How I got past the Base Line checkpoint was a minor miracle. SWAT removed one passenger from the bus. They were about to ask everybody else for their residential permit cards, but didn’t have the time. Which was copacetic, because I’ve lost mine.
I’m in the hotel lobby strategizing how to evade the desk clerk when Rudy from Muscoy invades my life. Alonzo’s cherished half-brother is shirtless and covered in sweat. Par for the course, he’s frowning. Rudy detests me. Enough for Rhonda to say he once made a serious pass at her.
“Pastor, I need a word with you. It’s crucial.”
If Rudy wants to confess his sins, I’ll refer him to another member of the clergy—I have no stomach for his woes. Hesitantly, I put down the suitcase. For insurance, I genuflect.
“What is it, my son? Do you need my holy consultation?”
“You know me, Pastor. I’m cool. But somebody else does.”
“Do you want to tell me about this person?”
“Yeah, I do. Let me get to the meat of it. You had the fucking nerve to tell Alonzo he has issues. Short eyes have issues. Rapists have issues. Murderers have issues. My brother does not have issues. He is ill. Do you understand?”
“Alonzo isn’t dead yet.”
“He talks like it. The asshole. He’s still drinking. I tell him to cut it out and he gives me some insanity about the air, how bad it is. Like I’m stupid? I don’t let my kids breathe the damn air. Do you know how many rehab places Alonzo’s been in? That crap costs money.”
“What do you want me to say?”
Rudy’s sad eyes belong in the frozen vegetable section at the supermarket. “How do I know? Alonzo’s so messed up and paranoid, he talks on the phone at home with a loaded pistol in his hand. But why am I telling you this shit? You ain’t nobody. You’re a fucking charlatan. I don’t trust you. And you know what, Pastor? I didn’t make a pass at your wife. She made one at me. So fuck you.”
Due to Rudy, my vocabulary has a new word. Trust. I swish it around in my mouth, like a fine wine. Nobody ever talks about trust. Rhonda certainly didn’t. The philosopher Habermas has written we’re living in an age of exhausted utopian energies. I never understood what he meant until just now.
After Rudy and I part company, I venture upstairs to my rooms. A new message is waiting on the answering machine. It’s from my parole officer. Telling me he informed Blessed World of my felon status. He’s angry I didn’t mention it to them. And he wants me to report to his office on the double. If I’m not there by five o’clock, he’ll revoke my parole. I press the delete button.
I heave the suitcase onto the coffee table. I settle down in the wingback chair to meditate on it. What if there’s a bomb in the fucking thing? There’s only one way to find out. I get up and trundle into the kitchenette and rummage around in a drawer for a pair of scissors. Finding them, I return to the coffee table.
Dropping onto my knees, I hunch over the suitcase. Up close, it resembles an Iraq War veteran. The cordovan cloth is scratched and abraded, pocked with blood and mud. If I’m not imagining things, there’s a bullet hole in it.
Employing the scissors, I saw through the rope holding it together. The scissors are dull and the rope is stubborn. Right when I’m about to quit, the rope snaps in two. I pull apart the suitcase—three dozen bundles of napkin-wrapped cash tumble onto the coffee table. The bills are in assorted denominations. They gleam faintly sexual, almost extraterrestrial in coloration.
I put one and one together. The nut job is the robber Dalton is hunting for. The cheese has been stolen from banks. For the next hour, I count the dough. When I’m done, I become the unwilling guardian of fifty grand.
Anxiety rappels up my nervous system. I want to wash my hands. To calm myself, I commence deep breathing exercises. Five breaths in, eight breaths out. In, out. In, out. I do this for fifteen minutes.
No dice.
I’m having a category-five panic attack.
Two trains of thought sidetrack me. They override my jangled nerves, beating them back into a corner. For a fact, Superman would never succumb to nervous tension. He wouldn’t compulsively wash his hands. And the bank robber’s note said to give the suitcase to Jesus Christ. I ask myself the question that lives at the heart of the question itself: what would Jesus do with pilfered bank money?
I’m not the bravest man. Nor am I the smartest. I am a wretched sinner, a defrocked priest. Think hard, I tell myself.
The answer hits me in the pit of my stomach: I cannot be second-best to Superman anymore.
It’s many hours later. I’m in bed, too hot to sleep. The curtains rustle—a wiry man jumps through the opened window. He’s in military jungle fatigues, a ten-day stubble lays siege to his gaunt cheeks. He has no eyes—two black holes bore into me with a fury greater than the midday sun. It’s my dad. In character, he bullies me: “What are you doing with that money? Don’t tell me you’re gonna do something stupid. I’d hate to think I raised a fuck-up.”
Then he dissolves into nothingness.
What I never told Alonzo, what I’ll never tell him, the war at home, the one that my father said would follow Vietnam—it’ll never end. Not until we break on through to another world. Any world, just not this one again.
□ □ □
I was out of prison two-plus weeks. Sixteen days, eight hours, and counting. Things weren’t getting better with Rhonda. In her own fashion she attempts to reunite us. One sultry evening in the kitchenette she says, “Let me give you a hand job.” She’s smiling, and means well. But I’m irritated from lack of sleep. I reply: “Not now, doll.” Rebuffed, she lambasts me with heavyweight accusations, claiming we’re incompatible. I clam up, cowering behind a wall of narcissism. Rhonda complains: “Is anybody there?” I answer: “No one’s around. Come back later.”