“A musical?” Adonai, The One Who Cannot Be Named, asked.
“Yeah,” Jesus said, thoughtfully. “It’s worked before. Look at what Menopause The Musical did for Orlando.”
“Orlando already had a few things going for it, financially speaking,” Shiva said smugly, always the one who had to be right.
“It might work,” Adonai said, popping a piece of pickled herring into his mouth.
“Yes, let’s not judge too quickly,” Jesus said.
“You always say that,” White Buffalo Woman snapped. She was tired from recent appearances.
“I thought we were just going to write off Butte,” Shiva sulked. “Let the damn thing destroy itself and fall away to dust. That’s such the obvious answer.”
“Look, they need a hand,” Adonai shrugged his shoulders, palms up, eyes squinting like his grandmother used to do. “They asked. Their intentions are pure… Plus I owe Finkelstein.”
“For what?” Buddha perked up. He was so damn quiet. It was unsettling. Everyone preferred it when he spoke up
occasionally.
“Um,” said Adonai. “I’d rather not say.”
St. Patrick was taking all this in. He was chewing on some road kill beef jerky White Buffalo Woman had brought for everyone. The stuff got stuck in your teeth like nothing else.
“I don’t think we should get involved,” he said.
“We’ve got several warring factions here and it’s getting hard to tell them apart. We don’t want another Middle East.”
“Or middle west!” laughed Baccus, lamely trying to lighten the mood.
“That is sooooo not the middle west, you moron. It’s the West,” chided White Buff, as her girlfriends called her.
“It’s all the West, out there,” Shiva snipped. “West, west, west.”
“That is so like an easterner,” White Buff shouted standing up. “What, you can’t tell us apart?”
“All right, all right! Enough!” Adonai shouted, shushing everyone into a shamed silence. He was good at making them feel guilty enough to shape up. “So, what should we do? Consensus says…?”
Everyone got very quiet.
Then, the one who hadn’t spoken yet, sat up:
1 comment:
In a fantastic, and to some frustrating, turn, the story ascends a dimension or two. I liked the grand pull-back because while it took us out of the plot it remained with the themes of eclectic spirituality, musicals, and the contemplation of southwest Montana. I also liked the true to form deities. The addition of this kind of character, does not strain the story with unnecessary character development as we already know most of the deities or can readily guess from the dialog or is that deilog? Anyway the main benefit lies in the wide-open now blowing through the story, anything can happen deus ex machina can be justified because we saw him machinating. Nothing is out of the picture in this wide view. Also it gives a handy segue for the introduction of either Satan as owner/proprietor of the Pit (Berkley, Hell, whatever) and/or the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Rockies, both fixtures of Butte.
Post a Comment