Snake Girl VS the KKK

by Peter Joseph Swanson

  “Oh, right here.” Michael handed it to him. “What’s it for?”

  “The west is the direction of death. The chalice is its traditional symbol. I’m so glad you had one. Mine’s still out at Joel’s cabin from last Solstice. I’m just too lazy to go all the way out there to pick it up.”

  “Well, you better go get it before the snow flies, girl,” Michael advised, “or you won’t have it for Christmas.”

  “Christ.” Burt moaned at the prospect. Then he went back to his basket and placed his crystal egg at the north.

  “What’s that for?”

  “The north is the direction of Mother Earth. Eggs make nice emblems of her.”

  “Oh, and the others?” Michael asked as he gestured to the south and to the east.

  “The south is sensuality, and the east is ideas.”

  “Oh.”

  “I hope our eye-liner is water proof,” Burt said.

  “Why? Am I getting baptized?”

  Burt took a vial of holy water from his robe pocket. “Yep!” He splashed Michael in the face. “I’ve always wanted to do that to you.” He sprinkled Joanie with more care, then sprinkled the plastic Virgin Mary at the kitchen table, and the four corners. He drew pentacles with his fingers and the water on all of the windows and mirrors—including the bathroom medicine cabinet.

  Michael remembered a conversation that he’d once had with Burt about ghosts. Burt called them wandering souls saying that if a person dies but doesn’t know it then he wanders around for awhile until he figures out he’s supposed to be dead. He’d have to ask Burt sometime if this ritual had anything to do with helping Alex move on. Or was this just for them. Burt placed his empty vial in the chalice.

  Michael said to Joanie, “I don’t think we’re going to get a eulogy.”

  “It’s not another funeral,” she said. “Burt’s merely cleaning house.”

  “Cleaning? Oh. Is that what this all is? Oh. I was wondering.”

  Joanie nodded. “It’s just a cleaning ritual. Bad things here need cleaned out. Bad energy. Thanks for the nice things you said about my brother at the funeral.”

  Michael cringed. “Could you understand me through all my bawling?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t talk normal when I’m like that. I hope you didn’t think I was doing my Diana Ross impersonation singing out one of her Wiz songs.”

  “You mean your screeching?” Joanie squeezed Michael’s arm. “You were fine. There’s nothing wrong with being choked up at a funeral.”

  “It was terrible.”

  “It’s natural to get choked up when you’re sad.”

  “It was terrible!”

  “Yes, it was a funeral.”

  Michael sadly nodded. “Choked up, breathless and making awful sounding high notes.”

  “All done.” Burt sat at the table. “Except for the libation, of course.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You know… libation, communion, Eucharist, mass, the breaking of bread, chow. Everybody does it. The pizza delivery should be here any minute. They have a thirty-minute guarantee or you get it free. Michael, go get your chalice so we can fill it with beer.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Of course not.” Burt slipped out of his robe. “Beer and pizza are food. Now the living have to go on living. It’s as important a part of the ritual as any of the rest of it.”

  Michael sadly shook his head. “I don’t think I could eat. My stomach feels like it’s in a tight knot.”

  “Pretend. It’s a ritual. At least pretend!”

  Michael glared at him. “Pretend to eat?”

  “It’s a very good start.”

  There was a ring from the doorbell. “It’s here!” Michael jumped up and opened the door. “No! It’s Annie Bea! Glad you could come.”

  She thanked him.

  “So nice to see you here,” he added.

  She entered the kitchen with a tissue to her eye. “I’m so sorry about all of this. Oh, hi, Burt. Where’s your wife?”

  “She’s deathly allergic to death,” Burt said.

  Joanie greeted Annie Bea, “You’re just in time for pizza.”

  Annie Bea’s face brightened. “Pizza! Great! When I’m upset I’m so hungry. What kind?” Then she looked at the table cluttered with religion. “Where are we going to put it?”

  “Clean off the table to ready it for the food,” Burt ordered Michael.

  “No!” Joanie put her hands out. “I want to keep this like this here for awhile… for a few days… for a few weeks. Set up the card table. We can put the pizza there.”

  As Burt put his three Swatch watches back on his wrists, he asked Michael, “You’re so agnostic so why’d you have me come here and do this?”

  Michael shrugged. “Burp, honey, science makes for a boring funeral… unless, of course, we pull a giant lever and make the body come back to life to do our bidding.”

  Burt grinned. “Hmmm, that would be a very exciting funeral.”

  “Next,” Michael asked, “Can we make voodoo dolls of the bad guys and torture them by dressing them in Barbie clothes? There are times magic is the very best thing to do.”

  Burt shook his head. “Bitter, bitter, bitter.”

  “You’re not going to tell me to turn the other cheek, I hope. I don’t buy that Golden Rule shit. I do the Iron Rule: Do unto others as they do unto you. If they want war I’ll give them one right back!”

  Burt asked, “Who’s they?”

  “The KKK!”

  “Where are you going to find that?”

  Michael shrugged and tears came to his eyes again. “Out there in the woods somewhere.”

  “What woods.”

  “Somewhere out there where the trees haven’t all been chopped down yet out in farm land.”

  Annie Bea took Joanie’s hand. When they finally dared look into each other’s eyes, they busted into tears. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”

  Michael didn’t want to cry again so he hurried to the bathroom, sat on the toilet seat, and held his breath.

  * * * * *

  The next day in the early afternoon, Lizzi walked down Main Street towards the downtown park. She decided to run her lines for the high school variety show. She put on her Nastassja Kinski pose and snarled at the world. “Jack dahhhling. Dahlink. Dahhhling. Darrrling. Dirling honey pie, what are you doing all the waaay over here in the States?” She repeated the sentence a few more times so that she could play with the accent. “Dahhling… dahhhhling.” The idea of doing the piece with a French accent was all hers and she hoped Tony could master one. She’d kill him if he messed it up. “Jack dahling, what in the hell are you doing in the States?”

  And then Tony says something, Blah, blah, blah.

  And then she says, “Where did you think I’d go to spend all of your money?” She repeated the line a few more times then looked up to see Michael sitting on a park bench. His back was to her but she recognized him by his wide angular shoulders and his long hair. She stood silently and watched him for a few moments, studying his purple shirt of thin flannel that almost looked like a pajama top. “Hellooo?” she finally hailed him.

  He slipped his dark glasses down his nose and peered over them. “Hmm? Tom? Is that you? What a bad wig.”

  It took Lizzi a moment to notice his facial bruises but when she saw them she put her hands to her face. “Oh my God! What happened to you? Were you hit by a car?”

  “Oh. It’s not Tom. It’s you! Hi, Liza.”

  “Lizzi. I never remember names. My head is just too busy for that.”

  “Michael.”

  “Oh, I remembered yours. Who can forget you.”

  Michael invited her to sit down.

  She shook her hips a few times and asked, “Doesn’t this new skirt make me look like a rock star?”

  He thought it made her look like she was out hunting for sperm so he agreed.

  Lizzi sat and folded her hands neatly
in her lap. “Um, thank you.” She looked at his face again. “What happened? AIDS?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that. Um, I was in an Airport movie. I tried to land the plane all by myself. I can’t fly this plane!”

  “I didn’t really think it was AIDS but then I know nothing about it, other than it comes in a Trojan.”

  “What?”

  “The horse I mean. Whatever. Were you in a fight, then… just right in your face.”

  He thought back to that lazy warm afternoon when he’d first met her at the sandbag wall. He was with Alex, wasting time together as only two bored friends can. She warned them about the witches that ate wild dogs at the river woods at night, as if that was the most horrible thing the world had to offer.

  Lizzi noticed Michael’s melancholy. “Hello? I see lights on… but…”

  “Oh!” Michael laughed at himself. “I was just spacing.” The hair-of-the-dog he’d mixed with bubbly mineral water hours earlier didn’t help. “Booze takes away guilt.”

  “Why? What did you do to deserve this?” Lizzi asked. “You’re way cool.”

  “Nothing at all. I was just raised to feel guilty and this is a very good time.”

  “Because you got way beat up?”

  Michael nodded. “Proper people don’t get beat up unless they’re asking for it or whatever. I know it’s bullshit but that’s how I was raised. The Lord giveth; the Lord taketh away. If you ever find yourself having fun at all in life, be careful. You’ll get zapped for it.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  Michael made himself laugh. “I still feel like I’m gonna burn in hell if I use too many condiments. If that’s how you’re raised that’s how you’re raised.”

  “Oh, you’re just being dumb.”

  “Don’t you believe in God?”

  She shrugged. “I always forget to think about it. Out of sight out of mind I guess.”

  “Didn’t your mother teach you guilt?”

  She looked up into the tree. “She usually just bitches about stuff. So yeah, I guess.”

  Michael made himself smile. “What have you been up to?”

  “I’m rehearsing lines for a really Lawrence Welk, like, play. For school. My bit with Tony is going to be a big production in the middle of an otherwise boring show. It’s gonna be so in your face. So 3-D!”

  “Live theater in 3-D… how cool. Need any help?” Michael perked up.

  “The lines are easy,” Lizzi said. “Tell me what you think of this accent!” She cleared her throat and positioned herself luxuriously in the bench. “Jack dahling, what in the hell are you doing here in the States?”

  “Hmm.” Michael rubbed his chin, trying not to blatantly scowl. “Are you trying for German or French or Swedish or something? No. Don’t tell me… Cuban! Japanese!”

  Lizzi tried not to sound hurt. “French. It needs work? But…”

  “Oh.” He thought a moment. “It should be at your lips more and resonate in the nasal passages a bit. Watch a few Catherine Deneuve films and you’ll get it.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “A French star. Very glamorous. You look a little bit like her… except for the nose.”

  Lizzi pinched her nose as if that would make it thinner. “I’m a senior. I’m a total star.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  “Well, I really haven’t, you know, practiced yet. Do you want to help me? Do you think my doing it like this is just making me a sex object? I don’t want to be a sex object. I may want to write an important book about feminism or something someday and I don’t want this to come back to haunt me. They take lots of pictures.”

  “We’re all sex objects. Especially at our ages. The point is just to try and be a bit more than a sex object so you have something to grow old with.” He frowned. “Try.”

  “Oh, good. I can’t wait to wear one of my mother’s old bullet bras. It’s as good as new because she said she hated it, but it’s old. And your boobs go way out into the room.”

  Michael nodded. “Yes, I have one.”

  “Oh that’s right. You would.” She laughed nervously. “By the way, um, who beat you up?”

  He shrugged.

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. But it’s obvious so I can’t help it.”

  “No, no, it’s just that it was really awful. I mean, I didn’t get the worst of it. It was just… I mean it was… pretty awful…” Michael trailed off.

  “You were jumped?”

  He nodded. His hands started trembling so he folded them tightly between his knees to contain them.

  “You need a vacation.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sure,” Lizzi said. “My totally spaced-out aunt married money so she took a vacation every time she decided she was having a bad life. Her personal problems put her into all types of cool tourist spots. What was one of your best vacations ever? Do that again!”

  “I think my best vacation ever was something I could never do again.” He began to sing in an Indian impersonation, “Camp Shoshini, land of bed so stony, let me ride my pony, to the macaroni!”

  “What the hell was that?”

  Michael sadly chuckled. “A song from summer camp. I bet they still sing it today if the camp is even still there at all. I could never go back. That’s just kid’s stuff.” He imagined Alex telling him that having once gone to summer camp was not a personality. “Oh but those were the days. A beach full of boys—a beach from heaven on Lake Shoshoni. It was just boys that week. No girls. A Baptist camp. What a beach. And… and at night in the dark…” He held his breath.

  “Find a new beach!”

  The idea of skipping town had occurred to him already but he was tired of slumming it as he had in Chicago and San Francisco. There was one place he could go but it would have a different price. “The farm ponds don’t have beaches… but… I could go home for a day.”

  She grinned. “Home?”

  “Yep. You see, I never go there—it’s a big headache—but there’s a big family reunion that my mom has begged me to attend. Well, she’s mentioned it with a mention of Jesus and for her that’s begging. She lets Him do the begging for her. There’s one every October and this year it’s at their farm.”

  “A farm! Wow, that sounds like fun! Let’s go!”

  Michael looked at her in dismay. “My family is not fun.”

  “Why not?”

  “Their Jesus is not fun.”

  Lizzi looked exasperated. “But it’s a farm!”

  “You say that like it has rides and shops… and the animals are people in fake fur costumes trying to be cartoons.”

  “Do they know about your shows at the Cabaret?”

  “No, Mom doesn’t know that I have far more lipsticks than she does… and that I once tried to wear them all at the same time.”

  Lizzi shrugged flippantly. “Tell them. I told my mom I was straight and all she could say was to not to get knocked up or she’d fuckin’ kill me.”

  “Funny.”

  “I’m serious. You don’t know my mother. She gets drunk and yells at the news, the local news, calling all the women reporters dirty bitches and stuff. She used to do the news, herself, back a hundred years ago but she said she got tired of trying to pretend it was news when it really wasn’t news—if that makes any sense. She makes no sense. Of course the news is news—it’s on TV at news time! And then last night she kept me up with the sound of her flushing the toilet over and over a hundred times, bawling that it wasn’t clean. She drinks and then becomes demon possessed and sees germs nobody else can see.”

  “Wow. That’s heavy. Well, screw it. I don’t want to deal with mothers. It’s just that I’ve already lied to mine that I had a girlfriend.”

  “Oh, my. You’re so way bad.”

  “I feel dumb for doing it but it was to shut her up. Or to try and shut my guilt up. I guess you could say I don’t quite care for them enough to tell them the truth. Sometimes it’s easier to not be yourself but to just be what other
people want to you be, especially if it’s family.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That my girlfriend and I were musicians and we play in St. Louis a lot. So we’re always gone. So that’s why I’m never around to say hi.”

  “What’s the name of your girlfriend?” She wickedly smiled like a horny criminal.

  “She doesn’t have a name. They don’t care. They don’t really want me to say hi, anyway. They just want to keep the guilt always going at slow burn.”

  “Why don’t you just borrow a girlfriend for the weekend? Look it up in the yellow pages; there must be a service. What weekend is it? I may be available. I’m an actress who sometimes plays girlfriends.”

  “Slow down. I never said I was going anywhere.”

  “It’s practically decided. I can pretend to be your girlfriend. Oh, do choose me! I’ve never been to a farm before… well, except the time we went out to Keaffer’s Research Farm to see a cow that had a glass window to its stomach. It was so gross. What a concentration camp!”

  “We don’t have anything like that.”

  “What do you have?” she asked, her interest mounting.

  “Um, cows, chickens, goats, and things like that.”

  “I’ve never seen a goat before—not in real life, anyway. I just see them on TV on mountains. Oh God, tell me you don’t have mountains!”

  “You’ve never seen a goat?” Michael asked, astonished. “You were never dragged to the petting zoo?”

  “Do they really eat tin cans?”

  He shook his head. “They just like the paper on it… and they love the glue. But nobody can be so dumb as to think a mammal can just chew down a tin can.”

  “Isn’t it funny?” Lizzi hadn’t listened to his last remark. “Me being your girlfriend? That is so funny! I love the idea of being a girlfriend! Whenever I’m with Tony I don’t feel like I’m a girlfriend. It’s even hard to pretend.”

  “No, no!” Michael put his hand up. “I have to think about this! There’s something very very wrong about this! You’re too young!” Then he realized she was the same age as Tony. He put his face in his hands and moaned.