Something Wonderful is going to Happen! (Installment 1, Chapter 1)

The following is the first chapter of a novel or novella, dependent on the ending length, which I will be submitting periodically in installments. It is a satire of sorts with elements of dark comedy. It follows a main character with a clearly defined morality that is well removed from normalcy.

This story and its subsequent installments are graphic, vulgar, and very likely per the definitions of some, blasphemous. IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED, DON’T READ THIS STORY!!!

I looked out the back window of my trailer through the brown, rust covered screen to see what I’d seen for the past five years: cows, Black Angus as far as the eyes could see. It was a pitiful thing to have been at college as long as I had and to have seen little more than smelly bovine standing remarkably still with no more to do with their time than eat grass--their aspirations already preset on making a fine hamburger someday.

What more could be expected? I had, after all, decided to attend college at Rock University knowing full well its rich history in agriculture. The story goes something like this:

Earl Johnson, Protestant preacher and a man made wealthy through cattle trade, had decided that a man ought be able to have as many concubines as he could support. His church, on the other hand, thought otherwise. This would have been around 1900. But, despite being outnumbered in his belief, he was able to break away from his native church and put together a community of other men who thought as he had.

In the then booming coal communities of southeastern Oklahoma, towns now so small they aren’t even on the map, he gathered actual and wanna be polygamists and taught the gospel, or his version of it. Every Wednesday and Sunday in a lush valley on the outskirts of Adamson Oklahoma that is now beneath thirty feet of water via Lake Eufaula, he held his services in a wooden temple, until one evening when white-hooded men, then thought to be the keepers of public decency, told him he could either leave or be subject to public hanging.

He left, but through one last heartfelt sermon he was able to convince his some eighty parishioners to come along with him. The speech is a matter of public record and goes as follows:

“I, Preacher Johnson, am a man of God! Despite this fact, the people of my community, the people who had so willingly ate my beef, have seen fit to drag my name into the filthy quagmire, to quit eating my beef, the best beef, the beef of the Black Angus!

They have taken to beating my meat, saying ‘Why this meat t’aint no good at all!’ I say to those, they should beat their own meat! No good has ever come from simply beating the meat of others! They should sit down in the evening, stare themselves in the mirror, search their souls, beat their own meat, and then and only then might they be not so quick, not so willing to beat the meat of others!

I, Preacher Johnson, am a man of God, and I, Preacher Johnson, am a provider. Up until I was so rudely blackballed by the supposed good people of this community I provided the beef for a good part of it. I provided beef for as small a charge as possible. I even on occasion saw to it that the widows of the community, those who would otherwise have no beef at all, were given plenty. On more than one occasion, I might add, after long day’s toil, I saw to it that Widow Simpson was given beef of the night. ‘Oh,’ you may say, ‘but surely you didn’t give her good beef, not the beef of the Black Angus!’ I say to you I gave her the sturdiest, thickest cut of meat I had!

I gave beef to widow Cultry, widow Salisbury, widow Crank, I even gave beef to Mr. Holliston when he was down on his luck. I gave beef to his entire family, and now he is among the very men who want to see me hang! And all for what? For what I ask you? Because I am a provider? Because I want to spread my seed and prosper just like the Good Book tells us to. They tell me I’m wrong; they tell me that in the name of decency, in the name of FREEDOM, I should stop! Well I say what kind of freedom is it that doesn’t even let a man have the same rights as animals!

‘Animals,’ you say ‘why what on earth ever do you mean?’ Some of you questioned my bringing this Black Angus Bull to the church today. Well, now your questions will be answered. I brought my great bull Rock here today to make a point. I think it is of little doubt, regardless of what you think of me personally, that I have provided some of the best beef for this community for the good part of ten years now. Well don’t thank me. Thank Rock! That’s right, every last delicious morsel you’ve eaten was a product of Rock’s seed! It has been a good seed; he is a good bull; and as a result, he has been given free range to copulate with every cow I got.

He does this, and yet not a soul has threatened his life for it! But when I say to the people I am a provider! I am a man who gives good seed! They say to me I can only give this seed to one wife. Ha! Fools! I say NO! I say to whoever be willing to marry me, to however many be willing to marry me; I give you my seed--my good seed!

And they say, ‘don’t be daft; for those beliefs you hang or be banished forever.’ Well, now I leave! I go west for a better life, a better world where a man has FREEDOM! And those of you, those brave few who believe along with me, I say to the women come with and you will never hunger for the good beef. And men come too, and you will never hunger for concubine with which to disperse your seed!”

The good preacher was true to his word. He led his cattle and his followers west until they found a desolate piece of land in western Oklahoma near the Texas border, and named the piece of land Freedom, as it is still called today. Along the way they had plenty of beef, in fact, so much beef that others came with them. By the time they reached Freedom there were over two-hundred among them.

The colony proved greatly prosperous; men were able to raise cattle, and to plant fields of wheat that grew like nobody’s business. Freedom’s population grew and grew with an efficiency beyond that of any other place. Men were awarded wives as a result of their ability to make money. And in 1907 the forward thinking Johnson decided that Freedom needed a venue of higher education. As luck would have it that very year Rock, his beloved bull, took ill with a deadly case of, ironically enough, rock-foot and died while grazing atop Freedom’s only hill. It was there that Johnson decided to build his college, and to name it after its founder: Rock University.

Preacher Earl Johnson died in 1940 at the age of seventy-three. The source of his departure is of great debate. Most historians tend to believe he died as a result of syphilis caught from a Gypsy whore, others say he caught syphilis from an Indian whore, and still others say he caught syphilis from an ill-chosen wife who, coincidentally, had once been a whore.

Whoever gave him the syphilis also gave it to about every other male member of Freedom. They in turn gave it to their wives and one by one they wasted away. The few who survived denounced Preacher Johnson’s religion and began following more conventional worship. Today not a single follower of Johnson’s branch of cattle inspired polygamous religion survive. But the Black Angus and the wheat does, as far as the eye can see, as well as the only true cow-college in the United States.

And there I was, stuck in a $150 a month dump of a trailer overlooking all of it. I had come there, oddly enough, because of Johnson. My original home had been in southeastern Oklahoma near Adamson, and people still told the tale of Preacher Johnson. It struck a chord with me and my own beliefs. Not that a man just ought to be able to marry as many women as he wanted, but that a man ought to be able to have sex with as many women as he wanted and not have to be ashamed about it.

It was my belief that deep down this was the belief of Preacher Johnson--that he’d simply made up the whole religious aspect of it so men wouldn’t have to be ashamed for having sex with lots of women. I really admired what he had done. I think deep down all men really want is sex with lots and lots of women.

I’d tried the monogamy thing in high school. You could get one woman, be really nice to her, and almost inevitably you’d get sex. But just as soon as you started having sex with another girl the other one would get mad and not have sex with you anymore. Or she would go and have sex with another guy.

That simply wouldn’t do. I wanted more. One girl was nice, but I always wanted another one, but to get another one meant losing the last one. No headway was being made. Because, let’s face it, one of the real purposes of sex is to show ownership, and the American way isn’t to own enough, it’s to own more than enough. The fact that I could only own sex from one woman at a time was frustrating--not to mention it made the prospect of a three-way all but impossible.

But my senior year in high school, being the industrious young man I was, I came upon what seemed to be the answer. Alcohol! The trick was to get two girls I’d had sex with before really drunk, and next thing you know they’re willing to do the nastiest things in the world with you--and each other. The problem is that the next morning, without fail, they never want to speak to you again. It was a quick fix, but it led to a dead end that saw fewer prospects than ever. One of the girls actually killed herself as a result of depression, and the other became a nun. After that it was impossible to have sex with either one of them again!

I tried to console myself by thinking, “Hey, this girl actually killed herself because of me.” But I knew she hadn’t--it was the fact that that night she had discovered she was really a lesbian. Her suicide letter didn’t even mention me--just on and on about how she was in love with Nunny McNuninson.

The alcohol gave me no more power than a single night’s conquest. Again, going back to the teachings of Preacher Johnson, I realized the folly of my ways: POWER! Preacher Johnson had had power over his women both through religion and boom: MONEY! He had become wealthy selling his Angus beef.

It was from this I was able to devise my religion, my own trinity. The Christian religion is really very simple, composed of three entities: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Father is the biggest, most all encompassing of the three, none of them able to exist without the God who fathered them.

To me the creating father was Sex with a stable of women who only had sex with me. As a result, the need for making money and gaining power were created. My Trinity is thus: Sex, Money, Power.

I had discovered my own religion; I had discovered my own definition of morality.

1. I shall not have sex until I have gained money and power.
2. I shall gain money and power through any means necessary.
3. I shall keep a number of women in my stable proportionate to my money and power.
4. I shall use my money and power to bully and manipulate people in a way conducive of more sex.
5. I shall always be seeking in life more sex, money, and power.