textfiles/magazines/INTERTEXT/ITv7n3.etx

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InterText Vol. 7, No. 3 / May-June 1997
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  Contents

    Graceland..................................William Routhier

    The Lady of Situations.......................Madeline Brown

    Missionary...................................Gary Percesepe

    Paddlefish Sky..................................Hollis Drew

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    Editor                                     Assistant Editor
    Jason Snell                                    Geoff Duncan
    jsnell@intertext.com                    geoff@intertext.com
....................................................................
    Assistant Editor                     Send correspondence to
    Susan Grossman                        editors@intertext.com
    susan@intertext.com              or intertext@intertext.com
....................................................................
    Submissions Panelists:
    Bob Bush, Peter Jones, Jason Snell
....................................................................
  InterText Vol. 7, No. 3. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
  electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this
  magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold
  (either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire
  text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1997, Jason Snell.
  Individual stories Copyright 1997 their original authors. For
  more information about InterText, send a message to
  info@intertext.com. For writers' guidelines, mail
  guidelines@intertext.com.
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  Graceland   by William Routhier
=================================
....................................................................
  Those who accuse the music industry of deifying its stars have 
  _no_ idea.
....................................................................


  Jasmine's been after me for about a month now to go with her to 
  church. She says it'll cement the relationship. Now these are 
  two words I don't like to hear when it comes to women -- cement 
  and relationship. See, I see love as more a fluid kind of thing.

  I tell her I wouldn't mind going once, but don't go thinking I'm 
  going to join. I like the music all right, I tell her, but the 
  preachers ruin it for me, with their the gold belts, white jump 
  suits, mutton chop sideburns, wraparounds. "They look so cheap 
  and old," I say.

  Jasmine gets a hurt look on her face but in a blink she segues 
  into her conversion mode. "That's just false perception," she 
  says. "You can't judge by the superficial, you gotta take a leap 
  of faith, then everything that seemed superficial before shines 
  in glory and you're rocking on real gone holy ground."

  "Yeah, yeah, easy to say," I say, "but once I leap, there's no 
  way I can know what ground I'm landing on till I land."

  "Exactly," she says, then shakes her head. "Don't you trust me?" 
  she says, and I don't answer. She casts her eyes downward and 
  quietly tells me I might just be the type who'll never love 
  someone tender, who'll never take care of business. Then she 
  looks up and says "TLC," waving her hand in the air like a 
  benediction. "You may never know burning love," she says. Unless 
  of course I go with her to a service.

  I could show you a thing or two about burning love, I'm 
  thinking.

  After our dramatic little scenario, though, Jasmine cuts me a 
  beautiful, forgiving grin, says, "You're so square, but baby I 
  don't care." It's my greased black hair, I know. She can't 
  resist. There's something about religious zealots that's so sexy 
  to me. Everything so clear cut.

  I looked into it, for the sake of keeping her. I'm not against 
  the whole idea. I just liked the young guy better. Even though 
  most churches admit to two distinct periods, they all seem to 
  settle on the Vegas one, the overweight, glitzy one. The "Peace 
  in the Valley" one. I hate that song.

  I read an article in a magazine once that some Ph.D. at Harvard 
  wrote. Said the Church of the King -- Jasmine's particular 
  church is the First Church of Grace of His Trembling Lip -- was 
  a natural step in religious development, came at the right time 
  to snatch up millions of disillusioned Catholics after the gay 
  Pope scandal.

  Then when they found those scrolls, archeological evidence 
  recounting Jesus' actual death, how he got no burial, was left 
  for the dogs after they took him down, that nixed the 
  resurrection, this Harvard guy says, which upset a lot of 
  Fundamentalists and other Christians as well. Some called it a 
  fake, some tried to adapt their dogma, but then scientific proof 
  came in showing how eternal life and reincarnation were real. So 
  the abortion argument lost its zing, not to mention the heaven 
  idea. The walls came tumbling down.

  The mass recognition, Harvard Guy goes on to say, led to Him 
  replacing Jesus as Christ figure easier than anybody could have 
  guessed. What with the tragic death, the numerous sightings and 
  visitations, the spontaneous pilgrimages to Graceland on Death 
  Night which started up a few years after He died and turned into 
  what's now the largest annual gathering in the whole damn world. 
  Not quite so spontaneous anymore, of course. August 15th, Death 
  Night, day before the tragedy -- just like Holy Thursday and 
  Good Friday. It all fell right into place, Harvard says.

  That's why the churches go with the Vegas guy. Historical 
  continuity of myth. Hot buttons. Works the crowd better. It's 
  true, people love a tragic story best. The King's tragedy turns 
  into our salvation, just like with Jesus. Makes them forget 
  about themselves. Shakespeare knew it, littered the stage with 
  bodies. And costumes make the show. Give 'em enough for their 
  dollar, people'll believe what you want 'em to believe. Colonel 
  Tom Parker used to say that, but they don't talk about him.

  So with all this myth and spectacle, why would anybody want to 
  believe in the rockin' song of holding onto everlasting youth, 
  like the young guy tried to do? He sure couldn't, anyhow. Hard 
  to live that way, Daddy-O. I know.

  They had a vote on which guy back when, before the turn of the 
  century. Post Office asked people to decide who they wanted on 
  the stamp, young or old. People picked young.

  People had a better sense of style then.

  I play His music all the time. I never bought any official 
  church holy discs. All that sanctified crap they give you along 
  with it always creeped me weird. I got the old RCA ones. Songs 
  sound good still. The man could sing.


  Jasmine tells me as we're driving down A1A toward Miami, palm 
  trees swaying in the warm spring breeze coming off the ocean, 
  that Elvis -- all the preachers call themselves Elvis -- that 
  her church's Elvis, Elvis, told her she was a real Priscilla. 
  Jasmine's squealing, practically creaming her gold silk pants 
  and she runs a pink lacquered fingernail to her mascaraed eye 
  and brushes away the touch of a tear, she's so happy because he 
  said she was a real Priscilla. I think maybe I'm wasting my time 
  on this whole thing with her. Then she throws both hands into 
  the air, squeals again and shakes her glorious mane of black 
  lacquered hair, as much as she can, leans over with her silky 
  white blouse all billowing in the wind, puts her arms around my 
  neck and lunges in, kisses my cheek, and the thick whiff of her 
  perfume drowns out all my doubts as her heavy breasts rub 
  through my black cotton t-shirt onto my chest and it makes me 
  believe, good lord, yes. Love me tender, love me true.

  I sing the song to her in my... His voice. She's nuzzling my 
  ear, melting like a chocolate bar left in the sun.


  Personally, I'd love to have something to believe in like 
  Jasmine does, something to console myself with. My parents were 
  traditional Christians back when preachers were still guys with 
  white hair sprayed into a stiff pomp talking Jesus on Sunday TV. 
  Florida was the main place for television church back then, and 
  unlike many, my folks went out to worship and watch in person 
  every Sunday. Part faith and praying, part the kick of being on 
  television. I liked it too. We always videotaped, and that 
  afternoon before Sunday dinner, we'd sit there and watched what 
  we'd just sat through, pointing and cheering from our living 
  room couch when we'd spot ourselves in the crowd, among the 
  faithful. Weird how something as strange as that can be a sweet 
  memory. The clear-cut simplicity of it, I guess.

  Took quite a while for the whole Jesus thing to die. They held 
  out, even with the growing popularity of Elvis churches 
  encroaching and eventually taking over established Christian 
  church buildings, like when the Crystal Cathedral went belly up 
  after the big scandal with Preacher Morris Delbert and the four 
  choirgirls. That's pretty well forgotten now, but it was 
  plastered all over the tabloids back then for months.

  The day I realized it had really changed, I was about fifteen. I 
  remember it clear, this one Sunday morning, driving down Federal 
  Highway with my folks and hearing for the first time church 
  bells chiming "Love Me Tender."

  Wow, I thought. The whole thing started to blossom after that, 
  till pretty soon you couldn't find Jesus anywhere for looking. 
  My folks still went to one of the last Jesus churches, a small 
  one in Pompano, blue hair country. Mom said the Elvis stuff 
  signalled the coming of the apocalypse, but the century had 
  passed a little while back, Christ didn't return, so the wind 
  was gone out of those sails too.

  A few years later I remember getting a historical biography of 
  Him out of the library, a real book from the reference section, 
  with paper pages and black and white photographs and everything, 
  the kind the church doesn't like to acknowledge or talk about, 
  the kind they call secondhand tales told out of turn, 
  falsifications and lies, blasphemous trash. The librarian looked 
  at me like I was some kind of devil.

  Book said He wasn't so holy after all, He wasn't any saint. He 
  had sex with hundreds of women when He was on the road, wasn't 
  particularly faithful to anyone. He was a young guy full of the 
  juice of life. Later on, He took drugs by the fistful to dull 
  the pain of seeing His juice slipping away.


  Next Sunday I'm sitting in church beside Jasmine. Jasmine's 
  beaming with the victory of me being there. She's looking so 
  good, her hair in a high tease, tight pink angora sweater and 
  black capri pants, doused in perfume, that gold bracelet I just 
  gave her for her birthday jangling on her thin, pale wrist, I'm 
  thinking I might convert, just for today, just to have a night 
  of pure bliss peeling it all off of her back at her place. The 
  deal is she won't go past kiss and touch without me first 
  "joining in the oneness of the King's holy rocking soul." Right 
  now she's got my soul rocking and my rocks aching, jumpy to join 
  in that oneness, and she knows it.

  All along the circular walls between each stained glass window 
  are these big black velvet paintings of the King. One's a warm, 
  compassionate face. One's a serious face in profile, 
  contemplating a light from above. One's a full figure of him 
  performing in the white suit, microphone in hand. One's him in 
  the same suit standing sideways, doing a karate chop. One's him 
  with arms outstretched, eyes heavenward, half circle of white 
  cape under the arms. One's him in a dark suit, strumming a 
  guitar on a leopard skin couch, wearing the shades. On and on, 
  the many aspects of the King. Jasmine told me on the drive over 
  it's considered sacrilegious to refer to him as Elvis. It's 
  always the King. The preachers, though, they get called Elvis.

  Up on the big altar stage, there's a choir of women singers in 
  white robes, swaying and clapping, singing -- "See, with your 
  eyes now, see, what the King has done, o-ooo see, with your eyes 
  now, what the King has done, Lord..."

  The choir's wailing this to the old tune "C. C. Rider." The band 
  is hot, tight as Jasmine's pants, slick as her red lipstick. 
  They got these beautiful old vintage guitars, authentic brass 
  horns, real drums, no programmed stuff, everybody's playing for 
  real, working up a sweat and damn if it isn't starting to get 
  under my skin, down into my twitchy zone. My leg is bouncing, 
  Jasmine's noticing, wearing her cat just ate the bird grin, but 
  I don't give her the satisfaction of even a hint of a smile.

  The congregation is weaving, clapping, singing. A little boy in 
  front of me is kneeling on his seat, bobbing his head to the 
  music, staring at me. Black boy about five, cute, got on a 
  little beige suit, daffodil yellow shirt and red bow tie. I wink 
  at him and he grins and starts gyrating to the music as best he 
  can from his knees, two little hands holding the back of the 
  seat. His whole family, sisters and brothers of various ages on 
  either side of Mom and Dad are all bobbing their heads and 
  clapping in a grooving, rhythmic oneness, like some kind of 
  human caterpillar undulating along the branch of a tree. Except, 
  of course, they don't slide sideways.

  I been used to seeing blacks and whites together all my life, in 
  school and work and the market, but never in church. It was 
  always black church and white church. A few spill-overs either 
  way, but here I'm looking around seeing how it's all real 
  intermingled -- black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and there's no 
  big pockets of any one kind though the congregation either, it's 
  cozy and mixed nice, mostly couples and families. The other odd 
  thing I notice is I've seen about a dozen dwarfs.

  The band kicks into "Good Rockin' Tonight," the choir changing 
  it slightly and singing "Have you heard the news, there's good 
  rocking today!" The little kid throws both hands up in the air 
  and is bending his body, swaying side to side at the waist. I'm 
  hoping he doesn't fall over in his seat. With the entire 
  congregation going at it like this, I'm feeling it too though, 
  and that's what I'm beginning to concentrate on, how I feel 
  good. I groove along for a while until I get this calm inside, 
  like I used to feel when I was about ten years old and it was 
  early spring, not hot yet, just before summer hit and I'd go 
  outside in the morning on Saturday early before the day had 
  started, everything quiet except the occasional whoosh of a car 
  going down the highway or the buzz of a lawn mower far off. 
  Balmy air cushioning me like soft white cotton. I'd pick some 
  green palm leaves off a small tree next to a hotel pool and go 
  around to the back of the Wal-Mart parking lot, sneak down to 
  the edge of the intercoastal canal and float the leaves out into 
  the water and watch until they sailed out past the docked boats. 
  Then I'd make up all kinds of little stories and adventures 
  about where they were going, what they were going to find.

  I turn and look at Jasmine. Her blue eyes float dazed in the 
  black circles of her mascara and they're coming closer.

  "You're real gone now," she says, and kisses my cheek.

  I look at the velvet paintings along the wall. They look like 
  they got lights behind them shining through. I stare.

  Then I look around at the people, and their faces are beaming 
  and I think I never saw anything as beautiful.

  The band all of a sudden finishes and the music stops. The crowd 
  hushes and the lights go down. Even though there's some light 
  coming in the stained glass windows, it's fairly dim. One 
  spotlight hits the microphone and an orchestra is coming over 
  the speakers, a recording of the theme from the classic movie 
  "2001."

  Dah -- dah -- dah! Last note, lights go up, he comes whirling 
  out in his white caped suit, its golf ball sized spangles 
  shooting off lines of light, he's twirling the cape and holding 
  his hand out in the air to the congregation, who are standing 
  now and going nuts. He's not as fat like I thought he'd be, and 
  he's pretty good looking. The hair is jet black, he's got the 
  big weird mutton chop sideburns. No shades. The band is ripping 
  into something I can't place. He stands in front of the 
  microphone, raises his arms three-quarters up and the cape falls 
  out full bloomed. In a flick, he whips his arms down, karate 
  chops the air twice. I'm hearing a few screams and he grins. The 
  lip curls.

  I feel this pure sexual thrill of identification with him, how 
  he knows he's making the women go crazy and he's loving it and 
  that transfers to me somehow, this sexual feeling, that it's 
  something I can do too.

  I look over at Jasmine, and she doesn't know I'm there anymore. 
  Her mascara's running a little, a tear out of the side of one 
  eye and she's breathing too hard.

  Elvis grabs the mike and starts in singing.

  "Train I ride, takes me to the King
  Train I ride, takes me to the Lord
  If you wanna go there with me,
  Just gotta hop on board."

  The congregation's right there with him, singing and clapping. 
  He goes along, singing new words to "It's Now or Never," "Can't 
  Help Falling in Love," and "Suspicious Minds."

  As the last song's about to end he holds his hand up behind him 
  to the band and wiggles it, bringing it down, signalling for 
  quiet. Dead silence. Then he points at the choir, not looking 
  back, and their voices start up gloriously in a capella ooo's.

  Elvis sings, to "Are You Lonesome Tonight,"

  "Are you holy today,
  Are you going his way,
  Are you free from the doubt and the pain?" 

  Everyone is swaying, some got their arms in the air, some are 
  shouting "Amen! Yes, King! I'm free!" Elvis signals the choir 
  and it drops down to a bare hush of oooo's cooing soft in the 
  background. He points out at the congregation.

  "You feeling holy today?" He's got the voice, the deep, mumbly 
  honey-throated Southern drawl.

  The place shakes from shouts.

  "Are you going my way?"

  A joyous babble of Amen's agreeing.

  "Are you free from your doubt and your pain?"

  Yes, King! I'm free!

  "Listen to me, then," he says, the choir still cooing soft. "We 
  all want a burning love, don't we? We all want a love that'll 
  free us, purify us, make us clean, holy and whole. Well, the 
  King can give you that love!"

  Amen, King! Gimme that love!

  "But the mistake churches always used to make was to try to 
  confine that love, stop up that love, connn-troooolll that 
  love."

  Everybody goes quiet. I realize it's basically the same 
  performance every week and this is a cue.

  "Did the King control his swiveling hips?"

  No!

  "Did the King control his wiggling leg?"

  No!

  "Did the King control his burning love?"

  No!

  "Why not? Because you cannot control love, that why not! You 
  gotta give love, take love, shake with love, love with love!

  "All love is good in the spirit of the holy rocking oneness of 
  the King. But of course, we can't be wanton and unfaithful. As 
  man and woman, we must care for one another. How? How does the 
  King instruct us, what are the two special rules we must follow 
  to keep it all together, keep it from going astray? One! TCB. 
  Taking care of business. Responsibility. Faithfulness. Hard 
  work. The men especially need to pay attention to TCB. Two! TLC. 
  Tender loving care. Nurturing. Comfort. A kind word. Specialties 
  of the female. These dictates were handed down directly from the 
  King to his personal entourage. If we follow them, we can't go 
  wrong.

  "Can we follow the King?" he shouts.

  Jasmine's head's bent forward, lines of black snaking down her 
  soft cheeks. She's shaking all over.

  Both hands are up into the air like possession blew into her and 
  she's shouting "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"

  I look to the stage. Elvis' casting a strong look her way.

  "Who feels holy enough today to pledge their burning love?" he 
  shouts into the mike. "Any first timers out there, new to the 
  King? Who wants to pledge a new found burning love?"

  Now, part of the reason for what I did next was definitely 
  because of Jasmine and the look I see Elvis give her, but part 
  was maybe because I really did feel something.

  I hear myself shout "I want to pledge my burning love!"

  Amen's come up all around. Jasmine turns, shocked, snapping out 
  of a trance. She's beaming, squealing, kissing me on the lips.

  Hands guide me out the aisle then I'm bounding onto the stage.

  A hush comes over. I'm wearing my blue sharkskin suit, my hair's 
  slicked on the sides like usual, pomped a little on top, jet 
  black as Elvis' and from a distance, you'd might say I had more 
  than a passing resemblance to the King. People have remarked. So 
  standing beside Elvis we're the two Elvises, young and old. He 
  puts his arm on my shoulder, leans in.

  "Any chance you can really sing, son?"

  I nod. "Bet on it."

  I look in his eyes. Steely brown, no wavering in them. Grins. 
  He's got deep lines on his face you can't see from stage hidden 
  under a heavy foundation of make-up, crusted at the edges around 
  his sideburns. All his magnetism disappears as I stand there 
  beside him. He pats my back, says, "Then you just jump right in 
  wherever you can," flicks his hand behind him and the band 
  breaks into "Burning Love."

  He's good, I admit. After he sings the first verse, we do the 
  chorus together, then I stay on the mike and take the next verse 
  myself, Elvis beside me clapping. We're both on the mike at the 
  end, side by side singing, "I got a hunka-hunka burning love, 
  gotta hunka-hunka burning love."

  The place is going nuts. Jasmine is looking at us in ecstasy, 
  doing spasmodic little half crouches, pressing her knees 
  together and going into squeals and I know what that means.

  Song finishes. He pats me on the back, gauging crowd reaction.

  "I might just bring you back another time, son," he says. Then 
  he looks down at Jasmine and leans over, intimate, confidential 
  Elvis-to-Elvis arm and says, away from the mike, "Sweet little 
  piece you got there. Real choice A-1 Priscilla. Best keep your 
  eye on that though, 'cause I've had mine eye on it a while. I 
  might just steal it if you don't pay attention."

  Then he laughs, big white teeth, slaps my back.

  "That so." I slap his back a little too hard, wink and grab hold 
  of the mike.

  "Pastor here just graciously asked me," I shout out to the 
  congregation, "to do a couple more on my own. What you think of 
  that?" Applause comes strong up over.

  I see him go white under the make up. Then grits his teeth to a 
  tight smile and waves out, turns, glaring anger and unease as he 
  walks past to side stage.

  The band is looking this way and that. Confusion. I step back to 
  the guitarist and ask if they do "All Shook Up."

  "'Course," he says.

  "Then make it really rock, man."

  He nods.

  I hold the mike out shoulder level, do a couple hip swivels. 
  Screams. I count it off -- One, two, three, four!

  They hit the first chord like thunder. It slides up nice and 
  slow. The drummer's got the in between beats cracking.

  Dah dum! Dah dum!

  I point my finger at the middle of the congregation, slow glide 
  it until it's right on Jasmine. Give her a wicked grin. Hell, my 
  lip curls. I turn and wink at Pastor E., then I'm singing to 
  Jasmine.

  "I'm proud to say that your my buttercup, I'm in love... unh -- 
  I'm All Shook Up! Umm, umm, umm -- ummm, yeah, yeah!"

  The place is crazyland now. Chaos. They're rockin', on their 
  feet, some are standing on the chairs, young girls are making 
  unrestrained noises. I look over to Pastor, see him bravely 
  clapping along, smile plastered ten times tighter. I'm thinking 
  he looks like what he is, cheap old car salesman in a loud suit 
  waiting to get back and make his tired tried and true. Song's 
  ending, I point at him, shout, "I'd like to sing this next one 
  for that man there, your Elvis!"

  Crowd roars. He waves to them then gives me two fingers off his 
  eyebrow for show.

  I run back, quick consult with the guitar player, who I can tell 
  likes me now, then back to the mike.

  "Welllllll..." Band finds the key. Guitarist nods.

  "It's... a one for the money -- two for the show -- three to get 
  ready -- now go cat go! But don't you, step on my blue suede 
  shoes..."

  My antennae are up, nerve ends tingly. I'm rock solid on the 
  beat, in the middle of the music, hearing each instrument clear, 
  separate, rocking on real gone ground, just like Jasmine said. 
  I'm cueing the band with my body to where the emphasis is, like 
  a conductor. Like the King.

  I feel the crowd and I'm right there with them.

  I sense waves of tension in some of the older folks, though. The 
  challenge in the song. Young against old.

  I cast a quick glance back. Pastor Elvis isn't clapping anymore. 
  He's studying them, squinty-eyed, waiting for the time to move.

  The song's ending; I'm on the last line -- "But lay off of my 
  blue suede shoes -- " I snap around, point at the guitarist, 
  then turn sideways and face the Pastor.

  "You ain't huh-na-thin-buh-da -- Hound dog! Crying all the time. 
  Y'ain't nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time. You ain't 
  never caught a rabbit and you ain't no friend of mine!"

  Drum beat goes rat-a-ta-tat-a-ta-tat-a-ta-tat-a-ta-tat!

  Swiveling front I point down to Jasmine.

  "Well _she said you was_ high class, but that was just a lie!"

  The congregation's barely clapping now. They're stunned, except 
  the little boy in the beige suit, yellow shirt and red bow tie, 
  who's standing on his seat gyrating, going crazy still till his 
  sister slaps him on the shoulder. It's like he's waking up. He 
  looks around and starts bawling.

  I finish the song. Dead silence. A few boos. The Pastor strides 
  over to the mike.

  When he's close enough I put a hand out to hold him at bay.

  "I just insulted this here man, pastor of your church," I say. 
  "Why? Why would I insult a man I just met? And why would I 
  insult you in your church? Am I crazy, a rabble rouser?"

  Silence.

  "No, ladies and gentlemen."

  There's murmuring, unquiet shifting. Pastor stands back, 
  watching close.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell the truth, and the truth 
  isn't always nice, but see, this old man here, he said something 
  to me, disturbing."

  Pastor Elvis pushes in to grab the mike from me. I shove him 
  away. A shocked inhale out there an audible "Ooohhh." One sound. 
  Pastor yells to the crowd without the mike.

  "This disrupter... he's obviously disturbed. Please treat him 
  with care -- TCB -- TLC -- but please -- come up, somebody help 
  me... get him off the stage..."

  Several burly guys are heading down the aisle now.

  "Wait a minute," I say. "That beautiful young woman there, see 
  her? When I came to the stage to receive salvation from this 
  Pastor, well, he winked, whispered she was one sweet piece."

  Congregation hushes, the big guys slow down.

  "Said she's a real Priscilla he had his eye on a while and if I 
  didn't watch myself he'd steal her when I wasn't looking. Guess 
  he thinks he can, because he's Pastor Elvis."

  The big guys stop. Someone shouts "No!"

  "Yes! What reason do I have to lie?! I'm standing here 'cause of 
  a leap of good faith. Don't know a thing about this Elvis but 
  what Jasmine told me -- she said she was happy because he told 
  her she was a real Priscilla."

  There's general hubbub, babble. Jasmine's nodding, big.

  "That innocent girl," I say, "didn't know what was waiting. Now 
  I don't know how you people run things, but that don't sound 
  like TCB to me. Personally I'm offended, as you might figure."

  Pastor Elvis is square-jawed, shaking his head in the negative, 
  making broad gestures as if pushing me away with his hands, 
  playing like what I'm saying's hogwash.

  "Well, then, you all tell me," I say, "if I'm lying. `Cause if 
  I'm not, I just bet Jasmine's not the only one, I bet there's 
  another woman out there done to the same, someone who maybe 
  didn't want to say so publicly before, or someone who knows 
  about such a thing. Anyone confirm what I'm saying? Pastor made 
  someone else his Priscilla too?"

  Dead silence. I got a strong feeling my instincts are good but 
  at the same time I'm not sure if I just hung myself. A half 
  minute goes by. People are looking up at me, over to Pastor.

  Out of the back a woman's voice yells "Yes! It's true!"

  Down the aisle she comes, big teased hair, blue eye shadow and 
  thick mascara, gold lame jacket, tight black pants packing 
  sagging weight, pushing I'm guessing forty. A flash hits me. 
  Looks just like what Jasmine's gonna.

  "He told me I was his Priscilla too!" she says, up close to the 
  stage, pointing a long red fingernail. Then she faces the 
  congregation.

  "When I was fresh, he loved me. Then I wasn't anymore, my sin 
  was I got older, so he dumped me. That's not TCB. I don't know 
  why I keep coming here, I still have some TLC for him in my 
  heart I guess. But I'm just a fool, `cause his love wasn't 
  tender and it sure wasn't true."

  Poor old Elvis is frozen. Drops of sweat are falling off his 
  sideburns.

  Out of the crowd pop two more teased hair brunettes, younger 
  than the first, older than Jasmine, shimmying down the aisle.

  In the front row a woman who looks like the oldest of the 
  Priscillas gets up, hurries off to the side and pushes herself 
  through the emergency exit door.

  Pastor's wife, I figure.

  Pastor Elvis' looking at me. Hard. Then he suddenly swings 
  around flourishing his cape and disappears.

  I wait a beat. Don't know if it might be blasphemy, but I say it 
  anyway, can't resist.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building."

  There's a pause, then they start to laugh and clap.

  One eternal minute goes by as I stand there at the mike, 
  thinking, Maybe got what I wanted. The young one. Only it's me.

  Destiny breathing down my neck hot and heavy. Clapping's louder. 
  Deafening. I can't help...

  I feel my lip curl, looking at all of them looking at me.

  Shouting "Sing!"

  "But I ain't Elvis," I shout back. "I ain't the King."

  "Sing!"

  Jasmine is gazing up glassy-eyed, they all are, like I'm a 
  velvet painting. I want to run but my leg's twitching.

  Shouts grow louder, trying to drown it out of my head, voice in 
  there telling me over and over, "You ain't the King. You ain't 
  the King."

  William Routhier (routhier@tiac.net)
--------------------------------------
  William Routhier lives in Boston and is currently working on a 
  novel. He has written for _The Boston Book Review_, _Stuff_ 
  Magazine, and _The Improper Bostonian_; his fiction has appeared 
  in _Happy_, _atelier_, and _Dream Forge_.


  The Lady of Situations   by Madeline Brown
============================================
...................................................................
  "Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair 
  Spread out into fiery points
  Glowed into words, then would be savagely still."
  -- T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
...................................................................

  Once when I was a little girl my mother took me to the best 
  place I have ever been. It was on a summer evening and I had on 
  a new yellow dress that she had sewn for me and that matched one 
  she had made for herself. I woke up the morning of that day and 
  went into her workroom and saw it there hanging up, newly done; 
  she had promised me it would be ready and it was, and it was the 
  most beautiful dress I had ever seen.

  And that summer evening in the flower-laden air we walked down 
  the dusty path from our doorstep past the farthest spot I'd ever 
  been before, which was the village church, and it seemed to me 
  as we went that we were making up the world as we went along, or 
  at least that she was; that past the church, which I knew was 
  real, every bush, every squawking mockingbird, every leaf 
  stirring in every breeze was a moment's imagining for her, and 
  that what she was showing me, what she was teaching me, was how 
  to build a magic world and people it.

  And so when I think of that place -- Summer, The Past, Araby, 
  Oz, Xanadu -- and the festival we went to that night, where the 
  ice cream truck's tinny music mingled with the haunting silver 
  notes of flutes, and youths and maidens in bright colors danced 
  all night long, and where my best friend found us and grabbed my 
  hands and kissed my lips; that place -- I think of it as my 
  mother's invention, the sign of her consummate artistry.

  It was the last time as a child I felt her power so palpable, 
  the last time I felt myself protected, initiated by the magic of 
  her company. It was not so much that I felt her power weaken and 
  die as that I slowly discovered the power did not exist, and 
  never had. After my father's death, or in the year or two right 
  before it, when I had to watch her smoke straight through a pack 
  of Viceroys every afternoon, leafing through magazines since her 
  soaps had gone off the air, until she'd dulled her senses or 
  sharpened her desperation to the point where she could bear to 
  do what she had to do, which was to stay alive a little longer 
  -- then I thought the cruel thing. Not, how art the mighty 
  fallen; nothing so kind as that. But rather, how could I have 
  ever so mistaken who she was.

  Now I know better than that disenchanted child-self. Now once 
  again I believe in magic. Sitting here in the afternoons, when I 
  have tired of working at my loom, as I look at the green flag 
  flying from the tower across the courtyard, I think of her and 
  how, were she still alive, she'd fly through this window and 
  carry me away, carry me away from all this.

  Every night I climb into the bath whose water I have scented 
  with the spices that remind me of her and I emerge recreated 
  from those waters. When I dream at night I am back in her arms.


  It pleases me sometimes to be thought, to act the part of femme 
  fatale. It is so far from what I actually am that the imposture 
  makes me feel safe, perfectly disguised. I watch myself smile, 
  walk, flirt with infinitesimal motions of eyelash and fingertip 
  (so subtly accomplished am I), and I wonder: Where did I learn 
  this? how did I become so skilled? I think I must be a natural 
  actress, or at least have found a perfect part to play.

  But I am also capable of judging my behavior. What a bitch, I 
  think sometimes. I am a bitch, for instance, to my lover's 
  former concubine. But I don't know how else to express my desire 
  for her. For isn't the jealousy I show her a form of flattery? 
  And flattery a form of flirtation? She is a shell-pink creature, 
  and the sweat-damp, dark gold curls that cling to the back of 
  her neck in the heat of the day move me unspeakably. But she 
  will never see me; when her glance hits my body it cuts through 
  me -- the shape I have for her is that of the woman who stole 
  her lover, and who now gives her orders besides. But if I didn't 
  have this power over her, to so command her distress, I'd be 
  nothing to her.

  I desire her for her innocence. It pleases me at times to 
  fantasize about corrupting her innocence; at other times, to 
  fantasize being redeemed by it. Pleasant reveries, an 
  afternoon's pastime, such rumination.


  My lover visits me every night, except when I tell him not to 
  come. When I have lived the long weary afternoon through, and 
  made my state appearance in the banquet hall on my husband's 
  arm, I retire once again to this chamber and wait, but in the 
  evenings there's a direction, a focus to my waiting. Inside my 
  clothes my body feels different to me then, exotic and exciting, 
  as if the imminent prospect of its being seized by other hands 
  has somehow estranged me from it, made me able to desire myself. 
  And I do. I look at myself in the mirror, lips parted, eyes 
  wide, my dark hair loose around my pale face, while at my back I 
  hear my lover's spurs jangling on the stone as he mounts the 
  stairs, and I reach the pinnacle of ecstasy. I feel as if I am 
  about to ravish myself. Then there is the denouement of his 
  entrance, the entanglements of clothing -- which once I enjoyed 
  so much, the abrasion of wool and hard buttons on my skin (and I 
  remember the time he fucked me with his boots and spurs still 
  on, the pleasure and the danger of it) -- but which repetition 
  has dulled the piquancy of. No, it is the intervals in our 
  affair that now most arouse me, the fact of it and not the acts 
  -- I have a lover, I am someone's mistress! And I delight in it.

  But sometimes that delight seems so strange, so odd to me. 
  Because I am a Queen, because all eyes are trained on me, 
  everything I do has a consequence, a political significance; in 
  short, it matters. And if what I did didn't matter, would I want 
  to do anything at all? Isn't my desire for my lover, my joy in 
  being his mistress, in part the result of this sense of our 
  being watched? And if that is so, can it be that these things I 
  call "feelings," that I think of as part of me, don't come from 
  inside me at all but from outside me, are scripted somehow by 
  the expectations of others? And yet they feel like they come 
  from inside me.

  I don't like to think very long along these lines. It's funny -- 
  in college I could go on for hours, spinning theories and 
  discussing them. That seems so fruitless to me now.


  I grieve my husband. His grief began before I cuckolded him; he 
  married me so that I should grieve him, I think. If I didn't 
  understand this at the very outset, it wasn't long before I did 
  -- no later than our honeymoon trip, certainly. He had left the 
  planning of that to me, giving me carte blanche to choose where 
  we would go. I wanted the Cape, though ours was a late-winter 
  wedding and the marshlands would be soggy with snow, the shops 
  and pleasure-places boarded up. But I had gone there on holiday 
  once before, as a child with my mother -- it was after my 
  father's troubles began, in fact they were why my mother took me 
  there, to protect me from full knowledge of them -- and it was a 
  happy month I had spent there, dutifully ignorant. The idea of 
  going there again seemed exotic to me as a new bride -- the 
  ferries of course have long since ceased to run and we had to 
  get a special dispensation to drive on the scarred and pitted 
  highway, but I thrilled at my husband's power to command such 
  privilege. I didn't want a police escort and so we were on our 
  own, like any young married couple from a fairy-tale past, 
  setting out for a seaside pleasure jaunt with a map and a picnic 
  basket. But it took us over an hour to even find the bridge 
  across the river -- a mountain of crumbled cement had fallen 
  over the exit ramp -- and the ruined roads depressed me, with 
  their decade-old litter of broken bottles and hubcaps and 
  cigarette butts, paper bags and cups emblazoned with the logos 
  of defunct fast-food restaurant chains. And the motel we stayed 
  at, the only one we found between the bridge and the outermost 
  Cape, was a cheap cinderblock kept in business by teen-agers and 
  extramarital affairs, for of course there were rarely any 
  tourists anymore. We must have been the first any of the 
  residents had seen in years. And though some of them must have 
  seen us on television -- they still ran occasional news programs 
  at that time, seven years ago now -- or at least our pictures in 
  the papers, you wouldn't have known they knew who we were from 
  how they treated us, with a kind of brusque indifference. In the 
  morning after our first night there I took my husband to the 
  beach and even the ocean looked different from what I 
  remembered, lapping at the shore in scant ripples like 
  thin-lipped smiles.

  My husband knew by that morning what I had known sooner, that I 
  felt no desire for him. But he was kind to me. After the beach 
  we sat at the motel's outdoor cafe, by the empty swimming pool, 
  in the pale February light, and we ordered drinks and my husband 
  read me poetry. "Summer surprised us, coming over the 
  Starnbergersee/With a shower of rain; we stopped in the 
  colonnade,/And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,/And 
  drank coffee, and talked for an hour."


  I knew the poem, had heard it read aloud once before. I'd had a 
  professor in college who'd read it to me, along with many other 
  poems. My mother was dead by then, had been for some years. I'd 
  been adopted by a kind older childless couple, my guardians -- 
  they'd been colleagues of my father's before his fall but had 
  survived the political vagaries of ensuing years and were doing 
  well, and could afford to give me the best of everything. They 
  told me I had a fine mind, and should have an education; I could 
  be whatever I wanted, they said, but I knew they wanted me to be 
  a theorist. So when they sent me to college I studied theory. 
  First one kind, then another, each terribly important to me at 
  the time. And then in my senior year I found my professor, 
  whether by accident or as part of some design, I don't know. In 
  the beginning of the fall semester I was browsing through the 
  course catalog when I saw a listing that intrigued me: "Readings 
  in Counter-indicated Complexity," it was called. The professor's 
  name was not one I had heard before: some junior person, with no 
  reputation yet, it seemed. But I had taken all the recommended 
  seminars taught by well-known faculty already, so I went to the 
  first class meeting.

  He was young then, just barely into his thirties. But even then 
  he had the solemnity of a cleric about him. When all the 
  students had entered the room and taken seats, he closed the 
  door, opened a book, and began to read poems to us. It had been 
  years since I, or any of the others in that room I would 
  warrant, had heard a word of poetry. We students sat there 
  transfixed, and I remember the way the late afternoon fall 
  sunlight slanted through the windows into the room, made and 
  held a kind of space for the syllables to unfold in time like 
  music. We were waiting, of course: waiting for the poetry to end 
  and for him to begin to theorize about it, for surely that was 
  the point of it all, that was what we were there for, but while 
  we were waiting we held our breath, and tears formed in the 
  corners of our eyes. And that expected theorizing never 
  happened. From that first day until the end of the semester, all 
  he ever did was read aloud to us, poem after poem, sonnet and 
  free verse and narrative epic. He never asked us to write for 
  him, never even learned our names, but sometimes he would gaze 
  at one or another of us as he read certain lines, as if he were 
  speaking them to us individually, and whenever he looked at me I 
  felt he was looking into my soul. "Here is Belladonna, the Lady 
  of the Rocks,/The lady of situations," he read once, from a poem 
  called The Waste Land, and he looked at me as he read it.

  It made me shiver to hear my husband read the same poem to me, 
  on our honeymoon, as we sat on the concrete terrace with our 
  drinks tasting like rust in our mouths, tasting like metal and 
  blood and vitamins. (As I write this I am looking out my window 
  at the tower across the courtyard, and the green flag flying 
  from it. It means the Minister is in his study there, or so I've 
  been told.) I felt a sense of threat and excitement both, the 
  way I feel when there's going to be a thunderstorm. It seemed to 
  me my vision of things changed then, or completed an act of 
  change that had begun that semester in college. The barren 
  landscape all at once ceased to depress me -- looking past the 
  chainlink fence, I saw the sparkle of broken glass in the tough 
  tall marsh-grass and thought it pretty, and I saw the brown 
  water lying in the lowlands and thought it scary and 
  interesting. And far away, over the edge of the horizon, I 
  half-expected to see a horseman come riding toward us bearing 
  portentous news. There was a kind of shouting inside my head, a 
  shouting that was like a silence too, and I knew myself a part 
  of this place, its beauty and its danger.

  Across from me at the table my husband went on reading, his 
  voice dry and sad. He looked small to me, smaller than he had 
  been before. As if he could feel my gaze on him he broke off 
  reading and looked up, and our two glances met, and I knew he 
  knew what I knew too: that the sad parentless maiden he had 
  married to share his mournfulness was no longer me. That I would 
  not make my home in loss, or if I did I would call it by another 
  name and so transform it. And that in living thus I would bring 
  him pain after pain, and that it would be this pain that would 
  keep him alive. So we forged our contract.


  When I was a girl and my husband the crown Prince, I was in love 
  with him, as young girls often were. But I didn't actually meet 
  him until I was grown and had graduated college. I had returned 
  from the university only weeks previously, and was living with 
  my guardians, trying to decide what I should do next. My 
  guardians, though kind as ever, were growing a little impatient 
  with me, with my persistent ennui and sudden irritable bursts, 
  which I sometimes directed at them; impatient and a little 
  worried -- they thought I had suffered a disappointment in love 
  while I was away, and they tried to get me to talk to them about 
  it. But I couldn't explain what had happened to me. It didn't 
  occur to me that the kinds of things I was feeling could have 
  names put to them and be translated into an awareness, an 
  understanding in someone else's mind. What would I have said? 
  That I had sat in a room and a man had read poems aloud to me, 
  and that because of that experience nothing else, not my degree 
  in theory, not my promising future, seemed to matter anymore?

  Still, it mattered to me more than I realized not to disappoint 
  this kind couple, and so when my guardians made requests of me I 
  complied when I had spirit at all to do so. It was at their 
  request that I accompanied them to the debutante party of the 
  daughter of friends of theirs, a great decadent display of 
  fabric and food and furniture such as was popular at that time, 
  in the first flush of the Restoration. I accompanied them, but 
  in my sullen pride I wouldn't dress for the occasion -- I wore 
  instead my college uniform, the plain blue smock that was the 
  habit of my order, and I didn't dress my hair or put makeup on. 
  But because it was a party for the very best people, no one 
  raised an eyebrow at my austerity; the men all kissed my hand 
  and the women my cheek with perfect aplomb, and I felt foolish, 
  childish in my petulant withholding from pleasure.

  It was the feeling foolish, I think, that made me want to behave 
  really badly. I had drunk too much wine too quickly besides, and 
  felt overheated in the crowd. Someone, a youngish man, a 
  graduate of my own university who had a Cabinet post, was saying 
  something about a new post that was soon to be created, a 
  Ministry of Culture, and in a voice that sounded thin and reedy 
  to my own ears I heard myself say, "My father wanted to 
  establish such a post fifteen years ago, and they destroyed him 
  for it." There was a pause after I spoke for just a heartbeat's 
  length before the smooth momentum of the conversation around me 
  resumed, and in my memory it seemed that that pause in time 
  opened up a physical space too -- the crowd around me parted for 
  a moment and through the gap I looked down the room and saw the 
  King nearby, in just the next knot of people, saw him hear my 
  words and turn to see who'd spoken them, saw something register 
  in his eyes when he saw me. I felt a moment's shock as I 
  recognized him -- I hadn't known it would be quite so grand a 
  party -- but I was compelled by some other directive to look 
  past him, further down the length of the room, to the great gilt 
  mirror that hung on the far wall, and in that distant glass I 
  thought (and even now I am not sure) I saw my professor, he who 
  had read me poems, his face half-turned from me.

  When I turned around the wall of people behind me had closed 
  again, and someone was calling us to dinner. And at dinner there 
  was no sign of my professor, if indeed he had ever been there. 
  But the King was there.

  What did my husband think of me that night, at his first sight 
  of me? What was it in me that drew him to me? Curiosity, a kind 
  of prurient interest, because of my being my father's daughter? 
  Perhaps that was part of it, but it couldn't have been all -- 
  there were other victims of the purge, after all, and many of 
  them had daughters. I try to see myself through his eyes, as I 
  must have appeared then: a pale, eager creature, awkward in her 
  schoolgirl disguise, thinking she was burning with strength and 
  arrogance when all she was showing was a shame and fear and rage 
  so deep it was like a request to be preyed on. Did he want to 
  prey on it? Or did he want to protect me from being preyed on by 
  others? Or some combination of the two?

  But no, this is just me speculating -- it is what I now think of 
  my younger self, what I wish someone had been able to think 
  about me then. Who knows what my husband thought, strange man?

  The next day my guardian brought up to me in my room the fateful 
  calling card as heavy (or as light) as beaten gold, with the 
  famous monogram scrawled across it in fountain ink, and that 
  series of interviews began, in the private sitting-room at the 
  palace where the spaniels lay on the rug and the timed 
  intrusions of tea and sandwiches or scotch and sodas punctuated 
  the formal courtesies of our exchanges. And though I delayed and 
  hesitated and even feigned illness or hysteria at points in that 
  chess-game courtship, it seems to me now that nothing was ever 
  in any real doubt: there was never any question that I would 
  marry him, for the plot had been set in motion, and I'm a sucker 
  for a plot: on and on it draws me, eager as I am to discover 
  what's going to happen next.


  Before the purges began, before the civil war, before the 
  restoration and the truce -- for so people of my age count time 
  -- but after my father had begun to be unfaithful to my mother, 
  for so my own sense of history dates it -- there was a story 
  that came on television in the afternoons that my mother and I 
  watched everyday. All my friends at school watched the program 
  too, and we talked about it at recess, and acted out our 
  favorite parts and made up new scenes, but there was something 
  about the show that was intensely private to me all the same -- 
  it was like it was my secret dream, this television show, 
  despite its widespread broadcast. It was about a fairy-princess 
  whose name was Laura. Her face was like a painting, quiet the 
  way the faces in paintings are. I remember I didn't think her 
  pretty, the first time I saw her, because I didn't think she was 
  fancy enough. Then after a week or so I understood how beautiful 
  she was, and it was as if my eyes had grown new wisdom. She had 
  wavy hair that was the color of wheat with the sun in it, and 
  eyes like the ocean, sometimes green, sometimes gray, sometimes 
  blue. She was ageless and young at the same time. The story she 
  was in had many sub-plots and many characters, but the single 
  central strand was the mystery surrounding Laura and her great, 
  secret lost love. Every episode ended with a vision of her face 
  at a window, gazing out, speaking in voice-over to someone in 
  low, intimate tones: "And so another day ends, my love. Another 
  day without you near me..."

  I remember how I used to sometimes whisper those words to myself 
  as I lay in bed at night, and try to imagine who that person 
  could be, the person to whom those words were addressed. 
  Thinking about that story now, about its sweet continuance, I 
  know that it wasn't the promise of revelation that kept me 
  enthralled with it day by day, but the certainty that there was 
  always something that would never be revealed.

  The story was on for years before it was finally cancelled, one 
  of the last of the television shows to go off the air. After the 
  first year or so, the actress who played Laura didn't want to be 
  in the story anymore, and so they replaced her with a different 
  actress. I remember the harsh jarring sensation, the outraged 
  betrayal, I felt the first time I watched the story with the new 
  Laura. But after a few weeks I got used to her, and a few weeks 
  after that I stopped thinking about the previous Laura. 
  Sometimes, I remember, I felt a vague kind of loss, a longing 
  for something out of reach, that now I associate with loyalty to 
  the first Laura -- but then again, wasn't the loss and longing 
  there even when the first Laura was in the story? They had five 
  or six Lauras over the span of time the story was on, I think.

  As I sit here in my tower room, working my tapestry, I get a 
  feeling that takes me back to that time, that quiet afternoon 
  time when my mother and I curled up together and lost ourselves 
  in that story, each losing our separate selves but staying 
  connected by the contact of our physical bodies, each to each. 
  It is a feeling of quivering expectation that fills me now, a 
  thing I almost want to call joy -- it makes me want to run down 
  these stairs and out onto the green and up the bell-tower, and 
  set all the bells a-swinging.

  But at that thought I always stop, and my joy is strangled in my 
  throat. For the Minister's study is in the bell-tower, and the 
  green flag flying tells me he is there.


  It is time to speak of him. I have put it off long enough. I 
  have tried to wade in slowly, referring to him here and there, 
  trying to prepare. But I can't. He's a jarring note, someone I 
  can't make sense of. Someone I can't work into the tapestry 
  without tearing the thread, warping the woof. But I can't ignore 
  him either. (Write it, Terah, I tell myself, and even as I do so 
  I hear the echo of a poem, read by his voice.)

  I will, I will write it. I will tell you.


  He first came, oh when was it? Six years ago? Though I knew 
  before then that he was coming. When was it I knew for sure that 
  it was he who would come? Coming to know that I knew was 
  gradual, the way getting to know you're in love can be gradual, 
  the recognition of one's state trailing so far behind the 
  important event that the event itself -- the moment of falling, 
  the Great Moment -- is located in an unlocatable past (does the 
  theoretician in me show?).

  There was talk even before my marriage about the new Minister of 
  Culture, how the King had surprised everyone by choosing someone 
  young and unknown, and surely I must have at least suspected 
  then? (For I thought I had seen his face in the mirror, the 
  night I met my husband.) (But why does it seem important to try 
  to puzzle this out? Because somehow I think of my knowledge as 
  guilt, and my ignorance as innocence. Was I ever ignorant? Was I 
  ever innocent?)

  Certainly by the day of the culture festival, held to honor his 
  arrival in the capital city, I had long since known that the new 
  Minister was my professor. I knew too, by then, that his wife 
  came to the city with him, for she had been appointed Priestess 
  of the Chapel. (It shocked me to hear that archaic title brought 
  forth again after so long, and it frightened many people. Not 
  all the old traditions are best reinstated, some said.)

  On the festival day my husband had the avenue that led from the 
  palace to the tower strewn with flowers, and musicians, 
  jugglers, actors, painters thronged the square, plying their 
  trades. Makeshift bookstalls displayed dusty volumes for sale, 
  dug out of obscure storage in recent months. And I was there, on 
  my husband's arm, dressed in my regal robes, in my powdered 
  hair. I was there when the closed litter (for as of times of old 
  her face was never to be seen) carrying the Priestess went in 
  procession down the avenue, and I saw the Minister riding behind 
  her on his white horse.

  He had changed. Once, in that distant classroom, he read to us 
  as Satan, speaking to the sun, and he had said: "Me miserable! 
  which way shall I fly/Infinite wrath, and infinite 
  despair?/Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;/And in the 
  lowest deep a lower deep/Still threat'ning to devour me opens 
  wide,/To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n." And I thought 
  how like a fallen angel indeed he looked as he read those lines, 
  his florid face twisted into passion and his short yellow hair 
  standing on end, and the sensuality of the mouth with the 
  clarity of the gray-blue eyes ...

  But he had changed. His face was a stately mask that festival 
  day, immovable, it seemed.

  It made me want to make it move.


  Write it, Terah. Say: it was all my own doing. He never once 
  gave me any sign, of recognition or of interest. Unmoved mover, 
  he greeted me in the formal manner on state occasions, making me 
  the low bow, kissing my brow with cold lips. But a fire had 
  flared into being somehow (As kingfishers catch fire, so 
  dragonflies draw flame -- ). It raged in my blood and would not 
  let me sleep, let me eat, or let me work at my loom. (What I do 
  is me; for that I came.)

  And so one night, I followed him after vespers. It was still and 
  dark on the stairs to the tower. He preceded me, seemingly 
  unaware of my presence, his robes a faint glow up ahead. But 
  when he reached that round chamber at the top of the stairs, he 
  turned and stretched out his hand to me. There was a brightness 
  there. I moved toward it. When I reached him he was naked. It 
  was his skin that was glowing. His naked sex, erect, curved, 
  pure white. My own skin, when I removed my robe, looked gray 
  next to the whiteness of his. His hands on my shoulders, I went 
  on my knees, the bones of my knees on the cold flagstone, and 
  then his cold sex in my mouth. How could it have been cold? 
  There must have been some heat there. And then the sudden force 
  of his ejaculation, the jolt of that.

  With that unholy milk still on my lips he lifted me up, led me 
  to a curtain at the back of the chamber, swept it aside, and 
  there she was, as if entombed. The Priestess. I had never seen 
  her face before that I could remember, and yet she looked 
  familiar to me. She was younger than I had thought, but her face 
  was like a death-mask, white and still. There was a blue cloth 
  covering her, but there was a rent in that fabric over the rent 
  in her, her vagina open like a sea creature lifting itself to 
  the air, a pink stain like spring blossoms in bare woods. His 
  hand on my hair, he put my mouth to her bleeding gash, and his 
  milk on my lips staining her was like the breeding of maggots in 
  her flesh, and I gagged and struggled free and fled. Out into 
  the night. To the Knight, who became my lover.

  For the Knight, my lover, was encamped on the green between the 
  tower and the palace, sleeping his troops there for the night, 
  just returned as they were from the northern regions where they 
  had put down the recent rebellion. One of his guards seized me 
  as I fled the tower, naked as I still was, and bound me and 
  brought me to him. I saw from his shocked eyes that he knew who 
  I was, had seen my photograph, or me myself in some state 
  procession.

  And he was kind to me. He said, Bring her a cloak, it is a holy 
  madness that is upon her, for such things afflict royal folk 
  sometimes, 'tis said. I grasped those words and held them, hold 
  them still. Perhaps they are true.

  His simple lust restored me. His concubine, the pink and gold 
  girl, lying next to him on her divan as he received me from the 
  night, I thought not of then. Later though, after I had crept to 
  him from the separate bed where he had couched me (for he 
  thought not to return me to my husband that night,) I heard her 
  weeping. But I did not stop. I needed him, needed his clumsy 
  surprised passion. Afterwards I slept, as I had thought I never 
  would again. I found refuge in the passion and the pain of this 
  simple couple, from the unholy holiness of that other pair.

  Who yet are always with me, even as I write this, breathing on 
  my shoulder, the troubling sun and moon of my nights and days.
  

  Madeline Brown (madeline@mit.edu)
-----------------------------------
  Madeline Brown lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. She is at 
  work on a series of interrelated fictions, of which "The Lady of 
  Situations" is one.



  Missionary   by Gary Percesepe
================================
...................................................................
"So they drew near to the village to which they were going.
He appeared to be going further, but they constrained him, saying,
'Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is far spent."
--Luke 24:28-29
...................................................................

  Right after high school, I spent almost a year at a 
  fundamentalist Christian college in upstate New York, where I 
  seduced my English professor and got C's in all the courses not 
  in my major, which was psychology. My papers in John's classes 
  were all weeks late, which explains the C's, if you believe in 
  explanations.

  I wasn't dumb. I left before we were caught. They didn't have 
  anything on me, or on him, but they were on the scent. I could 
  tell. John was hopeless in the area of deception, and they had 
  ways of finding things out, a whole legal machinery of sin 
  detection, complete with informants. Leaving was something I 
  could do for him, at least. I never got to say goodbye, which 
  was the way I thought I wanted it at the time. Just check out, 
  like a rehab gone bad. Failed fundamentalist. Don't look back. 
  Lead him not into temptation. Deliver him from evil.

  I know what people think when they hear all this, and it's OK -- 
  maybe I think some of that too. But the thing is, it's been six 
  years since I left, and I still don't know what any of it means, 
  or even how to make this sentence keep going until it made sense 
  to anyone who wasn't there. Or to anyone who was.

  Like Garbo
------------

  Winter is my favorite season. I've always known this. It seems 
  wrong to speak of other seasons, as though they exist. I liked 
  it there in winter. The sky was low like a snowy roof and in the 
  brilliant woods adjoining campus a furious wind was blowing, 
  always. The lake was frozen three straight months. Sometimes 
  John would walk me across it, laughing and moving in a 
  half-skate. We danced, a kind of tortured mock tango there on 
  the lake, remembering bits from old movies that John had seen in 
  videos that he rented and played late at night in his cabin, 
  where I'd go late at night, breaking curfew with the help of my 
  roommate Kit, another fugitive from fundamentalism, who'd let me 
  in the locked dormitory door at six the next morning.

  When we stumbled and fell we'd lie in a heap on the ice, 
  kissing. After, I'd pull away and stare at him, my face lit by 
  moonlight, immobile, like Garbo. Like that, yes. I knew what he 
  saw when he looked at me, his conflicted desire.

  It hurt to look at him then, seeing the shape of his care 
  reflected in his cloudy eyes. Poor boy. It was then that I knew 
  he was as lost as me. At these times and no others I'd let 
  myself think, "he loves me," but then I'd remember that to him, 
  as a fundamentalist Christian, love and rescue meant the same 
  thing. He's big on salvation, I would think. Then: It's not his 
  fault; it's all he knows.


  John
------

  John did his best to impersonate a normal fundamentalist college 
  professor, but it was an unconvincing performance to me. He'd 
  tell me that he didn't belong there at Redeemer College, that he 
  took the job only because he was desperate for work in his 
  field, that he got the job because the Dean knew his father (a 
  pastor), that he'd leave when he finished his dissertation, that 
  something better would come along. And I'd say "What?," sweeping 
  my hand in a dramatic gesture that took in the eight-by-eight 
  square of his office with the droopy tile overhead and the 
  blinking fluorescent lights. "And leave all this?"


  John believed that leaving would be the best thing, after what 
  had happened between us, but I observed that belief was 
  precisely his problem, that he was excessive in his need for 
  belief. Besides, I'd tell him, you're needed here. You're a 
  missionary.


  Mr. Darcy
-----------

  When I was small, the single missionaries would stay with us at 
  the parsonage, and my sister and I always dreaded it. The women, 
  with faint moustaches and impeccable grammar in their 
  fund-raising newsletters, always seemed to have the most 
  terrible physical problems; they limped, they gave off a vague 
  medicinal smell, they used no makeup, they wore K-Mart shoes and 
  hose with seams. I changed the sheets when they left, holding 
  them at arm's length as I threw them into the washer.

  It's possible that the single men, however, were worse. Once, in 
  sixth grade, a man named John Darcy stayed a week with us, and I 
  never saw him come out of his room -- that is to say, my room; I 
  had to stay with my sister -- until the last night, just before 
  dinner, when he appeared before me and Cassie and our 
  girlfriends and started doing calisthenics with an unholy 
  enthusiasm. Amazed, we watched as he stood on his head in the 
  living room, his glasses awry, his spastic mouth twitching with 
  exertion. I was twelve, and horrified. I wondered what he had 
  done all that time alone in my room. I grew up deathly afraid 
  that I would become a single missionary and do calisthenics in 
  the houses of strangers.


  Class Notes
-------------

  What I remember comes in pieces, like the soft doughy squares of 
  bread my father served at communion in the Baptist church, the 
  crust carefully cut away by deaconesses. I reach inside and seem 
  to pick up a piece of Wonder Bread memory. This do. In 
  remembrance of me. This is my body. Broken for you.

  I remember John lecturing on the history of romance. It was a 
  morning in early January, missions week at Redeemer. Slouched in 
  my seat against the pale green wall, notebook in my lap, I 
  sleepily took notes. Tall titled columns of them. But when I 
  look, my notebook now looks like the haphazard ramblings of a 
  bright but disorganized deity:

  happy love has no history 
  Tristan lands in Ireland 
  Iseult the Fair love has always been nourished by obstacles 
  romance only comes into existence 
  when love is fatal, frowned upon doomed by life. 
  what draws us is the story?

  It surprised me that a fundamentalist college would offer 
  courses on Shakespeare and the age of Romanticism, lots of 
  Keats, Byron, Shelley, but I've learned that fundamentalists are 
  very big on love and romance. They're suckers for tales of 
  conquest and heroism, evil dragons slain, fair damsels rescued 
  from distress. They don't really believe in happy endings, at 
  least not in this life. They want to believe that all are 
  sinners, all are lost (they're right, there!), that everyone and 
  everything can be saved through a personal relationship with 
  Jesus.

  I'd say: Jesus saves. Moses invests. Lead us not into Penn 
  Station. Deliver us from Evel Knieval.

  This was not what John wanted to hear.


  Mother, Milky
---------------

  I had sex for the first time at fourteen, and by the time I was 
  sixteen I had had four lovers, a drinking problem, and an 
  abortion. My parents were oblivious to what was going on in the 
  house. They were never home, always at church, organizing, or 
  practicing the cure of souls, and Cassie and I quietly became 
  famous in the Grand Rapids underground, a loosely knit criminal 
  network of mostly pastor's kids. It was fun, until Cassie fell 
  off the back of a motorcycle, and my parents remembered me, and 
  started to use my name in sentences in a way that seemed to me 
  excessive, and began asking to spend time with me, their 
  cadaverous eyes haunted, their skin stretched tightly over 
  remaining flesh.

  Late one night I got up for some milk. My mother, drawn like a 
  moth to the light of the refrigerator, silently sat down in the 
  middle of the kitchen floor, naked. I dropped the milk. I laid 
  down next to her, my head in her lap, and kicked the carton 
  away, then drew my milky legs up until they were under my chin.

  There was no money for college, but Redeemer offered free 
  tuition the first year for the children of pastors, so there I 
  was. I figured I'd do one year, then transfer some place. It 
  wasn't much of a plan, but it was what I could manage at the 
  time. My parents said they'd find a way to help pay for a 
  secular school later if I gave them that one year at Redeemer. 
  They'd say it just that way, like a prayer: "Give us this year."

  Like it was a gift.

  To them, I guess it was.

  To me it was a life. Or half a life. A half-life.

  I was eighteen years old.


  Chapel
--------

  The first week of winter quarter was missionary week at 
  Redeemer. Did I say this? We were required to attend chapel 
  twice a day during missionary week, in the morning and again at 
  night. The missionaries that came to the conference were the 
  real item, all the way from Chad and Brazil, Zaire, Mexico, the 
  Philippines, Japan, England, France, you name it. And "Home 
  Missions" people too, from Grand Rapids and Atlanta.

  I found it odd that they would have missionaries in a lot of 
  these places, especially England and France and Grand Rapids, 
  where there's a church on every corner. Kit said the evening 
  sessions were a great time to catch up on your homework. We'd 
  sit in the back of the chapel in the part we called "The Zoo." 
  We'd pass notes, giggle, set off the occasional alarm clock, and 
  make fun of the nerd boys they had there, who carried gargantuan 
  designer Bibles with their names printed in gold block letters 
  on the cover. (They prayed over ice cream cones when they'd 
  venture out on dates, which was rare.)

  One night I asked to look at one of these Bibles. A nerd boy had 
  come in late and had to sit in The Zoo, so I reached over and 
  opened it to the inside cover, looking for the inscription Kit 
  said was always there, in the five line space Zondervan made for 
  this purpose. Sure enough, there it was: "To Travis, in the hope 
  that this book will keep you from sin. Remember, son, This book 
  will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book. For 
  prayerful study at Redeemer, where we trust you will get a safe 
  education, by the grace of God. Your loving parents." I gave the 
  Bible back to Travis and squeezed his sweaty hand, dragging it 
  into my lap. I pecked him on the cheek. I put my tongue in his 
  left ear and smiled sweetly. I did not ask him how safe his 
  education felt then.


  Sex
-----

  I didn't tell anyone about us, except for Kit, but I knew that 
  we were being watched. At Redeemer points could be scored for 
  bringing someone down; a sexual fall was a biggie. Sex was 
  preached against on a daily basis in chapel, but the really 
  funny thing is, all that did was call attention to it, 
  heightening anxiety and, of course, curiosity. Lust was 
  everywhere. The place was a hothouse of love, love, love; 
  everyone was a possible victim, anyone could fall. It was the 
  most sexually democratic place on earth. I'm saying there was an 
  obsession there about sex. Even Hugh Hefner got tired of it, for 
  Christ's sake, but at Redeemer they just didn't know when to 
  stop.


  John, II
----------

  Somewhere in here I concluded that John belonged there. I say 
  this because I watched him pray (while safely disguised as a 
  good-attitude coed in a navy blazer and plaid skirt). John sat 
  up front on the right side of the College Chapel, with the other 
  faculty. His head cradled in his beautiful hands, the long slim 
  fingers threaded through his wavy hair, when he prayed he seemed 
  to be lifting off the pew, as if elevated by an invisible wire. 
  Afterwards, students and colleagues would gather around him to 
  ask what he thought of the sermon. Even if it was a disaster -- 
  say the preacher had gotten off one-liners on abortion, the 
  ACLU, how God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve, liberal 
  apostate theologians, all in a commentary on the first chapter 
  of Paul's Epistle to the Romans -- John would look each of these 
  petitioners in the eye and speak carefully, without 
  condescension, giving his careful critique. Evenhanded. He must 
  have known that it was killing him to be there, that he should 
  leave, but I began to feel that this was because of me, not 
  because he had outgrown the place. How could I take him away 
  from all this when I didn't even know what it was, the life he 
  had there?

  I'd think: If anyone finds out about me and John, we're fucked. 
  I felt bad about this, because as I said, John was so hopeless 
  in the area of deception. He wanted to turn himself in. He was 
  unprepared to live in the world, that was pretty clear.

  One day we went to the post office in Albany. He wanted to mail 
  a package to his grandparents. We were in the downtown office, 
  it was crowded, and he drifted from counter to counter, unable 
  to settle anywhere, until finally he found the right one. But 
  then he realized he didn't have the right zip code. He stood 
  there, turned to stone. He was ashen. I asked what was wrong and 
  he said it was impossible, we'd have to return home and look up 
  the address. I told him that was ridiculous, it was a thirty 
  minute drive back, and besides, one of the clerks at the window 
  could look up the zip code. He stared at me as though I were a 
  Martian, as though this were news from another planet. Finally, 
  he got in line, the clerk addressed the package complete with 
  zip code, and John paid him. But when he counted the change, he 
  saw that he had one dollar too many, so he gave it back to the 
  clerk. Then he walked away slowly, counting again, and in the 
  middle of the staircase he realized that the missing dollar 
  belonged to him after all.

  I stood next to him, at a loss, while he shifted his weight from 
  one foot to the other, wondering what to do. Going back would be 
  difficult; a crowd upstairs was pushing and shoving in line.

  "Just let it go," I said. He looked at me, baffled.

  "How can I let it go?" he said.

  Not that he's sorry about the dollar, money in itself is of no 
  consequence to him. But it is the fact that there is one dollar 
  missing. How can he just forget about something like that? He 
  spoke about it for a long time, and was very unhappy with me. 
  And this repeated itself with different variations, in every 
  shop and restaurant. Once he gave a homeless person a five 
  dollar bill. The man had stopped him and asked for a dollar so 
  he could eat. Five was all he had, so John asked the man to 
  change the five, but the man claimed he had no change. We stood 
  there for a full two minutes trying to decide what to do. Then 
  it occurred to him that he could let the beggar have the five. 
  But we hadn't gone ten steps when he began getting angry. This 
  is the same man who would have been eager and extremely happy to 
  give the poor man five hundred dollars with no questions asked. 
  But if he had asked for five hundred and one we would have spent 
  the day trying to find a place to make change, he would have 
  worried himself over one dollar.

  His anxiety in the face of money was almost the same as his 
  anxiety over women. Or his fear of things official. Once I 
  called his office in the morning, begging him to take me away 
  from there that day. I was beside myself, I needed to get away, 
  just for half a day, somewhere, anywhere. I cursed him when he 
  said he couldn't. Afterward, he didn't sleep for nights, he 
  tormented himself, wrote me letters full of self-destruction and 
  despair. Why didn't he come? He couldn't ask for leave. He was 
  unable to bring himself to ask the Department chair for release 
  from his one remaining class that day, the same Department Chair 
  he admired in the depths of his soul -- I'm not kidding -- 
  because of the Chair's skill with computers. How could he lie? 
  he'd say. To the Chair? Impossible.

  Lying is possible for most of us because it gives us a safe 
  place, at least momentarily, a refuge from some situation which 
  would otherwise be intolerable. At one time or another all of us 
  have taken refuge in a lie, in blindness, in confusion, in 
  enthusiasm or despair, or something.

  But John had no refuge, nothing at all. He was absolutely 
  incapable of lying, just as he was incapable of getting drunk or 
  high. He lacked even the smallest refuge; he had no shelter in 
  the world. He was exposed to everything that most people are 
  protected from. He was like a naked man in a world where 
  everyone is clothed.

  This is why he could not continue seeing me, and also why he 
  could not continue teaching there. He knew this, but was unable 
  to leave either me or Redeemer. Like at the Post Office, I 
  thought: He will move from counter to counter, trying to find a 
  space to work it out, a place from where he can see through to 
  tomorrow. He couldn't leave because of me, but he couldn't stay 
  either. But what would be his reasons for leaving? He loved what 
  he did there; he felt he was needed by his students. And of 
  course he was. If he were to leave, where would they go? Had he 
  left last year, he would have never met me, and then my 
  suffering would have been greater. I know that he thought about 
  this, but for him it was more than a practical problem, it was 
  also a theological issue: How could God do this to him?

  I told him: lying is inescapable. If he stayed there he lied, 
  because he couldn't remain and be the type of person that he 
  was. But if he left that was a lie too, because there was part 
  of him that very much belonged there, that would be misplaced 
  anywhere else.

  I told myself: Maybe we are all searching for places where we 
  can stay the longest without lying.

  Later, I thought, who knows? Maybe he reached his place of 
  optimum truth there.


  Cabin Stories
---------------

  When we met Fall Quarter, John was a virgin. He told me there 
  was a girl once when he was in high school, but they broke up 
  before it ever got to that. One had to know how to listen with 
  John. He tended to leave things out.

  One night I followed him home to his house on the north end of 
  College Street. The street was lined with run-down shacks, with 
  broken down cars on the dirt driveways and little kids playing 
  tackle football in the street. No faculty lived on this side of 
  town. As we walked our shoes clacked on the concrete pavement, 
  then afterwards crunched on the long cinder path that led up to 
  his little cabin at the edge of a dark wood. Dry leaves rustled. 
  It was Thanksgiving break. I'm sure, to him, I was a waif, lost 
  and errant. It's true that I had nowhere to go. Everyone else 
  had gone home, most to their parents' houses. For many reasons, 
  my parents' house was out of the question. I called and told 
  them I was staying with a friend. They sounded relieved.

  Over wine at dinner I got the rest of the story out of John. It 
  turns out that he had never even kissed this girl, whom he had 
  met at a dance when he was fifteen. She was the great love of 
  his life, there had never been another, and he hadn't so much as 
  kissed her.

  There was a black coal stove in the center of the main room, but 
  the bin next to it was empty. The tiny bedroom was in the west 
  corner of the cabin. The bed was covered with animal skins. It 
  was funny to see John's white hands shooting out of those dark 
  skins at dawn, like some prehistoric creature with good 
  reflexes. We'd laugh and squirm around to get warm, grinding 
  ourselves into the cotton sheets while John re-positioned the 
  skins above us. I'd ask him to tell me a story, and he'd tell me 
  how he used to tug his little brothers on a sled up a snowy hill 
  in Peekskill, or about the time when he was four and his older 
  brother's dog bit him, and his parents made Matt destroy the dog 
  in the back yard, in front of him.

  Right here was when I told him about Cassie. I mentioned her 
  wavy dark hair and did her laugh for him and made him get up to 
  get my jacket, which had been hers, for her scent, and we both 
  put our noses into the collar and rutted around, and when he 
  cried I knew I wanted a different story. After that he began 
  telling stories about God and I got less and less interested, 
  and finally I just told him to stop and then there were no more 
  stories.

  We stayed in that cabin almost a week. John found some coal for 
  the stove, and it was a good thing, because on the second day it 
  snowed. The windows frosted over, and snow blew in through small 
  gaps between the logs in the northwest corner. When we talked we 
  could see our breath. John said it looked like something out of 
  _Dr. Zhivago._ I took his word for it.

  We got into a routine: wake up, cook breakfast, back into bed, 
  up for lunch and long walks in the woods, drive into Albany for 
  dinner at a different restaurant each night, bed again. There 
  was no talk of Redeemer College.

  The day before classes resumed we were lying in bed. We talked 
  past noon. I took a deep breath.

  "John, how did you get into this whole fundamentalism thing? Why 
  are you here? I mean, you can't really believe all this stuff?"

  " 'Jesus made as though he would go further.' "

  "What?"

  "That's it. That's why I believe."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Luke 24. After his resurrection, Jesus is on the road to 
  Emmaeus and he meets up with two of his disciples, but they 
  don't recognize him. They think he's just another guy and 
  they're amazed that he hasn't heard about this Jesus person, so 
  they say, 'Haven't you heard? You must be the only one in town 
  who hasn't! He's risen from the dead!' Then Jesus finally 
  reveals himself to them, going back through the Old Testament 
  and showing them how all this was speaking of him, how he really 
  is the messiah. The first time I read this story, Zoe, I thought 
  to myself, this is sad, this is really so sad. I mean, to have 
  to explain yourself like that. After all the great things he 
  did, all the miracles and the healings and to top it off Jesus 
  rises from the dead, and here these guys that claim to be his 
  followers don't even recognize him. He was traveling through the 
  world incognito. Even the ones who claimed to know him best 
  didn't recognize him, or denied him, they all somehow missed 
  him, or betrayed him with a kiss. After three years they still 
  didn't know who he was, they still didn't get it."

  "But what is this, Jesus made-as-if-he-would-go-further stuff?"

  "After Jesus goes through this whole routine with them, and now 
  they recognize him, and believe again, it's dinner time, and the 
  disciples were going to spend the night somewhere. But the text 
  says that Jesus made as though he was going further, and they 
  had to persuade him to stay with them. I think that's why I love 
  him. I think that's why I'm here. He was just so incredibly 
  polite, he didn't force himself on anybody, he had the most 
  incredible manners. He didn't want to offend. He wanted to help 
  them to see. Jesus--"

  "Wait a minute. That's why you're here? Because Jesus made as 
  though he was going further, because he had good manners? That's 
  a reason? You're saying that you came to teach at a 
  fundamentalist college with weirdo rules and a pervert for a 
  President, and you choose to stay here, the whole thing, because 
  Jesus was polite to these bozos?"

  "Because Jesus goes unrecognized in the world, Zoe. Because 
  we've been in the presence of grace and we didn't even know it. 
  Because the greatest mysteries in the universe have been 
  revealed to us and we've forgotten or overlooked them or somehow 
  screwed things up but he's too polite to embarrass us again. 
  Because he travels through the world, travels through us, 
  incognito. We keep pushing him away, out of the world, out of 
  our lives, and he lets us! Because he's been right there with 
  us, hell, he's carried us and we didn't even notice."

  He sighed, and looked into his hands.

  Outside, the wind was picking up. Voices of children could be 
  heard at play in the street, and farther off, the low rumbling 
  of a train. I watched the grimy curtains move toward us, 
  disturbed by the wind, then lie limp against the window pane, 
  suddenly still.

  John got up and threw some more coals on the fire, then came up 
  behind me and waited. I didn't say anything.

  Then he said, "I know I'm not saying this very well, Zoe. I just 
  think I can help here, that's all."


  Kit
-----

  One day during missions week a Vice President of one of the big 
  missions boards used maps and charts to share with us missionary 
  possibilities all over the world, particularly in the former 
  Communist bloc, and could it be that God would like to use us in 
  Russia for His glory? Five hundred students raised their hands 
  and come forward down the aisle to go to Russia. That's one 
  third of the student population. I thought, What are all these 
  people going to do in Russia? I felt sorry for the place. I 
  pictured all those Bible thumping classmates tearing up the 
  countryside, knocking on doors and handing out tracts in poorly 
  translated Russian. I thought, if I were in the Kremlin I would 
  pass laws immediately to stem the tide of evangelistically 
  minded American students with large Bibles. The way I looked at 
  it, the country had enough problems.

  But then, Kit and I figured that 498 of them would change their 
  minds. They'd get married, get a mortgage, have kids. Most of 
  the students I knew would rather die than think of themselves in 
  a country without shopping malls. And what would these students 
  wear? Kit and I tried to imagine the Redeemer girls with their 
  blazers and pearls, trying to talk to vodka-smirched Russian 
  women waiting in line for brown bread. We cracked up.

  Besides me and Kit, there were our trainees, Alix and Jennifer 
  and Sara. After the missionary conference ended at 9:30, we'd 
  sit around complaining about how we were expected to get any 
  work done when they had us going to meetings all night. We'd 
  trade favorite missionary stories. Sara thought she had the best 
  one, about this missionary from Brazil who used to tell 
  repeatedly, every time he spoke, about how this giant bug was in 
  his skull for three weeks, how they eventually prayed that bug 
  right into oblivion, and Alix recalled a missionary who somehow 
  failed to tie up the livestock on a plane and wound up with 
  goats chewing things up and raising hell in the cockpit, but we 
  all sat there in amazement when Kit told us about her mother.

  "I grew up in West Virginia, right, and down there we take our 
  religion seriously. No room to fuck up, I mean you've got to toe 
  the line, sister, or whump, they'll toss your sorry ass out the 
  church. So my mom tries, right, really tries, to please my dad 
  -- who incidentally is the pastor of the church -- you know, to 
  be the total woman. She even wears only Saran wrap when he gets 
  home from work, kinky sex to the Song of Solomon, the whole 
  fundy thing. But she knows that she's going nowhere in that 
  small town and she's itching to get out and back to school so 
  she can get herself a life before she's too old."

  Jennifer stopped looking at Kit, and stared at the wall, a 
  vacant look in her eyes. I put my arm around her.

  "So one Sunday night at church my mother shows up with three 
  roses, each in a Dixie cup of dirt. One rose is completely 
  closed, the other is partially open, and the third is in full 
  bloom."

  "What was she doing with three roses?" Alix asked.

  "They were her props, see. She was about to give us an object 
  lesson, just like she might have done in junior church or 
  something, but that congregation was about to hear something it 
  never heard before, I promise you. Us kids are sitting quietly 
  in the pew, we've got our coloring books, our Barbies, the whole 
  thing, like a normal Sunday night. But nothing was normal that 
  night.

  "So now my dad, who remember, is the pastor, says it's testimony 
  time, and the minute he says that my mother stands to her feet 
  and in her hands she's holding her three roses, and she starts 
  in on her testimony.

  " 'My dear sisters and brothers in Christ, I want to share my 
  heart with you. You see these three roses? They represent my 
  life. As you can see, the first rose is unopened. It signifies 
  my life as it has been for the first 33 years. All this 
  potential, all of my possibilities, going to waste. Do you know 
  what it is like to have a good mind, a sound mind, that the Lord 
  God has given you, but you are unable to use it? Well, that has 
  been my life. This is the old me, a beautiful rosebud, unopened, 
  yearning to burst out into bloom.

  " 'And this second rose you can see is in bloom. Its petals 
  have opened, all the world can see its beauty, but it is still a 
  veiled beauty, isn't it?' My mom held the second rose aloft in 
  her hands. I could see old Mrs. Bartle sitting on the edge of 
  her seat, following that rose with her eyes. 'But something is 
  still wrong,' mom said. 'This rose is not all it can be. It has 
  yet to become all the rose that God intended it to be.' Now she 
  had her head bowed. She was weeping. 'This is my life now, this 
  rose. I've opened up to the Lord, I'm willing for the world to 
  see me now, but not all of me, just a part. I'm still only half 
  a person.

  " 'But this rose.' She waved the third rose in the air now, 
  triumphantly. 'This rose is in all its glory! It is the rose in 
  full bloom. Nothing can be more beautiful than a rose that has 
  completely opened to its possibilities. And this rose is what I 
  want to be. What I shall become, by the grace of God.' "

  "God, Kit, that is so beautiful," Jennifer said.

  "Yeah, they all thought so. Mrs. Bartle was bawling so loud you 
  could hear her across town. But what no one knew is that I had 
  heard my parents earlier. They had a huge fight. They thought I 
  was outside playing with my sister. My father was pleading with 
  mom to stop having the affair, to stay with us, and she kept 
  screaming, over and over, 'Leave me alone, you're smothering 
  me!' That woman was heading for the door long before the trinity 
  of roses speech, I'm telling you. It was a great performance, 
  and it bought her some time and a lot of sympathy afterwards, 
  when she left town. _Masterpiece Theatre_."

  "God, Kit," Jennifer says. How did you stand it? Did you tell 
  her that you knew?"

  "I've never told anyone," Kit said, "till now."


  On The Ward
-------------

  Kit was the rebel. I didn't have the energy for rebellion. For 
  that, you had to care. I was just there for observation. I told 
  myself constantly, "You're on the ward, pay attention." But it 
  was weird, since they all thought the same thing, they were 
  observing you. After all the services at home, all those 
  Redeemer chapel messages, all the Bible classes, I had 
  internalized a fundamentalist voice. It talked back to the other 
  voice, my voice. I heard these conversations all the time.

  --It's wrong to have sex. The Bible says so. Whoremongers and 
  adulterers God will judge.

  --That's ridiculous. Sex is the most natural thing in the world. 
  You see a gorgeous guy, you think you're going to live forever. 
  God gave us sex. He made us this way.

  --You must learn to overcome these lustful thoughts. God will 
  judge.

  --Then God's judging himself, since he gave us these bodies in 
  the first place.

  --That's blasphemy.

  --Your God's perverted. Do you really think he's hanging around 
  the Ramada Inn, checking out what's going on in Room 208? 
  Shouldn't he be more interested in Northern Ireland, or Lebanon, 
  Bosnia, something more worthy of his time?

  --He's working on that. Besides, God knows everything about 
  everybody. He is not only omniscient, He is omnipresent.

  --So he's got the Holiday Inn covered too.

  --You have a bad attitude.

  --So what?

  --You're headed for hell.

  It's like fundamentalism is a double-voiced sickness, but the 
  ones who observe it are themselves observed, so no one knows how 
  to chart it. It's a standoff.


  Chapel, II
------------

  I did some math: if you stayed at redeemer for four years, and 
  went to chapel and the special bible and missionary conferences 
  at the beginning of the semesters, and to church twice on Sunday 
  and Wednesday night prayer meetings you would have heard 255 
  sermons per year, for a total of 1,020 in four years.

  Redeemer was in session for thirty weeks a year, fifteen weeks 
  per semester. This means that a student could hear 255 sermons 
  in 210 days in one year; graduating seniors will have heard 
  1,020 sermons in only 840 days. If you want the prayer figure, 
  take the sermon number and double it: 2,040 public prayers, 
  minimum, not counting required dorm bible studies and prayer 
  meetings.

  Many of these were about sex. Not having it was the idea. There 
  was no mention of child abuse, homelessness, racism, or sexual 
  harassment. Math was not my strong point, but I checked my 
  figures three times. I thought these figures were not widely 
  known. When I told John he suggested I write a letter to the 
  school newspaper. When I told Jennifer, she said that's not 
  counting the summers, when you attend church and prayer meeting 
  at home with your parents. She went off to calculate the number 
  of times that worked out to in terms of hosiery bought and put 
  on. When I told Kit, she said, "What'd you expect, that they'd 
  leave anything to chance?"


  The President
---------------

  The president of the college frightened me. His name was Jack 
  Sampson. Since Redeemer was so small, we all got to see him way 
  more than we'd want. When he looked at me it sent shivers down 
  my spine. One day, waiting for John after Chapel, he looked at 
  me; well, not at me, he looked at my body. At my legs and butt. 
  It was a "degree day" today, meaning it was below zero and the 
  girls got to wear pants. Pants on girls were so unusual that 
  when we got to wear them, we'd flaunt it, whatever we had. So I 
  had on Jennifer's too-tight striped pants and he looked at me in 
  this really ugly way, and I knew he wanted to undress me. I 
  wanted to take John's hand and run out of the building.

  That night's topic of dorm conversation was President Sampson: 
  Was he a pervert? Kit thought so. "Think about it. This guy 
  comes right out and says he is a friend of Jimmy Swaggart, I 
  mean this guy knows that weirdo! He has Swaggart's home phone 
  number, can you believe it?"

  "Did you see the news when Swaggart asked forgiveness from his 
  congregation? Wasn't that nauseating? His poor wife."

  "I saw the interview they did with the prostitute Swaggart was 
  with. She has a kid. She said the stuff he asked her to do, it 
  was sick."

  "I don't know, Zoe. I don't think Sampson's a pervert. The 
  president asked for prayer for him, is all. And besides, we're 
  different from Swaggart in doctrine, right? So Swaggart doesn't 
  really represent the Christian community. I mean, Swaggart is a 
  charismatic, right? We don't believe that stuff about tongues 
  and all."

  This was Jennifer. She was somewhat in awe of us.

  "Right, Jennifer." Kit said, "Sampson doesn't speak in tongues 
  so he can't possibly be a pervert."


  John, III
-----------

  I worried about John constantly. It was unbearable. He was 
  wracked with guilt. I didn't believe in guilt. I thought it was 
  a false emotion that we manufactured to torment ourselves. I 
  watched my parents manipulate each other and my sister with 
  guilt. Fundamentalists are expert at guilt, but this is a 
  cliche. What's not widely known is how much they suffer.

  I looked at it this way: I'd been around fundamentalism enough 
  to have received an inoculation. I think I'm immune to it now, 
  that enough distance has been created, but it's still in my 
  blood, traveling in me, silent and potent.


  Saved Sex
-----------

  John sometimes wondered if he was still saved, what with all 
  that we had done together. I'd tell him we need saving from 
  something every day, what makes this day any different? And take 
  his hand and place it on my breast.


  Kit and Me
------------

  One of the weirder rules at redeemer was that if two girls were 
  on a bed, they both had to have both feet on the floor.

  I ask you.

  So one night Kit and I were lying in bed in our underwear with 
  the door locked. Kit was admiring my panties, which were white, 
  with red hearts. My mom sent them to me for Valentine's day, but 
  they were too big. I knew Kit didn't have much money. After her 
  mom ran off her dad lost his church. He got another one but it 
  was a small congregation and couldn't afford to pay him much. I 
  said what the hell. I took the panties off and gave them to her. 
  My bra too.

  Kit gave her professors fits. That day in New Testament she had 
  embarrassed her prof by asking him if he had sex before marrying 
  his wife. He deserved it, he kept going on and on about the 
  biblical view of sexuality and Kit just couldn't take it 
  anymore. I had to put my head on my desk to keep from laughing 
  out loud. The prof asked if he could see her after class. He 
  questioned her attitude. She had an appointment with the Dean 
  the next morning at eight.

  Anyway, we're lying in bed, me naked now, regretting my decision 
  to stop seeing John outside of class, when Kit jumps me. We 
  wrestle till we're panting with exhaustion, our sides splitting 
  with laughter, but she has a good twenty pounds on me, and it's 
  clear I'm going to get pinned, so I decide to just lay back and 
  enjoy it. Kit pins me, then counts slowly to three in a 
  referee's voice, and calls me a wimp. She lip synched to the 
  illegal tape I had playing: "Got it bad, got it bad, got it bad, 
  I'm hot for teacher." Then she kissed me on the lips, and asked 
  me out to dinner.

  I got back to the room the next day after classes and found a 
  note on my bed. From Kit. They'd kicked her out. I ran down the 
  hall crying. I found the Residence Hall Advisor and asked her 
  what happened to Kit. She looked at me like I'd dropped in for 
  the day from Jupiter. Then she said out of the side of her 
  mouth, "Kit had an attitude problem. As you know. She's gone."


  It's been six years. I made my escape the day Jennifer was 
  kicked out for attitude in The Zoo. I piled all my Redeemer 
  clothes in the middle of the floor with a note saying "Help 
  Yourself!" and caught the next bus out of town. I didn't say 
  goodbye to anyone. I called my parents from the bus station and 
  they freaked. But they didn't ask me to come home, I'll give 
  them that.

  I stayed with Kit in Ithaca until I got a job cutting hair and 
  an apartment. I took some night classes and tried to get into a 
  degree program at Cornell, but I couldn't get my Redeemer 
  credits to transfer. Whenever I said that word, Redeemer, I'd 
  get this look, like I was bad meat. There were fights with the 
  Registrar, and scenes in the Admissions office. Finally I just 
  gave up.

  That was years ago.

  I am twenty-four.

  Last year I got married to this guitarist. We're on the road a 
  lot. It's OK at night, when there's so much set-up work to do 
  and then the band is playing and everything is moving by so 
  fast, the lights winking at the dancers on the crowded floor and 
  the crashing wall of sound that seems to flatten the room, picks 
  us up and throws us down again. But the days are slow. 
  Sometimes, after dinner with the guitarist and his friends, I 
  stand up and walk outdoors, and keep on walking till I'm in 
  sight of a church.

  I just found out that I'm pregnant. I haven't told the 
  guitarist. I haven't told anyone, yet. I've given a lot of 
  thought to what I'm going to call the baby if it's a girl. 
  Katherine Anne, after Kit and my grandmother. And if it's a boy? 
  That's easy.

  There's this song playing at work. I hear it all day long. The 
  one about God on the bus, trying to make his way home.

  I think: What if God _was_ one of us?

  I don't know what happened to John. For a while Kit was getting 
  Redeemer newsletters at her house but she called and told them 
  to fuck off. I never got any. I guess to them I never existed.

  I still think about him sometimes, and yeah, about our 
  conversation that last day in his cabin. And I see John's point 
  in the Luke story. But I think Jesus made as though he would go 
  further because he just wanted to get away from those two guys. 
  Maybe that's the difference between believers and non-believers 
  when you get right down to it: the believers think it all comes 
  down to this one person, and they know how to hang on to what 
  they have.

  And then I remember: We were in bed when he told me that funny 
  story about Jesus walking on the road. John's hands were there 
  on my belly, like mine are now, soft and warm, and he was 
  sobbing, shaking so hard I thought he would fall apart, and he 
  kept saying my name, over and over, Zoe, Zoe, Zoe, Zoe.

  I tell myself I may be remembering this all wrong, that things 
  change and your life plays tricks on you, but I mean, there we 
  were, in that little cabin at the end of the road, and I was in 
  his presence and I never knew what it was, what he meant, what 
  was mine.


  Gary Percesepe (cpwh49a@prodigy.com)
---------------------------------------------
  Gary Percesepe is a former fiction editor at the Antioch Review. 
  A native New Yorker, he is the author of four books in 
  philosophy. His fiction, essays, and poems have appeared in the 
  _Mississippi Review Web Edition_, _Enterzone_, and other places. 
  He teaches at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio.


  Paddlefish Sky   by Hollis Drew
=================================
...................................................................
  Those who know the most about the people of the River aren't the 
  ones who pilot the boats.
...................................................................

  This is my last day to drive a school bus. I usually wake early, 
  but today a fat rain sweetens my sleep until a foghorn way off 
  on the Mississippi River roots through a rich, moody clabber to 
  bait me from my dreams. In the early spring the River can be 
  mulish and unforgiving; its swollen waters pulls along giant 
  trees, loose barges, even dead people, so bloated and dark and 
  sexless it takes weeks to identify them, in its hungry prowl 
  towards New Orleans. Hundreds of tiny islands along this stretch 
  of the River clog its waters. Sandbars and currents are tricky 
  through here. A tug pilot blinks at dark visions from inside the 
  dim, green light of his wheelhouse and prays his tow won't 
  bugger some careless fisherman who nods off in his skiff. Even 
  with million-dollar radar, the older pilots still only trust 
  their eyes.

  The River changed its course long ago, which supports my daddy's 
  notion that only three rules in life are certain: "Time will 
  tell. Shit will smell. And water will seek its own level." The 
  State of Tennessee claims most of the islands, even though they 
  now snuggle up against our side of the River. My daddy probably 
  heard when it happened, but I didn't ask him before he died. 
  Even if my daddy didn't know, I'm sure my granddaddy knew the 
  history of the River.

  I was young when my granddaddy died. I'm not sure now if I 
  remember him or just the stories my uncles tell. His name was 
  Tyrece and his people came from Virginia. He was a hostler, a 
  main man. He was also a tiny man, but unafraid of the meanest 
  mule in the lot. He dipped Garrett snuff and quoted scriptures 
  from memory all day. He played a piano by ear; and if he heard a 
  song played once on his old battery-run radio, he could play it 
  forever, banging proudly upon a tinny-sounding upright, with his 
  fingers hammering it out like little black hammers. He chopped 
  cotton for more than eighty years and died at one hundred three. 
  He outlived five wives and was buried beside them in a grove of 
  yellow catalpa trees.

  He told wonderful stories from his youth: of the time when his 
  mother and two aunts, left alone and hungry during a spring 
  flood, paddled out in a boat left tied to the second story 
  bedroom window to slit the throat of a doe swimming through the 
  tops of a flooded corn field; and of a black panther that clawed 
  into the attic of their cabin one night to give birth, safe from 
  the hotly baying hounds; and of a groggy rattler seeking heat 
  that crawled into his bed when he was five, which he kicked 
  three times with a heavy thud out into the floor before his 
  puzzled mother came to investigate; and of winter mornings so 
  cold his father's moustache was caked with ice from his steamy 
  breath. He remembered when an ancient forest covered this land 
  and six men clasping hands couldn't reach around its huge 
  hardwood trees. My grandfather would have known all about the 
  River changing its course if asked, but a man only thinks of 
  such things when it's too late.


  I live next to a dogleg in the levee just outside the small town 
  of Lazich, Arkansas, with the same wife, and in the same house I 
  did as a kid. I can brag on it some because I can count on one 
  hand folks who can say the same. Stella and me are still here. 
  No doubt, we've been pretty lucky.

  Stella is spooned around a pillow on her side of the bed; her 
  breath hitches upon itself like something fancy, and I know she 
  will live forever. She cruises through her dreams. I am 
  comforted by her sighs. She makes me laugh and feel cozy. Some 
  mornings she rolls over, only partly awake, and mumbles in a 
  deep rubbery whisper, `You still lovin' me?' But this morning 
  the rain also holds her under. She won't wake up for another 
  hour. I'll be gone to the bus garage by then. After a cup of 
  black coffee, though, she'll air dry and be good as new.

  Stella has made a good wife; if it is true, as my daddy said, 
  that all good marriages begin and end with a steady woman, then 
  I have been blessed, but he was still disappointed we married as 
  we did. It had nothing to do with Stella -- she is humble as a 
  parable and he loved her from the start -- but we were just 
  fifteen. He wanted me to finish school; but I thought I was old 
  enough and smart enough I didn't need his permission. I came in 
  one day to say this is what Stella and me was going to do.

  "Okay, Mister!" he said. "Now, I'll tell you what you gon' do: 
  Come Monday, you gon' give your books to your cousin to take 
  back to school. Then you gon' grab a hoe and join me in the 
  fields." That was all he ever said about it. But he was hurt. 
  None of his children had finished school. He had it worked out 
  in his mind I would be the first. Even though I finally earned 
  my diploma through the Army, it wasn't the same. He lived to be 
  eighty-two; and he held it against me until Robert, my 
  firstborn, finished school. Then it was okay between us. His 
  intentions were good, but he just didn't know Stella.


  We own a country grocery and bait shop that Stella runs. Nothing 
  fancy. We have a little meat counter in the back of the store 
  where we sell bologna and souse and slab bacon, sticky meat 
  bought by the slice and wrapped in white butcher paper. (Poor 
  people can't afford stuff that's low-fat or organic.) We don't 
  carry many fruits or vegetables. Fruits spoil too quickly in 
  this humidity. And most people around here tend a small garden; 
  squash and tomatoes and okra grow like weeds. So, we don't sell 
  many vegetables anyway. Some folks still make cornbread in black 
  iron skillets. Stella will buy a hundred pound sack of potatoes 
  each week off the produce truck from Osceola. But now most 
  people seem to prefer such stuff in a box.

  Stella sells sack lunches for the cotton choppers. Stuff that 
  won't spoil; mayonnaise will kill you quicker than a moccasin in 
  summer. The farmers pay for the choppers' lunches and even pay 
  social security on the choppers now. Like the man says on TV, 
  "And so it is..."

  A gravel road passes by out front and crosses over the levee 
  onto Island 35. We sell bait and beer to the local fishermen. 
  And I have a large tank where I sell fresh fish and soft-shelled 
  turtles bought off the fishermen on the River. But only the old 
  folks buy turtles from me now; they just scoff at the 
  high-minded talk in the paper about the danger of chemicals. 
  They speak, instead, in their high feverish voices of haunts and 
  swampdevils and croup, which worry them much more than the 
  poisons that rain down from the bellies of those swooping yellow 
  planes.

  Children slip inside the store to dangle over the tank and watch 
  the turtles. They jump and giggle at their fear when the turtles 
  scrape their claws against the sides of the tank. The children 
  are suspicious and hopeful, and I tell them stories from my 
  youth, when giant alligator turtles crunched dainties from the 
  bodies floating down the River -- before the oily poisons 
  softened their dough-colored eggs and tainted the turtles' sweet 
  meat. Sometimes one of the brave ones will reach down into the 
  tank and poke the soft leathery skin of a turtle with a finger, 
  but not many do. I admire the brave child who thinks she risks a 
  finger.


  Mister Feeny, the druggist, comes in each day at noon from his 
  shop on the town square to pray inside the walk-in freezer at 
  the back of our store. Three years ago he moved to Lazich to set 
  up business in an empty clothing store. People say he has a 
  family somewhere back up north, but they didn't move down here 
  with him.

  Feeny is a short man with thinning hair; he sprays his scalp 
  with black dye, so he resembles one of those round Russian dolls 
  that looks like a metal bowling pin. And his teeth and fingers 
  are bronze from the rolled cigarettes he smokes. He has a steel 
  plate in his skull, a confusing reminder of Vietnam, like the 
  yellow crazies that chase him in his dreams. So, the war, and 
  Lazich, and the jungle prison camps sometime get all tangled up 
  in his mind.

  I sometimes spy on him through the small square glass window in 
  the freezer door kneeling under the cold numbness of the light 
  bulb. It is safe to spy; his eyes are closed; so he can't see 
  me. Feeny often speaks in unknown Tongues. I can hear his 
  muffled words through the thick freezer door.

  His skin is blue when he leaves, and his teeth chatter. Maybe he 
  purifies the children of Lazich with ice. When he leaves, he 
  often mumbles, "No matter what you do, it ain't enough!"

  Stella shakes her head; he makes her nervous. "People want what 
  they can't have," she says.

  But Feeny means no harm. He just don't have much chrome on him.

  I don't know what he does at noon on Sundays; we usually close 
  the store until one. If it is our freezer that moves him, on 
  Sunday he's out of luck.


  I have mixed feelings about retiring. I just heard on the 
  Memphis evening news they have put security cameras on school 
  buses over in Tennessee to catch kids carrying guns and knives. 
  But I'll miss it mostly. I have been getting up at four for too 
  many years not to miss it. A man can't walk away from forty 
  years of driving a school bus and not feel something. Still, 
  I'll be seventy-two this fall. It's time.

  In 1952 I walked to the white school in Lazich and asked the 
  Superintendent if I could have a job driving a school bus, since 
  he was in charge of hiring. That was the first year our black 
  children would have their own buses. Before that, some black 
  children had walked up to five miles to the school we had built 
  for them out on the edge of Lazich.

  His secretary made me wait outside the school under the shade of 
  some chinaberry trees. The berries crunched wetly under my feet. 
  He came out after about two hours and hired me on the spot. He 
  also gave me a job as a custodian. He was impressed that I had 
  been in the War. He wasn't, but he had lost a son in Belgium. 
  Stella had said before I left the house that morning, "Don't you 
  beg him for nothin'!" I waved her away. I knew how to handle 
  him.

  Anyhow, that's how this school bus driving got started.


  We are still a big school district, and my bus run is sixty-four 
  miles long. So I must get to the bus lot early. I'm always the 
  first bus to leave. I have a key to the gate and let myself in. 
  Still, I cut it close because I want the bus children to sleep 
  as long as possible. See, I have a rule, `You wait on the bus 
  'cause the bus don't wait on you.' They know I mean it, too.


  I run into patchy fog down along the bayou. It stretches across 
  the land like an old man's cataracts. Slows me down some this 
  morning. Funny -- let two flakes of snow hit the road and we 
  close school for a week. But let thick fog slip in off the River 
  and the buses still roll.

  I usually push the bus hard on the straight stretches. The 
  governor is set at sixty-two miles per hour. But not today, 
  because of the fog and planting. Farmers hog the road and run 
  their equipment blind. I keep my window open so I can listen for 
  their equipment on the road.

  My first stop is seven miles out of town. Little Doc Odom gets 
  on. His daddy is named Doc Odom. When Little Doc was born, Doc 
  had them put on his certificate, "Little Doc." So it's pretty 
  official. I don't know what cologne Little Doc wears, but he 
  prefers it to bathing. Must cost one dollar a gallon up at 
  Wal-Mart.

  Little Doc seldom speaks. He grunts once in awhile. He always 
  sits down right behind me. First window seat on the driver's 
  side. It's a good place to see everything. One morning we saw a 
  duck divebomb into ditch water beside the road. "Mister bus 
  driver," Little Doc said, his voice suddenly tainted by emotion, 
  "That duck just committed suicide!" That's been his seat for 
  since kindergarten; he's been stuck for three years in fifth 
  grade.

  Little Doc's momma died of cancer last year. He climbed on the 
  bus one morning and said, "Momma died!" I didn't even know his 
  momma was sick. She rode my bus once, too; her name was Judy. We 
  talked about it some. How he felt. How sadness eats at you when 
  your momma dies.


  I start my run toward Polk Island after crossing the railroad 
  tracks. It is a seventeen mile run to the far side of Polk 
  Island. Few children live along this road now. Used to be a 
  house was perched on every forty acres. So many children lived 
  out here, it took three buses to collect them all. Even then the 
  children who climbed on last had to stand in the aisle. Now then 
  the world stops at the end of this road.

  I stop to pick up two brothers who live in a rusty yellow house 
  trailer beside a shallow ditch. The trailer squats in heavy 
  weeds under a peeling sycamore tree. Their high-butted mother 
  stands barefooted in the dusty yard cursing them for some 
  slight, but her angry words bounce off their wide backs like 
  harmless grit. They climb aboard scowling darkly, unable to look 
  me in the eye.

  I am most happy on those days when these two stay at home. They 
  are much older than the others, too grown to be in school. They 
  are also mean and cannot be trusted. Last year they messed with 
  the young girls in first and second grade. Running hands where 
  they shouldn't. The courts put them on probation and sentenced 
  them to finish school. They don't like me for it, but I make 
  them sit up front in the "angel seat" across from Little Doc, 
  where I can watch what they do.

  My grandchildren once gave me a wooden plaque for Christmas that 
  reads, "The man with all his problems behind him drives a school 
  bus."


  The engine groans or hums to tell me what to do: I down-shift 
  through a curve, then brake to a quick stop at three shotgun 
  houses slumped together near a tractor shed. Flowers bloom at 
  the edges of their ragged, sloping porches; and in the yards the 
  forsythia's long rooster tails salute us with their bright 
  yellow bells.

  Seven panting children climb aboard smelling of sausage, jelly, 
  and buttered biscuits; there is something healing about fresh 
  hot biscuits. They rush from their kitchen table when they see 
  my school bus coming. In the winter, they smell of clinging wood 
  smoke and Vicks salve.

  A light wind sweeps the fog from the ditches into soft layers 
  that hover some twenty feet above the road where I run safely 
  under it. At the end of pavement, I turn onto a hard gravel road 
  that winds through a freshly plowed cotton field toward Polk 
  Island.

  The children stir when we turn onto the island at the end of the 
  causeway. Deer, quick as rabbits, sometime sprint from the cover 
  of the hedge and into a field, then spin upon their hind legs, 
  like dancing bears, and dash back into the hedge when they spot 
  our yellow bus. Come summer, Mink and otter will feed on the 
  pale muscadine grapes draped in the hedges.

  Once we clattered, like a swarm of angry locusts, upon a drowsy 
  alligator sunning in the middle of the causeway; the Fish and 
  Game Commission had brought them up from Louisiana to clean the 
  ditches of beavers. It was young, about four feet long, and it 
  ran heavily before us, then dove into the scummy water with a 
  loud splash. The children were too paralyzed to speak. The 
  Island is stringy and primitive, something untamed and lovely, 
  and makes the children solemn, as if we have quietly entered an 
  ancient cathedral.

  Polk Island is a magical place. Osage oranges the size of 
  softballs grow beside the hard gravel road. Old people still 
  call them deer apples, and, in the fall, I stop the bus to let 
  the children gather one or two for their science classes.

  Only one family lives out on the Island now. Ever so often, in 
  the early spring, after a heavy snowmelt up North among the 
  spruce, firs, and tall pines, the River crawls out of its bank, 
  and the Martinez family moves over the levee to safety, or 
  remains on the Island, if the water doesn't rise too high. If 
  they can stay, they bring David over to the levee and wait in a 
  fifteen foot aluminum boat for my school bus to arrive at 7:05.

  I don't envy David. He is a loner, an only child. I've asked him 
  if he likes the Island and he says so; but it has changed him. 
  Their house is built upon a Nodena ceremonial mound and rides 
  high-and-dry most years, but it is bad luck and brings on 
  visions to build on hallowed ground. I believe David has seen 
  their ancient spirits. He wears a small dream catcher on 
  multi-colored beads around his neck.

  I hunted rabbits out here when I was David's age: I struggled 
  through heavy snow along the River, following the rabbits' soft 
  tracks to their tunnels under the thick rimy grasses, then broke 
  their necks with a sharp blow from a club. Then I ran a wire 
  through the leaders on their back legs and carried so many of 
  them slung across my back the sagging wire cut into the cords on 
  my neck; it was easy to find them quivering under the snow.

  Then, when the sun would break through the gray, rolling clouds 
  to sparkle off the water and snow, I'd be snow-blinded by the 
  light -- eyes bright red and burning like rubies, like the 
  rabbits' eyes -- but happy, too, because I had enough fresh meat 
  to last my family for a month.


  At night the tugs on the Mississippi spray their searchlights 
  across the sky. The air feels damp then, like the wind blowing 
  against a fog. The Island is a spooky place, deathly still, with 
  owls mumbling inside the pale willow thickets crowding the 
  riverbank. I've fished for eel and suckers and drum in the 
  chutes by the achingly-white light of a gas lantern. At two in 
  the morning, the hissing lantern sucks up bugs and snapping 
  things which flutter against the tops of the trees, obscure 
  things you feel more than you see, like the restless Indian 
  spirits who visit David in his dreams.

  People have been killed out here, falling out over a 
  round-heeled woman or strong brown whiskey or a drug debt gone 
  unpaid; at night it is not a good place to get excited or 
  careless.


  Stella and I will come out here to fish now that I'm retiring. 
  We will find more time together. We will close the store on 
  Mondays. We will buy an aluminum boat and drift down the chutes 
  that hug the islands. I will teach her how to wait patiently on 
  the fish.

  And I will show her the thick pink and white walls of wild rose 
  mallows growing in soggy places and the cheerful blooms of the 
  buttery tickseed and the bright orange trumpet-creepers. Come 
  July we will pick the wild blackberries, as fragrant as new 
  money, from the prickly vines drooped heavily over the water 
  until our fingers and lips turn purple; and we will suck at 
  their bitter seeds stuck between our teeth and spit our crystal 
  froth like offering upon the water.

  We will drift among the dried, cupped leaves and place our 
  trotlines in the winding chutes, then listen to the beaver slap 
  the water with his tail to ward off our dominion, and watch 
  clouds of white egrets as they skim across the early, blushing 
  sky.

  When a hot afternoon boils up lazy clouds into yellow, then 
  beige, then green and, finally, dark blue demons, we will tie up 
  to a bank and stretch our tarpaulin over us. We will wait below 
  the fragrant, rustling hedge, and watch the dainty waterstriders 
  skate across the water, and listen to the distant dogs idly 
  barking at only dogs know what.

  After the rain has passed, we will wait patiently at the mouth 
  of the chutes to snag the giant paddlefish that enters the 
  shallows in search of food drug by the strong undertow along the 
  slippery bottom. We will slice open her huge belly and dip up 
  the warm dark eggs with our fingers. It will feel good out under 
  the cool shade of the giant trees.

  We still have things to learn, just like when we were young and 
  couldn't keep our hands off each other.

  But now we need not hurry.



  Hollis Drew (hdrew@intertext.com)
-----------------------------------
  Hollis Drew is the pen name of a 53 year old writer and retired 
  school bus driver who lives near the banks of the Mississippi 
  River. He had been writing unpublished novels and short stories 
  for twenty-five years when InterText published his short story 
  "Shooting Stars" last year (InterText v6n5).



  FYI
=====

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