Flesh and Blood

by Michael Lister

  “Run that shit by me again,” Merrill said.

  I did.

  We were in my truck in Panama City, heading west on Highway 98 toward the beach. My truck was old and small, and Merrill’s massive bulk seemed stuffed into the passenger side. Today was his day off, so instead of his correctional officer uniform, he was wearing jeans, a long, untucked black shirt, and stylish black leather shoes.

  “I been tellin’ you Jesus was black,” he said when I had finished.

  “You never mentioned he was a little girl,” I said.

  “Didn’t know that shit myself,” he said, his lips twitching in something that had there been more of it would have been a smile. “But I ain’t surprised none.”

  Merrill Monroe was a large, muscular man with very dark skin, very white eyes and teeth, and a nearly perpetual look of amusement on his face—as if we were all actors in a Shakespearean comedy, but he was the only one who knew it. He was my best friend, one of the best and smartest men I knew.

  “Still don’t explain why we takin’ a day off to go see her,” he said.

  “We’re the wise men,” I said.

  He laughed. “We light one.”

  “You count as two,” I said.

  He smiled.

  Merrill and I both worked at Potter Correctional Institution, the meanest prison in the Panhandle, he as a CO sergeant, I as a chaplain.

  “And didn’t you already have the day off?” I said.

  “Didn’t mean I didn’t have shit to do,” he said.

  The morning traffic on 98 was heavy, but moved well considering. It was cool for an August morning in Florida—even the north end—and the sun was just beginning to do something about it.

  “Let me tell you a little something about Charles Simms,” I said.

  “Who the hell is Charles Simms?”

  “The guy who called me,” I said.

  “Oh, right. Okay, tell me something about ol’ Chuck.”

  The cars on the dealership lots on either side of 98 were wet with condensation, which glistened in the increasing sunlight, the pavement around each vehicle looking as if it had just rained.

  “He’s a Fundamentalist,” I said.

  “A what?”

  “Jerry Falwell.”

  “Oh shit,” he said. “What the hell you got me into?”

  It was the end of the semester, and the parking lot of Gulf Coast Community College was largely empty, but across the street, Berg Pipe and the Port of Panama City were busy.

  “Not only is he superstitious and a literalist, but he’s sexist and racist—”

  “So if he says a little black girl is Jesus …”

  “Then it’s something I’ve got to see.”

  “Still don’t explain what my black ass is doin’ here,” he said.

  Panama City Beach Christian Retreat was in an old converted hotel on the north side of Highway 98, across the street from the Gulf. It was painted bright pastel colors and catered to the religious teenage spring break crowd, especially church youth groups. It was not what I pictured when I thought of a spiritual retreat center, and was nothing like St. Ann’s Abbey down the coast near Bridgeport—which was where I went when I needed retreat and renewal.

  The converted hotel was three stories with external walkways lined with room doors. The L-shaped structure surrounded a medium rectangular swimming pool and had very little parking.

  Clothes and sheets were draped over the balcony railings, doors were open, and people, mostly African-Americans, were everywhere. Though far better off than those still trapped in the Superdome, the people crowded into the Panama City Beach Retreat resembled them—both in their impoverished condition and in their boredom.

  “That’s a lot of Negroes,” Merrill said.

  I laughed.

  “Not used to seeing that many at the beach,” he said.

  I pulled off 98 and parked near the little office out front, and before Merrill and I could get out of the truck, Charles Simms was at my door.

  “Little thing, ain’t he?” Merrill said.

  I nodded. “Anxious too,” I said.

  “Probably all the aforementioned Negroes,” he said.

  “That’d be my guess,” I said. “Though, he could just be excited that Jesus chose his humble little retreat center for his Second Coming.”

  “We don’t have much time,” Simms said.

  This came without preamble and after he opened my door.

  “Why’s that?” Merrill asked.

  We climbed out of the truck.

  “Who’s he?” Simms said.

  “Ask him.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I’m … I mean things are … . Here’s the situation. Before I realized what was going on, whom we were dealing with, I contacted the authorities. They’ll be here to get her soon. I want you to talk to her before they get here and help me figure out what to do.”

  “It’s cool,” Merrill said, and introduced himself.

  “Come on this way,” he said, leading us toward a one-story building in the back left corner beside the hotel. “Meet her first. Then we’ll go over everything.”

  To our left, behind the office, a pickup truck of supplies was being unloaded by a couple of teenage boys in baggy clothes and do-rags, while two buttoned-up white men watched. To our right, on the hotel balconies, grown men sat on the cement floor playing cards, checkers, and chess, as nearby women held babies and kids ran around engaged in improvised games. Nearly all of them had a weary, resigned expression, their eyes without light or joy.

  “What can you tell me about her?” I asked.

  The moist morning air was thick with the pungent, greasy smell of a southern breakfast cooked commercially in cafeteria style. It reminded me of a school lunchroom or the chow hall at the prison.

  “Not much,” he said. “We don’t know anything about her before she arrived here.”

  “That ’cause she was in heaven,” Merrill said with a straight face.

  Ignoring him, Simms continued. “She has no ID, no known relations, no—”

  “I know, I know,” I said, “no beginning and no end.”

  Merrill laughed.

  “You laugh,” he said, “but no one here knows her. We have no idea how she even got here. She has no parents.”

  “Sure she does,” Merrill said. “All you got to do is call the Temple of the Black Madonna.”

  “You’re Jesus?” I asked when I stepped into the small cell-like room and saw the beautiful pre-teen girl with the big black eyes.

  Somewhere around ten years-old, she was long and lean with corn rows that extended down nearly to her shoulders and held colorful beads at their ends. She wore faded blue jeans, brown sandals, and a fitted white t-shirt.

  “I said I’d return,” she said, the hint of a wry smile dancing on her dark full lips.

  That was a quick come back, but perhaps she had prepared it ahead of time.

  The small, mostly empty room was used for counseling. Two folding chairs facing each other were in the center on the cheap linoleum floor. She was in one. I sat in the other. Merrill had remained outside with Charles. It was just the two of us.

  “Is it so hard to believe?” she asked.

  “I just didn’t recognize you.”

  “I get that a lot,” she said.

  I smiled at her.

  She smiled back.

  There was something about her, and it wasn’t just that she was breathtaking, her dark skin flawless, her kind, intelligent, slightly sad eyes penetrating. It was her presence. There seemed to be something of the divine about her, as if she were a spirit-person, not really meant for this world. What she didn’t seem was mentally ill, which, didn’t mean she wasn’t.

  “Weren’t there supposed to be trumpet blasts or something?” I asked.

  “Who says there weren’t?”

  “Oh, well, it’s just … I didn’t hear any,” I said.

  “It’s a very noisy world,” she sa
id.

  Wow. She’s good, I thought, deciding to play along for a while longer to see how well she held up.

  “That must be it,” I said. “So, I guess what we’d all like to know is … well—why’d you take so long to come back?”

  “I come back all the time,” she said. “Haven’t you seen me— hungry, sick, poor, in prison?”

  “You’re good,” I said.

  “You don’t see me at Potter CI every day?” she asked.

  I started to say something, but stopped. Charles must have mentioned I was a prison chaplain at PCI.

  “I try to,” I said, “but it’s not easy.”

  She didn’t say anything, but her face revealed she knew what I meant.

  “Where are your parents?” I asked.

  “Who are my mother and father?”

  “Don’t you think they’re out there somewhere looking for you?”

  “My mother and father and brothers and sisters aren’t out there looking for me, but here with me looking for God.”

  She obviously knows Scripture, I thought, but so do a lot of kids. She could have been raised in an extremely religious home where Bible verse memorization was part of the compulsive behavior. But she doesn’t seem obsessive. She doesn’t seem unbalanced or deranged.

  “So whatta you here for?” I asked.

  “Same as before,” she said. “The Mother has sent me to reveal her love.”

  “The Mother?” I asked.

  “Or Father. Lover. Friend. Other. I just happen to know you’re very comfortable with the mother metaphor.”

  How could she know that? Not even Charles would know that, would he? Had Sister Abigail said something to him? She must have. That had to be it. There was no other explanation … ex-cept—there was no other explanation. Still, it was disconcerting.

  She’s remarkable, I thought. Her clarity and wisdom are amazing. Her IQ must be astronomical.

  “What does the Mother want from us?”

  “To love her back. To love each other.”

  “That’s it?” I asked, hearing in her simple words the distinct echo of “You should love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all you strength and your neighbor as yourself.”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  I had to remind myself I was talking to a ten year-old. There was something ageless about her, and it wasn’t just her wit and wisdom, but her presence and bearing.

  We fell silent a moment. I searched for a way I might trip her up, break down her defenses, penetrate her delusion. And yet it didn’t seem like delusion at all—of course I knew it was, but she seemed so sane, so centered, so full of … of what? Life? Soul? God? How else could I explain the presence in the room? I recognized in her the same spirit that had been in other saints and spirit people I had known.

  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “A little confused, maybe.”

  “The first time I was here, my family thought I was mad,” she said. “They were going to lock me up at one point, but I got away. Several people said I was possessed. Not much has changed since then.”

  “Could you do a miracle for me?” I asked. “Just a little one.”

  “It’s a wicked and adulterous generation that looks for a sign.”

  I smiled. She had an answer for everything. She may not be the only begotten daughter of the Mother, but it was obvious she was very special.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “but blessed are those who haven’t seen and still believe.”

  “That’s very convenient for you,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “but that doesn’t make it any less true, does it, John?”

  She was so quick. I was having a hard time keeping up. And she didn’t seem to be calculating or straining to come up with something clever to say, but just conversing naturally, nearly effortlessly.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I heard Charles say it,” she said, “but I know a lot of things about you. Things no one else knows.”

  My eyebrows shot up as I cocked my head. “Like what?”

  “I know you’re depressed,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything. For a moment, I couldn’t. I hadn’t told anyone how I’d been feeling. Not even Merrill. Whatever her condition, she had uncanny abilities. Perhaps I was in the presence of a genuine child psychic. That would explain—

  “You’re lonely,” she said. “You wonder if you’re making a difference, or if you’re just wasting your time working in a prison, and, of course, you wonder if you and Anna will ever be together.”

  Mouth dry, pulse pounding, I was speechless. She was reading my mind. I felt awkward, vulnerable, naked. I knew there had to be an explanation for how she was able to do what she was doing— whatever it was—but none seemed adequate at the moment.

  “I know you’re afraid you’re going to wind up like your mom,” she said. “Drink yourself to death. Die alone with nothing.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up as goose bumps popped out on my arms. “Do you believe me now?” she asked.

  I hesitated a moment, searching for something to say. “I believe you believe it.”

  “Could you be just a little more patronizing?” she asked. “You almost set a record. A little more and you’ll have it.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I think you’re a remarkable young woman.”

  “Just not God incarnate?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Is it so unbelievable?”

  “Well … yeah, it is,” I said slowly. “I mean, think about it— about what you’re asking me to … If there is a God, which is a big if in itself, and he—or she—wanted to become human for some reason, why a little girl? I mean, who’s gonna listen to you?”

  “Someone might.”

  “Might?” I asked. “Someone might?”

  “Sometimes that’s all there is,” she said.

  “What all did you tell her about me?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Charles said.

  “You must have said something,” I said. “And she must have overheard you talking about me, too.”

  “I told you, didn’t I?” he said, a huge smile on his face. “She knew things, didn’t she?”

  He had been waiting—anxiously, from the look of it—and approached me the moment I stepped outside the education/recreation building.

  Merrill wasn’t with him.

  “I want to know exactly what you said to her or what she might have overheard,” I said.

  “John,” he said, “I swear. I didn’t tell her anything but your name. And she couldn’t have overheard anything because I called you from home this morning and haven’t talked to anyone else here about you or her or any of this.”

  I shook my head slowly, thinking about what I had just experienced.

  “Whatta you think?” he asked.

  “There’s something about her,” I said.

  Glancing over toward the converted hotel, I saw Merrill standing on the second story balcony talking to a group of people. Even among so many black faces, he stood out, and it wasn’t just his physique. Like the little girl I had just spoken with, there was something about Merrill—a power, a presence, a gift.

  “Told you. So will you help me?”

  “How exactly?” I asked. “I don’t know anything I can do.”

  “I want to find out what’s going on,” he said. “No matter what it is. If she’s some sort of incarnation of God—I mean, that is possible, isn’t it?—or if she has some special ability to know things about people, or if she’s mentally ill.”

  “I just don’t think I can help with any of that.”

  “We’ve got to move fast,” he said. “When Children and Families, come they’ll take her away, and there won’t be anything we can do. They’ll be here any minute now.”

  “Is there any way you can stop them from coming?” I asked.
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  “If we found her parents,” he said, “but that’s not very likely. Maybe there’s something legal we could do. I’m just not sure.”