Falling Idols

Of course, they said. Of course we will.

But Maia wept.

X. Consummatum est

And thus finishes this testament of a boy who wanted only to grow up and be a saint.

There are many who’d say he couldn’t have fallen any farther short of such a lofty goal. After all, there are saints, and there are butchers, and they believe they know the difference.

But a few — a growing few, perhaps — would say that he achieved his dream all the same. But this depends on your idea of paradise.

“Think of it this way,” Lilah tells me. “You struck some of the first blows in a coming war. Oh, you’ll be venerated, I don’t have any doubt about that. I’ve seen it before.”

And now, at the end of all ambition, where too ends the flesh and the blood and the seed of life, I can’t help but thinking of my old hero, obsolete though he may be: Saint Ignatius, on his way to the lions in Rome. Would that he’d had such beautiful mouths to welcome him as I’ll soon have.

Take me into you, Maia. Take me in, my angel, my deliverer, and I will be with you always … until the end of your world.

Caress then, these beasts, that they may be my tomb, Ignatius wrote in a final letter, and let nothing be left of my body. Thus my funeral will be a burden to none.

As for me, I’ll not mind leaving bones, and I hope they keep them around, gnawed and clean, true relics for the inspiration of disciples yet to come.

Sensible Violence

You’re minding your own business when he comes up to you, the way it happens to anyone. Your palms are pressed against the plate glass of the store’s window, a pet store, you never can resist it, taking time out to squat on your haunches and share a few moments with the puppies. With their big feet and fat little bellies, they squirm and trip all over each other trying to get to you, impress you, maybe you’ll take them all home. Show them the world on the other side of the glass.

“‘s’cuse, not to be intruding or nothing, but I’s needing to ask you something, okay, mind if I conversate with you a second?”

Money. He’ll want money, it’s as good as predestined. When you squatted down to watch the pups he was nowhere in sight, and you’d checked, too. You’re less a target for beggars when you’re moving and they know that, that it’s easier to pretend you don’t hear them, that your ears shut down in midstride.

“Basically I’s wondering if you could spare like a couple dollars so I could get something to eat, you know, I wouldn’t ask but I ain’t had nothing to eat for a couple days now—”

He talks with his hands always in motion to make you feel his urgency, feel his hunger, and you wonder if you should tell him to calm down, quit flailing so much and he’ll conserve more calories. He tells you how your donation will enable him to go back up the street a couple blocks to the Dairy Queen on the corner, alleviate his hunger with a double cheeseburger and fries.

“I’m not giving you the money,” you tell him, “but if you’re hungry I’ll take you to buy it.”

“I heard that, let’s go,” his willingness immediate, without the outrage that comes when they only want the cash, then you’re walking up the street, not looking as though you naturally belong together but are something odder, buddy cops maybe, and he’s just come in from undercover work, the reason he’s dressed the way he is, wearing that dirty sweatshirt with the hood fraying around the edge. He probably really needs the meal, unless he only dresses the part, although some don’t even bother, wearing two hundred dollar warmup suits and pricey new sneakers, as robust as marble statues come to life, with their hands out, telling you about all the meals they’ve missed.

“Got a head for business, must have,” he says about you, “be wanting to eyeball where your money goes.”

“Well, it is mine,” you say, then with a glance back at the pet store: “People eat dogs sometimes. Not here, but…”

“Get hungry enough, yeah, I can see that, my stomach gets to growling too loud, I’d eat me a Benji-burger too.”

“It’s wrong, eating dogs, no matter where they do it,” and he nods along with you, sharing a soft spot for man’s best friend. Or maybe he’ll agree with anything as long as food is coming, so you don’t mention the T-shirt that you own with the wolf’s head in the center, between two slogans: SAVE THE WOLF above, then underneath, PREDATORS KEEP THE BALANCE.

It’s midmorning and the Dairy Queen isn’t busy and the young woman with the dreadlocks behind the counter has no smiles for you or your new best friend, looking at him as if she’s seen him too many times before, and you along with him.

“So you let that fool shame you into buying his breakfast for him,” she says when you order, resenting it and why not, she’s the one with the job and the grocery bills.

“No, no shame. My family’s Norwegian, we didn’t do slavery.”

“Well, so nice to see someone with a clear conscience for a change,” she says, very unimpressed. “He want anything to drink?”

You turn to check, but your undercover cop pal is off in the corner, clowning with another just like him who’s rattling a newspaper.

“Give him a Hi-C,” you decide, “keep him from getting scurvy for a few more days.”

A corner of her mouth tics, as though tugged by a marionette string, you’ve almost made her laugh, or laugh for another reason instead of at you, at liberal Caucasian guilt too pervasive to be assuaged by pushing a nervous dollar or two away from your body before remembering somewhere else you have to be.

He trots into the restroom before the food is ready, is still there when it’s up, so you carry it to a table and wait, checking to see how ignored you are. You unwrap the burger and peel the bun back on its ligaments of cheese, exposing thick goo, mostly bright primary colors, unnatural, like a squashed animal in a subversive