After her parents were killed by a falling tree that had been struck by a double bolt of ground lightning during a late-August electrical storm, Nell, who was then twenty-four, inherited The Paradise and invited Sister Domino to live there with her, which offer Sister Domino accepted. Eventually, Sister Domino and Miss Napoleon, as Nell came to be called, succeeded in converting the house into a combination hospital and retreat for those individuals incapable of dealing on a mutually acceptable basis with the outside world. Sister Domino's mandate, however, held that those residents of The Paradise be
serious
Christians. No blasphemy was tolerated and no waffling of faith. This policy, though, extended only to The Paradise; those persons she and Nell treated outside the house were not required to adhere to Christian tenets, the Lord's beneficence being available to the Veritable Myriad.
Sister Domino never did get to the Congo to assist Dr. Schweitzer, though Nell offered to pay her way. There was always too much work to be done at home, Sister Domino said, and when news of Dr. Schweitzer's death reached her, Sister Domino merely knelt, recited a brief, silent prayer, arose and continued scraping the back of a woman whose skin was inflamed and encrusted by eczema. Sister Domino died three years later, leaving Nell to carry on alone. As the years passed, however, Nell limited her ministrations to women, preferring their company to that of men, whom, Nell concluded, tended toward selfishness in their philosophy, which displeased her. Once made, Nell's decision was irreversible, and her devotion was further refined by her increasing acceptance of nonviolent, mentally disturbed women. A decade after Sister Domino's death, Nell officially registered her home with the county as Miss Napoleon's Paradise for the Lord's Disturbed Daughters. A large oil portrait of Sister Domino, painted from memory by Nell, hung on the wall opposite the front door so that the first sight anyone had upon entering was that of Miss Napoleon's own patron saint.
Mary Full-of-Grace Crowley Rattler fit in perfectly at The Paradise. As the mother of Jesus Christ, it was simply a matter of being acknowledged as such that contented her. At no time during her stay had Mary Full-of-Grace caused Miss Napoleon the slightest difficulty, not even
when another woman, Boadicea Booker, who also believed she was the mother of the Christ child, lived at The Paradise. Boadicea had died within three months of her coming, so it was possible, Miss Napoleon believed, that Mary Full-of-Grace had no knowledge of her existence. When Tyrus Raymond Rattler and his sons came to visit Mary Full-of-Grace, Miss Napoleon was pleased to welcome them, as they were unfailingly polite and well-behaved. Even when Lefty Grove and Smokey Joe were small children, Miss Napoleon noticed, they had minded their father precisely and comported themselves properly in the presence of their mother. Therefore, when Mary Full-of-Grace's sons and another boy appeared on the front porch of The Paradise one windy afternoon, Miss Napoleon welcomed them inside.
“Afternoon, L.G.,” she said. “Afternoon, S.J. Your mother will be pleased to see you. And who is this young gentleman?”
“Hello, Miss Napoleon,” said Lefty Grove. “This is our friend, Pace Ripley.”
Pace set down the sack he'd been carrying and nodded to the old woman, who was barely more than four feet tall. Pace figured her weight at about seventy-five pounds. His daddy could lift her off the ground with one hand, he figured, dangle her by her ankles with his arm stretched straight out.
“Hello, ma'am,” Pace said. “Beautiful place you got here.”
“My parents, Colonel St. Jude and Fanny Rose Bravo, built it and left it in my care so that I might care for others. You boys can go right up, if you like. Mary Full-of-Grace is in her room. She never leaves it until dark.”
“Thank you, Miss Napoleon,” said Smokey Joe. “We 'preciate all you done for Mama.”
“The Lord prevails and I provide,” said Miss Napoleon, as the Rattler brothers, followed by Pace, who carried the sack, filed up the stairs.
Mary Full-of-Grace was sitting perfectly still in a high-backed wing chair next to the windows when the boys entered her room. Her long, silver-blue hair hung in two braids, one on either side of her V-shaped head. She wore a white, gauzy robe with a golden sash tied at the waist. Pace noticed that she had almost no nose, only two air holes, and hugely dilated brown eyes. She kept her long, thin hands folded in her lap. Her fingers looked to Pace as if they were made of tissue paper.
“Hello, Mama,” said Lefty Grove, who kissed her forehead.
“Hello, Mama,” said Smokey Joe, who followed suit.
The brief, soft touch of their lips left dark marks on her skin.
“This boy here's our associate, Pace Ripley,” Lefty Grove said.
“Hello, Mrs. Rattler,” said Pace, trying to smile.
Both brothers looked quickly and hard at Pace.
“This here's the mother of Baby Jesus,” said Smokey Joe.
Mary Full-of-Grace stared out the window to her left.
“My son is soon in Galilee,” she said. “I keep the vigil.”
Smokey Joe motioned to Pace and Pace slid the sack containing most of the money from the robbery under the light maple four-poster bed.
“Well, Mama, we don't mean to disturb you none,” said Lefty Grove. “We'll just come back by and by.”
Smokey Joe headed out the door and Pace followed.
“By and by,” said Mary Full-of-Grace. “He will be by, by and by.” She continued to stare out the window.
“So long, Mama,” said Lefty Grove, closing the door behind him. They did not see Miss Napoleon on their way out but Pace spotted the portrait of Sister Domino.
“Who's that?” he asked, walking over to take a closer look. “And what does this mean?” he said, reading the words carved into the bottom of the frame. “God's Gift to the Veritable Myriad.”
“Must be was Miss Napoleon's mammy,” said Smokey Joe. “What the hell you think?”
Pace trailed the Rattlers out of The Paradise, wondering about those words carved into the frame. A hunchbacked old woman was coming carefully up the steps of the porch, holding a large, blue plastic fly swatter.
“Suck cock!” she spat at them. “Suck cock! Suck cock! Suck cock!”
RIOT AT ROCK HILL
“You won't regret goin', Bunny. Reverend Plenty puts on a show and a half.”
“I'm lookin' forward to it, Lula. Been needin' to get away from the laundromat anyway. More'n even a two-armed woman can handle there.”
Lula and Bunny Thorn were riding in Lula's rented T-bird from Charlotte to Rock Hill to witness Reverend Goodin Plenty's first-ever sermon in South Carolina. His Church of Reason, Redemption and Resistance to God's Detractors had been running ads in every newspaper within two-hundred-fifty miles of Rock Hill for a month.
“How's your sex life, Lula? You don't mind my askin'.”
Lula laughed, looked quickly at Bunny, then back at the road.
“Well, okay, I guess,” she said, and with her right hand shook a More from an opened pack on the seat next to her, stuck it between her lips and punched in the dashboard lighter. “How's yours?”
“Lousy, you don't mind my complainin'. Guys'll do it once with a one-armed woman, just for a kick, 'cause it's kinda unusual, you know. That's it, though. They don't come lookin' for seconds. I been wed to a rubberized dick for a year now. Least it don't quit till my arm give out. I'm considerin' joinin' some women's group just to meet some queer gals. Maybe they won't mind a two-hundred-twenty-pound washerwoman with one musclebound arm. And I almost lost it, too, tryin' to unjam a Speed Queen the other day.”
The lighter popped out and Lula lit her cigarette, took a couple of powerful puffs and laughed again.
“Bunny, you're somethin' fresh, I tell you. Sailor'd love you to death.”
“Yeah? Think I oughta come visit, stay at your house? Maybe get Sailor to give me a workout or two?”
Lula coughed hard and tossed the More out the window.
“Just jokin', hon'. Tried to get Beany to ask Bob Lee if he'd do it, but she didn't go for the idea. And she's my cousin! Guess I'll have to stick with Big Bill.”
The parking lot at the Rock Hill church site was full by the time Lula and Bunny arrived, so Lula parked the T-bird across the road. Since groundbreaking for the church building had not yet commenced, a giant tent had been set up and filled with folding chairs. Lula and Bunny managed to find two together at the rear. The tent was filled to capacity by the time Reverend Goodin Plenty, dressed in a tan Palm Beach suit with a black handkerchief flared out of the breast pocket, walked in and strode down the center aisle, hopped up on the platform, grabbed a microphone and faced the audience.
“My goodness!” Goodin Plenty said as he smiled broadly and sized up the crowd. “Ain't this just somethin' spectacular! My, my! Not a empty seat in the Lord's house tonight. Ain't it grand to be alive and holdin' His hand!”
“Yes, sir, Reverend!” someone shouted.
“Tell us about it, Reverend!” said another.
Reverend Plenty smoothed back his full head of prematurely white hair with both hands, making the microphone squeal, then raised up his arms as if he were a football referee signaling that a touchdown had been scored.
“I am gonna give you somethin' tonight, people! The Church of Reason, Redemption and Resistance to God's Detractors is here in the great state of South Carolina, first to secede from the Union, to stay!”
“Maybe so,” shouted a tall, skinny, bald-headed man wearing a blue-white Hawaiian shirt with red and yellow flowers on it, who jumped up from the front row, “but
you
ain't!”
The skinny man held out a Ruger Redhawk .44 revolver with a seven-and-one-half-inch scoped barrel and pointed it straight at the Reverend's chest.
“This is for Marie!” the man yelled, as he held the gun with both hands and pulled the trigger, releasing a hardball round directly into Goodin Plenty's left temple as he attempted to dodge the bullet. The shell exploded inside the Reverend's brain and tore away half of the right side of his head as it passed through.
A riot broke out and Lula and Bunny got down on their knees and crawled out of the tent through a side flap. As soon as they were outside, they stood up and ran for the car.
“Holy shit!” said Bunny, as Lula cranked the engine and sped away. “That was better than the Hagler-Hearns fight! Only thing, it didn't last as long.”
Lula put the pedal down and drove as fast as she dared. “Uh-uh-uh,” Bunny uttered. “That Marie must be some
serious
piece of ass!”
SHAKE, RATTLE & ROLL
Wendell Shake watched the Jimmy's oversized tires crawl through the mud ruts toward his farmhouse. He lifted the .30-06 semi-automatic rifle to his right shoulder and sighted down the four-power Tasco scope. At his feet, propped on end under the window, was a loaded eleven-and-three-quarter inch, forty-pound draw Ninja pistol crossbow with a die cast aluminum body and contoured grips. Wendell had come home to Mississippi and the Shake family farm two months before, after the fifth severed head had been found in a garbage can in the Bronx. That was the last of them, Wendell decided, one for each borough of New York City, to show the Jews, Catholics, and coloreds what he thought of their so-called civilization. Armageddon was about to commence, Wendell believed, and he was an operative of the avant-garde. It was his Great Day in the Morning, as he liked to call it, at last, after forty-eight years of silent suffering, witnessing the slaughter of the innocents. Now, however, the rest of the avenging angels were poised to strike, and the message Wendell had delivered was being read and discussed. Perhaps, Wendell thought, as he watched the Rattler brothers and Pace disembark from their vehicle, he was about to receive an acknowledgment of his effort.
“This place been abandoned for years,” Lefty Grove said to Pace, as the three boys walked up the path to the house. “Daddy and us used it lots of times when we come up to visit Mama. Been about three, four months since we been here, I guess. Right, Smoke?”
“ 'Bout that, Lef. You remember this gate bein' wired shut like this?”
Smokey Joe placed his left hand on the post and vaulted himself up in the air.
Before Smokey Joe had cleared the top rail, a bullet smacked into the center of his forehead, knocking him backward, so that his legs looped over the front of the rail by the backs of his knees, leaving the upper half of his body dangling upside down on the opposite side.
Lefty Grove and Pace both hit the ground and covered their heads. They heard the screen door of the house open and slam shut, footsteps
coming down the porch steps and then on the path toward them. Neither of the boys dared to move. The footsteps stopped at the gate.
“Charity, gentlemen,” said Wendell Shake, “ain't got nothin' to do with mercy. Even in a foreign land.”
Lefty Grove raised his head and saw a middle-aged man about six feet tall and two-hundred pounds, wearing a red and gray flannel shirt, red suspenders, black pants and low-cut, steel-toed, brown work shoes. His hair was almost completely gray, with dark patches at the front, worn very long, touching his shoulders. It was difficult to see the man's face because of his heavy red beard and the way his head was pressed down close to the rifle. The man's eye sockets seemed devoid of white.
“Suppose you say somethin',” Wendell said to Lefty Grove, “and they ain't the right words?”
Wendell rested the rifle barrel on Smokey Joe's right knee, keeping the business end directed at Lefty Grove's head.
“Could be there'd be repercussions.”