I cannot believe that I wasn't there for you when you were feeling so low.

That I didn't support your goals or cheer you on.

I'm so sorry that I didn't insist that you are enough--even if perfection is unachievable,

but that what you provide is absolutely close enough.

I wish I had looked at your face and always seen beauty,

kindness,

expertise and competence.

But when I look at the eyes staring back at me from the cold glass,

I see the tears tremble there.

As the wetness hits my face my guilt and sorrow consume me.

It was church bells that roused me when nothing else could have. A cacophony of potted bronze. Clamorous machines engineered through the centuries to do naught but direct the highest possible volume of sound downward, down to where the sinners live, work and sleep, and to wake those sinners UP. The bells did their work on this day. One hundred bells clamoring for notice atop one hundred churches. Bells hung by a pious people in a pious city, people who would surely one day, if there is a god, walk that golden road to meet Him. The bells were a not so subtle reminder that today was Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the day and time to wake, to stop working, and to accept the invitation to God’s house. It was the day set aside from living so that one might prepare his soul for dying. My soul had little preparation, but was ready yet... almost eager.

The pew was hard. It was of a dark wood, mahogany maybe, polished smooth by two centuries of cotton and wool rising and sitting only to rise again to sit and rise forever. Those polishing the pews spent their lives in this town, listening to these bells, worshipping the Catholic God whom they had inherited down from Ferdinand and Isabella, worshipping from these polished pews, or from ones like them, amongst this congregation, or ones like it, congregations that knew their individual parts and protected them, and loved them. Congregations that are ever changing as parts die and parts are born, but congregations that are somehow still always the same.

Upon the pew, beside my head, is a pile of bloody vomit, bile mostly, as food is a waste, serving only to neutralize that which really matters. The vomit emits a familiar smell of disgust that clings to me forever like spray paint clings to a freight car, tacky, tasteless and rude to the senses. Dried blood cakes my face and shirt. My own blood. Blood freed from me, perhaps, by a member of this very congregation, by one of it‘s parts. Blood that might be washed from me with tender fingers by that same man’s mother, or sister, but not his wife. A man who would do such as this to another man would not have a wife, not for long, not even a Catholic one. Of course, I could not recall the beating, and it may have been deserved. I am not usually a nice drunk, as the alcohol only softens angry nerves for a short while before it pokes them with its needles.

My groin is also sticky wet. Like the rest of me, it too reeks repulsively, my pants clinging coldly to the tingling skin of my inner thighs. My breathing is jagged, my chest heaving, but I can smell them through the fear... the urine, the vomit, and the church. The church has its own scent, a scent of timelessness. Its odor mixes unnaturally with mine in the warm, dusty air. The dust wafts in streams of brightly colored sunlight above me, blue dust, red dust, and gold as it floats across stained glass prisms. The dust swirls ’round me like the smells and the ringing bells, everything swirling, everything sickening.

I try to rise, but cannot. I try my body, my arms, and my legs. The efforts trigger one last spasm. The bile heaves from below, filling my mouth and nostrils. With an instinctive sense of preservation my body coughs, willing the nastiness away, but the coughing only opens the trachea, allowing it to suck the acidic bile inside, where it cannot be. Thus begins the chain reaction of cough, inhale bile, cough and inhale again...

The doors open, letting the townsfolk in. They take pause at the surprise waiting upon the pew. They look with horror at the drowning man, even as he looks at them through his own terror filled eyes. He sees them, a dark-haired, dark-eyed and dark-skinned people, for all the world like impoverished angels. They whisper in a tongue of angels. They whisper prayers for me, a stranger, the women clinging to their rosaries, the men clasping gnarled hands.

The darkness creeps in. The angels fade. The Golden Road lays there before me. At its end waits an unknown God, a God who dose not know my voice, as it is a voice that has never known prayer. It is time now to walk that road. It is time now to test His mercy.

I was fallin’ down to Earth at a gawd-awful speed through the clear blue skies of Zephyrhills, having made my peace with Jesus, knowing – finally – how the universe began and how it would end:

“Helluva lot of good that’ll do me now,” I thought.

A six-pack of things crossed my mind, including: who would get my Frank Sinatra album collection, where did I park my car, would my sainted Mother have to ID my crushed body, how would my Nets, Mets, and Jets do next year, would anybody miss me when I was gone, and, most importantly: “Whatever happened to Arch Deal?”

Why Deal?

In June, 1975, Tampa Bay TV newsman Arch Deal jumped out of a small airplane at 3,000 feet over nearby Cypress Gardens and his main chute didn’t open. At 2,000 feet, his reserve chute failed to deploy. At zero feet, he hit the ground – yet managed to survive, except for his broken neck, six broken ribs, separated pelvis and hundreds of contusions, lacerations, and bruises.

I was in a similar situation – but without the chute.

Would I survive?

The spinning, churning, and turning was taking its toll. I was fadin’ in and out. I’d managed not to look down by keeping my eyes closed as long as I could. When I finally opened them (wide) and stared at Mother Earth, I saw (floating in the sky) what looked like a large, eerily thin, crown of thorns.

A sign from God?

Then the crown slowly transformed; first, to a winking eye; then, to a butterfly.

My last sane thought was of the card game that dealt me this death drop.

“Never play poker in an airplane when you’re out of money,” I thought. “Never.”

Wish somebody had told me that sooner.

The rushin’ wind, like an old train, was blastin’ (unmercifully) through the dark, moist caverns my brain. The last functional thought I had was a joke I heard as a kid. The punch line:

“It’s not the drop that kills ya . . . it’s the sudden stop.”