The deaf thing was a real bitch. Took the fun out of people.
Life for Jack was an unending, unpleasant game of charades being played underwater, stunning him how dependent we are on sound as one of the most important of the only five ways we perceive things. Learning a novel way to communicate with fingers, replacing ringers with flashers, spotlighting the toilet with a little pinlight so when one urinates at night, he ain’t doing it on the floor, the wall, or on the cat. Can’t hear the trickling sound, you see. It was all so...stunning.
It had taken him five months to gather up the courage to make his first shopping venture, and when he did, Jack Mayhew felt the deep sting of “being different” on his very first outing. Trying her damnedest that her husband didn’t go the way of Z, she took him to HOBBY LOBBY for art supplies. Walking into the store was scary and tentative, but he got along fine—at first—filling the cart with canvases, brushes, and acrylics--until he asked an associate for assistance.
“Excuse me ma’am,” he bellowed loud enough for the whole store to hear. “Can you help me?”
She approached him without saying a word (so far, so good). “Can you tell me where the glazing medium is for oils?”
She started yakking right off the bat--Jack gave her his “I’m deaf” heads-up and handed her the little notebook he brought with him--but she just kept talking. About something. “You’ll have to write it down, please.”
Whats a glazing medium? for oil? she wrote, looking a little bit put-out.
“It helps thin and manipulate the paint,” he said, giving everyone in the store an art lesson. “They’re little bottles of clear liquid.” The HOBBY LOBBY associate turned her back and pointed up and off to the left (people pointing was his second biggest “being deaf” pet peeve). “Sorry, can you please write it down?”
She grabbed the notebook a little brusquely and scribbled barely legible: never heard of it, but try isle 4–bottom lower shelf on the left. might be there”.
“Thanks. Now if you could show me where your stretcher frame bars are, I’ll--”
He stood as if he had been dipped in a vat of plaster of Paris after the associate handed him back the notebook, mouthed something unpleasant he assumed by her grimace, turned away, and high-tailed it back up towards the registers leaving Jack embarrassed, confused, and angry. When he told Julia about how he was rudely blown off, she complained to the manager who sided with his associate. When Jack sent the company CEO, Dennis Green, a certified letter registering a discrimination complaint (his first, but not last), it went unanswered. Was this his life to be?
It would take Jack several more months before venturing out into the world that had become a never-ending, quite unfunny silent movie. And he discovered that you don’t have to be an enemy target in a far-off land to get “shell-shocked”.
2
Deena’s life the three years since Ben Webber’s untimely demise went on. She invited guests into the Captain’s Keep and tried to do most of the maintenance work herself, but asked her friend Ian Noonan for help often. She kept busy cooking, cleaning, entertaining, and stealthily hunting Norway sewer rats in the dead of night.
It wasn’t long after her husband’s death that town tongues began to wag, especially seeing Noonan’s white BMW parked alongside the service kitchen all the time, they whispered. Soon, the rumors started to fly about an affair, that it had been going on long before good old Ben was killed, and didn’t it seem kinda funny that the weekend Deena was out of town is when he had his ”accident?” Did ya know, Gentle Ben’s autopsy showed two bruised hand-prints embedded on his chest? They must have had one hell of a fight before she left for her beloved mall.
It was soon bandied about that certain townsfolk “heard” that she and her Mormon boyfriend had planned the whole “hubby falls to his death scheme” for love and profit. It was surely Noonan who pushed him off the ladder—you betcha!—like it was a game of Clue. She bought him the luxury car, they were saying in hushed tones, after she sold off all of the Webber land. You know how them people like the finer things in life, tithing a little to their Lord, keeping the rest, they scoffed.
Now that Deena and Ian were being seen out and about together, many feigned outrage. Too soon...too soon, some tsked. More and more busy-bodies became convinced that the two were murderers who pulled off the perfect crime.
Tonight, though, Tuesday, November 4, 2014, guests decked out in outlandish outfits of red, white and blue were all smiles and laughter and back slaps and joyfulness and spiked punch as the Captain’s Keep was hosting a local Republican election night party. Squarely in the middle of Democrat President Barack Obama’s second, and final term, Republicans were going to control the House of Representatives and win full control of the Senate.
With total ad spending reaching $3.7 billion, this bought-and-sold midterm election was the most expensive in history—at the time. Vast amounts of this unlimited, untraceable spending, avalanched by conservative media gaslighting fear and lies about the current president spread by the Tea Party and its politicians, was the festering effect of a disaster of a ruling made by the United States Supreme Court in 2010.
In the court case, Citizens United v. FEC, a conservative nonprofit group called Citizens United challenged campaign finance rules after the Federal Election Commission stopped it from promoting and airing a film criticizing presidential candidate Hillary Clinton too close to the presidential primaries. A 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court sided with the nonprofit, ruling that corporations and other outside groups can spend unlimited money on elections, substantiating candidate Mitt Romney’s claim that corporations are people too, my friends. The high court removed reasonable campaign contribution limits, allowing a small group of wealthy donors and special interests to use dark money to influence elections. This unholy ruling has led to policies that benefit special interests, not policies that enjoy support from the majority of Americans.
According to an analysis by End Citizens United, outside interest groups have spent over $4.4 billion in federal elections since the decision. Of the $4.4 billion, nearly $1 billion has been marked as off-the-books, “dark money” expenditures. Eighty-six percent of all outside spending in federal elections in the past 30 years has come in the ten years since the decision. The worst, most corrupt, politicians money can buy.
Deena flitted around the crowd with trays of canapes and wine, beer, and pitchers of punch; Ian kept busy, too, bussing and refilling stemware out of friendship, not out of political persuasion. At one point during the exuberant Fox newscast, Deena embraced him in a long, joyous hug to which he seemed to reciprocate. This behavior--out in the open--would normally have been frowned on, but tonight, everything was good for the god-fearing GOP:
That Mooslem Obamanation who was shit out in Kenya, indoctrinated as a youth in an Indonesian madrassa (a public school, repackaged by the conservative “news” outlets as a terrorist training center), married to a tranny, Obummer, would no longer be able to pass any more of his Socialist agenda, like the affordable health care bill he rammed through on his own, illegally. “Rally ’round the flag, Tea Party members! The Republic is saved!”
3
The Tea Party movement, started in 2009, was a populist, grassroots, dark money group of conservatives who deeply opposed government spending, taxation and regulation, and who believe that the federal government uses these measures to infringe on Americans’ personal liberties as outlined in the Constitution. 37% of Tea Party members were college graduates. Almost 40% were evangelical Christians. They saw taxes, regulations, and Obamacare as direct threats to their livelihood.
Although they considered themselves full members of the Republican Party, adherents wanted to move it back to a more pure form of conservatism. They felt threatened by the new demographics in America--this was especially brought home by President Barack Obama’s win in the 2008 and 2012 elections. They were indoctrinating their base that they were becoming a minority regarding their religion, values, and way of life.
The Tea Party shut down the government in 2013 and almost refused to raise the debt ceiling because it wanted to defund Obamacare. Members included cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid as part of the conversation.
A growing lot of Americans, angry and resentful that their crack at Manifest Destiny was growing dim for the first time in American history and egged on by their blowhard mouthpieces, needed someone to stem the tide. In two year’s time, their savior would slither down from above via a golden escalator.
4
Christmas Eve, 2014, was an exquisitely old-fashioned one at Blackstone, with doorways, fireplace mantelpieces, and staircases decorated with boughs and garlands and wreaths of holly, ivy, mistletoe and pine--accents like velvet ribbons, flowers, berries, fruits and nuts gave the greens additional color, texture and elegance.
Ian decorated a half dozen trees throughout the home with beads, tinsel, paper ornaments, and jeweled baubles; the centerpiece, the twelve-foot, fresh-cut Frazier at the foot of the staircase. He knew the ghost girls liked it there because he saw ornaments swing and swirl randomly, and strings of popcorn would break sometimes, too, spreading the kernels under the tree like snow.
Durings setup, he tried to run an electric train under its evergreen branches, but it kept derailing; it finally dawned on him why--he apologized for his insensitivity and callousness and replaced the train set with a little miniature village with an English tableau.
Tonight under the warm glow of candlelight, Ian entertained friends for a night of harmony and peace and games and the celebration of their Savior’s birth. His skill with a table saw was lackluster in the gourmand department, so it was a catered affair. Fellow missionaries from Nauvoo came and harmonized on carols; everybody, both Saints and sinners, oohed and aahed at the holiday grandeur of it all.
Deena Webber made a delayed appearance--she had had a busy evening at the Keep entertaining her guests with sing-alongs of holiday songs in the parlor, and then had prepared a late supper of oyster and chili soups, gingerbreads, and chocolate-dipped goodies--all homemade. All agreed that her hospitality was exceptional and comforting, considering they were spending Christmas far from home.
Ian took her coat at the foyer and gave her a smack and a hug under the well-positioned mistletoe. “Merry Christmas, Deeny. You’re looking well.”
“Thanks. Sorry, I’m late. Just got things cleared away from tonight and then started preparing for tomorrow’s dinner. Gonna have a full table. Oh yeah, Merry Christmas back.” She said, rushed, then gave him another hug. “Love what you’ve done to the place, Mr. Dickens.” They both laughed and hugged again. “Normally, I’d have a wisecrack, but it’s Christmas and, well, the place looks beautiful.”
“Thanks. Been secretly crafting ornaments since September,” Ian replied, enjoying a virgin eggnog. “There are tons of ideas, templates, and instructions on how to create a Victorian Christmas decor, but some of the lacy patterns were kind of tricky. Actually, the hardest part was trying to keep you from finding out what I planned for this season.” They laughed and hugged again. “Merrythihkwiwi,” he whispered in her ear, above the guests’ rip-roarin’ group performance of Deck the Halls.
Deena went white, her body as cold as Ben’s when she found him. She thought he had repeated a similar nonsense word that morning before she left for Iowa City. It was a haunting memory, that final farewell with her husband three years before. “Merrythihkso-and-so?”
“Eh?”
“Uh . . . sorry, Ian. Never mind.”
“Are you okay? You look shook.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just a sudden flash of Ben. Happens around the holidays. I miss him and get so lonely sometimes...I’m sorry.”
Deena excused herself to the bathroom where she touched-up her face and downed a few more tranquilizers with her spiked eggnog before she rejoined the festivities.
The candles were puddles of wax when the holiday party broke up. One guest stayed overnight.
5
Deena Webber was awakened at 3 AM, not by Santa’s reindeer’s hooves tramping on the roof, but by persistent scratching sounds coming from outside the bedroom door. Groggy from indulging in a candy dish of pills and snuck shots of bourbon throughout the night, but now as joyous as a kid off to open Christmas presents, she grabbed her robe and the shotgun beside the bed and was ready to do some middle-of-the-night rat hunting.
“Filthy little turds, tonight’s the night. You’re mine, now. Methihkwiwi, little fuckers!″ she exclaimed with vengeance, in a guttural low voice. Dazed and sedated, she aimed the barrels towards the floor and slowly opened the door to an empty hallway.
There were no rodents outside, just their creepy little slushy footprints on the stone floor that resembled cat paws more than their usual five-toed claws, leading up the main staircase. Deena stood in the darkened silence. “Maybe, just maybe, if I can find enough shreds of him, the mortician can have Ben looking whole and handsome again for our wedding,” she gushed, then shhhhed herself for hoping too loud. Fingering the extra shells she tossed in her robe pocket and thinking what a wonderful Christmas present that would be, she began her pursuit.
Padding down the hall, Deena was growing more and more disoriented as the passageway on the first deck of the Captain’s Keep seemed to pitch and roll; a waft of salty sea air blending with the fragrances of orange and cinnamon. She poked the gun barrel through the galley and was relieved that the little bastards hadn’t gnawed on tomorrow’s turkey that was thawing in the sink like they had gnawed on her dead husband’s handsome face.
She continued starboard until she got to the foyer, then stopped again at the double doors. “Now who in the hell made this mess,” she moaned and stared, pissed at the slushy stamps of more cat-paw boot-prints, square-toed boot-prints, and prints without boots on them at all, that led inside. “And who the hell goes out in the snow without shoes on? And why couldn’t they wipe their feet on the goddamn welcome mat?”
Her anger that now she’d have to scrub the floors in the morning in addition to preparing a full goddamn Christmas dinner from scratch was disturbed by the scamper of a shipload of rats and their chorus of high-pitched taunts of “methihkwiwi, come catch me” cascading down from the second floor corridor. Their squealing cacophony seemed to Deena nearly identical to the Christmas with the Chipmunks record she played unmercifully as a child, but increasingly spinning faster and with increasingly higher and higher pitches, more annoying than the album.
“Aye, aye, Alvin, Simon, Theodore, and the rest o’ ye filthy bastards!” Deena shouted from the main deck, shhhhhhed herself again, and started up the stairs.
Two doors, portside--that’s where the first set of cat paw prints were leading. Deena stood at the closed door and could hear the little shits in there, all right, tearing at the wallpaper it sounded like to her. Acht Gott, die kleinen bastarde!
As she turned the knob and opened it in slo-mo, Deena’s first thought was: note to self, oil 2C’s door next week--its squeaks are attracting rodents. She peeked into the moonlit darkness and was sure she could see two of the little Jim Carey-impersonating assholes gnawing on the antique oak headboard. She took two quiet steps inside and declared, “Auf wiedersehen, you rabid, flea-bitten bastards! Ha!”
Deena aimed at the pillows and fired both barrels. Hasta la vista, and a happy new year! she thought, giggling, feeling like a bad-ass female Ahnold in those Terminator movies Ben liked so much. The happiness she derived from splashing rat brains on the wallpaper was like the happiness she enjoyed when her husband’s stupid Terminator movies finally ended. Oh my gawd, his taste in movies. Taking me on a high school date to see Ben, the movie about a boy and his homicidal pet rats, is finally reaping dividends though, honey!
It looked like tonight was going to be a double-feature, for the high-pitched, brain-scrambling provocations were now coming from 2E, the last room on the right. Deena put the spent shells in her robe pocket and reloaded. She better finish this off despite the fun and get some sleep--the Most Wonderful Day of the Year was here and she had guests to entertain.
6
Ian Noonan’s cell phone chimed with Elvis’ “Blue Christmas” at 6:22 AM. Who could that be this early on Christmas morning? he wondered, still three-quarters asleep. He seemed a bit perturbed and let it go to voicemail. This was the first holiday he would get to celebrate being in love, and he and his partner were snuggled warm as gingerbread men in bed.
“Sorry to wake you, Terry. I should have muted my phone last night. Sorry, I’m new at this,” he whispered, as he saw the sheets stir. “How’d you sleep?”
“Wonderful. Merry Christmas, good-looking.” They kissed.
Terry McDermott was another Saint performing missionary work in Nauvoo who arrived in town last May. Single, late-twenty something and perfect, the two hit it off right away; both relieved to know that their Church officially does not have a position on same-gender attraction and that it supports all its members regardless of sexual orientation with kindness and respect, both at home and in church.
Justification is everything: when a sect’s founder’s sexual proclivities are exposed, but then excused because they were “divine edicts from God,” how can the same founder denounce his followers’ carnal practices as sinful? Benjamin E. Park, a scholar who received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and is an assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State University, explains away this dilemma in his book, The Kingdom of Nauvoo”:
“Whereas the temple’s cornerstone ceremony was witnessed by thousands, an equally important ceremony took place that same week, only this one was under a strict code of secrecy. On April 5, [1841] the night before the laying of the cornerstones, Joseph Smith met with Louisa Beman and Joseph Noble in a small grove, shielded from prying eyes. Noble was a longtime member of the church and close confidant of the prophet, and Beman, who had disguised herself as a man by wearing a coat and hat, was his sister-in-law. Emma Smith [the prophet’s wife], unaware of the meeting, was not present. All three knew that what they were about to do was neither legally nor socially justified, yet each believed their actions were both justified and necessary. Acting as officator, Noble married Beman to Smith as a plural wife.”
Dr. Park further informs his readers that Smith was also “sealed” to many other women--he took around a dozen plural wives just between January and July 1843 alone, the busiest polyamous period during his years in Nauvoo. Following the pattern established the previous summer, most of these new brides were young and single. Several were sisters. His “blessing” of Sarah Ann Whitney, March 23, 1843, was in Smith’s own handwriting.
When rumors began to fly about his many secret marriages, and he was finally exposed, “his theorizing on polygamy was not a superficial endorsement for extramarital sex, but a vision of the multilayered patriarchal hierarchy that governed the cosmos. As he did throughout his prophetic career, he constructed a new religious world that gave radical meaning to human activities,” the author stated.
Smith and his close associates “were to fulfill the patriarchal tradition of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob”, the prophet dictated in a 3,300-word revelation “on the order of the priesthood”. He made the claim to his followers that those who were “sealed” by this priesthood authority, both men and women, would inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, powers, and dominions upon their death.
Some bought into the edict nonsense; however, some, like Smith’s first wife, became suspicious. Park tells how Emma began to worry that these sealings were more than just spiritual in nature, especially when she discovered what appeared to be love letters addressed to her husband (when confronted, the amorous correspondent wrote in her diary that “darkness now reigned in Emma’s heart”.)
At one point, it seemed that Joseph was worried Emma might seek revenge by starting her own affair with the prophet’s close friend, William Clayton, Park wrote. She thought that if [Joseph] would indulge himself she would too.
What is with all these horny men of god like Jimmy Swaggert, Ted Haggard, and Jerry Falwell, Jr, two centuries hence, who condemn other people’s “sins” while doing the same? And what is with the suckers who buy into their flimsy rationale that “the devil got to me! Poor me! Send me more curing love gifts of money!”--when busted?
Neither man was ashamed of being gay, but Ian’s need to know was limited to the Webbers and a few other close local friends because he understood that small town tongues tend to wag, and often wag wrong. He came out to Deena early on, before their Homecoming date, and was happy to know she and Ben were open-minded enough not to care.
Speaking of, it was his dear sweet friend across town on voicemail he played back a few minutes after stirring. “Hey Ian, can you get over here ASAP. I think something bad might have happened last night. Please hurry.”
7
Deena met Ian and Terry outside under the veranda, still barefoot and in her robe, despite the frosty morning darkness. Underneath the oversized lantern that welcomed guests with a warm, yellow glow, she looked sallow, like she just had been sideswiped by Claus’ sled.
“Deeny, Deeny, Deeny, let’s get you inside and warm, honey,” Ian said, holding her close, guiding her through the double doors gently, as if she were a victim of a nursing home. “What in god’s name happened to you?” He saw the stippled bits of gunpowder, brains, and blood that sprinkled her in the light like the glitter on his homemade Christmas ornaments.
“I’m not sure,” she mumbled in a dead-eyed, zombie voice, assuming zombies talk. “I woke up with these in my pocket.” She fished out a handful of spent shotgun shells and started to break down in confusion. “I don’t know what happened. Ian. I’m so sorry.”
“Shhhhh, it’s okay, he said quietly. “Come sit in the parlor and Terry and I will check it out. I’m sure everything will be just fine. Here, I’ll turn the Christmas tree lights on. Just relax.” He neither hugged her or wished her holiday salutations in fear of agitating her, because his friend, indeed, looked agitated, but she also wore a crooked, goofy, dazed smile of satisfaction. “We’ll be right back.”
The two men, looking for clues, blood, or something—anything—scoped down the hallway towards her bedroom and noticed nothing suspicious. The first floor was trimmed and undisturbed, the stone floor swept and clean. It smelled of Christmas with the hanging scent of burnt gunpowder--apparent to both that she fired the weapon somewhere inside the house. Confirmation that Deena had hit her mark was evident by the streaks of red and bits of scorched hair that stained her pillow and sheets when they walked into her bedroom.
“An intruder on Christmas Eve? Shoot, everybody in town knew that Deena lavishes gifts on just about everyone. A haul like that could make a methylated grinch some nice pawn shop money, that’s for sure,” Ian whispered as he examined the shotgun closely without touching it that lay across her bureau.
“Would you not take a shower first though, Terry, before you went to bed?” he asked, puzzled. They cleared the rest of the downstairs in relief that everything seemed fine, checked on Deena, finding her still numb, staring at the blinking lights, out of it. The two men headed back out to the foyer.
“So, she shot something...upstairs?” Terry whispered, a little panic in his voice, hesitant to find out. They paused.
“We’ll finish the sweep there, then the attic. Maybe a raccoon got up in the rafters last night. Maybe he’s the one who tried to steal the presents. They do wear masks and everything. I better just shut up, huh?” His babbling attempt at levity could not hide his growing foreboding. They two squeezed hands and tip-toed up.
The hallway was as clean as the first floor corridor, everything in place, except that the gunpowder stench was stronger. Ian rapped lightly on room 2A’s door and with no response, cracked it open. “Everything’s good in there,” he said. “Totally Deena--decorated for the holidays from ceiling to hardwoods. I got to hand it to her,” he whispered, feeling pangs of sadness, yet, hope, for his good friend. He inhaled to the bottom of his lungs and exhaled and was becoming a tad bit more confident that all was well. “What can go wrong on Christmas?”
A lot, the two men discovered. Room 2C was decorated with the remains of Bernard and Alice Manchester, a retired Mormon couple from Provo, Utah, who booked the Keep at Christmas because of the ‘old-fashioned’ holiday angle that Deena had advertised in the Deseret; a young couple from Hanover, New Hampshire, named Jeremiah and Hanna Wilkerson, checking out the area to see if they wanted to missionary here, were tinseled all over Room 2E.
Because of these four splattered Saints, Deputy Putnam’s Christmas morning with the wife and kids was shot now, too.
ns 15.158.61.23da2
