The Resurrector

There lived a young man in the South, got himself the nickname The Resurrector. The fact he was born of a sermon-busting preacherman might’ve had something to do with it; but the boy in question was no Christ figure, nor yet a Lazarus. He was the kind of kid who would take eggs from the hen coop and leave them on sun-baked broadstones overlooking the dirt flats, watching for the hairline cracks that would appear in their shells, for the fragile yolk to leak out and simmer. There’d sometimes be a smudge-dark embryo locked inside the goop, a chicken that wouldn’t ever hatch, because this lad had not the patience his Pa hawked at him in memory of Job, to wait for the egg to make its way onto his plate from his Ma’s skillet.

His Pa made him sit on the hardback woodstock chairs of the parish church, a flinty little grey thing not unlike its preacherman. Here, in the cooking shade and drifting dust, the boy learned of Sin and Sinners, of the firey roast awaiting those who made it out of this frying pan, into the next. The boy would whistle through his teeth, thump his heels back against the chair legs as his Pa droned on, occasionally breaking the chain with tight whip-crack sermons and loud Hail Mary’s. And all the while, the parishioners would gather and press around in their cramped sweaty droves, the good ol’ boys gone bad, with their ciggie-stump fingers and rum-tainted tongues; the fan-flap ladies in their Sunday best, flecked with the rust-coloured dust that just about covered everything else, as though bloodying up the world. There’d be other kids too, some his age, with their corkscrew curls and whittled eyes; they’d watch him carefully, pudgy fingers stuck tight in their mouths, because this lad liked to pinch if he got close enough, and being the preacherman’s son, he could call Wolf with the best of them. The kids knew what high-sun bedtimes and sting-sore buttocks felt like. They said nothing, returned no looks he might give them, and made sure their fingers could always be seen and accounted for.

He would leave a dead blackbird – that symbol of calamity – in the post box of anyone who tried to thwart him. Only after he’d removed the wings, of course, since no kid wants a bird spirit flying back to haunt him now, do they?

With fingers that liked to push, a mind that liked to probe, this boy was restless. He was surrounded by the dying and the dead, so far as he was concerned. He liked to watch his Pa make the last rites over some wrinkled old dude, clasping the knit-needle fingers like he could crush them in his own huge paw. The boy would stand in the doorway, quiet as nightshade, waiting and watching for that pale man called Death to walk past him, to stand beside his Pa and lean over his shoulder; to look into the glazed eyes of the dying man, and suck out his breath even as those milky orbs cleared. The last rattle was that of a snake, he thought, called in the desert sands where he could play for hours. They never tried to hurt him, and neither did Death, each time he went by.

But he comes to us all in the end. One day, when the sky looked like the burned salt flats some men spoke of while lounging on their hog-bikes, Death came for the boy’s Pa.

The boy never forgot that rattle. How it made his Pa’s throat bob, much as it had when he got corn stuck there one summer, like twin headlamps stuck in the skin as it fought to get past his voicebox. This time, it was the cancer. This time, it wasn’t something that could be hemmed and hawed and swallowed down with a few swigs of the burning brandy his Ma kept helpfully on tap, behind the bread bin.

The boy had shuddered, clutching at himself as he watched his Pa sink further forward over the bed, until his shiny little crawfish head nearly touched the thin sheet. He’d stayed that way upto five minutes, heaving and wheezing, until his Ma – with a rare spike of thought – grabbed at his shirt collar and hauled back.

And back went that sweaty head, with a dull clunk spelling Trouble, onto the pillow. His eyes popped open. They’d stared across at the boy in the doorway, past him, widening. He too saw pale Death, as he approached.

“Not ready,” he’d croaked, “not done!”

But Death had other plans, and took the preacherman’s cracked hand in his own. The fire went out of his throat. All thoughts of God, that shining higher place and angels with gold trumpets, went out his head at the last. He looked back at his son.

“Don’t wait,” he told him. And the boy ran.

He didn’t stop running until the city’s glare burned the tears from his eyes.

*

Every man needs a hobby. The Resurrector restored people’s lives. He made them second-guess boredom, which is worse than Death. He forced them to re-evaluate what precious items they held dear, what service they’d run for others, what founding earth bore them and would one day reclaim them. He made people live again. He was their undeserving mercy.

He made them look Death square in the eye, as he had.

Knitting needles, jabbed in a man’s side outside a nightclub, could bring him up short with the wild eyes of a burned-tail cat; he’d peer through the heaving crowds, seeking the blade come to bleed him.

Empty syringes, in the Resurrector’s keen hands, could become dealers of fortune – One strike you’re out! Yet the saltwater inside would sting and twist, and render nothing in a blood scan for the teary, thank-Christ eyes of the boy bobbing up and down in the doc’s chair.

His whipcord muscles would flex with a grab at a girl’s shoulders, as she leaned far over the churning waters of the river below, safe in the knowledge those old stones of the bridge would hold her – a sharp jerk, and she’d find herself nearer to the shine than she’d like. Her glasses might slip, her camera might fall; her heart would hammer, bringing blood and puke to her throat, a burning message of What might have been. One darting glance back, when her hands had grappled for the cool grip of stones: nobody there. The dark shadow, spent; the Resurrector, on his way. The liberation complete, and his job -so far as he saw it – done.

Yet there were so many, so many out there. So many fools and slack-jawed plodders and wheeler-dealer dancers with other’s Fate, and he was but one man. One against thousands, millions of tired, gritty eyes, empty hearts. He watched them for a time, after he’d made them deal cards against Death. He waited to see their next play, was often rewarded with the pot-luck cast of a die; a man’s unexpected proposal, a girl’s striking makeover and immigration to the land she’d dreamed of since her hair was last this short. He liked to see their blood burn again, their mouths high and firm.

The casinos in that far-gone city of his childhood, where he’d immersed himself for a time, had taught him much. About trickery. About sleight-of-hand. About the casual shove, the jumping tic under the eye, the straining beast on its leash of society and manners. He’d rigged the slot machines, as a trial and error, seeking to probe the player’s levels of fixation. He’d found one honourable truth among so much greed: They responded well to shock rewards.

Yet each night, turning the key to his meaningless apartment, with its piled boxes and used food cartons and disused bed, the Resurrector would always find a truth of his own.

Death is a watcher, pale and patient in the shadows.