HE'S JUST THE KING OF HIS THRONE
MERIDEAN DONNELLY
It’s the hottest morning on record for the secluded town of Seraph’s Point, North Dakota. 122° and climbing, and only 11 AM. On the main stretch, anyone foolish enough to walk down the middle of the shimmering blacktop would see heat-blurred glimpses out of a film.
The Owens kids with their bare backs to Louie’s brick storefront, white shorts and scrubbed shoes shining like polished marble in the orange sun. The tan faces of the Hsu sisters, cheeks dimpled with coy smiles for their boyfriends and lead-ons. A popped fire hydrant sizzling against the asphalt like grease in a skillet, store windows dusted with drops, and bare feet cringing from the hot ground as children and grown men alike dance under the spray.
Javier, as it happens, is foolish enough to walk down the middle of the blacktop. His face gathers sun, darkening almost by the minute. His tank is untucked, his shorts clinging to his sweaty knees, scuffed shoes covering the half-mile of Main. Javier catches eyes as he passes, clothes soaked from the hydrant, eyes near-blind with sun and sweat. He makes it all the way to the Andromeda Cinema & Arcade at the edge of downtown in a daze. It’s only when he sees the silver gleam off his brother’s rental car that he stops walking.
The fresh Mercedes-Benz pulls off the street, and Javier watches from the center lane as his brother parks in front of the cinema. The strip mall is wobbling with heat, and Francisco climbs out the driver’s side door into that very distortion. He hasn’t been to Seraph’s Point in six years, not since he got his tuition paid at MIT. Javier wants to hate him, wants to scream at Cisco to get back in his rich-ass rental and go back to his trophy girlfriend in New Jersey and just leave Seraph’s Point in the dust and decay like he did before. But Javier knows what he has to say, and it can’t wait. He leaves the center lane, steps up the curb and approaches Cisco like he has a gun in his waistband. He might as well. It would have the same effect as what he’s got to say now.
“Julia?” Cisco asks when he sees him.
“Javier,” Javier corrects, coming to a stop. He thinks it should be obvious by now. The binder, the shaved head, the low lilt of his voice.
Cisco ignores all of it. “You didn’t walk here,” he says instead, and pulls at Javier’s sweat-dampened shirt.
Javier can’t even force a laugh. “Don’t have the money for a car.”
Cisco tries to ignore that, too. He’s not successful. “That what you want, Jules? Cash?”
Javier clenches his jaw. “I’m dying. Cancer. Can’t pay for treatment, and I’m not gonna ask you to, either.”
Cisco’s face falls. “Cancer?” His voice shakes.
“Lungs,” Javier explains shortly. “Smokes finally got to me.”
This particular revelation must change Cisco’s feelings. He wipes his face of pity and looks angry instead. “You idiot. You call me out here just to tell me you fucked up? I already knew that. And what’s this shit about me not paying? You wanna die? That still it?”
Javier smiles, but it stings his cheeks like a snarl. “Nothin’ to live for, brother. You got the hot girl, the bank, the silk sheets. I got Ma’s urn and pocket lint.”
Cisco shakes his head sharply. “You got your fists. You were always a good fighter, even bein’ a girl. How far along is it? Can you rig up somethin’ with Hawk? Get some money for chemo?”
It’s Javier’s turn to ignore what Cisco has said. “Stage 2,” he answers. “Hawk left years ago. No gym, no pits, no matches. Nobody bets on locked doors. I got nothin’ left.”
“So what,” Cisco demands through gritted teeth. “You just gonna curl up and die?”
“Don’t want you to hate me more than you do,” Javier allows.
“Jules,” Cisco says pleadingly.
“Javier,” Javier corrects viciously.
Cisco scowls. “I don’t hate you,” he finishes, but it comes out feeble.
“You can’t even say my name,” Javier levels.
“It’s not your name,” Cisco spits. “Ma named you Julia.”
“And she understood!” Javier pauses. “Ma understood when I shaved my head, and started runnin’ with Hawk. You and Papa were the only ones who didn’t get it.”
“El Dios mio,” Cisco says bitterly. “I wouldn’t’ve come if you just wanted to compare me to that hijo de puta.”
“Don’t diss Abuela,” Javier says on instinct, then remembers neither of them can stand the old woman. When Javier was born, their parents were fighting more and more, and Abuela Katrina insisted on a paternity test. She used to tell Javier, when he was young and pretty with long ringlets and chubby cheeks, that he was born out of bad omens. Julia, she would say at a whisper, El Diablo has you by the hand. Javier almost laughs at the memory. If she could see her grandchildren now, fighting aimlessly on cracked asphalt in the sweltering heat.
Cisco shakes his head. “I was messed up,” he says. “Papa made me think it was okay to hate you. Abuela, too. Saying you were evil. They lied about a lot.”
Javier looks away. “Look,” he interrupts, but doesn’t face Cisco again. “I don’t wanna talk about Papa. I wanted to tell you.” He pauses again. “You should know I’m not gonna repent like you want me to. I’m who I am, and that’s not about to change just ‘cuz I’m dying.” Finally, Javier looks back.
Francisco has a particular expression on his face, like when he broke his pinkie and ring fingers the week before his high school viola recital. “You’re not staying here,” he says flatly.
It takes Javier a moment to understand. When he does, unbidden rage floods his belly like floodgates opening at the pit of his chest. “I’m not comin’ to Jersey. You don’t really wanna help me. You just wanna fix me.”
Cisco throws his arms out, palms facing up. “Is that such a bad thing? You’ve got some shit goin’ on, Jules. You think God didn’t make you how you’re s’posed to be!”
Javier bites the inside of his cheek to cool down before replying. “I think God made me exactly how I am. He made my whole life, so he made me this way. You can blame me, or the devil, or Papa, but in the end you’re just blaming God.”
Cisco’s blood flames dark red under his skin. Maybe it’s the heat, but Javier thinks his brother’s face ripples in anger. “Rot in Hell,” he snarls, and turns to walk away.
Javier watches him storm across to his rental, climb inside, and pull out of the parking lot. He remembers being fourteen, and watching Cisco board the plane in Phoenix, cheeks dimpled from his smile. It’s the perfect book-end. The beginning of the end of his life, and the final sentence. Javier sighs through his nose and feels the gut-piercing urge to hunch over and cough. He manages to avoid it until Cisco’s silver rental is out of sight.
The taste of blood is strong in Javier’s mouth.
The Owens kids with their bare backs to Louie’s brick storefront, white shorts and scrubbed shoes shining like polished marble in the orange sun. The tan faces of the Hsu sisters, cheeks dimpled with coy smiles for their boyfriends and lead-ons. A popped fire hydrant sizzling against the asphalt like grease in a skillet, store windows dusted with drops, and bare feet cringing from the hot ground as children and grown men alike dance under the spray.
Javier, as it happens, is foolish enough to walk down the middle of the blacktop. His face gathers sun, darkening almost by the minute. His tank is untucked, his shorts clinging to his sweaty knees, scuffed shoes covering the half-mile of Main. Javier catches eyes as he passes, clothes soaked from the hydrant, eyes near-blind with sun and sweat. He makes it all the way to the Andromeda Cinema & Arcade at the edge of downtown in a daze. It’s only when he sees the silver gleam off his brother’s rental car that he stops walking.
The fresh Mercedes-Benz pulls off the street, and Javier watches from the center lane as his brother parks in front of the cinema. The strip mall is wobbling with heat, and Francisco climbs out the driver’s side door into that very distortion. He hasn’t been to Seraph’s Point in six years, not since he got his tuition paid at MIT. Javier wants to hate him, wants to scream at Cisco to get back in his rich-ass rental and go back to his trophy girlfriend in New Jersey and just leave Seraph’s Point in the dust and decay like he did before. But Javier knows what he has to say, and it can’t wait. He leaves the center lane, steps up the curb and approaches Cisco like he has a gun in his waistband. He might as well. It would have the same effect as what he’s got to say now.
“Julia?” Cisco asks when he sees him.
“Javier,” Javier corrects, coming to a stop. He thinks it should be obvious by now. The binder, the shaved head, the low lilt of his voice.
Cisco ignores all of it. “You didn’t walk here,” he says instead, and pulls at Javier’s sweat-dampened shirt.
Javier can’t even force a laugh. “Don’t have the money for a car.”
Cisco tries to ignore that, too. He’s not successful. “That what you want, Jules? Cash?”
Javier clenches his jaw. “I’m dying. Cancer. Can’t pay for treatment, and I’m not gonna ask you to, either.”
Cisco’s face falls. “Cancer?” His voice shakes.
“Lungs,” Javier explains shortly. “Smokes finally got to me.”
This particular revelation must change Cisco’s feelings. He wipes his face of pity and looks angry instead. “You idiot. You call me out here just to tell me you fucked up? I already knew that. And what’s this shit about me not paying? You wanna die? That still it?”
Javier smiles, but it stings his cheeks like a snarl. “Nothin’ to live for, brother. You got the hot girl, the bank, the silk sheets. I got Ma’s urn and pocket lint.”
Cisco shakes his head sharply. “You got your fists. You were always a good fighter, even bein’ a girl. How far along is it? Can you rig up somethin’ with Hawk? Get some money for chemo?”
It’s Javier’s turn to ignore what Cisco has said. “Stage 2,” he answers. “Hawk left years ago. No gym, no pits, no matches. Nobody bets on locked doors. I got nothin’ left.”
“So what,” Cisco demands through gritted teeth. “You just gonna curl up and die?”
“Don’t want you to hate me more than you do,” Javier allows.
“Jules,” Cisco says pleadingly.
“Javier,” Javier corrects viciously.
Cisco scowls. “I don’t hate you,” he finishes, but it comes out feeble.
“You can’t even say my name,” Javier levels.
“It’s not your name,” Cisco spits. “Ma named you Julia.”
“And she understood!” Javier pauses. “Ma understood when I shaved my head, and started runnin’ with Hawk. You and Papa were the only ones who didn’t get it.”
“El Dios mio,” Cisco says bitterly. “I wouldn’t’ve come if you just wanted to compare me to that hijo de puta.”
“Don’t diss Abuela,” Javier says on instinct, then remembers neither of them can stand the old woman. When Javier was born, their parents were fighting more and more, and Abuela Katrina insisted on a paternity test. She used to tell Javier, when he was young and pretty with long ringlets and chubby cheeks, that he was born out of bad omens. Julia, she would say at a whisper, El Diablo has you by the hand. Javier almost laughs at the memory. If she could see her grandchildren now, fighting aimlessly on cracked asphalt in the sweltering heat.
Cisco shakes his head. “I was messed up,” he says. “Papa made me think it was okay to hate you. Abuela, too. Saying you were evil. They lied about a lot.”
Javier looks away. “Look,” he interrupts, but doesn’t face Cisco again. “I don’t wanna talk about Papa. I wanted to tell you.” He pauses again. “You should know I’m not gonna repent like you want me to. I’m who I am, and that’s not about to change just ‘cuz I’m dying.” Finally, Javier looks back.
Francisco has a particular expression on his face, like when he broke his pinkie and ring fingers the week before his high school viola recital. “You’re not staying here,” he says flatly.
It takes Javier a moment to understand. When he does, unbidden rage floods his belly like floodgates opening at the pit of his chest. “I’m not comin’ to Jersey. You don’t really wanna help me. You just wanna fix me.”
Cisco throws his arms out, palms facing up. “Is that such a bad thing? You’ve got some shit goin’ on, Jules. You think God didn’t make you how you’re s’posed to be!”
Javier bites the inside of his cheek to cool down before replying. “I think God made me exactly how I am. He made my whole life, so he made me this way. You can blame me, or the devil, or Papa, but in the end you’re just blaming God.”
Cisco’s blood flames dark red under his skin. Maybe it’s the heat, but Javier thinks his brother’s face ripples in anger. “Rot in Hell,” he snarls, and turns to walk away.
Javier watches him storm across to his rental, climb inside, and pull out of the parking lot. He remembers being fourteen, and watching Cisco board the plane in Phoenix, cheeks dimpled from his smile. It’s the perfect book-end. The beginning of the end of his life, and the final sentence. Javier sighs through his nose and feels the gut-piercing urge to hunch over and cough. He manages to avoid it until Cisco’s silver rental is out of sight.
The taste of blood is strong in Javier’s mouth.
*
Natalia Penzak works the reception desk at the downtown library. She’s been Javier’s only real friend in town since she moved into the apartment across from his. Her left breast is a scar, her right a constant threat. Natalia leans heavily on her hand and talks about her remission whenever Javier needs to listen. He doesn’t tell her it’s because he thinks his suffering might be saving her.
“My father believes this part of the world manifested in my cells,” Natalia reveals. “He tells me it’s the heat, and the people. The grease in the food. He wants me to come home.”
Javier leans on the counter opposite her, one ankle hooked behind the other. “You ever think about going?”
Natalia shakes her head immediately. She peels at the edge of the counter with sky-blue nails for a few seconds before she speaks. “St. Petersburg has too many bad memories for me.”
Javier nods. The computer screen catches on Natalia’s pupils, making them shine like glass screens to mask the inside of her skull. Like flimsy armor. “I get that,” he says.
Natalia quirks an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
Javier shrugs, ignoring the ache in his ribs. “Yeah. Ma moved us up from Alabama when I was a kid. My Papa wasn’t a good guy. I still can’t think about the house where I grew up without getting mad.” Mad is a complex word. It means too much. Getting sick, swinging his fists into the bed frame until his knuckles bleed. Getting the shakes, lying on his back on the floor until his bones stop vibrating. Feeling terrified.
But Natalia must understand it. She taps something on the keyboard and grins. “Have you been to the gift shop yet?”
Javier squints. “You have a gift shop?”
Natalia huffs a laugh. “No, not here. The one at the hospital.”
Javier’s chest stills. He shakes his head slightly. “Not yet.” He hasn’t been to the hospital since they found the polyps in his lungs. He hasn’t paid that bill. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever pay a penny of it before Cisco has to buy a plot in the graveyard. Maybe he’ll bury Javier in New Jersey, to really grind the salt in.
Natalia’s mouth twists sideways. “There’s a book, next to the coffees. It’s called Fuck Feelings. Two psychiatrists with licenses published it. There’s a section about childhood trauma that made me laugh. But it helped, also. Better than a lot of things do. Better than therapy, in my opinion. Or beating up those punching bags. Or whatever it is you can’t afford anymore.” She gives him a knowing look, bordering on a glare.
Javier sighs. “It doesn’t matter, Nat. I already talked to Cisco. Pretty sure he won’t pay to fix my mistakes.”
“But will he pay to give you a second chance?” Nat asks sagely.
Javier doesn’t know the answer to that. He blinks, eyes stinging. He’s struck suddenly by how much he doesn’t want to die. “Probably not,” he lies.
Thankfully, Nat doesn’t press. “Go find some books. Stop punishing yourself.”
Javier knows she means to think about his options. To stop pestering her about her own remission. It makes her tense to talk about those months where she thought she’d die, knowing that might still be Javier’s reality. Javier nods and goes to find books. He doesn’t check anything out, but he thinks about that book by the psychiatrists. He wonders distantly if Cisco ever got help like that. Therapy, for all the things Papa did. It would make sense, Javier finds, why he acts the way he does, if he never got help.
“My father believes this part of the world manifested in my cells,” Natalia reveals. “He tells me it’s the heat, and the people. The grease in the food. He wants me to come home.”
Javier leans on the counter opposite her, one ankle hooked behind the other. “You ever think about going?”
Natalia shakes her head immediately. She peels at the edge of the counter with sky-blue nails for a few seconds before she speaks. “St. Petersburg has too many bad memories for me.”
Javier nods. The computer screen catches on Natalia’s pupils, making them shine like glass screens to mask the inside of her skull. Like flimsy armor. “I get that,” he says.
Natalia quirks an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
Javier shrugs, ignoring the ache in his ribs. “Yeah. Ma moved us up from Alabama when I was a kid. My Papa wasn’t a good guy. I still can’t think about the house where I grew up without getting mad.” Mad is a complex word. It means too much. Getting sick, swinging his fists into the bed frame until his knuckles bleed. Getting the shakes, lying on his back on the floor until his bones stop vibrating. Feeling terrified.
But Natalia must understand it. She taps something on the keyboard and grins. “Have you been to the gift shop yet?”
Javier squints. “You have a gift shop?”
Natalia huffs a laugh. “No, not here. The one at the hospital.”
Javier’s chest stills. He shakes his head slightly. “Not yet.” He hasn’t been to the hospital since they found the polyps in his lungs. He hasn’t paid that bill. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever pay a penny of it before Cisco has to buy a plot in the graveyard. Maybe he’ll bury Javier in New Jersey, to really grind the salt in.
Natalia’s mouth twists sideways. “There’s a book, next to the coffees. It’s called Fuck Feelings. Two psychiatrists with licenses published it. There’s a section about childhood trauma that made me laugh. But it helped, also. Better than a lot of things do. Better than therapy, in my opinion. Or beating up those punching bags. Or whatever it is you can’t afford anymore.” She gives him a knowing look, bordering on a glare.
Javier sighs. “It doesn’t matter, Nat. I already talked to Cisco. Pretty sure he won’t pay to fix my mistakes.”
“But will he pay to give you a second chance?” Nat asks sagely.
Javier doesn’t know the answer to that. He blinks, eyes stinging. He’s struck suddenly by how much he doesn’t want to die. “Probably not,” he lies.
Thankfully, Nat doesn’t press. “Go find some books. Stop punishing yourself.”
Javier knows she means to think about his options. To stop pestering her about her own remission. It makes her tense to talk about those months where she thought she’d die, knowing that might still be Javier’s reality. Javier nods and goes to find books. He doesn’t check anything out, but he thinks about that book by the psychiatrists. He wonders distantly if Cisco ever got help like that. Therapy, for all the things Papa did. It would make sense, Javier finds, why he acts the way he does, if he never got help.
*
“What do you want?” Cisco asks when he picks up the phone. It must be 9 at night in Jersey.
Javier doesn’t let himself get mad at his brother’s sharp tone. He swallows. “How much are tickets to New Jersey?” he asks, and hopes that does the talking for him.
Cisco sounds like he’s stopped breathing. And then he says, softly, “Gloria a Dios.”
Javier doesn’t let himself get mad at his brother’s sharp tone. He swallows. “How much are tickets to New Jersey?” he asks, and hopes that does the talking for him.
Cisco sounds like he’s stopped breathing. And then he says, softly, “Gloria a Dios.”
MERIDEAN DONNELLY is a senior at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, AL. She is a creative writing student whose poems are most often inspired by the various translated works of Russian author Yevgeny Yevtushenko. More specifically, she is inspired by "Fury." She has received the judge's special recognition from the Alabama Writers' Forum in the High School Literary Arts Awards and Scholarship Competition, and has been published every year in her school's literary magazine since 2012.
