Alabaster Christ

Part 2 of “Alabaster Christ”. Read the whole novella here.

Poe was drunk again. The words wiggled and swam on the page like agitated tadpoles. He pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his rheumy eyes for a moment but when he opened them again the vowels, consonants, quotation marks, periods and commas, the principal carriers of meaning in a book, were reduced to ink-colored mud splattered on the yellowing page with a trowel.

Poe reached for the silver flask in the pocket of his raincoat but suddenly remembered that it was empty, drained of all of its delicious, amber-colored embalming fluid hours ago, shortly after eating an Egg McMuffin which he couldn’t keep down. “Embalming fluid” was how his old man used to refer to Kentucky bourbon. Sour mash.

“Gonna have a little after-dinner embalming fluid,” he would say, pushing his bulk away from the supper table and making his way to the china cabinet where the bourbon was stored. Never for long, though. Dad would go through a quart every other day, leaving the empty bottle in the cabinet until he replaced it with a fresh one. No one was surprised when he died of cirrhosis at the age of fifty-three. He was buried in the only suit he owned, a slate gray affair he purchased at the Mervyn’s in the mall so he would look properly solemn and respectful when he attended his mother’s funeral.

Poe closed the book and sadly returned it to its proper place on the shelf. He needed a refill on his embalming fluid and figured there must be a liquor store somewhere within a few blocks of the library. He shuffled past the front desk under the watchful eye of a security guard. When did they start needing guards in libraries? he wondered. Dangerous people don’t go to libraries. Or do they? Poe remembered a doctor in Fresno who once told him that he was a danger to himself. That doctor was the reason he fled from Fresno in such a damn hurry, leaving behind two cats, a Collie that was blind in one eye, and a mountain of debt that had threatened to crush him to death.

Poe staggered down the front steps of the library, patted the gray stone lion that rested at the foot of the stairs, and ambled along the rain-slickened sidewalk. He thought about Kerouac, the Collie he left behind, and he started to choke up. It felt like he had a stone wedged in his throat. Poe’s eyes were misty and his shoulders began to heave.

He sat down on the curb, his feet resting in the rain-swollen gutter. There were holes in the bottoms of his shoes. He didn’t care. He missed Kerouac and the weight of the sudden grief that swept over him was almost overpowering. Poe was not accustomed to experiencing emotional pain. His ex-wife, he firmly believed, took a rusty scalpel in the middle of the night and carved all of the emotion out of him, turning him into a witless drone with a two-car garage and a nine-to-five.

The hunk of curb that Poe rested on was in front of a church on California Avenue in Santa Monica. He turned to look at the architecture. It was ornate and Gothic. Roman Catholic. Poe liked Catholics. He got along with them and found them to be a worthy asset to have next to you in the foxholes of life because they had such strong spiritual conviction. He recalled a TV movie from when he was a boy. It had Martin Sheen in it and it was about a fringe order of Catholic priests in a monestary in Ireland who began saying Mass in Latin again, which really pissed off the Vatican. That was all he could recall of the movie. It was a long time ago.

In the vestibule of the church, Poe picked up a pamphlet without looking at it and slipped it into his wet pocket. He had nothing to drop in the charity box near the door. The nave of the large church was empty. No worshippers, no one with head or knee bent in penitent prayer asking God to take their cancer away or simply begging for another chance at forgiveness.

God, Poe knew, wasn’t in the forgiving business. Not his style, never has been.

Poe marveled at the beauty of the church. Fine mahogany pews. Elegant stained glass. He paused at the edge of the pulpit and gazed fixedly at the Communion table. The silver wine chalice was empty, of course. There was a ten-inch Christ on a crucifix in the middle of the table. It appeared to be alabaster. Definitely alabaster, Poe concluded after further consideration of the white and translucent sculpture, a finely granular variety of gympsum, if he remembered his Art Studies courses correctly.

“It’s Oriental alabaster,” a voice suddenly contributed. “A variety of calcite.”

The voice was small and weak, like the distant signals Poe used to get on his transistor radio when the battery was running down.

“Calcite, calcite/give me your answer/truuuuue,” the voice sang. “I’m half craaaaazy/all for the love of yooooooou!”

It was coming from the alabaster Christ on the Communion table. The small mouth was moving and one slim finger on a crucified hand was tapping to the tune it was singing.

“It won’t be a stylish marriage!” The statue sang. “We can’t afford a carriage/But you’ll look sweeeeet/Upon the seat/of a crucified Christ or two!”

Two small alabaster eyes rolled and considered Poe, whose skin was turning a shade as white as the alabaster Christ.

“Do me a favor, Poe. Do me a favor, Poe, my boy, my man, my homie, my undergraduate of misery and sole friend in the world. You just gots to do me a favor, Poe.”

“What do you want?” Poe whispered. He was shaking.

“Go out there and tell them the truth, Poe. The truth shall make them pee. You like that? A variation on ‘the truth shall set them free’? Poe, Poe, Poe, you have lost your sense of humor. You want to hear a secret, Poe? I’ll tell you something that nobody knows. Classified information, as they say. Top secret stuff. On the hush-hush. The Big Scoop. Jesus Christ Confidential.”

Poe backed away from the table. He held out a trembling hand in rejection.

“Here it is, Poe. Listen up. It wasn’t the Romans that killed me, Poe boy. Are you listening? It wasn’t the Romans. It was the CIA, Poe! It was a vast conspiracy, Poe! You’ve gotta listen to me, Poe!”

And then it began singing again in that small voice.

“Stop!/Oh yes/Wait a minute, Mr. Postmannnnnnn!”

Poe bolted down the aisle in his wet shoes. Just before he passed into the vestibule, Poe heard the alabaster Christ scream out, “You’re not alone, Poe! There’s a lot of people like you in the world! Good luck with that!”