And the Ass Saw the Angel

  But please, come to me soon, I beg you,

  Beth.

  Ah draw a ‘G’ and she sees a sickle of blood!

  O the lace and the hair. Her neat hand. The glow of the lamp exposing her young body beneath the cotton smock.

  Each time ah returned her message in the same way. Dipping mah finger in a stray spot of nose blood, ah would draw upon the window the letter ‘G’. But once she had called it the ‘sickle of blood’, it was. hard for it not to take on the shape of one.

  Another letter, the third or fourth, said

  DEAREST GOD,

  The wise old ladies scare me but You do not. They grow impatient I think. They say if I am not good the rain will come. But I know it will be soon when You are ready. I am not afraid of You, God, no matter what. But please make it soon. For them. Make it soon, no matter what.

  I love you.

  Beth

  P.S. Why arc you waiting? What is wrong? Have I done a wrong thing? Please tell me so I can stop.

  The funny thing about it all was that she was right. It would be soon. Ah could feel it, too. And the voices – the chanters – already they were throbbing, stirring, getting ready to go. O yes, it would be soon. It would be soon. No matter what.

  Ah lay all alone, on mah bed, in the gloom, host to a yapping pack of aches and algos. A knot of nervous anxiety, rooted deep in mah belly, squirmed through mah system like a bunch of bagged eels and ah suffered it all dumbly, heroically ah tell you – suffered it all till ah could suffer it no more. Ah flung mahself upright, jerking mah legs over the side of mah cot, throwing mah head back and clawing at the air with mah bandaged hands. Feverish and near delirious with lack of sleep, ah slugged back the remains of a bottle of peel liquor, then heaved and gagged as ah battled to keep the numbing liquid down. Naked, ah hugged mahseif. Ah rocked. Ah think ah even cried.

  Ah had found a brand new tractor battery and a box of forty-watt light globes. The box was marked with a blue crayola, so ah knew it had come from the tool-shed up by the refinery. How ah had secured them and the means by which ah had transported them back to the shack was a complete and utter mystery to me. Ah had no memory of it at all. Here was deadtime at its spookiest. Ah must have hauled the stuff back from the refinery mahself, ah concluded, figgering that a memory-wipe wasn’t near as bad, on the sanity scale, as having an imaginary helper working the night-raids for me.

  Ah had rigged up a cable making a line from the battery to one of the globes, and ah listened to the hum and crackle of the electricity as it coursed along the wire. A sickly yellow glow pulsed from the bulb and, spellbound, mah eyes focused on the droning bolus. Perched on mah bed, ah watched the bulb become a living, breathing thing, like some ghastly human appendage – a jaundiced, convulsing organ, pumping sticky gobs of wobbling light. Ah closed mah eyes, but already ah could feel the knot of nerves twisting its way up through mah body, forcing me to mah feet.

  Mah legs felt weird – unsound – and by way of experiment ah took one misadventurous step forward and stumbled drunkenly into a kennel, turning the whole thing over and on to its wire-meshed front. Inside the cage something thumped, dull and heavy.

  Suddenly ah was laughing as ah struggled to haul the kennel back over, humping and laughing with all mah might, hoping to exhaust mahself in the process, mah body thoroughly ravaged by a need to sleep as ah grunted and heaved and laughed at the stubborn kennel – at the caged beasts around me – mah Kingdom – the town – the valley – the whole stinking, shit-sucking planet – laughing and pushing until the kennel tore free of its chicken-wire frontage, leaving it anchored to the ground.

  Ah flew backwards into a pile of hessian grain sacks, the empty tea-chest still in mah hands. A stack of greasy kerosene tins collapsed and crashed about me as ah lay sprawled upon mah back, naked and helpless with laughter. Ah beat and thrashed at the dinning air with mah stick-thin limbs like a doomed insect awaiting the pin.

  When ah had taken control of mah laughter ah crawled to mah feet, still sniggering behind mah hand but somewhat embarrassed by mah outburst, and found lumped on the wire face of the kennel the stiff and bloated corpse of a she-bitch. Lying on its side but with its legs angled straight out, the inflated bitch looked as if it had died on its feet, stiffed, and then been blown over. Drawing closer, ah could see the maggot nativity, wet and teeming, infesting the dog’s teated unnerbelly. Ah chucked a grain sack across it and stumbled back to mah bed.

  Ah swilled down another powder with a bottle of peel, then kind of crumpled into the bedding in a heap.

  Muzzled in slumber, mah vassals squatted in their boxes, nodding unner, lesson over. Theirs was a well-earned rest, for ah had spent the best part of the day in pursuits of the pedagogic kind. They were as those being perfected. They were as those being initiated into the great mysteries. Yet it was not mere sleep that these beasts succumbed to, but a trance-like state – though it is true they needed a little help, sometimes, to get them there. But the fatigue engendered by the very closeness – the very coopedness of their confines – was, more often than not, enough. Anyway ah preferred not to waste the dwindling sedatives on mah bestial ranks, as sleep refused me entrance to its anodynic domain with increasing insistence. The fact is ah just did not get to sleep at all unless ah was barrelling through slumbertown’s back door, stoked to the gills on poop-powder and peel juice.

  Ah listened to the electric light but found no comfort there.

  Ah laid the strip of lace from her nightdress across mah naked chest and ah threaded the lock of hair through the fingers of mah right hand.

  And, in time, something did descend upon me. But was it sleep? A hex cast, perhaps? A spell? A petit mal? A waking dream? A sinister pall? An hallucination? A visitation? A fragrant passing of an angel’s wing? A nothing?

  No? Yes? A little of each perhaps. First, an adumbrate pleasure rising only to abate in a wince of pain. A release and a certain ensuing calm that allows an hour for dreaming. No more. No less. This little release that brings you down – takes you unner – but lo! Take heed. Beware! The Devil’s hem, the burning hair – and the love. O, the love, sweet Beth, off in your heavenly rest up there. Off in your heavenly rest up there. Off in your heavenly rest up there.

  On this day ah had gone down from Doghead, mah fortress, because ah could not stand it any more. The sun was setting over the western slope and the firmament was scarred with long sanguineous cirrus. The crops, heavy with harvest, were nudged by a warm breeze, rocking and rustling in a low sough.

  Normally at this time of year ah would have taken extra precautionary measures against the riff-raff that had begun to filter into the valley in time for the impending harvest. Some of the trailers at the work-camp had already been occupied and in a week the valley would be swarming with these drifters, drunkards and low-livers, and it would be open season on male mutes, crap-catching time for soldiers of the Lord. But on this particular day in the year of 1959, the presence of these men was to take me completely unawares. Ah had other things on mah mind as ah moved down the slope to where the gallows-tree still writhed in rock-like supplication, its plea still pending review – for mercy – a little mercy – lest we all die of longing.

  The cane was talking. Perhaps it was a warning. Maybe it said danger. Danger. But not to me it didn’t.

  Suffer. Said the cane. Sssssuuuuufffffaaaaaggghhh. An asthmatic sibilation to its low-spoken sough. Sssssuuuuufffffaaaaaggghhh. The gallows-tree groaned.

  Ah sat upon a root. Ah gnashed. Ah stood. Ah was despairing and ah was suffering and ah was having a really bad time.

  There’s enough daylight for me to be able to take the short cut through the cane, ah thought absently, but ah wasn’t thinking much about the daylight or the cane or being able, no – what with all the mind-murk, all the death up there – up here – all the ugly and all the sick, all the sin and all the woe – O God! How long must ah run on? And ah unslung mah sickle and threw it over the wire fence at the edge of the cane.

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nbsp; Did ah tell you ah was suffering as ah crawled on mah hands and knees unner the barby-wire? Tormented as ah got snagged. Tortured as ah ripped a clump of hair from mah skull in the process of getting unsnagged. Blinded by tears of rage as ah tore mahself free. Mortified by a hill of hog-shit and the hand that ah unwittingly plunged into it. Kneeled in it too, got it everywhere. Out of control as ah groped for mah sickle and swung it at whatever stood in mah way, which just happened to be a lot of sugar cane. Ah recall the singing steel, and the tall virescent stalks – some as high as eight feet or maybe even ten – crashing down about me, crashing down about me, bruising me, scratching me, spiking me – and me, swinging that sickle regardless and thinking, slash slash O yes at last slash slash at last mah arm it feels complete…

  Ah lay upon mah back staring up at the violent sky, wringing mah blistered hands and shivering.

  Ah thought of returning to Doghead and spending this mean and very unchristian eve in mah menagerie coaching mah beasts, but they’d all become so demanding of late. If only they would just – ah mean, God knows, they are not the only ones waiting. In any case, there was a kind of a need that had hounded me from the Kingdom with increasing urgency, that stole mah sleep and made mah waking days a downright misery – a need that Doghead could no longer sate, that all the mortification inflicted upon mah flesh could no longer quell. And yet, for all mah efforts, ah simply could not name it.

  With these thoughts troubling mah mind ah crawled through the wire fence at the far side of the crop without so much as checking for the presence of any possible persecutors. An act of uncharacteristic recklessness. Of that there was no doubt. It would prove to be one very sorry mistake.

  Ah staggered into the yard of the workers’ camp, mah captain’s jacket torn and smeared with pig-muck, mah sickle still in mah hand and swinging at mah side. Sitting at a trestle table in the middle of the yard were six or so newly-arrived workers, shooting the shit over a bottle or three of malt mash.

  Ah froze in mah tracks. Ah stared at them and they all stared back at me. Ah recognized their kind at once.

  They were ‘lifers’ – old hands. They had been coming to the valley every ingathering since they were old enough to swing a machete. They were a breed unto themselves, and as far as ah was concerned a bad breed – the baddest.

  They sat in a cluster, dressed in foxed singlets, canvas trousers and army boots. The skin on their faces was red and leathery, and so badly weather-beaten that the only thing that distinguished the mean line of their mouths from the thousand other cracks and scars was the soggy butt of a hand-rolled cigarette. They had little empty piss-holes in their heads that served as eyes. They sweated and belched and farted, and evilness and baseness and violence sat like low things in every pock and pore of their bastard fucken faces.

  Mah heart seemed to hang between beats, suspended in some queer kind of limbo, retarding mah body action. Ah could smell mah own sweat turning sour with fear and ah wiped drops of it from mah eyes with one braided cuff.

  ‘Run!’ ah thought. ‘Run!’ Bur ah could not.

  ‘Jeeshus freaking Christ! What the…’, blurted out one, lifting himself to his feet, and the entire company erupted into laughter, pointing at me and slapping the table, happy as pigs in shit that some sorry bastard like me had come by so that they had their chance to get ugly.

  O ah knew that sort of laughter all too well. Ah was well acquainted with the sort of fun it could inspire. No siree, there is nothing funny about laughter. Nothing funny at all. Out of all the correction that has been dealt mah way, ah cannot recall a solitary time when laughter has not been the battle-cry.

  Ah felt mah hand tighten around the handle of mah death-dealing sickle, thinking, ‘Ah don’t know what you men are so happy about. You ain’t got me yet. In case you haven’t noticed, ah have a very big fucking sickle in mah hand and ah plan to lose it in the first face that tries anything,’ trying mah hardest to bolster mah confidence by thinking tough, trying to curb the fear, trying to thaw mahself out. But all the thought-threats in the world weren’t going to stop those drunken bastards from laughing at me – from mocking me – from plotting against me.

  Ah noticed that the one that was standing was different from the others. He was younger and did not laugh. Rather he shook his head slowly from side to side, a strange expression in his eyes ah had never seen before. Pity was there, compassion. Ah have never come across that look again. Ah was petrified by the five who so openly ridiculed me, but not by this man, not this heart-swollen sympathizer. Rather ah was consumed by such a blood-boiling hatred for this miserable son of a bitch that ah was tempted to hang the consequences, leap on him there and then, and rip him all to pieces.

  ‘Trigger Treat,’ one joker with a beak like a bird and a bottle of booze in each hand called me. ‘Trigger Treat,’ he bawled, and they were off again, hooting with laughter and weaving about in their seats. Ah noticed that three of them were now standing, and it worried me that ah had not seen them rise. Someone said something about me looking like ah’d taken more triggs than a St Louis whorehouse – evidently a real cracker, for they launched into another bout of laughter.

  ‘Give the shailor-baw a treat then,’ said a lanky, bald-headed joker guffawing into his handkerchief, and, in an attempt to divert mah attention, he howled like a dog and fell backwards off his stool. At that exact moment the beaked one pitched a full fucken bottle of booze right at mah head, yelling ‘Catshit’. But ah saw it coming and simply stepped to one side, letting the bottle sail right past me and explode against a concrete trough that sat beside the trolley tracks a few paces away.

  ‘You’ll have to do better than that if you wanna knock down Euchrid Eucrow,’ ah thought, and there was a second when ah almost felt the urge to laugh, so feeble was the throw. Ah could almost have caught the thing in mah bare hands. ‘Oh no, you’ll have to do better than that!’

  Suddenly they were all standing, their faces clenched like angry fists. They were not laughing anymore. And ah knew that the time to act was nigh. The time was nigh to move. ‘Run!’ ah thought, ‘Run!’ And do you know what? That’s exactly what ah did.

  Ah did not look back, but ah knew that they were following me for ah could hear their threats roaring at mah hind – their sour breath burning like a brand into mah neck. ‘Freak.’ ‘Sicko.’ ‘You’ll pay, you screwball.’ ‘That was a fool boddle, punk. You’ll pay. You’ll wish ya hadda catshit.’ You name it, they flung it. Ah was bad news and they were gunna rewrite me if they ever catched ahold of me. Ah plunged on, with nothing in mah mind but to haul ass out of there.

  Just when they stopped chasing me ah do not know but let me tell you this, ah wasn’t going to stop and find out. As ah charged out of their work-camp and bounded along Maine, their blistering threats seemed to swell in intensity and their oaths of vengeance grew more and more virulent, more scathingly eloquent, taking on a new horribleness. But this was not all. O no. Not at all. As ah ran, sucking great aching lungfuls of the mad valley air, ah heard the voices slowly but surely multiply, as the original group of cutthroats were joined by other new arrivals – to the valley and to the hunt – so that what followed me was no longer half a dozen cranky old men but a mob, liquid and swelling with each passing second – a malign and clamorous evil shrouded in red dust and dealing death. And was that a hound or two that ah heard?

  Ah allowed an image of them to take form in mah mind – O mah mind, the racket inside of there – of here – forget it – a giant centipede or millipede – for all the time the numbers grew – its thrashing appendages armed with hay-rakes, machetes, axe-handles, chains, ropes, rocks, sticks and stones – scurrying closer, yes, gaining ground. Yes, ah could hear it. Mah head thundered with its many-tramping beaters, blood-oaths and death threats, as ah passed the city-limits sign and bowled headlong into town.

  And ah ran on. And ah ran on. And ah ran on.

  And as ah ran, as ah bounded on, ah remembered what these animals had done to Queenie. Ha
ve ah told you about Queenie? No? Did ah tell you what they went and did to Queenie? No. No ah didn’t. No ah don’t think ah did.

  Ah told you about the lame ‘bo and Kike, the Christ-killer – the two evil winos of Glory Flats. Remember? Yes? Well Queenie was a friend of Kike’s. Ah forget where he found her.

  Ah suspect she crawled out of one of the tin humpies that sit, obscured by heavy wooding, on the other side of the western ridge – ah’m not sure – at least ah don’t remember any freak shows passing through town at that time. She was just there in the church one night when ah delivered their dose of moonshine.

  Queenie didn’t say much but she liked to laugh very loud and then listen to the laughter come bouncing back. ‘Laughing Queenie’ was the handle Kike, the great giver of names, hung on her. She was one of God’s less complicated creatures, finding pleasure in the more simple things. She was at her most contented sitting on the church altar – her ‘throne’ as Kike put it – in her grimy blue frock, a bottle of White Jesus clasped between her pudgy pink hands. Here she would bounce up and down on her haunches, expelling a loud flat ‘Ha!’ with each flop of her fat little body. ‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!’ Piling echo upon echo, rebound upon rebound, until the whole church seemed to vibrate with her merriment. Even the grim bloodless Christ that hung, ghastly in its unredeemed whiteness, above the altar – why, even He appeared to tremble on His rack. Queenie would stop, lift the bottle to her mouth, drink, place the bottle back between her legs, then begin again, her tiny round eyes dull and lifeless in the centre of her face.

  Kike would applaud and the ever-sullen bum with the mangled foot would stew in his corner, holding a prayer book over each ear.

  Kike used to get lickered up and for a few ringers of White Jesus he would futter Queenie on two pews pushed front to front. The other bum, the one with the scar and the mangled foot, would recite slabs of Leviticus until he was hoarse, then turn beseechingly to Queenie with tears in his eyes and a quarter of a bottle of watered down shine proffered in his trembling hands.