To Your Scattered Bodies Go

2

God was standing over him as he lay on the grass by the waters and the weeping willows. He lay wide-eyed and as weak as a baby just born. God was poking him in the ribs with the end of an iron cane. God was a tall man of middle age. He had a long black forked beard, and He was wearing the Sunday best of an English gentleman of the 53rd year of Queen Victoria’s reign.

"You’re late," God said. "Long past due for the payment of your debt, you know."

"What debt?" Richard Francis Burton said. He passed his fingertips over his ribs to make sure that all were still there.

"You owe me for the flesh," replied God, poking him again with the cane. "Not to mention the spirit. You owe for the flesh and the spirit, which are one and the same thing." Burton struggled to get up onto his feet. Nobody, not every God, was going to punch Richard Burton in the ribs and get army without a battle.

God, ignoring the futile efforts, pulled a large gold watch from His vest pocket, unsnapped its heavy enscrolled gold lid, looked at the hands, and said, "Long past due." God held out His other hand, its palm turned up.

"Pay up, sir. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to foreclose."

"Foreclose on what? Darkness fell. God began to dissolve into the darkness. It was then that Burton saw that God resembled himself. He had the carne black straight hair, the same Arabic face with the dark stabbing eyes, high cheekbones, heavy lips, and the thrust-out, reply cleft chin. The same long deep scars, witnesses of the Somali javelin which pierced his jaws in that fight at Berbers, were on His cheeks. His hands and feet were small, contrasting with His broad shoulders and massive chest, and he had the long thick moustachios and the long forked beard that had caused the Bedouin to name Burton "the Father of Moustachios."

"You look like the Devil," Burton said, but God had become just another shadow in the darkness.