Dirty Needle

What Killed Him

The word of God in the summer heat… He died from a dirty needle

Sweltering funeral.

I’m not sure what I’m doing here. Yes, I knew him, I mean who didn’t? Lately, we used to shoot up together. So what? To be bluntly honest, I had forgotten that today was his funeral, and I still don’t remember who told me it was and where. I did arrive in time, though — well, just about, the last to do so, I think. The doors were still open but a holier-than-thou-looking young man was busy preparing to close the massive things. He looked at me wondering if I was coming or not. I was pondering that very question, should I actually enter? Then I figured they must have air conditioning in there and since I wanted to get out of the heat: two birds with one grave stone won the argument.

Not so.

Not so with the air conditioning, that is.

Hotter inside than outside if that’s even possible; and more humid too. And that he had so many friends, I had no idea — for they could not all be family, surely?

Nor had I any idea that Archie had been such a good person. If this other priest-looking man, who was the priest, surely — and who referred to Archie as Art — is to be believed, that is. It’s ironic, really, this man of God singing Archie’s praises when Archie himself always said (correctly, in my opinion) never to trust a priest. By that perverse (though likely correct) logic Archie was a devil, which more or less corresponds with my conclusion from a few years running with the boy/man, now ex-boy/man.

And, no, he did not die from a wrongly diagnosed liver condition (I’d sue if I were the hospital — and really, can priests lie with impunity? Surely, there’s a special hell for those guys, lying priests, I mean), he died from being third or fourth down the line using the same needle, just after Henna, who everyone knew, had hygiene, medical, and other issues the length of the Nile. No one in his or her right mind uses the same needle as Henna. Then again, Archie had not been anywhere near a right mind for weeks and months, possibly years by that time.

And certainly was nowhere near the angel this lying priest-guy is busy up there by the casket painting.

Man, it is unbelievably hot in here. So hot I can actually see (or is it hear that I do) God’s word wilting mid-air and not quite making it to all ears. Feels like seeing but it must be hearing that fizzles out and then drop to the marble (at least I think it is marble) floor.

Everybody is listening, straining to hear over the oppressive heat that though it does not make a sound effectively drives you deaf anyway and blinds you to God’s word.

No angel, our Archie.

The priest seems done now and beckons the front row to come up and add a footnote or two. Or a special person in the front row. No one is rising (to the challenge or request) as yet. His mother perhaps? Father, sister, a-giant-stick-stuck-up-his-ass brother probably. He’d put the priest to shame in a lying contest, that brother of Archie’s — or Art’s as the lying priest would have it.

Ah, his mother. Standing up now and making for the microphone.

I met her once and only the once. She came into the late-night bistro (well after midnight) where Archie and I were slurping milk shakes and drinking coffee discussing how best to create a cross-word puzzle, not solve one, mind you, make one up. Our discussion was going pretty much nowhere but in very interesting circles.

She walked straight over to our table but did not sit down. Handed Archie an envelope and didn’t even look at me. Hardly looked at Archie. Then she turned and left. My only though then was: God, look at how small she is.

She hasn’t grown much since.

In all black. Makes you even smaller, it seems; blending you into the darker splatches of background, they sort of take bits out of you, leaving only a partial person up there trying to come up with something adulatory to say about her son. Well, she could say, for one, that he did not accept her (fully paid) invitation to a private rehab out in the country somewhere, which was what the envelop she handed him in the bistro contained.

I did not know that you could sell prepaid rehab registrations, but somehow Archie managed to convert that envelope and its contents into dollars — cents to the actual value, of course; we lived off of that envelope for a week, food and room and smack. Thanks mom.

She says nothing about that here though, in this absolutely sweltering church right now. Instead, she’s on about a promising student, career, life evaporating just like that and God’s mercy for accepting Archie into his lovely heaven (yeah, right).

Then she works at not crying; not very effectively. Her husband (her estranged husband, I should say) rising now to walk up and take her elbow and escort her back to her seat.

I almost applaud.

But realize, in time, this would not be the place or time.

The priest is back up there looking down at the front row again. No takers. The church has gone dead quiet now, as if holding his breath.

I almost don’t stand up.

And I almost don’t say, very loudly: “He died of a dirty needle for Christ’s sake.”

© Wolfstuff