As my Jim Kearns novel is approaching its end, the new year will see me posting more short stories and our award-winning screenplays among other things. For some reason, this story keeps being paywalled by Substack so I am reposting it as free for anyone who has not had a chance to read it.
Eli Horton was a carpenter. Well . . . not really, but that’s what he called himself. His true occupation entailed cleaning a giant table-saw’s blade with a 400 p.s.i shot from an air hose, stepping in after every fourth cut and blasting the gummed-up sawdust from its gnashing teeth as an assembly-line procession of half-inch 8’ x 8’ plywood squares streamed by. All day long, day in and day out, he watched and counted and blew, sometimes almost hypnotized as sheets of wood parted at his station like water upon rock. Once halved, these pieces slipped onto diverging conveyor belts and traveled to opposite sides of the factory.
Sure, carpenter was an oversimplification, but he wasn’t going to waste his time and diminish his status trying to explain his job to some well-upholstered number while he clutched a sweaty one at the bar on a Friday night. Nor did he want to bandy around titles like ‘chip-blower’ or ‘wood-wrangler’, catchy hyphenated job descriptions that could be mistaken for entry-level positions at a gay-porn studio. Eli sawed stuff . . . sort of.
Besides, he looked like a carpenter – an L.L. Bean carpenter, anyway – with his broad shoulders and a full, black beard that careened towards bushy if he skipped even one of its thrice-weekly trims. His hair, so thick and wavy it took on an oily-bluish hue (Elvis-technicolor-black was how one woman described it), his propensity for well-worn plaid shirts, and features symmetrical enough to make you look twice completed his model-as-builder looks. He himself had been put together square and true.
But today Eli didn’t feel square and true. He’d wobbled more than once at his station, leaning each time on the edge of the table’s vast, cold surface, feeling the power of the saw course through his palm and up his arm. He mentioned this to his friend, Turk Cavendish, over lunch.
“So, go home,” Turk said through a mouthful of meatloaf. “You got sick time.”
Turk was a little guy, six years out of high school (grade ten, to be exact), with long, lank hair, tombstone teeth, and a home-made tattoo scratched into each nut-like biceps: one read, Ginny, and the other, Parkdale. He reminded Eli of Iggy Pop – without Iggy’s talent or raison d’etre. And now Turk swept out a sinewy arm, indicating the 20,000 sq. foot factory around them, implying the powers that be. “Plus, you don’t owe these fuckers nothin’.”
‘These fuckers’ meant Modular Inc., a fast-growing company making a name for itself in Toronto’s turn-of-the-millennium rebounding housing market, where bungalow owners within view of downtown, midtown, or uptown high-rises could add one-hundred-thousand dollars to the value of their property with a sixty-thousand-dollar, installation included, factory-built second-floor addition.
It was a no-lose situation for everyone but the forty-plus $15.20 per-hour carpenters who worked long hours in a sea of sawdust and clatter. The truth was the real carpenters installed the additions on-site at a handsome wage. Eli and Turk were considered carpenter ants and treated as such, which was why Eli could understand Turk’s ‘me first’ attitude. Christ, working conditions aside, growing up in a housing project the way Turk did would do that to you, but Eli couldn’t behave that way himself: guilt, compulsion, or maybe even something as basic as sense of duty kept him at his post. And more and more these days, as he played out his thirty-third year, he wondered why he limited himself like that. Who the hell could be passing judgment on him? What could he gain?
But those questions, as always, were mere rhetoric, and he heard himself say:
“I think I’ll hang in there, Turk. There’s only five hours left in the day.”
“You, my friend, are a fuckin’ martyr,” Turk said, poking a plastic fork full of French fries at him. “And nobody likes a fuckin’ martyr.”
Slightly confused, Eli looked at him for a moment before saying, “That makes no sense, Turk. Why doesn't anyone like a martyr?”
Turk thought about this while working a chunk of fry from a molar with his tongue, then said, “You’re right. It just sounded good to me. What I meant was, martyrs are fuckin’ loony, from camel jockeys driving car bombs into American embassies right down to Mother Theresa wasting her life in the black hole of Calcutta. Sometimes you gotta be able to turn your back on whatever you think your responsibilities are, crack open a cold beer, and flip on the fuckin’ television – which is what you should be doin’ this afternoon.”
He looked at Eli triumphantly, apparently satisfied with the bluntness of his response the second time around; but that’s how Turk’s thoughts often spilled out: distastefully compelling, like a funky odour, and honest enough to be examined for any possible merit.
Eli had been drawn to him for that very reason, from the first time they’d opened up a lunch bag together two years ago. Something primordial radiated from the guy, the essence of man since he’d first dropped from the trees and picked up a beatin’ stick to take on all comers. And, somehow, Eli had always thought he was just the person to smooth out Turk’s rough edges, to help make him fit.
He looked at Turk now and raised an eyebrow. “Camel Jockey, Turk?”
“Ah, Christ, you know what I mean, Eli,” he said, sounding chagrined.
“Yeah, I do,” Eli said. The mere fact that Turk could now discuss topics other than pussy, drinkin’, and fightin’ felt gratifying; throw in his attempt to broach a subject as esoteric as martyrdom along with the concern he was showing for another man's health, and Eli felt as if they were making real headway. He’d have plenty of time to work on that 'camel jockey' thing.
But for now, his job beckoned. He gathered his lunch remnants as he stood. “Well, I gotta get back to the table.”
Turk looked up at him. “Just go home, Eli. Really. You don’t look so good.”
“I appreciate your concern, Turk,” Eli said. “But I can last the afternoon just fine.”
Eli spent the next half-hour counting, blowing, and contemplating, eventually landing upon a familiar thought: Why hadn’t Modular Inc. automated his task yet? The mechanics of it were mind-numbingly simple; even as he considered this, his alarm bell rang and he slapped the conveyor belt’s off switch.
Ten seconds later, he’d cleared the clogged blade and restarted the saw. Restarts were a common occurrence, but even that aspect of the job, the clean-up after the clogging, could be automated with a clamped-down air hose and one more ninety-nine cent computer chip.
Following the automation question, Eli thought about what Turk had mentioned at lunch – a cold beer. If he felt better after work, he’d phone Mary and ask her if she wanted to go out for one. He hadn’t seen her in a while and the thought of commitment had started creeping into his life again.
Then he recalled that other thing Turk had said: Just go home, Eli. Really. You don’t look so good.
Maybe the unexpected arrival of Turk’s and Ginny's baby was a good thing, after all. Maybe that was the catalyst that had finally allowed Turk to start thinking past himself.
Eli smiled thinly as he stepped into the ‘zone’ to blow sawdust from his blade again. But the truth was, not only did he not look so good, he also felt worse than he had before. No mere wobble affected his gait; vertigo gripped and shook him, like the flu had arrived in full.
He took another step and his strained smile, a distant remnant of those last images of Turk and Ginny and the baby, contorted into a silent grimace as his right foot tangled with the length of hose pooled beneath him. He looked down, shook out his leg to break free, and lost balance. A heartbeat later his grimace transmogrified into a full-throated scream as he pitched forward and found himself airborne, hurtling . . ..
He landed directly on the buzzing saw blade, hitting it hard, cupping it into his stomach as if he were greedy for it.
How long Eli felt that searing pain, he couldn’t say. It seemed infinite, with his own insane hollering a distant soundtrack to the fast-forward replay of his pointless life. And to exacerbate the assault, as if an assault of that gravity could be exacerbated, the teeth of the saw blade, built to grip and rip and tear wood, did its job with terrifying force on the more pliable substance of his shirt, grabbing hold of it and pulling him closer, like a punk reeling in a sissy by the lapels for an even sounder beating.
Surprisingly, in and amongst this carnage, Eli also felt a sharp jab of . . . what . . .? embarrassment . . .? as another sense working on another plane told him that co-workers rushing to his aid were screaming or vomiting or fainting, creating a mini scene within the scene he’d caused. Plus, his sphincter muscle had let go, allowing the seat of his jeans to fill with hot, liquid shit, flu-shit, adding to the stench of freshly spilled guts.
How could he have been so stupid? Tripping was one thing, but tripping onto an industrial table-saw blade? If the gene pool were tangible, he’d have been a turd bobbing in its shallow end. And now, inevitability, he faced the prospect of being scooped out and dumped unceremoniously into the cosmic waste bin.
Then all of these experiences, most notably the indescribable pain, ceased. He no longer writhed upon his saw, performing an auto-autopsy in front of blanched and reeling men. Instead, he found himself disembodied. This confounded him, for somehow, if he’d died or was in the process of dying, he’d missed the tunnel – the one with the light at the end of it, the one with the dark at the end of it, every tunnel, mythic or symbolic that he’d ever heard of. He hadn’t even had one last peek at his corporal self as he’d ascended, if, indeed, he had ascended.
But he had gone somewhere; he could see that now, although he experienced no physical evidence: No walls or floor or ceiling, no ground or sky, just an all-encompassing sense of place. In the foreground or background stood a woman, looking puzzled, tentatively feeling her head while she appeared to talk, from this distance, anyway, to a nondescript gentleman. As Eli tried to digest these facts, he realized that he now looked down at his perfectly intact stomach. He ran a hand over it.
“No, you’re not dreaming.”
Startled, Eli spun about and stood face to face with another man. What he looked like, Eli couldn’t say – except that he was soothing to the eye.
“Where the he----? Where am I?” Eli asked.
“Well, it’s not Purgatory, but it’s not exactly where we all go in the end, either. What answer are you looking for?” the man replied.
“How about the correct one,” Eli snapped. “I’d have to think that everything I am, everything I ever will be, is riding on it.”
“And what if I can’t supply a comprehensible answer?”
Already angry, and both literally and figuratively shit-your-pants scared, the last thing Eli needed was the run-around from this guy – whoever he was.
“Then I’d have to ask you to dumb it down a bit, Pal. The last I recall, I was doing the funky chicken on top of a table saw. Am I still there? Am I here? Maybe you could cut the cryptic bullshit and tell me what you know.”
The man smiled. “Cryptic bullshit. I like that. We should have heeded that criticism long ago.” He paused then (to what . . . shoot non-existent cuffs? Eli couldn’t say, everything still seemed so nebulous) before supplying his response:
“Okay. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you’re in heaven.”
Eli looked around. “Well, if I am, you must already know I’m not much of a believer, and this particular scenario isn’t helping. Where are the Pearly Gates . . . or the Frenchman, the Englishman, and the Italian?"
“It’s not quite like that,” the man answered. “It’s much more time/space than place. As I mentioned, it’s hard to describe.”
“Well give it your best shot. Make me believe that I’m somewhere and not just in the deepest throws of pain-induced hallucinations.”
The man sighed. “Alright, for now I can perform a simple party trick, a masses-bamboozler as we say in the trade . . . although you are my only audience member so I don’t think 'masses' is----”
“Yes, yes, get on with it,” Eli said impatiently.
And without warning, Eli found himself in an oak-and-leather office. A huge library of books lined walls that seemed both confining and endless, and a globe (not of the earth, but a rotating 3-D sphere sparkling with innumerable points of lights – the disco ball of existence, perhaps) sat to the side on the vast desk stretching between him and the man.
“Satisfied?” the man asked.
Eli shifted in his chair. This wasn’t exactly how he’d envisioned heaven, or even heaven’s waiting room, but the man had shown some power. And the chair felt quite comfortable – cloud-like, in fact.
“Well, at least it’s not nothing,” he said, “and I can come to terms with that.” But each passing second held the possibility that he spewed his life-blood somewhere else, thus limiting his awe.
“Coffee?” the man asked, nodding to a gleaming Bunn-O-Matic in the corner. “I understand it’s heavenly.”
"You’re stalling again,” Eli said. “Can you give me answers, or are you nothing more than ecclesiastic counter help?”
The man drew a deep a breath. “Alright, answers . . . but for that, a bit of back story might help. The trouble started some time ago, when humanity was at its bleakest, when the smell of unwashed groins and burning heretics blanketed the planet and humankind showed almost no possibility of changing its ways – ever.”
“Hey, that’s people,” Eli said. “We've been that way from the start.”
“Yes, you have. But at that particular time, your flaws seemed pervasive, irreparable, and in a fit of youthful pique, we willed ourselves a cosmic vasectomy, so to speak . . . an irreversible one.”
“Don’t be silly,” Eli said. “Do you really expect me to believe that?”
“Why not? For millennia, first millions then billions have believed far sillier.”
“True, true,” Eli said, nodding. “So go ahead, continue. You gave yourself a ‘cosmic vasectomy’ and . . .?”
“And our actions pretty well guaranteed no second coming.”
“Excuse me,” Eli said. “Isn’t that talk a tad racy for someone of your ilk?”
“Regardless of what people think, we’re not so pious as to lack humor,” the man said. A slight smile played upon his lips.
“Obviously. I love the joke you’re pulling on me.”
“Anyhow,” the man, said. “We realize now that we’d made a rash decision----”
“Whoa,” Eli said. “Sorry for interrupting again, but let’s clear this up once and for all. What exactly do you mean by ‘We’?"
“I mean ‘We’, a stunningly simple religious concept that’s beyond the majority of first-world, present-day humanity’s comprehension . . . but we, I mean I, digress. What I’m trying to say is, we’ve had a change of heart but can’t take action in the same manner as we have in the past. Lord knows, we’ve tried, but we’ve only been able to go local. For example, Gandhi was----"
“Dandy, but sex sure didn’t rot his teeth,” Eli said, interjecting.
The man scowled.
“Hey, you’re not the only funny guy around here,” Eli said.
“Stop it or I’ll bust a gut,” the man replied.
A short and awkward silence followed then the man said, “Look, I’m trying to get to the crux here. Are we finished our Abbott and Costello routine?”
“Yes, sorry.”
Alright, where was I? Oh yes. As you know, the world’s in big trouble. If I had to draw a comparison, I’d say the planet and its human inhabitants are much like an enormous monkey house full of enraged chimps, except instead of flinging around chatter and feces, you're firing bullets and hurling bombs.”
“Eh?” Eli said.
“C’mon,” the man replied. “The concept’s simple. Your technological savvy has evolved at a far quicker rate than your ability to experience empathy, show compassion, or think logically. You love to kill, whether you do it individually or as groups or nations.”
“I wouldn’t call it love, “Eli said. “I mean, nobody really wants to . . ..” and spotting his lack of logic, he let his sentence trail.
“Humans love to kill,” the man reiterated. “And it’s done with relish when performed under the guise of ‘God’s will’, or for that extra bit of wiggle space, God and Country. First world, third world, any world, what starts out as a basic our-beliefs-are-the-true-beliefs mentality, ultimately evolves into sanctioned slaughter.”
“So, do what you’re good at,” Eli said. “Rework your ‘rain-for-forty-days-and-nights’ routine or whatever. Teach us a lesson we’ll not soon forget.”
The man smiled. “Yes, that was a good one, wasn’t it? But pulling the wool over the eyes of a band of crude sheep herders who couldn’t see beyond their own mountain range was child’s play. We can’t do that anymore. There are far too many crude sheep herders, far too many sheep, and you can see beyond all of your mountain ranges now.”
“Uh, by the way, I was joking,” Eli said. “Floods, pillars of salt – that stuff isn’t the right way to go about things. Christ, talk about role models.”
“Yes, we’re aware of how you think, Eli, which is why you’re here and what brings us to the salient point: we never wanted or deserved this filled-with-wrath image, but ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’ has not once been adopted as a national motto, and ‘turn the other cheek’ has never been bellowed as a war cry. We really thought that as you grew, you’d outgrow the pettiness.”
“Alright, we agree,” Eli said. “The world’s a nasty place, but what does any of this have to do with me?”
“Well, I was wending my way to that actual point,” the man said, “and it goes something like this: we need to find a leader, but unlike a Gandhi, a Kennedy, a King, or a Havel, we need one capable of more than national reverence and a world-wide reputation; we need someone with the potential to teach the world that taking even one life or robbing one person of his or her freedom is an intolerable injustice.”
Eli laughed heartily. “That’s mighty big dreaming, but I hate to break it to you: you’re not even going to be able to find a guy who can popularize multiple-denomination country-clubs let alone garner a global following.”
“Nevertheless, that’s our goal. And as I’ve said, we can’t go the Son-of-God route. We have to go with someone who’s already walked the planet for a while, and he’s got to have passed a biblical quality test.”
“Why?” Eli asked.
“What, you think Richie Rich is the man for the job? This is how it works: no pain, no gain. Our candidates have to overcome tremendous suffering.” He paused dramatically here before continuing. “And brother, are you suffering . . . even as we speak.”
Suddenly, Eli realized why he sat where he sat, and another cataclysmic pain rocked his stomach, this one like a celestial left-hook. For a moment it left him gasping, then he stood and pointed at the man. “Uh uh. No Way. Get outta town.”
“Yes way,” the man said.
“Jesus!”
“No,” the man said. “Jesus-like.”
“But why me?” Eli asked. “Out of all the work-a-day schmoes in the world, why me?”
“It all boiled down to standards and types,” the man answered. “The obvious ones, the ones who would elect themselves for the position, the politicians and priests and boy-scout leaders of the world were weeded out for reasons we needn’t go into.”
“This is no time for stereotypical jokes,” Eli said.
“Who’s joking. But the most important factor was this: we chose a split-second in time to cull our applicants, in a portal fashion; this kept us from pitfalls like waffling or over-recruiting, and we selected from . . . from the basic, decent fabric of humanity.”
“Applicants?” Eli asked. “So that woman I saw when I first arrived . . .?”
The man nodded. “Head wound . . . rescuing a kitty from a tree.”
“Anyone else?” Eli asked.
“Here and there.”
“Alright, what about the woman? he asked. “Not that I’m belittling her qualifications or lobbying on my own behalf, but religion’s not built for that kind of evolutionary step. I mean, if after all of these centuries we’ve never seen a gay Cardinal bow before the Popette in a rustle of chiffon, how can we expect to see humanity accept a female as its actual Savior? That would put a lot of boxers in a knot, wouldn’t it?”
“It certainly would,” the man said. “And perhaps some knotted boxers would drop the testosterone level a bit.”
“Then there’s the possibility you might be jumping the gun here,” Eli said. “If you were to wait just a while longer, maybe the world would straighten out naturally, maybe races would come together in harmony, maybe people would see eye to eye on faith, maybe . . ..”
Eli’s statement dangled as they shared a laugh, then the man added, “And maybe the sun would rise in the west to shine upon this enlightenment, but right now we’re looking at the more plausible route: miraculous intervention; so if we could continue?”
“Alright,” Eli said, “although I still have no idea what you see in me.”
“Well, you certainly aren’t without sin,” the man said, appearing to consult the blank desk-top in front of him. “There was that kegger in ‘89 and the ‘yellow light’ incident at the corner of Don Mills and Eglinton in ‘95.”
“Hey, the guy deserved it,” Eli said, suddenly finding his fists clenched. He stopped and took a deep breath. “But let’s be honest. There’s more where that came from – lots – and I wouldn’t want some tabloid crap to rear up and bite my righteous ass somewhere down the road.”
“We’re aware of all your bombastic moments, and we’ve got them covered,” the man said. “You are, after all, only human; but on the more mundane side, if we could review a few facts?”
“Certainly,” Eli said.
The man looked to his desk again. “It says here that you were born in the early hours of December twenty-fifth, nineteen-sixty-nine, in the back of your parents’ Volkswagen bus.”
“That’s right,” Eli said. “They never made it to the hospital. I first broke surface while “Eli’s Comin’,” that old Three Dog Night tune, blared from the van radio. That’s how I got my name, Eli Cummings Horton. Or so I was told.”
“Yes, your parents were hippies: Jurgen ‘Big Dawg’ Horton and Sandy ‘Moonbeam’ Delroy; we’re not holding that against you, though,” the man said. “In fact, one of your most valued traits comes from a sentiment voiced if not championed in that very era: your ability to reach out, to lend a helping hand.”
Eli looked quizzically at the man. “Okay, you’re confusing me now,” he said. “I mean, the part about me lending a helping hand. When have I done that?”
“With one Turk Cavendish,” the man replied.
“Turk?” Eli said. “Turk’s just a friend. You do things for friends.”
Once again the man peeked down then looked back to Eli. “Sixteen months ago, when Turk’s girlfriend, Ginny, announced she was pregnant, you hunted him down during his three-day bender at the Parkdale Hotel and took him into your home.”
“So,” Eli said. “Who wouldn’t do that?”
The man smiled. “And in the following weeks you kept him sober, kept him employed, and reunited him with his girlfriend.”
“Well, the truth is,” Eli said, “I always saw a bit of myself in Turk . . . except, y’know, he needed more, a lot more. He never did have much of anything that was good in this world. It’s the least I could do.”
“Even now you sacrifice time and energy making him a better man.”
“It’s no sacrifice,” Eli said. “I enjoy it. But he is only one man, and to find myself in this position because of that, well, I just don’t think I . . ..”
“One man or many, it’s what’s in your heart,” the man said. “And billions of Turks roam the earth at this very moment in need of what you can offer.”
Eli felt the corner of his lip rise, giving him a no-comprendé stare. “That’s where I’m having a problem. I don’t really know what I can offer.”
“I think you know exactly what you can offer and that if its definition came easily to you, it would be mere artifice.” He stood and extended his hand. Eli stood with him, his mind abuzz, and grasped it.
“I can’t say for certain at this point, but I like your chances,” the man continued. And as he spoke, Eli felt as though he were falling away, as if the man before him were a receding portrait, with his voice diminishing accordingly. Then, even more faintly, Eli heard, "Just between you and me, I think I’m looking at the next----”
With that, the man and his voice disappeared totally, although Eli could still feel their hands clasped together. For some time that’s all he could feel, one hand in his, and nothing, not even light, marred his vision.
And then a voice re-introduced itself; distant and muddled at first, it grew clearer as Eli’s vision returned, until finally he saw Turk standing before him, bent at the waist, his face contorted, his sparse mustache glistening with snot. He clutched Eli’s hand and wept openly as he said:
“Jesus . . . Jesus, Eli. I told you. Just go home fer-fucks-sake. That’s all you had to do.”
Of course, Eli couldn’t really feel Turk's hand. From the neck down he felt nothing, but above the neck, where feeling becomes so intertwined with perception, he sensed two strictly intuitive realities: one, that indescribable pain was being held at bay; and two, that he was packed like a Christmas turkey. Other than that, he could have been an impartial observer. An intravenous bag hung next to Turk’s head, pumping Lord knows how much morphine into his body. Eli knew the amount had to be enormous to deaden him so.
Now a huge tear fell from Turk’s face, landing on the cold, wooden thing he gripped, and Eli was certain that he could sense it . . . it was so warm; he knew that it trickled down through the thick, black hair on his wrist.
Behind Turk stood Ginny, still just a girl, really, her cheeks wet, shining like satin, as if the way she’d pulled her hair back had stretched her skin too tight. She held little Eli, oblivious and sleeping, against her shoulder. Just beyond them, in the next bed, a woman with her head swathed in bandages lay still, seemingly lifeless.
“Just go home, Eli,” Turk said one last time, his voice hitching. “That’s all.”