When We Join Jesus in Hell Read Free Page B

he?”
    “Gone,” she says, draping her arms across her chest, glaring at him with those sad eyes. She is unmovable now. She is not going to help him. He can see that. He tries to think of her as an accomplice to Jesus’ ways, but she’s not and he knows it. She’s barely hanging on to what love she has for him, and he thinks she must go through hell, knowing her son is what he is.
    “Mind if I look around?” He doesn’t know why he’s whispering. If Jesus is there he’s heard him by now. He says, “Is anyone else here?”
    “No.”
    The only light inside comes from what he assumes is the living room. He treads softly. An old lamp perched on a scarred end table casts a sickly yellow glow onto a tattered couch. He moves past her, not caring if she jumps on his back. He’s used to extra weight now.
    He searches the living room and kitchen and finds no one, but he sees a yellow post-it note with Jesus’ name on it, a number scribbled below. He memorizes it as he hears a voice say in his head, Say my name. Jesus . Say it .
    “Jesus,” he says.
    His heart hammers in his ears. He chokes on bile, glancing past the woman, out to the street where dark men pass the dark car and pale bodies. Fist wipes his eyes. The woman says, “Why don’t you sit down. I’ll get us some tea.”
    “I don’t need to sit. I don’t need tea. What I need is to find this piece of shit so I can drag him out to the car and let my wife and daughter watch me put a bullet in his head.”
    She flinches. He can’t imagine what it’s like being in her shoes. But he gets the feeling she can imagine being in his because her face softens for a moment and she touches his shoulder the way his mother had rarely done, yet he wished she had a hell of a lot more.
    She says, “You think hurting him will bring them back? You know it won’t. And where you gonna be then? How will you honor their memory if you’re in prison, a murderer?”
    “I don’t care about honoring their memory,” Fist says. “They knew I loved them. No one is going to change my course.”
    “You say that now.”
    He offers a sharp nod. There are two closed doors. He moves to the first, clenches the pistol, believes that fate is close by, it’s taunting him, teasing him with possibilities and he may just end up dead too, bleeding out in the ghetto with some woman he doesn’t know looming over him, with his wife and daughter waiting for him in some better place and he can’t say that’d be so bad because he knows that the life he’s had up until tonight isn’t within reach anymore.
    He twists the knob.
    The door opens beneath its own weight.
    The room is dark, blankets draped over the windows, and it smells like long-forgotten sex and cigarettes. He raises the pistol, squinting against the darkness, one hand groping the wall to find the light.
    The world explodes with a different light, the sharp crack of a bullet cutting air, and Fist staggers, hits the bedroom door jamb, confused because the pain stems from the back of the shoulder and it’s burning through him. He looks to the woman. She points an old revolver at his face. For some reason he thinks it’s his father’s pistol. He figures she must have had it hidden in the fold of her gown. He wants to smile at her but only once she’s sucking breath from the carpet. She’s still sad, and maybe even some of it is for him, but he sees she doesn’t like people breaking into her house and looking to kill her kin. Her hand doesn’t waver much, but a little tick tugs at her right eye and the grimace she wears is pure.
    He grins, unsure why, but it disappears as he moves his arm and lights explode in his head. He’s surprised he can still hold the pistol, surprised that he still clings to hope that things will somehow get better. He feels lucky that she was either a bad shot or was only intending to wound him.
    She waits for him, this dark grim reaper with her broken scythe. She says, “Set that gun on the floor and