Posts under Fiction Category
How sick the Father sits at desk amid a candle flame. It is eleven sometime soon, and the clock tower bellows from its iron lungs.
There in the palace, the miter hive retires, atop the bullish oak. There, the beeswax candles drip on woven rugs. Darkness swells around him, filling apse and leaning on the smoky hearth. How silly, that papal swan, wrapped in white gold, bedazzled, and eyes as dull as dust. He thinks on moral claims as light as air: the wind-drawn wisps of theology at play. While murders are convened, under foot and under doors.
Sighs usher from his fleshy lungs, and then, a tactile calm. The candle falters by his breath.
Bitter and consigned to throne and chambers all alone, I wonder what he thinks and what he thinks he should. For it is no majesty to be successor to the Christ. And perhaps neither is it possible for a frail farmer who fell in love with eating much, and is a faithful alcoholic.
I’ll thank you to remember his high office, though: the clerical clout, the utmost pomp, the names and titles given. There is more than meets the miter about that miserable man. What, after all, do we know of that charge? What have we ever known of love’s austere and lonely office?
He leaned against the warped oaken desk that had only three legs, and he only one. One and a splintering cane.
On his rayon cuffs, the golden sheen of plaything cufflinks convinced the eyes of something noble, but not at all: over-starched, the sleeve fell into an oversized shoulder, padded with ’80s nonsense, and from there argued with some cardboard collar from the back shelves of Ross. It was stained with body oil and make-up, like some cheap trick of the stage. But would not bend or bow when heads were turned.
He grinned at me through coffeed teeth, that erstwhile something of a man, through the palpable reek of ashen cigarettes. And once, at a funeral, a cigar. His bulbous nose swelled inside the room, nearly blotting out his cataract eyes. There was no hair upon his head, not a virtue to humbly hide.
And he was 55 that Sunday. Before the God who loves us all somehow pulled the trigger, out of misery and necessity. He ended that charade, and I clapped my 12-year-old hands together.
Today, I have skin as black as ink. It suits me. As I hobble down the streets, limping; as my jacket chafes my supple neck; as my squinting eyes look on toward home.
He said with toes between his teeth, “Well now, it’s a bit hard to know if it was someone else’s bread, wouldn’t you say?”
His hair was ratty, dangling in strands over his complicated eyes. And yet, there was a simple grin on his face.
“You know, it’s not as if it had sentimental value. It was bread, for God’s sake.”
“You were crucified for a piece of bread?” I asked quizzically.
“No, not quite,” he said sheepishly. “I mean, there are rules. Don’t mingle with the higher-ups. Don’t eat the food of a centurion. And most definitely don’t laugh at them when they demand their food back. What was I supposed to do, cough it up?”
“You said something before you died,” I said, shaking his story off.
“Ah, yes. That bit about Jesus.”
“What was that about?”
“How do you mean? He never stole bread. I heard something about a spat in the temple, but who doesn’t get into a brawl with money changers now and then?” Laughter trickled out from between his dregs.
“He said you’d be in heaven. And here we are. Did you see that coming?”
“I kind of live my life day-to-day. I really wasn’t sure they would crucify me for that piece of bread. I mean—bread! Who does that? Like they were one crucifix short on the hill and needed somebody to fill in. Fucking Romans.”
“God’s will be done,” I muttered.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing,” I coughed, trying to change the subject. “So, if you’re the good guy here, what did the bad thief do?”
“Let’s just say … he deflowered God’s creation.”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
“He stole a 12-year-old girl’s virginity.”
“Jesus!”
“I know, right? And I was strung up for manna.”
“It does seem ironic. But he seemed ok with death on a cross.”
“Well, I was ok with my ‘crime’ too. I just didn’t think mine did anyone any real harm. It certainly didn’t deserve crucifixion. He knew better. He had to have.”
Silence lingered as I pictured the three of them on Calvary. “We know what Jesus said to you. What did he say to the other guy?”
“You’d never believe it,” he chuckled. “There’s no one more unpredictable than Jesus. He wasn’t human, for Christ’s sake.”
“Now I have to know,” I pressed. “Can you give me a hint?”
He looked at me with another eerie grin at the corner of his mouth, his thin lips curling. “I’ll never forget it. You know how the Bible says Jesus looked at me and told me I would be with him in Paradise?”
“Yeah,” I said, waiting for the punchline.
“They got that wrong, you know. Jesus never said anything to me. He looked straight at him and said that: ‘Today, you will be with me in Paradise.’”
The momentary silence floated as his words sank in. A reversal of justice. Hell, a complete destruction of justice, goodness, and every sense of right. The rapist went to heaven.
My mouth stayed open long enough for drool to catch at the edge of my bottom lip. Noticing it just in time, I sloppily wiped my face with my arm and looked down. I couldn’t help but ask the obvious question, though I couldn’t make eye contact.
“So … he’s around, then?”
The good thief laughed, a deeper and more guttural laugh than I have ever heard. “Oh yeah,” he said matter-of-factly. “We eat dinner together all the time.”
“I would probably change the temperature.” Then silence, dragging the final syllable like a child to a bath.
He chuckled lightly, thinking his witticism something to be enjoyed. But I sat across from him, reigning in a velvet-clad arm chair, and stared. Just stared.
The man was a mere 66. But life’s undue chaos wrecked his eyes and shook his robust stature. He slumped in chairs now, ties curling at the protrusion of a bulbous belly. He wouldn’t make eye contact, unless to follow the chorus of laughter erupting after one of his many jokes. And in the background, leaning on the dining room table, wife Elise only shook her head sadly, retreating to make a pot of tea.
When I first asked him what he would change about the last 66 years, he giggled. His friends used to call him Captain Jonathan, but no Captain giggles when serious questions are asked. Elise brought the tea after the punchline faded and all that was left was my uncut stare and his sweaty awkwardness.
“I suppose I’d change a few things,” he soberly responded.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” he stammered anxiously. “I suppose I lied… once or twice. Misled people.”
“You suppose?”
“I did, I did lie… I mean, not intentionally… always.”
“Does that matter?”
“Doesn’t it? I didn’t mean to cause harm.” The slump was corrected, back straightened, and the tie unfolded to reveal a deer bounding in a field. Cheap gimmicky crap.
“People still suffer because of you.”
“It’s not my fault!” he bellowed. Then, with a modicum of calm: “I didn’t have much of a choice.”
“Didn’t you? You were in control, weren’t you?”
“What are we talking about? The …” His voices trailed off and he turned his head to look outside the window, growing beads of sweat glistening on his brow. His hands fussed at his lap, picking at the point of his tie. And his knee wobbled unrhythmically back and forth beneath the desk. He couldn’t say it.
Slowly, he lowered his head to focus on the bounding deer. “I suppose… it could have been different.”
“How?”
“How the hell should I know?!” he snapped. “I only knew so much then. It’s always easier to see things in the past.”
I nodded, looking down at my pencil and dog-eared reporter’s pad. He was right. I had come here to interrogate, to drag from a noble man an ignoble past. I brought him down from what he was to lie with his guilt, but I hadn’t imagined what to do once it had happened. Or even if I should be doing it.
“Tea?” Elise mutedly offered, reaching over the coffee table to fill my cup with a shaky drizzle. Everybody was on edge. Silence sat, uncomfortable, for several seconds, until I mustered: “It could have been worse, you know. More people might have died.”
Jonathan seemed to nod faintly, his eyes still following the wind-swept trees outside. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?” he pushed through a deep sigh. “They’re dead now. I can’t bring them back.”
I stirred awkwardly, starting to feel my own shame form in sweaty drops on my forehead. A solider, a husband, a father. And after 66 years of colorful service to humanity I was sitting here trying to undo him.
The silent pause lingered.
“Well,” I finally upped with a cough, standing, “perhaps I should be going.”
Elise eyed me quizzically. “But… you haven’t even—”
“No need,” I interrupted. “What’s done is done. Let’s not resurrect the past, eh?”
Jonathan sat unmoved in his leather swivel chair, not acknowledging the end of the interview. I looked over at him, weakly smiled, and headed for the door.
“Let us know if we can be of any more help,” Elise said as the door pulled to behind me. On the stoop, I turned around and grinned in recognition.
“You’ve done more than a good man would ask for, and probably more than a good man deserves,” I said.
With my pad tucked in my jeans pocket, I slowly wandered to my crumbling VW bug. Twenty years of hard-hitting, truth-finding journalism, and the only thing to share it with was a 1970s foreign car with a cracked rearview mirror.
What is service, anyway?
