The heady smell of burned incense stinging his nostrils wakes Sonny from a void. It is accompanied by the taste of boozy puke lodged in the back of his throat. His head rests on the long, cold wood of a pew. It is where he passed out late in the early morning hours when sober thieves went to work. Unlike Sonny.
Yesterday. The Blade & Bone pub. Sonny sat at his usual corner table and watched the racing. He was drinking alone because everyone he knew was waiting for dole day. With careful sips he had made his two pints last for several empty hours.
The sun was starting to dip when Sonny saw the old man’s familiar face grinning at him in a sly way. It was an aged, life-drained face with ruddy eyes, the grey skin gutted with deep creases around a hanging jaw. The shaved skull housed a brandy-soaked brain that misfired every nanosecond without fail. Possessing a pickled brain meant the old man was in a permanent state of semi-inebriation. It also meant he was pig shit ignorant.
Sonny knew everything in his life could change in a second. One action always had many consequences of both the good and bad variety. The old man’s appearance meant some of these consequences were inevitable.
Sonny looked at the old man sat opposite.
- What do you want?
- Dead easy. Lift the Jesus off the altar and bring it to me. The silver one. You've seen it when you go to church, fucking left-footer that you were.
- You hate that shit.
- A client fancies it. She’s a Jesus freak. Wants it for her country gaff. There’s a ton in it for you.
Sonny’s hands dipped his empty pockets, and his thirst tickled away behind his eyes. A simple solution presented itself as an opportunity. All kinds of bills to pay at home. Decisions, decisions. The best ideas appear out of the blue. A bottle of blue label.
Drunk as a skunk on cheap brandy, Sonny enters the church through unlocked doors. So far so good. On his way to the altar the brandy rebels, and he vomits in the christening font. The old man only drinks brandy and Sonny can never keep it down. Ten minutes later he urinates in the confessional. Twenty minutes later he blacks out on a pew and snores his heathen prayers at the moonlit saints posing in stained windows. They peer down on him with golden eyes and judgmental frowns. They want to hate him but, being saints, it is impossible.
Sonny and the old man drank cheap brandy, hunched over the corner table, faces close together.
- Only one time I went to that church to pray, and it was, please be seated one second, please stand a second later, please be seated again. We was up and down like a bride's nightie.
The old man’s snickering morphed into a crunchy cough. Sonny listened to the chesty upheaval as the old man’s warm phlegm crept out of his wretched lung sacks and up the esophagus, teetering on the edge of a mouthy gob before sliding back down into the twin tar pits.
- I’ll do it tonight.
- Good man. Another double?
A bluebottle buzzes over the marble font.
Sonny stands up and gawps at the silver Jesus hanging above the altar. A dawn light falls on its chest and a sparkling nipple brings a tired smile to Sonny’s hungover mug. This will be a very simple grab and go.
The Jesus thief places his arms around the slim waist of the statue in an embrace. He lifts it, freeing it from the stone cross it was attached to. It comes away easier than he’d expected, and he stumbles backwards with the silver Jesus pressed close to his heart. The statue is also a lot lighter than he thought it would be. He believes solid silver or even silver plate will have a certain heft to it. He turns and makes his getaway.
Halfway down the central aisle, he stops to examine his loot. It is at this moment that it dawns on him the statue is made of plastic, shiny silver painted plastic, not silver. Sonny has risked his freedom and his soul for a plastic Jesus. He shrugs it off and lugs the statue past the yellow stink of the confessional and the buzzing flies at the font.
In the ratty car park behind the Blade, he presents the silver Jesus to the old man.
- One silver Jesus.
Sonny places it on a stack of pallets. The old man nods and taps it with his vape.
- It’s a thing of fucking plastic, pal.
- It’s the only silver Jesus in that church.
- It’s a load of shite.
- You owe me a ton.
The old man takes a step back from the awkward negotiation, sniffs nasal remnants of cheap powder, and lets it fester for a beat inside his frontal lobes. He knows his client will pay him two hundred for it. She knows it is made of plastic and thinks it will look great above her bed. He steps close to Jesus. His arthritic hands reach out, touch the statue and as expected, he receives not one single jolt of a holy buzz from it. He pushes his nicotine fingers into nail holes and pokes an orange index into the spearing. He has witnessed a few wounds in his day and these ones impress him. Whoever created them knew what a hammered six-inch nail did to flesh and bone. He looks at the soles of its feet and sees the MADE IN CHINA stamp. He grins back at his Jesus thief.
- My client’s classy. She won’t want a knock-off fake Jesus. But I’ll give you a tenner for it.
Sonny feels the rejection drill deep into his heart. He hates disappointing the old man.
- How about twenty for my effort?
- You robbed an unlocked church. Fifteen, final offer.
Sonny glances up at the rain clouds and then looks the old man in the eye. It goes the way it always goes.
- Okay. Deal.
- Jesus loves you, kid.
The old man hands over three ancient fivers and grins as his Jesus thief trousers the cash.
Sonny wrestles with the plastic silver Jesus until it’s in the back of the old man’s van and the old man slams the doors. Sonny spits once on the busted gravel.
- Call me if you get any jobs for me.
The old man half-waves a half-acknowledgement out the window as the white van drives off, coughing grey smoke out its arse-end.
- Love you, Dad.
Sonny crosses himself a couple of times and trudges back to the Bone’s bar for a well-deserved pint or three.
Hah, very fun.