He was staring at me but his eyes slid north. I swiveled my gaze to fix it along the great stretch of crossbar where an arm and a wrist and a hand could be spiked.
“God, yes!” I said.
For, lined up as in a rifle’s sight was the wall, and the place on the wall where the wax and papier-mâché dummy had been hoisted in place, and, further on across a stone meadow, the facade and the waiting doors of St. Sebastian’s church!
“Yes!” I gasped. “Thanks, J. C.”
“Get down!”
“I am.” And I took my eyes away from the wall but not before I saw his face turn once again to the country of the dead and the church beyond.
I descended.
“Where you going!?” said J. C.
“Where I should’ve gone days ago—”
“You stupid jerk. Stay away from that church! It’s not safe!”
“A church not safe?” I stopped going down and looked up.
“Not that church, no! It’s across from the graveyard and, late nights, open for any damn fool who drops in!”
“He drops in there, doesn’t he?”
“He?”
“Hell.” I shivered. “Before he goes in the graveyard nights, he first goes to confession, yes?”
“Damn you!” shrieked J. C. “Now you are lost!” He shut his eyes, groaned, and began the last positioning on the dark pole in the midst of dusk and coming night. “Go ahead! You want terror? You want fright? Go hear a real confession. Hide, and when he comes in late, oh so damn late, and you listen, your soul will just shrivel, burn, and die!”
Which made me clutch the pole so hard slivers stung my palms. “J. C.? You know everything, don’t you? Tell, in Jesus Christ’s name, J. C. tell before it’s too late. You know why the body was shoved up on the wall and maybe the Beast shoved it there to scare, and just who the Beast is? Tell. Tell.”
“Poor innocent stupid son of a bitch kid. My God, son.” J. C. looked down at me. “You’re going to die and not even know all the reasons why.”
He stretched his hands out, one to the north, one to the south, to grip the crossbar as if to fly. Instead an empty bottle fell to break at my feet.
“Poor sweet son of a bitch,” he whispered to the sky.
I let go and dropped the last two feet. When I hit the ground I called up a last time, dead-bone tired: “J. C.?”
“Go to hell,” he said, sadly. “For I sure don’t know where heaven is—”
I heard cars and people nearby.
“Run,” whispered J. C. from the sky.
I could not run. I simply wandered off away.
51
I met Doc Phillips coming out of Notre Dame. He was carrying a plastic bag and had the look of one of those men who roam through public parks with nail sticks, jabbing trash to thrust in bags to be burned. He looked startled, for I had one foot up on the steps as if I were going to mass.
“Well,” he said, much too quickly and heartily. “Here’s the boy wonder who teaches Christ to walk on water and puts Judas Iscariot back in the criminal lineup!”
“Not me,” I protested. “The four apostles. I just pick up their sandals to follow.”
“What’re you doing here?” he said bluntly, his eyes flicking up and down my body, and his fingers working on the trash bag. I smelled incense, and his cologne.