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| Popes Like Bullets | |
| By andybyers | ||||||||||||
| 03 August 2007 | ||||||||||||
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I wrote this a few years ago for my own amusement. Thought I'd take then opportunity now to find out if I wrote it for anyone else's amusement. :) Although my job giving hickies to wetbacks paid well, still, I found the work fundamentally unsatisfying, and I was soon in the market for employment of some other sort. And that, in a nutshell, is what set me on the road to destiny. I made my way in and out of several vocations over the next several months... chicken-gargler, lunchmeat component disgust-rater, tampon designer (hey, somebody has to), bank president... but none of them had that certain something I was looking for. That certain... zing. It was then I saw it, hidden away in a corner of the religious want ads. Bodyguard for the Pope. Yes. It seemed the Pope was soon to be off on yet another uninvited overseas romp, to drum up support for overpopulation and the thorough dissemination of sexual guilt. And I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Had to be a part of it. A holy glow fell upon my shoulders and with tears in my eyes I heard the voices of beautiful angels compelling me to throw my body between the Pope and the agency of anyone who would do him harm. I set off to do just that. The address on the scrap I'd torn from the newspaper led me down to the dockyards. I know it sounds corny, but with the way the fog curled in around me, concealing the shabby trappings of this earth, with my every step I felt myself walking nearer to God, as if into the very cloud-buttressed vaults of Heaven. Carelessly I tripped over a heavenly wino. “Heeeyyy,” he whined, emerging from his boozy euphoria. “You broke my bottle!” He looked on the verge of tears, and though I suspected that the bottle had been already empty or very nearly so, I apologized and offered him the cost of a replacement, which his grasping fingers snatched away with all the grace his blessed booze-buoyed brain could muster. “Can you tell me how to find this address?” I asked, pointing to the paper. But he never even bothered to look at it. He simply belched and, as if divinely inspired, pointed me in the direction I should go, before shuffling off himself to secure more poison for his liver. I thanked him. Over his shoulder he pointed heavenward with his middle finger, and vanished into the mists. A warehouse door marked “Condemned” proved to be my destination. When I knocked, the echo in the place seemed to suggest an interior far larger than the outside would have hinted at. I felt myself close to some holy truth. A little panel in the door slid open and two narrow eyes regarded me. “Whaddayuh want?” they snapped. “'Knuckles sent me,'” I offered, giving the password from the ad. The eyes shifted to scan my surroundings, as if to be sure no one had followed me. Apparently satisfied, he began fidgeting with the locks. When the last of them had been loosed, the door swung open, and there stood a man in Jesuit garb, holding a machine gun. “'Knock and it shall be opened unto you',” he cracked, and snorted a couple of times at the joke. “Is that from the Bible?” I asked him as he closed the door behind me. “I dunno. I heard it on 'Little House On the Prairie',” he shrugged. Another priest started patting me down. “He's clean,” he announced. “D'yuh know how to handle a gun, kid?” the first priest asked. “No,” I replied sadly, adding quickly, “but I'm willing to learn.” The priests smiled. “I like you, kid. You'll do okay.” The smiles faded. “...That's if the Big Boys take to you. What's your name?” “Calvin Luther McKnox,” I said. “That's a good Catholic name if I ever heard one,” the first priest nodded sternly. “I'm Monsignor Modus Operandi, and this,” he said, indicating the other, “is Father Paddy O'Furniture.” Father O'Furniture nodded. “Always at the ready in the service of the Lord,” he assured me. “I guess the first thing we wanna do it is present you to the man in charge,” Monsignor Operandi growled. “He's the one sorts out the wheat from the chaff. He'll be the one to decide if you're spiritually acceptable for the mission.” I swallowed hard. They led me though a maze of pipes, sharp turns, and narrow corridors, where moisture dripped and the air was cold and heavy, as full of fog as the air outside had been. And finally we stopped, and I stood beneath a bright light. “Is this it?” I asked, turning to the Jesuits. But they were gone. Another light blazed forth from the darkness and for the first time I saw the huge oaken desk before me. A high-backed chair, turned away from me, towered over it on the other side. The clamminess of the air combined with my nervousness to strain my bladder to the breaking point, but I suffered it like a staunch Christian and I waited. I don't know how much time passed before finally, the chair began to turn. And I was greeted with a soul-rending sight; a vision of man ruined by one too many missions for the Lord. He sat in the chair, looking as insubstantial as a skeleton dressed in the red vesture of his office; his face shrouded by a black hood, topped by his tall crimson hat. The room was silent but for the dripping of water and the soft but laboured breathing of the man as air passed in and out of the catheter in his neck. He raised a small electronic device to his throat. “I'm Cardinal Ecks,” he spoke, his voice a drawn, mechanical rasp produced by the machine. “Cardinal X?” I said. “No, Cardinal Ecks,” he reaffirmed. He raised his other hand; one of the fingers slowly elongated across the desk with an electric whir until his ring was presented just inches from my lips. I kissed it, and the finger withdrew. “Bet that comes in mighty handy,” I joked lamely, chuckling a couple of times. The Cardinal didn't laugh. I was still. He spoke again. “I understand you are interested in guarding the person of the Holy Father.” “Yes, Your Eminence.” He fought to fill his lungs; clearly even speaking was a strain for him. The deathlike whisper of his mechanical voice made its painful way across the desk again. “And what skills do you bring to the enterprise?” Seeing as my ring joke hadn't gone over I refrained from making any Star Trek references now. “Nothing but a burning passion and an unshakable belief. You see, Your Eminence...” I tried to put my experience into words; poor substitutes, but I had to try. “...When I read the ad this morning, I was overcome by the sensation that... I was chosen for the job. That I am... the One to Protect the Pope...” My words hung in the air, bouncing off the wet, bare mist veiled walls all around us. The Cardinal said nothing, but considered me carefully from behind that black mask of his that betrayed nothing of his thoughts. And finally he said, “Yes... I believe you may be correct.” And with that, he pressed a button hidden under the trim of his desktop, and the floor disappeared from beneath me. Screaming like an idiot I shot down the long narrow tunnel at breakneck speed. After a few seconds I felt the angle gradually increase in acuteness until I was slipping along almost horizontally, at which point I shot out of a hole in a wall and was dumped into a large pile of white satin pillows. I gathered my senses and fought my way out of the soft jumble, only to be greeted by the sight of a man, all dressed in white, bent over a golf putter and practising a shot. It was none other than the Pope himself. He glanced up. “Oh, hi!” he said. “Just a sec, okay?” He lined up the shot and knocked it into the cup with (almost) infinite grace. “Very nice,” I said, more or less involuntarily. To my horror, he heard me and looked up. But he smiled. “Aw, that's nothing,” he said. He retrieved the ball. “Watch this!” He hurried across the room, set the ball down, and, back to the cup, he tapped the ball in the opposite direction. Before my amazed eyes, the ball performed a sweeping turn and made a beeline for the cup, which it entered with a soft rumble. “Went in, right?” called the Pope. I nodded feebly, awestruck. “Wow,” I breathed. He smiled, throwing his arms wide. “One of the nifty little perks of being pope,” he said, starting towards me. “Frankly, I don't know why I bother practising anymore. Sort of takes the fun out of it.” “I can imagine.” “And you are...?” he queried. “Uh, Calvin McKnox, Your Holiness...” He raised a hand. “Please. We're alone. Call me Karl.” I smiled, dumbfounded. “Thank you,” I managed. He popped open a jug of sacrificial wine and poured himself a glass. “You're here about the bodyguard job, right?” he asked, gesturing to a second empty glass. In regard to the wine I shook my head. “Yes, I am, Your Hol— I mean, Karl.” He raised the wine to his lips and put it back. “Ahhhh,” he said. He set down the glass and reached into his robe. “Know anything about guns, Calvin?” he called, throwing a pistol my way. Startled, I was sure I'd drop it, but it landed perfectly in my hands. Still, no one could be more surprised than me to learn that the Pope was packing heat. “Well... not much,” I said. I looked at the gun; it was a sparkling silver semi auto; that much I knew. It weighed just exactly the right amount and the grip fit perfectly in my hand. “Nice gun, though,” I opined. He picked up the putter again. “Yeah,” he said. “John XXIII had it made in Switzerland. I inherited it with the ring. We call it 'Peter's Piece', even though it's a pretty safe bet St. Peter never handled a gun.” He chuckled. “Kind of a pope joke,” he explained. I nodded, smiling. “Gee... I never knew you carried a gun.” “Oh, yeah — popes are big on guns. Always have been,” he said, practising a putt. He looked up and pointed to a portrait of a Renaissance pope hanging on his wall. “It's rumoured that Alexander VI invented the concealable pistol. Well — you know those Borgias. And Pius XII had one of the biggest gun collections in Europe.” “Really?” “That's a fact,” he nodded. “Now me, you know, I'm the modern pope. The with it sort of pontiff. When I got the job I decided guns just weren't my style. Till this assassination stuff hit the fan; then all that went out the window.” He straightened, regarding me. “Now I come prepared.”_ “Forgive me for asking then, but... why do you need a bodyguard?” He smiled and put his arm around me. “Put yourself in my place, Calvin. You're out in public all the time, at risk. Now, yes, I carry a piece. But I don't really want to use it, do I? Except maybe as a last resort. I mean, think of the headlines — 'Earthly representative of Prince of Peace guns down would be assailant'. Not exactly good press, is it?” He stepped over to his golf ball and lined up a shot. “In fact, in some quarters I might be regarded as a bit of a hypocrite. So you see my problem.” “Yes,” I said. “And that's where you come in,” he smiled. “Your Holiness “ “Karl,” he waved a finger. “Karl,” I said, “you can count on me!” He tapped the ball. It shot into the cup. “Well, I have to warn you, kid. There are drawbacks.” “Every job has them.” “Long nights...” “No problem.” “You're on call 24 hours a day...” “I was chosen for this job.” “You might have to catch a bullet for me one day...” “If that's what I'm destined for, so be it.” “Maybe even die...” “How can I convince you that I was meant for this—” “Pays minimum wage...” Suddenly I wasn't so sure I was meant for this job. “Ah, well, yes,” I said, grinding my fingertips together. The Pope leaned on his putter, considering me. “I did have one or two other positions I should check up on before I give you a really firm—” “You're not going to take the job, are you?” he said. “Uhhh... No.” He smiled. “That's okay, I understand.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “Wow. That's really great of you.” “Hey, no problem. I am the Pope.” I started backing away. “Sorry to have bothered you with all this.” He eyed the golf ball and the cup. “It's okay.” “Thanks. Say, uh, can I kiss your ring before I go?” “Nope.” He knocked the ball into the cup perfectly yet again. “Right,” I smiled. I walked out of there with a new lease on life, took the first job I saw (sandbox cleaner), and never looked back.
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