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Original Sin

“Oh, my god!” I cried out, running to his side as he collapsed by the rutabagas. “Are you okay?”

“Jesus H. Fucking Christ, do I look okay?” he all but screamed in my face.

He was handsome, with a chiseled jaw covered in a thin blonde beard, and blonde hair that he kept closely shaved on the sides of his head but had let grow out on the top. He had blue eyes, too—sparkling blue eyes, like the sea. God, but it had been a long time since I had seen the ocean…

I had to admit he didn’t look okay. I could forgive his blaspheming, considering the circumstances.

“I’m a sister at the convent just beyond this clearing. If you can walk, I’ll get you over there and we’ll call you an ambulance. Or, you know… You just stay here. I have water,” I said, my words spilling out of my mouth in a mixed jumble of syllables that barely seemed to have any meaning. I was nervous and not just because of the gravity of the situation. This was the first man who wasn’t my father or a priest that I had seen since… Christ, since only God knows when. And he was a hottie, at that.

He had to have been under thirty. It looked like he worked out. His biceps and shoulders looked like something that belong on a comic book superhero instead of on a bloodied wretch in my vegetable garden.

His arms were covered in an intricate patchwork of tattoos: they seemed to portray a man’s descent into hell on a motorcycle. I knew my Dante and I rapidly identified each circle of that fiery pit.

“No, no, no…” he said finally, cutting me off. “Don’t call an ambulance. Don’t call the cops. Just…”

And then, more thrashing in the bushes. The blooded man froze and then his hand shot to his hip. He had a pistol. How had I not seen that before? He drew it fast and leveled with a shaky arm on the bushes. He had only held it for a minute before his hand was trembling bad, looking like he might drop the gun.

“Can you…” he started but I was already moving. I grabbed his arm and held it steady for him. He gave me a look, a look of solidarity and thanks, and my heart all but ascended to heaven at that look.

But any moment we might have had was interrupted by the crashing in the bushes. Finally, two men burst into my garden: both fat, both clad head to toe in leather like this man, both holding guns.

“Put ‘em down, boys, or I bury you here,” the bloodied wretch in my garden screamed. The others started to raise their own guns but my shooter roared his warning again.

“Now, you turn tail and you run, and you tell your bosses than Dario Jameson is harder to kill than just that. Do you hear me?”

The interlopers hesitated, exchanging a look and then glancing at me. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I just shrugged.

“You’d better do what he says,” I screamed, suddenly, not knowing where it came from. “He’s crazy!”

“I’ll give you five seconds. Five seconds till I end you mother fuckers… Five…”

The two didn’t move.

“Four… Three… Two…”

And then they were off, into the bushes, charging back towards the highway.

“One…” Dario murmured. He titled the gun up toward the sky and pulled the trigger. I winced but it clicked empty.

“Dumbasses,” he grunted. “I can’t believe that actually worked.”

“Were they the ones that shot you?”

Dario gave me a disbelieving look.

“No, I shot myself to garner their sympathy. Of course, they were.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long, stupid story. Do you think you could get me out of the sun?”

I realized that where he lay, he was directly in the path of the brutal Louisiana sun. I dragged him to the side of the garden and cradled his head in my lap as I tipped my water bottle into his mouth.

“Goddamn, but that’s good…” he sighed as the water dribbled out of his mouth.

“Well, there’s more where that came from,” I said. “If you come back to the convent with me…”

He shook his head.

“No, no, no. I won’t go to no convent. And you won’t call no ambulance for me.”

“But… You’re wounded. You’re hurt bad.”

“I’ve had worse,” he said, shaking his head. “This is what you have to do for me: go back to that convent of yours. Get something to disinfect. Get some scissors or tweezers. Bandages. And any booze you can rustle up.”

I gave him a withering look. I didn’t like being ordered around. It was bad enough when the mother superior did it. But I didn’t like the idea of this stranger telling me what to do. And all before he had even introduced himself!

“You didn’t say the magic word,” I said in a whiny, childish voice.

“Christ, I could be dying here!”

“If you’re dying, I’ll get you an ambulance.”

“Oh, no, you won’t!” he roared as I stood and started back to the convent. “Disinfectant, tweezers, bandages, and booze!”

I found the first three in our first aid room: a make-shift infirmary that didn’t get much use at all. As you might imagine, us nuns are a pretty healthy lot. I didn’t even bother looking for the booze—I knew the mother superior might had a bottle of wine or port in her office, tucked away, but besides the wine used in mass, I doubted there was any liquor on the convent grounds.

When I returned, I found Dario resting underneath a tree. Color had returned to his face and he had stripped off his leather vest and white undershirt. On closer inspection, I noticed his vest was covered with all sorts of patches and insignias. A few seemed to relate to military service—it looked like he had been in Afghanistan, with the Marines—but most were motorcycle related.

He had wrapped his t-shirt around his waist and the white cotton cloth had soaked through with blood. I knelt next to him and without asking, because to remove the undershirt.

“What are you doing?” he demanded roughly, his eyes fluttering opened. It seemed he had drifted off to sleep.

“I’m helping you. We’d better get this taken care of before you get an infection and if you won’t let me get you to a hospital, this is the best you’ll get.”

“I’ll do it,” he said gruffly, reaching for the materials in my hand. I darted out of his grasp.

“No, you won’t. You are in no condition to attend to your… condition,” I said, somewhat lamely. The old nervousness was back. I had never been this awkward around boys in high school—or, at least, the short amount of time I had spent in high school.

And what the hell? Boys? This wasn’t a boy. This was a man. Every part of him screamed man. From his powerful, built chest to his cheese-grater abs to the haunted, hunted look in his eyes… Eyes that could only have spoken of some far off tragedy, a pain which the heart never forgets… All of it identified him as nothing other than a man.

“My condition? I was shot!” Dario yelped as I took the tweezers and began prying the tiny shotgun pellets out of his gut. He gasped as I teased the deformed pieces of lead out of his flesh, dropping them on the ground and dousing his wound with disinfectant.

Eventually, his grumbling and his whining subsided and he allowed me to tend to him. After nearly twenty minutes of excruciating surgery, I was positive that I had excavated every bullet fragment out of his wounds.

I wrapped a bandage around his powerful torso, allowing myself to savor the feeling of his muscles under my hands as I passed the bandage around him, over and over.

“You haven’t even asked my name yet,” I said, after a long silence.

“It’s a hell of a lot safer for you if you don’t know my name,” he murmured, looking off into the distance.

“Oh, is it? Big mister scary biker…” I murmured.

“Yeah, that’s right. If you only knew…”

“Then tell me.”

We locked eyes.

“You’re a nun, right?” Dario asked.

“That’s right.”

“Where’s your… Your head thing… Your hat….”

“The habit. I don’t wear it when I work outside. Can you imagine wearing all that stuff while gardening?”

He shrugged. “I can’t imagine wearing it at all, frankly.”

“You get used to it.”

“Why’d you become a nun?”

“Why’d you become a biker?” I retorted.

“Because I hate when people tell me what to do and I love riding. Why’d you become a nun?”

I sighed. I sat back on my heels, looking at the ground.

“I got knocked up when I was fifteen. My parents are super conservative Catholics. They pulled me out of school, stuck me in a home for girls—most everyone there was either on drugs, a lesbian, or pregnant—and after that, I didn’t really have much choice but to take orders.”

“That’s fucking primitive,” scowled Dario. I shrugged.

“It’s my life.”

“Why don’t you leave? Are you eighteen yet?”

“I’m nineteen.”

“Then fucking leave. Tell those old hags to fuck off. I mean, unless you like being here.”

I glanced behind me, back in the direction of the convent, which was camouflaged and obscured by trees.

“No. No, I hate it.”

“Then run away. Who’s going to stop you? You’re an adult.”

I shook my head.

“It’s just not that easy. I don’t have any friends outside the convent anymore. My parents wouldn’t take me in. I just don’t know anyone.”

“So? Knowing people is awful. Being by yourself, that’s where it’s at.”

He pulled a cigarette out of the pocket of his vest and lit up. The smoke smelled sweet and fragrant. It had been so long since I had smelled a cigarette. I had been a smoker in high school, carrying a pack in the pocket of my Catholic schoolgirl skirt or even tucked into my bra strap and thinking I was so bad. Of course, I hadn’t smoked since I had gotten pregnant and then not since I had got to the girls’ home.

“So, what’s your name?”

“Sister Imani Pineiro.”

“Imani. That’s a pretty name. That was my older sister’s name.”

“Really? Was?”

“She’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” he said with a sigh, blowing a ring of smoke drifting out of his lips.

“What’s your gang called?” I said quickly, trying to change the subject. He had been looking at me expectantly, as if he wanted a piece of holy wisdom—a promise that his sister was dancing like an angel in heaven with all the saints. But at this moment, I didn’t feel like passing on the good word.

“The Damned,” he said with a smile. He pointed to the tattoo in his arm.

“It’s Dante,” I said, smiling back.

“Good eye. I love Dante.”

“So do I,” I said quickly. “I learned Italian so I could read it in the original. I told the sisters I wanted to read theology but I read Dante and Boccaccio instead.”

Dario grinned.

“Speak some Italian to me, sister,” he said leaning back. I gulped. I hadn’t expected to have to recite anything but fortunately, I did have a few passages committed to memory…

I began: