bedtime story

All I remember is a story about a church in Mexico, told in between gins and one of the last nights we spent around each other.  So the story goes, in his voice soft and with the edge of a tired lawman from another time - There was a grand Catholic church, he said, somewhere inland from the Baja coast, where exactly I couldn't say.  He said he didn't believe in God, but he believed in churches.  He then grew more morose with each passing word, as he told me in world weary tones about the simpler, less garish and more humble church just off and down from the main road and from the large church.  Then about the Indian burial ground just aways from that smaller church.  Then about the little old man and the little old woman who were making clay pots even further down that road, where there was no road at all.  I had thought the end of the story came down to them, but while that big church, and that little church, and even that Indian sacred burial ground meant shit compared to them, the little old man and the little old woman - well, they weren't the end of the story either.  Inside the clay beds of earth were spiders, the special disastrously unique kind that only thrived in the deep of Mexico, and those spiders weaved more intricately than any man or church or road.  That what they created out of shit and spit and dirt and clay would outlast all the rest, and do so modestly and unheard, in the quiet beneath the world.  I can't remember if it was spiders, or insects, or a different hard shelled creature.  That's where I lose the memory.  And that's where his story ended.

~ M. Lucia