Doggerel

She cancels all appointments and sinks into the merriest week of spring, the first week of her twenty-second year. A black widow, she avoids Gloria Beatrice and Laudette and walks in the park and the streets, veiled, hiding her weariness and her grief under that currently fashionable accessory; she is a dark note amid the bursts of blossoms of May—hawthorn, crab apple, and dogwood—and the knots of automobiles, cable cars and other pedestrians. Desperate, plagued, she takes heart where she can find it. What happened? It all happened so fast she is not exactly sure. The fact that she did not see the body, that rumor can not be trusted, leaves a ray of hope, dim though it is, that Corn Dog is still alive. It is a moment of relief, a welcome alternative, in an otherwise bleak mindscape of wishing she could follow him into the land of no return, and not having the courage to dispatch herself.

If there’s a chance that there has been a mistake, oughtn’t she go to the county medical examiner and see for herself, or even send Laudette? But denial puts a strain on her thinking. Her judgment suffers from fits of morbid whimsy as she walks along the waterfront, praying, praying, praying that she will meet him strolling there too.

Lord, let me turn a corner and see him smiling. He’ll say that the rumors of his death were premature, or that the destroying angel fouled up on the paper work, took him by mistake and had to replace him back on earth.

This life is not so wonderful. She knows in her heart the tidings are true. She prays for what there is no prayer for, a break from the finality, the inexorableness of death. What does the good Lord do? Nothing, except give her cause to build up animosity.

If the power in heaven will not answer her prayers she will find some other thing that will. Her prayers turn to curses, “God, damn you, you’re one jealous son of a bitch! You bless the men I’m indifferent to, those rich bastards, and are spiteful to the one man I adore. And after I posed for you first, before any man! Now that I want something in return, you don’t even want to know my name!”

The ghost white moaner in a black lace veil, looking for help, wanders on a shady side street and is struck by a carved wooden sign on the side of an old brownstone that says Paradise Books with an arrow pointing down. As the daughter of a Shibbolite Bookkeeper, she grew up in Zion Beehive with great respect for the printed word, although her idea of a good book differed from her father’s. There’s a flight of steep steps to the basement. In her high heels, she is awkward on the high risers and short treads and has to step down sideways, holding on to the rail. Even so, she stumbles, and almost tumbles down. When she gets to the bottom she finds a solid oak door and on it is carved another sign.

Paradise Book Shop

Specializing in Obscure Incunabula,

Explicit Florilegia, Horned Faunicopiae,

and Out-of-the-Way Books for Children of All Ages.

Please Knock For Admittance.

Sarah taps softly with her black velvet glove and a stick of an old man with a wispy white beard, crooked hips, and a cryptic smile opens the door. “Welcome,” he says, unable to look her straight in the eye; his left being of glass is fixed in a dead gaze. “My name is Faustus Dash. If there anything specific you’re looking for, Madam, I am here to help you.”

Sarah wants to ask what he has on bringing the dead back to life, but she cannot bring herself to say it. Instead she says, “I collect books.” She lifts her veil and sniffs. “I can tell by the musty old smell in here there are some things for me. Mind if I browse?”

“Not at all,” says Dash. “I just got this in. It’s new, a first edition, but it might be right down your alley.” He shows her a thin black hardcover volume, The Poongi Book of the Dead, as translated by Doctor Crane Haddock-Watt.

Sarah has read her share of travel literature. She knows that Pingp’yangpoong, or Land O’ Holy Poong, is not a fantasy land, only faraway and ancient. It is a tiny country located for the most part way up in the chilly white clouds of the Pu Mountains, the mighty range that separates the real magicians from the phonies. One can find it on a map north of Mahabharata, east of Bhimastaan, south of Nagabhotse, and west of Shunyu.

Sarah receives the book, thanks Dash, and promises to have a look at it.

“If I can be of any further assistance, let me know,” he says.

Sarah murmurs her thanks and waits for him to limp off back to his desk in the corner. While he sets to lacquering the pages of an old tome, Sarah scans The Poongi Book for suggestions on raising the dead. She finds descriptions of how a soul progresses through a hierarchy of metaphysical planes called the Between Life during the first forty-nine days following death, either going to a lasting resting place in Bliss, peace in the Light, or coming back, because of ties, to this world. There are prayers to tell your dear, departed loved one, things to keep in mind yourself.

Oh dear born one, noble non-attachment is the skeleton key. Death is the opening of an ever-burning thousand-petal blossom of Light. Be grateful for it. What is the body but a flash of light, a drop of dew, the scent of a flower, a shooting star, a wave in the ocean, a specter here, then gone? Be at one with the dead. Come easy, go easy, the river of the dead is the inner spring of life. Unwind with the departed, drift downstream. To surrender to the void is to be the undeparted.

Easy come, easy go, eh? Sarah is disappointed about that. She thinks of her buck’s fine young bronze body now feeding worms in some pauper’s grave and shudders. Accept that? Never. And who has time to wait for reincarnation? Maybe the type is born again and again, but Corn Dog was a single edition, limited to one lifetime, unique, irreplaceable. She cannot control her need to keep his spirit close to her, out of the light and away from seeding itself in some other woman’s womb.

She puts down the Poongi Book and lets her guilty conscience be her guide through the stacks.

There may be one Lord in heaven, but in the valley below, authority seems to come in a pack. The dogs of the dead are the subject of many books. Not nearly so wise or venerable as the funereal bible from the mysterious East, these others have recipes for personal power, the ways and means to selfish ends, how to get possessed and obtain possessions. She never saw so many books on the Prophet’s Blacklist! Here’s one on pulpy paper by Bubba Z. Leib called Power in a Flash. It gives instructions on mastering the souls of others and having the devil do your dirty work.

Never fail, come high water or hell, hail to the Author of Lies, the Lord of the Wolves, the Father of Flies … he’ll come when you whistle, he’ll come when you call. Surrender to the dark side, the mother of all.

Another by Madam Eve Treiziert called The Devil’s Services details rituals to put one in communion with the dead.

Seeker of truth, pivot on your knowledge of the names of the Dogs of the Underworld, say them backwards and forwards, in passwords and crosswords …

This is more like it! Sarah feels her spirit lifting. Other books have promising things to do with bells and candles, how to sound brass and twinkle symbols.

She should know better than to even look at such nonsense, but the feeling of falling into the bottomless pit, the torture of it, makes her reach out for anything that will break her fall. Desperate, she imagines the dogs of the dead can do the trick.

Certainly life is not authorized by the Lord alone, she thinks. The compulsions that the righteous contend against pack plenty of stopping power.

She also finds the Paradise has a store of adult books, what her father would call filth. There are the usual picture books of naked women and boys, as well as story books with sexy plots, and unusual volumes that link sex to metaphysics. Here is one called The Animal Lover’s Field Guide. All very proper, respectably technical looking on the cover, on the inside it is a manual on the ways of bestial sex, with the redeeming feature of pointing out the supernatural possibilities of such applications. Like the devil, the animal lover is said to have the power to stretch beyond the grave. On one page there is an anatomy of a black cat, showing where the magic bones are. There are also testimonials from history. She reads one by a young Bon Vivante who was impressed by a Lady in the Gourmet Court, whom he adored, into being her pet poodle’s lover. From the private journal of the Empress Theodora, who took half her cavalry and their horses to bed with her, there are excerpts telling how she managed. There are accounts of dog and pony shows, cock and bull stories. and the sworn confessions of plain ordinary citizens who on occasion copulate with their dogs and cats or enjoy having their pet hamsters burrow around in their underpants.

The news of Corn Dog’s death has filled her so full of self-loathing that she can not imagine ever having sex again. It comes as a surprise then that the books stimulate her imagination and point her mind in that direction. She finds that her mouth waters a wee bit, a sign of life that dictates she make some selections.

When she goes to pay, Dash remains impassive, as if both his eyes were glass, as he totals up what she owes him for the mystic tracts and power manuals, the curious field guide, a piece of anonymous fiction, and an oversized volume of photographs of boys with everything hanging out. He slips them into a large brown paper sack and takes her money. “I didn’t see The Poongi Book among the ones you chose,” he says matter-of-factly.

She shakes her head.

“I cannot recommend it too highly,” he says. “It’s really a must in everyone’s collection.” He puts a copy in the bag for free and gives her a fatherly wink.

Sarah thanks him for it. Downstream is the reverse of where she wants her love’s soul to go. The power of non-attachment is the opposite of the one she is planning to exercise. However her intuition tells her that perhaps she can alter some of the prayers and exhortations for the dead to suit her purposes.

On the way home she stops in a store that specializes in ladies’ intimate apparel and buys herself a new bed jacket. She plans on making herself as appealing as possible, betting on her sweet ass as her best asset, a temptation for Corn Dog to forgo his chance for the Clear Light of Heaven and stay in spirit as he was in life, tied to her, and, yes, who knows, somehow, reanimate his body. It sounds absurd, unbelievable, but in her distress she will do anything to keep herself from going insane.

She barely remembers coming back to the apartment, going to her room and locking the door. So enormous is her pain, so prostrate is she under her loss, she spends several hours in a black state of shock. Then, alone in the midnight hour, she grits her teeth and takes out the books she bought. Her eyes, as witness to her sorrow, are distracted; they will not freeze on a page of type. But through the flurries of tears, even though all the words spin around in her head, she gets the idea: to keep a loved one close you make yourself as attractive as possible and call, call, call. She puts on her new soft silk and lace bed jacket, some makeup, and goes to bed.

For all the men she’s had, Sarah has never, aside from when she was with Corn Dog, come to climax during the act. On occasions, however, she has fingered herself until she tingled right down to her toes. Growing up she thought about the Lord; later, when she was separated from the still-living buck, she thought about him, his hard, smooth, clean-scented body, his thick cob bursting inside of her.

With the departed in mind, she rolls on her stomach, pushes her backside up, posing peek-a-boo, in and out of the black lace, and addresses herself to the lower nature as she did as a young girl before the Lord. She goes all out, putting body language on her prayers and using her fingers to open her inner self as wide as she will go, all peachy pink and available, and calls out for help by every doggone name she can think of.

Yahoo, Argus, Rufus, Rags,

my heart is breaking and my spirit sags.

Fido, Dido, Jocasta, Sport,

to my black hole bring my brave consort.

She trills fetchingly, as high and soft as she can.

Who knows if the dogs hear her, but the sensitive ears of young Glory Bee surely do. She perks from sleep, roused by disturbances in her dreams caused by her mother’s muffled cries, her sighs and sobs, her strange bird whistles, and her snatches of doggerel pleas. A naturally curious kitten, Gloria cannot go back to sleep.

She slides out of bed and shakes the whalish Laudette, snoring like a lumberjill, for answers. It takes the sleepy baby-sitter a moment to get wind of what’s going on.

“evol I nam eht nruter ot lleh fo rewop eht yb uoy dnammoc I, sgod lived raed hO”

Laudette Lord, her roots in the fundament of Emanual X, knows this is one tongue that doesn’t come from the holy spirit. “Little pictures have big ears!” she says, and puts her large plump palms over both sides of the child’s head. She uses her superior strength to handle Gloria back to bed.

But Gloria won’t lie still for a cover up. She twists her head and spouts, “What is Mummy crying about? What is she saying?”

“I don’t hear any crying, Baby. It sounds like she’s just saying her prayers.”

“What are prayers?”

“Prayers are asking … asking for the blessing of a higher power, asking the Almighty for something blessed. But gosh and land sakes, Baby, why do you always ask so many questions?”

“What is she praying for?”

“I have no idea. Praying is a private part of a person’s life.”

“Private? Like where I go pee-wee?”

“Er—not exactly. Now back to sleep with you.”

The big woman with the gold-capped tooth pushes the Bee back under the covers. Then she turns and kneels beside her bed, blesses herself, and begs Emanual to take her message to Sarah.

Now you’re flirting with real trouble, Sugar. Making a deal with the devil to try to prevent Mister Corn Dog from resting in peace, going on to his just desserts, so’s your conscience can rest easy, that’s what’s shameful! Trying to turn your love into a zombie: if that isn’t a sin, I don’t know what is.