Arise and Walk Read online

  “Sit next to me,” Klarence said, when Zvatiff came into the room. “She hasn’t said anything yet.”

  Presciencia “Precious” Espanto was thirty-six years old. She had been born in a small village near Puerto Angel, Mexico, on the Gulf of Tehuantepec, where she lived until she was six, at which time her family moved north, crossing the border illegally just west of McAllen, Texas. In McAllen, her father, who was known in his native village as El Profeta, was killed in a bar fight by a fellow patron who took exception to his prediction that the president of the United States would die in Dallas during an upcoming visit to that city.

  After the death of El Profeta, Presciencia and her younger twin sisters, Esplendida and Espiritosa, were taken by their mother, Despareja, to Houston, where Despareja worked as a prostitute. Presciencia left Houston when she was sixteen in the company of a traveling power tool salesman named Ed Ard, who paid Despareja five hundred dollars for the privilege. Presciencia traveled with Ed Ard around his territory, the Southwest, for four months, until she ran away in the middle of one night while he slept off a drunk in the Brazo Negro Motel in Gila Bend, Arizona. She never saw Ed Ard or her mother and sisters again.

  Presciencia worked as a hotel maid in a number of towns and cities until she realized that, like her father, she had the gift of prophecy. In Las Cruces, New Mexico, Presciencia started her own ministry, which she called La Iglesia de los Ingratos—the Church of the Ungrateful—based on the assumption that human beings can never entirely appreciate the gift of life until it is taken from them, and must therefore remain ungrateful until their ascent to heaven or descent into hell. At first Presciencia’s followers were mostly Mexicans, farm workers, ranch hands, and domestics, but as word spread about her ability to prophesy, a wide variety of people, including whites and Indians, joined her church.

  Because she was an illegal alien, Presciencia moved often, communicating by letter and telephone with those who could not follow her. Eventually she was deported, but regained entry to the United States shortly thereafter by legal means at the behest of the wife of a U.S. senator from Louisiana who had become a believer. It was because of Sally Blaine, whose husband, Senator Rantoul “Bingo” Blaine, was later killed in a plane crash over Big Tuna, Texas, that Presciencia came to establish the Church of the Ungrateful in Baton Rouge. After the Espanto teachings reached cable TV, Klarence Krotz, among tens of thousands of others, became fascinated by this female preacher, eager to hear her every word and witness her healings and prophecies.

  The old Bulgarian pederast and his protege sat transfixed before the electronic image of Presciencia Espanto, her long, curly blond hair contrasting dramatically with her burnt-sienna skin. She wore wraparound dark glasses at all times now, to protect her inner harmony from vision thieves, and covered her body with a plain white cotton robe. Only Sally Blaine, the former senator’s widow, and now Presciencia’s lover, knew that beneath it the prophetess was naked. Seated behind Precious on the stage were her bodyguards, several young Hispanic men recruited from the No Chingues gang in Albuquerque.

  “Hear me, ungrateful ones,” Presciencia said, her golden head bowed toward the microphone. “Hear the black wings as they beat above, above and beyond. Hear the words of Jeremiah: ‘Behold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as a whirlwind: his horses are swifter than eagles. Woe unto us! for we are spoiled … wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?’ Oh, thou ungrateful, what of your expectations? ‘When thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? Though thou clothest thyself with crimson, though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold, though thou rentest thy face with painting, in vain shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek thy life. For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringest forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers.’ ”

  “She’s the one, Zvatiff, the one person we need to put us over the top,” said Klarence, muting the sound of the television with his remote control.

  “Her people, they will vote?”

  “They’ll vote if Precious tells them to vote. They’ll do whatever she says. If we can get her to back me, it’ll show the niggers and the nigger lovers that a prominent person of color believes in me. It’ll turn ’em around without turnin’ off the Kluxers, who’ll figure rightly it’s a political necessity. I don’t have to explain myself to them, they know who I am and always will be. Forget the Jews; we’ll take care of them after.”

  The sardine doyen nodded and danced the stubby, oily fingers of his right hand over his bald head.

  “We shall meet with her, then,” Thziz-Tczili said. “It would be good if she will prophesy your victory.”

  Klarence smiled and placed his right hand over the old man’s crotch.

  “ ‘Though they dig into hell,’ as Amos says, ‘thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down,’ ” said the candidate. “Miss Precious and I, between us we got the world by the balls.”

  ELOHIM

  Spit and Ice D needed new clothes.

  “El-Majik always sayin’, a brother in need come to one of his Welcome Homes,” said D, “supposed they provide him food, clothes, shelter in return for do some work. Sell they paper, Majik Speak, or somethin’.”

  “That ain’ hep me none,” Spit said.

  “I take extra for you, Spit. Don’ nobody be knowin’ the diff’rence.”

  The two escapees sat on a bench in a small, triangular park on Magazine Street, smoking cigarettes.

  “You know where’s this Welcome Home in New Orleans?” asked Spit.

  “Looked it up in a phone book back at that cafe. Be on Napoleon Avenue. Nearabouts, I think. Why don’t you wait here an’ I go see what up wit dem?”

  Spit sat alone on the bench and thought about how messed up everything was. Here he was, a grown man, an escaped convict without a cent except what he could steal, in need of clothes and shelter, partnered up with a black, intent on assassinating two men for the crime of lying in public.

  Being poor was a condition with which Spit was not unfamiliar. His single most horrifying childhood memory was of the time he had come into the house and found that his mama had fallen asleep in a chair while breast-feeding her newest born. The child had fallen asleep also and lay still in her lap while a gray-brown rat the size of Spit’s daddy’s shoe nibbled at the nipple of his mama’s left breast. Spit, who was seven years old when this happened, had tried to knock the rat off his mama, but the rapacious rodent bit into the woman’s breast, causing her to awaken with a shriek and drop the infant to the floor.

  Spit would never forget the sight of his mama twirling and howling in pain as she attempted to dislodge the gigantic rat. Her horrifying dance seemed to go on interminably while Spit watched and his baby sister cried. Finally, the Spackle mother managed to tear the beast from her chest, flinging the thing across the room as she collapsed. Spit had seen the rat float through the air as if in slow motion and land on all fours with his mama’s left nipple locked in its protruding teeth, then scurry away with the lactating treasure.

  The breeze blew a piece of newspaper against Spit’s right ankle and he reached down and picked it up. It was the front section of a week-old Times-Picayune, and Spit read a small item on the back page:

  EMBASSY SOUGHT FOR EXTRATERRESTRIALS, was the heading. The story was taken from the Deutsche Presse-Agentur and datelined Geneva. “A sect that says it represents extraterrestrial beings wants an embassy in Switzerland,” Spit read. “Claude Vorhilon, head of the 250-member sect that claims to be in contact with extraterrestrial beings called ‘Elohim,’ wants to put the embassy question to a nationwide vote. ”

  Spit crumpled the newspaper and tossed it aside.

  “Be double damn if this planet ain’t alre
ady loaded with surplus crazy bastards per square inch,” he said aloud. “End’s near they start lettin’ in ones from outer space.”

  MOVING RIGHT ALONG

  “You are looking wonderful, Sally, as usual.”

  “Why, thank you, Zvatiff. I’m not entirely displeased to see that you are still alive, either.”

  Sally Blaine and Zvatiff Thziz-Tczili sat together at a table against the wall in Galatoire’s. This was their first meeting since both had established residences in New Orleans, Zvatiff having only very recently taken an apartment in the Garden District from which to direct Klarence Krotz’s campaign in the southern portion of the state. They had first met and become acquainted, of course, in Washington, D.C., but had not been in touch since the death of Rantoul “Bingo” Blaine. Following up on Klarence’s interest in Presciencia Espanto, Zvatiff’s investigation had disclosed her relationship with Sally Blaine, and subsequently he had arranged a meeting with the widow of the deceased senator.

  The former lobbyist for the Eastern European sardine industry ordered turtle soup, pork chops, and hearts of palm. The televangelist’s mistress requested salad only.

  “You are quite trim as it is,” said Zvatiff. “Why not have something more?”

  Sally laughed, and replied, “Remember what Jack Kerouac said: ‘I’d rather be thin than Famous.’ ”

  “Who is this person who speaks such absurdities?”

  “A novelist.”

  “Ach,” said Thziz-Tczili, Frowning as he raised his wineglass, “novels! I never read them.”

  As Zvatiff and Sally Blaine lunched and arranged a suitable time and place for Precious and Klarence to rendezvous, Cleon Tone stood in the Maria Callas Memorial Launderette on Conti Street reading a flyer tacked to the bulletin board next to a washing machine in which the backslidden reverend had deposited his clothes.

  “El-Majik Speaks!” Cleon read. “Do Not Let This Happen To You! Where are the people who have disappeared? Every year countless people disappear without a trace never to be seen again and it is never reported. Why? I am convinced that they are the victims of Followers of Elohim, an evil, extraterrestrial anti-Human that is heavy into organized crime who practice ritual murder on a massive scale and sell the flesh to fast-food chains to make hamburgers out of and in this way dispose of the evidence.

  “What these people do is entrap persons looking for sex, then kill them in a very sadistic manner and these things are generally done Fairly close to the fast-food restaurant. Another method is that they buy children from poor whites whom abduct the children from school yards, daycare centers and even from their parents by pretending to be health care workers or from the child protection agency. Usually it is black children who are the victims. These people generally target single mothers who have problems to begin with or welfare recipients who no one would believe, and that I am convinced is the reason they have artificially created a high birth rate among welfare recipients. If we do not stop it, no one else will.

  “Why do the criminals get all the breaks? Why does the law only protect the other guy? Why does every TV show concern crime? The answer is that the Elohim are running the media and using it to create an unusually high crime rate in order to have an excuse to take your freedom away. The Elohim are Outer Planetary parasites who hide themselves among us. They often profess to be either Jews or Christians but they are not. They manipulate political candidates such as KKK and espouse insane notions via false prophets.

  “I am convinced that the media has a secret archive where the Elohim keep movies of an anti-Semitic and anti-Christian nature and blackmail the clergy of this nation and Rome for millions in order to keep them off the air.

  “The Elohim used Saadam Hussein to kill Kurds and use the hides for leather and sell the flesh to fast-food chains to make hamburgers out of. Elohim like to ingest live human sperm and vomit caviar that hatches into maggots that eat mulberry leaves and spin cocoons and hatch into full-grown people who do the same.

  “The Elohim have schools in Russia and Romania that train people to manipulate the human mind and send them over here to cause unstable people to commit acts of violence to use as an excuse to enslave the public. They are trying to create a junkie work force that they only have to pay in drugs. Where will it all end?

  “Salemm’ Aleikoum. Yours in peace everlasting, El-Majik.”

  “Dis yo wash?”

  Cleon Tone turned and confronted a humpbacked old lady about four and a half feet tall with a black patch over her right eye. The front part of her scalp was completely bald and dotted with scabs.

  “Ah look yoost, yaw done. Done stop, see?”

  Cleon opened the lid and unloaded his few articles of clothing.

  “All yours, ma’am,” he said to the woman, who cackled.

  “We dogs,” she said, wagging her head. “Watch yo ass, mist, watch yo ass. God dog git it, haw!”

  BUGS

  It was not Rebel Ray Bob’s custom to return to his shop once he had closed it, but he had forgotten to take with him earlier in the evening a shortwave radio he intended to fool with. He was convinced that some of the languages he heard on it had to be coming in from outer space. There was no way, he figured, a human being on planet earth could work their mouth around some of those sounds. It was eleven minutes past midnight when Ray Bob unlocked, entered, and then closed the front door. Three seconds later, before he could turn on a light, a blunt object—a chunk of heavy glass with the word MIZZOU decaled on it in gold letters over a black and gold drawing of a snarling tiger—permanently wrinkled the unsuspecting owner’s right temple, causing his immediate collapse onto the brown-stained cedar board floor.

  “Wad you hid ’im wid?”

  “Ashtray. ”

  Ice D knelt next to the prone pawn king and closely inspected his head.

  “He fix, Spit. Fix permanen’. Maybe bes’ we carry im out back way we come in.”

  “No,” said Spit Spackle, slipping the murder weapon into the canvas sack that already held the several guns and ammunition he and D had swiped from the store. “Bugs be on him too quick. Cop scientists use insects now to establish time of the crime.”

  “Insex? How you know dis?”

  “Read it in a magazine in the prison library. Dead body lyin’ outside attracts enough blowflies and flesh flies to lay thousands of eggs in the mouth, nose, and ears within ten minutes of death. The eggs hatch about twelve hours later into maggots that feed on tissues. When the maggots is done, they crawl off the body and cocoon in the soil around it. Then comes more bugs, beetles usually, that chow down on the dryin’ out skin. After them it’s spiders, mites, and millipedes that feast on the insects. Best we just leave him.”

  “Damn!”

  Ice D stood up and the two fugitives took off out the front. Spit slammed the door behind them, dislodging from the wall next to it a framed sign that flipped faceup onto Rebel Ray Bob’s back. It read: IF ASSHOLES COULD FLY, THIS PLACE WOULD BE AN AIRPORT.

  THE RING OF TRUTH

  “What time do we meet these gentlemen?”

  “Six. Suite at the Monteleone.”

  “Little higher, please, Sal. It’s always where the wings was itches most.”

  Presciencia Espanto stretched her brown form to its full length. She lay flat on her stomach on the bed while Sally Blaine straddled the hottest female televangelist since Dilys Salt and massaged her back. Both women were entirely nude, having spent most of the afternoon making love and sleeping.

  “It still rainin’?”

  Sally glanced out the closest window.

  “Course, Precious. Wouldn’t be New Orleans if it weren’t raining.”

  “This Krotz is a racist, Sally. Used to was the Big Goofus himself of the Holy Order of Everlasting Yahoos. What’s in it for us?”

  The deceased senator’s widow kneaded her amour’s tight little milk chocolate shoulders and said, “Man runnin’ his campaign’s an old D.C. warrior, hon, name of Zvatiff Thziz-Tczili. Zvatiff he
lped out Bingo lots of times, special most on the baitfish bill. Remember the scandal when Buster Bustelo, junior senator from New Mexico, was caught with a ten-year-old Vietnamese girl in a Baltimore hotel room?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, that was Zvatiff’s setup. Buster wasn’t a bad guy, but he wanted too much in exchange for the use of White Sands as a nuclear waste dumping ground. He was going to kill Bingo’s baitfish bill in committee unless Bayou Enterprises deposited a half-million dollars in a numbered Swiss account. It was really the limit. I mean, it’s one thing to be dirty, it’s another to be that greedy. So Bingo went to Thziz-Tczili, and the old Bulgarian took care of it.”

  Presciencia rolled over onto her back and looked up at Sally Blaine.

  “You’ve got great tits, Sal. Wish mine were bigger.”

  Sally laughed, bent over, and kissed Precious gently on the lips.

  “You’ve got a greater commodity, darlin’, one that won’t shrivel up or fall, neither. Your vision’s bigger than anyone’s.”

  “What did Bingo have to do for this Bulgarian?”

  “Made sure Louisiana exempted imported sardines from state tax.”

  “Politics ain’t for them that’s weak in the stomach, Sal, I know. What’s this Klarence Krotz think I could do for him?”

  “I’m sure he means to try to get the endorsement of the Church of the Ungrateful. He needs more than the white vote to get elected. He’ll want to stand next to you on the broadcasts.”

  “Forget it,” said Presciencia, sitting up, forcing Sally to dismount. “The No Chingues guys wouldn’t let it happen. They’d stomp him.”