Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption

by Kris Saknussemm

  Copyright © Kris Saknussemm 2014

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or part in any form. For information, address Sanford J. Greenburger Associates at 55 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10003.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Print ISBN: 978-0-7867-5595-0

  ebook ISBN: 978-0-7867-5596-7

  Distributed by Argo Navis Author Services

  Reverend America

  Kris Saknussemm

  For Breece D’J Pancake and John Kennedy Toole

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Colophon

  1 Now We Are Engaged

  2 Rocky is the Road

  3 The Lonely Room

  4 Favorite Shows

  5 All the Way Down

  6 Normal

  7 Sins and Wonders

  8 What are We Going to Do

  9 From Bend in the Road to End of the Road

  10 Little Red

  11 The Real Hoodoo

  12 Don’t Hang Your Hat on the Wind

  13 In the Time of My Dying

  14 Austin City Limits

  15 Rinders Highway

  16 The Hallucinogenic Matador

  17 Hop in and Help the Handicapped

  18 In Heaven there are Frogs and Honest Strangers

  19 Goodnight Missus Pepper

  20 Murkers and Lurkers

  21 For Reasons That Escape Me

  22 If I Don’t Come Back

  23 Making Your Way To The Moment

  24 The Hour of Lead

  About Author

  Portions of this book first appeared in Playboy, Nerve.com, The Antioch Review, Retort Magazine, Ragazine, The Café Irreal and the Southern Humanities Review.

  And I saw Heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew but he himself.

  1

  Now We Are Engaged

  Seen from a distance—fence stringer gait, battered knapsack, faded jeans, Caterpillar cap, close-cropped hair. At close range—a scary white—certainly very white drifter. One who’s known the phlegm and dandruff of others—scabies cleanser—sour milk farts of men who haven’t changed underwear in a month—bucktooth women whose yeast infections give off a palpable scent. And worse. Here’s a man who’s done work you wouldn’t last a day doing. Ever picked grapefruit in 110-degree heat? Or punched the charge gun into a pig skull as they come down the concrete chute? Many people know there are towns in Kentucky called Soft Shell, Dwarf and Monkey’s Eyebrow. Some people have been there. A shadow escaped from a body. A Crossroads Man.

  It hadn’t been a good Friday. The bus had developed engine trouble. Indianapolis. Another palace of strangers. Another golden calf city.

  “I hate you,” the woman said.

  She appeared to be wearing a hat made from a cake box.

  “You don’t know me,” Casper replied. “But I like your hat.”

  “I hate you, I hate you. Have a nice day,” she smiled.

  Like Mrs. Toffler at the State Ward.

  He spotted the police at the far end of the station and slipped into the entryway. Fortunately, an interracial couple was arguing near the door and a drunk was panhandling aggressively, so no one took all that much notice of him. The areas around bus stations and train depots were good that way. Of course that’s the first place they come to look—if they are looking for you.

  Outside was a taxi rank and young black kids were hustling for them.

  “Yo, White Knight. Whass up?”

  “I gotchyou, Sunshine. You goin’ someplace, my man?”

  They’d given him the look. If you’re a 6’3” gaunt albino pushing sixty, you can pretty much count on it. Another reason why he kept his hair short and wore a cap. All those people over the years checking to see if he had pink eyes. Calling him Leper, Paleface, Ostrich, Easter Bunny—Casper. He could never be sure what blacks would say. Sometimes being so pale made him seem in his own category.

  He thought he needed to stay clear of the station for a while. There was always that night in Boise to think about—and who knew what was made of Joe’s trailer at the bottom of the gully if it had been found? There’d be another bus in a couple of hours. The black kids were all over him—not like the ravens come to nourish Elijah—like hungry, petulant crows. A kid who might’ve been sixteen snagged Casper’s daddy longlegs arm and led him to a well-traveled Oldsmobile. “This isn’t a cab,” Casper said, clutching his precious knapsack.

  “Gypsy cab, man. Half price. Where you wanna go?”

  Casper saw the cops come out. The only thing he knew about Indianapolis was the Speedway. The kid caught his glance at the uniforms and jumped in with him. The driver was also black, a couple of years older. The car lurched away. A sign for the Speedway. They went in the opposite direction. They all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man and his brother with a net. The vehicle slowed. He saw chained up storefronts and a green El Dorado without wheels. Long strips of silver gaffer tape held the jagged starfish of a shattered window in place. The car stopped. The kid pulled out a gun, the kind that might go off in your hand when you robbed your first liquor store. Casper stared into the barrel, then glanced down at the floor. Cigarette butts—a mud-stained girlie magazine. The magazine page that lay open said:

  JOHN WAYNE - AMERICAN

  In more than 150 films, he captured our essence. Our strength. Our values. Now, you can own a precisely detailed re-creation of the .45 automatic pistol he carried in all those great military films. It’s distinctive, satisfying and absolutely safe. Celebrate the legend. Order yours today.

  Casper smiled. The boy thought he was smiling at him and tried to break his nose with the gun. The driver was just thinking that he shouldn’t leave the shakedown in such young hands when a bullet occurred in his brain like an extremely clear idea.

  “We must sever the wicked from among the just,” Casper told the younger boy, as he held him still, one hand slowly crushing his trachea while the boy’s body began to squirm. Despite his corpselike appearance Casper had immense strength in his hands.

  He wiped them down on the John Wayne ad, noting the large artificial breasts of the woman on the opposite side. How pathetic that someone would try to rob him. He’d come out of a Greyhound Bus station for God sakes. That’s how desperate people were now. He’d just gotten lost in the past for a moment. He heard traffic—rap music. Then it was quiet. It was one of those neighborhoods where people were good at minding their own business. Made him think of an old stove in a room off Pioneer Square in Seattle.

  The drawer to the griller was slightly open and he saw layers of silver foil glued to the metal tray with what smelled like dried lamb fat. But there was something else he couldn’t quite see. Then it moved. He heard a scrunch of foil and the entire white G.E. stove erupted in cockroaches.

  He wondered if behind the windows and the chained up doorways now, there were people waiting to scurry out at him—and he trembled, remembering that building. The dank maroon carpet. The toilet that always had the inexplicable odor of beef bouillon. How long ago had that been? He’d seen and smelled so many places like that—in Buffalo, Joliet, Akron—the fleabag beside the strip club in Portland. That was where the knife fight had happen
ed.

  Once he’d been in a place where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. Some people laughed or cried all the time—and there were those who threw their feces. They shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm. An orderly named McHale would make you suck his nightstick if you didn’t want a beating—Mrs. Toffler always cursing and smiling—

  Then Berina Pinecoffin saved him. He was taken to a place where the air smelled like cedar and lemon. What Joe Meadow later told him about Rinders proved true.

  One day they let him out of his clean white room. He went to work in a stockyard with sheds full of dripping sheepskins, blood turning black in the air. Other jobs followed—burning for burning, beast for beast. The Philistine cities swirled around him like leaves. Detroit, Kansas City, Baltimore. But no good ever came to him in those places. They are the flesh and this city is the cauldron. So, he drifted out west to the redemption of work on the land, returning to Joplin to visit Berina Pinecoffin when he could.

  For a long time this life had worked. Until she died and the work ran dry. Then he started wandering once more, traveling on the money he’d saved—he was a good saver. Just not a savior.

  One afternoon in Lake Havasu City, after he left the couple with the reptile museum, he’d met Joe Meadow. Joe told him America was going to collapse soon, but he was prepared. “Organization and preparation is the key.” Which is why he was planning on bugging out to the Ozarks. Joe was always talking about “bugging out.” But for all his hoo-haw about Arkansas, he liked the desert and the high prairie. And Casper knew Joe liked having him around.

  “I’m six foot of fightin’ muscle,” Joe said. “I just shrunk.” He still had a full head of hair and huge, lined, work-heavy hands hurt in their youth by cash-for-bucket labor in breathless nut orchards and soggy asparagus rows. But they remained dead steady holding a rifle, and gentle, almost tender in squeezing the trigger. “You have to be easy, son,” he’d say. “It’s hard to learn how to be easy.”

  Of course Joe would also say, with relish, “You know, when the bottom falls out—and it damn sure will—it’s going to be a bumper to bumper shooting matching on the highways. Only those hunkered in the hills with plenty of ammo are going to see the dawn of a new day.”

  Joe’s face had a stern Saxon blankness—until he smiled. Then it was like the sun coming up over Zabriskie Point. He was a child of the red dirt and he had some grains under his fingernails yet, even after a lifetime in the golden west. Like the old cars he admired, there weren’t many people like him left, and they’d never come again. Casper forgave him his anger. Joe had paid for it in tears and back sweat long ago. Besides, anyone who’s kind to you—well, only the kicked dog truly knows comfort. Joe never made it to the Ozarks—he died early one morning just east of the Colorado River.

  Groping now at noonday down that wino street in Indianapolis with his road-worn pack over his shoulder, Casper found himself vomiting coffee, and what tasted like gall and wormwood into a trashcan.

  A car drove by. Faces shouted something through the window that he couldn’t hear. He was thinking about the Oldsmobile. About the police. The incident in Hartford was nothing. They could’ve been looking for anyone here. He’d just gotten skittery. Then he heard more voices. Outside his head. Hadn’t the angels spoken to even foolish Lot?

  Up 38th street, he saw a gang of tough looking young black men bottled up in a doorway. They spotted him and he wished for a moment he’d kept the Saturday Night Special. But there were too many. He knew that if he was going to get past them, a Rinder would have to intervene.

  A car skidded to a stop. A real taxi cab. The driver was a black man whose head was shaved. He sported a fantastic handlebar moustache. “You need a ride!” he said.

  “No,” Casper replied, wary at first. Help me, somebody. I call on the righteous to come forward.

  “Trust me, you do,” the black man said.

  Casper stopped walking and looked ahead at the gang. Everything connects. Then he looked at the bald black cab driver with the flamboyant moustache. The nest down the street came to life. He eeled out his long right arm for the car door and slung his valuables inside. The instant he was in, the driver smoothed the tips of his mo and screeched down a cross street as an empty bottle burst on the sidewalk behind them.

  “Cameron Blanchard is who you have to thank for saving yo’ ass,” the man announced. “Now I ask you, what sort of name is that for a man as dark as I am? I should have a name like Balthazar Washington, right? I am a black man.”

  The man behind the wheel was the blackest American Casper had ever seen—as absolutely black as he was white.

  “Cameron is Scotch Gaelic for ‘crooked nose.’ Have you ever seen a nose less Gaelic? Never mind. I can see you’ve been studying long in the University of Life. Nothing to be ashamed of. There’s always been more to learn in Har-lem than at Har-vard. You feel me? The School of Hard Knocks is where you find the best knockers—not to mention those big-butted women that still know how to cook. Traveling light’s just all right.”

  Casper did travel light. He kept a small bedroll in his knapsack and always washed and aired his clothes whenever he could. His teeth stayed clean and his Red Wing boots got a rub down wherever he was bunking down that night. He wasn’t averse to discarding and foraging clothes with the seasons. What he carried with him was what mattered. Stuff never fit him all that well anyway. He prized sturdy, comfortable shoes, underwear and socks that dried fast—the rest he picked up as he needed. Simple dark clothing and deodorant was the rule. Now that it was getting warmer, he’d be sloughing off his old pea coat soon. They drove on in silence, heading south. Casper noticed that although the cab was old and heavy, it smelled clean, as if it was well cared for. The driver with the amazing moustache cleared his throat.

  “Did you know that Thomas Jefferson, our first Secretary of State, advocated that all Americans learn Spanish—and that for many slaves that was their first language here?” he announced suddenly.

  “No,” Casper said. But now he’d never forget. Although he did know the Only Men were influenced by Spanish music. It didn’t occur to him to wonder why the cabbie had offered this information seemingly out of the blue. He knew from long experience that people are always talking to themselves, and a good bit of what passes for conversation is really just moments of this inner discussion overheard.

  Cameron nodded. “Near the end of his life, the old man of Monticello remarked ‘I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.’”

  “You know a lot about him, for a—”

  “For what, for a black man?”

  “I was going to say cab driver.”

  “Brother, cynicism is one thing, ignorance another. Black people always get so worked up when they talk about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, because they owned and fucked slaves. Jesus to George Washington Carver! One of the reasons they were leaders then is because they owned and fucked slaves.”

  “You approve of—slavery?” Casper gulped, although he was pleased that the man hadn’t made any albino comments. Maybe he had a thing about albinos. Casper had met women who did. One working girl in Spokane had been convinced albinos were very well hung. He remembered her disappointment.

  “Read my thick lips,” the man replied, without any hint of animosity. “Course I don’t approve of institutionalized dehumanization! Course I don’t approve of castrations and lynchings! I will not equivocate—I will not excuse. I’m just saying that for one man, like Thomas Jefferson, to attempt to undermine a social and economic institution—of any kind—may go as much against the principles of democracy as the evil institution in question.”

  “But Abraham Lincoln—” Casper began, although he wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about. The only thing he really knew about slavery was the Only Men.

  “Yass,” the black driver said twirling his moustache. “Not at all the simple hero white America would have us believe. His stance against slavery evolved
over several years. When he was in Congress he voted against abolitionist policies, believing that the new territories should be places where the Poor could better themselves. And there’s substantial evidence to suggest he was at times mentally unstable. The great Unionist and peacemaker, he was at the helm during the bloodiest gang war in American history. Let’s not forget that.”

  “So—you think he was wrong?”

  “How could it be wrong to stop the most systematic campaign of degradation ever perpetrated?”

  Casper was confused. He realized he hadn’t mentioned where he wanted to go. He didn’t know where he wanted to go, or if it was safe to go back to the bus station. That was silly—of course it was safe—or had been—that was just foolish panic. But now he had the Oldsmobile to worry about—although he didn’t think anyone had seen him, and the shot hadn’t been loud. Shots got fired all the time in that neighborhood. That’s why they’d taken him there.

  “I’ll tell you a true-blue American story,” Cameron continued. “One year, this company gave out masks to the schools at Halloween. Witch’s masks, Frankenstein masks. My school got Abraham Lincoln masks—I shit you not. They dumped ‘em on the black neighborhoods. But if that’s all you get, that’s all you got. So we went trick-or-treating, me and my friends—Darnell, Yussef, Chilly. We went to this store on the corner that used to be run by black folks but had been taken over by Greeks—and Chilly—he took him some Tootsie Rolls—cause it was Halloween, right? The old Greek behind the counter raised the alarm like he’d been robbed at gunpoint and the cops came after us. Two white buzz cut cops chasing four young black boys wearing Abraham Lincoln masks. You talk about the Fugitive Slave Law—one of those cops took a shot at us! Woulda hit us too if he hadn’t been out of breath.”

  “I don’t understand . . . ” Casper sighed, thinking again about John Wayne’s fake .45 and how dirty the inside of the Oldsmobile had been compared to Cameron’s legitimate cab.