I’m not sure I remember how I convinced my mother and the Colonel to let me keep the starving little pup that showed up on our farm one day. Neither of them liked dogs that much. And Max growled at them most days to let them know he felt the same affection for them. But they let me keep him. Well, I think my mother let me keep him and she let the Colonel keep his health.
My mother had many looks outside of her “frying-pan” brand, and I guess she used the one that said, “Let the boy keep the dog,” because the Colonel only grumbled and said, “Great! Just what the world needs, another mouth to feed.”
So Max was my dog and I was his Man. That was our arrangement—our trust. He was my responsibility. That, the Colonel wasn’t budging on.
Now, maybe it was the time the Colonel took us duck hunting? There were many, but this one is frozen into my memory. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.
The Colonel said if Max was going to eat our food, he needed a job. And apparently, according to my father, Labs were born “feather-finding, death-dealing duck-hounds.” I remember that verbatim, too.
This particular time, our river was as frozen as February—you could walk like Jesus right across it. But Max and I had found a place where the water eddied back and swirled enough to keep a small patch of water from freezing completely over. When I told my dad about it, he got that knowing look on his face. “Honey-hole,” he said. “That’ll be stuffed with feathers in the morning.”
Max and I stayed up all night, him whimpering and me simply not able to sleep. When the gray fog was still low and the morning wasn’t even a thought, the Colonel and I met in the mudroom and donned long underwear and jackets and waders and our big fuzzy face masks.
Max watched us, whimpering and wagging his tail so hard that I thought it might beat a hole in the floor.
There was something magic about the preparation for a hunt. There didn’t need to be much talking or convincing or planning involved. It was almost as fun as the hunting itself … almost. But clicking gun safeties and testing duck calls and stretching gloves over excited fingers came in a close second, maybe? Though, packing a double-barreled twenty-gauge, the breach broken open and resting on my shoulder like a big steel boomerang, while I walked along God’s angry river dike with my dad and dog … was a dead heat for that position.
Max followed slightly behind us and to my left, and it only took an occasional reminder from me for him to “heel” to keep him there.
I don’t blame Max for what happened—I get excited like that before hunting, too. But to the Colonel, a dog that won’t obey is no better than a wild animal. He killed plenty of those. Or so he said.
We heard them before we saw them, and the gabbling and quacking sounds, and the chuckling, feeding and long, lonesome highball calls filled the air with the knowledge that we were going to find a mess of ducks in Max’s and my little backwater eddy. So the Colonel and I dropped down on the field side of the dike and loaded our guns. Listening to the commotion those ducks were causing just over the dike and not thirty yards across the river, Max tried not to whimper.
My father looked at me, tilted his head, raised his eyebrows and frowned a little. I knew what he meant.
Then the Colonel said, “Shut him up or they’re gonna head to Heaven before we can flush them.”
“Quiet,” I tried to whisper at Max.
The whimpering went down a little. I glared down at him. He knew what that meant, too. There was a lot of unspoken communication in our little family of four—as far as I was concerned, Max counted. But he was my responsibility, and if he messed up this time, it would be strike two.
Regardless, I knew we weren’t shooting when we crawled to the top of the dike—we had played this game before. We all peered through the tall green reeds on our side of the river, across to the far river bank about twenty-five yards away.
“Burn and Boil be damned to the dungeons,” the Colonel whispered.
That caught me by surprise and I looked at him. It wasn’t that my father never used profanity, he had plenty of occasion to swear or curse at something or someone, but he had a special brand of it that took me a couple thousand years to figure out. That one was a classic.
“It’s like the Arena of Reckoning on Judgment night,” he muttered.
Whatever he was talking about, I had to agree with him. There were… I couldn’t believe how many! Mallards and gadwalls and widgeon and even a few Canadian geese were jammed into that little open patch of water on our near-completely-frozen river. It looked like an overstuffed bait bucket on a salmon fishing boat, splashing and sloshing, spilling over onto the iced-over top of the river around it. And every time water spilled out of that hole, it froze solid within a few seconds.
Those ducks flapped and fluttered and flitted their wings. And they chased and quacked at each other, jockeying for a spot in the barely fifty feet of open water.
Frozen weather did that to the stragglers, because if the ducks dallied around in the North too long—didn’t get out of the path before God sent down a miserable cold snap—there were precious few places that were safe for them to rest for the night. Water is safety to a duck just like obscurity is for a citizen. If the danger can’t get to you, then it’s not really dangerous. But once someone finds out where you’re hiding, you’re as good as dead.
Yes, I realize I’m not talking about ducks. And I know you guessed that was more of the Colonel, imparting his wisdom, but in hindsight, you know it’s just more truth, so what does it matter that I’m the one telling it. Truth just is—doesn’t matter who you hear it from.
What did we do then? I’ll tell you what we didn’t do—we didn’t shoot at those ducks.
There was some story that the Colonel had hinted to me on our first attempt at this maneuver. It was about a couple of bulls watching a herd of cows. And I would’ve remembered it—you know that’s the truth—but he told me he didn’t want to get the “frying pan” for telling me all of it.
I didn’t press him for the details—that tactic never worked—but I sure wanted to know why we weren’t going to blaze down those ducks. After all, the last time, this same strategy hadn’t “panned out” too well … so to speak. For either of us, come to think of it.
“Again?” I asked.
The Colonel knew what I meant. “You want to learn that lesson again.” It wasn’t a question. It also wasn’t what I meant, but I could see how he might think that.
Once is enough, I thought to myself. “No,” I said. I knew that was the right answer.
The Colonel smiled back at me—it was a rarity—but that still got us no closer to bringing back ducks for dinner.
“I want to shoot ducks,” I informed him of the obvious.
“How many?” the Colonel asked. I hated when he got cryptic in the middle of something tense.
“What?”
“How many do you want to bring back?” he said. “One? … Two? A dozen? How many? It’s a simple question.”
Now I was getting fidgety, just like Max. I could feel him lying next to me, shivering, not from the cold, but from the excitement and anticipation. No one is cold in the clutch when you are hunting—too much adrenaline. But if we kept talking, I was sure that the ducks were going to hear us. Eh, even then I knew that they were making so much of their own noise that they weren’t going to hear us bantering over their impending death. I just wasn’t in the mood for some hidden lesson when I wanted to shoot so badly.
“All of them,” I whispered, only half-jokingly. “I want to get them all.”
There was no way we would be able to get them all, but I could almost taste the deep-red, slightly greasy texture of duck breasts wrapped in bacon, and my stomach grumbled. We hadn’t eaten breakfast before our hike down the dike. And besides, by then, I had started to press back against my father’s condescending curtness with a brand of resistance all my own.
The Colonel stared straight ahead at the—there had to be a thousand ducks. “Only one way to do that
,” he said.
I wasn’t getting out of it—I knew that. My mother wasn’t the only one who knew how to dig in and deliver a message. “Okay,” I said, even forgetting to reign in my annoyed voice, “how’s that?”
The Colonel seemed to enjoy his own lessons more than teaching them to me. He smiled down at the grass in front of his face. “I’m glad you asked,” he said, “because, if you want to kill a whole flock full of faithful feathered fuckers”—I know I said that he used profanity, but never like that, especially in front of my mother, but him smiling when I jerked my head toward him, meant that it had been solely to get that response—“you let them all think that they got away scot-free, and then you pick them off one by one when they come back.”
So that’s what he was trying to do that last time, I thought. We never had a chance to get to the ambush part of this strategy. As I stared over at the Colonel this time, I knew he was thinking the same thing.
Me drowning … kind of spoiled that last time we had tried this.
— CLVII —
I’VE GOT A pretty good idea who this dead angel on the floor of my church is, but the huge bird isn’t going anywhere, so I’ve got the time. And it’s a good thing too, because I’m excited to have a reason to go to the “Mike.” I’m pretty sure that will give “time” a little chance to catch up.
I already told you about that, didn’t I? Sorry—I’ll claim old age for that one.
While I’m gone, I can’t have him waking up. I can only imagine the amount of anger that this one will have. Because if this archangel demon is who I think, it may be time for me to start practicing some of that deception the other one talked about.
Time to dummy up, Benito, I think. Going to the Mike will be good practice.
The Mike? The Mike is the citizens’ slang term for the Black Mar-ket—Bravo Mike, in old military slang. Everyone shortened it to the “Mike.” Because, though the State has locked down pretty much everything else, they’ve allowed the underground marketplace for godly goods and sinful services to flourish.
The average citizen has no idea—too busy trying to stay out of the crosshairs, or an alley body-bin for that matter—but I know exactly why.
We had a saying at seminary, “A playing sinner is a praying sinner, and praying sinner is a paying sinner.” Because if you keep a person cold, hungry, and scared for their life—immortal soul, in the case of my church—they’ll pay or do anything to keep from thinking about taking that next step.
So, whether it was cracking credits into the offering basket on Sunday or trading a week’s wages for some State sanctioned swill, smokes, or sex… Protection and the Clergy were like two sides of the same coin. Two shepherds tending to the misery of their flock of sheep.
The State and Protection kept a citizen’s body fearful and barely fed, and the church did the same thing for their soul. Because happy and healthy citizens didn’t need someone else to reassure them that everything was going to be okay—that they were safe as long as they kept in line, followed the rules, and gave God and the Devil their due. Though which one of us—State or the Clergy—was which, depended on the day of the week.
Don’t believe me? I didn’t believe it either, but like I said, I read the book.
And I’m out the front doors and away from the safety of my beautiful cathedral—into the dreary gray drizzle of Seattle. I look around like prey watches for predators at a watering hole. I keep watching over my shoulder as I lock the front doors. I’ll get to the paint later, I think, seeing the work of the overnight taggers on the retaining wall next to the front steps. The Devil’s work is never done.
I jog down the damp front steps, scanning up and down the street through the mist for danger. I hadn’t heard them before, but the drone-raid warnings and emergency vehicle sirens blare a few blocks away. It’s nothing new, but this sounds a little bigger than the normal cracking down on citizens.
I make a mental note to inquire about any Protection operation at the Mike. Trying to find the truth on the PIN news is futile. Every citizen with a Judgment-free mind left knows that the real truth is on the street. And every citizen knows that it doesn’t get any more real than the Mike. Judgment laced coffee buzz, or not.
Sure, I could call up the archdiocese and inquire about the sirens—they are sure to know what Protection is up to—but like I said, curious minds… Regardless, Protection unleashing some misery on citizens may work to my advantage for a Mike run. Any trouble I might have encountered will probably be hiding in their habitat, hoping that those sirens aren’t meant for them.
I flit my eyes to the alleys and crevices where danger makes its home. My mind reminds me that the rules of revenge outside of my sanctuary haven’t changed just because an angel crashed through my roof. The urban zone is dangerous, even for a well-identified priest, dressed in telltale all-black.
The good news for me is that I stick out like my father’s lost finger—no sane citizen is messing with a priest. The bad news? Most citizens are long past fully sane and … I stick out like a lost finger! And in a city full of wandering and wanting citizens, anyone who looks healthy is a target.
My little flask full of swill helps make me look less than a hundred percent, but I pause on the bottom step and think about going back and digging up my pistol … just in case. It’s a dangerous world, after all.
I think better of it and give myself a little reprimand—Patience, Benito—such drastic measures will only work once.
Not ten yards down the sidewalk, the proof for everything I’m thinking comes right out from under the boxwood bushes along the side of my church. And I’ve got a weathered fast-food cup pushing at my face and a grimy, gut-grumbling citizen’s hand—one of Heaven’s forgotten souls—clutching at my arm. “Father,” he says with his voice, but his breath does most of the talking—he stinks of State swill and freshly injected Judgment.
I know the smell of the State’s low-grade liquor, and as for the Judgment, I’ve seen the results of it enough times at the Fifty that I’d know that wide-eyed “I just saw a demon” look, even without my glasses.
“I haven’t eaten in”—he pauses for a second, like he’s trying to separate his delusions from the reality of talking to a priest—“Last night, father, I saw … I saw a angel on your roof.”
I look up at the roof of my cathedral. Except for the missing cross, you would never know there is a ten-foot-wide hole in the backside of it. I just nod—it’s better to let a Judgment hallucination play itself out. If this turns violent, I’ll change my tactics.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, “right up there. He was just sitting there by the cross, like a big bird. And he was…”
I widen my eyes at him.
Maybe the hallucination gives way to his last sliver of sanity, because when he pauses, he looks at me like he’s apologizing and he’s sad. And he points up to where the cross on the steeple used to be. “There’s no … no cross up there, is there, father?” he says.
“No, my son,” I say. It’s what he wants to hear. “It is … being repaired.”
“I’m sorry, I…” he starts to say, and then he looks at his cup. “I haven’t eaten.”
I pull out my flask, unscrew the lid and steady his hand, gripping his wrist while I empty the rest of my flask’s contents into his cup. It’s not what he’s asking for, but I know it’s what he wants. And a few more ounces will ease back some more of this Judgment trip he’s having. I’ll refill it before I get to work on my “houseguest.”
I think to the Candidate part of my seminary training—we all became Shandian warriors of the Word. That Priest Instructor’s voice is clear in my mind. Number one, get control of a threat right away. Deceive, disarm, disable, then destroy if you have to. The four deadly “D’s” as taught by those who knew how to use them. But this poor wretch won’t require any further precautions. Regardless, if he does, I’ve already got control of his dominant arm.
This lost soul seems satisfied with a few ounces of
swill. “Bless you, father,” he says. “God in Heaven, bless you.”
And his whole body relaxes and I let go of his wrist. This is as far as this encounter will go. Most likely, he will wander off to an alley and sleep off the rest of his Judgment. He will have plenty of company—the alleys of Seattle are habitats in and of themselves. If humanity had to house every citizen that lived in an urban zone, the skyscrapers would touch Heaven.
I smile at him but it’s more at myself and my use of old-world vernacular. Scrapers, I remind myself. You’re getting old, Benito. Too old for all of this.
Even though he probably did see my dead angel on the roof, once that kind of hallucination takes hold… He’s about half way through to redemption.
“Thank you,” I say to him, and then I recite the whole point of our encounter, “for the Lord God commands us to give strong drink to one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress. Drink and forget your poverty, brother—remember your misery no more.”
To a forgotten soul, looking for answers from God, hearing a priest recite scripture calms them like their mother singing at bedtime. The chapter and verse are for me, because as long as the “voice” of the verse seems right to them, a citizen wouldn’t know the difference.
Most of my sermons I read verbatim from the Bible, especially the ones on Sunday out of respect for my mother. But occasionally, I make something up that I feel is more fitting to the events of the day … just to see if anyone in my congregation has read the entire book. But memorizing most of it took me about four years to master, so I’ve never been called to truth on it. Not even once.
Then another verse pops into my head and I smile at its irony: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
I guess it is time to dig at least one of my sins back up. Luckily it’s not very far away—I’ve got my Word buried right next to my gun.
TF- C - 00.00 - THE FALLEN Dark Fantasy Series: A Dark Dystopian Fantasy (Books 1 - 3) Page 58