J King - Angel of Death

Keith ascends from the road to the curb. On the concrete, the frost has etched tiny stars. His Converse high-top All-Stars look very red against the wintry ground. He imagines standing there through the next frost and the first snow and wonders how his shoes would look then.

Alone and lonely, that’s how. If I stand here all those days, I’d be alone and lonely for Father. That last one wasn’t too good. He was not much of a father except to his dog. There were plenty of fathers there who got scared, maybe, which helped. But still, one bad father was bad enough. He would have to be replaced by one very, very good, good father. The chimes of St Francis on the hill at the end of the street say it is two o’clock: time for confession. Mass is at six.

Keith doesn’t put his hands in his pockets as he shuffles up the cracked sidewalk. Maybe if he holds them really still they will turn to ice and he can break them off at the wrists and put Father’s hands on in place of his own.

He walks. The round-leafed weeds that worked so hard to push through the sidewalk cracks are now bunched and dry, shaded gray by frost. He can probably kick them out and they will be the shape of manhood, long and with a ridge underneath. They are pushing to get down into the ground – the sky is always trying to burrow into the hard, cold earth.

Someone nods to him as he passes. Keith gestures in a way that looks like he is taking a DVD down from the rack. He wonders which DVD it is. Probably a naked one. He thinks of The Manhood of Eddy’s Father. That was a good one. For a while he walks with the scenes playing in skin-colored neon across his mind. All the store windows have bright fantasies: lights, snowflakes, pictures, statues, TVs, smiling men, pointed toes, metal rods up into the back of the boy’s new pants, deer with targets on their sides, guns with those hard long ridges beneath them, men in white furs that cover their long chastities, a man who crouches and turns a screwdriver in a wall box, a little train that puffs real gray smoke and always swerves away from the dark, round tunnel through the cotton mountain, silvery sausages made out of the dirty parts, amber bottles wearing little red collars around their necks, elves working hard and fast beneath Santa – what a wonderful world. He stands on the corner and waits for the light to change. It goes to yellow, and a black sedan roars up and dashes through the red. Someone shouts out of the window, “Fuck you!”

That is what the rum man had said. What a wonderful world.

Keith crosses the street and takes the sidewalk toward St Francis. The church is massive. It is built of yellow brick. The cornerstone says A.D. 1953, but it looks older than America. He wonders if there is a cat in the cornerstone. They do that to give a building good luck. It is bad luck for a cat. It is not a good cat they use. It is an alley cat that isn’t fixed and has one eye and half a paw on one foot.

Maybe the luck isn’t in the cat. Maybe it’s just in the fun of killing it.

The windows are tall and colorful and shaped like manhood. The steeple has a wiry cross on top like an unbent coat hanger. It is a bigger church than the Nazarenes have, and higher. It needs lightning rods so that when God blasts out of the sky, He doesn’t burn it all up. It is bigger than the Nazarene church but it is still really small under God and it belongs to God and He can do whatever He wants to it.

There are three big red doors on the front, for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Keith McFarland wants to go through the big Father door, but it is locked, and the Holy Spirit door is, too. The Son door is just right, and he goes in.

It is dark and damp and still cool inside. There is a smooth floor of stone like in a cave, and coats hang on one wall. He hangs his with the others. The big part of the cave is up ahead. It opens up so the colored windows are standing tall and shining on both sides. There are two men sitting in fur coats in the dark pews, their heads down like they’re tired. The Father is in that cabinet with the curtain, behind a little square with a screen like he is about to do a puppet show.

Keith McFarland walks there.

“Hey, get in line,” says a man with big yellow hair – no, a woman. She is one of the tired people in the pews. The other one, who also has breasts, looks up, too. Keith looks from the one man to the other and makes a dotted line in his head. He walks to the end of his dotted line and sits in the pew there. No sooner has he sat than a man comes out of a red curtain and walks slowly toward the hanging coats.

“Hey, g-get in line,” Keith shouts to him. He keeps walking. He is tired, too. He must have been working very hard before he got here.

The man with the big yellow hair is gone, but Keith sees her high heels under the curtain. He listens hard in the buzzing quiet and hears everything. This man talks like a little boy: “That hurts, Father. No, not there. That hurts. That hurts. Don’t.”

There is one more man. She goes. Then it is Keith McFarland’s turn. He feels his pistol and his hunting knife.

He goes past the curtain into the cupboard and stands in there, waiting for something to happen. His gun is ready in his pocket.

“Kneel, my son,” says the voice through the screen.

“Begin when you are ready.”

Keith McFarland kneels on the little velvet cushion on the little wooden ridge. He still has his hand on his pistol.

“What troubles you, my son?” the voice says.

“N-nothing, m-my F-f-father.”

“Have you any sins to confess?”

“I-is killing a s-sin, my F-f-father?”

“Killing what? An animal? A person?”

“A p-person.”

“Oh, yes, my son, that is a very serious sin – unless it was during a war. Did you kill this person during a war?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, but it troubles you, still. Are you Catholic, my son?”

“Are you C-Catholic, my F-father?”

“Yes.”

“I am C-Catholic, too, my F-father.”

“Have you confessed about this killing before?”

“Y-yes.”

“Ah, but it still bothers you. Have you spoken to Our Lady of Mercies about it?”

“I d-don’t kn-know.”

“Are you C-Catholic, my son?”

“I don’t kn-know, my F-father.”

“What is troubling you? Speak freely. You have no need to fear.”

“I don’t l-like the w-way you touch m-me.”

There comes a pause. “What do you mean, my son?”

“Th-this way.”

“My son, this is a holy place. You must not do such things.”

“It is when you touch me here, and put your hands in here, my Father.”

There comes another pause. The Father is speaking, but Keith hears another father, a father long dead and gone. “Oh, so you don’t like that? You don’t want me doing this? Or how about this? Well, that’s too bad, Keith. When you’re the father, you can make the rules.”

“I am very angry about this.”

“Go ahead and be angry. Go ahead and go in the back yard, spitting and kicking the cat. The neighbors know what you are, what you’ve been doing. They could care less. The cops know, too. They just say, ‘Well, he’s a retard. At least he’s found something he’s good at.’”

“I’m good at shooting you with this.”

“You keep your hands off my guns. How did you get into the rack? Give me that. You want to shoot the thing? Shoot it down your own throat. You ought to be used to that by now, you little fuck.”

The bullet blasts out. It’s loud in the little box, and it echoes in the rest of the cave. There is a hole in the screen and something heavy leaning on the other side. Keith McFarland comes out of the cupboard and sees there is not a line, or anyone in the church at all. He opens the door where his father is and goes in with him.