A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing Read online

  Ladies and gentlemen, Battle said to himself, drunk off his own brain fumes, this murderess most definitely has the ass of God, yes folks, it is a gleaming white layer cake, but it is only a display item. She climbed down from her wagon, picked up her axe, walked over to the fire, and sat on a tree stump. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees.

  You don’t mind if I just sit here with my rump in your face for a second, do you, Battle?

  Nah, Battle mumbled, barely audible, and the horses raised and lowered their heads. Folded this way Lily now looked like she was composed primarily of ass. Battle sat behind her staring directly at it. Rump, he whispered, rump, rump, rump. Yes, Lily’s rump was XL and round, but from this perspective much larger than his already perfect understanding of it, of them, the two, the massive cheeks, since it took up his entire field of vision, as if her rump were a quarter-mile wide with a tiny bulge of fat extruding from either side. Battle thought he was going to die if he didn’t stick his head into Lily’s rump. He didn’t want to just smell, touch, kiss, gnaw, or grip it, he wanted to inhabit it with his mind, he wanted to go through the knotted flower into the big dark cave that he pictured as a high-ceilinged church that echoed with dark red walls.

  Lily had a curious look on her face. She turned to face Battle and the fire. She cradled her axe, kissed the blade, and then began to sing:

  Beautiful how sweet the flesh cracks

  When playing with my sharp beloved axe

  O she’s an intelligent girl

  As precious to me as a gleaming pearl

  Lily dropped her axe, grabbed her hair with both hands, and pulled. This isn’t hair, she said to Battle, these are nerve endings!

  Okay, Battle said. Then she clomped back to her wagon, flopped face down onto her mattress, rolled over onto her back, and stared at the top of the canvas ceiling. Then she looked at a picture Raymond had just hung up on the sidewall. What is that absurd picture doing here? A painting of cows skiing down a mountain.

  From underneath the wagon Raymond said, Perhaps an attempt at interior design.

  A hollow gulping sound could be heard. Battle knew Twyla was engaged with Moon, their horse, his huge soupspoon tongue incessantly kissing her, five solid minutes. Battle stuck his own tongue out, a weak pale thing coated white and smelling like an onion, that couldn’t be counted on to turn a screw. His eyes were dark, desperate dots that seemed to operate independently of each other. Battle brooding, uneasy: You can see why women prefer horses. Look at their rear ends. They are tremendous. He reached back inside his pants and gripped his own sorry behind. Who knew? Why didn’t someone tell me that my rear end needs maintenance? A horse stands five feet high and seven-eighths of it is buttocks with a giant lock of hair running down the middle. How do you compete with that?

  Twyla stood in front of Moon. When he finished licking she said, before you came along I only felt loved by my dolls. They never looked away.

  That night Lily dreamt with gritted teeth of a giant dreaming pig named Jealousy Song whose adorable ears wiggled and eyelids fluttered as she slept; a small stinky pen with buckets of mash and slop, a big scalding sun high in the sky, more mud than could ever be known, squishy everything, water and more mud and a fresh young child underhoof, stomped and rammed and bitten to death and eaten completely within minutes, bones tossed up in the air, played with, buried.

  Raymond’s disruptive digestive problems forced him to sleep outside by the fire. An enormous ten-foot snake slithered up to him and decided to show his affection by dropping the bottom half of his mouth like a fork lift and scooping up Raymond’s feet. After that the knees, thighs, and torso were easy; soon came the head. The effect of the enveloping snake around his body was warm and comforting, and Raymond’s snoring sleep grew deeper, but air was scarce, and soon nonexistent, and he opened his eyes in this dark wet place. He pushed and kicked and tried to stand up, but nothing worked so he began to scream for help.

  A groggy Lily, waking after a restful ten hours, heard her husband’s faint call but didn’t know where to go. All she saw was this long silver sack like a swollen elephant trunk moving in little jerks, wiggling, murmuring by itself. In her sleepy state her first thought was baby and pregnancy and she sighed a little chipmunk orgasm sound, coo, the miracle of life, hopefully me someday, but then she saw a little black eye at the far end taking her in and she knew at that instant that it was a snake and she lunged at it, carefully sliced open its center as if she were unzipping an old sleeping bag, and out rolled her long, lanky, drippy husband, gasping for air.

  In the morning Raymond had a bowel movement that frightened him, something along the lines of a beet-red opossum, a true growler, and it stared back at him in grave seriousness. The fuck, he screamed, leaping backwards, falling, scrambling to his feet, zigzagging hysterically back to Lily, and without hesitation she asked if he had returned. He, she said so calmly. At first Raymond was perplexed by her question, but then realized she was right on target. How did she know? How utterly perfect; suddenly the matter of what to do with Gore’s wagon had ended. Reincarnated, Gore would remain with them on the slow crawl west. It didn’t seem right to travel with a man you had murdered, eaten, and shat out, but there were worse things. And really, when a crowd of new-ish acquaintances go on and on about how wonderful you tasted, it hardly seems right to hold a grudge. Flattery will keep a wagon train together.

  We’re all just passing through, Battle said, handing Gore his boots back. Gore forced out a smile and nodded.

  Thank God you weren’t the type of man or creature that dispels his entrails as a defense mechanism when plucked from life, Twyla said to Gore in full earnestness.

  Gore, eyes downcast, pinched his face like he was contemplating double-time or about to sneeze, and said, You’re welcome.

  It was a cloudy day, more milk in the sky than actual blue, plus a small breeze. Within an hour the wagons were loaded up, the horses watered, grinning discretely at each other, ready to hit the road.

  1865

  DIXIE BELLE: THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

  BY KATE BORNSTEIN

  DIXIE BELLE: THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

  Letter of May 26, 1865

  My Dear Friend Tom,

  It has been nearly two months since General Robert E. Lee hanged up his fiddle, and it’s only today that the very last of the organized Confederate troops are turning their weapons over to Union soldiers. I am writing to you after so many years and on this particular day because for the first time since the war begun, there’s a good chance there ain’t no rebels in the hills to ambush the United States Postal Express, and so this letter may ackshully get all the way to your door.

  I have addressed this to Tom Sawyer, and I hope with all my heart it is Tom Sawyer who is reading this letter and that he ain’t dead and buried out on some battlefield. But whether it’s him reading or maybe some surviving relative, have you got any idea yet who’s writing to you with such fancy, fine, and dainty handwriting? It’s me, Huckleberry Finn hisself! Not that anyone in the city of Nawlins has ever knowed me by that name. No sir. I go by Miss Sarah Grangerford, of the Jackson, Mississippi Grangerfords, honey, such a pleasure to make your acquaintance. There are a few folks know me as Elexander Blodgett, but the crawfish aristocracy and not a few soldiers and officers around town know me better as Sassy Sarah from Madame Violet’s Parlor of Elysian Delights, and I sure would appreciate if you don’t tell anyone that Huck Finn ever was my name.

  Speakin of names, the illustrious Mister Twain and I have crossed paths again, right here at Madame Violet’s! I am sure you will see him soon yourself. He asks after you constantly. I am trying my best to persuade him to write stories about this new life of mine the way he done before, but he seems to have some misgivings, which doesn’t make sense because I heard that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn made him some good money, more even than Tom Sawyer. How about that! I never read either of em all the way through. Have yo
u? You tell Mister Twain to write us into another book of his. You was always the one who could sell arrowheads to injins and chains to niggers. Have you seen the old man since we knew him, Tom? He has the same tobacco smell and the same crow’s feet about his eyes, only much deeper now, and his hair is gone all snow. He always tells me to send you his warmest regards and hopes for your well-being should I ever see you again alive. I certainly hope I am being successful in delivering his message through this letter.

  Well, I am bustin with all sorts of good stories to tell someone, and they are the truth mainly with only some stretchers. So, if it ain’t Tom Sawyer readin this letter, then whoever you are, I hope you enjoy the tellin. I’ll start back when I took my leave of Miss Watson and the Widow Douglas. Much as I appreciate those two god-fearin good women and all the charitable work they did on me, I reckon I was never cut out to be the well-behaved boy they expected me to be in return. So I let em kiss me goodbye and I set out down to the courthouse to collect the $6,000 that you told me Judge Douglas was holding for me. You remember? My pap never did get his hands on it, you said, and the judge still had it? No hard feelings, Tom, but it might’ve been better for all concerned if you hadn’t stretched the truth quite so far. The day I showed up to collect my heritance, the good judge instead made me the gift of bein a two years all-expenses-paid guest of the great state of Mississippi for what did he call it? Vagrancy and Public Noosance. He did it to self-improve me, he said, and if there ever were any $6,000 I never did see a nickel of it. Sure enough though, I learned a great deal about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as a guest of hizzoner’s sheriffs. Soon as I was fully rehabilitated from being a public noosance and released back, I hightailed it as far as I could from respectable society, and headed down to the river, which is the only place I ever felt free. I spent a year and some workin engine room on all sorts of steamboats, ferryboats, and fish-boats. Tom, I was happy as any river snipe ever had a right to be. Did you know I love to tinker with engines? But when your time is up, your time is up, or so they say, and I landed down here in Nawlins just three days before we heard that war had broke out between the states. From that time on, any sort of river travel got a whole lot harder to do without the Union interferin in your business, and it was clear to me that I was stuck to death in the largest city of the newly constitutionalized Confederate States of America. What little money I had saved ran out. I was a fine mess with not even two bits to pay a barber to cut my hair, which by this time had growed down to my shoulders, as long as my pap’s but nowhere near as greasy. I had the choice of stayin in the city or livin out in bayou territory, shootin possums and Union soldiers. Well, I was never very fond of eatin possum, nor have I ever shot a human bein in my life, though if I was to do, it would be a Union soldier rather than a rebel. So I stayed in the city and took myself whatever slop jobs I could find on the waterfront, where everyone worked long hours for not one penny but for two tasteless meals and a sweltering bunk-room filled with too many hardworking newly mancipated niggers, Creoles, and no-account tars like me. I was beginning to reconsider my thoughts about possum.

  Then came April 1862, a dark month for the Confederacy but a darker month for Nawlins. The Union Admiral Fraidy-Guts invaded the port like it was no more than a mud castle made by children. He fit an almighty battle, sinking eleven of our ships and clearing the way for the soldiers to march in and take the city, which they wasted no time in doing. The Occupation dried up most of the river trade and most of us dock rats found ourselves out of work. Both armies were lookin for fresh meat for their cannons so they sent recruiters down to the waterfront every day. The Rebel recruiters were sly. They had to be. If they was catched, it was prison and certain death as traitors. Still, some niggers and bums sided with the Rebs and resisted by all means the Occupation. The Union recruiters on the other hand were full of themselves and with good reason: They was holding all the cards in this game, and they offered us positions in their army like they was offering us a place in heaven, which place I have never been very anxious to visit anyways.

  Well, I reckon you are about all out of patience wondering what a boy like me is doing calling hisself Sarah and writing you with handwriting so like a girl’s. Well, wait jest a minute more because I’m getting to that part.

  I suppose I owe it all to the papists. There sure are a whole mess of em here in Nawlins, and most of em residing in the frenchy quarter. A couple years back they built themselves three entire new churches in that part of town. Well, I heard tell Our Lady of Perpetural Sorrows would feed the poor, and none bein so poor as me and since I hadn’t had a bite to eat for nearly two days, I saunters my way down to the frenchy quarter. It were a summer-time sabbath morning. I never been inside a catholick church and I didn’t figger on spending so much time on my knees. I was beginning to wonder when that perpeturally sorry lady would make an appearance and start feeding us poor folk, when all of a sudden this priest feller in skirts commenced ringing a bell and everybody in the place gets up off their knees quick enough and marches up to a little fence they got inside the church, right up front. Then this fancy-dressed priest pours hisself about the biggest cup of wine I ever seen and I’m wonderin is he going to share it or drink it all hisself. Well, one by one each of them catholicks dropped to they knees, turned up they faces, and opened up they mouths like baby birds waitin fer worms. My turn at the little fence came soon enough and I dropped to my knees like I been a catholick all my life. The frenchy priest looked down at me and muttered something or other and it wasn’t even in the French language, but I closed my eyes and opened my mouth. Durned if he didn’t drop a insignificant crust of bread on my tongue which I chewed and swallowed even though it was dry and dint particularly taste much. Naturally, I opened my mouth for more.

  “Move along, my child,” says this priest to me.

  “Well, sir,” I say perlite as I can, “I’m still hungry.”

  “Well I ain’t a’feeding you,” he says. “I’m a’blessing you.”

  “Priest,” says I, “ef this is a blessing, then I’d ruther have a curse as it would likely leave a better taste in my mouth.”

  He made to push me away and I think I took a swing at him. I’m not all that sure what happened next because I fainted dead away from hunger right there at the little fence. I know I didn’t get any more bread. The next thing I do know is I’m flat on my back out in the middle of some dusty road in the frenchy quarter at high noon, and I’m lookin up at the prettiest angel I ever did see. She was lookin down at me and the sun was behind her head, all halo-like.

  “Ma’am,” I inquired perlite as I could, because the catholicks had jest showed me how ornery they could be if a feller wasn’t perlite enough, “are you Our Lady come to feed me?”

  She jest tosses her head back and laughs. “I may feed you, boy,” she says, “but first you come with me out of that awful hot sun.”

  I was surprised to see that Our Lady was a quadroon beauty, tall, long of limb, with skin the color of creamed-up coffee. I let her lead me across the road and through a pretty little wooden gate set into a row of nicely trimmed hedges and we come into a well-kept garden. A nice breeze springs up, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of all the flowers. Of a sudden, I remembered my manners and tip my hat and out spills all my scruffy long hair down over my face and shoulders, which I think is gonna put her off, me being such a bum.

  She laughs about the loveliest, deepest, richest laugh I ever did hear and says, “Better and better,” and smiles a smile like to break my heart she is so lovely. “Young man, you want to earn yourself a dixie?”

  Well, that settled it for me: She was not Our Lady, for I had never met a catholick willing to part with a nickel, let alone one of the famous ten-dollar notes writ on the back of them in French with the word dix.

  “Ma’am,” I said to this beautiful woman, “I will do whatever it is you want for jest a little bit of supper, being as how I haven’t et a bite for nearly a week now.�
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  She jest clucks her tongue and marches me into the house attached to the garden, and I find myself inside a cozy kitchen presided over by a fat, smiling Creole cook.

  “Bon Mambo, please fix this boy a hot breakfast right away. I’ll go fetch Madame Violet. She’s going to like this one. Boy, my name is Miss Rosie, so how do you get called?”

  “Elexander, Miss Rosie,” I says, Elexander being a name that has served me well in the past. Then I add for good measure: “Elexander George Phillip Blodgett.”

  “Fine then, Elexander George Phillip Blodgett, you eat your fill and I’ll be back with good news by the time you’re done.” And with that, Miss Rosie sweeps out of the kitchen through a fancy beaded curtain, leaving me alone with Bon Mambo, who has already begun to crack a couple of eggs and turn up the flame under a pot of greens. Now in case you don’t know, a Mambo is a lady priest of the voodoo people, whose priests ain’t nothin like the frenchy catholick priest I near brained over the street at Our Lady of Perpetural Sorrows. I heard tell that Mambos could turn you into a zombie if they wanted to, and you’d have to do everything they tell you to. Bon Mambo set a plate of eggs and greens down in front of me, and I fell to it like a dog.

  “Mistah Elexander,” she says to me while I devours the victuals, “you ain’t really no Elexander, and if you stay in this house much longer you ain’t gonna be no mistah either. But they’s good news for you too.”

  Now, the short hairs on my neck was standing on end but I kept silent and went right on eating. It’s best not to innerupt Mambo ladies who are tellin your fortune so she kept on atellin mine: “Come tomorrow mornin, you gonna be not one but two dixies richer than you are right now. An you gonna give Bon Mambo one o them two dixies as tribute, and fo me keepin you alive with these here eggs and greens.”