Green Eyes

by Lucius Shepard

  Yes, indeed. The boldest of them were three-quarters of the way down the aisle, waggling their hands overhead, praising God and begging His guidance.

  ‘Salt Harvest! Listen to the name. It’s a natural name, an advertising man’s dream of organic purity, a name that bespeaks the bounty of the sea and of God, redolent of Christian virtue and tasty gumbos. How many people live here?’

  They argued briefly, settling on a consensus figure of between fifteen and eighteen thousand.

  ‘And things aren’t going too well, are they? The economy’s depressed, the cannery’s shut down, the kids are moving away. Am I right?’

  ‘Now bear with me, brothers and sisters. Hear me out, because like every great plan this one’s so simple it might sound foolish until you get used to it. But imagine! Eighteen thousand Christian souls united in a common enterprise, all their resources pooled, digging for every last cent, competing with Satan for the consumer dollar and the souls of the diners. You’ve got everything you need! Cannery, shrimp boats, good men and women, and God on your side. Salt Harvest. Not a town. A chain of franchise restaurants coast to coast. I’m not talking about a dispensary of poisoned meat, a Burger Chef, a Wendy’s, a Sambo’s. No! We’ll stuff them full of Gulf Shrimp and lobster, burgers made from the finest Argentine beef. We’ll outcook and undersell Satan and his minions, drive them into ruin. Instead of pimply, dope-smoking punks, we’ll staff our units with Christian converts, and in no time our logo, the sign of the fish and the cross, will not only be familiar as a symbol of God’s love but of gracious dining and quality cuisine. We’ll snip a page from Satan’s book and have a playland for the kids. They’ll enter through the Pearly Gates, ride Ferris wheels with winged clouds for cars, cavort with actors dressed as cute angels and maybe even the Messiah Himself. A chapel in the rear, ordained ministers on duty twenty-four hours a day. Every unit will shine with a holy beacon winking out the diamond light of Jesus Christ, and soon the golden arches will topple, the giant fried chicken buckets will fill with rainwater and burst, and we’ll bulldoze them under and build the Heavenly City in their place! Oh, there’ve been Congregationalists and Baptists and Methodists, but we’ll have something new. The first truly franchised religion! That’s real salvation, brothers and sisters. Economic and spiritual at the same time. Hallelujah!’

  ‘Hallelujah!’ Their chorus was less enthused than before; some of them weren’t quite sold on his idea.

  ‘Praise the Lord!’

  ‘Praise the Lord!’ They were coming round again, and after a few more repetitions they were held back from the stage by the thinnest of restraints. A man in a seersucker suit stumbled along the aisle, keening, almost a whistling noise like a teakettle about to boil, and fell on all fours, his face agonized, reaching out to Donnell.

  Overwhelmed with disgust, Donnell said, ‘I could sell you sorry fuckers anything, couldn’t I?’

  They weren’t sure they had heard correctly; they looked at each other, puzzled, asking what had been said.

  ‘I could sell you sorry fuckers anything,’ he repeated, ‘as long as it had a bright package and was wrapped around a chewy nugget of fear. I could be your green-eyed king. But it would bore me to be the salvation of cattle like you. Take my advice, though. Don’t buy the crap that’s slung into your faces by two-bit wart-healers!’ He jabbed his cane at Papa Salvatino, who stood open-mouthed in the aisle, a Utter of paper cups and fans and Bibles spreading out from his feet. ‘Find your own answers, your own salvation. If you can’t do that,’ said Donnell, ‘then to Hell with you.’

  He took a faltering step backward. His fascination with the crowd had dulled, and the arrogant confidence inspired by his voice was ebbing. He became aware again of his tenuous position. The crowd was massing back against the tent walls, once more afraid, in turmoil, a clot of darkness sprouting arms and legs, heaving in all directions. Whispers, then a babble, angry shouts.

  ‘Devil!’ someone yelled, and a man countered, ‘He ain’t the Devil! He was curin’ Alice Grimeaux’s boy!’ But someone else, his voice hysterical, screamed ‘Jesus please Jeesus!’

  ‘Yea, I have gazed into the burning eye of Satan and been sore affrighted,’ intoned Papa Salvatino. ‘But the power of my faith commands me. Pray, brothers and sisters! That’s the Devil’s poison: Prayer!’

  The gray-haired usher came up behind him, grabbed a chair, held it overhead and advanced upon the stage while Papa exhorted the crowd. Dark figures began to trickle forward between the chairs, along the aisle. Jocundra stood by the drum kit, pale, her hand poised above the cymbal stand as if she had meant to use it as a weapon, transfixed by the sight of the Army of Our Lord in Louisiana bearing down on them. Donnell felt his groin shriveling. Ordinary men and women were slinking near, gone grim and wolfish, brandishing chairs and bottles, a susurrus of prayer - of ‘Save us sweet Jesuses’ and ‘Merciful Saviors’ - rising from them like an exhaust, ragged on by Papa Salvatino’s blood-and-thunder.

  ‘Pray! Let your prayer crack Satan’s crimson hide! Shine the light of prayer on him ‘til he splits like old leather and the black juice spews from his heart!’

  A meek hope of countering Papa’s verbal attacked sparked in Donnell, but all he could muster was a feeble ‘Ah…’ An old lady, her cane couched spear-fashion, her crepe throat pulsing with prayer, came right behind the gray-haired usher; a tubby kid, no more than seven or eight, clutching his father’s hand and holding a jagged piece of glass, stared at Donnell through slit black eyes; Sister Rita, two hundred pounds of blubbery prayer, cooed to the Savior while she swung her purse around and around like a bolo; the man who had tried to worship Donnell had himself a pocket knife and was talking to the blade, twisting it, practicing the corkscrew thrust he planned to use.

  ‘Let’s fry Satan with the Holy Volts of prayer!’ squalled Papa Salvatino, ‘Let’s set him dancin’ like a rat on a griddle!’

  Donnell backed away, his own sermon about fear mocking him, because fear was gobbling him up from the inside, greedy piranha mouths shredding his rationality. He bumped against Jocundra; her nails dug into his arm.

  ‘God, I’m healed!’ somebody screeched, and two boys sprinted down the aisle. Teenagers. They darted in and out of the crowd, knocked the gray-haired usher spinning, and reeled up to the stage. One, the tallest, a crop of ripe pimples straggling across his cheeks, raised his arms high. ‘Holy Green-eyed Jesus!’ he shouted. ‘You done cured my social disease!’ The other doubled up laughing.

  ‘Goddamn it, Earl!’ A barrel-shaped man in overalls dropped his chair and rushed the boys, but they danced away. He lunged for them again, and they easily evaded him.

  ‘Witness the work of Satan!’ cried Papa. ‘How he turns the child against the father! Child!’ He pointed at the tall boy. ‘Heed not the Anti-Christ or he will bring thee low and set maggots to breed in the jellied meats in thine eyes!’

  ‘Shut up, you big pussy!’ The boy avoided his father’s backhand by a hair and grinned up at Donnell. ‘You done made my hot dog whole!’ he shouted. ‘Praise the fuckin’ Lord!’

  A ripple of laughter from the front of the tent, and a girl yelled, ‘Git him, Earl!’ More laughter as the big man fell, buckling one of the chairs.

  The laughter disconcerted the crowd, slowed their - advance. Donnell turned to Jocundra, thinking they might be able to hide amongst the cars; but just then she seized him by both hands and yanked him through the rear flap. He sprawled in the cool grass, shocked by the freshness of the night air after the pollution inside. She hauled him to his feet, her breath shrill, rising to a shriek as somebody jumped down beside them. It was Earl.

  ‘Them Christians get their shit together, man,’ he said, ‘and they gonna nail you up. Come on!’

  He and Jocundra hoisted Donnell by the elbows and carried him between the rows of parked cars to a van with a flock of silver ducks painted on its side. Earl slid open the door, and Donnell piled in. His hand encountered squidgy flesh; a girl’s sulky voice said, ‘
Hey, watch it!’ and somebody else laughed. Through the window Donnell had a glimpse of people streaming out of the tent, imps silhouetted against a blaze of white light; Then the engine caught, and the van fishtailed across the field.

  ‘Whooee!’ yelled Earl. ‘Gone but not forgotten!’ He banged the flat of his hand on the dash. ‘Hey, that’s Greg and Elaine back there. And I am…’ He beat a drumroll on the wheel. ‘The Earl!’

  Headlights passing in the opposite direction penetrated the van. Elaine was a chubby girl wriggling into a T-shirt, forcing it down over large breasts, and Greg was a longhaired, muscular kid who regarded Donnell with drugged sullenness. He pointed to his own right eye. ‘Papa Salvatino do that to you, man?’

  Elaine giggled.

  ‘He’s been sick,’ said Jocundra. ‘Radiation treatments.’ She refused to look at Donnell.

  ‘Actually it was bad drugs,’ said Donnell. ‘The residue of evil companions.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Greg, half-questioning, half-challenging. He took a stab at staring Donnell down, but the eyes were too much for him.

  ‘You shoulda seen the dude!’ The van veered onto the shoulder as Earl turned to them. ‘He talked some wild shit to them goddamn Christians! Had ol’ Papa’s balls clickin’ like ice cubes!’

  Elaine cupped her hand in front of Donnell’s eyes and collected a palmful of reflected glare. ‘Intense,’ she said.

  Greg lost interest in the whole thing, pulled out a baggie and papers and started rolling a joint. ‘Let’s air this sucker out,’ he said. ‘It smells like a goddamn pig’s stomach.’

  ‘You the one’s been rootin’ in it.’ Earl chuckled, downshifted, and the van shot forward. He slipped a cassette into the tape deck, and a caustic male voice rasped out above the humming tires, backed by atonalities and punch drunk rhythms.

  ‘… Go to bed at midnight,

  Wake at half-past one,

  I dial your number,

  And let it ring just once,

  I wonder if you love me

  While I watch TV,

  I cheer for Godzilla

  Versus the Jap Army,

  I think about your sweet lips

  And your long, long legs,

  I wanna carve my initials

  In your boyfriend’s face.

  I’m gettin’ all worked up, worked up about you!’

  The singer began to scream ‘I’m gettin’ all worked up’ over and over, his words stitched through by a machine-gun bass line. Glass broke in the background, heavy objects were overturned. Earl turned up the volume and sang along.

  Jocundra continued to avoid Donnell’s gaze, and he couldn’t blame her. He had nearly gotten them killed. A manic, sardonic and irrationally confident soul had waked in him and maneuvred him about the stage; and though it had now deserted him, he believed it was hidden somewhere, lurking behind a mist of ordinary thoughts and judgements, as real and ominous as a black mountain in the clouds. Considering what he had done, the bacterial nature of his intelligence, it would be logical to conclude that he was insane. But what logic would there be in living by that conclusion? Whether he was insane or, as Edman’s screwball theory proposed, he was the embodiment of the raw stuff of consciousness, the scientific analogue of an elemental spirit, it was a waste of time to speculate. He had too much to accomplish, too little time, and - he laughed inwardly - there was that special something he had to do. A mission. Another hallmark of insanity.

  Earl turned down the tape deck. ‘Where you people headin’?’

  Jocundra touched Donnell’s arm to draw his attention. ‘I’ve thought of a place,’ she said. ‘It’s not far, and I think we’ll be safe. It’s on the edge of the swamp, a cabin. Hardly anyone goes there.’

  ‘All right,’ said Donnell, catching at her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.’

  She nodded, tight-lipped. ‘Can you take us as far as Bayou Teche?’ she asked Earl. ‘We’ll pay for the gas.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Earl’s mood had soured. ‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘My ol’ man’s gonna kill my ass.’

  Chapter 11

  May 21 - May 23, 1987

  A tributary of Bayou Teche curled around the cabin, which was set on short pilings amid a palmetto grove, and from the surrounding darkness came a croaking, water gulping against the marshy banks, and the electric sounds of insects. Yellow light sprayed from two half-open shutters, leaked through gaps in the boards, and a single ray shot up out of a tin chimney angled from the roof slope, all so bright it seemed a small golden sun must be imprisoned inside. The tar paper roof was in process of sliding off, and rickety stairs mounted to the door. Jocundra remembered the story Mr Brisbeau had told her, claiming the place had been grown from the seed of a witch’s hat planted at midnight.

  ‘This is the guy who kept the moths? The guy who molested you?’ Donnell had put on a pair of mirrored sunglasses - a gift from Earl - and the lenses held two perfect reproductions of the cabin. ‘How the hell can we trust him?’

  ‘He didn’t molest me, he just…’

  Before she could finish, the door flew back, giving her a start, and a lean old man appeared framed in the light. ‘Who’s there?’ he asked, looking out over Jocundra’s head, then down and focusing on her. Gray streaks in his shoulder-length white hair, a tanned face seamed with lines of merriment. His trousers and shirt were sewn of flour sacking, the designs on them worn into dim blue words and vague trademark animals. He squinted at her. ‘That you, Florence?’

  ‘It’s Jocundra Verret, Mr Brisbeau,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a friend with me.’

  ‘Jocundra?’ He was silent, the tiers of wrinkles deepening on his brow. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘better you come in than the damn skeeters.’

  He had them sit on packing crates beside a wood stove while he boiled coffee and asked Jocundra about herself. The cabin was exactly as she remembered: a jackdaw’s nest. Waist-high stacks of yellowed magazines along the walls interspersed by even taller heaps of junk. Dented cookware, broken toys, plastic jugs, boxes, papers. Similar junkpiles occupied the room center, creating a miniature landscape of narrow floorboard valleys meandering between surreal mountains. Beside the door was a clothes-wringer, atop it a battered TV whose screen had been painted over with a beach scene. The wood stove and a cot stpod on opposite sides of a door against the rear wall, but they were so buried in clutter they had nearly lost their meaning as objects. The walls themselves were totally obscured by political placards and posters, illustrations out of magazines, torn pages of calendars. Layer upon layer. Thousands of images. Greek statues, naked women, jungle animals, wintry towns, movie stars, world leaders. A lunatic museum of art. Mildew had eaten away large areas of the collage, turning it into gray stratifications of shreds and mucilage stippled with bits of color. The light was provided by hurricane lamps - there must have been a dozen - set on every available flat surface and as a result the room was sweltering.

  Mr Brisbeau handed them their coffee, black and bittersweet with chicory, and pulled up a crate next to Jocundra. ‘Now I bet you goin’ to tell me why you so full of twitch and tremble,’ he said.

  Though she omitted the events at the motel and in Salt Harvest, Jocundra was honest with Mr Brisbeau. Belief in and acceptance of unlikely probabilities were standard with him, and she thought he might find in Donnell a proof for which he had long been searching. And besides, they needed an ally, someone they could trust completely, and honesty was the only way to insure that trust. When she had done, Mr Brisbeau asked if he could have a look at Donnell’s eyes. Donnell removed his glasses, and the old man bent close, almost rubbing noses.

  ‘What you see wit them eyes, boy?’ he asked, settling back on his crate.

  ‘Not much I understand,’ said Donnell, a suspicious edge to his voice. ‘Funny lights, halos.’

  Mr Brisbeau considered this. ‘Days when I’m out at the traps, me, even though ever’ting’s wavin’ dark fingers at me, shadows, when I come to
the fork sometimes the wan fork she’s shinin’ bright-bright. Down that fork I know I’m goin’ to find the mus’rat.’ He nudged a bale of coal-black muskrat skins beside the stove. ‘Maybe you see somethin’ lak that?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Donnell.

  Mr Brisbeau blew on his coffee and sipped. He laughed. ‘I jus’ tinkin’ ‘bout my grand-mere. She take wan look at you and she say, “Mon Dieu! The black Wan!” But I know the Black Wan he don’t come round the bayou no more. He’s gone long before my time.’ He squinted at Donnell, as if trying to pierce his disguise, and shook his head in perplexity; then he stood and slapped his hip. ‘You tired! Help me wit these furs and we fix you some pallets.’

  The back room was unfurnished, but they arranged two piles of furs on the floor, and to Jocundra, who was suddenly exhausted, they looked like black pools of sleep in which she could drown.

  ‘In the mornin’,’ said Mr Brisbeau, ‘I got business wit ol’ man Bivalaqua over in Silver Meadow. But there’s food, drink, and me I’ll be back tomorrow night.’

  He glanced quizzically at Jocundra and beckoned her to follow him into the front room. He closed the door behind them.

  ‘Wan time I get crazy wit you,’ he said, ‘and twelve years it takes to forgive? Don’t you know, me, I’m just drunk. You my petit zozo.’ He held out his arms to her.

  His entire attitude expressed regret, but the lines of his face were so accustomed to smiling that even his despondency was touched with good humor. Jocundra had the perception of him she had had as a child, of a tribal spirit come to visit and tell her stories. She entered his embrace, smelling his familiar scent of bourbon and sweat and homemade soap. His shoulder blades were as sharp and hard as cypress knees.

  ‘You was my fav’rite of all the kids,’ he said. ‘It lak to break my heart you leavin’. But I reckon that’s how a heart gets along from one day to the nex’. By breakin’ and breakin’.’