“Wanna play some sack?” the doughy face under the hat finally asked.
Corn did not want to play some sack, but neither did he want to skulk away to the booth defeated in his attempts to impress Rachil, so, outside the bar, he soon found the dusty knit hacky sack bouncing off his chest.
Corn looked as if he were struggling to dance along with bad balalaika music—squatting, kicking the sack up with his instep, then hitting it with his forehead so it lurched halfway back across the circle before landing dead center with a crusty plop.
The faces in the circle did not smile for these strangers, knew what kind of degenerate had entered their midst.
They radiated judgment.
“So I should tell you,” Rico said, kicking up the sack with a fluid motion, stalling it on top of his foot, then flicking it over to his left foot and stalling it again (bravo!). “I’m not going to go all the way until I’m married, so you don’t have to worry about me and Rachil.”
He kicked the sack expertly over to a young man with an inexplicable Afro.
“That separates me from the rest of the pack here,” Rico said with a jerk of his thumb, “and some people can’t handle that. But you know it’s important to my faith—Southern Bap.”
He leveled a serious look at Corn.
Corn noticed, suddenly seeing his friend afresh, that Rico’s eyelashes were ridiculously long and that one of his eyes was still . . . off.
(RAAAACHHHHILLLLL!!! We can almost hear the desperate grinding of Corn’s molars.)
The sack once again bounced off Corn’s chest and landed at his feet.
“Earth to bro!”
A skinny kid in a faded T-shirt stifled a laugh.
Corn picked up the sack and threw it into the bushes like a petulant child.
“Not cool!” the skinny one said, running after the bag.
“Whoop,” Rico said, checking his watch. “Gotta go! Bible study at seven. Nice to see you, bub. Really nice. Say bye to Rachil for me. Later.”
Rico took off his hat and bowed, curly black hair falling around his puffed face.
Then, he turned and ran with rigid posture toward campus.
Corn watched the flip-flops flap against Rico’s mud-smudged heels.
He turned back to the circle, which had closed itself.
He narrowed his eyes and rubbed his hands together.
He would have her . . . somehow!
*
Before we delve into the next chapter of this expertly crafted narrative, dear readers (Are you jealous, Mailer?!?!), let’s linger for a moment on the issue of Rico’s faith.
It is not simply a work of my imagination.
Of course, it is not how I was raised, and at the time it was more than a bit strange, but I do not judge matters of faith and I advise you to also reserve judgment.
Why?
I’ll tell you.
No one can doubt the end-times are near, and so any acquaintance with Scripture (no matter how egregiously presented) will surely help ground a person in the gravity of this apocalyptic interlude.
True, I must appear to you light, carefree, jovial, and playful with my “scenes” and my “witticisms,” but make no mistake: blood will flow.
And soon!
I can see it.
If not by the hand of the “Lord,” then by a worldwide shift in consciousness that will cause the higher beings among us to cull the litter of frauds and ninnies, charlatans and hustlers.
One day you’ll be sitting there in your apartment, reader, idly watching some yuppie walk his Italian greyhound along the primrose path, and as he bends down to grip the greyhound’s feces with his plastic-sheathed hand, he will suddenly see, there on the horizon, the first signs of the Event.
The clouds will have turned green, and the leaves on all the trees will quiver with their light undersides exposed.
A blast of cold wind will blow the yuppie’s hair back; the Italian greyhound will whimper and scurry behind his master’s legs.
First one wayward robin will fly by—too close!
Then another.
A third.
A fourth.
The yuppie’s heart will race.
A sharp inhale and then: the deluge!
He is suddenly surrounded by flapping darkness as thousands, perhaps millions of robins, their innate sense of direction exploded by cell phone radiation, pour from the trees down the street like coal through a chute, their fat bodies covering the cars, their white-circled eyes gone insane.
Everything within your vision there at your window will be covered by red breasts and dusty feathers, a pandemonium of wings, claws, beaks, and the sharp pins of feathers nicking and scratching and gouging against the glass—what a terrifying noise!—and surely the man and his dog . . . blood . . . fur . . . flesh.
The dog is dead.
The yuppie is dead.
Just two victims in the worldwide catastrophe.
You will run for cover, but where?
The birds have already begun to make their way in through every available crack in your domicile.
The world has suddenly gone dark.
Cowering in the pantry, you will feel the sound before you really hear it, the maniacal freight train that precedes the tornado.
Close your eyes!
All there will be is the whirring of wings and hellish squawks surrounding you.
Yes, it will be time to die . . .
Politically, of course, corporate democracy cannot stand, and the socialist Big Brother equally appears (to any observant eye) ready to topple, so all it will take is one slight push in either direction for the New World to emerge.
Is this not the prophesied apocalypse?
Where will you be when it occurs, dear readers?
What side of the wall will you be on?
On the side of the People, or on the side of the (so-called) Elites?
Choose wisely!
Do you really want to be sitting in your apartment watching an Italian greyhound defecate without having done your part for justice and righteousness?
Who knows what your last thought will be—most likely some idle lyric from a Roxette song or some such cultural detritus—but there is a chance it will be, “Why did I allow that man’s banishment?”
Your soul will sit before ultimate judgment.