 
### Coffee and Sugar

### C. Sean McGee

Coffee and Sugar

Copyright© 2013 C. Sean McGee

CSM Publishing

Santo André, São Paulo, Brazil

Published at Smashwords

Second Edition

All rights reserved. This FREE ART ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, the reader is not charged to access it and the downloader or sharer does not attempt to assume any part of the work as their own. Free art, just a writer's voice, and your conscious ear.

Cover Design: C. Sean McGee

Interior layout: C. Sean McGee

Author Photo: Carla Raiter

This story was written under the influence of:

Epicloud by The Devin Townsend Project

### Contents

CHAPTER ZERO

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

TWENTY ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

For Nenagh, and Tomás

#  CHAPTER ZERO

"Get over here, little donkey. Look at him. Doesn't he look just like a donkey? Long useless arms, hands like a little girl. And look at those fingers; they'd snap just trying to grip a toothbrush. Hey donkey, bring your daddy a drink," said The Bishop in a drunken slur to Joao whilst chafing some passers-by.

As he rocked waywardly on his white plastic chair, the thin legs bent under the strain of his heaving upper body that twisted and turned with the eschewal of his foul exuberance.

From behind the counter came Joao, walking with sullen eyes and full hands; balancing a rickety metal tray holding a large bottle of cachaça and a single glass. As he crossed from the small kitchen to where his father sat, he patiently and obsessively counted every tile, watching his feet magically appear from out of sight and then always stepping on the space where his eyes had been.

He wondered to himself that if his feet always landed where his eyes had been, how much longer would he need to stare at the moon before they carried him there?

He imagined then that the tiles below him were great ash white asteroids and that if he stayed on them longer than it took for a passing eye to pass on by, he would fall forever into the oblivion of space, always falling downwards, regardless of what direction he was falling; kicking his legs aimlessly whilst somehow keeping the rickety metal tray steady so as not to spill daddy's drink.

As he moved from asteroid to asteroid, he sensed himself closer to the moon and with every next step; the thrill of accomplishment was met with the hurried fright of expected failure and he nervously tiptoed his way over the last few obstacles.

A heavy depressive weight cemented itself in his stomach, pulling on his focus and negotiating the exchange of his equilibrium as the sound of a low phlegmy cough willowed through his ears and threw him into expectancy.

The boy tipped his hand slightly and his eyes drifted from an ash white tile just beyond his right foot to a piece of space just outside the reach of his left arm where the glass of cachaça sat idly in mid-air, having so naturally and unsubtly just slid off the rickety old metal tray like water off a duck's back and crashed against the floor, smashing into a hundred thousand pieces and waking the old man from his momentary slumber.

"Are you retarded? What the hell is wrong with you boy? You just dropped a full drink. Have you any dignity, any bloody respect? And in the house of God? What the fuck is wrong with you?" yelled The Bishop, slapping his fist across the table as if he were laying his firm hand across a cattle's rump, ushering it to move its insolent arse along the path of his righteous choosing.

"I'm sorry, daddy. I'll clean it up, you're right, I need to focus. I'm sorry. I promise I'll be better from now on" said Joao, putting the tray down on the table in front of his bullish father and hurrying to the floor to sweep the shards of glass into a small pile with the thick of his palm, trying to be swift yet gentle so as not to cut his hand.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all I ever hear. I'm sorry daddy; I promise I'll be better. You're the reason this church is always so empty. You cursed the farm and now you curse my church. How about actually using that thing inside your head for once? It's called a brain. Figure out how to turn the thing on and use it. You know I wonder what I did to anger Jesus for him to grace me with you. You don't see your mother here picking up that glass do you? No, of course not. I do everything for this family and still, this is what I get, a lack of respect from my own son. I know exactly how Jesus felt with Judas and..." said The Bishop, trailing off into lexical slur before his heavy eyes and drunken breath undid his temper and lowered his head upon his outstretched hands; his face nudging the chilled bottle of cachaça like a cat's head, rubbing itself exhilaratingly against the tender loving touch of its owner's amorous caress.

"Silly, silly, silly," said Joao as he continued to clean up the glass from the floor.

As he swept the last shard, he cut the tip of his pinkie finger and it stung wickedly as it basted like a hairless chicken in the dregs of old cachaça mixed with cigarette ash and cheap domestic bleach.

The cut burned horribly but he wouldn't make any more of a fuss than he already had. He had no right to deserve compassion for his own stupidity and that lesson he hadn't forgotten, having been beaten into him many time before at a time when his drunken disgrace of a father carried more swing in his fist than he died in his curling tongue.

He tore off a piece of cloth that was wrapped intimately around the broken end of a metallic squidgy and doused his wound in a vile cocktail of undesirable fluids; the remains of what would be of every Sunday service in the world's least popular church in a part of town where not even your own shadow would stalk you under a beseeching summer sun.

As he washed the floor with a putrid blend of alcohol, bleach and old dishwater, he allowed himself to slowly drift into the impossible again, this time imagining himself as the lead singer of a rock band taking to the stage in front of ten million people; maybe more and running around the length of the stage from corner to corner standing on top of the tables; that to him were giant fold back speakers and holding his microphone stand high into the air and singing at the top of his lungs; "Baby, you're a rich man, baby rich man too, you keep all your money in a big brown bag inside the zoo, what a thing to do."

Joao loved that song; he never knew who sang it and he hadn't mastered the pronunciation but for what felt like a very long time, he would hum the tune quietly to himself and disguise it as evening prayer so as not to offend his simple but gargantuan mother and foul-mouthed displeasing father, sneaking up on the words he knew and then pouncing on them whilst splashing through the melody like a massive puddle in a summer rain.

He never quite knew exactly what he was singing but he imagined a very rich man that had so much money and he was really worried about trusting it with his financial advisor so he put all of his money in a big brown paper bag and snuck into the zoo one night; late, after everyone had gone home and when the keepers who stayed there overnight had fallen asleep while watching their favourite television shows.

Then; when he knew nobody was around, the rich man cut a hole in the fence and dragged behind him, his big brown bag full of money and left it somewhere that he thought nobody would find it, probably in a monkey cage, but whoever wrote the song obviously thought that was stupid because they couldn't believe he would do something like that.

The song was explained to him when he was young by a travelling European hippy; one of those spiritual questers who in the search for their inner Zen, cast themselves into a river of disquietude thinking the key to existence was found in the inheritance of the external struggles of the downtrodden native peasant; tied spiritually to nature, so that when they returned to the drudgery of their corporate middle class configuration, their feet could be grounded, their mind humbled and their heart could be deep-rooted in the memory that even to this day, they knew and lived the plight of cultural indignation and that the Indian inside of them would beat the tanned hide, playing its hollow drum as the beat of their heart while he or she hanged tight to the arduous threads of their inner sanctum as this cruel world threatened to copulate with their identity; or something equally introspective.

He said the zoo was a metaphor and asked Joao if he cared to know what it was a metaphor for. Joao just smiled, nodded his head and asked; "what's a metaphor?"

The significance of the song wasn't important to Joao. He didn't need to understand the words to enjoy singing them just as he didn't need a doctorate in geology to enjoy throwing rocks.

And as he sang and danced around the room, he accidentally kicked over a pile of crates and old cardboard boxes. The boxes had been stuffed with construction material to make them more sturdy for the Sunday service and he squealed as he subbed his toe against the bricks, causing the old man to be jolted from his drunken pasture and throw his weight backward, opening his eyes in a drunken flurry and waving his arms about as if he were calling a 747 in to land.

He eventually fell backward on the ground with his head hitting the floor and his stubby, little legs kicking away in the air. And as they kicked, one of his feet knocked against the plastic table making the bottle of cachaça fall onto its side and spin in a flashing circle, moving dangerously close to the edge.

Joao leapt from where he stood, diving through the air and catching the bottle just as it rolled off of the table and with the precious cachaça entrenched in his hands, he crashed down hard against the floor hitting his chin on the wet tiles and biting down on his tongue. But, the bottle was safe and for that, he hoped the old man would be slightly happier than displeased.

The Bishop stepped over him; reaching his hand down to pick his sweet reward. He made his way to the podium which sat next to the bar; at the head of the church. He wobbled and swayed as he stepped up onto a little wooden box hidden behind the podium and held his arms out in the air, welcoming the eternal love of Christ.

The Bishop fought angrily with gravity and his weak grip as he wrenched hard on the bottle's lid trying to twist it open without success.

"Surely this excaliburian bottle has been packaged for the king of kings, to set free the spirit of Christ to fight the evil in the world and lead mankind to the judgment."

This was what the old man thought as his sweaty palm slipped and slid over the metal lid and twisted and turned until the skin on his palm it burned and it burned and he cursed a ton of vile obscenities into the air, throwing all of his insult at his dim-witted son who was now picking himself up off the floor, looking disgraceful in his Sunday's best with a trickle of blood running from his chin down onto his white shirt and a stupid washcloth wrapped around his right hand.

"You're nothing like your kin; always on the near side of an accident. Your brothers, now they were smart. Don't know how in God's grace I ended up with you but for the eternal grace of Jesus, I will endure your hellish deviancy. For the love of god, would you look at your shirt, it is a disgrace, you are a disgrace. Hurry back there and make yourself presentable for Jesus. There'll be no service with you looking like that" yelled The Bishop, steadying himself on the podium and trying to catch his swaying vision by steering his head in all directions, over correcting each time and aquaplaning his conscious mind, taking with it, the bottom of his belly as with every spin of his mind, he felt his stomach swinging about wildly and willing itself to evacuate onto the floor below.

"What's the time donkey?" he yelled out at the top of his lungs.

Behind a curtain in a small room behind the bar, Joao was busily removing his shirt and quickly soaking it in water and bleach before the blood-stained permanently. His chin was stinging as the warm humid air flowed against the small, loose flap of skin from where he had hit himself against the ash white tiles; ash white because no matter how hard he scrubbed or how much bleach he used, he just couldn't wash away the filth that had collected over the years that. So instead of returning to an off-white like when they first moved in, they had a thick greasy and greyish residue from all the years of dirty shoes, cigarettes, beer, cachaça, semen, urine and rain having washed all over it and so, no matter how hard he scrubbed, the best he could get was an ash white colour.

"It's eight thirty-five" yelled Joao from behind the curtain; racing to dress himself in a clean white shirt to match his Sunday suit; the pride of any man's possessions if his heart was true to the lord that is.

"Why did you let me sleep this long? You know the service is forty-five minutes and I've only got twenty-five minutes before the soap operas start. You've upset Jesus" said the old man.

"Can we miss the soap opera tonight?" asked Joao.

"What?" screamed The Bishop belligerently.

"Every Sunday we give a service from eight until eight forty-five. Not a second earlier and not a second later. At nine o´clock every night, we sit with Jesus and watch the 'The Carriage of my Heart'. That's the way it always is, it's the way it's always been" he continued in a lecturing tone.

"Sorry daddy, I didn't forget I just thought that..."

"You didn't think little donkey, that's your forte, speaking on an empty mind. Now what are you doing in there?" yelled The Bishop, ushering the boy along so that they could start their service.

"I'm coming daddy" he said, tucking his shirt into his pants, all the while staring at a picture of his mother who sat upon an old wooden bench on their farm wearing a long floral dress that covered her big bulbous knees and holding; in her manlike hands, a small pocket-sized leather bound bible; being long from where they were and surrounded by barren land and lots of stinging insects.

A joyous warmth washed over Joao as he thought of the work he and his father were doing for the sake of their family and more so for the kind and brutish woman sitting painfully still in the photo.

Joao came rushing out from behind the curtain and sat on one of the crates in front of his father who was now standing behind the podium with his chest high into the air like a proud preacher, waiting to deliver the word of Christ, our Lord, and saviour.

"Fix your tie son, you look like a Catholic," he said acrimoniously.

#  CHAPTER ONE

Joao was by no means any more special than any of his eleven brothers or eight sisters. In fact; working on the farm, from where he was born and subsequently much later expulsed, he had always proven to be the appendix of his family's working organs.

His hands were too small to grasp and his legs were like two elastic bands balancing on ice cubes. He had the coordination of a dizzy drunkard and all the force of a polite request. As a young boy, he could barely even carry his own reflection in a mirror.

As for the labour of attending to the land, his sight was poor and his bulimic learning had him knowledgeably bankrupt, being able to only hold onto an idea for as long as it would take him to forget it. So useless was he in fact that he couldn't even pick a seed from a grain of sand. His worth on the farm and more so, to the family, could be summed up in the inspirations of his father;

"Little useless donkey," he'd say, "you're only talent is in breathing. God gave you lungs so you could stay alive long enough to trouble him a little less."

Joao never took it to heart inasmuch as he never argued himself out of accepting the truth that; on the farm, his presence alone was akin to that of a drought. Whenever he neared the toils of his siblings, they would curse and moan and band together to shoe him off like a diseased cattle; with he, wandering off to graze by himself in the dry dusted earth of the unwanted and unmanageable land they had always called home.

His mother; bless her heart, was no kinder than a bull ant in her maternal affection; a giant hulking mass of a woman with elephantine like calloused hands that were more leathered than a cattle's skin and tougher than a crocodile's arse.

She always wore the same floral dress that struggled to adapt and stretch around her huge knobbly knees. It was a white cotton dress but over the years it had worn itself into a reddish, orange hue from the time she spent with her knees buried firmly into the dusted earth, breaking and then turning the ground with her bare hands, doing the Lord's work to unshackle the dry dusted earth from the devil's unquenchable thirst.

His mother was no stranger to hard work and had run the family farm since she too was a child, having dealt with her own parents' untimely death in the fashion of digging her fingers into the dirt and burying the mounting stress and sadness of her burden, with every seed.

And so, she passed on to her own children what had helped her to survive for many a torrential season under the harsh sun and parched earth, feeding them from an emotional well that was as dry as the Sahara and as deep as a lizard's print in the sand. Instead, they learned and drank from the goodness of Lord Jesus Christ and quenched their thirst on his divine words and bared themselves through the agonizing sores on the tips of their fingers with the promise of daily prayer.

Hard work was the ink on which their lives were scribed and Joao had always struggled to find himself; as a part of the family and as of use to the land. He had not the strength of his brothers, nor the homeliness of his sisters, making a burden of himself wherever he stood.

From the moment he learned how to crawl, he had almost instantly; as some self-preserving nature, started to distance himself from the accident of his nature which; as one and one is as to two, would be the inexorable disappointment in everything that he was to do.

His brothers and sisters teased him daily, calling him cruel names and pushing him into fox holes, burying him up to his neck and leaving him to roast under the scorching sun and swell up like an oddly shaped balloon as the stinging ants crawled over his face, taking out their own pent frustration towards this godforsaken arid land by biting into his milky white skin that would quickly turn pinkish red as the sun preyed upon his fair complexion.

Their father; the old drunk preacher, egged them along and made residence of the boy's sentence; to be the butt of their humour and the footstool unto which the insurmountable weight of their spiritual abandon rested so heavily, making light of how they spent their days; one after the other, turning the soil and suffocating their hope in an impotent dry dusted earth.

There wasn't much for the children to like about Joao; in fact his father used to deny having ever being involved in his conception, saying instead that his wife had once swallowed a poisoned seed; one passed through the hands of the devil who had come dressed as a cunning trader and from that seed then spawned the flower of Satan that then blossomed into the gangly little donkey called Joao.

Although nobody actually believed his story, the other children loved to listen to their father's fevered sermon. Nobody believed it, nobody, except for Joao that is and for this reason alone; he accepted the cruelty of the family of which he so longed to one day belong.

Every night before he lay his oddly shaped head down on the bumpy ground to set himself to sleep, he would pray silently; whispering inside his own mind, for Lord Jesus to take him away and find him somewhere where he could belong; not so he could be happy, but so his brothers and sisters would no longer have to feel so spited that they needed to curse and refer to cruelty to irk the foul form that nested within his skin and tricked its way into their salvation. And also, that his mother may live a single day without having to see the shadow of her disgrace walking in her footsteps and begging for her embrace. And as for his father, well, his father was a preacher and on terms with Christ, so he needn't pray for someone who as a servant of the Lord would obviously bargain their own redemption.

Every night though, he thought of his family and how much he loved them and it grieved him thinking how something as simple as his being was enough to cause them so much hurt and for god; because of his existence, to have to go so far as condemning this land to bear no life to any seed which made its bed under where his cursed feet had left their impression.

But it wasn't all so terrible for Joao.

Not always anyway.

Their farm had become; over the years, popular amongst travelers; Europeans mainly, looking to absorb themselves in the rustic and arduous countryside and enrich their identity by assembling some closeness to their primitive tidings like an eagle on a spiritual quest, deciding upon his ascent to shut its eyes and flap with one wing.

There was one visitor who made an impression on Joao. He was unusual in that he was unlike the other travelers who yearned and likened to quieten their educated tongues, speaking only to the dry dusted earth with the sound of their knuckles scraping against the sharpened edges of reddened stones.

In fact, this stranger had the knuckles of a newborn baby; rounded, smooth and unblemished like a ripe tomato. There was not a single line of bother or burden across his pasty white skin and he had an annoying happiness about him, always appearing out of nowhere with a guitar around his neck and not a speck of dust on his knees, always toting that imbecilic donkey grin as if he was reliving the moment he blew out the candles on his seventh birthday every single moment of his life; completely inappropriate and horribly distracting.

At first, Mother thought he was just always hungry so she'd shove a beet or two in his open gob hoping he'd wander off and keep himself busy chewing on it for an hour or two until; like the rash on her gargantuan thighs, she could figure out how to get rid of him without having to skip a beat of work.

When; almost immediately, The European spat out the beets and returned to his manic grin, she realized that he wasn't hungry and was probably just retarded; one of God's little miracles. And so, in the end, she let him be, expecting no more out of him than she would a stubborn wart or dead cattle; much like her ne'er do well son, Joao.

And so, for a short time, Joao had a friend and he felt less uncommon than he had had for the entirety of his life. The two were inseparable. It was the Cheshire stranger actually, who goaded Joao to make his first coffee and it was he who taught him that coffee was more than a drink.

He said it was one of many fractals of existence; examples of universal mathematics and that like life, the perfect drink should be bittersweet and that coffee is the resonance of existence in that; like the perfect coffee, life has many grains of bitter days; the type of days that could rot your stomach if they are all that you had; but, every now and then, one has a few sweet moments that make the tough days easier to digest, meaning one can take the learned lesson from life; the good and the bad and then strengthen their resolve and return in the morn with an eager thirst for more.

"Life is coffee and sugar" he would say to Joao, teaching him that when making the perfect coffee, he should become the person for whom the drink will be prepared.

He should cast their bitterness and struggle into the cup and then drizzle; like a light rain, the fondness of life that are the subtle, sweet moments that quench the aridity in the drought of one's spirit.

"It is" he would say, "a reward for what has been given and what has been done; as a solution is to a problem, as heaven is unto earth and for what the beginning is unto the end. Every ending should be bittersweet."

Although Joao understood little of his conned musings, he did like the stranger's maniacal grin and how he waved his arms around and stamped his feet like a musical gorilla while he ranted in his philosopher's tongue, holding the cup of coffee knightly in his hands as if he were raising the wounded body of Christ up into the open mouth of heavens above.

And so, while the maniacal stranger strummed away on his guitar, humming a song about a rich man and a zoo, Joao went about pouring his heart into every cup, imagining the burden being worn by his mother and the bitterness that lathered in the thick callouses on her skin. And he then prepared a coffee to suit, with the kick of a stubborn ox and only a hint of sweet summer rain; just enough to wet the sting of the broiling, in a temporal drought that etched in the back of her throat.

And so, at the end of every day; when the unforgiving sun made its bed in the blanket of the horizon, his mother, his father, his brothers, and his sisters would all return from their toils on the land to a single cup of coffee awaiting each and every exhausted hand; a flavor unto its own, prepared as a toast to the marriage of the arduousness and amenity of their unique existences; the perfect coffee and sugar, brewed as the sum of their every day.

And then; in every morn, as the darkest hour turned to the faintest light when in the outstretch of night, the sun birthed from nature's womb, a coffee with sugar would be waiting for each and every one.

Joao was happy to find a place; somewhere useful to belong inside his family, even if it was for just a minute or two at the start and end of every day and so he dedicated himself to becoming an artist at what he did, putting his heart and soul into every single cup, watching from the creepy shadows as each and every person whisked up their cup gingerly and pressed it gently against their lips, lightly breathing a chilling wind over the skin of the coffee; just enough to shake off the lines of steam that clung to the surface like fine dust on old photograph.

He loved to watch their eyes speaking what their voices could not. When the coffee touched their tongues, their pupils would shudder, as if the sun had just taken refuge in a blind man's eyes, unshackling some obedient disconnection concerning within, shocking their senses into familiarity.

And as their eyes settled and their hands clasped the cup, their fingers would fold gently like the pages in a book; as if in silent prayer. And each and every person would; like a child seeing themselves for the first time in their own reflection, feel the warmth of their own aching heart stretching down to iron out the creases in their souls. And as each drop rolled from their wilted, cracked lips, over their enslaved, domesticated and tongues and deluged their droughted senses, each and every person would discover their own existence and the effect of their own heavenly embrace.

And so, as every brother and sister heaved their chests against his infinitesimal frame barging through the darkness, out of the old swinging doors that squeaked and squealed under the tear of rusted hinges as they flung back and forth, stirring the wasps that slept on the frame just above; angering them into wake to start their day more belligerent and beguiled than the last, Joao fell; from the push and the shove, backwards into a useless heap on the dry dusted earth, dressed; like the European stranger, in a Cheshire smile, no longer yearning to belong, until it was, that he looked upon the table to see one cup left untouched.

And in every eve and every morn, a final chill would slip through the tapered cloth that kept neither the sun nor the wind from molesting his tender skin, a chill that crept from his spine through to the fine hairs on his neck that shrilled with a fevered disappointment as the coffee he made with the all of his heart sat quiet and tepid next to a yellow, stained glass where, in it, housed the escape of a single clear droplet; like a poisoned tear, running from the sweetness of the rim where a small swarm of bees all bumbled about and then pooled in the thick well of pasted sugar at the bottom of the glass.

Joao could never please his father. Even with the passion of his art and he; hidden in the blanket of absence and out of sight, his father would never touch a single drop of his coffee.

Instead, the old man started his every day with large glass of cane juice, sweetened with eight large spoons of white sugar. So sweet was it that his lips bore the stings of hundreds of bees that swarmed drunkenly around his glass every morning; he, waking them from their delicate slumber into a trace like gravity about the cracks in his mouth and upon the broken edges of his filthy, yellow glass.

And every night, his father would greet the going down of the sun with that same filthy yellow glass, served tall with the heavy aroma of cachaça, filling a bottle or four into his liver before his reverend mind rested in the stillness of the night.

The Bishop; as of which he was spoken and revered across the community of farms, cared only for the sweetness in life, having bared no grief, no hardened days and having worn nothing of the bloodied, blistered hands of his wife or of his children.

He was a preacher; one of the finest orators ever to be carved in the name of Jesus Christ and the scars he wore were visible in his heart, not on the souls of his feet.

He alone was responsible to dig the spiritual well for which his family thirsted. But he was not just the surveyor of divinity for his pious lineage; he was, in fact, the voice of God and the servant of Christ for every poor farmer within miles of whom, all travelled on donkey, horse, and foot, on bicycle and rusted Beetle to tap into his divine grace so as to bridge themselves to his link to god.

Every Sunday they would come marching over the dry dusted earth, carrying with them, the emotional burdens that they longed to trade for spiritual restoration; a sense of purpose, strength and direction that they could take back with them to fasten the buckles of their determination to ground themselves in the fight to overcome the imposing will of self-defeat in each of their own personal struggles and then; in their au fait fight, together as a band of brothers, enduring the test of god to make fertile; by their loving grace alone, the parched and impotent womb of nature.

In the late afternoon, their shadows would ascend from a faint line in the distance, far beyond the limit of orange and red earth and beyond the splitting sounds of shovels and spades scraping and cutting away at the crumbling soil like a malignant cancer where hope itself was reserved in the farmer's hearts and not exposed at the tip of their blade where the blunt edge of diligence bore through the cynically expectant soil.

Joao would always be the first to see them coming; his eyes floating free like his unlaborious hands, unabridged from the pursuit of work as he spent the whole of the days watching his brothers and sisters breaking their spirits against hard rock and the kick of stubborn mules.

In his own mind, he was becoming the thought of their labour so that he could be the bitterness of their tireless grind and then imagine what sweetness would be lulled in their hearts while their fingers blistered and bled and the reddish-purple rash between their toes readily worsened.

This was his work; to become their somatic discontent and peer behind the thick callouses of their hearts to find not only the condition of their assiduousness, but also, the colour and song of their souls so that when they rested their rusted trowels and bade farewell to the suffocating leather that molested the sores on their feet, they could all spend a moment or two in private solicitous prayer, consuming the sum of themselves, just as a drunk might pause to admire the submissive, accepting and apologetic eloquence of his battered wife or how the successful executive might take a moment to count; on one hand, the sum of all the days he had spent watching his son becoming less like an emotionally wanting child and more of a cold and unaffecting, disconnected version of himself.

What his brothers and sisters tasted was the extent of their cruel impiety bridged with the amiability that they themselves were flawless strangers to; the kindness in them; imagined as already having been abjured or aborted, that they would recognize as an illness were it ever to seep into how they went about administering the predicament that was their hardened selves.

They encountered a moment of tender awakening that each would render in a longing stare and gentle embrace of their fingers around the inflecting ceramic reflection of their laborious yet laudable lives. And the prolonged heavy breath that followed every sip, would usher out the abandoned and forsaken sediment that clung like a spider's silk to their exposed and vulnerable, infantile souls.

So, while his hardened siblings bruised their backs; basting under a fiery orange sun, Joao sat in simple contemplation watching their toil and envisioning how the arid land fought so gallantly to undo; unto it, what do his siblings would like to have done.

And as the sun threatened to explode on the ridge of its descent; it stretched it rays around their desiccated skin like the long stinging tentacles of a jellyfish, lashing at its prey as the tides pull it further from its mooring, being sunk and weighed down by something more insurmountable than its own daily depression. Joao watched in expecting delight as from the fatiguing horizon, came the birth of one shadow; at first seemingly an infinitesimal fracture in his sight and then to a tiny black spot that soon morphed and broke away from itself and multiplied like a viral cell until a shadowy crest swelled up under the falling sun like a tidal wave of gentle familiarity, rushing towards their tiny farm to wash away the stains of isolation.

By the time the sun settled below the horizon; bringing the dawn of struggle to another farm on another distant part of this world, the great shadow that had ascended across the land had melded into a horde of smiling faces, shaking hands, kissing cheeks, warm, longing hugs, and simple converse.

On one eve, in particular, the farmer's wives gathered together and cackled away in their hoarse voices and in the extent of their laughter and shared joy, they sounded more like a collection of antique kettles, whistling away and all coming to boil. They all looked remarkably reverent, dressed sententiously in white; their dresses flat against their either corpulent or skeletal frames and flapping only lightly against the rough skin on their knees as a hot dry breeze slithered its way through the air like a snake through the yellowish dry brush.

As they sat in their circles, the old women talked about their sore joints and their strained muscles and they compared scars and snake bites and oohed and aahed whenever one of the old women lifted their Sunday dress above their knobby knees and gargantuan thighs to reveal a scar thicker and more bulbous than the ones that had come before.

And they cheered and clapped and admired as one old lady told tales of her close encounter with the devil, mistaking a python warming under her covers and sliding over her trunk like legs for the spent affection of her drunken husband, thinking she was reaching to peel away his slimy advancing sexuality, only to pull hard at the snake's tail and receive four bites at the bridge between her thumb and her index finger.

She showed the marks where her husband had cut her hand to suck out the venom and all of the women crowded around her in marvel and wonder.

The men said very little.

They gathered in a circle like the cattle they herded; their heads hanging low, their eyes looking out from the edges of their straw hats and their hands each cradling a stained glass of cachaça, listening with silent applause while another man attended to his beaten up old acoustic and strummed away, as in the sky abounding, the last hint of light pledged its allegiance to the retreat of day.

And as the man with the guitar strummed, he sang songs about life on the hard land; digging and turning the uncouth soil and making one's bed in the asperity of life. The farmers all kept their stern faces, clasping and cradling their strong drinks and nodding their heads every now and then as they played out in their minds, the words of the songs that painted with a dry, coarse stroke, the attendance of their difficult and rarely rewarding lives on their farms.

The men never talked about their problems or their worries. They would just sip on their cachaça and tilt their heads about until they caught another's eye and then tip their heads forward, wink lightly (though with such a leathered face, one would have to use quite an amount of force to feign a slight wink), make an unidentifiable utterance that may or may not be a word and then continue to tilt their heads about like a bouncy ball, bobbing about in the open sea.

The men didn't like the uncomfortableness of sitting still with arms flat and in attention. They responded and reasoned better with order and direction and were more common to communicate with primal grunting and pointing, conversing in high esteem only with their horses and stubborn cattle as opposed to their complicating wives and directionless children.

This circular quietude; the gathering of men, was just offsetting, so they relied on one man to strum away on his guitar while another canted openly and profoundly about horses and stubborn cattle, something they all had in common and longed to nod away to in communicable agreement.

Once the night had settled in, The Bishop called everyone into attendance and the stiffened men lifted themselves from their uncomfortable wait and the cackling, worn, old women lowered their girthing dresses and put away their aging scars as the two groups came together; the smiling women being taken in arm by their reserved men then scooping up their children as they shuffled along the dirt path to the back of the farm where; in an old shabby barn, there waited, under a single flashing bulb, Joao's father. The Bishop stood tall on his podium with his arms reaching out into the distance as if he were their shepherd, calling them into his pasture to feast upon his good word.

Every Sunday they came from far and wide; from all over this sun-drenched country to listen to The Bishop give his sermon. The farmers sat quietly and attentively on rows of benches carved out of splintered and diseased wood and balanced on piles of dirt, sticks, and rocks with the heaviest people sitting on each end to balance out the seat for all of the others.

The women sat with their hands in their laps while the more prosperous of the men, held in their hands; as they had their glass of cachaça, a small, leather-bound black book which to them was as a key is to a lock, as violence is to obedience and as love is to servitude.

They sat still like wayfaring bulls, looking straight at The Bishop just as a sailor would, the forever line of the horizon; unflinchingly and covetous, while beside them, the children sat submissive, edging to gather again in group and race about on the dusted earth in play but having been clipped over their ears and pinioned enough times through the years to restrain the wanton wrecking of the devilish child within them and instead, listen intently to the good word of god.

Joao was not allowed to enter the shed and instead would have to watch the sermon from the gaps in the swinging doors as a thin piece of copper wire struggled; like his mother's waistband, to keep the heavy doors from swinging back open.

He would crouch in the sand, his left knee pressing against a small carven hole in the splintered wood and his toes curling into the sand where the two heavy doors met.

It was something he had always done; shifting the warm sand between his toes while his father stood magnificent and gallant in front of the many inspired people.

At this moment, he was deaf to the echo of his father's abusive slurs and immune to the tyranny of insult from his entire family, for; while he stared at his father, the image of his veneration and communal splendor alone was enough for him to drizzle sweetness onto his own bitter struggle to belong in his family, in his own body, and in the world.

To Joao, The Bishop; when he was preaching, of course, was mountainous in his stature. His two arms could stretch out and embrace the world, holding it tight and safe, free from falling away from its passage about the sun just as his word did to strengthen the will of man and stop them from descending into debauchery and societal slavery with alcohol, parties, drugs, sex and other spices of the devil's condiments.

The reality was that The Bishop was a tiny bulbous man, with short stubby legs and balloon-like hands. He had a big fat belly that hanged low over his rusted belt buckle with his tight shirt pulling against his sweaty skin, clinging just below his belly button so the thick and sweaty, black hairs of his chest and crotch would ride up into the air and glisten under the low light like fresh dew on a prickly thorn under the rise of the sun.

His hair was flat and matted. He had a large bald spot that he smoothed over with a mixture of the sweat from his belly and grease from the insides of old truck tires that he would move about daily feigning use and activity while the rest of the family earned their measly supper. He would spend the greater part of his days running his hands through his long fringe and flattening it down over the top of his sunburned head.

The Bishop wore flat footed loafers. He did no work on the farm other than preparing the weekly sermon so he needed not of the leather to bear the daily trenching through the fields like his children. Instead, he wore comfortable slip-on shoes that were slightly large for his feet so that every time he walked, he would slap the heel of the shoe loud and annoyingly against the ground, thinking to himself that he displayed all the grace of a show pony plodding around the less muddy and dusty parts of the farm.

Joao hated this sound. And while he would sit and watch his siblings toil on the land; imagining their bitter struggle, The Bishop would slap his stupid feet about like a flamboyant donkey in his usual uneducated and arrogant accent and the sound alone would pull Joao from his focus, driving him towards internal disturbance.

He would try to balance himself and ignore the slapping of plastic heels on the cold tile; breathing calmly and looking out in the distance without trying to attain any focus whatsoever, just letting the conscious storm pass without dirtying his creativity.

It was no use though. The second a breath of silence returned and he started imaging the troubles of one of his brothers or one of his sisters, from out of nowhere would come that annoying, ignorant slapping sound.

Back and forth it went, all day long; the sound of his father's feet smacking against the ground, begging for someone to craft a question as to where they might be heading and what they might be doing when they get there.

And everywhere that his feet slapped were those two stubby legs with knees that looked like two squashed turnips, jeans that were too big, even for his lumpish frame, hanging off his arse like a diaper that's just been filled, that enormous stomach and its protruding sweaty, black hairs, his two tubby arms that looked like someone had just attached his forearms to his shoulders.

And then there was the leather case.

The Bishop had a little black, leather bag with a long, leather strap that he carried with him everywhere he went and nobody quite knew what he kept inside but the way he swung it about let all and sundry know that he was a man in charge.

And everywhere that he went, he would have the bag thrown over his shoulder with his wrist bent lightly back, walking with a cretinous swagger as if he thought he was in league with Santa Claus or a vagrant hobo.

That was his weekly parade though, for now, and every Sunday, he was dressed as sophistication; his hair combed neatly over his balding spot, the tufts of grey hair that sprouted from his ears gelled back into their waxen housing and all of the other unnecessary hair trimmed and cut away with his face shaven of the thick, black, prickly hairs that under the hot sun, pushed their way through warts and puss filled blemishes.

He wore a shiny black suit. I say shining because to look into its stellar dark, one could see a glimmer of hope. And his midnight black leather loafers glistened under the dim light. So embossed were they that they would glisten under the faintest light of the moon on the darkest part of the earth. He looked entirely like a man of profession and of course a servant of Christ has; in his making, the profession of holiness, of goodliness and of spiritual ascension.

After all, he who is appointed to preside upon God's word must look as if he could administer a heaven.

Joao looked through the tiny hole in the fence in pleasant wonder as The Bishop raised his hands and sang his words in mighty esteem, banishing the doubt and fear that coagulated in the crevices of his congregation's collective consciousness.

Whenever he spoke of drought, disease or of a stubborn ox, he would shake his fist about as if he were inviting the devil himself to a duel. He cursed the fallen one for everything that wronged the world and as he spoke of travesty and tragedy, the farmers would gather around him; his faithful flock, shedding tears from their stone set eyes and cringing under the vexing weight of his words.

And just as that pressing weight seemed unlivable, he would open his fist, extend his arms into the air with his open palms tilted backward facing the dim light above him and he would lift his head and look upwards slightly as if he was reading the word of god from the back of his hands and chant out the name of his Lord Jesus Christ high and mighty, with love and without fear so that the light he carried in his heart exploded from his chest and exalted the devil from the will of mankind.

And he would shed many a tear as he talked about the unquestionable love that Jesus Christ had for each and every, man, woman and child and how his sacrifice that atoned for their sins; if not gone unloved and unmarried, would always carry them through the torrential part of any calvary that they endured and that the love of Christ alone, had once shaken him of the devil from the clench of his fist and spilled pure grace down the length of his arms, dripping the light and love of Jesus Christ and his splendorous heaven into his virtuous Christian soul.

And on this particular eve, the farmers erupted in joyous canter, swaying their arms around as if they were shooing away a plague of locusts from circling about their heads. Their eyes lit up like a forest fire and it seemed as if some drug had taken its effect, overpowering their senses and extending them to pure exhilaration and Elysium.

And a drug had indeed taken effect.

The ecstasy of Jesus Christ was swimming in their blood and coursing through their varicose veins, dousing their senses with pure Christian goodness and taking them beyond the immediacy of the aches and pains that swelled at their feet and bludgeoned through their stinging open pores.

It lifted them beyond the valley of defeat where their dreams and aspirations had become firmly rooted in disparaging soil. It unhinged the worry that shouted the veracious viscidity of life so deafeningly in their hardened minds; that which consistently edged them closer to temptation and to disregard their struggle as a worthy test of their faith by instead condemning the light in their heart for blinding them along a weak and crooked path.

It lifted them to the sight of the heavens where the charity of Christ extended from a bridge paved with their devotion and cemented with the blood, sweat, and tears that quenched the fire of their laden trial.

It left them lighter than a single breath, rising up from the most profound depths of an ocean of self-doubt to join its brethren in a listless, heavenly abode where they could kiss the stars each and every night.

Joao peeped through a tiny hole, pressing his face tight against the wood and squinting with one eye whilst catching sharp splinters in the flesh near the corner of the open other, trying to see as everyone saw; the light of the world coming down upon them. He twisted and turned on the spot, ignoring the little splinters here or there, pressing his knee into the hole just above the ground and scrunching his now blackened toes in the hot dirty sand.

He wriggled and writhed, waiting for his favourite part of the service when The Bishop would invite each parishioner to the front so they could speak of their saving graces and so they could thank Jesus for the miracles he had spelled upon them to turn their trail of troubles into an abode of fortune.

It was at this moment that Joao would do what it was that Joao was unrivalled at doing. He crouched in the sand with his head turned to the side, pressing against the splintered hole and he listened with his ears and he would listen with his heart while each person canted their bitterness into the hands of The Bishop and at the end of their ordeal, they spoke of the delicacy of their faith and the sweetness that Jesus Christ brought to their hearts.

Joao became their struggle, closing his eyes and imagining himself walking back through sodden fields with sore blistered feet, blurry eyes and blistered hands, having reaped only mockery and insult from his dry earth to then stumble through an open door, thirsting for anything to parch the defeat that clung to his skin and opening the fridge to see his last beer having been drunk and then turning to the table to see that the chicken had spoiled and then finally marching into the bedroom to see his wife on all fours, blaspheming the name of god whilst a singing European knelt behind her with his guitar swinging off his back, banging her like a French drum and all the while singing that song that he always sang.

"Baby you're a rich man, baby you're a rich man, baby you're a rich man too. You keep all your money in a big brown bag inside the zoo, what a thing to do," singing and singing and slapping her rump as if he was riding her off into the sunset, waving his left arm in the air while his right gripped her thighs and treated his good little woman like some bucking bronco.

As the old farmer canted in honest bravado, his voice swelled with anger for the seeming betrayal but he saw no blame in his wife, for she was swept upon by the lust of Satan and she was screaming out the name of Jesus to come and save her from this obviously horrendous torment.

"I know myself," The Old Farmer said, "that when my dear wife and I consummate our love, she says not a word and she's as quiet in bed as she is at the dining table so I knew then that the devil had put a spell on her and she was screaming to Lord Jesus to free her from that man's lure. Apparently, she was screaming for quite some time. In fact one of the farm hands told me she stopped several times and would start up again just minutes later, moaning away and screaming out the name of Jesus to come and rescue her. And it was God who had me down my tools and save my dear Beatrice. It was Jesus who walked in my boots and sent that devil packing and onto the road of good intentions. I thank Jesus every day that I got there in time to save my dear Beatrice and I know he counts her blessings along with me."

The Old Farmer leaned his head to the right to bid a naive shimmering eye to his clearly disheveled wife who looked on with a nervous look herself, convinced that the lust which burned between her thighs on that day and even now, as her husband relived her orgiastic trial, was the work of the devil and not of her own will and that the purity of her good Christian heart, of her faith to her husband, had her; in the throes of hellish emotion, still find her soul's voice and chant out the Lord's name in between heavy moaning.

"My Maria suffered the same" yelled one man.

"As did my Josephine" yelled another.

In fact, much to the surprise of Joao, all of the men had suffered the same bitter struggle which in the end would make his work much simpler and appeasing.

Each and every man stood to attention, looking longingly and mournfully at their spiritually injured wives with apparently all having had played the fool to the trickery of Satan as in apparent mortified splendor, the singing European had wandered from farm to farm and lusted all of the women whilst their men were away attending to the land.

They all told the same sweet tale that Jesus had called them to their homes and there they had heard the desperate moaning and pleading of their wives; some of whom were on all fours while others rode the European like a king of the rodeo, obviously drunk on the devil's deception and evil trickery.

As each man spoke, their wives looked onwards like beaten puppies welcoming the tender and caring touch of consoling hands brushing against theirs, accepting their grace and concern like the innocent victims that they were. And they all thanked Lord Jesus Christ for guiding them back to heed their fearful wives' cries.

Joao lived every moment of their ordeal and as he did, his hands crushed and stirred at a mix of beans in an old wooden bowl and he looked not at his hands for his eyes were gelled shut, but he looked through his fingertips. And he crushed the beans not with the weight of his fist, but with the extent of his heart, smashing down on the beans with his faith and his love of Jesus Christ; a love that would carry him through the most bitter of ordeals and a love of which would always sweeten the journey.

As he listened with his ear and his heart, his attention was stifled by the sound of a guitar strumming off in the distance and the sound was edging closer to where he stood. As he stirred the grains, the men inside the church all spoke of the same devil; the unworked European with delicate hands, long wavy hair, sky blue eyes, an aversion to chore and a penchant for song.

As they all canted the same tale, The Bishop's eyes flared and an awakening became him, for he had invited the devil into his own home. That very man had spent weeks lazing about his farm, singing that wretched song and only God knows what else. He cursed loudly and looked at his wife who had worn a sheepish distance until that point and he asked her down on his knees; reaching out in loving kindness to her gargantuan bulbous knees.

"Has the devil bedded with you my love?" he asked.

A slight snigger went about the congregation as all looked upon the giant mass of a woman and all imagined that God had built her with such grace, charm, and dimension, that the devil himself would be warned off from her earthly spell and mountainous thighs.

"I but merely shook his hand, bid him work and nothing more," said Mother.

"The devil is among us" spoke The Bishop as outside, the strumming of the guitar grew louder with the European quizzing Joao, pulling him from his heavenly grace and concerned focus.

"C'mon, it no fun out here," he said, pushing the door open and standing in obvious shock.

Around him, angered farmers pointed fingers and sheepish wives grinned lightly and waved hello in secrecy, apparently consumed again by the devil's allure.

"Ladies" the European said humbly as he turned away and ran; followed by scores of angry farmers and the Bishop in tow, all of them picking up sharp stabbing instruments and chasing the skinny white European through the dusted terrain and out into the black of the night where, in the invisibleness of visual abandon, he disappeared and was never seen again.

When the parishioners all returned, there waited for each and every one, their own cup of coffee and sugar, mixed and prepared by Joao alone as he gave himself to their bitter struggles and Christ's sweet descent.

But nobody was interested in coffee that night and as Joao spied from outside the kitchen window where he stood on a rusted metal drum and peered through a smudge in the grease laden window that allowed him to see mainly the outlines of people in the room, he could see; as they walked around waving their fists in anger, that no hand warmed against a ceramic cup and so he looked to the table where aspiringly, he could just make out what looked like every coffee that he had prepared, sitting exactly where he had left them, all but one.

The Bishop burst out of the house with the cup of coffee in his hand and as he did Joao slipped off the rusted container in ambushed wonder, a large smile entrapping his face and the joy of seeing his father finally about to taste his own reflection and see in him; for once, a state of usefulness was saddened and depleted when The Bishop raced towards the edge of the veranda and threw his heavy set forwards, putting all of his weight into his right hand which cast the cup of coffee up and into the darkness with the smashing of the ceramic cup crying out as a faint whisper compared to the breaking of the young boy's heart.

Normally, service was; compared to this particular eve, a lot more sedated with a lot of singing and dancing, a lot of prayer and many tears of joy. Rarely did they actually do battle with Satan, but on occasion they did, just as they had done the night that life for Joao and The Bishop would shift degrees of states; both metaphysical and geographical.

But before anyone spoke of change, the good people cast off the strangeness that had become them and sat themselves back in the barn where there sat on the podium, where The Bishop had stood, a small black and white television that crackled and hissed and snowed in and out of picture, responding kindly to a quick wrapping on its side before eventually clearing up, showing the title for the only thing as important as Jesus in their lives of which was; 'The Carriage of my Heart'; the longest running and most successful soap opera, having been a part of the weekly fixture on their farm since before Joao was accidented and even dating back to when The Bishop himself was just a boy.

Everything the family knew about life, they had learned from this television show. Through it, the children learned how to speak, picking up useful and; unfortunately, sometimes quite unsavoury phrases but in general, the language was very acceptable. Overall the show helped them to gain a clearer perspective on the troubles facing their country's culture and for themselves too, to have real idols of which to aspire.

Theirs was the only television around for longer than the lineage from donkey to horse. So after every service, the farmers would sit in awe, watching the small static television and living the extension of their desires through their favourite heroes and villains; imagining the sweet poison that is life in the city.

The idea of the city alone was gargantuan and terrifying but at the same time, wickedly wanting. As they watched, the women dressed their imaginations in the riches they saw, having the same silken fabrics slide over their skin like they conceived, charity over the poor; feeling lighter than air upon their moist skin and invented firm breasts as they were weighed only by the pith of their elegance as their necks shone with strings of pearls and their slender fingers sparkled with diamonds and gold as the noble poor; black men dressed in tailored suits, waited upon them hand and foot, calling them Madam, opening their doors, fetching their bags, sparkling their champagne and brushing off their condescending, benighted, racial tirades that they costumed as educated, titular empathy.

The men, on the other hand, imagined themselves younger, taller, of more generous proportion, strikingly featured with striking chiseled faces and hands that were tough enough to fight a bear, yet delicate enough to rock a crying baby to sleep; the type of man who could fire a gun in one hand whilst writing a poem in the other.

This was the city man, the man they imagined themselves being; riding in their sports cars, signing contracts, lifting weights unnecessarily; not because they had to, but because they could. And of course, sexing everybody; their secretaries, their cleaners, their children's nannies, their personal trainers, their venereal disease clinicians, and their marriage counselors.

They were men of power, influence and potent libido and every day was a grand adventure where devilish good looks and roguish charm were all you needed to be rich, successful and happy.

Every now and then you could see one of the old farmers imagining himself in his animal prime, escorting his beautiful modeled wife; or children's nanny, through the city streets in his European convertible with the warm summer evening breeze flowing like a raging rapid through his long, luscious, wavy hair as every light that he passed was green, winding his way; like a seamstress with her needle and thread, in and out of heavy traffic like some mechanical ballet with everyone looking in his direction and every whisper, said about him in envy with everyone wishing they could be just as he was.

And he would smile drunkenly before being awoken from his own wishing by a rude nudge, twisting his neck to see his elephantine and leathered wife sitting by his side with her neck redraw from the constant caressing of her imaginary necklace with her long dirt laden nails and moaning like an old tractor that won't shift out of neutral.

After 'The Carriage of My Heart' the farmers would all shake hands, bid gentle polite kisses to the cheeks of the women and make their way by torchlight back along the long dusted track from whence they came to settle upon their own lands and put to bed, their rejuvenation and joy.

When they left, the Bishop liked to call the whole family into the barn and together send thirty minutes to one hour watching some midnight television; that being 'The 13th Apostle of The World Church of Jesus Christ's Eternal Heavenly Glory'.

Even Joao; who would normally be resigned to experiencing family togetherness through a peephole, was welcomed to it on the rickety wooden benches and watched The Thirteenth Apostle as he preached in front of thousands of devout Christians, all herded into one massive auditorium; ten thousand people, body to body, perspiring their struggle onto one another, all standing with their arms raised to the throne of God and praising the name Jesus Christ.

The Bishop watched The 13th Apostle attentively, studying how he used the light of god like a sword to cut through the fear that imprisoned the people.

He was a big man. In fact, the cameramen had to be positioned down the street just so they could fit his enormous hands and his head in one frame and his voice, it boomed of the weight of heavenly goodness; a tremor of divinity that rippled in one's belly and kept one's feet sure on the earth while their spirit and mind ascended into the heavens to be whispered sweet nurtures by god almighty.

His hands were so large that the microphone looked like a broken match and when he called the old crippled women to the stage, they too looked infinitesimal when wrapped up in his arms; their faces pressed tight against his sweaty, yellow shirt that peeled off their skin like a bandage when they lifted their heads to look up at his giant flaring nostrils with The 13th Apostle, retelling their struggle and heartache in his words; with one hand pressed against the back of the old lady's head, baptizing her face once again into the river of sweat that pooled on his chest.

"That should be you" Mother would say, looking to The Bishop.

His children would then all join in the commotion, feeding the benevolent respect for their father, praising his reverence and wishing a world stage upon his voice.

The Bishop would listen to their words and inflate his self-belief in hearing the echo of his own assumptions and on this particular eve in question; sometime in the past, Joao spoke and for the first time, was apparently heard.

"You should go there, to the city" Joao said, and as he did, none so much as looked in his direction or acknowledge his speaking as much as they took it upon themselves to extend his meaning and harvest a seed that had been planted a long time ago and was budding now, into a fruitful reality.

"You will go to the city; for your family, for Jesus and to save the world. He needs your help, The 13th Apostle, he does. The devil is getting stronger, his reign more torrential. The war, the drugs, the sex" said Joao's mother.

"And the Catholics" yelled one of his brothers.

"He's right; there are more of them every day. And it's because of that singing priest. We have to stop them" she said.

"And the Jews," said one brother.

"And the Arabs," said another.

"What? God, no, that's horrible, no, just the Catholics. Now who wants some corn ice-cream?" she asked.

The Bishop was pensive, imaging himself on the grand stage orating to hundreds of thousands of devout Christians, receiving awards and acclaim for his sermons and then out of nowhere, taking a bullet in the stomach as a lone Catholic gunman invaded the church, shooting wildly.

The Bishop burst through the pack of panicked parishioners to jump headstrong into the gunmen, wrestling him to the floor and wrenching his pistol from his hands, sliding it across the auditorium as he struggled and writhed, eventually securing the assassin in a wrist lock and held him until the police arrived with the parishioners all cheering and chanting his name as he looked down to see a thin stream of red trickling from a hole in his stomach, down onto his bended knee and onto the floor where he then collapsed upon both knees, gripping his wounded belly as then under the adoration of the world, he closed his eyes and died a hero and a martyr for Jesus Christ.

"I'll need a hand. One of the boys" The Bishop said.

"You can take Joao," Mother said.

"Why would I bring a donkey to a horse race?" he asked annoyed.

"I need the strong boys here to work the land. You need someone to get your things, arrange your church, and help you prepare your sermon, yes?" she asked.

"Well, yes but..."

"Perfect. The donkey can carry your things while you race. Joao, pack your bag you're going to the city" she said, pointing her bulbous stubby finger.

The Bishop lowered his head into his straining right hand and shook negatingly while Joao jumped up from the rickety old bench and ran gleamingly past his brothers and sisters who sat disbelievingly with mouths agape; the evening flies buzzing around their tongues that swilled like a shooing tail on a horse's arse.

Joao burst out the doors of the barn and danced around in the midnight black, jumping from one leg to another and swinging his arms like a windmill; happiness burgeoning at his centre as for the first time in his life he felt important, useful and seen.

He ran about in the darkness humming in his mind the song about the rich man, jumping up and down from one foot to the next, stamping each one firmly into the dry dusted earth until his right leg slipped on a thick slimy patch of cow dung and over he went; his swinging hands grabbing; in desperate fall, a mesh gate that swung open with his rapid descent making a calamitous clanging sound as he crashed to the floor, smacking his face hard against the earth and cutting just above his lip with the family's hens and roosters all barging out of the open cage and disappearing into the night.

"Really? You couldn't have at least given me one of the girls?" said The Bishop.

"You're taking Joao," she said before waving her gorilla-like hands to the other children to fan them away like a bad smell.

"What are you waiting for?" she said. "Get out there and find those chickens."

The children all got up from where they sat and whispered to one another as they moved out of the barn in pairs, off into the endless night where under dim torchlight, they fixed their eyes to the play of shadows and raced after each chicken in their midnight parody running this way and that, tripping over one another as they dived onto the shifting light like a confused actor trying to find his mark.

They cursed silently and muttered to themselves their hatred for Joao as they pardoned their sleep to amend the outcome of his poorly equated existence.

"Joao is no good to me here. You'll find a use for him. You have to be careful, we don't know what the city is gonna throw at you. There's all that sex and drugs and fast cars and rock n roll music. You keep him away from all of that and keep him away from those city girls. They're all sluts and whores" Mother said.

"Do you really think I can do it?" asked The Bishop.

"If 'The Carriage of my Heart' has told me anything, it's that anything is possible, especially with the love of Christ in your heart. This has to work, if it doesn't, the farm will collapse. If you come back without money you better not come back at all. Understand? We need money. Jesus believes in you" she said.

"And you?"

"I believe in Jesus."

"Ok, I'll do it. I'll go to the city; I'll spread my word to the world. I'll save our farm. But what am I supposed to do with Joao?"

"Figure something out. Just get him off my farm before he destroys anything else. You'll leave before dawn."

"I'll make you proud. I'll be a famous preacher. I'm gonna be rich and I'll send money back every month, understand? We won't ever have to worry soon. And I'll find a use for Joao, I'll keep him busy."

"Do what you want with him just no whores" Mother yelled in closing, leaving the barn and stomping her way into the house and then into bed.

#  CHAPTER TWO

There were no farewells or well-wishing on the morning of the journey south; only Joao and The Bishop in the darkness loading, up the old Beetle while Mother; in the distance, scratched ticks out of the folds in her arms, watching despairingly at the two men tripping over themselves trying to tie down a ceramic Jesus and a giant wooden crucifix to the top of the small car.

Eventually, after much shoving and patriarchal debate, they managed to secure Jesus and the crucifix and filled the back seats with suitcases and some rice and beans, packed in poorly sealed plastic containers that would do them until they reached the city.

Both men looked to Mother and bid her a salute; The Bishop tipping his wide-brimmed hat and Joao waving maniacally; smiling and whispering 'I love you' through the darkness to Mother who didn't flinch or even notice her son's call of attention; instead her eyes were the poor knots holding the rope in place.

"No whores" she yelled as the engine turned.

The old Beetle rattled like an empty can and the two men set off on their journey to save the family farm.

The small car shook and rumbled its way along the long winding dirt track that led from their small farm, through the winding countryside, up and over hills and eventually somewhere far in the distance, onto the road of death; an old highway measured not in the span of its breadth, but in the amount of lives it has taken over the years. If it had a heartbeat, it would have been shot by now; or running a government.

As the car pulled away from the farmhouse, Joao watched on from the back seat while The Bishop drove and changed gears with his right hands whilst holding a torch out the window with his left. Joao sat squashed in the backseat with luggage and hundreds of carved Jesus statues all piled on top of him while in the front passenger seat sat the infamous black leather bag that The Bishop carried with him over his shoulder wherever he went; his leather strapped crowning jewel.

Joao knew not to pester his father; not whilst he was entrenched in his sermon preparations during the light of day, not when in the eve he was reclined in his swinging chair with cachaça in hand and especially not while he was driving in the hands of God; on a black night, on a winding dirt road in old rickety car with no headlights.

Instead, he sat on the back seat thinking; not about the city, but about the coming of the sun and the rise of his brothers and sisters to what would be their last coffee with sugar for some time, a time in which he dared not imagine.

The Bishop kept his eyes stern on the tiny light flickering just beyond the car's flapping bonnet; the hinging locks having rusted away, lending the bonnet to bounce up and down with every bump in the road. He dreamt about himself as he drove and as he did, he didn't even notice that the road was no longer there.

The engine sputtered and then quickly died as the old Beetle sat riddled and bogged in thick mud somewhere far from where they had come from and a lifetime away from where they intended to be. The sound of the accident was enough to caution a herd of cattle to move off of the roads up ahead and keep their grazing back behind their open fence.

The Bishop lay with his head against the steering wheel, blood trickling from an open cut above his eye, down his face onto the leg of his pants. His arms hanged lifelessly beside his still body; his fingers bruised and twisted horribly.

In the backseat; under a mound of cases and wooden statues, Joao held his hands to his face, still bracing and expecting some greater impact; something that might wipe the consciousness from his eye. He whimpered lightly to himself as he listened to his father's waking groans. Reality slowly washed over both of them as the aches and breaks spoke of their own accord.

"Are you singing donkey?" said The Bishop.

"Sorry sir" replied Joao, shaking now from the sea of adrenaline that washed like a tidal wave upon his conscious shore.

"Are you alive?" asked The Bishop.

"I think so" replied Joao.

"Great, that's means I'm alive. What the hell just happened?" he said to himself.

"You were driving funny, twisting the wheel and that. Was the car broke?" asked Joao.

"Car broke?" The Bishop mumbled mockingly, "Are you hurt? Can you move?" he asked, wiping shards of glass off of his legs and pushing away with his hands, the tip of the bonnet he had been dreaming upon when it was that the car had careened into the muddy ditch.

The Bishop was first to squeeze his way out of the car. He leaned his heaving frame to the right and kicked at the door with his left foot until finally some pieces of twisted metal were no match for his culpable anger, cursing to himself about rogue cows and the devil so that Joao could hear and in doing so, loud enough so that he could deafen his own conscience, cursing at him from the tip of the bonnet that erected mockingly to his eyes, swaying back and forth in the light breeze.

His feet sank into the boggy mud as he dragged himself from the wreck. The car was ruined; the front end crumpled in and the bonnet; as he had seen, was pressed up against the broken windscreen with the wheels buried somewhere under the mud that rode up to the open door and spilled inside the car onto the worn leather mats on the floor.

The Bishop tried to move through the bog but it was impossible to wade through so he had to lift each leg out one by one and press it further in front of him to squish his way through the darkness and find some dry road.

"I'm stuck. What are you doing donkey? Get out here. Help me" yelled The Bishop, screaming over his shoulder with his heaving chest having fallen forward into the wet mud and his legs spread like a Sunday chicken, one stretched wide in front of the other and sinking fast into the mud; his wide belly the only thing that kept his complaining mouth from quieting in the dirty wet sludge.

"I'm coming, sir. Try not to move. It will only pull you in further" said Joao, lifting himself from within a cage of suitcases and statues and having to wipe warm beans and rice from his eyes.

Joao worked his way to the front seat and kicked his foot through the broken windscreen at the bluebonnet, forcing it back down towards its worn and rusted hinges. He climbed out through the broken windscreen and sat on the end of the bonnet calling out to his father.

"Sir," he said, "where are you?"

"Over here you idiot" yelled The Bishop sinking further into the strangling mud as his whole body writhed with the contempt in his voice.

"Don't go anywhere. I've got an idea" Joao said, stamping over the bonnet towards the roof of the car, wiping delicious warm brown liquid from his arms and licking his fingers as he did.

He reached up onto the roof and pulled at the knots his father had tied only hours before.0He took the ceramic statue of Jesus and slid it slowly off the roof and put it through the broken windscreen so that Jesus' shoulders were resting on the two front seats and his head was sitting in an upturned owl of warm beans. Then he raised his body again and undid more rope, this time taking the giant wooden crucifix and sliding it down beside Jesus' feet and down to the tip of the bonnet where he kneeled beside it, putting his weight on the end so it didn't fall straight into the mud.

"Sir, can you hear me, sir?" Joao asked sheepishly.

"Get me out of here you stupid... Just get me out of here" he yelled.

"Ok. I'm gonna try and build a bridge over to you. Wait there."

"This is all your fault, Joao. You distracted me. You better fix this."

"I will sir. I'm sorry" Joao said, slowly lifting his weight off of the end of the cross and lowering it gently towards the mud so that it lay flat across the surface.

He placed one foot on the crucifix just to see if it could support his weight and for that moment, it did. He then moved back onto the bonnet and took Jesus by the ankles and worked him backward, being careful not to scratch his ceramic body on the broken glass by working his hands up from his ankles until he had Jesus around the waist, gripping his crotch. He then back stepped until the statue was clear of the car and he then turned himself around so his footing was aligned with where he had placed the giant white wooden crucifix.

Joao lowered himself onto the white crucifix then slowly took Jesus with him in his arms as he walked the wooden plank over the thick gluggy mud, whispering to his father as he tiptoed along.

The Bishop turned his head to the coming sound and reached his arm out into the darkness where he could see; just in the flicker of an eye, the outline of a wounded hand reaching out to him. His mind started to drift into the surreal as the hand edged closer to his eyes and he could see along the stretch of its arm, the face of the lord, looking down upon him with sympathy saying 'take my hand, my son, come with me to the kingdom of heaven'.

"Is that you Jesus? Did I die? Are you here to take me home?"

"Take the hand."

"I don't wanna die oh lord. I have so much of your work still to do. You take Joao, he'll do you good in heaven. Please, let me live" pleaded The Bishop to the outstretched hand.

"Sir, take the hand, I'm gonna pull you out" yelled Joao in a whisper.

"Donkey? Is that you? What the hell are you doing? Is that my Jesus?" yelled The Bishop.

"Take the hand, sir. I can get you out" Joao said.

Cursing under his breath, The Bishop reached out with his left hand while the other steadied on the surface of the mud, keeping the side of his face from sinking under. Joao tipped on the edge of the crucifix holding the ceramic Jesus by the knees and the crotch, stretching his body as far as he could to edge closer to The Bishop's desperate grasp.

"Reach further sir, you nearly have it"

"Come to me lord" said The Bishop as the ceramic hand grazed his fingertips and with the weight of want in his soul; etching the will to survive, The Bishop threw himself up and towards the outstretched hand, soaring like eagle as the heavens lifted below his body, carrying him towards the open hand of Jesus Christ.

And he clenched hard, wrapping and winding his fingers around the wounded hand like a child to their favourite toy or a drunkard to his last drink. And as his body crashed back against the thick of the mud; called home by the rule of gravity, the ceramic hand broke in two and into the mud went The Bishop, Jesus, and the donkey, as his father would have him known.

"I'm sorry sir."

"Shut up. Just shut up" said The Bishop.

The two sat silently in the mud, The Bishop thinking only of his wife's gargantuan face frowning upon him, her trunk like arms folded over one another and her bulbous veins popping out through her leathered skin, swelling with disdain and expected disappointment.

In his head, the giant woman stood there unmoved, speaking only through the scorn that flared from her eyes and scolded; like the afternoon sun, his culpable conscience.

And he grimaced and grumbled as he slowly crawled his way up the remainder of Jesus' broken arm to his ceramic body where he clung and rested; like a stranded whale, suffocating under his own weight and badgered by his quickly beating heart and poorly inflating lungs.

Neither spoke as time turned from dark to near light and eventually, when the sun lifted away the blanket of night to take its throne; orating the rule of another day, The Bishop and Joao were guests to the merriment of their predicament which of course, drinking from the glass of insult, they refused to see.

Their Beetle was ruined; buried deep in the mud and their possessions were scattered all about the place. Glass was strewn about the road and grassy bank like cheap flowers on an old man's gave and there; covered from head toe in brown dry and crusted mud and clinging to a one-armed ceramic Jesus Christ, lay two men, not an inch away from the side of the road.

The Bishop was awoken from his stupor by the sound of an idling engine and a honking horn and he took a deep breath; swallowing his insult as he raised his left arm into the air, calling the car back towards him.

He continued his grumbling but was drowned out by the sound of beeping from a reversing utility as within a second the headlights came into view and a hornlike tow bar pushed out through the centre as the vehicle came to a stop. The driver's door slammed shut and standing there; haloed by the light of the sun, was a colossal looking shadow that paused under the men's captured awe and then demurred; the light thinning the shadow, as a small woman with quickly judging eyes shook her head in disbelief and stepped down on one knee as she tied off the rope in her hands against the tow bar and the other end, around the head of Jesus.

"This some kind of kinky religious thing?" said The Lady Driver.

#  CHAPTER THREE

"Hold on," said The Lady Driver as her right foot pressed on the accelerator, the deafening roar of the engine shooing a hundred crows from their perch just above the muddy swamp where Joao and The Bishop had found themselves imprisoned for the night.

The two men clung steadfast to Jesus as The Lady put the utility into gear and pushed the car forwards, dragging slowly but not gently, the ceramic statue out of the muddy waters and onto the dry land where the two men; holding on for dear salvation, unraveled their arms and rolled themselves onto their backs, staring up at the morning sun while the mud that covered their arms and faces crackled under the morning light.

"Can I give you a lift somewhere?" asked The Lady.

The Bishop took a minute to compose himself; looking out at the wreckage and feeling a wave of shame wash over him like a bucket of warm piss. He pulled his knees up to his body, looking castrating and convicting at his docile son Joao whilst cursing his own name over and over in his mind for making the impossible, something that they will never ever mention to Mother.

"My name's Joao, what's yours?" he asked The Lady Driver.

"Is there anything you want to bring? There's no space in the tray but you can try to swing some things on the roof if you like. I'm headed south. You headed to another farm?" she asked.

"We're moving to the city," said Joao excitedly.

"Is that so? Well, I might be able to take you as far as you need to go then. Hop in when you're done affixing yourself" she said, turning away from the Bishop who still sat foetal near the belly of Christ, his chin settled in the valley between his two knobbly knees.

The Bishop eventually pulled himself from the ground as the utility's engine roared like hungry a lion and a puff of black smoke burst out of the exhaust filling the air with the smell of diesel. Joao went to his side and offered a hand to which his father pushed away sending him stumbling back towards the car. His face was bitter and his eyes were mean and he scratched at his throat in disapproval, spitting in the direction of his sinking Beetle that swallowed with it, their clothes and their food.

"Isn't this fun? We're hitchhiking" said Joao.

"Shut up and give me a hand donkey," said The Bishop, wetting the boy's enthusiasm and groaning as he leaned down, wrapping his arms around the ceramic Jesus with Joao lifting from the statue's feet.

The Bishop dragged the statue over to the car and rested it against the rear of the utility. As he reached his hand down to undo the elastic straps for the tray, the car jumped forwards and he and Joao fell over each other and the statue with Joao hitting his face against a rock and cutting his upper lip and The Bishop, coming crashing down on him like a moral objection, taking his breath away and breaking one of his front teeth.

"What the hell is wrong with you lady?" yelled The Bishop.

"I told you. The tray is full. You got mud in your ear?" she said.

"Lift the legs donkey; we'll tie it down to the roof."

"That won't do. Your statue will tear through my tray top. Find another way or leave it behind. Now hurry, I'm late" she said in a strangely inappropriate and unnerving yet affectionate tone.

The Bishop wiped away a sweat ridden line of dirt from his eye and cursed under his breath as he sat on the floor.

"I got an idea. Get in that mud donkey and tie off around the cross. Bring her back up an inch" he said hitting his palm on the back of the utility and yelling to The Lady Driver who was admiring herself in the mirror and watching The Bishop's hand press against her precious tray; flirting with punition.

The Lady Driver slowly backed the utility up to the edge of the road while Joao prepared to lower himself into the cold thick mud to secure the rope around the crux of the crucifix.

"No need to be fancy, donkey, it's not the ballet," said The Bishop.

As Joao eased one foot delicately into the mud, The Bishop grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and the belt on his pants and threw him through the air so he landed like a dead frog in the middle of the muddy swamp.

Joao pulled his face from the mud and dragged himself along the last meter or so until he was secure around the crucifix where he tied off the rope and clung for dear life as The Lady Driver revved the engine and dragged the white wooden cross from the middle of the muddy swamp, up the bank and onto the road.

"Are you sure about this?" asked Joao as he tied Jesus' arms to the crucifix.

"We'll make another. Jesus is a once affair. Check your knots" said The Bishop tying the end of the crucifix to the tow bar with little slack so that it would pull neatly behind the utility as they drove.

The two finished tying off Jesus to the crucifix and the crucifix to the back of the car so that the ceramic statue was dragging behind on a wooden sled hanging precariously above the red-hot bitumen.

As they were about to pull away, a loud bang coming from the tray startled Joao and he reached to the door, opened the handle and jumped over his father to escape out of the car, running back towards the muddy swamp.

The Lady Driver looked in the mirror nervously.

Joao looked back over his shoulder for a moment and dived back into the muddy water and dragged himself along until he reached the old Beetle. The passenger window was open so he leaned his body over the door and brushed around with his hands in a desperate flurry.

"What's with the boy?" she asked.

"He's retarded," said The Bishop.

As they spoke, Joao was back in the mud and wading through with momentum and vigour. He pulled himself up the bank on vines and roots that shot out from the lush earth.

When he entered the car again his father slapped him across the back of the head and cemented him in the middle seat. Joao sat still with a mammoth grin and handed his father his black leather case with the black leather straps.

"Nearly left it behind sir," he said to The Bishop, panting away.

The car pulled away from the bank and headed south on the highway. The thoughts in their heads and the uncomfortable silence were overrun by the roar of the revving engine and the sound of a wooden crucifix, splintering whilst being dragged along the bitumen, lifting into the air and crashing back to earth, every time they passed a bump in the road or some loose gravel.

"So what do you do? You don't look like a farmer. You selling stuff?" asked Joao to The Lady Driver who sat with conditioned eyes, locked on the curves in the road, blinking only occasionally, maybe to prove she that she was real and not a crudely drawn sketch of a woman.

"We're moving to the city. The Bishop here is gonna be famous. He's gonna get his own television show and he's gonna be the best preacher the world has ever seen. Isn't that right sir?" Joao exclaimed rightfully looking up to his father who responded only by staring straight out at the road ahead and in the corner of his eye, seeing how The Lady Driver would react; in his mind, playing famously cool.

"The Bishop is the most famous preacher in all of town. Folks come from all over to hear him talk about Jesus. I've seen it too, he's really good. Do you like Jesus? Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?" asked Joao.

"No," she said. "No, I do not."

"That's too bad. Maybe later The Bishop could tell you about the good book" he said.

"I think for now I'd prefer to listen to the sound of the wheels turning," she said.

"We have a church, in the city. It's waiting for us. What's in the tray? Is it the stuff you sell?" he asked.

"You could say that," said The Lady Driver.

"What are these?" asked Joao, picking up a pile of scattered papers from below his feet.

He shuffled the papers in his hands as if he were about to deal a winning hand, patting away at the sides while gently tapping the bottom of the pile against this lap making it straight and ordered.

The Lady Driver; with her eyes married to the road ahead, reached across with her left hand and snatched the pile from the boy and tucked them snugly in the compartment on her door.

"Are they your boyfriends?" asked Joao.

The Lady didn't speak; she just kept her eyes locked on the road and ignored the young boy's snooping.

"Don't be rude?" said The Bishop slapping Joao on the back of the head and fasting his hands down to his sides, giving him some of his fashioned pitchfork paternalism, tossing the boy around in his seat until he finally came to rest in a less cumbersome and obtruding way.

"Sorry sir, I remember. A good boy should see only of what he's been shown" said Joao, sinking into an apologetic defeat and locking his inquisitive, tentacle-like hands between his knees, willing himself entirely to focus his eyes on the white line of the FM radio and not wander around the foot of the car.

For the rest of the day's drive; all eleven hours, not a word was spoken between the three. The Bishop and The Lady were comfortable inside their own thoughts, neither itching to know about the other whereas Joao; for eleven hours, it was absolute hell.

At the end of the day, they pulled into a small roadhouse and snuck their car as close to the main gates as possible pretending to be paying diners but instead using the safety of their secured parking to get a few hours of sleep before continuing their journey.

"You can get a room if you want, but we're only resting for a bit. There's a long hike ahead so I just wanna see the back of my eyelids for a sec. Now, II appreciate my leg room so if you'd please" she said, ushering the two men out of the car.

"I'm getting a drink. Don't touch anything and don't go anywhere" said The Bishop, pushing Joao against the car's tray with his index finger and stamping off through the dark parking lot with his annoying feet slapping against the pavement and his leather case draped haughtily over his shoulder.

Joao rested against the tray and looked down at the crucifix lying behind the vehicle. The wood was almost completely worn away close to the end, making it look more like a giant stake than a simple cross. Without moving, he examined the ceramic Jesus and apart from the missing left forearm, he was in perfect condition, still hanging on to the crucifix.

He sat in the darkness imagining The Lady Driver, thinking how mysterious she was and how lucky they were that she came along. They could have been stuck in that mud forever had she not turned up with her truck to pull them out. And if she wasn't so kind as to offer them a lift, they would have been in a world of trouble sitting with no food and water by the side of the road. She really was a nice lady. Even though she didn't like to speak, he could tell that she was really sweet and he sat in temporal conscious drift imagining what her bitterness might be.

What was it that brought her out onto the road?

Was she travelling around the country, living off the small commission she made from selling the things that she collected as she went along? Maybe her father or someone really close to her had died and she was driving unendingly; silent in her own bitter grief, rushing to the other side of the world to be with her family when they lowered his body into the ground and watered the dry and triste soil with their bitter, salted tears.

Maybe she was like they, having been excluded from her home; the wooden boards ascended upon the entrance by suited financiers in their tanned loafers with writs and summonses waving in their hands like sodden handkerchiefs, chasing her down the street like a scorned lover, negating the end of their torrid affair and she was driving; like they, to a new city, somewhere far from the sediment of her bitter trial to find a sweet moment to give her life meaning and worth; maybe an old flame to whom she had never spoken of her fascination and adoration when it was that she was just a flower in bloom; ripened by the season of youth. But now that she was wilting under the unremitting ordinance of time, she was racing against the clock to find the love of her life and quench the amorous hunger that had gnawed at her quietude all these years leading her to make a trail of mistakes that would undo the binds of obligation she had used to cage her heart since her courage failed her that day that she watched him walk away from her touch but remain a dumbed prisoner in her domesticated heart.

Whatever be the reason that she kept unto herself, it was enough for her to endure the lonely trial of pursuing the end of the infinite horizon and; just as her vehicle had to break to refuel, she herself must have been running on some bitter charge, a reservoir of difficulty which hardened her will and kept her tied to her convictions.

With The lady Driver in mind, Joao snuck away from the utility, keeping away from the dim light that shone down dispiritingly from small, yellow, flickering light bulbs which swung from interloping, rusted wires that hung just above the line of parked cars. He kept in the infinite black so as not to arouse the appointed disapproval of his father, especially if he were to be drunk which after a mere minute at the bar, he most surely was.

He ran in-between the cars and looked through the window into the roadhouse to see his father leaning over a yellow glass and speaking to none but himself, his disgraces lined up in empty, stained glasses just to the side of his reach.

The coast was clear so he snuck into the restaurant and walked calmly with no apparent suspicion up to one of the tables where there sat a large silver coffee vat on a table and beside it were some plastic cups that were piled up next to a dirtied jar of sugar that was stained brown from the illiterate spoons which had spun first; the bitter coffee, and then dipped then the spoon into the sugar, spilling the drink and making horrible brown clumps, ruining the innocence and chastity of the fine crystals.

Joao shook his head at the obvious insolence of the average person, so willing to stain their pleasantries with tragedy and disappointment.

He imagined again the struggle of The Lady, trapped behind a steering wheel; driving, neither from nor to her delicate end; imprisoned like a purgatorial abortion, winding her way to her expulsion from the life that cut her away.

He thought and felt of this weight while his hand slowly pressed on the lever and black coffee dripped out of the silver vat and into the cup below which he turned gently like a record with his right hand, letting the coffee fill according to the pace of her heart.

When the cup was full, he then thought of the things that The Lady Driver would find sweet, the moments she would collate along her unforgiving journey. These were the little things that meant nothing to anyone but her and of which she probably kept safe in the tray in the back of her car so he thought not about what could be inside but the feeling of knowing that whatever secret she kept within was hers to keep for another day and a great joy washed over him as he took a silver soon, filling it with just enough sugar to tempt him to shed a light on her secret but not enough to know what it was.

He smiled to himself as he let the crystals fall through the coffee, her sweetness dancing with her struggle and when he felt the tiny crystals somewhere near the middle, he spun the cup in his hands back and forth as if he was gently crushing a small insect and he continued to move the cup back and forth until he felt as she would feel when her motor turned, taking to the open road with a heavy stomach and a light heart.

The whole time, the spoon he used to collect the sugar lay neatly on the table, never violating the sacred coming together of coffee and sugar.

When he made it back to the car, The Bishop was there, still nursing a drink in his hand and looking woeful in his dismounted reverence, having his son betray his word which upon him, was a title given unto him by God.

"Where the fuck did you go you little cunt? You don't respect your fada? You don't respect uh, Jewish" he screamed in his drunken slur, pointing his indicting finger and tripping over his exalted balance.

"I'm sorry sir; I just wanted to do something special for the driver lady. She drove us this far and I thought maybe she would want a coffee when she woke up. I made one for you as well" he said sheepishly, holding up a cup in one hand to his father.

"No one likes your fucking coffee, donkey. You're just a fool" he said, swinging his drunken fist and punching the cup out of Joao's hand so the hot liquid; along with his self-esteem, went crashing to the floor, staining his feet.

The Bishop staggered forwards and quickly grabbed onto one of the elastic bands holding the tray cover to brace himself as he fell to the ground, somehow keeping his dirty glass of cachaça from tipping onto the floor.

A drunk will conserve his talent for whatever means might pour him another glass. And as he keeled over himself; propping his long chin into the top of the glass like an oddly shaped sunburned cork, the elastic holding one end of the tray cover snapped and part of the cover opened in the dull light; still dark and hidden, but uncovered nonetheless.

"What this bitch think's so good that I can't put Jesish in da fucking..." said The Bishop, mumbling abhorrently whilst slowly picking himself off the ground; wobbling at first but eventually finding his feet and pulling himself to the corner of the tray to satisfy his superiority.

"Sir, you said a good boy should only see unto him what has been shown," said Joao worryingly.

"Do I look like a fucking boy to you? You question your father again donkey and I'll bury you in a shallow grave. Do you understand me? Never, ever, question your father. Inconsiderate little donkey, fucking stupid..." he said, trailing off into a grumble.

His vision swayed like a pendulum in front of his eyes and he slapped the tray every time he lost his grip, eventually throwing his arms forwards in through the gap and stumbling backward, taking with him, a strange looking floral shirt; clenched in his hands.

"What the fuck is this?" The Bishop said, holding the shirt up to his blurry eyes.

He threw the shirt on the ground and stumbled back to the tray putting his right arm deep into the tray and patting around in the dark at the strange shapes. He felt a pair of shoes, a lot of clothes heaped up, a handle and the ends of some straw or something, just out of his reach. He jumped when his hand strummed the strings of a guitar and the sound woke The Lady Driver who was sleeping behind the wheel.

"Donkey," The Bishop screamed, "I told you not to touch the goddamn tray. Why don't you do what you're told?" he continued, standing over Joao who crouched on the floor, punching him in the face, over and over until his lip split open and his eye swelled up like a balloon, all purple and black.

"Woah, wait on a second buddy," said The Lady Driver trying to calm down The Bishop who had broken the boy's nose and would have kept going until long after his son was dead if she hadn't intervened.

"It's ok, it's not his fault. Relax, ok" she said putting her hands against The Bishop's chest and leading him away from Joao. "It's just some things from my brother. He died recently and I'm taking them to our mother. Listen, Bishop, yeah? Well Bishop, do me a favour, can you pop the shirt back in the tray for me, I'll check on your son and we can be on our way. We can be in the city by noon" she said.

"Whatever," he said, stumbling away from the boy and leaning over to pick up the shirt and take it back to the car.

The Bishop threw the shirt through the open cover and tried to take another peak but was stopped by the sound of a honking horn. He pulled the elastic back over the cover and moved his hand away feeling something cold and sticky on his fingers. He wiped his hands on the leg of his pants and headed back to the passenger seat where his son sat sulking in the middle and The Lady Driver sat pensive and unemotional, behind the wheel.

"I made this for you," said Joao, handing the coffee to her and wiping a bloodied tear from his cheek.

#  CHAPTER FOUR

When they arrived in the city, the sun was sitting high in the sky but it was being commandeered by an ominous black cloud that was pushing like a broken face of the crest of the gods, sweeping through the heavens to wash away the dregs of the day's labors, burdens, and unwanted returns.

The same heat that scolded the dry air in the countryside ignited the air in the city except here, every pocket of air was filled with droplets of warm filthy water and the humidity was stifling. It was the kind of heat that heavied your lungs and slowed the thrill in your voice so that like a cripple, you hobbled over your every word and then collapsed upon your exclamation

Joao was unbaited by the heat.

His body and his mind were electric on the pulse of the city, wanting; like a companioned dog, to hang his head from the window and feel the hot wind brushing past his face and breathe in the rich texture of the city air pumping from spinning turbines, eschewing from blackened heaving exhausts and excreting from the sweat-drenched pores of weary people, all shuffling about in a desperate flurry, each and every one with lateness in their step, pushing and prodding and begging for advantage; their bodies colliding in ignorant melee with beads of sweat bursting upwards from their skin to the thick polluted sky where it filled more pockets of air and made the heavy humid heat heavier; being filled like a blister with the extent of the city's toil.

Instead, Joao sat still in the front seat, allowing the energy of the city to wash over him like a summer shower, drenching his senses and igniting the imaginable in his mind, turning the empty conscious canvas into a theatre of the impossible where what he once could not conceive, was; in the city, all so common and a part of the people's way.

"This will do" said The Bishop to The Lady Driver, pointing to a nearby bar on the corner of a shady looking street that was actually nothing more than an emptied garage of an old lady who; in between serving cachaça and beer to her furrowed looking patrons, stood by the side of the road, washing leaves off of the kerb and down the street with a green hose, obviously drowning in contemplation as she sat idle, staring out into the yonder, seemingly catatonic, holding the green hose and washing away the tiny leaves and twigs that were soiling up the street.

"You take care, Joao. And thank you for the coffee. It was wonderful. You're a kind boy. I hope you make a home here" said The Lady Driver, kissing his cheek lightly before he hopped out of the car and joined his father on the side of the road, waving as The Lady drove off into a plume of smoke.

"Wait here with Jesus. I'm going to get some directions from these people, find out which bus we need to get" said The Bishop to Joao.

"Yes sir," said Joao politely, standing by the entrance to the bar as The Bishop walked in and took a seat next to a group of construction workers and what looked like homeless old men who were all nursing a greasy looking glass of poisonous-looking liquid.

Joao sat by the entrance for what could have been hours, though in the excitement of the new surroundings, to him, felt like the passing of seconds. He sat on the broken cement, gripping the ceramic statue and watching in mysterious awe as all types of people scuttled past him, weaving in and out of one another, leaning their hands against one another's bodies to part their stride and push past them; their stride, nothing short of brisk.

He could hear in the background, the sound of men laughing and cursing and every now and then, when a pretty girl walked past; whose glance was always cast somewhere out in the distance, he could hear the men behind him whistling and chanting vulgarity and he could recognize his father's voice amidst the drunken bondage.

The sun was beginning its descent into the night when finally The Bishop picked himself off his stool and stumbled outside, kicking Joao in the belly to wake him up and lurching down the street as if he were walking on two wooden legs with no bend in his knees for the fright of fall.

Joao stretched out his worn body. The long drive had tired him so that his muscles had retracted like a coil and were frozen solid by the freezing air as the sun bowed before the coming eve.

He took the statue on his back and carried it with him, catching the slow-moving pace of his father, being pumped and prodded by the passage of people about him who cared not for what weight he carried or for where his journey might take him.

Moving through the thick of the crowd along the broken sidewalk and racing towards his drunken father's failing steps, he felt like a salmon fighting his way upstream as for every inch that he earned, the crowd pulled him back another foot or two and a panic started to wash over him as he saw; through the gaps in people's arms, the image of his father creeping slowly out of sight.

"Bishop" he yelled, but the drunken mess didn't respond, he just kept swinging his legs left and right, clambering his way down the street, slapping his loafers on the broken cement and carrying his leather case over his shoulder with one hand while the other swayed this way and that trying to weigh in some balance in his swagger.

"Do you want a hand?" asked a girl's voice.

Joao stopped briefly, tired from the statue sitting upon his shoulders and dragging behind him. He pulled himself from under Jesus's back and turned to see a girl; no older than he, standing there with wide considerate eyes, lashes fluttering like the lens of a camera and a smile that invited the sun back into his eyes, lighting up the dark restraint which was binding his panic-stricken sight to his conscious eye.

Joao smiled, completely besotted.

"Hi, I'm Charity. It's nice to meet you. What's your name?" she asked.

Joao was speechless. He could find neither the words, nor the courage to undo the spell she had cast over him. She was so beautiful, unlike any girl he had ever seen before, just like the girl from the television; and she was speaking to him.

He moved to say his name but his knees got weak and his legs gave way under the massive weight and he crumbled onto the floor like a deck of cards beseeched by the wind.

"I'm Joao," he said in a crackly voice from underneath the statute.

Charity reached down and took the statue in her arms and lifted it from the crumpled body of Joao, leaning it against the adjacent wall and then lowering her hand to take that of Joao's and lift him back onto his feet, patting at his body with her gentle hands to brush off the dust that had associated itself with his fall, marring his white collared shirt.

"Charity is a nice name," he said.

"Are you lost?" she asked.

"I just moved here, with my daddy. He's up ahead; I'm trying to catch up to him. We're trying to find out where our house is" he said.

"I can show you if you want. I know this city like the back of my hand" said Charity joyfully.

Joao smiled and went cross-eyed as his cheeks flushed red and a nervous exuberance clambered about in his belly causing his stomach to lift up to his mouth, his teeth to chatter and his palms to sweat like a farmer's crotch.

Charity touched her hand against his and the softness of her skin sent a shiver through his whole body that ignited a fire in the nether of his subconscious which sent waves of light and energy through his entire body. He felt as a might child feel, the first time that it opened its eyes or even a flower in bloom, lifting its petals to taste the sun's warm tender rays against its soft supple bud.

Joao's body; from his head to his toes, felt magnetic as if all the goodness of existence were now drawn to him.

And then his muscles weakened.

And he farted.

Nothing loud or obnoxious, but it happened and she heard it and he retreated back into his nervous shell like a frightened turtle.

"C'mon," she said; ignoring what to Joao seemed damnable. "Let's catch up with your dad. What do you prefer, the legs or the body?" she said.

Joao stood with his mouth ajar, staring at Charity. She was magnificent. Her long dark hair ran from her milky white skin down the centre of her back. It was so straight and tied so neatly.

Her face was so pretty. She had big warm brown eyes that were like the mouth of a river inviting him to wash away his disparity in the purity of her simple, longing embrace of her fetching stare.

She had a cute little nose that drew down to luscious lips that pouted lightly as; in the moments before speaking, the words built upon her lips like a tidal wave breaking through the wall of a dam.

When she smiled; of which she did ceaselessly, a small dimple dressed upon her cheek as her luscious lips pulled back over her white teeth. At the end of her questions, Joao noticed that she always poked the tip of her tongue playfully through her teeth and bit down on it gently, waiting for his response.

He sat there now, captive to her beauty, looking at her tongue as it poked through her teeth.

"Well?" she said, smiling again, shedding more light on the dumbfounded deer.

Joao shook himself and then followed the line of her chin down to her slender neck that was neither too long nor too short. It was the kind of neck that could wear a thousand jewels and still make room for its lover's kiss.

From her neck, he followed her milky white skin to where her large supple breasts pushed up and out of a simple tear in the fabric where her shirt pulled tight against her skin.

He stared at her chest with his mouth agape and his hands tied to his side, sweating profusely. He imagined her slowly lifting her hands to the edges of her shoulders were the tiny strips of fabric held the shirt over her body and while her eyes undressed his, her hands gently flicked against the fabric and cast them over her arms so that gravity and her desire to be lusted by him, brought the shirt to the floor. And then she stood before him, with her bare chest and beautiful supple breasts calling him to a warm loving embrace where they would make love under the halcyon crackling of an open wood fire.

"I like your body," said Joao nervously.

"I meant the statue Joao," said Charity smiling. "Do you prefer to carry the head or the legs?"

Joao ummed and aahed.

Feeling flustered and overcome by a sheepish embarrassment, he nailed his head to the floor, looking only at his own feet while his face glowed bright red and his stomach sank heavier and heavier. Charity smiled and lifted his face with her gentle touch, looking him longingly in the eyes.

"You're cute," she said.

"Umm, the top half is heavier so I'll take the shoulders and you can carry the legs. Umm, thank you Charity, umm, I'm sorry I wasn't looking at your, I'm really sorry" he said.

"That's ok," she said, "I liked it."

Joao ushered an innocent and playful smile as if a wrong he had always known of was now so apparently right; as if in the city, he were finally discovering himself and finding where it was that he belonged.

"Sir, this is my friend Charity. She's going to show us how to get home" Joao said, placing the statue down on the ground next to where his father sat, waiting for a bus.

The Bishop looked over at Charity displeasingly at first before looking to the line where her breasts met and then finally at the light crease in her trousers between her legs. And he traced out the silhouette of her sex with a ravenous, sleazy grin on his face and an uncouth, venomous look in his eye.

"It's nice to meet you sir," she said as a bus pulled up against the curb.

#  CHAPTER FIVE

"Hi, my name is Joao," he said, extending his hand to the driver.

Charity pushed him along gently while behind them, The Bishop stepped up onto the bus carrying in his arms the ceramic statue of Jesus, his knobbly knees wobbling under the awkward shift of weight-matched against the volume of alcohol in his blood.

The driver didn't acknowledge Joao. He just looked briefly at the sidewalk being emptied, sneered lightly and then pulled on a handle to close the doors and redirected his focus to the bustling street where cars dodged and zoomed past.

And seemingly everywhere Joao looked, hundreds of motorbikes zipped around, weaving in and out of traffic, onto the sidewalks and almost knocking over people and denting cars wherever they went and they never stopped coming, like an endless swarm of mosquitos, buzzing about and infecting the air with their imprudence.

"Hi, my name is Joao," he said, extending his hand to shake that of the man sitting at a turnstile in the centre of the bus.

"You're supposed to pay him," said Charity, whispering in his ear. "I've got this," she said, "three please."

"It's four," said the man.

"There's three of us," said Charity arguing.

"I count four. You, your boyfriend here, the old drunk and Jesus. That makes four. That'll be eight bucks" exclaimed the man at the turnstile.

"It's not really Jesus sir, it's a ceramic.."

"He knows," said Charity lightly shushing Joao.

"It's taking space. If you don't want to pay you can get off. Eight bucks. Or maybe we can arrange something else" said the man.

"Go fuck yourself" she muttered under her breath, handing over the money to the sour-looking man sitting sideways on his seat and leaning his left arm out the window behind him.

"Temper, temper little sweetie, you fill that mouth up with bad words you'll have no room for dessert" said the man in the chair, squeezing against his crotch with his right hand while his left hanged coolly out the window.

Nobody on the bus seemed to bother or offer anything more than a subtle glance in their direction. Joao walked through the centre of the aisle excitedly. He had never been on a bus before and the ones he had seen on were nothing like this boat on wheels. Charity walked close behind with her hands pressed on his back, easing him towards the rear seats.

The Bishop followed close behind giving one and all the evil eye, painting doubt and suspicion upon the skin of everyone he encountered. Eventually, he lowered himself onto an empty bank and stretched out his legs, lowering his head into his chest and drifting into a deep slumber, drooling lightly from the right side of his mouth as his head tilted and locked over his fat belly.

"This is the address?" she said pointing to a piece of crumpled paper in her hand. "Ok, well you'll be getting off four stops after me. Remember that. It's not the best neighborhood ok, so just don't go talking to anybody. People will take advantage of you" she said.

"Thanks. You look like the girl from television" he said.

"Which one?" she asked.

"From 'The Carriage of my Heart'" he said.

"The pretty one or the ugly one," she asked playfully.

"The pretty one," Joao said, feeling a wave of warmth wash over him as his face instantly turned red and he wished he could have undone his words.

"My real name is Avé Maria, but I hate that name. My mother is crazy religious. So I call myself Charity. I like it, what do you think?" she asked.

Joao; sitting right beside the girl he had just met, was electric at the sensation of his body touching hers and was stuttering; even in his own mind, the words that he wanted to say. That was until the girl took his hand in hers and squeezed it tight, looking right over him; out of the window, as if it weren't strange or even a big thing.

Joao, on the other hand, was willing himself not to sweat, imagining an invisible fan blowing in the infinitesimal gap between his skin and hers, cooling his hands as he watched the tiny white hairs on the nape of her neck; just below her ear, dance to and fro as the warm evening air blew in from an open window behind them.

He hadn't the courage to look with her, just in case she would kiss him. What would he do then? He had never kissed a girl before, not unless he could count his sisters and his mother but neither of them was nearly as girly as this girl.

They were more like men.

With women's parts.

Joao's heart was beating like an African drum, pounding inside his chest and he was sure that Charity could hear every beat and he thought to himself that she knew he was nervous and that he had never kissed a girl and "Oh god, what if she wants to have sex?"

It was all becoming too much.

His mind was racing and his hand was losing its cool, like a dam with a broken wall, bursting into a vigorous sweat and from there, his knees started to tremble and her face was sitting so close to his that he could see his own breath bristle the loose hairs just beside her ear and he wondered then if his breath was stinking so he took no chances and held onto it, releasing every now and then from the corner of his mouth and all the while playing cool and unfazed by the beautiful girl, holding his hand and leaning across him.

"Kiss her," he thought, braving himself to act on his desire.

As he leaned forward, the girl pressed a red button just above Joao's head by the window and she jumped up from where she stood, running towards the door. Joao was startled, jumping back in his seat and then sunken by his exploding heart as the girl stood waiting to exit the stopping bus.

"I like you" he shouted like a startled dog. "I mean, I like your name."

Everyone turned and looked and Joao buried himself into his hands, embarrassed at the intrusive glare of everyone about him. Charity smiled and as the bus stopped and the doors swung open, she quickly ran over to where he sat and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

"I like you too," she said.

And then she was off again running to the door before the driver changed his mind and closed it on her.

As the doors shut, Joao pressed his face against the glass and felt part of his existence turn to sand and slip away from his weakened grasp. It felt horrible and wonderful in the same breath.

Outside the window; standing on the edge of the curb, Charity stood smiling at him and holding up her hand, waving four fingers, reminding him of the number of stops until he had to get off. Joao pressed his hand against the glass and felt every part of his self-ignite. His heart felt as if it burst right out his chest and his hands and legs broke into an adrenaline-laced shake, trembling frenziedly, so much that the old lady across from him thought for a moment that he was having some kind of attack.

"Are you ok?" asked the old lady.

"I'm fine," said Joao.

"Your girlfriend is pretty," said the old lady.

"Yeah," said Joao smiling stupidly.

"I have a girlfriend. She kissed me" he said in his mind, bewildered by the experience, feeling like a baby being born; stretching its arms for the first time and taking its first breath, feeling parts of himself expanding and retracting and twisting and turning, sensations he never knew that he could feel before and he sat with a silly grin slapped upon his face, looking at his open palm; the one the girl had been holding and he tried to remember the feeling of her hand clasping his.

He counted every stop in his mind and imagined Charity standing on the edge of every curb, looking straight into his eyes, each time holding one less finger up on her hand and his excitement built as if she were counting down to the next time they would kiss.

Joao looked around the bus and for the first time, he opened his eyes to the people piling in through the turnstiles and crowding around the steps near the exits and those cursing at old women who dared to question their priority seating.

The bus was alive.

There was so much colour and veracity.

Nobody was hiding who they were or what they believed or what they wanted to say. Their honesty bridged on the tips of their tongues, on the furrow of their brow and for one, tattooed onto the centre of his forehead, a picture of a small pile of poo with little lines running off the top to show that it smelt.

There was an old man sitting to his front; looking straight at him, except the old man wasn't looking at him as much as he was looking through him. His eyes were glazed and distant and it seemed as if he were reading something profound, engraved on the seat where Joao sat. The old man stared straight through his belly at the words no doubt scribed behind his back.

In his hands, the old man had a large white plastic bag that had a symbol of a record on it. The bag was quite large and it wasn't full. Whatever he kept inside was piled just down by the bottom. So large was the bag that the old man had to lean his gangly frame over and reach far and long to get his hand near the treasures that he kept and as he did, his eyes never shifted from their fixed address; peering straight through Joao's chest.

Eventually, the old man pulled out a single cassette.

Joao may have been raised on a farm but he still knew of modern technology and he was stupefied by the strangeness of seeing the old man cradling the small piece of plastic and using his long fingernails to wind the tape backward until it pulled tight and his fingernails could twist no more. Joao had never seen a cassette before, thinking for a second that maybe this was something new, so he watched on in astounding wonder as the old man pulled from the bag; one by one, a new cassette and held each one in his hands so delicately as if they were made of dust and a single breath alone would have them sift apart and scatter about in the air and far from his aging heart.

One by one, he took them from the depths of his bag and he wound them tightly with his long yellow fingernail and then after reading the folded paper inside the cassette's container, he neatly put the cassette and paperback together and gently placed it back in the pile, taking one more.

As his fingers cradled each of his treasures, his eyes stayed locked on Joao's chest while his gummed mouth gnawed away, his jaw spinning like a washing machine, round and round. And every now and then, one of his dentures would slip from its setting and pop out of his mouth and he would suck it back in without shifting his eyes and without interrupting his cradling hands.

After counting three stops, Joao pressed the red button and sounded an alarm and a sense of completion and action became him. The bus pulled to a heavy stop sending him careening over himself, landing in a crumpled heap by his father's feet. The Bishop kicked and wriggled away in his drunken stupor, opening one eye involuntarily; only at the behest of the constant tugging from his son.

The two men exited the bus and stood in complete darkness as the two red taillights quickly vanished from sight. Joao was feeling a little nervous, remembering what Charity had said which was to be wary of other people.

He kept his father close, holding him up with his left arm while he dragged the ceramic Jesus about with is right navigating through the darkness over uprooted trees and broken cement, dodging smashed bottles and weaving around burned out vehicles whose shells lay strewn about, forcing the pair to move from the sidewalk to the road and then back again.

The night was getting cold, nothing like the day that had passed. Joao was dressed in just a fine t-shirt and his bones were starting to chill from the inside out. He thought of the girl; Charity, and he could imagine only sweetness, seeing her affectionate smile and her warm eyes paint across his perspective.

Joao had never imagined that a girl as beautiful as she would ever speak to him, let alone hold his hand or kiss his cheek. He wondered if this was what love was, the carriage of his own heart being saddled and carried far from its mooring, whisked away by the kiss of a beautiful stranger.

The two men passed a deal of abhorrence as they worked their way through the quickly thinning streets, winding upwards along the emaciated and strangled face of a mountain where houses stuck outwards in seemingly absurd angles, defying every common rule of gravity and engineering; erected like concrete pimples on the face of the earth.

The further they went along the thinning and winding road, the darker and more impending everything seemed to feel. The characters they passed each meter seemed to have been written from the strangest book as if all the dregs of society that could not work their way down the stream of usefulness, gathered here and made the crack in the pavement that divided degradation and degeneracy their humble, intrepid abode.

As he dragged along his father and the ceramic Jesus, Joao was whistled by men dressed as women and women dressed as men. They came from the recess of where one would least expect, pouncing on his surprise and wrestling with his breath.

He remembered the girl and paid the men or women no mind, instead focusing only on putting one leg in front of the other until finally; they reached near the summit and were greeted by a group of men carrying an array of weapons and knives.

"You don't go any further. Who are you and what are you doing so high on the hill?" asked one of the boys pointing a gun right into Joao's face.

Joao had had this since he was a child, having his brothers point rifles at him all the time and threatening to shoot him like a scavenging dog, so having the muzzle pointing against his nose didn't take him any further than his family ever had.

"We just moved here, we're lost. Look, this is our church, do you know it?" he said pointing to the address scribbled on a piece of toilet paper.

The armed men whispered to one another in their conspiring circle, looking up from within their ranks every few seconds to peer at the two men lumbering around in the dark with a giant ceramic statue.

Eventually, The Alpha broke from the group and with his armed thugs behind him, stood eye to eye with Joao; his hands tucked under his armpits and his elbow lifted high into the air, showing his authority.

"We run this hill; this whole community. You pay a tax to stay here. Every month. A hundred bucks. You don't pay and we'll shoot someone you care about and if you're late again and I'll personally wrap you in old tires and set you on fire. Understand?" said The Alpha sternly; lifting his hands further into his armpits as he ascertained his command and threat while behind him, his gang of armed men wore their meanest faces and gripped high powered assault rifles.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Joao," he said dementedly, extending his arm to the gang of men and letting his drunken father fall to the ground.

The armed men looked at him like a moth with one wing as he hobbled about trying to pick up his father and they ushered him on.

Their church was in a collection of houses that nested on the top of the hill. They had to climb a lot of awkward steps and brave a few near falls before they arrived at the heavy metal gate that was shut with a long chain and heavy padlock.

Joao reached around and took from The Bishop's neck, a key that was attached to a silver chain. He leaned down; steadying the statue and his drunken father cautiously against the wall, then unlocked the door to a small filthy space that was overrun with giant rats, cockroaches and had a permanent fervor of urine and feces with the putrid, musky smell of sex; a humid blend of semen and sweat.

They were home.

#  CHAPTER SIX

The title of bishop was not one that he had attended to on his own accord; it was a right that had been handed down from generation to generation, a name bestowed upon him by his father and spoken upon him by his followers. It was more than a name; it was in many ways a burden he wore and made his calling, to be the spiritual north for his parishioners and all those whose broken sail had them cast adrift on a sea of tempestuousness as they roamed further from the true course of righteousness.

The Bishop was a good man at heart. When he spoke the words of Christ, he believed in himself and in the message he delivered. His belief helped to inspire others; those in the midst of depression and emotional furor; affected no doubt by their spiritual distraction and earthly obsessions and those just downtrodden by the incorrigible trial of God's love, breaking their bones and blistering their skin to turn another stone and another page in play of his lord's fated script.

The Bishop though had a weakness and from when he was a young boy, no different to his own son; skipping work and finding more trouble than use on his family's farm, he had a penchant for all things sweet, caring not for the journey of a trial, instead appearing always just in time for the arrival of the verdict.

And as a young boy, he would sit in the fields hidden by the craning of long ripened cane, crouching in a ball near the cool earth and licking the sweet nectar from the plants that lay about him. He would only drink water as long as it had been sugared to the point where one's teeth tingled and pained just at the thought of putting the cup to one's mouth.

He had sugar in everything.

In his drink.

On his food.

And he ate the bare crystals, right out of his hand.

He had lost half of his teeth by the time he was thirteen and the rest were held in place by the sticky nectar that he scraped from the plants where he hid and played every day. His own father was no different, having told a similar story as his father having told his, all finding use and purpose in the word of god; father to son, passing the torch to the last child to carry into the darkness and lead mankind to its salvation until Christ returned to bring his children home.

The Bishop, his father, his father's father and so on; a generation of men, the last born descendants, chosen by God to address the holy word and lead all those into the light, unlike the firstborn sons and daughters, whose right it was, was to tender the crops, being useful with their hands and not their hearts, to adhere to the word of god and embrace their trial as they embraced the love and sacrifice of their Lord Christ Almighty and were thankful for the struggle alone; for without which, they would be but a cow in a paddock waiting to be milked or turned into beef.

It had always been a dream of The Bishop; of every father who wore the cross, to take their word to the city and lead more than their tired faithful flock, but to move millions; a whole country, the whole world.

The Bishop had always imagined himself on centre stage with his arms high as if she were carrying the sun in his crested hands, baring that burning weight for his loyal followers who would look upon him with want and awe; empowered by his word and weakened by his enigma.

He imagined that when he moved to the city, there would be rows of people all waiting upon his word, that the moment he opened his church, the people would come like flies onto fresh dung and in maybe a week or some days, he would be invited onto the world stage to direct a crowd of millions and his face would be shown on every television around the world and there would be nowhere he would go without someone recognizing his brilliance and making others abreast to it.

He imagined that their church would be in the richest part of the city where every morning he would drink coffee and eat buttered bread with pop stars and celebrities and in the afternoon he would be counted as advisor for politicians while in the evening he courted young women; dining in the most extravagant restaurants and drinking only the most expensive whiskey and wine, finishing every night in the presidential suite of the classiest motel in town.

He imagined himself on the television as one of the pastors and bishops who dressed in poverty and preached to millions of people around the world, their faces synonymous with the Christian movement and the word of Jesus.

He imagined himself as The 13th Apostle, standing on that stage, pressing old women's heads against his gargantuan sweat drenched chest, ripping crutches from the weakened grasp of cripples and building faith with his calloused heart just as a man with calloused hands might build a house. And in every dream, there was always the same end. He would put his life in front of a bullet to save his sheep, just as Jesus had done.

It had been a month since Joao and The Bishop first stumbled upon their new home and in the days that passed, neither found themselves closer to the other's dream.

The first days were spent scrubbing the floors and getting the smell of sex out of the air. They must have used over a hundred liters of bleach on the walls and floor alone. The curtains that were hanging from the ceiling to divide rooms were set alight as whatever devil had been frolicking upon them was now nestled incarnate within the fine blackened fibers and no amount of bleach or prayer would cast it out.

Joao spent his days walking through his community like a mountain goat, slowly working his way around and down the massive hill and then going door to door of the enormous houses that stuck out like pins on every angle, speaking to everyone he met and talking about The Bishop and their church and selling their Sunday service, focusing on those that needed it most, those of whose trial was etched in the deep furrows on their face and upon the scars on their hands and backs.

In the first month alone, he must have reached over two thousand houses and just as many kilometers walking for hours every day and having door after door slammed in his face and then drunken slurs slapped upon his cheek while rifles prodded in his back and insults tied themselves to his ears.

But still he continued; like a wounded pup, hobbling along with what strength he had left in his legs, being willed along by the light in his heart which took none of this rejection as truth. Instead, he saw himself as having already made a difference in his community and having most certainly awoken some to the good word of his father.

The truth was, there was nothing to sell.

The competition alone in the city was immense. Their church sat on a hill that not even the devil's shadow would dare to cast itself, even on a summer's day. On every corner, there was a whore house, a beauty salon, a place to buy old tires, a mangy old bar and a quaint little church and nothing set theirs apart from the others. They were a single unimaginative grain of sand trying to stand out in a formidable desert.

The Bishop turned immediately to his sweet oasis, burying himself in bottle after bottle of cachaça; selling his sermon to the trickle of vomit that hardened by his mouth as he lay on his side, watched over by Joao, who kept a vigil at his father's gravely shadow, catching him wherever he fell and brushing off his father's insult as he did the flies, that gathered on the old drunk`s back.

Every Sunday though, The Bishop would take a razor to his face and an iron to his suit and he would take to his podium in front of a row of white plastic chairs and he would throw his voice long into the night so that it beat down every door and disarmed every gun and spayed every whore in town. His words would willow through their cynical adhesive to nurture the seed of self-respect that had been left thirsted in spiritually arid soil.

He would chant and he would cant and would cry out the Lord's name and he would always fall to his knees and weep, his tears; real or not, being rubbed away with a silk cloth that he pulled from the pocket of his jacket. And at the end of every sermon he would collapse at a table by the entrance to the church, watching the flux of people scuttle past; artless in their appreciation or knowledge of his good tidings and the passion that he bore into every word and from the end of one sermon to the start of another; until all of the outlines of his ideals and wishes smudged into an abusive blur, he drank.

It was after a bottle or maybe many more that on this one eve The Bishop fell into another drunken sleep that would be nothing more than a quiet watch were it not for who came knocking on their door.

"On the ground."

"On the fucking ground."

"Hands on your fucking head."

"I'm gonna cut your head off you son of a whore."

"Where's our money?"

"Just kill em."

"Where's the money? Where is the money? Where is our fucking money?" yelled The Alpha, holding a gun to Joao's head, pushing his face into the cold tiles while the other boys kicked at his ribs, legs, and back.

"Where's my thirty percent?" said The Alpha repeating.

"There's no money. Please, nobody comes to the service. There's no money" replied Joao choking on his tears and dislodged teeth.

"We had a deal. If you don't pay, you better pray. And someone's gonna get hurt" said The Alpha.

"Please, not The Bishop. You can hurt me. Please hurt me instead" said Joao.

"It doesn't work like that," said The Alpha, giving his order.

The Alpha kept his knee buried in Joao's back, holding him to the floor while he twisted his head to see the gang of young boys; no older than twelve, taking his drunken father and throwing him to the ground.

They stomped on his head with their two feet, kicking him in the groin, in the stomach, and in the throat. Joao watched on in horror. There was nothing he could do except wish that things were different, praying to Jesus to look and to see what was happening and to do something; to intervene and just stop it.

But it didn't stop.

The more The Bishop screamed, the more excited the group got and the more riled were their senses, the more depraved was their violence. This was not just violence for the sake of pennies; this was a show, for sake of scores of pennies. As, for the group, the louder the man's screams, the more others would be inclined to settle their debts before they expired and avoid a similar bruising fate.

"You see that? He's crying, he's in pain, he's suffering. God won't help him. Jesus won't help him. This is my hill. This is my community. This is my law. Take this as a lesson and a cost. When I see you again, you'll have my money, if not, I'll put him in the tires. Be thankful you got this one chance" whispered The Alpha into Joao's ear as he looked into his father's teary eyes; blood dripping from the old drunk's sobering face, his body twisted and distorted from the constant beating.

In the distance and in the part of his sight that made everything look like a cunning trick, Joao could see one of the boys meddling with conspiracy and stirring away in the darkness. And that boy, he took from against the wall, a long sweeping brush and he came into the light and into Joao's sight and he held that sweeping brush by its bristling bristles and he pointed the rounded end towards his father's buttocks while the other boys pinned down The Bishop's thrashing legs and tore off his soiled trousers.

#  CHAPTER SEVEN

"It's much better than I expected. The church is looking really good. We are in a great area, nice neighborhood; a lot of people are really looking to me for spiritual guidance. It's just a matter of time now really. I'll be sending money to you shortly. Yes, Joao is fine. You know he is keeping himself busy. I don't know, just being busy, doing his coffee. Well, you can tell him that yourself. Ok well, I'll tell him for you. How's the farm? And the service? Relax, I have to get my church set up before I try for television, but soon ok? It's just a sore tooth, I'll get it fixed. Because it doesn't bother me that's why. Well then, that's very brave of you, isn't it? Listen I have to go. Do you want to speak to Joao? Ok then" said The Bishop, passing the receiver to Joao who stood wide-eyed beside him, longing to tell of his adventures to his mother.

"Hello Mother," he said before The Bishop clasped his hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver, looking Joao sternly in the eye and speaking in godlike reverence.

"You mention nothing about last night to Mother" he said, wiping the blood away from his chin and easing himself towards his bed; wincing and limping through every step, cursing all and sundry under his breath as he hobbled past the kitchen towards the darkness of his quarters; hidden behind a sheet of red cloth.

"No whores" yelled Mother into the phone before hanging up abruptly.

Joao placed the receiver gently onto the table and walked solemnly towards his father's room, resting his face lightly against the red cloth, his breath causing it to flutter lightly as his fingers turned over the bend in the wall and urged him forwards to mend his father's broken spirit.

"Sir, I'm sorry. There was nothing I could do" said Joao, trailing off with the sound of his father shuddering through every pained step until the old man was out of sight, cowering under his covers, drenched in shame and fueled by violated rage.

"I could have taken care of it. You should have just left well enough alone" said The Bishop.

"Maybe you shouldn't drink as much."

The Bishop snorted.

"Sir," said Joao correcting himself.

The Bishop lay curled in a ball like a sulking child but still spoke to Joao as if, even in this state, his son were less than him; his own child, less than his most fervent disgrace.

"You're bad luck, Joao. I should have brought your brother."

"Which one?" asked Joao.

"I don't know. The tall one, thingy-me-bob, you know, what's his name" said The Bishop.

It was never easy to hear his father struggling to put a name to one of his children. Joao felt like a slightly bigger spoon in a row of spoons.

"Maybe I could look for work," Joao said.

"Your work is with the church."

"But we need money. For those men and to send to Mother. She's expecting us to send her money" Joao said.

"You just do what you're supposed to do. You let me worry about Mother" said The Bishop, falling asleep on the last syllable.

The next morning played like the many mornings that followed. The Bishop moved not a foot from his mattress, hidden in the dark, refusing to come out into the light, speaking only through low grunts when his glass ran dry, finding peace only when consciousness became foreign to him.

Joao did little except clean his mess and keep a strange order about the church, unsure what to say to make The Bishop feel better. The only thing he could think of doing was something he hadn`t done in a long time; not since they had arrived in the city.

Nothing could cure a man`s pain than to well in his reflection and what better way than with a perfect coffee.

Joao smiled to himself.

It wouldn`t bring them money, but it would lift his father`s spirits and hopefully take him from this daily, darkened prison where he drank himself into oblivion.

He went into the kitchen and took the coffee powder and boiling water and sat down on the floor where his father had been attacked. He lay down where his father had laid, looking where his father had looked and he closed his eyes and imagined what bitter memory he must be trying to blur in his mind.

And the vision that came to him was of The Bishop; no younger than he, being brushed aside by swift busied hands that had no time to favour his musings or stories over the pressing need to whip a tired and worn ox in circles; his brother, slapping at the beast`s arse with his bare hands every time its legs pardoned to fail or begged upon a moment`s respite, turning like the hands of a clock in burning sand while his brethren; their backs kissed with cancerous sores, fed fields of cane with their stony hands into the giant metallic mouth, their unfortunate fingers just an indecision away from catching in the metal teeth that snapped down and dragged the cane inwards to be torn and eschewed out as a fine but thickly liquid.

Joao; looking through the eyes of The Bishop, watched as the sweet cane juice trickled out from the rear of the monolithic machine, the kind sound of water touching stone frightened only by the constant churning of the long mechanical arms tied to the neck of the ox and the animal's pained moaning; silenced only by the impeding bellow of his brother screaming for more; whipping and beating the animal, never satisfied, never tiring, always wanting more.

As he lost himself in dream, Joao's hands magically attended to the cup that sat lifeless beyond the tip of his idle hands and as his imagining eye painted a bitter consternation with a gentle and solicitous stroke of his heart, his hands opened like a spring flower, turning to take the cold inanimate cup from the table, embracing it delicately in his fingers as it were a part of own body; an extension of his molecular self, drinking from his conscious stream.

In his conscious theatre, the massive animal was drudging through the hot sand like an old man on his last legs creeping across a cold, sterile hall to die somewhere more familiar than the bed that nursed his sickness. Slowly the animal turned and even slower, the massive crane like mechanical arm twisted around, scratching and screeching like the passing seconds of an interrogation.

And as the animal trudged along, so too; the fingers in Joao's hand, slowly turned the cup so that the hot black liquid pouring into it ran along the sides of the cup and swam gently towards the center, the patient coming together of liquid; the building of a pool. It was more of a transient molecular dance than an abrupt violent incident.

In his conscious theatre, The Bishop lifted his hands into the air to call to those of his father, only to have the course lashing of a leather strap; like the ox, releasing him from the bondage of his discerning desires, sending him back into the trail of his own footsteps, drifting aimlessly through his wanton existence. And it was this lashing that pulled Joao out of one dream and into another.

This time The Bishop was much older and with much less ardor; his face hardened by the unremitting drought or maybe just toughened by all the lashes that were spent across his childish affection.

He stood now in front of many people; maybe twenty in total and they were all looking towards him with their eyes and ears thirsting for salvation, hanging onto his every word as if each syllable were a fine thread woven by God himself that suspended them above their growing despondency.

As he spoke, their spirits lifted. The light of the lord emanated from his eyes and carried high in the palm of his hands, washing down on them like a summer rain, cleansing them of the stains of doubt that dirtied and tightened their skin.

And as their eyes widened, so too did those of The Bishop; feeding himself on the return of their love and devotion, on the spiritual echo of his own words; seeing in their eyes, his own reflection, more spectacular than he imagined in his own mind.

And as he caught sight of himself catching sight of himself, a single tear welled in his eye and it held for a moment before running down the line of his face, building at the edge of his chin and dropping free from his body and splashing against the hot dry earth.

As the tear released its grip on The Bishop's contentment, it fell into his struggle; the dry dusted earth, and as he imagined his father upon the podium in a moment's grace, Joao followed the tear with a single pinch of sugar falling from the grace of his fingers into his father's bitter struggle and just as the tear had vanished into the dry dusted earth, the grains of sugar; or the sweetness in his father's life, fell into the dark coffee and delicately made their way to become part of the liquid, just as his tear of happiness would swim with the earth to become the plantation of his existence. Joao turned his hands slowly back and forth so that the grains danced with the coffee and those that wouldn't were free to sediment themselves at the end of the glass.

When he stopped his dreaming, the coffee was done. He felt exhausted but having had lived and just as a miner might carry a single speck of gold after breaking his back with his spirit and a pick, Joao held; like a king's crown, the coffee in his hands and shuffled towards his father's room, knocking once on the wall beside the red curtain that kept darkness and absence about him.

"Sir, I made this especially for you. Here you are" he said holding out his two hands, the steam from the cup and the bitter smell fermenting in the air and tickling the old drunk's senses, rousing him from his foetal slumber.

"What is it?" asked The Bishop.

"It's a special coffee. I made it thinking of you" said Joao.

The Bishop reached out his hand and took the cup retracting it close to his body where his legs lay pressed against his chest, his face buried against the cold brickwork and his blanket, warming him from the horror that played out in his mind.

He pulled the cup to his mouth a slowly sipped, making a long slurping sound as he sucked up the coffee and swilled it in his mouth, swallowing it with a thick gagging gulp as if he had just swallowed his own vomit.

"What is this shit?" he screamed, throwing the cup in Joao's direction, scalding the boy in hot coffee and then spitting against the floor where he stood.

"You didn't like it?" asked Joao, sinking into self-defeat, his stomach feeling like he had just eaten a bag of cement.

"Too weak. Tastes like fucking tea. Bring me a real drink. No, just leave me alone" The Bishop said sulking.

Joao bent down to the ground and picked up the pieces of the broken cup and then made his way back into the lit church and sat on one of the plastic chairs, looking mournfully into the broken pieces that he cradled in his palms, seeing his own reflection, shattered into a million fragments and beaten down upon by the savagery of his father's depression.

And as his fingers slid the broken pieces over one another; moving them in his hands like a set of dice, a single saddened tear ran down his cheek.

Joao did very little the rest of that day except stare at his feet and dissolve himself into the conversations of people standing at the front of his church waiting for a bus to arrive. They all spoke of struggle and burden and slung every word out of their mouths like the swinging of an axe or a deer's carcass from one's back to a table. Their eyes looked heavy, weighed down by the sight of things they did not have and their fingers stung, itching for what things they could not touch.

Joao picked himself up from his stupor. There was no reason to wallow, not when the city had so much to offer. All he needed to do was to go out and find some work.

The church was making no money for now and most of their reserve was being drunk away by The Bishop's floundering; with he, preferring to remain benevolently boozed than to admit that this parody was, in fact, a failed reality and change his predicament, accepting instead the much-fashioned trial of God and penance of fate as a reason to bathe in his own negation.

And Joao knew that he had to find a use for himself. He couldn't find one on the farm; there he had always felt like he didn't belong; a tomato amongst apples or a 'y' amongst vowels. But everything had a use and a purpose; every bitter end had its sweet reward and he knew that he would find his in the city; that his niche was something more than a bruised back and blistered palms.

Spirited, Joao briefly checked on his father who was curled up in the darkness, solicited by unconsciousness. He took some money from a small jar beside the bag of stale bread on the counter; just a few coins so he could catch a bus should the need arise.

Then, with his money and his good spirit, Joao left the church and strolled down the winding hill alone; engaging himself in wandering stares and vagrant smiles from all of the strangers who passed him by.

The streets were so strange but they were also so fascinating. Even the people; who reeked of precariousness with their questionable squinting eyes and their clamorous irking grins, were visual magnets for his blank cultural canvas. His every sense hinted at him to keep away from their reach but his eyes could not keep him from painting the outline of their presence.

When he reached the bottom of the hill, he felt he had come down from the mount of a concrete jungle, encountering every type of person imaginable with every second seeming so fictional to him, exactly like he had seen on the television. This world was amazing, so full of life and colour; unlike his farm which was starved of dimension and culturally anorexic.

The first place Joao visited was a shop on a corner at the bottom of his hill. There was a large poster on the window advertising vacancies so Joao walked into the store with his smile wide and his mind open.

"Hi, my name is Joao; I'd like to apply for the job. You have a poster on the window. I want to do that job. What is it?" he asked.

"Motoboy? You deliver pizzas on a motorbike. Do you have a motorbike?" asked the greasy man behind the counter, flipping the pizza base with his filthy hands as he spoke, catching grains of dirt and dead mosquitos in the mix of flour and dough.

"No" replied Joao.

"Do you have a current license?" asked the greasy man, spitting on the table to soften up the dough.

"No. You mean for a motorcycle?" asked Joao.

"That would help also," said the fat man sarcastically.

"No, I don't. I've never ridden a motorbike before but I can..."

"Fuck off," said the greasy man now pasting the dough in a thin layer of red sauce and counting the specks of grated cheese that he spread across the base before dumping it into the fire and burying his hands in more dough.

Joao turned to leave and was pushed aside by some larger men as he tried to exit through the door, knocking his head against the wall and being flattened by the weighted stare of one of the men whose eyes spoke of nemesis as if they had shared a thousand of such exchanges in the past.

As he stumbled out of the door, a bus approached and pulled up by the curb. Joao didn't think. He stepped up onto the platform and handed his money to the man at the turnstile and sat nervously but excitedly at the rear of the bus, painting every person with an observant brush as he made his way down the aisle.

The windows were stained yellow and brown and through the dark smears he could see the flux of traffic whizzing about; cars and trucks cutting each other off, riding bumper to bumper and motorbikes zooming past, their rider's feet high kicking at doors and mirrors as they zipped along; their arms waving famously in the air as they cursed silently through their helmets at the drivers yelling back aimlessly through the trail of their fumes; each and every one, pounding on their horns as if it made a difference, exalting their indignation like rice on the steps of a cathedral.

It was all so exciting.

The people were so alive and so vocal and they spoke with more than one syllable and they spoke with more than their mere words. They waved their arms over their heads to sing out their dismay, their disbelief, and their disapproval and they nodded their heads and flicked their fingers in apposite conduction; inviting other drivers into accepting their grace and they flicked on their lights meaning 'I give you the right', they opened their palms as to pick of a fight, but they never got out, they always moved on with a wave of their arm at whoever was wrong.

Joao sat stupid and smiling, like a young child watching an ice cream being poured; his hands pressed against the glass, his fingers spread wide, his mouth agape and his tongue limber in his mouth; almost licking numbly against the stained glass.

He had seen this so many times before on the television and he had sat no different to this, pressing his face against the flickering screen and imagining the feeling that would accompany this sight. And now that he was seeing this, living this and experiencing this. The sensation he had so longed to acquire was now beyond narrative.

Somewhere inside of his subconscious mind, new memories were being formed and his personality was changing, like the thawing of the tundra, he could feel for the first time, his whole body engaged and electric, a part of the universe; an opposable thumb, twitching to lock around anything that passed the lunacy of his sight and feeling for the first time also, himself in colour.

At the fourth stop, Joao got off the bus and stood by the side of the road watching the manic bustle of cars, motorbikes, bicycles, buses and above him, queues of airplanes and froglike helicopters hopping from one building to the next; the air spinning around his feet, lifting the excitement from his toes to the hairs on his neck which craned into the sky and fluttered like the blades of grass on a river bank, trembled by an evening breeze.

When he turned around, he saw another sign on a window offering work. It was a small corner café. Nothing to flash yet at the same time, timely enough to warrant a rows of beautiful people sweeping in from the busy sidewalks taking tables by windows, lighting their cigarettes, drinking beer from small glasses, laughing hysterically and canting jovially; their voices booming over one another, bumper to bumper with every syllable, each and every person talking like they drove, with necessity rolling off their tongues, raising their voices until their throats were red lining; adjacent analogies competing to receive their ovation first.

The men were handsome, striking and particularly alpha, the women; disarming, demure, desirable and dangerous with their looks alone, sending the men into primal debate. And in the mix were down and weary workers, brushing off the dust that painted upon their skin, stretching their eyes and yawning out the day's argument; a small glimmer of joy brimming in their eyes as more like them gathered around, leaning against the counter, resting their servant limbs and massaging a small glass of cold beer between their fingers.

And as the animated roar built into a deafening exhilarating clamber, there came from the streets the shoe shiners; dressed in shabby clothes and their fight with hunger or drug addiction, evident in the scars on their faces and the invisible lead weights that had their eyes low and hanging.

And like a swarm of jellyfish they came, almost out of nowhere, moving into the café and then table by table, they held up their wooden footrests and dirty old toothless brushes and with saddened starving eyes and acquiescent mouths, they pleaded their service from person to person and they moved quietly like obedient dogs, squeezing past chairs and shuffling up to whoever caught their quiet musings or walked into their stare.

And as quickly as they came, so too were they gone and the spirit of the eve accelerated with the clinking of glasses, the spilling of beer and the raising of voices in jovial cheer.

"My name is Joao. Can I have the job?" asked Joao timidly to the large greasy man behind the counter; his white apron stained black as he moved from flipping burgers to changing notes.

"Do you have any experience?" asked the man.

"No," said Joao.

"Do you know how to work a till?" asked the man.

"No," said Joao.

"Can you work a grill?" asked the man.

"No," said Joao.

"Well what can you do?" asked the man.

"I can make coffee, I guess," said Joao.

The large greasy man paused for a moment scratching his head and straining his face as if a migraine had just camped in his frontal lobe.

"Are you gonna steal from me?" asked the man.

"No," said Joao.

"I'll have to take your word. The rest I can teach you. You're hired. You start now. Here, wash these and cut some lettuce' he said handing stained beer glasses to Joao and ushering him to the sink behind the counter.

"You can call me Fatts," the man said.

"I'm Joao."

"You don't say."

#  CHAPTER EIGHT

"Sorry sir, I promise it won't happen again," said Joao, his honesty secreting like a fevered sweat.

"Don't apologise and don't call me sir. What were you raised on a shooting range?" said Fatts with his enormous hands pressed against his statewide hips.

"I'm just being polite," said Joao.

"It's not polite to make people feel uncomfortable. I don't want you to lick me with your discipline. Relax a bit. We don't call anyone sir here, except maybe them" he said, pointing out to the small group of police officers walking down the road with their automatic penises loaded in their hands and their berets, tight against their foreheads, cutting off the blood to their rationale and reason while their eyes busied themselves, carving trouble out of the ordinary.

"Yes sir, sorry," said Joao watching the uniformed men walk past and feeling a sensation that felt like the anti of secure, creep and tingle its way against his spine.

"So you have Darwinian hands. That's ok. Just gotta keep you away from anything fragile. Sweep up the broken glass and take the mop to the floors when you're done. We'll start your learning from the ground up. Don't worry. They're just plates and cups. Smile a bit more, that's why I hired you. Sure as hell wasn't for your good lucks or equilibrium" said Fatts laughing.

Joao did as Watts said and relaxed to a certain degree though disappointment had always been the diagnosis of his potential, echoed incessantly by his siblings, his gargantuan displeasing mother, and his drunken self-concerning father.

If all you had ever heard was that up was down and left and right for the entirety of your life, it would be very hard to take the kind grace of a smiling stranger who; to make your failings seem less fated and tenured, sang like a silenced conscious voice of reason, the contrary to a lifetime of dictated truth.

It sounded sweet and assailing, but it would take a lot more than a few kind and opposing ideas to lift the dogmatic knee from the bruised and crippling back of his stunted and irretrievable self-belief.

So Joao smiled momentarily as if a blind man had heard the hooves of a donkey and called it a horse; it sounded pleasant upon the second it was spoken but it wasn't true and the second the donkey saw its own reflection; in the instance of his dunce, it would again kick its idle temperament and assume a lesser role.

And momentarily he did smile, adoring the title of useful, belonging and apt, even though he knew; like an apology or a well-wishing, it was just a learned polite behavior on behalf of the kind fat man and there was no greater truth in what he had said than what he had heard repeatedly throughout his life so though it felt grand dressing in a king's clothes, they were not his and it would be more conciliating to return the title than to have it taken away, knowing that the higher he perched upon the throne, the further he would fall into acquainted disapproval.

Joao picked up the pieces of glass and ceramic and he thought of his father and how it seemed that his dreams were just as fragile and how this city was just as reckless and inadvertent to a man's hopes and expectations as he was to a round dinner plate and he saw in his hands, the shattered soul of his father crawling out from beneath the blue petals of the fragmented flowers that stretched across a thousand shards of broken plate.

"Where's Fatts," said a voice booming over his head as he crouched over the broken shards sweeping them into his hands and with the tip of his index finger, pressing lightly against the infinitesimal shards, lifting them from the cold tiles like sugar from a bun.

Joao looked upwards and saw one of the uniformed men standing above him with one hand on a pistol strapped to his hip and the other making a fist and pressed against the side of his body.

Behind the man were two other men facing out to the street, holding their weapons fast as their eyes targeted every man, woman, child and stray dog that wandered listlessly past the entrance to the café.

"He's in there," said Joao pointing with a tilt of his head to the staff door.

The uniformed man walked over Joao and into the staff room with his right hand clenched firmly on the handle of his gun and the right finger gently flicking at the leather strap which locked the gun into place. Joao watched his index finger stroking at the tip of the leather strap delicately as he walked away. The other two uniformed men stayed by the front of the store, their eyes still carving trouble out of perceived normality.

"Coffee please," said a woman's voice from behind the counter.

Joao didn't respond. His focus was on his task which was to clear the broken plate and to mop the grease and beer-laden floor.

"Hey, you. You work here? Can I have a coffee or not? I haven't got all day. I have to meet someone important. Are you stupid? Come one" yelled The Nervous Lady at the counter.

Joao wasn't sure what to do. Fatts was back in the staff room with the uniformed man and he wasn't even sure if that was good or not because the man looked very serious and was masturbating his gun strap. And Fatts was clear that he wasn't to talk to or serve any customers at all but still, she looked upset and coffee Joao knew.

"Good afternoon mam, can I help you?' he said taking a post behind the counter, his senses creeping over his shoulder to watch for Fatts bursting through the doors and sketching him in reprimand.

"Coffee and strong," The Nervous Lady said. "I've had a hard day. I'm meeting someone."

"OK," said Joao.

"Can you bring it to me? I want to sit over there in the corner near the television. I'm meeting someone" she said.

"Ok mam," said Joao politely.

When the woman sat down, Joao took a moment to disguise himself from reality, detach from his conscious tidings and travel into The Nervous Lady's conscious mind, to attest to her worries and her burdens and then dive into the emotional dam of her subconscious fears and loves.

Joao ignored the giant vat beside him full of steaming coffee, a cruel ordinary mix of blunt dark liquid and intoxicating sweet sugar where; with every sip, the lining in one's stomach tore, along with the enamel in their teeth.

Instead, he took a filter from a nearby drawer that he had seen and placed it over a small cup. While he stared at the fidgety woman who was busily defining the right position of her chair at her table, his fingers pressed perceptively into the fine coffee powder by his side, pinching grain by grain at the effect of her struggle.

He watched her nervously place the seat in front of her at varying angles around the table. She sat with her knees pinned and her hands folded over one another and pretended to dip her head in faint humoring approval of something that had been said in the delusion she was playing out in her mind, passing her hands over her shy smile as if to modestly brush off her imaginary lover's bridging compliment, fanning the warm air that touched upon her moistened red lips.

Then; as if someone had pulled on her uncertainty thread, her thoughts seemingly convulsed as her neck lightly twitched and her fingers wriggled and writhed in some scheming dance as she lifted herself to slide the chair opposite a half a degree to the right and then she sat back down and smiled in modest approval to the imaginations in her head.

While taking grain by grain with his fingers and placing them into the beige filter sitting precariously above a blue floral ceramic cup, Joao watched The Nervous Lady and focused on her face and especially how it tightened when she appeared most comfortable.

He imagined what her struggle must be like, every morning of her life; waking to find everything from the day had moved one zillionth of a degree out of place and having to spend the rest of the day before finding what it was that was actually out of place and wanting to, no, obsessively needing to, put it back where it belonged; but never knowing that in truth, every morning she woke up one zillionth of a degree further from her own perspective and that the change she couldn't make, was inside herself.

He thought about The Nervous Lady putting on her makeup and imagined that while she sat in front of her antique mirror; paralyzed in the painting of perfection and symmetry on her pouting lips, behind her, a clock's hands raced around so that only a greyish blur was visible against the numbers as if a tiny stroke of her hand had seen days, months or even years pass it by.

He imagined then, as The Nervous Lady pouted and kissed the air, she lifting herself from her satin lined stool and upon passing her reflection in a window on the street, seeing that she had missed the tiniest and most invisible speck of colour near the corner of her lip. He imagined her heart beating frantically, a sea of rage washing upon her conscious shore, sirens sounding in her ears and everyone in the whole world, obviously drawn to this stupid mistake.

As his fingers picked at the grains and placed them almost one by one into the filter, his imagining turned to The Nervous Lady in a room, seated at a table no different than she did right now, just an inch or two in front of him, except there were no passers-by, there were no other tables and there was no busy bustle as the many scents of vibrancy shuffled about in hurried flight. She was sitting at a table much like she was now and at the table; which was grand enough for another eleven guests, there were places and plates and glasses with wine set and arranged in front of every chair.

Around her; on the ceiling and hanging from the walls, were lines of coloured string tied with helium balloons that threatened to lift up and out of the room should her gallant expectation lift the roof off her house. Along the wall that lined the dining table was a large sheet of paper that read 'Congratulations' and The Nervous Lady sat alone, focused on arranging the napkin beneath her plate, moving it left and right and turning it round and round as silence filled every glass and emptiness attended to every place set out.

And the silence was eventually broken as she lifted her eyes to the mirror that sat on the wall opposite and looking at her own saddened smile, she clapped her hands and sang happy birthday, cheering her own celebration.

And she when she was done, she neatly packed up every plate and every glass and put away the presents she had bought for herself; an expensive pen, an organizer, a Miles Davis CD and lace lingerie.

And when everything was neat and ordered again; putting every back one zillionth of a degree, she dressed in her Victorian nighty; the white one that wrapped around her neck like a strangler's kiss and drew absence on her sex as it pulled like a curtain over the length of her body.

And she went to bed.

Alone.

When he pulled himself from what he imagined was her struggle, the filter before him was already being watered like a delicate flower by his hand, it, pouring hot water gently over the fine handpicked grains, swishing the water over the sides so as to pull the thick clumps of coffee into the centre and ensuring that every tear from her soul, passed through her struggle.

Joao threw himself into The Nervous Lady's glare again as his fingers pressed into the nearby container of sugar and he touched and moved each grain, his fingers working like tentacles to find the sweetness that resembled the smile that etched on her face every time she caught a pair of men's shoes edging from the crack in the window to the entrance to the café where her heart beat with wanton expectation; she, perched upon her desire like a thief upon a fleeting moment.

Joao caught this moment before it turned into something else and he captured the grains of sugar that most felt like this and he put each grain into the cup and allowed them to slowly sink and dissolve into the coffee, caring not to stir the delicate dance of nature.

"Here you are, mam. I apologise for taking so long but something like this should not be rushed. I hope you enjoy" said Joao, humbly stepping away behind the counter.

"Thank you," she said politely, taking the cup and placing it between her hands on the table while she continued to receive imaginary compliments from the imaginary man seated in front of her.

"Joao. Did you just serve a client? I thought I asked you to mop these floors?" said Fatts, coming back from his secret meeting, looking flustered and vetted by his encounter with the uniformed man.

"Yes, I'm sorry sir it's just she..."

"What did I tell you about formality? Listen until you get a feel for this place I don't want you to worry about having to deal with the customers ok? I'm not mad Joao. Not at all. I wish half of my workers had your gusto, it's just, for the moment you're like a newborn in his own skin, you haven't quite found your legs yet. Let's just give it some time. Did you make a coffee by hand? You know the vat here is full of coffee; you could have it out in half a second. We don't do it by hand. It's too slow and..."

"Sir," said The Nervous Lady, "I just wanted to say that this is the most wonderful coffee I have ever had in my life. It feels like I am hugging myself from the inside. Your boy there is an artist," she said.

"Do you mind?" asked Fatts with his hand outstretched asking to try some of the coffee.

"God that's awful" he yelled, spitting out the coffee onto the table.

"Sorry about that, just it was very bitter and it has an aftertaste. It's umm, I don't know, just... I'm really sorry; I'll pour you another one on the house"

"No, it was perfect. Absolutely perfect. Like seeing my own reflection when the summer rain washes over my living room window. Thank you. I haven't felt like this in some time. Would you tell the boy thank you for me?" asked The Nervous Lady.

"Sure, no problems," said Fatts, smiling estranged and affected as The Nervous Lady stepped tentatively over the high curb at the entrance and then made her way down the bustling street and then she was gone, for another day.

Fatts stood behind the counter looking at the filter and scratching his head. The coffee tasted terrible but who was he to argue with what someone else believed to be true. He walked over to where Joao was affixing the broken handle of a broom to the bent nails that stuck out from the mop head to hold it in place.

"It's tricky," he said, "You have to kind of wedge it in there. You know that woman comes in here every day at the same time and sits at the same table being the same amount of weird. This is the first time I have ever gotten anything out of her other than a couple of bucks tied to a string of complaints. Good one. Mop up here and then we'll round up the day. We can talk about that advance" said Fatts cheerfully.

"Thank you Mr. Fatts," said Joao, pushing the broom into the nails so that they wedged around the stick and held it enough to the mop head so he could do his work.

Joao was happy. He had never received a compliment before for his work and especially not for his coffee. He wanted to rush out onto the street and tell someone or anyone what had happened. He really wished he had someone to tell but he didn't and the thought of this alone was enough to desiccate the good vibes that were gingerly raining down upon him.

His father was locked behind a curtain and his brethren were far away attending to the turning of soil, the milking of cows and the tiring of oxen. Even if they were here, they would have probably been looking in a different direction.

As he pushed away on the handle, his eyes married the checkered tiles that lined out before him; eyeing off every scratch and fleck of dirt that his hands would lead to and wash away, throwing his left leg down into the ground and pushing with his two hands into the handle moving like a hurricane through a wooden village, picking every scrap up in his wake and pulling into its centre.

As he swung the mop left and right, he watched the feet of the customers tapping about, singing out some song or pent expectation they imprisoned in their heads.

Then his eyes caught wind to fire.

Watching the floor beyond his reach, he saw a hand reach down into a bag that wasn't its, stay a moment inside and then vanish quickly. Joao followed the hand upwards and saw in an instant too late, the image of a dark-haired girl running out of the café, her hair swishing about in the mix of a warm breeze and desperate flight.

Joao dropped the mop and ran out the door after the girl, apologizing as he pushed past old women and men on crutches and he pushed and shoved until at the end of the street he folded over himself, his hands pressed at his sides and his lungs, working beyond their capacity to slow his heart and shallow his breath.

"You're slow," said a familiar voice behind him.

Joao couldn't speak.

He tilted his head to the right and saw the dark-haired thief standing beside him with her arms folded over her chest. She was smiling with her left leg pulled up so that the sole of her foot pressed on the wall while her right was straight against the ground and her body was arched kind of funny so that she was leaning only her shoulder blades against the crème wall.

"You have to try harder if you wanna get me," she said.

"Charity?" asked Joao struggling for breath.

"Yep. What you thought you'd never see me again? You gave up on me that quickly? I thought we were friends" she said.

"We are, I mean I didn't, I mean I was, I mean... Did you steal something from that person in the café? I saw your hand and you ran from me. Are you a thief?" Joao asked.

"It's nice to see you too," she said, leaning downwards to kiss Joao on the cheek.

The second her lips touched his cheek he felt his lungs deflate; absolved of air. And his soul exploded again, into a billion particles that swarmed around his chest, threatening to burst out and ignite the air that surrounded him. He went red immediately, looking like a stretched out tomato as he fought for air to usher out the embarrassment that flustered about his face and beat; like an eagle's wings, in his heart.

What a wonderful feeling.

"Do you have to go back to work right now?" asked Charity.

"It's my first day. It'll be bad if I don't. I have to mop the floors. Mr. Fatts likes them real clean. Why?" Joao asked.

"I thought maybe we could go for a walk. There's a nice park a few blocks over. I know this spot that's real secluded. Nobody goes there. It's really nice to be alone. Thought maybe you'd want to go there with me and hang out, but if you have to work, then..." she said coyly, rolling her finger in her air as she caught her bottom lip between her teeth, calling Joao to sensual indecision.

"Yeah, I have to work," he said. "Too bad."

"O...k," she said, kind of shocked. "I guess I'll see you round."

"I did a good job today" shouted Joao as Charity walked away.

"I know. I saw. I still like you, you know. Even when you brush me off" she said, speaking over her left shoulder, her voice trailing away with her shadow behind the corner of a building and then lost; like a tear taken in a flood, amidst the flux of hurried people all pushing against one another in their fight to be one step ahead of everyone else.

#  CHAPTER NINE

Joao walked home smiling that day, remembering The Nervous Lady's face as the hot coffee splashed across her lips and drenched her pallet and he could swear he saw her feet dance a little as the coffee worked its way through her body, tingling its way from her neck down to her wriggling toes; lighting her senses and filling her soul.

He thought about Charity and how pretty she looked when she smiled. She seemed so happy and the glow in her eyes when she looked down upon him; surprising him at the end of his chase, it was the opposite of incident. It made him forget completely that she had stolen something from a woman in the café.

Was he falling for a thief?

On the bus he was brimming with confidence, watching every stranger board and following them from the turnstile where he sat, all the way to their seats; surveying how they walked with some trudging their feet along like shackled prisoners while others moved about in a light skip; some defeated by the monotonous and suited obedience of day while others were lighter and waking with waxing zest into the celestial lechery of night that was coloured electric.

As the bus was in motion, he sat and examined people's expressions, especially those lost in wandering thought. There were so many muscles in the human face and it was so awing to see the skin lift and contort and pull and turn in so many rising and sinking fashions. It was like they all had worms under their skin and every time they thought of something pained or wonderful, the worms would wriggle about and stretch their bodies making the people sitting in front of and around him seem anything from lost and complacent to concerned, pensive, tough, mean, frightened, defeated, sad and angry.

When their faces changed, Joao knew their minds were changing and he tried to envision in each of them what weight and burden might have been saddled in their conscious minds.

"This is your stop buddy," said the man at the turnstile talking to Joao.

"Thank you sir" he replied.

The man paid no folly to his good charm and instead went back to reading his word sleuth, the furrowing worm of worry crawling through the skin on his forehead, pushed up by his confusing eyes as they searched harrowingly for an 'a' or an 'f' and his fingers squeezed the tip of the pen so tightly that the skin from his knuckles to his fingertips turned whiter than snow and as his concentration welled deeper as his tongue slithered like a slippery slug out from between his teeth and then wiggled at the air as if his soul were trying to shake itself free from the chains of illiteracy.

Joao exited the bus and was caught by the sight of something marvelous as he turned to make his way up the giant winding hill towards his home. There, in front of a shop window, out in the air for the scent of new to be caught up by the wind and tickle against his impressing nose, and just beside his swinging hands and feeling fingers, was something so beautiful that its practicality was an unspoken reward. There; at his touch, was a beautiful white plastic table that in its centre had a crucifix engraved into it.

"This will be perfect for the church," he said to himself.

Just then a smiling old woman walked up to him, one hand clutching a tiny black bible and the other reaching out to touch Joao's elbow; the highest The Nice Old Lady could reach in the quest to console his inquisition.

"It is beautiful isn't it?" she said.

"Yes, beautiful is the only word to describe this but I'm sure it is very expensive and I only have a bit of money and I need to pay it to the men on the hill, so they don't hurt my daddy," he said.

"How much can you pay?" said The Nice Old Lady, now strangely squeezing and pinching at Joao's elbow, making him jerk a little.

Joao opened his wallet and flicked through the notes inside. He had asked Fatts politely for an advance because he had some urgent matters. He didn't want to divulge too much. Fatts had agreed as long as Joao agreed to loosen up a little and take his foot off the formality. Joao agreed.

Now he was at the bottom of the hill picking at notes with his long fingers inside his wallet while the nice looking old lady watched on.

"Let me help you," she said.

"Thank you, mam. This is the first money I have ever had. It's exactly like on TV you know? The same colours and it's not paper is it? It's plastic" he said.

The Nice Old Lady smiled and took the wallet from his hands. She scrunched her right hand and pushed it into her bra and then shoved the wallet directly into Joao's front pocket.

"Be careful my boy, you can't have that thing out or people will rob you around here. You can't trust anyone, especially with a face like yours" she said.

Joao thanked her and she gave him and hug and a kiss on the cheek before he picked up the table in his arms and slowly plodded his way up the way, swerving to and fro as he dodged invisible stones and potholes the size of quarries in the road and along the path of which was only being held together by the very obstacles that made it almost impossible to pass.

"Hey there cutie" said one of the prostitutes lined up against the concrete wall where all along the road, there sat rows of plastic tables circled by plastic seats and in every seat, there was a drunk man, waving his fist around and raising his voice in directive protest while around him, heads bobbed back and forth, nodding away and slurring their way through drunken approval.

Joao nodded his head at the prostitute because he could not wave. His hands were nursing the awkward table and his legs were busy stopping him from falling over as the hill ventured near vertical as he reached close to the summit. As he neared his church he was stopped by a hoarse yell coming from one of the bars beside him.

"Preacher boy, you got my money?" said The Alpha, coming out of the bar with his weapon strapped under his arm and followed closely by his henchmen who squinted profusely and snarled their upper lips, feigning mean and unpredictable as they shadowed their leader out onto the streets.

"Yes sir, I have your money here," Joao said.

Joao took the wallet out from his front pocket and pushed his fingers inside. He took out the notes and swished them about in his hands before The Alpha reached across and stole them from his hands.

"Is this a fucking joke? Eight fucking dollars? You tryna fuck me here, or do you want me to fuck your daddy's arse again with that broomstick? Where's the money preacher boy?" yelled The Alpha.

Joao panicked and opened his wallet and picked and pulled at every little compartment, pushing his fingers into the tiniest of spaces knowing there was no way they would be filled, but hoping to all Christ that somehow they would.

"I had two hundred dollars. Two hundred and eighteen. It's my advance. I asked Fatts and he said if I agreed to stop calling him sir and was less polite because he doesn't' like...

"Shut the fuck up. Where is my money? Nobody lives on this hill without paying their tax, nobody. Not even friends of Fatts. Do you understand? You don't pay your tax, you're gonna die preacher boy" snarled The Alpha, throwing the eight dollars at Joao and pushing him back with his two hands, sending the frail boy hurdling over onto the ground, tripping over his table and banging his head on a large stone.

"Leave him go, he's just a kid. He doesn't know any better. Look at him, he's scared" said The Harmonious Whore.

The Alpha turned to The Harmonious Whore and grabbed her by the throat, rushing back against the wall, squeezing so tight that her eyes bulged and not even a gasp could escape her mouth.

The Harmonious Whore kicked away with her legs while her fingers twitched but The Alpha eventually released his hand sending her crashing to the floor. As she fought for breath, The Alpha and his henchmen kicked at her stomach and stomped on the back of her head while seemingly everywhere, sitting at every table, heads bowed and dissenting voices silenced as a wave of fear lapped across the conscious mass of one and all.

"Get up preacher. You're next" said The Alpha, leaving the bruised and bloody Harmonious Whore and; with his hungry henchmen, making his way over to where Joao lay cowering, cracking his knuckles and pulling from a sheath on the back of his belt, a long and very sharp hunting knife.

Joao flipped through his wallet but it was empty, only the few small notes circling about his body as a light breeze picked them up and they fluttered about insultingly.

"The Nice Old Lady," Joao said, "she must have made a mistake. She took too much money. I can speak to her and when she sees she made a mistake she will give me the money back and I can give you your money. Please, trust me."

The Alpha took Joao by the throat and pushed the tip of the hunting knife under his chin, breaking the skin. A cool trickle of blood ran from his neck down his chest and pooled on the cloth that tucked into his pants and caught against his belly button.

"I want my money preacher boy," he said.

"Here, take it," said a girl's voice from behind throwing a handful of notes over The Alpha's head, the light warm breeze holding them long enough for Joao to see the cost of salvation.

"This is his debt, not yours. Half of that money's mine anyway. What the fuck are you doing away from your post and why are you helping this stupid kid?" yelled The Alpha.

"He's a friend. And it's not my money. It's his. I robbed him earlier. I'm just giving it back is all."

"Since when did you have a fucking conscience?"

"Just let him go. Look, you made him piss his pants. Let the kid go."

"There's only one fifty here. He's fifty short" said The Alpha.

"I can get the money, sir, I can. I'll speak to The Nice Old lady" said Joao pleadingly.

"Go home Joao, it's ok, go," said the girl.

"Charity? Is that you?" he said wiping the tears from his eyes.

"Joao, go home, I've got this. Don't worry" said Charity.

"What are you doing here?" asked Joao.

"Don't worry. Go home. Your father is waiting" she said.

"Are you sure?"

"Just go," she said smiling to him.

Joao picked himself up slowly and backed away like an injured crab from The Alpha who was squatting on the ground, holding his hunting knife in his teeth while his hands were busy collecting the notes that were flying about in the light breeze before him.

He looked at Charity who was smiling back at him innocently making all of the fear in his blood turn warm and consolingly as if her tender stare were a fever that boiled away the impurity in his heart and returned him to calm and love.

He stilled himself in her eyes and smiled as he picked up the table and walked past the bars and rows of blind witnesses to the small decrepit entrance to his church where a blinking light invited him to the shadow of his father, stumbling about drunk.

"What happened to you?" asked The Bishop, zipping his pants and wiping something from the tip of his nose.

"Nothing," said Joao.

''Where were you all day?" said The Bishop.

"I got a job, sir. At a café, at the bottom of the hill and I got an advance and..." said Joao.

"A job? Doing what?" said The Bishop interrupting.

"I help Mr. Fatts. I clean things; cups, plates, the floor and I served a customer today. I wasn't supposed to, but I did. I made her a coffee and she was really happy. She cried. That's how happy she was and Mr. Fatts, he was a bit angry I think, but when the lady spoke to him he kind of changed his mind and was happy as well. I did good, I did" said Joao proudly.

"Your job is here, helping me with the church. Did you even knock on doors today? Did you do your real work?" said The Bishop.

"No sir, I didn't. I'm sorry sir, I just thought if I could get some money then we could pay those men and they wouldn't, you know..."

"Those men did nothing to me, you hear? Nothing. You think I'm scared of a couple of thugs with guns? Where's the money? You said you got an advance, how much? Where is it?" asked The Bishop.

"It's gone," said Joao.

"Gone?"

"I have this sir," Joao said passing him the eight dollars that he had collected from the ground.

"This is your advance?"

"I bought this table. I thought you would be happy. Look, there is a crucifix in the middle which is good if you put it against the wall and people sit on one side and they always see the right crucifix and I thought you would be happy sir' said Joao.

"You're bleeding," said The Bishop.

"The bad men, they hurt me. My friend, Charity, do you remember her? From the bus, remember? She helped us find our way? Well I saw her today at work and it was really weird cause I thought she stole something then I saw her again tonight. She gave the men money. They were going to hurt me. He had a knife at my neck. I thought he was going to kill me then Charity saved me. Do you think that was the money that she stole?" said Joao.

"What?"

"The money, she gave the men, if it was the money I think I saw her steal from a lady at the café earlier today. I chased her but I forgot to ask her. I kind of forget everything really. She's really friendly and I don't think she would have stolen something cause she is really friendly and nice people don't do bad things" he said.

"It's eight o'clock," said The Bishop.

"Oh, 'The Carriage of my Heart' is on," said Joao excitedly, forgetting the stinging pain in his neck and the singing bruises that rose up his back and legs.

"You disappoint me," said The Bishop, folding his arms.

Father and son sat down in front of the television that now sat on the new plastic table that Joao had bought and they shared little emotional or lexical reference as they dove into their favourite reality and skipped far from the one that buggered them ceaselessly.

#  CHAPTER TEN

The next morning Joao woke with new life and purpose and he felt alive in his own skin feeling himself moving through the air and parting through life, at one with existence. When he showered, he felt every drop of water touch his skin and run down his body, tickling every nerve and splashing in a pool above the rusted grate that guided each droplet in a swirl down into the blackness of the drain below his feet.

When he brushed his teeth, he felt every bristle scratching at the surface of his enamel and he could hear the sound of plaque, bread crumbs and old coffee lifting off his teeth like old wallpaper and he wondered if the same drops that had washed his skin the day before were the very same droplets of water now rushing from the faucet to wash away the black grime from the tips of the bristles on his brush. Had those droplets cleansed his arms and his legs in a time when he was less spirited and if so, how did they feel about him now; now that he filled every breath with a mount of gusto?

When he left for work, the church was in an abysmal state from a night of savage drinking by The Bishop, something which was becoming more common. Joao said little about the drinking or the drugs. He always knew the Bishop had an unquenchable thirst but for many years; for as long as he could remember, it had been contained.

Mother always gave the beast enough room to stretch its legs but not enough to dance so he was permitted his nightly drink to unwind. But every now and then, he would come to Sunday lunch reeking of dried vomit but, for the most part, he was a seasoned patron of sobriety, a pillar of moral aptitude who spoke ill of alcohol and all other broths stewed for the devil's seed.

Today The Bishop was much different, lying in a yellow patch of drying sticky urine; his belt unbuckled, his pants pulled down to his knees, his dress shirt stuffed inside his stained yellow underwear, one shoeless foot sticking up in the air and his toes poking through tears in his woolen socks looking like a sick headless mushroom.

He wore a pained expression, probably from having dressed in some untoward disgrace at some point between unbuckling his belt and becoming unconscious during his drinking binge. He looked as if he were constantly being buggered by some pungent aroma with his nose scrunched up and his upper lip arched, dried and stuck to his gums showing his crooked, brown front teeth.

Joao picked his father up and dragged him towards the curtain behind the kitchen, laying him down on his bed so that he could wake, just a little bit less inglorious than when he had gone to sleep. On his way out he tidied up very quickly, picking up the broken shards of glass on the floor, throwing a wet towel on the patch where his father had pissed his own pants and affixing to the wall again, the picture of his mother, sitting on the wooden bench back on the farm. He shook off the broken glass and hanged the frame back on the wall where it belonged, looking down over them.

Down the hill he passed the men with guns, watching over his step, snarling at his face and laughing behind his back. Joao paid no mind, he kept his momentum skipping down the hill, jumping over potholes and singing to himself as he went along. He couldn't wait to relive the day before and maybe again, get a chance to serve someone but if not it was ok because it was good enough to be useful at something than to want to find a use in everything.

At the bottom of the hill, he passed The Nice Old Lady who sold him; the night before, the beautiful plastic table that they used in the church to hold their television and small statues of Jesus.

"Excuse me, mam," he said, "I think you might have made a mistake last night when you sold me the table, remember? I think maybe you accidentally took, by accident, of course, I'm not saying you're a thief, I mean you're an old lady, a nice old lady and thieves look more like.... Well... them" he said, pointing to the men with guns on the hill and the emaciated boys upon them begging.

"But I think maybe you mistook the notes and you didn't know because I had two hundred dollars in my wallet but now there's only eight and I didn't want you to be shocked that you had extra money and you didn't know where it came from, not because you're old. I'm not saying that you did this because you're old, I mean maybe you did, you know, not that you're senile, but sometimes, you know at night it's really hard to see some things and when you get more, umm, mature, yeah mature, when you get older, well your eyes strain and..."

"Fuck off you whiny little cunt," said The Nice Old Lady slamming the door in Joao's face.

Joao stood in passive negation staring in through the shop window like a disciplined puppy, unsure what it was he had done to be locked out in such furor and wanting to make himself more pleasant to be allowed back in. He thought maybe it was something he had said. Joao called a spade a spade and even sometimes when the spade was disabled, he couldn't help himself from staring idly at the broken dangly parts making the spade feel more like a shovel, in a room full of spades.

"I'll speak to her later, it must be her period" he thought, having learned from his father and brothers that all women's irrationality was born once a month and knowing nothing of the science of what they were actually talking about, just that it was apparently an appropriate assumption of a difficult woman.

On the bus, it was much of the same. The wonder and awe that had slapped his face when he first entered the city had no less strength in its daily waking, greeting him like a dancing string with new dimension every time he blinked; new faces, new contours, and new struggles etched upon the bridge of worry parting a sea of emotional eyes; each telling their own tale of sunken promise and buried treasure, entrenched somewhere in the pulling depths of their fathomless appetites.

"Good morning my dear Joao. How did you sleep after your first day of work?" said Fatts grinning madly.

"Fine sir, I mean, Mr. Fatts," said Joao.

"Let's get started. If you want a coffee, you can have five minutes before the morning rush piles up. The vat's primed" said Fatts.

"If I could, I mean, if you don't mind, could I make you a coffee?" asked Joao.

"Knock yourself out, kid. Whatever you need to get your batteries charged. Big day today. We got the final this afternoon. If you thought yesterday was busy, you wait till you see this place fill up. So where are you living?" he asked.

"On the hill," said Joao.

"Oh. That's a colourful neighborhood alright. Some pretty bad characters around those parts. You near the bottom?"

"At the top," said Joao pleased.

"You're kidding me? Are you crazy? That's just for junkies, whores, and tourists. What the heck are you doing living up that high? You know how dangerous it is right? Who are you living with? Do you have family?" asked Fatts concerned.

"I live with my daddy. The rest of my family live on the farm. They work real hard they do," he said.

"What about your father, what does he do?" asked Fatts.

"He's a bishop. Real good he is, probably the best. We have a church on the hill, that's why we moved there. Daddy is going to be famous like The 13th Apostle. You know on the farm everyone comes from all over to listen to daddy preach every week" said Joao.

"Nobody's gonna visit that church, not as long as It's on that hill. Not even God can compete with cheap crack and free pussy. And the people that go up there, they can't be saved, my friend. But I guess you probably know that by now. Just watch out. If you ever get in any trouble you call me ok?" said Fatts.

"I'll make you that coffee. If you don't mind though. Could you go and do something? I need to concentrate" said Joao.

"Ok, sure, anything you need, little buddy. You need me just holler" said Fatts walking out from behind the counter and moving some boxes from the entrance of the café to the wall near the door to the storeroom, creating a nice neat stack that reminded Joao of the haystacks his mother used to pile back on the farm except his mother would grunt like a stubborn ox every time she planted one pile on top of the other and she had to swing her gargantuan upper body back into a vertical position.

Joao took a glass from the sink and rested it on the counter in front of himself. He then took the small white filter from the top drawer, still white because it had never been used in all the years that it had taken up space in the drawer. He placed the filter gently on top of a silver pot, nothing too big; it couldn't boil a potato or anything, maybe a couple of eggs standing on their ends but it was the perfect size to rest the filter and fill maybe two glasses of coffee for Fatts so that he could dance with his shadow and be sang to by his soul.

Next he took the container of coffee and pressed his fingers into the fine powder, not pulling at anything, just letting his fingers move in and out of the dark powder like long slender worms, pushing their way down through the container until the compressed wall of thick coffee wouldn't let them travel any further, then pulling them back up slowly to swim through the loose fine grains that sat atop like a pool of dried granulated water.

He looked to Fatts who was twisting his hips like a giant crane; his feet cemented into the cold tiles and his body turning on its axis with his back arched over and his hands hanging low like two chains with fleshy mechanical claws gripping at the boxes and spinning and turning on a dime to return the cargo to the wall beside the door, his feet never shifting from where they had planted and the smile on his face, infectious and distracting.

"Hey look, Joao, I'm a robot," said Fatts, spinning and turning and making mechanical noises whilst moving his arms on imaginary pivots.

As much as Joao tried, he couldn't imagine any worry or bother in this man. Fatts was so magnetized by life that it seemed only kindness and gratuity stuck to his skin. Even the mosquitos that buzzed by his ears and rested on his arms didn't bite. He was a happy man and looking into his eyes and watching how he spoke with his body, it was impossible to believe that he had ever struggled or cursed his way through a single second of his life. Try as he did, Joao just couldn't find it, until the uniformed men walked in.

The same violent looking man with a stone like stare entered the café with his right finger masturbating the latch of his holstered weapon, just as he had done the day before and Joao looked straight at Fatts, who; though apparently calm and inviting, had the same look in his eyes that his father had had when the boys with guns visited them that night in their church. It was the same look a roo gives when it narrowly misses a speeding road train.

By the entrance stood the uniformed man's two subordinates, looking anything but subordinate; to the passers-by and to anyone with a liking to their pulse.

Joao gazed into the eyes of Fatts and froze for a moment in time. He found at that moment Fatts as a young boy, no older than eight, standing in front of his mother as their crazed landlord cursed in vile obscenity, spitting through the air as every word aborted from his castigating tongue.

Behind him, his mother shivered in fright, clinging to her son and trying to pull him behind her so that he could be spared from the cruel prizing of her dependent life. But it was no use, the boy stood firm in front of her, staring down the maniacal madman, ready to strike at whatever part he could reach to protect the last dregs of innocence, curdled within a decaying shell of decrepit addiction and maltreatment that was his dear, once loving mother.

When the man stopped his screaming, he slammed the door shut in Fatts' face, shattering the two panes of glass in the centre and sending him and his mother backwards onto the floor; his mother collapsing into a useless pile of drooping flesh and brittle bone, her scrawny pen like fingers clutching at the blotchy skin above her eyes, catching the tears that ran down her face onto the palms of her scaly hands and down her arms, filling the open scabs and punctured flesh from old and scarred needle marks.

"What's wrong with her?" spoke a voice from the corridor near the now open door, swinging on broken hinges.

Joao; looking through Fatts' eyes, saw a young girl standing by the open door watching in estranged wonder as her friend's mother lay foetal in the middle of the room in her soiled panties, shivering and sulking as drool spilled from her blistered mouth and a small stream of clear urine trickled down her leg onto the floor.

Fatts had on his face, the same look of waking and willowing shame that he wore in this factual moment outside of this daydream, having been caught by Joao in a moment of secrecy that he would rather have kept inside the invisible confines of obscurity. His eyes were wide and glazed with surprise as if his red hand was drawn upon a brilliant white canvas on his face. The girl was looking at his mother crumpled on the floor but he felt her eyes looking only sullenly at him, casting their judgment and abating their congeniality.

"Please go," Fatts said to the girl by the door.

"It's ok Fatts. I won't tell anyone. She looks sick. Is she sick? She looks hungry. Is she hungry?"

"Just go away," screamed the eight-year-old boy in ire disgrace to the only person he had ever called a friend, "I want to be alone" he continued in broken and tear-laden speech.

"I'm sorry Fatts. I just want to help" she said.

"I don't want your help. I don't want to ever see you again" he yelled.

The girl left, crying into her hands as Fatts turned to his mother on the floor who was shaking uncontrollably.

"I think I wet myself again. Can you change me?" she said.

Fatts sighed.

As he changed his mother and wiped her clean, he thought of the only friend he had ever had, staring at him mockingly and he knew she wasn't like that. He knew that she cared but it cursed him for her to see him like this, nursing his drug afflicted mother, cleaning her soiled panties, wiping dried urine from her legs and now, mixing heroin in a spoon and sticking old rusted needles into her veins because she couldn't do any of it herself.

When he returned to his own sight; back in the instant of a moment, he watched the same wide eyes looking at him wishing him away as the uniformed man with his finger rubbing against his weapon took him away in a firm handshake and guided him through the storeroom door and when the handle clicked, Joao looked down at his fingers which had; in the extent of his delusion, placed grain by grain, the fine dark powders into the filter.

He took the boiling water that sat on the stove beside him and slowly, gently and delicately poured the water along the sides of the filter so that again, the fine grains of his struggle folded over themselves and stained the water with the burden of his silent trouble. The water boiled just right so that it wouldn't burn or denigrate any of the grains more than the truth of his soul required them to be.

Joao turned to take from the far end of the counter, the small container of sugar; the one had had prepared himself the day before, pouring it with kind gentility in his heart into a container he had cleaned with his own hands so that it was free of the grease and the plume of the stresses and cynical passage of spoons that shoveled copious amounts of sweet obscenity into stained glasses of vatted mediocrity.

As before, he let his mind wander as his fingers slid into the grains and felt their way around the image and emotion playing out in his mind. He thought about the kind and sweet moments that filled Fatts' eyes and the reserve in his soul, those moments that made all of the bitter ones much easier to stomach.

The first image that played in his mind was of Fatts lowering his massive upper body to unhook the small but sturdy latch at the bottom left corner of the metallic grey roller door at the entry to the café. The sounded of the latch turning caused him to smile, not because of the sound of twisting metal scratching against a worn hinge, but because it was followed by the brisk shuffling of worn shoes on broken cement; the sound of joyous expectation scratching away the binds of beleaguering disappointment as an old man; the same old man who had slept on his steps for the past ten years, threw off his heavy stinking blanket, woken by the sound of twisting keys and turning locks and jumped to his feet in celebrative joy.

And just as the old man shuffled excitedly; expecting to see the welcomed grin of Fatts, so too did Fatts, twist nervously at the key and snatch at the lock, hoping to hear the excited shuffling of feet and then, when the door pulled high and the sunburst in the darkness, to see the old man's smiling face with his single wobbling tooth shouting good morning through the thick brush of his straw-like beard and his husky voice shaking off the night's trouble with a comical and solicitous murmur.

Joao wore the same momentous grin on his face as his fingers worked seemingly with their own independence, picking at each grain, finding the ones that magnetized to the joy that sang in Fatts' heart and that corralled to the theme of a metal latch twisting and turning.

He took the cup in his hands and softly blew away the steam that spelled from the top whilst slowly twisting and turning hands as if he were trying to gently and patiently find his favourite song on an old vinyl record.

As his hands turned, so too the grains danced to the song of his heart, each finding a path of its own inside the bitter struggle of Fatts' soul, choosing to settle where each grain thought that it needed to settle, being only where it belonged.

When the coffee was done, so too was the secrecy in the storeroom and the two men came back out into the now filling café where tired eyes were straining over distant chalkboards debating their morning feed.

The Uniformed Man joined his subordinates with his wallet in his back pocket seeming larger than when he had entered before. Fatts watched him leave almost insultingly and as quick as it had appeared, the anger in his eyes vanished and he was again making robot sounds and swishing his body about like a giant crane, winning the smiles of customers and most importantly, garnishing the widened smile of Joao who was walking over to him now with the cup of coffee.

"Great," he said, "this is just what I....ahhh..."

He shut up.

When the coffee touched his tongue, the whole world seemed to vanish and all of the wrongs that he had been sweeping away and washing down the street were no less stained in his mind than they were on the broken cement at the foot of his café.

As the first sip eased down his throat he felt his own soul stretching out his skin, making every nerve tingle and as he cast out a relieving sigh, he felt that very soul embracing him in a warm ardent hug and it spoke to him and introduced him to his shadow and he saw his shadow for the first time and it invited him to dance and with every sip, he was taken in familiar arm, dancing in the whim of eternity where god itself hummed the echo of his dancing feet as they shuffled and tapped upon the golden floors of heaven.

Joao watched on in distant celebration as Fatts drank from the essence of his own life, reliving every secret he had abandoned deep in his memorial regret and listening to the faint whisperings of his childhood that he had ushered into absolute silence and so too; in that very same moment, tasting the sweetness ingrained in the unexplainable sensations that he was unconscious to when all of his senses aligned in one repeated moment, crouched over a rusted lock with the passage of dawn at his toes.

Feeling dizzy, Joao sat down on a stool to catch his breath leaning his head over his skinny legs, resting his hands onto his knees, staring idly at the floor and heaving in and out like an old workhorse retreated in its stables.

His mind was light and fuzzy and his head felt like he was being pricked with a thousand tiny hot pins and very soon this sensation swept down the entire of his body until; while fastened in his absent stare, he wiggled furiously his sleeping toes to rid them of the sensation and convince whatever demon was trying to possess his sleeping body that there was still someone at the controls.

Joao felt like this after every coffee that he poured. At first, it was a light and intermitting depression, a warmth in his mind that streamed through his veins and tickled his toes. It was the kind of warmth that weighed his blood and made him feel heavier and more aged. It was a feeling that always passed, generally, quite fast like a sizable wake trailing from the side of speeding craft or the sadness that followed the death of a pet as behind any incident, some time is taken to extract the fibres of love from one's heart and set its spirit free.

As Joao sat heaving on the stool, he was being swept up by the wake of Fatts' struggle and it was so unlike any he had felt before. He wondered for a moment if this was normal if other people experienced what he experienced and how exactly did they keep their head above this torrent of sadness?

"Are you alright Joao? Do you feel sick? You don't look so good, why don't you lie down for a moment" said Fatts helping Joao off his stool and taking him into the store to lay down on a pile of coats and kitchen shirts.

As he was being carried along, Joao's eyes followed the ground and the back and forth of Fatts' feet, stretching out in front of his sight and pulling the world beneath them as if he didn't move himself, that he was so strong and gallant, so heavied by his youth that he made the world move for him.

He imagined that his legs must be so strong to carry so much sadness and shame in his heart but that none of this was his fault and that a man as kind as Fatts should not feel shame for something he did not bring upon himself, something that he willed to change and for being able to see and still love and care for; in his junky mother, a thread of goodness that was enshrouded in a thickly woven tapestry of decrepitude and despondent and irreversible self-abandon.

"Thank you, Joao. That was a wonderful coffee. You have quite a gift. Would you like to work the counter?" asked Fatts.

"Really? Yes, I mean I'd love to but maybe not all the time. I get tired after I make a coffee. I think I'm not good at it. My mother says I am like an appendix, completely useless and the only time you notice me is when something is wrong. I guess she's right, I mean look at me. I can't even make a coffee without feeling sick" he said.

"Do you actually believe that? That you're useless?" asked Fatts.

"I guess so. Mother would know. And daddy, he went to school and all. He can write good and really read and he says the same thing. I was no good on the farm, just kept getting in the way. I used to make everyone coffees though" he said.

"Oh yeah," said Fatts enthusiastic "and what did they think?"

"I never told them it was me who did it. I watched through the broken kitchen window. Watched them all drink their coffees every morning and night and they really enjoyed it, but if they knew it was me who did it, I don't think they'd like it as much."

"Suggestion is a heck of a thing. Don't feel off. What you have can't be taught or learned in school. And what's the point of being smart enough to read if everything read makes you dumb. Do you know what a fifty-one percenter is?" asked Fatts.

"No, I don't. Is it like math or something? Do I need it to work the counter?" Joao asked unartfully.

"Not at all. This is something you don't wanna be. Something that everyone is, a fifty-one percenter. There was an old proverb I always liked. Made me feel good about my simple education. It says that 'it's better to be untaught than ill-taught'. Basically means it's better to know nothing and figure things out by yourself than to learn the wrong way by someone who was probably taught the wrong way and to not know something right. You see, everyone in this city is a fifty-one percenter. What I mean is that when they were in school and university, they were all content, no not content, they were relieved to get fifty-one percent in all of their exams. You see, all that's important in this world is certificates. A certificate looks like a hundred percent. You see someone with a doctor certificate or a lawyer or an engineer or something like that and you assume the certificate means they have a hundred percent knowledge but they don't. In fact, all of them are fifty-one percenters. In university they either struggled to keep up with the knowledge or they were swept up by the 'the world is yours' mentality and spent their time in bars, growing beards and debating dead philosophers as if it actually mattered. Then when it came time to their tests and exams, they all scraped in over the line and they were ecstatic, to get fifty-one percent because, at the end of their learning, fifty-one percent meant a hundred percent title."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, even though they only know fifty-one percent of the subject, they have a certificate that says they are a hundred percent qualified. That is the world we live in, a world of fifty-one percenters. Think about it, nearly every doctor in this city got forty-nine percent of their answers wrong in university meaning that; being a fifty-one percenter, every second decision they make will be wrong. Now you imagine how many decisions a doctor will make every day, how many do you think are wrong?"

"That doesn't seem right."

"That's the world we live in buddy. Designed and mapped by schizophrenic and bi-polar geniuses and administered and maintained by fifty-one percenters. There is nothing wrong with you Joao. You're a hundred percent in my book. Don't compare yourself to any of these pseudo-scholars. If you do, that'll be your forty nine percent decision and guess what; you'll be just like them. How you feeling?" he asked with a gentle hand on Joao's shoulder.

"Better Mr. Fatts. I feel better. Thank you. You're a good man Mr. Fatts. Like on the TV" Joao said, picking himself up off the floor and walking with a more steadied step out of the storeroom to attend to his mop and broom.

"TV?"

"The Carriage of my Heart," said Joao surprised he had not picked his own resemblance in the mirror by now.

"I don't watch television. Maybe you can describe it to me one day" said Fatts.

"Ok, great, well there is this boy from the country that moves to..."

"One day" said Fatts, lightly patting Joao on the back, taking the rest of his coffee in his hand and sitting on a stool in the corner of the store, watching discreetly, the people eating, conversing and lazing about in his café; the life that emanated from each and every one and as the cup touched his lips, he closed his eyes and vacationed inside his soul once again.

Joao took to his mop and busied himself around the café, watching how the leaves inscribed on the sticky tiles always seemed to match and he wondered if the tiler had meant it this way or whether he had just been lucky. They looked very pretty running along the floor and up along the walls but they were disorientating and after basing his senses in cheap bleach, his mind started to drift and the walls started to breathe, pushing in and out and all of the pretty blue flowers started to spin like little cellophane fans.

Joao smiled as; from the bustling street, in walked The Nervous Lady who; for as long as she had walked in through that entrance, had always brought with her, a fervor of anxiety and viral stress for the other baristas who generally played a game of paper, rock, scissors to see who would have to brave her intolerable fickleness; at times debasing their the façade of endearing respect, throwing their hands about in front of her depreciating eyes.

Today though was different.

The Nervous Lady walked straight up to the counter smiling, something which made all of the baristas more than slightly apprehensive and had one of them reaching for the nightstick taped to the bottom of the counter. Her eyes were glistening, like how the glasses did sometimes when the afternoon sun dropping by the open shutters cast its reflection into the tiny droplets of water that spilled from the rim of the glasses and beaded on the silver counter.

"Coffee and sugar," she said smiling to The Barista.

"Sure thing mam, I'll bring it right over," said The Barista.

"I want the boy to make it, not you. He knows how to make my coffee. Yours tastes, cheap" she said after a lengthy pause.

"Whatever," said The Barista.

The Nervous Lady took to arranging her seats; the dance of obsessive delight that had her sitting for no more than a single second before her mind dirtied her perspective and had her itching inside her conscious eye, electrifying her blood so that she jolted from her seat, twitching her fingers wildly and like a golfer; crouching down to the green with his squeezing eye locked on a single yard, she eyed the distance between her hands and what would be that of her imaginary companion and she danced around every angle, twisting and turning her neck, rushing to where the empty seat sat; prodding it lightly to and fro, trying to quell the obsessive itch in her mind.

The two baristas stood dumbfounded, looking obviously and rudely at The Nervous Lady, as did the scores of patrons sitting about the café, the bread bastille in their hands, frozen in time, one inch from their mouths as their wide eyes paid no respect to the absurd that played out before them, watching in insolent splendor as The Nervous Lady lost herself in her nervous dance, making the imperfect, perfect and present in her attendance.

As she sat twitching her fingers, one of the baristas brought over her coffee and laid it out before her, watching her oddly as he slowly back stepped away from her table towards the counter where his friend stood smirking to himself.

The Nervous Lady stopped her twitching and took the cup in both hands and gently pulled it to her lips, pulling a cold breath into her mouth as the cup lifted off of the table and as the coffee hovered before her chin, she smiled to herself as the breath she had taken broke free from her expecting lips and brushed away the lines of steam that ran up from the hot liquid, bridging just on the rim of the cup.

As her breath escaped, so too did the lines of steam and with them; like salt in a freezing current. A part of her soul; a recurring itch, went with the current, with the lines of steam, out and away from her being, into the passage of day where it became the breath of a discerning man walking through his life carrying an imaginary bag of all the things he didn't like or need not care for but collect he did and he would never know why.

The Nervous Lady touched her aged but soft lips on the rim of the cup and closed her eyes as the hot liquid poured onto her expecting tongue and her senses exploded with aghast.

"What the fuck is this?" she screamed, spitting the vile drink out of her mouth and painting the clear glass window before her with the black coffee she exalted from her mouth.

"Oh, shit," said the barista, "here we go."

The Nervous Lady jumped from her seat and threw the cup of steaming coffee through the air so that on its way to the counter, the hot liquid poured over the tables and floor below and the small cup smashed into hundreds of pieces as it narrowly missed the barista's head who ducked and dove, out of its range; angered and amused, excited and deranged.

"Fatts!" The Nervous Lady screamed, "Fatts, get out here now. Please, please, please, please, why are your insolent baristas so intent on insulting me? Fatts!" she screamed.

"Fuck this I quit" said the barista tearing off his apron and slapping it against the counter, pushing past the patrons with little apology and disappearing into the flux of people, swiftly shuffling about on the footpath outside the bustling café as inside, patrons watched; some through hidden peering eyes and others in blatant obtrusive display, some shocked by the woman's outrage with their eyes wide and mouths agape while others; who were akin to her difference, enjoyed the show through their peripheral vision, caring not to enlighten themselves on her stage by directing themselves to her waking sight.

The other barista put his head down; pretending to clear some cups and plates while out of the storeroom came Fatts, rushing to see what the commotion was; a chiseled look of war etched upon his face.

"They insulted me Fatts. Your insolent barista, the one with spiky hair, he insulted me again. I asked him specifically that I wanted a coffee and sugar and I wanted the boy there to make it like he did yesterday and the barista agreed like he understood and he shook his head and he said yes like he understood. I was very direct Fatts. I was very polite and he shook his head Fatts. That's universal. It means I understand. See you're doing it now" she said as following her speech, Fatts focused on her eyes and nodded his head in agreement.

"He insulted me Fatts. He pretended to listen but he wasn't, not really. Probably thinking about sex or football or something. I'm meeting someone Fatts and look, now I have a stain on my dress and look at the window that I have to look through, it's got coffee all over it. He insulted me Fatts, they all do. I see them looking at me but I don't care because they'll all shut up when my friend arrives and they see how handsome he is and then they'll all wish they were like me and they'll all be looking at me, but different. How long have I been coming here Fatts?"

"Eight years, seven months and...'

'Eleven days. Every day now for eight years, seven months and eleven days. He's going to come through those doors again, I know he will and I'll talk to him this time and we'll be together, forever. He wore shiny black loafers, the rich kind, not like those evangelists wear, like an important man, a rich man. And there was a silver buckle on the toes, looked really smart and his suit was pinstriped and he had a strong chin and he didn't have a beard, but he could grow one if he wanted to, you could see that, but he kept his face clean and shaven and his eyes were that colour of green/blue like in the tropical oceans, like in the travel magazines and his hair was neat and tidy and he smiled at me and said hello. We were meant to be you know?" she said.

"I believe," said Fatts.

"I talked to a medium last week. She is a spiritist. She said that all understanding equates to a solution. You know what that means? It means that if I think and believe something to be true then it must be and as long as I think it to be true then I can equate it and make it true and I know we were meant to be, so I just have to keep coming here at the same time every day, keep calculating the truth and the universe will equate the solution. He will walk through those doors again. And we'll be together forever. Do you believe me?" she asked manic to Fatts.

"Of course I do," he said, "you are a wonderful kind lady and you deserve to be loved and respected. You deserve all of the kindness in the world. And I know the universe is looking out for you. You'll see him again" she said.

"I'm sorry about the cup. Can I have another coffee? By the boy?" she asked innocuously.

"Sure," said Fatts smiling, "Joao, could you help this dear lady with one of your special coffees please?"

"Ok, I would love to," said Joao placing his mop back into its container and rushing behind the counter where the other barista busied himself picking up the pieces of the shattered ceramic cup and drying the splotches of coffee from the floor and cabinets.

Joao prepared the coffee with the same care and assent towards the honesty that sang behind the chorus of absurdity in The Nervous Lady's song.

He dressed himself in her naivety and gazed through her eyes, touching every grain of coffee as his heart touched upon every moment of sorrow that she carried deep in her gut and he looked too, with expecting eyes, at every pair of feet that shuffled about on the broken cement outside the window where she sat, waiting for a pair of black loafers with a shiny silver buckle over the toes to walk past the window, stop in front of the entrance and turn on a five cent piece; like a soldier's procession, and move into the café where she would follow the feet until they stood upon the tail of her own shadow and as he followed her eyes up the length of the man's trousers, to his chest, his heart exploded with hers as her eyes locked upon her late companion's and heaven swam at her breast and at this very moment, Joao's fingers picked at each grain of sugar and spent them into the bitter black coffee below and as he pulled himself from his delusion, from her bitter sweet life.

Joao calmly watched The Nervous Lady sitting in her chair watching the passage of feet on the broken cement as she had done for the last eight years, seven months and eleven days; waiting for chance to bring love back into her life, and as he watched her, his hands slowly turned the cup back and forth as if he was gently trying to start a fire with a stick, turning his hands like one of Shakespeare's witches, boiling her brew until the tiny individual grains of sugar slowly sank into the bitter coffee and found their places, putting themselves were they needed most to be and with a single breath, it was done.

He took the coffee over to The Nervous Lady and sat it down in front of her. She looked into his eyes for a moment as she bid him thanks but she paused as she caught her own stare looking back at her.

The Nervous Lady smiled; as she had at him when she arrived not long ago and she made a companion of expectation once again and as the coffee touched her tongue, her senses exploded with delight.

Her soul danced; picked up by its own reflection, carried away in by the song of belief on the winds of hope. It reminded her that it was good to have hope, to expect the impossible and to make a prize of every breath and more so; for her, to feel sure in returning her eyes to the broken cement, knowing that the next pair of bustling feet to come out of the corner of nowhere would be, the lover she had waited all these years to one day see again.

Joao was exhausted.

His mind was awash with endorphin and he felt as if he had just run a marathon. He sat himself on a stool behind the counter and just watched The Nervous Lady experiencing her bittersweet moment, thinking nothing of or to himself, thinking nothing at all, just watching in silent admiration.

"You've made a tough fan there Joao. She is a special lady, very misunderstood. I don't know what you do with your coffee but it looks like you're the only one who seems to understand her. You're a good lad" said Fatts.

"She is very sad and so very happy."

"She's zero and one, both extremes. Bi-polar I think. What she has is not a symptom, it's a gift. She feels intensely. So much better than the rest of these people that are content living their lives in summary" he said.

"What do you mean?" asked Joao.

"All of them, They entertain themselves my watching mediocre television, listening to mediocre music, reading mediocre books, having mediocre sex and living mediocre lives and you know what? They call this happiness. They're scared to live, scared to feel. So scared of crashing from every height into every fall that they convince themselves that this television crap, the latest bestseller, the news, fashion, football, the newest shit band, all of it; their whole lives, they convince themselves that all of the mediocrity they consume is satisfying" he said.

"They set mediocre expectations for themselves so that they are always met. You ever heard the expression; don't judge a book by its cover? Bullshit. They buy a book based solely on its cover and a three line blurb. You know what a blurb is, don't you? It's the three line description on the back of a book that gives you the gist of the story. You see, they need to know the story before they will read a story. God help them should they ever just open a book and discover something new. In fact, this three line blurb will ensure they only read stories they've read before; the same tired and worn narrative that in the guise of mediocrity, never gets old. They need to know what the movie is about before they watch it. They need to read a thousand reviews before they will listen to an album. They need to experience someone else's mediocre emotional response before they will interject their own. They need to know why, before they do anything. You look at religion and spirituality and all of this nonsense. It all exists for this stupid mediocre expectative want of people. Everyone has the one empiric question. Why are we here? They are too scared to feel, too scared to live their lives and find out for themselves at the end. They need to know the plot, the whole bloody story before they will commit to living. Lots of mediocre summaries and blurbs to help people get through their mediocre books, movies, music, and lives so that when they get to the end, their satisfaction comes not in the journey or the experience, but in knowing that the meaning of their lives was exactly as what was scribed in the three lines they had read before this farce began. Fifty-one percenters Joao, the lot of them, except her. She's special" said Fatts.

"She is real lonely," said Joao.

"She comes in here every day at the same time, has for the last eight years. I started opening on Sundays on her account you know. She met a man a while back. He came in here for something. If you ever get close enough to ask her, she can tell exactly what he ordered and how many bites he took before he slipped away. She fell in love and she didn't get his name or his number. She doesn't even know what he looks like. Didn't see his face, just the back of his head and his shoes. She didn't have the gall to look at him when he came in. You believe that? She didn't even see his face and still, she fell in love. Incredible. So she started coming here every day following at the same time, hoping he would come back. She figured, if he worked nearby, then chances are she would see his loafers walking by the broken cement in front of her table. If he was here for a meeting, chances are he'd be called back in one day and would wander as he had into her life and that next time, she wouldn't let fate beguile her with hindsight. Every day at the same time she is here, always fidgeting away at the stools, making her placing just right and having herself imaginary conversations, whispering away under her breath, smiling and tilting her head, blushing with some imaginary things that were said. She's a special lady indeed. She doesn't take to too many people but looks like she's taken to you. I want you to serve her from now on, ok? Can you do that?" he asked Joao.

"I'd love to. I mean, if that's ok, yes. I can serve other people if you like" said Joao.

"Are you sure? It looks kind of tiring, kind of slow. Maybe we could put a different price on it. Special coffee. I'll cut you in on some of the profit. What do you say?" Fatts asked.

"Sound fantastic," said Joao.

"What should we call it, this special coffee of yours? The Bitter Sweet Life, Reflections, Calma Mater?" said Fatts laughing to himself.

"Coffee and Sugar," said Joao.

"Coffee and Sugar by Joao," said Fatts, "that's it. Simple and perfect, I'll go and make a sign up" said Fatts excitedly.

Joao was happy, happier than he had been in; well, the entirety of his life, for he finally felt that he had found somewhere he belonged and he felt like the boy from 'The Carriage of My Heart' and how he felt in episode seven of season thirty six when he got his first job singing in a bar and was asked to be a regular and it's when the music business guys saw him and he became famous and Joao felt a bit like this now; not that he was going to be famous but that he was sitting at the right table, that his universe had just exploded and was now set to expand.

Later that evening; after the sun had fallen from the sky and brought with it the billions of stardust that lit up the blanket of night, from the streets came a different bustle, started first by chanting and singing; a chorus that was born from a great distance and by the time it was turning to enter the café, had reached an outrages crescendo.

Hundreds of youths locked arm in arm and all dressed in their city's colours all streamed into the café and spilled into the available booths and piled around tables clicking their fingers, ordering rounds of bottles of beer and shouting jovial, racial slurs against their rival and singing insulting songs, all in the name of pride.

"Fifty-one percenters Joao," said Fatts smiling to himself and patting Joao on the back, speaking in a loud roar to battle with the ruckus coming from the animated youths throwing back drinks, shouting at the television and slapping each other on the backs in their primal competitive dance.

"Dyu ave pizza?" slurred a young man waving plastic notes in his hand, an assortment of colours, some of them cheap and some of them expensive.

"What are you studying?" asked Fatts.

"Medicine. We're all. I mean, them, over there, the table. We're studying medicine. We're gonna be doctors, fucking save lives and that; pretty cool yeah?" slurred the youth, spitting his words of the counter.

"Fifty-one percenters Joao. His parents, just the same. You know the fastest sperm never fertilizes the egg. It gets there and is so tired it can't even wipe its brow against the wall. Then millions more come along and bite and chew and make a hole so one lazy fucker can hop over the lot and jump through the window and take advantage of the situation and be the hero. Nature, is also a fifty-one percenter" said Fatts laughing.

Joao laughed with him though he didn't quite understand but what he could take away was that it was ok being him, that he shouldn't feel less than these well to do middle class university kids or their parents, just because he wasn't schooled and he didn't learn how to think from a book or that he didn't know or couldn't remember how to pronounce the four syllable words they used together that made them sound really smart.

The crowd in the café got bigger and louder and the game got closer to starting and Joao watched around the room, smiling to himself and thinking of what Fatts had taught him. He liked watching the different groups within the groups.

There was a group of three or four guys who were generally not very attractive, in most cases overweight and they knew a lot about football and they said lots of names and statistics and lots of stuff that Joao didn't know about and the person who remembered the most statistics was revered and he spoke like an angry father to his son, lathering the law in his fist, striking down on his child's applauding mutiny.

And as he scanned the room; his hand twisting a wet sponge in a dirty glass, his eyes caught a surprise. There, staring up at a television, with a magnificent smile on her face, watching the weekend lottery was Charity; her hands clasped together, her eyes drawn upon the screen, drifting into imagination and her smile; so bright it could make the sun seem like a tiny star in the blanket of night.

"Hi Charity, are you here to watch the game as well?" asked Joao.

"Shhh," said Charity, "come back in a minute. Sorry, Joao, I'll talk to you in a second. Just give me a minute, ok, hun?" she said.

"Ok," said Joao, feeling a little flattened but not entirely deflated.

He went back to his post behind the counter and continued to clean glasses. He had spent the afternoon making coffees for a lot of patrons and I guess they had made a lot of money because Fatts was very happy.

Everyone left with massive smiles on their faces.

Fatts said it looked like everyone had just been laid for the first time. Joao thought about chicken laying lots of eggs with people inside them. He didn't get the joke but laughed along anyway.

Once the students came in though, there was no more coffee, only beer. They came in every night at this time, once their classes were done for the day and they stayed for a few hours, drinking and singing; usually in good spirits but sometimes breaking into fight, at which point, Fatts would pick them up like empty chip packets and throw them onto the sidewalk.

So, now that there was a game, their spirits were lifted higher and the beer was flowing and for Joao, this meant simply attending to the sink and keeping the glasses clean.

Joao looked on while his hands scrubbed at dirty glasses as Charity sat by herself with her head titled high so that her hair draped over her shoulders and scratched against the middle of her back and he was catatonically watching her as she was watching the screen.

When the lottery was done; after all the numbers had been read and the hosts waved goodbye to everyone and well after the credits had rolled across the screen, Charity sat with her eyes glued shut and her smile widening so much that it seemed she would tear her face in half if she kept going. Joao wondered what she could be thinking, what pleasantry was staging in her cerebral theatre. She looked like she was witnessing the birth of a child, the rescuing of a puppy from a well or the returning of a lost child to its parents. The smile she wore was not one that was handed out on a whim and it felt awkward watching her as if he were stealing some private moment.

After a minute she opened her eyes and took a breath and Joao could only see that she had opened one, because of the angle she sat but he watched her move and wondered if he could go over and speak to her now.

Charity stood up from her seat and pushed her chair in gently and started to walk towards the door but as she walked she hobbled horribly as if she had suffered some horrific trauma to her legs. She looked in pain and her thin white legs wobbled under her shifting weight as if they were foreign to her body; on their first day and receiving their first orders, mixing everything up.

As she hobbled and stumbled towards the door, her hands gripped at the back of chairs to steady herself and she apologised here or there to patrons whose hair she pulled on by accident or shirts that she tugged on whilst firming her grip and making her way through the café.

"Charity, are you ok?" shouted Joao rushing to help her, putting his right arm under her left, steadying her direction and helping her to the door.

"Thanks, Joao. Sorry, I can't stay and talk. I have to be somewhere. But next week, we'll meet and I'll take you to that place I said, ok?" she said.

"Ok," said Joao.

Charity turned to kiss his cheek and as she did, Joao saw in the reflection in the mirror the black bruise over her right eye and her purple swollen cheekbone and her split and scabbing upper lip.

Charity hobbled out of the café and rested her right arm along the wall beside her as she slowly made her way up the street and into the disappearance of night.

#  CHAPTER ELEVEN

"Wake up," said The Bishop, shaking at Joao's legs.

"What is it? What's wrong?" asked Joao.

"Time to do the Lord's bidding," said The Bishop.

Joao unclamped his eyelids from their encampment, letting the virgin light of dawn attend to its retinal battery as he adjusted his focus as best he could, seeing The Bishop; or the outline of The Bishop, dressed neatly in his Sunday suit, seated at the table that Joao had bought, folding pieces of paper and making a neat stack just beside his leather case.

"Come on Joao before we give the devil the start he needs," said The Bishop, speaking in a light joviality that Joao had never heard.

Joao lifted himself from his mattress and stumbled blindly towards the sink by the curtain to his makeshift room. He ran some cold water through his hands, feeling the tips of his fingers tingle before falling numb and he stayed there transient, feeling only the weight of something pressing against his hands as his mind drifted into dream, pulled overboard from his conscious vessel as he tried in vain to reel in his tiredness, finding himself thrust outside of his waking body and running instead, through the fancy of his desire.

He stared into the greasy mirror that hanged precariously from the brick wall where a brown rusted screw wound itself from the top of a splintered wooden frame whilst peeling away from the crumbling brickwork, hinting at the inevitable effect of disregard.

His eyes fell past the rusted screw and drew past his own reflection where behind him, he could see a row of trees lining a gravel path and as his eyes focused, he could see through the rustling of the leaves and branches, the hand of a girl pushing out into the light. First one and then another, reaching out and parting the leaves so that the light of day shone onto the lire of Charity who sat in the darkness, crouched low under the hanging trees, parting the leaves and smiling at Joao, her eyes inviting him to escape.

"We've a big day today Joao," said The Bishop, resting his two hands on his shoulders.

Joao didn't quite know how to react. He had never felt this sentiment from his father. His custom had been; like a disciplined pet, to cower in whatever shadow would keep him from obstruction whilst listening to the slapping of his father's heels against the tiles in their house as he paced about with his leather case draped over his shoulder, sweating an air of insolence.

Joao had learned to spread his vine lightly over the crest of his family; careful, should his simple flower be torn from its roots out of a fit of boredom from his bullying siblings or his brutish mother. He had often tried to find some condolence in his father; when he was younger of course, for they swept along the same paths and breathed the same unspoiled air away from the burdens of physical task but it was like an ant trying to cozy up to a landslide.

"Good morning sir," Joao said in his usual defense.

"Don't call me sir. Call me Bishop or, better yet, you can call me dad. How does that sound?" he said smiling, looking anything but the disheveled mess that had been taking refuge in its own dejection, buried under a mount of blankets and soaked in degrading tears.

Instead, he stood with his head high, his eyes brimming with exuberant fire and a consistent sniff that had him attend to; unendingly, some dust or something caught in his nose.

"Yes sir, dad, sir," said Joao, feeling very strange, like that same disciplined pet, eating from its master's plate.

"I thought we could start from the top of the hill and work downwards, door by door. It will be better and we'll cover more ground if we split up and take house by house. I made some flyers, look" said The Bishop handing a dirtied napkin to Joao with a gallant accomplishing smile on his face.

"But this is just a napkin. A flyer should be on paper with colours, like what the people hand out near the café. This isn't a flyer" said Joao.

"Does it have the name of our church?" asked The Bishop.

"Kind of. Is this it here?" asked Joao pointing out what looked like either blotched ink or tomato sauce.

"Here, look, The World Church of Jesus Christ's Eternal Glory. And here is the address and email" said The Bishop.

"What's email?" asked Joao.

"I don't know exactly. Don't ask stupid questions, Joao. What do you think? I had a friend help me" asked The Bishop.

"You have a friend? Really?" asked Joao surprised.

"She told me about putting an email on the flyer," said The Bishop.

"She? It's a girl? Does Mother know?" asked Joao.

"Don't be stupid Joao. It's not like that. And don't you tell your mother. She worries enough about you to have to inherit me in her thoughts. She's just a friend, that's all" said The Bishop, his cheeks turning from off-white to a bright pinkish red as he constructed the last word in his lie.

The Bishop collected a pile of napkins and gave them to Joao who put them neatly into the pockets of his suit; straightening his jacket as he did and tucking his shirt firmly into his pants.

"I'm glad you are happy too" said Joao as he followed The Bishop out of the church and onto the street where about them, junkies brushed off the morning chill from the hairs on their arms and haggard looking whores on every corner welcomed the morning sun with their arms outstretched, yawning out the hours of abuse from their spent bodies while; fumbling drunkenly at their metal buckles, scores of addled men escaped the honest bridging of the sun, pulling their pants back up around their waists, abating their molesting wealth for the polite reserve of day that was waking from the shadow of eve and exposing their disgraces unto themselves which; under the veil of night, they had easily disguised as the norm and festivity.

"Excuse me mam," said Joao approaching one of the prostitutes that were lighting up a cigarette.

"My shift's done, buddy. I'm all worn out. Come back in a couple of hours, ok honey?" said The Harmonious Whore.

"Oh no mam, I'm not looking for, well, can I ask you a question? Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?" asked Joao, expecting her eyes to light with exhilaration at the thought of pondering the wonder of God.

"I remember you. You got into a little scuffle the other night yeah? How you doin honey? You gotta watch those boys. They got tempers" The Harmonious Whore said, leaning in close to Joao's ear and like a worn exhaust, spitting clumps of thick smoke and light phlegm towards his ear.

"Oh, that's ok mam. I remember you too. You stood up to those men for me."

"I did? Well, that explains the bruises" she said, rubbing at a tender spot on her bottom, wincing and kicking her leg in the air as she scratched her elongated fingernails against grazed skin and a deep black bruise.

"Did you know that Jesus kept the company of a, well a girl like..."

"You mean a whore, like me? And I ain't no girl honey" she said, lifting the slither of fabric she called a skirt, tucking her hand inside her stained, once silken panties and pulling a scabbed and swollen penis out into the morning light.

Joao was shocked, estranged and scientifically puzzled, taking one step back in apparent surprise but looking dumbfounded in obvious wonder. He didn't know if he was a she or she was a he and that such a thing could even be.

"You stare any longer and you're gonna have to pay me twenty," The Harmonious Whore said.

Joao immediately turned his head away, pulling his hands over his eyes, apologizing as he walked off towards his father, further on up the hill.

"I'm sorry mam, I mean sir. Have a good day" he said, stuttering through a polite exit.

"Don't you wanna talk Jesus honey?" she yelled, shaking her scabbed and swollen penis in one hand while the other gripped firmly to a crevice in the rock face beside her, steadying her impending gravitational descent as she threw her joviality and her centre of balance into insulting the delicate reserve of the shy boy, kinking her legs as she swung her hand and fought to stop the pull of the cigarette from her blistered lips to the floor below.

Joao dipped his head and held his sight toward the floor as he quickly shuffled his feet and wearied himself away from the stream of prostitutes and their drunken, bastard lovers that spilled from the back seats of cars, dirty garages that posed as bars and brothels and even from the cracks in the earth, once saved only for rats, vermin and the vespertine disease.

"It's not too late to save yourself. The way is in Jesus Christ, in his heart, in his love, and in his word. His arms are whole enough to carry you home" said The Bishop.

"This is my home mother fucker. You see this body?" The Angry Prostitute said, shaking her rickety hips and running her manly thick bulbous index finger in her mouth, over her chapped lips, down along the stubble on her chin and down along the curve in her enormous breasts and finally slapping and mean-spirited hand against her rump, winking at The Bishop as the sting rippled through her body and the slap echoed in the morning air.

"This body is god damn, mother fucking di-vine baby" she exclaimed.

The Bishop kept a caring informed look in his eye and he stared directly; with kindness and understanding, into the glassy eyes of The Angry Prostitute, ignoring the desperate defense that slapped against her thigh and instead focusing the warmth of his compassion and ready ear upon the tired and scared little girl that lay confined within this temple of abuse that; should he look long enough, would have her lift up her hand and will him to help pull her out and into the arms of our Lord.

"Jesus Christ can suck my dick" she said, grabbing at her genitals and sneering at The Bishop who; with a wealth of faith in his heart, kept searching for the little girl or little boy as it may be, inside this wreck of a human being; looking for a slight tremor in the prostitute's eyes to see if the child that he believed could be saved, was actually alive.

Joao watched from a sure distance as The Bishop raised his arms into the air, rattling the palms of his hands, light but very brisk as if he was brushing off the drops of water that lingered from his washed hands or shaking an imaginary Tambourine as the rhythm of god fed like a current of electricity from the soles of his feet through his believing heart, shining from his eyes and yearning to burst out of his fingertips.

"Praise be to our Lord Jesus Christ, our saviour, the son of god, the king of kings" he sang, his voice booming; the only thing louder than the sound of belt buckles sliding into place and the jingle of loose change that hummed through the air.

He stamped his feet on the spot, one after the other as if he was making his pitch on a bed of molten lava and he shook his arms and hands like two great heavenly branches while he canted with his eyes wildly widened and his voice; at first warm and according, inviting the wounded bird to show its broken wing and then; when the bird hobbled off of its perch and tumbled about, out of reach, blossoming into a coarse and abrasive instrument of divine, oral detention.

"God has a place for you," he said, waving his black book back and forth, "where rivers of fire sear your tainted flesh and demons and devils molest and degrade your spirit for an eternity. An eternity of suffering and torment and misery, unless you repent to god now. Yours will be the worst suffering yet, you sick denigrate. You, you homosexual" he yelled at the top of his lungs as The Angry Prostitute ignored his plight and staggered off down the hill in the stream of indecency, cackling and cursing and pointing over their shoulders as they spread into the passage of day below, onto footpaths, onto buses and into the back of taxis.

The Bishop was furious. He turned to Joao with his face red and enraged, his knuckles white from the strain of his clenching fists, his veins popping out of his neck and his eyes, bulging like a poisoned cat.

"It's not your fault you know. Fatts says nobody here can be saved. You can't bring heaven where it doesn't belong. You can't save what God has already condemned" said Joao.

The Bishop said nothing. He took a pile of napkins from his pocket and gave them to Joao, pushing them into his stomach with enough force that had his much smaller son gasp with the wind being stricken out of him.

"Save your breath for where it counts donkey. You'd better start earning your worth around here or you'll be right back on that farm, swishing flies off of horses' arses. Do you hear me, boy? If you disappoint me, I'll set an example of you" The Bishop said jabbing his thick club like index finger into Joao's chest.

Joao started knocking on every door, taking to the battered and boarded houses or wooden shacks; as they could be better titled, tapping gently against the splintered door frames and clanking rusted metal chains against the large bars in which they married, sending an awful screeching sound through the light sleep of whoever was making permanence of these shabby-looking dwellings.

He knocked hard on a door several times, wanting to agree with the immediate silence and allow whoever might be mandating their absence, to continue their private residence.

When he moved to turn away; feeling horribly uncomfortable with every inconsiderate knock, he would be caught by the disapproving stare of The Bishop who; with wretched sweet breath and a stained glass in hand, was engaged on one hand in some distracted banter with a greasy fat truck driver while keeping one disciplining eye on his idiot son who; like a typical country mouse, was fumbling his way through a crack in the kitchen wall, petrified about anything grander than his own shadow; at least, this is how the drunken bastard saw his son.

The Bishop squinted his eye, lowering his thick monobrow and hinting for the boy to wait and Joao understood every inch of his mocking decency, turning back to the door and lifting his little pebble-like fist to tap against the metal frame on the heavily bolted front door.

He banged three times with enough tempered flare for someone in wake to know that he was there or for someone in sleep as to pardon from care.

"Fuck off" yelled a low booming voice behind the door.

Joao looked over his shoulder only to have the disciplining eye of his father whisk him back around to address his responsibility.

He knocked again.

"Whatta you want?" yelled the low booming voice behind the door.

Joao cleared his throat trying to steady his pitch and edge out the fear that curdled in his stomach and clung to the roof of his mouth.

"Uh, good morning, my name is Joao and I..."

"Fuck off Joao. I ain't got nothing you can buy and I got nothing you can borrow, but I do got a really big gun though. And I will shoot you if you keep a talkin," shouted the low booming voice behind the door.

Joao held his breath, turned away, caught his father's now drunken stare, turned back, released the breath, clenched his pebble-like fists, took another breath, closed his eyes, wished for a moment, thought of Charity pulling aside a host of branches to invite him into her solicitude, took another breath; this one loud and describing and merely a murmur compared to the breath he expelled; sounding out an obedient sigh like an injured calf having served its purpose well, making the hunter know that this was hardly a game, with the sound he exhaled, carrying from his heart and soul, the full weight of the last drips of his waning hope.

He took another breath and spoke in machine gun spread.

"DoyouhaveapersonalrelationshipwithjesusChristandwouldyouliketodiscussthewonderandlightofourlordandpraywithusinourchurch?" he said.

Click, click.

'Have a nice day" said Joao backing away from the door, ignoring the eye that was gnawing away at the back of his head.

Joao moved from house to house and at every door he was met with defensive rage and the clamor of hostility but at every door, he quietly kneeled to the floor and slid part of every napkin through tiny gaps in their doors, leaving a small tail of white flicking in the light breeze so The Bishop himself could see that Joao had tried.

But try as he may, Fatts was right.

The people who frequented this hill came here with the intention of bedding with sin, not cleansing themselves. Here they could exercise the demons that itched at their moral skin, begging to burrow into their domesticated hearts where it would split the fiber of their being should they not pick it from their sweaty pores and vanquish it in drunken orgiastic splendor upon the black veil of night. This was where the foul beast was abetted to stretch its legs, to run free and to have no worry.

These souls were not to save. They were being saved and the whores who hobbled about with infection drawn upon their skin and tragedy upon their youths were merely cunting priests whose moral servitude was to invite the devil between their thighs and gaping mouths and to swallow whole; like an open drain, the residue that built upon normal men, threatening to colour them badly, of which they must scrape off of their skin and cleanse the avenues of their minds in a storm of debauching indecency.

The whores were tainted angels and the drunks, the junkies, the perverts, and the estranged, they came here to pray. Their lives may have been better for it; their children more loved, their wives more endeared, their neighbours more acquainted and the rules of social standard and heavenly tenure, more adhered.

But behind some of these doors; the ones that conspired with secrecy and were weighed with heavy locks, were the ones who made their homes in this refuse, having no choice but to shut their eyes as they washed their skin in the runoff of human degradation, keeping a silted eye open as their heads sank into their stained mattresses and their ears fought to silence the whoring moans, the abusing seduction and the violent altercation that leaned against their weighted doors, threatening to spill over onto the thin sheets that kept the foul air from their aging sore skin.

These people needed to be saved.

"Good morning my name is Joao and I would like to talk to you about the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do you have a relationship with God?"

Silence treated him like a dear friend, creeping up to his arm so that it shivered lightly as it took him in its embrace, squeezing the surety from his soul so that fright would warn away from the door and so that he paid no debt to god; not with his own life, not at this house, not today.

As he had done in the other houses, Joao leaned down to the floor and pushed the tip of a napkin through a crack in the door and something ripped it from his hands and swallowed it whole. He panicked and fell backward awkwardly, his bum hitting the ground hard and his arms twisting under his body.

He stared at the tiny hint of darkness where a corner of the door was broken away and imagined to himself the worst kind of devilry, impregnated within the darkness.

He wanted to run but something had him stopped and mesmerized and so he watched and listened to the sound; which was barely there, of a hand scratching at something; paper, skin, hair, clothes.

"Donkey," yelled The Bishop, now heavily drunk, "here, now."

Joao turned slowly, not wanting to pitch his absence and distraction to the tiny black hole in case the devil should jump upon his back and devour him as it had, the small napkin that was ripped from his hands.

As he lifted himself off of the ground he heard a hiss come from behind the door, like the scoffing of a new idea; nothing loud or abrasive, but he heard it nonetheless and from the tiny atramentous hole between him and whatever lurked behind the door, flew the white napkin that had been ripped from his hands. He followed with his eyes and his trembling heart as the napkin fell by his foot and then the hiss upon which he trained his ear; fell quieter as it became the molecular darkness in which it made its home.

He leaned down and picked up the napkin and scrunched it into the pocket of his jacket and then quickly turned and ran away from the rows of civic squalor towards the church where The Bishop stood; swaying in the light breeze, his teeth stained like the empty glass that sat perched near his greedy hands and his eyes filled with disgusting venom that Joao knew, would soon shower upon him with guileful ferocity.

"Get over here donkey. What did you do? Nothing? Fucking nothing. You disappoint me. You disappoint your mother. That's why I'm cursed with you. You had no use, no worth on the farm and you have no worth here. You're a disgrace. There's not a kind word to be said about you. You're proof that even the best of us, even me, good people make mistakes. You were am mistake, Joao. You should never have been born" said The Bishop almost choking on the last word, collapsing onto a plastic seat and dropping his head forwards against his chest in drunken surrender.

Joao straightened The Bishop's legs and settled him better in his chair so that he wouldn't fall should the earth or his heaving belly tilt just a fraction. He then went and poured himself a coffee and looked over the mess that had surmounted on the floor, between the cracks in the tiles and up along the length of the walls.

They could hold neither a service nor a filth laden drug riddled orgy in this mess. Even the whores and crack addicts snubbed their noses as they stumbled on by.

Such a thing, to be less than zero.

Joao spent the rest of the afternoon on his hands and knees, scrubbing and scraping and clawing and scratching at the marks and filth and dirt and grime and soot and stains and smudges and smears and urine and vomit and cachaça and beer, loosening with bleach and a few of his tears and throwing the full weight of broken promise into every sweep of his hand.

Family is a cruel and depending appendage.

"Get over here little donkey. Look at him; doesn't he look just like a donkey? Long useless arms, hands like a little girl. And look at those fingers; they'd snap just trying to grip a toothbrush. Hey donkey, bring your daddy a drink" The Bishop said in a drunken slur to Joao whilst chafing some passers-by, rocking waywardly on his white plastic chair; the thin legs bending under the strain of his heaving upper body that twisted and turned with the eschewal of his foul exuberance.

Joao stood near his bed, staring at the hanging mirror, looking beyond his frail impression and seeing in the outline behind him; Charity, holding a brush of leaves with one arm raised high above her kind adoring face, her congenial smile inviting him into her safe sacred place, far from the light of his familiar hurt.

He looked then to his right and saw a photo of his mother; a gargantuan woman, sitting alone and unemotional on a wooden bench where behind her, the arid and barren land soliloquized the ravages of drought, its cant; invisible to his ear but the words to its poetic dismay were etched in the long, drawn and desiccated stare of his mother, a look that thirsted one of their hope and felicity.

His father was yelling something from outside. It could have been an insult or an order. Either one would have been spelt the same had it been written down on paper.

Joao continued to stare at the image of his mother and where once he felt a desire to belong; to find some meaning and purpose, now it felt as if he were looking at an x-ray of a tumor that was suffocating his soul, one that had always been a part of him, one that was responsible for the who he was, the way he thought and the way that he felt.

A tumor of which he had to efface.

He thought then of Charity and he felt a tingle through his body, a warmth somewhere near his heart and he forgot about the parts of himself that were uneven. He felt special and cared if having only the thought of her alone in his life were enough for his soul to be attended.

"I'm coming daddy," he said, tucking his shirt once again into his pants and adorning his jacket, preparing for an evening service that would not come.

Joao stepped out of the room feeling different.

The Bishop looked him up and down with an unapproving eye and a grimace as if some wild beast had just passed wind in his direction. He grunted to himself and exhaled in dissent.

"Fix your tie," he said, "you look like a Catholic."

Joao pulled at his necktie, pushing the thick bulb tight around his neck so that it hurt every time he gulped on a breath of air.

"How many people did you talk to? How many confirmations did you get? Well?" asked The Bishop.

There were no answers that would be sufficient. None that were true anyway. Joao shrugged, feeling useless and stupid, having been armed and educated with his father's impotent knowledge and now having to report the failings of such and have to garment these failings as somehow being his own.

If his father's effort was only to make the boy feel poor and useless, then the entirety of his work and knowledge was golden and the effect of his magic was pure show.

"Nobody would answer their doors. And the others, they'll not come" said Joao.

"The whores only come for money and even then, they're just pretending," said The Bishop.

"I tried dad, I really," said Joao.

"What did you call me? You never stop calling me sir, ever. Insolent little slug" said The Bishop sternly.

"I'm sorry sir. Earlier, this morning you asked me to call you..."

"Are you calling me a liar or stupid, which is it?" The Bishop screamed, lifting his hand high into the air and striking the back of it hard against Joao's cheek so that he fell backwards against the giant statue of Jesus, stinging his skin and bruising his ribs.

"No, sir. I'm sorry sir" he said weeping.

'Stop your fucking tears. It's embarrassing. Sit up. The service is about to begin" said The Bishop, leaning down to the table where between two statues was a small mound of cocaine that he swished about into three thick lines and like a diver hungry for their first breath of air, The Bishop snorted every grain of white powder in three foul swoops, licking his fingers and patting his nose as the symptom of his morning cheer and constant cold became evident.

"God is great," he screamed.

#  CHAPTER TWELVE

The roads downtown were coarse and bumpy and the buses in the city traded practicality for comfort and safety. The driver sped along the road, weaving in and out of traffic like a mosquito would, the clapping hands of a desperate camper, himself not imagining in his mind a lick of difference between sitting behind the wheel of a bus and sitting behind the wheel of a Beetle, driving the former like the latter, his right foot planted firmly on the accelerator as he swung the wheel left and right, clipping mirrors and bumpers and waving his left arm out of the window as if he were reaching for God's hand to pull him out of the coming wreckage.

The bus was packed as it always was, with the morning flood of weary and worn workers and beggars and priests and thieves; sounding out in their heavy moans, a chorus of fatigue of which they swapped for choking black fumes that hanged in the thick moist humid air like a poorly lit decoration.

Some coughed and some blinked of their eyes. Others sneezed into their hands and then rested their hands on the backs of others when the bus would hit a bump or a puddle or a pedestrian. And their sticky, dirty hands clung to sweaty backs and to greasy handrails that were so crowded that sticky, dirty hands lay on top of other sticky, dirty hands like an orgy of worms as thick, bulbous hairy fingers rolled over and in and out of one another, wrapping tight like retracting coils whenever the bus shuddered or a pretty girl bid her brace before many fat, disgusting men.

Joao stood wedged between a silver bar which pushed against his spine and a large gingerly woman whose giant low hanging breasts seemed to enclose themselves around the curves of his face so that the sweat that stained through her shirt and dripped from her chin stung his eyes.

The woman's stained t-shirt was more like a washcloth now as with every jump and jolter or the bus, her enormous breasts shook up and down and dragged Joao's face along her chest where her t-shirt streaked across his eyes and his chin like a filthy rag on a toilet floor.

He tried to hold his breath but it was no use. Her sweat ran down his chin and onto his neck where it trickled down his body and tickled his skin. When he tried to lift his hand to scratch his belly and dry the woman's sweat by patting his shirt against it, the woman slapped him over his head, short and sharp to stop his wandering hand from coming close to her curvaceous body.

"Touch me and I'll crush you," she said, slapping him once on the head.

"Sorry, mam. I'm not trying to touch you" said Joao.

"I'm not good enough for you to touch? That's what you're saying? I'm just a fat bitch, huh?" yelled The Obese Woman.

"No mam," said Joao choking for air, taking in every breath, the warm air that curdled below her armpits, being able to taste on his tongue, the fruit of the giant woman's labour, "I have an itch and I just wanna scratch."

"Oh you have an itch you wanna scratch do you? Dirty little no gooder," she said.

"I'm sorry mam," said Joao, straining from being buggered by the bead of sweat that ran down his chest and settled by his naval begging to be touched and mopped away from his chest.

"How about you lose some fucking weight you fat nigger," said The Nazi.

"Excuse me?" said The Obese Woman.

The Obese Woman turned angrily to face The Nazi who was standing on the steps in front of the open door as the bus sped along the busy avenue. It was the same Nazi that Joao had seen every time he rode the bus. He was a big man who wore big black boots with white laces and his pants fit him very funny. They didn't come down to his heels. Instead, the legs of his pants stopped near the top of his boots so you could see his socks underneath and he had red braces on his pants like an old farmer but they were full of badges. And he wore a dark blue jacket that had some symbols on the arms and he had a crudely drawn poo tattooed on his forehead. It was the same man who always sat in front of Joao looking angry whenever there was a black man on the bus.

Joao squealed like an injured puppy when the woman turned with the force of her anger spinning his small frame like a thin wire so that he scraped his back and spine unnaturally against the pole. And his squeal; as piercing as it was, was heard only by the author of this story who ensured that you the reader also heard it as Joao's face was buried deep between the woman's heaving breasts that were like two wrecking balls now as her anger married with the rule of gravity to swing her body and her breasts and Joao in absurd directions as she pointed her finger and hurled a ton of abuse at The Nazi who stood arrogant and unaffected, just an inch from her scorning lips, standing coolly on the steps of the rear exit.

"You heard me; N.I.G.G.E.R," he said, spelling out his insult in a worsening derogatory tone.

"Fuck you, you pasty white racist honky," said The Obese Woman, spitting at the end of her trade.

Joao wriggled and squirmed under the weight of the woman feeling every bit like a cat in a bag, trying to squeeze his way out of this uncomfortable situation.

The Nazi and The Obese Woman continued their racial tirade, neither finding more grace than the other, both taking to lower blows to reduce the other to submission but their words and shouts and spitting and insulting just continued the entirety of the journey whilst Joao counted out in his head, the number of stops before having to stretch his skinny little hand up and out from beneath The Obese Woman's breasts and to desperately press the red button to bring this circus to a stop.

As the bus swerved through traffic, knocking everybody this way and that, a chorus of abuse spread through the bus with the frustrations of the people being exalted in foul words and pushing and shoving; too close to one another for any real hurt but close enough to make a mark.

There was the elderly cursing at the youth who sat vacantly in their priority seats, either pretending to sleep, looking absently away or glaring back in obvious undisciplined dissent.

There were poor, wrestling with the rich and then the poor who were dressed as rich, cursing the rich who spoke with poor tongues and even poorer minds.

Everyone found some difference that could serve as a canvas on which to paint their disappointment and tired appreciating committal, yelling and pushing and finding a weakness in one another and making that the tone of their address.

Joao squirmed some more.

His hand reached for the red button.

His finger stretched.

The button pressed.

The bell dinged.

And everybody swayed back like a mound of human reeds caught in a gale force breeze as the driver slammed on the breaks bringing the bus to a dead stop.

The tiny doors opened and scores of stressed and angry workers piled out, pushing and squeezing and biting and fighting as they fought for an inch of fresh air and to make their way onto the hurtling sidewalk as if nothing at all had happened.

Joao shook the surprise from his pants, straightening out the legs of his trousers and tucking his shirt back into his pants before entering the café where Fatts was waiting with a giant grin, chuckling out loud and holding his massive belly whilst pointing an amused finger at Joao who look beset by disbelief and troubled by the pull of the city's tide in the early morning.

"Let me tell you a little something about life," Fatts said, "there's an animal for every stage in a person's life you know that?"

Joao said nothing but responded instead with an eager eye that widened in exuberance as he walked towards the counter where Fatts was now sitting. He prepared for his mind to be painted with a new colourful truth from the man that he admired.

"You know, when a baby is born, it's really cute. All cuddly and fragile and you just wanna wrap it up in your arms and squeeze the life out of it, in a good way of course. Well, new babies, they don't do very much. They eat, poop, sleep and play. That's about it. Just like a kitty cat. And just like a kitty cat, they'll cry all night until they get to do one of those four things and you can be sure; just like the kitty cat, they're gonna wanna do all those four things when you least expect and when it's gonna dance on your sanity. My kitty, she wakes up at 3am and starts pulling at the hairs in my nose. Now she thinks that's ok cause she's a cat and it's her world after-all, just like a baby. And just like a kitty cat, that baby isn't bothered about having to sugar coat the truth. It'll tell ya when you're not needed or wanted and will be pretty damn obvious when you are. You see the kitty and the baby, they don't imagine much outside of the four things they do well, can't imagine myself why you would want to. It's a great gig you know. Another thirty years and I'll be in the geriatric home living my last days like the kitty cat" said Fatts.

Joao smiled.

"Now when a baby gets a bit older he or she becomes a toddler. As soon as they get those legs working they're running around grabbing whatever they can and generally, breaking it. To mum and dad, causing a ruckus and making a mess, to the toddler, they're just having fun, exploring, learning, being. So as soon as a baby gets its legs, it goes from being a kitty cat to a puppy dog. You leave that toddler alone for a second in a room and when you come back, there'll be paint all over the ceiling, your prized books will all be scribbled upon, cups broken, computers pulled apart, wallets devoured and in the centre of the room, there'll be a bare bummed little walking terror telling you that they didn't do it; just like little puppies, learning their limits, sharpening their teeth, pulling things apart, having some fun. Toddlers are dogs" said Fatts academically.

Joao's smile widened.

"Now when these dogs grow up, they start to hang around in large groups and usually they'll have an idol, a star, anything at all really, just something up high that can shout down at them and move them about. They never travel alone. Always rushing this way and that, but never rushing first, always being on the heels of their friends. You see when the toddler grows up and hits puberty, he becomes a sheep and like the rest of the flock, he or she does nothing really, just sits around all day being ushered this way and that by their parents, rock stars, their teachers, doctors, their heroes, villains, everyone. They're kind of useless but you hold them for long enough and you can fleece them of all their money. From cats to dogs, to sheep" said Fatts.

Joao giggled lightly thinking of his siblings and returned his stare to Fatts who was just putting down his cup to start again.

"Now, we get to us; the grownups or cattle. This is what being a man is about. Being shoved into a tiny little bus and herded around the city so you can end up stuck at an office for ten hours a day and milked of your intellectual property" said Fatts.

"What's that?" said Joao.

"Your ideas. The cow is milked and its milk is stirred and pasteurized and bottled and boxed and labeled and branded and sold, just like the grown up. He sits at his desk while his ideas are extracted and complied with other ideas to make a great idea that is produced and boxed and branded with the company logo and sold to some other poor chump in some other part of the world who's just doin the same thing. Paying for a part of someone else's milk cause he sold off his own. And like the cow, the grown-up is given freedom, democracy, shopping malls, pornography, churches, theme parks, rock shows, football, and choice. Give a man freedom and he'll do nothing with it. You wanna make a man strong, you take away his will to fight. You wanna hear him scream, you force his mouth shut. But, if you want him to be stupid and still just like a cow, take down the fences, put a bell around his neck and make him think he can leave if he wants to. Grownups, they're cows. Every now and then, they're a bull but when the humping is done, they go back to being a cow." said Fatts.

"And what about old people?" said Joao.

"Revert back to kitten. Except we're talking those hairless kitty cats with loose skin. They go from cow to pug to a hairless cat. That's it. So remember, when you're piled on that bus with all of those swearing and cursing fools, each of them clinging to one reason why they are better than the rest; they're all bloody cows" said Fatts.

"Even you?" asked Joao.

"Me? I'm a wildebeest" said Fatts laughing.

Joao laughed too, though he wasn't sure why. It was just fun though to laugh with other people like in the way some people felt more comfortable joining a queue with more people even when they were queuing for the same thing. It felt ensuring to ride on another's wing; to be sure you're in the right place or to know if and when you are enjoying yourself.

"You have a customer," said Fatts pointing to the door.

It was The Nazi from the bus. He was standing in the doorway looking angry and mean in his eyes, staring at Fatts as he walked from around the counter and behind the restricted doors.

Joao smiled but he was reserved and nervous.

"Coffee," said The Nazi, "and hurry up, or I'll punch ya."

Joao busied his hands and knocked over a horde of cups and pots as he prepared his tools, pressed by the mean fisted urgency of the man in front of him, staring him down like a hungry polar bear over an injured, baby seal.

"If you don't mind sir, I make my coffee different. It takes just a moment more time. Is that ok?" asked Joao nervously.

"If it's crap, I'll punch ya," said The Nazi.

"Ok," said Joao, accepting the terms of his grace without any debate, or choice.

Joao washed his hands thoroughly, removing the spit and sweat and stains from the morning's ride on the bus. He had a special towel that was only his. Fatts had bought it for him. And he used this towel to dry his hands so that they wouldn't collect more coffee than they needed, so that the grains that did not belong would not stick to his fingers and make their way in to poison The Nazi's cup but instead would follow the negating rule of his fingers as they flicked the grains back to where they belonged, in someone else's coffee.

Joao dipped his hands into the jar of coffee, this jar too, given to him by Fatts and permitting only his freshly washed fingers to touch the lid and to press inside the dark grains.

The Nazi stared straight at Joao who stared straight back as his fingers pressed gently through the surface of the grains and slid their way downwards until his fingernails touched against the hard glass bottom and then; as his mind wandered, his fingers too wandered through the grains, touching each and every one and picking only the ones that spoke of the vision that played out in his mind.

And as his eyes trained onto the pupils of the scarred, angered man with poop tattooed across his forehead, a wave of harsh and bitter warmth had him at first scolded, like a bare bum breeching a boiling bath and then, as the curtain pulled on his cerebral theatre and his conscious eye opened, he could see a young boy being pushed and prodded, being picked up by a group of older boys by the legs.

As the boy swung wildly and pleaded for them to stop, the tears and snot that billowed from his eyes and nose streamed back down his face and the back of his throat making him splutter through every word.

The boys laughed and shook him so that the few coins he had in his pockets jingled as they struck against the bathroom floor.

"It's not my money" yelled the boy.

"It's not my money, it's not my money" the meaner boys repeated mockingly.

"It's my nana's money. Please" the boy pleaded to the meaner boys who laughed hysterically and lowered his legs so that his head was just beneath the rim of the toilet; a filthy, disgusting toilet with a horrendous stench that hadn't been cleaned in months.

"You got no mummy and you got no daddy, little crybaby is a bastard, you're a bastard, you're a bastard, you're a bastard, you're a bastard, you're a bastard. You're mum and dad are dead" screamed one of the boys, leaning down to his face, shouting over the rim of the toilet, nasally and repugnant like.

Another coin fell from his pocket and the young boy thought only of his grandmother, the woman who had loved him and protected him through tragedy, who had always kept the spooks from camping underneath his bed and trying to break into his head and wreck his dreams.

He thought of her face and he felt sad because he was too small to help her and he was too scared to say anything back.

"You wanna see you're mommy little baby? Huh? I'm gonna kill you, you freak" shouted one of the boys, lowering his pants as he spoke so that he could urinate on the boy's face as it hanged over a pile of old feces.

"Yeah, piss on him" shouted the other boys egging their friends on to follow a trend and urinate on the boy's head and face.

Each of them took their turn, sometimes two or three at once. They leaned in to urinate on the boy's face as he clenched his eyes, mouth, and nostrils shut, feeling the warm liquid drench his hair and face, thinking only of his grandmother and hoping she would rescue him like she had from the depression that shadowed from the death of his mother and father.

As the boys were about to lower his legs further so that his head would sink into the pile of mashed and crusted feces at the bottom of the toilet bowl, their joy was broken with the sound of old hinges turning on a creaky, old door and a bent, rusted, metal frame.

"It's a teacher," said one of the boys panicking.

"Aint no teacher here," said a loud voice from behind the stall where the children gathered in surprised panic.

"We're just playin around. Just messin" said one of the boys.

The sound of many confident boots marching into the toilet was deafened by the silence that came after as they all aligned before the stall and the mean boys' fear heightened at the sound of the only exit; a small but heavy iron door, being closed and then locked and then chained and then the sound of a padlock, clicking into place.

"Seems a little unfair, all of you onto just him," said the booming voice.

A boot smashed against the door of the stall and there; standing in the light and blocking the entrance, were nine older boys, some of them young men and one of them; the one with the booming voice, hardly a boy.

"You know, when I was in school, kids like you wanted to pick on kids like me. Put him down," said the man with the booming voice before continuing. "You see, I was just like him, different, special. But you and all the little cunts like you, you gang together and you tried to pick on kids like me, like my friend here, because you're not special, you're ordinary. You think havin a mum and dad that tuck you in every night and mash up your potatoes and dice up your steak makes you special, it makes you ordinary. And you know what happens when you get older? Nothin. You still have someone to cut up your food and hold your willy when you pee and you still need mum and dad to make you feel safe when you're not with your little faggot friends. Come ere buddy" he said to the boy now cowering on the floor, waving his hand gently and invitingly, giving a consoling stare.

Around the gargantuan man, there stood another eight boys and men of all ages. All were dressed in big black combat boots with white laces, jeans that ended strangely above their boots so that their white socks were plainly visible, red braces holding their jeans to their waists and dark blue bomber jackets with swastikas and crucifixes branded all over the arms and zippers on buttons and badges and well-sewn patches.

The boy lifted himself shakily. He had small bits of feces on his forehead and in his hair and he had wet himself during the ordeal.

"Hold on little buddy. His money, pick it up for him" said the booming voice to the group of trembling boys.

One of the mean boys leant down and collected the coins from the ground that were now covered in urine.

"Clean them before giving them back. Don't be rude" said the booming voice.

The boy went to wipe them on his shirt before the man with the booming voice stamped his boot on the floor and like a clap of thunder, scaring all of the boys into attention.

"Not with your shirt. Wash em. In your mouth" he said.

The mean boy took the coins and put them inside his mouth and washed them around, gagging as he did with the flavor of urine stinging his taste buds.

"Come ere buddy," the man said, taking the boy close to his enormous frame, kneeling on one knee and resting a trusting, confident arm across the boy's shoulder.

The boy looked to the man and felt the same calm that he would receive whenever his grandmother chased away the spooks that were camping beneath his bed.

"You know, being special is a good thing. It's good to be different. You're mum and dad died and that sucks but life is like that. You're not alone though. You got family. We're your family" he said, stretching his arm around and showing off the other boys and men who stood staunch, glaring at the mean boys like pit-bulls resting upon a single command.

The boy smiled.

The man with the booming voice clicked his fingers and the other boys and men; primed to attack, did just that. They leapt from where they stood, taking to each mean boy in pairs, taking them by the arms and legs and swinging their limp bodies into walls, doors, porcelain bowls and smashing their faces against the massive mirror that hanged above the seven small sinks along the far wall.

They stomped and kicked and very quickly, the mean boys went from tears and screaming to whimpering and then silence as black combat boots came crushing down on their hands and backs and faces and their blood gushed from their body as quick as their bravado as the boys and men followed the mean children's lead and lined up along the crumpled children and urinated all over them.

As the boy walked out of the toilet under the wing of the man with the booming voice, he caught sight of his own reflection, seeing the end of years of torment from these cruel children that were dressed up as educated and moral and middle class but were as mean and vile and filthy as any sewer rat. He caught in his own reflection, the end of his youth marked with a brown stain across his forehead.

On the other side of the door, he was now much older and as they passed through, Joao could see that the young boy was now a young man and he was no longer weak and feeble, shivering to himself at the thought of violence, threat or altercation.

Now, looking in the mirror, he could see that this young man was the threat.

He was violence.

He was altercation.

"Your father would have been so proud of you. And your mother too" said The Grandmother, her voice old and crackling, spoken with a pinch of pride and a dash of imminent shame which; from the silence that trailed her words like an aftershock, welcomed to lash upon the young man's ears at any moment.

The Nazi said nothing. He continued to dry his body whilst catching the shadow of his grandmother behind his mammoth reflection in the mirror, her small, frail fingers curling around the door, holding it just enough so her voice could enter unchallenged into the room.

"Don't put it on, please?" said The Grandmother.

The Nazi said nothing.

"It's not the boy I know. It's not the boy your father would want you to be. You're better than that. You don't believe all those things" she said.

"They're my family," said The Nazi.

"I am your family, not those monsters," said The Grandmother.

The Nazi unchanged his stare, seeming unmoved by the plight of his grandmother whose light breathing now sounded out as a light cry and the sadness that ´pulled beneath his conscious sea, spilled anger into his mind and spurred fury at his fists so that his unchanged stare now yielded a heady glare in his eyes that set fire to his blood and had him want to say the worst things imaginable, but he couldn't.

She was his grandmother.

And he loved her.

"You don't need them anymore. They're no good criminals and they'll get you in trouble. You should be in school" she said.

"They're my brothers. They're my friends. They're my family. They were the only ones who ever looked out for me" he said.

"What about your mother and father?" she said.

"They're dead" he yelled back.

"And what about me? You're the only family I have" she cried out.

The Nazi said nothing.

"If you put that jacket on, you can't come back here, ever. You'll be nothing to me. I'll never want to see you again, do you understand" said The Grandmother, her tears and sadness now overwhelming so that her words spilled from her mother like a torrent of water from a crumbling dam wall.

The Nazi looked to his side at the jacket folded neatly over the chair beside his bed and his eyes studied the badges and insignia etched and sewn across it. They were what his identity was built upon, all that he knew and all that he believed in. They were the symbols of strength that flexed in his muscles, beat from his heart and echoed from the fight in his soul.

These symbols took him from being a young child, embossed in torment and ridicule, trampled by the abandon of his mother and father and preyed upon by his need for his adoring grandmother; always being the insect having its wings and limbs torn from its body, to then being a young man; confident and strong, a leader, powerful, listened, learned, well spoken, assuring, domineering, hardly a victim, always the threat; a king amongst men.

The Grandmother wept out loud. She collapsed to the floor with her head buried in her hands while the only family she knew walked out of her life, stepping over her frail body and marching out of the house to never return again.

The Grandmother cried.

The Nazi swelled with anger.

When he walked out of the door he was much older, almost the man he was today. He wore the same jacket though many of the badges had been removed. His skin was more scarred, the effect of being accountable for the things he had said and done in his life and more so, for those done by men he longer eluded to being his family.

The Nazi sat alone on a stool.

He had no brothers.

He had no friends.

He had no family.

He was, entirely alone.

All he could do was to sit and stare as his mind rambled like a broken radio, a strange hiss that when he gave it the attention it deserved, became clearer as the sound of his dear grandmother sobbing and weeping as he had stepped over her frail body all those years ago, leaving her alone like his parents had done to him, leaving her alone like he had done to himself.

Joao gasped as he closed the theatre in his mind, seeing once again The Nazi staring him long in his eyes, tapping his fingers away on the counter, looking mean and demanding and short of patience.

He moved his hands to the sink and ran water over his stained fingers, washing away the remnants of this man's bitter past. He wiped his hands clean and dry and then returned his stare to The Nazi before pressing his fingers gently into a bowl of sugar, one; like the coffee, that only addressed his hands and of which every grain belonged to someone's history.

When he closed his eyes, his mind was blank. There was no vision at all playing out for him and every grain of sugar seemed to dissipate away from his touch almost as if there were no sweetness at all in this man's life, nothing at all that would warrant him to will away the shadow of his own death and have him return day after day for more of this existence.

He moved his fingers slowly through the bowl of sugar passing in and out of hundreds of thousands of individual grains and each grain screaming in vile contest as his fingers passed through with not one sweet moment belonging in his life.

Then as he pulled his hands from the bowl, he opened his eyes and caught drift of The Nazi's stare and saw in him, a look he had seen before and so he closed his eyes again and imagined someone else as his fingers slid through the white grains.

He saw the face of an angry lady, one whose anger was but the bark of her tremoring loneliness and amorous abandon. Her anger was so much like that of this man; this tattooed, broken, disheveled and lonely man. The Nervous Lady had that same vacant look in her eye, defending her sadness with venomous spite.

She had no friends.

She had no family.

She was; as The Nazi, entirely alone.

Joao smiled to himself thinking that nothing in the world is entirely alone, pinching grains of sugar, small seemingly insignificant grains that would tell this story and remind The Nazi that he was not the only person in the world to have ever felt this way and as such, he was not alone.

#  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Hey there handsome, you wanna get away?"

Joao was exhausted.

The days were so long and every minute seemed like it had a whole week stacked upon its back. In his brief moments of rest, he allowed himself to drift off into light dream, keeping his eyes open and alert, seeing the patrons passing through the doors but seeing them more as a heavy wind, brushing past his window for they all moved about in sight but without form and without face, the effect of their being and their passing seen in the filling of cups, the moving of chairs and like that strong breeze blowing about fallen leaves and loose brush, the creating of mess as papers, napkins and wrappers piled up on the floor and then moved from place to place, kicked about by busied feet.

And so he continued to stare at the blurring lines of colour and shade.

"Wakey, wakey" spoke a girl's voice, a soothing girl's voice, clicking her fingers in front of his eyes and summoning him into wake.

It was Charity and she stood before him smiling, her hands pressed against the counter and she, bouncing up and down on her heels while her head tilted slightly to one side. Her hair was tied back in a little ponytail and she looked cute with her fringe pulled away from her eyes, her face looking so young and amiable.

The way she smiled it was near impossible not to smile back.

"Charity. How are you? I missed you? I mean..." he said, stuttering over his words, realizing that for that moment he sounded silly and desperate as if he had been waiting day and night to see her again and had been collecting the seconds that passed as a heavy longing and yearning in his heart that threatened to topple him over whenever he thought of her; which of course he had and was completely true.

But he didn't want her to know that.

"I mean, it's nice to see you, again. You look... umm... great" he said, pausing to find the right adjective, seeing how the swelling in her eye had vanished and the bruises along the line of her face had gone from dark purple when he last saw her, to non-existent, so that the only colour was the light in her eye as she smiled.

"Hey what time's your break," she asked.

"Well it's nearly over," Joao said.

"Hey Fatts," she yelled to the back of the café, 'let me have this cutey here for an hour. Don't make me have to fight you" she said playfully.

Fatts shook his head and huffed loudly.

"I gotta business to run here you know, it's not a god damned social club. The afternoon rush's happening soon. No funny business. Go, have fun. Half an hour, not a second later" he said sternly shaking his giant finger.

"Oh come on Fatts. One hour" pleaded Charity, pulling on Joao's arm and dragging him from around the counter.

"Thirty minutes" yelled Fatts.

Joao's heart was beating loud. It sounded; to him, like a silverback, pounding its giant fists against its chest in rising protest and he felt a heavy sickness in his stomach as his veins flooded with flight inspired drugs, commanded by his overwhelmed mind, unsure how to deal with this approximation to desire, want and love.

"Your hand is sweaty," said Charity.

Joao said nothing.

He swallowed a lump in his throat and fidgeted in his shoes and wished for a second that he could dissolve into a bead of his sweat and escape from this embarrassing truth, but he said nothing.

"Are you nervous?" asked Charity.

Joao said nothing.

As they walked along the street; she, holding his hand tightly, he felt every bead of sweat that dripped from his pores and onto her delicate, soft hand. They pushed through swarms of workers all dressed in cheap suits, rushing from cafés and restaurants along the busy avenue, their minds pestered and petulant, thinking only of their obligations and their desire to return unto them, seeing every step and every space in front as an opportunity that they must steal as if the passage of their commute were practice for the ethos of their lives, to abandon the pursuit of politeness and take every advantage that had yet to be divulged, pushing and shoving and kicking and screaming and biting and shouting and cursing and defeating every single person regardless of age or sex or colour or deficiency, thinking only of the opportunity; the space before them and with their eyes blinded to their own effect, diving into every single space, taking every theft as some measurable gain.

Joao was too kindly in this jungle environment and would be brushed this way and that; thrown around like a dangling fringe. But at the extension of his hand was a beautiful girl with the force and will of a maniacal tyrant and she pointed her elbow forwards, creating a part in the human traffic, cutting straight through the centre and laughing out loud as men, women, and children of all ages cursed and yelped at her parting of their flux with reverent biblical grace.

"Are we going to your special place?" asked Joao, his voice gurgling at first as he swallowed a lump in his throat, sounding more like a concerned Muppet than an excited lover.

Joao had been thinking about this for days and weeks, imagining; every time his mind drifted, the sight of Charity's kind face lifting back the thick brush and scrub with her gentle hand and inviting him away from the grey concrete jungle and into the dark passage where the rest of her body waited, somewhere in the shadows behind the expanse of green, away from the world where he could lay with her, away from this city, away from his family, away from God whose servants of morality; drunk on cheap, foul cachaça, had, for so many years, bruised his skin and tampered with his soul.

He wanted so much to be away from himself and just to be with her for her knew that that must be heaven.

"Not today," she said.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"I want you to meet someone," she said.

"Are they famous?" asked Joao intrigued.

"Yep," said Charity, skipping down the street with Joao dancing behind in tow, gripping onto her soft, delicate hand, the sweat that once poured now dried by the wave of animated electricity that surged through his every being.

He had never met a famous person before. His father was the only famous person he knew. Many people had travelled from very far away every week to hear his father deliver his sermon and to give them guidance in the way of the lord. He had always thought of that as special, peeping through the cracks in the barn doors while his siblings, his mother and the travelers all sat in stupendous awe of his father who stood on his podium with his hands waving fanatically high like molecular antennae, tuned to the divine radio of Jesus Christ.

Charity giggled as she darted from the path and ran up a massive flight of stairs with Joao stumbling after her, watching his feet so he didn't tumble over himself.

They burst through a set of doors.

"Shhh' ordered a thousand tongues as a thousand angry faces turned towards them with their index fingers clenched against their lips.

Charity giggled again as the doors slammed shut behind them. The minister at the front of the church cleared his throat and continued his sermon and all the people turned their snubbed noses back around to attend his speech.

The two entered through another set of doors.

"Joao, I'd like you to meet The 13th Apostle," said Charity.

Joao was deafened with delight.

He heard nothing of what she said after that. His mind echoed with the word apostle and he couldn't believe that he was in the same room as the man who was regarded as the closest descendant of Christ, one of the holiest men on this planet outside of the incestuous Roman molesters who hid their depravity and disturbance under long cloaks.

In front of him sat that very man and though his back was turned, Joao knew exactly whom he was admiring having seen this momentous frame pacing around his TV set for years, always holding in his hands, a microphone that looked more like a toothpick held daintily in his trunk like fingers while his massive arms swung wide like a fisherman's net, pulling in saddened and disparaged parishioners, gathering them in one sweep and pulling them tight against his Christian bosom, pressing their faces against his mucky and sweaty chest like a child with their favourite teddy bear.

"So you must be Joao. Charity has told me all about you. Everybody is talking about you" said The 13th Apostle.

Joao sank into his stomach. His head went dizzy. He smiled and fell stupid, unable to say a word.

"He makes the most divine coffee you will ever taste. People come from all over town to drink it. Isn't that right cutey?" said Charity.

Joao said nothing.

He wanted to say so many things, though, even in the safety of his mind, he couldn't imagine what those things might have been. He had never been good at anything and could sell neither a slither of barbequed meat to a starving carnivore nor a kind word about his own talent to a stranger, to his father or even as it seemed, to himself. He saw his gift; as it were, as merely something he did where he stopped trying to think as he thought others wanted him to think and instead just, was; whatever that should mean.

Joao's nerves surmounted.

He gulped some fetched air.

His stomach whined.

His cheeks clenched.

His stomach sank.

Charity squeezed his hand.

He farted.

He blushed.

He started to cry.

"My boy. Come here and dry those tears on my chest. There ain't nothin dirty or wrong or awkward or even uncomfortable about a bit of wind. You don't think Jesus ever passed some gas?" said The 13th Apostle.

"He's real excited to meet you, Apostle. He's been watching your show for years. That and what was it?" asked Charity.

"The Carriage of my Heart," said Joao.

"That's it. The Carriage of my Heart" said, Charity.

"I do love television," said The 13th Apostle. "You know we're about to buy our third network here for The World Church? It's the work of Jesus Christ it is, ensuring our prayers are heard twenty-four hours a day, nationally on three open networks. There's a lot of the devil's work going on some of those channels. The sex, the drugs, the violence, the corruption. You know I do believe that violence begets violence. You want peace and love in this world; you need to see Jesus everywhere you look. He's there you know; healing every wound, sweeping up the filth off the streets, being born from the womb of ever unnecessary cesarean, raining down at the end of every summer's day. He's in every home, in every heart. He's on every billboard and he's in every war; you though can't always see him right away. Sometimes you really got look hard, but you can find him and when you do, you'll lay down your arms next to your open heart and be glad for having an enemy as having someone that you can learn to love for Jesus loves everyone, even the Muslims and the gays" said The 13th Apostle.

"Is Jesus on the hill?" asked Joao.

The air fell still, the Apostle, silent, the bounce in his voice flattened.

"There ain't nothin up there that Jesus can save," he said.

"I live there. My father and I. We have a church. My father, he is a bishop and he wants to be just like you. We're, well, he, is trying to save the people; the prostitutes, the drug dealers, the drug addicts and especially some of the people who live there at the top with us" said Joao.

An uncomfortable silence addressed the room, broken nervously by Charity.

"I've seen his church, it's nice," she said.

"Really, you've seen it?" asked Joao.

"I've told you Charity that you shouldn't be going up there no more. You know I have a place for you here in the church. You can work with me; you don't need to go near that hill again" said The 13th Apostle.

"You know I can't do that," she said.

The 13th Apostle kept in his chair looking direct at his own reflection while Charity and Joao stood behind him while to his left and right, a team of girls brushed at his face with powder and makeup, getting him ready for the taping of his sermon any moment. He was angry, but he didn't show it, though Charity knew. She felt it. She was no stranger to the message in his cryptic stares.

"So do I get to try one of these divine coffees or yours Joao?" asked The 13th Apostle.

"Yes sir," he said, managing to utter two simple syllables and restrain himself from excitedly tripping over a thousand words and sounding foolish and excusable.

"At the back of the room there, just in the corner" said The 13th Apostle, swinging his giant crank like arm back around to the right, pointing to the far end of his dressing room where there sat a small kettle, a jar of rich textured coffee powder; the beans no doubt crushed by the kindness in his heart and beside the jar, a small cup and besides that, a jar of white sugar.

As Joao moved to the back of the room, he caught in his narrow sight, Charity leaning in to whisper into The 13th Apostle's ear and he thought that she must know him really well because as she spoke, The Apostle smiled in crooked kind of way as if he had just been slipped a winning hand in a corrupted game of cards but to Joao it just looked nothing outside of the norm.

The 13th Apostle and Charity continued whispering to one another while at the back of the room; Joao prepared himself by washing his hands and preparing his utensils, the instruments of his creation.

He was so careful in removing the dirt that collected under his nails and between his fingers, scrubbing them lightly but briskly so as not to scratch or strain the fine sensors on his skin that he used to feel and hear the heartbeat of every grain that passed his touch, canting their story into his mind so that he dreamed of a life he had not lived, feeling as they had felt, hurting as had been dealt and making a heavy brew of burden from the sting of his tears.

He looked long at The 13th Apostle, being pampered like the king that he was; his cheeks being powdered, his hair being brushed, the hairs in his ears being gently clipped, his shirt being straightened, his penis being pampered, his speech being prepared, his sandwiches being cut, his name being called out, its cry being ignored and his thick bulbous fingers, encapsulating the girl he adored.

Joao closed his eyes and slid his fingers into the jar of coffee that laid out before him like a sorcerer's cauldron. He took a long breath and when he exhaled, he carried with it outside of his conscious stage and awoke in a lone seat; stained and torn that swayed on broken hinges like a rotting tooth.

The room was dark and quiet.

His subconscious made not a sound.

There was a clicking sound as if someone had turned a switch and a wheel was turning, somewhere behind him, out of sight, maybe in another part of his mind. The sound was not obtrusive. It was just loud enough to be heard over his own heavy breath and so he gripped the sticky hand rests as the curtain to the theatre of his mind opened and there before him, stood, the devil although he could not see its face.

"The righteous path has no fair price," said The Devil.

As he spoke, tufts of smoke plumed from his nostrils and the bottom of every word seemed to gurgle as if he were speaking into a vat of scolding acid as the accent of every word cast a snakelike hiss into the air. Still, Joao couldn't see its face; he could only see a shadow, an outline of some gargantuan form that shifted every time it spoke.

Joao looked around. His hands were no longer gripping a sticky, wet hand rest. They were wet and sticky with his escaping sweat from his surmounting fear as he stood, just out of sight, watching the two shapes conversing under a rickety sign while he stood not far away, believing he was invisible. Around him everything was quiet. He could hear The Devil jingling some coins in its pockets as it stood waiting for a large shape; that he assumed was The 13th Apostle, to respond.

Around the two, a torrent wind blew yet everything was completely still and silent where they stood. It was raining in the distance and the storm was rushing towards where they stood and though it was dark where they were, Joao could still make out the shapes of the eyes of hounds watching him, everywhere he looked.

"I will pay any price," said the shadow he assumed was The 13th Apostle.

Two gigantic hands presented to The Devil with open palms, nervous and shaky with The 13th Apostle, expecting his soul to be torn from his skin but wanting so much for a gentle reward to address his desire, laid in the palm of his hands.

"What is it that you desire?" asked The Devil.

"I want to be powerful. I want control. I want to influence the world. I don't want to be rich, riches get spent, I don't want fame for fame is eventually forgotten. I want infamy" said The 13th Apostle.

"What price are you willing to pay?" asked The Devil.

"My soul," said The 13th Apostle.

The devil laughed.

"You really think your soul is worth infamy?" mocked The Devil.

"I'm not sure. I thought..."

"One soul, I'll make you a star. Sell me a million; I'll make you an idol. Sell me a billion; I'll make you a leader. Sell me a lineage and I'll make you the son of God" said The Devil.

"How? I'll do anything? I'll pay any price" said The 13th Apostle desperately.

The Devil laughed again.

"You will work for me, collecting souls, paying your debt. In return, your name will echo in history and while your borrowed soul burrows beneath your bonded skin, you shall have anything you desire, without consequence" said The Devil, devilishly.

"Deal," said The 13th Apostle extending his hand.

The Devil pushed its shadowy limb through the man's chest, close to where his heart lay and squeezed tightly, branding the man's soul.

The Apostle screamed.

The Devil laughed.

Joao squirmed.

The hounds howled.

The air stirred.

The storm neared.

Dust swept up into the air and circled the men.

Joao watched, his hands stirring.

The Apostle ended his scream and fell to the floor.

Joao gasped.

The Devil met his stare.

It pointed.

It smiled.

Its eyes caught on fire.

It vanished.

Joao pardoned himself from his thoughts with vagrant fright, jumping into his conscious mind and falling backwards against the small bookshelf that perched behind him, knocking it to the floor and landing in an awkward heap, catching his fall on one hand, balancing on one leg while the other dangled like a broken crane, swinging lifelessly as if he had just severed every nerve in his body.

"Are you ok?" asked Charity, oddly humored but still concerned.

"Umm, yeah. I fell. Sugar?" he asked The 13th Apostle.

"Life is sweet enough my boy" said The 13th Apostle, slapping the bum of his hair stylist who; though greatly offended, violated, cheapened and disgusted, flinched and yelped like an injured pup, tightened her cheeks, swiveled her body, garnished an 'oh you' kind of smile, swallowed her pride, giggled out loud, won his affection and returned to straightening the stubborn curls behind his ears as if nothing had happened.

Joao picked himself up nervously and stared at the cup sitting on the table. The dark liquid swirled around in circles and smaller circles and even smaller circles still and in the middle it looked like there were two dark eyes looking right back at him and the swirling dark liquid; swirling in circles, swirled into a little dark smile and he took the cup in his hands, holding it in a gentle clasp and he steadied himself as he walked; watching his feet as they made every step, towards The 13th Apostle who was now wetting his lips on desire and temptation.

He handed the cup as if it was some holy chalice and The 13th Apostle treated it as such, taking it gently from his hands, holding it to the brim of his mouth where his thick upper lip pressed lightly against the fine china like a drunkard's belly as he leans over the bar to collect his drink.

The Apostle sipped on the cup and immediately his eyes lit like a forest fire, widening; taking in as much light as possible as if some dark fright had snuck up upon them. His hand shook slightly, not a lot, not entirely visible but Joao could see it and it was the same tremor he saw in the man's hand when sat outstretched, inviting the devil into a deal.

"You think you can make more of that?" asked The 13th Apostle sounding more than a little shaken but licking his lips, hungrily like a junky.

Joao was silent.

His mind was sore.

His heart was sore.

"Sure he can," said Charity, still standing by The Apostle but looking lovingly over at Joao who was looking at The Apostle in a veil of disbelief.

"I'm not sure if I can," said Joao; wanting to leave.

"Sure you can," said Charity again, this time leaving the clutches of The Apostle and wrapping her arms around Joao's neck, bowing her head slightly so that she looked up at him doe-eyed, whipping her long, black lashes and cutting a retiring smile across her face so all Joao could do; in the complete dissolution of his will, was say; "Ok."

"You were right Eve, he is a special boy indeed," said The 13th Apostle.

"I have to go," said Joao.

"Don't you want to watch the service? We are taping tonight. Do you want to be on TV?" asked The 13th Apostle.

"I have to go" said Joao anxiously, looking at Charity like a young child would to their mother, wanting so much to run away and never come back again; wanting to tell the world what he had seen but knowing that, not only would nobody would ever believe him, nobody in their right mind would ever listen.

#  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Spin around," said, Eve.

"What? Why?" said Joao.

Charity pulled on his arms so that he came to a stop; with her, standing in front of his drawn face, smiling like a sleeping thief.

"Don't ask, just follow my lead. It's silly but it's something that drives me crazy. Any time I turn around, I feel like I have this elastic band wrapped around me and I just have to turn around the other way to undo it. If I don't, I'll go crazy. Look" she said, closing her eyes and lifting her delicate arms into the air so that the light breeze ran through the fine hairs on her arms, caressing her with a tender chill that had her shiver just slightly, not enough to molest her thought, but enough for Joao to see and he himself, to feel a cold chill run up and down his spine.

Charity smiled as she danced in the light breeze, her fingers catching pockets of air and pulling them with her as she turned on a dime, her heels, high in the air as her body rested on top of her toes and she sprang; like a wildflower, up into the height of the sun, so high that she took Joao's breath with her and his heart paused as he held sight of her floating like an angel, drifting in the warm summer air, the sea of content unto which he thirsted to drink.

She turned and turned and turned and turned some more, swinging her arms and laughing as she drunkenly fell to the floor.

"Now you," she said.

Joao lifted his arms like she had done and tried to manner the same grace but as he turned, with his eyes jammed shut, he felt a hissing breeze spit across his right ear and he thought of a thousand eyes watching him and as he turned on anything but a dime. His right hand swung wild and hit against the cheek of an infant child being carried at its mother's breast, almost knocking it from her arms and inviting the stricken child into a wounded and desperate shriek.

Joao pleaded his apology while the infant screamed for its mother's breast while the mother clung to her child despondently, cursing and spitting at Joao, calling him names he had never heard before and advising him to do things he had never imagined a man could do and definitely not with the types of animals she mentioned.

"I'm really sorry," he said.

But the mother; with her complexion bruised with rage, slapped him across the face and stormed off down the street, pressing her crying baby against her chest while around him, pedestrians past with their judging eyes, tisking with their mouths and shaking of their heads; attending to the itch of their moral nerve while on the ground; looking up with a cheeky grin and wide blue eyes was Charity, laughing hysterically, squeezing her stomach and crunching over herself, cursing the pain that her laughter brought to her belly as if she were in the throes of birth.

Joao was red.

Embarrassed.

Ashamed.

Charity; noticing his distress, managed to control her hysteria and picked herself up from the ground and put one of her gentle hands on his cheek to earth the swell of his distress and to calm his growing nerve.

Her skin felt like soft, bumpy silk and she quickly calmed his nerves as he lifted his stare to dress against hers, losing himself in her beautiful blue eyes that looked as if they were exploding from their centre where her soul was kept. The different colours were magnificent, all rolling in and out of one another, a billion shades of blue, twisting and turning and slowly drifting from the tiny black centre like the death of a star.

"Ok, now don't you feel like you need to spin back the other way?" she said laughing. "Oh, come on it wasn't that bad. So you hit a baby. Could be worse."

"How?'

"Hmm. Maybe you'd best not try to undo this."

"This is stupid. I have to get back to the café. Fatts will be angry."

"So, what did you think?" asked Charity, skipping along beside Joao.

"It was fun I guess, kind of stupid really."

"No, of the Apostle silly," she said, poking his side playfully.

"He seemed nice I guess, I dunno," said Joao.

"Nice? You haven't met many stars. The Apostle is amazing. There's no other word to describe him. He's helped so many people. Apparently done some miracles too. Healed some people who were very sick" said Charity.

"I thought you weren't into that kind of stuff," said Joao.

"Well I'm not, not really, just The Apostle, he has this effect, I don't know what it is," she said.

"I have to get back to work," said Joao.

"What's wrong? Why are you so down? I thought you'd be over the moon to meet your idol" said Charity, slowing her skip, turning towards Joao consolingly and pulling on his arm to bring him to a complete halt.

"I liked it I did. Thank you it's just.."

"What, what's wrong? It's ok Joao, I'm your friend, you can trust me."

She pressed her hand against his cheek and he felt a shiver run down his spine and a warmth overcome his mind, flow down through his veins and threaten to burst out from between his legs.

He flushed red.

"It's just, I thought we might go... It's nothing don't worry, I'm being silly. I'm sorry I have to go" he said, hurrying away from her hand and running down the street, caring less about how others might think as he barged through them with tears starting to well at his eyes and an uncomfortable warmth overtaking his entire being leading him to want to be somewhere far from everyone and everything that he knew.

He just wanted to be alone.

"Joao, don't be mad" Charity yelled to the wake of Joao's escape as he dodged and weaved in and out of a manic torrent of pressed pedestrians.

When he reached the café, he could see scores of people all lining up by his counter waiting impatiently, some tapping away at their tables while others tapped their feet against the floor, others nervously bit at the fingernails and others took their nails to scratching against their skin. The place was packed and everyone was there, desperate and demanding, waiting for him to return so that they could live another brief moment inside their own shadow, a moment that only Joao could give them.

He wanted to go home, back to the farm where once again he could be nothing. He had never thought that one could be less than zero but here in the city, he found himself once again feeling this way.

"Hey, there he is. Joao, Joao, Joao, Joao," came a chant from inside the café as one of his customers caught sight of him standing at the far entrance to the café, clutching his hands over his face; his fingers spread lightly so that only the cracks of his eyes peered through at the scores of people lined up waiting for him to return; he, shaking uncontrollably as a fevered dread tickled his nerves and put an anchor to his feet.

The whole café turned and caught sight of him and then started their chant and rant; calling his name out like some sporting idol or pop star, banging their clenched fists and slapping their open palms against their tables in a pounding ritual invitation; their hands and fists at first sounding out their own beat, then like all things in nature, one fist eventually slowing to sound out like the one before and then the one before that to the one before it, until every handheld the same space between it and the table as every other hand before and beside it so that the sound of every strike of approval was as loud and defining as Joao's own heartbeat.

The roar was deafening and where once he thought that this might have brought him joy and a sense of belonging, now it seemed it brought him to a worse place than the back of his father's lecturing hand.

He turned and ran away from the entrance and hid behind the corner of the building, pressing himself against the wall and sucking in long gulps of air, clamping his hands to his knees and resting himself as blood pounded against his forehead making him feel as if his brain could explode at any second.

"If God permits," said a voice laughing heavily that sounded more like a cement truck turning its produce, the words sounding out like heavy slush, piling up on loose soil.

Joao turned and saw the back of Fatts, his arms out wide and inviting as if he were about to heartily hug the two police officers before him like a python would, its lunch. They were the same officers he had seen coming into the café every second day, wearing mean, bullish looks and directing Fatts out into the back of the store in obvious secrecy.

The men shook hands and the two police officers dressed in military black with their berets pressed so tightly against their skulls that Joao could see; even in the distance, a thin white line meeting a dark red glow where their skin folded under the tight band of elastic and rubber lining.

"Joao. Come here, son. What are you doing hiding round here?" said Fatts, turning joyfully and taking Joao under his giant arms like a skinny, molecular, talking and whimpering, human crutch.

Joao wiped away the tears that escaped his eyes, sniffing away as he did like a toddler at the tail end of a learning lesson, willing to read between the lines.

"What's the matter, boy? Nothing is so strange as having no definition? You can tell me anything. I won't judge you" Fatts said.

"It's Charity," said Joao, unsure how to continue or say what he felt.

"Oh, women," said Fatts in sagacious confusion.

"I like her. I mean, I really like her but I don't think she likes me, not the same way. But she always smiles when she sees me and she holds my hand and she makes me feel funny and I really like her. How do I know if she likes me the same way?" asked Joao.

"Ask her," said Fatts.

"I can't. I get nervous. I want to ask her. I want to say a lot of things. I want to tell her how pretty her hair is and how her eyes remind me of the solar system and how when she says my name, I feel special and I don't want to hurt myself anymore" he said.

"You want to hurt yourself, Joao? How long have you felt like this? You don't cut yourself or anything do you?" said Fatts, slowing his voice, lowering his tone like a disabled ramp, inviting Joao into his empathy.

"All I ever wanted was for someone to notice me. Not someone, well not anyone; just my family. I just wanted to be useful, to do something, to matter, but no matter what I did, no one ever saw it or if they did, they never let me share it with them. My mum, my brothers, my sisters... My dad" he said, his last words sounding out like the choking splutter of a stalling car.

"Let me tell you something about family Joao. You know sometimes; well all the time, girls like to put shiny stuff on their nails and paint them different colours?" asked Fatts.

"Yeah. Charity, she changes the colours every day, well when I see her anyway. Some girls just do red but Charity paints her nails a ton of colours, really bright as well. I think it's a bit silly, but I don't tell her that. She..."

"Focus Joao. Ok, so you know what I'm talking about then. Ok, well to get rid of that paint, they use stuff called acetone, or nail polish remover. Now your life is like a canvas, it's the nail and everything you do is the bright and shiny stuff that you paint on top and your family, they're the acetone. You see, family is like nail polish remover, they take the shine off of everything you do, they make you dull and uninteresting, and they bring you back down to earth. If you wanna feel better about who you are or what you do, don't go showing our nails to your family" said Fatts.

"But they are the only ones I want to care about the things that I do."

"Look around you, Joao. Can't you hear them calling out your name? You're at the heart of something bigger than your family. Everybody loves you, Joao. Everybody needs you. So go in there and be somebody to them" said Fatts, taking Joao by the shoulders and directing him back into the café where he walked with dry eyes and a swelled pride, his feet falling upon every chant and pounding fist, his heart, pumping love and belonging through his body so that his fingertips expanded like a rose's petals as its flower comes into bloom and they twitched with animated exhilaration and his feet felt like they were hinged on giant springs as he bounced through the employee doors and into the café where hands patted against his back and joyous cheer erupted in the afternoon air and finally, his soul filled like a weather balloon, with definition.

#  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"Coffee and sugar" spoke an excited voice from across the counter, vying to have their order heard and be the next to experiment with the flavor of their soul and be cast in their own shadow for but a moment.

The mood in the café was electric. People were pushing over one another, waving crumpled notes patriotically and shouting short sharp commands to get the attention of Joao who; in the midst of frantic baristas taking money and scribbling notes and confusing orders, sat like a thinking monk, his hands entrenched in a jar of coffee, looking with his shut eyes into the life of an old man with missing teeth, scruffy hair, torn shorts, a rather large and oddly shaped middle toe, a nervous twitch on the muscle in the right side of his neck, an uneven beard that looked more like the burnt out scrub in a desert dune, a runny nose, a virulent cough, a lazy left eye, a crazy right other and a hand full of one cent coins in his clenched fist; a week's work of begging that he held tighter in his left hand than a father would, his child through a thunderstorm.

The old man handed over his coins and took the small glass to his lips and before he let the liquid touch his tongue, he paused for a second that could have passed as a lifetime as the steam listed up his mucky cheeks and wet a dried tear that scabbed beneath his eye, setting it free to run the length of his face; to pass through his messy beard, to run along the line of his jaw and to pool just at the tip of his chin where it stretched and filled with the heavy, musky breeze that rained from the bloating sky above; an advent to the coming afternoon showers.

And he tilted the cup slightly so that the dark, hot liquid that steamed like the echo of his voice, ran out of the small glass cup and along with his life, washed over his tongue and coursed inside of him and the single tear; that for years he had been hardened to shed, fell away from his stony face and splashed onto the floor where it quickly dissolved into the hot moist air abounding.

And as his soul was warmed with a glimpse of its own reflection, the crazy old man felt free to feel again; to love, to fear, to want, to need, to long, to miss, to remember, to laugh and to cry.

And at the sight of the crying crazy old man, the crowd went into hysteria with the counter looking more like the platform for the last train out of dodge with people of all ages, all creeds, all denominations, all false fabricated ideas of ideals; all being, all too human, resounded in desperation, want and desire and each and everyone knowing that before them sat a full bowl of candy but in their minds they looked through the mounting pile and saw only the last one and shedding; like a head cold, their off the rack morality to eat as many candy as they could to ensure they got the last piece.

Fatts sat at the back of the café with his giant arms folded over his chest laughing heartily. He had never seen this kind of hysteria before and he preferred more to enjoy the moment than to attempt to package, price and profit from this furor that ignited from the small spark of his dear Joao and his only talent that nobody had ever cared about but that of which now, was the only thing people wanted.

The chants and screams for coffee and sugar echoed at the counter deafeningly and the continuation of such; of this drunken desire, spilled back out of the store and whispered in the farthest regions of the city where people shuffled about in their normal bustle with their heads low, their eyes perched on the backs of the feet in front of them, thinking of their work, wishing they could wish it away, living as they normally lived. But at this moment, as they shuffled about in the nether parts of the city, they sensed something calling them; something different, but something oh so familiar, for everyone everywhere was sensing it too.

Joao moved in and out of trance, passing forward each cup and then moving to gently wash his hands and the creases between his fingers and in the folds where his fingers bent so that he painted on a clear canvas for each coffee that he prepared and with every coffee, he moved a little slower, looking a little heavier on his feet, longer in his face and more vacant in his eyes each and every time that he stepped into his conscious state, looking less like a person and more like an old shack being weathered by a pestering wind with its shades half drawn and a dim flickering light slowly buzzing towards its inevitable extinction somewhere in a small cramped space at the back of the house, visible as just a tiny speck of wavering light creeping out of a blanket of heavy nothingness that spoke of abandon and absence and was less of an invite as it was a warning for curious travelers to make their camp in another's work and to rest their worries on another's pillow.

"Show's over folks, go home," said Fatts, stepping in front of the exhausted Joao, pressing his massive palms against the push of the desperate crowd, keeping Joao from the pursuit and craze of their expired obligation.

The crowd got angrier and even more restless than they had been, knowing to well that they would have to bed with their pent expectation, still waiting to reach some climax in their want and desire. Those that had been waiting shook their fists and cursed and those that had been served; hungry for more, pleaded and begged and fell to their knees saying 'you did this' and 'just one more'.

"If you didn't get a taste, you will get priority; tomorrow, understand? If you yell and push and shove and stick your face around long enough for me to remember it, you will get nothing, not now, not tomorrow, not ever. Now, Mr. Joao has tired for the day and will retreat into where it is you do not belong. Thank you and be considerate to one another as you exit the building and please, in the next twenty-eight seconds, find somewhere else to be" shouted Fatts, standing on the counter and orating the much sought and yet still debated intermission.

"Oh come on, I've been waiting forever" yelled an unimpressed man.

"And tomorrow you will wait forever more," said Fatts while behind him, Joao collapsed to the floor, his hands shaking, his skin pale, his eyes where they should be but looking hollow and clinging to a spirit that was without form.

The café cleared and as it did, an echo of peppered feet splashing against slippery, wet tiles hummed through Joao's ears and lay a blanket of threat in his mind, making him feel as if his fame were smothering him and though he was almost completely out of breath; struggling to keep his head from hitting the floor, he wanted so much to dive back into that sea and be swept away by the currents of conscious imaginings to find, in the murkiest depths of his subconscious, the tiny treasures he once thought abandoned, sunken and thrown overboard and then be able to somehow pull them from the depths of nothingness so that their colours could shine once again.

"You're a star, Joao. I've never seen people react like that before, not to anything that wasn't a drug anyway. You go home and get some rest" said Fatts.

Joao felt less like an adorning star and more like an old washcloth with the kindness and life in him gone into cleansing each and every soul that passed by his counter, leaving him only with a thick grime and residue that he couldn't shake off.

As he lifted himself from the ground, pushing his small pebble-like fist under his buttocks and heaving upwards, a familiar footstep patted its way into the café and towards the counter where his left hand now gripped against the rounded edge, holding his swinging body as he siphoned the last of his strength down to his folded legs, building like a jack in the box's tensing suspense and eventually; when he felt his legs could serve him, springing high into the air and springing backwards into a stack of pizza boxes in stupid surprise as Charity said "Hi."

Charity giggled.

Joao went red.

A little embarrassed.

A little annoyed.

"Hi," he said.

He wanted to yell at her and make her feel as awkward as he had felt, as he always felt every time he was around her. He wanted her to feel as stupid as he felt. He wanted to give her this feeling of shame and ridicule that boiled in his blood and made him want to bury his head inside a small, dirty hole. He wished for a millisecond that he could pass this on like the flu or chlamydia; that he could give it to her like she had given it to him.

Yet even though he felt like this, he still couldn't help but look favouringly in her eyes as she seemed to look matingly into his and when he did; as he did at this moment, any trouble that he had loaded by his scratching nails, his whitened knuckles and at the tip of his tongue, dissolved in the merriment of how she made him feel and he thought to himself as he warmed in the glimmer of her eye that this must be how the earth must feel every morning when it turns it sleepy head and opens its heavy eyes to see the sun still there, to find itself still revolving; to find itself still belonging.

"I'm sorry Joao. You're my friend and I don't want to ever make you feel bad. I really am sorry and I will show you that place. But later, when it's more special," she said smiling and reaching her soft, delicate hand onto his, causing neurons to fire, his blood to boil and sweat to pour from his pores with sirens sounding in his mind as the dam walls threatened to burst open then and there.

As her hand pressed against his, he felt warmed and cozy; cared for and safe. He had felt this when he was a boy, when he would be asleep in the buggering cold, curled on the floor, shivering his way through an escapeless slumber and nightmaring dream and the old mangy dog; the one whose hanging fur looked like an old man's elbow, would curl up beside him, stretching its long, scrawny body along his, keeping him warm and attended through the night.

"Can I have one of your coffees?" she asked.

Joao smiled and tensed his hand and as he did, Charity tensed hers; entwining her fingers around his, curling the tips underneath so that they stroked at the palm of his hand so gently as if the skin on which she strummed were the nylon strings to his heart.

"I don't wanna see myself," she said.

She was so beautiful and her wanting stare was so intense. Joao could hardly breathe.

"I wanna see you," she said.

#  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"So why do you do it?" asked Joao.

"Do what?" said Charity.

"Steal from those people," he said.

Charity laughed.

When she did, she threw herself forward; pulling her hands tightly over her stomach and casting her head towards her knees so that her long fringe baited Joao's discerned stare and took him with her, aside from his concern and into hilarity.

"I don't steal from them, Joao. Those people, I help them, all of them" she said.

"But I saw you reaching into their bags. The woman at the café, I caught you reaching into her bag and you took something."

"Left something."

"What?"

"I left something, Joao. Do you really think that of me? That I am a thief?" she said, pulling at his shame string.

Joao went red.

He lowered his head so that his eyes anchored upon his two fragile and clammy hands, clasping together between his knobbly knees, trying to squeeze the stupid out of his pores as if his mind were a pimple that made him always say the wrong things.

"So you're not a thief?" he asked.

"No of course not, I'm a good girl," she said.

"Do you mind if I ask?"

"What I was doing? Sure. Do you play the lottery?"

"No. I don't know what it is."

"Really? You never gambled? You never played the lottery?"

"Yes, no and no. Is it fun?"

"Yeah, if you play it right. For most people though, it's a bit of a trap. But I know how to play it. I know how to win" she said.

"What happens? What do you have to do to win?"

"You just buy a ticket with numbers and if the numbers are called, you win a lot of money"

"Have you won?"

"I win every week," she said.

"Wow, is it easy? What do you win?"

"Happiness," she said.

"But how? Does everyone win happiness?"

"No, Joao, they don't. The lottery is a bit like god really, like religion. It's kind of an escape for everyone"

"To escape what?"

"This. All of this. Don't you dream of escaping this? Getting off this hill? Having a nice house on the beach somewhere? Meeting someone famous and living happily ever after?"

"No. I like my house. The people here are not very nice but nobody has ever been nice to me so I'm kind of used to it, well except you and Fatts, you're nice" he said, turning red, trying to emphasize both she and Fatts but the burning lust in his eyes, the crackle in his voice, the soaking at his knees, the sweating from his palms and the air of awkwardness hinted that the you, was singular.

"Well I wanna get out of here and I will you know, I just need something big to happen and then I'm off. You could come if you like" she said, posing her gesture as a question making Joao panic in a brief instant as to whether she were joking or serious and whether he should say yes and if so, should he be zealous or should he feign interest and act in cool reservation and would this coolness amount to insult or on the other hand, would she get turned off by his jumping zest and oh my god, maybe she was just joking and how the hell should he respond?

"Yup," he said, croaking like a frog.

"Most people, they play the lottery every week and they spend a lot of money and they play it wrong. They even know it's just a game, or it can be a game; like a roller coaster or a movie or a drug", she said.

"It's like a competition yeah? And competitions are fun, yeah?"

"Not really. You see everyone is really screwed up here and well, everyone wants more money and more money is never enough so they're always gonna need more and they're always gonna be more miserable until they need so much and are so miserable they just kill themselves. And that's why they play the lottery, to escape. Every Monday they buy their ticket and they imagine winning the fifty million bucks and they dream about all sorts of stuff like paying off their bills, buying a big house for everyone in their family, going on holidays, buying lots of cool stuff, giving some money to poor people and charities and never feeling bad again" she said.

As she spoke, Joao closed his eyes and imagined what he could do with money. This was the idea of he and The Bishop, coming to the city so that they could make it rich like the man from 'The Carriage of My Heart' so they could send that money back home and save the farm before the bank or the devil's thirst took everything.

With his eyes shut, he imagined his father standing on a podium and preaching to a packed church, maybe where they lived now or maybe somewhere even bigger. In the front pew sat Mother and she was wearing her Sunday floral dress and because the air conditioner was on really high, her normally white stubby legs looked all blue and reddish and she looked at his father with a proud content emptiness as if she were waiting for him to finish before she addressed her consideration and care and before she distracted him with how she felt.

He imagined that at that moment, everybody he knew was in some way happy and content; even his annoying brothers and sisters who were more like scorpions in that he remembered them, not for the good they could do, but for the harm they had done and even they; in this image in his mind, seemed happy.

And this was what money could bring, happiness.

"Sounds great," said Joao.

"Yeah, until Saturday comes."

"Why?"

"Well on Monday people buy their ticket and start to get all high and that, daydreaming about what they will do when they win. Not what they would do, but what they will do cause god is listening to their wants and this time they can feel it, everything is aligned and they're gonna win. It just feels right. So then Saturday comes along and at 6pm, they sit down in front of the TV with their numbers laid out in front and a pen in their hands, watching the screen like a drunk will watch someone else's beer being poured. Then as the numbers get called, they start to have these short stabbing sensations, like little electrical shocks in their system. It's depression. It's reality, breaking through their dream, about to smash down their house of cards. Then one by one, game by game they start to lose, not once, not twice cause they bought twelve, fifteen, fifty games and they lose fifty times and every time they lose, it's another cruel foot on their hopes and aspirations, it's the pillow being pinned over the face of their dreams. Then when they scratch off the last game they fall back into depression and anger, realizing that they didn't win, they didn't escape. They are still stuck with their dead-end wife and their dead-end kids listening to the same old bullshit from their dead-end friends and apologizing to their dead-end boss for the poor work they did in their dead-end job so they can struggle to pay their bills again this week cause they spent all the money on the fucking lottery tickets and so they're gonna have to borrow money off their father in law and listen to him go on about responsibility while his wife is in the other room buying things they don't need with a card they can't afford to pay and his kid is on drugs and his wife is bangin his brother who is staying with him while he finds a job and he's coming up to the hill every Saturday night to binge of beer, cachaça, coke and cheap whores so that he can even out the mess that is his life, all so that on Monday morning, he can wake up at 6am, go back to the job he hates and do it all again. And on Monday afternoon, when he gets that fifty game ticket, he starts smiling and dreaming once more" she said.

"That's kinda sad," said, Joao, as if he were being told that Santa was not real. "What about you? Are you that sad too?"

"The lottery is a game, like a rollercoaster. I like to play it like a game. Like I said, I've played every week since I moved here and I always win. I haven't lost a game yet" she said smiling loftily.

"You must be real lucky. But if you win all that money every week, why aren't you living on a beach somewhere and friends with famous people?"

"I give it all away?" she whispered.

"Really? Why? Are you crazy?"

"Every Monday I buy a ticket and I give it away. Sometimes I see a purse or a bag nearby and I sneak the ticket into the person's bag, quick so they don't notice. Other times I leave the ticket in a cigarette packet, with like a couple of cigarettes still in the packet, sticking out from the top, to catch attention. Smokers have got really good eyes when it comes to seeing a full cigarette lying on the floor. Funny that. Anyway, I do that when I buy the ticket. It's good when I can pick a person cause it's fun to be able to remember their face when Saturday comes around" she said.

"What do you do? How do you know you won if you gave away your ticket?" asked Joao.

"When the numbers are called, I write them down with the pen and I imagine the ticket I gave away; that I put in the packet or the woman's purse, and I imagine her sitting in front of her television and she's scratching away at every number and it's the first game on the ticket and every number is a winner and when they call out the sixth number, the woman jumps up and down screaming and when she does, my heart almost explodes cause I can feel how happy she is and her family all come in running and they're crying cause they can't believe that they won and all of their problems have gone away, all of them and they are so happy and she calls everyone she knows and she tells them what happened, that she opened her purse on Monday and there was this ticket there that she didn't buy it and she didn't know how it got there but it did and she can't explain it but that's ok cause she just won fifty million and she'll never be as happy in her life as she is right now because someone gave this to her, someone gave this to her. And I cry. And I get so happy I cry. I don't cry like other people do, because they are sad. I cry because, well, because of me, that woman and her family can be happy forever, they get to escape. And all the things I dreamed about when I bought the ticket on Monday and snuck it in her purse, all the things about her going on holiday, paying for an operation for her sick mother, buying her children the toys they want, taking her husband finally on that honeymoon they never got, giving their house to charity because they wouldn't need to sell it to buy another one and never having to worry about money or debt or problems ever again. And never having to do bad things that she struggles to forget, just to make ends meet. So I cry, cause she gets all of this, because she is happy and I saved her, I saved her" she said weeping into her echo, smiling as she sniffled lightly and wiped a tear from her eye.

"It must feel good, to help those people," said Joao.

"It does and every week I do the same thing. I find someone to help, someone to save. I wait and I follow them and when I have the perfect opportunity, I sneak the ticket into their bag, their wallet, their cigarette packet, their baby's jumpsuit, their car door, their purse and sometimes, their hand. And every week I imagine how they would be saved and every week I imagine them saved and they all are" she said.

"But how do you know they won? The numbers could be different. Do you write the numbers down?"

"That's the thing. I don't look at the game. I look in their eyes, I remember their faces. I don't ruin it by trying to remember the numbers. The first time I see the numbers are when they're being called out on the screen and I see them on the ticket in my mind. Everyone wins, every week. They all get saved and I help to save them all. And I never feel bad. I always feel good. I get to imagine and dream when I buy the ticket like everyone else except I don't come crushing down to earth when the game gets played. My high gets higher. It's like filling a balloon with helium and it's going up, up, up into the sky. It goes up and up and up and it flies so high into the sky that it looks like a tiny little dot before the wind takes it far away to somewhere so impossible for you to see and you can imagine it going up and up and up and up forever till it leaves our galaxy and it enters another and floats up into a sad world with no colour and no balloons and it floats upwards, past the sad eyes of a sad, little boy and his fingers catch the string just before it floats away and it's the only colourful thing in his world and it makes him the only happy boy in his world"

"Won't that make him sad?'

"Why would he be sad? He has a colourful balloon."

"Well if he's the only happy person then he'll feel guilty for being so happy when everyone is so sad and then he will feel sad again, like everyone else."

"True, ok, well this story isn't about the sad little boy in a world with no colour or no balloons, it's about the balloon so it; the balloon," she said enforcing her words, "keeps going up and up and up to infinity like the screen of a broken television. That's how I feel, always. Like that balloon. And every week I fill another one and every week I let it go."

"But the balloon has to come down somewhere"

"Only if you imagine it so. If you accept that it crashes then you'll be sad, thinking about the balloon falling on a roof somewhere far from where a child might play with it. But if you imagine that it doesn't fall, that it keeps flying forever then what's the harm? Who can prove either way" she said.

"That's real nice Charity," said Joao, feeling cleansed of his nervousness or his shame by the namesake of her words and the way she lived her life.

Joao twitched his left pinkie slightly so that it grazed the thumb of Charity, nothing forceful, just a slight passing of skin but for Joao, this movement sounded out in his heart so that his ears pounded with impending event, something catastrophic like the pulling of a drape over a sleeping Kong and the rounding percussion that plays out as his eyes widen, his voice gruffs and his fists waken to beat against his chest.

Charity curled her hand around his, holding it tight and Joao's heart ignited.

He was in love.

"Joao," she said. "Can I stay here tonight?"

#  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

When Joao awoke in the morning, Charity had already gone. There was a note on the table but Joao was illiterate so he merrily tucked the note into the pocket of his pants that lay neatly on the floor and quietly snuck into the shower, so as not to disturb The Bishop.

His head felt light but his heart felt heavy. He was so tired and hung-over, having given so much of himself in every cup of coffee that he had made and having lived so much difficulty in such small containable doses.

He stood catatonic, with one hand holding the neck of the shower upright so that it didn't fall forward against the wall and the other, slapping away at the broken tiles of the bathroom with a broken squidgy, haplessly trying to evade the water from flowing past the drain where he pattered about and past the filthy sink and rocking toilet and out into the small kitchen and church floor.

And; as the cold water streamed over his face, shivering his body into shaking away the severity of the sadness and asperity that caught in his pores as if his soul were the muddy carpet that collected the pit and filth of traveler's shoes, he cried. And even under a cold stream, he could taste the salt on his lips and strangely, it made him thirsty for more.

"I wonder if the sun ever feels this tired."

As he left for work, he tidied up around the church so that The Bishop wouldn't be mad. His temper was immeasurable and it was much easier to find ways to avoid it than to have to reason with it. He straightened some chairs that were strewn about, collected some papers that were on the floor, cleaned The Bishop's vomit which was next to the papers strewn about on the floor and he set aside on one of the chairs, a pair of women's panties that were pink with some frilly lace running around the top.

As he walked out the door, he thought about the things Charity had told him and what they had talked about all night and basically he just tried to remember anything she had said so he could hear the sound of her voice so he could feel as happy and belonging as he did last night, sitting on his bed, holding her hand, listening to her talk about life, telling her everything about his and laughing at things that weren't really funny but were just fun to laugh at and listening to her breath get heavier as she drifted into sleep with her ear press against his lap and her sleeping eyes watching the door with Joao; leaning against the wall, falling asleep after some time, running his fingers through her long black hair to undo the piles of dried, frizzed and tangled knots at the ends.

When he left the church, he closed the iron gate that boarded off the entrance, wrapped the two chains back around through the bars like an old rusted snake and bolted their heads to their bums so that nobody could tear them apart.

And with the house secure, he headed off. But as he did, a slight clicking sound; like the turning of a lock or the loading of a gun, caught his attention and it pulled his sight to one of the old shacks at the top of the hill. He couldn't explain it but for one reason or another; a reason that was not his to debate, he turned back and climbed to the top of the hill and stepped up onto the wooden planks that ran across a small open sewer; the wood wobbling and creaking beneath his feet, daring him to take another step and fall into the sordid mess below.

He stood at a door with his hand raised mere inches from a long chain that hung from a bar, welded across the frame and he stood still in capitulated, mute maladroitness; as he did before, wanting; but unable, to speak, to knock, to say his name or to ask who's there, on the other side of that door.

He could hear someone there; on the other side of that door, standing probably as he was standing and listening, probably as he was listening. Maybe they were kind and needed a friend or maybe they were just mean and selfish like everyone else; smiling and showing their teeth benignantly before gnawing off your giving hand and spitting it out again because they had probably just confused their repugnant hunger with their casual boredom.

They could only be one or the other; mean or kind, and though he felt saddled with fear; the type that makes you run until your legs fall right off, there was a part of him that could see almost through the fog that pressed him to flee and he felt that maybe he could see some kindness, not a great deal, just a bit.

But even a bit might always be just enough; that the person behind that door could be one or the other but if he were to say his name or rattle at the chain, maybe the person would be kind and maybe he could make another friend, someone close to home; like he'd never really had.

His heart beat fast, his breath quickened and he felt as if he were losing his lungs to the aspect of drowning in a raging open sea for every time he opened his mouth, a short, sharp, desperate breath raced over his gritting teeth and stung the small sores on the side of his tongue which was pressed down upon rows of jagged teeth as its tip pushed down at the point where his teeth met his swollen, red gums, pressed with the force of a supporting beam as he maintained the construction of his silence, willing no sound upon his body, not even the taking of a breath or the licking of his tongue as he swallowed a single drop of saliva.

On the ground, next to a large stone that was beside the door to the shack, was what looked like a small pencil or pen. Joao leaned down slowly, trying not to make any rash sound, but as he clasped at the pencil, the large stone slipped on a bed of small pebbles and loose gravel and a chorus of scrunching and scratching echoed in his ears and it sounded probably louder than it actually was but what played out in his mind had him ardently freeze, staring at the crack between the door and the planks of warped wood which acted like an unsteady bridge, jetty or wharf over a river of filth, waste and excretion, thinking to himself that each breath that he took sounded was like a clap of thunder and so he tried holding onto each breath but it didn't work because eventually he had to let go and every next breath was louder, deeper, more desperate and more addling than the one before.

Panic set in.

But he didn't run.

He reached into his pocket, crouching by the overturned rock and scribbled something on a piece of paper that was scrunched inside. He took the paper and pressed it gently to iron out the uneven edges that folded like the pages of an old textbook and when it was flat enough to slip through the crack in the door, he pushed it through.

He pinched the thin paper with both hands, his thumbs and fingers delicately pressing the far tip of the paper into the dark and holding it for a moment while he thought if this was the right thing to do or not and when he had decided that it wasn't, person behind the door snatched the paper from his gentle pinch.

Panic set in.

And he ran.

He made no bargain of silence with his stamping feet, only one of distance and he powered through every step, unabridged from stealth or secrecy.

He ran straight past the church with its heavy rusted gate chained and bolted shut and down along the rows of brothels emptying of clients and whores like an old washer spitting out the dregs of water from its last cycle and then he ran still, on past the scores of closing bars where old women with neat washcloths tied over their curled, purple hair stood with damp, bending cigarettes clinging to their yellow teeth while they hosed off the tables, chairs and floors, completely separated from the truth of their labour, staring idly into the distance, imagining something they had been watching hours before on television, when it was that the crux of this lecherousness had been consumed and then exhumed and then dried and crusted like an old scab onto the floor.

He pushed through the swarms of people stumbling down the hill towards their dawning sobriety. Most of them split their direction and spilled to the side, falling heavy on one leg, hopping and cartwheeling their way back onto two feet and shaking their fists in slurred combatant banter but with all the threat of a polite address.

He ran and ran and ran until his bounds were so high that he was no longer running for he was leaping his way down past the scourge of the city, almost splitting his chin as his rampant rising knees sprang up like a tragedy on an otherwise bad day, catching him content and unaware, hitting him hard and leaving its inevitable bruise that would leave long after his explanation failed to suffice.

At the bottom of the hill, he leaned over himself and caught his breath, gripping his hands to his hips and squeezing his stomach to drone the pain that was like an electric belt across his stomach and that coursed up his body and into his lungs.

He stood hunched over in the middle of a busy sidewalk where people rushed from one side to another, heavyset in their obligation, all seemingly pressed for time and comfort, pushing past each other and nervously stepping on one another's toes.

Nobody ever looked at the hill as they passed. They all knew it was there but they furthered to pretend it did not exist, like a friend with a crippling dependency; everyone just turned the other cheek, ignoring; in the wake of their own flight and flux, the flow of people coming down off the hill to join them in their disheartened mirth as; in the drudgery of their banal existences, they all wished away yet another day, haggling with god or the universe or secular chance for any another day to be today, bettering themselves instead to go unfed and caring only to lick at the sugared spoon.

They didn't look to their right as their paths were swept up as one with scores of men and women, spilling from the mouth into the open river of 'see nothing, say nothing', where eyes were just a dressing, like a coloured ring on an eagle's wing, for the people looked only in their beleaguered minds, thinking of places they would rather be and not noticing how the people that spilled down from the hill had changed the complexity in their eyes and that in an instant, they went from perverse defiler to red-handed reproof to finally; like a soldier's feet falling into march, to the ubiquitous blank and obnubilated, cast iron stare of a decent, abiding citizen.

They didn't see the faces of the feet that quickly found their march, moving in learned, uniformed succession. They dared not to look, should they accidentally spy on someone they trusted, on someone they knew or on someone they loved or, by looking up and catching in a shop window, themselves, in their own escaping reflection.

For the flux of degeneracy that poured from the open sewer into the river of obligated congeniality and decency was made of everyday people; brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, lovers, friends and every profession you would curse yourself to imagine.

Joao saw them all though, every one of them.

He saw how the rapists, junkies, drunks and vile torturous pigs so easily put on their morning masks and became lawyers and preachers and prayers and mothers and fathers and judges and doctors and kindergarten teachers and every single person in this entire city, in this whole wide world, every last one of them, they all had their own bastardised and vitiating hill, maybe not here but somewhere, they all had their own hill and each and every one of these decent people, they all looked scant and horribly naked under all their clothes and though their dresses of good and charity and decency and well-mannered would have their appropriate occasion, they would always be just a dress, something to put on, something to take off and something they could easily stain, but decency, holiness, caring, affection, altruism, and good tidings, they were not freckles or dimples or markings upon their skin and so, under their fancied and fashionable ideals; under their coloured and tailored, moral cloth, no amount of scouring would ever do away with the filth and decay of which they lathered and layered and wept from their sweaty pores and which was made all the more perdurable from the time they spent in wished upon days.

Seeing his bus racing down the avenue, Joao rushed across the road and knocked into The Nice Old Lady, making her knock over an empty vase that was sitting on a table that fell to the ground and smashed into a billion pieces. The Nice Old Lady gripped at the table from where the vase had just come, clutching her heart at the behest of her distress; not because her heart was weak but because it was something old ladies seemed to always do when they heard a loud band, passed another person at a corner or a dog on a leash walked up from behind them, something her elderly husband; if she had one, would shake his head at but which was something to her that seemed appropriate and fitting.

"Oh dearie me," she said.

Joao turned to help her, his eyes magnetic with apologetic care.

"Stupid idiot," she said. "Oh it's you, what is it with you kids that you're too busy to open your bloody eyes and see people who are just standing here minding their own business and its stupid idiots like you; stupid.....fucking idiots like you," she said, "who have no respect at all and are the reason this city is going downhill and....."

It was The Nice Old Lady who took his money and cursed against his favour and there was that word again; 'hill'. He had seen this old lady once before up on that hill whilst cleaning up around the church; as he did at night, with the lights off so as not to arouse the interest of the drunks and the junkies.

As she rattled on; her bottom jaw flapping like a piece of torn screen in the wind, he stared at her small angry looking face, one that; without the searing eyes, flared nose and projecting false teeth, may have looked sweet and docile but regardless, for this act, was a face that he had seen wandering around the top of the hill with a searching kind of look etched in her eyes, but not of someone who was lost but of someone who had made themselves lost, so that they could find or be found by what it was they were searching for.

"Are you looking for someone?" asked Joao.

"You nosy disrespectful little..."

"I'm sorry mam. I really am. I didn't mean to knock you I don't mean to be rude it's just I saw you the other day and it looked like you were looking for someone. Maybe I can help you. You see I live there and..."

You live there, on the hill?" she said.

"Yes mam"

"There are only ghosts on that hill. Nobody lives there" she said amidst a trickle of tears, turning away to go back into her store, hobbling slightly, but leaving her anger out on the path, away from her breast where it longed to keep but of where it did not belong.

As she shed a tear, Joao rushed to her with a small napkin that was neatly folded in his pocket.

"My husband is gone. My son is gone and my grandson is gone. All I have are ghosts" she said, taking the napkin from Joao and unfolding it to pull up to dry her eyes.

Joao stepped onto the bus and as it pulled away, he moved into an empty seat and couldn't see; behind him, through one of the stained windows, on the side of the street, just beside a light plume of smoke from the bus' exhaust; a look of shock and extolling surprise and marvel that lit in the old woman's eyes as she recognized the way the words were written on the back of the crumpled paper tissue. He didn't see at that moment how The Nice Old Lady's sadness vanquished at the sight of a ghost.

The bus pulled up in front of the café and Joao piled out of the rear, being spat out into the rat race once more, finding his feet quickly and moving out of the burgeoning flux before it took him with it somewhere annoyingly far from where he felt as if he intended to be.

There were the same faces he saw every morning and the same displeasure in being squashed and squeezed next to one another. With so much in common, it was amazing really why none of them were friends.

The Nazi and The Obese Woman didn't exchange insult on this journey but they did catch one another's lingering threat as their heads turned in constant revolve like a boatman's light.

Both entered the café with hordes more people and each shuffled their way as close as they could to the counter where two baristas looked nervously at one another, shaking their shoulders and each looking to Fatts who was busy watching outside the café at Joao who was busy looking inside the café with the eyes of a bullied child, wishing he had the courage to be useless once more and to just walk away from everything; from the café, from these people, from the hill, from the city, from life, from himself and oh so very far, from this gift he had for connecting people with their own selves, with their souls, and with their bittersweet sorrow.

"Hello," said a happy voice from behind him.

It was The Nervous Lady.

She was very giddy, almost jumping out of her shoes as she stood behind Joao waiting to show him what was in her hands.

"His name is David," she said, hinting at the small coloured fish inside the small bowl that was still and lifeless, without flurry, without flare and without swim inside the small clear bowl.

"Is he alive?' asked Joao, looking strangely at The Nervous Woman and then at the small clear bowl and the still black thing floating inside.

"Of course he is. He's just sleeping," she said, tapping at the glass vigorously in more of a poking manner than a tapping one.

"Do fish sleep?" asked Joao.

"I don't know. Do you think he's ok? I sometimes use cream on my hands because they get dry and the cream keeps them moist. My hands have to be beautiful, it's very important. And it has a perfume. It smells really nice too. But I use alcohol on my hands before I give David his food so that he doesn't get the chemicals in the water. Do you think maybe the chemicals got in the water? The alcohol, it makes my skin really dry" she said.

"I don't know. Do you have a bigger bowl? Maybe" said Joao.

"But the man at the store said he needs to have just a bit of water because he gets scared if there is a lot and he needs to go to the top to get air and if there's a lot of water then he'll get tired and sick and die. Do you think maybe there's not enough water?" she said.

"I don't know. I mean, fish, they live in the ocean and in rivers yeah? Well, there's a lot of water there. That bowl seems real small though. Maybe you could get David a bigger bowl. Does he always stay in that?" he asked.

"The man at the store put him in this bowl. He didn't tell me I needed to put it in a bigger one or I would have. Not too big. I don't have a lot of money but if he needed a bigger bowl I would get him one. Do you think he needs a bigger bowl?" she asked.

"Maybe," said Joao.

"Ok, I'll get him a bigger bowl. Are you working today? A lot of people there now. Are you making coffee?" she asked, jittery and nervous.

Joao looked tried.

"No, I don't think so, not today," he said.

"Oh, but you have to. You're real important now. Your coffee is the best in the whole city. Everyone knows that. I came all the way here from my house, just for your coffee. You can make me one though, right?"

"I'm sorry mam, I can't. I'm tired. I'm sad" said Joao.

"Please. I travelled by bus. I came a long way. I brought David to show you. The least you can do is make me a coffee. Please, I came all this way. And David?" she said.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry you came all this way, I am it's just I feel sick and I think I might go home and rest."

"No, you can't do that. I came all this way to see you, to show you, David. Here you can have him. You have to make me a coffee. I have to see my soul" she said belligerently, holding out the bowl to Joao's chest like a beggar with their silver plate.

Joao started to feel edgy. The Nervous Lady was quickly losing her calm and becoming transparently dangerous. Her fingers twitched and it looked as if the bowl she was carrying might just slip from her tremulous grasp at any second and unfortunately for David, merge with the ground below.

Her eyes looked glazed and her pupils were pulsing erratically. As she stared behind his reason and excuse, looking for some truth to harass or with which to bargain, Joao saw a thin red line; jagged, like a bolt of lightning, stretch across the white of her eye and cast a yellow stain in the corner while her grinding teeth only barely succeeded in keeping her trembling bottom lip quiet and restrained.

"I'll pay anything," she said.

Those words; so desperate and detaching.

Would this make him a devil?

"You should get some rest mam. Do you have someone who can collect you, take you home, look after you?"

The Nervous Lady let go of the bowl. The earth invited the glass to smash into a billion tiny fragments that scattered about Joao's feet and swept down the road while David; who had apparently been sleeping and was not yet dead, flipped and flapped on the ground once or twice or fifty times before he eventually stuttered then stopped and looked less like a dying fish and more like a small piece of black tar pushing up from the sidewalk.

"I have no one. There is no one for me, no one, except my soul and you have it. You have it in your hands. You took it from me. Give it back. Let me see it, please, just a sip, you can keep it if you want, it's ok, I don't really want it back. I just want to see it, just one fix, please" she screamed.

Joao panicked.

The Nervous Lady screamed.

The scores of people pushing, shoving and fighting inside the café and the hundreds outside all turned in their direction and their cursing and yelling then, less than subsided; it stopped altogether; dead, like David the unfortunate fish.

"I don't have your soul mam. It's just coffee" said Joao, holding his hands defensively in front of his face.

"You did something, you took it from me; that day and you turned it around and you showed it to me, you put bits of it in my coffee but you kept the rest for yourself and I tried to see it myself, like you showed it to me, but I couldn't find it. It's not there anymore. You took it out of me. I want it back. No, you can keep it, it's ok, I don't wanna live with it. I just wanna see it. I'll give it to you forever, you can keep it if you want, just if you show it to me again, just once more, please" she screamed, rushing with her hands arched to pit around his neck.

Joao knocked her hands away and ran and as he did, the scores of people inside the café and the hundreds pushing and shoving along the sidewalk ran at first, with him, then; when he picked up his pace, they ran after him; calling his name laudably, each making their call more prominent and throwing their voices with more gusto as they jostled for space, throwing their elbows and nudging their shoulders, knocking over whoever may pardon to fall and clawing at the backs and sides of those that wouldn't, edging to get closer to their idol, the provider of the window to their souls, the dealer of their heavenly ideal.

They all yelled, each and every one of them, thinking that Joao would recognize their voice especially, amidst the taunts and screaming from hundreds of desperate and addled followers, each saying the word Joao more personable, more caring and more understanding than the last.

Joao ran and he didn't stop, not for his falling lungs or his elastic legs. He ran until he was so far from where he started that he had no real idea of where he was.

He was somewhere downtown, on a street, he didn't know that was off many streets he had never heard of or seen before. He crouched behind a large skip bin that was placed crudely over a curb near a construction site that was heavily boarded and while he crouched, he listened to his heart exploding in his chest, thinking he had never felt as scared as this in the whole of his life.

The ordinary and mundane had never been as appealing to him as it was right now; cleaning a floor, opening a can of vegetables, peeling the sticker off of the tomato sauce bottle, sweeping vomit, tucking his father into bed, watching the television or combing his hair, anything at all was what he would rather be doing and anywhere but here was where he wished he could be.

He looked quickly to his left and to his right but the street he was on was a desert of commotion. There was an old stray dog sitting by a bench seat across the road and he was scratching with his hind leg behind his ear and flapping his tail up and down against the ground as he did. The dog had a pained expression as if the attendance to its itch with his digging and scratching claws might be incredibly galling or insatiably good, it was hard to tell really whether it was enjoying it or not.

Joao watched the dog and cast his stare on the shrub beside that grew unbaited from a hole in a red wall that stood erect behind the scratching dog. There wasn't a lot of shrubs as the hole wasn't that large but it did look like the arm of a tree had pushed straight through the bricks to find itself some sun and Joao trained his eyes on the waving green that was picked on gently by the light breeze and he imagined; as he had done constantly of late, the small green shrub being parted lightly by the hand of a girl.

But as he stared out across the road, his mind felt funny and as he thought; as he had become so accustomed to, of a delicate hand parting the leaves but when the brush was cast aside, he saw his own face looking back. The hand was not his but his face was there. It was far from the opening and there was a rope around his neck keeping him hanging from a branch that was off at a height somewhere that he couldn't see.

The dog stopped scratching and skipped gingerly across the road, stopping by Joao for a second to sniff his hands and to look him in the eye before pitter pattering away into the construction site behind, slipping through some loose panels and disappearing amidst the sprawl of rubble and flapping tarpaulin.

Joao followed, looking quickly behind as he darted to the fence and peeled back the broken panels so as to squeeze his skinny frame through. He took one last look at the deserted street before letting loose of the panels that jumped from his hands and swung like a pendulum in a heavy scraping swish before the two pieces came to a rest, one sliding over the other and both making invisible, the entrance behind the fence.

The bricks crumbled and crushed under his feet and though he tried to make a secret of his pass behind the broken panels, he could do little to dampen the sound that invited cautious ears to his arrival.

The ground was hidden under a loose mount of rubble, broken bricks and half mounted walls that teetered on edge of collapse, moored by thick metal tubes, wires, and piping that ran between the brickwork and pressed deep into the ground.

Joao made every step a tentative one, feeling the tip of his foot touch the bricks before the rest of his body followed. The tarpaulin tickled as it flapped under the course of the wind, its sharp corners lightly whipping the back of his neck while above him, the rest of the sheet pushed in and out as if it were breathing, being pushed down upon by the lightly blowing breeze.

And as he walked through a plastic sheeting that covered an entry into the building, the light vanished almost entirely and he stepped forwards, blind and calling quietly to the dog that was sitting way off in the distance, in a dark part of the building in which he could not see, sitting and watching as Joao patted at the darkness with his wavering hand, whispering a coming command to the dog to which sat, waited and watched, alongside its master.

#  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Do you believe in God's plan?" spoke the voice of a man, leaning down in the further dark and patting the small dog that sat beside him which lifted its snout high so that the man's massive fingers and coarse nails could scratch against his skin in a fashion that his own could not.

Joao knew the voice immediately.

It was loud and booming, like the sound of rolling thunder, muted by the guarding of hands, clasped over frightened ears.

"Come here son, let me show you something."

The man stepped out from the retreat of shadows with the dog tailing by his feet. He swept the fearful Joao up in his arms and rested his assuring hand on the boy's shoulder in a way that maybe his father might have done had he ever assumed the rank of good man or half decent father. Regardless, it took some of the paint off his red hand and he walked with The 13th Apostle into the construction.

"You see this here," he said, waving his arm around to point out an empty part of the site. "This is going to seat twenty thousand people and outside, we're building a space with enough standing room for fifty thousand more. That will make us the biggest church in the known world, in God's world. That's his plan, to set his stage for the Lord's return and the apocalypse and you can be a part of that Joao" said The 13th Apostle.

'The apocalypse?"

"In building that stage."

The 13th Apostle turned and held his two great hands-on Joao's shoulder and the warmth that exuded from him filled Joao with a kindly confidence that made him swell with intrigue. The Apostle looked him in the eye without discipline, without disappointment, and without disregard; a look that felt as foreign to him as his was to The Apostle, as he scrunched and grimaced his face in estranged appreciation.

"Are you ok son? You're not retarded, are you? Charity said you were a little strange."

"I'm sorry sir. I've been feeling really strange in the past days. Real funny and stuff. Not retarded or nothing, just kind of funny, kind of sad. Do you think people can be saved? That Jesus can save everyone?"

"Well I know he can or I wouldn't be here doing this now would I, dedicating my life to his word, singing his name and turning to him like the flowers do, the morning sun. Do you have a question in your faith?"

"No, sir. I love Jesus. I just wonder... why he loves us, you know?"

The Apostle leaned down on one knee and even now as he lowered himself to the ground, he still towered over Joao, casting his shadow behind him like a fisherman's net.

"All Jesus wants is for us to pass this test. And it's never too late for any man, no matter how deep his wrong, to find Christ in his heart and be saved. That's where people like us come into the equation, Joao. It's our job to help them open their eyes. Once they have Christ in their heart, and you know this," he said adamantly, "their lives will find meaning and they can start to make better, all the hurt that they done. But Jesus, he is a patient man and he'll wait an eternity; if that's the time a man needs, he'll wait that eternity, to answer that man's prayer and when that man calls out the Lord's name, when he's down on his knees under the banner of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, when he gives his heart and soul into the hands of the son of god, when he casts off his fear, when he lays that first stone himself, you know what Jesus says?"

Joao wanted to shake his head but he stood dumbfounded.

"He says, welcome home my son. That's what he says."

Joao smiled.

"So everyone can be saved?"

"That's right."

"Everywhere? I mean, on the hill too?"

"Everyone can be saved Joao, but not everywhere. You can't strike a match in the middle of a hurricane. You gotta hold onto that match until the storm passes and then you can do what needs to be done. That hill, it's not part of God's plan. Nobody on that hill wants to be saved; you gotta get em when they come down. Here is the only place we can save them" said The 13th Apostle.

"My daddy, he drinks a lot; a lot more than he did, since we moved onto the hill."

"Is he violent? Is he out of control?"

"I don't know. I don't see him much anymore. He's out most of the night and he's drunk and asleep when I get up in the morning. I just clean up a bit before I leave. I think he's real sad. He wanted to be like you and Jesus. He wanted to be a good man, to be famous."

"And what about you Joao? What do you want?"

"I want to matter," he said.

"You matter to someone."

"No, I don't," he said.

"You matter to your mother and father, your family, you matter to them."

"They're mean, all of them. I'm no use on the farm and here, I can't do anything right. My daddy drinks and he's using drugs and I can't stop him. And I think he might be seeing a girl, from one of the bars."

"You sit in the desert too long and you're gonna thirst."

"I think about dying sometimes."

Joao wept as The 13th Apostle took his great arms and pulled Joao close to his chest with such force that it felt as he if might squeeze all of the sadness and disbelief from his pores like an old and worn sponge.

"What if I told you that Jesus has a plan for you? What if this is your plan?" said The 13th Apostle.

Joao didn't respond. His tears spoke of his despondency. The Apostle squeezed him tighter, pressing his firm hand against the back of Joao's head, almost smothering him as he wept against him cathartically.

"Your coffee," said The 13th Apostle, pausing slightly so Joao could silence the flight of his sniffling and tears, "how do you do what you do?" he asked.

Joao gripped The Apostle's waist and pulled his head away from his chest. His nose was running horribly and there was a long wet stream along The Apostle's chest but The Apostle didn't seem to care. Joao wiped away the hanging snot from his nose and sniffed heavily of what beckoned to follow from his wiping hand.

"I close my eyes and I just imagine stuff. I see stuff. I feel stuff" said Joao.

"Don't be modest Joao. That's not just stuff that you see, is it? It's the truth. You see the truth in people and you show it to them. I've been asking around. There's a lot of people talking about you, about what you do. They're calling you a witch" said The 13 Apostle in an indicting manner with his words ejected short and sharp like a pointing finger.

"I'm not a witch," said Joao, "it's just coffee," he said desperately as he had to The Nervous Lady, unsure why people were reacting as they were. "Why can't people just see that? It's just coffee."

"That's not entirely true now, is it? I've had your coffee and it's not just coffee, in fact, it's not like anything else. It doesn't taste like any coffee I've had before and trust me, I've tried everything" he said with a lizard's lick of his tongue.

"I swear, I'm not a witch. I'm just me. Am I in trouble?" he asked worriedly.

"No Joao, you are not and I don't think you're a witch. I don't believe in witches or fairies or wizards or goblins but I do believe in the light of our Lord and I believe that he's shining his light through you and I believe that we need to point that light onto the right stage" said The 13th Apostle.

"You want me to make you a coffee?"

"Me? No, not just me. My congregation. The city. The world" said The Apostle, lifting himself; like an inspiring emperor to a spiring stance as his chest heaved and his arms stretched out wide with his palms curled and rising upwards as if some great invisible weight were being held in his hands and kept from crushing the world below and he didn't speak his words, he expulsed them out as the heavens would a thunderbolt or a mother would, her newborn child.

"I don't know if I can," said Joao.

"Of course you can my boy. Jesus chose you for a reason. Those people on the hill, the ones that cannot be saved, the ones that cannot find their way down; with your light shining on my stage, they will find their way and together, we can save them" said The 13th Apostle, falling once again to one knee and resting a kind and gentle hand on Joao's shoulder, speaking in a softened, congealing tone, less like a mongering emperor and more like the consoling and assuring father speaking without threat in his voice; finding a better approach.

"What if it's not good for them?"

"You've seen how the people react. How could it be anything but?"

"I've seen them change too. They become angry and they scare me. They only offer their want and need as payment, giving me their guilt, their sadness and the bad things that will happen if I don't help them. They frighten me with their prayer and I get so sad thinking that they might do something bad if I don't listen to them if I don't answer their prayer."

"I know exactly what you mean Joao. And Jesus; he knows what you mean too. Our work is not easy, to have to attend to the prayer of many, but it is our work. We never chose this work, for it was the choice of god that we were chosen" said The 13th Apostle, inviting Joao into a spell of confusion.

"I used to pray to Jesus. At first on the farm, for him to bring rain, for him to make Mother happy, for him to make my brothers and my sisters happy and less cruel and now, for him to find my daddy cause I can't see my daddy in those eyes anymore. He's good and happy only when he uses the drugs and I pray to Jesus every day that if we can't save these people, if he can't help us build a good church, if daddy can't be famous like you then if he can only do one thing for me, if only one of my prayers can get through, I pray that he can help my daddy. Do I sound like them when I pray? Am I a beggar? Does Jesus run away like me? Is that why he doesn't answer? Is he hiding behind a fence on a deserted street, somewhere in heaven?"

"Jesus hears every prayer. He doesn't just change things. He fills your heart with love and belief, to give you the courage to change things yourself."

"But I don't think I want to change anything, not anymore. You change something; someone and they just change right back. Maybe not straight away, but they always change back and then they come back hungrier and angrier and they want you to change them again. They're like babies" said Joao.

"But this is our work; it is the nature of our trial. They will come to us hungry and weak and we will feed them and when they are fed, they will go off and starve themselves again until they can take no more and then they come back hungrier and hungrier. They can't feed themselves. They; and god, need us to portion Christ's heart, his passion, and his forgiveness."

Joao looked spent and defeated as if he had accepted there were no fight in negating his promise and use.

"There will be a place for you here, in this congregation, when it is done. Your work is here, with me" said The 13th Apostle.

"But the reason I am here is to help my daddy, with his church, with our church, on the hill."

"Nobody will ever step foot in that church. Do you understand?"

"What about my daddy, The Bishop?"

"Bishop what? What is his name? Bishop John? Bishop Vladimir? Bishop?" asked The 13th Apostle with his massive brows raised, his suspicious eyes wide with the white around his iris lighting up the room as much as when he smiled.

"The Bishop," said Joao simply.

"The Bishop, just that? The; as in, the one and only? We'll see. Bishops are a dime a dozen in my pocket. It's you though Joao, who is special, who is chosen."

Joao felt an odd sensation engage with his mind and swim through his blood, filling his veins and lifting his stare.

It was pride.

"I want to show you something. It's yours if you want it."

The 13th Apostle took Joao under the expanse of his branching arm and them; with the dog in tow, stepped around the construction and passed the men in plastic hats who hammered nails into wooden boards and passed the men in blue collared shirts, who shouted orders at the hammering men. And they passed the men in suited clothes, who read off of charts and documents and pointed their fingers and waved their hands around the site, expertising tasks of which they had no comprehension and even lesser dialect, but of whom, a stroke of their pen could re-assemble, re-arrange and re-structure so as to resemble whatever may be that the suited man might wish then to see.

They entered an area of the construction that was being plastered, painted and even furnished; a room in the back of a long hallway unto which The 13th Apostle lead the pair, pointing and smiling triumphantly.

"This can be yours, if you wish, of course, to come to the side of the lord and ruffle your feathers from his divine perch," said The 13th Apostle.

Joao stood in amazement. He had never been invited into a room of this stature with such fine belongings hanging from the walls, leaning against the backs of chairs, nestled upon such glistening tables, draping across polished wooden floors and poured into glasses of which one alone could fend off their style of poverty for an entire year.

There was so much wealth here and he felt uncomfortable, constantly vexed, thinking as if he may lean against something and it might fall to the ground and smash into pieces, that he may brush against something and the disparity from his fingertips might just leave a stain that could never be cleaned and that the room alone, seemed poorer simply with him being in it.

"Sit here," said The Apostle holding his massive hands on the back of a leather bound chair that could have kept a giant in abiding comfort and regality.

Joao sat in the chair and disappeared. His back was hunched, his head low, his hands pulled into his lap and hanging limply over the tips of his wobbly knees. The Apostle rested his hand on Joao's shoulder and lifted his head up lightly so that he caught his own reflection in the mirror in front of him.

He saw himself looking back.

Nervous.

"You belong here" whispered The Apostle in Joao's ears as he stepped away from the chair, flicking a switch on a radio that sat on a table and pardoning himself from the room.

Joao, gripping the handles of the chair dumbfoundingly and yelled out loud but not a sound at all escaped from his gaping mouth.

The radio was playing a news broadcast. The broadcaster spoke in a heavy country accent. Joao thought for a second that it might have been someone he knew but then he thought, what would be the odds of that?

He sat back into the chair and waited uncomfortably while the news played out, trying to ignore the flight in his mind by concentrating on something that was bigger than him but at no point as real as the height of his current dilemma.

He tried to casually focus on the football results as if they mattered and concern himself with the reports of a travelling psychopath kidnapping and murdering single men throughout the country.

He stared at his reflection.

He looked minuscule and almost ridiculous in this massive chair. Understandably for someone like The 13th Apostle who was so grand and marvelous and whose wavy hair was always more like a storm cloud, so high up above his head, catching his wandering, desiderate attention.

Joao took a breath and thought of Charity lifting that brush to guide him into her retreat and in his mind; as his fearful self-longed and willed her to invite him away, she; under the loosely hanging branch, pressed her finger against her lips and shushed away his concern, smiling at him infectiously so that as she lowered her arm and closed herself off to his imagination and returned him to his dreaming, heavyset stare, his temperament changed.

He put his hands firmly on the armrests and pushed out his chest and started to pose and turn his face to the mirror, blowing air into his mouth to push out his cheeks and fill his face, then making concerned and adoring expressions, imagining himself as being admired and worshipped and important and affecting and belonged.

And as he moved his body around in the chair and fed the belly of his ego, the newscaster sounding out of the radio beside him debated the effect of social conditioning with a well-credentialed psychiatrist who believed entirely that this type of sexually violent, predacious serial murderer was an extension of the sensuality of a moralized conditional society and that the good moral people were watching; in scathing audacity, nothing more than the starved and weakened lioness mauling on a stray calf and; though in apparent debate, the broadcaster ummed and aahed in a manner that assumed he was shaking his head in feigned and mythical understanding so as not to pepper his sweet presentation with a less than knowledgeable defense of his listeners who took to his voice as the truth because after all, it was spoken from the radio, just as the truth could also be found written in a book.

The broadcaster wanted to baste the profile of the serial killer as some kind of immoral beast that could be wrestled into submission, of whom wore scars and markings and of whose existence was but a trial of humanity's growing condition in a world beset upon by the devil's ideals and moral findings.

He used the words monster and devil, and used adjectives like lone and forsaken and immoral and ungodly and decrepit and he made his case that even though this killer was the effect of god not being in every home, he willed his listeners to calm in knowing that this monster was not in every home for it was a monster and not a man, whereas the psychiatrist wanted to paint that every man is a monster and has yet to hunger enough to stumble upon his wandering calf.

Then; as the radio fizzled with scathing debate, a golden handle lightly clicked as it slowly turned and the door pushed open.

Startled, Joao blew out the air in his expanding cheeks and sat upright in the chair, looking down at his hands once again pressed between in skinny legs and then, sheepishly tilting his head to the left to see a beautiful woman; a seductress, dressed scantily in black, lace bra, panties and suspenders and carrying in her hand, an empty, black porcelain cup with the word Jesus painted in white along one side, the side that faced him as he sat in stupefied wonder and adamant fear, feeling every bit like the calf as the starving lioness preyed upon him, dressed in fleeting lingerie and feathered stilettos with every sound of her heels clapping against the floor feeling like conscious nails, hammering into his mind and keeping him stupendously still; his pounding heart sounding out his jittery arousal.

The door behind The Seductress pulled shut and a lock turned as Joao's reflection and his escaping sight was confounded with a woman's near perfect, naked body.

Joao tried to look away but when he tilted or turned his head, the woman touched; ever so gently, her long fingers against the tilt of his head and leaned his eyes towards hers where she cast a spell on him that had him willing his sight back to his wobbly knees where maybe he could imagine mundane and ordinary thoughts in his mind to further himself from the fervor that boiled in his blood, pounded in his mind and swelled in places that had him horrifically uncomfortable and terribly embarrassed.

The Seductress lowered her widened hungry and salivating eyes to the affrighted retreat of her prey; the weak and forborne calf, clinging to the fine black leather with his nails outstretched scratching at the arms of the chair.

She leaned her hands onto his so that he couldn't escape and brought her face down to his shoulders so that her fringe swished against his eyelids and then his nose, tickling his reason as she exhaled her warm and insatiably irreligious breath at the base of his ear so that it trickled down his neck and shivered at his spine, ordering the tiny white hairs that lay on his lower back into rising attention.

"If I show you my body, will you show me my soul?" she whispered into his ear, so soft and sensual, biting down with her teeth; gentle but firm on the edge of his ear and purging a sigh of wanting stress across his quaking lips as one of her hands reached down to his legs, pulled his clamped and clammy hands from between them and slid her own considerate touch along the inside of his quaking thigh.

'How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?" she sang in his ear and it felt as if her voice were like smoke, entering his body and wrapping itself around the tiny fight left in his soul, defusing the last remnant of logic and reason in his mind.

He looked past The Seductress or at least tried to, tilting his head away from her bulging bust and her swishing hair, catching an inch of the mirror in front where he caught a reflection behind, something calming and escaping; the sight of a welcomed hand, opening a passage to his desertion.

The Seductress pinned her muscular legs tight, straddling Joao so that he couldn't move, even if he managed the will to do so. In her mouth, she bit on the handle to the cup, holding it in her teeth. The word Jesus ran out of her mouth like some salivating and scandalous tongue, folding over her mouth and running down where her chin might have been, hidden behind the turn of the porcelain cup.

Joao was without word and without definition.

He felt entirely strange as though he were engorging with shame that could explode at any moment. He tried thinking of Jesus but as he did, he was reminded of the licking tongue of this harlot who sat perched upon his body like a vulture upon a tiny infant's withering carcass and it excited him in a fearing and powerless kind of way.

He tried to think of Mother, the great, gargantuan insulter, she whose abrasive regard could confuse sandpaper for a sponge in how she caressed the need in one's heart and soul.

He imagined her sitting on the wooden bench with the hot afternoon breeze swishing at her floral dress of which fluttered in the gusting wind as she fought in a reserved and educated, womanly manner to pin to her knees with her axe man's hands. Her skin drank of the hot sun like air into a vacuum and from her pores; she sweated her hope, resilience, and consternation into the life that she tried to mend; the seeds beneath the dried earth and her children who stamped about upon it.

As he imagined her sitting there looking at him all weathered, worn and emotionally droughted; as she did in her only photo, he felt again an uncomfortable and shameful warmth engorge in his loins as outside of his delusion, The Seductress slid her body tight and warming against his, pressing her lips against his ear, her hot breath running down his neck like hot wax from a dripping candle as her silken whisper crept into his mind and pulled apart the image of his mother, pixel by pixel, until her body exploded into a billion particles of dust and vanished from his conscious sight, leaving only The Seductress; in her black lingerie, occupying his every fright, clasping the cup in her teeth and undoing the straps to her bra with her free hands while her raping eyes kept him prostrated and conceding.

. "Show me, my soul, I'll pay any price. You can do whatever you want to me. Anything you want. Anything at all. I won't tell" she said, pausing between her tease to speak and then, making good her promise, taking his clammy hands and pressing them against her breasts as if they were some garment.

Joao closed his eyes and tried to disengage the senses on his fingertips that were burning and tickling against The Seductress' breasts and making him feel as if he were committing a wrong. He tried to think of anything that would help him to disengage.

He thought of his father, standing in front of him with his disappointed smirk; where his brow furrowed, his bottom lip rose up till it wet the tip of his nose, the nostrils on his nose flared inwards almost closing entirely and his left hand pinned a black leather bag to his shoulder while his right hand pulled from his pocket with what might just become a lecturing hand and he expected his father; the surveyor of truth and example, to be usual in his disinfecting emotional resonance, washing Joao clean of his partiality and impurity and returning him to a disheveled but accepting zeroed state.

As he felt The Seductress writhing over his cowardice, he watched in dissention as his father smiled and took from his pocket, a pair of women's panties, like the pair he had folded when he left his house this morning.

The Bishop; in his delusion, still with one hand clasping his black leather bag to his shoulder, smiled deviously as he took the panties in his right hand and pressed them against his face, inhaling prophetically while choking black smoke swirled around him which turned to roasting flames and then the image of his father vanished and when the flames receded, he was left again, a victim of the harlot on his lap, using his hands like a divine and lustrating scrubbing brush, all over her sinful body.

"Stop" screamed Joao, his voice crackling as his parched throat fought to turn this weaken vice in his stomach into a visceral retaliation, using every last inch of his defending reserves to invert his repression into striking everyone and anyone within an earshot of his chastising, oral fist.

The Seductress stopped, unfastened her prowling stare and let go of his hands so that they dropped heavily and slapped against his tensing legs. The cup in her teeth fell from her mouth and bounced off of Joao's body and smashed to pieces on the floor, along with the will of her seduction.

'What the fuck wrong with you? Whatever" she said as she covered her breasts with one hand as if she had just broken from some trance and was akin to the disrepute of her self-esteem, seeing the wrong in the reflection of her doing.

"Apostle, hey Apostle" she screamed.

The lock on the door clicked and the handle turned and the great man himself walked into the room with a less than concerned look in his eye.

He was smiling with his arms wide and embracing.

"Did he resist?" The 13th Apostle asked Joao and The Seductress who stepped passed The Apostle, gently brushing her open palm against his heaving chest, closing her eyes just enough so that her eyes just peered through the luster of her long black lashes, looking upwards at The Apostle in a sexing glare.

"Do I look satisfied?" she said, leaving the room with her hand still draped across her breasts.

The Apostle watched her leaving the room with a degenerate and hungered groan expelling from the pit of his belly as the door slammed shut behind her.

Joao looked every bit the trembling calf that had just been picked from the gnashing jaws of a lioness. He was shaking and breathing fast, overcome by a tidal wave of unfamiliar, toxic emotions.

He looked up and saw The 13th Apostle standing behind him about to lay his massive hands on his shoulder consolingly and beside him; he saw the small dog sitting politely on its rump looking at him with the same look he just gave himself as if to say, "I've known; in times past, how you feel."

"Our closeness to the lord should take us no further from the wrongs that make us human, that define our religious corroboration. Every man has in him the abundant will to accomplish many things and our desires and our depressions, they are the triggers unto which the devil sets about his traps. Even Jesus felt the thirst of temptation, for the flesh is does weaken; it suffocates the soul, so much that sometimes most people forget that the soul is even there. They get so caught up in their skin, in the packaging; painting it and making it sparkle, that they forget the reason for it, that their body is a package, it is a parcel, it is a gift from God. And they forget to look inside; to see themselves, to see their spirit, to see their purity, to see their Christian heart. Their sciences try to prove that it doesn't exist at all so they can keep this swill and swell of desire and depression at the fingertips of each Christian, to lure them, away from the embrace of Jesus Christ and smooth their depressions with saturnine delight" said The 13th Apostle.

Joao shook his head in ignorant acceptance as if every word were from his own tongue.

"I didn't understand the first word, corroborator or something. I'm sorry" he said, looking frightfully confused, no longer nodding in concordance, and feeling like a donkey in horse's shoes.

The 13th Apostle smiled generously and squeezed his hands tight over Joao's shoulders, pressing his fingers firmly between the linkages of his bones, his hands almost tearing through the boy's skin like a claw hammer through butter.

"You are a pure Christian heart. This is what I dressed in my message. Forgive me my Joao, sometimes I get carried away by my own words, forgetting that they are just that, just sounds and its rude of me, rude and uneducated, to use words that you wouldn't know. It doesn't make me any smarter than you are in your misunderstanding. This was a test and I'm sorry you had to endure this but to serve the Lord; we must accept that his will is for us to love and to suffer so that others may be led by our lightened hand towards the pastures of heaven. Let me show you something" said The 13th Apostle, lifting his weighty hands and guiding Joao out of the illustrious room, back through the construction where men signed papers and checked boxes while other men coursed their voices hoarse and crackly, inspiring through threat, the other men, who worked tired and laboring with their tools beating against wooden boards, picking splinters from their skin, wiping large beads of sweat from their brows and clearing phlegm from their throats, casting out large clumps of their swallowed pride; enveloped in dust, dirt and intimidation.

The 13th Apostle guided Joao through a series of rooms, one being a massive auditorium, so big it looked like they could build a city inside.

"This will be the new center of evangelism in the world. When this is finished, it will house over one hundred thousand people in every cult service. A place without war, where Christians from all over the world can migrate and join their hands as one, to finally worship Jesus Christ away from the tyranny of political injustice, away from the fear of bullets, away from corruption and away from the speck of false idols; a new Jerusalem, just for Christians" said The 13 Apostle, looking proud and almost coming to a tear as he looked around the massive auditorium, speaking in prolific zest and imagining the extent of his work and belief, living, breathing and praying before his eyes.

Joao felt magnificent and insignificant in the same breath, under the wing of The Apostle, imagining as he imagined thinking only that The Bishop would so love to experience what he was now experiencing and that he couldn't wait to tell him where he was and what he had seen.

"You see that large cage over there?" said The 13 Apostle, pointing to the back of the auditorium where a large metal cage stepped out from the wall and stood all the way to the rooftop above.

"That's where we record, edit and send the word of god around the world. This will be the largest functional studio in the city, bigger than the TV studios" The Apostle said.

Joao's eyes were wide and impressing.

"But it doesn't come cheap, Joao. The work we are doing here, to rebuild the temple of Jesus Christ, it ain't cheap. We've made an emotional plea to our disciples, making it easy for them to donate to the building of the church and being a part of something so grand and universally important. But it's not enough Joao. We still need another eleven million dollars to finish the works and I can only do so much and that's where I need you, Jesus needs you´" said The Apostle.

Joao felt a great imaginary weight collapse upon his shoulders.

"What can I do? I am poor. I have no money" he said.

"You're coffee," said The 13th Apostle, grinning so that his lips peeled back over his massive white teeth, lighting up the room and the will to favour in the young boy.

The 13th Apostle took Joao again out of the auditorium and into a smaller room, passing many more that looked like an endless cavern of hallways that opened into large open areas, kitchens, bathrooms, small closets, and many, many, many rooms.

They entered a small room at the rear of the complex. It was shabby, with poorly laid carpet that was pulled up and fraying on all the edges, no window and no circulation whatsoever with a small table on one side with a small computer; nothing flashy, just something old and functional and a gallon of water sitting open and collecting dust in the corner.

"This is my room," said The 13th Apostle, "this is where I spend all of my days, thinking and praying. I don't have riches. I don't have plush seats and big screen televisions. All of that; the comfort, I give for my disciples and for the millions of Christians in this world who need this. I have my work and my dedication to Christ. It's not easy work, but it is my life and my love, it is my passion. People like us Joao, we are not meant to be comfortable in what we do. Our work is to save souls and sometimes we have to give a little more and for us, to take a little less for us to be able to do our jobs. What did you want to be when you were a boy?" asked The 13th Apostle.

"Useful," said Joao, thinking only in his mind of having spent the whole of his youth watching how his life should have or could have been from the retreat of a broken window or a loose slat, hidden from the haggard expense of his busied and burdened family.

"I wanted to be a race car driver," said The 13th Apostle.

The Apostle lifted his head lightly towards where the horizon might be sitting were they outside of these walls, flickered his left nostril like a hungered rabbit and feigned a light tear to almost look as if it might well in his eye and run down his cheek.

He cleared an imaginary lump in his throat and lifted his left palm into the air as if he were setting the stage for a burden to lift itself with heavenly wings and fly free from the weighing repression of his silencing obligation.

The two men stared pensively at the small table pushed against the wall and the small metal seat folded against it. Joao wondered how a man so big could sit at something so small.

"What we want or what we wish of ourselves is not always what God intends. But we must listen to his word and make best our promise to serve. Jesus is calling you now. Do you hear his word?" he asked.

"I think so, maybe. What is he saying?" said Joao.

"He wants you to help him, to build his temple, to send his message to the people," said The Apostle.

"He wants me to pray, to lead a service' asked Joao meekly.

"He wants you to make coffee," said The Apostle.

Joao inhaled deeply as if trying to extinguish a fire in his belly, one set alight by his faith.

"For who?" he asked, feeling as if he had no choice.

The Apostle smiled generously again, this time to himself, keeping one of his hands clamped onto Joao's shoulder, squeezing firmly and pushing the boy downwards in a strange and upsetting kind of dominating condolence.

"Let us put to test, the gift that God has given you," The 13th Apostle said, turning to Joao and taking his small, feeble hand in a firm, crushing grasp, almost swinging the boy like an empty bucket as he shook firm and with winning vigour.

As The Apostle's hand enveloped his own, Joao sank into the nightmare of his doubts and fears and saw in his mind and felt against the smoothness of his skin, the coarse abrasion of The Apostle's bitter struggle. As the prodigious man; in personality, stature and size, stood before him with the crooked corners of his mouth almost touching his dangly ears and his white teeth glimmering in the dull light of the small office, Joao thought only of the handshake this man had made with an impervious dark figure.

"Is the devil real?" asked Joao.

"He most surely is," said The Apostle, "he is as real as you and I. Does that frighten you?" he asked.

"Yes, it does," said Joao.

The Apostle pulled Joao close to his chest.

"My son you have nothing to fear. You are in the house of God and now, you are one of his servants, one of his disciples. The devil cannot get your soul my boy, as long as it is with god, as long as it is with us, here" The Apostle said, but the only words Joao could hear in his mind were; 'any price', words that he kept hearing over and over; what anyone would do or what anyone would give for their desire.

"Grace, would you call in our guests," said The Apostle to his receptionist, almost breaking the tiny buttons on the phone with his club like finger.

Joao had a worried look embossed in his eyes. He looked like he was willing himself to run, but that he was outside of his own body, unable to enact his will; defenseless, submitting, servile.

"What did you see?" asked The 13th Apostle.

"What?" said Joao, as if pulled from suspicion.

"When you made my coffee. What did you see?"

An image flashed before him, one that set a storm of impassable dread in his mind that had him feel isolated and his protest, censured. He didn't know what to say; that he had seen him, a man of God, The 13th Apostle, shaking hands with the devil? And that this man had promised to collect the soul of every man, woman, and child as the any price that he was willing pay.

In his mind, this image lit up by flashes of lightning from the coming storm and the coming together of the two hands in concordance was met with the clapping of heavenly thunder, sounding out in dissention for what had just become.

What would he say?

"My apologies sir, your guests are here" spoke a small and tidy looking woman with a simple floral dress, cheap flat heeled shoes; her hair tied in a bob and; like a stray dog, dressed with the stricken look of poverty in her apologetic eyes.

The Apostle, with his eyes fated on Joao's waiting for what truth the boy had to account for, lifted and shook his left hand, inviting the guests into the room.

"Welcome," he said to the guests, "before we discuss investment, can I offer you a coffee?"

#  CHAPTER NINETEEN

"Relax Joao. This is nothing different to what you normally do, except instead of showing them themselves, you're going to show them something else" said The 13th Apostle.

Joao wanted to run, but he couldn't voice his concern to his legs.

"How do you normally make it?" The 13th Apostle asked.

"I put my hands in the grains, I close my eyes and I see things and when I open my eyes again, it's done," Joao said.

"Well, you just do the same thing except I am going to tell you something and I want you to visualize that, I want you to see that and I want you to make them feel that, each of them, all the same," said The 13th Apostle convincingly.

"Ok," he said, wishing he had the gall to say the contrary.

Joao stared at the men and women who sat in a circle around a table, pointing their appropriated fingers at figures and statistics, shaking their heads in concurrence and abrogated disapproval. He couldn't hear what they were saying because he had The 13th Apostle hunched over his shoulder, leaning close to the side of his face and whispering into his ear.

As his fingers swam through the fine dark powder; running past and through every grain, he visualized in his mind a sea of infinite sadness that swelled within him, its currents pulling him deeper than he had ever been, so deep that he felt that the infantine breath to which he clung, might surely be his last.

Every word from The 13th Apostle's tongue sank him further and further until he was shipwrecked; weighed by such an incredible depression that spilled of him, the mount of his treasures, out into the open sea and his fingers picked at each one, placing them considerately into a filter before his reach.

Still, The 13th Apostle whispered more and more horrific truths and the more he listened and the more he imagined, the more Joao wept. He wept like he had never wept before, like no man had ever wept before and he felt as Judas must have felt, knowing the wrong he must do, for the love of his brother so that the Christian truth could avail; the sadness of becoming the true martyr of Christendom, the sacrificed lamb in Christ's heart whilst being the eternal villain in his worship of his word, to service the lesson of love and betrayal to all of humanity.

Joao felt this kind of sadness and he wept as the truth laid itself bare before his eyes, shaped by The 13th Apostle's words.

The men and women at the table; The Apostle's guests, paid no mind to the suffering played out behind them as they toiled over superficial importances; those of greater magnitude and determinable effect than the upsetting of a poor boy.

Then, as an appalling, dismal image burned in his mind; making him scream in sheer terror and disbelief, The 13th Apostle released the tense grip on his shoulder, unrigging his fingertips from between his weak bones and lifting the anchor from his bed of woe.

Joao stood still in his body but he was shaking in his mind as if his soul had broken loose of its binds and was rattling about like an old engine, held by weak and rusted spiritual screws and bolts, undone by some equivocal intention. He titled his hand and poured the boiling water over the grains and watered his surmounting grief as if from this saddened earth would flower some worth of kindness, hope, and purpose.

The 13th Apostle whispered into his ear once more as his fingers worked their way through the fine white grains and an uneasy smile became Joao, becoming quickly, a widened grin that spread warmth and sunshine through his body and it grew with more bridging joy, stretching out the grief as his arms would do every morning when he stretched out his slumber and opened his eyes like a flower's petals to kiss the morning sun.

"There, it's done," he said, retracting his hands.

The 13th Apostle smiled greedily and took the coffees over to where his guests sat in negative debate over parting with their money.

"Ladies, gentlemen, if you will. I think before we make any decisions, we should wet our lips and warm our bellies" The 13th Apostle said, handing each of his guests a cup and inviting them into a toast.

"To charity, to profit and to Jesus Christ. May our discord be, not what divides us, but what brings us together" he said, raising his cup.

His guests looked vaguely at his wavering arms and lifted their cups out of educated prudence, nothing more. And as they touched their lips against the rim of the porcelain, their perspectives changed, along with the condition of their engagement and focus and whatever decision they thought they had come to, dissipated in the measure of decision they would all uniformly make, without schismatic debate.

Joao thought about the things he had seen, the truths whispered to him and while looking at The Apostle and his guests shaking hands, he thought again of the devil, and he cried and when he snuck away, he went unnoticed for The 13th Apostle and his guests were busy undressing.

#  CHAPTER TWENTY

As he walked blindly through the winding corridors, feeling sicker with every step, he anchored his drifting attention on one of the hundreds of large televisions that draped the walls and above the passage of doorways, their screens all flickering with the same image; an overweight woman, maybe in her fifties, taking the whole of the screen as the camera zoomed in on her bulging eyes and her trembling lips, with every dimple on her face looking like a cavernous and aged, earthly fracture and every mole like a mountainous rock, purging from her converging, molten core.

Joao stood still in wonder and watched the screen just above an entry to a set of toilets. The woman on the screen was reaching for a microphone with her short stubby fingers which were twitching away, the white of her eyes widening as her crazed and hungered stare feasted upon the hands on a man in a brown suit; still off camera, reaching forwards over a crowd of rubbernecking preachers who twisted and turned their heads and their bodies to follow the line of the camera's sight.

The woman; now nattering her teeth and salivating from the corners of her stretching mouth, wrenched the microphone from the man's hands and pulled it towards her mouth as if she were a hungry bear, snatching a salmon in its flight upstream. It looked like she was about to swallow it whole as she opened up wide and thrust the microphone towards her rapacious looking expression.

"Praise Jesus," she said.

A roar ripped up through the auditorium, thousands of people, tens of thousands, scores of thousands, all chanting and cheering into the air with their hands shaking on imaginary tambourines; rattling the attention of the gods or shaking off the dusted shrill of the devil.

"Praise Jesus, thanks be to god" they shouted and sang to the air.

Joao mouthed the words himself, silent, but involved in the effect of the woman's initial plea. He stood still and dumbed but his lips spelt out every word as the crowd ascended their glory and spirit in the name of their saviour, eschewing their fears and impelling themselves; by the grace of God, from the pit of their depressions as their voices echoed through the heavens.

"Glory and thanks be to god indeed, for all of us, for this church, for our health, for this life; saddled with challenge but so worth the turning of every grain of sand, for every dessert we turn," he said shouting, "to find that single speck of gold. And it is in God that we trust but it is in Jesus that we bear our arms and we carry in our hands, belief as our weapon, that we can dig until our hands are blue and our fingers fall off, that we can dig well after we have been cursed to stop, that we never stop digging, we never stop turning the sands, because the gold that we search for, the light of this world, is not buried by the sands of time, by the desert of desperation and spiritual desiccation, it is in all of us, in our hearts, in our souls. It is our wounds that we wear as a symbol of our diligence, of our devotion. It is the cross that each and every one of us are willing to bear for the sake for our Lord, just as his was borne for everyone in this room, everyone watching at home now around the world; hello by the way to our new viewers in Myanmar," The Apostle said, lowering his zest and speaking in a more welcomed breeze before building again to a cyclonic, biblical howl. "Everyone who takes Jesus Christ as their one and only true saviour, for every other religion is an outright lie and an infernal sin, for only Jesus Christ walks with love, without violence, without vengeance, without abysmal fear, without archaic tradition, without child molestation, without robes, without mystic, without darkness enshrouding his step, without shadow, with only light, for Jesus Christ is one and only and every man, woman, and child who carries Jesus in their heart and who carries no scorn for the cuts on their hands, the sores on their feet, the disparity in their life or for the troubles that they see, no man with Jesus in his heart shall ever suffer alone; for Christ will suffer for you, for each and every one of you. The love of Christ can prove all and cure all. If you have Jesus in your heart; if you truly believe, Jesus will heal you. He will cure your cancer, he will make you walk again.... He will even bring you back from death. Jesus is that powerful. He is not a wizard. He is the son of god" yelled The Apostle, to the rousing reception of the scores of thousands of sweaty and pressed upon people in the auditorium, crammed together like thoughts in a madman's head.

Joao was immured in stagger, his mouth busy catching flies while his eyes threatened to fall out and roll along the floor. He felt hardened and inspired, hardly the feeling he had after just giving himself to what felt like a wrong bidding and leaving the suited men and women, to their drunken, carnal orgy; oiled on what dismay and debauchery he had conjured for them.

As he stood there in awe, watching the taped service, a line of people came walking through the corridors, some heading into the two toilets below the television and others standing beside Joao, with the same headlighted trance, opening their mouths as if to better their soul's antenna and consuming the emotion and passion from the service as if it were crack cocaine, their eyes glazed and their want for more, increasing with their exhilaration and spiritual infirmity.

"Jesus saved my son's life, my boy, Jesus saved him. Stand up, come here son" said the woman, ushering to a large man with a shaven head, tattoos running from the corner of his eyes, across the side of his head and running down his back somewhere under the obscenely large shirt that he wore with the word 'Gangsta' embroidered on the front and the words 'Jesus Christ, The Original' embroidered on the back.

The man stood up and took the hand of his mother, pulling it slowly towards his own brutish and emotionally anorexic face.

"Jesus touched you?" asked The 13th Apostle.

"Yes sir, Jesus touched me," said the man.

"Where did he touch you?" asked The 13th Apostle.

"In the prison sir, Jesus touched me in the prison"

"And what did you do, when he touched you, what did you do?"

"I cried, sir."

"He cried. By the grace of God, he cried. You tell everyone here, you look into that camera and you tell the world, you tell us how Jesus touched you in that prison. Don't be afraid now. We're no strangers to Jesus' touch here. We've all been touched, isn't that right?" said The 13th Apostle in frank cant, nodding his head in self-concurrence.

The man bowed his head, foundering by an exigent shame that he was carrying with in his soul and he lowered himself so that he could garnish the strength to dig his hands deeply below that Promethean rock of sufferance of which bound his soul and cast it out, into the erasure of the amnesty of the lord.

"What were you in prison for?" asked The 13th Apostle.

The man shook his head as if the truth were screwed into his soul and he was unwinding it, up and out into the light.

"It was drugs sir and on account, my wife is missing and I beat my boy, there was also that," the man said.

The 13th Apostle pressed his hand over his face and spread his fingers slightly, so his weary eyes could just been seen through the ravine on his mountainous appendage. He held the microphone close to his shaking head so the sound of disbelief expelling from his heavy heart would settle like a black cloud on their heavenly horizon and as he did, the scores of thousands standing; sweaty body to sweaty body, all puffed their faces in emotional stout and readied for a coming storm.

"Keep going, my son. What happened next?" said The 13th Apostle.

The man's mother pressed her open stubby hand against her son's back, stretching up high so she could reach; like an ant trying to lift up a cloud, holding her other hands over her flooding eyes, weeping loud and supporting as her son arrested the maniac of his normal defense and spoke instead, in the voice of the frightened child that had been willowing away somewhere beneath that bank of anger.

"You took drugs?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you hit your son?"

"Yes, sir."

"You beat our son."

"Yes, sir I did. I beat him good. I'm not proud of it either."

"So you took drugs and you beat your son and you didn't have Jesus?"

"No sir, I did not"

"And prison? What were you arrested for?"

"Homicide. The police arrested me. They said I killed my wife"

"It wasn't true" shouted the mother, "the police lied. They pick on my boy because of his past, they just lie" yelled the mother.

"Because of your past"

"Yes sir," said the man.

"Because you beat your boy?"

"Yes, sir. I beat him good. And I mean good like bad, not like good"

"And because you beat your boy, they think you killed your wife?"

"Yes, sir. They arrested me without cause. I'm not a violent man. I never done no-one a lick of violence"

"Except your boy"

"Yes, sir."

"You beat your boy."

"Beat him, good sir."

"But not violent?"

"No sir, discipline sir"

"And the police just locked you up? Did they have any evidence?"

"No, sir. Just my neighbours sir, but they're not good people"

"They're Catholics!" screamed the man's mother.

The scores of thousands of people standing sweaty back to sweaty back understood; lazy religious zealots, heaven's part-time subscribers.

"When I was in prison, I was real angry. Cause I didn't kill my wife and I fought some guys and I didn't want to see anyone."

"Not even his mother" cried his mother.

"Not even your mother?" asked The Apostle.

"Not even my mother," said The Tattooed Man.

"What changed?"

"I read the bible. There was one in my cell and I opened the first page and I started to read and I must have read sixteen pages before Jesus, he spoke to me."

"Jesus spoke to you? Oh the grace of God. And what did Jesus say? Did he answer your prayers?"

"Yes, sir he did. Jesus, he told me to keep strong and have faith. He spoke to me every night in my cell. He said if I just have faith, everything will be ok. And I didn't believe him at first. I was real scared. But then he touched me."

"And you felt different."

"I felt different sir. I believed. I prayed every day. I prayed for Jesus to show the police and everyone the truth, that I didn't hurt my wife, I loved her, I did no wrong" he said.

"And what happened?"

The man wept while his mother bawled, her head flush in her left hand while her right stapled against her son's back.

"The prosecution dropped their case. There wasn't enough evidence to convict me, that and they didn't find my wife's body so you know, no body, no crime and they had to let me go" he said smiling, looking like a doting father towards the heavens.

"They had no evidence, not a thing?"

"Nothing. Nothing to link me to killing my wife."

"Oh the grace of God. And you're a free man now?"

"Yes sir, a free man"

"Because of Jesus?"

"Because of Jesus."

"Oh the grace of God. Praise Jesus. You see, all you need is faith in Jesus Christ. And who is that beside you?"

"This is my boy," he said, patting his hands on the boy's shoulder causing him to flinch and squirm from the pain that writhed from the black and purple bruises that ran from the skin just under his collar to all the way down his back and along his lower legs.

"A Family reunited by Jesus. Jesus Christ is lord, praise Jesus" The 13th Apostle shouted. "Now let's have some music," he said cheering as at the bottom of the screen, deposit details streamed for bank accounts in thousands of cities around the world and showing the ease in making their monthly payments to The World Church.

When the song started, Joao was broken from his spell and he looked around at the people beside him, all locked in absolute, stupid wonder, like an infant unto its own reflection or a dog upon a stern request.

Joao ran.

He ran down the hallways in circles.

He ran in circles for minutes and then groups of minutes and then halves of hours until finally he found an exit and he slipped out the door and onto the street.

When he left the building, a woman handed him an easy pay booklet with twelve printed payment receipts that he could pay for at any news agency or bank and make his obligation to the church. He had never had one of these before and regardless of how he felt towards The 13th Apostle, still; receiving this payment booklet, he felt older, responsible, like an adult.

He gently pressed the booklet in half and pushed it into the pocket of his jeans, patting lightly against the bulge before walking off down the road with his reason derailed, thinking of the wrong he had done for a collector of souls.

"Am I like a devil?" he thought, stepping onto the bus.

# TWENTY ONE

As the bus sped along the streets; clipping car mirrors and sending zealous bike riders wobbling off onto sidewalks, Joao stared idly out of the window, hardly participating with his eyes at all.

His window passed a thousand sights of which; in the common trait of normality, would have swelled him to swaggering delight, ignoring in absolute monastery, the idea or consensus of keeping one's business and the perch of one's stare to themselves or ne'er near strangers.

There was a young man sitting by the foot of a women's boutique with his greasy hand outstretched begging for loose change and the open wound on his right leg pulsed as if it were a thing itself with its own heartbeat and emotional complications.

There was a sign leaning against his infected foot that was smeared with the filth from his hands and under his fingernails and it was impossible to read the extent of his plight so instead the young man, who; under a thick scruffy beard and a scabbed and blistered complexion, looked every bit an old man, drew attention to the horrible looking untreated wound on his leg that might have started out as a mosquito bite a year ago but; with enough careful inconsideration in the past however many necessary days, months and years, had become an eyesore that infected the decent passing of wandering attention, having hands reach briskly for jingling and coined empathy in disgusted appreciation for the will of god should one stray from their benevolent path or; for the new age non-believers and systematically clustered non-conformists, the rallied test of their wreckful verdure guised as that ever lingering moralizing bitch called Karma, she whose name is spoken of only vehemently and because of whom, good will is only attended to out of boding fear of her just retribution for moral dissent; she, as present, giving and apparent in good tidings as is genuine sensitivity and gentle consideration in a father's ascetic advice.

Joao didn't notice him.

He was looking at a woman with a piece of flowered cloth wrapping up her hair who stood at the front of a small hair salon where she worked or refused to leave, holding a long green hose in one hand and a partly dampened cigarette in the other, staring listlessly at Joao through the yellow smeared glass of the pausing bus, with he and his eyes, conversing with the same unmoving concern, watching the smoking woman hosing the sidewalk and the feet of passers-by who hopped and skipped like gaming children to avoid the pith of her absence, looking back over their shoulders with a 'say-nothing-do-nothing' type of facial scorn.

The bus started up again, racing through the streets with the conductor hanging out the window, his arm flapping like a one-winged pelican trying to shoo off the cars and motorbikes zipping past so that it could skip lanes and make one of many an impromptu stop.

Joao continued staring out the window as more and more people piled onto the bus until the last finite space was sated with bodies pushing against piles of other bodies, their open palms pressed against the backs of butting heads, keeping sweaty strands and clumps of hair from entering breathing mouths with a desperate semblance building into a climate of refreshing panic as the climate abounding fell stinking and warm from unwashed bodies rubbing against one another and unbrushed mouths recycling the musky, humid air; breathing short, fast and terrifically acute.

"Did you get your ticket?" one man said to another.

The other man nodded his head with the tip of his tongue trapped between his yellow teeth. He may have been suggesting something lurid and his friend acknowledged him with a laugh that had the woman beside him clench and shiver as if a fever of decency were trying to shrill of some acrid advance as the man's sticky breath molested her ears.

The bus was loud and provoking with people shouting from one end to another about football scores and bad decisions and corrupt politicians and police who don't do their job and football and violent criminals and drugs and car thieves and football and kidnappings and flooding rain and shitty traffic and football and that movie they said was good and that band that did that song and football and more football and even more football and he should have done this and he shouldn't have done that and I would have done this and I know more than you, cause I know all the names and the plane crash and the car crash and the market crash and that celebrity who threw his three-year-old daughter out of the fifteenth floor window.

"Twenty million" shouted one person.

"What would you do with that?" shouted another.

Joao didn't imagine what it would be like to have all of that money. He didn't need to. If he had all of that money, it would only get spent or at best; saved, with the worry of being spent.

The bus sped along the road and stopped for a moment outside the café. Joao was resting his head on his hands and staring blindly out of the window, seeing everything before him with not enough care or consideration to name a single one.

Caught in his lingering stare; standing at the front of a crowded café, was Fatts, a familiar imposing figure, standing with his arms folded across his massive belly. Behind him, a crowd pushed about inside the café, all stamping their feet and fists and chanting out into the air.

Fatts didn't flinch or flicker at the commotion behind him which was building into a sure incident. He simply looked quietly and without affection towards Joao, who was looking back; straight through him.

The bus pulled off down the street and after several stops, Joao calmly pressed the red button and squeezed out of the doors, feeling a shudder in his heart as his feet gave way slightly with the ground beneath him crumbling and he slipped into a small puddle of murky water.

The Nice Old Lady across the road, smoking in front of her store, laughed as Joao stumbled forwards and was saturated by a splash of water as the bus pulled away quickly. She didn't try to hide her smirk or lessen her choir. She roared as if she was sharing the funniest joke she had ever seen and as she laughed, the growing cancer in her lungs laughed with her, casting sticky and coarse phlegm into her throat so her carnivorous laugh went from that of a wretched witch's cackle to a horse's bellow to a sputtering engine, submerged at the bottom of a boggy marsh.

With a cigarette still in her hand, she pointed her convicting finger at Joao as her laughter turned to choking tears, holding her other fist against her mouth so as to catch her lungs, should they escape in the midst of this fit.

As Joao brushed the water off of his face and his pants, he turned to see scores of people; directing by the coughing old lady's pointing finger, all taking time out of their struggle, out of their pith, out of their rush, out of their disconnection, to turn and to laugh at him.

Each and every one of them all pointed their fingers just like The Nice Old Lady, inviting anyone who hadn't seen yet to turn their attention to the soaking boy and laugh as they were laughing and ache as they ached and a great deal of humour shook inside of their bellies.

Joao couldn't hear the things the people were saying as he turned and made his way up the hill towards his home. He wiped away more of the dirty water that streamed from his hair across his face and focused on every step as he walked up the hill, looking only at the lines where the slabs of concrete came together and pacing his every step so that his feet would fall either just before or just after the line, but never touching.

There was the usual trade of debauch all about him and some hookers whistled out in joyful appeal while others snarled and hurled empty cans and bottles in his direction. It was still the afternoon and they were drinking and cursing and acting like the sun had long been gone.

But Joao didn't notice. He ignored the hookers, the junkies and the dealers and just kept staring at each step and his only thought was of Charity and how he would like to sit quietly with her watching some television; 'The Carriage of My Heart', and maybe hold her hand as well.

The thought of Charity beside him quenched the turmoil that was building in his mind. It lifted him from his depression.

When he arrived home, the church was in disrepair. The table he had bought was broken into pieces and papers were scattered all over the floor. There were animal or maybe human feces in the middle of the room and the walls looked charred and blackened like someone had tried to take fire to them. It was so different from the place he had tidied in the morning and yet, it looked like he was glimpsing inside of himself.

The phone rang.

At first, it sounded like an ambulance's siren. It caused him the same alarm so he shook off his somber and picked it up.

"Hello," he said.

"Joao, it's your mother," Mother said.

Joao wanted to cry, but he couldn't.

"Hello Mother," he said.

"Where is your father? Put him on the phone" she said.

Joao looked around. He couldn't see him anywhere, only the trace of him having been here.

"He... went to get bread" he said.

"When will he be back?" asked Mother.

"Soon," said Joao lying.

The silence was uncomfortable.

Joao was not very good at lying.

"And how is the church?" she asked.

"It's great," said Joao.

"So there are a lot of people then?" she asked.

"Oh lots," said Joao, staring at a vile empty room.

"Is he back yet?" asked Mother, uncomfortably.

"The Bishop? No. Do you want me to get him to call you when he gets in?" said Joao, picking up on Mother's reason.

"No. I'll call back in one hour. Are you behaving Joao?" she asked.

"Yes mam," he said.

If she had of called a week before, he might have told her about his job and the good he was doing and how good that made him feel. He would have told her about all of the interesting people he met and about the interesting things he had learned from his friends and how he had friends and had found a way to be useful; like he always wanted like she said he would be. If only she had called a week before; but not today.

"And your father?" she said in obvious dubiosity.

Joao was silent for a second but that second spelled out an eternity. He thought of so many things he had not seen; hints of things that could have been and that shouldn't have been.

"He's good too mam. He's very busy with the church and helping a lot of people around the city. He's really important here, just like we said he would be" said Joao.

Mother hummed loud and unapproving over the phone.

"One hour Joao. I want to speak to The Bishop" she said before hanging up.

Joao hanged up the phone and plucked his fingers nervously against the corners of his eyes, wondering if he could just tear them out and stick his ears with stinging barbs. He thought of Charity again, standing before him with her hair tied back and her hands inviting him to her concern and the sound of her voice almost brought him to tear.

"Hey, you," she said.

Joao turned and saw her standing by the doorway, looking so pretty. Charity smiled and Joao smiled back. His heartbeat tremendously. He was so nervous. He was always so nervous around her, though he couldn't tell her that though; not like he needed to anyway.

"Whatchya doin?" she asked.

"I have to find The Bishop?" said Joao.

"Can I help?" asked Eve.

Joao smiled.

He looked stupid when he smiled, like a lost tourist.

"Yay," he said, realizing immediately how that must have sounded and hating himself just a little more.

"I don't know where to start," said Joao.

"I do," said Charity. "Let's go," she said, taking Joao by the hand and leading him out of the church and into a whore house called Misty's.

#  TWENTY-TWO

When Charity smiled it seemed that the world about her did just the same. Plants would rustle, dried leaves would flicker about and dance under light drifts of air and the clouds would part just so the sun would be able to catch the slightest glimpse long enough to etch her shadow on the concreted pallet below.

Joao thought about this as they walked through the entry to the whorehouse as around them, faces lit up like New Year's Eve with all smiling and fanning about her as they walked past the cashier.

Charity offered a faint wave before they walked down the darkening hallway. The music built into a deafening roar when it was that they rounded a dark, stained and sticky corner into a large bar with small tables spread about a large room with a rickety stage at one end which rocked to and fro and on it, naked women, crawling like heated felines along the stage towards drunken and drug-addled men who sat silent and pervasive in their seats, fondling themselves in the darkness and preferring to save the last of their pennies for one more drink rather than shuttling them into a girl's panties for her to do to them, what could just as easily be done by themselves.

Joao was shocked. He didn't like this place. He didn't like seeing women doing these kinds of things. It made him feel like he was doing them wrong just by being there. He felt excited, but like with The Seductress, it felt sinful.

"We should go," said Joao.

Charity smiled.

She knew he was nervous so she held his hand. This is no way made Joao's plight any less formidable; feeling her warm soft hand squeezing his, feeling the light touch of her thigh brushing against his, feeling the tips of her shoulder scratch against his, while watching four women kissing and masturbating each other on a stage while in the background; bleeding in his ears, Johnny Cash was singing about the coming apocalypse.

"He won't be here, not in a place like this," said Joao.

"There he is," said Charity, pointing and smiling with her free hand.

Joao covered his eyes, lowering his stare to the floor while they crossed the floor passing the front of the stage. He felt hands sweeping down on him but he kept his focus trained on his feet and bid his thoughts of his gargantuan mother to prohibit his curious distraction from settling on those strange naked women.

At the corner of the bar, drunken and slouched over the table with his face buried in warm ale was The Bishop. His pants were undone and either falling down or having been caught after trying to be pulled up. His face was buried in a pool of alcohol but he was still breathing. They could see by the little bubbles that built in the warm ale every time his fat belly heaved inwards and spilled back out onto his legs, past the point where his belt would normally be.

"Sir," said Joao.

He didn't respond.

Charity lifted up one of his hands and let it go. It slapped hard against the table and still, he didn't move or respond. Not even a groan.

"We'll have to carry him," said Charity.

Joao nodded and kneeled down with Charity to prop his father on his shoulder and drag him out of the club. He kept his head tied to his feet so as not to disrespect the naked women on the stage. Just because they were there, it didn't mean he had to look and it didn't mean they wanted him to look.

It was just their bitter struggle.

Still, Joao snuck one quick glimpse as they hobbled past the stage, shuffling his eyes upwards and quickly putting them back to the floor.

"I saw that," said Charity smiling.

Joao felt embarrassed.

They got The Bishop out of the club and back onto the street where the cold air coming from the late afternoon breeze and the sounds of buses' horns and racing cars and shouting pedestrians and coughing and pointing old women, roused The Bishop into a semi-conscious slur, saying something that neither Joao nor Charity could understand before venturing back into unconsciousness and eventually, being dragged back up the hill and inside the church where he was laid like a sick animal, in a ball on his bed.

"What do we do?" asked Joao.

"He's home. Just let him rest it off. He should be fine. I've seen worse" said Charity.

"But Mother is going to call. She wants to speak to him. If she doesn't, she'll be real angry. If she knows he is like this and at those kinds of places with those kinds of women...."

"Do you think I'm a bad person Joao?" Charity asked.

Joao forgot about his mother for a second.

"No, of course not. You are very kind, really kind and you do lots of good things like what you do with the lottery tickets, that's really kind. Bad people don't do things like that. Imagine if those people won" he said, wishing he could say that she was beautiful, so beautiful that when he saw her, all of the things he thought he could imagine himself saying abandoned him and all he knew of the words were that they were kind and adoring.

He wanted to tell her that he loved her.

"He's not waking up any time soon. Here, this will do" she said, taking the phone cable and tearing it from the wall.

Joao said nothing. She could do anything and he would play the ever agreeing participant.

"You're lucky Joao," she said. "You have a family."

Joao thought about all the times he was teased and hit by his siblings and the emotional disparagement of his mother and that ignorant, slapping heel of his father and he felt lucky as she had said, though he thought luck to be something that no man would ever wish upon, the picking of the wrong hand.

"Where's your family?" Joao asked.

"I never really had one, not a mum and dad like you have. I mean, yours may not be perfect, but at least you know who they are. You can find em in a bar and drag em home. You got someone to be angry at. Someone to yell at. Someone to apologise to. That's something, even if it's all you have" she said.

"I guess. But I don't really hate them. I mean, they are mean, you know? I guess all families are like that. I don't really have any friends to ask" he said.

"And what am I?" she asked angrily.

Joao wanted to say I love you; so very much.

It seemed so appropriate, so right but he couldn't. Her face was so pretty and her heart and care were so enlightening and though she gave him the will to accomplish anything, she took from him the courage to say the words that he wanted and that he needed to say.

"You're my friend. I mean like..."

Joao couldn't finish his words. His face turned redder than a tomato, painted with frustration and abashment.

"I'm just teasing," said Charity pulling on his hand.

"But do you really have no family?" asked Joao.

Charity looked sullen. She looked rare and unnamed.

"I don't really like to talk about something that is not. Know what I mean? It's like, if I don't remember who they are, maybe that's a good thing. If I forgot, like maybe I knew them when I was real young, but if I forgot, I think maybe I forgot for a reason. There's a lot of bad people out there. I guess it's good not knowing if I was made by one of them or not" she said.

"Well who do you have?" asked Joao.

"Well, I got you now, don't I?" she said squeezing herself against his arm.

Maybe now would be appropriate although Joao said nothing and missed another moment, so maybe not.

"I went by the café and you weren't there. Fatts said he saw you run like the devil was on your tail. What's wrong?" she asked.

"I don't think I wanna work there anymore," he said.

"That's a shame. You're real popular" she said.

"I think I just wanna help The Bishop. You know, help him here with the church. Maybe if I wasn't making coffee for all those people, I could have been here helping The Bishop, bringing people to the church" he said.

"Joao, you're helping those people. You don't just make coffee, you make... I don't know... reflections. God, your coffee is like a drug" she said.

"I know. And that's what I mean. What if the good I think I'm doing is actually hurting these people? They come back, at first smiling but then real desperate, real angry. I don't think they're meant to see their soul, or god would have given em a mirror. Know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I do," she said, looking down at the extent of her body.

"What's the worst thing you ever did?"

"I don't think I've done it yet," she said.

The two were quiet for a while, for a series of awkward moments.

"I like you, Joao. But I've done some stuff and I think if I told you, you wouldn't like me no more" she said.

Now is more than appropriate.

Just say it you, idiot.

Tell her you love her.

Don't say nothing.

Damnit just say you love her you fucking imbecile.

Say it.

"I don't think that's true," he said, fighting over the proper words.

(Idiot)

"You're a good friend Joao, thank you," she said, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head against his chest, weeping lightly as she felt the tips of his giving hands, press nervously against her back.

Joao held her until long after she had given into to her exhaustion and fallen asleep, gently pulling at and stroking her hair, twisting it like strands of spaghetti around his finger.

He laid her down gently on his mattress and undressed her without any predatory appetite, folding her clothes neatly on a chair beside the bed before tucking her into the blankets, clasping his eyes out of shameful respect.

As he pulled the blankets over her sleeping body with his eyes stapled shut, he couldn't have seen the long line of bruises that ran all twistingly down her arm, all black and purple and yellow and brown and he wouldn't have seen the scrapes and cuts and etches and scratches on and around her knees and he surely wouldn't have felt or seen what had been done between her thighs and as she rolled over onto her side; with his eyes still shut and his senses aborted, he most certainly didn't see the small tattoo on her back; just above the line where pink, frilly, lace panties touched her soft skin.

"I don't feel useless when I am with you. You're the only thing that matters. I'm glad I found you. I love you Charity" he whispered to her unconscious ear before lying himself on the floor, below her fallen breath.

#  TWENTY-THREE

Joao slept well that night, smiling good thoughts inside his head and stirring only once or twice to shake off the sleep in his arm so that he could scratch at the mosquito bite in the middle of his back.

He had laid his head for the first time feeling useful and not used and for the first time in days, he had managed to unhinge himself from the feeling of small purveying eyes watching him at every corner and stalking upon his every thought. It felt good to have someone to care for and it felt good to matter.

When he woke, his arm was numb again and he dragged himself up quietly so as not to disturb Charity who was asleep on the mattress above his head. He tiptoed out into the kitchen and turned on the stove to boil some water.

The church was in a horrid state, how they had left it after Charity had fallen asleep lying across his lap. He thought about her head propped on top of him and he, petting her like an injured puppy, but of course, thinking nothing of the sort.

Outside he could hear the racket of drunks and junkies stumbling about, kicking cans and picking fights, no greater threat to their own shadow than they were to anybody else but they shouted and they groaned, begging for loose change and sex and half smoked cigarettes as the sun cast shadows over the desert of their dawning sobriety.

Joao paid no mind in his childish glare for if he could not see them then they were not there. Instead, without any sense of creeping or dread, he gathered his things around the kitchen sink to prepare a coffee for Charity; one sweetened with courage that would tell her exactly how he felt about her.

He closed his eyes and took a long deep breath, holding it in his lungs a swilling it in his mind, saying Charity's name over and over while his heart beat three times singing; I, love, you.

His mind felt light and his consciousness dizzy, as if he were a mere thought away from turning on his end and spiraling out of control, beyond approach and beyond repair. He felt unsteady and uncertain, saying her name over and over in his head, wondering what he might see as her bitter struggle, wondering if he wanted to and if it was right for him to see something that she could not see herself to show him; the scars etched in her soul.

Finally, he imagined her face and the currents of his delusion settled. They stopped their violent spin until the ocean of uncertainty settled into a waking calm, like a universe spilling out from the still end of a black hole. Joao bathed in her stare as Charity; in his conscious theatre, stared back at him; neither daring to blink in case the other should not be there when they returned again.

The breath he had taken had given him the time needed and nothing more, for his fingers to gently find their way into the fine dark grains of coffee and for his mind, to find a way into the woman he loved; a portal that would take him to the most profound depths of her repressions, into the thick grimy culture of her personality, of her heart and of her soul.

The breath of air burst out of his chest and he followed with it; in his conscious theatre, into the sea of the open void in Charity's eyes, from where her universe spilled out and shone life; into the very black of her eye.

And when he gasped for air, he opened his eyes and there she stood; triste, in attendance of her own reflection.

Her breath was like the spit of a hot spring as the cold morning shivered against her bones, her sadness expelling from the pit of her belly, clouding out the image staring down at her; her true complexion, looking less than she had ever convinced herself to imagine.

And there, though her skin was white and soft and washed and scented and though there was not a mark on her entire body, her eyes welted, for in her reflection, her skin was bruised, her knees were cut and sore, her wrists were scarred with long bulbous lines of regret and recovery that ran the length of her arms; some clean and straight running from her wrist to the elbow, some angled and abutting; from one side of the street to the other and many, in their frantic scores, jagged and frenzied; along her arms, on the inside of her thighs and on the virginal skin, hidden beneath her supple breasts, away from perverting hands.

Then, as she wept, her reflection lifted its hand out of the mirror and took hers. She felt its fingers crease gently around hers and its long nails scratch against the palm of her hand and it tickled more than it irritated her.

Charity smiled.

Her reflection lifted its other arm out from its bind and took Charity's other hand and slowly stepped out of the mirror and into the cold morning air, tremoring its body briskly as it shook off the shiver that courted the fine hairs on its body and brought its wounded skin to a thousand small bumps.

The two girls stood side by side, Charity on the left and her reflection beside her, their hands locked as they stared silently into the mirror, their eyes casting on nothing but an empty pane of reflecting glass.

The reflection turned its head slowly and whispered in Charity's ear; no words, just the secretive telling of murmurs and sounds, spoken so that the accent of its innocent tenure, snuck into Charity's hardened skin and attached itself to her abjured and insentient nerves.

As their breaths left their bodies and touched upon the glass, strange shapes upon the mirror; haloed by the ghostly fog of their warm breath, came into light.

They were the imprints of hands and fingers, each coming more clear than the last before disappearing into every next clouded breath that fell upon the pane and with every print, Charity's reflection would shiver and quiver and clutch at her hand, digging its nails into her palms, crying out like child, wise enough to sense a wrong but muted into a frightened and educated silence.

Each print confessed of a hand that had touched her skin; that had dug deep into the fibres of her being and undid the small ties that kept her ligated to her soul so that the fine threads of her emotional tapestry frayed and snapped, separating her from her reflection and the tremor of warning in its touch and in its shrill and sagacious infantile verse so that; addressed in disconnection, it jingled about silently within her being, like a sailboat, cut from its moorings and drifting unattended in the open sea, eventually, shipwrecked by the rising swell of her conscious dispassion.

As another of her breaths fell upon the mirror, Charity's reflection began to speak so quietly as if in song.

"And remember when I moved in you? And the holy dove was moving too? And every breath we drew was hallelujah."

In the mirror, both Charity and her reflection preyed their eyes upon something they had both wished to have forgotten and to never need to address but in her culture; the thick sediment of her struggle in the pith of her depression, played an act that she and her reflection must accept as both having played an integral yet unfortunate part.

The act started with Charity and her repressing reflection first as a child, laying discreetly in the shadowy confines of a dank midnight cellar. Her breath was light and her eyes, transfixed on an infinitesimal fracture in the darkness, where the cellar door met the neighbouring stairs.

The unbroken light was a temporary figure of surety meaning there was no-one above the stairs, that there should be no more visitors in the coming seconds. And her eyes dared not flinch, should she miss what could have been a warning, dressed in the shadow of her father's footsteps.

Staring into the mirror, Charity grasped firmly at her reflection's hand and her reflection the same as before them, the young girl in which they had both once been was stifled and quilled as transient light was eclipsed by the epitome of unforgivable love.

The girl whimpered lightly, fearful to make any sound which would celebrate the inevitable. So accustomed was she to these nightly visits from her father that she knew any unworldly gesture would only see this misplaced affection prolonged.

She remained completely still and unemotional.

The darkness that once attained her bedside had now given way to the light she wished she were blind to. The cellar door opened, peeling back the darkness above the stairs and an imperious figure appeared, completely blackened in the wake of the daylight pursuing.

It was a man, her father.

His musky scent was unmistakable.

It was her father, appearing anything but vestal, making his way down the staircase on another of his nightly conquests to relinquish her innocence and trust. Love was what he called it, a duty he commanded of her that he said was her obligation to the only man who loved her in the way that only god understood.

"You remind me so much of your mother" he would say. "You have her eyes, her gentle touch, and her forgiving heart. She would be so proud of you."

He would say these things as if they should offer some reassurance for what would become another torturous memory, another emotional scar; another black spot on her subconscious; as if she should somehow be comforted into accepting that this sacred violation was normal.

"I love you" he whispered as he removed his belt and laid a cruel hand on the girl's trembling thigh.

Charity and her reflection; gazing into their repression, cast an itinerant sigh that seemed to travel neither here nor there. Instead it lingered before them, echoing their discontent to none but themselves and as the image of the young girl vanished with one of her escaping tears, the two stood with their arms locked and their fingers entwined, closer than they had ever been; knowing that it was at this moment, such a long time ago, when they had first stopped speaking to one another.

Charity and her reflection took a moment to brave one another before an image in the mirror had that moment adjourned and in the second act, the girl appeared once more, though older; in adolescence, but still far too young for these fictitious definitions.

She was in a room that could only be described as squalid, with men twice her age, six men to be exact, all with emaciated appearance. Her half-naked body was slumped on a sofa, seated between three men, leering over her exposed breasts. Her right arm was bound in a tourniquet and in front of her, one of the men, being approximately five feet ten in height, grossly underweight, and having an uncanny resemblance to her father, was hunched over a blackened spoon with a dirty syringe, preparing a cocktail of drugs.

In the grimy spoon lay a concoction of heroin, crystal meth, and cocaine. Into this the man squirted eighty units of water, lifting the spoon and holding a flame to it, dissolving the powder into a milky white fluid. He dropped a filthy cigarette butt into the solution to act as a filter even though the carcinogens present would have done more harm than good.

The man resembling her father then took the worn syringe and drew back the fluid until there were forty units pushing up a tiny point of air towards the tip of the needle. He lifted the needle to the horizon and gradually pulled back on the plunger, flicking the syringe with his index finger as he gradually moved the plunger towards the heavens, removing any residue of air from the liquid.

The man gave the syringe one last invigorative flick and turned to the girl whose body had become a mantelpiece of sweaty, cumbersome hands.

There was not a sign of emotion on her face at all. Her eyes were irreflective and stared in abiding neglect out into an adjacent room where a running tap dripped water homogeneously into an underlying sink. One of the three men fondling her positioned himself to her right, steadying her bruised arm as the other two men elatedly remove her panties and continue the only display of affection she had ever known.

The girl whispered silently, a rhyme that time and time again remained caught in the chambers of her mind. The words seemed to trip over one another as they fell from her tongue.

"There goes that girl over there, whose not really here as she is over there. Unbound and unknowing, unwilling to care, mute to your calling and blind to your stare. See her you will and by that, you will swear, that the girl over here is the girl over there."

The father figure leaned over her body, pushing his whole weight on her right leg and aligned the syringe with her exposed sinking vein. He pushed the needle vigorously through her flesh and the sting provided her with a familiar sensation of being alive; pain being the only feeling kinder than love.

The man drew back on the syringe, filling the milky solution with explosions of dark blood and upon seeing the mix of colour, immediately forced the solution into the girl's vein.

Her mouth palpitated for a brief moment as the liquid soared through her veins, accelerated by her failing heart. The taste of the drug-coated the back of her dry aching throat. She swallowed several times, savouring the evidence before escaping once more with her eyes never straying from the tapping of tiny droplets of water, escaping from the clutches of man to join its brethren in the search for the open sea.

The girl caught sight of one drop perched in midair and before it departed the obscenity of this passing sight, she cast out her soul in a single tear so that it would not have to remember, what she willed it to forget.

Charity let go of her smile and her distant stare and she cried; still holding tightly to her reflection's grasp and grasping the thin air with her other free hand but her skin no longer felt tough, her nerves no longer felt dead.

She no longer felt strong and fighting.

She felt scared.

She felt less alone.

She felt safe enough, to cry.

And as the tears rolled from her eyes, her salted struggle wetting her broken and blistered, acrid lips, the markings of all those men and women, stained upon her body; from her ankles, all the way up her legs and between her thighs, branded on her buttocks and her breasts, around her wrists and around her throat and so that they covered her eyes.

Her body was a temple of another's touch; greasy marks all over her soft white skin, looking less like the girl that she sold to herself and more of the girl that she sold for the barest of prices.

As she cried, her body stained more and more. The cuts and scratches and scars and scabs and bumps and lumps that she had painted with an avoiding eye; the debris of her repression, all became clear and stinging and they glistened as the morning light touched upon her streaming tears.

And she cried more and more; still clinging to her reflection that was now losing all of its wounds to the girl who clung desperately to her soul's forgiving touch. And when she cast her final tear, her reflection let go of her hand and turned to her.

Charity looked helpless. Her body was hurting and she felt abandoned; without her tough skin and her defenses to keep her far from the chill of her own guilty acclaim.

Her reflection touched the side of her face, looking her long in the eye and though hers were heavy and slated with truth and burden, her reflection's were not. They looked clean and without deformity. They looked knowing and without oppression. They looked young and without fever. They looked cleansed and without fear.

Her reflection smiled and stretched its arms around her, pulling her tight against its body so that the morning chill no longer bumped against her skin and no longer danced with the fine hairs on her arms. Her reflection held her in a loving embrace, whispering in her ear as it laid its head upon her shoulder, smiling as it drifted into her body and vanished beneath a blanket of bruised and battered skin.

Charity stood in front of the mirror as she had when Joao had followed his expelled breath and she was enraptured in her own giving embrace, her arms stretched across her body, clutching to her skin, her nails digging in, not wanting to ever let go. She could feel her reflection stretching its arms inside of her heart. She could taste the tear that she had expelled so many times on the edges of her lips and it reminded her that she need not feel alone, not in any of this struggle.

Joao gasped.

He felt sick.

He pulled away from the steaming cup and purged on the floor. He was shaking feverishly. Anger enshrouded his whole conscious being and he wished only to take her into the safety of his arms and if need be, to spend an eternity redefining trust to this poor broken girl for whom every man had betrayed when they ushered the words 'I love you'.

He closed his eyes once more, in search for some kindness, some attribute of sweetness that this world had for her, and when he followed another drawn breath into delusion, opening his eyes with a meddled worry, her last act washed over him.

She was standing on the shore of a beach somewhere on the other side of the universe and she was staring into the horizon where the ocean blue met the cerulean sky, tasting every breath that she welcomed into her lifeless body.

She sighed uncontrollably as she ran through a catalogue of undisposed memories.

"How I failed" was how she thought.

She blamed; at first herself, for how her life did unfold and then, with every new breath, she gained clarity and accepted then, the inevitability of circumstance.

Her idea of love was different from Joao, to me and probably to each of you who read this story. To her, affection had meant intolerable cruelty. A vacation was not merely an exercise in family togetherness; it was escaping to her subconscious where her soul and last drop of sanity were spared from her incestuous father and all the men in her life that fate would have her drawn to.

Succumbing to this revelation would not prevent it from happening again; it would just add unconscionable irony to an already predestined path of surrendered faith and molested love.

She opened her eyes to remove the images from her mind, watching a tiny leaf being towed along by the gentle current, bobbing up and down on the even lapping swell.

With every transitory breath, she was alive.

She stood; as Joao did, her toes twitching and moving in the wet sticky sand beneath her feet while his did in his old ripped socks out of nervous apprehension.

Joao could sense in her that, for the first time in her life; since she met with forgiveness with her reflection and long after the people she had known had long since disappeared, including Joao, she was akin to innocence.

The gentle wind lifted her fringe so that it flapped like a sail and the clear escaping air filled and expanded her lungs.

She exhaled her final breath and dove into the ocean. With no desire to take another breath, she sank lifelessly into the water and gave herself to the currents which took her invitingly out to sea.

Joao inhaled profoundly and exhaled a long sigh of relief. She was now free, moving in spirit with her brethren as the essence of life.

Soon clouds would form above her and her spirit would evaporate momentarily, parting from the sea and moving through the sky to rain down on the world below.

Her soul would scatter into millions of droplets that would descend upon the earth, filling the cup of every man and cleansing the soul of the earth. She would nourish the thirsty planet that would, in turn, feed its starving guests.

Her soul would exist in every flower, in every grain of sand and in the heart of every man. And it is the heart of man that she would judge astutely.

Those she deemed worthy would be wrapped in her delicate arms. She would sing to their spirit and lesson its state of alarm. Those undeserving would taste her in every breath. She would poison their souls and send every man to his death.

When he opened his eyes, he could hear stirring near the bathroom. He felt destroyed. What a horrible weight this girl had had to suffice. And what strength she must have behind her smile to be able to keep that suffering from making her its pet.

He took her coffee in his hand and though he hurt horribly and was infected by her pain; as god must have felt, watching all of it happen but doing nothing to interfere, he did as she and wore himself a hardened smile to greet her as she woke.

When he entered the room, he could see that she wasn't in her bed. He heard noises coming from the bathroom and assumed she must have woken while his mind was in dream and he inherited some of her displeasure. He walked over to the door and when hearing a pained cry, he worryingly called out but there was no word, only another pained cry.

"What should I do?" he thought. "Charity, are you ok?" he said through the door in a low whisper, but there was no response except for another pained cry.

When he turned the handle and pushed the door open, he saw Charity, naked and leaning over the sink. Her hands braced at and her fingernails almost clawed their way through, the filth-ridden porcelain.

She was crying in pain but she was crying for more as behind her, with his left hand in a strangling curve around her neck while his right pinched, slapped and punched her buttocks and her back, The Bishop cursed wildly. He expulsed horrible words, calling Charity vile and degrading names with his repugnant fat, sweaty and hairy stomach folding over her arching back while his eyes rolled backward in his head, thrusting like a savage heated animal until he turned his head and saw his son's disbelieving eyes wishing him to stop.

Joao stood in silent protest, the cup in his hand and disbelief on his conscious mantel. He couldn't say her name. He couldn't say a word.

As he stood there dumbfounded and broken, The Bishop watched him, grinning swimmingly while he defiled the only thing Joao had ever had in his life that mattered; biting her shoulders and spitting on her back.

He wore the same lecherous look that he had had when he paraded around the farm with his loose shoes slapping on the cold tiles and his right hand bent over his shoulder with his leather case pinned to his back. He wore that same arrogant, molesting smirk.

Joao looked defeated.

He started to cry.

The Bishop laughed heartily and with his strangling hand still curved around the back of Charity's neck, he clutched her hair with his free hand, ripping it back with sadistic vigour and lifting her pained and wanting face so that as he came inside her and as he screamed out her name insultingly and as she screamed out his, her eyes opened to the sight of her only friend, the boy who loved her without condition, now having found just one.

"Joao, please" she screamed as he ran out of the church.

"Get off me you fat cunt" she yelled to The Bishop, pushing his heaving body and slipping out from under him.

She ran out of the bathroom as The Seductress had done, covering her breasts, akin with her shame. She ran out of the church and out onto the street and down the hill as far as she could, calling his name.

"I'm sorry Joao. Let me explain" she screamed.

She walked back up the hill and into the church, seeing The Bishop still naked, pouring himself a coffee, looking proud and descent.

"You did this," she said pushing The Bishop.

"Oh don't be so melodramatic. He'll be alright. He always is. Useless. He'll never fuck you like I can. He's just a donkey. You need a stallion inside you" said The Bishop, pressing his naked body against hers.

"He's your son you fat prick. Not a fucking donkey. He's your fucking son and he's my friend, the only friend I have, the only person that gives a shit and sees me as something more than a cheap cunt to fuck. He's my only friend and now he's gone. Why the hell can't you see? He's the only sweet thing in our lives. And I fucked it up?" she said.

The Bishop leaned in to offer a consoling embrace but Charity pushed his arms away.

"Whatever," he said, taking his mug from the table and dropping some loose change on the table by a steaming mug.

"I'm a fucking whore," she said.

"And don't you forget it," said The Bishop wiping himself with an old shirt.

When the coffee touched his tongue, The Bishop shivered with familiar fright as if he had just turned a page he thought had already been torn up and then an air of arrogance escaped his lungs as he froze and the morning air and time, they swam around him as if his body were a giant stone at the bottom of an idly moving stream.

He stood; in his mind, in front of a tall dressing mirror and there was no colour or light around him except for the glow of the reflection before him of which he could not turn away.

A loud crashing brought him from his delusion, from the insight of his soul as the mug in his hands slipped from his weakened vice and married with the floor below, the hot liquid scalding his feet and the pieces of the mug, shattering across the floor.

"What did you see?" asked Charity, knowing exactly how The Bishop felt.

The Bishop slumped himself on a rickety white plastic chair, his naked skin folding over itself many times and slushing about as he stapled his hands over his eyes and shook off the fever of regret that tickled at his nerves.

"What did you see?" Charity asked again.

The bishop took a long bleaching breath, icing the fire in the back of his throat.

"Joao," he said, referring to his own reflection.

Charity took the insulting loose change that The Bishop threw behind, collecting the coins in her trembling grasp; adrenaline fueling the shame that she felt. She took the mug of coffee in her hands and rested it against her lower lip, pausing in reflection while the steam ran the length of her face and beaded as small droplets on her brow and for a second she pretended it was a tear and that she could actually care.

She felt a warm apology dress her mind and she thought of Joao for a moment until she took a sip and was reduced to hysterical tears feeling the bittersweet resonance of her own reflection, feeling her soul stretching; for the first time in so long, inside of her heart.

Charity finished her coffee and fell to the floor weeping with a shaky smile on her face. She felt both subtle and soiled in a single breath.

#  TWENTY-FOUR

From this height, Joao could see over the entire stretch of the city and at that moment, it all looked so magnificent and so very busy and the spaces between everything seemed so incredibly small.

From this height, the cars and the trucks and the buses and the motorbikes and the taxis and the rattling old Beetles were no longer fraught or final, they all looked quaint and so benign and orderly and the people and their demeanors and their children and their dogs and their guns, they too seemed less of a menace.

They all seemed so minute and charitable.

From this height, he could easily see the church, and he noticed a small hole in the roof that probably could have been fixed weeks ago had he or The Bishop bothered to find the source of the leak.

From this height, the world hardly made a sound. He could hear the light buzzing of taxiing helicopters in the distance, circling over tall skyscrapers and jostling for space in the murky sky.

He could just hear; from this height, the dull rumble of an airliner far off near the thin line of the horizon and he could just hear; at this height, a small mosquito buzzing about his right ear of which he felt no bother to slap away.

From this height, it was hard to hear anything over the echo of his last held breath.

It's hard to say for sure how Joao was feeling from this height but I can tell you, he wasn't scared or sad or angry or despondent. But if I did have to describe what was going through his head, I guess I'd say he felt relieved.

And he sure was pretty quiet about it.

From this height, there was a specific sound to silence.

And from this height, he could see Charity, tripping over her every desperate step as she ran towards him, reaching out for something in the air that was always just out of her reach and she was screaming something, but from this height, he couldn't hear that the something she was screaming was his name and he couldn't tell that the something she was reaching for, was him.

And from this height, he could see that The Bishop had been taken by a pawn.

#  TWENTY-FIVE

"Get him down, get him the fuck down" screamed Charity, spitting out every word and holding herself under Joao's feet, trying to lift him upwards.

And every time she budged, his knees buckled and his hanging weight shifted and pulled and body hanged limp once more.

"Why aren't you doing anything? Do something, please" she pleaded to The Bishop.

The Bishop was silent. He had no idea how to speak. He had no idea how to move his fingers. He stood there by his son's hanging feet, looking up at his frozen halcyon expression and he said nothing.

And he thought nothing.

He just stared in disbelief.

Charity fell to her knees; her head bowing down to the floor, tears flooding from her eyes and choking her throat. She and her reflection wished that he would move. Her blood felt so heavy and she spluttered through every bargain for him to blink his eyes or to move a muscle.

Her head hanged low and her body shook feverishly and her hands clung to Joao's swinging feet and she couldn't believe that it was true. He looked like an old branch, broken away by the wind, but still hanging in the air, waiting to fall to the earth.

She cursed and she cried and she said sorry maybe a million times and a million times more, each time that she looked up to see his still eyes, looking out over the stretch of the city.

Charity and The Bishop stood there, without definition, in their own way of desponding, while a son and a friend, hanged by his belt from a branch of an old tree.

And from this height...

#  TWENTY-SIX

There was a passage of feet that none would ever have imagined having passed as a carriage of mourners made their way in a solemn ascent up the hill.

Nothing was said between the strangers, whose eyes hanged lower than their expectations, scraping along the bumpy and rocky path, watching for the same loose rocks and potholes that Joao had, every morning and every eve when there had been less important in this journey.

Their thoughts filled their every breath, travelling out into the cold afternoon air in a heavy ghostly mist. Above them, dark clouds circled and started to weep with large droplets splashing against their faces and on their legs as they trudged along, led by The 13th Apostle, up the hill towards the church; hundreds of people, all of whom had found themselves at the hands of Joao; all of whom had found their culture and their reflection at the bottom of a small coffee cup.

When the procession reached the church, they gathered like a swarm of bees in front of the door and made their way into the service one by one, filling every minute space with their bodies pressed against one another, their eyes peering over one another's shoulders, their hands pressed against the warmth of another's back; feeling the sadness tense and flicker in their muscles with each understanding hand, grounding and settling the sadness to which it pressed against.

They poured into the church like water into any space at all, finding a place for themselves in every crook and cranny and makeable crevice so that they could see or hear or feel a closeness to Joao's white coffin.

And those who couldn't push their way through the door pressed their ears against the thin walls and scaled the roof and even watched through the small hole that Joao had noticed before he died.

At the front of the church; standing before the coffin, The 13th Apostle lifted his rattlesnake hands into the air, shaking them like a tree's branches in a heavy wind. The shaking travelled down his mammoth branches until his whole body shook as he fought for the words to address this terrible day but he couldn't find them.

He collapsed onto the coffin as if his roots had been torn from the earth of his contentment and the heavy winds of his depression pulled him over on top of the coffin and as he draped over Joao's still body, he wept uncontrollably and he felt as if he could never pull himself away.

Mother leaned to The 13th Apostle and with her calloused hands, she lifted him under his belly and gently around his neck and brought him back up to his feet so the hundreds of mourners inside the church and those peering through the hole in the roof above could see the colour of his tears and so his crying soul could be heard through the walls, out in the crowded streets and down the hill where it could make its own passage into the hearts and souls of those who had yet to taste true sweetness in their lives so that their souls too could grieve as every awoken soul did, inside of the church.

The Bishop stood beside Mother and beside him and inconsolable, was Charity. Mother took The Bishop's hand and looked around the church seeing the hundreds of people all begging upon a kind and meaningful word, for some solution to their grief that submerged their conscious minds and had them confounded and bargaining with God.

At the front of the room stood The Nazi, though Joao might have missed him were it not for the tattoo on his head. He was dressed in subtlety, devoid of his colours and badges and his symbols of regret; a plaid black suit and black loafers with a shiny silver buckle over the toes and beside him stood The Nervous Lady; alone, as she had always been, staring downwards for a certain pair of shoes, nervously picking at the palm of her hand.

Feeling her shiver against his resting arm, The Nazi took her hand and pulled her close with his other, shushing her worry.

The Nazi smiled.

The Nervous Lady smiled.

"There are so many people here," said Mother, squeezing The Bishop's hand, for the first time, pride swelling the tip of her tongue so that she lisped her way through the words.

The Bishop stepped away from his blame for a moment and opened his eyes to what stood before him and she was right. What everyone had said was impossible, even what he had believed could be but quickly; as he lost his way, learned to himself negate, had been made true.

Everyone had said that nobody would ever enter through these doors, that not even God himself would pay any mind, that hope, and kindness; upon this hill, would never be.

"I knew you would be a success," said Mother, looking The Bishop lovingly in the eyes.

"They are your people," said The 13th Apostle. "Address them."

The Bishop's first word was louder than any that had followed and it was all anyone heard, for the second he said Joao's name, hysteria beckoned at the hearts of one and all; from the foot of his coffin, through the church and out the door onto the crowded streets, people of all denominations, of all creeds, of all colours, of all sexes, of all differentiation, of all strangeness and opposition-held each other in their arms with storms building in their eyes.

The Bishop canted his voice loud and availing but nothing could be heard over the wailing of strangers, locked in considerate and liberating embraces.

As he spoke, Charity leaned into the coffin and kissed Joao on his cold lips. She took from her bag a lottery ticket, folded it neatly and placed it in the pocket of his pants.

"What did you see when you were there?" she asked, kissing him one more time before turning away and leaving the church; in her hands a bag with nothing more than a clean shirt, a pair of sunglasses and a bus ticket.

Charity left the church, catching the cold air against her skin and drawing it into her soul, feeling her passage calling her to lift her anchor.

She stood watching an old lady slowly shuffling her feet and clenching in her frail hands, a tiny slither of paper. The Nice Old Lady had a look like a child at the turn of a handle, waiting on the edge of their patience for their father to come home. She had a look of radiating expectancy and though the wrinkles on her face were worn from a life of grimace and groans, it looked; in the little tremors on her cheeks, as if she were brandishing every muscle in her body to garnish a welcoming and finding smile.

The Nice Old Lady shuffled up and towards an old wooden shack at the top of the hill and she nervously and eagerly rattled on an old rusted chain that hung from the door and Charity watched in still wonder as a lock turned.

The old chain rattled and slid from its binds and the old wooden door slowly creaked opened and then the piece of paper divorced from The Nice Old Lady's fingers and drifted like a dead leaf through the air as she cast her arms open and wide in a forgiving embrace and walked into the darkness.

As Charity walked down the hill, carrying the small bag and with her reflection stretched out beneath her skin, she thought about the open sea and she thought no words at all, just a feeling of the wonder of returning to where she belonged.

At the end of the service, after the bishop had spoken, the scores of hundreds of consoling strangers all passed by Joao's coffin one by one; touching his hand, giving their thanks and saying goodbye.

They turned to The Bishop, overwhelmed by his compassion and his deliverance and shook his hand offering their condolences and vowing to return, to quench their thirsting hope within these walls.

The Bishop smiled in humble pride.

So accosted was he that he didn't even notice Mother, with one hand on Joao's coffin, shaking the devil's hand.

Also by C. Sean McGee:

A Rising Fall (CITY b00k 001)

Utopian Circus (CITY b00k 011)

Heaven is Full of Arseholes

Coffee and Sugar

Christine

Rock Book Volume I: The Boy from the County Hell

Rock Book Volume II: Dark Side of the Moon

Alex and The Gruff (a tale of horror)

The Terror{blist}

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