During the spring, locals and tourists alike could enjoy the Jotham Spring Festival; during the summer, there was the Jotham Strawberry Fair and Wine Festival. In the fall there would be the Jotham County Fairgrounds annual town Crawfish Boil and then later the annual Harvest Festival, which was often the talk of the town depending on the number of provocative costumes in attendance. And in the waning winter months, Jotham opened the fields for their annual Armed Forces Appreciation Day, which had hit a snag back in 1972, but was revived again in ‘94, just after the Gulf War ended and just before Slick Willie began his second presidential term.
Every resident of Jotham came to the Jotham fairs. From Suzie, the town baker, to the redneck fellows who worked the slaughterhouse, to the mother hens who milked the heifers at McFarland’s Dairy, to the blue haired ladies of the Good Behavior Committee, to the old Negro fellow, Gus Taylor, who’d owned and operated his own Barbershop on Main Street since before ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,’ to Gary Boone, a forty-year-old ginger a Capella singer who’d once had big city dreams but never left city limits because of his sick and ailing mother, to Caleb Holcomb, the popular high school quarterback whose doting parents would have a heart attack if they knew of their son’s nightly walks out to Gardner Village, one of the few nicer suburban areas in Jotham, visiting a pale faced boy by the name of Fredrick Klein, and Fredrick Klein, according to Caleb’s secret journal, gave the best blowjob he’d ever had, to Rusty Gonzales, Gonzo to his friends, who operated Bud’s Guns off 7th Street, to Heath Thompson, a middle-aged Family Practice doctor who developed a nasty habit of chewing morphine tablets late at night and sometimes even on Sundays, to Murray Pascoe, a somewhat chiseled high school wrestling coach who’d never worked up the nerve to ask Molly Hackett, the school nurse, out on a date, who herself, never having dated a man, likewise couldn’t find the nerve to ask the Spanish teacher, Ms. Gomez. Everyone attended, all but for Kenny Murray who preferred his taxidermic critters and his privacy and strange talk of giant red eyes in the night to the hustle and bustle of the crowd.
Located at the center of town, several blocks from Highway 290 and Route 77, across the street from what had once been Busters & Brothers Law Office, now Butters & Sons Real Estate, Jotham County Fairgrounds consumed most of downtown. With a length of dark green bald cypresses covering most of the outer perimeter, and lush green acacia with a lovely habit of turning a sweet golden honey color in the fall filling in the plots near the picnic areas, and the gazebo Todd Phillips and his son built back in ’99, the same one where Gary Boone and his a Capella group performed during certain festivals, Christmas among others, and the impressive outdoor playground with the blue colored slides and red swings and yellow monkey bars and the little orange plastic treehouse at the top that Rudy McFarland donated in 2000, and footpaths that looped through dense woods, it would be hard to imagine for tourists traveling through Jotham that the area had been a landfill back in 1879. The old timers remembered, or at least the ones with roots going back that far, the ones whose own elders had passed the tale down.
In 1879, Augustus Westfield had been as much as a town pariah as Kenny Murray was today, but a few days before December 25, something had changed. Most of the locals called it a Christmas Miracle. Few called it suspicious. Regardless of whatever his intent was, it would have been hard not to notice the bearded, limping man riding into town spilling his pockets of gold and lines of credit. Shops flourished right away; many had thought they’d have to close down and move south to Giddings prior to Augustus’ charity. In 1880, the lumber business in Jotham picked up pace. Soon, wheat and cotton fields also grew larger. Railroad tracks were finished. Investors contributed, though few ever made the move to Jotham. Committees began taking on larger roles, improving the town. There was even talk of starting an electric streetcar system, but it was turned down by a majority council vote. The mayor at the time, Amos Wilson, couldn’t have been happier. There had been a moment, prior to Westfield and all the new life in Jotham, when Amos had considered with much effort the best way to go about killing himself. By the time the Masquerade Ball came around, Amos would indeed find his preferred method of conscivit.
On the eve of 1885, Jotham had finally bloomed into a haven of modern civility while maintaining its small town culture, and it was all thanks to Augustus Westfield, the strange hermit-savior who’d owned the land over on Oak Lee Road. One of the first town projects on which Augustus had insisted was moving the landfill just outside of Jotham on a patch of land that belonged to no one civilized, but to a small surviving tribe of Bidai. The Bidai would make no complaint so long as the town continued to support them with cotton and wheat, in which they in turn traded to other tribes living near neighboring Polk County. With the agreement in hand and plans drawn, the townsmen went to work, removing decades of mounds of waste and began to develop the land into “A refuge,” as Augustus had called it, “for every man and woman and child to come and take leave of the burdens of this place.”
The park had been christened in his name, Westfield Park, but after the events of the New Year’s Masquerade Ball in 1885…The ball had been a big to-do, a source of rumor and gossip, really. Only a few of those living in Jotham had actually received an invitation, and the mysterious circumstances of those who disappeared were unaccounted for in the days following the masquerade, including Augustus. Gilbert Killington, one of Jotham’s least profitable cotton farmers, noticed the near naked body of Jillian Swan stumbling down Main Street muttering something about large red eyes, and heat, and the word Nashirimah, over and over until she succumbed from exhaustion. Until then, the ball remained somewhat of a mystery. The park that had been named after Augustus was eventually renamed Jotham County Fairgrounds as whispers of Augustus and his masquerade faded into local legend.
The old timers and adolescents alike spun tales to unsuspecting listeners, typically around Halloween night. One of the more popular ones was The Ghost of Oak Lee Road. “Be careful driving by that house on Oak Lee Road,” some would jest. “There’s a Confederate soldier who’d once lived there, and if he’s seen you, he’ll follow you to your home. You won’t even know he’s there. And at night, when your eyes feel like stone, he’ll come and eat you whole.” It was a popular urban legend among teenagers, especially when someone new moved into town and took residence in the house on Oak Lee. It didn’t happen often, the house typically sat vacant, no one local would dare purchase the place, but every so often someone would move-in, keeping the legend alive in-between generations. The last to have lived there, before Maggie Smith purchased the property, was the Fetcher family, who, after the summer of ’76, were never heard or seen of again. And so the stories continued unabated.
“Be careful driving by that house on Oak Lee Road. There’s a Confederate soldier who once lived there and if he’s seen you, he’ll follow you home. You won’t even know he’s there. And at night, when your eyes feel like stone, he’ll come and eat you whole.”
That very same legend was now being whispered between Paul and Vivian Toussaint, the proprietors of Jotham County Florist on 4th Street, as Johnathan Steele limped by on his way to the fairgrounds public restroom. Gossip of the new resident and her guests on Oak Lee had spread throughout Jotham the moment they arrived in town. Rumors of Maggie Smith sprung the day Duke and his sons were found dead. Many of the residents of Jotham noted how odd it was that Maggie Smith never ventured into town. She was a hermit, much the way old Augustus had been.
“The Confederate will do them in for sure,” Paul joked with his wife, glancing at the hobbling man disappearing into the restroom.
“Paul!” Vivian nudged her husband with a sharp elbow to his gut.
Paul clutched his stomach smiling. “What?” he boasted not so innocently.
“You know what.”
“Babe, it’s just a story.”
“Not a very tasteful one.”
Paul laughed and threw an arm across his wife’s shoulder. They
kissed and then waddled toward the deep-fried Twinkie concession stand.
CHAPTER 19
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
Johnathan
There was a portly fellow standing in front of one of the porcelain urinals. His hair was balding, combed neatly to one side. He wore dark tan trousers and a navy blue polo. His knees were buckled as he arched a stream of dark unhealthy yellow. His bald spot, a large circular landing patch, among others, reflected the fluorescent bulbs that hung above. What remained of his hair was peppered in grey and stood out on ends making him look oddly as if Bozo the Clown had gone into politics. The untanned strand on his forth finger told Johnathan a lonesome story of a recent divorcé, a story he himself may share if he didn’t get his act together, if he didn’t convince Karen that he would get help. Stop the hallucinations. That he could change. I can change!
Johnathan looked at the girthy stranger, sighed, and then disappeared into one of the stalls. He could hear his bathroom companion whistling some familiar tune. A vague impression of some Lynyrd Skynyrd song, “Simple Man,” perhaps. He rested his cane against the toilet paper dispenser, examined the toilet seat for any special surprises, and then plopped down. His stomach bubbled. Grunting and disposing the reagents of last night’s debauchery, he began to read the graffiti on the stall walls, the blue-collared philosophy stained in black ink. One line read ‘Question Everything.’ And just below that someone else had penned ‘Why?’ There were other gems, such as, “And on the 5th day the Lord spoke…‘Let there be Lobstercock—Corinthians 15:30.’” This slice of bathroom spiritualism was followed with a crude drawing of what one could only assume to be a walking talking lobstercock, similar in design, some may argue, to the 1950s Walt Disney Mickey Mouse cartoon.
On the opposite side of the stall, some restroom poet wrote, ‘Roses are tits. Violets are tits. I love tits. Tits, tits, tits.’ Johnathan giggled against the pain in his gut as he whispered the poem. The balding, urinal divorcé cleared his throat loudly from somewhere near the sink. Johnathan paid little mind. The bathroom stall graffiti reminded him of the sage designs written within the cramped walls of porta-johns in Iraq. Art that would never be showcased in any gallery, only remembered by those with the honor of viewing them as they were. Sweatbox reading of differing variations of vaginas, some as hairy as Cousin It from The Addams Family, others bald, most with stick legs coming out from underneath the lips and arrows navigating the reader to ‘insert here.’ Not every piece, as he recalled, was selective to sex. There were not only plenty of cocks, both big and small, but also racist depictions of Iraqis or those stupidly meant to reflect people in varying units in the operations area.
One of Johnathan’s favorites was a piece that said, ‘So, there I was, balls deep in the CO’s ass and he turned around and kissed me. What a fag!’ His second favorite was, ‘Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity,’ of which someone commented below, ‘Right on man! Peace. Love. Dope.’ Another favorite said, ‘4 out of 10 dentists agree. Wagner loves the cock.’ He had no idea what it meant, but loved the lyric nevertheless. Most of these came from porta-johns on Camp Victory, a few from that base on the outskirts of Route Tampa. The oddest he’d seen that had struck him as being out of place, was a quote from a William Wetmore story, or so he guessed, trying his best to remember high school literature class, from a porta-john on Camp Ferrin-Huggins, where Jake had been stationed. Some seemingly educated bastard wrote:
“Blow but thy breath across the sea,
Our galleys go triumphantly;
Avert thy face, though skies are fair
We sink and founder in despair.
Dear Goddess, turn to us thy face!
Not justice we implore, but grace;
Give us what none can win or buy—
Thy godlike gift, prosperity.”
Just as Johnathan had finished recalling the poem, the restroom door opened and closed, ushering the still bathroom in cold silence. All alone, he breathed, peeping between the gaps in his stall. He went to finish his business, smirking at the large lobstercock again on the stall door in front of him. He leaned and wiped, his gaze falling on his prosthetic leg, wondering if he’d packed enough socks for his residual limb, when a rapping sound echoed from the stall next to him.
The hell? Someone else here? He remained deadly still, listening for a sound or sign.
Another cold rapping, echoing off the walls in its sudden thunder. Johnathan furrowed his brow.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
No one answered.
Silence.
Okay…
Another rattle of tapping against the stall wall next to him.
What the fuck?
Johnathan wondered for a moment if perhaps this was of the those public restrooms, the ones he’d heard about with the male symbol etched near the entrance, the ones where you’ll find a particular kind of crowd where there is but one rule, “No glove, no love.” He shook his head. No. Not this close in town. Not in a quaint little place like Jotham.
More rapping.
“No thanks!” Johnathan shouted.
Snickering, cruel and malevolent, drifted from the other stall, rolling on the cold tile walls and giving the room an otherworldly chill.
“Yeah? Well, fuck you too!” quipped Johnathan, finding himself a little more disturbed then he cared to be. He stood and pulled up his jeans. He flushed.
The snickering faded back into dead silence. “Care to give your confession, my son?” chided the raspy laughing voice. The fluorescent bulbs above began to flicker, pitching the restroom in a waning darkness, and in the confines of the stall, it was a coffin-like darkness where Johnathan did not care to stay.
He reached for his cane.
“Have you never had a confession before, Johnny-Boy? It starts, ‘Father, forgive me for I have sinned…’” heckled the cold, jeering voice, a voice that became all the more terrifyingly familiar.
Johnathan froze.
“Ricky?” he whispered hoarsely.
His door flung open. Johnathan fell back on the commode. He stared in horror at the corpse that once was his friend. Rotting pieces of flesh fell to the grainy tile floor. The walking dead smiled exposing a darkened gap of forlorn teeth. The stink of the grave rolled off him in waves of cold-heat. His ACUs were black as moss, the American flag patch nearly rotten with some sort of blueish grey algae.
“Ricky…” The name escaped from Johnathan’s throat in a gurgling attempt to breathe.
“Hey, bro—we gotta stop meeting up like this. People will talk.” The dead soldier grinned a shark-like smile, exposing even more broken and jagged teeth.
The spill-way within Johnathan’s mind finally gave. A torrent of panic and fear rushed over him. He shook uncontrollably and screamed. He screamed until his lungs burned and tasted of acid. And then he screamed some more.
CHAPTER 20
FR. BECKET
Jake
Within the doors of Saint Francis Xavier Catholic Church of Jotham, the walls were solid white, bright, and pristine. Cleaner, Jake felt, than a hospital ward. Row upon row of pews filled the sanctuary. They were made of lightly tanned wood with purplish-red velvet cushioning and kneeling boards tucked underneath. The quiet air was surreal compared with the carnival going on just outside at the Jotham County Fairgrounds. Perfect, Jake thought with some pleasure. He walked to the middle row of pews and sat down. He clasped his hands and glanced upward at the large stained glass window and the huge wood statue of the crucified Christ. He shuddered at the remembrance of lasts night dream. Praying in a hoarse whisper, he pushed the nightmare away.
“Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who
trespass against us.
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.”
Amen.
So let it be, he thought, his gaze lingering on the wooden Jesus hanging on the cross. The image of the Suffering Servant set its own gaze upon the tabernacle below, where the Lord’s Supper was taken, no doubt, every Sunday morning, or perhaps most days during the week, depending on how the Catholics in Jotham conducted Mass. He thought of his own church services. How the traditionalists, the blue haired mafia, preferred the old ways of taking communion, every Sunday and only on Sunday. From Jake’s experience in church politics, the loudest voice was the generation after the Greatest, the Gen-X’s, who preferred a more minimalistic approach to worship. The millennials, of course, being the youngest were more diverse. Some loved simplicity; others, loved new ways of doing Church. The rock ’n’ roll lightshow worship. Hip speakers in tattered jeans and sandals and trendy ditties eerily reminiscent of ’70s love songs.
Emerging (Subdue Book 2) Page 15
