Coffee and Sugar

by C. Sean McGee

CHAPTER SIX

  The title of bishop was not one that he had attended to on his own accord; it was a right that had been handed down from generation to generation, a name bestowed upon him by his father and spoken upon him by his followers. It was more than a name; it was in many ways a burden he wore and made his calling, to be the spiritual north for his parishioners and all those whose broken sail had them cast adrift on a sea of tempestuousness as they roamed further from the true course of righteousness.

  The Bishop was a good man at heart. When he spoke the words of Christ, he believed in himself and in the message he delivered. His belief helped to inspire others; those in the midst of depression and emotional furor; affected no doubt by their spiritual distraction and earthly obsessions and those just downtrodden by the incorrigible trial of god’s love, breaking their bones and blistering their skin to turn another stone and another page in play of his lord’s fated script.

  The Bishop though had a weakness and from when he was a young boy, no different to his own son; skipping work and finding more trouble than use on his family’s farm, he had a penchant for all things sweet, caring not for the journey of a trial, instead appearing always just in time for the arrival of the verdict.

  And as a young boy, he would sit in the fields hidden by the craning of long ripened cane, crouching in a ball near the cool earth and licking the sweet nectar from the plants that lay about him. He would only drink water as long as it had been sugared to the point where one’s teeth tingled and pained just at the thought of putting the cup to one’s mouth.

  He had sugar in everything.

  In his drink.

  On his food.

  And he ate the bare crystals, right out of his hand.

  He had lost half of his teeth by the time he was thirteen and the rest were held in place by the sticky nectar that he scraped from the plants where he hid and played every day. His own father was no different, having told a similar story as his father having told his, all finding use and purpose in the word of god; father to son, passing the torch to the last child to carry into the darkness and lead mankind to its salvation until Christ returned to bring his children home.

  The Bishop, his father, his father’s father and so on; a generation of men, the last born descendants, chosen by god to address the holy word and lead all those into the light, unlike the first born sons and daughters, whose right it was, was to tender the crops, being useful with their hands and not their hearts, to adhere to the word of god and embrace their trial as they embraced the love and sacrifice of their lord Christ Almighty and were thankful for the struggle alone; for without which, they would be, but a cow in a paddock waiting to be milked or turned into beef.

  It had always been a dream of The Bishop; of every father who wore the cross, to take their word to the city and lead more than their tired faithful flock, but to move millions; a whole country, the whole world.

  The Bishop had always imagined himself on centre stage with his arms high as if she were carrying the sun in his crested hands, baring that burning weight for his loyal followers who would look upon him with want and awe; empowered by his word and weakened by his enigma.

  He imagined that when he moved to the city, there would be rows of people all waiting upon his word, that the moment he opened his church, the people would come like flies onto fresh dung and in maybe a week or some days, he would be invited onto the world stage to direct a crowd of millions and his face would be shown on every television around the world and there would be nowhere he would go without someone recognizing his brilliance and making others abreast to it.

  He imagined that their church would be in the richest part of the city where every morning he would drink coffee and eat buttered bread with pop stars and celebrities and in the afternoon he would be counted as advisor for politicians while in the evening he courted young women; dining in the most extravagant restaurants and drinking only the most expensive whiskey and wine, finishing every night in the presidential suite of the classiest motel in town.

  He imagined himself on the television as one of the pastors and bishops who dressed in poverty and preached to millions of people around the world, their faces synonymous with the Christian movement and the word of Jesus.

  He imagined himself as The 13th Apostle, standing on that stage, pressing old women’s heads against his gargantuan sweat drenched chest, ripping crutches from the weakened grasp of cripples and building faith with his calloused heart just as a man with calloused hands might build a house. And in every dream, there was always the same end. He would put his life in front of a bullet to save his sheep, just as Jesus had done.

  It had been a month since Joao and The Bishop first stumbled upon their new home and in the days that passed, neither found themselves closer to the other’s dream.

  The first days were spent scrubbing the floors and getting the smell of sex out of the air. They must have used over a hundred liters of bleach on the walls and floor alone. The curtains that were hanging from the ceiling to divide rooms were set alight as whatever devil had been frolicking upon them was now nestled incarnate within the fine blackened fibres and no amount of bleach or prayer would cast it out.

  Joao spent his days walking through his community like a mountain goat, slowly working his way around and down the massive hill and then going door to door of the enormous houses that stuck out like pins on every angle, speaking to everyone he met and talking about The Bishop and their church and selling their Sunday service, focusing on those that needed it most, those of whose trial was etched in the deep furrows on their face and upon the scars on their hands and backs.

  In the first month alone, he must have reached over two thousand houses and just as many kilometers walking for hours every day and having door after door slammed in his face and then drunken slurs slapped upon his cheek while rifles prodded in his back and insults tied themselves to his ears.

  But still he continued; like a wounded pup, hobbling along with what strength he had left in his legs, being willed along by the light in his heart which took none of this rejection as truth. Instead, he saw himself as having already made a difference in his community and having most certainly awoken some to the good word of his father.

  The truth was, there was nothing to sell.

  The competition alone in the city was immense. Their church sat on a hill that not even the devil’s shadow would dare to cast itself, even on a summer’s day. On every corner, there was a whore house, a beauty salon, a place to buy old tires, a mangy old bar and a quaint little church and nothing set theirs apart from the others. They were a single unimaginative grain of sand trying to stand out in a formidable desert.

  The Bishop turned immediately to his sweet oasis, burying himself in bottle after bottle of cachaça; selling his sermon to the trickle of vomit that hardened by his mouth as he lay on his side, watched over by Joao, who kept a vigil as his father’s gravely shadow, catching him wherever he fell and brushing off his father’s insult as he did the flies, that gathered on the old drunk`s back.

  Every Sunday though, The Bishop would take a razor to his face and an iron to his suit and he would take to his podium in front of a row of white plastic chairs and he would throw his voice long into the night so that it beat down every door and disarmed every gun and spayed every whore in town. His words would willow through their cynical adhesive to nurture the seed of self-respect that had been left thirsted in spiritually arid soil.

  He would chant and he would cant and would cry out the lord`s name and he would always fall to his knees and weep, his tears; real or not, being rubbed away with a silk cloth that he pulled from the pocket of his jacket. And at the end of every sermon he would collapse at a table by the entrance to the church, watching the flux of people scuttle past; artless in their appreciation or knowledge of his good tidings and the passion that he bore into every word and from the end of one sermon to the start of another; until all of the outlines of his ideals and wishes smudged into an abusive blur
, he drank.

  It was after a bottle or maybe many more that on this one eve The Bishop fell into another drunken sleep that would be nothing more than a quiet watch were it not for who came knocking on their door.

  “On the ground.”

  “On the fucking ground.”

  “Hands on your fucking head.”

  “I’m gonna cut your head off you son of a whore.”

  “Where’s our money?”

  “Just kill em.”

  “Where’s the money? Where is the money? Where is our fucking money?” yelled The Alpha, holding a gun to Joao’s head, pushing his face into the cold tiles while the other boys kicked at his ribs, legs and back.

  “Where’s my thirty percent?” said The Alpha repeating.

  “There’s no money. Please, nobody comes to the service. There’s no money” replied Joao choking on his tears and dislodged teeth.

  “We had a deal. If you don’t pay, you better pray. And someone’s gonna get hurt” said The Alpha.

  “Please, not The Bishop. You can hurt me. Please hurt me instead” said Joao.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” said The Alpha, giving his order.

  The Alpha kept his knee buried in Joao’s back, holding him to the floor while he twisted his head to see the gang of young boys; no older than twelve, taking his drunken father and throwing him to the ground.

  They stomped on his head with their two feet, kicking him in the groin, in the stomach and in the throat. Joao watched on in horror. There was nothing he could do except wish that things were different, praying to Jesus to look and to see what was happening and to do something; to intervene and just stop it.

  But it didn’t stop.

  The more The Bishop screamed, the more excited the group got and the more riled were their senses, the more depraved was their violence. This was not just violence for the sake of pennies; this was a show, for the sake of scores of pennies. As, for the group, the louder the man’s screams, the more others would be inclined to settle their debts before they expired and avoid a similar bruising fate.

  “You see that? He’s crying, he’s in pain, he’s suffering. God won’t help him. Jesus won’t help him. This is my hill. This is my community. This is my law. Take this as a lesson and a cost. When I see you again, you’ll have my money, if not, I’ll put him in the tires. Be thankful you got this one chance” whispered The Alpha into Joao’s ear as he looked into his father’s teary eyes; blood dripping from the old drunk’s sobering face, his body twisted and distorted from the constant beating.

  In the distance and in the part of his sight that made everything look like a cunning trick, Joao could see one of the boys meddling with conspiracy and stirring away in the darkness. And that boy, he took from against the wall, a long sweeping brush and he came into the light and into Joao’s sight and he held that sweeping brush by its bristling bristles and he pointed the rounded end towards his father’s buttocks while the other boys pinned down The Bishop’s thrashing legs and tore off his soiled trousers.