Sweet Jesus (30 page)

Someone nearby shouted, Praise Yahweh!

Chad Dorian’s voice grew softer, more confidential. Satan has a special rage against the Jews, he said, because if he destroys them and Jerusalem, then Jesus can’t come back to earth and claim Jerusalem as the new kingdom. Now, I’m happy to be a
gentile. I don’t want to be Jewish. God didn’t make a mistake there. But will I die, if I have to, for the battle of Jerusalem? You’re darned right, I will.

In the new millennial world, the pastor said, fear will not dominate your spirit, faith will. If fear dominates, the anti-Christ has won. The Bible says, Jerusalem will be the throne of the lord.
The throne of the Lord
, he repeated. This must be the devil’s most hated verse in the whole Bible. He wants to sabotage the apocalypse, and that’s why there’s so much terrorism focused on Jerusalem. That’s why all the wars in the Middle East – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Iraq, 9/11, even Nazi Germany – they’re all predicted in the Book of Revelation. It’s all in here, friends, and I don’t enjoy saying this, believe you me, but if you’re not seeing it when you read the scriptures, it’s because you don’t
want
to see it.

We are approaching the vortex! he shouted in a hoarse voice. There is no time for apathy. Things are going to get much, much worse before they get better. Many more righteous men and women will die before they get resurrected. We must prepare ourselves for battle. We must prepare ourselves for the second coming because Jesus Christ is coming back to restore the kingdom of heaven – the Global Kingdom of Salvation – here on earth, folks! This place under your feet, this body of Christ in the community that surrounds you here, this is a taste of what the rapture will be like!

There was a roar of cheers and whistles. People stood and clapped with their hands over their heads. Chad Dorian took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face. He held his Bible in the air. I want, he said in a quiet, exhausted voice, all of you who are visiting us today from Israel to come to the front. Let us pray in Christ’s name for the strength of our Jewish friends, that they might have the fortitude for the task that lies
ahead. And while we pray, Crystal Carter, if you will, will come up and lead the worship band.

A young woman with an acoustic guitar walked humbly with her head bowed over to a mike at the side of the stage and swung her guitar forward across her belly and started picking out some gentle chords. The drums hooked into the beat and then the electric guitars buzzed in like allied aircraft. A flute fluttered high over the music. People surged forward. Chad Dorian prayed into his microphone. He called on his intercessors, and two more women and a man appeared, plucking microphones from their stands, and began to pray on stage. A whispered cacophony of voices over the swelling music. Then the intercessors began speaking in tongues.

It’s ironic, Zeus said, but when they speak in tongues like that, it sounds Arabic. Close your eyes and you could be in a mosque in Tripoli.

But we’re not in a mosque, Connie said. We’re in an ugly aluminum hangar, in the middle of America, with a thousand charismatic right-wing Christians. But I’ve got to go forward. I came here for prayer and I’m going to get prayed for. Are you coming?

Hannah shook her head.

Zeus stood up and said, This is bullshit, and he wandered off.

Connie watched him go. I can’t help him right now, she said to Hannah. I need to think of myself, and she stood up and walked towards the stage and the crowd swallowed her up.

This was madness, Hannah thought. And Zeus was right. If you closed your eyes, it
could
be a mosque. And Tripoli sounded like an exotic bird. Or a famous blue sapphire. Maybe the medievalists got it right. Maybe the mass should be recited in Latin, with incense and bells. In a language you can’t
understand. To remain a mystery, Hannah thought and opened her eyes. Her sister was right as well. Here was ugliness and an appetite for the divine. And what did the Jews think of it all? Had the Jews come? Or were they racing for the exits?

H
annah lost the truck in the parking lot, then found it. Zeus was lying on his back in the truck bed. I thought you might be here, she said. Is everything okay? He was staring at the elaborately sculpted clouds in the blue sky overhead. Do you want to go for a drive? she asked and Zeus sat up.

Where are we going? he said.

I don’t know, and Hannah tossed him the keys. Check on Rose first? Then I thought we could go into town. Grab a beer or something?

When they got to the hotel, Zeus waited outside by the truck and Hannah took the elevator up and knocked on her mother’s door.

Rose opened it, then headed straight back to bed. Her hair was vertical and waving around like grass. Her eyes were puffy. Her skin a little shiny.

Come out with us, Hannah said. Come have lunch and see the city.

Rose shook her head, then yawned so violently it seemed to come from another source that overpowered her. Hannah sat down on the edge of the bed. There was a bottle of pills from the hospital on the bedside table, next to an inhaler. How are you feeling?

Like an idiot, if you must know, coming all this way and look at me. I just need to rest and I’ll be fine later. She lay back down. Hannah noticed a small spot of blood on the pillowcase next to her head. Maybe it was the tetanus shot, Rose said. I just can’t get out of bed.

Though it was ridiculous, childish really, Hannah felt mentholated with hurt, some stupid feeling of rejection. That’s okay, she said, I understand. Do you need anything? Do you want me to get you some tea or something?

Rose grunted, Uh-uh.

Connie said the front desk would get you something to eat, Hannah said, if you called down for it.

As she was shutting the door, her mother called her back. I forgot to tell her this morning, Rose said, I was half asleep, but I have a letter for Connie, from Harlan. Can you give it to her for me? I don’t think it’s urgent, but I told him I’d give it to her right away.

Sure, Hannah said, and her mother pointed to her purse. Hannah opened it up and beneath the kleenex and keys and lipstick found an envelope addressed to
Connie Foster
.

Hannah went back out to the truck, where Zeus was waiting in the passenger seat. You drive, he said, and they headed downtown. A man in an open-air Jeep, wearing a turtleneck under his sweatshirt and mirrored aviator glasses, passed them while talking on a
CB
radio. At the next red light, he was stopped in the lane to their left. Hannah watched him lift an enormous insulated mug to his face, the size of a small,
tightly rolled sleeping bag. From his rear-view mirror dangled a black wooden cross. The most religious, she thought, always have the darkest dispositions. That’s why they’re the ones most in need of rescue. It’s why Jesus spent so much of his time with the prostitutes, murderers, and thieves. And lead us not into temptation. But why not? So many of the things prohibited in her youth were not as scary or carried such negative consequences as had been forewarned. People were so easily cha-grinned. When someone said, Have you no shame? Hannah wanted to say, No, and why should I? Shame was the invention of nervous people.

But then, some people had nervous
upbringings
and scrambled all their lives to manage with the rules they were taught. When she was nine years old, Hannah had given her mother the finger. Rose had looked so shocked. Do you know what that means? she said, and Hannah shook her head. There were no words for it because it meant fuck you, which she didn’t want to say out loud. She already felt embarrassed and didn’t need to be punished. It means, Rose said, that you want to put your finger in my vagina. It still made Hannah shudder to think about it now. But it was what her mother thought was the appropriate thing to say at the time. It’s what she
knew
. What’s wrong, Hannah wondered, with the way
I
think things ought to be now?

The closer they got to the downtown area, the more opulent and bigger the buildings became, as if wealth was the fertilizer that made lifeless things grow. The streets were clean. Things gleamed. Election posters cluttered the windows.

There’s so much shit you have to put up with when you’re gay, Zeus said, and for a moment Hannah was silent.

But that’s why you’re so great and compassionate, she said. Because you know what it’s like to be excluded.

I don’t think Rose will ever look at me again as just myself, he said. Just Zeus, the person.

You can’t listen to her about certain things. You can’t listen to
either
of my parents when it comes to anything that isn’t traditional or conservative. I love them, they’re my parents, but they can be totally narrow-minded. Whatever she might have said, I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt you. She tries so outrageously hard to be irreproachable. I mean, what’s
that
all about?

You belong to her, Zeus said. You never have to doubt that. You know she loves you.

Oh, I know she loves me, Hannah said. I’m just not so sure she’s ever really
liked
me. Hannah had never realized how true this was, but instead of opening her heart to the pitiable fact of it, she quickly pushed it away. Whatever, she said. It doesn’t matter.

Hannah almost ran a red light, braking hard at the very last moment. Zeus grabbed the dashboard. Sorry, she said, as a very pregnant teenager waddled across the intersection. She was wearing a t-shirt that said,
I’m not with stupid anymore!

Zeus sighed and said, What if people started caring? The sun was just coming out from behind a cloud and the light was travelling towards them at a stately pace, making things emerge as if for the first time. What if people
actually
started to care about all the things they pretend to be indifferent about? he said. What difference would that make?

People don’t feel important, Hannah said. They don’t feel like they matter. I mean, I never really felt like
I
did, you know, growing up.

The side of a building went orange as the sunlight moved across it. Cars across the intersection flared and the bright boundary of the sun slid across the pavement and up over the white hood of the Ranger and soaked the windshield and
made it go milky. Hannah’s hands on the steering wheel felt warm in the light.

Once, that may have been true, Zeus said, raising his head. But I kind of see you surrounded by people who tell you all the time how much you mean to them. But maybe you can’t hear them. This Norm guy. Your mother. Your sister, even. Would you believe me if I said I really cared about you too?

Hannah turned to look at him. Someone behind them honked, and she drove on. In a minute, they passed a billboard that read,
RAMADAN –
1.5
BILLION CELEBRATING – FIND OUT WHY
against the backdrop of a blurred and rippling American flag.

You know, this country is the mirror image of ourselves, Zeus said. We’re all so divided. Did you know that the Christians, the Jews, and the Muslims all come from the same family through Abraham?

Did I know this? I’m not sure I do. The problem with being a rebel, Hannah said, is that you disinherit a lot of your education. There’s so much about the Bible I’ve forgotten.

Fenton was sort of obsessed with this stuff, Zeus said. Apparently, Abraham had two sons. The first one, Ishmael, leads to the Muslims, and the second one, Isaac, leads straight to Mary and Joseph.

Why isn’t this talked about more often?

Their mothers didn’t get along, and that’s why they went their separate ways.

So they’re not enemies at all, Hannah said. They’re siblings.

Exactly.

They parked the truck and asked a man in a wheelchair where they could get a beer. Try Frankie’s at the end of the block.

Frankie’s it was.

The bar was small and dark. They sat down at a round plywood table and both ordered a Bud Lite. Hannah took a
swig and fell back into her own element. The
TV
above the bar blurted out more election coverage, a campaign ad, Obama shaking hands in a crowd, looking confident and relaxed. You know, Hannah said, this is where you’d find Jesus, if he were alive today.

I
am
alive today, Zeus said.

Hannah gave him an indulgent look. What people don’t understand, she said, is that Jesus was one of the original shit disturbers, a revolutionary. He went after the establishment. He believed in the redistribution of wealth, that everyone should get a fair share. Jesus wasn’t a republican, he was a democrat.

Zeus wasn’t interested in a rant. It was the middle of the day. At the bar, two women in cowboy shirts were having a drink. One of them said, People in the south, they smile with their mouths but not their eyes.

Zeus went over to the bar and started up a conversation with them, Beverly and Sandy Lanache, and soon they joined Hannah at the table. After half an hour, Sandy invited them to stay at their place. With me and my wife here.

You’re married? Hannah said. That’s so great.

We have a king-sized bed, she said. You guys can sleep in the middle.

The come-on made Hannah feel bashful.

I’m just joking, she said. Sandy was a dentist and explained that she did free dental work on the weekends for the poor of Wichita – she was used to taking in strays. As she talked, her silver bracelets clinked. She had soft-looking hands with long, slender fingers. Hands you wouldn’t mind having in your mouth, Hannah thought.

For a moment she considered the possibility and regretted the circumstances of her life that sometimes made her feel constricted, slightly uptight. My dentist in Toronto, she said,
just lost two fingers in a car accident and had to shut down his practice.

I hope they were insured, Sandy said, leaning back in her chair and putting her hands behind her head.

They ordered another round of drinks and talked about the upcoming election and the Republican Party, the Arab Spring, and the old war in Iraq. They talked about the economy and how bad the recession was, and how Kansas seemed to be at the centre of it all.