The Freewayfayers' Book of the Dead Read online

  The Freewayfarers’ Book of the Dead

  A Novel

  John Okas

  New York

  Art in Heaven

  Three Hundred Sixty Degree Vision

  In reality, the account of Art in Heaven is seamless. There will be no end to it until he comes back to the beginning. But on earth there must be pauses. Although he no longer needs air to live, Art takes a breather anyway, no doubt to let us mortals make what adjustments we must to digest the tales we swallow.

  A flash in heaven is a chunk on earth. The seasons pass, one, two, three, four, and I mark November first, the Feast of Saints, and keep it open. There is no holier day for me than eleven one; day zero on my calendar. It was a year ago today I saw my brother Art resurrected, back from the dead, or, as he claims, never dead at all. Before he vanished he promised me I would see him again.

  Once again I am at the cottage in East Cornwall for the day. This year the weather is dismal. Wind howls and rattles the shutters, an icy rain beats so hard against the window panes I can hardly see out at all. With work in the garden out of the question, I spend the day in my cotton night dress, spread out on the fleecy lamb’s wool rug by the fire in the library, reading, writing, tending the fire, contemplating, getting set to lay eyes on my brother Arthur King, come again.

  As night falls, the wind picks up, the torrent batters, making the old house shudder and creak. Freak autumn lightning flashes and thunder rumbles like drums. In a white glare and a crash that bursts like a bomb, the electricity goes out. Let the elements rage, the shingles fly, the power fail; I am safe, quiet, warm, unphased. The inside sun never sets; it lets me face the dark without gloom. I bank the fire and before the rising flames I do my stretches and tie myself in knots. My spine is supple enough to allow me to plow into myself. I lie on my back, and swing my legs over my head until my thighs box my ears; then I take my hips in my arms and press my head forward gently until my forehead abuts the low point, the seat of my psychic energy and spiritual power, and my lips are sealed in my own dark, fertile crescent.

  I’ve heard it said that self-love stinks. That is only true if one is an unimaginative lover. I dig myself, plant myself, water myself, and, after my flower opens, compost myself. I feel an ecstasy in the organic process that transcends the agonies of birth and death. Buried deeply in the riddle of existence, I meditate, balled-up thus, tingling my bell, wetting my whistle, listening to the wind whining like a pack of wild dogs outside, letting my mind seed roll where it will, free of tangles.

  The last time he was here, I saw all sides of Art, and yet he had me surrounded. This time is no different. I see the light, my knight in shining choir robes, Arthur King coming within me and without me, up from the deepest part of me, down from high heaven in all his glory. I relax my self-embrace and, plain as day, plainer in fact, I see him here, on the carpet with me. I reach out and embrace him. How incomparably smooth, lustrous, and warm the heavenly body he snatches for these occasions is!

  His body is of a piece with his mind. What he lacks in depth he more than makes up for in length and width. His brightness alone is evidence of a power beyond squared, beyond cubed. By the stretch of his imagination and the snap of his mind, Art can turn words into flesh. He is utterly adaptable and can assume any form we can imagine and some we cannot.

  “It’s not a fit night out for man or beast, Morning,” says Art with his characteristic silly-goose grin and cornball humor. “And you wouldn’t believe how many witches are still riding around, lost after last night’s big blast.”

  Through Arthur King’s divine comedy I am no longer Morning Black, rotten egg, bad apple, mean witch. I’ve put my black cat up for adoption, hung up my broomstick, and merged with my brother figure, the kind, just, and gentle soul that he is. “Tell me about it, Artie. You wise men never fear to tread on water, right?”

  “You could say that, Morning. But the real reason I’m not at all inconvenienced by the weather is that I’ve arrived through your inner channel. It should, however, come as no surprise to us that the tempestuous darkness outside does fit our tale. There’s some stormy weather in the story for us tonight. I’m going to tell you about a being who rides the wind and could burn you up as soon as look at you.”

  “How chilling! A devil?”

  “Well, he’s been to heaven and hell.”

  “You don’t say! Commonly, folks think the twain never meet.”

  “In real life there is no beginning without an end,” says Art. “For perfection to be complete it must contain imperfections, and for the Big Wheel to be unbroken it must have lows as well as highs. It wouldn’t be bliss without a dash of torment for contrast.”

  “I can see your point on that, Artie boy.”

  “And never forget death. It’s the meat of our story, the grist of our mill. Easy come, easy go, Morning.”

  “Easy for you to say once you’re gone.”

  Art doesn’t mind if he does. “No matter how gripping your dreams seem to you while you are having them, when you wake up in the morning, you experience them as thin, pale, inconsistent, disjointed. In death you wake up and realize your life was only a dream. Morning, have faith, there’s so much more to creation than just what you can understand through your senses. When you leave this plane you wake up and smell the heavenly coffee. One sip and your whole life fades like so much immaterial fluff and fancy.”

  What is rare about Arthur is that he can remember his dreams, and even though he departed this world he can still make his presence felt, through me. On a previous occasion he appeared and showed me the genesis of our family, and promised to continue on with the adventures of our adventuress grandmother, Sarah Black, and her red hot lover, our mixed-breed grandfather, Corn Dog. As you may remember, we left her locked in love’s embrace, happy ever after, reunited with him.

  “But, Morning, ‘happy ever after’, that’s for storybooks, this is real life we’re talking here. Things work out in mysterious ways. The higher the high, the lower the low. No sooner had Sarah found her sweet lover boy, than she lost him again, permanently. When we come upon her she is experiencing the hell of the morning after.”

  “Oughtn’t we then review where we’ve been, Artie, and thus never come to this grief?”

  “Morning, the Big Wheel keeps on turning clockwise. That is the direction of good fortune. We little ones would have to be mad to even think of spinning widdershins. Let our audience try my eyes for size. They’ll see where we’ve been in where we will go.”

  Hail to you, good Arthur. Your directions are unimpeachable from any angle. More than the source of my Black Family Chronicles, more than the A and the Z of enlightenment heroes, you are the dead start and the living end of us all.

  Art is blind to common sense, yet he can see all routes at once. His heavenly sight is three hundred sixty-degree vision. Looking at him is like looking inward. I fix my gaze on that glow within. The dead’s eyes are my own, bright, scrolling, rolling like fruit in a Los Pecados slot machine. As mouthpiece for the omniscient narrator, I can see every person, every place, every thing, past, present, and to come simultaneously. So, come, newcomer, go to seed with us, let your mind ride the wind, wave on the broadcast beam from beyond, and go where the spinning wheels take us.

  The Freewayfarers’ Book of the Dead

  what spice

  do the dogs of the dead

  add to our lives?

  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.