Bee's Wax

                Felicity McBride loved to talk about people, but never about her father, the lighthouse keeper who blew out his brains when she was eight. He had been a morose reclusive man suiting himself in raw solitude, leaving a seldom-visited wife and daughter in a coastal shantytown not far from land's end. Actually, it was the sky that killed him. Observing his actions night and day, it was an all-seeing eye much like the one on a dollar bill. It ruled the limitless void beyond his jumbled mind, and yet, it hovered so close behind the right ear lobe that the man could feel a pressure of beating wings. When the existential horror became too great, Captain Wescott removed his Webley service revolver from its desk drawer and ended eveything. Of this Felicity was dead certain.
                 

                                                                                   *

                   Not long after Brother Ambrose and Sonya Chekov departed in the Skell Van, Mary Jane the greengrocer saw Felicity approaching the tent, and noted how advanced the splotches on the old widow's face had become, looking like nipple-sized pink crabs. A gaunt crone in a black gown with stained armpits smelling like wilted roses.
                    "Morning, Mary Jane."
                    "Felicity."
                    "Well guess who came knocking yesterday."
                    "Haven't a clue."
                    "That Jew newspaperman. Asked me what it was exactly I saw going on at that hippy church down near Gresham's Wood, the one that used to be a barn. It seems he gets news from the sherrif's blotter."
                     "Yah--yeah, folks like to read stuff like that, especially the way Scoop slants it. Petty crime, domestic disputes. Arrests. All from the record. It's like reading good gossip."
                      "That's what worries me. He's liable to make me sound like a jackass. Instead of taking that preacher to task."
                      "Felicity, you're the one who ratted, instead of minding your own bee's wax."
                      "You offend me, Mary Jane."
                      "I'm sorry. But you are such a nosy person. What in God's name were you doing down there anyway? That's quite a walk from your--"
                       Felicity whirled like a black-robed dervish, losing her balance in a moment of lightheadedness, and strode off as if a bee had stung her in the ass. If Mary Jane's tent had sported a door, Felicity would have slammed it shut.

                                                                              *

                         Kirkland McBride had left Felicity with modest income, a 401K and an 1890 house, painted pearly white, with two gables and a gingerbread front porch. At the end of the porch was a parlor window. The elegant little room waiting inside, forever in breathless gloom, had a mahogany mantel where a clock's stentorian tick-tock suggested the passage of time. Kirkland McBride's ashes were treasured in a brass urn.

                                                                            *

                            Scoop found Sheriff Ito Tanaka in freshly starched khakies at his desk closely observing the hesitation waltz of a Mexican jumping bean. His black hair was pasted to a porcelain scalp showing male-pattern baldness, giving him a samurai look.
                             "What the hell, Ito?"
                             "Look how it moves. Isn't that something?"
                             "Yeah. Magic, I guess."
                             "Moth larva, inside, moving around."
                             "I gather this is not a busy day."
                             Although the Mexican jumping bean had given him an occult insight toward solving a cold-case murder, the sheriff blushed like a schoolboy caught peeking down a girl's blouse. Then, annoyed, he crooked an eyebrow.
                              "What can I do for you, Hoffman?"
                              "Tell me what Widow McBride saw out at Gresham's Wood."
                              Ito cracked a grin. "An orgy. A satanic orgy. Naked people fucking and hollering and having a damn good time."
                              "You're kidding."
                              "I'm kidding. She's got a screw loose somewhere. What she actually saw was an old fashion baptism. Full immersion. Blub blub."
                               Scoop smiled wistfully. "I see. My late wife was a Mormon. They do the same thing."

                                                                                *

                                That afternoon Scoop visited Mary Jane and they shared some Green River herbal tea. He told her about Ito Tanaka's Mexican jumping bean.
                                 "That Jap cheechako. What a card!"
                                 "He's a clever little guy. What's a cheechako?"
                                 "Tenderfoot."

Regression

          Mary Jane the green grocer sold her locally grown produce from a tent with perfect location. She owned a vacant lot in the heart of town. Cedar Crossroads, where rush hour traffic clotted for only fifteen minutes, was a nexus for zoning misfits The Wicker Man and Andes Bean Company, a homecrafted furniture store specializing in wicker peacock thrones and a gourmet coffee bar catering to unpublished poets, unemployed grad students and underdressed telemarketers. Mary Jane was a rich heiress free to be a counter-culture Mother Jones. Her fortune had been made by a spruce logging empire supplying that special wood needed for World War One aircraft, chiefly the S.P.A.D. pursuit fighter flown by Captain Eddy Rickenbacker and crew. Mary Jane was one fifth Oregonian Chinook, white complected, with high cheekbones and tanned crowsfeet. She wore her silver hair in a long french braid. Her gray eyes danced with clandestine mirth. Always clad in denim longsleeves and jeans, railroad engineer gloves, scuffed wellington boots, and a floppy straw sombrero tricked out with a bluebonnet scarf. A familiar sight, she garnered a continuous parade of honking motorists. Everybody loved Mary Jane. Especially Sonya Chekov.
            The Skell Van parked in the dirt outside the tent and Sonya lumbered down from the shotgun seat, alarmingly rotund for such a strap of a woman. Mary Jane fancied that gravity would haul the baby out, dropping it like a little Buddha at mother's feet. Sonya's buzzcut whitewalls had sprouted lustrous raven plumage, tips flashing electric amethyst hues of purple and violet. She wore a brown paisley burnoose with the hood gaily thrown back. Her elfin face glowing.
              "Hello, darling," Mary Jane said, waving to Brother Ambrose behind the steering wheel. He returned the wave.
               "Hi, yourself," Sonya smiled.
               "How did he like your arugula?"
               "He ate it all up!"

                                                                           *

                 Mary Jane offered Sonya a puffy sofa seat next to a potbelly stove in the "office."
                 "Take a load off," she said. "And tell me what's on your mind. Something's troubling you."
                 "No. No trouble. Just--"
                 "Just what?"
                 "I wish he would tell me about his dead wife."
                 "The one who visits him in the spirit?"
                 "She used to do that. I sense she has truly passed on."
                 "And you want to know what she was like."
                 "Uh-huh."
                 "Well, why don't you ask him?"
                 "Oh--"
                 "Pick a good time and tell him flat out you'd like him to share her with you."
                 "Yes. That sounds right."
                 "I think so."

                                                                 *

                  "Her name was Cherry Blossom and I was called Ziggy. Short for Mister Zig-Zag because I smoked a lot of grass. We made love all the time. She painted the crazy mural on my old van. What can I say? I don't know where to begin."
                   He forced back a sob, stood up and walked out to the patio balcony. Beneath his checkerboard flannel shirt shoulder blades jutted like wings of a gargoyle.
                   Sonya sat with a ringing in her ears.

Eyewitness

          At sundown great hunter Orion strode above the western trees, in his left foot ever bright Rigel dominating a sky of pastel vermillion. This singular hue reminded Brother Ambrose of tulip pastures he had seen last Spring while driving the Skell Van near Washington's Mt. Vernon. He was sitting on Sonya's patio balcony and sipping her mulled winter cider, homemade from San Juan island apples, with cinnamon, allspice and juniper berries. He envisioned her picking fat heavy apples from fragile low-hanging branches and hoarding them in a wide blue apron. Behind him, back in the kitchen as she washed dishes, there came a clinking of glass. An odd memory: opening a box of custom retorts shipped by UPS when he himself cooked experimental fermentations.
           Mugsy pounced into his lap, causing him to spill a dram of precious cider. She curled up and closed her devil eyes and began to purr. "Whoah, cat! I thought you hated me."
           He shouted to Sonya, "Hey, Babe! Come and check this out!
           Sonya was astonished. "She is onto a new game. So, tell me what's going on at the church?"
           "Oh, some Tam O'Shanter dropped by during evening services, peeked through a window, and then reported to the sheriff that she had seen a mad cabal of witches and demons making merry."
           "Good grief--"
           "It was you and me she saw."


            Through the Tudor-paned window Old Widow McBride saw but a still-life in mosaic. Flesh-tone pixels. Yet she positively recognized Brother Ambrose and his half-breed whore in the midst of an unholy quorum, twelve men and women, cavorting in a frenzied dance of unspeakable carnality.


             "You spoke on Goethe's Urpflanze, the idea that Nature is God's living garment. That all plants evolved from one Original Plant. I must tell you, that is such bullshit!"
              "I wasn't arguing on Goethe's behalf."
              "Where did she get the notion we were naked?"
              "Most likely, our clinging ecru vestments enhanced what she desired to see."
              "She's a fucking liar!"
              "All right. Now come sit with me."
              Sonya drew up an adjacent chair and they sat side by side, able to hug one another. Mugsy woke from twitching slumber and crossed over to Sonya's lap.
               "Clinging ecru vestments, my ass!"