A Bet

A Bet

He does not stare upon the air

Through the little roof of glass:

He does not pray with lips of clay

For his agony to pass;

Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek

The kiss of Caiaphas.

Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Terribly sick (stiff), he fell face forward onto the sidewalk. His entire body trembled uncontrollably as the image, and the eventual sequence, raced through his head: Jo’s bandaged face; both eyes blinded by the silk and crust of blood encasing whatever it was that raced out from within his gouged eye sockets. The horse and buggy, closing in, plucked the concrete road with every step and track engraved. He lay motionless for a few good minutes before the sound deafened every thought, even the image pounding.

Out from clover, over tree, you descend so gallantly, facing death and penalty, you will earn your place with me, sang the voice that thundered melodiously. It came burrowing from underneath to his pulsating temples: a cryptic, but strained voice.

His eyes met the horizon, lateral to the freshly baked pavement crossing from Peludo to McCormick and back over Prieto to Lewis. His swollen face, that dirtied left side of stretched, punctured, and hideously deformed face, pressed itself against the fiery piece of gravel tracing the road running up from where his eyes met the buggy (the black satin petroleum soaked horse, too) climbing all the way up (sideways)

Towards Heaven with a cloud, a rope, and a set of boots, a dusty road to lead me on impassioned drives, Towards Heaven, carrying gifts and wishes too. Bellowing onward, riding, whistling this tune. The voice, that immeasurable sting of a melody, kept rising up from the ground, crossing the back of his head, like fingertips, all the way to the right side of his face.

The acrid smell of paint thinner sifted through the dirt floating about his face (the road, the buggy approaching). The smell triggered memories and again twisted his already upset stomach with the realization: Jo was dead and he didn’t know where the road (his road, the man’s road) lead. He’d come so far in so very little time (‘How long has it been, sir? Ten, twelve hours?’ he spoke to himself) and now his body had given way and lay frozen with heat on the ground. The sound once again pierced through his thoughts and rose from but a few feet away. The man’s voice, that gravel scratched throat that tuned whatever words tempted his parched lips, was almost unintelligible, but persistent. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed his frozen body on the ground a few feet off the path. He grew conscious of that incapability that hindered every attempt at movement and wondered but for a moment if he’d died and, since, lay there dwelling, unaware of the outcome.

Death has rung a bell outside my house, I’ve come out wondering where I’ll go, but death is nil, O’ savage one, a ghostly wonderment corrupting us. He held in his hands that pocket knife that Jo wielded constantly. He knew he held it in between both hands there beneath his ruined body, but the fingers… he didn’t feel for a second what each finger did (bent or broken). His chapped lips coiled inward as he struggled to turn over. His neck slowly began turning, spastically jerking his head in the same direction. After a few seconds his entire body shifted sides and he lay, finally, face up to the sky. He was no longer able to see the man, the buggy, and the horse that were already closing in on Heaven

Up above, where angels dance and clamor fills every sigh, a lonely man has nothing to worry about, when raining blessings paint the sky. He could barely hear him anymore. The man had missed him, he knew not why, and the horse, that cryptic set of protruding knees, like rocks, chiseled, had long passed him.

When things came to a head I did nothing—I’ve, I’ve come to accept the fact that Jo’s gone, he’s missing and he’ll never come back, I mean, I saw him there, there’s no way he’s coming back. He’s not coming back. But I’m still here and I haven’t the slightest idea why. I wasn’t as guilty as he might’ve been (I mean, I’m not sure how guilty, these people don’t need much, you know), but I—there’s a reason why I’m alive and that’s I never screwed up as bad as others did, as bad as Jo did, I guess. Goddamn. What the hell am I going to do? I don’t even know where I am. How am I gonna get back home? How the hell am I gonna—gonna get back? God. His whole body trembled in a cold sweat. He felt as if his insides spilled out from his back, down through the dirt and gravel, down towards the center of the Earth. His fingers tapped the dirt and coughed up a gale of dust that settled uneasily about his chest and legs. It was all he could do while waiting.

The clouds shifted patterns (a wind carrying a cumulus of soap across the sky) a number of times before it all grew dark and he fell asleep, thinking he could use some bandage to stop whatever raced out from within his ribcage once the ground gave way from under his back. Once he’d gotten back—Once I’m back and everything settles, like the dust that settled upon his sunburned face and Jo’s face, caked with blood could use some clouds to wash away the dust, he thought.