Tom Piccirilli - A Lower Deep

Several hundred Jewish settlers attacked Israeli Arabs' homes in Nazareth. Sporadic conflicts and further rioting spilled into Hebron, BidiyaVillage, Jisr al-Zarka, Netzarim Junction, and the Erez border crossing. Israelis took to the streets in anti-Arab protests at several points throughout the country. In northern Israel, at Tiberias, residents raised an Israeli flag over a mosque and set fire to the building before police restored order.

The full moon rose over Babylon.

I made it back to the gratis hotel room and could feel the presence of my mother as I walked the corridors. I knew someone was already in my room.

I turned on the light.

My father sat on the edge of the bed and stared blankly ahead.

Gawain lay on the floor, hands folded neatly over his belly. His blind eyes focused on me and the corners of his mouth lifted. He'd been stabbed twice in the stomach.

I kneeled beside him and took his head in my lap. I tried to make him as comfortable as possible. He did not appear to be in pain. His serpent's tongue twined as he mouthed words I didn't understand. I talked to him for a few minutes about nothing that mattered as my tears trickled onto his forehead. He closed his eyes and let out his last breath.

We stayed like that for an hour while I cradled Gawain's corpse, and finally I accepted that this truly was the apocalypse.

Self crouched at the window and pointed into the sky as the bloated moon slowly became as blood.

Finally my dad turned and looked at me. With that mad intelligence blazing in his moronic gaze he whispered, "Megiddo."

It was Easter Sunday.

Most of the train and bus service had been disrupted due to the disorder. I decided to rent a car from Sixt on King David Street. They were reluctant to let me have the Jaguar XJ8, but I paid in cash and took all the insurance.

If we were going to travel to the end of the world, then we might as well cruise there in style.

It was dangerous to be out. The heavy hail came down in fits and starts. Israeli helicopter gunships kept up their buzzing and Palestinians were lynching and setting fire to anyone they considered an Israeli spy.

Mobs roamed freely. The drive to Megiddo would take us through some of the worst areas of the fighting. It would keep everything in context, listening to the shouts and shrieks in these days of rage.

I was eager to get started. I'd never owned a car that came close to the roaring power, stealth, and deftness of the Jag. Who would have guessed you could get such a quality beast here in the Middle East, at the brink of the final war, while children huddled against stone walls and had their kidneys shot out, on the day Christ had risen two thousand years ago?

My father sat in the backseat with Self, and they held hands like a parent and child. They whispered together and occasionally tittered. Self complained about his hypoglycemia some more so I stopped at a bakery and got him a hazelnut honey lekach.

He took two bites out of it and spat it on the ground. Gross! There's ginger in this!

Hey!

And nutmeg! Go get me some challah bread!

You ungrateful little bastard!

He went around spitting like a cat. You couldn't just get a slice of apple pie? A few cupcakes or hamantashen? A growl emerged from the back of his throat. Can't you ever do anything right?

Who the hell do you think you are?

I know who I am in hell. Who are you?

I drew my hand back knowing what I was about to do but not completely sure why I was doing it. As if from a great distance I watched as my palm came down and struck Self across his cheek. It startled him enough to make him go Wha! He blinked twice. His bottom lip quivered and then he leaped.

He climbed my shirt and grabbed me by the collar, panting in my face. You aren't going to make it.

Then you won't either.

You're wrong. I'll never die.

Get in the car.

I need sugar! I feel light-headed!

Come on! Let's go.

He jumped down and got back into the Jag and thrashed around in the seat for a few minutes as we drove. Soon, my father began making faces against the window, yanking his mouth wide with his pinkies and mashing his nose on the glass. After a while Self did the same and they laughed until they could hardly breathe.

I was losing control. I started having memory flashes of the times when my dad had taught me to swim in our pool and taken me to the beach. They became so strong that after twenty minutes I had to pull over because my hands were trembling so badly. I flung open the door and listened to the shouts of thousands. Neither of them got out of the car while I staggered around in the dust.

I couldn't shake my thoughts and kept remembering when my father used to drive us to the shore. How we'd walk down the dunes and see the damaged remnants of cyclone fencing. He'd hike me to his shoulder and carry me past the goldfish pond, the ice cream stands along the boardwalk, and all the pockets of pale short-tempered people with their stinking sunscreen and umbrellas positioned as if to stop a stampede. When he put me down in the water it would only take a minute before the waves and wet sucking sand had buried our feet. I'd take a stance behind him and watch as the roiling surf and foam broke against his heavily muscled legs.

I could smell other Easters, the chocolate bunnies and spring in the park. My mother's dresses were always dappled with flour or honey, but her cakes never quite rose enough and were always burned black around the edges. The sun sifted in over her shoulder as she turned, one hand on her hip, the other smoothing back a tangle of her hair, with the fiery light enveloping each angle of her face and catching in the beads of sweat flecking the point of her chin. Dad would rush into the kitchen like a bursting storm, sometimes smiling as he knotted his tie, sometimes upset with his lips smashed white, in the years after we were no longer allowed to attend church.

I walked back to the Jag and leaned against the car door with my hands on the hood. I crouched, looked inside, and said, "Dad, tell me . . . do you know where Michael is?"

The changing of our roles was as common as it was profound. All men grow and watch their fathers weaken from legends into old men. All men bury their fathers.

He crooked his finger and beckoned me to him.

I held my face up to his with the window between us, and in a way I'd never felt closer to him.

He stuck his black tongue out and said, "Woo woo."

My hair was thick with ice crystals, and when I moved my curls rang together in harmony with my father's jangling. I had a flash of deja vu. This had happened before at the mount. We hadn't gone anywhere, he and I. Despite these trials and all this damnation over the years, we were in pretty much the same place we'd started out, vying for who might be the bigger fool. At least he was finally having some fun now.

When I got back in, Self started singing from "The Wizard of Oz" and Dad went along with it, swaying in his seat as if it were a jazz blues riff and he was grooving back in his beatnik days. We're off to see the Wizard…

Coming over a hill I saw Fane hobbling down the road. I considered just tapping the horn and passing him, but I couldn't be bothered with such spite. I pulled up alongside and said, "Hop in."

I could tell he wanted to walk the distance. That fanatic enthusiasm of the martyr was bright in his eyes from all the glorious discomfort he was in. He'd been walking for hours and would've crawled if he'd had to. Letting me drive him to the apocalypse in an air-conditioned Jaguar wouldn't count for as great sacrifice in the Book of Judgment, but Fane didn't want to miss out on the battle. He stumbled around to the passenger side and got in. "Thank you."