“So why’re you here?” Asked the room-mate. “I’d rather not say,” said the once family man. “But, if you really want to know, I got a loud mouth family member who lives a posh life, and decided to put my foot where his mouth was.” He said. “You oughta tell me,” said the gorgeous and highly masculine, male Latino room-mate. “Was it one of your bastard youngins?” “Well, as long as they never dig deep enough for the dates on those state records, or for those state records for that matter,” said the man, “No one will ever know we found him being raised by a group of Africans on the southern end of that great country.” Added the extremely handsome, older blond inmate. “So, why did you take him? I mean, why didn’t you just leave him behind as he has done so many innocent others?” “How’d you know that?” Quizzed the man. “You some kind of prophet or something?” “Eh, I dabbled a little in the church movement way back when,” he said. “Mother, you know, faithful Catholic woman. Been baptized in the church in South America, Bagoda, Columbia before it got as bad as it is now.” Said the Latino man, whose mother just happened to name him Fabio. Perhaps on a whim. Perhaps because his father was a physically beautiful man like himself. But unlike him, his father only liked women. A lot of women. And unfortunately, not his mother. Or at least not enough to stay by her side forever, let alone support her and Fabio with the love and the financial means to feel like a normal family. So, out of pain, a pain so psychologically deep his words could not explain, Fabio had branched out in life. That is the story of how he got here.
“So, this is the scoop,” said the older blond man, by now a fixture on the room. His days had turned to years, and as his laxadazial relative had wasted all of his days on television, sweet ice cream sundaes and dog breeding, he spent his days here trying to do what he used to do on the outside on the inside. “You got a generator?” Asked Fabio. “Naw, I aint got no generator. And you?” Asked the blond man who named Johnnie at birth had a sudden and strange and constant craving for a slim jim and a Pepsi. And an ice-cream cone. Things nobody got much of here, let alone much of any real friendship or understanding.
“Yeah, well there’s this guy I saw on t.v. once, and then I went to the Ozarks to whip around and have a good time on a boat with my lover, someone who has a lot of money, a lover who said he can pay my way in life. And I had to take it, or else it was between that or homelessness. You know anything about that, uh?” “Johnnie. Johnnie is the name,” said the handsome older man. “But I aint into none o’that.” “I understand, I understand,” said Fabio. “I wasn’t ever into none of that either, but I felt like after I spun out of control for all those years, after my mother passed on. She died from alcoholism. After my papa’ left my mother, she drank herself to death. Yeah, every time she wake up in the morning and see the love of her life gone from the scene, and off with some other woman, life is now meaningless for her, see?” “Yeah, well other people’s lives aint nuthin to play around with,” Johnnie at least admitted that. “What you do for a livin’?” Asked Fabio. “I don’t know if you want to know,” said Johnnie. “Well, it can’t be any more bad than what I do,” said Fabio. “You could have that right,” finally admitted Johnnie, again,telling two truths in a row. He almost felt he had outdone himself this time. “So, you been here long enough?” Asked Fabio, now just really killing time, as the conversation seemed at a lull. Johnnie now felt so convicted of guilt, he could no longer hold back. “Son, what’s your business with me,” he finally said. “Well, I aint got no business with you,” he said. “I’m just your new room-mate. Just trying to make some friendly conversation here.”
Finally though, Fabio broke down and began to sob in his hands. “Oh God, don’t do that kind of stuff,” said Johnnie. After all, the dinner hour was near, and he knew that tonight was man dinner night. Mashed potatoes, gravy, and Salisbury steaks and peas with what he called ‘imitation apple pie and ice cream slices.’ More anxious to get to dinner than to do this, Johnnie sighed real loud. Fabio stopped crying, and as the two now sat on Johnnie’s bottom bunk facing each other said to Johnnie, “You tell me the truth. Why you in here?” Said Fabio. “What, because of some clean-cut school teacher or something?” “Son, I’m gonna ask you again, and then I don’t want no trouble. How’d you know that? You some kinda prophet or something.” “God no,” said Fabio, I don’t even know God. My mom is the one who knew that, and she’s dead now.” “But son, I’ve had enough of this nonsense. If you aint’ got nothing else to talk about, I’m headed for dinner.” “Wait!” Said Fabio, in a way so desperate and sudden, it apprehended the man. “If I told you that if you put your good and anointed arms around me like a papa and told me you loved me like that, and prayed with me, that I think I could love a woman again, what would you say? Would you refuse to touch me? Would you snarl your face? Would you say nasty things to my face? Would you act like I am an untouchable piece of crap? Or would you act like I am a human being with flesh and blood and a beating heart just like yours who wants the same things out of life that you do? A home. A wife. Security. Happiness. Joy. Look I don’t really know this Jesus whose picture you got plastered on the concrete wall.” He gestured toward the picture of the savior positioned over the one lonely sink in the cell. “Or who that man is you got hiding in that large bible on the desk. But if he’s got something I need and you know how to share it, then by all means, despite your cold do not touch me family member who put you here, if you will wrap you arms around me and tell me you love me like a brother or a dad, I will be glad to receive your Jesus. And the anointing I feel coming out of you, it smells so nice and clean and good. I want some of that too.” Said Fabio adamantly.
Matthew 25:31-45 For I was an hungred, and yee gaue me meate: I was thirstie, and ye gaue me drinke: I was a stranger, and ye tooke me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sicke, and yee visited me: I was in prison, and ye came vnto me. 37 Then shal the righteous answere him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fedde thee? or thirstie, and gaue thee drinke? 38 When saw wee thee a stranger, and tooke thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sicke, or in prison, and came vnto thee? 40 And the King shall answere, and say vnto them, Uerely I say vnto you, in as much as ye haue done it vnto one of the least of these my brethren, ye haue done it vnto me. 41 Then shall he say also vnto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into euerlasting fire, prepared for the deuill and his angels.
Johnnie, in all of his glorious years as a right handsome as well as a godly and obedient blond man knew that this was good and right to do so. He did not think for a moment what the other men might think. After all, the man did not mean it that way. I mean, he thought to himself, what am I going to do. Harm him in some way for asking for the love of God. Wouldn’t that be sinful, or rebellious to his pastoral calling? Even somehow godless? Dispelling of the ten-foot ‘don’t touch me rule’ for just one moment out of his whole guarded life, he did hear the voice of God say, “It’s okay, Johnnie. Do it.” Just this once, he thought, because even he knew that for those times you really did and were, and really did take the time to get all prayed up, you knew if you should do something or not. And you knew those times when you blew it, and did not show love or grace and should’ve and were in the flesh and messed it all up. But because he had spent time with the Lord just this morning before the new man, Fabio came, even he knew that this was just not one of those times. “Son,” said Johnnie, reaching out his arms. “Come home to papa.” And with tears in his eyes, Fabio wrapped his arms around Johnnie, and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into his heart and life. There were no words left to say after this though, for truly men are not God or gods, and the two would just have to leave it mostly, they knew to the Holy Ghost from here on out. And Johnnie wrapped his nice, strong and comforting and loving fatherly arms around Fabio and just closed his eyes as his heart and soul and that of the other Father smiled with peace. And Johnnie was glad, very glad that at least one person who had not gotten what God wanted for him in life, despite the mistakes of human beings and their wrong choices, the word of the Lord Johnnie knew had been spoken over him for a different destiny originally. Fabio had finally gotten what he needed, and would now be able to let the disobedience of others in his past go, and move on away from them and all of their unjustified lies and excuses for their foolish decisions and rash mistakes, despite their selfish and evil hearts, and without them, and get on with his own life and at last know peace.
SET ME FREE (Déjeme sola. Váyase)
No Copyright Infringement Intended. A Non-Profit Endeavor
By Tess Doberville
We enter our scene tremulously with news of a woman who arrived from another country on a huge banana boat. She keeps ordering her new boyfriend around. After three months of such scenarios, the local people soon figure out that her problem is bigger than just travel fatigue. Join us as we sit in on this situation and see if we can catch what is going on.
Slidell, actually terrified of a woman for the very first time in his life, hides in the closet of his government ministry office, hoping and praying she does not enter with fist pounding demands one more time today. He informed his secretary he went to his Love Me More group therapy meeting. “At first,” he tells the large group sitting around in a perfect and closed circle, “I had no idea I would fall in love like that.” He shifts from Spanish to English and English To Spanish again. He only does this when he is upset. “Santa Madre de Dios. Estoy dispuesto a renunciar a este trabajo en el gobierno y volver a la granja, y de vuelta a la madre.” “But I do not think she loves me, for although she may I think she just likes to control me. I think my tall and powerful darling thinks these is love. I will do her every bid and command. But there is only one thing I must change back, if I can. Then he elaborates in broken English. “She should no be dictator of my country anymore. It is just too much. Some may say, it is just the time of month when I crave chocolates too much. Calm down Slidell they may say. Here have a banana, Slidell. Did you take your meds Slidell?” he mocks his own self. The grown man, about fifty years old begins bawling into a small white embroidered kerchief. “My brown haired senorita with the cute pixie haircut, she gave me this, ” he said. “I just don’t know. I just do not know what to do. I love her so much.”
“There, there,” said one small older woman, a cleaning woman at a local place down the street from this man’s huge government building. This woman had come to the therapy group after staff found her drawing involved trigonmetry equasions on walls with chalk in order to calculate and discover the method for not just eiπ=−1, where i=−1, but also in order to calculate a new scientific discovery she had made. Specifically, her theory for sending a rocket to the next and undiscovered atmosphere while superceding the obstruction of a more limiting unknown velocity. Her new discovery sought not only to uncover the unknown. But also looked at the possibility of how to enter the new sphere with vast if almost complete limitation of any negative impact at all. The staff wrote her up for failure to line up with the outlined and written job description. She was here for penal reasons. “Do not make it that bad, or you will get suicidal,” like my son she said “Yes, one day he goes to a large dance in a large ballroom. A blond woman, you know like those bleached blond senoritas talks to him there. She holds him while he sobs and helps him to come out of the closet. “Why is he in the closet?” asked the others in unison. “Because, it is a cruel and cold world and people need to change, si. Vastly,” adds the humble cleaning woman. Everybody nods in unison. And she continues her tale. “So, the blond woman who looks like an angel, she comforts him. After she tells him her story about getting left behind. You see, her date should have come. He should have been there. After that, everything went wrong that night. My Jesus, my son, that’s his name, Jesus, he gets so upset when she tells him the story, he tries to jump off the bridge. He never heard a story so sad in all of his life.” This hits the raw nerve of the heart strings of Slidell, who now bawls even louder into his perfumed kerchief. “She made this like this for me,” he whimpers to the group, speaking of his new live in girlfriend. “When I saw her stepping out of the banana boat, I never saw such a beautiful American woman in all my life. Making wavy hand motions, he shows how an hourglass looks.
“What happened to your son,?” He asks. The doctor nods his head in approval as this is an important part of the group therapy for everyone here. “Well, after these girl found him on the bridge, she try to talk him down,”the doting mama of the young man said. “So, did he come down?” Asked another man there whose addiction to pot, tequila and fine banana cigars has led him here. “Yes,” said mama. “He finally come down, and vow to find who do this nasty thing to stand her up and leave her standing all alone and crying that night. He vow to fight for her honor with his valor.” Everyone nodded and sighed with great agreement. The next man here in the group circle, his prior wife almost left with a man driving a red Camaro. And although he knew deep down in his heart that the man who wanted to take his ex-wife is actually a gringos and a very bad Diablo, he still loves her present friendship too much to see her punished and living with just any old Don Juan. He knows after all that this woman deserves a man worthy of her inner woman. He has vowed to find her a man who will make all of the bad years up to her. A kind man. A loving man. A better man. The doctor thinks this is a healthy move for the man. After all. the sooner he proves his recovery, the sooner he finishes the program and escapes from all of the stories Slidell keeps telling about the sex life of him and his new girlfriend during therapy, as such a thing he does not only want to imagine with his mind, he does not want to know. Considering this, there is hope for Pablo after all, thinks the psychiatrist to himself. He crosses himself and then remembers that religion is not allowed in his country. He pretends to ruffle and arrange his chest hairs.
“My girlfriend, she arrive on the Banana boat one day, and it is as if she has taken over my whole life the next day. Every morning she gets up and straightens my beautiful shoulder length black hair with the plug-in curling ironing rod. She schedules all of my El Rey Del Mundo cigar box orders. She orders the maids to keep my black scuff military boots shiny and perfect at all hours of the day and night. She has put a hold on all drug abuse and drinking in this country. She has stopped all dancing and Salsa dancing as well. She has even launched a new campaign which she said her public relations person at her big organization started in her country. It is called the Forgive Me So That I Do Not Have To Repent Coalition. The public relations person at her $3mil dollar agency also came up with the idea that instead of admitting that they are victimizing a victim, that they will simply change the wording and call it fighting to make it look like the victim is always coming after them and fighting them, when instead it is the bully organization that is pursuing and levelling and bullying and taking all of these individual people.” He continues speaking.
“So my Venus Fly Trap lotus, my new pixie haircut girlfriend, she is so good at public speaking. She can convince anybody of anything at any time of an outright lie. But not anymore in her great country. For soon the gig would be up and they would be onto her. So she comes here to my great country, and she hands out large protest signs all up and down the street corners for the people to carry around that say,”Make Slidell look good! Lie, and say he does no wrong!” Yes, this social blasphemy is a great government operative, si, where all you do is like what I do here in my country. Anything I want to do. And if anybody does not like it, I just say to them no matter how many times I have beat them or conned them out of babies, farms or money or lands, or homes or families. I tell them. “”You must forgive me! And right away! And like I say. Now! Or else!”” “And then?” Asked the mother of the boy. “And then, I go and do more evil again, and again and again!” Bellowed Slidell proudly while laughing loudly, and pounding his chest. Everyone in the circle hushed, for many knew the ramifications of this move. It could mean anything. Torture. Prison. Even the worst punishment of all, which Slidell had been exercising with all of his men, to keep the poor soldiers in line. A fate worse than death. A night alone with this woman. The treachery of even a thought of a starlit night of wine and roses and the shadows of her sadism falling like gloom upon a deluxe and private suite above the Copacabana, one of them alone and with her only, turned the men an even much darker shade of pale. Each man who had his turn for punishment for a slight while serving the army begged for the safe and sweet enclosure of a brig suite, the wet cold, dripping odor of a pungent dungeon confinement of the military palace instead. Others offered and begged the burly once male, before her arrival, dictator to allow them to return to his girlfriend’s home country and become one of her prior friends, also a fate initially worse than death. Such punishment promised initial poverty, abandonment, homelessness, rejection, shunning and finally the removal of all children, husbands and property and the supportive surroundings of a normal community life. One man who actually accepted this punishment shuddered with fear, as he boarded the banana boat to America.
“Si. These is why she got thrown out of her country America,” said the big burly man shoveling down a tiny cup of strawberry yogurt now. A teenage girl grimaced, wrinkled up her nose and got out a pack of cigarettes, Camel, no filter shortly before wolfing down a delicious slim jim, followed by a pepsi chaser. No worm. She just sat there eating while Slidell looked on. “My health. She is always worried about what I am eating. She forces me to take a low-fat salad dressing everywhere I go.” The teenage girl, filled with boredom, began doing sitting arm exercises. She started out with small arm circles and then progressed to eye-level elbow pullbacks. “Nobody eats salad in this country, ” said a night janitor addressing dictator Slidell, who forced to attend therapy after stealing too many cigars from Slidell’s drawer while mopping his office floor, one day decided to take the dictator’s box of gold bars shaped like his new girl instead. “Yeah, it is all enchiladas and tacos here, ” said another man boisterously.
“So anyway, my girlfriend, she puts these campaign out she names You Must Forgive Me, So I Do Not Have To Tell Someone I Admit I Made Bad Actions Program, Even Though I Know I Must Stop And Turn Back And Undo What I Did And Do No More Evil And Leave The Innocent One Alone and the next thing you know, the whole country gets out of disorder. My girlfriend’s actions make no sense. So instead of putting the blame on the criminal to reform where it belongs, and reverse from all of the bad decisions and stop ~ The focus is put back on the victim.” Said Slidell despairingly. “Which?” Asked a very handsome Spanish gentleman, while glancing at his pocket watch. “Which means that the criminal never has to make any restitution. They try everything they can to prove the victim is sinful or unholy like them. It is like Escape From New York City. And much civil unrest, si. So then, this man she lives with, who she says she treated even worse than me, if that can be imagined, says he can’t take it no more too. So one day, as he sits thinking how he has put up with this for about some forty years now, he figures to himself about these here country here who puts bad people on banana boats and sends them here. So he reasons. Why not send one back? Then he fires her public relations agent for coming up with such a useless and tricky campaign, and puts her on a banana boat with nothing but the clothes on her back, headed for here.” “Amigo,” rumbles a younger man, “You mean, these is your girlfriend, your senorita?” “Si.” Said Slidell drawing out his ‘Si’ slowly and with much compulsion. “Santa Madre de Dios,” said the young man in return. “Obviously, these woman is a controlling she dog who drove her husband as mad as a rabid animal. Never mind that she owns some big conglomerate of office buildings and sells New York Times best seller books to the dumbed down of her own nation amigos. But these woman is of the worst kind. She is a bourgeous anarchist! None of us men are safe to come out at night after dark with her around anymore. She is a man-eater amigos. “I have seen her. She comes out all day and all night,” said a young boxer, who so terrified of the wo-man by now, he changed his name and got a new job working as a stocker at a local discount department store. This made Slidell break out in cries of jagging moans and great realization of as opposed to the heat of, the torment of the moment instead. He felt himself coming out of denial. He repeated Step One of his Great Big Book the therapist had given him. “I admit, I am powerless over myself, and I must depend on others to tell me what to do, as my choices are limited, and it is all up to others.” He looked up to the heavens and said, “I do not believe in you, but if she is the weapon that drove grown men to their knees to look for you, I think it works.”
One day, before he discovered the beautiful place of the marvelous and healing therapy room, the only place she would not go to, he daydreamed in his office while knocking the Japanese pachinko clacker balls on his desk back and forth with his pencil. He stared at the photos of the two of them together, hugging on the beach and at home. He then thought of the cruel way she had treated him after he made her dinner last night. “Slidell! Slidell! Slidell!” She had screamed. “Did you cut those roses back yet! I told you that I want one-thousand red arm bands by seven-o-clock for the Forgive Me Or Else! campaign and street march I am conducting among the nation on Thursday! Good God,” she cried out. “I guess if you want something done, you have to do it yourself.” It was at this time that he felt his spirit breaking. Certainly, he did not know how much more of this waterboarding he could take.
And then when she fired his ninety year old mamasito secretary who had been with him for all of his life, for not hand printing the propaganda flyers fast enough, that was when he knew he must do something. He must go for help. “Cha, Cha honey,” she bellowed from the other room. “I never worked this hard in all my life. I am so mad I could just, just just…” “No, don’t say it,” wept Slidell. “Don’t say it.” He pleaded again. “Back to Am-er-i.” “I told you not to say it, ” he said and wept as he hit the floor. “All my hard work down the drain.” He wept to himself and mumbled. “I stablish this country so we can smoke fresh grown dope wrapped in the most tender and delicate banana peels ever, and drink from the fresh coconut bowl, and dance, dance, dance.”
“Dancing?’ She gasped. “That word is not in my vocabulary. Absolutely not. Against the rules. And you yak on and on about disco dancing when I am eight months behind in a hostile farm takeover. My husband was right when I felt his foot kick the back of that boat hard for the last time,” she mumbled to her own self. “Thank God I went to see Life of Pi at the theater just before it happened.” She thought to herself. This led her to think of a film she forced others to live, but truly avoided herself. “Haven’t you ever seen the movie, ‘Stabbed?’ ” she demanded hardly. “That’s Speared, or End of The Spear,” he said in a low tone of voice so as not to upset her anymore. “Well, it looks like I’m serving the same old goverment Mission I always served,” she said. “I guess I’ve got to grab my god by the ram horns and make him do what I really want him to. And I am not going to let go of him until he blesses my soul and has you like all the others. Bowed down and worshipping me 24-7,” she commanded.
When she first came, she thought she had finally found a man who believed the same way she did. That is why she fired up one of her tiperello cigarettes and pulled the skirt up one side of her knee to prove to him after all this time, she still had it. She loved how his dark eyes and black beard glistened at sunset, and most of the time, he did seem to believe the same way as her. “Which is it honey?” He said, the first time he fixed dinner for her. “Crepes rolled with strawberries and cool whip, or shall I bake you a nice homemade raven pie?” “Your people don’t eat raven,” she said. “Yes, that is right, ” he agreed. After all, there had not been a raven in this place for years.
Sometimes he woke up in a cold sweat with nightmares, and that is when he had to slug down his medication with a glass of red wine. “Bow down to the Lady of Guadalupe,” said the man in the nightmare. “Worship her.” His hands bound behind him, what else could he do? He must bow down to what he thought was the statue of some lady. “Give her all of your money,” said the man. He watched as his servants carried large bushels of the paper money and poured it into a small luxury yacht. “I love to control the people by making them poor just as much as you do,” She said to the stone statue. “But please, I love my money. It is all I have left in life. And I cannot have power over you without it.”
One night while she rested in his arms, beside a romantic burning fire over good tequila rubbing one arm of his one-piece camouflage, both not the kind found at the local package store along with the cheap cigarettes, she whispered in his ear so softly, it made him tremble with delight. “Darling,” he replied back to her in much the same way. “You are such a little control freak, my sweet senorita. But still all the same, you make me burn with a wrong fire. I think I can spend all of the rest of my life with you. I don’t know, really know all of the details of why you came, or even if you were married to that man you lived with before. “Probably not,” he thought to himself. What man in his right mind would consent to such a thing with an unsubmissive woman like this. “I do not care. I just want you.” He lied only to manipulate. He knew that for the first time in his life, he had met his match. “It is all I know for sure,” he said, with eyes so serious. Secretly she thought private thoughts to herself as well. For even she knew that if she would just take her hands off of the thing and get her meddling nose out of everybody elses affairs and just work on her own private life, and quit trying to manipulate and control everyone and everything, and undo all of the evil she had done and leave it all alone and move away from it and move on, and not make things worse than what she already so very evil and unwise as well had already done, it would all work out. After all, little did she know that every last even single little and every large thing she had done to one woman left behind in America, who came to mind in particular would one day all happen to her just like that. And even down to the last finute, distinct detail. Her thoughts now returned to him. The two got up together and together they lifted wood and refilled the fire there with more wood for the hot place.
Maggie stared out of the window of her tiny apartment. Her long blond hair rested around her hips. Someone from that church was praying against her in witchcraft again. Claiming to be a mature adult, or at least only looking like it on the outside, someone from that church was praying against her in witchcraft again, she told the flowerbox of daisies on the ledge, a second time. One year this past August signified the anniversary of whoever prayed a bundle of witchcraft against her all at once. And you might fool some of the people some of the time. But this was uncalled for. She was living in peace and minding her own business. Isn’t this what they wanted? For her to go away. To just kind of dissapear into the cracks of the walls. Or take a dive into the chilly Mississippi. Imagined standing on the ledge of the bridge with her arms out and the seven foot wingspan, like a giant dove. She closed her eyes and thought about what it would be like to fly. She obeyed. So leave her alone. All of you. What seems to be the problem? They will reap what they sow.
Just like God found a way to tell Kate Winslet through Leonardo in the final scene of Titanic that she would not only die old in a warm bed, but more than live to see the day when God sent her someone, Maggie remembered going to watch the film. The real one does exist. Maggie thought of who her one would be. He would brush her long blond hair for her just as her grandfather had done for their wife and his father before him. It took one whole year to grow her glory back. The more she thought about it, it really was her glory. Maggie sat on the perfectly made single bed in her living room and closed her eyes. She felt and it was good to feel what God gave her. Even sad. After all, the cruel books of her husband from the other church said to shut down your emotions and die. But she knew how they used it. They used it to oppress people and take their lives over. For when Paul said to die to self, he meant that to minister to the sheep of God, thought Maggie. And for she knew her relatives ever filled with his warm love always had a flock of sheep around.They did not have to beg. Presence of love drew humble sheep. Loud noises ran them away. That is why that if she could write the final scene to Titanic, the two star crossed lovers would have survived and floated back to Ireland and married. They would have lived in a newly thatched cottage on the sea.
It was very sad to write death into the final scene for DiCaprio surmised Maggie wisely as she glanced at her black antique typewriter with typed on papers everywhere all over her table. Like a face down game of fish, even the ones who attempted this past year to bully an already crushed and broken person born of a sick desire to attempt to use her own enemies to crush her must know that even like they say, you reap what you sow. And so they might. So she just as well might just wait and watch and while praying they did no more evil, take less time to analyze, and more time to wait upon God to outlast that other shallow badness. They will reap what they sow.
Until that week, Maggie thought her life had just started to fall into place. She had routine. She was just starting to slowly reach out and trust. And then suddenly right in the middle of walking on sunshine, the avalanche came. She tried to push the door closed, but soon tired of that and collapsed. After that week, though she fought as hard as she knew how, she felt punished for a crime she knew for certain she was not the perpetrator of ~ On top of it, asthma, she was healed of at the age of eighteen, returned. Shortness of breath. For the first time in years she realized how very tired she was. Her best friend from high school announced he was gay. He would need her help to come out of the closet. And she barely had time for herself during that late August summer. It was at the same function that the fiance’ of her other best friend said he would put the wedding off if only for her. Shocked, she wanted to slap him. But patiently held back and like a mother or a sister counseled him back to health. She stood for photos with another friend’s husband who stood for photos with everybody. He felt as comfortable in public as he did alone. This is strange.
After that there was the sudden hair situation. It is very true what Jim Morrison said. People are cold when you are a stranger. In short, people take your good prayers. They drink you down. Surprised, she slowly turned and looked and saw herself in the glass of the red lacquer wall mirror that had been hers and hers alone this past year. An old friend gone shortly, now to reappear. And they, like greedy and careless vampires on a cold winter night, sit back and watch you die as if it were the Sunday afternoon footballer game. Making shallow puns and asides you do not find funny and do not have the strength to laugh at. Do they not know, you are more about Handel’s Messiah and a whole lot less about standup comedy. And that the tragedy you write about is a good despair of an even greater melancholy and dissapointment that you feel almost all of the time. Sad, that this is what God has put in his pulpit to care for the sheep, you whisper to the mirror afraid that God will hear you say it and make them pay vastly for their secret infidelity to him and him alone. Not for her and certainly, they the energy sucking emotionless, have no heart. They could not care less about anything but one thing. Morning. Noon. And night. Eat. Sleep. And laugh. And more like chuckle themselves to death. I guess and besides, thought the mellowed, and no more the crisp and prompt Maggie, it is so much easier to make an excuse when it is your turn to have the problem you know you prayed in against a gentle one, alone. Legion. They will reap what they sow.
They love to put up the barricade of, well God is developing your faith or you need to give us some money or not wanting to be confrontive of your enemies although you defended them from theirs. They say, God is just developing you as they head for the shopping mall or McDonald’s for a cone. No he is not. It is what it is. An ancient excuse, she spent at least seven years on the farm believing that one thought Maggie. And now that she is in the city, even more private silence finally figured out that no one was ever coming to get her negatives at any time. They did not then. They are not now. People are comfortable to live lives of the kind of nonconformity called conservative. And yet this is only a great rebellion for the covering of a broader blanket of resistance to any art of change they may draw up late at night. In the secret precipice of the creative gallery of the mind, only one direction knowledgeably exists. You have to cross the river to get east to the other side.
Yet she only had the strength to think about holding the nirvana inside and giving life a wait. At the very same time, two horrifying situations that came against both of her daughters and her son; her father, her sister, and all in the final week of August, one year ago from August 2012. And no thanks to I’m reading everything you write, and I’m right on top of it with my magnifying glass, thank you very much. She thought about her critics, and often wondered if they had even completed the fourth grade, let alone the fifth. For certainly, most did not act an age past ten.
“And from my basement platform, I’m calling down the hordes of hell against you,” you threaten. ” But I ask you,” Maggie speaks shyly and quietly, ever so softly to the sheriff devils above. And since that week someone, somewhere had been calling down the hoards of hell against her daily. “No need.” She was already so deep down in it by then, the light necessary to process even peaceful joy from out of the deep seemed dim at best. At least here was the precious thought world. She did not even have a milidot of the capacity to process it. One man did this to her for eight years, a rabid King Saul who pursued her daily. He then died suddenly, all of life concluded one day. It was the first day in eight years she had a peaceful day. That day. “For anyone to oppress a David on the farm or anywhere,” the macroputer spoke freely in a gentle male voice, “Is nothing to wear a badge of honor over, secret or otherwise.” She stared at her computer, grateful for the subtle revelation she at times found this way. They will reap what they sow.
The second alien imposter, not at all of her Irish family clan of prior times, her bulbous old husband, died of natural causes after a little over ten years of such behavior. He too seemed as blind to the art of giving apologies as the other rude rogues. His arrogance waxed high in the heavens. His boasting more so. “I am the fifth generation of Farmington preachers,” her old husband bellowed as she watched him lie, hoard and commit nasty deeds too criminal to mention. “Well, I could not even begin to compete with that she said. No preachers in my family. Just my mom who got saved before she ever started first grade when Jesus appeared to her in the middle of the woods of the high mountains of Tennessee and conveyed his love to ‘Little Engin’ and her affectionate town nickname at the time.
That’s all. And her Grandpa Emmet of Watervalley, Mississippi who got delivered from severe alcoholism and found Jesus while alone and spent the rest of his life being gentle and kind and telling the rest of us about the real love of the flow. The head Irish Whiskey runner over all of the other whiskey runner go boys of Yallobusha County. Well,” she guessed that wasn’t much. And then there was the Indian grandpa who smoked five packs of non-filter camels a day, he proudly rolled himself and a fifth pint of whiskey from the time he was eleven until he died young at the age of nearly eighty, which is very young for a mountain person to die, the good air and all. Everyone attributed his early illness to the fact that he smoked non-filter cigarettes all of his life. Then he accepted Jesus Christ on his deathbed and all twelve something of the children, one adopted, another one they adopted after he just showed up on the doorstep one day, and all of the sisters still tell of how the light of the heavenly presence filled the room and everyone saw the angels come for him.
Well, but I guess my old husband is right,” she thought to herself whispering in her head, and only dreamed of writing all that down someday. Very sad that she did not have more to say about her family being preachers and all. Yes, almost all of the people in her family were saved from things that should probably not be discussed with anybody at all. He was right. It was such a shame to discuss such things. Besides, she had always secretly loved to listen to the stories of all of the many adventures her two grandpas had had before. The grandma would call out from the kitchen for them not to tell all of the stories, to let me talk too. But it was like I told Grandpa. “The fireplace is warm. And I live overseas the rest of the time. I am little, and I am lonely. But I want to be alone when I do, and besides to only see him once every four years. The last time Maggie went, why she thought when she was twelve. They did not sit that year for him to get him started, and make him talk for five hours straight or more.
He had a new electric guitar with a wa wa and he was sitting up in the attic on the third floor writing songs. Fresh back from Vietnam, her cousin Ronnie who now measured life slow pounded floor boards. He never talked to anyone anymore. Maggie loved her family. They were good people who had loved many strangers. She remembered her parents driving down the Pennsylvania Turnpike in a snowstorm and stopping to pick up a private home on leave going to his folks on the farm for Thanksgiving. They taught her things like that. The folks of the young military man invited Maggie and her family to come inside. His mother must have had over fourty-two plates and bowls including leftover dishes on the table. They all sat in the quiet of low indoor farmhouse light on hundred year old handmade wood chairs and scooped homemade strawberry ice cream from shining ceramic bowls. The people were loving. Her parents taught her openess to meet new people. She knew that once, and had almost started again. You will reap what you sowed.
One cousin delivered from drug abuse and filled with Jesus in the time it takes to blink an eye. But again, he was right, her husband. None of his black man hating preacher cousins or back to the first of the fifth generation had ever allowed a black person into their home, let alone their church. They were a family that kept it clean, her old husband’s family. And the friend that was with her cousin at the time was a black person who also got instantly saved and delivered from all desire for drugs forever. “Yes, her husband was right. Only a small handfull of her family lived as men of the cloth.” Surely she would take his advise. For she had to. “You will stay away from your family,” he said. Because that deliverance minister at the church who wore marine khaki and never set foot in a war, let alone with his camoulage hunt. He said his family was better. They only thought they were better. She prayed for God to give her a family next time that just was. Better yet, a man that was an adult and who could navigate like a man. On his own. The holy good fifth generation preacher was a wife beater who unfortunately did not fall asleep when he drank what he had hid out in the cow milk barn. But instead, got meaner. “And God he was right. Wasn’t he?” Maggie thought about her family. She loved them. They were life. But he said they were bad. And that his family is lily white. You reap what you sow.
A lot of people in her family, a lot had been saved straight up out of sorrow, and to walk a holy happy life all of their days, they loved to reflect a joyful light. Gee, nothing like a f-i-f-t-h g-e-n-e-r-a-t-i-o-n Farmington, Missouri preacher. Whose mandate, cold, and with no love. How was this life? Her sinful family and almost all of her relatives who loved eachother, so much so that most of Maggie and her cousins grew up through the years, “For all of us to feel close no matter where we go in the world,” and they talked about it like that at family reunions. Compared to the fifth generation preacher and his cast of lukewarm drip dries, she rather had to love who and what he condemned as sin by Mormonism. And yet they had a spirit greater, and even more, love. And yet there were the Catholic side of the family of Maggie. She loved them too.
One time, she went into a Catholic church place where the nuns were. She walked over while he was in the package store looking around for something to drink. She would never know how he found her in there sitting in the few back rows of where the nuns were praying and singing. She was praying for one of his dead relatives, who presently lived in a house one town over. “Get your Catholic ass out of here,” he said. Well, she thought she had better do that. However, she had already looked up Catholic in the dictionary, and knew for a fact that it meant universal. And that part of her she had always marked as private, exclusive, and most definitely not universal. Her universal that was safely tucked into her blue jeans. Private, it was hers alone. Was he by any chance trying to insult her? Although his request made no sense, she obeyed it. The lily whites on the other hand, heretofore known as his fifth generation preachers, looked and smelled like bowling alley proach at all times. But that is likely why almost all of the cousins among Maggie’s family preferred to go to the L.D.S. Did she say a cuss word? It was either that or the Catholic church. Not one more bad than the other. But just places to go where you took what was in their heart. But they coudn’t see that. They could not even see they were religious. So how could they see that. The other side was Baptist. Besides, modern Pentacostals are not the real thing. Arrogant, God feels constantly fit to squeeze them every minute. The others got saved one by one. They would all join in groups and pray for the young folk. One day she thought of who was continuously and daily praying against her, and she thought. “I should just get into my car and drive to their house, and tell them to stop. Just stop.” But of course, she would never go there. It was the last place she wanted to go. She was tired. She just wanted the evil to stop. They would reap what they sowed.
And as time went on, it was almost like that bible story she heard in church growing up, about the forming of the original church, after the time when Jesus died. That and it seemed like God was always adding one more of us to the mix. But, first the perpetrator of Meg’s old husband’s ministry group he left died suddenly one day of sudden natural causes, after eight years of such unbearable and wicked behavior, and complete jealousy of Meg by his side. Little did the man know, he could have had him for a good chicken. And for reasons Meg never did fathom, she heard God say, “Trust me. I would never give your shoes, past or present to anyone on this earth willingly,” she heard that voice say to her. “Although if you are really evil, God may take your power to make that choice away,” remarked the spirit to him. You will reap what you sow.
Therefore, let us kindly proceed with the plot of our story. Also during that final week of August 2012, a man who had never ever even been invited to her home in his life, let alone talk to, a man the age of by now her dead old ex-husband, in his seventies suddenly showed up at her door and asked her out on a date. A man she had not ever even talked to, but who she had only ever talked to his sister some at the store that he owned. A man she had no interest in whatsoever and he was so pushy. Maggie was deep in the depths of her manuscript and trying to do alone what some people got help with. She was so insulted as she saw right through the spirit of the thing. It was all she could do not to cry. That and be rude to the man. Because it was the fault of the others and no fault of a one who unknowing just went along with the feel of that current. While she needed her strength to finish what she was working on, that same week, and for a grand total of more things happening that week than had happened the three years since she had slowly and quietly walked away from the halls of drama, she had actually been healing from the post traumatic stress disorder. Or at least on the path toward that.To proceed, and finish telling the rest of what happened to her during that week, outside of the memories of the condition of all of those people in her family who got miraculously saved and delivered, and not a one a stiff, cold, intolerable and very religious and a very hateful, do not touch my hair as I do not like that, preacher like her perfect wife beating, cussing, alcoholic and among other things adulterous fifth generation preacher husband. They will reap what they sow.
So, up to her neck in manuscript and without any answers in the mail for a willing collaborator, she felt overwhelmed. After all, they said it had to be finished that week as well, and what was more, she still did not have all of the factual information she needed. Which meant one extremely inconvenient thing, and one extremely inconvenient thing only. The young lady would have to go back through every last single paragraph of every last single page and begin deleting from a work that was technically complete, hence this. With hours of editing before her. She had hoped to bless someone. She had hoped that for the first time in her life, this part of her life would change. That this would be the end to the endless pattern that she had experienced and known all of her life of people who had let her down despite her faithfulness to them. At the pivotal times, when they were uglier than sin, she had stayed by them. They will reap what they sow.
The world is filled with songs and poems and books about people who are bad and selfish friends, and even cold and apathetic lovers. Which reminded her, one day her old husband always claimed he was like a father to her. But he also told her all of the time that she did not need Jesus, because he was all the Jesus she would ever need. He did not mean that lovingly. He meant that when he was God. One time she got a job at a school typing. The superintendant rang her on the phone. “Hello, this is God,” he said. “Yes. Nice to meet you,” she responded back. For she did not doubt it. And besides, she knew this, she had never seen a Jesus in her life that acted the way that he did. He was supposed to be soft, gentle, kind and loving. Not loud, boisterous and jumping around and screaming, and so obsessed with gaining power. Such behavior is actually relative to the medical profile of a serial killer, of which my husband had already received his medical diagnosis. His psychiatrists coddled him and assured him it was due to an unhealthy childhood. How stupid of his psychiatrist. Someone needed to give them some acid free paper to write his medical prescriptions on.
First, her husband was the exacting opposite of her father. And her father had grown up more abused by far than this ego-maniac. But her father was always gentle, kind and good and did not hurt people. Therefore, that dispels the totalitarian blanket hypothesis that all girls marry their father. And yet why anyone in the world has to have an evil heart is an enigma. It is exactly like the maintenance man who helped her set up her table said as he told her his story. His mother also was a raging alcoholic and ruinously abused all of the children. True, there is a long-lasting rage that is the noted medical diagnosis of every victim of child abuse and incest. But this big old guy was kind by what he called choice. Choice is a lot like love. It is a choice. Everyone in the world can think of lots of people who had a bad childhood who are not out there hurting people. And what is more, there is something demonic about it or not. After all, what about the people who are born without conscience? Did the demon get inside when they were still in heaven getting ready to come down? Is it physio-biological? Or are some people just plain evil and they enjoy it? It is likely all of these things rolled up into one. What they really needed Maggie knew, was that if they did not have anything good to pray for her, and wanted to get out of spiritial work with the lazy man’s excuse, then what they really needed to do was to just leave her alone. If only they knew how tired she was. She could not carry them anymore. They had carried her a little in the past. And then one day, they had just suddenly walked away. Maggie was tired. In a way for the first time in her life, she had never been tired like this before. Even during the abuse. They would reap what they sowed.
One day she went to the library to see what had happened to her. But first, in order to do this, she had to hide under the back seat of the truck of her husband when he went to town. She pulled the moving blanket over herself and lay there. He went into a place called The Factory, a kind of small town shopping plaza to flirt with women. And quickly she got up and ran into the library and looked up on the computer what was wrong with her. What had the infrastructure of the modern cult church and his religious evil done to her? She looked up the phrase strange movement and instantly, the computer pulled it up as according to Wikipedia Encyclopedia,”The kinetic energy of an object is the energy which it possesses due to its motion.[1] It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its acceleration, the body maintains this kinetic energy unless it’s speed changes. The same amount of work is done by the body in decelerating from its current speed to a state of rest.”
Amazing. And then right next to the definition, a picture of a ferris wheel was posted to help illustrate the definition. However, what about the times when it felt more like a roller coaster, or like you were the roller coaster? The owl perched on the top of the curtain rod began to speak to her. “I told you for the second time,” she said. “All of my life I have been good. It’s really not a self-righteous thing. At times, it has been a disturbance to me. If only I could be like those who feel nothing when they take revenge or misconstrue, because they are mean. And in fact have been so mean all of their lives that they have long since lost the power to know the difference.” The tiny set of red velvet curtains parted to a miniature lawn outside. An army of a hundred Christmas soldiers bowed, and bending as a set of many trees danced she felt, and this more pleasant to the sight. She turned aside and wrinkled her nose at the other veterans of bitter and rancid. But thankfully, they were few and very far away from her. Very far away. She made a mental note. “Someday you will write a book,” stated the coy librarian. She stared straight ahead without speaking. This was how she cheered the librarian up. It took a thousand years of concentration just to get herself into the place she called book heaven. “I wish I owned one,” she accidentally said out loud. Speaking out loud. This was a cult rule violation punishable by two or maybe even three days locked up in the chicken shed. They will reap what they sow.
One time a chicken got stuck back there behind the large meat freezer and died. He didn’t care. But this was her friend. Horrified she thought about and felt his suffering for days. She began to hate meat. She hated that he filled the freezer with the old ten year old meat. Who could eat that much meat? Who could eat that old meat? Gross. It wasn’t her fault. The man on the farm, he was always picking things up and shoving things, and hammering and moving things around. One time he jumped up in the middle of the night and pulled the sheets off fast and hard. She fell out of bed. “It’s time to change the sheets and re-arrange the bedroom,” he said. She never complained or argued. She expressed calm and quiet gratitude for each strange and cruel instruction. At the time, she did not know it was an illusion.
There was that other time she was in the shower. Thank God it was summer, although she had slept in the snow for almost eight hours one winter day. She was hiding. From him. She had, well she does not want to give all of her secrets of survival away. After all, the others in this world, others have their own lessons to learn too. Half asleep, and even after suddenly wide awake, she survived the screaming and the threats and the demands about not moving the furniture around fast enough by remembering how he demanded she come outside now one summer day and take the outside pool down. He hated that pool. But she had to come out and do it, he said right now. An elderly woman who lived in a house so old, one of the owner’s slaves had set a hallway on fire to protect himself from her, gave the teenager the money to buy the pool after she spent something like all summer gardening, cutting grass and on the tractor, cooking, cleaning, scrubbing floors, and everything else also as well as chopping enough wood to last the woman her whole winter. He hated that woman. She dismantled the thing carefully and systematically for over an hour. The sun burned hard. But that felt good. It must run in the blood of a descendant of such a royal heart to work so hard like that, and even if in the void of no supervision. She did wonder who flew overhead in the private plane. But it did not matter. No one ever came to rescue Maggie Maise. Maggie Maise was clearly on her own. She went back inside to put on her long skirt and standard shirt and tennis shoes and put her hair up in a bun and all of the rest of the gear. She had a full body suntan to beat the band.
Evelyn knew what was going on. While others were steamed mad about not getting her for her piano for a church platform, she had more things to worry about than the selfish desires of the youngest preacher in Farmington. The meat of the matter they did not notice. Evelyn knew that something about the man of the woman and the daughter was not right. However, it was good for them to learn of this hate. For they would encounter it in two or three cruel churches. Although elderly and in her nineties and secretly dying from cancer, she as a woman who once worked as a kind minister in the streets of St. Louis before her retirement here to the historical country home and property her husband and she bought for a weekend home for in between trips to California and back, and he now sadly dead ~ She discerned a devil of Satan in the husband man of the speechless wife and child before her. She knew that the behavior of the little girl he dropped off there everyday was not right. And the woman never drove. She only rode. And only the little girl could stay. He never let the woman stay. And the little girl only worked and never talked. The woman only seemed to talk with her eyes. And she seemed far away, somewhere completely different from here. It was almost as if that although she dwelt in the earth, she did not. And that she certainly always dwelt in heaven while on earth. She would go back to that. They would reap what they sowed.
One day the elderly woman, Evelyn, she announced to the man who the little girl was going to stay with her for a weekend. She did not ask. She had dealt with few of his kind ever. But she knew enough to demand and not plead for favor. She put the little girl, actually thirteen by now upstairs in the tiniest little girl room with the original furniture for the period of the dwarfed about 17th century two-story farm home. Everything in the home was scaled down to the size of four-foot two tall people. And everything in the home was a kind of reddish wood and all original. The crooked posted canopy stints which held up a pink flag which rested over the bed gave way to small porcelain dolls and an antique lamp and a even an old jewelry box. And a burned area in the middle of the house, still there from the pre-civil war days where a slave or someone had set fire to the home for protection, and of the house that leaned slightly sideways.
When the little girl came home, she whispered to her mother that she actually ate a bowl of homemade cherry ice cream, and for the first time in about ten years, slept like a log. The mother did not think she herself had slept at all in twelve years. Let alone like a log. Until August rolled around again. And it was then that she just climbed into the bed at the end of September and she slept for one month solid. And then she got up. And saw. It was all still the same. As cold as snow. Lazy Christians everywhere. She had given up hours to pray for them, spending whole nights on ice froze Missouri parking lots and parks and backyards and wherever she could go to do this. She saw unlike the prior, these now complacent simply wanted to take the lazy man’s way out. She realized that for the first time in years, she was just simply out of strength. She saw the cold truth. That she really had not been loved back, and indeed was not loved as she had loved at all. She was necessary to them for one thing. And one thing only. She repented for taking a break from the other world. She kneeled and crossed herself. And then got right back into bed again. She sunk, and for all of the months after, she lost all track of time as most men know it.
Mysteries & Other Short Stories 