Not Far From Golgotha Read online

  Ebenezer held up his hand as if requesting this quiet a moment too late. Even though a grimace tightened his face his voice was strong and reassuring. “Let’s not bullshit ourselves here, Billy. You leavin didn’t have a goddamn thing ta do with me gettin mugged. Hell, if you’da stayed we’d prob’bly both be laid up here, or worse. Don’t kid ya’self, kid. Ya ain’t responsible for what happens ta me. I don’t need people holdin my hand. Never have and if I start now they can lay me six feet under, cause I don’t like the idea. That’s my bar, Billy. Been goin there way before ya was born, and as soon as I can get outta here I’ll be headin back.” He wagged a finger in Billy’s direction. “Let’s not forget somethin, son. I’m just the guy who tells a story or two, I didn’t hire ya on as a goddamn bodyguard!”

  “I know, I know,” Billy sputtered. “But I just feel like a shouldn’t’ve cut outta there like I did. It was an asshole thing to do…”

  And Ebenezer shook the hand back and forth to stop the drivel. “No, no, no! I mean it! We’re friends, and friends don’t owe!” He stopped to catch his breath and get ahead of the pain in his chest. “Ya got me son?”

  Although Billy’s eyes were heavy he managed a thin smile. “Yeah…okay…” he affirmed.

  “You’re goddamn right!”

  Billy closed his eyes for a moment and then snapped them open suddenly. It appeared he was close to voicing something that didn’t need to be said, and Ebenezer jumped in to stop any untimely confession. “Let’s just get it straight for once and all, Billy. Ain’t nothin ya coulda done woulda changed anythin. Here I am, alive. No sweat. Been better but I coulda sure as hell been worse. What’s done is done,” and in so saying he felt a mild satisfaction, seeing the hint of relief in Billy’s stare. And ten minutes later, after a little more talk, Billy did reach over to clasp Ebenezer’s hand in his own before he excused himself to the ceiling tiles down the hall.

  Chapter 29

  Billy had his dinner alone that night, in the half darkness of his apartment. Comedy Central aired a several hour string of Saturday Night Live reruns, but even that had tired him a short time ago. There were some casts he liked and some he couldn’t stand. He’d switched over to a black-and-white movie, turning down the volume until only a dim electronic wheeze issued from the tinny speakers, he all the while sitting languidly at the card table which served as his dining room. The Mexican T.V. dinner had been everything the bargain price suggested: horrible. He wondered how the contents in the tray could so completely and quickly transform itself into something a dog wouldn’t piss on. Freshly removed from the microwave, steam piping away from the congealing sauces and suspicious desserts, the aroma was at least vaguely palatable. However, once finished and left to sit and cool for several careless minutes, the picked-through remains hardly seemed fit for the garbage. Much less dinner. Hard to believe he still ate this shit.

  Expectations always seem to exceed realities, he reminded himself, shoveling the carcass of his dinner into the wastebasket. He then hurried to the bathroom to brush his teeth of the perversion he’d placed into his stomach.

  Shortly, he returned to the combination dining room/den and sat down on the rug in front of the television. He switched back to the reruns and once again tried vainly to embrace their skits, but the cast was truly lame (Dana Carvey being the only redemption, but unfortunately with his eye to the door), before losing interest again.

  His conversation with Ebenezer kept running through his mind. He was extremely glad the old man was all right because there was something he hadn’t said.

  Billy had seen the men who’d mugged him. He knew that just as clearly as he knew his own reflection in a bathroom mirror. On the way down the street that night, trying to clear his head of the morose images that had forced him from the Ripcord, he’d seen them hunched in the darkness like a burgeoning nest full of venomous wasps. Even though Ebenezer said he wasn’t sure, Billy was. There had been only three.

  Forgetting the T.V., he studied the floor, running his hand roughly through his hair. Leaving it a rumpled mess, he rested his chin in his hands. The muse came down; the memory rushing like a turbid stream.

  --His footsteps clicked rapidly on the sidewalk as he hurried along, his hands thrust deeply into his jeans’ pockets. Head down as he wrestled with the demons the storyteller had uncaged in his mind, cursing Ebenezer silently for bringing on the assault, intentional or not. Then in the darkness hearing the dry rasp of a cigarette lighter, and him halting momentarily like a rabbit in moon-shrouded headlights. He could see the teeth of the largest one, shining hard against the glow sweating off the buildings. A preternatural evil cooked slowly in the darkness, now smiling his way. Two others shadows hunched near their malevolent leader like rats close to a garbage can. And then came the voice behind the teeth: “Hey Bro, you gotta light?” as the flickering flame suddenly disappeared. And the thicker shadows of the approaching assailants began to slide ominously, pulsing from the alley like grease from a drain. Unintentionally, Billy had stepped off the sidewalk and soaked his foot above the rim of his shoe in a ragged pothole. He looked down, shaking it, while the one with the teeth swaggered over slowly, his bald head gleaming in the streetlights. It seemed the thing had been polished and put away to be used only at night, and then only to inspire fear. “How ‘bout a quata, muthafucka,” Teeth said while firing up a joint. The acrid smell touched Billy as he recognized the three were gaining uncomfortable positioning. The bastard on his left had almost rounded off enough of a corner to make a go at him, and with this terrifying revelation Billy broke from his trance. He glanced once more at Teeth, the man’s face curled into an infectious snarl. The hatred it contained spurred Billy to action, and he cut sharply across the steamy street, using what remained of his high school speed to make his getaway. “Yeah Fuck You! Run Muthafucka!” rebounded off the walls and pavement behind him as he steadily pounded out a frantic escape from the predators. But they took no cue to follow; they were after easier game. Game less fleet of foot.—

  The memory flowed in fluid sequence to this point. But then the guilt shut the procession short. Billy raised his head, staring gape-mouthed at the television image that could not overcome nor even water-down the memory. “Oh man,” he whispered, his voice holding a rusty, shaken edge. He’d gotten away from those bastards that night, oh yeah, run a good three or four blocks before slowing down even. And when he’d had to stop, when the air had finally refused to fill his lungs if he didn’t, he’d collapsed on an empty stoop sweating and shivering simultaneously. The whole time, nervously, looking down the street to make sure Hell didn’t follow.

  You made it all right that night, he told himself, the nagging side of the same coin reminding him of the squad car that had driven slowly down the street as he sat there panting on the stoop. He’d only waved unenthusiastically as the black-and-white rolled slowly by, and the policemen inside hadn’t taken the time to stop. Typical junky, they must have figured.

  How the hell was I supposed to know they’d attack Ebenezer? asked one side.

  Why the hell wouldn’t they? chimed in another. But I didn’t know which way he took to get home, and there was the chance someone would drive him.

  So, six-one, half-dozen of the other, huh? That makes it right?

  “Fuck it,” he said, feeling the tide of disdain rising. “Like he said, ‘It’s not my goddamn fault,’” and Billy stood up trying to convince himself of this fact as he bumped his way groggily to the bedroom.

  Chapter 30

  On Tuesday morning, a few minutes before eleven Elizabeth boarded the Esplanade Bus and rode the several blocks to City Park. The bus stop was located right across from a traffic triangle at the entrance to the park where a coated, copper effigy of General P.G.T. Beauregard sat atop an equally stoic, but pigeon-beshitted mount. Passing by in the striped pedestrian crosswalk, she wondered not for the first time why the plaque didn’t bear the ‘P’ of the Civil War hero’s name. And who the hell cares too, huh? she
thought humorously, coming now to the long stretch of sidewalk that lined City Park Blvd. The trees swayed gently, ushering visitors and lovers on to the New Orleans’ Art Museum. Names like St Gaudens, Whistler, Richardson, and La Farge stared down from the stone façade, but Elizabeth was not concerned with the wealth and creativity contained within the stone walls.

  Today, as usual, she veered right at the traffic circle surrounding the museum, crossing the same tiny bridge, making her way past the garish piece of avant garde ‘art’ work. She sought out the small pond, scarcely fifty yards across at its widest but seeming to encompass a much vaster area if one knew where to sit.

  There was the park bench. Situated just far enough away from the water’s edge so as not to disturb the social climate of the many crossed and distinguished varieties of water fowl, and of course, the ever-present city pigeons, some of foul and loathsome stock while others sparkled iridescently. The brilliant red eyes became very eerie at times while the brilliant bloated necks of the amorous, strutting males provided a complimentary, otherworldly contrast. Just to the right of the bench an oak tree that had broken its’ seed at the turn of the last century and even now yearned to meet the next, sprawled its heavy branches effortlessly into the air around it, guarding the dusty ground beneath like a jealous but warm husband, its power demanding peacefulness. Even the sunlight was softer here.

  Elizabeth sat down, ignoring the pin-pricks of discomfort pushing out from the hollow spaces in her body. These fatalistic reminders would be denied power here, she determined. Placing her back-pack on the bench, she unzipped it. It contained only bird seed, and she reached inside, grabbing a handful to fling in a spray toward the smooth water. The shower fell into invisible places in the dust around the old tree while the larger pellets actually made it to the pond’s surface. She sat back, breathing relief into her body. The ducks huddling around the gnarled trunk cracked their sleepy eyes to mild slits, and looked around in wary but drowsy disinterest. One nuzzled her beak deeper into the soft down of her underwing. Another stood upon one leg and simply remained, statuesque.

  A flock of pigeons were camped on the far side of the pond, stiff-necking around like wind-up toys, until (as if according to some secret agenda) they arose as one and came screaming across the glass surface of the pond to the old oak. They ripped into its branches like commandos; a cacophony of sharply flashing winds made momentarily softer by the chorus of mellow coos which quickly followed. Elizabeth always thought it amazing what they brought to the scene; an addition of breathing parts that increased the lividity of their chosen host until it seemed like strange hands or perhaps a face should suddenly materialize at the ends of the many moss-covered branches. Some of the birds immediately dropped to the ground to kick and peck at the tiny grains Elizabeth had sown. And between the spontaneous feeding which the more subdued ducks took well in stride, there was the constant pursuit of sexual desire, the males stuffy and intent while the females made pretended pains not to notice. Or did, oblivious to their company.

  Elizabeth suddenly realized she hadn’t been breathing or moving, although oddly enough, she still felt incredibly alive. Every sensation seemed to soak inside like a sponge. Maybe this is what it is, she wondered and not for the first time. This very moment, the ticket to other worlds. The moment, supported by all agreement in the universe, transported her.

  Her memories gained footholds, ascending through time-encapsulated layers timidly at first, but then finally gaining prominence. Amid the cooing rapport and skittering, clawed feet around the sprawling oak, similarities attained breath and came to life; things forgotten achieved a bittersweet second birth.

  The scratched-at and worn circle around the oak, devoid of all but sparse tufts of grass here and there like hair poking out of an old man’s ear, bore witness to an earlier, seemingly happier time. A time when her father had been living, and Billy and she had been pre-teens living in Baton Rouge. That was before her father had been transferred and thoughts stemming from the house they’d lived in had ever sense possessed a tenderness that seemed almost sacrilegious to deem ‘nostalgic.’ Even though they’d moved to New Orleans when Elizabeth was four she still remembered. Children (she knew this now) had no conceptualization of the meaning of years, just a growing wonder at the possibility of each budding day. She wanted that feeling back, not just in fragments, but whole.

  And there, staring at the foot of the oak, Elizabeth recalled a similar, dusty circle around the friendly oak from that other yard, the one now lost in Time, the one she should be able to fetch back at moments like this. It had been the focal point of their days, her’s and Billy’s. He’d built a tree house in the sturdy, lower branches (denied to go as high as he wished due to their father’s daily inspections), just high enough to give the needed rush of triumph, of surpassing reality somehow. Even at her young age the memories had been formed and embedded, forever concrete.

  Forever.

  The dusty area had come about gradually, slowly succumbing to the constant presence of industrious young feet and rubber tires. What a great race track it’d been; many infamous races now sewn into the awesome tapestry of Time, excitement weaved forever into the willing, aloof fabric. It’d seemed huge. My God, huge.

  Even now, as she sat beneath the shade of the oak so many years removed from her childhood, she remembered the time Billy had attempted to jump fifteen football helmets using only an overturned flower pot, a short length of pine wood, and a flimsy bicycle that always threatened to lose its chain upon the slightest provocation. He’d made fourteen, landing in a dusty, rolling heap of bicycle and boy, lucky enough for him to receive a lone skinned knee and not a broken back. Billy, she thought, always the radical in his youth, now so eerily reduced and quieted in his manhood.

  What had happened to that risk-taking, industrious boy she remembered? How had his happiness and drive been sucked away to the dry husk she saw so seldom now?

  She bit her lip, considering her ignorance of many important, but intangible circumstances. What were ‘answers’ anyway? She thought them, paradoxically, mysterious, perplexing metaphysics. In fact, she doubted she’d ever really heard one that she’d accepted without question since childhood. And just lately it was harder and harder to accept anything.

  Elizabeth momentarily regained her place in reality on the park bench, pulled from her meandering in the Void by the wild exit of the cloud of pigeons. They blurred through the branches, into the open, back across the lake. Something must look tempting over there, she mused, though she could perceive no change. She glanced back to the base of the oak, among the lone fronds where the ducks napped. Some now stirred uneasily, shuffling from foot to foot with open, blinking, dumb eyes. Was it the departure of the pigeons that had caused this disquiet?

  Elizabeth thought not. As far as she could tell, all eyes were on her, an obvious attempt at questioning lurking in their pea eyes. She watched them silently, wondering somehow if they could feel other worlds around themselves also.

  Chapter 31

  Ebenezer brought the bed up into a sitting position. The change began a grinding protest in his shoulder, and he winced, taking his finger off the button. As seemed to be the rule of hospitals, he had on no clothes (the hospital gown was bunched around his waist for modesties’ sake), and where the fresh hospital dressing didn’t cover, a dark black bruise spilled across his chest, almost to the nape of his neck and down close to his nipple. A large bandage covered the gash his collar bone had ripped. When he let the arm rest (as he’d done all day) any new movement caused fresh pain.

  He’d been in the hospital five days, and even though he’d not been cognitive for the first bit, the time since had dragged on endlessly, day to night. The antiseptic room was fast driving him crazy; he wanted to be home where the clutter and jumble was predictable, comforting.

  A soap opera droned on mindlessly above his head; he didn’t know which and didn’t care, finding these inane dramas disconcertingly disturbing. Surely the
sign of a society in decline. Why else would so many waste their own muted existences, preferring instead the watching of fantasy lives as thick with substance as gruel? These endless parades of impossible (or at the very least, highly improbable) scenarios somehow enthralling enough for people to sacrifice their own potentials, convinced their lives, by comparison, were indeed dull. A nation of drones, munching away as their asses thickened and the couches weakened.

  His mood darkened yet. That’s the problem now, he thought. Most people doin just enough ta get by, if that much. At every perplexing crossroad simply peering hard to the horizon, straining to pinpoint the easiest direction. Goals were set over plates of bacon in the morning and satisfied in front of televisions late at night. This was a world where kids were killed over athletic shoes and whatever-the-hell Starter jackets were, a world where old men got mugged on the way home from their favorite pubs for a few scraps of paper they held in their pockets. Christ, what a place.

  “You’re just outta date, ole man,” he said, clearing his throat gently so as not to disturb his shoulder. My God, it was sore. And of course that was not the extent of it; his whole body hurt; ached deep down, even to the roots of his hair.

  He had to get out. A vision of his living room floated up like a prophecy of well-being. Within its familiar embrace he felt sure the healing would truly begin. Even the perpetual dust would serve to nurture and mend his aching wounds.

  The doctor (‘Hebert’? ‘Howell’? Ebenezer really couldn’t recall) had given him a tentative departure date for the weekend, but only after excessive prodding by Ebenezer. Not good. It was only Wednesday and cabin fever was getting strong. He kept hoping Billy would stop in. There was something about him. What a strange young man, he thought for the hundredth time. Ebenezer detected huge tracts of want, goodness, and need hidden somewhere behind the childish eyes, but access to these places was uncertain, perhaps impossible. He’d seen such people before, long ago in the war. Living fortresses, sealed up and as tightly packed as sticks of dynamite. Potentially as volatile. Ebenezer knew from experience these people had a tendency to explode with only the faintest of warnings.