Multiplex Fandango (28 page)

***

Night had fallen to the screams of a hundred thousand revelers.
The
Celebration Carnelevare
– Farewell to the Flesh –was in full swing as the nearly manic crowd engorged itself on a pre-Lenten binge as if their souls knew the truth of the mid-February Christian holiday
—
older than Christianity, rooted in the worship of Pan and the Grecian Orgies it inspired.

As a priest, I wanted to remind the people of the importance of Ash Wednesday as the start of Lent where we recognized the sacrifices of Our Lord Jesus as he survived in the wilderness.
Then of course there was Good Friday and Easter.
So far away, yet intimately connected to tonight’s celebration.
It was tragic how so few remembered that the end of the celebration was the death of Jesus and the ascension of a God.
The greater Lenten concept wasn’t something people paid particular attention to as they groped and groaned among strangers.

We’d waited in Jackson Square until dusk, then again entered the throng of revelers.
Matthew knew where he was going, but I didn’t, and after getting separated twice, he gripped my hand
and
pulled me along.
Through alleys and side streets, between buildings.
Although I had been in New Orleans for three months, I was soon lost.
An hour later, sweat dripping from my skin and chest heaving, we descended a set of stairs and stopped before a closed door.
He turned to me in the darkened alcove.

“There’s one more thing.”

I had difficulty finding my breath, and managed only to nod my head.

“You’ll need this.”

He pulled a bag from his jacket.
Made of leather and rabbit fur, it was something unexpected, almost Pagan.

I raised an eyebrow as he placed it into my hands.
My fingers began wrestling the bag open, but he quickly covered my hands with his own and shook his head.

“Not yet.
You’ll know when it’s time.
Promise me, not until it’s time.”

Beneath his fierce gaze, I could only nod.
I shoved the bag into my jacket pocket and we entered the broad basement.
The first thing I realized was that what I had mistaken for a basement was actually a warehouse.
The ceiling was at least three-stories high and the floor was easily half the width of a football field.
In the center sat a large raised rectangle, and atop this were two rows of six tall posts.
Each had chains dangling from its top.

Although it looked like an altar, I immediately identified it as a float.
Yet, unlike the garish displays of Mardis Gras, this one was completely unadorned.
An old slat
board platform, wooden wheels and two long lengths of rope to pull it.
If the Mardis Gras floats were for celebration, this lonely thing was for redemption.

“Can’t you feel them?
They’re here.
The Shrove...”

I watched as he cradled his head and whimpered.

Searching the rest of the space, I realized that we were not alone.
It wasn’t like me to miss things like this, but it seemed as if the very act of searching had created the people before me.
Unveiled, I saw, eleven pairs of men standing in different parts of the warehouse.
There was a familiarity about them.
Not that I knew them, no.
More like they were as Matthew and I.
One person, head hanging, dilapidated life
—
the other, a guide, but no less stricken.
I met each gaze in turn, inspecting them as they inspected me.

“We must change,” said Matthew.
“It’s almost time.”

Matthew moved towards the wall to our left, where twelve chests waited.
As had the others like him, he opened one and withdrew two robes.
The green one he gave to me.

“Wear this.”

The other robe was a patchwork of golds and purples and greens.
Where mine was tightly spun satin, his was made from a hundred different fabrics.
Although gaudy, no one would ever mistake it for finery.
It was the robe of a penitent man.

“The green color stands for faith.
Purple is for Justice and the gold stands for power.
These are the colors of Mardi Gras.
They are the colors of God.”

As I pulled the robe over my clothes, he reached into the chest and withdrew two more objects.
One was a crown of thorns, the other was a gold ceramic mask, blank except for two eye holes.
No nose.
No mouth.
No contoured features.
Just blank.
This he passed to me.

“Wear it, as I wear my own.”

He placed the crown of thorns atop his head and I winced as immediately several trickles of blood began to flow.
He merely smiled.
Just as suddenly his smile turned to a frown and a gurgle escaped his throat.
From around the warehouse, I saw the same thing happening to the others.

I placed the mask over my face.
For a few long seconds, I fought claustrophobia, but there were rules here and if I was going to figure this whole thing out, I would have to play the game.

He jerked me towards the back of the platform where a piece of plywood served as a ramp.
Stopping at the third post on the left side, he let me go.

“Bind me,” he said, holding out his hands.

After a few false starts, I managed to secure Matthew to the post.

“Now what?”

“We wait, I suppose.
I mean I’ve never really done this before.”

“And The Shrove?
You trust them?”

“Why not?
It’s all a matter of degrees,” he said.
“Who would have ever believed that the death of one man would release the world from sin?”
The chains rattled as he brought his hands up to his head.
His right scratched hard at the ear.
Twin lines of blood appeared.

I grabbed at his wrist to keep him from hurting himself, but he jerked away.
His right hand gripped his crown and he pressed it deeply into the flesh.

“They say...” he gasped, “they say it’s time.”

From where I stood I could see every inch of the room and except for the deep shadows along one wall, there wasn’t a place to hide.
The harder I stared into those shadows, the more uncomfortable I became.
The feeling grew until a buzzing crept into my mind.
It felt as if a million ants had moved in.
Fighting to ignore the feeling, I stole myself to stare deeper into the darkness.
The buzzing increased and my hands flew to my head, then the darkness swirled as something moved within it.
For the briefest of moments I could have sworn I saw the tip of a tentacle.
Green.
The color of faith, I remembered.

“Let me tell you of the smell of leaves burning in winter.”

“What?”
I staggered and reached out to steady myself.
My hand found his chest and came away wet with blood.
His face was pinstriped with red.

“The smell of leaves burning in winter.
It’s why you’re here, to listen to my confession.”

“Tell me,” I said, trying to ignore the darkness.

“I know the smell of leaves burning in winter,” he said.
“I have awoken to the screams of a child.
I know the sounds of flesh burning.”
He sagged to the floor at my feet.
His arms rose in supplication.
“Forgive me father, for I have sinned and all my confessions before this are as nothing to what I will tell you now.”

The request was unorthodox, but there was no mistaking the suffering underlying his words.
I made the sign and knelt beside him, averting my gaze as I placed my ear close to his trembling lips.

“Tell me of the smell of leaves burning in winter,” I said.

He sighed, the sound of dead leaves rustling along the ground.
Like the leaves in my own memory.
Mr. Jenks hadn’t killed my pet.
The sheriff insisted that the dog had been hit by a truck.
The old man had placed the body in the leaves so I wouldn’t see it.
He had been trying to spare me.

“The smell of leaves burning in winter, they smell like death.
They smell like the end of existence.
The end of hope.
God, forgive me.
I had no idea.
I hadn’t a clue.”

“Have you ever awoken to the sounds of a child screaming?” I asked.

“It was my son,” he said.
“The sound of a child screaming is the death of the father.
The death of the mother.
The end of all hope multiplied.”

From his lowered head ran pinkish drops, blood mixed with salty tears.
There was still one more question to ask.

“What is the sound of flesh burning?”

“The end of life itself,” he said.

Suddenly cold, he stared at me, his face smeared with tears and blood.
He gritted his teeth, the sound like a heavy file against concrete.
“I was popular with the children in my school, you see.
There was nothing they couldn’t ask of me.
I was always there for them.
For them, yes, but not my son.
God knows how long I’d neglected him.
God knows the depth of his pain.
I’ve wondered for so long...what if he had come to
me
?
What if he had asked
me
for help?
Would I have paid attention?
Would I have been there for him?
Would I have done it differently?
Even after all this time, I don’t know the answer.
I am guilty of the harshest crime.
He gave me love.
I gave him neglect

As was my own crime
, I thought.

“I can only imagine how he felt, because I'll never really know.
When I awoke that winter’s morning to the screams of my son burning in the leaf pile...when I ran outside and heard his screams, saw the can of gasoline...when he stopped breathing as his lungs filled with fumes...when his skin...ran like butter...”

I knelt with him for a time.
The thorns of his crown scraped my cheek.
Finally he looked up.

“The Shrove said that our sacrifice will heal the world.
It will heal me, they said.
We are twelve and twelve makes one and then thirteen ascend.”

From somewhere far away a church bell rang, signaling the end to Mardis Gras and the beginning of Lent.

“The pouch,” he said.

I pulled up my robe and fumbled the pouch from my pocket.
It took a few moments, but I finally managed to retrieve the pouch.
I opened it and stared inside at the ash within.
I knew without asking where it came from.
His gaze was far away as I reached inside, applied the ash to my fingers and made the sign of the cross upon his forehead.

“Man is dust, and from dust you shall return.”

He mimicked my
movements and made his own sign
of the cross upon my forehead.
A smile crept along his mouth, and then his expression went blank, his gaze once again far away.
I didn’t dare disturb him, so I closed the pouch and placed it around his neck.

We opened the great doors to the street.
Outside, the night was silent.
The Feast of the Flesh was over and it was in quiet dark that we twelve confessors grasped the ropes and began pulling the float through the streets.

There would be no crowds for us.

Redemption is a lonely thing, and sacrifice is individual.

***

Story Notes: In the mid-90s my mother told me a story about a friend of hers who came home to find her child burned to death in a pile of leaves. It was called a suicide and I couldn’t help but wonder how a survivor could deal with such a thing. I held onto that question for a number of years until I was asked to present a Mardis Gras story to the Twilight Tales Reading Group in Chicago. I wrote this, then read it out loud in the Red Lion Pub. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when I finished.

NOW SHOWING ON SCREEN 14

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with a Playboy Bunny

“Holy Mother of Plastic Surgeons! Is this what’s under my bed?.”

–
Hugh Hefner Jr
.

No Dust Bunnies Were Injured During the Filming