1947

Her given name is Dora.  Everyone in her circle knows her as Lady Richard.  Richard Lawrence isn’t the King of Los Angeles, but he’s definitely royalty.  He’s grabbed a handful of every land-grab since Owens Valley.  His Boar Enterprises owns a hefty chunk of Hollywood real estate and built a good quarter of the buildings downtown.

With royalty comes obligation and so Lady does her part as a member in good standing of the Soroptimists, the woman’s branch of the Optimists Club.  Today’s obligation involves attendance at the dedication of some benches circled by cement and rocks in a wooded area of Griffith Park.

The president of the Soroptimists speaks to the gathered crowd.  She’s a mountain of a woman with a habit of emphasizing many words.  “We dedicate this haven of solitude and comfort in memory of Minnie Barton, a woman who offered respite to many when they needed it most.  As the second female policewoman in Los Angeles, Miss Barton founded her Home for Girls in 1917, housing young women on parole or discharged from jail.”

Dora should be listening but instead her mind is filled with the strangest vision.  She imagines Mary sleeping close to Joseph, an empty manger beside them;  Mary’s eyes suddenly open, she knows the baby is coming.

“Ten years later, she founded the Bide-A-Wee Home for destitute woman with small children.  We recognize the delegation here today from the organization she founded before her death, The Big Sister League.  We also thank the representatives from the Four Square Gospel Church, especially the young ladies who were taken in as orphans by Aimee Semple McPherson and raised by her church.”

Lotus stands with a dozen other young and discarded women who live at the Temple.   Sister Aimee gave her the name Lotus after returning from a missionary trip to China where she discovered that lovely and delicate flower.

Lotus is unaware that twenty-three years ago, not far from where she stands, her father held her in his arms while the woman they are honoring shot him in the chest.

She is also unaware that Lady Richard is her mother.

Somehow, having never seen her since birth, Dora becomes aware.  She faints dead away.

The Story So Far

1970

This booth is ridiculously close to the highway.  I grab the phone almost before it rings.

“You heard right, Jay. It was Phoebe.  I talked with the Saratoga police, told them I was following up on a similar M.O. here in New York.   Lacerations on face and hands…it’s ugly…you want to hear this?”

“I want it all.”

“Death was either by strangulation or blood loss.  She had marks on her neck, but then again, her throat was slit…all of it?”

“All of it.”

“Recent sexual activity.  Possibly rape.”

“It’s all bad.”

“Not everything.  The state police took over the case.  They are taking an interest in this, Jay.  Dead hippies are piling up all over the state.  As much as they’d like to ignore Phoebe’s murder, they can’t.  At least, not yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’ll keep looking for her killer for as long as they don’t have a suspect.  But given a way out, like, say, an abandoned husband who was in the vicinity of the murder…they’d drop the investigation in two seconds flat.”

I press my head against the glass.

“What do I do?”

“They don’t know about you.  Keep it that way.  Disappear.  Don’t show your face until they catch the killer.  You know a place?”

“Yes, I do.”  A truck clatters past, in low gear because of the grade.  Across the highway is a roadside bar and a sign reading “Welcome to Silverlode, Colorado.”

I cross the highway and begin the next chapter in my life with my father.

The Story So Far

1888

Sunday considered burning a lot of things.

The chapel where he knelt and prayed and didn’t believe.  The birthing tent where he was God to screaming women and newborns.  The hammock where he spent his evenings.  The house where she slept, dreaming that she was his daughter.

In the end, Sunday put the torch to the saloon he never entered.  And the gallows, the goddamn gallows where he strung up each of his friends and most of his enemies.

Then she turned her back on the flames and left town at a gallop.  Headed south to Mexico.  To find her real father.

The Story So Far

1970

An army-surplus tent has been mounted to the bed of the truck, making it a modern covered wagon.  The old man has a good view from inside.  He can see both the crowd and the speaker.

The Magic Man shouts.  He prances.  He spreads his arms and they encompass the Gathering.  “Consider the vortex, friends, the black hole.  It’s out there.  It’s just over that hill.  It lives in the cities and it eats tall buildings.  You can read it in the papers, man, in the black and in the white.  The vortex is the Makers’ work.  The Makers are hungry.  They’re tired of the skyscrapers.  They’re coming for you.  They’re coming for me!”

A photograph of a young man jitters in the old man’s hands.  He reports.  “That’s Mackey out there, son.  I think his name is John.  They call him ‘The Magic Man’.  He’s a curly mane on a matchstick.  He used to be on TV.  He was the lead guy in that TV version of “Jessup”, the film about the hippy cop.  I seen him a couple of times now.  At San Luis Obispo in ’68, up in Boulder that same year, and twice in Saratoga both in ’69 and now.”

Mackey drops to his knees, draping an American flag over his head as a shawl.  “They say our movement is dying!  I say that it’s them that’s dying!  La morte, mother fuckers!  Adios!”  Nazi salute!

“He considers himself a ladies man and he probably is.  There’s a bunch of gals around him generally.  I’ve seen him with a girl named Sara Blue, used to come around here with her hand-made whistles.  Jewel Something, Missy Something.  Lately, it’s a pretty gal named Phoebe. Phoebe James has sad eyes.  She told me she missed her little girl.”

He’s back on his feet!  “If you’re feeling sick, don’t fear. The Magic Man has Magic Hands.  If you feel the Makers holding you down, pulling you down, just reach out.  The Magic Man has Magic hands.”

The photo could be of the old man’s son.  Or maybe it’s just him as a young man.  “Sounds like he can heal the sick and raise the dead.  This is getting mighty familiar, my dear boy.”

——————————————–

Mackey’s speeches nearly always arouse the libido;  couples begin to drift off into the surrounding woods.

One unfortunate pair  makes the discovery, stumbling upon the corpse of Josey’s mother, her throat slit and looking as pale as a paper doll.

This Ends the Third Cycle of  BURNT

The Story So Far

1888

Sunday stares up at the damned thing, considering all the threads in the rope of a noose.  There’s far too many to count.

It’s much easier to do the math on the folk who died hanging from those gallows.

Twenty-four were men from Los Rios — they were Arango’s men and her father’s personal enemies.

Thirty-one were his old friends.

The remaining seven were made up of local cow thieves, bad drunks and one drifter from Ohio who had the misfortune of being named Jesse James.

Sixty-two.

Waring is dying.  This morning, she had the deputies haul his bed out in to the sunlight.  Now the sun is dipping low and the gallows’ shadow has nearly consumed him.

He starts and grips her hands.  His eyes struggle to focus.  He fills his lungs one last time and breathes out, “I am your father.”

In fifteen years, she had never questioned it.

Now she knew he was lying.

The Story So Far

1923

A pile of flesh and bandages lies on a stone floor.  Ragged breath.  Clay is alive but just.

He wakes to find the note.  “Go to the yard. Climb to freedom. All is taken care of.”  It is signed, “A friend”.

He gives the cell door a tentative tug.  It opens freely.  He stumbles down a dark passage, past cages where other broken men are dying.

There’s the rope.  He struggles to the top of the prison wall.

The city spreads before him like a gray blanket littered with sparkling light.  Beyond is the darkness.  He knows what’s out there.  He knows Griffith Park is out there.

He wraps the rope around and around his neck and he leaps.

The Story So Far

1883

Sunday is ten and she finally has a name.  For a long time it was Cutie, followed by Girlie and then, one day, she was Sunday.

They’ve been riding for a long time and the desert doesn’t change.  She couldn’t guess how her father knows when to stop, but he does.  He lifts her from her horse.

“Do you remember this place?”

She doesn’t so she wanders here and there.  She kicks scrub.  She gets on her knees and plays with the coarse sand.

Her father is back in the saddle, scanning the horizon.  She brushes the hair from her face and watches.  His eyes are swallowed by the shadow of his hat.  Gray hairs sprinkle across the black field of his mustache.  He’s moving a little slower these days.  But he’s still the strongest man she has ever seen.

Something sparkles.  It’s a tarnished silver necklace.  She hangs it around her neck.  She digs around a little and finds some more jewelry.  And then some childrens’ toys — a sling-shot, a couple of ragged dolls.

And bones.  Lots and lots of bones.

This Ends the Second Cycle of  BURNT

The Story So Far

1970

I lead Josey to the middle of the field.  The Gathering is calling it “Enlightenment Meadow.”  She gives me a look.  We strictly avoid these places.

“Grab a knee.”  She laughs.  It’s our little joke, transforming the ever-present hand-holding circle of love into a football huddle.

I can’t remember what I’ve told her and what I’ve left out.  So I tell her everything.

I tell her about meeting her mother.  About our life at the University, our little house, Phoebe’s studies, my teaching position.  I tell her about dropping out.  About the work commune in Alaska.  About her birth.

“Was it me that made her run away?”

“No, Josey.”

“Was it me that turned her crazy?”

The madness was always there, waiting to take her.  “It was my fault.  We left our old life because of my problems with my father, my problems with my life.  Your mother was safer in our old world.  There was structure there. There were steady friends, her family.”

I try to push away the city of tents and mini-buses.  Someone’s on a make-shift stage, playing a guitar and singing, “Why don’t we swing along the road…”

“This transient world, this traveling circus, it’s no good.  It feeds her sickness.”

“Is that why sometimes you get angry at these people?”

“Yes,” I say.  I don’t say, ‘that’s why sometimes I kill these people.’

A bearded troll is shouting from the stage.  “I hear the call!  I hear the call and I will answer it!”  The crowd comes running on their bare dirty feet.  The Magic Man is about to speak.

“We can turn around right now, Josey.  I mean it.”

“I want to meet my mother.”

The Story So Far

1923

Deacons move among the faithful, ushering the crippled and the lame to the aisles.  The news spreads through the auditorium and into the balconies; Sister will be doing no healings on this day, the first day of the new Temple.

Lights dim and the ceiling glows.  All, converted and curious alike, lift their eyes to see painted clouds cross the baby-blue sky.  The choir begins to sing.  Their voices soar; they crescendo!

Sister Aimee Semple McPherson appears on the altar.  Her white robes shimmer in a hot blaze of spotlight.  A bouquet of roses burns bright red in her hands.  “How do you like the new Gospel tent?”  Cheers erupt from the gathered multitude.  “Its sloping poles are now pillars, its sagging roof a mighty dome.  The openings that showed the evening stars have now become arched windows, and through them stream the light of His blessing…”

Everyone is caught up in her words, the new temple, the uplifting notes of the orchestra, the choir.

No one sees the cripple until he’s nearly at the altar.

His head is enormous, swollen and matted with blood.  One arm hangs useless beneath a bulging shoulder.  He drags himself forward on stiff legs.  His ragged clothing smells of smoke.  A trail of blood stains the carpet beneath his bare and mud-caked feet.

Sister halts her sermon mid-sentence.  Ushers rush forward but she stops them with her upheld hands.  The choir’s hymn is swallowed whole by the sudden silence.

The man is lifting a pile of rags towards her.  She kneels and takes the filthy bundle.  Inside is a tiny baby girl.

Her eyes connect with Clay.

Just before he collapses, a moment of true and magnificent love passes between them.

The Story So Far

1923

There is a mob outside the temple.  Believers outnumber the one hundred wary police by fifty to one.  They keep coming, piling from autos, leaping from trolley cars.

Jubilant!

A fresh division of uniformed cops forms a phalanx and busts the crowd in two at Sunset Boulevard.  They usher through a flat-bed truck.  It’s a float, a miniature version of the Angelus Temple itself.  A banner hangs from the carnation cross atop the rose-covered dome, “Announcing The Opening Of The Church Of The Foursquare Gospel.”

As the float passes through the crowd, a murmur travels with it.  “It has come straight from the Tournament of Roses.”  “It’s won the Grand Marshal’s prize.” “God bless Sister and her work.”

Following behind the float, swept through the crowd in its wake, limps a hideous figure clutching a small bundle.

The Story So Far