Pilate stands. He walks to where the beaten man bloodies the stones under him and speaks quietly to him. “Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asks.
“Your knowledge,” Father Costa says mutteringly, “was it brought to you, or did you see for yourself?” His feet cry out for relief, but Father Costa gives them none. He is torn, because this man, Pilate, is to help him achieve his destiny, but in his destiny this man may also save his life. Father Costa can sense the Procurator’s hesitancy.
“How could I see myself?” Pilate asks. “What, am I a Jew?” The question prompts some in the crowd to laugh. “Your people have handed you over this day for me to execute. Have you done the things they say? Are you a rebel? Do you have your own kingdom? Are you planning war? Are you a king?”
“My kingdom,” Costa replies, “is not of this world.” His words are forced, but he knows that he needs to say them. “If my kingdom were here, my own people would have prevented my capture and made themselves known to you. But I am a king of another kind. I came to this world for the purposes of giving living testimony of the truth. Only those who are open to the truth can hear my voice.”
Pilate smiles. “The truth?” he asks. “What is the truth?”
Father Costa is too exhausted to reply.
“The truth is he must die!” the blue-gold Pharisee cries. “Crucify him!” The crowd, seeing that the Sanhedrin wishes for this man to die, begins to echo shouts of the same.
Pilate waves his hands to quiet the crowd. “You brought this man before me in my tribunal,” he says, “but now, see him, and see that I detect no guilt in him. He has done nothing to deserve death.” Pilate looks about the porch to the angry masses who scream their disapproval. “I see you are angered by my decision, people. But what am I to do with this man then?”
“Crucify him!” the wind cries. “Crucify him!”
“Then do so on your own bidding,” Pilate says. He turns to his man-servant, who brings to him a vase and small watering bowl. “This I tell you: my hands did not shed this man’s blood, nor did my eyes see it. Let his blood be upon you and your children.” With those words, Pilate washes his hands.
Monkey Humping Football
“You look like Halle Berry. You ever see Monster’s Ball?” He’s slouched on the sofa. She’s curled in the corner by the radiator, still. She has been watching him smoke her life away since last night, consumed with the contents of the bag that is not hers. He’s vomited twice in the last hour; she once. Luckily the tape is ripped from her mouth, a red rectangle is all that remains.
He looks at her and begins to pull at himself again. She’s seen men play with themselves before in her presence, and she didn’t mind it much (at least they weren’t touching her), but she minds this. She minds Dallas. He continues to do it, ’round the clock. She is hoping he gets so high that he drifts away, and she can try to escape again, get the duct-tape gloves off her hands.
His head rolls on its axis and spins until it finds Baby again. “Oh, Baby,” Dallas slurs. “Baby, why don’t you like me? Why don’t you like me? What’s the matter with you, you fucking whore? Why don’t you love me? Here, crawl over here and suck on this. Crawl over here, suck on me. C’mere and love me, you bitch.” He sits up, and then slumps back again, his hand still in his pants.
She watches him.
He begins to drift away.
She tries to gnaw the duct tape.
Dallas begins to fly. He can see everything from up here, up high over the city. It looks like shit from the sky, too, he decides. He hates everything about it. It’s destroying him. And he figures that, before it destroys him, he’ll have to destroy it first.
He needs to make a bomb. He needs to figure out how. He lands. He’s standing in a field. It’s the old Fisher Body plant. It’s an auto graveyard now. He sees a hole in the middle of the weedy block-sized lot. It’s a hole that leads under the city. He climbs in.
He’s dressed in rags, and he hears the apes above. The apes are marching on the city. He’s Taylor . . . no, not Taylor. He’s that other one, the one in the second movie. He knows this to be true. He knows that he has to get as far underground as possible to escape the apes who are marching on the city. They have guns, he knows. He has no gun now. He looks down and sees only his loin cloth. He thinks Nova is with him, but he can’t see her. It’s dark. But he knows he’s not alone. He sees light. He walks toward it.
He begins to
moving faster and faster and faster
and faster
and faster
and faster
and faster
and faster
faster
faster
faster
fasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfasterfaster
The fire! The heat!
He hears Liz laugh, that gimp-legged bitch laughing at him again. He tries to pull out his dick again, he needs to pull out his dick again to show her what he has, what she’s missing, what she will never get again if he can help it, and he knows he can’t help it, that he’d give it to her in a second if she asked for it, that he’d give it to her the best he knows how, that he’d give it to the little Latino Chico-and-the-Man fuck too, he pauses to think for a second—did he just say that he’d give it to the little Latino Chico-and-the-Man fuck, too?, and he thinks that he must be gay, that he must be queer for the little Latino Chico-and-the-Man fuck, that maybe he wants to fuck him too, and he begins to hate himself, as if he just discovered something about himself, that he’s actually a gay in sheep’s clothing, that he’s a fag beneath the sheets, and thinks that maybe, just maybe, Liz knows this about him, and maybe that’s why she’s laughing, that maybe she’s always suspected that he’s a faggot, and that maybe that’s why he couldn’t get it up for her, that maybe he’d rather try to get it up for him or Brad Pitt or some guy in a Playgirl magazine, someone as limp-dicked as he is at this time, but when he goes to pull his dick out of his pants he can’t find it, so he keeps reaching and realizes that he has no dick, that it’s gone, that maybe it left him, just like Liz left him and Smiley left him and anyone else in his life who mattered left him.
Smiley smiles at him. Smiles all around. “What are you doing?” Smiley asks.
“I’m trying to find my dick,” Dallas says. He looks down. He sees nothing.
“Well, what did you do with it?” Smiley asks. Smiley has a southern accent, as if he is from Athens, Georgia, or somewhere like that.
“I’m not sure,” Dallas says. “It was right here earlier.” He points to his crotch. His crotch looks like a Ken doll’s.
“You mean to say you can’t find your red rocket?” Smiley says.
“My what?”
“Your red rocket!” Smiley says. He stands on his hind legs and points to his penis. “Red rocket!”
Dallas watches in horror as Smiley attempts to mount Liz’s leg. Liz is laughing. She seems to think it’s funny. Dallas feels horror. Dallas wants it to stop. He tries to speak, to yell, but he can’t. He reaches out. He can’t reach them. Smiley is pumping with the fury of a thousand horndogs on Liz’s gimp leg, and Liz continues to laugh and watch TV. But Dallas can’t stop this from happening.
“Red rocket!” Smiley howls. “Red rocket! Red rocket! Hey, Dallas, what would Emily Post do now? What would Emily Post do now?”
Smiley no longer smiles at him. Smiley’s eyes become crazy. They stare at him. They pierce through him and chase him. They are no longer Smiley’s eyes. They are the eyes of the devil. They are Satan’s eyes.
The fire! The heat!
Dallas can feel the heat. He can feel the eyes. He can see Satan. He can see Satan chasing him. He tries to run. He sees Satan following him. There is no escaping Satan’s eyes. They chase him. They chase him. They chase him. They chase him.
He stops. He decides to fight back. This is not Smiley! This is not Smiley at all! It’s Satan! It’s not Smiley who is fucking Liz! I
t’s Satan! It’s Satan! It could never be Smiley! Smiley is his friend! Smiley would never fuck his wife! He needs to fight! He needs to fight! He needs to kill Satan! He needs to stop running and kill Satan! This Satan must die! This Satan must die! Pick up your stick and fight this Satan! This Satan must die!
The Man Who Would Be Crucified
Again he is flogged and beaten until he feels as though he has somehow misplaced his body. He does not feel himself standing, although he knows he is probably standing. He senses Pantherus, the mighty golden lion of a centurion, standing before him as Satan himself, scolding him as a child, saying, “You had your chance. You have destroyed the world because of your ignorance. You have destroyed the world.” He sees that Pantherus holds something in his mighty paws, and he knows, only seconds before he feels it, that a serpentine crown of thorns is fashioned in his derisive honor and bolted atop his head. His eyes close as the blood again runs.
He hears Caiaphas. “That should not read, ‘King of the Jews.’ It should read, ‘Costa the Blasphemer!’ ”
He hears Pantherus. “Take this tree and walk. Walk!”
He hears an older man’s voice. “To death with you! You are no Messiah!”
He falls to one knee and sees the blurred vision of a thin dog snap at his heel. He cannot force it away. He allows it to nip at him.
He hears a swirl of contempt for him, braying at him like a thousand mules. He can feel the contempt against his skin, each lash the lash of the people who want to see him executed this day. He smells the contempt for him, like the foul pungency from the jugular Via Dolorosa on a breezeless afternoon. He can taste the contempt, thick and salty, the blood from his own heart.
He hears his mother. Her voice is as Gabriel’s sweet trumpet. “Let my son free! Release my son!” It is too late for him, he knows, but she doesn’t want to believe it.
He hears the great anguish from the skies that become dark with clouds and angry with thunder.
He can not hear Peter the lap dog, or Philip and Andrew, or saucy boy John, or Nathaniel the Cananaean, or Batholomew the hunchback, or Matthew the Publican, or saucy boy John’s brother James the thunderbolt, or Thomas the frightened rabbit, or the younger James the turtle, or Jesus’ cousin Jude Thaddeus the delicate, or Simon the crazed Zealot. The angels were right. His followers have scattered like sheep in a thunderstorm.
He hears himself cry out as he takes the tree and carries it toward Calvary.
He hears Mary, his love.
Dallas hits Father Costa one last time with the baseball bat. It leaves an imprint on Costa’s forehead.
The bat is stained in dark red that drips slowly, like syrup. Dallas watches it and then throws the bat in the corner. He turns to look at Baby.
“Satan’s dead,” Dallas says. He wipes his red hands on his pantlegs. “He was coming to get us. But now he’s dead.”
“Let me touch him,” Baby asks. “Please, Dallas, please. I’ll do whatever you ask, just let me touch him.”
Dallas shrugs, which almost makes him lose his balance.
<“He’s dead, Baby. He’s dead.”>
He grabs the steak knife off the kitchen counter and slowly begins to reveal Baby’s hands again. Baby is scared, because Dallas’ hands are shaky. But the scene of the dying man before her, the kindly priest, the kindly delusional priest, the delusional priest who thought she was Mary and he was Jesus, takes her away from Dallas’ shaky hands and to the place where she can comfort the battered man. Her hands chapped and free; she looks down to her feet, still duct-taped. She looks up to Dallas. He rolls his eyes. He cuts her feet free. She crawls to where Father Costa squirms, hoping he doesn’t go into convulsions.
“Mary,” Costa says. She reaches to him.
“No,” he says. “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. It’s time for me . . .”
She watches his body give way, then go limp.
Dallas laughs. “Guess what, Baby?” he says. “It’s party time.”
FridayintoSaturday
Here is Wisdom
Allen Park is not Detroit. Dearborn is not Detroit. Southgate is not Detroit. Grosse Pointe is not Detroit. Taylor is not Detroit. Ann Arbor is not Detroit. Bloomfield Hills is not Detroit. These are places that are near Detroit, but they are not Detroit.
Meet someone from Michigan in another town, say Toronto. You say to them, “I’m from Detroit.” They will say, “I’m from Detroit, too.” Ah, you say to yourself—a brother in arms. A fellow veteran of the streets. You say to them, “What part of Detroit are you from?” And they know they are caught. They’ve been parading up and down the streets of Toronto telling anyone who’d listen that they are from Detroit! But they’re not from Detroit! You find out they’re from Grosse Pointe. Or worse—Troy! Someplace that isn’t even close to being Detroit! You are offended, because here is someone that’s away from the war pretending that they’ve been in the war, and they haven’t! They probably have never even been inside the city limits before! But they’re pretending they have been.
They pretend because they want those they encounter in other cities to think they are survivors, to think they’ve been through what real Detroiters have been through, real Detroiters who have really experienced the pain of living in what the national papers love to remind real Detroiters is The Murder Capitol of the World. You know that the pretenders want the people they encounter in other cities, cities like Toronto, to
In reality, you know that living in the city of Detroit is embarrassing, especially if you grew up there. If you grew up there and you are still there, then you believe you have failed. You haven’t achieved the goal, which is to move out to the suburbs. It doesn’t matter what job you have, as long as you no longer live in the city limits. You could be a lawyer, but if you still live in Detroit then other Detroiters who’ve escaped believe something is wrong. “How come he still lives in Detroit if he can afford to live in the suburbs?” they’d ask. And then they’d question your honesty. “He must not really be a lawyer, then,” they would conclude. But, if you live in the suburbs, you could work part-time at Little Caesar’s delivering pizza (they only deliver in the suburbs), and you’ve made it. You’re part of the Big Time. You no longer live in Detroit.
So now, when you save enough money delivering pizzas, you can afford to take a vacation, maybe to Toronto, and when you meet people you can say to them, “I live in Detroit,” and you can impress them with the fact that you’re alive to tell about it.
The Emergency Ax
Ronald Frady decides that the Ford assembly plant meeting place can’t happen—he hears through the scanner channels that there are going to be some busts down that way—so he contacts his Canadians and tells them to meet him at Plan C.
Plan C is the opposite end of the city, on the far side of Southwest Detroit near the steel plants. Frady likes to meet down by the steel plants because there are so many great distractions there—the area near the Rouge River (farther down than Delray, farther down than Zug Island, farther down than Oakland Heights) has docks and cranes and, for those imprisoned by the proximity of the river, hopelessness and desperation and activity.
There are mountains down by the Rouge River. Blue mountains. Blue mountains created by the salt mines. They are beautiful in their own way, and sort of resemble the ones in that beer commercial, white and blue-sparkling (but there ar
e no trees or flowing streams, only the occasional tarps and dirty tires used to hold the tarps down).
Long rust-colored ships, the Great Lakes freighters, slowly intrude through the narrow canal under the shadow of the long-since-abandoned (and weather-worn) Ford Rotunda tower. The ships carefully creep through the passageway, hoping not to be noticed, hoping to be able to dump their loads and continue on without being noticed. One thing in their favor is that they fit into the scenery—rusted and black and vulnerable to the predators around them. Sometimes, when the ships are docked, they’re vandalized in these ports. The horror stories are things of River Rouge legend.
In Nine Kinds of Pain Page 14
