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Cover
Table
of Contents
Editor's
Notes
Donations
Submission
Guidelines
Website
Stories &
Essays
Balance
_ By
Alison Baumy
Contemporary
Cultural Differences...
_ By
Ninni Siurua
Eclipsed
Yesterdays
_ By
Clyde Windjammer
Healthy Guy
_ By
David J. LeMaster
Immortalis Letum
_ By
Sophie Davis
Last Call For Salvation
_ By
Angela P. Markham
My Fault
_ By
Ro Thorton
Pacific Northwest
_ By
Aaron Hellem
Q-Q Ca Choo
_ By
Billy Pilgrim
The Best Laid Plans
_ By
John A. Ward
The Ecstasy of Cooking
_ By
Sam Nolting
The Girl With the Green Umbrella
_ By
J.R. Earlebeck
The Gods of Houston
_ By
Rebekah Frumkin
Poetry
Athena's Owl
_ By
Amberly Mason
But I Have Never Known This
_ By
Kaleen Love
Clouds On Your Floor
_ By
Savannah Bobo
Crowded Lobby
_ By
M. Blair Spiva
Ever After
_ By
Bennie Johnson
Important Questions
_ By
P.T. Bell
Migration
_ By
Sarah Wassberg
Moon Goddess
_ By
Kristina Diane Smith
Oldest Profession
_ By
Ashley Polker
On Visiting Hay-on-Wye
_ By
M. Blair Spiva
Sodom and Gomorrah
_ By
Jessica Fannin
Wal-Mart
_ By
P.T. Bell
Art
& Photography
Jeremy Harker
_ Paintings
Douglas C. Knight
_ Photography
Jed Knox
_ Paintings
and Drawings
May Ann Licudine
_ Paintings
Danny
Malboeuf
_ Paintings
Alex
Stanbury
_ Photography
|
(Continued)
I think the punk kid at least
sort-of earned the rednecks' respect when he ran the priest out
about an hour ago. Poor guy, I kind of felt sorry for him. The
priest, not the punk. He was a young guy, newly ordained, looking to
make a difference. Fat chance of making a difference in a place like
this. Nobody here wants someone to make a difference in their lives.
Still, I had to admire the guy's ambition. He came in here in the
black robe, the collar, the whole shebang. There was an oversized
Bible in one hand and the other was closed around the cross that
hung from his neck. Not an ordinary priest cross, one of those
pewter ones with flared ends and intricate carving and stones, the
kind that looks like it came from a Goth shop. It was huge too; the
top and bottom ends were sticking out of his closed hand. It was
pretty cool, the kind of thing I wouldn't have minded having, you
know, something else to freak out the guys at work.
He came in to talk to us about
God's abomination of the bottle and how we were neglecting our
family duties, since all drunk guys at bars are there for the sole
purpose of dodging their wives and kids. The rednecks tried to get
him hammered first, and when that didn't work they jeered him,
called him names, and tried to humiliate him into leaving. The
priest held his own, standing in the middle of the room and
delivering his sermon to the handful of occupants. I listened,
deciding what he had to say was more or less a valid argument. We
were all going to hell unless we changed our wayward ways. He was
offering us was salvation, a chance to spend eternity in heavenly
light.
"I go to church," I
told him once he got into the importance of church, which is an
inevitable point in every religious teaching. "Every Sunday. If
you don't believe me go see for yourself. I'm down at Southern
Freewill Baptist on Providence Avenue. So does this still apply to
me?"
"God's children sometimes
stray from the path of salvation, my child," he replied, in a
voice that could hypnotize anyone. "It is up to you to find
your way back to the path. You need only ask His forgiveness."
I smiled through the cigarette
in my teeth. "Good to know," I said, before downing a shot
of whiskey.
"Are you married?"
The priest asked me. For some reason I get that a lot. I guess I
look like the kind of guy who's supposed to be married.
"Divorced." I
shrugged. "The drinking didn't bother her. It was the smoke she
couldn't stand." I stubbed the cigarette out.
"Were there any children
involved?"
"She had two from some
guy she met in high school. They never liked me."
"Why do you think
that?"
"Are you a priest or a
psychiatrist?" I shrugged again and lit another cigarette.
"They were brats. She gave them everything they wanted no
matter how outrageous. They'd never heard the word 'no' in their
lives, which I told them quite frequently once they moved under my
roof. Those kids needed a serious dose of discipline. But don't get
me wrong, I never hit 'em. Thought about it a lot, but I never
raised a hand to do it, never even threatened it out loud. But I
told 'em 'no' and that was enough. They bitched at their mother,
their mother bitched at me, and then I bitched at them for bitching
to their mother. It was a vicious cycle. You can't win when you're
involved in a vicious cycle."
"So, what about it?"
The punk kid asked without looking up from his beer. "Is he
going to Hell or what?"
"Probably," I
answered when the priest hesitated. He seemed stunned that he had
been put on the spot to determine my soul's fate. I'm probably going
to Hell. I don't want to go to Hell—nobody wants to go to Hell—but,
looking at the situation realistically, that's probably where I'm
going to wind up.
"None of God's children
are beyond His reach," the priest responded after a moment's
contemplation.
"That was a very evasive
answer," the punk kid said. "Okay, so, how about this
one?" He finally looked up. That was when I realized he was
wearing yellow contacts. "What if I want to go to Hell?"
It wasn't what he said that left everyone in the bar, myself
included, with their breath caught in their throats. It was the
overall package. This kid was the image of evil anyway with his
piercings and his mace-spiked hair and his glowing yellow eyes. The
delivery was amazing: cold and serious with an edge that could have
cut the bar in half. He wasn't being sarcastic; he really meant it.
What if he really wanted to go
to Hell? Then what? Would the priest have to bring him over to the
other side? If he wanted to go to Hell, would the Heaven then become
Hell, because for him the dark was the light and well, you get the
point. It's all a matter of perspective, I guess—what side of the
spiritual fence you're standing on. Anyway, every trace of color
drained from the priest's face and he dropped his Bible. He kept
looking at the kid as he bent to pick it up. He seemed legitimately
afraid that he would be attacked if he broke eye contact. He picked
up the Bible and slowly backed out of the bar, actually apologizing
for bothering us. I turned back around on my barstool and pretended
to be engrossed in my cigarette. I didn't want the punk kid
confronting me on top of the priest. All he said though, as he
returned to his own drink, was "Dude, that was a pretty cool
cross, huh?"
"Yeah," I muttered,
and that was all I said till Mick declared he was shutting us down
for the night. I'm not much of a talker. My mind's always working
triple overtime, but maybe two percent of what I'm thinking ever
gets past my mouth.
I stub my cigarette out on the
napkin since the ashtray's filled to capacity. The shot's still
waiting, so I knock it back. It's not as satisfying as I had hoped
it would be. The last drink never is. You're expecting something
great out of it, that epiphany you didn't get from the other hits
you've had. The epiphany never comes and you're left wondering what
the hell you've spent your night doing. The last drink is, without
question, the worst drink you'll have. The first drink is always the
best. With the first drink, you're going somewhere. You're releasing
the stress, forgetting a crappy day at work, or the argument you had
with your girlfriend, or how that jerk with the cell phone nearly
ran you into a concrete roadblock. You're on your way to the
epiphany. The last drink sucks. You realize you're still pissed off
at your boss or your girlfriend or the guy on the cell phone. The
epiphany hasn't come. The only thing you are is drunk, and now all
that's left to do is go home and sleep it off. Going home and
sleeping it off means that you'll have to wake up in the morning and
go right back to the crappy life that drove you to drink in the
first place.
I'm over my limit. The
epiphany hasn't come. I guess the time has come to call it a night.
Time to go back to my apartment, try not to fall asleep under a hot
shower, crawl into bed, and hope my alarm doesn't go off as soon as
I know it will.
(Turn
the page) |
