kids rapped, gave each other high fives, or lay stoned and dying in doorways. Disemboweled grandmothers, dressed in gaudy South American costumes, lay beside starved bodies of Africans, while oil rigs hovered in the far distance; and a babble of Middle Eastern languages argued above purring engines of Mercedes and Lincolns, above the exasperating cough of lungs burned by mustard gas.

  “These, too, are my beloved,” Joel-Andrew confided to Obed. “There has been a lot of dancing going on.”

  Presidents strode proudly, and a garrulousness of flags snapped above the distant oil rigs. Statesmen swapped naked concubines. Chain saws roared, great trees fell, and bulldozers moved across the sky; the bulldozers ridden by white men and yellow men and black men—the men in business suits—as machinery of every kind—and cleverly designed to fail—fell apart like unfulfilled scrap metal. Banners, denoting efficiency, flew above ghettos. Credit cards rained from tiny puffs of storm clouds, whispering in plastic voices; and the TV news anchor yammered. “At no time in history,” the news anchor proudly proclaimed, “has this network reported such evidence of systems endorsement. We will attempt to interview a cherub after this important commercial break.”