I am Sleepy Joe, Rose began repeating to himself. He was upstairs, in Cleve’s attic, the place he thought most fitting. I am Sleepy Joe and I’m going to murder this man Cleve. Why? Why am I doing it? One, because I damn well feel like it. I am a thug and go through life doing as I please, or doing nothing, and if I kill someone, it is because I want to and I can. Two, I am going to kill him because he’s getting involved with my girlfriend María Paz. (Pro Bono had mentioned that Cleve and María Paz had been together, and if Pro Bono knew, Sleepy Joe could have known as well.) Cleve and María Paz love each other, or they like each other, or at the least, they’re after each other, and since I suffer from terrible jealousy, I’ll kill him and keep her. How should I kill him? Simple, I’m a trucker and he rides a motorcycle: I have the advantage. Cleve makes things easier when he takes a shortcut through a little-traveled road on the way to Chicago. I tail him, force him to accelerate, sideswipe him with the truck, and he runs off the road and kills himself. Done and over. Wipe off the rival and get away scot-free because there are no witnesses. Up to that point, everything seems rational. Then I put a crown of thorns on his head? That is, I get down from the truck even though it’s raining, run down the side of the road, find the body… and I perform this ritual. I have to do the ritual, that’s my thing, justifying my crimes with this mystical element, or the other way around, let the mystical elements lead me to my crimes. I notice the abundance of thorny acacia everywhere and break off a few branches, the ones heavy with thorns. There are nineteen thorns in total. Do I count them one by one, or do I even care? I count them; there are nineteen. Does that number mean anything? It reminds me of the acronym M-19, the name of the guerrilla movement in Colombia when I lived there. So what? I let go of nineteen, I’m interested in associations that Sleepy Joe can make. I’m losing focus; I have to remain in his shoes. I pick that branch of thorny acacia, handle it carefully, making sure the thick, long spines don’t harm me. What about if someone sees my truck? It’s worth the risk. I shape the branch like a crown for my victim. Do I hurt myself by mistake? No. I use gloves, to protect my hands and to not leave fingerprints. (There were, in fact, none, Buttons had confirmed.) I am Sleepy Joe, and I have powerful reasons for doing what I do. Do I punish my victim because I’m jealous? Is this vengeance? No, this is not about jealousy; it’s about something else. I’m not hesitant, that’s not my thing. What I am doing is not grotesque, or lunatic, or absurd. On the contrary, I am enormously pedantic and sure of myself, and my actions are full of transcendental meaning, although no one else may see this. They’re ignorant; I am enlightened. The moment is sublime; I’m the priest and have chosen this man as scapegoat. He’s the object of my ceremony, the Christ figure in this Passion play. The victim shines before my eyes with a sacred radiance that summons his sacrifice. Christ figures are meant to die. I tell myself that their mission is to clean this world that is dirty with sin with their deaths. (Concerning this last point, Rose rereads a portion of María Paz’s manuscript to confirm; she too knew that her brother-in-law was obsessive about ritual cleanliness.) I’m Sleepy Joe again and tremble with fervor; I even get somewhat excited, begin to get an erection. I’m transfixed and hard, the victim calling me, inviting me, he is there for me, offering a submissiveness and willingness that excites me. God’s calling tingles in my balls and demands the execution of the lamb. I obey because I am his prophet, his executor, his angel of death. Yahweh responds and lets me know that he counts on me. Divine punishment will be executed through me, and all the filth in the world will be purified. Shit, this is some big stuff I’m involved in here. I feel such fever that I need to put on the brakes; I can’t come till right at the point of consummation.
That’s it for the Sleepy Joe thing. Could the murder really have taken place like that? There seems to be a lot missing, Rose thought, I’m not getting this, too removed from the real heart of the thing, the blind conviction, a rapture so profound that leads me to torture and kill. This truck driver’s advantage over me is so enormous, in that he defeats me with the simple gift of his faith. He is the one endowed with belief: that makes a huge difference, and tips the scales in his favor. He is very adept at the ritual sequence, vibrantly engaged in each of the stages leading up to the summit of pain. His acts are based on a millennial tradition that is foreign to me. He thinks himself a prophet, while I’m a nobody. He counts on enlightenment, while I heed my hydraulic engineer’s logic. That’s why I’ll never understand him and continue to despise him. “Stay put,” Rose commands himself, “don’t get all scattered.” How does Sleepy Joe work, or I should say torture? In the first instance, knife wounds in the hands, feet, and side, the stigmata of the cross. He inflicts them on his own brother. The nails, much more vile, he reserves for the dog. For Cleve, he reserves the crown and the humiliation of the thorns. In a way he crowns Cleve king, thus must consider him his principal victim, his most significant victory, at least up to now. Or maybe not. Maybe he just improvises according to the circumstances and choses the thorns mainly because they were readily available. The sharp weapon, thorns, nails, all elements toward maximum suffering. Each of the victims has been sacrificed or purified with one of these weapons. Does Sleepy Joe hate his victims? Not necessarily. It could even be the opposite. It seemed that he liked his brother. How does he choose them then? What are the criteria? Maybe the deciding factor isn’t the victim but the act itself. Undoubtedly, the common denominator is María Paz. Unless, that is, the guy went around conducting similar ceremonies on victims that had nothing to do with this case. Buttons and Ming were convinced of his more universal sacrificial tendencies, and there was Corina, María Paz’s Salvadoran friend.
Rose returned to the manuscript, which was his guide, his map, and reread the passages about Corina.
“Open your eyes, María Paz. Open your eyes and be careful. That boy is sick. I know what I’m talking about.”
And this:
“‘I think he was praying,’ she told me one of those days.
“‘Praying? Who was praying?’
“‘Your brother-in-law.’
“‘You mean he prayed that night in your house? Before he did what he did, or after?’
“‘During… like in a ceremony.’”
But what exactly was it that Sleepy Joe did to Corina, why did he violate her with a broomstick? Rose went down the kitchen to look for a broom. Once in the attic again, he brandished it against an invisible enemy. He worked up a sweat. Or was it a fever? He felt his head burning, as if he had made it through some threshold, and was about to completely break through.
If I were Sleepy Joe, what damage could I do with this? Strike or wield, or even rape, as I did with Corina? I could stick the head of an enemy on a broomstick as if it were a stake. Or pierce it through the victim. A sharp stick. A spear? A long, penetrating spear, prehistoric, frightful. The spear, the mother of all weapons for the Chinese, the blazon of Pallas Athena, the sharpened head made of steel, amber, bronze, and obsidian. Wasn’t Christ’s side pierced with such a spear? Lance, spear, Britney Spears? If I were Sleepy Joe, would I not have penetrated, pierced, violated Britney, Athena, or Corina with this lance, spear, broom? It is an elaborate scheme, but it holds together. If it was really like this, what next? What other techniques of martyrdom did Sleepy Joe’s imagination resort to? Which ones had he employed yet, or not?