Desperado

On waking mornings, it’s the sand between his toes that wakes him. Ushers him forward to remember –

The shaking of his fingers as they cradle mismatched glass. Mismatch not only to the drink, but to the house, his name, and gradually, the whole parish. Looking from the thousand-shard scotch to his socked feet, the man closes his eyes one more time. In his dream, picks up the silver spoon and chews down a whole, big mouthful of dust.

Dust, he calls it, even though it tastes like ash. Except he doesn’t think of ash, because then, he’d think of burying it, and all the treasured morsels he could serenade over ash, were it allowed. Except it’s not. Souls who burn get trapped here forever. Every morning he wakes, the priest wonders if sometime — so long ago it no longer bears remembering — they burned him, also.

But then, as with the ticking of clocks, his eyes must open. For he is the man with sand between his toes no longer. He is now a man who sleeps in cold, lonely rooms, with plasticky socks on his feet. That still won’t warm him.

Today is Wednesday. A date of no import, and even less forgetting. It’s the sole thing he prays for, and is, perhaps absurdly, that which first drew him to his god. He prayed and the god answered, letting the man forget in a way the whiskey never allowed him. Finding god, another man might’ve ditched the drink altogether. But the priest thinks that’s no way to treat a friend. And he and Jameson are, indeed, old friends.

Wednesday, and he’s brushing his teeth, and scowling at the yellow stains that won’t come out of his fangs. Better than dull, lifeless gray, like Father Esteban’s, but still, not the teeth of a man who’d inspire confidence. Some mornings, he’ll scrub until the bristles of the toothbrush come floating inside his mouth, and he’s spitting blood, and he’ll pretend it’s for a noble cause, and not because he likes the sight of it pooling in the sink. Reckons he’s earned it. But not this morning, for it is Wednesday, and he has woken early. He has come alive to shepherd, and minstrel, and other words to remind him of booze and tinsel.

If he is good, tomorrow he won’t wake. If he is good. In the mirror, flesh-torn and pieced-back mishmash like patchwork quilt, the priest grins. Flashes of red and holier-than-thou. If he is good. That would be a first.

Spit. Rinse. Repeat?

No. There is no more time.

I hear inside me the voices of trees, Father.

It’s not what he expects, though to be fair, the other side of the screen has been silent so long, he’s surprised to get anything at all.

And what do they tell you, my son?

Silence, more of it. Too much. Until all Father wants is to grab the screen and yell through the little upside-down crosses of light that have, in recent years, become his entire world.

Oh. A sad hum of an ‘oh’, like teacup breaking. There was a time when they spoke to me, Father. Now, I would be glad if they spoke at me, even. All they do now, though, is moan. Longing to die, asking me, beseeching me. Saying I kill them, that it’s why I am here.

Father seizes up. Wonders, in the absence between two inhales, if he might not be a tree, instead. Chokes, then chokes that choke down with a swig from his flask of holy water. Never while on duty. And he is now, very markedly, on duty. He is also too old for talking trees. He is forty-one, yet ageless, with a whole cairn of sins weighing down his crook-back.

You think you’re meant to kill trees?

But he seems to have misunderstood again, for the voice laughs.

I think it’s what the trees believe. I also think it’s selfish of them to think I’m meant only just for them. Don’t you agree, Father?

At the back of his sore, scrub-raw mouth, the question has begun to form, already. By the time his neurons catch wind of it, it’s much too late. Have you ever actually hurt trees? Or considered hurting trees?

And even as he speaks, he recognizes the sentence to be malformed. You can’t hurt trees, Father remembers, if through a slight stupor. You can hurt people, animals, feelings, and bees, but certainly not trees.

Not if I could help it, the man replies, after weighing the thought. Speaks as if the very question offends him. Inside Father, a building rage. A stab of guilt, quick as a whip, and snake slither through his entrails, until it bellows up through the dome of his palate. Never, alas, reaching the archdiocese of his brain.

Then why on Earth are you here, my son?

Father?

Cautionary, but it’s too late. Once Father’s on a roll, there can be no stopping him.

Well, if you have no intention of hacking down an orchard, or settling alight a small wood, then why bother coming here, at all?

The priest tries never to think of his sinners as worthy. His flock. Not his sinners. For their sins do not belong to him. Only their souls. Still, the outside garden of pews and mildewy collection boxes must harbor more worthwhile confessions than this stunted tree assailant.

But, Father…

My son, I have no time for any of this. I have no more time, and it is a tragedy. And I’m so frightfully sorry. But either hurt the trees, or get out.

He listens to the moment of stunned silence, then hears the man awkwardly shuffle out of the confessional. Thinks, even as the silence hinges on awkward, of fines and punishments for those citizens wasting police time. What about the wasted hours and sympathies of priests, Father wonders. What of me?

As morning gives way to afternoon, moist lips of unkissed sixteen-year-olds give way to placid jealousies, a packet of lies, half a pound of wanton thrusts, and no less than three separate men, each salivating over their neighbor’s horse. Or perhaps hound. House. A Maserati, only that’s taking it too far, for he knows everyone in this parish. And not a one owning trait or automobile to fawn or lust over.

Sinners, but they are his. His god has released them into his care, and he’s not about to fail his god yet again.

The night sermon is, by choice and force of habit, a matter of picking lint from belly-buttons, counting the carvings in the pew opposite, and staring at inopportune, bare knees that won’t quite bear forgetting.

But he is grateful. For now, Wednesday is done, and he may return to the beach. To her. To the taste of wine and cheese and waiting for his wife to come back from the village — where she can speak French and bawd — and speak her broken English once more to him.

In his room, Father listens, only half-attentive, on the radio, to emergency reports. An act of god, they’re calling it. The priest wonders which.

Pictures the blue lights as he brushes, once more, his rotting teeth. Sirens, too, as young men with ruddy cheeks struggle, in vain, to put out the burning forest. Then, returning into his little room, above the little church, inside their nameless town, Father switches radio and light off, and drifts pleasantly into his sea of nightmares, and whims.

For god has promised him forgetting, and Father’s finished another long, merciless day of serving his god.

It is more than what is fair. It is, Father thinks as he wiggles his toes inside damp, beige socks, what is owed.

Thank you for reading. I recently released the second book in a fantasy trilogy. So chances are I’ll be talking about writing, among many other scatter-brained subjects on here. If that sounds like something you might enjoy, why not subscribe? It’s free.