Bite the Bullet - Saints Row

9: Where I Stopped Starts With You

The smoke in that church was thick enough to give half the block cancer. I contributed from the collapsed stairwell, gravitating there time and time again, out of sight and out of mind in the mausoleum of contradiction I didn’t belong in, smoking until the ashes burned my knuckles. The heat of the crackling barrel fire dry-roasted me in the fine essence of garbage cardboard and beer cartons, while petrichor perfumed the damp, aged stone. I just wanted to climb back onto my shitty couch under my shitty roof with my shitty TV, because I was sick of smelling somebody else’s blood and stale tobacco under my nails every time I took a trembling drag. Nights like these stuck to every facet of my life like a busted pack of royal purple fucking craft glitter, turning up on my psyche every time I heard a police siren wailing in the rain. 

Bitching aside, I wasn’t feeling much; it always worked like that—unable to give a shit about not giving a shit, doing it so I’d remember why I shouldn’t do it. My head swam in numbness, like I’d left it behind in the thrashing Lake. The oozing, split incision wasn’t doing the vertigo any favors either, and zipping up my jacket, I ignored it. The cherry on top of the shit sundae tonight would be getting blood on somebody and having to have that fucking conversation. 

Nacho sat beside me, stiffer and quieter than a corpse, interlocked fingers goalied by his knees with his wet hair making a puddle at our feet. Bathed in warm shadows, belt sagging from the weight of the gun, nicked scabs and scrapes ran up and down his arms like tire tread on asphalt. Something about the flickering matched the muted terror in his face, and maybe it was just me trying to talk myself into common ground, but I wanted to think he was just as out of place as I was beneath those dusty arches.

I wished I could've told him that I loaded the bullet that saved his life in that very same spot, if only to put that fact somewhere other than my head.  

A veteran and a student nurse tweezed the stray birdshot out of Julius’ elevated leg, dropping each bloodied pellet into an ashtray, every ping like a little metronome, but spaced far enough apart to keep me from going fucking crazy. The old man was half-slumped over his desk with a blunt in one hand and a sweaty glass of bourbon in the other, flashing a constitution to make me, Nacho, and the chapel full of Saints feel like kiddies fussin’ over boo-boos. Not many of them knew a lifetime of this shit had packed Julius’ body full of lead, or that the chunks missing from him were the real reason he wore all those fancy sweaters. If they knew, if only they knew the half of it, the gangsta-rap fantasy might lose some of its luster. 

“Back when you were still in diapers,” Julius spoke pointedly at us, taking a puff through an unreadable stare on the candelabra. “...We handled shit different. Me and…” His voice drifted off. “After the war, hardware entered the picture. Now everybody got a piece,” I watched the vet nod along. “Real easy to do, real eager to use it. Now, boys are dyin’ too young. Everybody dyin’, left and right. Everybody wants to be a leader, wants to prove it, wants to climb the ladder fast. Now, it's about cash and cars and pussy. Don’t matter who gets stepped on to get there.” He snorted, or maybe it was a laugh, but there wasn’t anything good in it. “... The fuck happened?” 

“Ya’ got old.” I retorted shortly, and he chuckled. It might’ve been for real that time, or maybe not, but I was thankful I never cared enough to learn the fucking difference.

“And I let punks like you talk to me like that,” he disparaged, taking another hit and getting comfortable. “You’re lucky this’s some good-ass shit.” 

While we slow-cooked in heated silence, the congested voices of gathered Saints celebrating their first real victory filled the chapel behind us, Nacho and I separated from them by a single crumbling hallway gushing candlelight. I wondered why he didn’t stay back—why he wasn’t over there soaking up all the inevitable respect that the cojones he employed tonight would award him with, because that was the point of all this, right? Every kid out there dreamt of being in his shoes—being the one to save Julius and his right-hand man’s ass, and taking all the bragging rights that came with it.