There is a small church sitting between two mini-malls. Even though it’s the middle of the night, Joe walks to the door, stands below the cross, looks inside. There are two rows of pews—fifteen or twenty on each side. A humble altar behind.
On a wall, a Man hangs on a cross. His hands are bleeding. His feet are bleeding. Joe stares at the Man. He may be wood or plaster. The blood red paint. He may be salvation. He may be nothing more than a doll for adults.
Joe steps into the church. He walks to the first pew, a few feet from the altar—a few feet from the man. He sits down. He stares. He thinks about his friend. Is he still on the ground where he died. Have they taken him away? Is he lying in the back of an ambulance or van? Is he lying on a cold, steel slab. He sits and he stares.
There’s a dim light above the altar. It casts shadows across the wracked body of the Man. Joe sits and he stares. And he tries to remember if he ever knew his dead friend’s real name. He sits for an hour. Two. The shadows move as the sun starts to rise. It is the first morning in a decade that Old Man Joe, age 39 but looks 75, isn’t lying on the beach watching the sky turn grey, white, pink, blue—isn’t waiting for answers but seeking them.
Streaks of light come through the door. He sits and stares. Blood on His hands. Blood on
His feet. Light moves down the aisle. Streaks, slowly. His friend somewhere in the city, dead.
A priest walks in, lights candles, smiles at Joe, nods. Priest leaves. Candles burn. Joe picks up a book. It’s simple, black, in the back of the pew, a gold cross embossed. He looks at the face of the Man. He doesn’t look like He’s in pain. Joe speaks:
“Why’d you take my friend?”
His eyes are open. They’re deep blue. Calm. At rest.
“Why’d you take my friend and leave those guys who killed him?”
His hands open, not clinched in pain. Fingers extended, inviting.
“Why? Why? Why you let men with different colored skin hate each other for no reason? Why you let one man have more than the other man when they both deserve it? Why you let children die in the streets? Killing each other over a corner or some white powder or the color of a bandana. Why you make my friends eat out of dumpsters and drink their lives away when they ain’t done nothing to hurt anybody their whole lives?”
His mouth is open slightly. His teeth white. He’s not grimacing. Calm.
“Why you make me spend my life chasing yellow, making other men chase green? Another man spend his life spilling red? If you for real and you love everyone like they say you do, then why you treat us different? Why you give to some and not to others? Why you take and hurt and destroy so many people that are just trying to get by and get through the day? Why you let that happen over and over and over and over again? Those that got, get more. And those that don’t got get nothing, over and over and over again. If you for real, it don’t make sense to me.”
He wears no clothes. Just a white sheet tied loosely at waist.
“You want worship for what? For what you give? For how you treat us? For what you allow to happen? For the hatred that exists that you don’t stop? For the violence that exists that you don’t stop? For the death that you don’t stop? Man killing man killing woman killing children that you don’t stop? And you want worship? You want us on our knees? You want devotion? You want exaltation? You want faith?”
A crown of thorns pressed into skull. Bleeding at the tips.
“I walk down the street and people hate me, not love me, hate my skin, my smell, the clothes I wear, what they think I am, who they think I am. Not one person looks at me and sees love. They just hate. Every single one of them. And you call yourself All-Knowing. All-Powerful. You sit in judgment.”
Thick streaks in his air. On his chin. Running down his chest.
“You want and say you deserve and that we must or are condemned? All you give us is this—this world where children get burned alive and men spend their money blowing each other up and women sell themselves to feed and all we see is destruction and war and mayhem in your name and it never gets better and you never stop all-knowing and all-powerful. It never ends. It never ends. And it never will.”
Head hanging but not in defeat.
“Why’d you take my friend? He didn’t deserve it. None of us deserve it…”
Lit from above, Joe stands and walks out.
--excerpt from "Bright Shiny Morning" by James Frey
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