Pepsi Bears and Other Stories (11 page)

Greek mythology tells us that when Zeus, in the form of a swan, took Leda unwillingly in the night, she was of such chaste body and mind, so unsuspecting of the debauchery about to befall her, that she gave off a sound so replete with betrayal, shock and despair that it
split the sky above Sparta and a thousand angels tumbled to their doom. A similar chastity might be assumed for Jorge Luis Enriquez, Great Leader of the Red Guards of the Nicaraguan Liberation. For the scream that emanates from his quivering jowls rolls up out of that village through the jungle of the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, sending a thousand birds into panicked flight, alerting all that an unthinkable indignity has been visited on a demigod.

Matt and Chris and Amelia, looking down on the village from their place of hiding in the jungle, grimace at the sound.

‘What … on earth … was that?' Matt whispers, standing and glancing around fearfully.

‘A chauffeur,' Amelia tells him. ‘Making turtle soup.'

H
istory throws up many examples in which people have talked to or seen God through animals. But Australia is young and the case of the Friesian adorned with a portrait of Jesus was the first of God's revelations to his children in that land through the medium of his quadrupeds.

Near the irksome town of Korumburra in the green hills of Gippsland a dairy farmer named John Kirkoff was devout enough, and poor enough, to discover he had a Friesian milker with a black patch that, if you squinted and believed, resembled a silhouette of a Lord Jesus with cauliflower ears.

The mutterings and objections from more traditionally religious people went unheard. For any man who
has been raised above the masses by having God stamp his cow with a likeness of His son is hardly likely to pay heed to the jealous sniping of those who have not.

Bus loads of fans came out to see that cow and Farmer John grew fat charging them ten dollars admission and selling them half-litres of Holy Milk at a hundred dollars a pop. Why not? Holy Milk needed no pasteurisation, Farmer John avowed, and he pumped it straight out of the Jesus cow into whatever receptacle the believers held, be it Coke can or hip-flask.

This killed a born-again Baptist from Punchbowl who skolled the milk while crossing the border back into New South Wales lest it be confiscated by fruit-fly inspectors. They buried him in the Punchbowl cemetery.

The death of the born-again Baptist killed off the allure John Kirkoff's Friesian held for Christians and air-conditioned buses of devout fans no longer came to see her. Her days as a star attraction, where she stood fondled by crowds of lowing believers, were over. Not wanting Jesus to be implicated in the poisoning of a Baptist, people squinted at their snapshots of the cow and said she fooled them at first, but now they were onto her. Now she seemed to be besmirched with the visage of a stoned Argentinean rugby prop, rather than adorned with the likeness of Our Lord.

Though she was defrocked, in Gippsland she had ignited a need in people for their animals to be living,
breathing, holy messengers who could turn a buck. In the year of Our Lord 2009, a year in which the Cassini spacecraft sent back close-up photos of Saturn, the Lord touched a hundred beasts in Gippsland and left them with his clear and unmistakeable mark. This is the story of that regrettable outbreak of holy branding and the Church's efforts to bring the contagion to a close.

On the Friday night after the born-again Baptist from Punchbowl went dead again, John Kirkoff's accountant, Hector Landis, was in the front bar of the Austral Hotel in Korumburra sipping his brandy-and-soda, while poker-machines played sound bites of orchestral pomp and a trio of mute TVs showed men at rugby and cricket and the dirt-bike scramble. Other men in that bar, beer drinkers, were laughing and joking about John's debunked milker. Leo Gibbs commented that unless John found the face of Jesus on his arse real quick he was likely to have both buttocks sued off by the twice-born Baptist's family. Normally a close adherent to client confidentiality, this remark angered Hector Landis so much he had to speak out. As John Kirkoff's financial advisor and himself a beneficiary of the blessed cow he was bound to say something in their defence. ‘Leo … you think I'd formulate a business model in which my client was not fully covered for public liability?'

‘Dude poisoned a Baptist, Hector.'

‘He sold a tourist a relic that that tourist foolishly ingested. Be very careful what you say, Leo. The Law is wolf unto slanderers.'

‘So, Hec, you reckon that really is Jesus' face on John's Friesian, do you? Eh?' Leo asked.

‘Professional confidentiality prevents me from saying. Have I ever spoken publicly on your father's brie?' Hector Landis asked.

Leo Gibbs pouted and shook his head.

‘No. Your father's a client of mine, and I never will speak of his cheese publicly. Even if it laid waste a hall full of senior citizens, I wouldn't seek the limelight as commentator and air my downbeat views.'

‘Take that back about my father's brie.' Leo Gibbs put his beer on the bar.

‘I didn't say anything about your father's brie. That was my whole point.'

‘Saying you wouldn't say anything about it even if it killed a hall full of seniors is saying something about it, Hector.'

‘Then … sorry.'

‘Good. It won a medal.' Leo Gibbs picked up his beer.

‘In the same year Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.'

‘Now you're going to have to say sorry again.' Leo Gibbs put his beer back on the bar.

‘Okay. Sorry again. But regarding John's Friesian, I will say this much, I will extend client confidentiality this far; I'll say it's the only cow in Australia that has milked people rather than vice versa.' Hector lowered his voice. ‘For a year it's been the most profitable tourist attraction in Gippsland. Think of that. That's a big achievement for a cow. And you blokes …' Hector
stared around at the beer drinkers, ‘you know I do the books for the Giant Earthworm.'

The beer drinkers shook their heads at this news. They had thought the cow's spirituality spurious, but no one could doubt its profitability once vouched for by Hector Landis, accountant for the Giant Earthworm.

‘It beat the earthworm?' Leo Gibbs asked.

Hector Landis nodded and, save for looped symphony-snippets from the poker machines, the bar went quiet as men blinked and pouted, searching for meaning in a world where a Friesian wearing a knot-eared Jesus could become a richer nugget than an eighty-metre-long cement earthworm with a jumping castle at its arse-end.

Later that night most of the farmers from that front bar went down on their hands and knees in their sheds and paddocks to scrutinise their livestock for the mark of the Lord by torchlight. Jack Chiseller's wife, Margaret, found the stigmata on their labrador, Buck, though there was suspicion he had got his front paws caught while besmirching Farley's spaniel bitch through a cyclone fence.

Jason Hillier, by looking at his Hereford herd, first the right way up, and then as he hung from his shed rafters like a bat, eventually discovered an upside-down Moses with a cowlick like Elvis in the white forehead blaze of a steer. Hallelujah.

Eunice Stronghold owned thirty-five Nigerian Dwarf
goats who gave a sourish milk that had not captured the local palate. She investigated them, one-by-one, for the Lord's artistry and came up empty handed, and was calling them an economic disaster and worthless runts and a pack of thankless little bastards when it suddenly dawned on her that their bleating resembled a loose Gregorian chant. By experimentation, Eunice found if she stood them on the iron grate floor of her milking shed and ran a few encouraging volts through that floor and turned those volts up at the right moment and down at the right moment, she could modulate and temper their chant into something akin to that emitted by the barbarous cathedrals of Eastern Europe. She called them the Assembly of God Korumburra Quadruped Choir and had her kelpies assemble them for two performances a day. Christians who came to visit never knew electricity was involved in the choir's harmony. They assumed it was a flock of willing amateurs under the Lord's baton. It became a great attraction.

Tim Watson saw the dark green face of Mary on a seedless watermelon he reared. Seedless, you see. Both the watermelon and Mary … confirmation the face was hers. The advantage of this watermelon over most of the other holy produce was it could be put in a pram and wheeled through the streets of Korumburra and a veil flipped up for viewing after a small donation had been made. It was a portable attraction. Though sadly, being seedless, it was a dead end as far as the propagation of further holy attractions was concerned. There would be no second coming for Tim Watson and his sacred melon.

Tim was an ox of a man and had, until Mary revealed herself on his fruit, been considered a good farmer. Now he abandoned the fields and perambulated his wonderful melon through the streets of Gippsland towns, flipping the veil for anyone who would part with a tenner. Whereupon they saw a wrinkling fruit with a coin-sized face that wore a slightly leery expression. The people who had parted with a tenner believed it was Mary, and the people who hadn't didn't. Such is the way of revelations.

Suggestibles came from all over Australia to Gippsland to glory in this outbreak of Godly sign and revel in the sight of His creatures, shampooed and groomed and miraculously decorated with biblical likeness. When a busload of believers has ridden from Cairns to Victoria to see John the Baptist revealed on the haunch of a Wessex Saddleback, they've travelled too many kilometres and eaten too much fried roadside food for disappointment to be an option. The most far-fetched likeness is swallowed whole and called a miracle by those who have committed to it by purchase of interstate bus tickets. So Christians fell to their knees before pug-ugly Marys and pecan-headed Christs and hollered their hallelujahs as though these malformed icons were duly ratified by the Church.

They were not. The Catholic Church hadn't felt so out of the loop since Joan of Arc started talking directly
to God. People gave up attending. Instead they toured the farms where God had made himself evident, stopping to ogle the likeness of His son on a cow over at Rosebank before travelling on to take in an Adam on a duck egg at Limefield. All the Catholic Church of Korumburra could offer as a counter-fascination was a handsome young priest named Father Gould Wakeling.

Father Gould was born with the built-in smile of a dolphin or a Dalai Lama and this made him much loved by the people of Korumburra. Sadly, his sermons were no more enlightening than the chirpings of a dolphin or a Dalai Lama, which made him more loved as a Country Fire Authority volunteer than a priest. His congregations became thin with the competition from holy livestock and fabulous melons. Until, on February the 2nd, when the likeness of St Paul was revealed in a fresh cow pat at Rutherford's dairy and that cow pat was roped off and declared something-to-see and a sure-fire-sign, Gould's congregation shrank to a spinster called Old Ms Harris, who believed the preacher struggled against an unholy lust for her and habitually inched her frock to her knee during the lesson.

Father Gould's bishop came to visit him from Melbourne. They sat in the dim Lady Chapel of Gould's church and the bishop mouthed a cup of tea and when the small-talk was done asked, ‘Gould, what is it? A congregation of one? What ails the parish?'

‘A hysteria is sweeping the flock,' Father Gould told him. ‘They are in touch with the Lord through their cows and fruits.'

‘A hysteria?' asked the bishop.

‘Yes. The latest … amazement is St Peter's face in a … in a … a cow cake.'

‘But a hysteria can be used,' the bishop smiled. ‘A hysteria may be harnessed. A hysteria is a gift, Gould. You must not waste a hysteria.' The bishop bent his mouth in a gentle pout as at a forgetful child. Then smiled and rose to go. ‘I know you will make the most of these miracles, Gould.' He stopped smiling and took the priest by the wrist. ‘For if there are to be miracles … they must be our miracles. You understand?'