Extreme

When Levon gets drunk, he rambles on about the war. Sometimes when he’s really high, he can almost convince you that his younger brother will someday return from the Mekong River where he was lost and left for dead almost forty years ago. Levon has never stopped waiting and hoping.

Levon is sitting on a wooden crate in a makeshift shack—a temporary shelter constructed of a rusting piece of tin held up on one end by a stack of railroad crossties and on the other by two metal pipes. The only wall is a paint-spattered canvas tarpaulin anchored to the roof with a couple of bricks. The hut is located on the edge of a hobo jungle—a shantytown hidden in a stand of trees on the outskirts of the city.

A steady rain has been coming down since nightfall. From the corner of his eye, Levon catches a movement just at the edge of the campfire light. When he looks, he immediately recognizes the bony face of the Preacher. The rain is rolling off the brim of his dilapidated fedora and onto the shoulders of a tattered black overcoat.

Once a hard-time hallelujah hustler, the Preacher now has the look of a man who knows the long shot has gone terribly wrong. He has spent his entire life preaching about, and waiting for the “second coming”—interpreting every notable event as a sign of the apocalypse. Years ago, he lost his only church by wrongly predicting the time and date of Armageddon at least a half-dozen times.

The Preacher hitches up his pants, ambles over to the shelter, and sags to the ground beside his comrade. He leans back, spreads his arms along one of the wooden crossties, and stretches his long legs toward the fire. For a few minutes, they sit silently while the rain drums a solo on the metal roof.

Levon reaches into the left side pocket of his field jacket and pulls out a butt. He lights the leftover with a battered Zippo, then holds the lighter in his right hand clicking the cover open and closed with his thumb.

“I’m plumb tuckered out.” says the Preacher, still lying back with his eyes closed. “God Almighty tired of walking and preaching—back and forth—up and down—town to town.”

“They say if you draw a map to everywhere you’ve ever been, you draw your own face.” says Levon, staring straight ahead.

Levon takes two more drags on the short smoke then, using his left thumb and middle finger, flips the butt out into the rain-filled darkness.

The Preacher opens his eyes and sits up. “You remember old Doc Wells, used to hang around at the mission? Always wore that dirty blue suit—every pocket, full of stuff he’d fished out of trash bins. Well, they found him dead this morning. Somebody put a bullet in his head, doused him with gasoline, and lit him up. Nobody knows why—probably just for the hell of it.”

The Preacher takes off his hat and runs his right hand through his hair. Looking down at the ground, he continues. “Today, I couldn’t even work up enough feeling to say a prayer for Doc. There’s no use talking to the dead—too late for sermonizing.” The Preacher shakes the rain off his hat, and puts it back on his head. “Fact is I’ve lost the calling—no more holy spirit left in me. The people on the street don’t even stop to listen anymore. I can’t take up enough collection to buy supper.”

Levon reaches down with his left hand and picks up a bottle. He takes a long pull and passes it to the Preacher. The Preacher wipes off the top with the sleeve of his coat, takes a swallow, and sets the bottle on the ground between his feet.

For a few seconds no one says anything, and then Levon speaks up.

“Once when were on patrol we came across this old Vietnamese guy propped against a tree—just like he was waiting there for us. He’d stepped on a mine and there wasn’t much left of his left foot. So this kid Blake walks over to where the old dink is sitting, and without saying a word, unslings his shotgun and points it into his face. The old man actually manages a smile. That’s when Blake lowers the barrel and blows off his other foot. Nobody says a fucking word. We just walk away and leave him there on the ground, screaming.”  Levon’s voice trails off. He seems absent from his words.

“There’s no way to understand things like that.” says the Preacher. “It’s impossible to stamp order on bedlam in a world where life means nothing. And if life means nothing, death means nothing.”

The preacher reaches down and picks up the bottle. He takes a swallow and passes the wine back over to Levon, who stops thumbing the cover of his Zippo long enough to kill what’s left in the bottle.

A sudden strong breeze rustles the leaves in the trees. Levon stands up, walks just outside the cover of the shack, and stares out into the murk. Almost trance-like, he mutters, “Feels strange tonight—like something’s moving this way.”

The Preacher immediately looks up at Levon with a troubled expression on his face. A bat suddenly flashes through the shack and back out into the shadows causing both men to duck.

“I’m gonna take a piss and turn in.” says Levon, as he throws the empty bottle into the undergrowth.

“Wait up.” says the Preacher, getting to his feet. “I’ll go pee with ya.” He takes a small flashlight from his pocket and follows Levon into the darkness.

They pick their way down a short slope through some scrub pines to a drainage ditch that runs through the woods. A huge rat caught in the glare of the flashlight holds his ground next to a discarded McDonalds bag. Levon picks up a large rock and throws it toward the rat. By pure chance, the rock hits the rat square on, and it lies there quivering in the dirt, dead as hell.

“Worthless son-of-a-bitch never knew what him.” says Levon, staring down on the gruesome scene.

_____

Levon and the Preacher stand side-by-side pissing into a rain-flooded ditch.

“The water looks deep enough for baptizing tonight.” says the Preacher.

“You ever do any baptizing Preacher?” asks Levon, zipping up his pants.

“Lots of times, back when I had my own church.” says the preacher. Once, when I was a little boy, I saw a man drowned at a river baptizing.”

The Preacher pauses as if recalling the scene.

“A country preacher got so full of the Holy Spirit, he held this old drunk sinner’s head under the water too long. They claimed it was a heart attack, but I saw the man’s arms and hands flailing around, reaching up out of that river for something or somebody to save him.”

“Well, maybe he found what he was looking for before he found the bottom.” says Levon.

 “Yeah, maybe so.” says the Preacher.

For a few seconds, the Preacher looks up into the rain, watching the dark clouds move past, then says in a tired voice, “I guess there comes a time when you realize that what you’ve been hoping for and looking for is never gonna happen.”

“Preacher, there’s one thing that’s always struck me about ’hope’, says Levon, “the more familiar you are with it, the less beautiful it becomes.”

“I know what you mean,” says the Preacher, “Now let’s get out of here before this rain washes us down the gutter. I could use some sleep.”

_____

The rain has slowed to a drizzle. Fog crawls along the wet ground. The Preacher and Levon are wrapped in old Army blankets, sleeping, on opposite sides of a dying campfire.

Crouched in the bushes overlooking the campsite, Lady Speed lights a joint, inhales deeply, and passes it over to Taylor. Taylor White is the creator and producer of DownHill Films, an independent film company specializing in documentary-style videos. Lady Speed is the one-person camera crew.

They like to refer to themselves as “reality artists”, or “de-humanists”. Specifically, Taylor shoots and burns arbitrarily selected homeless people, while Lady Speed films the action. They are purveyors of “degenerate art”; out to provide the insatiable public with one more taste of the extreme—attempting to wrest art away from the elitists and put it square in the face of the people.

This highly motivated team plans to make one and only one documentary, which they will call, “Streets Afire”.

These two underground artists know that their time is short. They know that they’ll be tracked down in a matter of weeks. To this truth, they are utterly indifferent. In fact, they’ve already made a pact to kill themselves, in front of the camera, in less than a month—a final artistic statement.

Taylor takes one last toke off the joint, extinguishes the roach between his index finger and thumb, and slips it into the pocket of his camo-jacket.

“You ready to roll?” he asks, pulling a black ski mask over his face.

Lady Speed does a quick inspection of the video cam, and says, “All set.”

Taylor takes a .38 snub nose from his shoulder holster, and says, “Okay, let’s go and immortalize these worthless sons-of-bitches.”

He picks up a metal can of gasoline and steps out of the underbrush.

“Tis’ a far, far better thing than they do…” whispers Lady Speed, as she moves out behind her partner.

_____

Two muffled shots, one right behind the other, sets dogs to barking in the distance. A few seconds later, the fire starts…

Levon dreams he’s somewhere else. Everything moves away—from one dark place to another. Years streak by in a blur of milliseconds until there is no time left. He hears a rushing sound and feels hot wind on his face. Purple smoke blows across a flaming river. When it clears, he begins to make out a familiar figure standing under the war torn trees that line the red riverbank. He calls out his brother’s name and starts to run in that direction…

A shiver runs through the Preacher, but he does not shake. He is not afraid. In fact he is peaceful. He feels as though he is turning to stone. It starts in his head and moves down through his body until he is completely petrified. Unable to speak, he knows his job is finished. He will no longer have to explain or make excuses for God’s continued absence. And even though his hope has been scorched by anger and disappointment, the Preacher still waits and listens for some purposeful movement in the empty darkness…

 

© D. B. Cox