When We Join Jesus in Hell Read online

His ears ringing, he says, “You’re either my friend or my enemy.”

  The kid tries to jerk away but can’t. His eyes water and lips tremble. Fist holds him a moment longer and then releases him. He says, “I have to find him. He won’t pay the price he should if the cops pick him up. He’ll sit in the stir for five years tops, then he’ll be back out, he’ll do this to someone else. Maybe someone you know.”

  The kid looks down the dark street, averting his eyes from the fire, and mumbles something.

  “What?” Fist says.

  The kid meets his eyes. He squares his shoulders and somehow, in the bleakest hours before dawn, he says, “They’ll kill you.” And Fist remembers how he’d said something like that to someone, a long time ago, when he was still a kid, earning respect with his knuckles, with stamina and discipline while his father pushed him and his mother cried silently in the dark because she thought them all fools, that God did not give men gifts to destroy or conquer. He had no idea what she thought he should do; she never said, convinced he would do what he wanted, like so many men before him.

  “You hear me?” the kid says. “They’ll kill you. They’re a nasty little gang. The worst of the worst over here. Like a bunch of carnivorous cockroaches, man.”

  “I’m ready to die. I’m willing to burn them out, stomp on their heads, whatever it takes. I just have to stay ahead of the cops and surprise Jesus with something direct.”

  The kid measures him for a moment, glances back in the car at Fist’s wife and daughter. He says, “Goddamnit, man,” then points down the street and gives him directions to a building Fist knows. From porches and street corners other people shake their heads and watch them. Fist wants to ask them, “What if this was your family?” But he can’t because he has to listen.

  The kid says, “You know where the old brewing company is, right? That’s where he’ll be. Him and the others are bad news. If we could have driven them out we would have, but you just get tired of trying, you know? You have to look out for your own.”

  Fist thinks they should have tried harder, they shouldn’t have given up, but he knows how hard it is to rail against something forever and to never see any fruits for your efforts.

  “Yeah,” Fist says. “You gotta look out for your own. That’s the bottom line. That’s what it comes down to.” He slaps the kid on the shoulder and thanks him. As he climbs behind the wheel he hears sirens in the distance. He rolls the window up, knows the cops are going to hate him for making them come to this part of town but thinks maybe it’ll be good to have some of them tied up here. He pulls away from the curb, the stench of wreckage clinging to him, his shoulder throbbing, his eyes burning so badly he can barely see.

  Karen has drawn more flies, slow lazy ones, about to die off in the coming chill, the hard winter. Fist cracks her window and swats them toward the opening. Some buzz dully in his ears. His daughter wails from the back seat and his grip tightens on the steering wheel. It’s fully dark now. The street lights are broken, the world lost in shadow. He thinks, I can get used to this again. I know darkness more than most people could imagine.

  He says to his wife, hoping she can hear him, some part of her presence still with him until this is all over because he needs her even if she doesn’t need him anymore, “Remember the first time we met? You know what my philosophy was on women then? Did I even tell you?” He shrugs, can’t remember. They cruise deeper into the projects, past houses crammed with mice, poverty, diseases and hopelessness, to the heart of the industrial section where truckers sleep with their doors locked, with weapons close at hand, debris catching in the gutters and shadows shifting between buildings.

  Fist says, “I always thought women change you, and not for the better.” He glances her way, raises an eyebrow, and laughs at himself. “But I changed myself, didn’t I? I tramped down a path I thought you expected of me and it only created more discord, and you loved me less the more I buried the man I used to be, the one you fell in love with, and this other guy, this worker bee with heavy wings, burst forth, ready to bustle and do what he had to do to give you guys what a family should have. And neither one of us were wrong or right, but that doesn’t make things easy. It may only make it harder because there isn’t much middle ground. You can’t be all things to all people or you’re nothing.” He shakes his head, reaches over and takes her hand. “There’s no way to go back.”

  Her head turns and her eyes are blacker than the cesspool outside the car. She whispers, We strangled each other with expectations.

  “I know.” He watches the street, unable to meet her gaze. He says, “You have to change to adapt, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it, and that’s where I messed up. I tried to like it. I wasn’t being myself. I could have done like my dad and trained someone, been a mentor to some kid on his way up, some underdog with enough passion and heart to see him through, but I let it fall to the wayside because I thought you needed something else.”

  She squeezes his fingers.

  I never needed you to be anyone else…

  A sob racks his body and he doesn’t want to talk anymore. He wipes his eyes with his sleeve and looks for a napkin to blow his nose but he’s kept the car cleaned out for years now, and so he sniffles and watches the black world roll by, unable to measure the pain accumulating in his chest, the meaning of suffering. He wants to pull over and hold her and Bethany and just cry, I love you so much! Don’t leave me! Don’t go! But a thickness fills his heart, the black bile of reality, and he presses the accelerator.

  Three

  This city has always been alive with roaming darkness.

  Fist watches a man grab a woman and jerk her into the mouth of an alley stationed between two weatherworn and crumbling buildings. Karen doesn’t have to say anything. He pulls over and jumps out, a pistol in his hand, cold and solid, as he leaps on the sidewalk, sees the man undoing his belt, his forearm shoved into the girl’s throat. Fist doesn’t care that his shoes are slapping the concrete like gunshots, in fact, he finds comfort in that, maybe a little crazy with passion, with doing what he can now to set things right. The man spins, and the girl’s eyes are on him, and Fist, quick, some of the nimbleness coming back to him as each second grinds down, plants his dad’s .38 in the man’s forehead as the man holds a knife with one hand and his cock with the other until Fist sees Jesus laughing in the dude’s eyes, and he pulls the trigger, the guy falling back, bone and blood painting the girl’s hair red and white, a soft auburn hiding beneath.

  The man hits the bricks, twists for a moment in agony, reaching for whatever it is the dying reach for. Fist stomps on his ruined face, feels and hears the nose crack, bone splinter. The man stills. The girl trembles against the wall. Fist says, “Get the fuck off the street.” She nods and slides away, into the shadows, out of one horrible moment and headed for another, and there’s truth in that that Fist can’t deny.

  He thinks, I can’t protect everyone. Half of them would never even want it.

  But he wants to save the hurting, defend the weak, offer direction to the lost.

  Goddamn he wants to.

  When he jumps back in the car, Bianca climbs on his leg. She stares up at him through the gloom and part of him fears she’s about to impart some bit of wisdom, the thought so strong that he almost puts his hand over her mouth.

  Karen whispers that choked whisper that wrenches Fist’s heart, She loves you, that’s all. She wants to be close to you because you protect her. She’s safe in your presence. You’re her whole world…

  Fist pets Bianca, picks her up, kisses her cute little head then sets her on his shoulder so she can pretend to see where they’re going. She curls up into the hollow behind his collar bone. He searches the rearview for his daughter’s face, just a pale orb in the darkness, and he can see her lips moving, whispering, We all love you…

  Four

  The brewery leans toward the street, its windows vacant, some of them broken. In a way it reminds him of a long abandoned mental institution
. He imagines the lost and rambling and weary, those who the world has given up on, but worst of all who gave up on themselves. He shuts the car off and looks at his wife, strokes her cheek, and waits a moment for his nerves to settle. She whispers, Take us with you, Fist.

  He studies her, shakes his head, feels something shifting inside him as he says, “I can’t take you where I’m going,” because he doesn’t want them to see how brutal and merciless he can be, even if they approve of it, even if it lets them rest.

  Bianca climbs down his shirt and into his lap. He touches her absently, wishing he can take the threads of his life and weave something worthwhile of them, take back every harsh word he’s spoken in anger, all of the times Karen has said she wanted to do something and he’s squashed it with a look of contempt, maybe part of him blaming her for helping him forfeit some life that was out of reach now.

  Bethany cries in the backseat.

  Wind rocks the car.

  A bum stumbles by on the sidewalk, and crosses the road, glaring into the car as he treads heavily with a wobbly gate. Fist nods his way, wonders what kind of existence the poor man has had before all he amounts to now. At one time he may have had a family like this. At one time he probably gave and received love and somehow, in the blink of an eye, he’d watched it slip away.

  Fist doesn’t know what Karen sees when she looks at him.

  For some reason it bugs the hell out of him. He always hoped she’d see the truth, that he’d do anything for her, and he tried to prove it with his actions because he knew words were hollow without them. And his training had proved, early on, that nothing gets results like movement, commitment, tenacity.

  Fist says, “This is going to get ugly.”

  Karen sighs like his father had sighed and whispers, It’s life. It’s ugly sometimes.

  “People are ugly,” Fist says. “They’re what make life so difficult.”

  Not everybody is bad, she says.

  No, he thinks. Everyone is at some point. We can pretend to care and pretend to be civil, but it’s a struggle when it comes down to our darkest moments, when we’re robbed by men, raped by debt, riled by injustice, plagued with cancer.

  Karen squeezes his hand. Don’t be such a pessimist.

  Bethany says, What’s a pessimist?

  Fist glances back at her and he sees a drop of blood blossom in the corner of her eye and then slide down her cheek. The bruises on her throat dance as shadows drift across her neck. His eyes tear. He trembles. He thinks, How could anyone ever hurt you, especially like that?

  He cries a while and he’s not ashamed. What can men’s judgments do to him? He knows they’re unsubstantial, braced by nothing more than the way they were raised and their own fears. He wipes his eyes but the tears keep coming. He thinks, You were eight-years-old. You loved horses and thought the world was beautiful…and the transgressions against her fill his heart with so much hate he chokes.

  Fist climbs out of the car with Karen crying, Take us with you…

  The bricks in the walls scream with the passion of the damned, skewered with time and inattention. Forgotten. Left behind.

  He glances up and down the street, looking for the bum, looking for anyone who feels this electricity in the air, this hopelessness and unfairness that squat on the sidewalk, sucking dreams from the air and exhaling nightmares.

  He shakes his head.

  A grocery cart, rusty and bent, crouches near the corner, bordering a wide and dark alley. He moves to it, a spring to his step because he’s ready, realizes he’s always been ready, he’s only needed something like this situation to bring out the beast inside him. And there’s always been a beast. He remembers those moments while training, before stepping into the ring, when everyone else faded and there was only the weight of the gloves on his fists and the speed and precision that hard work had earned. He remembers before that, when he was much younger, one of the only white kids going to a predominantly black school. Life had been full of intimidation, those rough middle years between childhood and adulthood, but he didn’t back down. His old man told him every time Fist came home with another bloody nose, Fight till you’re dead, not so people will respect you but so you can respect yourself.

  The memory lingers. The truth of knowing the difference between respecting himself and hating himself and finally owning up to the fact that he really has no one to blame stings. He made his decisions. He says to his family, to Bianca, “I’m sorry I lost my way. I could have done so many things better, with more honesty, with more passion and love. I was weaker than I ever thought I was. So goddamn weak.”

  Karen touches his thigh. She says, You’re so strong.

  He shakes his head. He doesn’t see anything noble in his choices. There were a million things he could have done right if he’d followed his heart and not held back or given in to someone else’s demands or manipulations. “No,” he says, “I could have given you so much more.”

  It was enough, Bethany says in that too young voice she’s pushing to sound so grown up, and he looks back and sees her looking out the window and into the dark and he wonders what moves beyond his natural vision and he hopes whatever she sees it doesn’t frighten her. He clenches his hands and thinks, I’m going to kill Jesus for you, baby.

  He pulls Karen from the car, surprised by how light she feels in his arms, and he sets her gently in the shopping cart. He returns for his daughter, places her between her mother’s legs, both of them looking forward, always ahead, unafraid of the darkness crowding the path in the distance and unafraid of the building looming over them because this moment is important, Fist thinks, the last time they’ll all be together. He kneels in the open driver’s door, not caring that his work slacks are wet with street water. He extends his hand, places it gently on the seat. Bianca can’t see him. Her tongue lashes out and she hobbles nearer, still a little sick but stronger than he ever imagined. She tries to cling to his wrist, force his hand open with her snout so she can lay on his palm, but he can’t take her and risk her life too. Fist wants her to live, to be there when he returns, to help him deal with the sorrow he knows is coming once he’s taken the final action and the darkness closes in.

  He wishes he would have left her with his father.

  He thinks, Maybe something so small and beautiful and innocent could have been the thing to bring us together. But it’s too late to go back now. He can only go ahead. He lets her sit on his palm a moment and nudges a cricket against her snout. After she’s fed, Karen and Bethany sing quietly as he grabs the cart and pushes them toward the entrance where large double doors loom. Echoes issue from within. Wild laughter, prayer, meditation, threats.

  Five

  He’d expected crackheads, men with bandanas and tattoos and guns, miscreants and dealers, but the hall is empty and subdued by shifting shadows as if a light somewhere up ahead spirals toward him. Fist clenches the shopping cart and inches forward. A wheel squeals as bats whip by, small, then larger, then smaller again, from murk to light to murk, their leathery wings the sound of a thousand tornados. He stops for a moment and pulls out one of the pistols. He doesn’t want Jesus getting the jump on him. His eyes strain to see farther down the corridor, and he wonders why he can’t see the main floor yet, in his mind imagining it’d be one big open area, not laid out like a hospital. But there are rooms and closed doors protecting them; the acrid scent of pale and long unused equipment, moldy beer, sweaty bodies.

  A stinging sensation spreads from his shoulder and works its way down his arm. Karen looks up at him and whispers, Your wound is bleeding.

  “I’ll live.”

  The hall shimmers beyond her and he wipes his eyes to clear them. He says, “I always thought we’d grow old together, thought we’d make it through that rough patch somehow even though we blamed each other, that the day would come we’d be able to admit to ourselves it was both our faults.”

  Music thumps deeper in the building; something tribal, ancient, as old as the sun and as fresh as newly
fallen rain. He tilts his head. Karen and Bethany do the same. They say, Follow the music.

  He grips the cart, ignores the noisy wheel and comes to the first door. The drum beat is still farther ahead, but he can’t walk by any of the rooms without first checking to make sure Jesus isn’t in there hiding. His heart slams in his ears. He rubs a hand on his pant leg and checks the pistol to make sure there are bullets in it. He can’t tell whose gun it is… his father’s? Jesus’ aunts?

  It’s loaded. Pain flares in his shoulder and a trickle of blood runs down his chest. Bethany sings a song softly and he tells her to be quiet, a little too harshly and he feels bad for it, but he needs silence right now but someone is still pounding the drum and the shopping cart spins in circles and bats scream, hunting in the gloom. Fist grabs the knob and twists it and eases the door open. The room is dark, silent, and he only hears the quick rustle of his breathing, the sweat accumulating on his skin, and the vows he made to Karen almost a decade ago.

  She says, Till death do us part.

  He shakes his head, eyes adjusting to the near-blackness of the room and he realizes he should have brought a flashlight the moment he knew he had to come here. And he should have known as much as he loved her when he married her that not even death could rip them apart. She fuels his purpose as much as she had when he was in the ring, when he fought for her and his father as much as he did to prove something to himself. A horrible loneliness suffuses his anger for a moment and he struggles with it, pushes it away, has to, otherwise he’ll fall right there in the threshold, his mind seeing into a room that isn’t there, his daughter in her bed with bruises on her throat, her still and open eyes, her pajama pants around her ankles.

  Fist steps back into the hall. He doesn’t care if Jesus gets the jump on him. He believes he can take it and he weeps as the hole in his shoulder weeps and part of his spirit rends a little more. They move down the hall and the darkness opens up and it waits for them with welcoming arms.