By Roger Pinckney
Shooting trip of a lifetime, Delta 101 out of Hartsfield, non-stop to Buenos Aires, eat supper, stretch out, drift off, wake up speaking Spanish. Five thousand some-odd miles at seven hundred some-odd miles per hour at twenty-six thousand some-odd feet.
But it’s hard to slip St. Expedite.
Lemme tell y’all bout St. Expedite.
St. Expedite was a Roman Legionnaire the story goes, puzzling over the Gospel message. He wanted to convert but couldn’t quite get the gumption. All the while, his column was being buzzed by flocks of ravens, which called “cras-cras” instead of “caw-caw” the way they do now. “Cras” translates in Latin as “tomorrow” or “later.”
Finally, the soldier had enough. He snatched a raven out of midair, threw it to the ground and crushed the poor bird beneath his sandals, then raised the little cross he had secreted beneath his tunic and hollered, “Hodie!” “Today!”
Instant grits? Ready in three minutes. Instant scratch-off lottery tickets and instant micro-wave popcorn you can buy with your instant winnings right at the instant Stop-and-Rob till? We even got instant no-fault divorces if there ain’t enough money involved for the lawyers to drag it out to the Second Coming of Christ. But for things that take a little longer, when the bus is late, when the check don’t come, when the girl says “maybe”, you pray up St. Expedite.
I tried it once, when a lovely voodoo priestess led me to the Saint’s shrine in New Orleans. I got a hug, a kiss, a belly full of gumbo and some sweet memories, but not much else.
I tried to forget but St. Expedite didn’t.
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In Argentina, your outfitter hires a guide, always female, always bi-lingual and lovely. She meets your plane, gets your firearms through customs, keeps the money changers from skinning you, books a hotel for as many nights as you desire, drives you around town.
Norma, muy bonita, bright eyes and a quick smile.
“Senor Royer, do you wish to see a tango show? Do you wish to visit Evita’s grave?” She held my hand at the grave.
Evita. Eva Duarte was a B-Grade actress of illegitimate birth and questionable repute, but after a whirlwind romance with a rising colonel twice her age, she suddenly found herself the wife of the new president, Colonel Juan Peron. She embraced lepers, kissed the syphilitic, laid her hands upon open wounds and threw her Gucci shoes at the feet of barefooted peasants who thronged in thousands by torchlight to her window.
When Evita died of cancer at age thirty-three, there were eight dead and two hundred injured in a stampede at her funeral. She was embalmed and put on public display like Lenin. But after Peron was overthrown, the new government could not abide the enduring “Cult of Evita.” They secretly shipped her remains to Italy and buried them in Milan under a stone bearing a fictitious name. And there they remained lost for sixteen years. At home, the possession of a photo, or even mention of her name, would land you in jail. Meanwhile, leftist guerillas assassinated a former puppet president, held the body ransom and proposed a swap: body for body.
Evita was buried in the Duarte family crypt and ten thousand pounds of concrete poured atop her remains and the guerillas unceremoniously dumped the ex-presidential corpse on a street corner. Both lie in the Ricoletta cemetery, not two-hundred feet apart. And the Cult of Evita remains.
I left my offerings amongst the flowers, three silver coins, heads up.
And I shot birds three days, shot till my gun got too hot to touch, shot till my eyes crossed, shot till my ears rang and my gun shoulder looked like a double pepperoni pizza.
Norma kicked together deadfall fires for field lunches each day, white wine, white tablecloths, dove breast fondue, dove breasts pounded into pancakes, dredged in egg and cornmeal batter and frittered in olive oil, dove breasts wrapped in bacon with half a jalapeno and a dab of cream cheese inside.
No shooting that last glorious day. Norma and I sat on the piazza, me with espresso and Norma with her beloved bombilla of mate, the jungle juice they drink down there.
“What’s it like, Norma, is it like tea?”
Norma rolled her beautiful brown eyes and smiled, “No Senor Royer, it is not like tea.”
We spoke of many things, knowing we would likely never see one other again. I chanced to ask if she had ever heard of St Expedite.
Long pause, her eyes widened with astonishment, a deep breath, “Oh you know of San Expedito?” She rummaged through her handbag and came up with a picture the size of an old-time baseball card. And there he was, his foot on that poor croaking raven and the cross held aloft. On the reverse was a prayer in Spanish which I translated as best I could.
Saint Expedite, you lay in rest.
I come to you and ask that this wish be granted.
Saint Expedite now what I ask of you. Saint Expedite now what I want of you, this very second.
Don’t waste another day. Grant me what I ask for.
But alas, St. Expedite was resting. One embrace and I was gone, over the Andes to the rest of my life.
When got I home and unpacked, there was St Expedite tucked in amongst my socks.
I propped the picture up on my nightstand and there it remained eight months. “Don’t waste another day. Grant me what I ask for. Oh St. Expedite, send me back to Argentina!”
He heard me and I shot birds the very next year, an estancia outside of Cordova.
But this time there was Gilda….
