Warren Murphy: Holy Terror

"I don't like that word. The last time it was used on me, young lady, was by rowdies in your father's pharmacy."

"You don't understand. 'Nigger' in the mouth of the Blissful Master takes the sting and prejudice from the word. What is the word but two insignificant sounds anyway? Nig and er. Nothing."

"It is not for you to decide. Nor for your master."

When Reverend Powell saw the Blissful Master, he nodded curtly and said, "uh huh," as if in confirmation. He was beyond shocks in this building. The Blissful Master wore a pair of too-tight white shorts and nothing else on a pudgy light brown body.

He looked like a knockwurst with a tight white Band-Aid around the middle. A youthful mustache struggled over precisely outlined lips. A lock of greasy black hair hung over his face. He stood before a television-type screen, watching a bouncing white blip and manipulating levers on both sides.

"Pong," went the machine, and the blip batted crazily from one side of the machine to the other.

"Just one second," said the youth, whom Powell judged to be fifteen or sixteen. The lad's lips twitched nervously. His English had only a trace of an accent, sort of English, like the white kids who had come down south in the summer to work for civil rights so long ago.

"Pong. Pong. Pong," went the machine and the Blissful Master grinned.

"All right, you're the nigger. Let's get to work. I'm Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor. Blissful Master to you."

Reverend Powell sighed, a tired sigh, hundreds of miles of dusty Indian roads, he sighed. Nights sleeping in the back of a car, he sighed. Watching the human monuments to famine being carried away, he sighed. The worry about the white girl who had once been so kind and so friendly to everyone. All these things he sighed and felt very tired when he spoke.

"Turkey, work your hustle on some other street. My soul belongs to Jesus. And you, Joleen, I'm sorry for you. This is no spiritual man."

"Good," said Maharaji Dor. "We can dispense with the bullshit. The deal is this. You and I could jaw for a hundred years on St. Paul versus the Vedantic scriptures or whatever shit goes down nowadays. My deal is this. I know the way you should live to make you happy. That's it. Your tongue is designed to taste. Your eyes to see. Your legs to move. And when they don't do all these things, then something is wrong, right?"

Reverend Powell shrugged.

"Right?" said Maharaji Dor.

"Eyes see and legs move when God wills it."

"Good enough. Now ask yourself about the whole package. Are you supposed to walk around with the feeling that you're unhappy? That something's wrong? Unfulfilled? Nothing is ever as good as you thought it would be, right? Right?"

"Jesus is as good as I thought he would be."

"Sure, because you never met him. If that Jewboy were around nowadays, he'd be here if I got hold of him. Not hanging with nails in his hands. I mean, baby, what kind of deal is that? I'd never give you that deal."

"Praised be the Blissful Master," said Joleen clapping.

"Quiet, child," said Reverend Powell sternly.

"What I'm laying down is that I make you feel like you ought to feel. Your body is going to tell you I'm right. Your senses will tell you I'm right. Just don't try to turn 'em off. But if you do, I'll win anyhow, because I am the way. Dig?"

"Blissful Master," cried Joleen and threw her pink linen head wrapping at the two pudgy brown feet. Her blond hair settled over the pinkness of her sari. Reverend Powell saw her young breasts quiver under the dress.

Maharaji Dor snapped his fingers, and Joleen ripped the sari from her body. She stood pale and nude, smiling proudly. Like showing a tomato for sale, Maharaji Dor squeezed the left breast.

"Good stuff," he said.

Reverend Powell saw the pink crest of her breast harden between brown thumb and forefinger.

"You think she doesn't like this?" said the boy. "She loves it. So what's wrong? Right." Squeeze.

Reverend Powell turned away. He was not going to be put upon by arguing with these heathens.

"Want this stuff? Take it."

"Good night, sir, I'm leaving," said the Reverend Mr. Powell, and the Dor lad smiled. As Powell turned, he felt two hands at his elbows, and as he struggled, he felt a collar being placed around his neck and locked, and his hands were shoved into shackles and pulled down behind him. His head fell backward, and his feet were being tugged. He braced his body for the cracking fall, but he landed on softness. Even the hand shackles were soft as they tugged at his wrists. He tried to get his legs under himself, but they went out in soft bindings to the right and left. Hands worked at his clothes, unbuttoned the jacket and shirt, and in a way he could not fathom, they got his clothes off his wrists and ankles without removing the shackles. He saw the lights from the ceiling and the soundproofing mosaic set around the strips of light.

He saw Joleen's face right above him. He saw her tongue dart out and felt it in the center of his head. Her firm breasts brushed his chest, and her tongue moved down his nose to his lips. They parted his lips briefly. He turned his head away and felt the wet tongue on his neck.

"Some things you can turn, nigger, and some things you can't," said Maharaji Dor.

The tongue tickled the reverend's belly button, and by the time it reached his loins, he knew he was out of control.

"I see your body is telling you something, nigger. What do you think it's telling you? You know what it's telling you? You think it's wrong. You think you know better than the body God gave you, you say. When you need air, you need air. When you need water, you need water. When you need food, you need food. Right?"

Reverend Powell felt the moist hot lips closing on him now. He did not want it to be nice. He did not want it to excite him, to grab him, to move him, to bring him to the trembling edge of exquisite tension. And then the mouth was gone, and he was still wanting. Quivering out there, his body begging.

"More, please," said Reverend Powell.

"Finish him," said Maharaji Dor.

As the exquisite, surging, pounding relief consumed him, Reverend Powell began to feel his own wrath upon himself. He had failed himself, his God, and the girl he had come to save.

"Hey, baby, don't sweat it," said Maharaji Dor. "Your body's healthier than you are. You feel bad, not because of your body, but because of your big, big pride. Pride, Christian. You put your head on the block for a cup of coffee, but it wasn't for civil rights. What sort of man looks down the barrel of a gun and says, "Shoot"? A man who feels inferior? Bullshit. You knew damned well you were the best sonofabitch in that drugstore. Big hero. Same reason, hero, you came here for the blond twiff, what's her name? You were being the great Christian. Turning the other cheek to the richest white man in that town, what's its name? Right? Big man.

"When the young loudmouths started calling you Uncle Tom, you didn't mind. You knew they didn't have the balls to do what you did. Look down the barrel of a shotgun and order coffee, big man. They had the beads and the clothes and the raised fists, but you had God. Wonderful Titus Powell. I'll tell you what you're doing here. You came here to prove you're just the most wonderful nigger in God's kingdom. Well, you black bastard, you ain't getting your pride massaged with any shotgun here. You ain't gonna get martyrdom here. No lynch mob. You're getting what you've run away from all your life. So first, we get rid of the damned guilt."

A pricking sensation in his right arm and then a rushing surge of everything being all right filled Reverend Powell. His fingertips felt a tingle and his knuckles felt a tingle and his wrists were alive and calm as were his forearms. His shoulders that had known so much lifting in his life eased into beautiful floating joints, and his chest became like bubbles beneath the ice of a frozen, smooth lake. His legs melted into the floor, and he felt cool fingers apply ointment to his eyelids, and then there were stars, tingling beautiful stars. It was heaven he was in, and there was a voice. A hard, rasping voice, but if you said yes to that voice, everything was all right again. And the voice was saying he should do whatever the Blissful Master said he should do. The bliss continued for "yes" and ended with "no." Reverend Powell thought it might be minutes or it might be days. The faces above him changed, and once he thought he saw night through a very close window. In it all, he tried to tell God he was sorry for his pride and that he loved Him and that he was sorry for what his body was doing.