It will not surprise you to learn that when Little Biggs sat down to play the introduction to the Jay Cooker Show he fired up that most famous of organ works, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. What will surprise you is that Bach probably didn’t write it, and if he did, he wrote it for the violin in, oh say, about 1740.
Who (ever) wrote it was responsible for writing John’s favorite single piece of music. Thus, when Little Biggs began to play, John grasped the Warrior Queen’s arm excitedly and broke into a wide grin. It was the last piece of music he expected hear on something as prosaically perverse as the Jay Cooker Show and, by Jay Cooker’s dumbstruck reaction to it, it was the last piece he had expected to hear as well.
Little Biggs started with the typical north German free opening, that single voice flourish in the upper ranges of the keyboard, doubling the octave before spiraling downward toward the bottom where a diminished 7th chord appeared to resolve itself into a D major chord, taken obviously from the parallel major mode. John couldn’t wait for the four voice fugue and hoped that the organist—who he intended to heartily pat on the back—would attempt the 16th note approach with the implied pedal.
Fiacre watched the expression on John’s face change from his usual, slightly sleepy expression to one highlighted by delight, with amusement. Leave it to John Heartbreak to love music most folks couldn’t stand.
Fiacre liked the Toccata well enough, even if it was a tad hoity toity for his taste. Still, he had appreciated Deep Purple’s version in Highway Star, and Keith Emerson’s upside down take on it when he was with Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, was pretty good.
What was just killing Fiacre right now, though, was the look on Jay Cooker’s face and the way his mouth opened and closed like a beached bass. That, and the way his skin mottled into dark purplely red blotches under his make-up. God, thought Fiacre, that is so funny!
The audience, comprised mostly of old (old, old) people, looked bewildered and shocked. Why, they wondered, was Pastor Cooker playing that ghostly music? It sounded like…well, like music to kill hogs by. Was Cooker telling them that the end, THE END which he so confidently predicted was nigh, was actually NOW? They began twisting in their seats, glancing first at the boy playing the horror show, then back over to Jay where he was sitting, pole axed, on the stage. His wrinkled face resembled a soft, over-ripe plum that became even more pronounced as a string of drool rolled from the corner of his mouth and hung off the end of his chin in a long dangle.
“Maude,” said an elderly man sitting close to the stage with his wife. “I think we need to get out of here. It’s end times for sure and we need to call the kids.” He got up and, tugging at his wife’s arm, began to shuffle toward the studio’s exit. A pair of duffer couples creaked their necks to watch Maud and her companion leave; they looked anxiously around and began to tremble.
Fiacre couldn’t remember when he’d had a better time. When God sent him to Berryville he had to admit that he felt a bit out of his depth. He was a gardener after all, and while the First Christian Church certainly had a garden and John Heartbreak was certainly its principal gardener, that was the only connection he could see to the whole “Saving Normal Christianity” agenda that was gumming up the works. But so far, things seem to be going well. Don’t you think so?
Fiacre glanced up at a television monitor and laughed. Jay’s television audience was catching the whole drama as it happened, right down to the dying bass routine and the gob of spit dripping off Jay’s chin. The program’s Director didn’t know where to place his camera shots. At the far back of the studio a cadre of security guards were wrestling with some guy wearing bunny slippers; the studio audience sat in stupefied fear gobbling nitro tablets, or quaking like a forest of aspens. When in doubt, as he was now, he took the path of least resistance and followed Jay’s habitual advice: “you can’t keep the camera on me enough, got it?”
Lulu Cooker seemed transfixed by the music and shook her head as though to clear it. She attempted to stand but gave up at half mast and dumped herself back onto the velvet couch. She turned toward Jay for a directional cue and then brought a tight little fist to her lips: Jay’s face was the maroon hue of a 1954 Ford Victoria that her father owned at the time of her birth. Lulu hadn’t thought about that car in years and, for no reason at all, she was suddenly filled with a feeling of well-being and happiness. Jay croaked and croaked; she smiled.
The Director saw the smile, the oddly beatific smile on Lulu’s face, and quickly cued the #3 camera to focus on her. How curious, he thought, that the drug addled Lulu should be the one island of calm amid what was an increasingly chaotic set. He attracted Lulu’s attention and mimed a smiley face, pointing at his teeth. Lulu nodded and flashed her teeth as Little Biggs moved into the final entry of the fugal melody where the composition resolves into a held B major chord.
She continued smiling, and began nodding in time to the music as Little Biggs played the coda section much like the Toccata itself before falling into a series of chords and arpeggios that progress, step, step, step, to other paired chords, each a little lower than the one preceding. Almost casually, she looked over at the apoplectic Jay, pointed at him, and giggled. “How about that, folks?” she laughed. “Jay’s speechless!”
Fiacre turned his gaze away from Lulu and searched for John. There he was, still smiling and still as loopy looking as ever. The Warrior Queen, standing next to John, was neither smiling nor loopy looking. She has an intense, fierce expression on her face, and was pointing her finger directly at Fiacre with her right hand and shaking the fist of the left.
“Where’s my money!?” she mouthed.
“Hmmn,” he said to himself. Dr. Sloan certainly looked the part of a Warrior Queen—tall, strong, angry—and, my goodness, why was her wrath directed at him rather than, say, the croaking Cooker or the dullard Heartbreak? What had Fiacre, poor Saintly Gardener that he was, ever done to her? Had he not already died, been dead, and gone to heaven, he might feel quite afraid of her. As it was, he still felt a shrill tremor of desire to flee.
As Fiacre assessed the Warrior Queen’s potential for violence on his person, Mrs. Heartbreak and Clara Jane entered the Eveningside compound and pulled the Winnebago into the parking lot. During the drive, Clara Jane had informed Clara Jane about the unsatisfactory state of her marriage to Agent Staley, and of the important role that Pastor Sincerely Dewayne Wayne Darby had played in transforming her from a devout, middle of the road Methodist into a new kind of Christian that Mrs. Heartbreak had no trouble at all identifying as lunatic. For the last ten miles of their trip she had only been able to say:
“But Clara Jane…”
…before Clara Jane interrupted her with increasingly delirious and vivid descriptions of THE END. Now, as Clara Jane switched off the key to the Winnebago, Mrs. Heartbreak sat mute—yes, birds fell from the sky and NORAD informed Pentagon brass of strange and peculiar changes in natural and electronically sourced air and atmospheric waves that could not be identified but appeared to be derived from a location in Northern Arkansas or Southern Missouri—and saddened by the change in her friend. Clara Jane, once so rational and clear headed, was now crazier than a bedbug.
Eddie Keever pulled into an empty spot two vehicles over from the Winnebago and shut his truck off. He picked up the MP3 recorder and said:
“Mrs. Heartbreak and the former Clara Jane Smith are leaving the Winnebago and heading over to the front entrance of Eveningside Ministries. For some reason Mrs. Heartbreak isn’t speaking and birds are falling from the sky…lot’s of birds…holy cow!...actually. What can the meaning of this unnatural event be?
“The two women are now at the entrance into the Eveningside Compound. Oops, as Clara Jane opened the door several people—old geezers—strike that!—Senior Citizens and God bless them!—are hurriedly leaving the building. They look scared. Actually, they look terrified.
“Oh my gosh! A large hairy man wearing only bunny slippers has stormed through the door!
“Friends, we aren’t in Berryville anymore!”
