By Prospero Pulma Jr.
It was rope for Luis and Mike as the two thieves and nails bigger than fingers for Juan. Juan watched Tomas, in his carboard legionnaire armor and sword, holding a hammer and nail above his palm. “Do it.” Juan shut his eyes and waited for the pain when the tip of the nail touched his skin. “Do it!”
Juan bit his lips the second the nail broke his skin. As the hammer drove the nail deeper, he thought of the daggers he had thrusted into his family’s soul when he went into artificial nirvana countless times for so many years.
The pain thrust forward the image of his mother begging him to stop using substances that twisted the mind before he fell out of school. Her buckets of tears did not help him complete a semester in college. The memory of his father trying to talk some sense into him with words, sometimes with his fists, came next. The hammering stopped. Juan braced himself for a new surge of pain as he felt Tomas shuffling to his other palm.
The pain from the second nail driven into Juan’s feet resurrected the long days with a priest and counselors. A few times, he had wanted a third nail for his feet. Each time, people responded by tying his feet and supporting his arms with thick rope. Each time he believed the extra nail was just punishment for the day he smoked the crystalline that shot his mind to the distant sky and his body close to the morgue.
A sudden lightness told Juan that Tomas and the other legionnaires were picking him up from the ground. When the sensation stopped, he opened his eyes. His position made him see the soldiers and people wearing ancient garb to his front. Behind them were folks in jeans, shirts, and caps, clicking away on their smartphone cameras. Further downhill were TV vans.The sounds were as eclectic as the sight – keening mixed with laughter and clapping.
Juan glanced at Mike and Luis at his flanks before his sight roamed the field until it zeroed in on a mango tree where little hands under its shade were waving at him. Little Lilian and Justin with Jenny were where he told them to be. He nodded his head, hoping his blunt crown of thorns would exaggerate his movement. Then he went on to convey a great leader’s words and emotions.
Grimacing was effortless after dragging a heavy piece of timber under a clear April sky across town then uphill and having two nails hammered into his palms. Conveying the message was like reciting from an old beloved story for everyone knew what his words would be. Feigning death was so easy with all the heat, pain, and exhaustion.
“Does it hurt, Papa?” Lilian tapped the edge of the bandage on his palm.
“Just like an ant bite.” Juan pinched her forearm. “Like this.”
“My friends say, ‘Teacher is so brave,’” Justin raised his other bandaged hand.
“Tell them, ‘Teacher is not brave. He’s just so sorry.’”
“Off to bed. Now!” Jenny used to cuddle and tickle the tots while herding them to bed until the village officials and local police knocked on their gate.
Juan was on their list. They told him to come to the village chairman’s office the next day.
Jenny broke down and Juan almost joined her. Many men and women from near and far had met the Grim Reaper after such visits that the visitors might as well have been the Reaper’s earthly emissaries.
Juan went to the village office the next morning before his grade school classes. The officials ordered him to confess on paper to his dark past and promise never to return to it again. Complying was very easy for he had never used the long years and weak memories to bury his past affair with the mind-freeing substances. He thought that displaying it,then shining a light on his present life would rescue people from the darkness that had enslaved him.
And rescued people he did, one of whom was behind him on the list – Clifford. Men on a motorcycle had blown Clifford’s brain off his head a month later, joining a growing list of other people of similar backgrounds and identical fates.
The town was his home. He had to rescue people, more so the ones who had condemned him and his kind, so he unpacked his bag each time Jenny packed it, along with all their bagsto get away from the dead bodies and shadowy motorcycle riders.
“Bedtime’s the same.”Jenny pulled Lilian and Justin to their bedroom. “Good Friday or any day.”
Loud knocking from the gate drowned her haranguing the children about their cluttered bedroom.
“Okay,” Juan said to the riders in the black helmets. He closed the gate behind him. “Okay.” As his message got through Clifford, Clifford’s message about the euphoria from the crystalline swayed him. Once. Just once.
The riders raised their pistols. The pain from the bullets was just pain.