The Kingdom of Heaven

by 19

  They were still giving him looks that were either blank or adoring, depending on your point of view. –If you want to belong, find somewhere you belong and stay there no matter how hard you have to fight to do it.

  None of them were getting it at all. –Find your own truth. I'm not your savior. You are.

  He walked out onto Spectre's back porch, and lit a joint. He was still holding the glass of lemonade. He settled into the cushioned wicker chair, took a long deep drag. I don't want to be this. Somebody has to do it, I know that, why does it have to be ME?

  Spectre came and stood leaning in the doorway, amused. –You blew their minds. They're out there whispering about the theology of what you just said.

  –They'll never get it, will they?

  –Give them a little time. A little mercy. I finally got it, didn't I? I used to want to lick your feet, too.

  He held up his booted foot, waved it in Spectre's general direction. Spectre laughed and shoved his foot away. –Freak.

  He sighed. –To do this, I have to lead them into not needing a leader at all. I have no idea how to do that.

  –The words will be there when you need them.

  –Mary would have a fit if she saw all these...disciples.

  –How is she? I thought you would've brought her.

  He let himself grin. Ah, that wonderful all-over physical growl that only testosterone could provide. –She's pregnant.

  Spectre stared at him, then whooped in joy, dragged him out of the chair, picked him up in a hug so fervent that his feet came off the floor, and spun him around, making a sticky arc of lemonade and nearly crushing the joint. –OH MY GOD! he was yelling, laughing.

  –Put me down, you lunatic, he said, dripping lemonade–it was in his hair, for fuck's sake–and laughing too.

  –How far along is she? Is she sick? What will you call it?

  He pulled his wet shirt away from his chest, grimacing, hitting the joint again. –Two months or so, no, and we're going to name it after you. How does Queer Circus Freak strike you as a tribute to my son's favorite...what will you be? Cousin?

  That degenerated into a lemonade fight, which in turn evolved into a wrestling match.

  His disciples finally got up the balls to come looking for him, and found their Messiah on the floor, sitting on Spectre's chest and rubbing an ice cube over his face.

  (27)

  The disciples set up a strange kind of a temporary town near Spectre's house. It was too big to really be called a camp. The rumor mill in Calvary was already churning like mad, and as more and more tents went up, the tension level skyrocketed.

  –I don't like it, Mary said to him. They were at Spectre's, sitting on his steps. Actually he was sitting on the steps, and she was sitting in his lap. He had his arms around her, one hand over her stomach. –This morning there were twenty-three offering packages on the steps. I almost fell over them. And people are beginning to really talk.

  –Well, what do you want me to do, Mar? Tell them to take their balls and go home? He kissed her, behind her ear, and bit her earlobe.

  She squirmed away, unwilling to be distracted. –Some of them are starting to look like you.

  That was all his little phobia of being unreal needed. Fifty people done up like him, his own face looking back like infinity mirrors in a funhouse, like a bad Halloween joke. –A lot of them are taking it too far. Some of them are just kids, Mar, dying to believe in something.

  –Well, why does that something have to be you? I want you to be my husband and our baby's father and nothing else!

  He hugged her. It scared him, the crying fits. She would get violently upset, sometimes sobbing until she made herself nauseous, over something like a broken coffee cup or a paper cut. Sometimes he tried to distract her, hold her when she would let him near her. Once she'd locked herself in the bathroom and cried till he sat against the door, talking through it to her. I love you. I'm sorry. Please come out. It's okay. It's all okay.

  –Why does it have to be you? What are you, anyway? Are you what they say you are? she whispered to him, finally.

  –Mary, I have a skill. One skill. I can sometimes heal the sick. Spectre has a skill. He grows the best weed I have ever smoked. And you do that thing with your tongue–

  She elbowed him hard in the ribs. –I'm serious.

  –I am too, Mar, he said.

  He had been careful, so very careful not to have to lie to her.

  –I just wish you wouldn't encourage them. That's all.

  He wished he wouldn't encourage them either. Something drove him to do it. He would go to their little shantytown every few days, and...well, preach. Maybe an hour, maybe two.

  He had tried to stay away, for Mary's sake. He would go outside for a joint to keep the smoke away from her and the baby, or to take a piss while she was taking a two-hour bath, and the next thing he knew he would be in the damn truck.

  He did a few healings, exclusively in private. He wasn't going to put on an exhibition like that bastard salesman Elijah. The thought of doing something that intimate for himself and the one he was healing in public, on a fucking stage. The point was to heal, not to get up and show off. He didn't have anything to prove.

  –It's something I have to do. Can you understand that, Mar? Can you at least try?

  She turned her head into his shoulder. –I'm jealous of them, she said, muffled, and sniffled.

  He smiled. Testosterone. –Don't be. You're the one I go home with, remember? You're the one I gave my favorite ring to. I give them time, Mar, but I give you my whole self. I'm yours.

  That made her happy again. It tore something up in his chest as soon as he'd said it, and he kissed her so she wouldn't see the expression on his face. He had meant that, every single word, with his entire soul.

  But he wasn't sure he was his own to give away.

  (28)

  It was a miracle that the Elijah incident hadn't happened sooner.

  Real miracles were bad for business when Elijah had built himself and Aaron an empire on a foundation of fake miracles. He was dangerous competition. The money that people insisted on giving him was money they weren't giving to Elijah.

  He really thought that Elijah could have been more creative, though. More considerate, of Mary at least, if not of him. The entire town knew she was pregnant, and nobody suggested to Elijah that it would be an asshole way to behave, coming to the house at night with a small crowd, bearing torches. Torches, for fuck's sake. He knew damn well that the hardware store had flashlights. What silliness.

  He knew, in one of the vivid flashes of clarity that were the only kind of vision he ever had, that they were coming.

  Mary was reading The Stranger, sprawled out across the bed, and he was rubbing the small of her back with one hand and jotting random thoughts in his journal with the other.

  –Elijah and about twenty of his cronies are on their way here. Nothing terribly bad is going to happen, but there will be a lot of shouting and a lot of ridiculous behavior. I want you to wait for me with Spectre. I'll be there, as soon as I'm finished here.

  She had never heard that tone of voice before, and she knew instinctively that you didn't question it. She got up, pulled her dress down, put her shoes on. Shaking.

  –Come, soon. Her eyelashes were wet. –The gun is...

  –I know where the gun is, sweetheart. I won't need it. Drive carefully, but drive fast. I don't want you on the road when they get here.

  In case our child can hear what I'm going to do.

  –You'll be alone.

  –I'm never alone, he said, touching her face with his fingertips. He kissed her mouth and her stomach, and gave her the keys.

  He listened until the sound of the engine faded. Then he dressed in the tuxedo jacket and red shirt he had worn to their wedding, painted his face with Mary's black eyeliner, brushed out his hair, put on his boots. Waited.

  Elijah was parading down the dirt road making a full-blown idiot of himself. He was wearing the
white suit, and he had a gold (gold!) shirt on underneath it. And a white tie. And he was holding a torch over his head like he was advertising the fucking Statue of Liberty. And the twenty or so cronies were following him like Klan members in the middle of Georgia.

  It was like he thought of this as, a photo op.

  He was sitting on the steps, smoking a joint and waiting. He was wearing his sunglasses.

  Elijah came right up to him, stopped less than three feet away. Apparently he hadn't planned on his victim waiting, dressed in full regalia. He had probably expected to drag him out of bed naked and groggy and blinking. He just stood there, twitching with what was probably supposed to be righteous indignation.

  He exhaled smoke through his teeth, held the joint out to Elijah. –Want a hit? It's good shit. Very mellow.

  Elijah struck the joint of out of his hand.

  That was his second mistake. The first had been the gold shirt.

  He stood up.

  He took off his sunglasses, and let them fall deliberately from his hand, and stepped on them, crunching them in to a mangled lump of plastic. He didn't look up until he was finished.

  Elijah stepped back.

  This time he didn't bother to smooth out the edges, round off the corners. –If you didn't come here to smoke out, Elijah, exactly what do you want?

  –You know why I'm here. I know about these false wonders you've been perpetrating on the innocent; I know about that cult of Hellbound idolaters camped out there in the desert. I know you. I have come because it is the will of God that I come here into the house of one demon -possessed.

  –Stop, he said.

  Elijah did. He actually could not speak again, and that was rather funny to watch, the frustration and fear building in his eyes. He tried not to enjoy it. He didn't like doing things like that. Did he?

  –If you can't even make a coherent sentence, you don't need to talk to me. I don't have time for it. You want to talk like adults? Like sane human beings? Go ahead.

  The preacher's mouth snapped shut, and he immediately opened it again. –By the power of the name of Jesus I compel the demons to come out of this man! he shouted, and held out his hand.

  It's not what you call me, it's what I answer to, he thought. Where had he heard that before? An African proverb? It had stuck in his brain in a secret place, and it whispered to him now, and he'd had enough of this bullshit, and he was well past annoyed and into the realm of angry.

  He grabbed Elijah's and spun him around so that his arm was behind his back, with the preacher's hand damn near between his shoulderblades.

  Elijah made a sound like a teenaged girl who had slammed her finger in a car door.

  He took the torch away so that the idiot didn't set fire to anything, threw it out into the sand, and looked at Elijah's little lieutenants. –I can break his arm before you can take me down, and every one of you knows he can't heal it. Step back.

  They did, the motion strange, shuffling.

  –You let me go! Elijah demanded, flailing.

  –I will. After I'm finished with you. It was your idea to talk to me, remember? Poof, you get your wish. We talk, but not here. We're going for a little walk, my friend, down to that idiotic tent you call a church. Start walking, he ordered.

  He kept Elijah hunched over. They walked. The enforcers trailed along behind them, dumbfounded and confused. This definitely wasn't going according to plan.

  He made Elijah walk a little faster, pulled on his arm a little harder. He had no idea what he was going to do when he got there. The words would come when he needed them.

  At the door of the tent, he turned to the entourage. –If one of you so much as looks in here, the next thing to come out of this door will be his body. And I will not bring him back.

  He pushed Elijah in, closed the flap. They didn't follow.

  –You're going to pay for this, Elijah choked out.

  –It's funny you should choose those exact words. Your entire little mind thinks like a bank account, doesn't it? Pay, owe, reap, sow. You're a salesman selling bullshit painted a pretty color. You figured out that religion is the only foolproof pyramid scheme in the world, and you set yourself right on top of it, didn't you? You're Aaron's financier and his little pawn, and you have this entire town under your thumb. Except for me. So let's get on down to the altar and get a little Jesus, shall we?

  He had to admit to himself he was really, enjoying, this.

  He dragged Elijah down the aisle, until he was in front of the long table across the front of the church. He kicked Elijah in the thigh, hard, so that he fell to his knees, and kept his arm twisted behind him.

  He started going through the preacherman's pockets with his free hand. Front right, front left, back right, back left, then the pocket of the tuxedo, and started dropping money onto the table. Twenties. Hundreds. Fifties. About six pounds of nickels and quarters and pennies and dimes, spinning down onto the tablecloth, some of them rolling off and hitting the wooden floor.

  –You ready for this?

  –I'm not afraid of you, Elijah said. His voice was wet.

  –So here we go, a little redemption. Here's your line. I want you to say: I fucking worship money, hallelujah. That's your line. Go ahead.

  Elijah still didn't understand this. –God will punish you for this, you.

  He broke Elijah's right index finger. Just twisted it around until it broke. The scream the preacher made was extremely satisfying. He thought of Isaac, the boy with the collapsed lung and disappointed eyes, and pushed the black smear of his hair out of his face.

  –That's one. You've got nine left, Elijah, and let me tell you, thumbs hurt a lot. Say it.

  Sobbing.

  –But I don't worship money and you JUST CAN'T DO THIS.

  –Surprise. I am doing it. He folded Elijah's right thumb, bending it hard enough to hurt like crazy, not hard enough to break it. Yet.

  –ALL RIGHT! Don't! I worship money, all right? ALL RIGHT?

  –You left out two words, he said.

  Snap.

  It took Elijah a minute to quit making this idiotic sort of a chicken noise, but he finally managed to say it. –I...fucking worship...money.

  –Say, Hallelujah.

  –Hallelujah, he said, weeping, broken.

  He healed Elijah's hand. The preacher screamed again at that. And he reached up and pulled the tablecloth off, showering Elijah with fluttering bills and clattering change, and dropped it over his head. He looked down at the man, under the cloth, curled up small, sobbing, and kicked him just once, in the tailbone, hard. –I forgive you, Elijah. But I can't fix what's wrong with you. Only you can do that, and I think it might be too late. There's not enough of your soul left to grow back.

  Elijah flinched with every word.

  –I just want you to know that even though I do forgive you, I still don't like you. And that is the ugliest fucking shirt I have ever seen, by the way. Tell your mother to stop dressing you like one of the Bee Gees.

  Elijah dragged himself up onto his knees, clutching his now perfectly okay hand, sobbing, his face streaked with snot and tears. There were tracks in his pancake makeup. –You bastard!

  –You're right about that one. My mother never married my father, he said, a little joke just for him. And his father. If his father was listening.

  –I'll get you for this! I'll KILL you for this!

  –I know that already too. He was exhausted. He felt scoured out and empty and sad. –If it's the last thing you do. Have a nice day. Enjoy being a high-priced whore while you can. It gets pretty ugly on the way down.

  He left. The enforcers were crowded outside, pale and uncertain. One of them dared to say, –Did you kill him?

  He sighed. –No, of course not. One of you might want to go in first and clean him up alone for the sake of whatever dignity he has left. ALL of you who heard that might want to do some hard thinking about why you work for a creature like that.

  He left.

  None of th
em followed him.

  Jordan was waiting on his deathtrap of a motorcycle. –You okay?

  –Yes. Are you my ride?

  Jordan nodded. –Are we gonna get chased?

  –No. It'll take them at least an hour to help the poor bastard fix his makeup. Is Mary okay?

  –She's crying.

  He sighed again, climbed on the motorcycle behind Jordan. –Don't drive like an idiot tonight, all right? I can't take it right now.

  (29)

  He had no way of knowing if Mary was hysterical or not. As soon as he walked in the door she went into Spectre's bedroom and locked the door. She wouldn't come out, and she didn't answer his pleading or his raging.

  –She's just pregnant. She'll come out in a minute, Spectre said, almost apologetic. Jordan was standing there scared and ready to cry if any shouting started.

  He couldn't deal with it. He couldn't deal with any of them, and he left the house and walked over to the camp of his worshipers

  Two of Elijah's lieutenants had immediately converted.

  By the time he got there, the story had evolved into a kind of Star Wars pyrotechnic battle, complete with himself chasing Elijah through the street shooting bolts of energy at him like fucking Gandalf.

  They had built a little...okay, it was a stage, as embarrassing as it was. He stepped up there.

  –Sit down and shut up. All of you.

  He only had to say it once. He was guessing something close to three hundred people, sitting there like it was a rock concert or a love-in, silent and waiting.

  –First, I did not shoot fireballs at anybody. We had an argument. I told him a few things about himself, and then I came out here. I broke two of his fingers. That's all. Any questions?

  –Did you heal his fingers? someone called out from his left.