‘Fact. Man was not derived from beast nor bacteria ape nor apple tree. Fact. I resign myself to believe there is a God out there who looks like me. [He] has a son and THAT son is my salvation. Fact. My Savior is a descendant of David NOT of Darwin’s evolutionary theory.’
-Rev. Portus DeRaine, Ph.D Humanities, 1967
Edgar had to strain just to see his reflection in the gilded plaque anymore. Head spinning, blood rushing –suddenly it was like date night as he tugged his bowtie snug. There he was: box-shaped head, banister-big glasses, boyish, whispy grey hair. His frame, in time, had gone soft, sure; but not his frame of mind. He was reminding himself to breathe. Bree would be here any second and Edgar Shelp needed a broom.
Since the dawn of time, something about sweeping had always put Edgar’s mind at ease though he didn’t know why. Perhaps it was the simplicity of it. Luckily for him, it featured heavily in the three things he was expert at: general farm-handing (his first love), the exact meaning/execution of all 68 U.S.-sanctioned Navy signals (Ed swept hard the decks of his first trek from home) and this, curating singlehandedly the Pro-Creation museum for Rev. Portus DeRaine, chairman of the Greenville Junior College Bible Board. Edgar’s broom swished its way around the replica of a Caucasian Caveman gripping proudly a meaty, cooked dinosaur leg. This was the same face Edgar hoped to get from DeRaine, given today’s meeting went well.
Being spring, it was a rare treat for Edgar seeing visitors this time of year. For an occupation bent on constant traffic, Shelp was lonely and the cash register, dangerously low. Now visitors had been reduced to Catholic schoolkids learning their universe (a seasonal crowd) and punk teens in want of a good laugh. At least they always bought a shirt. Thirty years ago, when this thing had opened, the community flocked to see what a good, God-fearing, upstanding institution still looked like. Noah only thought his ark was cramped. But today, you’d expect the museum housed the Chupacabra as both subjects seemed about as internationally rejected.
Damn. Er –Drat. Edgar regretted his curse, even if it’d been mentally. It was that danged new coffee maker. Shaking his sin like an etch-a-sketch and throwing a dime inside a dusty swear jar, Edgar rushed his round torso –broom and all- to a closet in the back. From behind the freshly dislodged door, the smell of musty Folger’s assaulted Ed’s nostrils. Flushing the new sewage down the sink, he curiously surveyed the glass marbles now painted and placed inside the skull of a stuffed chimp, collapsed and leaning across the coffee maker. Lips curled up in some dumb expression, his prime had seen him sitting atop a little birdy swing –hovering above a glass case dispelling the Scope Monkey Trial. Cracked and crusty, he now lay permenantly retired, a light blue dunce cap stapled to his head. Edgar had always had a particular fascination with monkeys; this was the closest he’d ever come to seeing one. In the years his wife had become insufferable, this was his only friend. He affectionately named it Scopey. Scopey watched Edgar wipe the last of the grounds into the sink.
“Couldn’t think to turn her off yerself?” A fire shot from Edgar’s eyes he reserved special for razzing his friend. Scopey only stared. Edgar chuckled as he put back the pot. “Naw, naw. No excuses.” He let his fingers fluff the primate’s matted hair.
“Think ol’ Portus’ll put us off again this week?” His thumb rubbed the edges of the monkey’s ridged paws, holding off his own, always-negative response to his own proposed question. “My sentiments exactly.” Like anybody, DeRaine –who had started this museum as a project- had long gotten sick of the upkeep. Especially now, as attendence and funds were waning, it was a miracle just to get DeRaine on the phone. Edgar knew if he could just get DeRaine to visit, if only for a second, he’d see the merit the museum still had and perhaps rekindle that old enthusiasm. But what was one appointment delayed by a day became delayed by a few, then a week, then a year’s worth. ‘Sell one of the exhibits,’ he commanded from a car phone before driving into a tunnel. ‘Get it into the hands of a private investor. That’s where our work belongs now anyway: with the people.’
And so he did. Inspired by seeing his sister-in-law sell all her husband’s stuff on Craigslist, thus became Edgar’s newest source of action. For a fogey on a dial-up desktop, he was amazed at such success. By day’s end, he’d been contacted by a ‘Bree’ –rather, Bree’s assitant- an art collector with a penchant for the ‘Almightily obscure’. Today was their day to arrive. And as if cued by the cosmos themselves, it was then Edgar heard the crunching of twigs, the deadened squeal of old breaks. His excitement got the best of him.
“Scopey, salvation finds us today in the way of sales!” Frantically, he re-tucked what sections of shirt had slipped out, struggling around his obese belly. Shooting out the door, hand on knob, he stopped –suddenly remembering something. Grinning big, he faced his friend. “Big day today! And I don’t want to any screeching from here outta’ you.” And with that, he slammed the door.
Sweating, panting, Edgar watched through the window an all-rounded, faded-black car sitting outside. An antique out of time, Shelp was sure he’d seen something like it in a gangster film or Al Capone-based newsreel. Suddenly, it struck him he had no idea what to expect. Was Bree a boy? A girl? Was there a first name/last name? A magazine at the library had only told him of a show in the neighboring town coming up -now the night before. From the driver’s side, the assistant –trim and boyish, complete with a caddy’s coat and cap- popped into view. Diligently, he circled the car for his boss’ door. As the door pulled theatrically away, Edgar gasped. There, twisted in his seat, sat what appeared to be a long, gangly being not quite man, yet no part woman. As fragile fingers wrapped around his accomplice’s hand, standing now upon shaky feet, Edgar was seeing a vampire. Translucent skin, sharp, angular features; even the sun seemed torturing behind those big-rimmed sunglasses. Closer now, scaling the lawn, through turtle-necked sweater and capri pants (all black), Bree’s emaciated frame looked the result of needles and pill popping. Poised against the ashy grey backdrop that had been the three-days-of-rain summer sky, Bree couldn’t have been thirty-three.
Edgar’s heart went to him. How brave, he thought, to be up against so much –conquering it all and still finding time for our museum. Ed wouldn’t hold the past’s sins against him; after all, they were what made up a man. Still, though, he was wildly curious to know what crazed hardships, what moral depravity Bree had seen. Years of stale shopkeep had become dangerous for Ed. He couldn’t turn his brain off anymore. He blamed it on those Dan Brown books his wife insisted he read. Suddenly this job, this town, this life was too small for him. He pined for the Big City. To feel the salty air sting again against his face, or to see the Brooklyn Zoo’s monkey exhibit and return to tell Scopey. He wanted to know ‘why not Creationsim.’ What else out there didn’t he know? Could curiousity really be that bad? After all, curiousity landed him his wife, landed him on Okinawa beach facing Japs and Jesus’ yet-requited call. (He conquered the last two the same night.) But when pressed for change, his wife and job simply muttered ‘no’. Hell no. He began racing through all that he could ask Bree when he saw it: through the window, approaching the door, an act that transended platonic comoradarie. A flattened hand carassing a sunken chest –screaming of the kind of chemistry Edgar had past castrated from bulls and crippled in Navy shower rooms.
Homos. The both of them. Edgar bristled at the thought these bozos were soon to cross the threshold of his most modest of museums. Sacrilige. He hoped the rafters didn’t cave. He inched back as they entered, hands tucked tight beneath armpits –careful not to catch whatever persuasive, insidious germs they could be carrying. Bree stooped as he entered, rubbing tight a temporal lobe. Once in, his demeanor seemed about as stale and stuffy as the humidity collecting outside. A black hole for conversation, each of them looked at the other to start.
“Your site really fails to bring your place here justice,” Bree said half-rehearsed as he half-looked around. Shelp’s mind was a sputting teapot –racing toward all corners of the museum in stock of what else his guest, here, might tear down next. A genuine grin curled from the artist’s thin, grey lips. He was tracing the sleeve of a hot pink tee, emblazened with the museum’s name across the chest. “Pro-Creation Museum? Ever get those horny, disappointed teenage boys desperate for a glance how babies are made?” he laughed, his assistant joining in quietly. Edgar’s mind stopped. Dizzy and slackjawed, it’d honestly never hit him before.
Bree’s assistant was stooping now, tending to the bewildered old man. His strong hands felt tight on Edgar’s tender shoulders, restoring his security. In a sort of daze, Ed was having a hard time thinking straight or telling what was going on. His attention was caught by the big golden buttons set against the assistant’s royal blue top. Old-fashioned, it almost mimiked the boys Edgar had served with offshore. His cap gave the shape of a halo. Bright blue eyes and a classic demeanor, he was less flamboyant than the other. And that made him agreeable in Edgar’s book.
“Mr. Shelp? Your ad spoke of an animatronic Adam?” The assistant smiled. Reality was rushing back to Edgar. The Adam they spoke of, salvaged from a foreclosed Bible-themed amusement park, was rusting in the backyard. Brown hair and pale complexion, it showed Adam picking, all alone, an apple from a tree. Originally, the Adam pulled his apple down to the range of his startled expression. Heavy rains and exposure to the elements, however, stopped that. Since then, someone had soddered a smiling Stegosaraus semi-circle around Adam and the tree for effect.
"It –it doesn’t work,” Edgar choked out. “Not as long as we’ve had it.” Looking between the two, he noticed Bree’s face didn’t dampen.
“No matter,” Bree scoffed. “Lord knows we’ll find a use for it somewhere.” Again he laughed and again Ed cringed.
“Right this way.” Leading the two, Edgar noted miraculously how he’d slipped back into clear thinking. The warmth in his gut told knew he’d need this if he wanted to sell full-price. He smiled as, from the corner of his eye, he could see the two gawking at the foreign world around them.
“Is that a T-Rex with a saddle on his back?” Bree asked astoundedly.
“Sure is,” Edgar laughed, tickled by the hokeyness of it all.
Together, their eyes passed over the rest of the dingy dioramas and watercolored walls as they reached the back storm door. To their left, a big-as-your-hottub replica of Noah’s Ark (complete with dino-sized stables) sat ready for rain. Bree pressed his nose hard against the glass, captivated.
“Fred Flintstone should sue.”
Laughing to himself, Edgar unlocked the screen. A serious change in Bree’s expression made Edgar’s stomach churn. Bree was slinking now, closer –aching to spill a secret.
“Curious, isn’t it, you can’t afford to keep open so you sell the very things only a few sorry people would pay to see in the first place?” Stepping past Edgar and out the open door, he laid a teasingly sympathetic hand a little too close to Edgar’s unguarded neck. “With a business plan like that, what’s next? Sell it all, then crack some Bibles and tell about the time Christ ascended to heaven using a pterodactyl?” As Bree cackled, lifting his hand gingerly and scooting away, Edgar’s jaw and fists clinched –his old fighting spirit suddenly back. A glance over at the boy in the caddy’s clothes made him retire his fists. Embarassment took over rage. It was one thing to be a victim in front of the calm, kind assistant; it was another thing to set himself up to be stupid. As he passed, his tight-lipped look of apology settled Ed a bit. He wondered if the two could be friends in a different situation. He wondered if it was too late to convert him back to straight.
As Edgar let the screen door swing shut behind him, the summer heat consumed his face. It was a nice change of pace from the always frigid a/c Ed had never learned to fix. Looking about, it seemed as though Bree had already found his booty. Of the three total exhibits left to outside, Bree’s was the furthest away. The others included (at his right) a velociraptor model posed beside a chicken (intended to illustrate the impossibility the one could evolve from the other) and, halfway across, a plaster cast of authentic dino prints parallel to ancient man’s.
“Looks like your Eden needs someone to cut its grass!” Bree yelled from his exhibit, peering up into the mechanical tree. It was true, the heat had made it hard for Edgar to mow in his old age. It was humiliating, in a way, how he could slave so hard as a youth shoveling hay all day to now lack the strength to push a mower for forty-five minutes.
“You have to ignore him,” the assistant offered through gritted teeth. “The show in Haywood hated him. He made a cross of all used toothpicks and they requested he leave. It’s like now that he’s mastered the formation of art, he’s bored and making repulsion his newest conquest.” Edgar had seen an episode of House so he thought maybe he understood. “Over a year and I still can’t understand that man,” he said with a sad little sigh. Still, Edgar thought, the child needed a lesson.
“You missed unicorns.” Bree was walking back towards them now.
“What.” Edgar spat, no longer amused. He didn’t like to say it but what Bree was being was just a dumbass.
“Job 39:9? 39:10? King James?” he laughed. “Mr. Shelp. Don’t tell me I know your Bible better than you do.”
Edgar scoured his memory of the Book. King James was not a translation any of his Baptist ministers had ever preached from. But how? He knew his translation in and out. Could people actually believe this? Unicorns were stupid.
“Tsk, tsk. A little biased now aren’t we?” he teased. Edgar didn’t listen; his Babel-sized assurance was taking a tumble. Did other people think Creationism this stupid? When you spelled it out the way Bree’d been doing it, what Shelp believed really sounded stupid. Had everything he’d slaved himself for these last thirty years been to waste?
Bree was at the plaster prints now. Edgar’s stomach sank. He’d long presumed what they had there was a fake but DeRaine had never allowed a test. ‘I don’t need the errs of man disproving what I know in my heart to be a miracle of God,’ he’d once cited. Edgar needed the proof.
“And you should probably fix this plaque, too. Says here, ‘Brontosaurus tracks’. There isn’t such a thing. Scientists stuck a Camarasaurus head on an Apatosaraus body. Guys so quick to cut the other down and shove their philosophies in peoples’ faces sold the world on a jip. Half a century later, five-sixths of the world still probably can’t tell you Brontosauruses aren’t real.” For the first time in minutes, Bree really looked at Edgar. He could see he had him reeling. A contemptuous smile spread slow across his face. “Where would you be without me, hmmm?”
It was all Edgar could do to stand. He looked to his less bombastic guest, fulfilling his job of standing by idly, not passing judgement and waxing heroic -any man’s envy. Why wasn’t he coming to his rescue? Why was all Edgar wanted to do was touch him? He imagined his skin was soft, his hands gentle. So badly he wanted the boy to see him –to look at him so he could be transfixed, lost and cured inside those icy blue eyes. He thought of Scopey, they way they played and if the boy would ever play back.
Bree was droning on. He was speaking to God, now –back turned to the men, melodramatic as if delivering a great speech. “Yes, I suppose there was a day that even I, the ‘pop tart’ that I am, went through a G.I. Joe, dinosaur phase.” He stopped, examining the years. “God, that feels like epochs ago.” Rembering his betrothed and battered host, he turned –again rejoining them. “Tell me, Edgar. Were you ever a Joe, yourself? A man in uniform? Mine were always the out of uniform type –buck naked along the bathtub.” Both guests burst with laughter. For the first time since their carassing, it was apparent the two were an item. The quiet assistant had broken rank and was now just a boy with a boyfriend and absolutely no real interest in Ed.
Abandoned by the caddy, left alone to die internally, Edgar swam through fifty years of misery. His wife, belittling him for choosing to read rather than touch her. His boss, skirting him at every cost. His inability to produce an heir. A world that rejected his God. A God that rejected him now. Too round, too old or too dumb to work. Terrified a bunk buddy would come out to him. Squealing on him when he did. Wiping the snot and tears, he stood, shaking, glimpsing the men at the other end of the yard, beside their beloved Adam. Today, he was that bunk mate –kicked, broken and bruised. And, like the Navy, an old familiar word was rushing back to him. Stomping his way across the Earth between them, the impact tore through the swollen soles of his feet. Tips of tall grass nipped at his slacks, shin-high. Fuck these guys. Edgar would live and die by this museum, cleaning and maintaining it piece by piece. Animatronic Adam, included. This was his castle, his country, his Eden. And he’d defend it by flaming sword, whatever God’s will be damned.
He was here, beneath them, a peon to their idle chatter. Smiling, they splayed their arms along Adam’s torso –bending to position what pagan pose Bree was concocting for his next show. Something obscene or pornographic, no doubt. Perhaps he’d plaster a penis over the dewey leaf the artist so conveniently placed. Edgar took a final look at the assistant. His fight wasn’t with him. Maybe, when this was over and Ed undoubtedly knocked to his ass, at last the boy could attend to him. Edgar would like that. Turning now toward the artist and peering up at his sweaty, gloating Adam’s apple, Edgar cocked back and punched.
