The Crackpipe Saint – I.C. Isay

February 27, 2026

I was born on His day of remembrance. He’s the patron saint of loansharks, bookies and cheating spouses… I have a chain with a gun and a cross which was His symbol and I pray for His guidance whenever I have to lie to a girlfriend.

He didn’t come to the crucifixion. He arrived when the crowds were gone, tumbling out a yellow cab half-drunk and febrile, clutching a losing ticket. He was looking over the body with its pockmarked skin, crimson at the temples and at the wrists.

“Poor Dismas,” he said, lighting a cigarette. He watched it burn all the way up the side, because fire wouldn’t approach the right way.

After a dreadful silence He said: “That’s all folks,” but there was nobody there to snigger, not that He was looking for that, only it is His music, the distance derisive laughter of others echoing out in damp cafes and the bleak far mountainside where coyotes go to bleed.

I know of His coming into the west. He pointed out the oilwells to Andrew Mellon but 100 years too late, getting His rapacious souls mixed up because His Notes App wasn’t working. He was drunk during prohibition and took an oath of brittle pacifism. Two years later He was up to His waist in Spanish bodies.

At the time of two rivers there was a man all alone, who had neither son nor brother. “For whom am I toiling,” he asked himself. “Why is this labour meaningless?” Then The Crackpipe Saint approached him and said, “A cord of three strands is not quickly broken,” offering two broad-backed slaves to ease his pain, if only for a while.

Then the man saw that all who laboured under the sun were displeased at their labour, that he was no different, that The Crackpipe Saint offered no respite, only distraction for a while.

The sound of the wind was about them, but it brought no comfort, only obscuring the sniggering laugh that was emptying out His scarred and weathered mouth.

“Many cares bring suffering,” said The Crackpipe Saint. “Many words are the speech of fools. It is better not to make a vow than to make a vow and not fulfil it. Do you have $10?” So, the man said nothing and took the slaves and freed them, but they did not flee they stayed to share in the labour, ignoring The Crackpipe Saint even when He poked them on the shoulder and said “Hey, you got a spare $10?”, not knowing what dollars were, knowing only that they toiled for the wind, for nothing, for nothing but the appropriate food and drink, for the chance to toil in the few days of life that God had given them, but despite this they were happy with the bargain, this bargain that was the only bargain that could ever be struck.

The Crackpipe Saint left on a tricked-out Harley. He had a meeting with Methuselah, and He was one thousand years too late, going off His Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra 150m, although it was set to Sumerian time so He could have been early.

“There is no one on Earth that is righteous. There is no one on Earth that does not sin,” said the man through gritted teeth as he tore at the soil, seeking to draw out its great sustenance.

“What the fuck is Earth?” said the freedmen, wondering whether they would be plagued by lust or greed or guilt in the days to come.

The Crackpipe Saint was in the grocery store talking loudly about His ingrown toenail. Outside there was no sound but the wind.