The Third Step

by William Lobb

  The sun was pretty high in the sky when he pulled his face off the table, painfully opened his eyes and looked around. The bartender came back with coffee and a bottle of whiskey. He’d gone home and left Frankie locked in. They sat there, drinking the delicious mix of coffee from Cafe du Monde and good Irish whiskey.

  Frankie finally started to talk. “Last night, I was out in the swamps with this guy. I’ve known of him for about year; I could never tell if he was real or a ghost. He told me there were many and vast things to learn from him, out there in that swamp. I saw nothing but insanity there. People dancing with snakes, crazed, speaking some bizarre language I couldn’t understand. It was like they were in a trance. Dancing around a fire

  and holding snakes as they danced. What is there to learn from that?”

  The bartender, who had introduced himself as David, said, “These people, these Cajun people, people of the swamps, the voodoo people, the witches of southern Louisiana, they live and abide by a deep and mysterious faith. They live with an abundance of faith in their God, their understanding of God. I cannot begin to try to explain it. I am a gay man and you’re a drunk. I have my faith; it may be a little more important to me, because so many good church people, the good Christian people, they call me a sinner, an abomination to God for being who I am. I’ve learned and taken comfort in the witches and voodoo people and the swamp people; they don’t judge me for who I am. They let me live and I let them live. In that—in that simple fact, I see God in them. They care about me. They are kind to me and treat me like family and I, in turn, treat them like family. They allow me to be who I am. In that, I see God. It’s all one God. We just see him differently.”

  Frankie listened intently, then said, “I have no God. I worship no God. I am without God or a soul.”

  David countered, “We all have a God, my friend. Yours is in this bottle; some of the men who come in here, their God is in the heroin, the drugs. We all have a God.”

  Frankie said, “I’m hounded and tortured by demons. One demon, he lives with me, inside of me. There was a time when I saw us as two separate beings, but now I see that we are one —” David finished, “—and that demon is your God.”

  Frankie took a long drink of the coffee and the whiskey. He said, “I met two women last night. In fact, I have to go and see the one again today. The one was a voodoo queen, and the other, I don’t know. I don’t know what she was; she was beautiful, and she took my breath away and my words. I just stood there, as if my heart and my thoughts were not my own, and I couldn’t speak. All I could do was stand silently and watch her. I was in love once, with a girl from the north. She was not in love with me. I’ve never felt anything hurt so badly.

  “My grandma always said I was devoid of a soul. I would hope that she’s right, because if having a soul meant ever feeling that again, I’m glad mine died. After her, I decided I’d fuck—that was all I’d do with any other woman. I’d fuck and never again fool with the stupidity of love.

  “Then that voodoo woman said I had many things to learn and someone I was destined to meet, and not five minutes later I met this woman. She’s another man’s woman I’m sure. Another guy was there before me. I stood there on the ground and I watched him climb the stairs to her and I felt sadness and emptiness. I felt a longing I’ve never felt before. She was beautiful, David, like that blue in the sky at first light. Like the stars. Like the rain. Like the smell of the sea and the beach in the sunshine and the sound of the ocean breeze blowing through sandgrass. I pulled back. I wanted to run away before she saw me. I wasn’t worthy of her. It was at that moment that I realized how much I had lost and how badly I wanted to come back. It was her; she was the answer; she was the reason.

  From the moment I first saw her, I’ve not been able to think of anything else. She consumes me, like fire, but she doesn’t burn; she heals. She confuses me and comforts me and I don’t even know her name. I was this broken mess. Standing there is the face of perfection and I couldn’t find her. I was staring at her and I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t find a word to say. That was last night. David, maybe the voodoo woman was right, but I can’t find a way back. I’ve gone too far. I can’t even remember who that guy was, the me before all this. That guy died with all those other deaths.

  You, this girl, the voodoo woman, Landry and all those crazy bastards, my grandma, all of you, you have this secret knowledge. You all know this secret, the magic secret, and I know none of it. I’ve never cared, but yesterday, for the first time, I wanted to care. I felt it, something inside of me felt something, but it was like a freezing cold man looking through a window, wanting to be warm, but locked out. I’m always just outside, hands on the window sill, looking in. I can’t even find me anymore; I don’t exist anymore. Maybe I never did.”

  David brought Frankie some clean clothes in a paper bag—shorts, t-shirt, sandals. He said that later in the day he could take Frankie to get some clothes more suitable to New Orleans in the hot autumn. There was a shower in the back and David suggested strongly that Frankie take advantage of that. After he’d showered and dressed, he came back out to the bar. It was after noon and the regular crowd of men in leather started to stroll in.

  Frankie was genuinely perplexed at the size of some of these guys, but they all treated him well. Last time he checked, Frankie was quite heterosexual, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone in the bar. A skinny heterosexual guy in tan shorts and a white t-shirt and sandals hanging out in a gay leather bar—it made as much sense as anything else the past year.

  He thanked David for all of his help and said he’d be back. He had to run down the street and deliver this envelope to that girl he spoke of earlier. He confided to David that he was nervous and didn’t know why. He walked out into the hot sunlight of St. Peter’s Street and down toward the cemetery again, walking past the voodoo shop. He hesitated at the shop door and looked inside for his friend from last night. He saw her in the back with a customer; she waved and smiled. He nervously crossed the street, and climbed up the stairs to the woman’s apartment, the same stairs he’d watched that other man climb as his heart broke.

  He reached the door and rang the doorbell. She opened the door and he saw her up close for the first time. Her smile was like nothing he’d ever seen before. It filled and dominated the room until there was room for nothing else, until he was just engulfed in the perfect warmth of her smile. He stood there unable to speak. She asked him to come inside. She asked him if he wanted to meet the girls. Frankie must have looked somewhat perplexed. She smiled and said her name was Zara, Greek for radiant. Frankie smiled. It fit. He said he’d love to meet the girls, but he was here for a friend. “I worked for the carnival; drove a truck. I was friends with the boss.”

  Zara’s beautiful face suddenly turned sad; she started to

  cry. She asked Frankie if he was there the night he died. He said he was. In fact, he found his body. “How did you hear?” he asked.

  She said, “His wife called me. It was cool. She knew. Everyone knew. We were old news.” Frankie handed her the envelope and could not find the words he wanted to say. He said some things about what a lucky man the boss was or any man who could be with her. The more he talked, the more he felt he was digging himself into a hole. He blushed and fumbled for his words, speaking words that made no sense.

  She smiled sweetly, trying to make him comfortable. “It’s okay, I’m in the business. For the most part, I just run this place,” she said, then repeated, looking him in the eyes, “for the most part.”

  Frankie was so nervous he was shaking inside. Normally, he had a pretty smooth line with women and he had confidence. He’d come to think of himself as infallible, but not here, not today. He felt she was a pinnacle, too far out of his reach; a place too high for someone as low as he. Frankie stood there simply in awe of her. She was so beautiful that he kept closing his eyes, fully expecting her to disappear. She was blonde. He preferred b
runettes, and her eyes were strange—they were a million colors, not just one. They were possibly green, or possibly made of the stuff of stars. Her beauty made her difficult to look at, like he was staring at the sun.

  For the past day, all he could think of were the words he was going to say to her when he had the chance, and now that he was here and alone with her, the words wouldn’t come. He needed a drink; he needed something; he needed to get out of there. She touched his arm and he felt his heart jump. He felt like he was sixteen again. He was getting angry at himself; he was panicking. The demon told him to run. He couldn’t reach her, but he needed to. He needed to find the perfect words. He needed to connect to the Celtic warrior poet, but the poetry inside him was dead. He felt like everything he’d ever dreamed of was right there before him, smiling and interested and she may as well have been encased in glass. It was as if he wasn’t even in the room. He turned to leave.

  Zara smiled at him and thanked him for dropping off the envelope. She asked him to come back some time so they could talk, and again she smiled that perfect smile. Frankie was broken. He walked down the stairs and back out onto St. Peter’s Street. He stood there in the sunlight on the stone and dirt pavement and felt the full weight of his failure.

  He walked slowly. Hands in pockets, realizing things had to change, but he was powerless to change anything. The demon put his arm around him and offered him a comfort that was laced in lies. Frankie stood in front of the voodoo shop and had a full-on argument with the demon. To anyone looking on, he would appear quite insane, standing there screaming at his imaginary companion. But to Frankie the demon was becoming more real every day and the line that separated them was becoming more and more blurred.

  He screamed, “You can’t even let me keep that! You’ve taken everything and every day you take more. You couldn’t even let me keep that. There is nothing left for you to take, but you just take more!”

  The woman came out of the voodoo shop. She stopped Frankie as he continued to scream. She spoke softly to him. “You are possessed, my friend. I can help you, but you need to go back to see Zara. She is a witch, a good white witch. She needs to be the one to rid you of the demon.”

  Frankie looked into her eyes. “I’ve lost where the demon ends and I begin. He has won.” With that, he turned and faced south and headed back to the bar.

  Chapter Thirty-one:

  Back To The Swamps

  He needed large quantities of alcohol and fast. He walked away from the voodoo shop and back to the leather bar.

  Frankie was about halfway between the bar and Zara’s place when he heard a loud metal-on-stone noise and squealing tires; other people ducked for cover and screamed. He saw smoke. Frankie ran for cover and dive-bombed behind a table, turning it on its side as he went over. He raised his eyes over the edge of the table and he saw it: Landry’s hideously ugly car. Frankie had left the keys in it; he could never imagine anyone would ever steal that rolling disaster. Now he guessed he was wrong. Some guy from the bar must have gotten himself good and drunk and decided to take it for a ride. What he saw next made his blood run cold. Behind the steering wheel, opening the door was a man: a man who looked exactly like Landry.

  The door opened and the man exploded from the car and ran over to Frankie. It was Landry coming at Frankie in a blur and a flash, and his blows landed fast and hard. Frankie felt the first blows land in his ribcage. He held his breath waiting for the ribs to break. Another shot came to the face and one to the nose so fast that Frankie couldn’t even raise his hands to defend as the pummeling continued. He could taste blood in the back of his throat, felt a rib and then a second rib break. He finally raised his fist to strike back at Landry. A hard punch landed against Frankie’s temple and Frankie fell backward over the table he’d used for cover. He felt his head hit the broken concrete of the sidewalk and next he found himself looking down at the cobbles of the street, tasting the dirt. He realized that he was face down and a good flow of blood was running from both his nose and a new cut on his forehead.

  He watched as his blood mixed into the dirt of the street making a thick paste. He felt the newly broken ribs; the pain was strangely like an old friend. In that moment he tried to recall the last time he’d gone a year without a broken rib, or two, or three. He felt a hand on the back of his neck and the collar of his t-shirt pulling him back up. Half-standing, he was spun around. He felt another blow to his head. Thought and consciousness faded away, closing in from the edges to a tiny singular point, but it never disappeared. Frankie hung on.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the woman from the voodoo shop and Zara, watching as he got beaten into the ground, presumably by a ghost. Frankie thought, There’s your poetic justice. There’s your irony. You can’t even fight anymore, tough guy. You can’t fuck and you can’t fight; you can’t even make sentences. You can only bleed from your beatings. Then the lights finally went out.

  He woke up in the front seat of Landry’s car, still bleeding. His ribs hurt with every breath. Landry was driving, fast as hell.

  Frankie looked over at him and said, “I saw you die. You had no pulse. How the Hell can you be alive? I saw you die!”

  Landry looked at him. His anger filled the ugly, smelly car. He screamed at Frankie. “You left me out there in the swamp! You left all those people to die. Now you will help me clear the bodies and clean up the mess you made, you and your goddamned demon.”

  Frankie countered back, “I watched you die, all of you! You can’t be alive!”

  Landry replied, “You know nothing of life, of death or faith. What you watched was your fear of the other side. That’s why you run, you hide. You’re a drunk and a drug addict. You know nothing of these swamps or life. You live to satisfy your fear, and my friends died because of you. Those deaths, Frankie, are all on you. Now you will help me gather the bodies and help those that died find their peace. You need to seek peace, Frankie. Your days and your chances are running out.”

  Frankie asked, “How can you find peace in that insane ritual, dancing with snakes? You talk of peace like you own it. You know nothing of peace.”

  Landry immediately countered back. “Peace? What in the world can a terrified man such as you ever know of peace, Frankie? Do you know the one thing me and the snake people and your voodoo friend and the white witch you love and your friend at the bar, David, all have in common, Frankie? Faith. We all share a faith. We all worship our God, the same God. We worship him in our own ways, and we fight each other because ‘they all do it wrong, and I do it right’, and all that bullshit, but we all agree we need to acknowledge him, but not you. You are too wise and all knowing.

  “You are an arrogant, ignorant bastard, Frankie, and when you’re gone and even your demon abandons you to rot, as he takes up with another, because he’s nothing but a whore for suffering, that is the day you’ll realize you were wrong and your life was a meaningless waste. Look at your life—you’ve killed your best friend, and how many others? Your sanity has left you. You cannot even love anymore. You are becoming the ghost before you die. Can you even feel anything anymore? Did you even feel it when I beat your ass? If you did, that’s the last thing that you’ll feel, a dying man’s pain. I’m not going to preach to you, Frankie, but your days and your options are running low. You can change like a chameleon. I’ve seen you do it. Now it’s time you change again.”

  Frankie looked over at him and said, “How are you not fucking dead? I wish you were dead.”

  Landry countered, “I’d love to kill you, right here and right now. I’d love nothing more, but I’ve got to teach you one more thing. Then you can die.”

  Frankie stared off into space. His body hurt everywhere. He’d never felt this battered. His spirit was as beaten as his body. Finally he spoke, “It’s not God; it was never God. It’s the church. That’s my war. The church has turned me against God and turned me into this. I hate your church. I hate Zara’s
church, and the voodoo church and Alexandrine’s church and the old ladies’ church. I hate all the fucking churches, but I hate your goddamned, stupid, fucking snake-shaking church the worst. You pompous asses, who do you think you are? It’s people like you who have turned people like me against God. Your church is the poison. Your religion is cancer. I’m a fucking mess; I’ll not argue that, but you people, with your religion, are as bad as me any day. You see what I’ve become? It is driven by people like you. I can’t stand the monster I’ve become and I can’t stand what you’ve become.”

  Landry looked over at Frankie and for the first time he saw the demon. The demon looked at Landry and offered him his hand.

  The long narrow road to the site of the ceremony was more frightening in the daylight than the dark. The deep, black water lapped only inches from the surface of the road, just compacted dirt and rocks and sand. The smell of the swamp was noxious on a good day. It smelled a lot like rotting fish and foul water.

  Frankie could see where everything had happened as they approached, including the pile of boxes where the preacher had stood and the blackened spot where the fire had raged. It was only a two-hundred foot by two-hundred-foot small circle of dirt in the middle of this putrid swamp. As they got closer, he could see the land was covered with the bodies of those less fortunate than Landry.

  Frankie burst out, “Why did you live and these other assholes die? What makes you so fucking special?”

  Landry had been quiet since he saw the demon in Frankie. He finally spoke, “I’ve been snake-bitten many times, as a boy and all my life, many a time. Their venom paralyzes me, but it doesn’t kill me. When you turned the snakes on the people, that’s when you killed them. You couldn’t stand the thought of those you’ve killed before. Was it three? Now it’s in the dozens.”