CHAPTER TWELVE
YEAR 1999
Aurora,
Colorado
MISSISSIPPI
BOULEVARD AT ILIFF AVENUE
PETER just finished
a long, long walk, and by his unfashionable semblance could be counted without
a doubt among the lost and drifting mendicants of the world. He strolled into
the King Super Supermarket, moseyed a circuitous path through and about the
aisles, selected a can of sardines, a small bottle of grape juice, and a packet
of cheese and crackers. As he exited the last aisle, a book display chanced to
catch his eye, as a curiously designed title appeared to be emanating more
vividly than the rest, as if it were the moon among the stars.
At first glance, the
publication resembled a Bible with black overlapping covers. On the
front, the title was luxuriant, wide and deep in relief, stamped with a gold-foil print,
exhibiting itself every wit in the fashion of
a Holy Bible. In spite of these artistic cover enhancements, upon closer examination, Peter discovered
quite the contrary: FIFE!; and directly above the title was what appeared to be a large Cross, also in golden relief.
The title FIFE! suggested
a blank, though the letters and the Cross were somehow arranged ingeniously and
shaped into what could be misconstrued as religious in content. If a shopper
were not quick enough to
apprehend the collective characteristics of the
item, he or she could easily mistake the relief for BIBLE instead of FIFE! From three feet or twenty feet,
staring straight on or from this or that direction, distance
or angle meant nothing: A fast glimpse, and
the title looked strongly like BIBLE. A mystery.
Easing the cover open with a
reached-out finger, but leaving the book on the display rack, Peter realized a professional Registration and part of a copyright notice.
…book printed by arrangement with the
acting agent of the auth
This book contains the original text from
the last original manuscript edite
including the right to reproduce this book
or portions her
Peter pushed the cover to and ran the ends of his fingers lightly over its front cover: Extremely
tricky, the way these characters are in
relief. They certainly attract a person’s eye.
Peter lifted the book from the rack and pondered
attentively as he scanned through its pages. Several of them were filled with all manner of introductions and prefaces. National
reviews normal to the business of book publishing and many more reviews
far beyond the norm, seemingly unending, followed suit deep into the work and
led Peter to soon become reasonably cognizant of its writer’s mentality.
———
Exceptional. Very explosive stick of fictional dramamite .
. . for a religious writer.
San Francisco Chronicle
Heaven forbid they
make FIFE! into a motion picture. As of yet, theaters are not subject to seat-belt
laws.
Alexander Pluff
Houston Chronicle
The student council of this university has mandated that
FIFE! be required reading for all its professors — and the dean.
University
of Massachusetts at Boston
Mother English has
suffered regeneration after long laboring in the ink of the bewildered. FIFE!
assuredly and beyond the lightest silhouette of a doubt upon the forehead of Compositor History has quite certainly put the printer’s
blackest glory to the old task. The nouveau Voltaire of the keyboard wields a silvery two-edged pen metamorphosed from the alchemist’s
stone: the flooded Quill that spilled all the bitters onto the docket. My only unimpeded advice to you current spinners of
tales is this: Beware against the old. Hurrah.
W. F. Buckley Reviews
Yes, FIFE!?
Surprise after surprise after surprise after surprise after surprise after — Damn good book!
Arnold Swats
Chicago Tribune Review
If you ever had a
question on life, look no more. Compelling to say the least. I have just finished
burning my Sigmund-Freud-and-his-psychologically-preoccupied-friends collection.
Dr. Benedict Arnol
Professor of
Psychology
Yale University
Excerpt from the
Yale Press
The world has gone
nuts, and so have I. I am half way through my fifth reading of FIFE!; and, I am now
seriously considering early retirement, so I can just sit back and read it and enjoy it until I die . . . if I die.
Dr. B. A. Lipskin
Institution of Operations Research -
Baltimore, Maryland
———
THUMBING hit-or-miss through the myriad reviews
and fifteen or twenty random pages of the text
and scrutinizing their inaugural sentences took Peter completely by surprise,
and he slowed: How could a story like this—ever be published…?
…9,499 hours and
45 seconds; and prior to this work wrote THE HOLY BRAID, subtitled THE
EVERLASTING GOSPEL, which received a wide arrangement of acclaim—and
worldwide criticism.
The Publisher
Wherever there is a testament,
there must be the death of the testator.
THE WARNING:
PAGE A
SIDE-NOTE:
PAGE A-A
THE DEDICATION:
PAGE B
THE INTRODUCTION:
PAGE C
THE FOREWORD:
PAGE D
THE PREFACE:
PAGE E
THE EPILOGUE:
BACK PAGE
A
THE WARNING
If you do not read the foreword, preface and
other
like areas, you will miss the entire release from tradition FIFE! is attempting to purvey. Furthermore, although no filthy material exists in
this novel, its components are often extreme, and events and depictions of depression
are sometimes double-fierce and may have enormous tendencies toward
altering the emotions of an average reader.
If you are not used to reading novels containing unexpected chunks of
terror or horror, or if you have a heart condition, are prone to anxiety seizures, or are visiting
a neurologist for reasons beyond your control, we strongly urge you NOT to read this story.
If you are easily subject to fits of depression, again, this literary work is not for you.
If you experience nervous disorders before you are half through
this novel, trials have concluded: In the interest of your health, if your desires
to complete the reading of this
novel are persistent, put this book on the shelf for at least two weeks before returning to its
pages.
This is not a joke to raise your interests or to encourage sales, but a
legitimate caution determined
necessary by our legal staff, due to potential risks.
A number of novels have surfaced in the past, from which the
reader had died, allowing him or herself to be dragged involuntary into an over-involvement in the novel’s romantically
apocalyptic nature. Likewise, a mingling of written facts with fancies
integrated professionally enough within the body of the text of a novel can
often influence the reader into believing those fact-fancies are actually
authentic or covered somehow by a law of nature to which the reader’s intellect
has not exposed itself and therefore must be accepted as rigid truth, when the
afore-cited fancies, in reality, are not.
Because of FIFE!’s elaborately imaginative facts of the unproven—pseudoscience—personal
reactions knotted within the
emotions of the reader can evolve into an inner confusion concerning a cluster
of aspects of what we—know—to
be the normative of matters of fact. Hence, our legal staff has advised us: FIFE! falls into the highest critical dimension
of the above-mentioned categories, as the context of its literary workings
exceed those socio-politically sensitive limits even well-established writers normally avoid, regardless of commercial impact.
In addition, although FIFE! is not filthy in character, allow it not to furnish you with allusions suggesting
“religious writings” or a book wherein you may find “spiritual consolation in time of need,” unless, of course, your religion
contains comparable but vague similarities the nature with which we are not familiar. This is only the opinion of the publisher.
If anyone is intimidated or insulted by this novel, please understand that the majority of
the events described herein were taken directly from your world in which the writer lived. Although this novel
is very exciting, it must be
journeyed through for a while to establish the foundation of the main
character, who is an extreme
zealot, and before the more awesome adventures begin.
Lest you should suffer panic, however, or periods of rage in consequence to the herein story
line, please allow me to
remind you: FIFE!, is just a novel, and we have printed it for entertainment
purposes only. Nonetheless, wiping away every inconvincible doubt entirely
from your mind, the mountainous span of its soaring entertainment is a span you
have yet in your life to transcend.
Peter could not pull himself
away from the reading, as though utterly transfixed to the pages, as if he were
reading something delivered from a cosmic vision.
Now, this addendum:
As fresh to our senses as this novel is, we have already recorded a new
phenomenon regarding our in-house readers, who say to the affect: “On our second reading through, we felt as if we were experiencing the actual memory of the writer, as if we
were living the writer’s life as we read. Suddenly, we were mixing the memory of that life with our own life
and began to see
peripherally within our mind material not written into the book: mental pictures—in a manner of speaking—scenery, items and
dialogue the writer had
omitted from the manuscript. The imaginations behind the novel, and the sought-after expressions that the writer might have
written but did not,
invaded our thoughts, as well, and made clear the various gaps in many of the contexts of the story.”
We here in our offices find this rather interesting in view
of these remarks paralleling those our own editors and typesetters had made
previous to those of our in-house readers.
So again we caution you: Be careful. Although FIFE! is a wonderfully exciting form of
adventure, this tale consists of quite a different style of writing and can
seduce a lone reader into a medley of perplexing and psychological encounters.
The Publisher
A-A
SIDE-NOTE BY THE
WRITER
Those who tamper with FIFE! or alter its wording or emerge as enemies of it or steal or
rob or fleece the sheep of God by FIFE!, or cause discord or hate or animosity
against anyone in the world because of it will receive plagues and torments
from the
Hand of God, for He is not a respecter of persons.
If you read half this novel and throw it through your window;
if you read this entire story, accepting none of its dramatization as
completely possible; or if you read FIFE! and believe it, yet eventually cast it
off as heresy: These are the greatest dangers. You are far better off not to
have ever read FIFE!
than read it once—and curse. Moreover, the first half of FIFE! (which obviously must be read first)
cannot be
deeply understood without having read the second half.
Although this story seems to flow within the standard
rules and patterns of chronology, the beginning of FIFE! is actually the end, and the end the
beginning. And to appreciate it to its fullest, you must know that this story was
written in reverse, and its
truest significance cannot be realized until read the second time.
The beginning portion of FIFE! is the dark and the void entering into the light, and the second
is the light and the forming of this whole household of scattered letters
verily into a closely knit nation of living words, with armies of phrases to
mask its secret rejoinders. Read FIFE! in both directions, for two declarations
cannot be heard from a man sawn
in half.
The Writer
Fear
God, and give glory to him;
for
the hour of his judgment is come:
and
worship him that made heaven,
and
earth, and the sea,
and
the fountains of waters.
B
THE DEDICATION
GOD
RECEIVES ALL GLORY THROUGH OUR
LORD
JESUS CHRIST BY WHOSE BLOOD WE LIVE.
This information is given to the world by His power, so those
He created in this world may see His truth. FIFE! is a story laid manifest by Life Itself.
I am merely the storywriter.
This is not a book on See the animals; we should live like them; for if so, we would turn to
beasts, squatting or lifting a leg to relieve ourselves. I have no desire to
exist as a puddle found between the belly of a viper and the dust of the earth.
This book is meat in due season, and this is the season of dues.
My love, my worship, my tears, my flesh, my blood, my bones,
my spirit, and every inch of my breathing life dedicate this novel to the
sovereign, awesome, merciful God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob
called Israel, and in Whose temple we in the Lord abide.
Though I be offended by the world; or, them in the bottomless
pit climb out to slay me in my steps, I will find no consolation in my heart
except this: God has given you this warning, for He so loves you, and not
because He chose me to write. For if I were to choose, my burning pages would
be white before they were ashes: I would not have written a word.
Instead, I must love the work He has given me. And I now
possess a knowledge in my spirit that tells me by His wisdom, that in a day, in
a time, and in a place, these living efforts written into this novel will work
to the good for them who will love the Lord enough to honor his authority; and
not as the
legion of hypocrites flooding the churches of our God are doing in these days.
FIFE! is not dedicated to my mother, who raised
me faithfully, for I did not write to her alone. This novel is not dedicated to
my Dad, who had his own tribulations, yet contributed properly to my upbringing and the support of our family. I already
honor my Mother and Dad, and love them, and both of them have told me they love
me.
This book is not dedicated to my marriage partner or to our children: they need no further
proof to know I love them.
This novel is not dedicated to other writers or other
novelists or those who have contributed to FIFE! technologically, though
I love all of them. But do they all believe and act upon the Word of God? Do
they yet possess unrepented sin? I do not know all of them intimately, nor do I know personally to whom or to what they have dedicated their
works. And even if I did, who knows what unclean or pornographic style or chain
of references I would be supporting? Still, I love them, and unconditionally.
Nor is this novel dedicated to anyone upon the whole face of
this Earth, nor to creatures, atoms, molecules, nor electrons beneath the sea.
Nor is FIFE!
dedicated to this planet, nor to the sun, nor to the stars, nor to the moon,
nor to an asteroid, nor to a meteoroid, nor to all the particles of the solar
systems (the wardrobe of God), nor to the fowl of our land and skies. FIFE! is not dedicated to the fish or to the
mythicalities dreamed into lakes or to the fantasies of this world or to the
beasts of our fields.
This story is dedicated to God and to God’s Holy Name, for
the glorification of that Name. All my teachers, my friends, my acquaintances,
and all who have ever lived (who were all somehow shaped by all the history of
life) came from God. And true or false or fact or fiction, it is the Living God
Who gave me the histories of your world and the life to write and the means by
which to type this strange and enlightening tale—through to its last word.
And assuredly, this novel is not dedicated to myself, as
others have boldly implied in their works. This book is dedicated to The Holy
Name of God through The Lord Jesus Christ, Who is—our God, giving—this book to
us. For as it is written: “You
can do nothing without
me.” And as it is written: “And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will
stretch out my hand
upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel.”
Therefore, I caution them who prophesy, them who teach, and
myself, to acknowledge the power of God, lest He should destroy you or me from the
midst of His chosen.
Nevertheless, my heart has persuaded me: I have written FIFE! by the authority of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost; thus, I believe the Spirit of Truth is now dwelling
within me, and Jesus is my Lord. Amen.
The Writer
Howbeit when he, the
Spirit of truth,
is come, he will
guide you into all truth:
for he shall not
speak of himself;
but whatsoever he
shall hear,
that shall he speak:
and he will shew you
things to come.
He shall glorify me:
for he shall receive
of mine,
and shall shew it
unto you.
The dedication alone nearly
sent Peter into religious shock. He certainly had known people like this
writer, many over the years, but the outspokenness of this one, well, he
contemplated half beneath his breath, “Let me browse a little more of this.”
C
THE INTRODUCTION
I am convinced that a more frightening yet sincere story is
not available on the open market today, other than FIFE!,
at least not to my present knowledge. Moreover, while literally thousands of
pieces of this story are omitted, through necessity and the lack of time, you will fill in the blanks.
This novel contains no immoral or pornographic episodes or
self-degrading content, for, from the abundance of the heart, the mouth
speaketh, and this writer prefers to remain divided from that form of
self-degradation, which is the equivalent of public masturbation. If I
contain a dot of filthy imagination, let me drive a stake through that imagination, bury it in the churchyard of my mind, and, for its
destruction, hand it to Jesus
Christ.
Why should I—somewhere or
someday—suffer accountability for teaching and inspiring the decaying of morals
in our youth and in our already rapidly crumbling society? Did Hans Christian
Andersen attempt to corrupt the society of his day? Did Harriet Beecher Stowe?
Did Emily Bradely Neal Haven? Did Charles Dickens? These writers were directed
by praiseworthy principles and attempted to upgrade the unsound minds of
their generation, not degrade them. (But what is called praiseworthy
today is of quite another color.)
The causes of many writers a century ago were blazed abroad and properly lauded as
synonymous to the needs of the destitute, the poor and the hungry, and often
successfully. Had those authors written by the tongue of today’s novelists (who make destitute
the poor and the hungry souls of our own), the puritanical populace of yesteryear would have hanged
them dearly from the tallest church steeple nearest the two-minute midnight
court, and removed them at sundown—forty-one days later. Furthermore, although Christ
is my only righteousness, and the level of uprightness in my mind is not
now as I pray it will someday be, my desire is to allow you to awake to the awareness of just
how far a person’s consciousness can rise from the muck and the blinding immorality now
smothering this world and therewith inspire your own patient search for the
same.
Every word, every sentence, every paragraph, and every
chapter in this work are similes to be reckoned with and cannot be measured easily by the starving wisdom of this world. For it is written:
‘For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He
taketh the wise in their own craftiness.’
Who is among the sons of men? Who among you can comprehend
and fathom the things that are not visible, yet have stemmed from the
beginning? Who among the daughters of men are able to construe this that is
hidden before their very eyes? Come out from where you are. Give…give. Come out from where
you are.
The emerging of those that will despise and scorn this story is surely inevitable; however,
souls whose priorities shall change for the better by reason of it are likewise
inevitable, even if in the end what I’ve written is esteemed simply as harmless
information pertaining to the harmless Savior who gave us the harmless
Commandment: Thou shalt not kill.
Simply because there—is—God,
This—is—a religious world.
And in this world, where even your body is of a religious
construction, as with FIFE!, the socially worst topic to expound upon,
whether in novel or verbal form, is religion. When men write of religion
and include a testimony of their conscience and of their heart, we chance
ending up with another Salman Rushdie and many intellectual “religious” devotees screaming, “God wants me to murder him!” Nonetheless,
was God offended by Mr. Rushdie’s Satanic Verses? Fail not to thoroughly
understand this: The following words are found in Holy Text: ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for
whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’
Simply hinting at how a man may better himself by quitting
his sins often results in worldly criticism rising from its
condemnation-fertile ground. And simply hinting that no God exists is a
beckoning to be showed proof from His vigilant hand: Woe unto him who strives
with his Maker. Fearful it is to walk through life without chastisement from
God, for is He reserving a special place unattended for those of a special
caste? Could darkness attempt to cloud the Light: the victorious and eternal
enemy of Iniquity?
The Writer
I will wash mine
hands in innocency:
so will I compass
thine altar, O LORD:
That I may publish
with the voice of thanksgiving,
and tell of all thy
wondrous works.
D
THE FOREWORD
FIFE! is about the fall of things unclean and the waking up, the waking
up, the waking up to them, and the redeeming of those called the Children of
God, the Children of the Light. Wake up your soul and tell it, “It is
time! time to wake up and be saved!”
FIFE!
is not about the fall of the Ming Dynasty, nor does it speak of the Fall of the Roman
Empire or the fall of the
Third Reich. FIFE!
delves into why they fell: the absence of true love; the absence of the True
Light. FIFE!
exposes the philosophies (endless and fruitless dissections of suppose)
of men of our world: shifting sands of our world, varied as their doctrines, fancy
advice columnists of the world,
who teach you with their eroding words how to build the houses of your
bodies, after their values and not after the values of God, thus,
causing the fall of yours and your children’s immortal soul into the tides of a
whispering hell. And the undercurrent in the fall to that hell is merciless,
sucking, swelling, and
decaying.
Experts say…experts say…experts say…. Throw the precarious
wisdom conceived by this world, which has only led to the grave, back to the
world, and gather to yourself the Wisdom of God, and live. For the inevitable
day is at hand, wherein the ears of the children of God will cease to
listen to those that have failed. Coming to the consciousness of truth and the
conclusion of lies, their communities shall cease to adhere to the philosophy
of republic and the philosophy of democracy and the philosophy of communism and
the mistrusting philosophies of the administrators of men, without having to include God in the program. The
ears of the children of God shall seek the words of the government of truth: the government of the most high God of
Israel, and find peace and life after the restoration of His rule.
The variant lights of every religion, philosophy, psychology,
and wise and clever old saying of this world are all together the blackness of
darkness without Christ our Messiah: the Light of our world. Remembering
this, bear in your heart the following: Just an iota of His light is all we
need to consume the evil, the fearful, and the plague-filled house of philosophically governing darkness. Are not we, in our
Christ, both in and of His faithful light?
There is no fear in
love;
but perfect love
casteth out fear:
because fear hath
torment.
Cast out those Thoughts and
Theories who cause fear—fear of your body, fear of your life, fear of your
environment, fear of your food, fear of your tomorrow. FIFE! dissolves the harmful traditions
taught in Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, and the outright lies found
in them and the hundreds of other faiths of this world. Walk through this
doorway, and your sins will be forgiven. Kiss and worship this rock to show you
fear God and your spiritual leader. There are many, many religions, but only
one Faith, and to not possess the Faith is sin due recompense—————MESSIAAAAAAH…!
FIFE! speaks of the fall of
the wise sayings of men and women dwelling
upon the temporal pleasures
of this world instead of dwelling upon the Love that is in Heaven and sharable
by everybody; the fall of idolatry and worship of things made by the hands of
men lacking duty of decency to glorify God in their good and moral works—if
they dare; the abuse of this earth and the impurities in the skies of weeping
miseries, and the abusing of mankind itself. The perpetual evil enacted upon this world is
again, as in the days of Noah, a curse to the Face of God.
FIFE!
is about the demise of the profanity of your men, women, and teenagers, and
your children, half naked in their underwear and brassieres, filling entire
pages of your newspapers—seeing you think this is a clean practice
and it sells. This practice, however, this seed, leads now and has always led
ultimately to what? the garden of pornography!
Would they ply their trade live and in color and in public
while they receive the Advertiser’s Award of the Year? By no means! only
in the backroom of their private, and often promiscuous, photographer. FIFE! is about the demise of the
above-mentioned mind, which is now in multiple millions, and the end
of
depraved, cheating, gender-free, unclothed people, sinfully running around and making indecent
gestures from those luminous
screens in your carefully dusted and vacuumed homes, and the demise of the new and distorted
priorities and vows of this world: the Sodom of all the blushing heavens
and marked for the angel of fire.
This their way is
their folly:
yet their posterity
approve their sayings.
Selah.
In this galaxy: earth’s potential eternal hearse,
brains have gone back to the dust before their time.
And many of them
that sleep
in the dust of the
earth shall awake,
some to everlasting
life,
and some to shame
and everlasting contempt.
This story is a celebration of the death of the unclean evils
dwelling among the children of God: unpunished lies, hate, unpunished murder,
despair, misery, unpunished rape, the wars, the filth, the wicked lyrics of
wicked songs; demoralizing words and phrases today found in your own library
reference books; wall-to-wall gambling throughout the United States of America;
egotistical and so-called humorous forms of portraying murder and death and
crime and sin; and the downfall of wholesale genocide against defenseless poor
and all the defenseless throughout the world. And if you do not yet know the
difference, quit reading, and pray your heart into the heavens.
The rich and beautiful and the poor and not
so beautiful
also
reside in this world so God can more easily judge
the heart of the scornful and of the envious.
FIFE! portrays the
vanishing of unrighteous judgment and favors toward them of advantage or wealth or poverty or ethnicity.
Rich or poor, a sinner is a sinner, and a liar is a liar, dead or alive. These are things we are
perceived as from every eye in the heavens this very hour: things unclean!
And he [Jesus] said unto them,
Ye are from beneath;
I am from above:
ye are of this
world;
I am not of this
world.
This world — is now the
Ghetto of the Universe.
For the punishment
of the iniquity
of the daughter of
my people
is greater than the
punishment
of the sin of Sodom,
that was overthrown
as in a moment,
and no hands stayed
on her.
The Writer
Nobody, Peter mused within
himself as he took a deep breath, and raised his eyes toward the rest of the
books in the display, nobody has yet had the courage, if courage it be, to
promote what I read here. A second more of wondering, and Peter glanced gradually
back to the pages of the extraordinary novel.
E
THE PREFACE
I do not believe there is a Christian adult on the face of the whole
earth, who has not heard or read the greatest Commandments of Jesus Christ: Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. Love your enemies.
I love my neighbor as I love myself. I love my enemies.
Besides, the Lord told Samuel the prophet, when the masses desired not a God,
but to have a man for a king: “Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that
they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me,
that I should not reign over them.” Considering this, how could Samuel find
personal offense in the people: his neighbors, or otherwise?
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus affirmed: “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep—of
the house of Israel.”
We in the Messiah, therefore, according to the Word of God, are
those lost sheep—of
the House of Israel. And
we must defend the Virtuous Glory of our God—in His Righteousness!
If you hate my God, you hate
me. If you hate me, you hate my God—the God who created both me and you.
The Writer
Now is the judgment
of this world:
now shall the prince
of this world
be cast out.
This is incredible, Peter
meditated, after reading four equally explosive pages of the story itself: The old one and he only must see this. Thus, he purchased
the strange book, along with the food, and departed the store: Who,
could have ever published—a book like this?
Who…?
Spying a pay phone, Peter
dialed the operator; she connected, three rings, and the party at the other end
stuttered, “Sh,shalom aleichem! Pray for the p,peace of
Jerusalem….”
YEAR 1981
WEAVERVILLE, CALIFORNIA
POLICE HEADQUARTERS
7:00 A.M.
THREE
MEN SAT
spiritlessly along the edge of the steel bunk in
cell number two. Five
others were sitting shoulder to shoulder
against the opposite wall, attempting to warm the cold gray floor. “I can’t
believe they’d actually kill somebody,” a thoroughly bedraggled man murmured
with a shiver, “especially a miner who was just trying to—”
“Hey! Hey, man!” a brawny and
weary-eyed man interrupted tenaciously, “It’s done, man. You can’t do nothin’;
it’s over, you understand? We just gotta learn a lesson from this. Last night
is history, man—history!”
“I’ve heard your tripe
before, Bik,” another interrupted, visibly in defense of the opening utterer.
“But the dog, man; those rotten pigs even killed a dog!”
“The cops said it was
dangerous and going crazy….”
“Yeah, the cops! The cops
would say anything…”
These eight debating men were
still heavily hung over from the Annual Miner’s Party the night before, and
news concerning the Elktail Saloon’s skirmish and killings was now echoing from
chamber of sobriety to chamber of hangover, up and down the concrete walkway dividing the several
cells of the new teetotalers and throughout
the whole coffee-drinking building.
A loud buzzer sounded with a
tinny and scratchy horn affect, a trustee rolled a three-tiered stainless steel cart lazily to the front of
cell number two and clangedy-clanged a tin cup back and forth between the bars. “Breakfast, boys,” sang the trustee. He
was a big man, dressed in a set of pale-blue work clothes, with side-striped
sleeves and pants legs, curly black hair descending lazily to his waist. “Quite
a mess, huh?”
“Did you see—”
“The garbage they left?” the
trustee blurted insensitively. “Sure, dude! Last night. I helped carry the
body, from the wagon, to the fridge. I realize I’m a big guy and everything,”
the trustee appended with badly concealed bravado, “but I about cried. And did
y’ know they couldn’t find one of his ears? And I saw mush pouring out the side
of his head. And hey, who’s the little guy in the corner? How ’bout you there,
spwort—wanna play cowboy and Indians with the County Mounties again?”
The man was just coming to,
pitifully, sitting on the concrete floor, half leaned over, pitifully, his hand
performing feats of an invisible masseur, rubbing a huge knot on the back of
his drooping head, pitifully laboring to straighten his straitened vision, a mystified
witness to the previous night.
“I was bown in this here brar patch—spwort! I got a hard head, see,” Shanan grumbled ostentatiously. “Whoever clobbered
me must have swung his club—clean from Arizona!”
HAVING
SERVED a tediously boring and
extremely depressing three-day sentence, a myriad of apprehensive reflections
bloating his wandering mind, Shanan received his release from the powers that
were, and jumped impatiently into a waiting ride: Cathy had driven through a blustery downpour of
rain the entire twenty-four meandering miles,
without company, to Weaverville.
“Where’s Amy?” Suspiciously,
Shanan slammed the door.
Cathy bowed her head and
shook it slowly. “I knew those would be the first words you’d
say, Shan. When will you ever—”
“—Where’s Amy!…?” he squawked
belligerently.
“I’ve had a difficult time,”
she strained, “deciding whether I should tell you, Shan. Could we wait til we
get back to Big Bar, huh?”
“—Th’ hell you mean?” he
thundered. “Where’s my Amy?”
“Oh, Shan, please, let’s wait
til we get home.”
Cathy was indeed a sensitive
girl. Near the beginning of their adventure, while mining at Ingot’s Bar, she
and her beau had finished their day’s panning, when she accidentally dropped
the large gold-jar onto a jutting boulder at the river’s edge, breaking the jar
into a thousand pieces. The minuscule flakes of fine gold, naturally, was lost without hope to the
swift current. She agonized in grief for a
half an hour, assuming Shanan would be so mad. He tried pacifying her a half-dozen times
with, “We can get more gold to take its place,
honey. Easy take; frivolous give...heh, heh….”
Now, unfortunately, today’s
was a different story. Shanan was so stressed with anxiety, he blasted a fierce glare into her face and fired—
“No! We can’t wait’l we get back!” he screamed! “I wanna know, now! Right now! Tell me now!” —he
shrieked! “Where th’ hell is Amy?” He about ripped the window handle off the
door!
Cathy sobbed louder, immediately. “Well, the troopers shot
and killed that guy they were looking for, that Mississippi rogue guy, or
whatever his name was, and Amy got in the way, and—”
“JESUS!” Shanan
exploded, big eyes growing filmy. Shadowy images of his Grandmother Bin and the
dark days of misery that followed her death, quickly inflated in his soul.
“And…?”
“She’s okay,” Cathy sniffled. “She only
got a dinky graze. But the vet had to shave
it, and the wound looks worse than it really is. I just didn’t want to tell you
til we got home, so you could see she was okay. I know how you are—you’d be
sitting on thorns for the next twenty-four miles, squirming and raving against
the police.”
She sat somberly before the
steering wheel, staring longingly through the whining windshield wipers….
“I can’t put up with this
life anymore, by no means, Shan, and I just learned my grandmother died, and I
really loved her. The Lord save me, I want to go home…” She turned the ignition
off and began crying again, as if Life itself had stolen its all-precious
meaning from her. Shanan had not married her. Until this very moment, he had
touched upon the delicate topic but once, and only in an indirectly defensive
manner. What is more, he was yet married to Ethel, and this tiny unimportant
point, he had altogether failed to mention. On this ticklish subject, he had
left Cathy totally in the dark, for Shanan reasoned that when or if the day ever came, he would tend to
that divorce business, behind the backdoor, so
to speak. Shanan was a self-centered, insincere, procrastinating man, so confined to the
interest of his own needs, while we are on the subject,
that he was often systematically
oblivious to the feelings of anyone within his midst.
NONETHELESS, Pride and Arrogance were not choosy about whom they
enshrouded. The United States’ support for Israel led to numberless acts of
terrorism toward American citizens by Palestinian militants or their allies. On
October twenty-three, nineteen hundred and eighty-three, attacks by Shiah
Muslim suicide bombers in or near the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, and in front of the U.S. Marine
barracks in Beirut, murdered nearly three hundred civilians
and military personnel, the majority of whom were Americans. These nefarious
acts caused an immediate and widespread
celebration within many radical Muslim quarters.
YEAR 1986
CATHY, WEARY OF GOLD MINING and fully brokenhearted due to the demise of her grandmother, had left
Shanan long ago, and had returned to her open-armed family in Minnesota.
Although this quick departure and absence had completely shattered his heart, Shanan had finished a comprehensive yet small book on gold mining, which he had
titled Bin’s gold-filled
Developments. It
included descriptions of mechanical inventions for easier extraction of
gold—from the gravel to the concentrates—and openly described techniques he had developed personally for working the
gold-amalgamating chemicals harmlessly in the field. Trinity County geologists
and mineralogists had considered no less than three of his discoveries
unadulterated breakthroughs; and a giant mining company, after their subsequent
assays, complimented his work highly. They had estimated his process of
amalgamation was losing only five cents worth of gold per ton of concentrates.
This low of a figure was unheard-of until Bin’s gold-filled Developments
surfaced in the industry. Selling his letters through mail order made him a
small fortune but, as usual, he tired—on the move again, letters from customers, ultimately losing
themselves, owing to several address changes
and a fleet of postal forwardings.
His love for Cathy diminished
not, nor Shanan’s passion for gold mining, but he quit the primitive hills of northern California; and
this time, with Amy at his side, conveyed himself toward other gold-bearing
regions: Idaho, Washington, Nevada, and New Mexico, broadening his mining expertise. Nevertheless, he bored
again, sold a considerable amount of his mining gear, including his rifle
(Someone else had retrieved his pistol from the Elktail Saloon war), and, with
Amy, either drove, walked, or hitchhiked through the United States and the
Country of Mexico, enjoying poor-man pleasures to the full.
Alias Shanan (circled) in a Diving Suit
These years, he avoided trouble, that is to say: on
the surface. In Clevins, Maryland, however,
after making many wonderful friends, he fervently attempted the art of
manufacturing resin giftware but eventually slipped out of town in the wee
hours of the morning, leaving a trail of floating debts dancing sadly in the
wind at his abandoning heels. A rather pretty young woman, Anne McAllen, left,
also, and traveled half the Southeast with him
for three months. She had returned to Maryland, and her family, and had
died of cancer two years after giving birth to Shanan’s alleged daughter
Gloria. The child was born with a rare paralysis but had experienced an adolescent
restoration to health. Shanan knew not of these sorrowful events until well
after being chased through the yawning portals of his fifties by a pursuing
army of debt-ridden times and pastures. Not every field had a greener side; he
had kindled and burned several of them over the years, through ignorance and
careless ignitions.
SHANAN LOVED Mexico and learning and speaking its language, and found the Mexicans,
generally, to be a humble
race, more so the deeper into the parched land he and Amy traveled.
In Mexico, throughout the thousands of back-and-forth
miles, Shanan helped repair rickety buses, ate the toughest steaks in the land,
became lost and found, and discovered the Latino women, stunning of
countenance, self-effacing in their conduct, were not the least bit inhibited
when breast-feeding their young in public. Moreover, as free as certain young
Mexican ladies were, Shanan desired no sexual company whatsoever. Arce Arcinio
(known as Archie, the head bell waiter, to
the tourists at the Mara Lisa Hotel in Acapulco) thought Shanan was not
sure of what side of his mother’s skirt he was produced from, as Archie had
attempted to provide the loving care of half the women on Acapulco beach for
poor Shanan, who smilingly declined the entire parade of fleshy candidates. He
would have to assert repeatedly to poor Archie, “I don’t want to do anything
except enjoy your customs, your food, your faces, your language…. Your hearts
are beautiful; I do not want your bodies…”
Archie finally came to realize
his amigo was not the slightest demented and meant what he said, after Jeeping with him and
Amy over hills, beaches, and mountains of Western Mexico for a month, and witnessing his machismo on two different
occasions in those unpredictable locales.
Archie’s older brother, Machado,
engaged himself in law and real
estate, and Shanan, Amy, and Archie would visit him on Sundays. Machado owned a lagoona (lagoon) and the houses
around the lagoona, and the land as far as the mountains north of the lagoona,
and the thatch-roofed saloon on the island in the middle of the lagoona,
and the island.
IN THE MIDST of a
superbly auspicious Sunday afternoon, after polishing off a poyo frito
(fried Chicken) dinner at the side of the lagoona, Shanan, after utterly
amazing the locals by catching a couple of catfish on imitation bait, gave his
rods and reels and a sandwich bag of fishing lures to Machado. Shanan had
visions of traveling on to Venezuela, to mix himself in with the diamond
hunters, and felt that the fishing equipment would only prove to be a burden.
Near sundown, as Shanan, Amy,
and Archie were leaving his brother’s beachside domicile, Machado approached, and had Archie translate, “You are a good man, Shanan. I want you to take
your choice of whichever house you would like for your own, and it is yours
forevermore. When the time comes you make your choice, I will remove whoever is
occupying it, and will find someone to cook and keep house for you.” Shanan
smiled and, in Spanish, gracefully
thanked the man earnestly, calling him brother. “Gracias mucho, mi armano.”
WHILE IN A SMALL, rented, and gated apartment, which Archie had secured for him, compressed into the
overcrowded, narrow-street hills of Acapulco, Shanan sketched a collection of
very attractive
renaissance-style pictures, chiefly religious, and resumed work on an oil painting of the Mother and Child, which
he had begun in the
states. These and painting supplies, three hours before departing Acapulco, he left in the hands of Archie. Shanan felt that the bulk would only
encumber him in his forthcoming travels; and Archie or his friends could
somehow turn a profit through the use of them.
From THE coastAL SHORES of Acapulco, he traveled Mexico extensively (southern border, its western shores, to the
northern border) and soon
resigned himself from the vague idea of acquiring Venezuelan diamonds (to replenish the Bin family fortune, as he so emphatically phrased it). Finally,
having experienced many lively towns and
villages, Shanan decided a rerun of the seaport city of Tampico was the icing on the cake of this
tour. Tampico was of a
more impressive arrangement: interspersed with
nineteen-century
architecture, quaint, breezy, colorful, and filled with people of the Earth, and peoples of the world. He had once
accepted a job as cook on a merchant ship in Tampico, just for a change of venue and epoch, but changed
his mind at the last minute—possibly the little inner voice.
The Captain was a stern Arab, and the tone of his speech impelled Shanan on
toward other destinies, or leastwise a
deferment of said attachment.
WHEN HE HAD EXHAUSTED ALL
FUNDS and had returned to the United
States, Mr. Bin gainfully solicited work for a week in exchange for a beater of
a station wagon and settled himself for four months in Bee Hive Lane in Dona Ana, New Mexico, a secluded desert community a short distance north of Los
Cruces, where misery renewing his driver’s license ensued. The license was
obtained finally, which allowed our boy to cruise and scour nearby southern New
Mexico deserts for a variety of soft stones. These would allow him to make a living
by carving Tiki-like faces
upon them and placing the finished products on consignment (without exactly stating exactly clearly enough that they
were exactly
“…genuine—Ahem! Indian—” cough, cough! “artifacts.”) in
the alleged Billy the Kid Town of La Mesilla, the Three-Crosses City of Los Cruces, and elsewhere in the county. Our boy had a natural flare
for the political side of the tongue.
During this New Mexico
venture, the Space Challenger blew itself wholly into eternity, in
Florida, and Shanan ranted to his friends for days, “Ain’t no teacher in space,
other than God himself.” The National Aeronautics and Space Administration had launched Christa Mcauliffe, a New Hampshire
schoolteacher (who was going to teach a profound lesson), with the rest of the Challenger’s
assorted crew, into the heavens, and they all gave their lives in the
effort—fatally.
Shanan had expounded
endlessly and nearly feverishly to his friends and neighbors the spiritual
value of the mile-high letter Y formed by the sky-streaking smoke of the
explosion. “The ‘Y’ is the
first initial of God’s personal name, Yahweh!” he would exclaim. “Ain’t
no coincidence; God’s trying to tell the world he’s the only teacher that’s ever going to be in space.” The memory of
that Flight of the Initial astounds Shanan to this very day.
January had pushed her icy claws
brutally into the Deep Southeast, and due to
the bitter, cold weather hammering the entire state of Florida, the week before the launch,
management at Cape Kennedy had either canceled
temporarily or flatly scrubbed the entire mission—five times. Furthermore, mere moments after the
fatal catastrophe, Florida warmed back to above-normal temperatures. Shanan took keen note of these details from news media, deducing that God must have
created the cold weather for a sign to warn
those scientists and their astronauts: They shouldn’t have tried to send a teacher into
space, he mulled to himself as he whispered a prayer for Christa and the
rest of the Challenger’s crew.
SHANAN HAD ODD-JOBBED his way around the country for the following year (having
by now and at one time or another throughout his life placed his feet on the
ground of every state in the
continental United States and nearly every state in the Country of Mexico and half the provinces of Canada), and he and
his baby, Amy, were heading north again. His desire was to visit a couple of friends in Minneapolis. The Northerners were well into their winter underwear as
Shanan was crossing the Minnesota line. He wanted to enjoy his friends; and,
the cold, white-flaking weather did not bother him the slightest. When his feet
itched, off he trotted into the wild white or green anywhere. His love-life was
no longer a priority, and a young woman was no longer touring the landscapes
with him, now allowing him to travel at will. No young lady, except, that is to
say, his main sweets—Amy.
†