Via Dolorosa(21)

“Another,” he told Roger as the bartender made a second pass to collect his empty scotch glass.

“Pushers,” Roger said, half smirking. “We get you hooked, don’t we?”

“Forget it. I changed my mind.”

“I’m just giving you a hard time. We do that in Milwaukee, too, you know…”

“Sure,” Nick said. “But I’m all right.”

“You sure, man?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“What?” Roger said. Nick’s face was telling.

“You think you can call me a cab?”





—Chapter VI—





Outside, the air was soggy, uncomfortable. The taxicab came and shuttled him through the island’s wet, sodden streets. The whole night was black. Feeling his hand throb against his leg, he could not shake the rethinking of what had happened in Iraq. It occurred to him that tonight, in front of Roger at the bar, was the first time he had told anyone what had happened in Iraq aside from his military superiors and the medical review board. The telling of it made it impossible to escape it. Granger, too, made it impossible: he was relative to what had happened, so it made sense that he could not be fully clear of it all while around Granger, and around the hotel. It had been Granger who, as a form of gratuity, had gotten Nick the job painting the mural. And that had come about because of his son, Myles, and how he, Nick, had tried to save his life. Sure, he thought. I’m a regular goddamn hero. A true American. He had accepted the gratuity because he thought it would be disrespectful not to accept it and, anyway, his own life had been disrupted and he needed to start over somewhere, and on a new page. He and Emma quickly married and he had agreed to work at the hotel for the summer. He could paint during their honeymoon and attempt to recapture whatever the war had seen fit to terminate within him. An island getaway—how bad could that really be? At the time of his decision, however, it had not occurred to him that his stay on the island and at the hotel would not be a turning of the page; in fact, if anything, it was only managing to prolong everything he was so anxious to try and forget. Granger reminded him, the talk of Myles reminded him, the mural and his goddamn hand reminded him. There was no escape. Again with escape, he thought to himself. Good luck with all that garbage.

They were all just lost souls, broken and weak and unsalvageable. He knew what it was like to be told to fight and kill—ordered to fight and kill—and how the anticipation of that charge carried with it a hot and hungry anxiety: something you knew you were ill prepared to do, no matter how well prepared you were, and that, deep down in your black guts, you knew it was as base and as wrong as you have ever been told anything was wrong. Killing was as base as a drunken brawl, and just as self-serving and unfulfilling as anything else perpetrated by tempted adolescents and, in the scope of all things, it was equally as clumsy and ultimately embarrassing.

As the taxicab trundled along and he could feel his hand, it occurred to him that he would forever be stuck with this hand—or, rather, what remained of it—and that, he knew, would be his constant reminder of it all. The Paradis d’H?tel would not be a part of him forever; Granger, either, for that matter. His marriage had become a misalliance, but perhaps, given time, and in some way or another, that would also be something that would someday be nonexistent for him. Yet his hand would always exist, and he would go to sleep with it every night and would awake to it every morning, and that was God’s cruel joke, God’s satisfaction that justice—however skewed—had been served.

He no longer believed in God. He did not believe in God as fact and did not believe in God as theory—as concept—either, and he did not know which was worse. It was not, however, difficult to acknowledge the actual, physical existence of Christ; although, Nick surmised, the acceptance of such a belief did not necessarily impart upon Jesus the Man—Jesus the Deity—the preternatural, superhuman powers borne by Almighty God as is translated through established Christian religions. Simply, Jesus Christ could have been a man, just a man—terrorist; zealot; consulate; politician; con artist; human icon; history’s first celebrity of sorts; it was all just as plausible as anything else, in truth—whose story had, over time and with the benefit of popular perpetuation, been blown out of proportion. In that sense, Jesus Christ could have been no different than, say, Davy Crockett, that backwoods revolutionary, magistrate, congressman, drunkard, cheater—the lying rogue who ran out on his wife and children only to be crucified, for the sake of analogy and in a manner of pretense, on a crumbling and futile Texas rood. The King of kings was really no different than the King of the Wild Frontier. How easily truth turns heroes and martyrs into historical degenerates. He’d believed in God once. Now, here, in the taxicab, in the dark, he was not so sure.

The taxicab arrived at a darkened roundabout at the end of a beached roadway. The Club Potemkin—swarthy and wholly eclipsed by the endless shadows of palms—stood like a forgotten relic washed up at the foot of the ocean. The taxicab jolted to a stop. Nick paid the driver and stepped out. He was accosted by the smell of the sea. The alkaline, oceanic sting was furious in his nostrils. Borne on the air, he could hear the faint stammer of live music, heavy on the bass, from within the club. When the cab left, it became clear to him that he was left in total darkness. He attempted to approach the club’s entrance, but, after several moments, realized he had gotten lost and confused, trundling along through the green and swollen hedges of palm. Pausing to catch his breath, he watched the reflection of the moon down on the sea, rippling and unsteady, like something from a dream. I’ve seen this before, Nick thought.