WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (53 page)

Maw Sue reached inside the carcass and dug around like she was searching for lost jewels. She yanked out a slob of gross, slippery chunks and the ground received them with joy, a sacrificial offering to the garden Gods. I almost passed out cold. How I was still upright is beyond me. She whacked off its yellow claws and dunked it
in the pot of water again. 
I thought of church.
 I saw people confessing and Brother Lester doing what he always does, dunk sinners under the water. When they come up from the depths of the baptismal pool, they are a
clarified, documented saint. 
Brother Lester puts his hand on their dripping head and says the same thing every time.

“A new heart. A new creature. Bless the Lord.” Then the congregation repeats after him. “A new heart. A new creature. Bless the Lord. Amen.”

I witnessed this dunking ceremony countless times and had to know more about it.

“
Maw Sue.
 
Why do we get a new heart? It sounds like a lengthy process. And what does God do with the old heart? Is my heart bad? Can I get a new one? Do I need a new one? Does he reuse them?
Fix them and give it to someone else? I don’t want someone to have my old heart. 
Why do people have to be saved anyway and what exactly are we saved from? Am I a sinner?

Maw Sue had one of those facial expressions. 
It was one of those oh shit faces. “Well, Willodean.” Sh
e said leaning on her armchair and sighing.  A long thin beaded spit necklace dropped from her
mouth. It landed with a splat in her golden snuff tin.

“Remember…everybody is born a sleeper.” She says. “When they are saved, their eyes have been opened to the truth. We become Seekers and the spark of the divine is lit on fire and our lives begin to make sense. It’s like the painting. That space, you know, between God’s finger and ours. That void can only be filled with Christ. He is our bridge to God. He filled the void and now our fingers are constantly reaching for the void to touch our lives, the one that leads to being seven, whole.”

“Well, yeah, but…” I said thinking real hard and twiddling my fingers trying to comprehend it all.

“I know it’s hard to understand but we are not supposed to understand all the details.
Don’t make it so difficult.  It’s simple really. 
That is what faith is. It’s just believing in the unseen. Everyone is born with two natures, two people inside; one that wants its own way and one that wants God’s way. The only way to get God’s way is to be saved from the other way. A new heart, just like Brother Lester says. If you live in this world long enough to see it for the tragedy it really is—you
will
want a new heart. Believe me Willodean. 
You will want a new heart. You will want to be saved from your own way.
Being a grown up makes us lose ourselves, our hearing gets dull, our eyes get dimmed.
We get selfish and needy.  We lose the sight of
simple things, that’s why I tell you to look for the crumbs and activate the gift inside you. 
Eyes to see, ears to hear.
 It all goes back to the story of when God played dress up.” 

That’s where the story stops because Maw Sue took a nap and promised to tell me the rest of the story on one of our nature walks. That was a few months ago and I’ve yet to hear it. I think she made it up to get rid of me. I was rather anxious to see how the story tied in to old hearts and dunking people. My vivid imagination went all kinds of crazy. I envisioned God dressed like Marie Antoinette with elaborate head pieces and big bustled dresses. But now that I’ve witnessed murder, I'm beginning to understand it better, after sitting upon cursed soil surrounded with blood and chicken parts. My ticker is faint
and I could use a new heart about right now.  I have a good mind to plead that he just remove the old heart right now, and
erase the memory of the chicken massacre, the spilled blood, the cursed soil, the awful smells, sounds, the darkness, Maw Sue’s bedroom, the rose petal people, the Mason jar, the president who screams in my dreams at night. 
Dear God of heaven, erase it all.
In fact, just start at my birth in 1963 and go from there, that
should do it. 

I was inside my head praying to the Marie Antoinette God when the henchwoman snatched me back to a living nightmare. She drug me into the kitchen to endure the final sacrifice. I expected to see a guillotine, instead she pulled out another pot, filled it with water and sat it on the stove. The Hitler of hens cleaned the bird inside the sink all the while mumbling how delicious it would be when it was cooked.
Well, she’s got another thing coming if she thinks I’m putting that thing in my mouth.  She submerged the
chicken into the pot and handed me the salt and pepper shakers and some parsley.
“Garnish it.” She said smiling a wicked smile. 
New heart! New heart!
 Five minutes later, the room engulfed with a smell so bad it made the hair on my tongue curl back in retreat. The pond frogs that once invaded my throat had surrendered and exiled to the lower bowel region, which rumbled and turned, while my pristine nose threatened mutiny. 
I fear I will never be the same.
 My taste buds have run-a-muck. My nose is off kilter. Jesus. I’d never again smell the sweet, delightful fragrance of a flower or the appetizing smell of my mom’s blackberry cobbler or her homemade dumplings, or God forbid, fresh picked strawberries from the garden. 
Nope, never again.
 Not only am I birth cursed—I
am nose cursed, eye cursed and ear cursed. 

“Willodean! Willodean!” The voice screamed. I was sure it was my redeemer, my Lord and savior coming to rescue me. But on second yelp, it was code six. I had never expressed a fondness for my mother, Lena Hart until this moment. I reckon, Maw Sue is still ta
lking to me, only I’m not there.  I ran out of that cursed kitchen
as fast as my scrawny legs could take me. I took a detour through the car shop, engulfing the fumes of gas from metal containers, fresh engine oil, and mechanical smells, then on the trail home, I relished in nature, pick
ing up crushed leaves to smell.  I ran through the garden smelling vegetables and plucked some sage, rosemary and dill from the herb container.  I rubbed it all over my face, chest and arms. 
I embraced trees and smelled the sweet sap of my southern soul and begged God for a new heart. My sensory receptors were null and as much as I sniffed I still couldn’t erase
the events of the day. 
The experience was vivid, surreal in my head, unrelenting. It came back, again and again similar to the bedroom experience. I kept praying to the Marie Antoinette God for my new heart. 
Give it to me please. Give me my new heart. Make me a new creature.
 
Amen! Amen!
 I had no idea it was about to turn Ichabod Crane
in my own house.  
 

Mag had just arrived from an overnight trip with one of her well-to-do friends. Not having anything else to do, she lowered her standards for about ten minutes
and hung out with the native savages. 
I told her of my horrible day.

“See.”
She said after I finished my story.  Her face was disgusted.  “
That’s why I want out of this place. Do you know where we ate yesterday? Go ahead and ask me where we ate yesterday.”

“Okay Mag.” I said entertaining her. “Where did you eat yesterday.”

“KFC.” She said. “Where shit like that doesn’t happen. You just order and eat. Done. None of this horrible do-it-yourself prehistoric country bumpkin nightmare ax raging lunatics.”

“Maggie! Willodean.” Lena’s voice squealed out the door. “Supper’s ready.”

We went inside to clean up.  Normally, I could smell Lena’s kitchen cooking but my nose was still par to chicken.  Mag and I found a seat at the table. 

“What's up girls?” Dad
said pulling a chair out and sitting down. 
That was a loaded question. I wanted to tell everything right then but Lena walked in carrying a big platter covered with red checkered napkins.
Her food always had to be dressed.    Apparently, she hasn’t walked in Maw Sue’s kitchen. 
My nostrils flared in response. I was hoping for lasagna or spaghetti. She sat the platter down next to the mashed potatoes, green beans and stack of rolls. She uncovered it—and that is when the worst day ever fell into the crapper. I stared at the fried chicken parts, vividly remembering everything I wished I could forget. 
New heart. New heart.
 
The
 
Coop Killin' Legend
novel plotted its revenge inside a room, inside the house. Words, bloody parts, icky feelings. All I could see was a pile of chicken parts with gray, mad, angry eyes coming to life.

“Dig in girls.” Lena said sitting down. I didn’t move an inch. She looked at me queerly and then splashed a big blob of mashed potatoes on my plate. It might as well have been a pile of shit, for all that I could see. My head was swimming. 
Shit strawberries, headless chickens, blood, murder, new heart!
 Breakfast was now making its third encore in my throat.

“What’s wrong with you?” Lena said taking a drink of tea. I could see her blue eyes darting at me between the lemon wedge and the ice cube.

“Did I tell you the Landers took Gretchen and me to KFC yesterday, Mom?” Mag gave me an evil-smirk. “We got to order anything we wanted and dessert too.”

“Is that so?” Lena was unimpressed. She grabbed a chicken leg and let it hover over my plate.

“NO!”
I said raising my hand in haste, trembling. 
Lena took her hand back dangling the leg
that now had hard yellow eyes as haunting as Maw Sue’s red stone dragone necklace. 

“But I thought you liked—”

“No…I—I do but…” I stuttered.  “I’m…I’m…just not real hungry.”
Everyone was looking at me weird, except Mag, who couldn’t stop laughing. To save face, I managed to force down a few bites of mashed potatoes while the madness in my head envisioned baby chicks dancing across the dinner table
along with their headless revengeful father.  And then Mag who loves to terrorize me,
reminded
everyone of something that happened long ago.  I had forgotten the story until now. 
 

I was six or seven. Big Pop, who is Papa Hart’s father, lived next door and had a roost of free reign chickens ruling the property.
They came and went. They ruled and conquered.
They scared Mag and I to death. 
Stalker chickens. Ninja chickens.
 They were everywhere, in the pasture, the barn and the backyard with full unattended access to everything, including me. I’m pretty sure they had a prefabricated notion, a prophecy laid out in egg yolks or fea
thers, of the murderous massacre of their kin folk in the future.  So, they tried to take me out early. 

Of course, the rooster had it in for me from the get-go. He didn’t bother Mag, Big Pop, dad or anybody else, 
just me.
 
Before I went outside I had to observe the layout of the land, make sure they weren’t anywhere in sight. 
One minute I’m minding my own business, eating a Hershey bar and the next thing I’m being ambushed by a big ’ole foghorn leghorn. He landed on my back, hunched my neck and darn near pulled my hair out. My scream was heard round the world. His reign of terror and pursuit of child domination, however, was short lived, thanks to dad. He yanked him off my back, twisted his neck and that was the end of that. Ironically, his life
ended much like Marie Antoinette’s.  After reeling from the terrorizing trauma, that night at supper I was chowing down on a chicken leg when dad turned and asked me, “So
Willodean. How does revenge taste?”

I was too young to understand what he was talking about.  I didn’t understand that a chicken leg came from a free reigning chicken, so
I just laughed it off
.   But after the chicken murder I witnessed at Maw Sue’s today—I’d say
revenge doesn’t taste good at all. It doesn’t smell good either.  

I excused myself from the supper table early.  That night
I took a long hot bath and filled the tub all the way to the top. I slipped underneath the water and pretended I was being dunked by Brother Lester in the baptismal pool but then it got weird, ‘cause I was naked, so I got out, put my clothes on and got back in. I stayed under the water as long as I could, drowning all the sins of sight, sound and smell into the water. I’d come up for air gasping and repeating the words, “A new heart. A new creature. Bless the Lord. Amen.” After ten failed attempts and a near drowning I began to think God had ran out of new hearts ‘cause mine still felt the same.
When my skin was wrinkled and Lena yelled to go to bed, I finally got out and put my pajamas on. 
I slid under the covers and
laid my head on the pillow.  J
ust when I was almost asleep, I heard the rustling of ancestral skin beneath my head, whispering and telling me haunts in my ears, I jerked up and threw the feather pillow on the floor. I pulled the covers over my head. In the darkness, my mind wandered. I thought about the day they murdered Jesus. I reckon, he is superior when it comes to murder and all. Maw Sue called the story, the Calvary Crucifixion. She even memorialized in her backyard on a hill with three wooden crosses. The only difference is that buried underneath the dirt is one dog, a parrot and a crazy cat named Casper.