The Lost Book of Ishmut

© Copyright 2009, Margaret Langstaff,
All Rights Reserved

Part I

Way back in time, after Adam and Eve, but before the Flood, lived a pretty good and honest man named Ishmut. Ishmut was the son of Ishmat who was the son of Ishbat who was the son of Ishflat who was the son of Ish of the tribe of Noflinchingallowed. His mother was Periwinkle of the tribe Standupstraightandpayattention. Yes, Ishmut came from good people. They don't make them like that anymore. When he was just the size of a parsnip his father Ishmat set him on his knee, looked him in the eye, and told him all he would need to know. Ishmut had followed these principles ever since. His father had said:

1. God is God, no if’s-and’s-or-but’s about It. You never know what He’ll do next. So look out.

2. Watch and pray or He’ll sure enough get you for it if you don’t.

3. Always tell the truth and the Truth will be in you and make you strong as an ox.

4. Be kind to animals. They are our little brothers.

5. Keep your nose clean and stay out of trouble.

At this time Ishmut was three hundred and twelve years of age and in the prime of his life. Now Ishmut had three wives and seventeen goats, give or take, and they lived in a dry and dusty area at the foot of the Hopeless Mountains. Ishmut spent most of his time roaming around the desert looking for something to eat while his wives sat in the tent and devoted themselves to complaining about everything and slapping each other silly. It was a cultural thing, and their mamas had raised them right. Their mamas had zero tolerance for lollygagging and it showed in their girls. They were always up to something. Occasionally they cooked when there was something to cook. They were also responsible for tent maintenance, finding potable water and keeping the home fire burning.

And their names were Anthill*softbutt!don’t^look^at^me^that^way, Shrieksome+more=why/don’t/you?won’t-do-any-good, and Nan.

Ishmut had got a bargain on Nan whom he got off her father Salt for a small basket of goat jerky because her name was so short. A roving band of

The Transcendence of Marshall Banks

(c) Copyright 2007, Margaret Langstaff, All Rights Reserved


Marshall pulled open the heavy glass door and the cold air whirled around him and sucked him in. He was crippled by a terrible cramp in his leg, but he tried not to limp. The rest of his flaming leg felt like a dead tree stump. He wasn’t even sure where it was. Just act normal, the voice said. For once.

Marsh had ducked out of an important meeting at the last minute, weathered the disapproving frowns of his co-workers, tripped in the parking lot, and nearly run over a squirrel speeding to get here. He was still miffed about the damn squirrel; he’d run up over a curb and into a boxwood hedge in someone’s front yard trying to spare its life. Thankless wretch. The squirrel had run out right in front of his car, and froze in the middle of the road, like a dare. Its round brown eye said, Bring it on, moron. Bring it on. It flicked its tail at him derisively and balled up its fists. C’mon, buster! There’s only air and opportunity between you and me! Then a lady came to the door of the house and wagged her finger at him, screaming for him to get out of her yard. He should have just run over the stupid thing. Taunting him like that.

Now his heart whooped and thundered in his chest like an African war drum. His lungs were in a vise and he gasped for air. Cool dark air, redolent with antiseptic and adhesive bandages. He drank deeply of it as if it were a fresh spring breeze. It went to his head. Slowly Marshall’s pupils widened in the dim light and he could see what lay ahead of him. It was not good. Holy GOD! This was going to be a disaster! Who were all these people? What were they doing here? A thousand angry natives pounded on his heart drum maniacally, and danced around his weak and helpless heart muscle in a sacrificial ring of fire. They shook their sharp spears in the hot air and brandished them at his left ventricle. (They were high on something, there was no stopping them!) No, this was more than a disaster, this was the freaking Apocalypse!

He needed to be out of here by 3:00 o’clock! He had carefully explained this to the nurse when he made his appointment last week. She promised she would do everything she could. She said she anticipated there would be no problem. Through fire engine red lipstick, she’d said, “Don’t worry, Sweetie,” and gave him a wink. Her betrayal cut him like a knife.

You couldn’t trust anyone anymore.

A sudden surge in his chest changed the subject. Soccer game at 5 O’Clock. The wan pale face of his daughter floated by like a lost balloon. Honey, he said as her sweet head drifted aimlessly out of sight.

With a crumpled up Wall Street Journal under his arm, he set his face in stone and marched up to the front desk. The woman was on the phone with her hand over her eyes. Marsh shifted back and forth on his feet, hurrumped and coughed. Nothing. He cleared his throat. With a pale slender hand tightened around the receiver, the woman mutely held her ground, other hand cemented over her brow. Marshall’s blood drained from his upper body and fled to his feet. He watched a man’s hand on the counter develop an octogenarian tremor, and blinked astonished when he realized it was his. He looked up as for an explanation and settled on the other hand in view. Its fingernails were those fake plastic kind and painted, he noticed, puzzled, of all things, blue. Ahem, he said, to the air between them. Excuse me, hissed in a sawmill whisper. The smooth hand with the blue fingernails did not move, and Marshall’s noisome efforts to get attention became progressively more theatrical as the minutes passed. Was he vapor? Was he chopped liver, for chrissake? His eyes drifted to the ceiling and his mind began to wander like a lonesome neglected kid. Ma had been gone now for almost a year. Maybe he deserved this. But still.

He felt someone brush by him. “ ‘Scuse, please.” A slender drug salesman in pleated slacks and tasseled loafers slipped through the door to the inner sanctum, blowing a kiss at the receptionist. She gave him a little wave and mewed Oh, hi! A sudden 400-volt spasm in Marsh’s leg aborted a vicious wave of resentment. Hanging on to the counter, he hopped sideways and shook his leg and foot like he had fire ants on it. Damn thing! No idea how this happened, stumble wasn’t that bad. Had he torn a tendon? Sprained something?

“Get down, bro, do the funky,” a black kid quipped from the audience. Marshall froze and his toes went numb. Unaccountably, he felt like weeping. With the phone still stuck to her ear, the receptionist looked up, nodded and pointed to a chair with a blue-tipped finger.

Inhaling deeply and mindful of the blood pressure that brought him here in the first place, Marsh reached into the basement of his past: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner. I want to kill this bitch. In a spasmodic hand, he scrawled his name on the clipboard and turned on his heel.

Limping to the only seat available in the crowded room, he put down his briefcase, and lowered himself into his seat, affected leg stretched stiffly out to the side, having lapsed into rigor mortis, and now, like a fallen tree, a hazard to unwitting pedestrians. He opened the Journal.

Stale and pointless worries crowded up to him like old friends. Bills, but Honey Baby too, and her increasingly bitter old dam. A plate of cold ham appeared in his lap. “Do you want ketchup?” his wife asked sarcastically in the background, “or caviar?” in her vodka- laced flat voice. A breezed passed through the greening trees outside and they lifted their limbs and sighed. “Where’s Honey Baby?” he seemed to ask his plate of ham. “Or would you like ketchup on your caviar for a change?” The refrigerator door closed with a soft thump and a messy bottle of ketchup appeared on top of his ham. There was a glassy- eyed crow in the barely green tree now, looking at him, swallowing him with an unblinking stare. He slid back into the present and became one of many needing attention.

The densely peopled room had grown steamy, moist. The presence of so many people—-breathing, scratching, yawning, and softly breaking wind—made him uncomfortable. It was not like a crowded plane, not like the subway at rush hour. For one, he had the only briefcase in the room. And hardly anyone was even reading anything. They just sat there and stared off into space and at one another. Marshall had never thought to pass time like that. He doubted he could. How can you just sit, stare into space and do nothing? He tried a little

The Sorrowful Mysteries

(c) copyright 2009, Margaret Langstaff, All Rights Reserved


The beautiful lady on his back, head bowed, eyes closed, palms open, followed him everywhere. The set of his jaw and look in his eye said he was proud of her, maybe even in love with her. Lloyd at the drugstore asked where did he get such a wet back get-up, and Grimes at work asked, but lots didn’t, they just stared. The shirt had an effect on people. Everywhere Thomas went with that shirt on, his shoulder blades sticking out in the back like spokes, people would remark, “Law, check it out. Weird, man.” Leonard at the P.O. one time asked, “How’d you get that monkey on your back, Thomas?” cackling like an idiot.

Wearing that shirt, Thomas felt he was incognito. He felt like a different person than the person he’d known all his life. He felt more important, surely, and somehow more secure. He left it hooked over a door jamb in his bedroom at night. Sometimes when the moon was just right, the colors would wink and glow in the dark. If a breeze lifted it, the beautiful woman would nod, gesture, and give him the come on. He’d put it on in the morning and something sweetly serene would come over him that muffled the noise and affronts of the daily grind. Sailing by the reflective store windows on Birch Street around noon, he snatched awed embarrassed looks at himself. Sometimes he would freeze in front of a display window and pretend he was looking at what was inside rather than what the glass was showing him. How about that, he’d say, one eyebrow sprung in amazement. Then he’d see himself in the face, the same long white mug, and move along.

“Shopping for a nightie?” Mary Goodwin quipped, winking at him in front of Coleman’s Department Store, himself on pause, his eyes swirling around in the reflected whorls of blue and gold of his own raiment.

“I reckon not,” he shot back. As the mannequins in lingerie came into focus behind the glass, and the reflected splendor of his shirt posed a veil between what was his and what was not, his face caught fire painfully. He needed to move his legs, he looked away, walked.

He’d got it at a five family Mexican garage sale on Dickerson Lane last Saturday, a cold rainy afternoon with few prospects beyond his breakfast at the Waffle House. Stuffed with scrambled eggs and tinny coffee, he wandered around town, looking for something, he didn’t know what, and then found himself in front of the run down house, Mexicans swarming all over the place. Cooking enchiladas on an outdoor fire under an awning, music blaring, big mamas’ wide butts swaying back and forth as they stirred and gossiped. Their voices were like ripe apples, shiney, red, delicious. Fast talking lot, laughter, knee-slapping, little brown kids running around everywhere, cerveza and rosaries. It was like a party. He left when everyone went inside to watch Mexico whip Puerto Rico in soccer.

Then he made himself. He visited Ma at the hospital. Since she couldn’t talk, the burden was his to fill the air with something, so he rattled on about his truck and the coon dog he’d been wanting. Asking her questions, then answering them himself for her. Her cloudy blue eyes rolled around the room for a while, sometimes softly brushing his, then she closed them and seemed to fall asleep. He stared at the two little pup tents her feet made under the sheets, trying to decide if he’d been there long enough. The nurse looked in once. She was kind of cute. His ma had always liked dogs. They’d had a lot of beagles. They were sweet as pie, but how they liked to wander. They’d put that nose down to the ground and just go and go till they got lost. Pa didn’t want them in the house, but sometimes, him gone a while, Ma’d sneak a dog in, play with it. Even let it on the couch with her.

About two o’clock, stupefied by antiseptic odors and silence, he fell out of the double doors in a daze into the parking lot. The streets were emptying out, nobody on the sidewalk. Everybody elsewhere doing something else. Walking home wouldn’t take long. Sun was at that angle, gets in your eyes, everything seems lit up from behind. The telephone wires were humming a lonesome song. Turning a corner, he saw a lady in a bedroom window, nude from the waist up. She didn’t see him. She was talking on the phone to somebody. Brushing her long blond hair. She put her head down and brushed it up backwards, still talking on the phone. All her long golden hair falling forward toward her feet, she bending over toward it. She might be saying, Come home, honey. Or did I ever tell you I love you? Or I’m out of patience, this is the last time. Or what part of No don’t you understand?

He ran into Corey on his way back. He was waiting for the light to change, as if it mattered, when Corey came up wearing the tightness in his face, eyes grown tiny over the last several months.

Corey said, “Heard anything yet?”

“Nah,” TJ shook his head, looking down, spitting.