Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2006 The Funhouse of God Charles Michael Henley Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES THE FUNHOUSE OF GOD by CHARLES MICHAEL HENLEY A dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2006 The members of the Committee approve the Dissertation of Charles Michael Henley defended on February 27, 2006. ____________________________ Mark Winegardner Professor Directing Dissertation ____________________________ Roberto Fernández Outside Committee Member ____________________________ Ralph Berry Committee Member ____________________________ Elizabeth Stuckey-French Committee Member ____________________________ Sheila Ortiz-Taylor Committee Member Approved: __________________________________________ Hunt Hawkins, Chair, English Department __________________________________________ Joseph Travis, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract Page iv PART I Page 1 PART II Page 137 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Page 269 iii ABSTRACT The Funhouse of God tells the story of a young woman’s return home to the fundamentalist central Mississippi world of her childhood in order to attend her brother’s funeral. Looking into the causes of his death, she learns secrets never before revealed about her family. iv “Sing to Yahweh, for he is greatly triumphant; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.” Exodus 15:21, The Song of Miriam Part I 1 The wind on the Palouse is like a thousand voices. It slithers across the wheat; it whispers through the shed. That morning Rebecca and Tulane collected eggs from the hen house, carrying them bunched in the bowls of their dresses. Mother and daughter wore homespun dresses made from the same pattern, of the same gray flimsy cotton, trellised with fine purple ivy. The thick, black ropes of their braided hair swung down their backs as they walked across the yard. Mud sucked at Rebecca’s cowboy boots. To the east the sky glowed pale pink. Though the cool air rushed against her chapped lips, Rebecca knew the day would grow warmer with the sun. It was not quite August of 2003. Standing on the porch of the ranch house, she watched Daniel and his dogs drive the sheep from the barn to the field. He swung a long switch over his head, whistling commands. He smiled and waved when he saw her watching. She returned the gesture, standing a moment longer with her little girl on the porch. Through the fabric of her thin dress, she felt the warmth of the fresh eggs, still crusted with a few downy feathers. Smiling, she gazed into the horizon of this new life: the bleating sheep, the several dozen acres of rolling wheat, and Daniel, this new father to her fatherless child. They had been married for six months. In the afternoon Rebecca and Tulane walked the half-mile to the mailbox. The faded sign arching over the end of the long driveway read, 'Martin Farms. Wool Products.' Across the gravel road, through their neighbor’s wheat, like a horde of wading giants, marched a column of high-tension electrical pylons. Somewhere to the east lay Moscow 1 where she took sporadic classes at the University of Idaho. Before she met Daniel, they had lived in town, but she preferred the quiet of the Palouse, of the old farmers and the gravel roads, the sheep and the dogs. At the mailbox she put her hand above her eyebrows, getting a look at the land. Their neighbor’s wheat ran riot beneath the wind. To the west, clouds of iron gathered in the far off blue. She watched the dust from a pickup traveling along the gravel road from the highway. Waiting for the vehicle to pass, she took a stack of bills from the mailbox. In the course of a day, Rebecca saw very few people. This was by design mostly, though a part of her longed for other voices, beyond those of her child and husband. As she waited for the truck, she glanced through the bills, pausing at a thick letter from her little brother, Joe. His letters were epic. Bizarre. They were full of raw pain, though he seldom wrote the details of his actual life. Still Rebecca could see through the hazy surface of his letters to the drowning man below. She’d had roommates and boyfriends. She had traveled in the borderlands of lives built of needles and razor blades, bathroom stalls and twenty-dollar bills. That was behind her now, wiped clean by the presence of Daniel sleeping peaceful in the bed beside her, by the sound of the dogs barking in the first morning light, by the clacking black hooves at her feet in the barn, by the whisper of the rolling wheat sea. Rebecca knew she would leave Joe’s letter unopened on the dresser beside her jewelry box for many days to come. She’d have to harden herself for its contents. “Is it from Uncle Joe?” said Tulane, pulling at Rebecca’s dress. “Yes,” she said. “Uncle Joe.” “Is there a story in it for me?” “Maybe,” she said. In his letters Joe made up fairy tales for Tulane, which Rebecca distilled out of the miasma of his suffering. It had been a year since he’d last written. He was living in New Orleans then, but this one was postmarked from home: Lidell, Mississippi. In his last letter Joe said he was getting his life together. He was always getting his life together. Rebecca shuffled the letter back into the stack of bills. Behind her Tulane twisted her small fist in the hem of her mother's dress. The old farmer waved through the opened window of his pickup and Rebecca waved back to him. Tulane flapped her arms and jumped. They might’ve been castaways on a deserted island, signaling to the rescue plane as it circled overhead. The truck kicked up gravel from the 2 road, obscuring their view with a cloud of white dust; they stood by the mailbox listening until the sound of the tires was gone, and there was only the whisper of the wind in the wheat, like the scattered songs of elves. A week later, when Kias Williams called to tell her that Joe was dead, his letter still lay sealed beside her jewelry box. Rebecca had not heard Kias Williams’ voice since she saw him at the state fair in Little Rock, when Tulane was just a toddler. He did not see her that night, and they had not spoken since before the girl was born. At the state fair Kias had set up his ‘Travelin’ Revival’ tent next to one with a sideshow promising animal freaks. “The dark side of Darwin!” screamed the sign. “See the two-headed calf! See a real alien fetus!” Shocked at the sudden intrusion of the past into her present life, Rebecca had ducked through the flap with Tulane planted against her hip. It was just what she expected. The floor was covered in sawdust. A loudspeaker crackled from the tent post. Naturally, it was standing room only. This was a fact: Kias Williams could pack a revival tent. He was a force of nature. Always had been. Back in high school, he used to round up the freshman and haul them behind the field house for a lunch break full of worship and devotion. From the stage Kias had thrown his coat into the sawdust. His sleeves were rolled past the elbows. A big-eyed blonde woman in a flower print dress continued to sing into a microphone, while Kias prowled the stage, slapping a Bible against the palm of his hand. Profuse with sweat, he had the whole tent rocking. “You done violated,” Kias chanted. “And The Speed Cop’s coming.” He slicked his dripping black hair off his face. With his boot heel he kept time on the plank boards. “Who in here wants to pull over?” he shouted. The crowd cheered, clapping in rhythm. Heading back onto the midway, Rebecca let the tent flap fall behind her. “Who in here’s ready to get out and let the Speed Cop drive?” he shouted. Heading for the funnel cake stand, she thought that was the last she’d ever hear of Kias Williams. “Rebecca?” he said through the phone. Daniel stood with his back to her, leaning into the refrigerator, retrieving the raw materials of a tuna fish sandwich. In the back yard Tulane threw a tennis ball for their basset hound Coconut. Coconut wasn't a sheep dog. The sheep dogs weren’t pets, Daniel said. Lest they became useless as work dogs, neither mother nor child were permitted access to the border collies. Waddling after the ball, Coconut’s engorged teats dragged in the grass. Through the sliding glass door, Rebecca 3 could hear the clear laughter of the child, as she ran after the dog in the bright light of the noonday sun. “Kias?” she said. “Kias Williams?” Rebecca carried the phone into the living room, not away from Daniel, but away from the sliding glass doors through which Tulane might’ve wandered. Without thinking about it, Rebecca was putting another layer of distance between the child and the voice on the receiver. Such layers were in fact the great accomplishment of these last seven years. Kias Williams had no idea he was a father to any child on the face of the earth.