Dear diary,
Reaching the end of the extra-long bridge that we’ve been coasting across, we’re now back to driving on a regular six-lane highway. But not for long:
I haven’t been watching the road since I began fondling Tara’s tresses, so our Studebaker Electric speeds aimlessly between all the lanes and goes off the shoulder into the grass and mud and then past several ziggurats and between the trees of the woods behind my childhood home and ultimately in a diagonal line over a grid of city streets. If you were to produce an audiovisual animation of our course on a map, it would look like a growing line of dashes bisecting every planet known to man and ending on an “X” in Philadelphia.
This “X” marks the spot where our Studebaker crashes. It drives straight into the garage of a car-repair shop (was this a call for help? I wonder), and the vehicle smashes into the back wall, where countless kegs of gunpowder happen to be stacked, so the impact results in the loudest explosion you’ve ever heard, and the garage is set ablaze with raging flames.
The repair shop’s owner, Dan Belteshazzar, is standing in the lobby sipping his coffee and chatting with one of his repairmen who’s on break, when the above transpires. There is a sizable window in the wall that divides the lobby from the garage, thru which these two men stare at the fire in shock.
Dan the owner, acting on impulse like a dreamer, now steps forward and places his hands on the pane of the window, as if the act of physically touching the vision will yield up its secret; then he shouts to his employee:
“Hananiah, did we not just see an early-model Studebaker Electric containing a pair of magi crash-land into our shop?”
And Hanny the repairman answers: “Yes.”
Then Dan the owner sez: “OK, so you and I are in agreement that there were no more than two magi in the vehicle when it sped forth and impacted our workplace in a thunderous fulmination. Howbeit, lo: now I see not a pair but a TRINITY of figures walking in the midst of the flames, and they seem unhurt; and the form of the third person resembles Enoch Metatron, Yahweh’s twin; also known as Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.”
And Hanny the repairman answers “True, boss; except that third figure is the life-sized cardboard cutout of the journalist Bryan Ray which came with his 14-volume diary set that you ordered and had us display in the northwest corner of the garage. The reason that the likeness remains unconsumed is that it’s made of fireproof toxins.”
Dan the shop-owner presses his face to the extremely hot window, to get a better look. “No, no, I recall what you’re talking about, but this is no cutout: this is the man himself, Joseph Smith, now in angelic form and more powerful than any deity who preceded him, because of all the celestial marriages that he’s accomplished. The only soul who even comes close to competing is the character Bryan Ray from all his novels (not the author, mind ye, but his fictional alter ego) — the confusion of identity is due to the fact that he is Joseph Smith’s evil twin.”
The repairman Hanny replies in sincere confusion: “I thought that you said that Mr. Smith’s Enoch is the twin of Yahweh God.”
“Yes, Metatron is the slightly handsomer twin of Yahweh,” explains Dan Belteshazzar, owner of the Barbaric Yawp Repair Shop, rolling his eyes in exasperation at his employee’s slowness, “but Bryan Ray is the evil Joseph Smith.”
“Ah,” Hanny the repairman nods at last, “that clears things up — I understand now.”
Then Dan the owner shuffles to the side and pulls open the door next to the window that divides his shop’s lobby from the now-eternally-burning garage. Flames roar into the lobby for a moment, while Mr. Dan Belteshazzar gathers his courage to enter the blaze. He then charges into the flaming inferno and pulls the door closed behind him. This leaves his repairman Hananiah standing in silence, surprised by the bravery of his boss.
Dan the shop-owner steps forward determinedly and shouts at the figures in the burning garage:
“Magus Bryan, tell your assistant and spiritual brother here to come hither and follow me — I will lead ye prophets of the most high God out of this labyrinth (by the way, sorry about the mess: we were in the middle of repairing several vehicles when ye appeared out of nowhere and smashed into our powder kegs at full blast) — I know the way, because I own the place. I’ve been repairing vehicles here for decades now; and I’ve seen a lot of crash-landings — we’ve had helicopters, jets, even space pods with extraterrestrials descend from the heavens; but all the passengers are usually burnt up by the time that I rescue them, especially the aliens, upon whom I must then perform a quick autopsy and video-record it, or else nobody will believe me — but never have I seen the pilot and his crew survive their crash without a scratch, as you all just did, while additionally remaining impervious to the lava and brimstones that are now hurtling about the locality after having been disgorged from the earth’s open wound. Moreover, this is the first time in my life that I’ve seen an original Studebaker Electric. It’s a shame that the thing is now totaled. Was it insured?”
“No, we don’t believe in insurance,” yells my assistant Tara over the raging flames.
“Oh, too bad,” shouts Dan the shop owner. “Well, I’ll set you up with another vehicle, so that you can continue your adventures. I’d hate for you to be stranded here in Philadelphia. This is the absolute worst place to stop on an adventure. Have you seen the Liberty Bell, by the way?”
“Yes, we have,” I shout; “or at least I did — I glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye while I was stroking my assistant’s hair, before we crashed. It interested me because I’m staunchly anti-debt, so I see the bell as a symbol for my stance.”
“How so? please explain,” sez Dan, now losing himself in curiosity and forgetting that his original mission was to rescue us from the burning furnace that his repair garage has become.
“Well, you see,” I shout over the surrounding conflagration, “the basic dynamic of debt is to accrue and intrude increasingly into the economy: it absorbs the surplus and inevitably transfers land and even the personal liberty of debtors to the creditor class. Now, to offset this for the sake of harmonious existence, we have the ‘jubilee’ concept: a planned, legally prescribed period of debt forgiveness. Jubilees were designed to make the aforesaid liberty-losses only temporary. The Mosaic injunction of Leviticus 25, ‘Proclaim liberty throughout the land,’ is inscribed on America’s Liberty Bell, as you know. The liberty in question originally was to free all people from debt peonage. Tho this was not egalitarian as such; it merely aimed to provide humankind with the basic minimum standard needed to be self-sustaining.”
Dan Belteshazzar the shop owner stands and stares at me in awe. His eyes glaze over, but I can tell that his mind is fully active. Finally he snaps out of this state of abstraction and shouts:
“That’s so interesting!”
“Thanks, I agree,” I place my hand in friendly fashion upon the shoulder of Mr. Belteshazzar. “To give credit where it’s due, I should add that everything I just said was lifted from a book by Michael Hudson. — I like to paraphrase in this way, to stay in practice; also to keep my disciples on their toes, lest they forget the most important Divine Commandment: ‘All plagiarism belongs to Bryan Ray’.”
Then, after blinking many times and shaking his head, Dan the shop-owner exclaims: “Ay me! what are we doing standing around here talking in the midst of this firestorm!? Let us escape this deadly blaze...” Mr. Belteshazzar waves his arm, indicating that we should follow him, as he approaches the door in the wall that divides the garage from the lobby of his repair shop.
So I Bryan the magician, along with my assistant Tara and our new friend Joseph Smith who is Enoch Metatron step forth out of Hell. We shake hands with Dan B. the owner and his top repairman, Hanny, during an official introduction in the shop’s quiet waiting room.
Hananiah the repairman looks dazed. He remarks: “How do the flames have no power over you folks? There’s not a hair on your head that is singed; neither are your lab-coats blackened…” then he sniffs us, one by one, and shakes his head and remarks: “You don’t even smell like your goose has been cooked.”
Here Joseph Smith delivers his first (and perhaps only) line of dialogue in this teleplay: “Blessed be the Matriarch of Metatron, who hath sent her angel and delivered her children, who yielded up their bodies in order that they might earn the right neither to serve nor worship any god but their own Oversoul.”
“Are you talking about the Shekinah?” I whisper to Mr. Smith.
“Yes, Shekinah,” Joseph Smith seems perturbed that I forced him to spell out this detail, but he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that I’m presently engaged in composing my own scripture, in the form of this present tale, for which I do not want to be accused of having fabricated anything — that’s why I’m being careful to cross all my taus (and christ all my crosses). He enjoys the advantage of having already finished his literary work, not to mention his life; so he can just kick back and enjoy all his goddesses while they colonize their plot of outer space; hence his attitude of indifference towards me, after rescuing us. But I’m determined to win him over, and I think we’ll end up as friends. He’s not at all like the Apostle Paul, our other brother, for whom we share a common aversion. And you know what they say about the enemy of one’s enemy.”
At this point, the other two employees of Dan’s repair shop show up for work.
“Bry; Joe; Tara;” Mr. Belteshazzar sez, “meet Mishael and Azariah.” Then he raises his voice when the two repairmen seem to be aiming to enter the garage thru the divider door: “Guys, no! Earlier this morning we suffered a tragicomedy, and the shop’s still aflame. Don’t go in there until I’ve had a chance to sweep up. I’m going to offer these passersby a new vehicle, from our recent repairs. What do you say I give them the 1941 Lincoln Continental V-12 convertible from the motion picture Detour (1945)?”
“That’s fine with us,” sez Mishael. And Azariah nods and adds: “But what will Mr. Ulmer drive?”
Dan the shop owner turns to us and explains: “Edgar G. Ulmer is the director of the film that I mentioned — the car in question is actually his own personal vehicle.” Then Dan turns to his employees and sez, “Don’t worry about Mr. Ulmer. I’ll offer him something even better, so he can’t complain.”
“Why not give him the entire San Francisco trolley system?” I say. “All twenty-three lines. Then he’ll never need another form of transportation in his life.”
Mr. Belteshazzar the shop owner looks befuddled: “I like your idea, but I’m in the business of repairing broken vehicles. Is the network of San Fran Cable Cars damaged in any way?”
“Well, sort of,” I reply. “Only three of the original lines remain in operation, and even those have been suspended since last March, on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Dan’s eyes grow wide: “That’s perfect! I’ll just create a cure for all coronaviruses, and then I’ll get the whole trolley system back on its feet, and hand it over to Edgar G. Ulmer, to compensate him for the loss of his beloved automobile.”
“Sounds great!” sez Tara. “And, to sweeten the deal, you might also throw in a few police cars, for there’s a whole bunch floating in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans right now. (I’m a fan of Detour, so I’d like be sure that Ulmer’s happy.) As the Christmas Carol sez: ‘Nobody can ever have enough police vehicles’.”
“Consider it done!” Dan the shop owner claps his hands.
So, the movie director Edgar G. Ulmer inherits the beautifully refurbished trolley system of the city of San Francisco, along with more than 300 drip-dried cop cars and a year’s supply of Rice-A-Roni, after Mr. Belteshazzar stumbles upon a cure for every possible strand of coronavirus (actually, it turns out that his vaccine works for ALL plagues whatsoever, not just the latest fad); while Tara, Joseph Smith and I drive off unscathed in Ulmer’s ex 1941 Lincoln Continental.
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