Jesse

“I found myself praying to a god I wasn’t sure I believed in.”

What an interesting waking thought to have.

Jesse rolled out of bed. Not much to do on this Saturday. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but at least the weather looked nice. The sun blanketed his room; he forgot to shut the blinds again. He’d been doing things like that, being absentminded. What a fucking dummy.

He looked in the mirror and frowned. Those thoughts were more common. Best not to linger on it, it just makes it worse, he thought. He brushed his teeth. He flossed. Take care of this vessel. It carries precious cargo, value as of yet to be determined.

He threw on some gym shorts. Summer was coming soon, and he wouldn’t want to walk, shorts or no shorts. Texas was so hot. Maybe this will be the year I move. To the east coast, to hustle and hard pavement, hardened people. To the northwest, full of secret gardens and secret tensions. Probably not back home.

Quietly he walked down the short hall. Lana was usually asleep until 2 on the weekends, either hung over from being out or passed out from working the closing shift. He wished she would get a better job. He didn’t really have a stake in it, they were Craigslist roommates. Really they barely knew each other. Why am I so paternalistic, anyway. His care paid off. She was on the couch, empty Shiner nightcap on the floor. Anyway.

Abundant sun, everywhere. Don’t they say that Florida is the land of abundant sun? Jessie thought. Kiss my ass, Florida, Texas has you beat. He smiled. He hadn’t been to Florida, but in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t such a big thing to be irrationally confident in. There are more important things to be wrong about.

The apartment complex was huge enough to walk around for a while, and sometimes Jessie would. He’d take note of the cars that hadn’t moved in ages, running Rorschach tests on the bird shit in the parking lot. He’d envision the conversations squirrels chattered:

“Hey man, did you see that bird?”
“Yeah, he just swooped in there and took Dave’s acorn!”
“Grackles, man.”
“I know, right?”

Imagination is a strength in boredom. In anxiety, a glass jaw.

Today wasn’t one of those days those, where nothing was wrong on the outside and nothing was right on the inside. Today just was. Jesse breathed in, deeply, celebrating the thought of just being. Let’s be MINDFUL!, he thought, grinning at the idea of motivational mindfulness. Now YOU get awareness and YOU get awareness and YOU get awareness! EVERYBODY GETS AWARENESS! He chuckled to himself.

He probably looked like an idiot, grinning like that. He pursed his lips slightly, furrowed his brow. His nostrils flared with internal conflict. The tension in his jaw pulled the smile away from his lips.

He forgot to wear his mouth guard last night; he’d been forgetting it a lot. His dentist would be pissed. He didn’t even know he had been grinding his teeth until the dentist told him. Are you under a lot of work stress, she’d asked. He wasn’t. It’s more like he was over the stress, if stress is what it was. Just layers of person, draped on top and around some dense and dark core, one that exerts pressure throughout the body and atop it. He was just a deep sea diver with no pressure in his suit, his body bursting at the seams but holding together in the shell of the suit, as if it knew that to escape the suit would be to finally give in to the crush of the dark water outside.

He shook his head briefly, negating the tension, took another deep breath, and slowed down his pace. He had started walking briskly, eyes fixed in the middle distance. He came back to the present moment just in time to hear the bird.

When he was twelve, Jesse’s dad died from an overdose. Far from Jonesboro, Arkansas, Jesse’s dad died in a Hotel 8. While Jesse was at church with his mother and stepfather, Jesse’s dad died and the man he was with slipped out the door. Jesse was surrounded by God’s love, Jesse’s dad died alone.

The fights got worse after that. Especially the fights about church. Church had left his dad alone in that room. How could he trust Church? Church had turned its back back on his dad. His father was sinful, and his father was in him. How could he trust these smiling people? Would they turn him out, too?

He turned himself out. It wasn’t easy. The fights came to blows. It was as if his stepfather knew that it was about Jesse’s dad, the homosexual. The addict. How dare this child. The temerity of this child.

His stepfather probably didn’t think that, not consciously. Surely he didn’t know what temerity meant. He was a pretty simple man. A safe bet for a woman who had been burned. His dad wasn’t perfect, Jesse knew. His mom wasn’t either. Sometimes it was hard to love them both.

Sometimes it was hard to love.

He stepped to the bird.

“What happened to you, little guy?”

That was sexist, he thought. I don’t know the gender of this bird.

The bird’s beady eye was rolling frantically, scanning for sky. Its beak stayed open, keening emanating from somewhere within the little broken body.

Did a housecat do this? He looked up. Saw nothing. Had to be a cat.

The bird was alone. There wasn’t a nest above. There weren’t even any people around. There was the sun, the grass, the bird, and Jesse. Alone together, sharing air for precious moments.

This bird wasn’t going to live. He could see blood. Wounds on the outside, and surely more on the inside. Wounds that wouldn’t heal.

Jesse was on the ground. On his knees. Tears raining down on a sunny day, washing the blood from this dying bird. He wished it was holy water, pouring from his eyes, bringing life to this body. But there wasn’t anything holy about him. He was his father’s son, broken and apostate.

There is no church in the wild.

He prayed.

Tagged: #fiction #short story