Chapter Sixteen
Saturday night, 11:55 PM
~ Lookin' for to save my save my soul
lookin' for the place where the flowers grow
lookin' for to fill that GOD shaped hole
.
Mother am I still your son, you know I've waited so long to hear you say so
mother you left and made me someone
now I'm still a child but no one tells me no *
Lucky sat in the park and smoked his crack. He inhaled as deeply as he could with his aching lungs and savored his high. He wanted to blast out of his universe, fly away, and never come back. He'd taken a cab back to the park, a perk of his newfound wealth. He lay on his back with his arms behind his neck, looking at the stars and watching them twinkle and glimmer and chase each other across the night sky.
Joey was right. This was good stuff, but it didn't numb him down enough or take away the reality of his thoughts and feelings. It pushed him into the stratosphere, but the white junk took the stratosphere away.
Lucky felt his high slipping away, and the harder he tried to hold on, the quicker it ran away from him. Joey didn't bother to tell him about the thunderous crashes that were the nasty side effect of the drug.
Lucky was holding his gun, flexing the
muscles in his hand around its handle. Annoying thoughts kept crawling into his mind, and
he just couldn't shake them away. They kept calling attention to his gun. He opened the
cylinder of his gun, rolled it, and slammed it back into place. He tapped the gun
rhythmically and nervously on his knee.
*** "Mom," Lucky called out as he walked into the front door of 24 Royal Street. "Why is there a 'For Sale' sign in the front yard?" he asked, puzzled. "You're not selling the house are you?"
Laura avoided Lucky's gaze as she bustled around the kitchen, tidying and placing the clean dishes back into the cabinets.
"I'm taking Lulu and moving to North Carolina. I want my daughter and me to have a new start. There are just too many bad memories here. And now with Luke going to prison, I think it's time to go."
..
."A man has a code of honor, Cowboy," Luke explained to his ten-year-old
son. "Never harm a woman, never steal, and never kill a man." ***
Lucky raised the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. CLICK. An empty chamber turned.
He started crying, and tears ran down the length of his contorted face. He pulled the
trigger again, and the gun went CLICK. He let the gun slide down the side of his
devastated face and onto the ground.
As he raised the gun for a third time and placed it at his temple with his index finger ready on the trigger, an authoritative voice inside him said "NO." Where did that come from, wondered Lucky. I know it wasn't me and no one else is around here. He sat there for a minute without moving.
Suddenly he began to cry out, pleading. "Why did they leave me? Why doesn't anyone love me? I hate myself! I just want to die. I want it to end."
Lucky was overcome with a flood of emotions as they finally surfaced and burst and bubbled over into his consciousness. His screaming mind and emotions raced and, oddly, he thought calmly of the huge, lighted Jesus on Cortland Street. "Why can't I do anything right? Everyone hates me, and I'm a terrible person. I can't get it right by myself. I've tried and tried. Oh, Jesus help me, save me!" he cried out.
Lucky coughed loud and hard and slumped
face forward onto the pine needles covering the ground. His body looked like a crime scene
without the white line drawn around it. His arms and legs were fanned out and his hand
still gripped the gun. He lay there barely conscious, shaking violently and gasping for
breath. Face first on the ground, he suddenly felt a purposeful, golden presence above
him. It moved directly toward him and surrounded him with warmth. His body and mind
totally relaxed, and all shaking ceased. He felt cradled by a purity of intent, an
all-encompassing, gentle, and understanding love. The whole world silenced and
disappeared, and he rested in this penetrating, comforting, light for minutes. When the
presence lifted, he began shivering again, as blood trickled from his mouth and he
succumbed to the total darkness of unconsciousness.
* lyrics from U2, "Mofo"