“Dukey,” Jesus turned to our resident tough guy, “Do you wish to weigh in?”
“I don’t know any of these dudes,” Dukey admitted, with a sheepish glance at his wife. “Nobody I know watches them. What about Survivor, is that still on?”
“What about Ultimate Fighting,” I could not stop myself from saying, though I was glad, after a few seconds, that no one seemed to have heard.
“I shall go on Bobby Biggs’s show,” Jesus said. “Anna Songsparrow will do Popopoffolous. Walesy will go on Spritzer.”
“Lenny Queen?” Dukey suddenly burst out. “He does presidents, don’t he?”
“You do Queen,” Jesus said, pointing at him.
“Me?”
“You’ll be great,” Ezzie told him. “Just be yourself.”
I thought we were quickly approaching the point where we were being too nice.
“Mr. and Mrs. Thomas will go on Linneament, the divisive one, the anger monger.”
“What about me?” Stab said. “What do I go on?”
Jesus did not seem to hear. “I am a perfectionist, I admit it,” he said. “I am not pleased with an eight-point lead. Eight points does not suffice with me.”
“We’ll work harder then,” Wales said, and the rest of them chimed in with nods and yes-sounding noises. Everyone but me. And pretty much everyone but me and Stab and Zelda and the reclusive Simmeltons, I noticed, had been singled out to do an interview. And I had more media experience than all of them combined. It hurt, I have to admit that.
But then Jesus said, “You are all free to head back on the bus and relax and rest up until the rally at five. I can handle the press on my own, don’t worry about it.… Russ, let’s you and me take a walk.”
“But the bus,” I said.
“We will hitchhike back. Do not fear.”
“What about me?” Stab said.
This time Jesus heard him, and I was glad. “I have something special in mind for you, my best friend. Special information. For now, go back with the others and make sure everyone gets home safe. You are acting director of security until your brother gets back.”
“Yes, God.”
ZELDA KISSED ME as if I had done, or was about to do, something special for the campaign or for the world. Mom chipped in with a warm hug, and my father came over and shook my hand hard, with the other hand on my shoulder and a lot of eye contact. Between all that and the way the others were looking at me before they turned to climb the steps of the bus, well, I might have been saying good-bye before heading off to Parris Island for Marine boot camp. The bus rumbled off, leaving us in the middle of the desert without any wheels. Jesus and I studied its progress until it was a spot on the horizon, and then he put an arm around my shoulders and we walked into the wilderness.
“I assume you have a plan for getting us back to the resort,” I was dumb enough to say.
“O Russ of little faith.”
We walked. I sweated and watched the ground for snakes, but he was lost in thought again. We went along another few dozen steps without speaking. “You seem agitated,” I said. “It’s not like you.”
“It’s nothing. Just that, the last time I went out into the desert, some bad character gave me trouble. This time I wanted my chief of security along.”
“So there is a devil then. I mean….”
“Ignorance,” he said. “Ignorance. Arrogance. Egotism.”
“Not an actual evil spirit, though?”
“Not with any power that worries me, particularly.”
“But you just said—”
“I was joking. I am untouchable, unhurtable. So are you.”
“Why doesn’t it feel that way, then? And why do you even need a security chief?”
“Because, as I once told you, we are locked in a dream.”
I thought about that for a minute. “Let me guess,” I said. “You have the key, and I don’t.”
He smiled. “We both have it. I know how to use it, you do not … not yet, anyway. At the instant of death, if your mind is pure, still, calm, if you have been kind to others, if you have been selfless enough, then you step free of the dream forever, and, in doing so, step free of pain and fear, and you move into a much more pleasant realm of existence.”
“Heaven,” I suggested.
“A sort of heaven, yes.”
“Good to hear. What about hell, then?”
“You make your own hell. You, not the devil.”
“But who would want to?”
He laughed; it was not a happy sound. “You are a strange and masochistic race. I can provide examples, if you’d like. Let’s see, which chapter in the history book should we begin with?”
“All right. I’m just trying to, you know, slip out of the grasp of ideas I was brought up with.”
“Good. That is the whole point and purpose of your existence. Old ideas, bad memories, regret, doubt, fear … imagine all that as the devil in the desert, tempting you. Your job is to cast him away.”
“We used to wonder why he tempted you. I mean you, of all people. Seems like a losing proposition.”
“There was no ‘him.’ It was metaphorical. I allowed myself to be human. You people do not escape pain, you do not escape death, or temptation … I wanted to experience it all.”
“Thirst, at the end,” I said, “if I remember right.”
“Are you hinting?”
“A glass of water would be nice right about now.”
He squeezed me against him, then let go. It felt like a gesture a loving father might make with a son who was struggling to figure his way through adolescence. “I imagine you noticed I did not assign you any TV or radio duties.”
“I noticed.”
“Hurt your feelings?”
“A little.”
“You speak the hard truths,” he said. “You have your father’s strength of character.”
I almost said, “You, too,” but managed to hold my tongue. By that point I had sweat dripping into my eyes, and I was glancing this way and that hoping to see a shady spot where we might take a break. Nothing. Cactus, dry gray stones, mountains in the distance; the rest was sand and sky and rattlesnake nests.
We walked on in silence until Jesus said, “I had the feeling you wanted to say something to me back there in the picnic area, but you were holding back.”
“Well, I’m not the press person. And I’m not the campaign director.”
“No matter. I want your advice.”
“Well, I think putting Dukey on the Lenny Queen Show is a risk.”
“What is the worst that could happen?”
“The worst that could happen? Queen could slip and say something Dukey finds offensive and Dukey could flip out on national television. I can see the headlines: ADVISOR TO JESUS JAILED ON FELONY ASSAULT CHARGES.”
Jesus smiled. Though he had what might be described as a sunny and upbeat personality, he was not an easy guy to make laugh, but I could see I’d almost managed it.
“When you are free of the dream and united with God,” he said, after a moment, and I was surprised to hear him use the word, “you have to be a master of balance. Gentle and firm, hard and soft, masculine and feminine, ferocious and forgiving.”
“Ying and Yong,” I said, because I knew something about the Eastern stuff.
“Exactly. Whatever else his failings might be, Dukey is a man of deep loyalties, and I appreciate that.”
“All right.”
“What we do not want is to look like everybody else, Russ. I came down the first time because humankind had gotten set in its ways. All those ritual sacrifices, all that stoning, all the rules. I was trying to break you people out of that, out of the dream. And I am trying to do the same thing here. The political talk shows—the campaigns themselves, really—they’re infected with polished spin doctors. I mean, in actual fact, what does one’s ability to perform well in sixteen debates have to do with the act of governing? It’s just verbiage, positioning, jousting. People listen to
that for a while, and then they stop paying attention. I am trying to shake them up, get a real, true dialogue going again, get people to think in a fresh spirit, and care about something other than their own supposed security.”
“So far, so good, in the shaking people up area,” I told him. “Though I have to say there’s a good chance Hurry Linneament is going to chew my mom and dad up and spit them out.”
“You’ll be surprised,” he said, “but I did not get you out here to talk strategy.”
“You got me out here to sweat off twenty pounds,” I said, and then he did laugh, a gentle, happy laugh that made me feel good.
“No, I got you out here to tell you how everything works.”
When he said those words I felt a shiver go across my skin, a desert spider running up my backbone.
“Do not be afraid,” he said.
Another big shiver. I tell you, they were the two worst things anyone has ever said to me.
“Okay,” I managed to squeak out, and then I cleared my throat for a few seconds while I was trying to get up the courage to speak again. “Okay … but … and I say this with all respect, you know, for your judgment, and so on. But, if you were going to share the secrets of the universe with someone, well, I mean….”
“You feel you are not worthy.”
“Lord, I am not worthy,” I said, an old line from the days when I used to go to church. And for once, the “L” word didn’t seem to upset him. “I mean, I appreciate it. I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful. It’s just that, well, Zelda, my mom, even my dad in his own way, Stab, Ezzie, Ada, the Simmeltons—I’m the smartass of the bunch, the doubter, the cynic. And they’re all, well … good.”
“Let me worry about whom I give the secrets of the universe to.”
“Right. Sorry. Absolutely.”
“I will keep it simple: There is an energy that runs through all the vastness of creation. On earth, for human beings, this energy takes the form of a stream of consciousness. What you call thought.”
“I’m with you so far.”
“Thought is composed of words.”
“Right. ‘In the beginning was the Word.’”
“Exactly. For some people the force of that stream is overwhelming. These are immature souls, new to the human realm. They are the ones who cause most of the trouble. To make the stream of consciousness, the force of thought, bearable, they feel, mistakenly, that they must narrow it down. They want to take an enormous river and build one small side channel into which they hope to divert it. But, of course, the force of the great river only increases the more you squeeze it into a narrow enclosure. For immature souls, this usually results in terrible violence. Hitler is a superlative example. He came up with his racist and nationalist theories because the complexity of creation was too much for him. That there were good Jews, that there were bad Aryans—too much. Instead of flowing freely through him, the enormous force of the universe was squeezed into his narrow theories. The result was … well, you know what the result was.”
“Okay, but what happens to somebody like that, I mean, punishment-wise.”
“If I were to tell you in a parable, I would say: he lives for six million more lives, suffering in all of them, until he gets the message.”
“Some people would claim you’re going too easy on him.”
Jesus did not seem to hear me. “At the opposite end of the spectrum is love, the complete ability to see the other as the self. I do not mean merely sexual love, infatuation, attraction, loving someone because of what they can do for you. I mean full-scale, selfless, pure love. The love of a good parent, for one of many examples, or of a selfless mentor. Where there is that kind of love, the power of the thought-energy is flowing directly through the person, and the person is unafraid of life’s complexities, does not need every other soul on earth to be exactly like him or her.”
“Nine eleven.”
“Meaning what?”
“The people who attacked us on nine eleven wanted everybody to be like them.”
“Precisely. Of course, there are millions of places on the spectrum between perfect love and pure hatred, between the saint and the serial killer. Some people manage the thought-energy in partial fashion, in certain compartments and not others. These would be, say, a great composer who is unkind to his or her spouse. A charismatic politician who rises to the heights of power and then misuses it, in a stupid, but not a murderous way.”
“A husband who loves his wife only fairly well.”
“Good. You understand, then. The fact is that you live many lives, you know that, of course. It is in the Bible.”
“No, actually, I don’t believe it is. My mom knows the Bible inside and out and she never once mentioned anything about multiple incarnations.”
“Someone must have edited harshly then,” he said, and I could not tell if he was joking. “In any case, ultimately, after many lives—or many years in purgatory, if you prefer, which is the same idea expressed in different imagery—you learn the full management of this thought-force. You come to master it the way a piano player masters his instrument after decades of arduous practice. At that point, to go back to the water imagery, your life on earth is the equivalent of swimming in a river, or perhaps surfing on a wave. You surf the thought-energy, you are part of the great force of life. The only trustworthy measurement of this is one’s capacity to love—not how often you attend religious services, not how often you smile and say nice things, not your ability to perform miracles or read minds, and certainly not your degree of worldly success. The only measure of that capacity is the ability to inhabit the psychic space of another soul, to fully understand him or her or them—which always results in kindness. A wise, not a foolish kindness.”
“And that’s what you came to earth to teach us? This time, I mean? That’s what you’re going to do as president, make the country more … tolerant, for lack of a better word? Kinder and gentler?”
“The important thing is to push down the barriers at the borders of your thought patterns, to go beyond labels. I have come to help you—all of you—do that.”
“Thank you,” I said, without intending to.
At that point we came over a rise, and where I was sure there would be nothing but desert, we saw a small town, a paved highway, a water tower. We kept walking toward it without breaking stride. I was hoping for a cold Coke, or something stronger, but I was caught up in thinking about what he’d told me, and I did not want to say anything as ordinary as, “How about a drink?”
“For the time being,” Jesus said kindly, “we have reached the limits of your understanding.”
“And so soon.”
“I want you to remember all this when things play out as they will. Remember this conversation. You might want to make notes about it in your journal, if I can presume to ask you to do that.”
The shiver again. “I don’t like the sound of that,” I said. “The when things play out as they will part.”
He squeezed me against him again and said, “One of my chosen people, even if he doesn’t know it; maybe especially because he doesn’t know it.” And then he let me go, and I could tell it would be useless to ask him anything else, and I probably couldn’t have in any case because he’d sent that electric current through me again. I felt like my bones were buzzing.
The other thing I felt during that walk, and this might sound odd, is that I had a true friend. Before I joined the campaign, my work had been sociable work. I had never lacked for people to invite over for a birthday party celebration or to watch the Ryder Cup. I’d always had this dream, though, I think a lot of people do, of finding one person with whom I shared some kind of soul-deep understanding. I don’t mean a girlfriend or wife or family member, I mean a friend. The feeling I had with Jesus on that day was something like what I’d always dreamed of. It must have been what Zelda felt in his company, too—who knows, maybe he made everyone feel that way—and it helped me to understand her better, and helped me let go
of my idiotic jealousy.
Without anything else being said, Jesus and I walked to the town, a hamlet really, one gas station, a general store, a dusty bar with wooden railings outside, and places to tie up your horse. Strictly a Wild West movie set. Inside the bar it was cool and dim. They had a decent local ale on tap called Oasis Amber. Jesus and I each ordered a glass and drank it standing there with our elbows on the bar and one foot on the rail, not talking to or looking at each other, like cowboys after a long trail ride … except that he was dressed in shorts and sandals and had his earring on again. It seemed to me after a time that he was flirting with the waitress, a middle-aged and, to my eye at least, wholly unappealing woman. He was asking about her life, how she liked it here, what her dreams were. Little by little, she opened up to him. She said that all she’d ever dreamed about was being a cosmetologist and starting her own shop, cutting hair, doing nails, makeup, eyebrows. That would be enough of a life for her. Jesus listened to this as if she were telling him she intended to find a cure for cancer. There was no judgment in his face or voice, no snobbery, no mockery, and sentence by sentence you could see the woman’s expression change. Half an hour into the conversation she was almost pretty.
“I have a brother with a pickup truck,” she said, when she heard we’d been stranded out there, reasons unspecified. “Let me give him a call.”
When the brother arrived, it turned out that he worked at the Palm Springs Inn and Club—I don’t know why I should have been surprised—and that he was just heading in for second shift. He’d be happy to give us a ride back if we wanted. We listened to a Willie Nelson tape on the way. Jesus seemed to like the music very much.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Shortly before the start of the two-hour bilingual press-feast in the Palm Springs Inn and Club, Jesus gave Zelda a scrap of notebook paper on which were printed, in his neat hand, the names of those reporters and photographers who had tried to follow us into the desert. They were excluded from the press conference without apology. At first, the sinners complained loudly to Zelda, maintaining their innocence, but in the end they gave up and tried to cut deals with those who had been admitted to the event, asking them to carry a small tape recorder, to show them their notes, and so on. It made me glad I was out of that business. And it made me see again that Jesus had a stern side.
American Savior Page 18