The Big Bitch
Page 27
“The man in my grave is called a saint,” he continued after a beat. “He is probably by any standard a martyr, and certainly by any standard a better man than me.” He tapped on the stem of his watch.
“A better man than any of us,” I said. “Who thought men like that still existed?”
A black limousine appeared and two large Latinos got out. The first looked the street up and down while the other opened the back passenger door for Jesus. As he stood in the doorway, I asked, “Do you know the fate of this priest’s village?”
“I am certain my father kept his end of the bargain as long and as well as he could, but remember: in the savagely ruthless world of drug cartels, even a man like my father would eventually run out of influence. And, well, the fate of the priest’s village isn’t really the point, is it?”
Like old friends always do, no matter how long the absence, we had read each other’s thoughts and finished each other’s sentences while laughing with anticipation at each other’s jokes. Now we were out of words. We said goodbye the way we always said hello—shaking hands, each of us with our left hand on the other’s right shoulder. His door closed and the limo disappeared like an apparition into the shadows and smoke at the dark end of the blue cobblestone Old San Juan street.
His final words hung in the air. So what was the point? After all the secrets, all the crimes, all the deadly sins, and after one long walk on the wild side, what had I found? Had I come so far to find so little? Had I come all this way to find nothing but nothingness? As I walked into the prism of the sunset I heard a voice inside my head. Not my voice, but the amphetamine-fueled, alcohol-laced, schizophrenic, so-called prophesy of mad Smitty.
It doesn’t matter if you’re down for the big bitch, or the little bitch. Or whether you got sixty seconds, or sixty years to go. It doesn’t even matter if you are on the inside or the outside; you’re down for the bitch. The big bitch.
I walked on into the night, a long way into the night, and I kept walking. I nodded to the police and smiled at the hookers. Strolling down empty streets, I heard Smitty’s voice ring out as if on an endless loop of tape.
You are down for the bitch because you were born down for the bitch; you were born to live in a rat hole, until you died in a rat hole. But you don’t rat, you don’t punk, you don’t take favors, and you take care of your friends, and you never, but never, fuck with anyone’s dream. Yes, no matter what, you’re looking at the bitch—the big bitch.
I continued walking into the night until a false dawn came, and far away I heard chapel bells ringing. Smitty’s prophesy rattled on incessantly, and then at first light, distant church bells chimed, louder and much closer now. Bone weary from wandering all night, I was blinded when the sun came rising over the bay and deafened by cathedral bells that shook Old San Juan like a seismic disturbance.
Easter bells drowned out mad Smitty’s voice, and with it, my small epiphany.
* * *
By turns, John Patrick Lang has been a lit major, a submarine sailor, a country-western singer/songwriter and a mortgage banker specializing in community lending. A native of Portland, Oregon, he makes his home in the San Francisco Bay Area.
For more information, go to www.johnpatricklang.com.