Iconoclasm

by Joel Lee | FICTION CATEGORY WINNER

This is the way things are: You hang around next to the dumpster behind Waffle House for a half-hour. A woman will meet you soon, all exasperated compassion and frizzy hair, and sneak you an illicit to-go box with assorted scraps. When she’s feeling generous, a proper breakfast plate finds its way into the mix.

Louisiana has been cruel in the way that only the swamps can be—a skim layer of sweat coats your forehead, wet and uneasy and permanent. The heat presses down on you, sometimes, until you can’t breathe. The grass squelches with unseen water everywhere you go. It makes you feel filthy. The tourists have no sympathy for you or your friends—you hate asking for money, like you’re helpless, some animal to be taken care of, and they only make the humiliation worse. (“The guy’s what, forty?” you overheard once, a sweaty father in cheap sunglasses whispering down at his daughter. “He had his chance. Keep the cash.” Behind the itchy beard that never quite grew in, you’re thirty-six. The chances he speaks of are now only half-memories, like something out of a dream.) You hole up in the shade when you can, still somehow just as hot as in the sun, and you dream endlessly about a fresh shave, about air conditioning, a queen bed with just-washed sheets, about mangoes and peaches and cantaloupes, full and sticky-sweet in the breeze. You’re sick of Waffle House.

Your friend Pigeonboy will occasionally share his sandwiches from 7-11, bland turkey

and cheese as thick and malleable as play-dough, in exchange for half of your spread. You meet him, usually, after a mile’s hike through the weed-choked woods. The old First Baptist building is hidden there, and if you’re lucky enough to find a pew that still has padding, you’ll sleep inside. You cross your heart, just in case, every time you pass through the door. The sweat remains through the night. This is the way things are.

~

For what used to be a church, there’s a lot of sinning going on under its lofty roof. Dave

sets up shop in the nursery and sells dollar-store-quality crack to vacant people who smoke it under the mural of Jesus’ birth, writhing and groaning; Stephanie robs men in the cemetery who think they’re paying for a prostitute; Pigeonboy gambles most of his lunches away, numb to both the loss and the reward. Frank delights actively in his desecration of the building and, when he’s angry, pisses directly into the baptism pool. You find yourself in the middle of all this, disoriented, neither a sinner nor a saint. For the life of you, you can’t figure out how you got here.

For all the sacrilege that goes on inside its walls, there is one icon whose sanctity

everyone can agree on. The crucifix behind the empty baptism pool dominates its sanctuary,

thirty feet tall, pearly-white and immaculate. Marble Jesus, as he’s come to be known, is the only thing in the building left untouched by spray-paint or human hands, and his perfection only stands out more with every year that passes. Even the dust avoids his feet. Legend has it that to touch him is to condemn your soul; Pigeonboy has a bet out for who will do it first.

He interrupts your afternoon nap one dehydrated August and shakes your arm. The bags under his eyes are dark with concern. “Hey. Hey, wake up. Wake up, Scotty.”

You open your eyes and watch vaguely behind his shoulder. To meet him in the eyes

would take energy that you don’t have. Your head swirls gently. “What? What do you want?”

“Scotty, I need you to touch Marble Jesus.”

You turn your head against the pillow and shut your eyes again. “I’m going back to sleep.”

He shoves weakly at your shoulder. “Scotty, no, touch Him, please, I need this.”

“You touch Him.”

“I asked you first.”

“Screw you.” You reach out to slap at his arm. “I’m not touching Him.”

“Scotty, please, man.” He’s using what you call his homeless voice, the reverent

desperation with which he pleads tourists for money and for food, but he’s given up on any

pretense of confidence. This is a voice for emergencies. It means he’s staking his dignity on you.

“I made a bet with Frank for twenty bucks because he thinks we’re soft. Touch His feet, even just His clothes or something, and you get all of it, I swear.”

This changes things. You haven’t seen twenty dollars in one place for a long time, and

already the thought makes you salivate. That’s a cot, and clean socks, and a pack of water

bottles. You release a sigh that sounds like a snore. The decision tosses like laundry in your head, loud and soft and circular. The certainty does not come. “Damnit.”

“Thank you so much, man. For real. Scotty, you’re a lifesaver.”

“Damnit.”

~

Night falls; Frank is standing at the altar at nine o’clock sharp. You try to think the whole

bet is silly, but the weight of all the rumors sits heavy on your back nonetheless. Marble Jesus weeps carved tears, and you’ve been watching them for twenty minutes, waiting for one to hit the ground. His eyes are shut, but you feel them watching you. They’ll open miraculously any minute now, you think, and look directly into the most vulnerable parts of you. It makes you aware of your own eyes, the weight of them in your skull. Maybe, you think, if you pull away and let Frank win, the Lord will bless you with everything you’ve ever wanted—not riches, not a car or any kind of gold-trimmed anything; you outline a cross with your fingers in your pocket, hoping for a clean bed and for blueberries in the sun and for so much water, enough to fill the baptism pool and keep it full forever, so everyone in the whole city can take a drink. You look up at Marble Jesus’ face and whisper an apology.

“Come on,” Pigeonboy says finally, pushing you gently toward the altar like a lamb

toward a regretful bolt to the brain. The stretch of frayed carpet beneath you becomes the Via Dolorosa. “It’s time, Scotty.”

Whatever resolution you might have felt before dissolves the closer you get to Jesus’ feet. He looms above you with all the power of eternal damnation, flickering in the light of a fire Dave has set to keep everyone warm. The light reminds you of hell. You felt like this only once before, when you were in the second grade, standing up to a bully on the playground: fear and wisdom pull you back, but some unknown force more powerful than either pushes you forward into damnation. Under the same haze in which you broke his nose, thoughtless and surreal, you reach out a hand and touch the feet of Marble Jesus. The deity feels just like any stone. He’s smooth and cool to the touch, and you glance upward to see that his eyes aren’t closed, actually, they’re open, just a tad.

Marble Jesus weeps, looking down at the top of your head, and while Frank cusses to

himself and shells out his wallet, you think you might feel a teardrop land in your hair.