BERESHIT
“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made of hand.”
— Acts 17:24
“When the Lord saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved.”
— Genesis 6:5
"If capitalism is criticized for treating human beings like commodities, what are we to say of an institution — the state — that treats human beings like garbage?"
— Historian Ralph Raico
"It weren’t the storm but what came after...that nailed us."
— Anonymous
"Again, I want to thank you all for — and, Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. The FEMA Director is working 24 — (applause) — they're working 24 hours a day.
— gwb
WATERTOWN
Chapter One
Warm wind danced his hair about his face. Jack peered out the window as the Santa Fe Super Chief brushed to a stop. The April sun glinted through the trees, the leaves bursting green in the early light. Seven hills ringed St. Joe, seeming to lift the buildings rounding out the town in a lolling, litling game of green bluffs covered with mustard grass and silent white clouds smiling down.Jack squinted, tracking the shadows dancing and floating across the streets and up the hills. He mouthed their names: King Hill, Queen Hill, Devil’s Backbone, Wyeth’s Hill, Aventine, Esquiline, and Palatine. Crazy town, he whispered.
Jack stood up. He slung his rucksack across his shoulder and walked down the aisle and jumped out the door onto the platform. He turned to face the train. The Super Chief let out two long blasts. The air brakes hissed. The conductor stuck his head out of the caboose window and nodded. The engineer up front snapped his fingers twice. Checking his pocket watch, the engineer clasped shut the hunting case. The train whistle let off two short blasts. The pinions engaged. The Super Chief chugged and rolled away.
The engineer waved. Jack waved back. He stood and watched the train gather speed and curl along the tracks at the edge of the shimmering river. When the Super Chief disappeared around the bend, Jack stepped across the platform and stopped. He turned around, looked down and jumped on the tracks. Crunching gravel underfoot, he crossed the tracks and walked on. He stopped, and looked to the town spread out beyond the platform. Cocking his head, he could hear the westerly winds roar in his left ear. He turned and faced the river, watching it silently move and sparkle behind a giant wall of sycamore trees.
He hadn’t been home in years. On the train he had imagined himself sprinting all the way home. Instead, he stared at the river. Minutes crept by. Jack finally shook his head and came to life and laughing out loud he shambled down the sloping valley floor, squeezing past the sycamores and the saplings. The ground cleared off as he approached the river below. Foxtail moored the shore. Moss-covered boulders lay tumbled, piled upon a sand bar near the shore.Jack jumped onto the nearest outcrop. He hopped from one boulder to the next until finally he stopped on a massive rock sticking out six feet from the shore. He dropped his rucksack on top of the rock and sat down, crossed-legged.
Staring down at the water, he marveled at how muddy and high it seemed, more so than he had ever remembered. His eyes followed the traces of eddies and riffles flowing across smooth-buried rocks just below the water’s surface. Looking out across the other side to the west, he could see a line of sycamores, willows and pinewood trees, their branches canopied over the water. Directly beyond, large bluffs stood off in the hazy blue-green distance of the morning. Jack could just make out a small town nestled in the foothills; a few half-hidden houses and a gas station. The tops of their galvanized tin roofs reflected the rising sun.
To the south, along the river’s edge, he could just see the top of a Ferris wheel sticking up over the trees. It was an old wooden, creaky thing built at the turn of the century. But fifty years later, here it stood, slightly leaning over the treetops. Jack wondered if the Midway still ran. He gazed back at the half-hidden river.
Jack’s father used to take him hunting pheasant and camping along the bluffs over on the Kansas side of the river. He remembered how his father had patiently explained how the river once had been part of a deep inland ocean. He also had told him about Lewis and Clark, how they were working their way from downstream St. Louis, had decamped somewhere close by and stumbled upon an Indian hunting party. The Indians made faces at the wanderers and were just about to attack when one of the travelers, Sacagawea, a young girl of just barely sixteen and carrying her newborn baby boy, ended the standoff when she suddenly realized that one of the braves was actually her brother, and they embraced.
Jack wondered about such a chance encounter in such a wood and along the river before the town had ever been born. He heard a “plop” and a water moccasin in a tree branch dropped into the water, darting away with its head above water.
Jack heard another noise: a low gurgle sound of an outboard engine close by. A flat-bottom johnboat soon came around the bend, skirting the shore, heading for the chute in the middle of the river.A man in glasses in a khaki uniform sat upright at the till. When the boat moved directly into Jack’s line of vision, the man spotted him. The man clenched his jaw, and the sun glinted off his glasses. Jack lifted his left arm to block the flash of light, and slowly and stiffly rose.
The man in the boat gunned the engine, turning the johnboat directly to Jack.Jack crossed his arms and watched the man approach.
The johnboat stopped and idled about sixty feet from the rocks.
“You there!” the man cried out. “You there on the rocks. What do you think you’re doing there?”
Jack stood silent. He could see the man’s sharp cheeks, his furrowed brow and cleft chin.
“Get outta’ there,” the man shouted. “You don’t belong there.”“Hell if' I don’t,” Jack shot back.
“This river’s rising, you dumb-ass fool. You got no business here. Now run along, sonny-boy.”
“Screw you, mister, you don't own this water!”
“Listen up asshole. We’re monitoring this river, and you best move out, like right now. Now move out or else.”
“Else, what?”Jack unfolded his arms and remained standing.
After about a minute, the man in the johnboat mumbled something and spat into the river and turned away and then stood upright and gunned the boat upstream towards the Pony Express Bridge. He and the boat soon disappeared past the concrete pylons.Jack watched him go.
“This town ain’t worth a lick a spit,” Jack muttered to himself. A mosquito whined in his ear. He swatted at it and the buzz went away. He hopped over the rocks and started walking back to town, shaking his head in disgust, cursing under his breath.It was trickier going uphill to the train station. Along the way, he bushwhacked a tree branch and it swung back, scratching his face and drawing blood from his cheek. He wiped it off with a forearm, and looking at his torn sleeve, he noticed that while the cut didn’t seem deep, it bled a lot.
Jack hiked around the train station and made his way past the platform and entered Felix Street, the town’s main avenue. St. Joseph now spread out before him as he walked down the center of the street leading away from the station. He spied a solitary car far off moving away from his direction. On his left, he noticed the brick courthouse and its golden dome, planted firmly on the town’s main square. Across the street, stood a learing two-story county jail, with rusty iron bars on the windows up top. A big hand-painted star fresh embossed on the front door greeted him. Turning to the right, Jack saw the old familiar dusty, one-story worn-out brick shops, lined up like sentries on duty. It was still early, and the shops weren’t open yet.
He made his way up the street. Looking up towards one of the highest hills, he could see the twin spires of the Immaculate Conception Catholic church, each of the spires capped by a silver cross sparkling white in the morning heat.A slight breeze picked up, and chimes tinkled. The trees bent low in the breeze, heavy with new laden branches and buds. They seemed to be praying like angels as they bowed and lifted up again. Jack remembered Easter Sunday was just a week away.As the sun rose higher, he began to sweat. A trickle ran down his neck. He walked for nearly a mile and was deep into town when he stopped.
Not wanting to draw too much attention, Jack slipped through two buildings and into a back alley that separated the shops from a line of small bungalows. He found a small patch of manicured grass with a shade tree in the center. Using his rucksack for a pillow, he set himself down, and soon, lulled by the wind, fell asleep.
Several hours passed. When Jack finally opened his eyes, he felt the sun directly overhead. As he rose, he noticed a man in a black suit staring at him from the back of the building where he had stopped.The man was trim, with a shock of white hair. He was wearing black-rim glasses. The man smiled, crow's feet crinkling around his eyes.
"Hello there, gypsy."Jack put his hand to his eyes to block out the sun.
"Hey there back at ya, hope you don't mind me just resting here."
The man came forward, and walking over to Jack he extended a hand to help him up. Jack rose, dusted himself off and picked up his rucksack.
"Hmmm. You look awfully thin and threadbare, there gypsy," the man said. "When's the last time you ate, son?"
"I dunno," Jack replied. "Mighta been yesterday. Can’t really remember. Had me some hardboiled eggs at the station bar in Chicago. Spent my last dime on train fare fixing to get here."
The old man peered into Jack's eyes, and slowly gazed down at Jack's feet.
"Chi-ca-go, huh? Well, I bet you could use a new pair of feet."
"Sure could," Jack said looking down, and then smiling back up.
"Come with me, I got plenty to choose from," the man said. "Don't you worry about nothing sonny-boy..."
The man wrapped his arm about Jack's shoulders, leading him to the back of the building."My name's Poldy... Leopold Vander Pool," the man said.
"I'm Jack." Jack sneezed. "'scuse me....Actually it’s John Boudreaux, but mostly they just call me Jack."
“They just call me Poldy.”
Poldy walked Jack up the stairs and led him inside the building. Jack peered into a series of rooms full of arranged flowers and rows of empty chairs in each one.
"Mr. Bowman is at the Immaculate Conception," Poldy explained. "They had a wake for Mr. John R. McDaniel last night. I still got some sandwiches left, if you want some."
Jack nodded, taking in the scenery of the wood-polished floors and the stained glass windows. Poldy led him to a room.
"Wait here."Poldy disappeared and returned afterfive minutes with a chambray shirt and a pair of workman's boots."Here try these on. They look like they just might be your size," Poldy said, handing the boots and the shirt to Jack.
"Geez, mister, I do appreciate this but...""Oh, come on, don’t fuss, I got plenty where these come from. You see, the family, they rarely want them back. They bring in the good stuff, you know, um, for later on."
Jack sat down on one of the wooden chairs lining the wall in the hallway and quickly began undoing the laces of his boots.
"That’s right, you try those on. I'll be right back."
Poldy disappeared again into one of the rooms. Jack stripped off his shirt, threw it into his rucksack and put on the flannel shirt Poldy had given him. It was too long in the sleeves, so he rolled back the cuffs. The boots were a perfect match. Jack was inspecting the quality of the soles when Poldy re-entered the room.
"Here's a couple of sandwiches left over from last night’s vigil. Eat the egg salad first. The summer sausage will last a little bit longer. Here’s a cold glass of buttermilk, too. Go on. Go on."
Jack took the glass from Poldy and drained it. He wiped his mouth with his forearm and gave the glass back to Poldy while stuffing the summer sausage sandwich in his rucksack. He unwrapped the wax paper around the egg salad sandwich and was about to take a bite when he stopped, mouth agape.
"Say, Mr. Poldy," Jack began. "Thanks all the same. Think I'll just eat this outside. Don't wanna cause a mess in here being so clean and all."
"Ho ho! Poldy said, his eyes crinkling.“No need to worry ‘bout that, gyspy boy. No one here right now will ever care about a few breadcrumbs, believe me. But, if you gotta get, use the front door. Where you headed, anyway?"
"Home," said Jack. "Mountain Grove. I was feeling mighty puny for a while there, Mr. Poldy, so thanks a million."
"Don't mind at all," Poldy said, taking Jack's arm and leading him down the hallway to the front door. Poldy opened the massive wooden double doors. The sun momentarily blinded Jack. After a few seconds Jack could make out the doors and he walked out into the sunshine."
"Mr. Bowman and the McDaniels will be coming back rightly soon, so it’s about time these doors be opened up. Now you have a safe trip, gyspy boy and take better care of yourself. Sooner or later we all wind up in a place like this, hee hee."
Poldy winked at him and stood on the porch, smiling down at him. Jack stepped down upon the sidewalk, feeling immensely better as he munched on the egg salad sandwich. He turned part way around and waved to Poldy standing on the front porch, watching him. Poldy waved back.
Jack continued eating his sandwich and carefully folded the wax paper and put it into his shirt pocket. As he did so, his fingers brushed against something inside the shirt pocket. Jack pulled it out. He fingered two bills folded with a paper clip, a twenty-dollar bill and a five-dollar bill pinned together. Jack laughed out loud, and quickened his steps.
“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made of hand.”
— Acts 17:24
“When the Lord saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved.”
— Genesis 6:5
"If capitalism is criticized for treating human beings like commodities, what are we to say of an institution — the state — that treats human beings like garbage?"
— Historian Ralph Raico
"It weren’t the storm but what came after...that nailed us."
— Anonymous
"Again, I want to thank you all for — and, Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. The FEMA Director is working 24 — (applause) — they're working 24 hours a day.
— gwb
WATERTOWN
Chapter One
Warm wind danced his hair about his face. Jack peered out the window as the Santa Fe Super Chief brushed to a stop. The April sun glinted through the trees, the leaves bursting green in the early light. Seven hills ringed St. Joe, seeming to lift the buildings rounding out the town in a lolling, litling game of green bluffs covered with mustard grass and silent white clouds smiling down.Jack squinted, tracking the shadows dancing and floating across the streets and up the hills. He mouthed their names: King Hill, Queen Hill, Devil’s Backbone, Wyeth’s Hill, Aventine, Esquiline, and Palatine. Crazy town, he whispered.
Jack stood up. He slung his rucksack across his shoulder and walked down the aisle and jumped out the door onto the platform. He turned to face the train. The Super Chief let out two long blasts. The air brakes hissed. The conductor stuck his head out of the caboose window and nodded. The engineer up front snapped his fingers twice. Checking his pocket watch, the engineer clasped shut the hunting case. The train whistle let off two short blasts. The pinions engaged. The Super Chief chugged and rolled away.
The engineer waved. Jack waved back. He stood and watched the train gather speed and curl along the tracks at the edge of the shimmering river. When the Super Chief disappeared around the bend, Jack stepped across the platform and stopped. He turned around, looked down and jumped on the tracks. Crunching gravel underfoot, he crossed the tracks and walked on. He stopped, and looked to the town spread out beyond the platform. Cocking his head, he could hear the westerly winds roar in his left ear. He turned and faced the river, watching it silently move and sparkle behind a giant wall of sycamore trees.
He hadn’t been home in years. On the train he had imagined himself sprinting all the way home. Instead, he stared at the river. Minutes crept by. Jack finally shook his head and came to life and laughing out loud he shambled down the sloping valley floor, squeezing past the sycamores and the saplings. The ground cleared off as he approached the river below. Foxtail moored the shore. Moss-covered boulders lay tumbled, piled upon a sand bar near the shore.Jack jumped onto the nearest outcrop. He hopped from one boulder to the next until finally he stopped on a massive rock sticking out six feet from the shore. He dropped his rucksack on top of the rock and sat down, crossed-legged.
Staring down at the water, he marveled at how muddy and high it seemed, more so than he had ever remembered. His eyes followed the traces of eddies and riffles flowing across smooth-buried rocks just below the water’s surface. Looking out across the other side to the west, he could see a line of sycamores, willows and pinewood trees, their branches canopied over the water. Directly beyond, large bluffs stood off in the hazy blue-green distance of the morning. Jack could just make out a small town nestled in the foothills; a few half-hidden houses and a gas station. The tops of their galvanized tin roofs reflected the rising sun.
To the south, along the river’s edge, he could just see the top of a Ferris wheel sticking up over the trees. It was an old wooden, creaky thing built at the turn of the century. But fifty years later, here it stood, slightly leaning over the treetops. Jack wondered if the Midway still ran. He gazed back at the half-hidden river.
Jack’s father used to take him hunting pheasant and camping along the bluffs over on the Kansas side of the river. He remembered how his father had patiently explained how the river once had been part of a deep inland ocean. He also had told him about Lewis and Clark, how they were working their way from downstream St. Louis, had decamped somewhere close by and stumbled upon an Indian hunting party. The Indians made faces at the wanderers and were just about to attack when one of the travelers, Sacagawea, a young girl of just barely sixteen and carrying her newborn baby boy, ended the standoff when she suddenly realized that one of the braves was actually her brother, and they embraced.
Jack wondered about such a chance encounter in such a wood and along the river before the town had ever been born. He heard a “plop” and a water moccasin in a tree branch dropped into the water, darting away with its head above water.
Jack heard another noise: a low gurgle sound of an outboard engine close by. A flat-bottom johnboat soon came around the bend, skirting the shore, heading for the chute in the middle of the river.A man in glasses in a khaki uniform sat upright at the till. When the boat moved directly into Jack’s line of vision, the man spotted him. The man clenched his jaw, and the sun glinted off his glasses. Jack lifted his left arm to block the flash of light, and slowly and stiffly rose.
The man in the boat gunned the engine, turning the johnboat directly to Jack.Jack crossed his arms and watched the man approach.
The johnboat stopped and idled about sixty feet from the rocks.
“You there!” the man cried out. “You there on the rocks. What do you think you’re doing there?”
Jack stood silent. He could see the man’s sharp cheeks, his furrowed brow and cleft chin.
“Get outta’ there,” the man shouted. “You don’t belong there.”“Hell if' I don’t,” Jack shot back.
“This river’s rising, you dumb-ass fool. You got no business here. Now run along, sonny-boy.”
“Screw you, mister, you don't own this water!”
“Listen up asshole. We’re monitoring this river, and you best move out, like right now. Now move out or else.”
“Else, what?”Jack unfolded his arms and remained standing.
After about a minute, the man in the johnboat mumbled something and spat into the river and turned away and then stood upright and gunned the boat upstream towards the Pony Express Bridge. He and the boat soon disappeared past the concrete pylons.Jack watched him go.
“This town ain’t worth a lick a spit,” Jack muttered to himself. A mosquito whined in his ear. He swatted at it and the buzz went away. He hopped over the rocks and started walking back to town, shaking his head in disgust, cursing under his breath.It was trickier going uphill to the train station. Along the way, he bushwhacked a tree branch and it swung back, scratching his face and drawing blood from his cheek. He wiped it off with a forearm, and looking at his torn sleeve, he noticed that while the cut didn’t seem deep, it bled a lot.
Jack hiked around the train station and made his way past the platform and entered Felix Street, the town’s main avenue. St. Joseph now spread out before him as he walked down the center of the street leading away from the station. He spied a solitary car far off moving away from his direction. On his left, he noticed the brick courthouse and its golden dome, planted firmly on the town’s main square. Across the street, stood a learing two-story county jail, with rusty iron bars on the windows up top. A big hand-painted star fresh embossed on the front door greeted him. Turning to the right, Jack saw the old familiar dusty, one-story worn-out brick shops, lined up like sentries on duty. It was still early, and the shops weren’t open yet.
He made his way up the street. Looking up towards one of the highest hills, he could see the twin spires of the Immaculate Conception Catholic church, each of the spires capped by a silver cross sparkling white in the morning heat.A slight breeze picked up, and chimes tinkled. The trees bent low in the breeze, heavy with new laden branches and buds. They seemed to be praying like angels as they bowed and lifted up again. Jack remembered Easter Sunday was just a week away.As the sun rose higher, he began to sweat. A trickle ran down his neck. He walked for nearly a mile and was deep into town when he stopped.
Not wanting to draw too much attention, Jack slipped through two buildings and into a back alley that separated the shops from a line of small bungalows. He found a small patch of manicured grass with a shade tree in the center. Using his rucksack for a pillow, he set himself down, and soon, lulled by the wind, fell asleep.
Several hours passed. When Jack finally opened his eyes, he felt the sun directly overhead. As he rose, he noticed a man in a black suit staring at him from the back of the building where he had stopped.The man was trim, with a shock of white hair. He was wearing black-rim glasses. The man smiled, crow's feet crinkling around his eyes.
"Hello there, gypsy."Jack put his hand to his eyes to block out the sun.
"Hey there back at ya, hope you don't mind me just resting here."
The man came forward, and walking over to Jack he extended a hand to help him up. Jack rose, dusted himself off and picked up his rucksack.
"Hmmm. You look awfully thin and threadbare, there gypsy," the man said. "When's the last time you ate, son?"
"I dunno," Jack replied. "Mighta been yesterday. Can’t really remember. Had me some hardboiled eggs at the station bar in Chicago. Spent my last dime on train fare fixing to get here."
The old man peered into Jack's eyes, and slowly gazed down at Jack's feet.
"Chi-ca-go, huh? Well, I bet you could use a new pair of feet."
"Sure could," Jack said looking down, and then smiling back up.
"Come with me, I got plenty to choose from," the man said. "Don't you worry about nothing sonny-boy..."
The man wrapped his arm about Jack's shoulders, leading him to the back of the building."My name's Poldy... Leopold Vander Pool," the man said.
"I'm Jack." Jack sneezed. "'scuse me....Actually it’s John Boudreaux, but mostly they just call me Jack."
“They just call me Poldy.”
Poldy walked Jack up the stairs and led him inside the building. Jack peered into a series of rooms full of arranged flowers and rows of empty chairs in each one.
"Mr. Bowman is at the Immaculate Conception," Poldy explained. "They had a wake for Mr. John R. McDaniel last night. I still got some sandwiches left, if you want some."
Jack nodded, taking in the scenery of the wood-polished floors and the stained glass windows. Poldy led him to a room.
"Wait here."Poldy disappeared and returned afterfive minutes with a chambray shirt and a pair of workman's boots."Here try these on. They look like they just might be your size," Poldy said, handing the boots and the shirt to Jack.
"Geez, mister, I do appreciate this but...""Oh, come on, don’t fuss, I got plenty where these come from. You see, the family, they rarely want them back. They bring in the good stuff, you know, um, for later on."
Jack sat down on one of the wooden chairs lining the wall in the hallway and quickly began undoing the laces of his boots.
"That’s right, you try those on. I'll be right back."
Poldy disappeared again into one of the rooms. Jack stripped off his shirt, threw it into his rucksack and put on the flannel shirt Poldy had given him. It was too long in the sleeves, so he rolled back the cuffs. The boots were a perfect match. Jack was inspecting the quality of the soles when Poldy re-entered the room.
"Here's a couple of sandwiches left over from last night’s vigil. Eat the egg salad first. The summer sausage will last a little bit longer. Here’s a cold glass of buttermilk, too. Go on. Go on."
Jack took the glass from Poldy and drained it. He wiped his mouth with his forearm and gave the glass back to Poldy while stuffing the summer sausage sandwich in his rucksack. He unwrapped the wax paper around the egg salad sandwich and was about to take a bite when he stopped, mouth agape.
"Say, Mr. Poldy," Jack began. "Thanks all the same. Think I'll just eat this outside. Don't wanna cause a mess in here being so clean and all."
"Ho ho! Poldy said, his eyes crinkling.“No need to worry ‘bout that, gyspy boy. No one here right now will ever care about a few breadcrumbs, believe me. But, if you gotta get, use the front door. Where you headed, anyway?"
"Home," said Jack. "Mountain Grove. I was feeling mighty puny for a while there, Mr. Poldy, so thanks a million."
"Don't mind at all," Poldy said, taking Jack's arm and leading him down the hallway to the front door. Poldy opened the massive wooden double doors. The sun momentarily blinded Jack. After a few seconds Jack could make out the doors and he walked out into the sunshine."
"Mr. Bowman and the McDaniels will be coming back rightly soon, so it’s about time these doors be opened up. Now you have a safe trip, gyspy boy and take better care of yourself. Sooner or later we all wind up in a place like this, hee hee."
Poldy winked at him and stood on the porch, smiling down at him. Jack stepped down upon the sidewalk, feeling immensely better as he munched on the egg salad sandwich. He turned part way around and waved to Poldy standing on the front porch, watching him. Poldy waved back.
Jack continued eating his sandwich and carefully folded the wax paper and put it into his shirt pocket. As he did so, his fingers brushed against something inside the shirt pocket. Jack pulled it out. He fingered two bills folded with a paper clip, a twenty-dollar bill and a five-dollar bill pinned together. Jack laughed out loud, and quickened his steps.
