Between the Bridge and the River (35 page)

We don’t have a fucking clue
is the lay term for the medical expression
inconclusive
.

Saul and Leon weren’t broke but Saul was aware that if he wanted to continue to have the best medical attention and live in luxury and as much comfort as his condition would allow, then they had to earn some money. The only way he knew how to do it was to pimp out his brother, but Leon’s stock had fallen considerably in Hollywoodland, and he himself was afraid to stay there anyway.

Roscoe had told him to get out.

He asked about Roscoe a few times but no one seemed to know who he was talking about, so he let it slide.

One long, hot afternoon, Saul was deeply depressed and was just about to ask Leon to turn off the television when he noticed a channel his brother had skipped past.

“Go back!” he said.

Leon flipped the channel back to what Saul wanted.

A religious channel.

A man with a preposterous hairdo in a garish yellow suit and bootlace tie was preaching fire and brimstone to a massive audience in a huge auditorium in Texas. A number was flashing across the bottom of the screen telling callers where to call to pledge their donations. Saul knew his prayers had been answered.

This was the way out of this sick and twisted fucking town.

Saul had Leon bring in some high-ranking Boondtists to his bed-side on the premise that he was interested in joining the Church. Saul had no intention of doing this, of course, but he pumped the Brainyists about the birth of their faith, about Boondt himself, and about their tax-exempt status as a religion. He asked about their recruitment techniques and their structure of management.

During this time Saul also asked for, and got, visits from Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, Mormons, Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, rabbis, gurus, shamans, and snake oil salesmen of every description who peddle their services to the sick, the scared, and the dying in the hospitals of Southern California.

Saul thought back to the sermons he had witnessed in the snake-handling church of Crawford’s Creek, how these dirt-poor farmers had been only too happy to hand over what little cash they had if they were convinced that they had been in the presence of a little miracle or two.

Saul devoured historical and religious texts. Leon hired an out-of-work actor to sit by Saul’s bed and turn pages for him. He had to fire three before they finally got one who would shut up. He studied the rise and fall of ancient religions, he studied the spread of empires and the careers of dictators. He read and reread, from the indecipherable Kierkegaard to the sound-bite-friendly Nietzsche. He read Kahlil Gibran and Tolkien and C. S. Lewis and Joseph Campbell and Jung. He read Saint Thomas Aquinas.

He read
Men Are Asteroids, Women Are Meteorites,
he read
Peephole
magazine, he watched daytime talk shows and hours and hours of religious television. He was in awe of the thirst that people had for someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right. He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly-headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs.

He read about branding and tipping points and all other aspects of advertising.

He thought about what Wiesner had done to
Killing by Starlight
. He remembered that the executive had renamed the movie using words that appealed to Americans regardless of their relevance to the plot. Saul tried to remember the words—
wedding, celebrity, united, America
or
American
.

Finally, when he had gathered enough information and his plan was completely formed, he was ready to make his announcement to his brother. It was the middle of the night. Saul screamed for the nurse. He demanded that she phone Leon and tell him to get here right away.

Something big had happened.

Leon rushed right over. Saul was sitting up in bed, a beatific smile on his fat mug, not unlike the look that Fraser had used to such great effect when working on Scottish television.

“Leon, oh Praise the Lord, Leon. Thank God you are all right.”

“What is it, Solly? What’s going on?”

“Leon, it’s going to sound weird but something has happened. I was lying here in the dark and I felt myself dying, I felt my body give up the ghost, and I cried out, ‘Oh Lord God, take me if You must but please look after my brother.’ “

Leon was hooked. Saul knew the way to get Leon really interested was to give him a starring role.

He continued, “Then the room lit up and a great wind blew through and I felt I was on a mountaintop and a tall handsome man in a long white robe and a beard appeared to me.”

“Jesus?” whispered Leon.

“He didn’t say. He only said this: ‘Saul, you have been a wicked and evil sinner. Leon thy brother has also followed the path unto darkness. The time is at hand to repent. I healed you for a reason. You two brothers are to turn from your wickedness and do my work. If you do not, then you will be cast into the fiery pit.’ “

Leon was transfixed. “What do we do?” he asked.

Saul raised his left hand and placed it in the hand of his brother. He looked up at him and smiled sadly, tears in his eyes. “We must do Our Lord’s bidding,” he said.

Leon fell to his knees.

Saul placed his hand on his brother’s head. “It’s going to be all right, Leon,” he said.

Leon wept.

GEORGE WAS AWAKE BEFORE CLAUDETTE
. The pain in his back drilled away at him but it was lower grade than before. He thought he must have a bit of the old morphine coursing around, thank God. He watched her for a little, then got up and padded through to the little kitchen.

He had a raging thirst like he’d been drunk for a week. He pulled a little bottle of Orangina from the fridge, twisted off the top, and drank it down.

“Holy crap,” he gasped aloud with delight.

He threw the Orangina bottle in the trash and went through to the sitting room. His other bottle, the little morphine bottle, was sitting on the table but he didn’t want to take it just yet, it made him feel dopey and strange, plus he wanted to feel the pain intensify because it would help him go through with his plan for the day.

It was still early morning and the street outside was quiet. He heard the occasional
putt-putt
of a moped, that shameful combination of hair dryer and bicycle that the French seem unembarrassed about being seen on.

He thought over the last few days of his good-byes in Scotland and he was happy about that. He had been deeply touched by the reaction of his daughter. He thought about how much he’d miss her. He thought
about his wife; that made him sad. She was such an unhappy, angry woman, and he suspected he had helped her get that way by staying with her and not loving her. He hoped she’d get a little more fun out of life, maybe with Barry Symington, the swimming instructor from the leisure center, although George really had a hard time believing that Barry wasn’t gay.

Then he thought about Claudette and wondered about all of that.

Everything had happened so fast yet he felt that he had known her for his entire life. He thought about what had happened to him by knowing her. He had become wild and sexy and interesting in the space of a few days.

A phrase he had heard somewhere popped into his head: “Nothing became him in his life like the leaving of it.”

He thought about the sex he had had with Claudette, not only on their first night but on the return from Scotland. They had gotten a little drunk on the best wine he had ever tasted, a fruity bouquet that seemed to go very well with morphine. They had eaten bread and cheese and fruit and chocolate and then made love on the wooden floor he was now looking at.

He thought about the phrase
made love
. He speculated that if you “made love” without having the correct ingredients, then it probably wouldn’t taste as good.

He thought about the sex again, he thought about how she looked at him as she took him in her mouth, and that it had excited him beyond belief. She had touched the tip of his penis with her tongue and gently stroked his bottom. She had left little lipstick marks on the top of his thighs.

He felt himself get hard again and thought that he’d better go through to the bedroom and wake her up but the pain was really beginning to bite now and anyway, he knew he couldn’t. He wouldn’t be going there to make love, he’d be going there to take it, and although Claudette would be happy to give it, he knew it was time.

It was time.

He put on his clothes as quietly as he could, then he kissed the sleeping beauty on the head and left her a little note that read:

Chere Claudette,

Quand tu reveille s.t.p. ne me pensez pas

grossier ou irrespectueux mais j’ai du le laisser.

C’est temps.

Si je ne t’ai pas convaincu pourtant je le dirai

encore.

Tu a l’amour de ma vie.

Merci de tout.

Ton Amour Georges.

X

He felt a little of ripple of gratitude for his high-school French teacher, Miss Major (a.k.a. Beanpole and Le Stick). Claudette kept the note until the day she died. It was far from perfect but it was the most beautiful and poetic French she had ever read. It was folded and tucked away in her jacket pocket when she was burned.

George took a last look at her. His face was calm, giving no indication of the pain that was roaring and bucking wildly inside of him.

He walked out of the apartment to his suicide.

ONCE FRASER REALIZED
that he was only blind and that it wasn’t anything serious, he calmed down considerably. He had been terrified for a moment or two that he was about to be thrown back to the trenches or into the hands of the grumpy boatman. His screaming had woken everyone else up, including the confused Mickey Day.

The Reverend explained to Fraser that occasionally when people drank the holy moonshine they would be rendered sightless for a time, but as far as he knew, their vision had almost always returned. Fraser said that was just fine with him, that his eyes could use a rest anyway, and as long as someone handed him a chocolate biscuit, he was good.

The rest of the troop were unharmed except for the vicious hangovers they had been stricken with, but they were soon helped by Potter, who went outside and picked eight watermelons from the patch near the swamp. They were still cold and dewey from the night and when they were cracked open they spilled their life-restoring red juice as freely as enthusiastic martyrs.

They were manna.

Pinkerton held a piece of dripping watermelon over Mickey’s mouth to give the groggy, dehydrated old man some moisture. The red
juice dipped over Mickey’s cracked lips in a fruity communion, and as the liquid dribbled down his throat, he coughed and spluttered.

He looked warily at the strange crew around him. They looked warily back. “What’s happening here?” he croaked in a tired frog voice.

T-Bo gave him the whole story, about him taking out the gun and having a fit and how they had panicked and that his camper was unharmed and sitting outside of the church.

Mickey told them that while he was out he’d suffered strange dreams, that his dead wife, Agnes, had appeared to him in the company of a bad-tempered French policeman and had told him it was time to lighten up and have fun and go with the flow and a whole lot of other hippie-speak and then the policeman had whacked him across the mouth with his nightstick.

Fraser and Pinkerton agreed with Mickey that they thought the policeman seemed to be a little keen on excessive force. Mickey was changed, though, the anger was gone.

Pinkerton announced that they must all take the camper van and travel to the convention in Alabama, that this was their calling, their destiny.

Mickey agreed and said he would be happy to drive, that he wanted to go with the flow.

As they stumbled aboard the camper, Fraser, who was being led by T-Bo, said that they should give the vehicle a name.

“It’s got a name. It’s a camper,” said T-Bo.

“No, he means a name like
Titanic
or
Queen Mary,
” said Cherry.

“How ’bout
Queen T-Bo
?” said Vermont. T-Bo glared at him and he apologized.

“I’ve always thought of her as taking the name of my wife, Agnes,” said Mickey.

They all agreed that it was only right that Mickey choose the name of their craft, given that he owned it, so Potter grabbed some red paint from his little shed and painted on the front of the RV, just above the radiator grille:

AGNES DAY

They had to wait for a moment while Potter explained to the graves of his family that he was going on a little trip and would be back soon. Then Mickey started up
Agnes
and the big bus rattled slowly out of the woods, through the little dead town past the Gupta gas station, and toward the turnpike.

They had been traveling for about an hour when they saw a minivan parked at the side of the road. Half a dozen large black ladies seemed to be fussing around something, and the sight looked comical to Mickey, who tried to describe it to Fraser.

Fraser said that they should stop and the Reverend Pinkerton said that Fraser spoke with the tongues of angels and was blind, so they stopped.

The ladies were the Salome Henderson Gospel Sextet from Miami. They had been headed to the convention in Alabama in a minivan because Salome herself was afraid to fly. In the minivan she had fainted and the others feared she’d had a stroke or heart attack. There had been a great deal of panic and hysteria in the little van and the result was that Magdalene Brightwell (a distant cousin of the unfortunate Lashanda Brightwell, Tootsiepop Ted’s fourth victim), who was driving, had pulled to a stop rather too suddenly. The vehicle had gone into a skid and they had hit the crash barrier. The van was badly damaged on the front end and Salome had still not regained consciousness. The ladies were in a panic and begged the Reverend Pinkerton for a cell phone to call an ambulance when he went over to them to inquire if he could help.