Reverend America: A Journey of Redemption by Kris Saknussemm Read Free Book Online

wash—no sign of tampons. When they asked him where he thought babies came from and he replied “from God,” the answer stood uncorrected. In fact, they seemed quite pleased.
    The only hint of anything shady about Poppy was his fondness for phrases such as becoming “unfinancial.” Other than that, the man was about the most likeable fellow you could meet. He had an untrained but lilting tenor and could do an excellent imitation of Will Rogers. He played the banjo. He was an adept mechanic and swift at all manner of minor repairs, often with improvised materials (he had the Rinder’s Knack as Joe would say). Yet despite these fluencies and a hearty constitution (he only drank milk and Dr. Pepper, never smoked or chewed, and always rose early to allow time for a slow, meditative shave with a well maintained straight razor), he never outgrew his thimblerigger upbringing.
    Rose, meanwhile, was fair-skinned with dyed dark hair, petite and pleasantly wrinkled. She applied rouge with precision, but always appeared confident enough to present a natural weatheredness to the world. Her eyes however, were almost black and penetrating, and could give her an occasionally sinister Ida Lupino intensity. Wherever and however it was that she’d grown up, she’d learned the art of “dukkering” or gypsy fortune telling. (One notion put forward by a policeman they once ran afoul of was that she was actually Irish and had been part of a nomadic band of tinker con artists.)
    There was something unaccountably cold about her though, especially in regards to any act of mothering. Despite the blatant sexual relationship with Poppy, she always kept her body well covered around young Mathias—and she insisted that he keep himself clothed in her presence. Whenever necessity forced his nudity upon her, she’d turn away, as if suddenly splashed with shame.
    Neither Poppy nor Rose could keep their stories straight on how they’d met, but one way or another Rose had become a psychic. She did crystal ball gazing, read Tarot cards and the Ouija, or what she called the “talking board.” Casper gathered that they’d made a life in one town after another, running a mixture of scams and semi-legitimate quackery/fakery ploys—only moving on when they thought the well had run dry or the locals had wised up. (As it turned out, it would be their move from physically direct conning to the use of wider reaching media like the mail that would catch them out.)
    They both knew patent medicines, and old bottles of Dismal Swamp Chill & Fever Tonic were still in evidence in their claptrap bus, which became little Mathias’ principal home, more or less.
    Poppy had once sold Dr. Sanden’s Electric Belts, a so-called “male invigoration” aid, as well as a variation on Vin Mariani, a 19 th  century cocaine infused beverage that kept resurfacing. Impotence cures, reducing techniques, communication with the dead—whatever worked best in the moment. Casper would later find out that they’d been accused of a $50,000 uranium stock swindle and formally arrested for the Vitalitonium, a whimsical looking machine they claimed was capable of bringing an end to: rheumatism, arthritis, nervous indigestion, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, falling arches, bags under the eyes and sagging busts.
    What they’d done with the money they derived from their bilkings and milkings remained a mystery. There was a family myth about a house in Daytona Beach. But if there was any truth in it, the details must’ve been well tangled in false names, because nothing of it ever came to light.
    They maintained a small neat house in Joplin, Missouri as their base camp, and it was in Joplin that Casper, as little Mathias, would be befriended by Berina Pinecoffin and where he’d meet his first and one true girlfriend Summer Shield. It was also where he was exposed to the first and only continuous schooling he’d ever know. Most of the time, however, he lived on the road