Chapter 29
As John moved in the direction of Eveningside’s entrance he crouched and walked quickly in a zig zag pattern. Dr. Sharon Sloan, the Artist and Scholar formerly known as Dr. Sharon Sloan, watched him with increasing alarm.
“What are you doing, for God’s sakes?”
“Serpentine,” John said in a hoarse whisper. “We move as the snake.”
“Epileptic,” Dr. Sloan replied. “You look like you’re having a seizure. Knock it off, okay? You’re going to draw attention to us.”
“Well.” John’s feelings were hurt. “I assumed we were traveling incognito. I’m just trying to fit in.”
Sharon shook her head and looked at her feet. The asphalt in the Eveningside parking lot, while new, was already beginning to crack and fissure. She could see that small shoots of chickweed had begun to root. It wouldn’t be long before the parking area looked like it belonged in a ruined first tier suburb. She walked over to where John was crouched and pulled him upright.
“If we want to fit in,’ she said, in a calming voice, “We have to look like Orin and Luella Parsnips, from Bum Squat, Missouri. We’re retired chicken farmers and I clerked at Wal-Mart for several years after our no good kids took off.”
“Why are our kids no good?”
“We need a compelling reason to belly up to Jake Cooker’s bar and drink the joy juice,” she said. “We are victims of hateful, willful children who only want our hard earned money to spend on unsuitable pursuits.
“Our son Donald left home to study ballet at the University of Central Arkansas. He is currently employed as a part time toe dancer with the Fort Smith Ballet and lives with a black guy named Maurice who lifts weights and is a performance artist.
“You know what all that means, don’t you?” she asked.
John nodded.
“Our daughter Ella lives with a person named Hog Dog and is herself known as ‘Easy On, Easy Off’ Ella. She smokes cigarettes and drinks whiskey when she isn’t incarcerated.
“Both our kids hate us and we never hear from them unless they need money. Donald says that you are a homophobic racist and Ella believes that I am a self-righteous Jesus freak church lady…our children are, of course, absolutely correct.”
“Without putting too fine a point on it,” John observed.
“No point on it at all,” Dr. Sloan replied. “We’re here because we’re Naturalized Citizens of Jake World. We, like Jake, are victims of a rotten Universe, and we hate everything in it—including our rotten kids. You and I—as Orin and Luella Parsnips—are lonely, old, and sickly. We’re filled with bile, ignorance, intolerance, self-pity, rage, bigotry, delusion, xenophobia, rightwing ideology, anti-Semitism, sexual repression, cholesterol, depression, fanaticism, apparitions of Mandingo on a rampage, acid reflux syndrome, chauvinism, prejudice, vitamin A, C, & D deficiencies, self-righteousness, vitriol, ire, wrath, fury, cruelty; we harbor an infinite well of certainty that we are oppressed, subjugated, dominated, and controlled by a vast leftwing conspiracy of limp-wristed oral sex addicted multi-culturalist college graduates. You, Orin, secretly struggle with an unspeakable desire to dress in women’s clothing. God only knows what you’ve done with those chickens out in the shed.”
“Good heavens!”
“Precisely. We’ve come to Jake World because all of its cherubim and seraphim sing in grand confirmation of these beliefs, feelings, pathologies, and yips. For us, for Orin and Luella Parsnips, it is a good heaven indeed!
“So, John,” Dr. Sloan admonished, “We don’t have to zig and zag to the front door. Just stand tall and be an ordinary, everyday maniac.”
Fiacre chuckled. The Warrior Queen really cracked him up. He was enjoying eavesdropping on her, and he certainly enjoyed the direction in which her conversation with the dullard Heartbreak was headed. She’d nailed the human conditions of Pastor Cooker’s targeted market pretty fast, but the funny bit was that Normal Christians were mostly a vast leftwing conspiracy of limp-wristed oral sex addicted multi-culturalist college graduates; more or less the average High Church Episcopalian and recovering Baptist…and about every other Roman Catholic Fiacre had run into.
He stooped to pluck a habanera off the vine and popped it into his mouth. “Hokey Smokey!” he exclaimed. Dull as he was, Heartbreak could grow peppers!
It should not surprise you that Fiacre can be working in the First Christian Church Community Garden in Berryville, Arkansas, and simultaneously listen in on a conversations taking place in and near Blue Eye, Missouri. Time Travelers are tridimensional in nature—they often meet themselves in their toing and froing—and as a soul and Saint as well as a Time Traveler, Fiacre is an especially gifted chrono-locomotive. Every conversation is an iTune in the world of the Departed Present.
He momentarily lost track of what Sloan was saying; tears streamed down his face from the heat of the pepper and he was tempted to spit, not that it would help. Fiacre pulled the hem of his T-Shirt up and wiped his eyes, then bent down to see what other fresh hell John had planted.
“Serrano Del Sol,” he muttered, impressed. He was looking at a fairly stout, squatty pepper plant with dozens of 3 inch fruits varying from very dark green to scarlet. Fiacre knew the pepper well; it was hotter than a check from Lucifer and had to be taken in small doses and then only when surrounded by tomatoes and cilantro.
Next to the Serrano, John had planted a Mellow Star and, just next to it, a really lovely Corno di Torro that would be perfect for roasting. The Mellow Star was an Asian variety, the Corno was Italian, and the Serrano was, of course, Mexican. Whatever Heartbreak’s deficiencies in the charm and excitement departments, he more than made up for them as a gardener.
Fiacre recalled a conversation about farming he’d had with Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker, back in New York City sometime in the middle of the Twentieth Century. Day had called on him in a prayer of intercession to go knock some sense into a cadre of over pious intellectuals trying to garden on the Catholic Worker farm in Elmira, upstate.
“Dorothy, please. No,” he had said. “It will be no fun at all. You’ve got three angry women at constant odds with three lazy men, each haranguing the other—and each other—over their character flaws. All manifestly real, by the way.
“And they’ve taken up Bible quoting, for God’s sakes. Some of the passages they quote are so obscure even Isaiah hasn’t heard of them.”
Day sniffed. “What kind of saint are you?” she asked. “’It will be no fun’ he says. For crying out loud, Fiacre, religious life isn’t a cake walk, you know!”
He had hung his head in shame, a feeling that surprised him given his transcendent, supernatural, been there done that man of several worlds experience. Yet, he also knew that Day would soon become a Saint herself, one that would show up Fiacre and several of his other saint pals for the saintly pikers they actually were (and are). He sighed.
“Okee doakee, Dorothy,” he acquiesced. “Where shall I begin?”
“Begin by telling them they’re all guilty as sin and that the Bible is not a gun. Tell them to stop thinking so much; a little more ‘head down and butt up’ positioning is exactly called for. Say ‘God loves a cheerful giver and scorns the pickle puss…”
“…I’m not sure that appears in Corinthians,” Fiacre interrupted. “Perhaps you mean to say…”
“…I mean to say what I’m telling you to say,” Day said sternly. “They need to pray more and talk less and worry about the devil not at all. The devil can take care of himself and they can depend that he will.
“Tell them that God rides the lame horse. He carves the rotten wood. Finally,” she said, “Tell them to grow some decent peppers. I am especially fond of Corno di Torros.”
“Is that it?”
“One more thing,” she had said. She reached into the pocket of her house dress and pulled out a paper. “Here are 10 rules they should follow. I think these came from Watchman Nee…but you can tell them it comes from you. Give the list to them.”
Fiacre scanned the list, which was headed:
Fiacre’s 10 Rules for Getting into Heaven
1. Think about God all the time. It gets easier with practice.
2. Listen when God speaks to you. PS: If God talks to you about somebody else's sinfulness, it isn’t God Who is talking.
3. God respects manual labor. He especially expects at least a little of it every week from federal employees, priests, pastors, and intellectuals of every stripe.
4. Guilt is a sign of good mental and spiritual health. Deal with it.
5. God does not belong to your church. If you get mad at your church and start a new one, God won’t join your new church either. You might as well stay where you are.
6. The Book of Revelations is an important book. It is also The Book of Scoundrels. Watch out for people and preachers who spend too much (of your) time there.
7. Unless they’re holding a gun, everyone you meet gets a fresh start. Every time you meet them.
8. Pray for a peaceful death ever day. If you go with a clear conscience you have lived well.
9. Read holy books. There are a lot of them, including some novels.
10. The devil is a spectacular failure. People and preachers who spend all of their time talking about the devil worship a false god and are behaving scandalously. They should worry more about what God and less about what the devil is up to.
Fiacre nodded. He would deliver the list.
“Anything else?” he asked, dreading an answer. But he had to ask of course; Dorothy was not a woman you plied with half measures.
“Sometime,” Day begin…“sometime early in the next century, you will go to Arkansas, also, as is New York City, a part of the United States of America—though I know you’ll find that hard to believe when you get there—but once there you will direct a man named Heartbreak and a Warrior Queen named Sloan to Fandango the apostate named Cooker. He is selling indulgences. Make sure you give them this list so that they in turn can give it to Cooker.
“Cooker’s receipt of the list will be his last chance for redemption. If he rejects its message the Warrior Queen and her companion will initiate Operation Fandango.”
“Dorothy, I have two questions,” Fiacre recalled asking. “First, who is the Cooker person? Second, what is a Fandango?”
“Cooker is a counterfeit hell robber; he pretends to save people from the fires of hell. As to the exact nature of a Fandango…well, I don’t exactly know what that is. I am sure,” she concluded, “that it is a spectacular thing to observe.”
Now, now that Fiacre was where Dorothy had predicted he would be—in Berryville, Arkansas, America, he suddenly remembered two things. First, the list that he had presented to the Elmira gardeners made absolutely no impression on them. They went on arguing, blaming, and failed to raise a single spud.
Secondly, he had forgotten to give the list to John. He reached into the right hand pocket of his Bermuda shorts, pulled out a wrinkled slip of paper and, wa la, there it was.
Dang.
