A Time To Pray

                                                             

                                                                                   A Time to Pray


   It was church bells that roused me when nothing else could have. A cacophony of potted bronze. Clamorous machines engineered through the centuries to do naught but direct the highest possible volume of sound downward, down to where the sinners lived, worked and slept, and to wake those sinners UP. The bells were doing that work on this day. One hundred bells clamoring for notice atop one hundred churches. Bells hung by a pious people in a pious city, people who would surely one day, if there is a god, walk that golden road to meet Him. The bells were a not so subtle reminder that it was Sunday, the Lord’s Day, it was the day and time to wake, to stop working, and to accept the invitation to God’s house. It was the day set aside from living so that one might prepare their soul for dying. This soul, my soul, had little preparation, but it was ready yet... almost eager.
   
   The pew was hard. It was of a dark wood, mahogany, polished smooth by two centuries of cotton and wool rising and sitting only to rise again to sit and rise forever. Those polishing the pews spent their lives in this town, listening to these bells, worshiping the Catholic God whom they had inherited down from Ferdinand and Isabella, worshiping from these polished pews, or from ones like them, amongst this congregation, or ones like it, congregations that knew their individual parts and protected them, and loved them. Congregations that are ever-changing as parts die and parts are born, but congregations that are somehow still always the same.
   
   Upon the pew, beside my head, was a pile of bloody vomit, bile mostly, as food is a waste, serving only to neutralize that which really mattered. The vomit emitted a familiar smell of disgust that clung to me forever like spray paint to a freight car, tacky, tasteless and rude to the senses. Dried blood caked my face and shirt. My own blood. Blood freed from me, perhaps, by a member of this very congregation, by one of its parts. Blood that might be washed from me with tender fingers by that same man’s mother, or sister, but not his wife. A man who would do such as this to another man would not have a wife, not for long, not even a Catholic one. Of course, I could not recall the beating, and it may have been deserved. I am not usually a nice drunk, as the alcohol only softened angry nerves for a short while before it poked them with its needles.
   
   My groin was also sticky wet. Like the rest of me, it too reeked repulsively, my pants clinging coldly to the tingling skin of my inner thighs. My breathing was jagged, my chest heaving, but I could smell them through the fear... the urine, the vomit, and the church. Yes, the church also had its scent, a scent of timelessness. That odor mixed unnaturally with mine in the warm, dusty air. The dust wafted in streams of brightly colored sunlight above me, blue dust, red dust, and gold as it floated across stained-glass prisms. The dust swirled ’round me like the smells and the ringing bells, everything swirling, everything sickening.
   
   I tried to rise, but could not. I tried my body, my arms, and my legs. The efforts triggered one last spasm. The bile heaved from below, filling my mouth and nostrils. With an instinctive sense of preservation my body coughed, willing the nastiness away, but the coughing only opened the trachea, allowing it to suck the acidic bile inside, where it cannot be. Thus began the chain reaction of cough, inhale bile, cough and inhale again...
   
   The doors opened, letting the townsfolk in. They took pause at the surprise waiting upon the pew. They looked with horror at the drowning man, even as he looked at them through his terror filled eyes. He saw them, a dark-haired, dark-eyed and dark-skinned people, for all the world like impoverished angels. They whispered in a tongue of angels. They whispered prayers for me, a stranger, the women clinging to their rosaries, the men clasping their gnarled hands.
   
   The darkness crept in. The angels faded. The Golden Road lay there before me. At its end waited 
an unknown God, a God who did not know my voice, as mine was a voice that had never known prayer. It was time now to walk that road. It was time now for me to test His mercy. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Shame of it All

The Shame of It All So this is where the years wind up? This is where it ends? The man crouching on the stool atop the stage touches the strings with delicate if resilient fingers, but the tattered Marshall on the floor beside him, the one one which his boot rests, doesn't seem to care. The Marshall likes it loud, just as the Gibson plugged into the amp does, and just as the old rocker who cradles the classic guitar to his breast does. And just like the other two, the aged amp still works fine, which it proves by ejecting the single chord that the man strummed through the “business end” of it’s speaker like a well-tuned cannon’s blast. The lonely chord reverberates through the practically empty room, an amplified clarion call of Axeman, Gibson and Marshall, but the few paired-up people in the bar are inattentive, all but one. In the harsh glow of the footlights that one who is paying attention can see where his fingerprints and sweat streaks have besmudged the guitar’s fire-burst d...
Read more

The Many Roads to Reward

  I watched it all from my spot on the bench beneath the cedar-pole awning of la Hacienda Gustamos over the course of one solitary month. During those thirty days, for lack of anything better to do, I whittled their likenesses from chunks of manzanita wood as I watched them work; the super-hard, desert-dried ironwood forcing me to make frequent pauses for blade resharpening, but by the time their construction project was completed so was mine, as I had carved out rather lifelike 3D figures of them all… boy, girl, and burro. The pair rode double into Ciudad Juarez with the boy behind, their bouncing synchronized astride the swayed back of an overloaded, yet quick-stepping burro, the burro‘s pace appearing suited to the pair’s dispositions. A bulging towsack tied to it’s rump increased the burro’s already considerable load. The day was warm in Ciudad Juarez, as always, the sky clear, as usual. The burro came to an abrupt standstill on the banks of the city’s thinly flowing river, whe...
Read more

The Shame of it All

  So this is where the years wind up? This is where it ends? The man crouched on the stool atop the stage touches the strings of his guitar with delicate if resilient fingers, but the tattered Marshall amp on which his boot rests doesn't care. The cranked up Marshall likes it loud, just as the Gibson connected to the amp does, and just as the old rocker who has slung the classic guitar low down from his shoulder does. And like the other two the aged amp still works fine. It proves this by ejecting the single chord the man has strummed through the “business end” of its speaker like a well-tuned cannon’s blast. The lonely chord reverberates through the practically empty room, an amplified clarion call of Axeman, Gibson and Marshall, but the few paired-up people in the bar are inattentive, all but one. In the harsh glow of the footlights his fingerprints and sweat streaks besmudge the guitar’s fire-burst design, soiling it, the same as the man’s blue jeans are soiled, and the boots be...
Read more