The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival (9 page)

“Cool beans,” he says, and scampers off.

When I get back to the rectory I find Father Johnson on his hands and knees behind the television.

“What are you doing?” Has this guy no shame, no sense of propriety? He walks into another man’s home and starts monkeying around with his television? Why not walk into church and piss on the altar?

“Keep your panties on. I brought you something.”

“What, exactly, did you bring me?”

“A cure for boredom,” he says. “Comes in handy for me, but it’s a lot better with two people.”

Before I can say anything, he pops his head up and adds, “And no, it’s not porn.” He goes back to work. “You know, it’d be a lot easier if you’d organize these wires back here. I mean, dear Lord!”

Curious, I follow the wires from the back of the television to a black box, which in turn is connected to two controllers bristling with buttons. “Video game? What am I going to do with that?”

“Grow a garden. Paint a picture. What do you think, dummy?” he says, standing up and patting the dust off his pants. He’s some two inches taller than me, blond hair, high cheekbones. Definitely gay. A man that good looking has no other reason to join the priesthood, I don’t care how faithful he might be.

I pick up one of the controllers. “I haven’t played since I was a kid. Look at this thing. It’s like Nintendo and Atari had a bastard child or something.”

“See, you’re not so out of it. That’s pretty much all it is. You’ll learn as you go along.”

We decide on something he describes as a first-person shooter.

“Good thing about it, it lets you work out some aggression. And God knows, with that whole celibate thing, we have plenty of the old aggression. People blame these things for school violence. Bet those little Columbine fuckers would have gone berserk three years earlier if they didn’t have this stuff around to keep them occupied.”

What an awful, insensitive thing to say. I’m starting to like this guy.

Of course, when the game starts he clobbers me. It takes me half an hour just to grow accustomed to the controller, the look and feel of the game. As a kid, I thought Nintendo’s Duck Hunt was the pinnacle of gaming technology, but this is something else entirely. I find myself almost motion sick because the graphics are so realistic.

“Wow, it’s almost like really killing someone,” I say.

Mark laughs. “What are you talking about? You haven’t killed anything yet.”

“Well, it’s almost like really being killed, just without all the pain and stuff.”

We make little conversation. I’m too busy biting my bottom lip, squinting my eyes, and leaning my body left or right, trying to will my character out of the way of bullets, grenades, and plasma bursts.

Eventually, I win my first game, twenty-five kills to Mark’s twenty-four, and I jump up, run around the couch a few times, and jab my finger at Mark. “Yeah. Now you feel my wrath.” I have an inkling of just how silly this is, but I don’t care at this point.

“Oh. Dear. Lord,” he says, rolling his eyes, but laughing all the same.

“Yeah, roll your eyes now,” I say, “but I got your number.”

I sit back down and grab my controller.

“You’re not hungry by any chance?” Mark asks.

Food? Do space soldiers need food? It’s a ridiculous question, but there it is, floating around in my foolish head. My stomach grumbles, reminding me that I am not, after all, a space warrior.

I look at my watch. I look back at Mark, back at my watch.

Smiling, he shrugs. “Happens to everyone their first time.”

“No,” I say, looking back at my watch. “Four? We’ve been playing for four hours?”

“Good way to waste a Saturday,” he says.

“Shit,” I say. “I have Mass in half an hour.”

“Oops,” he says, standing up. “I guess there’s no place to eat in this burg.”

“No,” I say. “Why don’t you hang out? Saturday Mass is short, half an hour. I have a refrigerator full of leftovers, some of the best stuff you’ll ever eat and none of it more than four days old.”

He politely protests. Myself, I can see the other side of that short Mass, me coming back here to TV and a drink or two, maybe some reading to the sound of the refrigerator’s hum.

“C’mon,” I say.

“Well, in that case,” he says.

I tell him to make himself at home and head over to the church where, of course, there’s the usual Saturday problem of Denise, her strawberry shampoo wafting around the altar. That’s twice in one day. I really should see about getting some incense up here. She’s got a new haircut, only subtly different from the last but just enough to make her seem older—
Or old enough,
some dirty little voice shouts from somewhere in the gray matter.
You know what I’m saying?
it says.
Old enough? Get it?

Yeah, I get it.

But for once, I have a few other things to bump that voice from center stage. I’ve got a gay man and some violent video games to keep me distracted.

By the time I wrap up at the church and wave off the last parishioners, it’s started to rain, a steady rain with no thunder, a Louisiana winter rain that could just keep on slow and steady for a day or two.

In the rectory’s kitchen, I find Mark leaning back in a chair pushed away from the table. His eyes move but nothing else does.

“You eat like this all the time?” he groans.

“Well, I don’t know if I eat like
that
,” I say, nodding at his empty plate. “But the locals make offerings on a regular basis, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He looks down at his stomach and then at mine.

“Yeah, I know. It’s starting to show,” I say.

Mark tries to move, but I tell him not to bother. I put on a pot of coffee, clean his dishes, then warm up some food for myself.

“You have this place all to yourself?” he asks.

“Jealous?”

“Hell no. This job’s lonely enough as it is. I don’t know if I could take being out here all alone.”

“I’m not quite sure I can, either,” I say, pulling my food out of the microwave and handing Mark a cup of coffee.

“Then again, I’m not exactly doing so hot surrounded by people, either,” he says, wrapping his hands around the coffee as if he were cold.

“How so?”

“Oh,” he says, shaking his head, his voice light again. “Don’t pay me any mind. Just me prattling on.”

I look at him and he looks back, his eyes telling me that whatever thing he’s got going in St. John’s parish is going to stay there for now.

Fine by me.

But that doesn’t stop him from divulging his biography. He’s originally from Gueydan, somewhere in the deepest depths of south Louisiana, a town so small that other backwater towns make fun of it. A promising student. Popular with the girls because of his good looks. But.

“After watching a couple of, shall we say, educational videos, I had a hint of what exactly it was that wasn’t quite right. Well, I couldn’t be
that!
But I was. But I couldn’t
do
that, and I just wasn’t
going
to do that. I wasn’t brought up that way! So the only logical thing to do was join the seminary. I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell my parents. So off to seminary with little Mark.”

“Which seminary?” I ask.

“Notre Dame, outside of New Orleans.”

“I’m sure that saved you,” I say. When I made my decision to join God’s army, I told the bishop it was on the condition that I not go to Notre Dame, notorious for its liberal approach to the liturgy. Among other things. I figured if I was going to deprive myself of a normal life, I didn’t want to do it half-assed. I wanted tradition. I wanted a uniform. And I didn’t want to have to worry about bending over in the shower.

“Exactly,” says Mark. “I probably would have remained celibate longer had I not joined that seminary. Wasn’t like I’d have found a man back home. Hell, I might have gone back into denial, found me a big fat wife who didn’t really like men, and had a baby or two.”

“Yeah, but.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “That’s not the way it happened. Still, I guess it wasn’t so bad. Familiar people, familiar surroundings. Wasn’t some back-alley New Orleans drunken thing. Not that time at any rate. And once I was in—or out, I guess—Lord, did my eyes open!”

He pauses before continuing. “I try to stay out of it, really. The back-of-the-closet drama. But.”

“But?”

Do normal adults, nonpriests, slip into confessional mode this quickly? I can’t imagine John the Welder unburdening his soul and unpacking his sexuality to Bob the Riveter two hours into their first job together. That takes time, and probably no small amount of alcohol.

I guess confessions are an occupational hazard.

He shrugs. He looks around the room, brings his gaze to rest on the window, like he’s staring out at clouds far off on the horizon instead of last summer’s moths and June bugs rotting in the screen. “You’re straight. I imagine you deal with a lot of sexual frustration. Imagine being gay. Like being a kid in a candy store. I stay out of the blackmail, all that. I’m not into the power and glory like some of these guys. I’m not angling to be bishop. But with what I know, I could probably make some nice deals for myself. Then again, I only know some of this because I ain’t exactly anybody’s version of the unstained lamb.” He pauses. “But the sexual temptation. God. All the time it’s there. And even when you have it under control, maybe someone else doesn’t. I mean, imagine if you had two or three women living in this place with you. Sometimes feelings get involved, and that’s when things get really ugly.”

Is that it, then? Is he hiding from someone in Lafayette right now, running from a broken heart?

“I see your point,” is all I say.

“Anyway,” Mark says, turning his eyes back to me. “Sorry to bring the party down.”

“Oh no. Not a problem,” I say. “Any time you need to talk.” I’m not sure if I mean that or not.

“Oh, sure, riiight.” He looks down at his watch. “Crap. I have to head back. But you’re going to regret that offer.”

“Well, I meant it.” Or did I?

“We’ll see,” he says. “Let’s just consider it payment for that video game system.” On our way out to the car, it occurs to me that that system probably wasn’t cheap. “How much was that thing anyway?” I ask. “I can’t let you pay for that.”

He gives me a sly grin. “Don’t worry about it. I took it from one of the toy-drive boxes at St. John’s.”

We both laugh.

“What’s funnier,” he says as he puts his car in reverse and starts to back out, “is that you think I’m just joking.”

When Johnny Blackfoot drives up in his battered pickup, its magnetic signs alerting the world that he is an ambassador for Magical Amusement Company,
THRILLING THE MIDWAY SINCE 1966. JOHNNY BLACKFOOT, OWNER/OPERATOR
, it’s a shock. A shock of red hair and foul language.

Blackfoot.

I was expecting an Indian. A Native American if you will. Some solid man with shiny black hair, a big belt buckle, and nice boots. A man of few words, who ran a tight carny. A man driven to tears by litter.

What I was not expecting was this five-foot-two hairy little red man standing in the parking lot of my church.

“Well now, Father,” he says, taking in the surroundings. “You’re going to have a tight fucking spot here, now, won’t you?”

First words out of his mouth. He’s got an Irish accent. Maybe his grandfather was Indian.

“But the good thing is the pavement. You’ll have your fairgoers park their shitmobiles out in a field or something, put the rides here on the pavement. You’d be surprised how some of these cocksuckers want you to put the equipment right in a patch of fucking dirt. In this state! With the rain you people get.” He says it as if the people of Louisiana were personally responsible for the weather. “Next you know, the Zipper’s all leaned over and the little bastards are dragging mud all over the seats and shit. D’ya know what I’m saying, Father?”

I curse. My friends curse. But it’s something else entirely for a complete stranger to start right in, especially when I’m wearing my collar. The only other people who do that are pro-choicers and, from their point of view, they have every reason in the world to be cursing at people like me.

But there’s no malice in Blackfoot’s voice. I get the feeling that if I’d ask him the time, he’d undoubtedly tell me that it’s “Twelve fuckin’ o’clock, according to this pieceashit watch here on my wrist.”

Whatever his linguistic skills, he throws me off. I’m supposed to be getting estimates, seeking out the low bidder. Instead, I find myself saying, “Mr. Blackfoot, I’m sure yall will know how best to use the space.” I’m halfway to just giving this guy the contract, which is just as well considering how late a start we got on this thing.

He hands me a bound portfolio with a Ferris wheel and an elephant on the cover. “Fucking right we will, Father. Damn straight. My men are the best in the business. And won’t give you a whole lot of shit like these other outfits. Straight-fucking-up is what we are.”

“Great,” is all I can say. I notice his accent is a little more than Irish. There’s an undercurrent of southern twang, a touch of white-trash phrasing.

Blackfoot pulls out a wad of chewing tobacco and stuffs it into his cheek. “Tell you what, Father. What say I look around the place a bit? See what’s what. I’m sure you got shit to do.”

“Yeah. Okay, Mr. Twofoot.”

“Blackfoot.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Ah, ’sokay, Father. Happens all the time. Better Twofoot than One-eye or some such.” He chuckles and spits, leaving a brown splat on the pavement.

He begins walking the property. Back and forth, back and forth, considering the trees, eyeing the graveyard, walking to the highway, and looking in both directions.

He’s disappeared behind the rectory when Vicky drives up and rolls down her window.

“What are you doing standing out here in the parking lot, Steve?”

“Mr. Blackfoot’s here,” I say.

“Who?”

I hand her the portfolio and she pages through it.

“Well, you actually got off your ass to do something. Looks respectable. Indian, huh?” She hands the book back to me.

“Not exactly,” I say as Blackfoot comes around to the front of the church again. He walks directly toward us.

“A bit small, but it can work,” he says. “I suggest you use that field across the way for parking. You’ll need a cop or crossing guard, too, so nobody gets their fucking heads squashed trying to cross the highway.”

Vicky’s jaw has practically fallen out through the car window.

“Mr. Blackfoot, this is Vicky Carrier. She’s the festival director.”

“Hi,” she says, getting out of the car and offering her hand.

“Right, then,” he says. He ignores her hand, reaches into his truck for another portfolio, and hands it to her. She makes a show of looking at it and I look down at mine.

“You actually have an elephant?” I ask.

“Sure do,” he says, smiling now. “Big motherfucker, too. But nice as a pussycat.” He looks into his own folder. “And she’ll be free that weekend.”

“Well,” I say.

“Tell you what. I’ll throw her in free if you sign up today.”

An elephant in Grand Prairie. To think of it.

“What exactly would one do with an elephant?” Vicky asks. She’s always such a stickler for details.

“Well, ya ride the fucking thing, of course,” Blackfoot says.

“Of course,” she says, looking back down at the portfolio in her hands.

He offers his hand to me. After I shake it, he walks back to his truck, gets in, and starts the engine. “I’ll draw up the papers and fax ’em over to you,” he says before driving off.

I stand there waving like an idiot child even after the short bus has pulled away from the curb.

“Steve?” Vicky asks, not at all pleased.

I just keep waving.

“Did you even talk to anyone else?”

“Sure. Of course.” Now, that’s a damn lie. Technically, I hadn’t even talked to Blackfoot before today. I looked at other places on the Web; Blackfoot was the first to get back to me.

“Steve!” For some reason, Vicky doesn’t quite believe me.

“What! It’ll be fine.”

“He’s a goddamn Traveler.”

“Name in vain, Vick.”

“Don’t give me that shit.”

Odd. She seems to be actually angry.

“He’s a Traveler,” she says again.

“What’s a Traveler?”

“They’re like Irish Gypsies or something. Con artists, thieves. They’ll probably steal the crucifix right out of the church.”

I’ve never heard of Travelers before. Irish Gypsies? Since when? Puh-leeze.

“Just great. The one thing I leave in your hands—” she says.

“Vick,” I interrupt. “It’s not as if your typical carny has a spotless reputation. And I should point out that this is all short notice. The only reason Blackfoot’s available that weekend is that a church fair fell through in Plaquemines Parish. The priest embezzled half a million dollars and was caught trying to flee the country with his seventeen-year-old altar boy.”

I’m surprised at my own logic, that my defense actually makes sense.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says. “Jesus.”

“So I wouldn’t go claiming any moral superiority over Gypsies or whatever they are.”

“Fine,” she says.

I decide to change the subject and, hopefully, her mood.

“An elephant, Vicky,” I say. “We’re going to have an elephant!”

That had shut her up. Okay. Not really. But the elephant impresses everyone else. Even Miss Rita. I saved the news for the day of her birthday, a week after my meeting with Blackfoot.

“That’s something else,” she says. “Prolly never been a elephant in Grand Prairie. All my years I ain’t never seen me an elephant.”

“Hey, I have an idea,” I say. “I can arrange to bring you out there.”

“What? I’m gonna drag myself out there just to look at a elephant? Uh-huh.”

“Look at it? You can ride it, Miss Rita.”

That gets her laughing. “Lord, you a fool, Steve.”

She takes a pull on her Crown Royal. We’re drinking it on the rocks out of plastic cups rather than out of the bottle in honor of the big day.

“I could just see me climbing up on some elephant just like it was a old mule or something.”

“Yeah,” I say. “You should come out there. Probably be the oldest person ever to ride one.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, but her laugh trails off. “Don’t know about all that. Might not be around.”

“Now, c’mon, Miss Rita.”

“Don’t c’mon me. You know five months is a long time away for somebody my age, especially with winter coming.”

Where did that come from? I try to swing the topic back around to her birthday. “So tell me again why you’re spending your birthday here instead of with your family?”

Unexpectedly, she gives me a straight answer. “Too hard to come back here. Spend all day with your family fussing over you, them little kids making big eyes at you, climbing up in your lap. Then you gotta come back here, to this place, to this room. You can get used to this place, but you leave from it, go back to that other world, it’s hard to come back.”

She falls silent for a bit, then shakes her head clear. “C’mon,” she says. “Don’t want to be late for my own birthday party.”

“You sure you want to wear that shirt?”

Today’s shirt features the heads of six or seven African-American luminaries and the phrase BLACK POWER in huge letters.

“Let’s go,” is all she says.

Miss Rita’s birthday is an annual media frenzy by Opelousas standards. Always a reporter and photographer from the
Daily World.
Usually a matching set from the
Advertiser
in Lafayette. And typically at least one camera crew. This year promises to be worse because some old coot in St. Louis recently died, leaving Miss Rita, however old she really is, the oldest person alive in the United States.

In reality, all it boils down to is a couple of nips of whiskey for both of us before I roll her out into the main room. There, all the other inmates are lined up in chairs, eyes lazily tracking the balloons, a glimmer of recognition somewhere in there—perhaps they’re remembering a child’s birthday party long ago, before that same child decided that out of sight was the best place for mom and pop to live out their golden years. A monstrous birthday cake with a garish amount of candles will be wheeled out so that Miss Rita can spray it with spit before it’s sliced up and most of it thrown away—the sugar could quite literally kill many of the residents. The only people who ever eat the cake are the journalists, scavengers who gobble up anything that’s free. But they have the decency to wait until the hard work of asking Miss Rita how it feels to be so old is out of the way. Most often she’ll reply with incoherent coos, carrying her senile act to the viewing public. Once, she responded with a very loud demand for her whiskey, causing some confusion among the nursing home staff and no small amount of blushing on my part. And after everyone leaves, I wheel her back to her room, where she delights in having pulled a fast one yet again.

This year, the home has decided to call it her 110th birthday, and despite her mood, everything seems to be going right once we’re in the common room. The cake and its admirers have been wheeled out. I’m sitting next to Miss Rita, holding her hand, squinting into the camera lights. Then Joe Brasseaux, foolish enough to do a live feed for Channel 10, asks an equally foolish question.

“So, Miss Rita, what could we possibly get for a 110-year-old woman?”

I know something is off when she yanks her hand from mine and sits up straight. She clears her throat loudly.

“Well, Joe, let me tell you. You can start off by giving me my forty acres and my mule.”

A puzzled, condescending smile affixes itself to Joe’s face. “Well, now, Miss Rita, isn’t that some—”

“Don’t ‘isn’t that something’ me, boy. I ain’t off my rocker. I want my forty acres and my mule.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Joe says. And that’s quite obvious. What’s unclear is whether he’s confused by her sudden lucidity or by the forty acres and a mule reference. Joe might be pretty enough for TV, but he’s about as sharp as the handle end of an ax. Joe’s cameraman is trying hard not to laugh. His shoulders are practically shaking, but he keeps the camera trained on the sparring pair.

“What’s there to understand, Joe?” Miss Rita says.

“Now, Miss Rita—” I start.

“Shut up, Steve,” she says, then turns her attention back to Joe Brasseaux and the camera behind him. She looks straight into the lens. “Not hard to understand at all. Forty acres. A mule, Joe. Reparations. You know what that word means, Joe? Might be surprised an old nigga lady like me knows that word. But I know, Joe. Means payback. How ’bout yall pay me back what yall owe me?”

By this point, the other old folks in the home, like animals sensing an earthquake, are upset and making noise. Even the ones who can’t possibly know what’s going on are rocking back and forth in their chairs, no doubt understanding the tone if not the content of Miss Rita’s voice.

“Yeah, okay,” Joe says in a calm voice, a voice completely out of place in this conversation. Then I realize that he’s talking to the person on the other side of his earpiece. He’s all business when he turns to his cameraman. “They cut the transmission. Kill the tape.”

“You sure?” the cameraman asks.

“Yeah, I’m sure, Carl. Who the hell wants to see this?”

“That’s right. Who the hell wants to hear some old lady talk about slavery? Go on, turn your camera off.”

“Miss Rita—” I try again.

“Shut up, Steve,” she snaps. “And get me outta here before I have to kick Joe Brasseaux’s ass.”

I do as I’m told, rolling her off while the attendants try to calm the others. Miss Rita takes a few parting shots. “I’ll get them Channel Three people in here. They’ll listen. Least they got a black person or two working for ’em.”

I push faster and when I get her into her room, I find her bottle of Crown and give it to her.

“Calm down, Miss Rita,” I say.

Her hands shake while she twists the cap off. And it’s not from old age and infirmity. Her knuckles are gray with rage. “Calm down. Don’t tell me to calm down. Ain’t your place. More than one hundred years on God’s green earth and you gonna tell me to calm down?”

“But,” I start. What the hell do I say? I have the feeling that invoking the name of Jesus at this point is only going to make things worse. “Where is this coming from? What? Why did you go and do that on TV?”

She looks at me for a good long time. I try to hold my eyes on hers, but I feel my ears turn red at about the same time I look down at my shoes.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“I did it because I felt like it. I did it because somebody needs to say something before the rest of yall forget.”