Vernon Little God

Author: Pierre
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: Jesus Navarro was born with six fingers on each hand, but that wasn’t what made him unique. What was extraordinary was what happened at the end of his life. He didn’t expect to die on a Tuesday; they found him wearing silk women’s underpanties. Now, the underwear of a girl has become the main focus of the investigation. Just think about it. His father said the police forced it on him. I don’t buy that. That morning’s events filled my head. “Damn it, slow down!” I remember shouting at him. On the way to school, a headwind was messing with our bikes, making them as heavy as the last Tuesday before summer break. Physics class, then math class, followed by another physics class, doing some stupid experiment in the lab. This damn hell on earth. Jesus’s ponytail danced in the sunlight, as if spinning with the trees above his head. Jesus was changing, becoming handsome in an Indian way, the remnants of his extra fingers almost disappearing. Though he remained clumsy and slow-witted, the logic we were sure of in childhood had been washed away by the waves, leaving only angry and skeptical pebbles clattering together with each new emotional wave. My best friend—who once did a hilarious imitation of David Letterman you’ve never seen—has now been taken over by adenosine, his mind likely filled with lively songs and scent hormones—songs and hormones that would lose their vitality if your mother noticed them, but you could tell they weren’t normal hormones. He kept secrets from me, something he never used to do. He became strange and bizarre, and no one knew why. I watched a TV show about teenagers once, which said role models are key to a person’s growth, just like for dogs. But you could tell whoever made that show had never met Jesus’s father, or my father, for that matter. My father was better than Mr. Navarro—at least before the ending. I often got angry and disappointed because he wouldn’t let me use his gun, but Mr. Navarro let Jesus use his. Now I curse the day I saw my father’s gun, and I guess Jesus cursed his too. He needed a different role model, but no one was there to give him one. Our teacher, Mr. Nacles, spent different times with him after class, but I wasn’t sure if the weak-minded Mr. Nacles and his imaginative vocabulary really made a difference. I mean, the guy was over thirty, and all you knew was that he sat down to pee like a woman. He spent all his time with Jesus: taking him to his place, sitting in his car, talking softly with his head down, like the people you see cared about on TV. Once I saw them hug each other, and I guessed it was like a brother or something. Even when they weren’t there, it was true. The core issue is, in the end, Mr. Nacles