American Savior

by Roland Merullo

  “Do you think your father will come?”

  “Not at first.”

  “I really liked him.”

  “Well, if you could like him after that display, after he showed you his worst side, then we’re all set.”

  “He reminds me of you. A lot.”

  I wasn’t sure how to take that remark, so I just held the swinging door open for her, and we went and stood on the platform and watched for the westbound 8:37.

  The westbound arrived on time—the first of what I hoped would be several small miracles. It chugged into the station, brakes squealing, porters hopping out and setting the safety steps in place below the doorways. And then all hell broke loose. As always, there were six passenger cars, and on an average day you might see ten or twelve people getting off. On that morning, a stream of passengers poured out of each door. Some of them were actually normal. But a lot of them were in what might charitably be considered Halloween costumes: men with plastic crowns on their heads, or circular crowns handmade of twigs; women wearing sheets that were supposed to be robes. One couple—they were kids, really, late teens—was carrying a huge wooden cross that they’d gotten onto the train in two pieces and were assembling there on the edge of the platform. More silver, gold, and plastic crucifixes than you could count. Picnic baskets with fish heads and baguettes sticking out of them. Cameras around necks. Bibles, pictures of the pope. JESUS FOR PRESIDENT placards, most of them handmade, in every imaginable shape and color. I’D DIE FOR YOU! one of them said. SAVE US! TURN AMERICA INTO HEAVEN! BANISH THE HEATHENS!

  You name it, we saw it.

  What we didn’t see was my mother or Stab. We backed up against the wall, watching in a kind of horrified excitement as the mob hurried past. “My God, you were right,” I said to Zel at one point. “And this is just people coming on the train. What about—”

  And then my mother and Stab appeared, at the tail end of the crowd. We hugged and kissed. I noticed that my mother was carrying a picture of the pope, who was Pope Benjamin IV at that time. Stab had a picture, too, but in his nervousness he had rolled it up and was busy trying to flatten it out again. In my nervousness, instead of keeping my mouth shut, I greeted them with, “I’m not really sure about the pope pictures, Ma.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Zelda was shooting me a look. We were going down the stairs to the street and the moment had the feeling of a baseball or football game about it, all those happy, excited people headed toward a great communal rite. You expected to see some kid walk by, yelling, “Hey, popcorn here!”

  “I mean, it’s Jesus, but I’m not necessarily sure he’s Catholic. You know.… There are going to be Protestants here, too, and the pope doesn’t do that much for them.”

  “Why not?” Stab asked. By then Zelda had let go of my hand.

  “The pope’s Catholic, Stab.”

  “So is Jesus.”

  “Not really.”

  “What do you mean, Russ? What does he mean, Ma?”

  “Nothing, honey. Your brother says stupid things sometimes, that’s all. It’s in the genes on your father’s side. You were lucky not to have gotten any of it.”

  “It’s crowded, huh, Russ?”

  “Sure, pal. Wait till we get there if you think this is bad.”

  “Do we have front seats because you and Zelda are God’s friends?”

  “We’ll be right up on the stage, pal. You’ll see.”

  “Russell has been asked to introduce him,” Zelda said when we were all in the car and clicking our seatbelts.

  I looked at her.

  “You’re introducing Jesus,” she repeated.

  “Says who?”

  “Jesus.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday. Late last night, actually. He called and told me, but he made me promise not to tell you until,” she looked at her watch, “after nine o’clock this morning. I decided to have mercy on you and tell you five minutes early.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Nope. Let’s go. We need to get to Padsen’s for the car. You might want to call Chief Bastatutta and tell him to keep Wilson Street open so we can get through.”

  I had the key in the ignition but I did not turn it. Zelda could not quite meet my eyes. “Anything else I should know?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you and your wife fighting already, Russ?”

  “A little bit, pal.”

  I still hadn’t started the car. “Has he been in touch with you?”

  “I just told you.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  She shook her head.

  “This was the only phone call?”

  “Last night at one a.m. I couldn’t call and tell you then, could I?”

  “You could have told me this morning.”

  “He said he wanted you to be spontaneous. He said you were great at thinking on your feet in front of a microphone and he didn’t want to spoil that by having you stay up all night worrying over the right thing to say. He said you should just get up there and say it the way it comes to you, no notes, no thinking ahead.”

  “As the Holy Spirit moves you,” my mother chirped from the backseat.

  “Yeah, Russ.”

  I started the car and pulled out into traffic. The train station was a little over two miles from Banfield Plaza, Padsen’s Livery Service about halfway between, and with each block more people were crowding the sidewalks. We drove slower and slower, and soon we came to a complete stop. I got on the phone to Bastatutta’s cell.

  “Where are you?” the chief yelled. I could tell from the sounds—sirens, truck engines—that he was outdoors.

  “Coming from the Amtrak station. I just picked up my mother and—”

  “Have you seen the plaza?”

  “No, how could I? I just—”

  “I’ll tell you what, you better make some calls. More toilets, for one thing. More buses to get people out of here when this is over. I’ll tell you what, Thomas, you got something on your hands here that you didn’t expect, that you didn’t warn me about. I’ve been talking to the mayor. He’s not happy.”

  “Not happy? First of all, whaddaya mean I’ve got something on my hands here that I didn’t expect. You’re the damn chief of police.”

  “Be polite, honey,” Mom said from the backseat. “He’s an important man.”

  “And second of all, the mayor should be happy as a clam in salty mud. His city is on the map for something other than a high unemployment rate. We’ll be famous.”

  “Famous for what, is the question,” Bastatutta said. “What if the guy don’t show?”

  “He’ll show.”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course, I’m sure. I’m going to pick him up right now.”

  “Yeah? Where?”

  “Where? I don’t know. First I have to go to Padsen’s.”

  “Padsen’s!” Bastatutta yelled into the phone. “Jesus is renting a car from Padsen!”

  “He picked Padsen’s, not me. He wants us to show up in a limo, so things seem professional. We need you to keep Wilson Street open so we can get him to the stage.”

  “A little late for that,” Bastatutta said. “Wilson Street looks like Times Square on New Year’s. You’ll have to find another way to get him here. To hell with Padsen. Rent a damn helicopter or something. I’ve got three-quarters of the force down here already, and it’s all we can do to keep people off the stage. Your moron friend Dukey—a convicted felon, I might add—is actually helping.”

  “Just give me a lane down the middle of Wilson Street, and I’ll take care of the rest,” I said, and then I hung up, and the car moved forward at walking pace.

  “If you know where he is you should tell me,” I said to Zelda, and I said it quietly and calmly.

  “I do not know where he is.”

  “Excellent. I’m going to introduce an invisible man.”

  “He said he’d show up. I trust him.”

  “I
do, too,” said my mother.

  I felt the doubt twisting and scampering inside me like a lizard in a box. “You okay back there, Stab? Enough leg room?”

  “Sure, Russ. Will we be on TV?”

  “Definitely. We might be on TV all over the world.” And then I turned to Zelda. “Who can you call to get another two dozen portable toilets? More buses, too. What else?” and she was on her cell, and we were, finally, pulling into the gated lot of Padsen’s … where a black Hummer limo was waiting for us.

  The fenced-in lot was an oasis of relative peace. Outside the fence the crowds flowed toward Banfield Plaza as if walking toward a parade or an amusement park or an Olympic event. More signs (I HAVE COME TO DESTROY THE TEMPLE. AN EYE FOR AN EYE. HE WHOM LISTENETH TO ME SHALL LIVE!), people singing hymns. Four guys holding up a banner that read JEWS FOR JESUS.

  “Pa should see this,” I said.

  “That’s why we took the later train,” my mother said, but she did not seem inclined to explain the remark in front of Zelda.

  Jocko Padsen, the owner of the car rental operation, emerged from the little white shed with a stogie in his mouth. He was, as we said around West Zenith, “connected,” which meant that he had friends who, for a price, would do you bodily harm, so he was not someone to be trifled with despite his bottom-of-the-class IQ.

  “Jocko,” I said. He squeezed my hand as if it were a walnut and his fingers were nutcrackers. “Who asked for a Hummer?”

  “Your people aksed. Whattaya mean, who aksed?”

  “It’s a little, you know, inappropriate.”

  “Huh?”

  “Environmentally, and so on.”

  He shrugged. “Hey. We got a call for it, you gut it, and it ain’t free, let me put it that way, even though your buddy’s inside and he’s, ya know, a piece a work. Nice suit, too.”

  “Who? Wales?”

  “Wales is a jerk. God’s inside. Ya know. Jeesum.”

  “Jeesum?”

  “I don’t say it in vain no more.”

  “Really. Since when is this?”

  “Since when? Since now. Go see him. Guy’s readin’ a book. I made him coffee. I din’t have no notice to do nothin’ about the calendars. So it goes.”

  With some trepidation, Zelda and I, along with my mother and Stab, walked around the black Hummer and headed toward the twelve-foot-square shed where Jocko accepted bets on football games and sold pornographic magazines, wholesale. I opened the door. There, inside, seated on a cheap gray metal chair that probably had been stolen from some government office, surrounded by walls on which hung calendars featuring naked women in provocative poses, and perusing, with a frown on his face, a well-thumbed copy of The Da Vinci Code, was Hay-Zeus himself. He was wearing a magnificent suit, somewhere between gray and silver in color, with thin lines of scarlet running through it, a white shirt, and a gold and red tie. Clean-shaven, his black hair brushed straight back, his nails perfectly manicured, and his black loafers brilliantly shined, he looked like he’d bathed an hour earlier in preparation for his wedding. When we came through the door he raised his eyes to us and said, “At last. My flock.”

  My mother was looking at him with some suspicion, I noticed, but Stab was already down on both knees in the little office and he was crying. Jesus tossed the paperback aside and stood up.

  “Jesus,” I said, “this is my mother, Maria, but everyone calls her Mudgie. And this is my brother, Steven, who everyone refers to as Stab.”

  Jesus came over and kissed my mother on both cheeks, in the European fashion, hands on her shoulders. She shivered and I knew that she’d felt the same current I’d felt when Jesus had touched me. Whatever suspicions might have been hovering behind the flesh of her face flew out the barred window. Jesus then reached down, lifted Stab to his feet and embraced him. “My number one guy,” he said. “Good of you to come all the way here. They gave you time off from the sandwich shop?”

  Stab was positively weeping by that point, tears dripping from his chin onto the collar of his shirt, and from there onto the rolled-up picture of the pope. He nodded.

  “Who told him about the sandwich shop?” I said, and when my mother heard me she made the sign of the cross three times. For some reason she chose that moment to hold out the picture of the pope to Jesus, as if she wanted him to autograph it. Jesus looked at the picture and smiled in a way that was completely ambiguous. In a voice that was gentler than anything I’d heard from him up to that point, he told Stab, “We have a lot of work to do today, you and I, so dry up the faucet please.”

  “Yes, God,” he said, and Jesus did not correct him.

  My mother was saying a prayer under her breath. Her eyes were fixed on the man in the suit. The man in the suit winked at her.

  “It’s a madhouse out there,” I told him.

  He nodded. “We will make some waves today.”

  At that point Jocko came through the door in a cloud of stogie smoke.

  “Why don’t we settle up?” he said, looking at me. “I’m prepared to give this here guy a discount. For bein’ a good guy. Ya know, special.”

  “Capo di tutti capi,” I said, but Jocko apparently did not see the humor in this, and he did not smile.

  “Let’s say ten percent discount. The Hummer limo is usually a grand a day. Let’s make it nine, even.”

  “You should give it to him free,” Zelda told him. She had been standing quietly off to the side, but she pronounced this sentence with a force that was all too familiar to me. “This is Jesus Christ,” she went on. “As in Jesus Christ sent from heaven. You’re going to charge him for a car?”

  “Huh?”

  “What if he’s president of the United States by next year,” I said, taking up the refrain. “Do you want to be known as the person who charged him for your services?”

  “Hey, I run a business here,” Jocko said. He looked from Zelda to me to my mother and back, as if everyone but him got the joke. Jesus seemed not to be paying attention.

  “This is God!” Stab said loudly. “Are you crazy? Are you a bad man? Do you want to go to hell forever?”

  I put a hand on my brother’s shoulder to quiet him, but I have to say I liked seeing Jocko squirm there behind his smokescreen, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, taking the cigar out of his mouth and working his thick lips. If nothing else, it gave him a taste of the same medicine he’d been forcing down his debtors’ throats for years. After a few seconds of indecision he said, “Twenty percent then. Best I can do. Comes wit a driver, ya know.”

  The driver was a short fellow of indeterminate ethnicity named Oscar Oswald. He sat behind the wheel, silent as a stone, and turned the Hummer limo out into the crowds. For a few blocks we went along unmolested. But then, even though the windows were tinted, the word must have gotten around that Jesus was inside, because people began pressing against the glass and fenders.

  “Russ, it’s scary,” Stab said. He was sitting beside Jesus, his back facing the direction we were going, and he had a hand on the candidate’s knee.

  “Can you move faster?” I asked Oscar.

  “And what, mahn, kill some dude?”

  “Without killing someone, could you move a little faster?”

  “They crawlin’ on the hood, dude.”

  It was true. At least two people were on the hood and a dozen others pressed their faces against the windows on either side. Jesus was sitting calmly in the seat facing us, Stab clutching his knee, with the crumpled picture of the pope in his other hand. As the security chief, I felt that my first big assignment was not starting off well. For one thing, I did not like the look on some of the faces we could see. The people crawling up the hood, now onto the windshield (Oscar had the bright idea to turn on the wipers and spray them with wiper fluid, which momentarily made them stay still but after that it made them angry, and they started banging on the glass with the palms of their hands), were especially disconcerting—two middle-aged men with stubble and jean jackets. Another secon
d and one of them took out a gun. Oscar leaned on the horn in panic, but the man raised the gun and fired twice into the air, and suddenly you could feel the release of the weight that had been pressing against the sides of the car. The second man peered in through the windshield, saw me, and gave a thumbs-up. He shouted something I could not hear. He shouted it again, louder. “Dukey’s guys!” And then, “Scorched Earth, man.”

  “Everything under control?” Jesus asked calmly, without turning around to look at them. Stab still had a hand on his knee. My mother was saying the rosary under her breath. Zelda was looking out the window and sitting so that there was space between her thigh and mine.

  “No problem.”

  “That’s a Glock, dude,” Oscar said, with some admiration.

  “He works for us,” I said. “Plow on.”

  With the two Scorched Earth employees riding on the hood and threatening those who pressed too closely against the car, we made it to Wilson Street, where the first uniformed person I saw was Chief Bastatutta. He was thrusting one arm this way and that and shouting orders through a bullhorn. Wilson Street was, if not clear of people, at least thinly enough populated that it seemed we could make it to the stage. As we went past, I rolled down the window and said, “Excellent work, Chief.” He turned to the side and spit.

  There, near the stage, as Dukey had promised, was a ring of Harley Davidsons, chrome pipes gleaming, owners standing with their huge arms crossed, facing the crowd. And what a crowd it was! As we stepped out of the black Hummer I became aware of the thundering noise. The term sea of faces came to mind, as did the term Poop Safe. I held my mother in one arm and Zelda in the other. Jesus and Stab were in front of us. As we approached the ring of bikes, Dukey himself appeared from behind one of his employees, and, with an expression as somber as a funeral attendant opening a car door for a new widow, he moved one of the bikes aside to make a narrow alley. Jesus and Stab passed through and we followed. On the way I patted Dukey hard on the flak jacket and said, “Excellent work.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” he said.

  In another few steps we were up on the stage that the guys from Dermott’s had put together the night before. I recognized the podium—it had been “borrowed” from Anderson’s Restaurant, where the monthly Rotary Club meetings were held. Some smart soul had thought to cover over Anderson’s logo with a purple cloth on which these words had been stitched: JESUS FOR AMERICA.