The Sutra of Reverse Possession: A Novel of Non-Idiomatic Improvisation

By David Keffer

People routinely explore a variety of peculiar avenues, many of which are spiritual in nature, in the pursuit of purpose and meaning in their lives. One should therefore not be taken completely by surprise that Poppy Hortie too opted to invite spirits inside himself in his goal of becoming a better husband and father. The remarkable thing about Poppy Hortie was his questionable choice of guiding spirits. He first entertained a spirit of violence in the form of “Earth Traveler Sun”, a Chinese dwarf who lived during the transition from the Shang to Zhou dynasties circa 1100 B.C. When that arrangement failed to yield the desired fruit,
Poppy Hortie invited inside a spirit of apathy, “The Unmothered Son”, the echo of a child who witnessed the massacre of his family in a genocidal act of tribal retribution and who was damaged beyond all repair. Finally, Poppy Hortie encountered the spirit of improvisation, “the ghost of Charlie Ankleyard”, the grandfather of non-idiomatic improvisational music. It was through a culmination of his interactions with each spirit that Poppy Hortie
came to a better understanding of his role in the world. These were cases of reverse possession because the man intentionally trapped the spirits within himself. This book is called a sutra because we allow the possibility that some worthwhile message might be gleaned from the reading of it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Keffer
• Release date: Mar 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301476701

David Keffer

David J. Keffer was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He pursued a technical education earning a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. After a year as a post-doctoral scholar at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., he began his career as an engineering professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he remains today. He has published about 100 technical papers in archival journals. He was awarded a Fulbright Grant to learn and to teach about sustainability in Seoul, Korea.Outside of engineering, David Keffer studied world literature and creative writing. He has published analytical articles on the works of Primo Levi and Kobo Abé. He created various reading aids to several classical Chinese novels. Over the past two decades, David Keffer has been active writing novels, poetry and stories. Several novels and illustrated stories are available from the Poison Pie Publishing House at http://www.poisonpie.com.Beginning in 2012, David Keffer began teaching a course on the subject of non-idiomatic improvisational music, of which he is a devoted listener and a topic which has led aided him on an investigation of a literature of non-idiomatic improvisation.David Keffer lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with his wife, Lynn, and two children. As a family, they enjoy hiking through the local mountains and are always on the look-out for poison pie and other ambivalent mushrooms that dot the landscape.

Book preview

The Shang Dynasty gave way to the Zhou Dynasty circa 1100 B.C. The legendary Taoist Jiang Ziya served as Military Minister for King Wu, the first Emperor of the Zhou Dynasty, gathering around him numerous Taoist disciples to aid in the overthrow of the despotic last king of the Shang Dynasty. One of these disciples was a dwarf, four feet tall with a face the color of earth, ugly and unimposing, with the surname of Sun. His origin was uncertain; Sun himself was no more specific than, I come from some island in the sea.

Sun studied Chan Taoism as a disciple of the Immortal Krakucchanda, who lived in Flying Cloud Cave on Dragon Squeezing Mountain. Followers of Chan Taoism were destined to break the prohibition against killing. Although Krakucchanda would later become a Buddha, Sun was destined for a far different fate. Under Krakucchanda, Sun studied the Way for about 100 years. As a Taoist disciple, Sun gained a variety of supernatural powers. First, Sun learned to travel on foot 1000 li (300 miles) per day. Sun also mastered the martial arts, specializing in wielding the iron cudgel. Later, Sun learned to travel 1000 li per day underground, magically burrowing without leaving a trace behind. For this reason, he was known among Taoists as Earth Traveler Sun.

Unfortunately for Earth Traveler Sun, Shen Gongbao, a dissatisfied Taoist acting against the will of Heaven, revealed to him, You have no hope of becoming an immortal, but you may be able to enjoy riches and power in the world of men. Thus, Earth Traveler Sun was corrupted and entered the political world of men. Stealing two gourds of elixir pills and the Celestial Binding Ropes from his master, Earth Traveler Sun ventured forth from Flying Cloud Cave. With these marvelous tools, Earth Traveler Sun first battled the Zhou army, going so far as to capture the Taoist Generals Nezha and Huang Tianhua as well as the Military Minister, Jiang Ziya, himself.

Earth Traveler Sun was not fond of dogs; when he saw the Sky-Barking Hound of Yang Jian, he twisted his body and disappeared into the ground, fleeing from the battle unseen. However, Earth Traveler Sun’s greatest weakness was lust; he was captured naked in bed with a general disguised as King Wu’s concubine. Having witnessed the prowess of Earth Traveler Sun, Jiang Ziya convinced him to join the righteous forces of the Zhou army. Once converted, Earth Traveler Sun was a dedicated general. He married the woman General Deng Chanyu, in order to convince her father, General Deng Jiugong, to ally himself with the Zhou army. Earth Traveler Sun and his wife, skilled in the slinging of stones, often fought in battle together.

As a General of the Zhou army, Earth Traveler Sun distinguished himself in battles against such powerful Taoist enemies as Ma Yuan, the Winged Celestial, and Luo Xuan the Burning Flame Immortal. Alas, Earth Traveler Sun was destined to die on the battlefield. His Master, Krakucchanda, predicted:

Skilled in traveling underground,

You must be careful on the way.

Before the cliff a pool of blood,

a beast will bite you to death in surprise.

This meant that Earth Traveler Sun was fated to lose his life at the hand of Zhang Kui, garrison commander of Mianchi County.

Earth Traveler Sun continued to distinguish himself in battle. He challenged Kong Xuan, who mistook him for three feet tall and said, That poor dwarf is doomed to die; I can just kick him to death. Thus distracted, Kong Xuan was struck in the face with a stone from the arm of Deng Chanyu.

The list of Earth Traveler Sun’s exploits is long. He battled Chen Qi and Qiu Yin at Green Dragon Pass. He coveted Yu Yuan’s golden-eyed five-cloud camel and tried to steal it but failed. He battled Fa Jie at Jiepai Pass. He convinced Deng Kun and Rui Ji to join the Zhou army at Lintong Pass. But against, Zhang Kui, Earth Traveler Sun was fated to die. Zhang Kui too could travel beneath the Earth. He ambushed Earth Traveler Sun at Fierce Beast Cliff and cut off his head. It hung on a pole in Mianchi County as a public warning. When Deng Chanyu sought revenge, Zhang Kui’s wife, Gao Lanying, blinded Deng Chanyu with 49 Golden Sun Needles, then sliced her head off as well.

Earth Traveler Sun was deified as the God of the Earth Mansion Star (Saturn). Deng Chanyu was deified as the Goddess of the Six Combinations Star.

*This brief biography of Earth Traveler Sun is based on information contained within Creation of the Gods (Feng Shén Yanyi), a novel originally written by unknown Ming dynasty (c. 1368-1644 A.D.) author(s), translated to English by Gu Zhizhong and published by New World Press of Beijing in 1992.

Chapter 1. The Horties

There is no such thing as ordinary. Upon closer inspection, each individual is unique and possesses subtlety in preferences, nuances in behavior and contradictions in thought that are far too intricate to be captured in a broad stroke or generalization. Life any other way would be hard to imagine and certainly less wonderful. That each mind, designed according to a unique template of DNA and shaped by an unrepeatable series of experiences, should manifest itself in some ways familiar but in other ways complex, perverse and ultimately confounding is not so much a surprise as it is an unearned joy. This is not to suggest that such uniqueness is invariably a virtue. In the cauldron of the human head, the wrong mix of genetics, biochemistry and maltreatment can result in idiosyncrasies that lead to brutality and horror and other flavors of meaninglessness. Still, none of us would willingly surrender this multifaceted recipe, even if we had the means to. More to the point, we have no such means. This is the fabric of our existence. We live inside it and we do not control it.

Perhaps, it is more appropriate to admit that there is no such thing as ordinary and there is no such thing as out of the ordinary. When the Bodhisattva Kuan-tzu-tsai was moving in the deep course of the Perfection of Wisdom, she told Sariputra among other things, There is no ignorance and no extinction of ignorance. It is in an admittedly superficial imitation of this thought that I concede, There is no ordinary and there is no out of the ordinary. If I add in a whisper, Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond! Awakened! So be it, it is only because the sounds roll off my tongue in a way that pleases me without explanation or understanding.

So it was with the family before us. Living in East Tennessee they had no knowledge of the Heart Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom. We cannot call them ignorant of its teachings because, after all, the Heart Sutra tells us that there is no ignorance. We can only say that they did not perceive its absence in their lives. Nor did they perceive the absence of a virtual infinity of other philosophies and teachings in their lives. No, their lives had been filled as the world fills each of us, to our measure, by the ideas in the environment around us. Thus, in every respect they were just like you and I, as ordinary as people can be. In the telling of this story, they may seem to become more unusual, perhaps eccentric, but the purpose of this introduction is to serve as a disclaimer: anyone of us, if examined at length, would offer up oddities that provoke consternation, defy explanation or simply thumb their nose in the face of discretion and good taste. When you encounter such episodes, I encourage you to close your eyes, take a deep breath and whisper to yourself, Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond! Awakened! So be it. We can then all pretend that this tale is a kind of a sutra, from which some beneficial lesson could potentially be gleaned.

●

Let us begin with names. The children, Sarah and Joshua, were given names from the Old Testament, not because the parents were deeply religious but rather because they sensed in these names a tradition greater than themselves. The benefits and drawbacks of this tradition did not factor into their reasoning, only that the tradition preceded them by a span of millennia and would, in all likelihood, extend beyond their passing some inestimable period of time. As for the children themselves, having been addressed by these names from the moment of their birth, they seemed as natural to them as the fingers on the ends of their hands.

The mother was named after a flower. Botanists have identified over ten thousand species of flowering plants. Of these, some suggest names more appropriate for mothers than others. Rose, Lily, Daisy and Violet—all very proper and feminine. Jasmine, Heather and Petunia—all no less loved. Goosefoot, Smearwort and Bat-Faced Cuphea are less commonly encountered as names of women and fortunately so by all counts. Sarah and Joshua’s mother was named Iris. Without access to her parents, we can only guess as to the origin of her name. The word itself comes from the Greek for rainbow, reflecting the many colors in which the flower can be found. Iris herself was only one color best described, not as iris—an ambiguous color if ever there was one, but rather as olive (not completely devoid of ambiguity itself owing to the great variety of olives).

Like the son, the father was also Joshua, though no one called him that, since his father too had borne the same name. To distinguish between the elder two Joshuas, the father of our story had since his early childhood been known to all as Butch, a not uncommon nickname in East Tennessee. Of all things about her husband, Iris liked this nickname the least. It not only lacked, in her estimation, sophistication but it also poorly described the disposition of her husband. Thus, when their first child, Sarah, was born, Iris assigned her husband a new title, Poppy, by which everyone in the family subsequently addressed him. Soon after the birth of their daughter, they moved into a new house with an extra bedroom in an old neighborhood, where the father was introduced to every new neighbor as Poppy. The Butch of old was not so much forgotten as simply relabeled. So, we too shall bow to Iris’ wishes in this regard and address him as such: Poppy. When I hear the name, I think of my own grandfather, though in this story it was adopted when the man was just a young father. Poppy, when compared to Butch, suggested an improvement in approachability, if not in sophistication.

Arfenbark, was an onomatopoeia, assigned by Sarah at a pre-speaking age to the family dog.

●

Introducing children through comparison with their parents is unfair to both parties. One may say that the son was cut from the same mold as the father, which is frequently true as they share the vast majority of their genetic code. Moreover, the father has had the opportunity to impress his own views and priorities on the son, making both genes and environment place the son in the steps of the father. This is not a rule, however, to which numerous exceptions cannot be found. Rather it is a simply one category of sons—those who take after their father.

There is of course another category of sons—those apples that by hook or crook fall far from the tree, for example, the brutish father who has a sensitive son. Perhaps, the reverse is also possible, the soft-spoken father has a violent lout of a son, although this situation certainly seems less common than the converse. Sometimes the father has sons that span the spectrum from meek to violent, as was the case in the Brothers Karamazov, in which Fyodor Karamazov had a philandering sensualist, an unstable rationalist and a likeable monk as his three (legitimate) sons. This example illustrates the complexity of father/son comparisons.

In the story at hand our father, Poppy, was perhaps a convoluted mixture of all three Karamazov sons, Dmitri, Ivan and Alyosha. He shared Dimitri’s thirst for stimulation, but for Poppy it was much more a platonic source of distraction, a guard against the mental disturbances of senseless suffering to which he like Ivan was susceptible. Poppy was from the cradle a Roman Catholic. He brought the family to mass each Sunday morning, a strict adherence to punctuality and form, though, if pressed, he would admit that he drew from these weekly meeting more social satisfaction from the gathering around coffee and doughnuts in the parish hall in the basement than spiritual gain from the service that preceded it. With his quiet ways and penchant for long pauses, Poppy was not immediately likeable, in contrast to dear Alyosha. Though he was comforted by the social atmosphere of the parish gatherings, he was barely a participant, content rather to find a chair at a table in the corner and watch his children playfully interact with the string of widows, waiting in line for coffee.

As for Joshua, six years old, he thankfully knew nothing of Dostoyevsky. Though, of the Karamazov’s he most resembled the father, at least in one respect. He fully expected to be taken care of. What six-year-old wouldn’t? He recognized that there were people in place whose responsibility it was to meet his needs, to keep him clothed, fed and sheltered and to remind him in times of need that he was well-loved. That is not to say that Joshua exploited his parents, rather he simply had grown accustomed to the fact that they had devoted their lives to the rearing of their children. Joshua was well-behaved at least part of the time and reciprocated his parents’ affection at appropriate times. Did Joshua recognize that he was fortunate to find himself in a stable, loving family situation? How could he be? Few six-year-olds have the breadth of worldly experience necessary to compare the advantages of a known familiar situation to those of potential, heretofore unexperienced alternatives. No, it requires the arrival of tragedy to open the eyes of children to the fact that they have been robbed of what had been incredibly good luck.

Does it make the world a better place to have brought this cruel wisdom to a child? No, but some would argue it is a necessary part of growing up all the same, a painful but essential component of the passage into an adult capable of distinguishing between the good that we have and the bad that we hope to avoid. Perhaps, this world suffers from too many adults incapable of making this distinction. The solution, then? Following this train of logic, we are led to the inevitable conclusion that the world needs more childhood suffering, a derailment of reason to be sure. Of course, none of this makes any sense. For Joshua, such thoughts were only faint, unseen shadows hanging in the dark corners of his father’s thoughts.

The daughter, Sarah, was another story entirely. Poppy liked to remind himself that she had likely been delivered via a flying saucer rather than a stork, so little resemblance was there between them. I can’t understand what you are trying to tell me, were the words that came most frequently out of his mouth to his daughter. In truth, the words were fine, the pronunciation articulate, the grammar in the sentences while not perfect was undoubtedly comprehensible. No, the problem lay in the absence of context.

Nine years old, Sarah approached her father as he leaned under the hood of the family car and peered uselessly at the reservoir of anti-freeze trying to remember if he had indeed caught the smell of coolant burning in the exhaust. She stopped behind him and watched him for almost thirty seconds without a word. Finally, she said in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she were continuing a conversation that the two of them had been engaged in for the past ten minutes, I have trouble changing.

Poppy closed his eyes and his did best to process this sentence. He repeated it silently to himself. I have trouble changing. He tried not to let his fear at the possibility that there was a leak in the engine or his impotence at trying to diagnose or fix the problem (if it did indeed exist) or his frustration with being interrupted in the midst of this useless meditation under the hood cloud his judgment or cause him to snap unduly at his daughter.

Poppy tried to imagine what his daughter could have trouble changing? Poppy was inclined to think philosophically, so his thoughts first turned to internal change. Many people had problems changing in this way. New Year’s resolutions were made to be broken. Poor will power was the calling card of the trouble people had with this kind of change. He was sure that this was far afield from where his daughter’s mind rested. He abandoned his thoughts and asked, Changing what?

He had waited too long. Sarah was already thinking about something else. Either she had actually not heard his question or it simply had not registered with her that it required a response, because she skipped away humming to herself.

Poppy closed his eyes. At the same time, he contemplated yelling at his daughter, ordering her back and explaining to her that it was impolite to ignore your father when he asked her a question. The fact that asking a question completely out of the blue would lead people to think she was crazy was a subject of conversation far beyond his meager abilities. He sighed. He did not want to take this car up into the mountains for the camping trip this weekend if it was leaking coolant.

Inside, Iris was examining the folded laundry in the laundry room. She had recently hired a housekeeper to come in once a week and clean the floors and the bathroom and change the bed linens. She now contemplated increasing it to twice a week, and adding laundry to the list. She knew her husband would object. He had vigorously objected to the housekeeper at all. Beyond the fact that he had been raised in a frugal family and his miserly tendencies had a hard time relinquishing money to any luxury, the idea of a housekeeper, the idea of his family being unwilling to clean up after itself repelled him on a more or less moral level, or so he claimed.

We can clean up after ourselves. We don’t need to hire someone poorer than us to do it for us, he had protested.

But the truth was that Iris was becoming quite successful. Once or twice a week, she was working late into the night and she had less time for chores. She forbade her husband from many of them, such as laundry, owing to the gross discrepancy in their judgment as to what constituted satisfactory cleaning. Yes, the loads did need to be sorted. No, wrinkles did not add a textural element to one’s appearance. She had hired the housekeeper over his objections and she resolved to add a day. Probably, she surmised, his protests would be weaker for the second day, now that he had already conceded the presence of the housekeeper at all.

He stepped into the laundry room from the garage, his hands smeared with the black greasy dirt one finds on engine parts.

Iris opened her eyes in alarm. Don’t touch anything. You’re filthy.

Poppy frowned and looked from his hands to the clean white sheets. He turned in place and, without a word, stepped back out through the door.

Iris called out after him. I arranged for Betty to come two days a week.

Poppy’s face reappeared behind the screened window. Two days?

Iris shrugged. Laundry.

It’s anathema to me, Poppy said in a quiet tone.

Please, Iris said, don’t be so melodramatic.

When the revolution comes and the proletariat rise, Poppy began and looked up to find Iris’s gaze.

She met his stare with a pursed grimace.

I wanted to be on the side of the proletariat, he finished in a mumble.

Then let’s plan on getting rid of the housekeeper right before the revolution comes, Iris suggested.

Yeah, said Poppy. That won’t work. You don’t know the arrival of the day of judgment…

Are we talking about the end of the world or a Marxist revolution? Iris snapped.

Poppy frowned.

By the way, Iris said, changing the subject, Your daughter came home with a note from the PE teacher saying that she takes too much time changing in and out of her gym clothes.

Poppy had a belated flicker of recognition. She mentioned that she had a hard time changing. I thought perhaps she was talking about self-improvement.

See if you can work on that with her. Iris grabbed the full laundry basket and strode out of the room.

Careful not to touch anything, Poppy washed his hands in the laundry room sink and then did his best to leave only small black smudges on the handle of the refrigerator, as he grabbed a bottled beer. He wandered out to the back yard where the early afternoon sun warmed the flat plain of clover and wild strawberry, a natural and not entirely unattractive blend of flora that flourished in the absence of any proper lawn maintenance. The yard was surrounded by scrub trees, hackberry, wild cherry, boxelder, all older than he was. In the evening, the sun would drop below this tree line and the backyard would cool below Poppy’s liking. In the meantime, he lay down in the clover, sipped the beer and soaked in the heat of the sun.

Not five minutes passed before he heard the shuffling of feet and felt the darkness of shadow come to rest across his closed eyelids.

I’ve built a robot, Joshua announced. Come check it out.

Joshua had maintained that when he grew up he was going to build robots, in much the same way as other kids vow to be astronauts or paleontologists; it was as likely a childhood infatuation as it was an educated choice of career path. Nevertheless, Joshua practiced his skills regularly, using whatever materials he could find on hand.

The sun had penetrated Poppy’s skin and warmed the blood and muscle underneath. Every impulse in Poppy resisted the offer of his son, wanting only to luxuriate in the slow, even heat, but Poppy rose. He had long ago learned that the life of the parent was not to indulge in satisfying oneself, but to rise to the model one hoped one’s children would eventually emulate. In a sense, he pretended to be better than he was, or he acted better than he felt, because he believed (without any reasonable basis) that his son was a better person than he was, or at least had the potential to become a better person, if given the right opportunity.

The robot, as it turned out, had an old cardboard box pulled out of the corner of the garage and over-turned for a torso. A bucket sat on top of that, serving as a truncated, conical neck leading to a white plastic Wal-Mart bag stuffed with grass and clover and dandelions for the head. Screws from the toolbox had been twisted by hand into the plastic, just far enough that the threads caught and allowed the screws to hang there like desocketed orbs dangling from optic nerves.

Wow, said Poppy standing in the entrance to the garage with one hand on a hip and the other holding the empty bottle. That’s wonderful. Does it have a name?

Joshua thought for a moment. Rock Buster Fighter Number Two. Its predecessor, Rock Buster Fighter Number One, had borne very little resemblance to this, but such was the way of robot evolution. Sometimes, one had to start with a clean slate.

What does Rock Buster Fighter Number Two do? Poppy asked

This robot can turn cheetahs into vegetarians, so when they are chasing an antelope, they can just stop and start eating some grass and not eat the antelope and the antelope can get away and not be killed.

Wow, Poppy repeated. That is so awesome. I’ve always felt the world needed a robot that could do that.

Joshua crossed his arms across his chest and nodded his head in satisfaction.

Poppy felt in his defense that there was scattered evidence that his son was already a much better person than his father would ever be. Far from alarming him, Poppy found this to be a great consolation. If procreation was a form of immortality, at least it wouldn’t be an immortality of uselessness.

●

Some people, more than others, need a purpose in their life and dwell, perhaps morbidly, on its absence when they cannot find it. Children seem to adopt temporary purposes more readily than do adults. Achieving an all-time high score or even incrementally increasing a personal best at video games can become an obsessive purpose, to which even sleep is sacrificed over a period of months. Others find purpose in supporting their sports team to extremes which are showcased as virtues only on fan-based websites. Some find purpose in their work. Others find little purpose at all and instead settle on time-consuming, life-consuming distractions. Of the endless search for an infinity of distraction, much has been said and will not be repeated here. Poppy, like many parents, found purpose in the rearing of his children. They were omnivores, consuming time and energy with insatiable appetites.

However, there are some people, like Poppy, who cannot rid themselves of silent doubts that they are not executing the purpose for which they were made. It can be likened to a second image of oneself, hovering and jerking about like a kite high in the sky on a cloudless afternoon. It’s real. It casts a shadow, but no one sees the kite. Everyone’s necks are craned downward, fixed on the shadow. Nevertheless, the kite above exists and in this kite one finds the potential legacy of a better self, one that overcame barriers no matter how insurmountable they may have initially appeared, one that reached heights and performed feats that were, if not physically impossible, at least deserving of poor betting odds.

Poppy worked as a programmer. He was good at it. He could write efficient code that used both a bare minimum of memory and CPU cycles. It was a 40-hour-a-week job that gave him time to spend with his family. It fulfilled a purpose, namely bringing in enough income for a modest house, health insurance and law school for his wife. Now that Iris had finished law school, passed the bar and established her own practice, her income quickly dwarfed Poppy’s. The purpose of breadwinner began to fade. There were other purposes associated with work, simply the pleasure of doing a job right, not cutting corners, taking pride in one’s work. Poppy found this to be an insufficient purpose. Taking pride in doing something useless with exquisite care troubled Poppy.

Poppy did not have to go far to be told what his purpose should be in general. He heard it at church in the gospel according to Matthew. Jesus saith to him: If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me. And when the young man had heard this word, he went away sad: for he had great possessions. (Mt 19:21-22) There were, to be honest, so many practical problems with this advice that Poppy really didn’t know where to begin. First, he didn’t want to be perfect; he just wanted to be relatively useful. Second, he didn’t want treasure in heaven either. He just wanted to feel all right about himself here on Earth. Third, and this was the kicker, there was no one to follow. The man in the scripture knew where to find Jesus to follow him. If he didn’t know what to do, Jesus would surely have told him, go tend to that leper, go comfort that widow, go pick that orphan up out of the filth and clean him up. In Poppy’s case, he saw no leadership in his pastor, in fact he could barely tolerate the man, whose admonitions were so disconnected from reality that they roused in Poppy a sense of profound bewilderment. Consequently, he wandered, hamstrung by the material possessions he had worked to acquire and accumulate. The important thing though, was like the rich man in this scripture, Poppy heard the advice of Jesus and, failing to heed it, was left with sadness. It was presumably, a pale intimation of the damnation to come.

Poppy did not want to pass this trait to his children. He kept telling himself they were old enough to begin doing useful, community service with him. He had the opportunity now to instill in them the good habit of volunteering, which could lead to who knew what varieties of virtue. His previous excuse of giving his wife a break by taking care of the children on the weekends had started to evaporate. Sarah and Joshua were old enough to come with him. They would probably enjoy filling boxes at a food pantry or visiting the isolated at a nursing home. Those children enjoyed most everything. But Poppy stood on the precipice of good intentions and had not yet acted. In his mind, he entertained the possibility that soon he would act. If not this weekend, then next.

Sarah tapped at his shoulder. Poppy shook himself out of his reverie and returned his gaze to the mortgage and utility bills before him. How had he gotten here? He had been admiring Joshua’s robot… Even when Poppy was the only one working in the house, Iris had always taken care of the finances, paid the bills, balanced the budget, filed the taxes. Now, she was too busy. Figures floated before his eyes. Go sell what thou hast, he said aloud.

Sarah ignored him and prodded his shoulder again.

What?

Mom said you are going to help me learn how to change clothes faster. Although it was now two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, she was dressed in her school uniform. Folded in the arm that she wasn’t using to poke him, she held her gym shirt, shorts and shoes.

How am I going to do that?

Use your watch. You can time me. She pointed to his analog wristwatch, then held up three fingers. I have three minutes.

Little more than forty-five minutes later, Poppy was again stretched out in the backyard soaking up the sun. He’d managed not to lose his temper. He’d kept his voice from reaching a shout. However, his blood pressure had risen about 10 points and his stress headache had emerged on queue. How it was possible to lose focus on putting on pants when one foot was already through the pants leg was beyond comprehension. She heard her brother issuing orders to Rock Buster Fighter Number Two and all thoughts of the other leg vanished. It was typical Sarah, for whom finding distraction was the least of her problems. Poppy had tried to remind himself that she was nine years old, but the frustration of failing to communicate with her and his inability to get her to focus defied all explanation. The headaches came. When it was warm, the best remedy was a sunshine bath. In the winter, he was relegated to Tylenol.

That his children should so easily induce headaches in their father was a point of concern for everyone in the family. It made their father either retreat or blow a gasket, snapping at them to leave him alone. It made Iris feel like she had to walk on eggshells around him. It was, all in all, completely unreasonable. Poppy, who fancied himself a reasonable man, made no excuses. Secretly, he wondered if he had a brain tumor. When he mentioned this once and only once to Iris she had curtly said, That’s not funny. He hadn’t been joking, but apparently stress headaches were not brought on by brain tumors, or so he guessed. He was loath to seek a professional opinion, since the doctor would likely order some medical imaging and predictably find a laundry list of heretofore undiagnosed, minor problems, none of which were related to his kids giving him headaches, and suggest a slew of follow-up actions that would invariably fill him with the unmistakable feeling of being treated like cattle—not beef cattle, as he wasn’t fit to be eaten, not sacred cattle, as he wasn’t fit to be revered, just some other kind of useless cattle, ushered in a herd by over-schooled cowhands that had traded their cowboy hats for white robes and stethoscopes. The sun healed his headache, free of charge. The somewhat smelly part sheepdog and part mutt Arfenbark snuggled its muzzle into his armpit and provided the additional warmth of the living. In thirty minutes, Poppy got up and went back inside the house.

In the living room, Sarah had on her school blouse and her underwear. She was seated next to Joshua who was playing Lego Indiana Jones on the DS. Poppy heard the whip crack and imagined the wily Dr. Jones swinging across a ravine. In Poppy’s opinion, whips were in reality mostly used for hurting people and therefore he was not a big fan of them.

Iris came to a stop beside him, surveying the situation. I see that turned out well.

What’s that?

Your daughter practicing changing her clothes faster.

Hmm, said Poppy. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Poppy felt some relief in finding stock phrases that succinctly supported his position. It gave him the sense that somebody had felt the same way before him, which somehow validated his point and cushioned his failure.

Iris sighed and ushered Sarah out of the room to get dressed, leaving Poppy standing there watching his sons thumbs frenetically working the tiny controls.

I saw the first Indiana Jones movie in the theater, he said.

When was that? Joshua asked without looking up.

Probably about 1980.

Oh, a thousand years ago. Back in the nineteens. This is the two thousands, Poppy. Stuff you did back then doesn’t count anymore.

Poppy stretched, releasing the last of the solar heat from his shoulders. It’s all right, Poppy said to his son, who wasn’t listening. It didn’t count for anything back then either.

Chapter 2. Reincarnation

Poppy tried to recall how the topic of reincarnation had come up at the dinner table. They didn’t talk about religion at the table, didn’t even say grace. Though they were church-going folk, the word Jesus was as foreign to the table as was Krakucchanda, so it seemed peculiar to Poppy that he was now explaining reincarnation to his children.

Some people believe that life is a cycle. You are born as a bug, and if you are good bug, then when you die you get to come back to life as a mouse. If you are a good mouse, then you get to come back as a cat. If you are a bad mouse, you have to go back to being a bug. If you keep being good, then you go through dog, pig, goat, cow and horse, until you get to come back as a person.

I like birds, said Sarah. I want to come back as a bird.

Don’t interrupt your father, Iris whispered in an amused tone. She was just as curious as Joshua to see where this unwinding of Eastern theological mysteries was headed.

Sarah frowned but persisted. Do I have to be good or bad in this life to come back as a bird?

Good, good, said Iris, shushing her. Of course you have to be good to get what you want.

Then what happens? Joshua asked, scooping a spoonful of plain mash potatoes into his mouth and slowly chewing.

Poppy smiled. Then you have to climb the ranks of people. You start out as the worst sort of people. If you are good, you get to move up to a better sort. And so on.

Joshua asked the only natural question. Who are the worst sort of people?

Who do you think? Poppy asked back. He knew enough to know that asking kids questions was the best way to educate them. Plus, it usually covered for his own ignorance.

Strangers? Joshua asked. They were so bad he was repeatedly admonished not to even talk to them.

Sarah was having two fingers of her right hand make snow angels in her mash potatoes. Poppy pretended not to notice. Even worse than strangers are Bank C.E.O.’s.

Bank C.E.O.’s, Joshua repeated, without understanding.

They only care about money. They can’t distinguish between right and wrong, or if they can, they intentionally choose wrong. People that place money above everything else are the worse sort of people.

Worse than murderers? Joshua asked.

Joshua! said Iris, disturbed to hear her six-year-old even say the word. We don’t talk about things like that at the table.

In the silence that followed, Poppy pretended to wipe some