The 3:19 Routine

A Story by MsBonn

Short story, heavy with literary elements, regarding a very controversial subject. It's the elephant in the room!

The 3:19 Routine

Bonnie Davis

Ryan merely existed in the house he shared with his father at 319 Sorrow Street. It was a small brownstone conveniently situated next to the neighborhood church- the one to which his mother had always been a faithful member. Today was no more unusual than any other. He sat on the porch rocking in his mother’s old rocking chair, listening to the same mundane battle. His attention was divided between the soothing sounds of his momma’s favorite Billie Holiday tunes serenading his left ear from the portable radio, while the reverend next door assaulted his right, his bellowing voice of condemnation threatening to shatter the church’s thin, stained-glass windows. He practiced delivering the same sermons without fail, Monday through Saturday, around 3:19 every afternoon. Ryan glanced at the old, ugly vulture perched upon the family mailbox, and wondered if the bird was some kind of clairvoyant, able to read his innermost thoughts. He eyed the bird suspiciously before allowing his mind to rejoin the big-mouthed preacher next door.

As usual, the only themes this “Man of God” seemed apt to preach about were repentance and going to hell. Ryan hated those sermons. He might have been a little slow, but two things remained true: One, he had heard the sermons so much that he could almost recite them verbatim; and two, he had been repenting all his long 16-year-old life. Momma had always told him that “good little boys who love Jesus and who love their parents were always obedient”, and “never failed to repent” for their wrongdoings.

Ryan leaned over, bending over to gently caress King David’s soft fur, and remembered the day momma found the black cat and brought him home. Daddy never protested about the cat’s presence, but his silence and the facial expressions gave away the fact that he wasn’t at all happy about having the new family member in his house. He vowed in his mind to stay as far from the cat as he much as he could, and hoped the nasty thing would have the good sense to reciprocate. Said “his eyes looked like they carried evil”, and that the best name for him was Evil Demon. Momma said that if he was evil, he “certainly was a pretty evil”.

“What are we going to name him?” Ryan excitedly inquired.

“Well, I think we should name him King David”.

They sat on the dull gray sofa and momma retold the bible story about King David and all the bad deeds he had done that displeased God. She recalled all about how David had to repent, and each time God forgave and blessed him. She told her son that no matter how many times he made mistakes, this biblical king repented, and God forgave him and continually blessed him, and that God loved Ryan enough to do the same for him. “Yes”, she insisted softly, “we’ll name him King David so we will never forget the importance of repenting, and then God will pardon us and bless us with our hearts’ desires.” She hugged Ryan and the cat in a tight group hug. The cat purred in agreement, as both she and Ryan laughed.

Even though she was now in heaven with Jesus, Abraham, and the angels, his mind replayed her words just like a scratched LP every minute of the day. All he really had left of her were those words, her rocking chair, her oversized Dallas Cowboy jersey, her worn bible, feeble King David, her appreciation for Billie Holiday, and the beautiful Oriental sticks she used to wear to keep her hair from covering her angelic face.

Ryan gently picked up the old, worn Bible from the table that sat beside the rocking chair. He turned to the only scripture he knew, (her favorite scripture, Acts 3:19), and read aloud to himself and the cat. “Repent you therefore, and be converted that your sins may be blotted out.” He wanted all his sins blotted out so that when he died, he could go to heaven and be with his mother. But, he thought, this repenting business was becoming tedious and tiresome. The vulture moved closer and tiptoed onto the table as if being drawn by the scripture reading.

Ryan gently returned the Good Book to its rightful place, (still opened to the scripture), and thought about his life of repentance. He recalled how he had repented for the anger he felt toward God for the way He selfishly snatched his mother from him when he was a mere 8 years old. What kind of God would do that? “Surely not a merciful one,” he heard his brain whisper. He had repented for cursing those ugly girls at school. They had embarrassed him with their constant snickering. They thought it so funny that he was motherless, and hysterically funny that his daddy cleaned toilets for a living. Hell, when he thought about it, he had repented all day every day for everything he had ever said and done, since as far back as he could recollect. Initially, it was a matter of doing it because momma said so. But after she went to Glory, he did it hoping that God would stop being mad, and give him his momma back. As the life began to dim more and more on that possibility, the little bit of hope he had left served his motivation, and the repenting continued. It wouldn’t allow him to let go. “What did I do wrong? God forgive me for wondering”, he thought.

Today though, his faith and his intellect had come to an impasse. He was beginning to second guess himself and all of this repenting mess. His mind worked overtime, trying to figure out what he had done to piss God off so much so that his punishment resulted in the unbearable loss (of his mother), accompanied by the pain of having to endure his the pain of the kind of love his daddy offered him. “Why can’t I stop repenting?” he’d ask himself continuously. The only request he had ever made to God was to be given the chance to feel real love- good love- before Death came and swallowed him up like it did his poor momma. He wanted his momma back, and that hole in his heart was the source of his intense and lingering preoccupation with love and death, threatening to overshadow the rest of his natural life. And as for the love for which he yearned… he didn’t like the love he was feeling, and he wasn’t “feeling” the love he was getting.

3-1-9. There it was again telling his brain to react. He hated the numbers 319. He got up from the rocking chair. Entering the house, the screen door’s screech and slam announced to everything, yet to nothing, that he, (with King David leading the way), had arrived. He went about his routine duty, getting supper ready for his daddy, who would soon be home from work, hungry and smelling like the toilets he cleaned. Same old dinner-baked pork chops, spinach and macaroni and cheese for dad, and a tuna sandwich and boiled potatoes for himself. Papa forbade him to eat anything else, just as he had momma. He didn’t want him “getting heavy in the center”. Ryan wondered what kind of animal eats the same thing everyday. “Yea, wild animals”, he thought. That made sense. He grabbed serving spoon from the kitchen countertop, scooped a humungous helping of macaroni and cheese from the casserole dish, and crammed it in his mouth. The smirk on his face seemed to interfere with his inability to chew. Knowing he had done wrong, he grimaced and spoke. “What he don’t know won’t hurt him. God forgive me”.

With dinner prepared and the table set, he picked up his own tuna fish-sandwich-dinner plate in one hand, the glass of ice water in the other, and made the journey to his room to place the plate quietly and deliberately on the worn dresser. Leaving it to its reserved spot, he moved on to his father’s room and sat the glass of water on the bedside table, the way he always did. As he changed the bed sheets with military-like precision, he glanced upon the wall. He wished his dad would take down that old calendar! Why was it still hanging on that rusty nail in the wall anyway? The year his momma died it had only been pulled back to March, and it was still there. He laid out his dad’s old tattered bath robe, a white t-shirt, pajama pants and slippers. Nothing new.

He heard the front door announcing his father’s arrival just as he turned the corner to the restroom to run his father’s usual bath. He made sure the water was just the right temperature, (like a good son should), and then sprinkled in a little Tide detergent. Methodically, he went to the sink to verify that the shaving cream and razor were prepared just as they were supposed to be: cream on the left, razor on the right, grey towel in the middle. “Oops, wrong side. God forgive me”, he whispered. Hands shaking like an old man with palsy, he switched the razor and shaving cream, putting them in their rightful places. Noticing his father’s sharp straight razor brought a slight chill to his lean and slender frame. With a quick glance to the small square window inside the bathroom, he found the black crow peering in, as if he were chaperoning Ryan’s actions. He watched the bird from the corner of his eye as he made his exit, another eerie shiver jarring him. “Damned vulture,... uh, God forgive me.”

Ryan, moving in a robot-like motion, willed his feet to his own room. He bathed and put on the Cowboys T shirt. Daddy always insisted on it at bedtime. He hated that. Standing there, his eyes darted to his bedside table, where he kept his mother’s Chinese hair adornments, a permanent reminder of the warm and wonderful love he once knew. He sat quietly in the room and ate his tuna. “You betta not never tell nobody but God. They’ll laugh and put you in jail for lying.” He would hear those words before, during, and after the routine. They were his father’s words, and he meant them.

His father ate alone in the dining room. That’s how they both preferred it. They hadn’t eaten together since the night momma went to sleep and never woke up. They said she died of natural causes, but Ryan believed with all his heart that the monster she affectionately called “honey” and waited on hand and foot had done something to her. And every thought that went in that direction found a “God forgive me” chasing right after it.

Ryan had fallen asleep listening to the cricket singing his mundane sound of woe outside the window. Suddenly, the sound of his father’s footsteps played like a loud, off-key Sunday hymn, jarring him from his sleep. He peeked at the clock through half opened eyes. “Three, one, nine,” he thought silently. The door knob turned, Papa crossed the threshold, and the ritual began to play out yet again.

Ryan was so sick of repenting. “God forgive me”, he thought. “Here we go again”. In order to escape the reality and his deep hatred for the way his father loved him, the boy turned his thoughts to the one thing he hated all the more- the number 319. Still, he could feel his father’s hands roaming in places he didn’t like. He had to blot it out somehow.

Seemingly in a trance, Ryan glanced at the red numbers on the alarm clock. 319. He felt his father’s strong, calloused hands pressuring him to lie on his stomach. His hot, garlic-smelling breath made every strand of hair on Ryan’s body stand at attention. He closed his eyes and the numbers floated through his mind’s eye like the bright red blood running through the labyrinth of his brain. With every thrust of his father’s hips, his hatred grew as much as the pain in his back, and wrapped around his heart like a boa constrictor, squeezing his very essence from him. The drops of sweat that rolled down his body competed with the dark kick drum-like beat of his heart. Faster and faster, Louder and louder. The “skwak” coming from the vulture on the window sill, mixed with the heavy, hurried breathing from his father cascaded the air, feeling heavy and unbearable to his ears. Something inside him convulsed violently. Some savage, foreign, unrecognizable thing rose up in him.

“MOOOOOOOMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAA!” he wailed. His father, startled by the sound, halted his movements. Everything went silent and slow motion, like a horror movie, with Ryan involuntarily cast as the crazed killer. With one swift movement, Ryan rolled over and jabbed his mother’s Chinese hair rods straight through his daddy’s body with all his might. One found its way through his back to his heart, and the other straight through the eyeball in his right eye. With his own eyes as big as silver dollars and tears streaming down his face, he pushed himself from the pile of unmoving flesh and found the floor with his feet, mouth still wide open from a second scream that remained silent. A long string of saliva escaped his mouth, stretching to the floor like a thin, transparent cake batter. Once the body stopped moving, Ryan moved unhurriedly, wiping the crimson evil from his hands onto the white bedspread. Bending to the level of the bed, he whimpered into his lifeless father’s ear, “No more love, Daddy. No more repenting.” His feet slowly moved toward the door, then halted. His body stiff, he swung his head toward the corpse, “And no more 3:19”, he declared. He heard the flutter of wings, a skwak, and from the corner of his eye caught the vulture taking to the air.

A few seconds later, he found himself in his father’s room, standing taller than he ever had. He picked up the glass of ice water meant for his father, tilted his head back, and poured it over his own throbbing head. It washed over him like a cool rain at the end of a sweltering summer’s day. He lunged at the wall, grabbing the calendar, and used it to wipe the sweat and excess water from his face. He opened his hand studied the paper, then glared at the empty space on the wall that had been the paper’s domain for much too long. A satisfying smile erased his furrowing brow.

Ryan stumbled from the room, entered his own, and replaced his mother’s T-shirt with a pair of briefs, his basketball shorts and an ancient tattered T-shirt that read “Momma’s Boy” in big red letters. Shoulders back, head tall, face expressionless, he walked through the house, walked out of the front door, and returned to his momma’s rocking chair. King David had barely rescued his long black tail from the screen door before it slammed hard. BLAM!

Ryan recollected on the morning of Friday, March the nineteenth. His mother had been pronounced dead at exactly 3:19. He pulled King David up by the soft place in his neck, sat him in his lap, and began to caress his fur with one hand, closing his mother’s bible with the other. The chair rocked. And the radio played. And the preacher preached.