Book of Jim: Agnostic Parables and Dick Jokes From Lucifer's Paradise (11 page)

“Nope.  No holocaust.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“What’s the problem?”

“I’m rusty.  I wouldn’t know what to say.”

Jim made the guffaw.  “Dude, you broke Europe.  Like, a substantial number of the people that are up here, they’re up here because of you.  A hundred million, two hundred.  I don’t know exactly, but it’s a lot.  And I know you don’t get any credit, but that was you, man.  You did that.”

Hitler nodded.  He drank the last of his pina colada.  He picked up the paperback and thumbed through its pages.  “This
is
a terrible book,” he said. 

“So you’ll do it?” Jim said.

Hitler stood and stretched his back and his legs.  He said, “I will do it, but we must become homosexual partners.”

“Uh, what?”

And Hitler put his hand on Jim’s shoulder.  “My lips are going to finish what your dick has started.”

Jim got it.

4

Einstein.  Einstein, come in.  Are you there?

Jim!  I am in orbit around the dark star.  The apparatus is fully operational.  Is the distraction in play?

It’s ready, but it might take some time.

After detonation, it will take two minutes for the charm quarks to reach the firmament.  Not a single person can witness it.  No observers!  Our timing must be perfect!

Do not detonate until I give the word.  I repeat, Do not detonate.

What is the distraction?  Fireworks?  A John Wayne movie?

Uh, well, not exactly.  Would that have worked?

Anything that draws the eye.  We only need a picosecond.  What is in play?

I went with Hitler.

What?!  You goddamn crazy hillbilly!

5

So Hitler came to the field of battle.  He stood upon the shoulders of a smirking angel who floated above the blasted ground.  A microphone descended from the sky.  Hitler tapped it with a finger and the thud echoed through the sound system of
paradise
.  There was the
wang
of feedback and he cleared his throat.

He said, “What is the difference between a Jew and a hooker?”

Jim thought, That sonofabitch, if he starts holocausting people I’m not golfing with him anymore.  He lay on a hill at the edge of the blasted ground, with binoculars in one hand and Einstein’s walkie talkie in the other.  And the voice of Hitler was clear through the sound system.

“The difference is, I have only instigated the murder of two hookers.  Get it?  I am the Fuhrer.  The joke is funny because it is not really a joke and it is inappropriate for me to tell it.  Don’t worry, I have many more.”

Throughout the blasted ground the heads began to
turn
.  For though they loved the war, they
really
loved a spectacle.  Muskets and shovels became leaning sticks and the Fuhrer had a small audience.

“How many Jews does it take to change the lightbulb?” Hitler said.  “Anybody?  The answer is zero.  It is zero because Jews now live in a terrible darkness, for which I am partly responsible, and they have lost the will to change the bulb.  This guy gets it.”

Jim followed the finger of Hitler, and he saw through the binoculars the oscillations of a papal cap.  Then he heard upon the wind the
hurrrr hurrrr hurrrr
.

And Hitler told many more jokes.  The small audience became a
fashionable
one.  There came the Anglicans and the Lutherans and several Orthodoxies, and there came the Methodists, the Baptists, the Mormons, the Evangelists, the Congregationalists and the Pentecostals.  They wandered in with weapons low, and they were glad for the reprieve and they laughed together at the saviorless Jews. 

Then the Presbyterians came.  They brought enough cake for everyone.  And when the Catholics came, the din of war was no more.  Hitler now stood at the pinnacle of all attention, high on the shoulders of the smirking angel.

He said, “But I have not come before you today to tell jokes or do the holocaust.  I am here to show you all my true colors.  I am in my heart the artist who died in Vienna, and to prove it I am going to paint for you a masterpiece.  I call it, The Prophet Mohammed Enjoys an Ice Cream Cone.”

Then a second smirking angel brought to Hitler a canvas and a pallet and a brush.  Hitler dipped the brush in the pallet and began to paint the likeness of the Islam prophet upon the canvas.

“Oh
shit
,” Jim said.

6

Einstein!  Now!  Fire!  Fire!

What’s happening down there?

Hitler is painting Mohammed!  Eating an ice cream cone!  I don’t know much about Islam, but you don’t fucking paint Mohammed.  We gotta go now.

Dammit, hillbilly.  Elvis, you could have called up Elvis.  Alright, we have detonation.  Two minutes to arrival.

Can you make it go faster?

Charm quarks do not have a gas pedal.

He’s starting with an outline.  He’s outlining.  Looks like a body.  Those might be arms.  There’s a head taking shape.

One minute, forty seconds.

I can definitely make out the ice cream cone. 

One minute, thirty seconds.

You know, he’s pretty good.  Like, he’s really got a knack for this.  It’s kind of sad how good he is.  I think this painting is really going to come together.

One minute remaining to impact.  Is the distraction complete?  A single observer, Jim!  A single eye looking up and the charm quarks will collapse, and you will all be slaves to the Immovable Asininity!

Nobody’s turning away from this shit.  He’s working on the eyes.

Forty seconds.

The eyes are brilliant.  It’s like, they’re looking
through
me, man.

Twenty seconds.  Jim, if this works, there will be an immense burst of light followed by, well, followed by
something
.  It will probably be disorienting.

I’ll be damned.  He finished.  Mohammed is enjoying an ice cream cone.  Oh shit.  Einstein, there’s another crack!  The
jihad
is coming!

7

Ka-fuckin-
boom
.

8

Jim!  Jim, come in!  Was there a flash?  Are you disoriented?  Damn you, hillbilly, what’s going on down there?

I, I’m here.  Yeah, I’m still here.

Did it work?

I don’t know.  There was a huge burst of light.  I don’t see the crack in the firmament anywhere.  Something’s weird, though.

What is it?  Can they see each other?  They should not be able to see each other. 

It’s, like, the opposite.

The opposite?

We can see
everything
.  Inside and outside.  It’s like we can look into each other’s thoughts.  It’s hard to explain.  But we can definitely see each other.

A million pole dancers in
paradise
, and you give Hitler a paint brush.  Do you see anything that is either immovable or asinine?  I will roast your hillbilly hide on a spit if we created a god.

No, it’s nothing like that.  I mean, it’s
awesome
.  We’re all looking around right know and finding out that we pretty much think the same things.  Like, we’re all scared shitless when it comes to spiders and the darkness, and music is a good way to fill up your time, and there’s something about a laughing baby that makes everybody feel warm inside.  Even the stuff about the God and the unknown, we’re all just sort of confused and hopeful about it.  It sounds crazy, but it just got real friendly down here.

Results!

9

Then Jim found Lucy on a low-hanging cloud.  She was
all
Lucy now, and there were bags under her eyes.  Jim stood beside her in silence.  Together they surveyed the peaceful throng of all religions.

And the throng
was
peaceful, but it was also stirring.  For the memory of the spectacle, which they called the miracle, was quick to fade.  They began to argue about the details of the miracle, and it looked like they might form new factions and go to war for the oneness of humankind.

And then it began to rain fish.

“Are you doing that?” Jim said.

“No,” Lucy said.

Jim pulled out the walkie-talkie.  “Einstein, it’s raining fish.”

The walkie-talkie cackled.  “Is that some kind of hillbilly riddle?”

“No, it’s raining fish.  Does that have anything to do with the charm quarks?”

“Well, in theory, if enough super neutrinos from the
antiverse
run up against the charm quark barrier with sufficient simultaneity, any number of strange phenomena could be localized there.  Fish rain is a bizarre, but possible, outcome.”

And the fish fell and
fell
.  Children played with the fish as swords.  Some of the fish fell in water and were fished again.  Disputes were settled by fish-throwing contests.  Protestants and Catholics and Muslims made fish angels together.  Then the
hipsters
, called Larry Goldstein and Gary Steinberg, began to collect and sell the fish.  And there was also some fish
juggling
.

Then a single note from a faraway horn dangled in the rain.  Jim knew the cadence, for it
was
a French horn, and a rainbow came through the sky. 

And Lucy, who called herself the devil, who played herself an angel, watched the people and the fish.  The bags beneath her eyes were the shadows
of
exasperation.  Jim said to her,

“You know what Jesus said to me?”

But Lucy stopped him with her hand.  “I don’t care,” she said.  “I just need a drink.”

XI

1

So Jim came to Small Town, Paradise.  There were green yards and clean airs and split-level houses.  There was a post office, a police station, a grocery store, five bars, and one set of well-kept stop lights.  Autumn cooled the afternoons and summer warmed the evenings, and every evening there was a new episode of Financially Stable and Moderately Happy Family.

Jim walked down the street through the split-level houses.  He came to a
particular
house, for it was painted white and there was a garden and a fence.  Though the lawn was already clipped to quarter-inch perfection, a stoical man mowed
it.
  He marched in rigid lines over the square of grass until the grass had all been marched upon.

Then the stoical man cut the engine of the mower, stored the mower in the garage, and entered the house.  Jim waited five minutes and knocked on the door.  The stoical man answered with beer in hand.

“I was wondering when you’d come around,” the man said.

Jim said, “Yeah.”

“You’ve been in some of the papers, you know.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, I guess you better come in.”

Jim followed the man to the room with the television.  The man sat in the dominant recliner, and Jim upon the angled couch.  Each waited for the other to speak.  It took a while.

“Your mother left me,” the man said.

“That sucks.”

“She’s a princess now.  A Disney princess.  You believe that?”

“I do.”

“Said I spend too much time mowing the lawn.
 
One look at
paradise
and suddenly keeping the house isn’t her thing anymore.  She wanted more.  They always want more.”

“There’s a lot to do in
paradise
.”

The stoical man drank long from the sweating beer.  “A man knows what he has and he makes it work.  A man doesn’t go off chasing what he knows he’ll never catch.  A man builds a house, pays the mortgage, and keeps his lawn.  That’s what a man does.”

“You have a mortgage?”

“Why’d you come here?” the man said.

“I’m not really sure.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“It isn’t money.”

“You in trouble with the law?”

“The law?  Are you serious?”

“Well, someone has to take things seriously around here.”

“I nuked a hole in the sky.  With my dick.  There was a war.  Angels cried.  I’m not worried about the law.”

“Sounds like you ought to be.”

The man’s posture upon the recliner was upright.  His arm lay flat against the armrest and the ankle of his right foot was stable upon his left knee.  He
was
sublime in his authority.  And Jim thought, He’s the king of the room with the couch and the television.

“You mind if I grab a beer?” Jim said.

“Not till you tell me why you’re here.”

“I really don’t know.”

“Neither did your mother.  You want a beer, you tell me what the fuck you’re doing here.”

Jim stood up instead.  “You’re not having any of it, are you?  You’re still back in Tennessee.  Does Uncle Zeke live seven houses down?  Is there a Thursday meat raffle you get racist drunk at?  I bet you still wake up at five-thirty and polish those ugly boots.”

“I served my country in those boots.  I love those boots.  They remind me that I did something once and I keep them clean.  I also built the room you’re standing in and I sowed the lawn you walked through to get here.  And I know exactly why I did it.  I did it because this is where I want to be and this is how I want to live.”

“You’re fucking dead!”

“You’re only dead when you run out of reasons.  I got mine, where’s yours?”

Jim
had
no answer. 

“That’s what I thought.”  The stoical man finished off the beer.  “You’re my son, Jim.  But your whole life you been flopping around like there’s a hook through your lip.  I don’t know who put it there, but it sure as hell wasn’t me.  Now, Financially Stable and Moderately Happy Family is on in five minutes.  So if you got nothing else to say to me, say something to the door.”

2

Therefore Jim went to Disney Land.  He came to a pavilion that was filled with color and children.  Parents sat on benches and drank cold beverages, or they looked through the windows of the shops that gave away trinkets.  In the garden there grew the flowers of imagination and its cobbled paths turned only for the heart.

The only
drab
thing
was a woman in soot-stained rags.  She stood in the center of the happiness.  She handed out candies and kisses that she pulled from the air.  Jim was careful not to step on any dreams when he walked up to her. 

“Mom?”

“Jim!”  She hugged him.  “What a lovely surprise!”

“You look so young,” he said.

“I
am
young.”  It was a playful warning.  She spun, and her soot-stained rags spun
with
her.  “I was always young.  I’m so glad you finally came.  That life, oh Jim, it wasn’t me!”

“I guess not.  You look really nice.  I mean, even in the dress.  It’s a nice dress, too.  I just mean, it’s nice.  Everything is nice.”

“I’m Cinderella,” she said.  Then she touched his cheek.  “And you look good, too.  Why don’t we take a little walk?”

There was some pouting when Jim stole the princess away.  But when the princess told them that her glass slipper was hidden somewhere in the garden, and that the first to find it would ride the magic pumpkin, the transgression was forgotten.

They walked until they were alone. 

“They really love you,” Jim said.

“Oh, I love them, Jim!  I love them so much!  And I love this place.  The colors, the magic, all the smiling little faces.  It’s
paradise.
  It’s really
paradise
.”

“I wish I could find something like this.  You know, something that fits.”

“There’s always room for another Jack Sparrow.”

“I don’t think I’d be much of a pirate.”

“I think you’d make wonderful pirate.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Oh!  Stop!  Over here! 
Shhhhhh.
  Here he comes.”

And Cinderella pulled him to the side of the cobbled walk and into the shade of the bell flowers.  A stiff man in a serious suit appeared upon the walk.  He carried upon his shoulder an enormous paint brush, the way a soldier might carry a bazooka.

“That’s Walt,” she said.  “Look, he’s about to change something.”

Walt considered what surrounded him and then he went to work with his brush.  The blues and the reds and greens and the yellows swirled out of comprehension.  A new
form
took shape.  It was a little thatch hut with wayward dimensions and a smoking chimney.  Then a family of penguins walked out of the hut.  They wore Hawaiian shirts and started a barbecue.

“Jim . . .”  Cinderella touched his elbow.  “There’s another reason I like it here.”

“What?”

“I get to be close to your brother.”

“I have a brother?”  For Jim had never
known
a brother.

Cinderella pointed.  Jim followed her finger over the thatch hut and the tress and a patch of giant mushrooms.  The peaks of a castle glittered against the painted sky.

“In the tallest tower.  That’s where they go.”

“They?  How many brothers do I have?”

“It was a long time ago, Jim.  Please forgive me, that I never told you.  How could I know?  How can anybody know?”

“Mom.  Mom, it’s alright.  Really.  What’s going on?”

“I didn’t want him.  I
couldn’t
want him.  It was so long ago, and in that dreadful
life
.  Before I met your father, I . . . I let him go.”

Then Jim understood.  He took Cinderella’s hand, for it was also his mother’s, and he pressed it in both of his.  “You had an abortion?” he said.

She nodded.

“And abortions go to the tallest tower in the Disney castle?”

“No one else would take them.”  Cinderella wiped a tear from her sooty cheek.  “Before Walt, the unwanted were unwanted even here.  But he changed all that.  They have a home now.  He’s a wonderful man.”

Walt, who was satisfied with the hut and the penguins, walked on down the cobbled path.  He let the tip of the brush trail along the top of a hedge row, and many-colored birds and beetles sparkled out of its wake.  Then Walt turned with his heart and the path turned with him and he was gone.

“Can we visit him?  In the tower?” Jim said.

“You go.”  Cinderella smiled.  “I owe a lucky little prince a magical pumpkin ride.”

3

“Hi-ya Jim!”

“Hi.  Mickey Mouse.”

“So you’re here to see your brother!  That’s just great!”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t look so glum, Jim!  You’re gonna love it!  We have the best facilities in
paradise
!”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Well let’s cut the chit chat and get on with it then!”

Jim followed Mickey to the rotunda.  There were marble busts of Aladdin and Muriel and Snow White and Simba and Dumbo and R2D2 and Pocahontas and Cinderella.  And high on the wall above the doors to the tower there was a mural.  The mural showed a happy family tossing their baby into the clouds, and Goofy waited there with a baseball mitt.

“Why Goofy?” Jim said.

“He’s the least visually abrasive!”

Mickey pulled a chain that hung from the dome and the doors to the tower came open.  They walked into the tower.  Jim beheld the collected abortions of humankind.

The fetuses floated in jars that climbed up the tower walls.  Each jar was fitted with an iPad and headphones.  The iPads dimmed and flashed in unison as the fetuses all streamed the same show.  Jim tried to estimate the height of the tower and the number of fetuses, but the tower was too high and the number too great.

“How many are there?”

“Millions!  And thousands more come every day!”

“And you just hook them up to iPads?”

“They were donated by Steve Jobs!  Isn’t he great?!”

“What are they watching?”

“What time is it?!”

“Four-thirty.”

“They watch Fox News from four to five!”

“Fox News.”  This wasn’t a question.  It wasn’t a statement either.  It merely fell out of Jim’s face.

Mickey said, “Well, it turns out you don’t have to have thumbs or be conscious to have a political affiliation!  And they’re all conservative on account of being aborted!”

Jim thought, It kind of makes sense that the aborted fetuses in
paradise
would be pro-life conservatives.  I mean, I doubt they really give a shit about the economics of it.

Mickey led him to a mine cart.  They climbed in.  Mickey handed Jim a hard hat and said, “Safety first!”  And then he pulled a lever and the cart began to climb the tower on a winding track. 

The cart carried them up and around and up.  The jars with the fetuses were packed in ten deep.  The fetuses had many shapes and sizes.  Some of them were large and well-formed, and these looked like pig runts.  Others were little more than strings of goop.  Upon them all the iPads flashed in constant rhythm.

“Why can’t they be people up here?” Jim said.  “They’re just a bunch of DNA, right?  It seems like, since we’re in
paradise
and we have all this technology, we ought to be able to grow them into people.”

“It’s a consciousness problem!”  Mickey pumped an upbeat fist.  “We tried growing a batch of em but nobody’s home!  They just walk around like zombies and mumble and drool!  That’s why we’re looking for activities that don’t require the spark of humanity!”

“So what can they do?  Without consciousness?”

“Well, let’s see.  We already talked about politics.  They can also browse the internet and post memes and clever comments!  A few of them even have blogs and facebook pages!  And they’re just great at Candycrush!”

And the mine cart carried them up.  Jim looked over its edge and saw that they had climbed about twenty stories.  The top of the tower was still a point in the distance.

“I don’t think I like where this is going.”

“What’s the matter, Jim?!  Afraid of heights?  Just think of down as up’s best friend.  That’s what I always do!”

“I – wait, what?  No.  How much farther is it?  And how do you know which one is my brother?”

“Steel trap!”  Mickey knuckled his head.  “And look at that, we’re already here!”

The mine cart came to a stop.  Mickey pulled out from the wall of jars a single jar.  The fetus that floated within it was on the
cusp
between a pig runt and a string of goop.  Mickey handed the jar to Jim.