A Lower Deep

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.'

'Don't mention it.'

Nip had been leading Fane by about fifty yards, as if ashamed to be seen with him. I pulled up and Nip got in the backseat too, still weeping and groaning as my father swayed to his own rhythms and Self went into another chorus. Because of the wonderful things he does…

'You're making a joke of this,' Fane said to me.

'You think so, huh?'

'Yes.'

I glanced over and wondered if Fane would have enjoyed having both his arms broken nearly as much as he did his crooked, pitiful legs.

'Listen,' I said, and my voice was already quaking. 'Yesterday morning I woke up lying beside a butchered woman who'd been taken over by the mother of all harlots and-'

'Another prophecy fulfilled.'

'Don't interrupt me, Fane! Last night Gawain bled to death in my arms. Now I'm going to Har Meggidon to face a man I once loved above any other, who tells me if I help him bring our messiah back he'll return to me the woman who made my life worth living. It almost sounds funny, doesn't it?' I glared at Fane and squeezed the wheel until the steering column began to groan. 'I've got a fair amount on my mind right now, so don't give me any shit. I didn't have to make this a game. It was a hoax long before I ever got into it.'

'Your self-pity is evident,' he said.

You talkin' to me? Self's DeNiro still needed work

'Yeah, well, sorry,' I hissed at Fane, 'but I'm in something of a mood.'

'You've never learned the worth of servitude.'

'Yes, I have. It's worth nothing. If you weren't always squirming in your own torment you'd know that.'

He sighed and shook his head, and I thought he might actually smile. 'Each of us enjoys our own agony too much.'

'Yes,' I said. The air conditioner circulated his noxious perfumes and I had to turn the vents in his direction. 'It's the devil, you know.'

'You blaspheme even now.'

'Especially now, wouldn't you say? The Holy Land is brimming in the blood of children and suicidal believers, but they're not dying with the love of God in their hearts.'

'You don't know that.'

'I do know that. They're only seething, and they'll keep up their frenzy until they all spill apart in the dust.'

It was nothing compared to the coming days, when heaven and hell burst wide open as the wars began, and the stars fell into the boiling oceans and earth became a poisoned cinder.

Are we almost there yet? Self asked.

The street was empty but there'd been fighting here recently, with burned-out trucks littering the walkways. I hit a pot-hole two feet deep and Fane blanched and let out a gasp as his mangled knees clacked together. He spoke through his gritted teeth. 'A third of the earth's population will begin dying soon. Today is the start of a war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. Tell me where you'll stand.'

'I'll let you know when the time comes.'

'You're not even sure, are you?'

My father let out a knowing high-pitched giggle that made me want to scream. 'Well, if you don't like the answer you can always slap me around with your pine sticks.'

Fane drew his stiletto and scraped the edge of the blade against the underside of his chin. It might have been