The Old Virgin

by Travis Mills

(Continued)
     Later, Rick found himself on the streets. He walked at a calm pace that he’d picked up after a year or so wandering from village to village. He’d long tossed his American hustle aside.
     Lamps burned in windows and the light from the day was just going away. Music escaped from the tavern. He watched the bodies of the women against the young men in their suspenders. None of them had faces. They were just outlines of arms and legs and hips. Rick stopped and leaned against a post on the other side of the street. He wished he could move one of the young girls between his legs. Maybe after the job, he thought, maybe I’ll leave Margie for good and find a place of my own and have a nice girl like one of those to keep me busy.
     A soldier rode by on his horse. It snorted as he stared at Rick through the fire of his torch. He went on and so did Rick.
     He turned down a smaller street. Men played a game with marbles. Their faces showed no excitement. They moved the pearly balls around the table like workers in a factory. He’d never learned its name or how to play. Once he had been a poker man. He could count, it was a natural talent, and some said he counted too well. In a saloon in Illinois, a few men got mad and chased him out of town. They followed him across the state border. He didn’t think they would go further than that but they did. He guessed they wouldn’t leave the country to get him and it turned out he was right. He hadn’t been back since. One of the old players broke from the game to cough. He returned, sucking as much as he could in little breaths. He moved a marble and scratched behind his ear. Rick moved on.
     As he wandered down the narrow passage between two stone walls, he felt the knife cut into his thigh. He’d shoved it into pants on a dash through the kitchen once Margie had passed out, as she always did after tugging him to the bedroom for what she called a "wet nap." He readjusted the blade awkwardly so that the point did not puncture his skin.
     He came out of the passage and the sky was dark. Ahead of him was a field of corn from a colonist’s plantation that had long gone dead after the revolution. Beyond that there was a white building, small and square. There were no lights to show that it was inhabited but he went on toward it anyhow.
     Across the field, he felt something brush past him, then he noticed the children running in the dry grass with a sown together ball to kick around. They faded into the dark. He could hear their laughter and two of them by the side, laying bets on the game with packs of gum.
     They seemed not to notice him as he went and he quickly forgot about them as he faced the small white building. He sidestepped toward a wooden door, crooked off its hinges, while keeping a close eye all around him. He slipped the knife from his pants and held it firm with the blade facing the ground.
     He pushed on the door and it opened with surprising silence. He stepped inside and shut it behind him.
     It was cool in the windowless room. Candlelight played off the walls from a table in front, under a worn statue of the virgin. Rick made soft steps on the stone floor; his eyes moved along the old oak pews. He reached the front and turned around. His breath went away and the knife went up. To his right, on the front pew, an old man lay. His feet hung to the floor, calloused, toe nails cracked. He did not wear a priest’s robe but a black suit, dusty. His head was bare and full of white, wiry hair. His mouth hung open with a snore and rotten teeth.
     Rick lowered the knife. He looked at the virgin. He could barely tell she was a woman. The angles of her cheeks were gone, flattened from years that had left her with nothing to tell what she once was. Her feet and her hands were just rounded white stones and her robe was full of little holes as if the birds had begun to peck her away.
     He moved behind her back and found what he was looking for. On the floor sat an iron box. A smile crept up his face. His cheeks sank as soon as he tried to pull it open; it would not budge. He stared at it blankly for a moment until he bent down on his knees and peered at the lock on the side that held it shut. He spun the knife in his hand and jabbed at the lock once. The sound filled the room but the priest lay still and the echo soon went away. The lock hung jagged. He pried with the tip of the knife until the lock fell off. He lifted the top of the iron box. There were a few coins and an old Spanish bill inside. He scrounged them up and shoved them into his pocket.
     "Alons-y," he heard.
     He left hand was still stuck in his pocket. The voice rose like an animal’s growl in the silence.
     "Si tu voulais l’argent. Alons-y."
     Rick looked up from his knees while his right hand crept up with the knife. A shot rang out. The bullet knocked the knife out of his hand and across the room. He grabbed at his chest because his heart stopped. He checked his palm for blood. The coins scattered across the floor.      The priest stood with an old German Luger in his hand. He was steady, his eyes squinted, his mouth open and teeth pushed together.      "Je deteste les Alemands."      Rick stood up and hung closely to the virgin. He recognized the language—French—but he could not understand a word of it. He moved around the statue and towards the door. He watched the old man follow him from over his shoulder. Rick’s hand reached out to open the door and another shot rang out. It bounced off the rusted metal knob to the ceiling.
     Rick clung to the splintered wood. He stared down the barrel of the gun waiting for a bullet to come out and grab him. The priest smiled.
     He lowered the pistol and then raised it to his own head and pulled the trigger. Rick did not see the blast or the man’s body fall to the floor. He only heard the dead weight slap against the stone as he held his eyes closed. When he opened them, blood ran under the back pews. He did not wait to look further and pulled the door open only enough to run out.
     The night was much darker than it had been when he had left it. He ran across the field without seeing the ground. He could hear the children playing but he did not stop for anything.
     Through the town, he ran past the place where the men had set up their marble game. They were still playing and would be till morning. The women had chosen their men and the tavern was filled now with only empty glasses, a shadow of what the night had been.
     When Rick stepped through the door to Margie’s place, he found her in her nightgown startled awake in a small chair by the door. She clutched him and he walked with her by his side to the bedroom where they lay.
     She kissed his forehead and his chin and made her way down his neck till she pulled his collar open to reach his chest. Suddenly she sat up. He looked at her through the mirror—what was left of a woman whose features had been beaten away with time.
     "You stay with me," she said.
     "Yes," he answered.
     She began to lick his chest and did not stop for a long time. When she lifted her head to kiss him, he tasted blood on her lips and he knew that she had licked the priest’s blood from his skin.
     She wrapped her arms under him and lay with all her weight down on him. He could not move if he wanted to and he decided that he no longer did.
     "Will you make me a bath," he said. She nodded and he watched her scoot out of bed and waddle towards the bathroom.
Travis Mills is a writer and film director. He studied both at Arizona State University. Having lived in South America, Africa and Europe, he draws on these experiences to explore a world of expatriates living in exotic Third World locations.