Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (motivational novels .txt) 📕

welcome mat now, which has morphed into a spongy quicksand, bubbling and cracking like an undercooked pie. Through the cracks, narrow scintillas of brilliant orange light shoot up, radiating heat, as though Oswald is being sucked down into hot porridge.

He tries to say something—tries to pull himself free of the miraculous gunk—but the dizziness is a tidal wave now, washing over him, drowning him.

He sinks into oblivion, everything going black except for the flickering fire of the netherworld.

* * *

Oswald lands with a thud on hard-packed earth in a haze of wood smoke. Gasping for breath, coughing, lungs heaving for air, as though he’s underwater, he gazes around the shadowy, alien world, trying to get his bearings. He is drenched to the bone in his own sweat, and the chills are constant now. He is shivering so convulsively now his teeth and jaw are clenched. At first all he can see are blurry shapes and the flickering orange glow of a campfire.

“Dude, you gotta get on the ball—I mean, time is running out.”

The voice comes from Oswald’s left—a familiar husky voice from his misspent youth—and Oswald twists around just in time to see a portly little gentleman in a John Deere cap and beard give him a sad little salute. The man sits on the earthen floor, his face only partially visible in the firelight.

Next to the man in the cap, the stoic old Ho-Chunk Chieftain sits cross-legged and mute. Ancient leathery face down-turned, shadows dancing across his deeply lined features, the Chief holds a two-foot long bundle of sage in his huge wrinkled hands. The end of the smudge stick is smoking. His face is the picture of exasperation.

“Duffy?” The word puffs out of Oswald’s lungs on a wave of recognition, as he stares at his old friend, then at the Chieftain, then back at the chubby little man in the cap. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Just trying to help,” the man replies with a shrug, chewing a plug of Red Man.

“Are you dead?”

“Shit no, I ain’t dead. Got a wife and kids, live in Albuquerque.”

“Then what are you—?”

“Fuck if I know,” he says with another shrug. “It’s your hallucination.”

Scott Edward Duff, one of Oswald’s only friends from his misspent youth, now wears overalls that strain against his rotund midsection. His round, suntanned face and droopy hound dog eyes radiate the honest ignorance of a man without ambition.

“Where the hell am I? Is this like... hell or something?” Oswald rubs his eyes and gazes around the hot, smoky chamber surrounding him. There are others gathered in the blue fog, sitting around him on the floor like a tribunal, their baleful faces flickering in the light of a fire pit: the Head-Wound Guy, the Drug Dealer, the Accountant with the Broken Eyeglasses, even Alberta Goldstein. There are others present as well, non-victims—Indians, tribal elders—with their war paint on, their beatific faces shimmering with perspiration, strobing in the dancing light.

The air is sultry with magic.

Oswald notices the beehive shape of the domed chamber, the way the walls are framed out of red willow sticks, tied together with rawhide and covered with Buffalo skins and old quilts. He notices the care with which the fire has been kindled and stoked in its ceremonial stone pit, not to mention the two forked antlers sticking out of the earth on either side of the pit, and the sacred lemon branches forming a spit. The dimensions and design of the sweat lodge are perfect—straight out of a history book.

For thousands of years, members of the Winnebago tribe have used these enclosures for vision quests and other ceremonies.

The Ho-Chunk Chief calmly leans over and whispers something to Scott Duff.

Duffy looks at Oswald. “He says you should stop changing the subject.”

Oswald stares at the man in the cap. “What are you—a translator now?”

“I learned a little Ho-Chunk back on the Res’—you know, enough to get me by.”

The Chief whispers something else.

Duffy gives Oswald a shrug. “He says he’s tired of speaking the white man’s tongue, and he’s tired of waiting for you to save enough lives.”

Oswald is confused. “What is he talking about? I already got five on the scoreboard, and I’d have two more if you guys would just stop interrupting me.”

The Chief leans down to Duffy’s ear and whispers.

Duffy nods and then looks at Oswald. “He says, ‘No offense, but are you retarded?’”

Oswald starts to say, “Oh Great Leader of My People, I am not retarded—”

More whispering.

Duffy nods, looks at Oswald. “He says you should listen to the lady.”

Oswald frowns. “The ‘lady’? What lady?”

From the other side of the sweat lodge, a luminous glow begins to rise up through the smoke.

Oswald glances at the far wall and his heart practically stops when he sees an apparition materializing from the nimbus of light like the yoke of egg separating from the white. She wears a flowing robe. Her face has returned to the peaches-and-cream complexion of her youth, her cornflower-blue eyes twinkling, her flaxen hair restored to its healthy luster. “Ozzie, you never were that good with math.”

Oswald swallows hard. His eyes well with tears. He tries to keep his voice steady. “Sweetie, I’m trying... I swear to God... I’m gonna make it.”

The ghost of Matilda pauses. “You just have to remember saving a life is a lot more involved than just deciding not to kill somebody.”

“I got five on the scoreboard, though, right?”

The angelic woman in the robe just shrugs. “You got... maybe three.”

“Sweetie, look, the suicide you gotta count. Right? That’s one. And the gambler—that asshole makes two. Those are givens. Right? Those guys were dead men walking, and I saved their asses.”

She shrugs and gives him a nod. “Okay, sure, but—”

Oswald pours it on: “Any other shooter, the Russian would have been a dead man. C’mon. You gotta give me the Russian. We gave him a brochure, for Chrissakes. C’mon, Tilda, whattya say...?”

The ghost of his wife says nothing, thinking it over, chewing on it.

Oswald wipes the sweat from his brow.