Free Tarot Sour by Robert Zimmerman Page B

open the basement door and stand there, listening again, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. The only sound is the scratch and scurry of the rats, which stop as soon as the slow creak of the door echoes. I flick on the light. The jolt of the electricity pouring down into the cup of the filament shakes the wire from which the bulb hangs, down above the drain imprinted in the floor, above the old wash basin I haven’t used in years. There is a quick flurry of long-nailed claws as the rats run to the shadows that remain behind boxes and in the deepest creases of corners.
    The stairs creak with my weight. Since my retirement a year ago, I have dedicated myself to the sin of gluttony. Better than some of the alternatives, I rationalize late at night as I sit at the kitchen table by the distant light of the windowed stars reflecting off the desert. I keep one hand on the guardrail, one beneath the saucer that holds the sandwich, and my eyes on the spaces between the slats of the steps, the spaces where my heels are vulnerable. The basement has no windows, and the stairway bends so that the light from the kitchen cannot continue past the first half dozen or so. I stand above the drain and watch my shadow sway around me as gravity pulls the bulb in a wide arc over my head. I watch for the shadows of the rats. I think I see movement in the back corner behind a stack of boxes that contains clothes I should have donated to the church years ago.
    I place the plate just to the side of the drain, step over it, and go back up to the kitchen, shutting off the light and locking the door behind me as I return to the daylight. These days, the rats are all I have left to myself. I wonder if they might appreciate the things that I do for them.
    The bathroom is down the hall. I go with the intentions of showering the morning’s dust off of myself. On the way, I pass my bedroom and go in to sit on the edge of the bed. From there I can see out onto the city. My house is built on a low hill, and so even though it is one of the scarce one-level ranches in town, I actually have a better view than most people. I’ve been lucky to find it after being dismissed from the church. The latter half of my former life was spent living in the small home attached to the rectory. Though, I suppose there isn’t much market these days for homes, particularly not here where the world is closer to ending than anywhere else.
    And indeed, the world is ending. As a boy, my parents frequented South America, where my father owned several burgeoning mining companies. I spent the majority of my days being served by the natives who worshipped my father as an economic god. He brings with him jobs, prospects, hope, for anyone who needs such things. In fact, it is the worship and devotion the villagers pay him that will one day inspire me to become a Preacher. While we are there we live in a humble three-room hut, stitched together with bamboo and palm leaves on a bare dirt foundation (one of the reasons why I feel so immediately at home when I come here to this city for my job). It is a ravishing difference from the scaling east coast mansion we live in for most of our lives, the months when my father can outsource his duties to vice presidents and accountants and developers all who swear their allegiance to him.
    It is there that I go, as a boy of sixteen, just fallen out of love with a native South American girl who dies of a spider bite, to the field in search of the knowledge of the sun. One of the village elders has, over the years, taught me the myths and legends of their people and how, though many of them have tried, none have successfully been able to commune with the god of the sun. Why I was able to, I don’t know. I tell the elder who had taught me the story what happens when I go out to the field, and he falls without hesitation to his knees, waves his arms toward me in reverence. I ask him to stand up and I tell him, “Don’t worship