Sweet Jesus

by Christine Pountney

  And what about the prophetic ministry? Connie asked. You have counsellors here who specialize in prophetic ministries, isn’t that right? Rose had told her not to miss this.

  Oh yeah, the receptionist said, brightening up for the first time. That’s just awesome. You’ll love it. You can sign up for that in the morning as well. Just ask someone where.

  But we can go in there without paying or signing up, right? Connie pointed towards the open doorway where the music was coming from.

  Oh, for sure, the receptionist said. That part of the Kingdom is always open and there’s no charge. There’s usually a worship band playing or a prayer team on the go.

  Well, Hannah said, pushing herself off the counter, I hate to be indoors on a day like this. You go on in, Con, if you want. Zeus and I’ll go get us a room at the hotel and we’ll meet you there later.

  I think I’ll stay, Zeus said, coming over with half a dozen pamphlets. Why not? We can take a cab to the hotel when we’re ready, right?

  There’s a shuttle bus you can take, the receptionist said.

  Well, there you go, Connie said, and Hannah nodded slowly and said, Okay, and marvelled as she watched her liberal, ex-upper-middle-class sister enter one of the treasured sanctuaries of the American Christian right with her adopted brother, a bereft, gay ex-clown.

  ~

  All manner of people were scattered around the worship hall. Young and old, from all walks of life. Some were praying, some reading, a few chatted softly. There were chairs enough for a hundred more. Up at the front, on a low stage, the band played a powerful, hypnotic song on drums, electric keyboard, and guitar. A young woman in a moss green V-neck sweater swayed behind a microphone, alternating between song and the spoken word. Her prayers sounded improvised and sensual, like requests beseeched in the intimacy of passion. Beside her a man played guitar, echoing every supplication with a phrase of confirmation, spoken or sung in harmony.

  Zeus leaned towards Connie and whispered, Are they flirting with us? The man with the red rose tattoo was up near the front.

  Kiss me with the kisses of your word, the young woman sang. Tenderize my heart. For you are the lovesick God, who delights in me, even in my selfishness.

  Connie stood with Zeus at the back of the room. Eventually, she sat on the floor and rested her back against the wall, and Zeus walked over to a row of chairs and took a seat and removed his shoes. You could do that here. It was okay. Connie admired his ease. I’m too uptight, she thought, always have been. She had a lot of disappointed dreams. Things she hadn’t managed to do. One of them – to become a missionary, like her mother’s mother, who used to travel in convoy around the Canadian prairies in the 1940s. What were they? Nazarenes. Gathered under the canopy of a striped canvas tent in a farmer’s dusty field. Hymns slipping out from the shade to drift and burn up in the sun. Her grandmother sang and played the ukulele and stood beside the preacher and illustrated, on a large sheet of paper pinned to an easel, the stories he told as he conjured up the Holy Spirit.

  Connie had wanted to go to Africa as well, dig a well and worship with the beautiful people there. Her kids supported a foster child in Namibia through World Vision. His picture had been on the fridge at home. They paid the small maintenance fee out of their own allowance and wrote letters once a month and received a regular update. Nelson Bundha would graduate from grade school this summer. They had bought him two bunny rabbits last year for his birthday. It was part of a community program. The boy’s letter afterwards had been ecstatic. He did not like to see his mother kill the new rabbits, but he understood. They were so soft. He had names for them, Mandela and Winnie.

  Connie looked over at Zeus and in her mind took him home and put him to bed. In one of the kid’s beds. Simon’s bed. Zeus would love her house. But then she remembered it was gone. How much had she loved her house. That was her brace of bunnies. She’d loved her garden and the young magnolia tree. Harlan had planted that tree as a gift, in the middle of the night, so she’d see it in the morning when she went out to get the mail.

  And the varsity rowing team. Connie had loved that too. Three mornings a week at five in the morning, down to the silent misty harbour, the undisturbed water like polished steel. Sometimes the mist was so thick it closed everything in, made the world small, even after the sun rose. Then the fog glowed white. It looked so solid and yet it could disperse in an instant, showing itself thin and wispy like a vandal, slipping out from between you and the tall grey hull of a sailboat, a mere twelve feet away. The caw of a seagull could take her back. The light boats the team carried down like surfboards to sploosh into the sea, nose first, then slicing through the water, the dip and drip of the oars, and the quiet, sleepy strokes before the coxswain began her drill. How high they sat in their shallow husks, as if it wasn’t water they were on at all.

  A young man in an orange t-shirt came out of a door at the far end of the room and began soundlessly vacuuming the floor with a kind of cylinder on his back, walking slowly between the rows of chairs like a beekeeper smoking out the hives. There was something comical about how he was doing it so intently that it made Connie think of Zeus. She looked at him from behind, his small shoulders, his shaved head, his vulnerable back. The band was playing something rhythmic and soothing now. She felt a sadness for him that was a lot like love. He seemed all alone. And yet here she was, his family.

  A man stood up from his chair and raised his hands in the air, cobwebs tattooed onto his elbows. Another man stepped up to the mike and prayed for Wichita to become the first transformed city. He prayed for change, for mercy, for the relief of suffering. Then he called for an end to abortion. Why did they always have to be so militant on this point?

  Connie got up and moved towards one of the tall black speakers, supported on what appeared to be the legs of a card table. She put her hand out and felt the puff of the drumbeat and bass guitar. I made it, she thought and pulled a chair over and leaned forward into the music. I’m so exhausted, and I’ve been faithful for so long. But now, God, I want something from you. I feel like I’ve done my part, but you’ve never really spoken to me. I need you to show me that you care.

  Connie felt lonely and overlooked, and yet she knew you couldn’t force God into a measly human corner. She’d never had a powerful religious experience, if she was honest about it. A woman on stage was praying into the microphone. She was speaking in tongues. Would she always be so unremarkable? Some kind of talent like that would have made her feel special. She felt her own mouth with her tongue. Felt her teeth and how smooth they were. Had she grown hard? Was she incapable of vulnerability? She closed her eyes and prayed.

  Zeus felt porous, full of holes, holes and swallows, swooping and darting from nests built into his rib cage, out into the bright big room and back again. He understood that this place was a refuge, a room crammed full of music, windowless, where the rest of the world just fell away. And what bloomed at the front of his head was a feeling of space he didn’t recognize.

  What was it going to be like, meeting his parents again? What if he’d got the story wrong? What if he had to change all the ideas he’d told himself over the years, things he’d believed to be true about his past. What then?

  Zeus felt so tired, he could barely keep his eyes open. He stretched out on the row of chairs and curled his wrists and tucked his hands under his chin. Through the frame of an empty chair in front of him, Zeus could see, about ten rows ahead, the back of a girl. She had a red dress, and she wore her dark hair in a thick braid. She reached up to scratch her ear and she was wearing a white plaster cast from her knuckles to her elbow that was covered in stickers and signatures.

  She reminded Zeus of a girl he’d met when he was eleven years old, at a summer camp the Crowes had sent him to in Ontario. She had a brother who was older than Zeus by a year and was the first boy he ever fell in love with. They were staff kids and sort of hung out on the periphery of camp. They had created a restaurant out of a few empty packing crates and a
red-checkered tablecloth. The name of the restaurant was painted on two crossed canoe paddles nailed to a tree that marked the path leading down to the river, where they caught the small rainbow trout they’d fry up with a strip of bacon and serve to the campers for twenty-five cents apiece. The sister had a crush on him. People called her Radish because of her rosy cheeks. One day she invited Zeus to the restaurant and met him at the top of the path, looking shy and embarrassed. Radish wore a daisy chain on her head and a white dress and told her brother to shut up when Zeus arrived. She placed herself deliberately beside him, and they walked down the narrow path together and she had a solemn way of walking. Her brother was humming the bridal chorus. When they got to the bottom, he declared them man and wife and laughed so hard he had to sit down on a big rock. Radish pulled her skirt wide, like opening a fan, and said, I’m happy now, and she was, until her brother’s mirth grew a mocking edge. Stop laughing, Radish said. We’re on our honeymoon. But he wouldn’t stop laughing. Radish slapped her brother on the side of the head so hard he fell over, and Zeus ran away while they were still fighting.

  The next day, the camp alarm bell started to ring. It was an old school-house bell and had to be rung manually, and it could mean there was a fire and everyone had to congregate in front of the mess hall. Radish’s brother had fallen off the balcony and broken his leg. He was sitting up and his leg was bent wrongly and the cracked end of his shinbone was sticking out through the skin, clean and pale, like a branch with its bark peeled off. There was only a small trickle of blood. Most of the campers had gathered and there was a loud and jostling crowd, but the boy saw Zeus and waved him over. His eyes were shining with a kind of silver light. Tell me a joke, he said, and Zeus panicked to remember one. What do you call a scared dinosaur? The boy shrugged. A nervous Rex, he said, and the boy laughed. Zeus told him another joke, then another, and soon the ambulance arrived. The boy reached out and held Zeus’s hand and, for a second, looked terrified, then two paramedics in blue uniforms took him away.

  Zeus never saw him again but for months was haunted by the boy’s look of fear, and as if he’d wanted something – and to be singled out like that, from a crowd. It had made Zeus feel anointed. It gave him the warmest, cosiest feeling to remember it now, and it made him want to be a child again – all that promise, and mystery and delight. But being a child was a treacherous place to be as well. It doesn’t take much to make an orphan. One natural disaster and we’d all be children again, wandering the ragged earth with all the other orphaned children.

  Look, there’s a parade of them now. Coming down the road in their filthy, threadbare clothes, broken shoes. There is a village and they ask for shelter, but are politely denied. The orphans move on, burnt trees like black capillaries against the sky. They come upon a modern convoy of UN peacekeepers. We refuse to help you, the commander announces cheerfully. And the children don’t mind. They accept these refusals graciously, innocent of any alternative. They walk until they come to the edge of a bright green lake, on the other side of which, an ancient white city is being bombed. Black fighter planes in the air like dragonflies, but the children are happy. Some of the orphans are taking off their clothes. They splash into the murky water in their thin underwear, shouting and laughing.

  Hannah pushed the curtains aside and stood at the window of the hotel room. Suburban traffic eight floors below. Highway construction. Late-afternoon sun warm through the glass. Hannah lay down on one of the two double beds and thought about Norm. She loved him so much. Why didn’t he want to have a baby with her? Sexy Norman Peach. He really knew how to thrill her. She touched her belly and moved her hand further down. Every forbidden thing rose to the surface. A woman arrives at her door. Hannah turns her around and presses her up against the wall, feels her tits, slides a hand up between her legs. Then she’s being fucked, with the quick, sharp thrusts of a dog. Then a horse cock, like Catherine the Great, and rough-looking stable hands crowding around and jerking off. Norm at a distance, proprietorial. That was Norm’s fantasy first, guiding the horse cock into her. He could be like that. A shocking, confident, liberated imagination.

  When Hannah sat up and looked around, she felt smug, a bit self-conscious. The theatre of the mind was unpredictable and lawless, but life was good if you could enjoy the company of your own thoughts, take a little dirt in what felt good. Then she thought about Caiden Brock. Now resident of Wichita. She found a phone book in a drawer and looked him up. There he was. Listed. She raised a skeptical eyebrow, then dialled the number. As soon as it started to ring, her palms rushed into a sweat.

  Hello? Julia’s voice.

  Is Caiden there?

  Just a moment, please.

  He was! And delighted to hear from her. You’re here for what? Are you insane? You have to come for dinner. It’s Friday night. We eat early because of the kids.

  Will Julia be okay with that? Hannah said.

  Of course she will, he said. Don’t be silly. I’m going to swing by and pick you up right now. You need rescuing.

  We’re at the Comfort Inn, near the Kingdom of Salvation place. Are you sure it’s not out of your way?

  We need a few groceries. It’s a thirty-minute drive. Meet me at the entrance.

  And that was that.

  Hannah went into the bathroom. Okay, she said. All right. And then she remembered his wife’s voice. She looked at herself in the mirror. I’m thirty-six, she said, and I like the way I look. Then she noticed a small white pimple near her mouth and didn’t mind. So Caiden could see it and think, she doesn’t care about appearances, isn’t here to attract me. She’s here as a friend, to inquire about my life and wish me well with Julia and the boys. She left it there as a little white flag to her virtue.

  Hannah left a note for Connie and Zeus on one of the beds and went downstairs. Caiden Brock was a married man, had been for twenty years. Hannah had been to his engagement party when she was sixteen years old. Caiden’s parents were hosting a barbecue in honour of their son and his Michigan beauty-pageant fiancée. The pool in the backyard, potato salad on paper plates. Hannah was coming out of the bathroom and there was Caiden. He pulled her into his old bedroom and shoved his hand down her pants. He slipped a finger into her hot young body. He was breathing heavily and they both heard Julia through the open window, laughing at her new father-in-law, something he said about a watermelon on the side of his head. Caiden’s desire was overpowering, and then he was embarrassed, and that made Hannah feel embarrassed too. I’ve got to get back out there, he said and left. On the window ledge was a model Ferrari. The sheers stroked it. Hannah looked down and saw Caiden bend for two beers out of a cooler. Hey, he was saying to his father. That’s my wife you got there.

  Caiden’s SUV pulled up to the hotel entrance. He was still attractive, still had that dazzling roguish smile. He was wearing a navy blue sweater with the stars and stripes across the front.

  Nice sweater, Hannah said.

  I’m wearing it in honour of the fact my citizenship just came through.

  You’re an American now?

  Oh say can you see, he said and saluted the sun visor. Do you know how long I tried to get a business off the ground in Canada? It was impossible. They take fifty cents on every dollar you make. There’s no love-loss there.

  So you like it here.

  The States, he said, has been very good to me.

  It’s made you rich, Hannah said.

  He laughed and slapped the leather wheel, then joggled it to make the SUV shake a bit. Things have been going like gangbusters, he said. In all respects – financial, spiritual. He counted these off, using his pinkie and ring finger. I have three sons now and another baby on the way. Pray with me, will you, that I get a daughter?

  You want me to pray for that?

  Prayers are all I need, he said.

  Caiden had maintained his Christian faith – had not lost it apparently, or rejected what he was brought up to believe. It still surprised Hannah. To have such a materialisti
c definition of success and to feel entitled to God’s blessing, as if worldly success was what God wanted for all of us. So your dissolute youth, she said, the drinking and the womanizing, have you renounced those along with the maple leaf?

  Caiden gripped the wheel a little harder, then released it. My faith, he said, is compatible with sinful behaviour. It has to be. Because I’m a sinner. I’m capable of embracing the contradictions between belief in Christ and un-Christly acts. You’re more of a purist, he said. Always have been. You’d throw the baby out with the bathwater.

  Speaking of which, tell me the names of your sons.

  He took his eyes off the road and turned to her. Mitchel, Chad, and Abraham, Caiden said. For a moment, he had that old look of knowing and risk and daring and sensuality, and Hannah’s pelvis responded to that look.

  There’s a story in the Old Testament, he said, about Mishak, Chadrak, and Abednego. Three brothers who survive the fiery furnace. I always had a vision I’d have three sons.

  There’s a camp song, Hannah said, about those boys.

  Maybe that’s where the seed was planted, Caiden said and gave a boisterous laugh. You know, Hannah, some amazing things have been happening in the church, here in the States. Have you ever heard of the Vinyard? Well, they had a revival, a number of years ago now. I first went to one in California and caught the laughing syndrome. You ever hear about this? Whole congregations coming over laughing. Even the Anglicans caught it. In fact, I think it started in England. Can you imagine? Prim little country ladies, in their Sunday best, laughing like drunkards. When I was in California, this preacher touched my forehead and I fell over. They have bouncers there to catch you, and I lay on the floor and laughed and cried and was totally paralyzed but full of the Holy Spirit. It was so powerful, Hannah. It was like being on acid, only I felt totally lucid.

  Hannah envied Caiden’s ability to be so easily transported. She would have liked to have had an experience like that. They were passing brick-and-glass bungalows on wide lawns with three-car garages. The air was windy, the sky full of contrast. Big white clouds steamrollered across the blue, strobing the sunlight, making the world loom bright and large one moment, then recede into the shadows the next.