by William Lobb
He walked the handful of blocks to Zara’s place, past the leather bar. He couldn’t handle another meeting. He was getting overloaded on God. He walked into the foyer of Zara’s apartment. and found her there, dressed impeccably in faded jeans, a tight black top, and a large, rumpled light scarf around her neck. Frankie was constantly amused by southerners and the way they dressed. It was well into October and still pretty warm, but he saw people around him dressing in heavier clothes, coats, and jackets in the early morning. One fifty-degree morning, he saw a couple wearing hats and scarves and heavy jackets, hilarious to a cold-blooded Yankee.
Zara and her pretty scarf around her neck. It was very attractive but also amusing.
He asked her, “What do you people do when it gets cold?”
She smiled as he walked in the room. She said, “You look sad and defeated.”
Frankie agreed, “I can’t feel it, Zara. It’s like I’m dead inside. I’m trying to feel it, to understand it, but I feel dead inside. Maybe I’ll feel it after I’m baptized and have my sin washed away. It’s going to need to be more than a dip in the river to cleanse me, I’m afraid.”
Zara extended her hand and invited him to sit on the wicker couch next to her. Sitting there next to the wall, they could hear the sounds of one of the girls fucking a client.
Zara smiled, “I like the sound, always have. I like this place and what we do. Many don’t. I’ve never been able to follow rules, my friend. Never able to keep in line with what I’m told is right and wrong. I had to find that in my heart. I had to find what is right and wrong and what rules I’d follow inside me. No one can preach it or pray it into me, or you. You are working so hard and trying so hard. I deeply admire you, but you are trying to follow someone else’s beliefs. You need to, as they say at the AA meetings, come to your own understanding, not just of God, but everyone and everything.
“Buddha once said, believe nothing unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. You don’t need to find God, Frankie. You need to find your own reason, your own values. Once you do, your God will appear. I care deeply for you and I like that you’re here with me. It’s strange and I don’t understand it, but I like it. I want you to do what you come to understand you need to do, but in the end I think what you need and what you seek is already inside you. You simply have to listen to your own heart, your soul.
“I know, I know, you’re a soulless bastard, but that’s not true. I hate to argue with the old witch of Orange County, New York, but I know you have a soul. I can connect to it. When we feel as though we are one—you know the moments I speak of—those are our souls talking. You have a soul. Please, go and be baptized and read all the Bible passages you need to, but listen to your heart. It knows the truth; it knows what’s real and what is contrived. Listen to your soul. Your God may come to you as a white light in a dream, or as a junk man collecting scrap metal from the street. Whatever it is or how it appears, listen to your heart.”
Then she kissed him. Frankie felt calm, for maybe the first time in his life.
Payton came out of the room covered only in a towel and lead her client to the shower down the hall. She smiled and waved at Frankie. Zara smiled at the two of them. “Sometimes my business isn’t about fucking, Frankie. It’s about having someone to connect with. You should never worry about me fucking some other man. That doesn’t happen often anymore anyway, not since you arrived in my life. It’s not the fucking, it’s the connection that is real and can cause joy or sorrow. We are connected. I want to grow with you. I know that this part of the journey is part of that process. In the end, I know you’ll find what you need. Part of that may be me.”
Chapter Thirty-five:
Everybody Into
The Water
A month went by. It was hard for Frankie to comprehend that a year has passed since he left home, since the night he nearly beat Billy Martin to death. A year since Pam fired the gun at his head, a year that he’d been on the run. Frankie had made it thirty days without booze or other drugs. He was still not sober, and still not quite sure what that term meant. At the AA meetings, he was told he was sober and was given a thirty-day chip. He was happy, maybe even a little proud, that he’d survived thirty days not drunk or drugged, but he felt he was still missing some key points before he could find sobriety. Zara assured him that he was working the process and he should not try to force anything. He needed to learn from the process.
His initial zeal to find God through Don and Tom had faded somewhat, but he was still seeing those men and attending church three or four times a week. He’d started working street corners “testifying” and collecting change for the church. On a good day or night, he could collect a few hundred dollars for the church, or as Don often corrected Frankie, he was collecting change for God.
He was planning his adult baptism and rebirth in a week. On a Sunday morning, on a secluded bank along the great Mississippi, Don would join him in the muddy water and wash away his sin. Then later that morning, he would testify before his church about the miracles Jesus had performed in his life. Frankie could feel it; he was even starting to think he had a soul and it was on fire for Jesus. That was his public story. Alone, at night in bed with Zara, he would confess he felt empty and still broken. He would roll over and wrap his arms around his beautiful friend and feel a comfort he’d never known. Those were the moments he felt he might have a soul, but to everyone but Zara he told them this reawakening in him was all about Jesus.
Halloween in New Orleans was an amazing experience. That was the night he felt, for the first time, gratitude. It was that moment in the journey to sobriety, where out of thin air you suddenly realize you are not drunk, but you’re reasonably happy, and you are not as sick as you have been. Not healed, just less sick. It’s an overwhelming moment. It was a milestone.
Frankie was on Bourbon Street with Zara and a couple of the girls. The street was alive with madness: drunks and vampires and werewolves and cowboys and nurses and strippers and Elvis, pumpkins and ghosts and ghouls and candy, and a seemingly endless river of booze. The entire French Quarter was just one ungovernable party.
Noise from fireworks that exploded everywhere echoed off the city and their flashes lit the night sky and reflected in the broad Mississippi River. Small fires pumped pungent stench from burning garbage cans into the still-sticky autumn air.
The music of a thousand bands all playing different tunes at once. The noise in the air was deafening; people could feel it, as if the air was on fire. Drunken people hung off second- and third-floor balconies, perilously close to falling over the railings and down to the street below.
For some reason, their heads turned at the same moment, and Frankie and Zara looked down the street as two women on horseback came galloping through the crowd—twin Lady Godivas, totally nude, on horseback. The crowd cleared away and broke into wild applause. Zara commented as they dismounted the horses, just down the street, “Those girls won’t be able to buy a drink all night.”
In the midst of all of this, in the depth of this drunken party, Frankie came to understand and appreciate gratitude. It came to him like a flash of light in the middle of this chaos and revelry. A calming revelation overwhelmed him in the midst of insanity: the realization he was not. He was no longer insane. Maybe today was only a moment, a respite, but it was real and it was his and he would take it and cherish it.
For nearly fifteen years, daily, systematically he had dug himself a perfect bottomless hole, or so it had appeared until about a month ago. Somehow, through circumstances that should have destroyed him, he found that bottom. He crashed into it hard, in what was apparently now, a survivable landing.
For the first time since that night many years ago, as a teen drunk in the cemetery with Sammy, Frankie felt sane. In the midst of complete pandemonium, this boozy, drugged orgy, he felt the gentle, welcoming breeze of sanity and peace. With those first fresh breath
s, as they deeply filled his lungs, he became aware of just how precious his breaths were. For the first time, he became aware of his breath and himself. In that moment, he was alone in this crowd. Perfectly isolated, yet somehow connected to everyone and everything.
He was sweating and smelling bad, a beautiful hooker on each arm, drenched with beer—or what he’d hoped was beer—poured onto him from a balcony above. He stood there whole and clean and not drunk. Sobriety might still be a few days’ ride off into the distance, but at the moment it felt to Frankie that he might actually find it.
The following Sunday morning dawned bright and clear. The sun in the South was strange to Frankie. The angle was all wrong, well into November and it looked like later summer to him. The entire southeast and Deep South was like a foreign country to him. He sat up on the edge of Zara’s bed. She stretched; he watched. He bent down to kiss her and then went into the shower. He was going to be washed of his sin today.
He dressed in khaki pants and a white sports shirt. He wasn’t sure what to wear, maybe a bathing suit; he had no idea, he’d better bring one. His hair had started to grow back in. He shaved. He almost looked healthy. He thought himself a long ways away from healthy. He went back in to say goodbye to Zara. She was up and getting dressed too. Payton was with her. The two of them were coming and they would meet Frankie there. Zara, for support, and Payton for amusement, but both under the guise of going to be part of the rebirth of Frankie. Zara wasn’t in favor of the whole born-again adult baptism thing, but she supported the entire process to sanity. She supported the journey. Payton did, too. Both were amused at the level to which Frankie insisted on taking everything.
Zara and Payton drove the ten miles or so down to Bella Chasse, Frankie drove with Don and Tom and rode in the backseat of Don’s car. They all pulled into the parking area a little past the ferry landing. Frankie was uncharacteristically nervous. Don and Frankie walked over to a public bathroom and changed into bathing suits. They came out and walked together the quarter-mile to where they would enter the water.
Tom, Zara, and Payton waited. Tom intentionally ignored the women. He wouldn’t even look at them. A small choir was there from the church, six young girls, including the one who always seemed within arm’s reach of Tom. The day Frankie met Don and Tom, he noticed her. Frankie never spoke to her; she just always seemed to me there and always close to Tom. Too old to be his daughter, but not his wife, Don just said she was Tom’s assistant.
Frankie arrived at the gathering and looked to see the woman from the voodoo shop and a few of her friends there as well. Frankie smiled and said, “Eclectic group.” Everyone smiled, except Tom and Don.
As Frankie and Don walked over by the riverbank, the choir of girls started to sing some old southern hymns. He was never one for church music, unless it was the old lady banging on her ancient out-of-tune piano. The songs were soft and strangely haunting. He couldn’t make out the words, but the melody was ghostly and comforting to Frankie.
Tom began to read passages from Corinthians, then Peter, then the Book of Acts. Don and Frankie started to walk into the water together.
Don said, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who doesn’t believe will be condemned.” The words scared Frankie as he felt Don’s arms around his body and he felt his head go under the cold, muddy water.
Instantly, Frankie began to panic. He could see the eyes of the demon again, feel him. The water began to burn his skin; he began to fight Don. His face broke the surface. He looked at Don and in him he saw a demon, too. He scrambled to find his feet in the slippery, steep, muddy banks of the river. He heard the haunting melody from the choir and Tom still talking. He just wanted to get out of there as fast as he could. Maybe he was truly evil. Maybe he was truly soulless, maybe this God was real and he thought Frankie was making a mockery of him and everything he represented.
Frankie wanted to believe, but what he saw and what he believed were staggeringly different. There had been something disconcerting about all things with Tom and Don since he met them. What he saw there in the water made him face a few truths that he had been forcing out of his mind.
He reached the edge of the shoreline. Zara and Payton were there with a towel. Don followed right after him. Don touched his arms and said, “Now, go and sin no more.”
Frankie looked at him in what must have looked like complete terror and walked quickly toward the bathroom to change. Zara followed him in.
She looked at him and said, “What happened to you out there?”
Frankie looked at her and then down at the floor. “I saw him again. All this talk of God and Bible studies and I felt nothing and I saw the demon’s face. I’m done.”
Zara sat next to him as he dressed. She spoke softly, “We all have demons, Frankie, every one of us. You are just more in tune with yours than many. Are you still going to testify?” Frankie looked at the bland concrete of the bathroom floor. It reminded him of the locker room and the night he killed Sammy. He missed Sammy. He wished he could talk to him.
He took her hand and he said, “I’ve got to. Maybe when I’m standing there talking, it will come to me. He will come to me.”
Zara simply said, “Then, we’ll be there.”
Don walked in and looked at the two of them with clear disapproval. Zara got up to leave saying she would give Don some privacy. Don dressed quickly and motioned to Frankie and said that they needed to get going. The church service would start in about an hour.
Tom and his assistant joined them in the car. The drive back to the church was quick and uneventful. Frankie sat quietly and looked out the window. In less than an hour, he was going to stand in front about 200 people and lie through his teeth. He didn’t buy any of it. Not one word. He didn’t like the restrictions, the regime, or the lack of humor. He didn’t feel it. He wanted to feel it. For a time, he thought he was just trying too hard. He tried to back off, but the more he did the stronger Don and Tom would come after him.
As Don drove, he turned halfway around and asked Frankie how he felt to be clean of his sin. Frankie said he felt great. Tom sat by the passenger side window, with his assistant between him and Don. Frankie never really got her name or where she fit into the grand scheme of everything. He watched as Tom put his arm around the girl as they drove north back toward New Orleans. The relationship between Tom and this girl bothered Frankie, not because anything anyone did was his business at all, but because it was pretty obvious something was going on between those two and it went against the grain of everything these guys preached.
A small fire had been building inside of Frankie for a week or two. He was still new at all this God and church business, but he was trying to keep all things in perspective. They pulled the car into the driveway next to the church and to a small alley in the back of the building. They opened the doors and got out. The sun was warm on Frankie’s face. He didn’t miss the cold of the north at all, but he was missing home, especially today.
The baptism left him deeply and dangerously sad and disappointed. He needed to find Payton and talk to her. It was the first moment since that last night, in the bar in the bathroom, where he really wanted to get high, totally and completely destroyed, and fight. The desire, the craving was overwhelming. He realized he was scared, scared and totally out of control. Anger controlled him, driving him. The anger was as much his drug as any chemical, anger and fear.
He’d been trying for over a month to be something other than what he really was, what he felt inside. That fueled the anger. It was subtle comments and things he overheard, from Don and Tom and some others, like Tom’s assistant. There were comments, some not so subtle, about Zara and her line of work and Payton’s. He’d been keeping it all inside, but suddenly it was coming to a boil. He walked into the old stone and concrete church; it smelled musty, like old books. It was cooler inside than outside. He walked past the dark brown, shining, rich wooden pe
ws. He heard the empty, hollow sound of his footsteps echoing throughout the old building. He looked up at the pulpit, a tall wooden structure that dominated the room and seemed to tower over those who sat before it.
He’d been struggling all week with what to say, what words to use. He struggled with his questioning, had he had given this enough of a chance; maybe it was still part of his learning process. He could stand there and mouth some words about the profound impact Jesus and God had made on his life, or he could rip this entire show open like an infected cut that was festering and about to turn deadly. He was still divided fifty- fifty. It could go either way.
Tom walked up next to him on his left side and sat down. He put his hand on Frankie’s knee. Don joined them and sat on Frankie’s right. They said they wanted to talk to Frankie and they wanted to pray with him. Don began the prayer. Frankie couldn’t recall the words. It was relatively brief, for Don anyway, who had a tendency to be somewhat wordy. They held hands and prayed about guidance and forgiveness and for Frankie to change his ways and find his path. Frankie commented silently to himself that he was feeling pretty good; AA/NA was working. He felt a little better every day; he wasn’t so sure he wanted to change his path.
Don then became very somber and serious.
He looked Frankie in the eye and said, “We need to talk. You are about to become a member of our church. You are already part of the family here. We need to talk to you about some of your friends. Frankie, we understand who you were and where you came from, but you are clean now, you are born again. You need to consider carefully who your friends are now. We are all sinners, Frankie, but your friends, the prostitutes and homosexuals, you have to let them go. Do you understand? People like that are not good for your soul, Frankie. Not good for you. We can pray for them. We will pray for them with you, but you need to seriously consider who your friends are. You’ll be much happier without them in your life. You’ll thank us one day.”