Not Far From Golgotha

by Richard Futch

  “Insurance?” Billy couldn’t hide the puzzlement showing on his face.

  “Yes. A little guarantee, a token of comfort if nothing else.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “I know. It’s hard. But it’s something I see like this. Even if nothing actually happens when we die, I believe we have the power to stave off the awful loneliness waiting.”

  “How?” The question was less than a whisper.

  “Dreams, Billy.” The smile broadened out her features, showing less weight loss now in her animation. “Be honest, how many times have you woken up with the taste of a dream on your tongue? You seem to come from somewhere very far away, electrified with emotion until, suddenly, you’re flying awake in bed. Already the dream racing away. On the other hand, nightmares go slowly sometimes, but eventually they’re gone too. I believe they’re the terrors borne of the Earth, and the dreams, the nice ones that race away at top speed, leaving just bare traces behind, like a scent almost, these are the promises, traces of something altogether different. Things that have nothing to do with this world at all, far older and more wondrous. I believe this.”

  Billy nodded his head, but remained silent. There was too much here to speak and destroy without further thought.

  “I’m using that as my Trump Card, Billy. It makes it easier.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying…” he began but she stopped him with a touch to his knee.

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “It’s not easy, even for me. It may appear outlandish at first, but what belief in this world holds any better advantage? None, because this is mine. It’s what I’m taking. It’s what’s gonna work for me.”

  “What is?”

  Elizabeth lifted her head and she really did appear healthier than several minutes before. “I’m going out with a dream of forever in my head, Billy. It’s something that I’m still working out the details, but I plan on taking everything I need.” And she smiled, a touch mischievously. “I’m not saying this is my only line of defense against this Monster, but it ain’t bad. Hell, even if there really is nothing at all after we die, I mean nothing but a wall, a great blackness, a lasting silence; at least this can attempt to breach it. Carrying the soul down that long corridor, the one that always spirited away when the light of morning came. It wouldn’t have to end, then. Nothing would. Why would a dream die if it were unleashed, finally from the body which constricted it?

  “I know it’s hard to picture, but its my personal escape route. It puts me in control, where I want to be at the end.” She laughed then, fleshing out her smile, although she kept her eyes fixed on a place Billy dared not turn to find. “In the dream I’ll still be alive and kicking,” she said and laughed.

  There was a long silence that followed.

  Chapter 47

  His mother had given him the Christian name Joshua Quincy Naples almost 34 years before, but it had already been long since anyone, including his mother, had called him by it. On the street he was known only as ‘Midnight’. It was a name he’d come by honestly; he’d forced it on no one. And he liked it, knew it was the only name rightfully his. Because he was black in deed and action; the name a natural reflection of his character. Although he wasn’t exceptionally forbidding in stature, he carried his average height plainly encased in a wiry musculature that twitched constantly on the brink of violence. His head was a gleaming bald dome bespeaking the deepest color of his moniker, made immeasurably more menacing when he smiled. For here was the predator revealed; his teeth already legend in the poor neighborhood he’d grown through; sparkling white and gold, as resplendent as a king’s crown. His posse believed he could speak with the Devil and this was immensely pleasing to him, although he took no pains with such ridiculousness. His evil was of truer stuff than the phantoms the old women screamed against. If he was an agent, he was one of free will and he carried himself with the confidence this line of thinking bred. His I.Q., though never tested, would have surprised any caseworker unlucky enough to have fallen in line for him, but no one ever had. He’d stayed on the fringes. A businessman, just like any other, and power was the only necessary ingredient. Everything else: worthless. Let the old bats wail and moan for his soul; he saw no need for such trivialities.

  He generally worked the Quarter. He’d always been good in crowds (he believed himself stronger surrounded by so much energy), and he was always careful. He was not a hot-head by nature. Crazy as a loon, but cool to the point of ice-edged terror. He peddled drugs but took nothing stronger than cigarettes, refusing to be scrambled like so many of the brothers he saw on stoops, withered under the white glare of prejudice. He, for one, basked in his color, surrounding himself in its powerful magic, slinking from shadow to shadow at night as if a scorpion on task.

  Right now, he leaned against the lamppost at Union and Dryades, snapping flame from the match with his fingernail. The sky held promise: the clouds continuing to pile up although nothing worse than a scattered shower was predicted. Unseasonably hot, yes, but he could deal with that. The sun would be gone soon enough. He smiled. Winter was his favorite time of the year; he didn’t care much for the spotty, chilling rain and wind, but he loved the sweet shortness of the days, the prolonged nights, the touristy-drunken holiday season. Easier, unsuspecting marks fell like ripe fruit from the trees.

  He didn’t remember how many people he’d killed so far. He generally didn’t hang around to see how things ended up, and there had been the disastrous period several years back when he’d been into drugs for a while. But he’d recognized the danger and moved on accordingly. He also felt if there really was a Devil, or any such being bearing resemblance in deed and action, then this Thing undoubtedly kept him under charm. His continuing freedom could hardly be explained in any other way, regardless how good he thought he was. But he did have a code of honor; he never attacked blacks nor foreigners. Not because whites were symbolic of slavery, atrocities, and other humiliations, but simply from the fact of their smugness and sheer numbers. These very qualities afforded Midnight a lucrative livelihood: the wealth of targets, the many addictions, the transactions that only spiraled skyward as years went by.

  When he hunted he usually brought Gnat and Nut, the first so named because of his build and the second for his mentality. They worshipped him as loyally as two boys from the Ninth Ward could. Never gave him any shit and never bitched about their purses. Midnight was the Boss. Years back he’d had a bad experience fronting and running drugs himself for a creepy white dude named Aldo Sautin, and had thankfully wrestled free with a valuable lesson taught him concerning the risks of business. He’d learned other things too, but he tried to distance himself from those memories. Luckily, the sonofabitch was long dead, forgotten by most. Midnight didn’t forget. Now if drugs were to be sold, he did it alone.

  He checked his watch and spit on the pavement. Fuckin Speed, fuckin slimeball, he thought acidly. The fucker was horrible to look upon, no more than six teeth left in his rotten head; he was worse to smell. To make things worse, he ran some of the worst-looking pussy in the French Quarter. Heroin and crack addicts for the most part, stinking of AIDS and hepatitis, but somehow the skinny, junky pimp always seemed to have money and at least one or two of the monsters he called girls close by. The world ran on every kind of broken machinery, there was no doubt of that.

  Speed had no more than a handful of cards left. The Horse had wrecked everything; he had a crazy, scatter-brained visage that disconcerted and kept most people away and that was fine as far as Midnight was concerned. The junkies’ pitted arms bore the history of the needle, and his ragged fingers were a testament of approaching death and lifelong squalor. All in all, a good customer, steady. Always waiting and wanting, and always with cash. The city contained so many of these sick fuckers.

  As Midnight made his way over to the Cathedral for the drop, he catalogued the previous week, filing the things he’d done away in particular places. He didn’t like to forget de
tails. When you got old, if you got old, they were the only things that stayed around, he’d heard. Well, he planned on getting very old. File one: the young couple several days back. A good score, and that had been the only thing (in retrospect) that allowed them to walk the planet today. California tourists lucky to be sent home with their own Deep South story. File two: the old lady; a weak punch to the face had been enough. He still remembered what she’d looked like lying unconscious. Hadn’t had shit.

  He never read newspapers because he didn’t want to know how things turned out. It made him feel more ghostly if he didn’t know, if he simply let his imagination loose. Of course there were exceptions, like the chick he sold to last night. She hadn’t fit the picture. A very nervous type, a novice. So why start with the Hard Stuff? Or how about the old man in the alley. They’d fucked him up plenty good (Midnight recalled the thrill of the knife sliding home), but the old bastard had never cried for mercy. Even there on the very edge of his life…

  Midnight rounded the corner, immediately spying the familiar slouching form crammed into one of the alcoves feeding from the church to Pirate’s Alley. The cockroach never looked up until you were right on top of him, and even then you couldn’t be sure he really saw you. Brain-dead muthafucka, Midnight reminded himself as he walked over to the figure under the ratty, straw-brimmed hat. He’d savor the day he pulled the plug on this fucker.

  Chapter 48

  Thomas had just left the Wal-Mart near Elysian Fields. He had bought materials for an in-ground aquarium-system pond complete with pump and several boxes of faux granite, and he knew he’d spend the majority of the next couple of days digging, pouring, and planting. He really didn’t mind; he liked working with his hands. The thought of donning a business suit and stepping up to the plate at his father’s firm filled him with spooky trepidation. He feared paperwork would be a slow crucifixion, a long string of excruciating torture, but that seemed to be where his life was heading. The dam was crumbling but until it gave way completely he would keep refortifying. When the inevitable came, of course, he would answer because the smell of money was undeniably sweet. He’d just have to string the old man along…

  Then, without warning, Elizabeth’s number had exploded in his head; a brilliant flash of light; a sudden stroke of lightning warning of an approaching storm. He slowed at the intersection, whipping between two cars amid a rain of horns into a Texaco station across the street. Two of the three phones hung unattended and he got out of his vehicle shocked by the urgency of his feeling. He’d been trying to forget about the girl ever since he’d spoken with her mother. What a goddamn battle-ax. And that shit about the hospital? What the fuck was that? He really didn’t know anything about her and that had kept him up later than usual several nights lately, he had to admit. She’d told him there was no need to pull out, but still there was a worry that refused to sink. More than once he’d feared his dick had plowed trouble.

  He dropped the quarter into the slot and typed out the digits rapidly. He stood, sweating, expecting to hear the monotonous, familiar ring or her mother’s exasperated tone. What he got was neither.

  “Hello?” The low, sweetly-textured voice was instantly recognizable. Suddenly his tongue corkscrewed into a knot. How the hell could he have thought that was her before? Then it came again, “Hello?”

  He coughed and cleared his throat, his tongue finally coming unwrapped. “Elizabeth,” he tried.

  “Yes…who is this?”

  “It’s Thomas, the guy from the party…” He wished he didn’t sound like this. He switched the phone to his other ear, trying for anything. Luck.

  A prolonged silence followed and then Elizabeth said, “Of course, Thomas. You didn’t think I forgot you?” The sun was unbearable and he felt sweat running down the cleft of his back. He wiped a hand across his forehead, then down his cheeks.

  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you since…I don’t know. I believe I talked to your mother a few days back and she told me you were at the hospital. That was it. I thought about stopping by, but I didn’t know if you’d be home. And I didn’t think your mother’d much like that.” He slammed the brakes on his rambling, fearing every second that passed she’d hang up the phone.

  “Don’t worry about the hospital, Thomas. It’s got nothing to do with you.” Her voice was so delicate Thomas had to press the receiver tightly to his head to hear, jabbing his forefinger into his other ear to stave off the noise of passing traffic shooting up and down the road. “I like to see you,” he thought he heard, miraculously.

  “Now?” he asked.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. Can you come?”

  “You’re sure it’s all right?”

  “Yes, I am. Come on over.” And then, perhaps more as nerve-soother than anything else, Elizabeth added, “There’s nobody here but me.”

  “I’ll be right there,” he said.

  Chapter 49

  Nora was sitting, again, miserably in St. Paul’s. She occupied a tiny space in the last pew and ruminated in seclusion on things that were proving consistently beyond her. Part of it was Elizabeth, another part Billy, but another, more vicious part was herself: her life, her accomplishments, her beliefs. There was a growing ache in her old bones and it was nothing physical; she would not be let off the hook that easily she feared. It seemed the harder she prayed, the more revelations she gradually received, like a cataract slowly dissolving under the laser, lending her inner eye startling, vivid clarity. She became more aware of her hypocritical tendencies as each day passed. The storms these revelations brought pitched and raged in her mind and she became increasingly helpless to shrug them off, to dismiss them as ridiculous. Things long in the darkness, squelched down as to be practically invisible, now stood out tenaciously. They pitched and railed, breeding all sorts and manner of perceptions. She thought herself too old to learn, but was finding out different.

  It had begun with Elizabeth’s illness. Cautiously at first, just like her own timid footsteps outside the house that had become a veritable fortress for her over the years since Phillip passed, she began leaving. Her husband and children had ventured forth into the unholy Outside while for years she had contentedly (or so she had believed) shored up her own convictions, reveled in her own fixed assumptions of what was right and proper. Her views had always been very rigid, she knew, as inflexible as the God from the Old Testament. She principled herself as she believed the ancient prophets had, subjecting herself to all manner of private subservience in the belief of furthering God’s glory. She had taken to heart the story of the seer perched atop his high platform for years, cut off from the world and its many comforts in hopes of seeking the Hand of God. There were also many other tales: Job, Moses, the repentant criminals who shared Christ’s agony. But now she wondered to what avail had she used these lessons? Strange new thoughts plagued her.

  A voice asked (and was it the voice of God finally?) What have you done? What good have your actions brought? With this multitude of rules what kingdom have you served? Sitting there quietly with the contingent of stained-glass saints and apostles looking on, she questioned her intent. She’d always believed her attitude had been carved from religious fervor, even though now (looking back) she questioned this, since she’d never been active or vocally strident in any congregation. None except her family had ever borne the whip of her philosophy. Her sternness had always been a mainstay with them, but never truly revealed for what she had presumed it to be. Now, frightfully, perhaps it had never been truly religious at all. Perhaps (and she shuddered in the empty church) it had only been a hardened smugness that had grown on her personality like a malignant growth, carefully tended and nurtured over the years with all the care of a devoted gardener. Perhaps it had only been used as both ammunition and backdrop in a perceived religious tapestry that she’d used to hide everything else behind. She trembled from this developing thought, this new malignancy that refused to go away.

  She no longer felt comfortable in St
. Paul’s. The stained-glass stares seemed sad now as they peered across the distance, fixing on her in her relegated spot. Before Elizabeth’s illness she’d not been in any church for over twenty-five years, preferring instead the sanctity of her home as sole tabernacle. She’d been safe in its privacy, the isolation it afforded. Had it been out of belief or conviction that she hid away, or had she offered up these feeble excuses to armor her cowardice? By the time Phillip died they’d hardly spoken two words to one another for weeks on end and she’d felt unwarranted contempt for him continually, for no pinpointed reason. Then there were the kids; she hardly knew them. One was gone completely and the other fading. And then, of course, the worst thought of all: Had she ever really known herself? Her convictions now appeared loose and slippery. She felt as if she’d run blindly, headlong, to retrieve some vital something only to stand agape wondering what that thing was and how to get back where she’d started before her strength ran out.

  And now, to her, it seemed she’d traded one isolation for another. How many hours had she spent alone in St. Paul’s lately, praying for souls, situations? She didn’t dare guess. Even so, after these many hours her own soul felt merely unresponsive, and it was frightening. Not to mention the fact that her conscious was infringing too. Here she was fretting and praying at a safe distance while Elizabeth bided alone. Nora shuddered. Did death hold such terror for her that she unconsciously forced herself from her flesh and blood out of irrational fear for herself?

  St. Paul’s pressed closer. A seemingly alien and remorseless finger pointed accusingly at her soul. She squirmed in the pew, the collar of her shirt constricting her breath.

  Then, the old-standard defense mechanism grumbled into gear, powered by the iron will that had ruled her for years. Even amid this shower of disturbance, even among this brilliantly truthful glimpse of insight, her fortifications still proved nigh impregnable. She dabbed at her forehead, reminding herself to get thoughts moving through her head: Didn’t leaving the house itself and venturing into alien territory bespeak a strong and unyielding love for her daughter? Surely these disturbing images were nothing more than haunting falsehoods set loose by the Tempter even here in the House of God. She’d always been good woman; how was a stern will and righteous character wrong? And if she wasn’t perfect at times, well, didn’t that only go to prove her humanity as God had chosen to give?