Victor J. Banis is an Author

The following are excerpts from the novel, HOLIDAY GAY, originallly published in 1967 and reissued in 2004 as part of the anthology That Man From C.A.M.P. Rebel Without a Pause (Southern Tier Editions)

There was something about the holiday season and Christmas time that Jackie Holmes always especially liked.  Most of all, it was evenings like this one, set aside for trimming the tree.  Here he was, in a cozy warm apartment.  The fire was blazing brightly in the fireplace.  A tall fir tree had been correctly placed in its stand and was already saturating the room with its delicious scent.  Hot toddies had gone a long way to putting him in a dreamy mood.  And to make the picture complete, he had the benefit of delightful company.  There beside him was one of those beautiful young men one usually just dreams about - tall, husky, with gray eyes behind long lashes, olive hued skin, and erotically carved mouth.  The picture couldn’t have been more perfect.            “How do you like those balls?”            “Perfect,”  Jackie murmured appreciatively.  He traced a finger over one of them.            “What about this, do you think it’s too big?”            “Not at all.  It looks better standing, though, than it did hanging.  I wish we could put it on top of the tree.”            His companion laughed, a deep, throaty sound that sent a shiver up Jackie’s spine.  “Too Much weight, I’m afraid.  It would bend the tree down.”            “I guess you’re right.  But the color’s perfect - that deep red crown.”  Jackie paused for a moment, devoting himself to his efforts.            “That’s better,”  his friend surveyed the results of the efforts.  “That gives it a shiny look, makes it glisten.  I think that’s more appropriate.”            Jackie frowned thoughtfully.  “Maybe just a little more,”  he suggested.  After a moment, he added,  “Christmas just isn’t Christmas without sweets.  Hard candy at that.”            “I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed the season more.  I almost wish it were Christmas Eve.  That part about going off up the chimney always gets to me.”            “Sounds like a waste to me,”  Jackie answered.  He turned slightly on the bearskin rug, and his glance fell momentarily on the tall Christmas tree.  Beside it, still unopened, was the large trunk in which he always stored the decorations.  Oh well, he thought philosophically, he could always trim it tomorrow.  As it turned out, he had far more urgent things to tend to this evening.            He looked back at his companion.  Like Jackie, Lorenzo was naked, reclining lazily on the soft rug.  He smiled, his dark lips parting to reveal dazzling, even teeth.  In the firelight, his satiny skin gleamed maddeningly.  Jackie reached out to the broad chest, and ran one finger lightly over a brown nipple.  His finger slipped downward, over the rippling surface of a brown stomach.  It curled in the thick patch of gleaming black hair, and then it was back to its previous source of pleasure.            A massive arm moved about him, pulling him close again, and Jackie felt himself drawn into the gray depths of those haunting eyes.  His lips were crushed beneath another pair, and then a warm tongue invaded his mouth.  Jackie shivered as a strong male hand stroked his back, making its way downward.            ”Beautiful box,”  Lorenzo managed to whisper.  “I wouldn’t mind getting something of that.”            “I hope you don’t want to wait till Christmas.”  Jackie tensed momentarily, and then relaxed to the firm, confident exploration that was taking place.  Sexually, he regarded himself as a seasoned traveler; and the seasoned traveler, he had learned from experience, had to be prepared to travel whatever route necessary to reach his destination.  At times, that had meant traveling virgin territory, but not in this instance.            He was rolled gently over, onto his back.  For a moment they lay like that, the powerful weight of Lorenzo’s body crushing him down against the rug.  It lifted then, and he felt his legs being raised into the air, balanced on wide, thickly muscled shoulders.  He opened his eyes to smile up into Lorenzo’s eager, thrilled face.            “Should I say please?”  His companion wanted to know.            “Save your breath for ‘thank you’,”  Jackie informed him.  They kissed, and he felt the first, tentative probings, then a slowly increasing pressure.  He was reminded for a brief second, of his companion’s impressive size, but the memory was not an unpleasant one.  He moaned softly, more from pleasure than from pain, and then he felt himself filling up, seeming to swell with pleasure as the sensations moved rigidly deeper.            Lorenzo kissed him, and then buried his face in Jackie’s hair, gasping hoarsely.  “Dio, it’s never been like this.  I’m in Heaven.”            “I’ll be there myself by the time this is finished,”  Jackie informed him.  “Because I think I’m going to have the hell screwed out of me.”            He was right in his expectations.  Until now, it had been forceful, but cautious.  It moved on until its journey was completed, the lovely ornaments that Jackie had admired before brushing gently against against the smoothness of his taut buttocks.  Then, scattering goosebumps over his flesh, Jackie felt it withdrawing, slowly, slowly-only to come crushing into him again, this time with an intense ferocity.            Jackie moaned again, arching upward off the rug.  “Careful of the rib cage,”  he managed to gasp, as the plunging became a roller coaster ride at breakneck speed.            “Ah, ah,”  Lorenzo sighed and sobbed, hurling himself against his partner.  “So beautiful, so unbelievable, It’s like a miracle.”            Then so abruptly that it was shocking, he came to a complete stop.  “It is a miracle,”  he exclaimed, his eyes wide with astonishment.  “Listen, I hear bells!”            For the first time, Jackie heard them too, filtering through he haze of his arousal - chimes, actually, a special signal that only he would understand.            “Christ!”  he swore aloud.            This exclamation only increased his partner’s consternation.  “Then it is truly a miracle, a virgin birth - the second coming!”            “Hardly virgin,”  Jackie reminded him.  “Although any birth from this would certainly be a miracle.  Anyway, I think we can forget about coming.”He extricated himself from the now passive embrace of his befuddled partner.  “Don’t go away,”  he said, heading with reluctance toward his bedroom. Annoying though it might be, he could not ignore the summons of the chimes.  His training on that score had been thorough, and he was dedicated to his duty.            In the bedroom, he went directly to the long low dresser.  On its surface was a figurine of a naked youth, seated.  Its appearance suggested nothing more than a piece of decorative art, but in reality it was more than that.  Jackie lifted it from the surface of the dresser, knowing that a concealed switch would start it operating at once.  He turned the bottom side up and lifted it to his face.  On this surface, too, it appeared perfectly innocent, but concealed cleverly within the posterior anatomy of the figurine was a miniature speaker, into which he now spoke, in low, terse terms.            “Holmes here,”  he addressed the porcelain buttocks.  They were, he decided a poor substitute for the lovely pair he had so recently been fondling.  “Jackie?”  He recognized the familiar bass voice at once.            “Yes, Rich.  What’s up?”            “Maybe I should ask you that,”  the voice chuckled from the area of the porcelain crotch.  “Your voice has that come hither sound.”            “Hither, thither - how can I get around to coming anywhere when these damned chimes are always going off before I do.”            “Sorry about that,”  Rich said, then grew sober.  “But this is really hot.  Upton’s called, he wants to see you pronto.  Use Contact Hustler.”            Jackie’s annoyance paled - Contact Hustler meant something big.  ”I’m on my way,”  he answered.  Without waiting for further comment, he replaced the figure on the dresser, and started at once back to the living room.            Lorenzo was still bare on the bearskin rug, looking confused by the entire situation.  “Sorry,”  Jackie said as he entered the room.  “But that was business, big business.  I”ll have to go out.”                         “What about this big business?”  Lorenzo asked, indicating.  For all the distraction, his business was still up and throbbing painfully.

            Jackie went past him to the table where he had left his gift wrapping paraphernalia.  He selected a large ribbon with a bow and, coming back to his companion, slipped it neatly around the prominent portion of Lorenzo’s anatomy.  “Put it under the tree,”  he suggested.  “I’ll be back to open it later, okay?”

 

Having learned that jewel thieves are using department store Santas to rob the stores of jewelry Jackie subsequently goes in drag as child actress Shelly Tipple to try to crack the case - with unexpected results…. 

  At first, Rich did not recognize the creature who entered the apartment the next day.  It was exactly as though the child actress had stepped from the movie screen of several years ago.  Her blonde hair hung in curls over her shoulders.  She wore a jaunty sailor cap, and a frilly skirt, and there were large bows on her patent leather shoes.  In one hand, she carried a small purse, and in the other, a huge lollipop.            While Rich stared in amazement, the little moppet did a brief soft shoe and sang, in a high, lisping voice, a few bars of the hit tune from her baseball movie:  “Show me your balls and I’ll take a crack at them.”            “It’s unbelievable,”  Rich declared.  “You look like a sweet little girl.  You look, in fact, exactly like Shelley Tipple, a few years ago.”            “You say the nicest things,”  Jackie answered in his normal voice.  “But I’m glad you like it.  After all, I want my daddy to be happy with me.”            “Your daddy?”            “Of course, I’ve always said I wanted you for a daddy.  And a little girl like me can’t just go running around town by herself.  Suppose I got molested?”            “Perish the thought,”  Rich said with a laugh.  “Well, I suppose you’re right.  I’ll have to clear it with High Camp, and arrange to have the office monitored.  But, frankly, I don’t think I’d want to miss this performance for anything.”              A short time later, they were making their way through the crowds at Marcy’s Westside department store.  Jackie held tightly to Rich’s hand, tickling the palm occasionally, to Rich’s discomfort.            The Santa Claus department was on the fourth floor.  Already, though it was early, there was a long line of children waiting with their mothers and a few fathers.            “Oh, Daddy,”  Jackie squealed, jumping up and down on one foot,  “There he is.  It’s Santa Claus.”            Rich smothered his embarrassment and took his place in line with his “daughter.”  The line moved forward slowly.  The children fidgeted.  Some of them cried, or yelled.  The little boy in front of them stared at Jackie for a while and then stuck out his tongue.  Jackie stuck out his as well.            “Now be nice, dear,”  Rich warned him, tugging his hand as the mother turned around to glower at them.            “Oh, sure,”  Jackie agreed reluctantly.  He shoved his lollipop in the little boy’s face.  “Here, wanna suck?”            The mother nervously yanked her son in front of her.  ”Charming little girl,”  she said without enthusiasm.  “But isn’t she a bit big for this sort of thing?”            “Jackie Sue?”  Rich asked.  “Oh, she’s just tall for her age.  She’s only eight.”            “Heavens, what on earth do you give her to eat?”            “Oh, she eats a variety of things,”  Rich said. “She can’t seem to get enough of the things she likes.”            “Mostly meat,”  Jackie Sue added.  “I love tons of meat, fresh, hot meat, especially big fat sausages.  And loads of cream.”            “And cheese,”  Rich suggested.            “Ugh.”  Jackie Sue made a face.            “Sounds like a heavy diet for a young girl,”  the woman said doubtfully.            “It puts hair on my chest,”  Jackie Sue answered, to the woman’s dismay.            “She’s got quite a sense of humor,”  Rich said, giving Jackie’s hand an anxious tug.            “So I see.  Well, as big as she is, I’ll bet the boys don’t tease her much.”            “Oh, I hate a boy who’s a tease,”  Jackie Sue said.  “I like boys who are soft on me.  But if a boy gets hard, why, then, I sit on him.  I’ve sat on lots of boys.  They always come after a while.  To their senses, I mean.”            The line moved forward again.  The woman seemed to have given up the conversation.  After another long wait it was time for her son to chat with Santa, and Rich and Jackie were next in line.  Jackie took advantage of the opportunity to study the Santa.  He looked like an ordinary department store Santa Claus, and not at all like a jewel thief.  But then, Jackie reminded himself, just at the moment he didn’t look like a secret agent, either.  You just couldn’t go by appearances in this business.            At last it was Jackie’s turn.  Ignoring the surprise on Santa’s face, he skipped up the length of the carpet and proceeded to climb up on one big knee.            “My,”  Santa said, obviously finding this visitor heavier than most.  “You’re a big girl, aren’t you?”            “The better to climb your tree,”  Jackie quipped in his little girl voice.  He had decided to make his play right away.  Without waiting for further conversation, he broke into song – “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly . . . “  He paused at this point.            Santa gave him another surprised look.  Then, after a pause, he laughed and finished the line – “Fa la la la la, la la la la.”            There was an awkward pause.  Uncertain just what the procedure was with the gang, Jackie decided to continue.  “Tis the season to be jolly . . . .”  This time Santa didn’t laugh, but with a shrug added the fa la las.            “Don we now our gay apparel,”  sang Jackie.            “Are you planning on becoming a singer?”  Santa asked, tiring of the singing game.            “Have you heard enough?”  Jackie asked.            “Oh, quite,”  Santa assured him, getting a bit impatient.  “After all, you didn’t come here to serenade Santa, did you?”            “Oh, no, not at all.  I came to get some goodies.”            “I see.  Any special goodies?”  Santa had regained his usual air of good cheer.            “Very special ones,”  Jackie replied in a lower voice.  “Something with feathers.            “I see.”  Santa was momentarily at a loss.  “Well, I don’t think we have any canaries on hand, but maybe by Christmas Eve . . . “            “Why don’t you just slip it to me?”  Jackie whispered, giving the bewhiskered man a wink.            “I beg your pardon!”            “You know, what you’ve been saving up for me.  Give it to me, okay, pops.”            Santa’s face reddened.  He cleared his throat.  “My, you’re a precocious thing, aren’t you?  Could it be possible that you’ve heard rumors about me . . . ?”            “Not just rumors,”  Jackie assured him.  They were talking now in lowered voices, although Santa kept glancing nervously at the waiting line of parents and children.  “I know about your special things for little girls – the right little girls.  I’m here to get mine.  And I assure you, I’m the right little girl for you.”            “Well, yes, of course, I can see that,”  Santa said with a nervous giggle.  “But of course, you know I couldn’t do anything like that here, with all these people watching.”            “Then I’ll meet you somewhere.  How about in the stock room?”            “The stock room?  You want – you want to meet me?”            “Sure, and anyway you want to spell it, too.”  Jackie winked again.            “Oh, I see.”  Santa seemed increasingly nervous. “What did you say your name was – Lolita?”            “Jackie Sue.  Look, I haven’t got much time, I’m meeting another old guy later.  Can we make this a quickie?”            “What about your daddy?”            “Him?  Oh, don’t worry, he’s in on it.  He always goes along when I’m after this sort of thing, just to make it safer.  No questions asked that way, don’t you get it?”            “Yes.  I must say, it’s a unique arrangement.  Well, I take a break in fifteen minutes.  If you’re sure, why don’t you sort of hang around and follow me down to the stockroom.  “We’ll work something out, okay?”            “Now you’re talking.”  Jackie raised his voice again.  “Oh, Santa, you’re such a card.”  He gave Santa a smack on the cheek with his lollipop.  “I can’t wait to see what you’ve got for me.”            “Well, it’s nothing spectacular,”  Santa admitted ruefully.  “I mean, don’t expect too much.”            “It may be small,”  Jackie whispered.  “But I’ll bet it’s priceless.”            Santa blushed again.  “I’ve been told it’s very nice,”  he admitted.            The other children were getting impatient. Santa reached into the large box beside him and brought out a small present – not, Jackie noticed, a lavender one.  “Here’s a little something from Santa,”  he said loudly.  In a lower voice, he added,  “I’ll have something special for you down in the stockroom.”            “Goodbye, Santa,”  Jackie chirped, climbing down off the knee.  With a final wink, he skipped over to where Rich was waiting and grabbed Rich’s hand.  “Okay, Daddy, let’s go,”  he said, tugging his partner away.            “How did you do?”  Rich asked as soon as they had moved away from the crowd.            “Fine,”  Jackie assured him.  “although personally I think this guy’s goofy.  But I’m to follow him to the stockroom in a few minutes.  He’ll give me the real stuff there.  Apparently, they aren’t taking any chances.  They may be getting nervous.”  He related his conversation with Santa.            “I don’t know, it sounds strange to me,”  Rich said.  “Maybe they have gotten wise.”            “I don’t see how.  Anyway, this guy is just so much blubber.  I can handle him all right.            “Maybe so.  Still, while you’re waiting for him to take his break, I think I’ll check it out with High Camp, just to see if there’s any dew developments.  You never know.”            “Okay.  I’ll wait here where I can watch Santa.  But make it fast.”            Rich hurried away through the crowds, in search of a phone.  Jackie turned back, to discover that Santa was just closing up his shop – to take a break, the sign said, to feed his reindeer.  As the red-suited man crossed the store, he gave Jackie a wink and a quick nod of his head.  There was nothing Jackie could do but follow him and hope that Rich would not be gone long.            Santa disappeared through a door marked EMPLYEES ONLY.  Jackie paused, glanced around to confirm that he wasn’t noticed, and slipped through the door.  Ahead of him, Santa paused beside an aisle that led through the stock bins.  When he saw Jackie, he again jerked his head and disappeared down the aisle.  Jackie followed him.  As he came to the end of the bin, he found Santa waiting for him, safely away from any observors.            “Well, have you got it with you?”  Jackie in a low voice.            Santa looked startled.  “I could hardly leave it behind,”  he said.            “Where is it?”            “Where . . . ?  Why, in my pants, of course.”            “Oh.”  Jackie was increasingly uneasy.  This man seemed to be stalling for some reason.  Maybe this was a trap.  Or, maybe Santa still wasn’t convinced that he was a member of the gang.            “Well, let me have it,”  Jackie said.  “I hope that it’s lavender, with feathers.”            At this Santa truly was startled.  His eyes went wide.  “What the hell do you want with feathers?”            “Maybe I like to be tickled,”  Jackie answered, giving him a coy smile.            “Oh, I see,”  Santa said nodding.  A lecherous expression came over his face.  “Just playful, huh.  Well, come here, you little minx, Santa will tickle you plenty.”            He made a grab for Jackie, flinging his arms around the ruffled shoulders.  “Hey,”  Jackie gave a muffled squeal.  “Take it easy.  I have to see you package first.”            “Heavens, you are certainly forward for a little girl.  But, if you insist . . . “  Relinquishing his hold on Jackie, Santa began to unbuckle his wide belt.  “Did anyone ever tell you you look just like . . . ?”            It was at that moment that Rich appeared, rushing down the aisle.  “What’s the big idea?”  He demanded in an angry voice.            “Oh . . . !”  Santa stopped with his pants hanging open and his stiff rod jutting out – he had certainly been right, Jackie thought, when he had said not to expect too much.  He gave Jackie a look of consternation.  “I thought you said Daddy knew all about this.”            “But, Daddy,”  Jackie tried to say, puzzled by Rich’s show of temper.  “This nice man . . .”            “Never mind,”  Rich bellowed.  His loud voice had produced instant results.  Already other employees had stepped into the aisle to stare at the trio.  “How dare you, you monster – molesting my innocent little daughter.  I ought to thrash you.”            But – but . . .”  Santa sputtered, looking about in horror at the growing crowd of angry and shocked onlookers.            “Daddy, darling,”  Jackie tried again.            “Come on, dear.”  Rich grabbed his hand and fairly dragged jackie away.  “We’ll talk to the manager about this.” 

In which the Underground Diner, The Friend and The Mother, go upscale at the Lucky Pierre Truck Stop and Dining Room….

The Mother was certainly relishing her salad by this juncture of the evening and was leaned over her tray with both hands moving like lightning, which is truly a sight to behold if you have never seen it, but she did say that she was off the beans after what had happened earlier, and besides the air at our table didn’t need any more perfuming, and she just did not care to even have them on her plate at all as they were spoiling her appetite, but she couldn’t see anyplace to put them as The Diner refused to have them added to his Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail Pierre, until she espied that the woman at the next table, who had been laughing the hardest of anybody, had left her purse sitting open on the floor by her chair leg. So The Mother rolled what was left of the beans up neatly in some slices of the deli ham, and pointed across the room and shouted, “I see what you are doing over there under that table,” and when the lady stretched her neck to see, The Mother deftly slipped the ham and beans into the woman’s purse and snapped it shut, which she had disposed of the problem neatly, she said, and ordered herself another Jack to celebrate her own cleverness, as she put it.

There was a bit of a brouhaha between courses when the manageress, Miss Macilhenny, showed up to complain that The Mother had disabused the salad bar, which wasn’t meant to be partaken of on waiters’ trays, and there was now a rather large crowd of diners milling about and poking at those wilted cucumber slices, which was all that was left.

The Diner could see that the manageress did indeed have a point about the waiter’s tray, but as The Mother pointed out, our server, Maybelle June, had assured her that she could make as many trips as she liked to the salad bar, and as she was in a wheelchair and it was inconvenient for her to be scurrying back and forth every few minutes, which would have been a lot easier if they had placed the salad bar somewhere closer to our table and not halfway across town, and what difference did it make if she got it all at once and saved herself the trouble? Anyhow, as she put it, she thought the salad bar had abused itself, as the cucumbers were wilted, which The Friend was willing to attest to, and the deviled eggs had been so long out of the nest that they wouldn’t have recognized their own mother’s patootie.

Which Miss Macilhenny replied to with a rude suggestion that concerned her patootie, and The Mother retorted that Miss Macilhenny was so dumb she wouldn’t know the south end of a chicken going north, and there is no telling where this conversation would have gotten to, but it was culminated when The Mother accidentally rolled the wheel of her chair over Miss Macilhenny’s toes, this being the danger of wearing open-toed shoes in a job as physical as hers was, and when Miss Macilhenny began to shriek and flail about with her arms, The Mother got disconcerted and ran back and forth several more times over the toes before she got her senses back, and by this time considerable damage had been done, including dumping The Diner’s Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail Pierre into his lap which necessitated his eating the rest of it from there, and which caused some other diners to give him peculiar looks, but at a dollar ninety eight before seven P.M, he was not about to waste a good shrimp cocktail and besides the levis had just been washed and ironed, including a pleat.

The busboys rushed up to help Miss Macilhenny away, and since she was of an ample size, they hoisted her onto the leather horsey and carried it through the dining room, which The Mother said was the first time she had ever seen a horse with two hind-ends, and she further opined that Miss Macilhenny was the only thing there older than the macaroni salad, and the woman at the next table got to laughing so hard at The Mother’s witticisms that she reached in her purse for a hankie and now she was wiping her eyes with a slice of deli him.

The Mother however, pronounced herself “downright ticked off” at being treated like a second class citizen, and out of spite she scraped the rest of her salad onto the floor under the table, the pickled eggs of which landed on one of The Diner’s white snakeskin boots and stained the toe bright pink, which he tried to get off with the corner of the tablecloth, but to no avail, and The Friend said probably he would just have to dye the other one to match, but The Diner said he could not very well go around wearing pink boots because what would people think, and The Friend said that was a laugh coming from a man who liked to wear women’s panties, and The Diner said she didn’t have to trumpet everything she knew for all the world to hear, since the woman at the next table was now all bent over laughing and was trying to blow her nose on a string bean, and anyway, he only wore the panties when he and The Friend were engaged in some romantic interludes, and The Friend said she didn’t see anything romantic about a man in pink panties with Love Will Come embroidered across the front of them, and that was the only thing that did most times anyway.

The Mother, who is nothing if not fastidious, said she had had enough of this kind of gutter talk, and she drove herself back to the salad bar with her tray, which was now being hastily restocked by a half dozen busboys.

Well, it seems Miss Macilhenney’s foot was being treated at the hostess counter with bacon grease on her toe, because some people say that is good for an open wound like hers, and the grease was being applied to the wound by one of the chefs, which The Diner must admit was pretty ugly, and Miss Macilhenny saw The Mother aiming for the salad bar again, and she had barely gotten a fork into the pickled tomatoes, though as she said afterward, she’d have gotten there in plenty of time if she hadn’t “out of the kindness of my heart” stopped on her way past one of the tables when a woman complained that there was a bug in her potato salad and The Mother said, “if you think that’s bad, you ought to see the mess on the floor under our table,” and from the way she described it, three people got up to come and see for themselves, and they were shocked, but none of them had any suggestions for getting the pickled egg stain off the snakeskin boot, so I guess that will just be a loss, and also by this time the woman at the next table had gotten herself into such a lather that she had slid right off her saddle chair and which she was laughing so hard she couldn’t get up to make it to the bathroom so this was another mess on that floor, which the visitors took note of, and the fact that the woman was wearing beans all down the front of her dress, which all agreed was an unusual fashion statement.

But I have gotten off the sidetrack here, and to recapitulate, however, when Miss Macilhenney saw The Mother making her comeback at the salad bar, she snatched a fire extinguisher off the wall and came charging across the room after her, and The Diner has to say, she was moving pretty good for a hefty woman hopping on one foot which if you have never done it is not easy to do and shoot someone in the face with a fire extinguisher while you are at it.

Needless to say, The Mother did not take kindly to a face full of foam, which she said left such a bad taste in her mouth that she was off her feed for a week, and she snatched a crutch right out from under an old codger who had the misfortune to pass by at that very moment, and who in his unbalance toppled across a table full of people who were just dishing around their All-You-Can-Eat-Spaghetti-Platter-For-A-Family-Of Six, which sent spaghetti flying everywhere and they thought that he had been stricken of a coronary, and there was lots of screaming, and someone dialed 911 and reported a man had just died at the restaurant, and the 911 woman said, “Oh, not there again,” and told them someone would be there by and by, and never to order the Tunafish Special Surprise at that place, if she had only known ahead of time, she would have been sure to warn them, and the health department ought to put up a sign about that, if you asked her.

Meanwhile, The Mother was stabbing Miss Macilhenny in the belly with the tip end of the crutch to keep her at bay, and one of the ladies at the table across which the old codger had toppled, thinking that he needed reviving, was attempting to give him mouth breathing, and he thought, as he explained later, that she had simply been overcome with a fit of passion and was trying to have her way with him, though why he should have thought that The Diner had no idea, since he wasn’t but a scrawny stick of a thing anyway, but it is always those fellows who think they are God’s gift, as The Friend points out, and he was trying to fend her off and his wife, who had taken good notice of those young ladies at the bar and thought that perhaps this one had started her evening at that location, was whacking at her with his other crutch, which she had outfought The Mother for, and he had just attained to his hands and knees in the spaghetti sauce when Miss Macilhenny, who had managed by now to hoist herself up atop the salad bar to get a better shot at The Mother, stepped into the new container of cottage cheese which the busboys had just replaced, with her good foot and went sailing, and lighted right astride the same poor fellow’s back, and he was so overwhelmed by being assaulted with not one but two amorous females, as he thought it, that he fainted dead away, and the mouth breather was at him again, to the additional dismay of the wife, who took off a high heeled shoe to replace the crutch which Miss Macilhenny’s spectacular descent had knocked to the floor and which The Mother was now wielding two of, which gave her a good advantage in the weaponry, the fire extinguisher having stayed behind amongst the pickled beets.

Now, The Diner is not one to point fingers, because as it says in the Good Book, let him who is without rocks cast the first stone, but he does hold of the opinion that what happened subsequently belongs right at the foot of that 911 operator, because she admitted when everything came out later that she had her mind just full up with that Tunafish Special Surprise, which she said was surely a surprise all right, and which had caused her three calls in the last month alone and she was just plain aggravated about, and she had just gotten a call as well of an illegal bingo game at Saint Alfonso of the Valley Church, and she got the addresses mixed up, so instead of the paramedics, we got the raiding party and the paramedics went to the church, which worked out just fine for them, because two of them came out winners, and the Pastor said he had never seen newcomers with such luck and he hoped that they put at least a little something into the poor box before they left, which only one of them did so.

When the raiding party came in, The Mother showed how fast she could move when she wanted to, and she abandoned her wheelchair, which was covered by now in fire extinguisher foam anyway and she put in a claim the next day for a new one, and where it asked the cause of the damage, she said she had met up with a cow which the agency said had never happened before in that neck of the woods, and she hightailed it back to our table, and the police officers, seeing three women on top of a table in what looked like a gang assault upon the person of an unconscious and helpless man, they arrested Miss Macilhenny and the mouth breather and the wife all three, and they took the codger with them for good measure, because as the Vice Captain, Vernon Melon, said to The Diner when he identified himself as a Gentleman of the Press, he might have been feigning unconsciousness to egg them on. “Some of these old coots can be pretty cagey,” as he put it in a nutshell, and also arrested was the woman from the table next to ours as well, even though Captain Melon admitted as to how he wasn’t sure what she had been up to, but as he put it, there was something awful suspicious about a person lying in a puddle of pee on the floor of a restaurant that has a string bean sticking out of her nose and can’t stop laughing long enough to give you any kind of explanation for things.

 

Excerpted from Life and Other Passing Moments, due fall/winter 2007 from Wildside Press

An excerpt from Life and Other Passing Moments, in which The Underground Diner, reporter for the Waltonsberg West Panhandle Express, takes The Friend and The Friend’s Mother, out for a romantic dinner. 

 

Fred and June’s Dew Drop Inn Live Bait Shop and Luncheonette is a casual dining experience, and the three of us had dressed accordingly, The Mother of course in that blouse that wouldn’t stay put and her brown mohair Capri pants which when she walked looked like two groundhogs wrestling, and the rest of us were in sundresses and tee shirts, the former of which The Friend had donned and The Diner was in the latter, in case you might have had a peculiar picture in your minds, as The Diner would not want anyone to get the wrong idea, especially after some certain remarks that someone had made publicly to one and all on our last outing, and The Friend wore her Peek-a-Boo blouse, of which she said laughing that she hoped somebody might peek, and I said I just hoped they didn’t say boo, and she did not talk to him on the journey either, which The Diner privately thanked the Lord for small blessings.

We were greeted at the door by a perky Almondine Crumpet, who both of them recognized one another as she and The Mother had gone to school together, but Almondine is years older, as The Mother is ever at pains to point out, the reason being that she was one of fifteen Crumpets and when she was a child, Almondine decided her first day of school that she wasn’t interested in any more of it and so when the other Crumpets trooped off to school each day she hid in the cow barn and it wasn’t until she was twelve that her mother caught sight of her one day in the chicken yard and immediately recognized her for who she was, and Almondine was carted off to school that very day and kept there, but she was already old for her age, and she was twenty four by the time she graduated, though of course she got older as the years passed, and the two of them never were friendly.

Almondine asked if we were there to fish or dine, and The Mother said the only thing she fished for anymore was compliments, and Almondine said that she might want to think about changing her bait, which it was not until later that The Mother decided that was on the snippy side, and The Diner could have warned the person that it was not the best business to get on the wrong side of The Mother, but then he thought, each to his own, as the man said when he kissed the cow, and anyhow, once The Mother got it into her head that she was not pleased with Almondine, she forgot that she was ticked off at The Diner, which the repast to ensue would surely be more pleasant for it.

Unbeknownst to the ladies, The Diner had called ahead and arranged for a surprise, and we were reserved for Fred and June’s Special Romantic Moonlight Dinner Cruise and Musicale, which consisted of we got into Fred’s outboard, which includes a one hundred horsepower Mercury engine, and we were paraded up and down the river while Fred’s nephew Dickie, who learned music at the community college and is locally recognized as an authentic real singer except he does walk somewhat funny, which we wouldn’t notice however in the boat, serenades you with befitting operatic music like Blow The Man Down and Indian Love Call, but sadly it turned out that Dickie had been stricken with some errant crockery a week earlier at a pancake supper, and it had left his windpipe out of commission for singing, which The Diner did wonder where the crockery had caught him, and he was not available for the evening, and The Diner said he ought to have been informed of that when he made his reservation, which he had guaranteed with his Chevron card which you have to do in advance to arrange for the Special Romantic Moonlight Dinner Cruise and Musicale, and if we were not getting the whole package, there ought to be an allowance made on the price, and we were at a stalemate for a bit, until June said she had found somebody to sing in Dickie’s place, being one of the other patrons there for the evening.

Well, it turned out to be our old friend, Zoe Pinkerwell, who said it was just making her feet itch all that good music playing on the jukebox and her not able to dance on account of her crutches, and especially Jailhouse Rock, which she said reminded her of her first beau, and The Friend said out of the corner of her mouth that she would have bet on The Battle Hymn of the Republic, which got The Mother laughing so hard that she had been drinking a beer which came from the cooler, and the beer came out her nose and three people got up from the lunch counter, which was two long boards which Fred had placed across his rear end on sawhorses, and they left and Fred had to go after them because one of them hadn’t paid for his Catfish and Hominy Plate, and Zoe said she might as leave go sit on the front end of the boat and sing for us, as she did in church on Sundays anyway, and at least she wouldn’t have to wear a choir robe, which she always does in church even when it is hotter than blazes, because as she said, the Lord apparently didn’t believe in air-conditioning for the New Albany Baptist Assembly, which The Mother, who is as devout as the next one, reminded her of Daniel in the lions’ den after the blowing of her nose, and Zoe said Daniel didn’t have to wear a choir robe and if he had, those lions might have had something to get their teeth into, and The Mother served her opinion that such a testament was blasphemous, and Zoe said if The Mother thought she was so blasphemous, maybe she would just stay right inside by the jukebox and listen to Elvis and The Mother could sing for her own self, and it looked as if the River Cruise might be spoiled for the Musicale portion of it, but Almondine Crumpet came by at just that fortuitous moment to take our orders. Well, The Mother ordered The Bumble Bee Tuna Spaghetti Bucket, of which she hoped Miss Strumpet could keep her fingers out of the bucket, and Almondine said that who was she calling a strumpet, and The Mother said that she didn’t understand why she was looking so huffy as she had plainly and clearly said Miss Crumpet, and maybe somebody’s hearing was going, which Zoe Pinkerwell said, that happens sometimes when a body gets on in years, and the two of them got to laughing so hard that the beer came out of The Mother’s nose again and Zoe said she was in danger of leaking and if they didn’t stop she’d have to go drape herself over the edge of the houseboat and there would just be an early moon above the river, and the two of them once again embraced the sacred bonds of friendship, though Almondine Crumpet wasn’t so very tickled, and went off to the kitchen in a high dudgeon.

Fred has a sign posted next to the boat that says, “You must be twenty one to ride this boat, or under an adult,” which is because of the romantic nature of the cruise, which The Diner thought the romantics would be curtailed a bit with The Mother along, but the ride would be nice anyway.

The Way Fred and June’s Special Moonlight Dinner Cruise And Musicale works, you place your dinner order before your boat sails, but you take your beverages along. As The Diner can attest, who is an old salt from way back, it can get plenty dry out there on the main, and then you come back to the dock to get your dinners, because there would not be room in the outboard to set up a table properly, as it was barely room enough for us as it was, with Fred at the back manning the engine, and Zoe at the front end with her crutches laid out long ways, and the cooler with our drinks, and Fred had bought his fishing pole along in the chance that he might catch something for the kitchen, and also on board were The Diner and The Friend and The Mother, who laughed gaily and said maybe she should just sit on Fred’s lap, which he said he needed his hands and his feet both to manipulate the controls, and which The Diner watched for all evening but never did see him use his feet until that unfortunate incident towards the end of things, and June, who was casting us off, said anyway the motor wouldn’t work if it was completely underwater from too much weight at one end, which is certainly the case, as except for submarines, boats weren’t designed to work underwater and you couldn’t do a moonlight dinner cruise in a submarine, since you wouldn’t get much moonlight. The Mother said it was a good thing June wasn’t going along or the whole boat would be under. And June said something in reply, but Fred gunned the motor at that moment which we couldn’t hear what was said and we set sail without further ado.

If The Diner may be permitted to back up here, there is a generous selection of beverages to choose from before setting sail, including coffee and tea and just about any kind of soda pop you could think of. The Friend selected the Hot Tea Your Way as it is described on the wall menu (which is the clean side of the back of a cardboard box with the selections written in red nail polish, which The Friend, who is of an artistic nature, described as completely clever), which consists of a little metal pot of warm water (”all the refills from the thermos that you want”) and your choice of tea bags, the selection including Lipton black tea and Bigelow green tea and Celestial Seasons Mandarin Orange; which is served with any one of three elegant plastic cups, the choices being Wile Coyote, Snoopy, or Sylvester The Cat. The Friend chose the Wile Coyote with The Mandarin Orange teabag, which she pronounced produced an oriental tea experience appropriate to a cruise and made her feel that she had traveled to some exotic location, which was enhanced by the river view with The Holiday Inn across the way, and the coal barges.

The Diner chose a Pepsi, which normally is imbibed directly from the can, but which he persuaded Almondine to let him have the Snoopy cup, which regardless of The Mother’s disdain, showed that the staff in this fine establishment was there to please their customers, and you don’t find service like that just any old place these days, as The Diner is well acquainted.

Also available for those on a budget is plain water, which some people apparently feared that Fred just hauled directly out of the river, so that there was a big sign as you came in that assured them that the management had personally passed all the water that was served in the establishment.

Terry Murphy fits not at all into the rough miners’ camp of the gold rush - little, effeminate, the constant butt of jokes and abuse - until the day he stops at the Lucky Dollar Saloon, looking for a job….and arrives just when the entertainer there quits…

“I came by,” Terry stammered, “I’m looking for work. I thought, well, maybe I could get a job here, at The Dollar. Maybe you needed somebody.”

Willis laughed mirthlessly. “You want a job? Why don’t you put on one of those dresses and go out there and dance for those damn fool miners. That’s what I need, sonny.” He stormed out, muttering angrily to himself.

Alone in the dressing room, Terry glanced about, and his eyes fell on the dressing table. Lizette had left most of her stage make up. There was a Spanish fan there, too, He picked it up and snapped it open.

Back in the Bowery, in the dressing room at the theater, Rosaria had entertained her fellow dancers often with her fan. “In Spain, a señorita doesn’t need words to tell a man what she wants to say, she can say it all with her fan,” she told them.

Clicking the fan open and shut, Terry strolled to the rack of dresses that stood along one wall, the costumes Lizette had left behind.

Why don’t you put on one of those dresses…Willis’s words seemed to echo inside his head. He thought of that time as a child when he’d dressed as a girl, how different he’d felt. He took one of the dresses from the rack and held it up before himself and looked speculatively into the standing mirror. The dress was black, vaguely Spanish in style, and lavishly trimmed in ruffles.

Even at a glance, he could see it would fit perfectly.

* * * * *

Willis was back a bit later. “You still here?” he said, coming in, “I thought I told you…”

He stopped inside the dressing room door and gaped in astonishment at the beautiful woman seated at the dressing table, scarcely able to believe what he saw. “Jesus H. Christ,” he swore aloud. “It can’t be, but…but it is, isn’t it? It’s…is it really you, Murphy?”

“Not any more,” Terry said. “Not tonight. Tonight, I’m Lola Valdez. And I’m going to dance on your stage.”

“You must be plumb loco. Do you have any idea what kind of men those are out there?”

“A pretty good idea.”

“They’d kill you for fooling ‘em like this.”

“They won’t know, if you don’t tell them,” Terry said. “Look at me, Mister Willis. If you didn’t know, would you ever suspect?”

“Someone will.”

“You go out there and tell them there’s a new entertainer just arrived in town tonight. Lola Valdez, you tell them, just back from a triumphant tour of the continent, where she danced for the crowned heads of Europe. And tonight, Lola dances for The Lucky Dollar Saloon.”

“They’ll string me up with you,” Willis said, but after another long, hard look at the face in the mirror, he gulped and shook his head, and hurriedly disappeared out the door.

Terry followed him more slowly. He paused at the edge of the moth eaten curtain, peering past it at the crowded saloon. For just a moment, his legs felt like they would fail him.

“He’s right,” he told himself. “You must be crazy, Terry Murphy, to think you could get away with this.”

There was a mirror tacked up just off stage. He looked at himself carefully in it. His hair hadn’t been cut since he had come here, and by this time it naturally hung all the way down to his shoulders. He’d used Lizette’s pins and a couple of Spanish combs to pin it up, and let the dark curls tumble down either side of his face.

He’d had to leave his glasses behind so he saw things through a faint myopic haze that, he did not realize until later, gave his glances a peculiar intensity. He had outlined his eyes to make them look even bigger and darkened his lashes. His mouth was painted a little fuller than it really was, and he’d made his complexion a bit lighter with powder, carefully not too much, and painted roses of rouge on his cheeks.

Other than his face and neck, there wasn’t much skin to be seen. He’d put on a trio of red petticoats under the black dress, and cinched it all at the waist with a gold chain. The skirt came down far enough to cover his stockinged legs but managed nevertheless to offer glimpses of scarlet ruffles when he walked. There were more ruffles that hid most of his bodice as well, and he had pinned a flowery lace shawl around his shoulders, that screened the rest of it while the glimpses of flesh showing through it created the illusion that they were was more to be seen than there actually was.

If someone who knew him, and especially someone who had any reason to suspect, looked closely enough, they might recognize him. But, who knew him here? Hardly anyone. He had almost never come into town, and then only briefly. They wouldn’t be seeing him up close, either, but from a distance, and as they had said more than once in their dance classes back in the states, distance lends enchantment. Besides, there was no reason for anyone to suspect, to think he was anyone but who Willis was announcing to them at this very moment: Lola Valdez.

Willis came offstage, looked at Terry and, with a nervous grin, shook his head in wonder. “Go on, get our fucking necks wrung for us, if you’re going to do it,” he said.

Still, Terry hesitated, until someone in the saloon yelled, “Well, where the hell is she?” and someone else echoed, “Let’s get her out here, then, and see what those crowned heads were so het up about.”

No, Terry told himself. I’m not crazy. I can do this. And I’m not Terry Murphy, either. I’m Lola Valdez.

And the moment he stepped out past the curtain, strolled to center stage, sashaying and making the ruffled skirt and the petticoats swish and sway with each step he took, that was who he became, and Terry Murphy was left behind in the wings.

Lola held the Spanish fan before her face and gazed out at the men over the top of it, smiling with her eyes as Rosaria had demonstrated for them, her gaze sweeping the room. It was a gesture that said, “I find you very attractive,” and her huge, dark eyes, just slightly out of focus, conveyed that message to every man in the packed room.

Something happened that had never before happened at The Lucky Dollar. The room went silent, a thunderous silence. No one spoke. Even the slap, slap slap of the cards at the poker tables went still. A hundred mouths hung open, a hundred pair of eyes were suddenly riveted on the little figure standing before them.

“Like a rose, suddenly appearing in the filth of that dirty room,” one of them would put it later, a description that would be long remembered by many.

It lasted half a minute, that eerie silence—a full minute, longer yet. You could almost hear the seconds tick by until Lola took the satin skirt between her fingers and lifted it ever so slowly, ever so slightly, offering more flashes of scarlet petticoat and one slender ankle—even an inch or two, but no more than that, of net clad calf.

She gave the fan a quick, sudden snap, revealing her face in full for the first time, and smiled, brightly—and there was not a man in the room who wouldn’t have sworn afterward that the smile was aimed directly and personally at him.

Pandemonium erupted. Male voices bawled like cattle in lightning, boots stomped, fists pounded on tables—so much noise that the very rafters shook and you half feared the roof might collapse, the building fall in on itself from all the noise and commotion.

Lola took a single step, rolled her shoulders. The silence fell again, as completely as before, as quickly as the noise had exploded.

She hardly knew afterward what she did. She was aware of the pianist banging out something on the piano, trying to follow the rhythm of Lola’s dancing feet, the notes nothing more than a discordant jangle.

No one cared. No one heard them. There was attention for nothing but that slim-waisted figure twirling about on the stage, tossing her fan, flashing her ankles, laughing and winking and weaving in hellish abandon. When she spun about, they saw more womanly leg than it was possible for a man to see anywhere outside of Belle Blessing’s whorehouse, and these legs were shapelier by far than any to be seen there. The mining camps didn’t generally get the prettiest women. Certainly, here, none as pretty as this.

At first, they watched in a stunned, almost disbelieving silence, but then men began to cheer and clap, and now they were throwing money onto the stage, vying with one another to see who could throw the most: coins, paper money, even and increasingly, little bags of gold dust.

Lola rewarded them by dancing still faster, with ever greater abandon, until the stage was littered with tributes to her spell and she could hardly step without bringing her slippered foot down on piles of money or bags of gold.

Finally, she leapt into the air, gave a final spin, and sank in a weary heap to the floor of the stage, panting from exertion.

“She’s fainted,” someone shouted from the audience and there was a shifting of many feet and a scraping of chairs being pushed back.

At once, Terry sat up and scrambled to his feet, knowing that he dared not let them rush to the stage to help him.

He smiled out at the audience and curtseyed, and again there was that roar of approval, and finally, for the first time in his life, little Terry Murphy knew love, felt it sweep over him in great waves from those cheering, shouting, clapping men—all their loneliness, all the grubbiness of their lives in this dismal place, their affection and desire, their excitement, coalesced into a great bubble of happiness that enveloped Terry and that it almost seemed he could float away in.

There was movement about the room, and no doubt some of them would have charged right up onto the stage, but Willis had the good sense to quickly whisk the curtain closed, and the last glimpse the miners had of Lola Valdez was the kiss she blew to them.

Terry quickly scooped up the money strewn across the stage, making a pouch out of his skirt to hold it, and ran for the dressing room. He had barely gotten there when Willis followed him in. The saloon owner was grinning from ear to ear, showing his blackened teeth, his face flushed with excitement.

“By God, you did it,” he cried, dancing a jig. “You did it. I can’t believe it. The toughest, orneriest men this side of creation, and you had them eating out of your hand.”

“Yes,” Terry said, sinking into a chair and looking at himself in the mirror. But it was not himself he saw, not the sissy boy whom others taunted or used for their pleasure, not the unwanted orphan, the butt of a lifetime of jokes. He saw someone beautiful, someone very much wanted, someone who brought happiness and pleasure to all who beheld.

He saw Lola Valdez.

Jesus Days is an excerpt from the novel Angel Land, set late in the 21^st Century—ravaged by the deadly Sept virus, the one time United States has disintegrated into The Fundamental Christian Territories, where Catholics, Baptists and Jews are registered as heretics, and gays are herded into walled ghettos, the Zones of Perversion. Aram is a territorial Elder, or administrative officer, in Angel Land, oldest of the territories. He has fallen in love with Harvey, and has arranged a meeting at the Jesus Days festival with the sister from whom Harvey was separated as a child, hoping to reconcile the siblings, and on his way to that meeting, stops to visit his brother’s fiancée.He is not aware that he has been followed there by Senior Elder Dorwin, Harvey’s lifelong nemesis.

 

(from a travel brochure)

Angel Land

The ultimate Family Value vacation!

 Ride replicas of the legendary cable cars “halfway to the stars.”

See—close up—the Bridge of the Golden Gate, once crossed by motor cars*

See the actual ocean, in absolute safety—no bio-hazards

 Visit an authentic restored “Frisco Watering Hole” of the Gay 90s 

Religious services every hour, every day. Baptisms 24 hours

 Plus—Tour free from unsightly perverts or homeless  Angel Land—your paradise on earth!  

Fundamental Christian Values strictly enforced!

No alcohol**, drugs or non-marital sexual activities

All Catholics, Jews and all other heretics must be properly registered.

All tattoos must be prominently displayed at all times.

*For safety reasons, viewing distance appr. 1.2 miles. Actual bridge cannot be entered.

**Holy Spirits, the FCT’s own beer, available at selected locations

Travel arrangements by Halo There, the official travel agency of the FCT.

   

Travel brochure printed by permission of the Council of Churches, ord. 3010a, petition on file

 

 * * * * *

Even from blocks away one could hear the Babel of voices that filled the air:

“Bethlehem Babies, fresh out of the oven, Bethlehem Babies, over here.”

“St. Peter’s Fish on a Stick. St. Peter’s Fish, hot off the fire. Hot fish.”

“Baptisms here. Baptisms.”

There had been a time, Aram knew, when the China Basin Family Activity Center had been used as a sports arena. Sports that were unfamiliar to him, but he remembered as a child his father’s talking about them with nostalgic enthusiasm.

The football game was the one he remembered most: one man held a ball in his arms and ran down the field and the other players tried to catch him. There were countless variations too. They all sounded simple enough, though he supposed there were subtleties that hadn’t been communicated to the child he had been then.

Those sports had all been banned over time. Too violent, some of them, or perhaps too homoerotic, though the Council would never have put it that way. Not that today’s youth were without their sports: there were foot races and relays, often right here in the Center, and somersaults and Stone the Martyr, which had always seemed plenty violent to him.

For sheer spectacle, though, nothing compared to Jesus Days—or more correctly, The Christ in Jesus Family Circus Festival. It lasted a full week and people flocked from all over the territories. “The vacation you’ve been praying for!” the travel brochures proclaimed it.

Strolling the midway, Aram thought that it was certainly the most colorful event in the territorial calendar, with the clowns and the acrobats in their gaudy outfits and costumed Apostles mingling with the throngs.

The scents of frying fish and fresh baked cookies wafted by and thick slabs of sucking pig perfumed the air and left grease stains on shirtfronts. Children passed around Candy Camels and the Crackers of Galilee and in the dirt at their feet crows and pigeons argued over the crumbs.

People knelt by an enormous tub to bob for apples and an enthusiastic group cheered a heavily draped Samson to lift greater and greater weights. Wide eyed children rode swaying donkeys around a roped oval or squealed and cooed at Noah’s Ark with its bleating sheep and goats, even a llama; and of course piglets, new ones each morning, their predecessors having been spirited away the night before to the roasting tent.

Aram paused briefly to regard the inevitable sinners in the stocks (”See The Penance Of Selected Sinners, Every Day”) and, just as inevitable, the young men there to taunt them and, when the guards looked conveniently away, to pelt them with pebbles and clods of dirt. There was a woman of middle years, tears running down her cheeks, and two men, boys really, eyes downcast, faces stoically impassive. He wondered what their sins had been. That would be announced hourly until their penance was complete. Perhaps he had sentenced one or the other of them himself. He couldn’t recall. The sentences seemed to run together in a blur. Had he always been so cavalier? Hadn’t there been a time when he had taken each case seriously, considered individually each person brought before him? When had they turned into faceless numbers?

He found Andra, at the playground, watching the neat rows of children waiting their turns at the swings and slides.

“Is it my imagination or were we a rowdier bunch?” he asked her. “Always shoving and pummeling one another, if I remember, and certainly making more noise than this batch.”

“Mostly, you liked to pull my hair,” she said. “Both of you.”

“You found every excuse to step on our toes, as I recall.”

“And the fact that we were brats does not mean that every generation must follow our example,” she told him primly.

“You don’t think they might be over-indoctrinated?”

“You sound like Elam.” She flashed him an annoyed look. “He’s the one always faulting the church. You used to be so, oh, I don’t know, so orthodox.”

“I’m afraid I lost my orthodoxy with my innocence.” He glanced around. “Where is Elam, by the way?”

“He’s working.” Andra frowned briefly. “Have you seen him lately?”

“Not for a while.” He considered for a moment whether he should tell her that Elam was not at work. He had stopped by the laboratory briefly on his way here, filled with guilt that he had neglected his brother so badly of late, and at the laboratory they had told him Elam was here at the festival.

“I think he’s working too much,” Andra said. “He never has a minute for his painting anymore. Or…” She checked herself, about to say, “for me.”

“I wish you’d talk to him,” she said instead. “He thinks I’m a terrible shrew when I say anything.”

He laughed and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “He adores you. And as for the children, it’s no wonder they’re so well behaved. If I’d had such a pretty teacher I might not have been such a brat myself.”

“Now you’re patronizing me,” she said.

“Only a little.”

“The children know that I love them. They can sense that sort of thing, I believe. I’ve told Elam we must have half a dozen of our own, maybe a full dozen. Which you may be sure elicited great groans of protest.”

He chuckled. “That’s just Elam. He’ll be a wonderful father, you can be sure of it.” He glanced around again. “If he comes, tell him I was looking for him.”

She watched him go and was aware that others watched him too, young women stealing surreptitious glances after him. Such a handsome man. Broad shouldered and slim hipped, with the same cute little bottom as Elam, though it was probably sinful for her to take notice of that. And so masculine, too, it was still difficult for her to grasp that he was…was the way he was. She could not quite say the word even to herself.

She liked Harvey though. He had an infectious quality, a boyishness that was hard to resist. Certainly she could see that Aram couldn’t resist. Watching them together she had been convinced that whatever Aram felt for him was profound, so encompassing that it could not help but frighten her. Where could it lead? What possible happiness could the future hold for them? But even with Elam she kept these doubts to herself. Whatever was in store for the Aram and his friend, it would be quite difficult enough without the burden of her fears.

She was jolted from her reverie by a cry of pain. One of the children had fallen from a swing and she started toward him but before she could get there someone had hurried past her and scooped the child up.

“Elder Dorwin,” she said, surprised not just at seeing him there but too at how gentle and soothing he was with the child. She had always thought of the Senior Elder as such a dour man. It had never occurred to her that he might have a tender side.

He cuddled the youngster and murmured to him and in a moment the tears had stopped.

“You’re very good with children,” she said admiringly.

He handed the little boy to her. “Children are our treasures,” he said. “They are our future.”

She couldn’t have said it better herself. “What brings you here? Surely the Senior Elder isn’t indulging in frivolity?” she asked in a teasing voice. “I thought you never rested from your labors?”

“The war against sin is never ending,” he said, offering her no responding smile. “But it is not always conducted in the church.” He glanced over her shoulder. “Actually I thought this visit might be a learning experience.”

“Yes, I suppose it could be that,” she said, chastened.

He did smile at her then and nodded. “Good day, Sister Andra,” he said, and went on his way.

She was surprised that he knew her name.

#

At a distance, in a moment of watching, you could see the resemblance: behind the thick lenses of her glasses, Jenny Walton had the same sharp-eyed wariness as her brother. The determined set to her shoulders reminded him of Harvey too, though on her it looked more defiant and less convinced. She had been pretty not so long ago, before something—life itself, perhaps—had sucked the vitality, the fire from her.

For the moment, this was not a reunion in the works but a job interview. He had corresponded with her about an opening in Angel Land’s administrative offices and since she would be here this week with Eden’s library delegation, had suggested that they meet. The rest he would play by ear.

“Good afternoon, Elder.” Her mouth was wide like Harvey’s, but thin lipped. Her smile came and went quickly and when it had gone it left little trace of itself. “Would you like to make a donation to the Library Fund? Or perhaps I could give you a demonstration?”

The Library Project had been a subject of controversy since its inception a few years earlier: a planned network of sites where every citizen could go and call up information on almost any subject.

The pilot had gone to Eden and there it had languished. It’s opponents argued that too much information was a dangerous thing, though from what Aram had seen, the “information” wasn’t likely to cause any problems: “The United States: a collection of individual territories with a central government; infamous for crime and vice and licentiousness (this represented by a photograph of a sailor and a girl kissing in something called a Time Square). The country was split into the nine FCT.”

“I’ve already had a demonstration,” he said. “You’re Sister Walton?”

She frowned slightly. “Yes, and you are…? Oh, the Elder, of course, the one who wrote me.”

“Elder Johnson. Is this a convenient time? I thought perhaps an informal conversation, a chance to get acquainted….”

She glanced around anxiously, as if lines of people were waiting for her assistance, but there was no one at her booth and hadn’t been the entire time he had watched surreptitiously from across the midway.

“They’ve got fresh coffee just over there, I tried some earlier,” he said. “You can watch your booth from there. Or,” when she still hesitated, “I can come back later.”

“No, this is fine.” She took a moment to lock up her donation box, which was empty as near as he could tell, and to cover it and her literature with a fringed cloth. Out of the booth, falling into step beside him, she was smaller than he had realized. He supposed he had expected her to be tall like Harvey.

“I trust you’ve given the matter some thought,” he said. “Of course, this is all tentative. For now I only wanted to see how you would feel about moving to Angel Land.” He bought coffee in plastic cups and found them seats at one of the plastic tables.

“I can’t imagine anyone’s not wanting to be here. It’s such an exciting place. It’s like you can feel the Lord’s work going on all about you.” She set her coffee aside untasted and regarded him solemnly. “Only, I wondered, how on earth did you come up with my name? There must be no shortage of candidates right here?”

He gave her a smile meant to be reassuring. “Let’s just say there are people who have a high regard for you.”

She seemed vaguely puzzled by that comment. Her answering smile was tentative. “In Angel Land? I can’t imagine who,” she said.

He ignored the question in her voice. “It is a big step though,” he said. “Leaving behind everything familiar. Friends, family….” He hesitated invitingly.

“I have no family.” She said it curtly, quickly, without self-pity, a mere statement of fact.

“Ah. But surely your file says, let me think, a sister, wasn’t it? Or was it a brother?”

She took her time with this subject, pondering. “I’m surprised that’s still in my file,” she said finally. “I had a brother. We were parted years ago. He ran away.”

Aram nodded, expecting more, but she looked past him into some far distance, momentarily lost in thoughts of her own.

“Ran away? And you’ve heard nothing since?”

“Nothing.”

“That must prey on one. Wondering, not knowing. Family, after all. Hard to let go of those ties, isn’t it?”

She looked directly at him then, fixing him with a steady, unblinking stare. “He was a willful child, full of sin.”

He felt a chill up his spine. It was not exactly what he had hoped to hear. “But, only a child, didn’t you say? One wonders, I suppose, what he might have become. Model citizen perhaps. Church official even.” He hesitated and added, with a slight laugh, “Or perhaps a heretic.”

She took the suggestion seriously. “Catholic, you mean, or, but he couldn’t very well be Jewish could he, or Muslim? Baptist maybe.” She smiled grimly. “Heretics burn in hell, don’t they?”

“Surely Christ speaks of forgiveness.”

“That’s true, yes.” She considered that briefly. “If I knew that he had been saved, that he had come back to the Church in full repentance. Yes, I suppose then I would be glad to see him.”

Which, he thought, effectively answered the questions he had, but he could not resist a final probe. “Perhaps not Catholic, then. Perhaps,” he hesitated. “Perhaps gay?”

Again those eyes behind their distorting lenses seemed to bore into him. “What a funny topic for conversation, Elder. Why this interest in a brother I haven’t seen since we were children?”

He shrugged and looked away. “Curiosity. Family is important, isn’t it? If we were to hire you here and you were subsequently to find him there, well, it could change things, couldn’t it? It’s something that ought to be considered.”

He was wrong about her: she could be fiery. Her eyes glinted fiercely. “Gay, you said? That’s what they call themselves, isn’t it, the homosexuals? Not gay at all, in my opinion. As I see it, Hell is not soon enough for those people. If I had my way they would all be herded into the public squares and burned alive. They’ve no business dirtying the world with their evil ways, corrupting innocent children, poisoning the air with their very presence….” Her voice had gone up. A couple at the next table looked in their direction.

She noticed and paused for a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said, calmer. She was wearing gloves and she took a moment to remove one and used it to wipe her brow, although the day was cool and rain threatened.

She rested her naked hand on the table. He saw that it was missing the little finger and a chill went through him. He began to understand. He had heard of that, of course. It was, on the books at least, a prescribed punishment for a wayward Born, though he had never heard of a Minister who had actually resorted to it: one finger for a serious offense, another for a second. He couldn’t recall if there was a limit to the mutilations. No more than ten, in any case.

He realized with a start that he was staring and looked up to find her smiling at him. “That was rude of me. I’m sorry,” he murmured, blushing.

“Don’t be,” she said. She held her hand up and regarded it as if she had noticed the missing finger for the first time. “I’m not ashamed. Proud actually. And grateful that my Minister was so firm in his duty. Not all are. It was a gift, you see….”

#

Oh, don’t, please, please, it hurts, it hurts….It’s meant to hurt. It’s meant to make you contemplate the pain you have caused me. The pain you have caused Jesus. Do you think your pain signifies at all in comparison to his, to the pain he suffered for you, ungrateful child? Pray on it. Share the pain. His pain. Share it and thank Jesus for it.

#

“…It was that glorious pain that finally brought me to see the light, praise be.”

Not too far distant a gospel quartet broke into song, their voices floating over the midway in sweet harmony: “Harvest time, it’s harvest time.”

He saw it then as clearly as if it were projected onto a screen in front of him. Harvey had run away and she had stayed. He had bartered his body to survive and somehow managed to keep his soul intact. She had been raped, not physically but spiritually. Her body, he suspected, was untouched, but her virgin soul had been deflowered, violated brutally, cruelly. And for the sake of what? Not God. No, certainly not God.

Others joined in with the singers, a few voices at first and then a growing chorus of festival goers: “…The grain is falling, the Savior’s calling….”

She held her mutilated hand before her and said, in little more than a whisper, “Hallelujah.” She stared hard at him and it occurred to him belatedly that she was waiting for him to reply in kind. He tried to say Amen but the word would not come. It turned to dust in his throat.

He stood up so abruptly that he spilled both their coffees, the liquid splashing across the table’s grimy surface and staining the front of his tights. A jay and a gull, squabbling nearby over a scrap of St. Peter’s fish, were startled into noisy flight.

“I’m sorry,” he said and knew that he was stammering. “Something has…I have to go….” He started away.

“…Oh, do not wait, it’s growing late….”

“Elder?” He stopped, but could not bring himself to look at her again. “You haven’t said, about the job?”

“Yes, of course. I’ll recommend you,” he said,

“Behold, the fields are white, it’s har-ar-ar-vest time.”

It began to rain as he walked. Overhead the retractable roof started to close and jammed halfway. People ran for shelter.

“Marcie.”

It was a long moment before a sleep-addled voice said, on the other end of the line, “Connie?”

“Did I wake you?” Connie asked in a noisy whisper.

Another long pause. “Connie, it’s, uh…one o’clock in the morning. What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” Connie giggled like a schoolgirl. She twisted a strawberry-blonde curl around one finger, chewing on the end of it, and said in a sibilant rush, the words tripping over one another, “Nothing, honey, absolutely nothing is wrong. Nothing could be righter, if you want to know, not possibly. Oh, Marcie, I’m sorry I woke you up but I just had to call and tell you, I had to tell someone, it is so unreal, it’s like a miracle. See, I was at Union Station this afternoon, I was just in the neighborhood and I thought I’d stop in and have a drink, you know, that little place on the mezzanine, and you will never ever believe who I ran into there, you couldn’t guess in a million years.”

Marcie sighed. “You’re right, honey, I couldn’t possibly guess. Who?”

“John! Isn’t that incredible?”

“John? John who?”

“John who? John Hagerman, who do you think, silly? My John.”

The pause this time was even longer. “John Hagerman?”

“Yes. Isn’t that the most amazing? He’d just gotten off a train. He got some sort of special leave, I never did quite get what that was all about, but you know how the Navy is. Of course, he was headed straight over to see me, and isn’t that the most bizarre coincidence, my being right there at just that moment, or he’d have missed me and who knows if we’d ever have found one another. Well, I’m telling you, we both just about laughed ourselves silly on the way back to my place.”

“Connie, are you all right? Are you taking your medicine? You know what the doctor told you, about skipping…”

“Medicine? For Pete’s sake, I don’t need medicine. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? I just spent the night with John. That’s the best medicine anyone could give me.”

“Honey, listen to me, don’t you remember—the letter? John’s…”

“Oops, got to go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

She hung up just as the bathroom door opened and a handsome young man in a sailor’s uniform came into the bedroom, smiled at her a bit hesitantly.

“My, my my, don’t you look handsome,” Connie said, and a bit more wistfully, “Oh, John, do you really have to go?”

He gave her a blank look. “John?”

She sighed. “Well, I guess one night is better than nothing. And it really has been a lovely leave, hasn’t it? Will you get back to see me anytime soon, do you think?”

“Maybe,” he said with a note of caution in his voice. He tugged his wallet from a pocket. “Uh, look, I don’t have much money, but, well…” He took some bills out of the wallet and laid them on the dresser. “Thanks. You know, for everything.” He started for the door.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

He paused, one hand on the doorknob, and looked a question at her.

“You haven’t kissed me goodbye.”

“Oh. Sure.”

He came back to the bed, looking a little embarrassed, and leaned down to give her a peck, but she put her arms up about him, clinging tightly and kissed him back voraciously. After a few seconds, he responded, kissing her with growing enthusiasm. When the kiss ended, he grinned at her, his embarrassment forgotten for the moment.

“Boy, you sure know how to perk up a guy’s leave,” he said.

She gave hi