Pilate's Cross

by J Alexander Greenwood

  Morgan Scovill had simply shaken his head and said, “Oh, but we do have secrets, Grif…and be glad we do.”

  “Crazy sum’bitch,” was all Sheriff Scovill had allowed Grif beyond the press accounts. After his firsthand observation of Bernard’s handiwork on the heads of Keillor and Kennedy, Grif had to agree. Even with Martin’s artistry with mortician’s wax and makeup, closed caskets were the order of the day for both funerals. In his twenty-two years growing up in the family business, Griffin Nathaniel had seen his share of dead bodies—none worse than those mangled by combines or car wrecks. However, in his opinion, there was something far more gruesome about a bullet hole in the face and a blown-out skull.

  “Griffin?” Martin Nathaniel called to his son from the stairs. “Son, you down there?”

  “Yes, Dad,” Grif said, waving at the smoke in the air.

  Martin descended the stairs, looking paler than usual. Admittedly, the man could have walked right out of Central Casting to play the part of a mortuary director even on his best day, but on this day, he looked flushed, perhaps even ill. His thin fingers nervously smoothed his black frock. “Where’s Dr. Bernard?” he said in the way they always referred to the deceased, regardless of whether they were on an exam table or in a jar.

  “Right here,” Grif said, glancing down at the open cylinder before him.

  “Oh good.”

  “Dad, you okay?” Grif said, unused to seeing his father’s studied reserve shaken and bothered by the man’s profuse and uncharacteristic perspiration.

  “Yeah. Just came down the stairs a little too fast, I suppose,” he said, his face morphing into the mask of disengaged kindness that he usually saved for the customers. “Do me a favor, son. Uh, I need you to go to the bank and deposit this check from the Harrisons. I have a feeling we shouldn’t hold on to it for too long.”

  Grif thought it an unusual request, as the Harrisons had been a local farm family in the area since the days before Moses, and they’d always paid their bills. “Uh, sure, Dad,” Grif said, pulling his jacket on and carefully nudging the Life magazine under the desk with his foot. He took the check from his father’s bony hand.

  “Thank ya, son. I’ll uh…well, I’m gonna seal up Dr. Bernard.” “His wife gonna claim him anytime soon?” Grif asked, halfway up the stairs.

  “No,” Martin said without turning away from the open cylinder. “Nope, I don’t think so. We’ll hang on to him a while in case she changes her mind. Now please be on your way.”

  Grif hurried up the stairs to find his overcoat for the chilly trip to the bank.

  Martin’s hand shakily fished into his frock coat. From a buttoned interior pocket, he retrieved a small brown ledger, held together with a fat rubber band. He fingered the rubber band a moment and looked at the crematory oven on the other side of the room. It had been fired up early yesterday for Dr. Bernard and was still quite warm. Martin took a step toward the crematory until he was stopped by Grif’s shout from upstairs.

  “Dad! The mayor’s here and wants to see you. He says it’s urgent.”

  Martin started, and the shaking in his hands worsened. The ledger suddenly seemed as hot as a coal from the oven. He hurriedly dropped it in the cylinder of Brady Bernard’s ashes, sending a plume of dusty remains into the air. He then sealed the package with packing tape. “I’ll be right up,” his voice quavered.

  The cylinder of ashes was still warm to the touch as he carried them to a small closet in the basement. He felt in the dark for the light chain and pulled it. Martin slid Dr. Brady Bernard’s ashes onto the shelf next to rolls of toilet paper and some dusty plastic flowers. He pulled the chain again to turn out the naked light bulb and closed the door. As he climbed the stairs to the parlor, the unmistakable voice of Mayor Ollie Olafson greeted him.

  “Marty, we need to talk.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE NEW MILLENNIUM

  John Pilate’s face loomed in the bathroom mirror, illuminated by a single sickening scented candle flickering on the toilet tank.

  The three a.m. antidepressant withdrawal-induced orbit around the apartment had ravaged his features.

  He stared in the mirror at his own dark eyes. The sleepless house, converted to apartments, creaked under his feet as Pilate shifted his weight from side to side, testing his profile in the glass. His brushed aside a lock of brown hair that hung over one eye. Man, I need a haircut. And a shave. And a damn job.

  Drips from the tap caressed the porcelain, wearing it down at a millennial pace. He twisted the tap hard to stop it.

  “Goddamn,” he said, blowing out the candle. His eyes adjusted as he stumbled down the hallway to go back to bed. His side of the iron-framed full-size was rumpled; hers was almost smooth. The empty bed bathed in the moonlight only served to remind Pilate of his wife’s absence. He couldn’t help but recall the sight of her bare, taut body in the moonlit lake the first time they’d made love. Memories of her came and went often; this was one of the “went“ periods, when Pilate tried fooling himself into believing she was coming back. “Samantha,” he said aloud, his voice chalky, startling even his own ears.

  He carefully slid back into bed, careful not to disturb her side. He pretended to sleep in hopes that the sandman would be drawn to him, if only for a few minutes, but he soon gave up on his quest for rest. Pilate leaned his head on his hand, his eyes drowsing, the sun almost up. His temples throbbed, and his waking dreams started at the beginning like a skipping record.

  He had begged her. “Please! We can fix this…I can live with…” He didn’t know what he was saying. He saw something in her eyes he could not comprehend.

  She touched his cheek with her thin, mocha-colored fingers and mouthed, “Goodbye, John.”

  He closed his eyes as if the sunlight was an insult.

  Pilate brewed coffee. Books were piled on the floor; an ashtray full of sunflower seed shells lay partially dumped out on the carpet; and a stack of compact disks littered the floor in front of the entertainment center. Dishes in the sink were rinsed but not really clean. The refrigerator chilled food that held no enticement. He replayed the answering machine message he’d received yesterday, only to once again hear the joyless, robotic voice of a joyless, robotic bill collector who insisted on mispronouncing his last name.

  It’s Pilate, asshole—like the Roman governor, not the damned workout. Ever read the Bible? Pilate thought as he thumbed through his mail, which mostly consisted of Sam’s credit card bills that she had foisted upon him. He stacked them on the dining room table, assuming they’d make a lovely bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day. Colin Hay’s “No Sign of Yesterday“ blared from the stereo.

  He went to the bathroom, stripped, and stood under the showerhead. Hot, steamy water drilled into his sandy brown head, rolling down his soft but flat belly, over his waist, and down his thighs. Water fled to the end of his penis and drained off like rain from a broken gutter. He rubbed soap between his fingers and thought of a tropical island with brown, pleasing women, tall drinks with funny names, and his feet buried in sand up to the ankle.

  The water turned tepid, then cool. As the chill overtook him, he thought of the past few weeks, the finality of Samantha’s words and the cancer scare that had led to the removal of his tonsils. These damn ten-year-olds getting excited about devouring all the Jell-O they can eat in the hospital. God, my throat still hurts. Pilate crouched by the drain until the shower water turned intolerably cold.

  He stepped out and toweled off. Steam obscured his image in the mirror. He examined his razor: bristles and excess shaving cream clotted the blades like a scab. Pilate dropped the cartridge in the trash and found a fresh one in a drawer, which was still filled with Samantha’s feminine totems: makeup, tampons, Midol, and that sinister-looking contraption that she’d bravely used to curled her eyelashes.

  He jerked the drawer out of the cabinet and threw it into the small trashcan in the corner of the bathroom. The drawer left a satisfying gouge in the wall it hit before landin
g in the basket, and pills and eyeliner scattered about.

  “Damn it!“ he shouted. His throat instantly felt as if he had gargled glass. Three weeks after the surgery, Pilate’s throat still burned. Along with his tonsils, he had shed eighteen pounds.

  He was also dead broke and very nearly out on his ass. Pilate had sheepishly borrowed a little from his fixed-income parents to pay the bills while he was in hospital, but that money was perilously close to gone; soon, he would have to vacate the apartment he had shared with Samantha. Where he would go remained undecided. However, for another five days, he had the place to himself.

  Pilate noticed the blink of his answering machine light; someone had called while he was in the shower and left a message. He pushed the play button, bracing himself for the bored authority in the voice of yet another disgruntled bill collector.

  “Mr. Pilate, this is Dr. Peter Trevathan at Cross College,” a voice fairly crusty with cantankerousness purred. “We’d like you to come up…to work with us. We feel you will be an excellent addition to our faculty.”

  The offer was to start as an instructor in speech and creative writing at the small Midwestern land-grant college. Pilate had applied online in the spur of the moment when he’d seen the wanted ad in a public library copy of the Chronicle of Higher Education. After all, he had to submit a few applications a week to keep his unemployment checks coming, pitiful as they were. On a lark, he’d applied to the college, which was 500 miles away, with no real anticipation of an interview, much less an offer.

  The previous week, he’d croaked through two phone interviews, shared a portfolio of old clips, and apparently caught the college in the middle of a dearth of instructors. Reading between the lines of what Trevathan had told him, it seemed a fairly new president at the college had fired, pissed off, or simply alienated enough faculty members that they needed warm bodies to fill the slots for the spring semester.

  Pilate told Trevathan he could be there just after Christmas.

  He didn’t mention his recent surgery.

  “Do you have a cold?” Trevathan asked. “No. It’s just a sore throat,” Pilate said.

  He decided he could crash at his folks’ place for a few weeks before the move, and they were happy to comply. For several days, he busied himself packing boxes for the move north. North to the new job. North away from Samantha…Away.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Cross College sent a small check to help him with moving expenses, but by the time Pilate paid for a U-Haul van, a trailer for his car, and all the other relocation hoopla he had to take care of, he had a meager $145 left; worse, it was going to be a long time until his first payday in February.

  His mother hugged him tight; his father tried to put a carefully folded $100 bill in his pocket. Pilate thanked his father and slipped the money in his mother’s jacket pocket without either noticing. They’d been on a fixed income for a year, ever since a factory floor accident had taken his dad out of the workforce. A small settlement and his father’s shrewd investment of his pension funds had kept them from eating cat food, but Pilate wasn’t going to ask for any more help. He wanted—needed—to make it under his own steam, if only to prove to himself that he could. If he ended up having to eat cat food, at least it would be cat food that he paid for himself.

  “Johnny, have you been taking your pills?” His mother’s face was all trepidation and concern for her second son, as mother’s faces tend to be. “You know you need to stay on them.”

  Pilate kissed her cheek. “Yes, Mom, I have,” he lied. He had not been able to afford his antidepressants for several weeks, and with no insurance and income, he had little hope of refilling his prescriptions. He silently promised his mother he would start back on them when his new insurance kicked in.

  His father grasped his hand. Pilate looked into his eyes and knew his dad fervently needed him to succeed, to forget Sam and get on with his life.

  “Forget her, son,” he said, even though Pilate had already gotten the message before he’d even uttered the words. “You deserve to get on with your life and be happy.”

  Pilate nodded, playfully punched his dad’s arm, and climbed into the van.

  The drive took him north through miles of farmland, a flat, uneventful landscape that forced his thoughts and memories to the forefront. Whole miles passed with Pilate entranced in his reverie.

  Rumble bars warned him when he migrated near the road’s edge. He would smoothly pull the steering wheel of the rented truck and trailer to the left to get back in the center of the lane. He glanced over into the passenger seat of the U-Haul, where there sat the small care package of sandwiches, cookies, and sodas that his mother had thoughtfully packed up for him—another thing mothers tend to do.

  Hundreds of miles passed with only the dirge of neoconservative propaganda spewing from the pathetic AM radio. Every hour or so, Pilate would turn it off for some relief from the idiocy, but quickly, the silence would become too enticing to his thoughts, so he had no choice but to return to the amusingly rank hypocrisy and jingoism.

  Hours broke down into minutes, into seconds, into eternities as Pilate swam through the wintry night. Frost bit the windshield as Pilate bit into one of his mother’s deviled ham sandwiches. The pain from swallowing had faded, but he still felt self-conscious about his throat. Nightmares about black, sticky bile leaking from his mouth or the horror of an exposed voice box visited his sleep often.

  He had a guilty pang as he pulled over onto what was euphemistically called a “scenic overlook,” shrugged into his well-worn Hugo Boss black overcoat and stepped into the deserted parking area. He patted his pockets for a half-pack of cigarettes, snatched one with trembling fingers, and poked it into his mouth. Pilate quickly lit it, inhaled, and tried to ignore the psychosomatic panic that cancer cells were waiting for this last puff to bloom in his throat. Neurotic, quick puffs followed, smoke and warm breath visible in the frigid night air. The sound of semi trucks on the highway Dopplered in and out of hearing range. He finished half the cigarette and flicked the rest away as he swallowed gulps of the cold air as if that could somehow neutralize the toxic crap he’d just inhaled.

  Pilate walked around the truck and trailer; making certain his black Grand Am GT was still secure. He climbed into the warm cab of the truck and eased it back onto the interstate.

  Not too long later, he branched off an interstate onto a narrower state highway. Remnants from recent snowfalls lined the roads, and icy, denuded cornfields glowed eerily in the moonlight.

  He crammed three cigarette-taste-killing mints into his mouth and peered into the darkness. It was nearing eleven p.m., and fatigue was setting in. By his calculations, he had at least five more hours to go before he arrived at Cross. The truth was, he felt no real urgency to get there.

  A scandal of neon mounted on a billboard pointed to an Indian casino just five miles off the highway. The sign indicated that there was a hotel there, and Pilate was certain it couldn’t be nearly as depressing as the bile on the radio.

  Even at such a late hour on a weekday, the casino parking lot was jammed with all sizes of pickup trucks and SUVs. The majority of vehicles, however, were the kind of beat-up, throwaway cars American automakers had shat out of their factories in the seventies and eighties.

  Pilate wandered in through the door that was held open by an aged man wearing an ill-fitting white security uniform shirt and a cheap badge. He was equipped with a walkie-talkie.

  The din of slot machines, Muzak, and the chatter of hundreds of gamblers assaulted Pilate’s ears before he ended his walk through a long hallway to the casino floor.

  In the casino, his eyes absorbed the lights of the slots, the gaudy signs, the sequined vests of the waitresses, and the crooked, toothy grins of table dealers, shuffling their decks with ease.

  He smelled the carcinogenic bouquet of a hundred cigarettes being smoked at once. His pulse raced. Pilate had never been much of a gambler, especially since his home state would have nothing to
do with organized, legal gambling. His forays into stacks of chips, showgirls, gout-ridden retirees and massive buffets were limited to Las Vegas. But here, in the middle of nowhere, basking in the glow of neon-splashed icy fields was a place where one could easily pick his or her own pocket.

  Pilate snapped out of his thoughts when he realized he was standing too close behind a table playing $10 Blackjack hands.

  A grizzled man with a roadmap of creases in his tanned, leathery face glared over his shoulder.

  “Sorry,” Pilate said, stepping away. His thoughts leapt to his wallet. I’ve got $145, but I need a warm place to sleep. He checked with the Native American girl at the front desk, who told him they did have vacancies. That was the good news. The bad news was that those rooms started at $115 a night. “I’ll think about it and might be back,” he said.

  And think about it he did. There’s always the road. A few more hours would put me right on the campus. Sure, I’d be early and have to wait a while to get the keys to my apartment in faculty housing, but I could wait it out in the early morning cold, or…

  Pilate wandered around the casino, slipping stray nickels into slots. A waitress with a face like a weather-beaten shingle brought him a vodka Seven. He lit a cigarette and orbited the blackjack tables while he downed the lemony-limey vodka.

  He ultimately eased into a $10 blackjack table between a porcine older lady with a supernaturally red coif and an old man with wisps of white hair sprouting from his ears and collar. Both had small stacks of black, white, and green chips in front of them.

  The dealer welcomed Pilate to the table as he scooped up the losing bets from the other two players.