The Unforgiving Crucifix

Written by Laura Vance

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Little ditty written for my high school creative writing class. This piece was heavily inspired by a boy I knew and his failing relationship with his God and with his family. I dearly love him and I hope he is doing well.

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I think I stopped believing in God when I was sprawled across the kitchen floor with a red–hot handprint across my cheek. It seems absurd to me that there was ever a time I was remotely devout, but I am certain my faith abandoned me on that day, the very moment his hand connected with my left cheek, eternally exterminating my mental image of the kind, bearded man that was so carefully crafted beneath da Vinci’s hand. When else could it have been? I don’t know.

It was summertime. It was hot, and unbearably so. The air was made of water that filled my lungs, boiling hotter and hotter until it spilled over, inflaming my breathing tract in ways that made my head spin too fast. I could sense Scout was feeling it too. He had been so lethargic lately, his shaggy nose pressed against his unclipped paws, the smallest whines escaping his mouth as he longingly looked at us for things we could not give him. It was too hot to play. And I was a bit more selfish then, the pains in my stomach unwilling to give up my leftovers.

Scout loathed the tortuous Georgian inferno, and with Dad fixing the unfixable AC unit behind the house, it was hard not to when we hadn’t tasted the fresh breath of cold in weeks. It was misery. I don’t believe in heaven, but I know there is a hell, for I spent all of my childhood there and I knew it intimately.

Boredom was a sickness I was heavily afflicted with. We had no television and Mom was gone with the only person I could play with. I missed James so much, it used to make my chest physically contract with pain. Though six years my junior, only he had the gift of melting the perpetually twisted ball of anxiety in my stomach, even if it was just for one precious moment. I felt unbearably lonely without him; I was a shell of a nine–year–old boy with the vaguest idea of happiness, and the memory of its only personified source was growing fainter each day.

I shouldn’t have done it. I know that now, but all the same, I also know that nothing should have warranted the extent of his wrath that night. But Dad was occupied with the AC unit – he would be for hours – and Scout was whining so bad that it made the crack in my heart from James’ absence break so much deeper. Before I knew what I was doing, my legs were sneaking out of the front door with Scout in tow, his scraggly mane swishing behind me.

I probably talked to him. I used to talk to Scout all the time, “a man’s best friend” they call those of his kind. I don’t know what I used to tell him. I probably told him about my pirate ship in the trees, which I honestly and truly used to think would appear atop the Southern Live Oak behind my house if I concentrated hard enough. Sometimes I swear it truly did. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t say anything back, though, at least not in English – we could talk and talk and talk for hours. Scout was a gifted listener.

We reached town in enough time; the sun had begun to sink behind the silhouette of our pitiful metropolis, a ghost town really, spattered with boarded–up businesses and dirty windows. “Bobby’s Candy Shoppe and Sweets” was at the edge of town, sticking out worse than a sore thumb with its pristine coat of fresh red paint. An old–fashioned font danced across the glistening windows, goading us to spend my months of meticulously saved coins on experiencing the ambiance of centuries ago. I went there once, a while ago, Mom carrying me on her hip. If I close my eyes hard enough, I can still taste the sour green tang of the lollipop. I wanted it back more than anything.

The door sang with the tiniest jingle as I pressed it open, making me jump from its unexpected predictability. So much for our inconspicuous cover. Bobby himself was right behind the counter in a ridiculous striped suit – a fat candy cane bound by inadequate polyester, really – and the sight of a skinny little boy and his mangy little dog must have done him in for the day. His face contorted in the greatest display of inconvenience, but hunger and boredom erect a dangerous pair of apathy against the rage of pompous, old men.

“Absolutely no animals allowed,” he said at once. He looked me over again, scrunching up his nose before saying the words I would never forget, even after death. “I can’t stand the sight of one dog in my shop, much less two.” My stomach swooped. I felt my face go red. But I ultimately decided that his cruelty was convenient; it would be hard to steal candy from a man who displayed unyielding kindness and sympathy.

Nevertheless, I stayed. I couldn’t very well take a handful of candy while he was staring at me like I was the second Black Death.

“Didn’t you hear me?” he huffed. “Or must I bark?”

Scout growled, and I wish I didn’t smile at that, or else everything else in my life might have gone very differently. Very, very differently.

“You think it’s funny?” he asked, turning to exit the counter as he lectured me.

It wasn’t me, but something deep and carnal and primal inside of me, beyond my conscious control, took a chance, fearlessly thrusting my hand into the bowl of sweets while his back was turned.

He saw me of course, but fear made me fast and I ran. I ran from the store as I had never run in my entire life, Scout eagerly bounding beside me. I ran so fast I didn’t see Bobby dialing the town’s Sheriff. I ran so fast that I didn’t see Sheriff Willis’s car blurring past me as I dove into the surrounding forest that would lead me home. I ran so fast that I didn’t see Dad was finished tinkering with the AC unit behind the house. I ran so fast that by the time I was securely locked in my room and reaching into my pocket, every last piece of candy was gone.

The house was dead silent for what seemed like hours, but I’m sure it all couldn’t have unfolded in more than ten minutes. I was terrified to leave, terrified to even breathe. I was convinced that if I moved an inch, a SWAT team would surround me within seconds, and I would be turned into a human slice of Swiss Cheese. I cursed myself for my stupidity, for giving into the mortal compulsions of natural sin that I had been drilled to suppress every single Sunday of my life. I wondered what the flames of hell would feel like licking my skin, unaware that the Georgian humidity had already made me familiar with the sensation.

“Michael!” my dad called as the windows grew dark, the night speckled with stars. “Michael!” The longer I neglected to answer, the angrier his voice grew, rising to the dangerous level I was far too familiar with.

He couldn’t know.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Scout instinctively placed his head on my lap.

My door suddenly shook with the loud knocks of an infuriated father and his incoherent shouts. I picked up bits and fragments of English peeking through his sputtering rage, my heart stopping when I caught the word “Sheriff.” Now I know it wasn’t a a big deal, really; a few pieces of cheap candy scattered across town, the stereotypical shoplifting child in every scenario of morality discussed in Sunday school. Bobby was an old man with a stick unpleasantly wedged inside of himself, and Sheriff Willis only meant to appease him. But me, I could have been on death row the way my heart was hammering. I knew what my father could be like, and the thought almost made me seek out Sheriff Willis and put the shiny bracelets on myself.

Through the cracked door, I meekly attempted to convince him that Bobby and the Sheriff were lying. When that failed, as is the nature of a poorly constructed lie, I sauntered into the kitchen, trying to blame anyone but myself. Bobby was a greedy man who wouldn’t give a hungry boy some chocolate. The Sheriff got the wrong kid. Scout wanted to get out. It was all a big mistake. See? I didn’t have any candy in my overturned pockets. See? See?

He said nothing, his fuming plumes of rage saying enough. How could a face get that red?

It then morphed into me blaming him. I was rambling, desperation grappling with my lost grip on sanity. He didn’t make enough money for us to ever have enough food, let alone sweets. He never did anything except spend hours at the AC unit, day after day, and it was still blazing hot. Mom used to buy me candy. Mom is gone. Mom is gone and it’s all his fault.

That’s when his right palm flew across my left cheek, the palm that had once cradled my infant head with such anxious care. He must have done that once. I don’t know.

I used to be envious of the kids at church who would talk about racing down the hills of roller coasters, those bright stretches of colorful metals that arched and looped above the trees. I used to think that a few hard–earned dollars were a small price to pay for that immortal sensation of flying, but the way I slid across the slick linoleum filled me with the petrifying terrors of being airborne, the inevitability of finally crashing and falling, down, down, down…

And crashed, I did. My head smacked a kitchen cabinet, the one that stored the pancake griddle. There was pain. The linoleum was splattered with blood.

He looked down on me, the towering, frightening man he was. There was hatred in his eyes, malice in his taut build, and mounted on the far wall, distant as it was through the red that streamed down my eye, was a wooden crucifix, lingering just above him as he yelled with fire in his eyes. He screamed of repentance. He screamed of unworthiness. He screamed of irredeemable sin. He screamed of the depths of hell especially erected for my occupation, the dirty soul I was. I couldn’t bear the shame.

I thought of what I knew about Jesus and the Bible, and how Jesus also bled; how he bled because he loved and how he bled because there was no one else to save him. And for a god to love that much yet leave me sprawled across the kitchen floor in the middle of my own blood, for him to stand by my father as he stabbed me with his words and wounded me all over again, I discovered the truth.

I knew there was no god. The sun would rise and fall and people could laugh and smile because that was the way things happened to be. But I knew there was Lucifer that ruled all, and I knew him personally, because I knew my father, and I saw the devil in his eyes on the day that God left me.