Jonah

by Dana Redfield

  Adam, I'm going to make a woman.

  God's thought is like cold wind blowing down Adam's neck…Adam's first premonition…something weird in the air…not those cackling crows, no, it's something more subtle, a mix of dread and erotic anticipation….

  “Adam—front and center.”

  Adam walks to the center of the garden, head bowed. God made him just right, reverent and obedient.

  “Look at me, Adam. You're a good boy.”

  “Thank you, God.”

  “Are you lonely, Adam?”

  “Oh, heavens no.” Adam names all of his animal friends. “And who could be lonely with you as a father?”

  “Adam, I'm going away soon. So I'm going to give you a mate.”

  “A mate?”

  “A woman.”

  “Woman?” He scratches his head.

  “She'll help you, Adam.”

  “Help me what?”

  “She'll help you become an interesting man.”

  “I'm not interesting?”

  “You're good, Adam. There's a difference. Woman will help you learn about differences. Now lie down…this won't hurt….”

  J.Q. Mahoney

  It's the day before V-Day—Valentine, victory, victim day, take your pick, there's no getting around it.

  Aunt Triss announced loudly this Saturday morning that she and Coral Kay were going to Grand Junction tomorrow—Valentine's Day—and would be staying overnight at a motel. Get it, Cosmic Man?

  Why is the most natural thing in the world so damn hard to do? Jonah wonders, shuffling into Huffaker's drugstore. Nothing more natural than romance between a man and a woman, but observing the dance some do to avoid being stung by Cupid's arrow, you would think it was a call tantamount to plunging into an icy lake.

  It used to be simpler, but we gave women the vote, some genius invented the birth control pill, then we let women fling their brassieres. Now they can get babies out of a petri dish—genetically designed kids who will march home from school and tune into the ubiquitous electronic babysitter, and pursue the Internet libraries instead of violent video games, pornography, or instructions on how to build bombs or purchase guns to blow away classmates. The planet could stand a little relief from the population explosion, but aren't there better ways ?…

  He can't honestly blame his angst on women's lib or men's obsession with violence and technology, not after living with Johanna Vanderbond. Despite her gayness, Jo had a philosophy that liberated women wanted liberated men. She meant the cosmic man. Women's lib was meant to be a bridge to connect the genders, not widen the gap between them. Women were doing their part by sharing the workload outside the home, and men were supposed to become touchy-feely kinds of guys…like Avery Bogart. On the other hand, Jo was hardly an advertisement for the survival of the human species, and if Avery is the model cosmic man, Jonah is sure evolution is going to continue to drag her feet….

  There are enough heart boxes of candy on the shelves in Huffaker's to jump-start a population explosion in the Valley. Jonah doesn't mind being part of the bewildered pack, but he doesn't particularly want to be observed studying the products of romance, as if his destiny hangs on whether he chooses pink or red. But it is baffling. If he buys a small box of chocolates, maybe she'll think him cheap. Big box, she might think he's too confident. Who knows the right voodoo? Chemistry tells you whom to mate with to make a baby, but who can understood the workings of the human heart?

  Jonah observes fat men, skinny, tall, short, clean-shaven, scruffy men quietly picking over the cards, staring glassy-eyed at the dizzying array of bows and hearts.

  Willie Wysop, infamous pot grower and cable bandit, sidles up. “Never thought I'd see you in a place like this, J.Q.”

  “Yeah? Why not?”

  “Man like you doesn't have to bribe with candy.”

  “Bribe…” Jonah strokes his beard. “You think I club their heads, drag them into my cave?”

  Willie grins and pokes him. “Man does what he has to.” Willie grabs a box of candy off the shelf, tugs the brim of his cap, slinks down the aisle.

  “But I want to do it,” Jonah says to no one in particular.

  It happened like this. Sunday morning Coral Kay came into his bedroom to tell him she and Aunt Triss were about to leave for Grand Junction. She presented him with a big red valentine trimmed with lacy white paper created with scissors magic. After an explanation of amazement and hugs, Jonah gave her a pink teddy bear and a big box of chocolates to give to Aunt Triss.

  “Where's Zion's valentine?”

  “I was thinking of giving her a shamrock on St. Pat's day. Will that do?”

  “No way! It's today, Daddy. Valentine's Day.” She parked her hand on her little hip and scowled at him.

  “I got her something….” He pointed at the rose in the vase on top of the bureau.

  “Oh, wow…”

  Down the hall she ran, yelling, “HE GOT HER SOMETHING, AUNT TRISS!”

  Zion is nowhere in sight when Jonah emerges from the bathroom, dressed in clean jeans and his best L.L. Bean shirt. He trimmed his beard to a neat chin ridge and splashed his neck with cologne. By summer the beard will be gone, but he's not quite ready to shave it off…maybe because of Frame's wisecrack.

  From his bedroom he takes the CD and the rose in the crystal vase into the kitchen. Every step he takes sounds like a giant crunching across dry tree limbs, but he doubts Zion can hear him above the exotic Far Eastern music playing below. Should he trot downstairs with the rose between his teeth? What if she's dancing naked? All the more reason…

  He deposits the rose and the CD on the counter next to the toaster, fills a mug with coffee and steps over to the back door to gaze out the window. Earlier it was bright and sunny, but now it's overcast. Nothing wrong with clouds; in fact, clouds can gentle a man's hyperactive mind, but there's a dreary feeling to these clouds. He opens the door and steps outside. Thunderpaws is creeping around the future garden, as if envisioning the juicy insects and birds it will attract.

  Jonah walks out on the dirt and looks up. That's an awfully dark cloud over the house and it has a kind of shape to it, like a blimp. The air feels heavy, very still. He can hear McNalley's dog barking, and off in the distance traffic on Ripple Creek Road. A wisp of wind flutters his hair, like skeleton fingers. He shivers. He's just feeling jittery about Zion. Doesn't he trust his vision? He prayed for a wife and Zion shows up the very next day. The New Agers say our thoughts create our reality. If true, it means they were attracted to each other, each having thoughts that created their coming together. (Never mind she owns the house and had no other place to go and his prayer was uttered in a fit of frustration…and he didn't specify a beautiful woman….) Whatever, God isn't going to come down and propose to her for him. And she has free will. What if the idea astounds her? “Marriage!?” She laughs. Begs his forgiveness. “I'm not laughing at you,” she lies. “It's just…I'm not really suited for marriage. Would you like to see the book I'm writing to fulfill my mission?” You promised to help me, and no one said you get me for a wife in the bargain. I didn't come at God's beckon, Jonah…Coyote sent me.

  He shakes off the gloom and heads back to the house. Walks in, almost collides with her, spilling coffee on the floor. Go for a towel or throw the mug and grab her?

  “I always just pour the dregs on the floor,” he says.

  She moves across the room, swanlike, tears paper off the roll, and hands the wad to him. She's wearing a black leotard thing on top, baggy black pants. Her hair is long and loose and shiny.

  “You didn't go to Junction?” he says.

  “No, I was ordered to stay home and receive a valentine from you.”

  “What if I forgot to buy one?” He walks past her over to the coffee machine, refills his mug. She's hexing him with her deep blue stare.

  “We'll think of something,” she says, brushing past him. She pours herself a cup of coffee.

  “It's there.” Taking a sip of coffee, he
nods at the vase next to the toaster. Red rosebud in a nest of heather with a pink bow around the neck of the vase. The clerk said any woman would be pleased to receive it.

  Zion picks up the rose, smells it, smiles. “It's lovely, Jonah. Thank you.”

  “There's a CD, too.”

  She picks that up, examines it. “John Denver…I’m not familiar with him. One of your favorites?”

  Jonah shrugs. “Earthman music.”

  “Thank you,” is all she says. Not—why don't we go downstairs, strip, and dance to it?

  Jonah saunters over to the table, sits down, and pulls out a chair as invitation for her to join him. But she remains at the counter. She's barefoot. Paints her toenails. Red.

  It seems to him they look at each other for a ten-minute stretch. It was probably less than a minute, but it was the most holding look they have allowed themselves since the night he returned from Star Rock. He can still vividly remember the way she looked at him the night they made love. The memory makes him glance away now.

  “We need to talk, Jonah.”

  His heart lurches. He gestures at the chair. “Well, come over here, Zion. You're not afraid of me, are you?”

  “A little…”

  That gives him pause. “You are?”

  But she's coming over. Looks slightly aloof as she sits down, not frightened at all. Women. Maybe they're not so different than men. Never mind what they say—what do they do?

  He reaches for her hand; she lets him hold it. “That's better,” he says, as if soothing a person on the verge of hysteria. That better describes him. He feels swoony with desire. But her hand lies in his like a polite dinner napkin.

  “We haven't really talked since I came home from the mountain.”

  She says nothing, just stares at him.

  “I had a lot to think about. Did a lot of reading to try and make sense of what happened.”

  “Did you?”

  “Make sense of it? Not really. Everybody tells a different story. A lot of the stories are similar, but those are the least like what I remember happening, so that only made it all the more confusing. Then something happened….” Jonah feels a blush creeping up his neck. “I, like, channeled something one night.”

  “Did it clear things up for you?”

  He nods, shakes his head, shrugs. “I burned it in the fireplace.”

  “It upset you.”

  “Funny…the actual experience I can almost accept, but the communication…too close to home, I guess. It was a kind of prophecy about our future here at the abode.”

  “Do you want to share it with me?”

  “I don't remember most. We're supposed to form a clan. Others will be joining us. It'll be a kind of safe port in a sea of upheaval. Earth changes, all that stuff. We're going to develop…” he chuckles, “some paranormal powers, such as the art of invisibility. It'll be a habitat…for the new kind of human being. Whatever that means.”

  “Perhaps in the natural course of evolution.”

  “Yeah…just a little leap, not those bug-eyed skinny things. I'm sure even one of them showing up at the hospital would freak out the natives…unless that will be the cause of the upheaval…” Jonah strokes his beard.

  “I doubt we need worry about that.”

  “You're a comfort to me, Zion.” Jonah squeezes her hand. Her look is penetrating.

  “I don't really think things are going to get radically weird,” he says. “We're just supposed to create a healthy environment for children.”

  Zion is straining to maintain her composure. Over Jonah's right shoulder, she can see a faint impression of a purple owl.…

  “We'll be needing a clan mother, Zion.”

  She jumps, as if he woke her up from a short snooze. “You own the property, and you're very wise.”

  “Who will be the clan father?”

  “Me.”

  “You're very practical, Jonah.”

  He bows his head to her hand. To his amazement, she runs her fingers through his hair. “It's more than practicality,” he says so quietly he doubts she hears him. “I've been in love with you from the first day you came home. But what do I have to offer? And what right do I have to ask you to be my wife? We hardly know each other.”

  She lifts his chin. Her eyes are soft.

  “I remember the night we made love, Jonah.”

  That sits him up. All this time, yearning for her, afraid it would be a long time before she warmed to him, even if it was in the cards…a question he could no longer suffer, which is why he decided to just out with a proposal of marriage, based on some twisted reasoning, cleverly put to a woman who is otherworldly enough, she just might go for it…. But what if she tells him their lovemaking was a big mistake and can never happen again?

  His tongue feels bound up with barbed wire, but he can't let the silence be.

  “I've thought about it a lot and wondered if it was like brute lust trampling your feminine psyche.” He touches her cheek with the tips of his fingers. “But my desire for you was bigger than my ethics.”

  She takes his hand and places it on her abdomen.

  He is stirred with incomprehensible surprise.

  “I'm pregnant, Jonah.”

  He disrupts the pattern of the table and chairs, embracing her. Tears stream from his eyes as he strokes her silken hair. He pulls her onto his lap, kisses her tenderly, touches her face with wonder, her arms and legs, looking at every part of her, as if this is the first time he has seen or touched a woman.

  “Marry me, Zion…”

  “Every day, Jonah…”

  Her response is like a button in pudding. His tongue isn't sure what to think.

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “Yes, I will marry you every day. No, I will not make vows designed to bind.”

  “I'm not sure I understand….”

  She places her hand on his heart. As before, electrical, sensual pulsations flood his body.

  Now he understands. She loves him!

  He gathers her in his arms, lifts her, carries her back to his bedroom, and lowers her gently to his bed.

  God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the Earth….

  And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

  And then things got very complicated….

  Chapter Z (26)

  Jonah would end the story here, if this were only a story. He would create a place where joy could run free and express like a healthy child, fortified by a small clan of like-minded, like-hearted individuals. We all experience such moments of perfect bliss (and amnesia), when it seems we can seize the light and expand the beam to shine on everything. Zion had such a vision once upon a time, as a fairchild who believed she could fly to Earth and open a portal of light. In Zion's world there were no archons, no diseases, no wars, no negative energies to convert. In Jonah's world, good always triumphs over evil, end of story.

  To whom much is given, much is expected….

  Jonah is dreaming. He's building little sod igloos out of bags of dirt, places for the people who will come to Apple Valley….

  “Ouch!”

  Jonah jumps. He stepped on a rock. “Sorry,” he says, picks up the rock, moves it closer to the apple tree.

  “Be more careful where you step!” the rock says.

  “But you were out there in the dirt. How'd I know you were a living rock?”

  “Because I talk.”

  “Everything talks, so what?”

  “Not every rock is a talking rock, not!”

  Jonah bends over, squints at the rock. About the size of his fist, it looks like iron ore dipped in sugar. It sparkles. “You sure you're a rock indigenous to Earth? Maybe you dropped from Geshlama.”

  “Maybe I fell out of the trunk of Zion's car….”

  “Uh-huh! A spy rock.”

  “I spy a sp
y coming to you.”

  “A double-talking spy rock…why am I not surprised?”

  “You will be….”

  Zion is dreaming. While dancing for Jonah, she spun invisible. She meant only to show him it could be done…realized her mistake on the last whirl before she disappeared….

  “Oh, what now?” her dream self says agitatedly. Will she ever learn to leave well enough alone?

  She is swinging, as if entwined in a bee's hive. Wound from her feet up to her chest, her silver cord is snagged on a stalactite in a chamber inside a great stone cavern. In dim light of no identifiable source, she can make out tunnels shooting off in all directions.

  In the misty light, she sees Zynnwxatu, the king of winds, surrounded by four female wind gods. His royal self is reclined, as if in a hammock. The gods are all slightly blue. Long tendrils of what is meant to impress as hair streams from Zynnwxatu's crown. The four royal winds are combing his hair with long, slender fingers, oiling his tresses to lessen the effects of static electricity, a great annoyance to this king of the airwaves. Around the royal five are breezes like naiads, whistling their praises.

  “Even winds in stones must rest.” The voice reverberates like a bass viol, swinging Zion on the stalactite.

  The king of wind's smile is grotesque, but the feeling projected is friendly enough. Lifting a bluish arm, he points a long, regal finger.

  “Come see vanity with a long silver tail. What a pretty, this starmeister who falls to Earth and spins wherever she pleases! She thinks. But what are her thoughts but vain memories of what she could command before she fell?”

  He knows my whole history, Zion thinks.