Pass the biscuits, please.

Sterling’s mom handed over a plate loaded with thick lumps of pre-packaged burned baked dough while Dad shoveled a fork full of mashed potatoes with gravy into his mouth. Finishing his Dough Boy hardtack in a few primitive gobbles, Sterling pushed away from the table and headed for the door. Like he figured, nobody asked where he had been, what he had seen or how he felt.

Don’t let your meat loaf, Dad, Sterling said.

Rattling the golf trophies on the fireplace mantle when he slammed the door behind him, Sterling jogged to his purple Mustang that gleamed in the porchlight, slid behind the wheel and roared into the evening dusk.

As expected, his deceased friend Palmer’s black 2020 Ram 1500 pick-up sat in the driveway of Palmer’s vacant family home. With Palmer’s mother and father also dead from COCID-19, lawyers weren’t in any hurry to divvy up the estate. So far, Pizza King’s lawyers had no success making contact with Ashley to see what she wanted to do with the family fortune.

Parking in the shadows of the street, skinny Sterling strained to lift the roll of galvanized steel cable from his trunk and dump it in the bed of the truck. Using his personal key to Palmer’s pick-up as he had done so many times when they were selling drugs, Sterling started the beast, gunned the engine and tore out of the driveway. Best friends since kindergarten detention, he and Palmer shared everything except death.  Lighting a joint, Sterling laid rubber and fishtailed down the street.

This one’s for you, Palmer, he said.

Now that the protests settled down, Blessed Mama Mia’s Pizza heated up.

Crowds formed long before sunset. Roman Catholic nuns and priests joined the Holy Rosary Society for recitations. Charlatans wearing thin off-the-rack suits arrived to perform healings, speak in tongues and sell stale bits of bacon encased in plastic they passed off as saintly relics. As efficient as Roman soldiers at the cross, everybody made a killing.

Gina had enough.

That night after closing, facing the shadowy image of the Holy Virgin that appeared on the pizzeria wall like clockwork every night, she apologized. Taking a knee, she entwined her fingers and folded her hands. Gina wept.

Look, Mary, I’m sorry, but I can’t take it anymore, she said.

The image glowed in the shimmering heat of the hot shop where sizzling cheese on baking pizza dough raised the room temperature to over 100 degrees. The image seemed to nod in the swelter, acknowledging Gina’s plea for mercy and understanding.

I see you for the strong woman you are, but you really have to go, Gina said.

Only one obstacle stood between her and normalcy; how to turn off the freaking streetlight. Praying like she never prayed before, Gina wished and wished and wished she had a solution, not directing her prayers to anybody in particular, but to fate, luck and whatever might work. Sal could have shot it out. Vic could have bribed a city maintenance worker to put it out. As she pondered, like a real miracle, the streetlight bulb flickered, flickered again and went out.

The explanation why Mary left was as simple as why Mary came.

Crooked city officials had problems with old equipment for decades and bought used or stolen equipment whenever they needed replacements. The new streetlight wasn’t all that new and the guys who sold the shoddy equipment already pleaded guilty to felonies and finished up short house arrest sentences where they continued to wheel and deal and fleece public servants by telephone and computer.

A handful of people remained on the street praying when Gina left the shop. She’d figure out how to break the news before she opened tomorrow. Maybe she’d call a press conference. Maybe she’d just never return. The pilgrims would protest and cry but they’d understand the same way they understood when war, natural disaster and COVID-19 killed countless people while the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost stood by and let tragedy happen.

God’s will, they say.

In this case, they’d agree Mary just decided it was time to go.

Three blocks down the street Sterling pulled the truck to the curb, hopped from the driver’s seat and ran to the back bed. Grabbing one loose end of steel rope cable from a wood spool, he pulled the cable toward the 12-foot tall Christopher Columbus statue. Leaping on the pedestal, Sterling looped the thick metal coil around the statue’s neck and jumped down. After securing the cable to the Gooseneck toe hitch he got back into the truck, revved the engine and took off.

The statue toppled with ease, almost in slow motion, slamming and bouncing face-forward on the street. Dragging the crumbling image of the legendary explorer who supposedly discovered America down the street Sterling turned up the volume of his anti-Columbus hip hop music and sang along to lyrics about slavery and cutting off Indians’ hands if they didn’t collect enough gold. Flying past the pizzeria at 75 miles-per-hour, the marble figure’s butt slapped against the asphalt like a Venetian gondola bouncing on heavy Italian waves.

Sterling screamed his war cry so loudly he thought he ruptured his larynx.

GEN-O-CIDE! GEN-O-CIDE!

Taking in the spectacle from the second-floor window, Dillon jumped up and down with excitement.

Columbus turned off the light, Dillon said.

Then the upbeat bird flew the coop.