by Owen Egerton
Pearl-Swine quietly returned to the stage. While Van Sturgeon talked, they noodled through a long instrumental introduction to their ballad “Heart Gift.”
“And what if you just die? What if you die tonight?” Van Sturgeon said, closing his fists and looking as if he might weep. “Is he going to call you home? Or will you go to that other place? Have you opened your heart to God’s gift of Jesus? It’s not too late to open your heart. You can do it right now as the band plays this next song. Don’t let this chance go by.”
Van Sturgeon nodded to the band and the song began in earnest.
I know you’re low. I know you need a lift.
I lived to die so by and by you could have my Heart Gift.
Teenagers were swaying, crying, arms around each other, singing along.
Milton could smell them. Youthful faith. Youthful fear. It has its own scent, like the air before a rainstorm. Kids were coming to the Lord tonight; his nose told him so. But some wouldn’t. Some would be left in that world the speaker described.
As the last chord of “Heart Gift” still vibrated, the band slammed into “Who’s Gonna Park the Car.”
That night in the bunk room the camp had provided for the band, Milton lay awake penning a new song in his head whose entire lyric consisted of “What the fuck, Jesus?”
The next day, as the band’s van curved down the mountains and toward the flatlands of east Colorado, Milton shared his struggles with the band.
“Love it, Milt,” Roy said. “Write your questions into songs.”
“Dude, we all have doubts, but we don’t sing about them,” Stan said.
“Why not?” Roy asked.
“You want to be a stumbling block?” Pick said. “We’re edifiers. That’s our calling.”
Roy referenced Job, the Psalms of David, John the Divine’s Dark Night of the Soul, but to no avail.
Milton said nothing. He couldn’t take the argument, the soft stabs of words. Milton felt like a lobster who’d just shed its shell. From the backseat of that van, he watched the mountain give way to the plains and thought of Tess. Thought of sharing his fears with her. She’d hear him. She’d offer to pray. She always offered to pray. And Milton loved her voice in prayer—airy and sublime. She’d end with the customary amen, raise her eyes, and smile. That smile would hold no answer, but it would offer comfort.
Milton began composing a long, handwritten letter to Tess sharing all his doubts, all his wants, all his heart. He mailed it from the road.
Four days later, Milton was shuffling through a stack of forwarded mail minutes before a show at the Boy Barn Bar in downtown Pittsburgh. One letter was a single piece of thick cardstock draped in white lace. In the finest calligraphy, it announced the marriage of Tess Peters to an investment banker from Houston.
Milton did not cry or shudder or even share the news. He went onstage ready to perform.
Milton was strumming away, eyes closed. He could hear Roy singing his lyrics with three hundred gay men singing along.
I want to live inside of you. Give inside you. Dwell inside of you.
Inside of you.
I’m coming . . . oh, Lord, I’m coming . . . I’m coming home.
He was imagining the dancing, thinking of the key change, wondering if he needed a haircut, when his Christianity fell away like a dead fingernail.
Milton had often prayed for others, often prayed that God’s will be done, but only three times had he made a direct request for himself. Once, as a child in the seconds between the firing of the basement suicide machine and the last twitches of his father’s body. Again, on a sleepless night in his senior year of college when he begged God to let Tess be his wife. And lastly on that Boy Barn Bar stage. He asked God to not let his faith die.
Three strikes. You’re out.
God allowed him to not believe, and that was evidence enough that he did not exist.
Shortly before going into the studio to record their second album, Milton announced that he was thinking about becoming a Buddhist.
“You can’t do that,” Pick said.
“I still want to rock for Jesus.”
“You can’t be both a Christian and a Buddhist.”
“Why not?”
“They contradict each other.” Pick shook his head. “Buddhists don’t believe in God.”
“Then I’ll be a bad Buddhist.”
“No, man. No way. This whole thing has been going on for too long,” Stan said. “Milton, you need to make the call. Walk the walk, or leave the band.”
“Whoa,” Roy said. “Are you kidding? We wouldn’t be here without the songs he wrote.”
“We’ve been talking about it, Jimmy, Stan, and me,” Pick said.
“You’ve been talking about it?” Roy bounced out of chair.
“Just talking. And we think maybe it’s a good idea for you to take a break, Milton. Maybe sit out for a while.”
“Sit out of the band?”
“Sorry, man. Real sorry,” Pick said. “But better to get kicked out of a band and learn than get kicked out of the kingdom and burn.”
“Nice, Pick,” Stan said.
“Thanks.”
Roy was flabbergasted, hopping about and arguing like a crackhead debate champ. Milton did not argue. He did want to “rock for Jesus,” but he was also keenly aware, painfully aware, that he no longer believed in Jesus. Not in the way the others did. The Buddhist part turned out to be a transition. All Christians losing their faiths become Buddhist for a little while. Strangely, very few Buddhists become Christians.
Roy joined Milton in leaving Pearl-Swine, claiming “It was more fun when we weren’t getting paid.” He and Milton tried to form a Buddhist band called the Lotus Motion. They played only two gigs before calling it quits.
The last song Milton attempted to pen was an exploration of his father’s philosophy. “The Many Mes.” He strummed away, thinking of words that rhyme with quantum, when he stopped. For an instant he saw a million hims scattered across existence strumming the exact same chords, working on the same melody, trying to justify rhyming Compton and quantum. Some Miltons were married to Tess. Some had unshakable faith. Some were born dead. Some were nearly an exact replica of himself—countless other Miltons doing the exact same thing in the endless worlds that pressed against this world. Nothing was unique. It was hard to see the point.
Milton retired from music, citing exhaustion.
Pearl-Swine went on to record several albums and continued to tour. “The Nail Won’t Fail” was still their opening number, and their initial slew of songs still comprised their most popular tunes. So every month Milton received a substantial check in the mail from Pearl-Swine. In this way, Milton was supported by the fruit of a faith he had discarded.
Mingus would approve
RICA ARRIVED AT Mundi House hours before opening. She sat on a bench outside and watched the sky move from black to blue through all the watercolor hues of dawn. The sky looked unhealthy, fragile, like a child that might not last its first year.
She let herself in, turned up Mingus’s album Let My Children Hear Music on the stereo, and began creating an elaborate soup incorporating as many ingredients as she could lay her hands on—garlic, tea leaves, cilantro, molasses, cucumbers, oatmeal, mushrooms. She turned up the Mingus. It was some of his strangest music. Jazz, it might be called, but the music went beyond jazz. Stranger and fuller. Filled with wild harmonies and unexpected twists and yanks. The music and food, the rhythm and chopping, the spank of the bass and the pop of boiling water all helped crowd out the thoughts of the last two hours. Milton with his confused face and cruel words. The chill that still stuck to her bones. Where was his mind? Too much to hold right now. Too much.
She turned up the volume till her ears hurt. That’s how she liked her music, just a little painful. She knew Mingus would approve. Hell, he put the pain in himself. He slammed two notes together that harmonized, but just barely, two notes that had to work at it. They weren’t a C and a G, m
ore a C and an A-sharp. That’s how she saw her and Milton. No one would choose to put these notes together, no one but a mind like Mingus. And when Mingus did it . . . when he played or wrote or yelled, he said, “Yes, this is how it is supposed to be. These notes belong together.” He told the notes, “You can fight, you can twist, but know that you are home. This is where you are supposed to be.” And the notes listened. And the notes sang.
But times were strange now. Milton was frightening. He was dangerous. Rica was not afraid for herself. If Milton had pulled this same shit a year ago, Rica would have pinned him down till he came out of whatever mind-funk-cavern he had fallen into. But now there was someone else to be concerned for.
For years the most important part of Rica’s life was herself. Milton had snuck in. He was important, but in truth, she was still higher ranked. If she had to make the choice between his life or hers, she would take the bullet, save his life. But it wouldn’t be easy. It would be an act of kindness, not compulsion. Now there was the baby hopping and bopping in her lowers. If the same choice were to arise for her and the child, it would be no choice. As Rica saw it, the child who had yet to take a breath was the most important part of the universe.
That’s why she had left. This baby needed strength. Needed a father with compassion and caring eyes.
In one Saint Rick Christmas episode, Rick plays Santa for a Mexican orphanage, asking each child what he or she wanted and producing their exact wish from his sack. A toy truck, a kitten, a bag of wildflower seeds. The last child in line sits on Saint Rick’s knee and asks, “Santa, I want you to be mi padre, por favor.”
And Saint Rick, a tear in his eye, says, “I’d like that as well, Pepe. But I’m Father Christmas. That means I have to be everyone’s father.”
She let the episode replay in her head, from the opening teaser of the orphans in the harsh Mexican heat the day before Christmas to the images behind the closing credits, the same images as every episode, Saint Rick walking toward an ever-sinking sun, alone and holy.
Before being pregnant, Saint Rick had been a guilty pleasure. Not just the entertainment or the eye candy of Hayden Brock, the pleasure that caused her guilt was the world the show described. A world where problems have solutions, where redemption can be found in a half hour, where God reaches down and helps us repair our lives.
As she replayed the Christmas episode in her head, Mingus’s Let My Children Hear Music filled in as a bizarre soundtrack. The music consciously created from embraced frustration, from spectacular failed attempts to reach past what music is supposed to do, was now the backing for what Rica knew was a trite television script where life’s questions are satisfied with shallow answers and tidy plots.
When the song “Don’t Be Afraid, the Clown’s Afraid Too” hit her head, replacing the sentimental strings of the end credits of Saint Rick, Rica shivered. The music was strange, filled with time changes and weird chord choices, themes developed, then warped and questioned, the snarling of circus animals played like chaotic instruments. That music over the mental images of Saint Rick walking into the sunset created a strained juxtaposition.
With Saint Rick, art answered nature, tied up the loose ends with a bow. But Mingus’s music danced with nature, a horn solo with a growling lion. The combination of the two, the frame-bending music and clean world of Saint Rick, perfectly fit Rica’s restless soul.
In that small kitchen, her baby kicking, her heart hurting, Rica felt she might choose between the two. Did she want Mingus’s madness or Saint Rick’s salvation? The questions of jazz or the answers of entertainment?
“The Chill of Death” was the second-to-last song on the Mingus album—minor notes and dissonant chords, and Mingus’s throaty voice describing death’s seduction and a road leading to nowhere but hell. Saint Rick, for all his silliness, triteness, ended each episode walking into a sunset promising life and heaven and another episode the following week. Which road to choose?
And Rica was not walking alone. She carried a passenger. She had glimpsed a little hell in Milton last night, in his uncertain, haunted eyes. If only for her baby’s safety, she would choose a shallow heaven over a deep hell. Mingus’s music was more real, perhaps more alive. But Saint Rick was safer. With the baby bouncing inside her, she now felt that perhaps she had underestimated the value of safety for most of her life.
With Mingus’s “The I of Hurricane Sue” blaring all around her and the aromas of the bubbling soup filling the air of the Mundi House kitchen, Rica touched her belly and yelled out a prayer. “Oh, Saint Rick, be with us in this our hour of need!”
Every feather, every bone
CLICK’S NEW WORLD was glass, curved, and capped. He twisted his shell, just able to turn a circle. He could find no corners, just the close curve and the blurred world beyond.
Everything had been dark for a time. Sometimes still, sometimes rumbling. He tapped his claw against the invisible boundaries. The taste of air was changing and no new air could enter. Click wondered if perhaps this darkness could be a home.
Then his entire cylindrical world had been pulled into the light and placed into two small, pink hands.
“A hemit cwab! A hemit cwab!” a high voice chanted, and a toothy face stared through the glass. The face squealed, and Click yanked himself into his shell. Everything moved and bounced. Someone was dancing. Someone was skipping. He ricocheted off the sides, off the sky and ground. “Thank you, Papa! I love him! I love him!”
“That’s what I said,” a man’s voice echoed from farther away. “How much body waste is one funeral parlor allowed to dump? I mean, really! It’s a public sewer!”
“Calm down, Kiefer. Don’t get all worked up.”
“I was covered with blood, Carla! Dead people’s blood! It got in my mouth!”
The bouncing stopped. “Whose blood?” the high voice asked. Click peeked out.
“No one’s blood. Papa’s just joking,” a woman said.
Click breathed in. The air was wrong. Thin.
“I want to name hew Patches! Patches di cwab!”
“Five-minute warning. Go get your school clothes on.”
The skipping started again, circling the room. Click bounced and rattled, up and down and side to side, clanging against the glass in rhythm with his tiny crab heart. Dizzy and breathless. Breathless. Breathless.
“Okay, okay,” the woman was saying. “Did they give any reason? I mean, the parlor?”
“Weight Watchers.”
“Weight Watchers?”
Click sucked in through thin crustacean gills, but there was nothing left to breathe.
“The local Weight Watchers had some kind of field trip yesterday. The annual smoothie picnic or something. Anyway, a big passenger van turned over on the 405.”
“I heard about that on the news.” The woman lowered her voice to a whisper. “Twenty people died.”
Hungry for breath. Starving for breath. The crab’s thinking twisted like a ribbon. Click could see the ground three feet below. He spiraled about the room. He forgot the toothy girl, forgot the jar. He was simply flying, circling. His black beady eyes narrowed as he zoomed.
“Twenty large people,” the man said. “And seventeen of them went to Still Pines Funeral Parlor. They were swamped.”
“Mama, who died?”
“A bunch of fat people, Becky,” the man said.
“Kiefer!”
Click could fly! He’d find the ocean and air! He’d fly to the coast, above the line of wet and dry. Seagulls crying out! Crying for food! He’d snag the wing of a seagull with his large claw and dangle! He’d jerk the shrieking bird to the sand. With slow snaps and nibbles, Click would kill and devour the seagull! Eat every feather, every bone. Then Click would fly away!
“I’ve got nothing against fat people. Hell, I’m no petite. Just all that goddamn blood!”
“Becky, ignore your father and go put on some clothes.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Fly above the ocean, out far
ther than the waves. Nothing but ocean and sky. Blue and blue and the warm in between. Just warm . . . sleepy warm . . . sleepy warm.
“And hand over that crab. It can’t very well live in a jar for the rest of its life.” With a quick twist of the sky, air rushed into the world, and Click breathed again. “I’m sure we have a shoe box or something. What do hermit crabs drink? Do I put salt in its water?”
Stiff reality slapped the dreams away. Click no longer believed he could eat a seagull. No longer even desired to. But he wished he did.
“Jesus, I still have that taste in my mouth!”
As Click tumbled into a brown, square world of corners and air, he felt a pang of anguish. What gave him life destroyed his dream.
Something had changed
THE SMELL WOKE him. Like a dentist’s office only stronger, sicker. The type of clean smell that is so fierce it becomes its own kind of stench. Milton, his eyes still closed, reached out his hands. He felt something wet and furry. His eyes shot open to find a recently dejarred, pickled Bigfoot head an inch from his face, its eyes pale yellow, its lips purple and bloated. Milton yelped and scrambled to his knees.
He was in the basement. The open door at the top of the stairs cast just enough light to fill the room with shadows. Boxes, bags, the memory of his father’s bleeding body.
He tried to recall the night before. A Floater. He remembered that. And Rica leaving, fear in her eyes. She was afraid of him. What happened? Lastly, Milton remembered the world was ending.
