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!"

Weed Salad

            Her belly round and full as a British dirigible and taut as a shaman's drum beneath his honeyed lips felt vaguely seismic, her own personal moon entering a new phase. She trilled like a  musky woodland beast, rutting while enormously pregnant. Brother Ambrose loved her dearly. Sonya, his Russo-Innuit bride-to-be. Asian eyes in a snow-white Sitka face, flushed and sweaty now.
             He rolled her onto her side and gently entered her moss pit. 
              "Baby Cakes!" she gasped as her breasts leaked milk from all her arousal. Brother Ambrose looked upon her blackberry nipples in awe.
              "God damn, woman!"
              "Oh, Baby Cakes--"


                                                                                                *

              Sonya's wanton filigreed kimono had lost its obi. Her pregnant belly poked out like the harvest moon, its pugnosed button nuzzling the kitchen counter where she was fixing an arugula salad. Meanwhile, Brother Ambrose snaked into a pair of jeans he had bleached threadbare, ridding them of winedark motor oil stains. He felt such a love for her it was beyond passion. Together they had created a baby, something he and Cherry Blossom never managed to do. Theirs was a marriage of musical rebellion, buttucks flat on the floor as they perfected yab-yum, bodies locked within a yoga of crossed legs, a hookah bowl richly burning not far away. Her yoni wept honey, and it spilled over when he climaxed. Shiva's lingam, he called his prick. Dozing on the sofa he had just dreamed of how Cherry Blossom must have looked in death, with that cruel hunting arrow in her throat. Oh, dear sweet wife--
                 He hoisted himself, pulling invisible strings, like a wooden Pinocchio, to a spindly standstill. Not as limber as you used to be, old man! Sonya was slitting two bell peppers, one yellow, the other red, and never sensed his approaching hand. He grasped her naked belly as if it were a Hammond Atlas globe, the hand cupping Australia, just above her feral pubic pelt. He could smell the goat cheese she had brought out for the toasted baguette croutons.
                 "Oh, baby--" she gushed. There were cruets of balsamic vinegar and virgin olive oil.
                 "I see we're having weed salad tonight."
                 "Wild arugula, fresh from Washington."
                 "Mmm--so nutty."

New Church

        It had been maryjane barn. The weed was long gone and the dudes were down in Roswell, New Mexico. Summer afternoons, it looked like an oil painting, with golden sunlight and mauve shadows. The timber had succumbed to verdigris and would reflect a ghastly palor during a full moon. No one visited it, as it was full of bats.
         Brother Ambrose bought it for a song. The real-estate woman was astonished with the way he crooned Donovan's "Fat Angel." 
         Fly Jefferson Airplane. It get's you there on time.
         Before he left her office he had taken advantage of her brazen decolletage.
         He parked the Skell Van at the great barn door. Got out and released the bats. They flushed into the trees, never to return. Kerosene lanterns illuminated the guano. He groaned.
         He rolled a dub of his favorite apphrodesiac: Haze Plum.
         "Ziggy," his dead wife whispered. "The time has come for me to leave you."
         "No! You must remain with me always!"
         "I can't."
        

                                                                                      *


        Oh, there were grand things he wished to do with his barn. (It was to become First Church of Saint Pelagius. "You are governed by nothing but your Free Will!") First the altar, then creating a facsimile of Robert Smithson's "Feet of Christ" on the wall behind it. There was a Russian-Inuit goth chick in town who could do it, if he asked her right.
        What a combination, he thought. Russian mysticism and Innuit shamanism.
        Now, what was her name?
        Sonya something.
     

inuit magic

       The moonlit globes of her ass rose up and she left the bed. She switched on the bathroom light so that he could watch her. It did not take long. On the wall beside the door hung a framed lithograph by Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak. It showed a totem-like figure with a woman's head atop an human-sized owl, its eyes located as such to become her breasts. Flanking her were running polar bears. Sonya switched off the bathroom light and prowled toward the bed. He could hear the hunger in her throat. She was like a dream. It was a dream. She seized him anew. All mouth.
        "I told you I have familiar spirits," she purred. "Torngaks!"
        "Torngaks. I'm doomed."
        Sometimes like now her youthful energy overwhelmed him. She moaned and wept. Riding him spectacularly in the moonlight,  she resembled a tremendous cat. He felt the coarse fur of its belly upon his. Indeed, this was a dream.


                                                                               *


        Brother Ambrose awoke in his own bed. Being alone, he felt relaxed. An erection pressed against the fly of his plaid boxer briefs. That felt good. He lay there with a mind roiling with forgotten dreams. Across his bare chest were scratches, fresh and livid.
        Impossible!
        His alarm clock announced the eighth hour. It rang like a breakfast bell. A bowl of cinnamon oatmeal awaited him.
        It was Sunday, the only day he set the alarm. He sprang into action. Routinely,  he shaved and brushed his teeth while the warm water sluiced. Shampoo last.
        He donned a mother-of-pearl cotton shirt with fluted sleeves.
        On the way out he espied Sonya sitting on her balcony-patio with Mugsy in her lap. Cat people.
        "Hey, sweet-lay!"
        "Good morning, sweet prince."
        "Coming to church? Services at eleven."
        "Yup." Nothing more. Laconic Goth Chick.
        Suddenly he remembered the dream.
        She was upon him, breathing hotly in his face. Her cunt absorbing his cock like molten magma. Teeth laughing, breasts laughing.
         Instead of calling out his question, he descended his flight of stairs and climbed hers, entering her cramped retreat. Mugsy spat and fled. He knelt beside Sonya, noticing her black tube-top and nipples. He asked: "What were you telling me about familiar spirits? The Torngaks? Something like that."
         "Torngaks. I would never speak of them to you."
         "Surely you did."
         "No!"
         Perplexed, he smiled graciously. "All right. See you at Church."
         Sonya reached over and hugged him.  "If you are good, someday I will tell you the story of Senda, the Sea Mother."
         "Tell me now." Determined to charm it out of her.
         "All right. Sedna was a beautiful Inuit girl with many suitors. She refused every one. Then a hunter paddled his canoe up to her hut and sang to her. He offered her ivory necklaces and a tent covered with beautuful furs.  Enchanted, she climbed into his canoe. Oh, but then, she discovered he was not a man but a spirit from the land of birds."
          Brother Ambrose interrupted: "I know this story. You told it to me last night in a dream."
          "No way."
          "Sedna. Also known as the Old Woman Who Lived Under The Sea."
          Sonya's Inuit eyebrows knitted above the bridge of her nubby nose.
          "What are you saying?"
          "That you came to me in a dream last night. A very physical dream."
          He unbuttoned his shirt and showed her the scratches.
          "Christ!" Sonya stripped him and daubbed him with aloe. "This is freaking me out!"
          "How so?"
          "Grandmother, back in Sitka, told me of things, things that happened between her and her first lover. Only she came to his bed as a polar bear."
           Re-buttoning his shirt: "Good grief."
           "Yeah. He fucking died."

                                                                                      



       





         




                                                                                       *

inside sonya

       He set the stage, dropping a red gauze over the lamp and lighting a stick of sandlewood. She had spread the byzantine sweat-cloth in the middle of the floor. Her music was playing. A mesmerizing instrumental by Dead Can Dance. Drums, electronic keyboard, eerie chanting.
       Sonya  smiled and ate a pomegranite. Brother Ambrose toked on a new strain of weed being distributed around town. They kissed like feral children.
        He helped her out of her black denim jeans. She tossed her Nine Inch Nails tee shirt across the room. It fluttered like a bat into a dark corner. She wore just bra and panties and felt groovy as warm honey on a muffin.
        Brother Ambrose felt like his old self. Ziggy, aka Mister Zig-Zag. He could not describe the mood he was in. The pain of losing his wife had dimmed. There was only the movie in his mind. Cherry Blossom lay upon the bare dinng table,  clothed like a San Francisco flower-child  with garlands in her hair. In the owlight he could hear her weeping somewhere up in the rafters.
        "Hey, boy-o. Why the far-away stare?"
        "Sorry, babe."
        And what did he have here? A palefaced Russian-Innuit goth chick half his age.
        Sonya began ab-crunches, wriggling like a serpent. Muscles beneath taut skin were glowing hot.
         Brother Ambrose watched, enthralled. Soon she was sweating, exhaling. This was like sex to her. His arousal began as her lips parted like a Bernini Theresa.
         He knelt beside her and placed the palm of his hand upon her belly. He felt her constrictions and could stand it no more. She gasped, and then they were entwined as planned.


                                                                               *


         "This is so kinky," she said. Feeling his seed within her.
         "Howzat?" Dreamily.
         "Me doing a work-out before we do it."
         "Eh."
         He gazed upon her with renewed intensity. Her black bush glistened. He combed it and placed a moist finger upon her tongue. "This is what you wanted?"
         "Yes."
         "Well, then."
         "Well, then."
         Brother Ambrose felt a sermon blooming in his head.  Sunday he would deliver it and it would be good he told himself.
   

mango pickle

        Solar winds licked the stratosphere.  An aurora soared above the dark treeline in hues of crimson, scarlett and california poppy. To Brother Ambrose it resembled a fantastic native thunderbird. He was standing on Sonya Chekov's little patio balcony. There was a new chia pet. It looked like a gay troll with green hair. Sonya was cooking chickpea dal with spices imported from India. Ghee and rice added  simple aromas.  It all smelled good, and he was glad that Artie had introduced her the cuisine.
        Mugsy snoozed on the ledge. Stretched sinfully to the ends of the earth.
        "How much longer, Babe?" 
        "Another hour."  She trilled.  "Must let everything simmer."
        His stomach was growling. He was unbearably hungry now. He ducked inside to see if he could speed things up.
        "Hellzapoppin! Babe, ya gotta feed me!"
        "Oh, you're being Ziggy again. Here, have a chipati."
        The chipati was fried heaven. He grabbed a bunch and a jar of Bedakar's Mango Pickle and sat on the sofa, almost giddy.
         "Oh, man.  This is so good."  Tears welled in his eyes.  The bastards were spicey hot.
         "You old hippy."
         "You know, I still have that tee-shirt you gave me."
         "Which one is that?"
         "Laughing Jesus."