Keith Ridgway - Hawthorn & Child

Child raised his eyebrows. Gave a sort of smile.

— That’s not going to happen, Moss.

— Well that’s it, man. Either the baby or the boy. That’s fucking it.

*

Jesus sipped wine and watched the door and wondered why the old man in the corner of the room was so worried. He had learned, over the years, to close people off from his mind. He had become like others. People sat by him now and noticed nothing odd. They felt no strange consciousness wandering their own; they did not feel suddenly understood. They rarely experienced the alarm of realizing, mid-thought, that they were overheard. He could see that the man was worried.

— What troubles you, Father?

And even still the old man seemed surprised. He peered into Jesus’s gloomy corner and licked his lips and squinted to see and stood and took up his cup and came over, limping.

— Who are you?

— Jesus of Nazareth.

The man’s eyes strained and he shook his head.

— I am fucked, my brother. My wife is dying. My son is ill and has no money. My leg is swollen. There is no god.

— There is a God.

— There is no god.

— No, really, there is. Look.

And Jesus showed him God.

— What about me? I take the baby out. I leave her on the doorstep even, and I come back in. You keep me.

— You’re no good.

— She’s quiet. She OK?

— She’s fine. She’s awake. She’s just lying there.

— Why am I no good?

Moss touched the knife. These people. They covered the city with points. Dozens of points. Hundreds of points. Thousands, probably, of points. Millions of points. They covered the city with points. Each point wobbling in the new dark. There was a jelly over the city, and they had strings with which to section off and slice it.

Moss never tried to think of a modern Jesus, a Jesus today. Such a thing was beyond him. It was beyond everyone. Jesus would be a shock, a violent intervention, a calamity. He would fuck things up. He would terrify all settled minds, petrify the structures. Such a thing, as a man, could not be imagined. This is why people did not believe.

The baby cried. Once. Just a little half wail. Then a gurgle and a cough. Then another half cry or half laugh.

— When Jesus was a boy …

— What?

— When Jesus was a boy. There was trouble.

— Can I put my arms down?

— Yes.

— I’m not religious.

— A boy was found. By the river. He had been beaten. He had been badly beaten. A woman, who was a nurse, she found him. She had not even intended to go that way, but for some reason, when she was walking home after seeing a new mother, she turned to walk by the river. She found this boy. About ten years old. Unconscious. Bleeding. His nose broken. A rib cracked. Bruising. Very bad.

Child put his hands in his pockets. Moss held his eyes.

— Don’t do that, man.

Child took his hands out of his pockets.

— Sorry.

— So she called some men, and they carried him home, and the nurse tended to him and he was OK. He would be OK. And when he woke up the men asked him what had happened. He refused to say. He would not tell them who had beaten him.

— Just let me take the baby, Moss. We have guys who are trained for this sort of thing. You know, talking.

— I thought you wanted me to keep you?

He said nothing. He just nodded.

— Some of the men knew that this boy was a bully. The beaten boy. They knew that he picked on others. They suspected that one of these boys’ older brothers had perhaps wanted to teach him a lesson. They asked around. They learned that recently the beaten boy had been picking on Jesus. Saying things about his mother.

— Moss.

— What?

— Do you even have a gun?

He said nothing. He turned his head and looked back towards the baby.

— You won’t read this story in the gospels.

— No?

— No. This is from the suppositions of the Association.

— The what?

— The suppositions of the Association.

— What association?

— The Association of Christ Sejunct.

— Saint John?

— Sejunct.

— Say junk?

— Sejunct.

— What’s that?

— The Association of Christ Sejunct is an association of Earth-bound sinners who keep alive in our hearts and in our daily lives, with an honest strength and an honest weakness, the solemn consideration of the sublime figure of Jesus our Saviour and Balm, in the years during which he is separated from our knowledge of him — from his circumcision to the age, by the Gospel of Luke, of twelve, when he attends to and questions the teachers in the Temple, and from then until the beginning of his blessed ministry.

Child nodded. He was smiling.

— That’s quite something, he said.

Moss nodded.

— Who is in the Association?

— I am. And my wife. And some others. And you, now, as well. You are in the Association.

— OK. I’m in it? How am I in it?

— Anyone who hears about the Association of Christ Sejunct is in the Association of Christ Sejunct. You will start to wonder. Now it’s in you to wonder. You will wonder, and you will come to believe things. About what else happened. In all those years. The gap in the story.

— I’m not religious.

— Neither am I.

— Can I have the baby?

— Yes.

He didn’t move.

— Do you have a gun?

He didn’t answer.

— Do you know the people in this house?

He didn’t answer.

— The boy. Do you know the boy?

He didn’t answer.

— I have so many stories, he said. Turn off the light.

He used his lighter to see his way back to the child, and his fingers burned and when he put them to his mouth he tasted his own warm blood. She stared at the flame.

— Don’t move, he shouted.

She jumped and her face crumpled and she started to cry.

— Shit. Not you — Child.

He grimaced. What a name for a man.

— I’m not moving, Moss. I haven’t moved an inch.

— I’ll shoot the baby.

— No you won’t.

He pocketed his lighter. He pulled the knife out of his leg pocket and looked at it. If he stuck it in his waistband somehow it might look like the grip of a pistol. And it would cut him. He stuck the blade under his belt at his back, within reach of his right hand, the hilt holding it. He wondered for a second if there might be a toy gun in the boy’s room. He pulled out his lighter again and looked around. The baby was crying steady, complaining. He was able to ignore her. He wondered if there was a length of time they gave Child before they decided that he was dead, and called the telephone or switched on a loudspeaker. He couldn’t see a telephone. There was a hairbrush on the bedside table. What sort of mother leaves a newborn in the care of a kid playing computer games in another room?

The baby was soft and she cried more when he lifted her. Jesus had two younger brothers and two younger sisters. Something like that. He would watch them sleep, and carry them around, and sing to them. He liked to sing to them. When they were older they would try to make him sing to them again. But he became embarrassed for a while and would not sing. And then song became something else that he did not do. He had put so much behind him by the time he started.

— Sshhh sshhh little girl. You’re OK.

He carried her to the door.

— Have you moved?

— Not an inch.

— I’m coming out. I’m armed.

— Yeah. No problem. Take it easy.

He opened the door wider with his foot and shuffled through it. Child’s silhouette was as he’d left it, standing on the stairs with its hands laid flat on the upturned back of the sofa. All the dark seemed to fill with little ghosts. A flickering blue glow came from the street.