Chapter 20
John stepped out of the Stateline Café while Dr. Sloan paid for their chicken fried steak and Dr. Pepper. Herman Melville was leaning against Mrs. Heartbreak’s van, a dyspeptic look on his face.
“Who’s that gal, you’re hanging around with?”
“The artist and scholar formerly known as Sharon Sloan,” John replied. “She won’t appreciate your calling her a gal, by the way.”
“Modern gal, is she?”
“In the sense that Louisa May Alcott is a modern girl, Herman. She’s a bit of a transcendentalist, but with Baptist antecedents. A Texan, actually.”
“Good God.”
“Exactly. Everyone has a row to hoe and some rows are harder than others. She has, however, taken to Arkansas like a duck to water, and that unfortunate Texas braggadocio diminishes by the hour. She is a good egg in my view.”
“You have fowl on the brain, sir. Ducks. Eggs. I’m embarrassed to be a party to such dialogue. If I’d written such dribble I’d have starved to death.”
John was too polite to point out to Melville that starvation would have been the likely result if the Melville family depended on Herman’s literary income for survival. Instead, he said, agreeably, “There are a number of disadvantages to appearing in this novel. Hackneyed dialogue is certainly one of them, and the extravagance of run on sentences and verb-noun disagreements are three and four. The list of disadvantages goes, frankly up to a hundred and four—and counting.
“But I have no control over what, or how, the Authorial I writes,” John continued. “Yes, I admit to being embarrassed by my appearance herein, and doubly embarrassed by the book’s postmodern construction and points of view. But what can I do? Surely you can see that we are both victims of circumstance?”
Melville sighed, pointing at poor Blue Eye. “It is a sorry set of circumstances that brought me to Arkansas. Look at this place,” he grumbled. “If this dump was in New England the Governor would declare a state emergency and seek Federal funds.”
“If you step this way,” John said, pointing to a patch of dirt about a yard north of where Melville was standing, “you’ll be in Missouri. The ‘Show Me’ State.”
Melville sighed again and slouched even lower against the van’s hood. Then:
“What are you doing here, John? What has brought you and the artist and scholar formerly known as Sharon Sloan to such a low place?”
“We’re here to Save Normal Christianity,” John said, forthrightly. “The Warrior Queen Sloan and I are in route to Eveningside Church to confront the Televangelist Jake Cooker and the new Tomi Raye, Lulu. A ‘Mission from God’ actually.”
Herman’s eyebrows lifted, questioning and surprised:
“You ain’t exactly Ahab, John, but I admire an Odyssey and epics of all kinds. I see that you see America as a holy place and as eschatology rather than a mere nation. I also like the sound of ‘Saving Normal Christianity.’ It resonates with my transcendental roots but confirms America—including even Arkansas!—as a New Jerusalem, the setting for final salvation, and for its people, who have rejected the Old World (Old Europe, I think Rummy called it) and are determined to create a New World. America, in their eyes—in our eyes, John!—has a sacred mission to fulfill biblical prophesies!
“There are many arguments to persuade us that our Glorious Lord will have a Holy City in America,” Melville recited, recalling Cotton Mather’s 1790 sermon, ‘God’s City: America.’
“A City,” he continued, “the street whereof shall be pure gold.”
John was gratified to see Melville so animated. Usually, the old seafarer had sailed so far out into the Slough of Despond that it was impossible not to be similarly afflicted. But now, he absolutely radiated cheerfulness.
“Your endeavor reminds me of what I wrote in White Jacket,” he continued. “We Americans are a peculiar chosen people, the Israel of our time; God has predestined great things from our race, and great things we feel in our souls!”
Melville was just winding up. He was about to say that the Puritans were also on a Mission from God, charged with creating a new society and a new church that would fulfill His plan for the human race—but Dr. Sloan exited the Stateline Café, toothpick in mouth, and said, rather rudely John thought, “You’re mumbling John! Most unattractive!”
Melville shrugged and slipped back into the van and the copy of Billy Budd that John kept stashed in the glove box. He had to tolerate Lizzie, his intolerable wife, but he was not commanded to tolerate other orders of female.
Sharon smiled. “I think I’ve come up with a Strong Statement. One that will cause a grand rallying around the Anti-Cooker flag.”
“And…”
“Taxpayers, for Christ’s Sakes!” she said, loudly. “I think it’s a pretty neat synthesis of both our aims. Whaddaya think?”
John did not nod. True, it succinctly captured the cruel spirit of the country’s mood, but he had been hoping for a more elevated statement along the lines of say, well, ‘Saving Normal Christianity-One Normal Christian at a Time.’ He said so and was treated to a lot of Jerry Colonna and Marty Feldman type eye rolling. Since both these guys are dead and you don’t know who they are anyway, let me just say that Sharon mimicked them to mock John in a particularly mean-spirited way. And, of course, it is fun to think of Sharon imitating these guys—so let’s just leave it at that. Okay?
“Are you done?” John asked. “Could we discuss the idea rationally?”
“Sure,” she said sarcastically. “As soon as you define ‘normal Christian’ for me.”
John was stunned. He and Sharon had known one another for several years now, and she knew him to be a practicing and happy Christian. He had even invited her to attend services at the First Christian Church with a degree of sincerity and resolve that had almost (but not quite) effected the deal. Wasn’t it a certainty that he, John Heartbreak, in the flesh, was an exemplar of Normal Christian? Was he not the archetype from which she could draw the firmest conclusion?
Dr. Sloan shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking, John. You think you’re a normal Christian and that you’re the normal or near normal example sufficient to the cause. Am I right?”
John nodded. (If you’re keeping track, this is the 18th time John has nodded. That’s less than once a chapter, so I don’t think I’m over-using it; it is neither an exhausted transitional device, nor simply a sign of creative exhaustion. Besides which, let’s also keep in mind the fact that Heartbreak, while a good enough bookseller and outstanding at yard maintenance, is essentially a dull human being with a limited repertoire of expressions and, moreover, is more or less, certainly more than less, emotionally constricted and inherently rhythm-less. All this nodding business then is, strictly speaking, consistent with his character. Personally, I wish—as I’m sure you wish—that he was handsomer, richer, more famous, and more inclined to action hero antics. If he was it would certainly make for a more interesting book. But: you dance with the one you brung. So:
Sharon laughed, but not unkindly. She knows that if Mrs. Heartbreak hadn’t rescued John from the Horse Latitudes of the early 80’s, he would be living in rural Iowa, hoeing a Trappist cornfield, looking unattractive in a dirty calve length nightshirt, brown. The Trappist’s loss was Mrs. Heartbreak’s marginal gain, but the impact on Christianity as a whole was surely nominal, and on its normality completely unknown.
His habit of talking with angels, and his belief that the Holy Spirit was a frequent tourist to Berryville, also separated him from the town’s average Christian on the Street. Sure, many of them could be counted on to witness to the presence of both while under the influence of high caliber ecclesiastical horseplay at Wednesday night services, but they would drop dead in fright or enroll in a psychiatric bin if the Holy Ghost appeared in the passenger seats of their cars on Thursday morning to discuss, as he frequently did with John, the fortunes of the Minnesota Twins.
John was also of the opinion that Lucifer was no more than a spectacular failure, a fallen and therefore unsuccessful angel. Why be so afraid of such a Big Loser? Yet preacher after preacher, church after church, Christian after Christian, poured enormous time and energy into making Christianity a never ending celebration of Halloween. So focused were they on the Devil and Hell that they scarcely had time for Christ or Heaven.
These signs are the minimal degrees of separation between John and the majority of other Christians in Berryville, Carroll County, Arkansas, the United States, and the World. There are other signs, of course, perhaps too numerous to count, but these will suffice for now.
Sharon believes that the rise of televangelists and of fundamentalist deniers of science and philosophy and art and Christ’s command to love one another is due to the average American Christian’s Cosmic Blondness, and to the fact that his material goods are the sole fixed point, the sole incontestable value amidst the uncertainties of life, that he really believes in.
John does not, insofar as Dr. Sloan can see it, fit into that normal mold. If he is to Save Normal Christianity it will probably have to be done without the aid of Normal Christians.
Naturally, the burden will fall to her. Isn’t that just the way it always is!
