Sacred City

by Theodore C. Van Alst

  “I do, too. Or at least I think I would.”

  I’m not sure you would make it, Grandson.

  “I’d try, anyway.”

  That I’m sure of. He smiles, pats me on the shoulder.

  “I appreciate that,” I say, marveling at his reach through the years.

  We’ve been standing on the bridge, talking in front of the Du Sable plaque. I look around at all the people rushing back and forth, franchise coffee cups gripped in stressed-out hands, beautiful weather ignored, hundreds of eyes never meeting each other. He stares out over the river, his gaze set beyond the lake, covering hundreds of miles and thousands of years. I watch him watching, amazed at all he has seen, has known, will know.

  “Grandfather, can I ask you something.”

  His hands rub at the stone balustrade, taking and imparting warmth at the same time.

  What is it?

  “Do we find out why, what, when we make the journey?”

  Do you believe we do?

  “I do. It’s what we do, right? What else is there to believe? The ancestors’ road is our way.”

  There’s so much more than that. You have to dream bigger.

  “Bigger than the universe?”

  The universe? You shouldn’t think so small, Grandson.

  I wish I could even begin to imagine.

  I put my own hands on the stone, stare deep into the horizon.

  He watches me do it, smiles, and puts his hand on my shoulder.

  I look deeper into the world, my vision stretching into a twisted past, unwinding to a future we both could see, only one of us understanding.

  For now.

  7. THE LAMB

  Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

  —JOHN 15:13

  We smoke too much weed sometimes. Okay, lots of times, but sometimes it’s just too much. We’re sitting around Jimmy1’s crib one day, trying to sneak pieces of the chicken his parents boil up for their spoiled dog Sheba, and listening to tunes. Jimmy1 is an asshole about the music picks, and you better like what he likes or you’re stuck. I can’t stand the Who, but I respect the violin in “Teenage Wasteland” cause Jimmy1’s old man Louie likes it. He’s from Sicily so I chalk it up to the tarantella or some shit, and instead of smacking the needle across the turntable I just say,

  “Turn it down.”

  “Fuck you,” Jimmy1 says.

  Apparently, no one else likes the Who, so they shout him down. He cuts it off.

  “Fuck you then,” he says, puts the album back in its sleeve.

  I say,

  “I wanna tell you guys a story.”

  “Sheeeeit,” they say, high as fuck. “One a them funny ones or a scary one?”

  “This one is both, I think,” I say. “It’s a goooood one,” I draw it out, high my damn self.

  “Alright, Midget,” JD says,

  “tell us a story then motherfucker.”

  “Alright then,” I say.

  I say,

  JD maws his sandwich and scans the living room for anything worth taking. The TV is a console. The VCR is a friggin’ Betamax and not yet a collector’s item. He throws the butt end of the bologna and cheese at the front window (he hates crusts and has trouble finishing anything of any substance, really; his lack of fortitude in that area annoys the shit out of me, but still we do stuff together) and lights a smoke.

  “Teddy. What the fuck are we gonna do now?”

  I stand in the living room, near the room-wide covered radiator laden with plant cuttings sitting in margarine dishes, look out the front window through the fresh mustard on the glass and out onto a grey snow-stained Damen Avenue on the North Side of Chicago. I rack focus back to the bars of light leaking through the partly open blinds. Dust mites slow roll in the sunlight like airborne sea monkeys. You could spend a lot of time watching them if you couldn’t afford the watery ones from the backs of comics.

  “Maybe if you had finished that goddamn sandwich you would’ve seen the moldy crust at the end,” I say. “These people ain’t got shit to steal. Fuck, man. They don’t even have good bread.”

  This jagoff. I forgot he ate a sandwich every time he did a burglary. Ya poor-ass bastard. Some of these white boys are hardcore.

  “We better get moving, I guess,” he says.

  “Son of a bitch. Fine. Go check the bedroom. I’ll hit the medicine cabinet.”

  “You better share,” he says.

  I laugh and flick my ashes on the rug. “You know better than that. Man, I didn’t even want to do this job. Think of it as your tax for making me come with.”

  We’re cutting school. Well, actually, I’m cutting school. JD had finished eighth grade and figured that was plenty. Daytime is of course the best time to rob people who aren’t home, cause they might be at work, and they might actually have some shit worth taking. Those slobs whose front doors leaked out the Price Is Right theme song didn’t have much but time and the slow grind of death by boredom and napping to crappy TV, and even less to steal. They got passed by, unless you were looking for something else entirely different to while away your day, the kind of thing that sometimes made the evening news.

  “I gotta take a shit, man. Let me in there, first,” JD crabs at me.

  I blow a smoke ring and put my cigarette out on the arm of the couch. I watch two fleas, still fucking, jump out of the way and onto my hand. I pinch them up with my thumb and a finger, nice and light, and toss them at JD. One disappears, but the other is crawling on his scabby neck. I hope it’s the pregnant one, and say,

  “Make it quick, jagoff. And don’t touch the medicine cabinet.”

  “Whateeeever,” he laughs, says it like he’s Native. I gotta stop hanging out with him. He’s picking up too much.

  JD vanishes into the bathroom, still laughing. Pretty soon, though, the laughing stops and I can hear that he’s actually taking a shit.

  Good.

  I want at that medicine cabinet.

  When he does burglaries, JD makes sandwiches, takes shits, gets caught. He’s not dumb, he’s just . . . unsmart. And a fucking lollygagger. I’m thinking, hmmm, maybe this could work. It’s late in the day, and I got kind of a bad feeling about this one, like someone could show up at any minute, but If I can get the shit I want, and get out, and he’s still in here and something goes down, well that’s his rep—always dicking around. Not my fault. I don’t want him to get caught so much, but I want me to get caught even less.

  We all make sacrifices.

  I figure JD could part with a bit of his freedom if need be, better him than me and all that. JD had already parted with his dignity pretty early on, probably about the same time his pedostache started coming in, the one he probably still has, the one that just appeared like out of whole cloth or something, like a shroud of dirt. We all thought he drew it on, or glued it on. Weird.

  But it wasn’t the ’stache that robbed him of his dignity. Nah. It was the church.

  St. Margaret Mary’s. So Catholic it got two names. And an Irish monsignor. From Ireland. The real deal. Except his name was Father Thomas. That didn’t sound too Irish to me. Maybe because in my head, Irish was Porky the Pig as a cop in the cartoons and was named O’Hara, like on Batman. But he had the accent and all and anyway, yeah. The church. As a descendant of converted Indians, our family had some strict ideas about who should be running things at church.

  One Sunday we’re in church, me and my brother. We put money in the collection plate, maybe seventy-five cents. I tried to keep it, but my brother wouldn’t let me. It was the same shit when I would go to light a smoke. He was like seven, and I was nine or so. We would walk up Seeley Ave. to get to the church, and on the way there was a picture of a white-white Jesus in the window of this old lady’s apartment. It was the white Jesus with the eyes, the ones that look like a deer’s but really are more like a judgy assistant principal’s. They say, “Oh, I see you. I know what you’re doing,” and other shit like that. They
work on your little brother, who is terrified of the Jesus with his judgy fingers that point up in the air but are really pointing at you and his low-key glowy halo. But me? Not so much. I am, however, terrified of my father, and my brother’s willingness to tell on me. The goodie-goodie little shit. We went to run away once, and as I was walking out the door, blanket, food, spot picked out, he went in to tell my ma goodbye. Jesus.

  So now we’re in the pew, everyone is back from the creepy transmogrification moment, and my judgy little shit brother is watching me choke back the communion wafer that to me is the same thing those flying saucer candies are made out of, the ones with the tiny colored sugar balls in the middle, or those shitty ice-cream cones you get because your ma won’t buy the sugar ones, put both quarters, the two dimes, and a nickel in the collection plate, making them loud, making them count (while cussing out my cheapskate dad who couldn’t even give us a dollar to put in because well he wasn’t there to make the donation so fuck ’em and my boys can take the heat for me), when we see this kid struggling, fidgeting, head whipping around, all sweaty like. Holy crap. It’s Baby JD. What the fuck is he doing in here?

  He doesn’t seem to know either, but in any instance his presence is definitely not agreeing with him. Baby JD ain’t too good looking anyway, but right now he looks terrible. His mom is kinda cussing at him, hits him upside the head a couple of times. Baby JD looks down at the kneeler and shakes his head, sweat dripping out of his greasy black hair.

  His shoulders heave up a little, and then a lot, like he’s trying to push that little man-suit coat right off his back. He looks over at his ma and starts to get out of the pew. She takes a big swing at the side of his head, but he’s too quick for her. He stumbles into the aisle like going back for seconds will save his immortal soul. Not sure why he’d want to do that, though, because if he ended up dying and going to hell, I’m pretty sure he’d finally meet his dad, who I’m definitely sure is in charge down there. He’d probably even give JD a job right off the bat.

  But then Baby JD takes off down the aisle, heading for the big wooden front doors. It’s one of those moments that takes on its own sense of time, slo-mos down to heartbeat speed. Light streams through the stained-glass windows and down onto the red carpet, the light pouring through the lurid stigmata even redder on the floor, yellow and blue jewels of Roman helmets and rugged crosses diffuse on the faces of the parishioners and young JD, Baby JD, jams his hand over his mouth so hard I think he might’ve broken his own nose, and then in the most ungodly beautiful moment JD’s face erupts, shifts in violent fashion, lunges forward as three perfect sprays of sweet white puke one each for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost shoot out from between his fingers and arc down onto six rows of stunned worshippers and he doesn’t miss a beat, laugh-cries his way right on out those doors and into the street.

  Hahaha. Fuckin’ JD.

  And now we do jobs together. Hilarious.

  I knock on the door; make sure he’s not rubbing one out in there (another trademark of his lollygagging ass).

  “C’mon, JD. Let’s fucking go!”

  “Fuck you, Teddy. You check the bedroom!”

  Goddamnit. I knew it. He’s had a hard-on ever since he stole that .357 earlier today. I still don’t know where he got it.

  “I hope you break it off, you little shit!” I yell, and head over to the bedroom.

  It’s a terrible place, really. Bedroom-set furniture. Heavy cheap baroque buccaneer looking shit. Funky smells eep out from under the brown, orange, and cream bedspread. Cheap jewelry sits in cheaper bowls on the mirror-topped dresser. The curtains are drawn back, but the shades are down and it’s way too warm. Fuck.

  Dove-grey light surges around the window frames when a cloud moves out of the sun’s way outside and I don’t have to turn on the light as the room comes a bit brighter. I look around for pill bottles, liquor. Nothing. Toss a couple of drawers in search of weed, quick-stashed cash. Getting shut out here, I yell, “JD, hurry the fuck up!”

  I check the closet. Shoes that haven’t been worn in ten years litter the floor, still hanging on mostly as pairs, but like couples who are kinda tired of each other, people you see where Jimmy’s ma’s a waitress. They’re at the bar together, but they sit apart a little and talk to other people. Clothes made out of fabrics that are probably illegal now crowd the saggy bar that stretches from wall to wall, dust on the shoulders of shirts that’ll be in style twenty years from now. I pull the string for the overhead light, see it’s an old bathtub ball chain hanging from a bare bulb fixture. I follow it up to a socket on a braided cord that drops down from a ceiling that’s higher than I expected.

  I look back above the door and see a spot not covered in cobwebs. There’s something taped to the angled ceiling.

  I grab hold of it and take it down. I pull all this tape off. It’s a little .32 magnum, the one where the grips are the biggest part of the gun. It’s not dusty or anything, but I blow on it anyway, can smell the propellant. I stuff it in the waistband of my baggies, under this Bad Company T-shirt, the one with the rainbow glitter weed leaf in the middle. I could sell this piece. Or use it. Nice grab.

  The rest of the closet is a fucking bust. Photo books that might get pulled out some drunken night, the old man trying to get his tired wife in the sack—“Remember when I looked like this?!”—and hoping she won’t remember what he looks like now, how his belly sags like her interest in hearing him bitch about work, but maybe they could fuck this one time at the kitchen table, and eat leftover pizza after, and pass out naked, on top of the sheets, dreaming of better days, or the way things used to be, like when they first met.

  I find his tame-ass porno mags, or maybe they’re hers. Or both. People are into all kinds of shit nowadays. Whatever. There’s a few more photo albums. I decide these folks need a vacation. Jesus Christ. Looks like the only place they ever go is to her ma’s house, which, near as I can tell, is on a part of the South Side that never gets any sun, like Bridgeport. I’m kinda glad I’m taking the gun because I’m pretty sure it’s just a matter of time before this guy shoots himself.

  I’m tempted to light the clothes and whole house on fire, do these people a solid, burn out their shitty memories and make them get some new ones, make them make some new ones, remember life is short and that’s why it’s so precious, but I’m not feeling particularly generous, or helpful, and besides, their taste in furniture sucks, and I’m pretty sure they’d just replace it with the same crap. I mean for real; the guy has short-sleeved dress shirts and sansabelt pants. C’mon.

  I’m getting a little sweaty here in this tiny shitbox, and I back out of the closet and shut the door, a quick flash of the sad couple behind my eyes along with all the bright future denied to them because I didn’t feel like burning down their accumulated failures. Man, I’m a lazy prick.

  Well that’s about it for this room. One last place to check.

  Under the bed. I yank up the edge of the sheet and there’s a chick’s face inches from mine. Big brown eyes bug out, the whites shot through with burst capillaries. Mouth shut tight. Looking right back at me.

  Fuck.

  I jump back and feel my head clock on something hard, metal.

  It’s that .357 in JD’s hand.

  “Something under there, Teddy?” he throws out through clenched teeth.

  Motherfucker.

  “You need to calm down, JD,” I say.

  “I don’t need to do jack shit, Teddy.”

  He’s right about that. But I say anyway, “Man, just tell me what happened. Maybe we can figure this out.”

  “Nah. Fuck that. He wasn’t supposed to be home. I came by this morning, when everyone should’ve been out of the house, off to work and school and shit. But here he was.”

  “So what happened, man?” (He? I think.)

  “I ain’t telling you shit, man,” JD says.

  I needed to know, cause when I came through here a few hours ago, there wasn’t anybody home, at least
no one that I knew of. I had broken in through the old coal door off the pantry on the back porch and immediately went through the medicine cabinet in the rear bathroom. Snagged two bottles of syrup and a junky old pill bottle with six Quaaludes in it. There was probably more here, but since I got a little excited and chugged a bottle of that syrup on the spot and popped one of the ’ludes, and I had already taken two Darvocets earlier (start the day right with a healthy breakfast and all that shit) I couldn’t really remember when I woke up down in the basement of this old building if I finished tossing the place. Or what I did after that syrup kicked in. Which is why I was back here, JD in tow. Fuck. Was she already under the bed then? Sonofabitch.

  “JD. Who is that, man?”

  “Who?”

  “The chick under the bed.”

  “What chick under the bed?”

  “There’s a chick under the bed, man.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “There is. I’m telling you, JD.”

  “There might be a dude under the bed, but there ain’t no chick, that’s for sure.”

  “See for yourself,” I say.

  I slow back out of the way, crouching low and keeping my hands out at my sides. JD kind of points the gun my way, bends down to look under the bed

  and her hands shoot out, grab up handfuls of that greasy black hair, and drag his face to hers. He squeezes off a shot that explodes a dresser drawer and digs deep somewhere in the wall behind it just as he drops the gun. I’m knocked off balance by both the loudness of the magnum in this small, close room, and the holyfuck strength of the girl under the bed, the one who’s looking up at me now, the last bit of JD’s nose stuck just inside her wet wet mouth, the one with the clacking teeth and the quick licking tongue.

  What the fuck.

  JD’s not making any sounds at all, and I can smell piss, then shit. I see the pistol way too close to her, and right at the ah fuck moment, I remember the .32 in my jock. I grab at the automatic and think I gotta get the hell outta here. The chick’s not really moving, just click-clacking them teeth, chewing up that last bit of JD’s face, and staring at me. She’s kind of pretty, and I have a thing for crooked teeth, but I slide the gun up real slow and put a lucky shot right in the middle of her forehead. The bone folds in on itself, leaks some of its contents out the back into the folds of the dusty comforter, and her brown eyes dim, the whites filling a deep red. She rests there on the floor, partway out from under the bed, what’s left of her face just visible behind the ruins of JD’s, one of her hands stretched out, a bloody hank of JD’s hair still attached to a chunk of his scalp entwined in her slim white fingers. Dead as a fucking doornail for the last time.