And your response was to have Jesus tell everyone to … ease up on the OCD and quit being meanies?
NEVER HEARD IT SUMMED UP LIKE THAT, BUT YES.
Suddenly so many things about Jesus make sense. Okay. I’ll play along. What are the frequently asked prayers nowadays?
A loud knock on her front door made her jump.
Had someone let him into the building? Shit.
She stood and scurried over to peer through the peephole, but it was just Jeremy, so she opened the door and stuck her head out.
“Hey, Jess. Sorry to bother you. There’s a man down at the front door who, I think, is here for you. He keeps shouting your name, at least. I wasn’t sure if maybe your buzzer was broken and you didn’t know?”
She leaned against the door frame. “No, I know he’s there. I just don’t want to let him inside. Because he’s the devil. Well, not actually the devil—I still don’t know who the devil is, and quite honestly, my messiah bandwidth is stretched pretty thin at the moment and I’m running out of energy to keep guessing. Plus, I figure, hey, I’ll probably find out in the worst possible way regardless, so why worry about it?”
Jeremy grimaced, exposing a sliver of teeth between his thin lips. “Ah, okay.”
“Wait. You think I’m crazy?”
He took a step back and the laugh that followed was obviously forced. “No, no. Not at all. Um, so do you want me to call someone to take care of him? Not anyone from the police state, obviously—two 911 calls in a month gets you put on a registry—but I have some connections in the Heart of Texas Militia.”
As tempting as it was to imagine Jimmy Dean facing off against a redneck with an itchy trigger finger and illegal body armor, Jessica declined. “No, it’s fine. I’m hoping he just goes away”—the intercom buzzed again, this time dragging out as Jimmy held down the button—“but maybe that won’t be the case.”
“You sure you don’t want backup? He seems a little unhinged.”
Talk about projection.
But also he’s right.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Jimmy’s a rage-vomit-inducing dumpster fire of a human, but he wouldn’t hurt me. I make him too much money.”
Jeremy nodded like he understood and backed the rest of the way across the hall to his front door, appearing to take conspicuous pains to keep from putting his back to her. She allowed him to get fully inside and shut the door before making any sudden movements.
Slipping on flip-flops, Jessica trudged downstairs to the condominium foyer. She’d hear Jimmy out, but she sure as shit wasn’t letting him anywhere near where she ate, slept, or dream banged. Plus, she had a few questions she might as well ask him while he was around … not that she expected honest answers.
She spotted his silhouette through the frosted glass of the main entrance as he reached out and jabbed the intercom. She yanked the door open quickly and soaked in the split second of alarm on his face at her sudden appearance.
In the flesh stood Jimmy Dean. Did the man never age?
“Jessica,” he crooned, recovering quickly.
His annoyingly white suit appeared much cleaner in person than it had through the smudged intercom camera, but the hooves that dangled on a red cord around his neck looked just as gaudy. He was in full-blown Church Jimmy attire.
Stepping forward, perhaps expecting her to move to the side, he was forced to take a half-step back to avoid being too close for comfort when she wouldn’t budge an inch. He played it off, though, straightening out his shoulders. “I assume you were asleep or in the shower or otherwise indisposed, and that’s why you left me out here on the streets for so long. By the way, there are a lot of homeless that hang out by your building. It’s rather suspicious.” He leaned forward and whispered, “They could be plotting something.”
“Yeah, Jimmy. Plotting how to not be homeless. Or maybe their next fix. Depends on which one you’re talking about.” She leaned slightly forward on tiptoes, glancing over the reverend’s shoulder. “Hey, Earle. How’s it going today?”
She cringed, waiting for his response. Earle wasn’t her favorite regular, and she was not his favorite benefactor.
“Go to hell, Jessica Cheapskate! Princess of Pennies!”
She grinned at Jimmy. “See? I’m on a first-name basis with Earle, so nothing to worry about. And as for your first assumption, no, I was not indisposed. I just still hate you.”
He bowed his head solemnly. “Yes, I understand that you sometimes get in these moods, and it’s perfectly understandable, given your sex, but I think you’ll change your tune when you see what I’ve brought, for I come bearing gifts.” He made to step past her and into the foyer, but she stuck her arm out, gripping the door frame so he couldn’t pass. He cleared his throat. “Okay, then. I’ll cut to the chase. I heard the awful news about your food truck being burned to the ground—”
“Which you had something to do with, right?”
He gasped and stumbled back a step. “Jessica! Dear, sweet Jessica! No! Never! I faithfully support small businesses. But also, I would never commit such a heinous act against the one for whom God Himself has asked me to clear the way.”
“Okay, I don’t know what you mean by that, so how about this: you tell me what you want in the next thirty seconds, or you’ll have to hold it inside and if you start buzzing me again, I’ll actually take up my neighbor on his offer to have the militia—which I didn’t even know was still a thing until a couple minutes ago—come take you out.”
Jimmy’s smooth, saccharine demeanor steadied, his nostrils flared as if scenting the air for militiamen, and the muscles in his jaw flicked up and down. “Fine. As we both know,” he leaned close, and as much as Jessica wanted to move away, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, “some or all of the foreword of the #1 New York Times and USA Today Bestseller Railed to the Cross was not written by yourself.” While his verbal admission shocked her, she steadied herself not to show it. “Frankly, I expected you to sue me, and I was ready to settle out of court. But for whatever reason, you did not do that.”
“You expected me to?”
He leaned back. “Oh yes. Of course I did.” He chuckled incredulously. “I would have, if the roles were switched. But it doesn’t matter, because I had a contingency plan.” He paused, smiling, making her wait until he was ready to reveal his plot. “Here’s the thing, dear child. You can do whatever you want in life, so long as you can provide something of value to those who would try to stop you. Had you filed a suit, I was ready to offer you more money for damages than you could ever hope for. We would have settled out of court because, had you taken it to court, there was always the chance that I could not only win, but humiliate you on a public stage yet again. Your publicist would have reached that conclusion soon enough. Anywho, that wasn’t the path you chose, and for that, I’m proud of you. Perhaps, even though you didn’t write the words yourself, you read them and agreed with them anyway.”
“Nope.”
He waved her off with a quick flutter of his hand. “No need to lie. Here.” Then, reaching into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, he pulled out a piece of paper. As he slowly unfolded it, he explained, “As my royalty checks roll in, I’ve set aside a percentage for you. Originally, this was intended for a settlement, but as you haven’t taken that path, it’s now available for something vastly more important: helping you achieve your dreams.” He held the piece of paper by the top two corners, right on eye level with Jessica, and as he spoke, his voice grew louder, like he was preaching to a congregation. “Because I believe in you, Jessica McCloud. Because you’re like the daughter I never had. I know this will be hard for you to believe, but I want you to be happy and to succeed.”
Jessica lowered her eyes from Jimmy’s lying face to the check.
Five hundred and seventy-five thousand three hundred and eighty-two dollars and sixty cents.
Holy shit.
She swallowed down the lunatic shout that threatened to jump out of her mouth.
&
nbsp; I could open the bakery downtown with this kind of money.
She suppressed a groan. “You made that off the book?”
A sly smirk turned the corner of his mouth and he nodded quickly. “Oh yes. And this is just from the first royalty check. There will be more coming my way, and subsequently, more coming your way. Since you’ve obviously read my book—who hasn’t at this point?—you understand the pivotal message of hope it delivers. And it seems readers are more than happy to recommend it to their friends, et cetera. Because you’ve so graciously contributed to that success with your glowing foreword that you definitely wrote in its entirety, based upon your knowledge of it without taking any legal action, I figure you deserve a cut.”
It could just be “Jimmy tax.” I could just consider it what he owes me for a lifetime of pain and suffering. In fact, it’s not even enough. He owes me back taxes …
It was so much money. And there would more where that came from, too, as he got in more royalties. All her financial woes could be solved in an instant if she just snatched the check from his hands and didn’t look back. She could even repay those who donated so much money to her endeavor. She would feel in debt to Miranda or Kate or Dr. Bell or …
No, but only because I owed all my success to Jimmy fucking Dean and his stupid book.
“This is a bribe.” She pushed his hands away from her, feeling nausea rising in her stomach. “I won’t take a dime from you.”
“I will!” Earle yelled from behind them. “This bitch only gives pennies. A dime would be a huge step up!”
“Fine,” Jimmy said. “I guess the Lord’s calling isn’t enough incentive for you to do what it takes.” He folded the check and tucked it in his pocket. “That’s what separates you and me, Jessica. When I see the path of the Lord laid out before me, I do whatever it takes to stay on course.” He patted his breast pocket. “If you change your mind about the money, let me know. It’s yours, far as I’m concerned. I won’t touch a penny of it.”
“Psh. Unlikely. Don’t you still owe my mom hundreds of dollars? Why don’t you go knock on her door?”
His eyes opened wide and he leaned forward, hissing, “You know she owns guns.”
“And I have militia connections. Guess nowhere is safe for God’s biggest thorn in my side.” She went to shut the door, but Jimmy jammed a shiny white boot in the space before she could, and the door bounced open again.
“Do you have a television?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Then you should watch channel six news at six.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why?”
He yanked his foot back and turned on his heel. “God’s blessing, my darling Jessica,” he yelled over his shoulder, waving with a twiddle of his fingertips.
Earle rattled his Sonic cup at Jimmy as he approached, and a swift flick of Jimmy’s left boot knocked the Styrofoam into the air, sending change skipping across the sidewalk.
“Dick!” Earle shouted.
“You’re right about that,” Jessica said.
As she closed the door, she checked the giant clock on the foyer wall. Though it was made of repurposed scrap metal and car parts and nearly impossible to read, she was pretty sure it was only a few minutes past three.
Still plenty of time to brainstorm her message and revise her business plan before the ax inevitably fell on the six o’clock news.
Jessica’s vision blurred. She combed over the business plan expense sheet for the umpteenth time but was still unable to find another twenty thousand dollars to trim. It didn’t help that she couldn’t peel her mind’s eye from the check Jimmy had dangled in front of her face just a few hours before.
At least she knew what he was up to, now. She’d have to tell Wendy. But not yet. Everything still felt too fresh. And as long as no one else knew about her turning down the money, there was still the possibility that she could …
No. Not now, not ever.
She knew on an instinctual level not to take anything he offered. It would be like following a stranger to an unmarked van because he dangled her favorite candy in front of her face and promised, “There’s more where that came from in my big murderbus,” and then she said, “Yeah, okay. Maybe it’s worth it.”
But at the same time, five hundred and seventy-five thousand, three hundred and eighty-two dollars, and sixty cents would make her feel a lot better about him faking the foreword, and maybe it would be worth it to walk right into his trap. She would probably end up in one of his traps eventually, and she might as well make a cool half mil off of her unfortunate fate.
His offer would mean that rather than poring over spreadsheets for corners to cut, she could be expanding her plans for the bakery into something much bigger, more centrally located …
No, no, no. Absolutely not. If there’s not a way to do this without accepting Jimmy’s help, then it just doesn’t get done.
It also nagged at her that even Jimmy had a clear message, and she still didn’t. Of course, outside of Jessica being God’s daughter, her mother being the embodiment of Original Sin, and her father being some sort of hog deity, Jessica wasn’t sure what that message was.
However, the answer to that mystery was sitting on the concrete floor in the corner of her living room where it’d slid to a stop when she’d, once again, thrown it across the room in disgust. Just looking at it caused the first inklings of a tension headache to gather behind her eyes.
She slammed the pen onto her brain map and stomped over to the book, grabbing it, opening it to the table of contents, and jumping ahead to the section called Life In Tents, which had been mentioned at her surprise brunch the month before…
We’d unloaded the rusty machinery but not yet the animals, and were sweating like slaves in the dense southern Louisiana air, when Crazy Jake let us know that something was wrong. Usually, it was Racist Wallace who scouted the set-up location first while the rest of us, sans Fish Head Sally, who wasn’t much help because—as I mentioned before—she had no legs among a variety of other disabilities. But whenever we traveled this deep in the South—because as anyone from the South knows, there are various rings in which Southern qualities intensify the closer toward the center one travels—we let Racist Wallace stay back with the rest of us to unload and sent Crazy Jake ahead instead. Back then, it simply wouldn’t do to send a black man like Racist Wallace on a scouting mission solo in this neck of the woods.
When Crazy Jake returned, he was visibly upset. “There’s already a tent where we was gonna set up! A big one, too!”
“Were there folks in it?” Ol’ Six Fingers asked.
“Sure sounded like it. There was whooping and a-hollering like I ain’t even heard in our tents. Whatever they got going on must be something special.”
With Bennefort and the rest of the talent not slated to arrive for days, it was left up to our band of misfits to problem solve, which never worked out well.
So it was decided that I, being the smallest among the men despite having grown two inches in the past few months, would conduct a reconnaissance mission. No one would suspect a thirteen-year-old boy of being a spy. I could slip in, see what was going on, and hopefully get to the bottom of why another show had settled on our lot.
Crazy Jake provided me basic directions, adding that I “couldn’t miss it.” And he was right. Even before I could see the top of the tent peeking over the horizon, I heard the voices. They weren’t like the ones I heard regularly at Bennefort’s shows. This crowd was energized in a way that told me they were not passive observers but a part of whatever excitement was taking place. The moans and cheers were galvanized. The distinct shouts of individual voices rose up like a bubble breaching the surface of a boiling pot of water. The water boiled faster and faster, and I was almost too exhilarated and terrified to tiptoe into the tent once I’d finally reached it.
There were no giraffes, no zebras, no tightrope walkers competing for the crowd’s attention. Just one man.
He stood
on a raised platform at the back of the tent dressed in a nice cocoa-colored suit as he paced the stage, speaking into a handheld microphone that pumped out his voice from every corner of the standing-room-only tent.
I pushed toward the front, snaking between bodies to get a better view, and the crowd, so focused on this man, paid me no mind. At last, when I was where I could stare up at him on his rickety stage decorated with a mic stand and a single wooden chair, I began to understand why so many people had gathered.
The words “Jesus” and “God” and “miracles” knocked lightly on a door in my mind, behind which I’d hidden away my teachings from Hawthorn First Baptist and Pastor Heathrow. And when this radiant man’s words knocked, those memories answered and came flooding out.
He was handsome, tall, almost fully gray in a way that showed wisdom more than age. He paced as he preached, his voice growing from a soft whisper that silenced the audience completely in their desperation not to miss a syllable to righteous shouting, brandishing his fist at the top of the tent and proclaiming his Truth.
“The Lord is not prideful,” he said, swiping an arm through the air. “Only man is prideful. The Lord possesses no ego. Only man possesses ego, and a harmful one at that. But sometimes, the Lord, in all His infinite wisdom, knows that we feeble-minded men must see to believe. And it is for that reason that the Lord is unafraid”—he lowered his voice, leaning toward the crowd as if whispering a secret—“to show off a little.”
Shouts of “Praise Jesus” and “Hallelujah” echoed from various corners of the tent, like a heavenly call and respond.
“So now’s the time, children of God. Now’s the time for your miracles. Those suffering souls of you selected by the ushers: come up here and be healed!”
Jessica’s mind was so absorbed in the strange tale, she almost missed the small tapping on her front door.
“Who is it?” she asked, hoping whoever it was didn’t require her to get up from where she’d settled on the couch with a soft throw blanket.
“Jeremy. Your neighbor.”
It is Risen Page 19
