Corrupts Absolutely?

by Peter Clines

  “Brutus?” Mr. Fulton called from the edge of the porch. “Come here.” He reached down and scooped up Brutus. “What the Hell have you done to him, boy? Why does he have red paint all over his face?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Fulton. It was an accident.” I struggled to make the words audible, to straighten my legs to stand, as I stared at the blood on my hand.

  Mr. Fulton mumbled something I didn’t understand and headed inside with Brutus.

  Glancing back and forth from the blood on my hand to the fence, I somehow managed to pick up my bloody baseball and glove and head inside to check on Mom. She had a small cut on her hand from picking up glass shards but was otherwise fine.

  I told her about Brutus after dinner. She gave me a smile of joy I’ll never forget, pulled my head to her chest, and said: “See, Honey? I told you that you were always meant for something big. Something great.”

  I didn’t sleep that night. I sat in bed and read every story of Jesus’ healings again and again. Reading Bible verses had always comforted me on nights when Dad got out of control and I felt scared. That night, they made me feel connected, special. I had always talked to Jesus about all of my problems just like Mom had told me to, and whether I was alone on the playground at school or in the backyard, He always listened. As I watched the sunrise through my window that morning, I felt amazing. He had not only listened this time, He’d given me a gift—the same special gift that He’d had while on Earth.

  I didn’t heal again for more than eight years.

  #

  Dad never slept another night in our house after the Brutus incident, and I talked to him only a handful of times before he died. Three months after he moved out, he drove his truck into the back end of a parked diesel and was decapitated. He had never changed his will and had never legally divorced Mom, so she received a nice chunk of money from Phillips Petroleum Company after his death.

  Over the years, she had become more and more disenchanted with the nondenominational church we attended. She thought Pastor Heely was starting to misinterpret the Bible, leading people straight to Hell. There was no way she’d ever let us step foot in one of the Baptist or Lutheran or Presbyterian Churches (G.C.C.s she called them: Greedy Commercial Churches) that dominated our small Bible Belt town. So now that we had enough money—and we both believed I had the power to heal, a power to be used for Jesus—we decided to buy an old warehouse on the edge of Dresden and open our own church.

  The Real Church.

  We started out small: anywhere from five to ten people a week. We painted the building white and stenciled the church’s name in an arch over the blue doors. We didn’t ask for money from the attendees, just an open ear. Mom sat on a stool in front of forty fold-out chairs and delivered her interpretations of the Scriptures and led the congregation in prayer. I lit the candles, helped serve communion, and read the Psalm of the Day.

  Within a month of opening, The Real Church had become the main topic in gossip circles around Dresden. So many bad things were said. Mom was a witch, I a demon. I was her lover, her brother. We were a satanic cult, pagan orgy partiers, a colony of loonies, a group of left-footed loopies.

  One time, someone painted a pentagram on the side of our church. Another time, someone tried to torch the place but only burned down a couple of Mesquite trees in the vacant lot next door. Beer cans and feces often decorated the porch on Sunday mornings. By the time I dropped out of high school at sixteen and earned a G.E.D., The Real Church had so many sinister, twisted members and terrifying truths that stories about us were beginning to rival the local Haunter of Mirrors, Blood-Eyed Stella, in sleepover scares.

  Despite the negative backlash, Mom continued to work at Gerald’s Cleaners, and I worked nights at Sonic so that we could afford to pay the taxes and insurance on the church. To make things easier, we sold the house on Matador Street and started sleeping in a double-wide behind the church.

  I continued trying to use my healing powers every chance I got. I knew that once Jesus allowed me to figure it out, it would show everyone that He was with us, which would catapult us to that Something Great.

  At first, I tried to heal any injured animal I came across. I tried to repair birds’ broken wings, a cat’s lacerated ear, a squirrel’s broken leg, half-squashed roaches, claw marks down a dog’s belly, and on and on. After each unsuccessful attempt, I prayed harder for an answer. One night, Jesus spoke to me in a dream and told me to use my powers on humans, not animals. Mom said she’d had a similar premonition and let me practice on her when she fell ill with a cold or the flu or anytime she got a bruise or scrape. She never lost faith in me. She even helped me sneak into Mr. Fulton’s house after he was diagnosed with cancer. We’d sneak into his house during the afternoon while he napped. I’d place my hand on his chest where the tumor was and repeat the same words I had over Brutus years earlier. But no healing ever took place.

  My most disappointing, unsuccessful attempt was last April. Mom had a stroke while washing the double-wide. By the time I found her lying on the ground, the sponge in her hand was dry. She wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse. I tried to heal her for hours until my head ached. I said the words over and over and over. I asked Jesus to show me how to do it again and again and again. Finally, in tears, I called an ambulance. Mom was buried three days later. I read the eulogy. The eighteen members of The Real Church and a couple of ladies from Gerald’s Cleaners were the only other attendees.

  I had to wash graffiti off her tombstone two days later.

  #

  Mom always said that Jesus does everything, good and bad, at the perfect time. And she was right.

  The Bad: I got blistering drunk and questioned my purpose the day after she was buried.

  I’d had a beer when I was a fourteen. Back then, it was a rite of passage thing; you know, sneak a beer with a few friends in the alley at lunch to prove you would. But alone inside the church that first night, in the crushing silence, the cases of communion wine stacked in the corner seemed to be calling out to me.

  Here we are, delivered and waiting, your own personal ready collection of feel-good healing potion. Give us a chance. Satisfaction guaranteed.

  I guess the McKinney family alcoholic monster had been hiding inside me the whole time, lingering below the surface somewhere, waiting for an opportune time to jump up and bite me. Not being able to heal Mom had put me in the perfect emotional and mental state to be attacked.

  I canceled that Sunday’s service, and every night that week, I sat on Mom’s stool in the church, bottle of healing potion in hand, and talked to Jesus.

  What had I done wrong? What had she done wrong? Was I delusional about my power? I asked Him if I should close the church, put the warehouse up for sale, and take the double-wide down to Austin or something. Did He want me to leave Dresden and start a new church somewhere else? I didn’t know if I could lead The Real Church without Mom anyway. I needed answers. I needed direction. And on the Friday afternoon after Mom’s funeral, when no booming voice came forth to answer my slurred questions for the seventh straight day, I smashed a half-empty bottle onto the ground, hopped in my Taurus, and headed for Tom Walter’s Realty.

  The Good: I crashed into thirteen-year-old Melinda Brown because I leaned over into the passenger’s seat to grab a piece of gum.

  Fourth Street winds over a series of small hills like a slithering snake. When I rounded the third curve at thirty miles per hour and reached over for the gum, the Taurus drifted onto the shoulder and smacked into Melinda and her bike. She flipped up onto the hood and violently rolled off when I slammed on the brakes.

  I hurried over to her and knelt down. Her eyes were open but unfocused. Blood ran into her thick, black hair from a gash on her forehead. Her purple jacket and jeans were torn, and her left femur poked its splintered tip out of her thigh. Jesus only knows what kind of internal injuries she may have had. I didn’t panic. Without hesitation, I placed my right hand on her forehead, m
y left on her shattered leg.

  “Stay still,” I told her as her fearful eyes met mine. “I heal you. I heal you because I can. I heal you because you don’t deserve this.”

  She began to writhe under my hand, trying to pull away. I pressed down harder and closed my eyes. “I heal you because Jesus wants me to. I heal you. I heal you.”

  She let out a soft whimper that sounded a bit both like pleasure and shock as the bones in her leg drifted back into a straight line. She stopped struggling against me and settled down onto the pavement. I opened my eyes just as the gash on her forehead finished closing.

  We locked eyes, both in disbelief. She didn’t know what had just happened, and I had waited more than eight years for this to happen.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. Her lips trembled. She glanced at her bike crunched under the Taurus’ front tire then back at me.

  I stood and reached out to her. She placed her hands in mine, and I pulled her upright. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  She looked down at her body then back at me. Her hands were trembling like her lips. “M-M-Melinda. Melinda B-B-Brown.”

  “Right.” I squeezed her hands a little firmer. “I know your mom. Doesn’t she work at the Toot ‘N’ Totum on Third?”

  She nodded.

  “Nice lady,” I said. “You have her skin and eyes.”

  She eased her hands out of mine, took a step back. “What just happened?”

  I smiled for the first time since Mom had died. “I healed you.”

  “But…how did…you…”

  I placed my hands on her shoulders “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.”

  Her eyes searched me for what felt like hours, days, years. “You’re that guy from The Real Church, aren’t you?”

  I nodded, still smiling.

  “And your mom just died.”

  I nodded again. “Yes.”

  “Are you really friends with the Devil?”

  She’d obviously heard the stories. “No. I’m friends with Jesus.”

  She just stared.

  “Are you sure you feel all right?”

  “Yes.”

  I stepped forward and gave her a good hug. “I’ve got to go now,” I said. “Do you want me to give you a ride home?”

  “I was supposed to meet Mom at the store.”

  “I’ll take you there then.”

  We got into the Taurus. I backed it off of her bike then got out and put the bike in the trunk. “If you come by the church tomorrow, I’ll give you money to go pick out a new one.”

  “Okay.”

  I felt her eyes on me as we drove in silence. Eventually, she asked, “Why didn’t you call the cops?”

  I looked at her then back at the road and sighed. “Because I knew I could heal you,” I lied. “And I didn’t want either of us to get into trouble.”

  “Do I need to keep it a secret then?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “No. You do what you want.”

  I parked on the side of the Toot ‘N’ Totum and popped the trunk. I saw Melinda’s mom walk up to the glass door and look at me before heading back to the register. I leaned Melinda’s bike against the brick wall. “Remember,” I said. “Come by tomorrow, and I’ll give you money for a new bike.”

  “Okay.”

  She didn’t move as I quickly got in the Taurus and left.

  I drove out to Lake Meredith in case Melinda’s mom turned me in and the cops came looking for me. I parked behind a copse of red oaks, walked down a worn cow path, and sat on the large, round rock in Jasper Cove that Mom and I used to sit on and fish.

  Skipping rocks across the calm water, I thought about Brutus, the other animals, Mr. Fulton, Mom, Melinda. What was different? What was the same? I slung rocks for hours, rambling, struggling to understand, to solve. Then, like all good moments of realization and inspiration, like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky, it hit me out of nowhere. I had caused Brutus’ injuries. I had caused Melinda’s injuries. And I had healed them. But I hadn’t had the slightest impact in the cases where I hadn’t caused the injury or illness.

  This was it; but how twisted it seemed. I had to cause the injury to fix it? I sat on the edge of the water all night talking to Jesus, devising a plan to test my theory.

  #

  The police never came to question me about Melinda Brown, but two days later, Sunday, she, her mom, two of her aunts and uncles, and couple of the family friends all attended The Real Church. My first day as its outright leader.

  After the service (I used one of Mom’s old sermons about The Good Samaritan), Ms. Brown approached me and grabbed my hand. “It’s true, isn’t it, Owen? I can tell just by looking at you.”

  I nodded. She smiled. “I knew it. Melinda and I have a close bond. And when she told me, and the way she told me, I just knew she was telling the truth. There was no doubt about it.”

  I smiled back at her. “Let me go get you some money. I promised Melinda a new bike.”

  “Don’t you worry about that. There are things in this world way more important than that. We’ll get her another bike. You just keep on healing people like the Good Lord wants you to.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “And thanks for coming today.”

  “No problem, Sugar.” She let go of my hand and placed hers on my chest. “If I have anything to say about it, you’ll be seeing a lot more people around here when they hear what you did for Melinda. The Lord is strong with you, young man. Strong.”

  That afternoon, as word of the healing spread across Dresden like wildfire, I went and emptied the prairie dog traps I’d placed in the dirt pasture behind the church. I took the animals inside, got out a knife, and started testing.

  I stabbed them in the chest and healed them. Cut off their limbs and healed them. Then I took a couple out into the pasture, shot them with Mom’s pistol, and healed them. I even poisoned a few with arsenic, and when they started to convulse, I healed them. I got to where I didn’t even have to say anything, just lay my hands on them and will what I wanted done.

  I’d figured it out.

  I know it sounds morbid, heartless, callous, but I assure you that I did struggle with plunging the knife in initially. I hadn’t harmed one animal since Brutus. What allowed me to do it that day was my devotion to The Real Church, Jesus, and especially Mom. The advice she’d given me when I’d complained about Brutus years earlier found me again as I stood there dagger in hand.

  “Sometimes, people have to suffer in order to help someone else.”

  In this case, it was prairie dogs instead of people, but the basic principle was the same. I’d been hearing and believing in it my whole life. Jesus suffered to help others. The Apostles Paul and Peter suffered to help others. Parents were always suffering to help their kids. Now, I’m not on the Jesus level. I’m not personally destined to suffer to help others, but Jesus obviously wanted me to do something along the lines of suffering and helping. And he had already told me that it wasn’t supposed to be focused on animals.

  #

  Around 11:20 on the last Wednesday in May, I snuck into Debra’s Day Care through the open back kitchen door.

  I know what you’re thinking: Children?

  But if I wanted people to come to The Real Church and find salvation, the easiest and quickest way to get them through the door was through their children. Everyone knows that. Besides, the children’s suffering would be minimal compared to the amount of good that would come out of it in the long run. And I was certain that none of them would die.

  Everyone in Dresden knew that every Wednesday, weather permitting, Debra’s Day Care took their twenty-plus kids to Keeler Park for lunch. The park was right across the street from the day care, and around 11:30, Debra and her workers, carrying baggies with sandwiches, bags of chips, and two heaping jugs of Kool-Aid, would march the kids across the street.

  Dressed in jogging pants, a T-shir
t, and running shoes, I slipped into the kitchen and hunkered down behind a large cutting block. The yellow-shirted workers were corralling the kids, slathering them with sunblock. I assumed the Kool-Aid was already made and chilling in the fridge. I was right. I pulled a baggie of dried, powdered Hedera Helix out of my crotch and split it between the two jugs. I gave each a good swirl, until the powder vanished, then hurried out of the building.

  After we moved into the double-wide, Mom and I had begun growing our own vegetables and herbs. She had many books on their healing and poisoning properties, and I learned everything I needed to know to stay healthy and safe. If consumed, the leaves of a Hedera Helix, which can be found pretty easily, will cause stomach pains, labored breathing, vomiting, and in rare cases can result in a coma.

  Both excited and terrified, I rushed down the alley, crossed the street to the park a block north of the day care, and started jogging on the track. It was a mile loop. A couple of walking elderly people greeted me as I passed. About ten minutes later, Debra led the kids and other workers to the picnic tables in the shade of an oak tree in the center of the park. They began to eat right away.

  I jogged and tried not to watch. A few other joggers had made their way onto the track too. I’d completed two laps when the kids were all released to go play on the swings, teeter-totters, and slides. I slowed, placed my hands behind my head, and started walking. I knew that within twenty minutes, the first symptoms would start to kick in.

  When I glanced across the park during my second walking lap, I saw a couple of kids holding their stomachs walk over to Debra and the other workers. A few others by the swings were obviously having trouble breathing. My pace quickened. I needed to make it to the section of track closest to the picnic tables.

  By the time I made it there, all the kids but three were huddled around the table, three lying down, two vomiting, and the rest hunching over in pain. Debra was freaking out. Two of her workers looked like they were beginning to feel nauseous as well.