Page 73 - WTP VOl. X #3

“I know I’m supposed to. That’s a big thing, right? Forgiveness? People just...” There were many faces that floated to the front of his mind—Sasha, Felix, Priyanka, his father—and then there was his mother. As he had last seen her. Shrunken and drained away to the point where the simple act of breathing was laborious. But she still smiled and was kind. She kept that up until the end. He couldn’t understand why she wasn’t mad. So he had been mad for her. And he still was. But it was exhausting. Maybe that deeply buried barb wasn’t from Sasha. Perhaps she had just aggravated the pre-existing wound.
“Are you really Jesus? Or are you just something a fisherman carved, and everyone expects you to be the Son of God?” Jerome thought of how frustrat- ing it must be to constantly not live up to people’s expectations. How unfair, to constantly be prayed and looked to for help, and yet lack the ability to do anything other than just be present. Maybe that’s enough.
“I’m uh...sorry. I shouldn’t have just expected you to save me. Sorry I put it all on you. I’m the fucking idiot who fell down here. Thanks for staying with me.”
The large wooden hand on his shoulder squeezed gently. With its other hand, the Jesus statue pointed at its own chest and then drew a straight line with its pointer finger to Jerome. As it did, it spoke, some word that required a fancy tongue roll that produced a clacking sound.
Jerome grew very tired and felt his energy slip, the anger and anxiety evaporating like steam rising off of skin after a hot shower. Even the pain started to fade away, and he was left with only the irresistible desire to let go. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the incline, and quickly sank into the deepest sleep he had ever known. Am I dying? It was a fleeting thought before his consciousness evaporated, and whatever was Jerome once his body and mind were stripped away relocated to a state of rest devoid of dreams or anger or pain, a clean slate like after good sex, where there are no conscious thoughts, nor thoughts about the absence of thoughts, nor desire for new thoughts, blissful, what he’d searched so
long for looking at those walls...
Warmth on his face that grew more and more intense until it felt like an actual flame was pressed to his skin eventually brought him back. His throat was
dry and irritated, and someone was shouting to him from what sounded like far away. Blinking, squinting
into an unforgiving sun, Jerome found himself alone in the ditch. His head felt as if it were in a vice, the pressure so bad he was sure his skull would shatter at any moment. The Jesus statue was gone. The voice calling out was that of a middle-aged man, leaning over the sidewalk edge from above. Jerome would find out later that the man’s car had broken down on the highway, that he had been walking to the nearest gas station when he had tripped and nearly fallen on some uneven concrete. Had he not almost gone over the side, he never would have seen what at first looked to him like a dead body on the side of the road.
Emergency workers came not long after. Accompany- ing the pounding in his temples, Jerome’s ankle was badly swollen and the pain in his chest had grown sharp. With each breath it felt like his ribs were rub- bing against razor blades. As they carried him away, Jerome noticed markings in the dirt, by the tall grass, random lines carved lazily from the end of a stick.
In the harsh morning sun his experience with the wooden avatar seemed less real, quickly fading into some freakish, drunken dream.
At the hospital Jerome was advised he had broken three ribs, fractured his ankle, had a concussion, and was severely dehydrated, but the doctors were con- fident he would ultimately be okay. He spent most of that day alone, sleeping, welcoming the smothering of the pain meds. It was quiet when he was awake. He didn’t bother to turn on the television in his room or scroll through his phone. When one of the nurses came to check on him, he hesitated before asking her for help.
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