The Old Rugged Cross

Danny DiVestri was eight years old the first time he helped his mother inject herself with heroin. He was eleven when he killed her with an accidental overdose. She was a prostitute. His father was an unknown. With no other family, and nowhere else to go, Danny lived on the streets.

Albert Paisley was a homeless alcoholic of indeterminable age. A drunk and a derelict. In another life he'd had a wife and a child. A house with a two car garage. But all Albert had left in the world was the Book of Common Prayer and the bottle.

Danny was by the park bench Albert slept on just after sunrise and nudged him awake.

'Here you go,' said Danny, 'I got you some water.' And offered Albert a throw-away cardboard coffee cup filled from a nearby drinking fountain.

Declining the water, Albert unscrewed the cap from his flagon of muscatel and drank a toast to the new day.

The only other people in the park were joggers and early dog-walkers. Albert made room for him and Danny took the empty half of the bench beside him. They listened to the strident calls of currawongs in the canopy of leaves above them.

'I've got money,' said Danny, 'if you want some breakfast.'

Albert shook his head. 'No thanks, mate. You keep it.'

He didn't ask where the money had come from. He'd accepted the probability that Danny, who was not yet a teenager, had most likely sold his childhood innocence for the "necessaries" just to survive.

Albert said, 'See those birds? The big, ugly, black buggers making all the noise? Look like crows?'

Danny squinted. 'Yeah?'

'See the white patches behind their wings? That's where God held them when He painted their feathers.'

'You're a daft old codger,' said Danny, smiling. 'There ain't no God.'

'Of course there's a God,' Albert insisted. 'He just stopped paying attention awhile back. And rightly so, I reckon. But not to you. Not to the little children. Don't give up on him, mate. He hasn't forgotten you.'

Danny shrugged and said, 'You think? He's got a funny way of showin' it.'

'We were soldiers once,' said Albert, 'and young.'

Danny looked over at him. 'What?'

'Didn't have a choice, did we? The government brought in conscription. Pulled names from a barrel. If your name came up, you were in the army. Long time ago, now. Before you were born. You've probably never heard of the war in Vietnam. So, anyway, they gave me a gun and told me to go and shoot the little, yellow bastards. They weren't yellow, they were "Red". What did I care about communists? We were only there because the Yanks couldn't keep their noses out of it. Dragged us in with them. There was a village that had a church, from when the French were there. And in front of the church was a wooden cross, stood up in the ground. I don't know how he did it, but one of the village elders had had himself nailed to it. Nailed to the cross.'

'What'd yous do?'

'We took him down. Our medic bandaged his wounds. Then we moved on, to the next village. But I'll always remember that. The Old Rugged Cross.'

'Fuckin' hell, Bert.'

'Goes to show, though, doesn't it? Life is diamonds and dirt, hearts and hurt, madness and majesty.'

'You're not a poofter, are you, Bert?'

'No, mate. Not me. Never was.'

'Good,' said Danny, 'cause you're me mate, and a mate wouldn't try it on, would he?'

'My soul has been washed in the blood the Lord,' said Albert.

Danny snorted. 'That don't mean nuffink. All them priests. Don't you read the papers?'

Albert waited for the words that, he suspected, the child needed to say.

'I don't want to be a poofter no more.'

And there it was.

Danny wiped away silent tears. 'They make me do bad things, Bert. They said if you do it one time then you're a poofter, and it don't never go away!'

'I don't believe that's true,' said Albert. 'I think either you are or you're not, and if you aren't then... '

'But they said!'

'Listen to me, Daniel. Whatever you've done, there's nothing so terrible that God would turn his face from you.'

Danny shook his head. 'If I don't do what they want, they'll hurt me. And if I tell anybody, they'll kill me. I'm in the shit, and there ain't nuffink nobody can do about it.'

Albert quoted, 'Come unto me all who are heavily laden, said the Lord, Jesus Christ, and I will give you rest.'

Albert stood up on unsteady legs. 'Come with me. I know someone who can help you.'

They made their way out of the park onto Oxford Street. Albert stepped off the curb without looking. The driver of the Number 3 bus from Padstow to Central didn't have time to stop.