Jesus Jackson

by James Ryan Daley

  “Sorry. I pick. It’s the only way I can offer the one hundred percent faith guarantee.”

  “Why?”

  “Because people never know what kind of faith is best for them. It’s like when an overweight woman brings a picture of an anorexic movie star to her hairdresser and says, ‘Make me look like this.’ That’s how most people are with belief. They bring in Buddha or a Muhammad or Jesus Christ, when what they really need is a Rastafari, or a high-pressure career, or socialism, or 1950s detective novels.”

  “Whoa. Those last three things aren’t religions at all.”

  “Not to you,” he said. “But to some people…”

  “Okay, fine. But what good will faith do me—whatever it is—if it’s fake? If you just make it up?”

  “Does it matter that it’s fake if you have complete faith in it? The point of a god is not to hear your prayers, but to have someone to pray to. You don’t need a deity to actually create the universe.” He swept his arms into the air. “The universe is already here, baby! You just need a little faith in how it might have been created to explain why the hell you’re living in the middle of it.”

  I stopped walking and just stared at Jesus for a few moments, trying to decide if he was being serious, or if this whole Spiritual Contractor thing was some kind of a twisted joke. He stared back, betraying nothing more on his face than a look of hopeful expectation, just like the salesman he purported himself to be—holding his breath for the close.

  “So,” I said finally. “How much would all this cost me?”

  “Oh, it’s hard to say right up front. You see, in your case I could probably make some exceptions, a few allowances, maybe even some pro bono tertiary background work, et cetera, et cetera…but then of course I’d need to see your pay stubs, W-2 forms, investment statements, and other holdings to make sure you qualify for our reduced hourly schedule, and then the holidays are coming up, so we may be running some specials.”

  “Jesus,” I broke in. “I’m fourteen. I don’t have W-2 things or investment whatevers. The only money I have is what I make from mowing the lawns on my block, which is about to end because it’s September.”

  “How much do you charge an hour?”

  “Seven dollars.”

  Jesus squinted. “Can you rake leaves in the fall?”

  “I guess.”

  He produced a small copper abacus from somewhere in his jogging suit, and began crazily flicking the beads back and forth. After a moment, he smiled. “Forty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents,” he said. “But remember, that’s only an estimate.”

  I reached into my pocket, and pulled out a tiny wad of crumpled bills. “I only have twelve bucks right now.”

  Jesus snatched the bills from my hand. “We’ll call it a retainer,” he said. “And I’ll get on it right away.”

  And with that, Jesus Jackson took off running around the track, toward the gate that leads to the woods.

  “Wait,” I called after him. “Do I have to do anything?”

  “Definitely,” he yelled over his shoulder. “Go look into that Alistair thing. It all sounds pretty fishy to me.”

  And then he was gone.

  Nine

  It’s hard to sleep without a god. Or anyway, it was hard for me, at nine years old, on my first night without one. It was like sleeping in the pitch dark, without a lock on the front door—blind and vulnerable. In the morning, I woke up exhausted, but with a purpose. I ate breakfast, told my mom I was going to a friend’s house, and rode my bike straight to Saint Christopher’s. No, I wasn’t going to repent for my doubting, or pray for faith, or anything else so righteous.

  Ryan had asked me to complete a task—to help figure out which god was the real one—and I wasn’t about to let him down.

  It was a Monday, and weekday mass began at nine. I got there at about five after, just as the opening hymn was coming to an end. I tiptoed into the last pew, neglecting to genuflect (which I had always hated doing, and decided instantly would not be a part of our religion), took out my little notebook and pencil, and wrote:

  1.A real god would not make you kneel on the ground.

  2.A real god would not make you sing stupid songs.

  As the priest went into his opening prayers, I poked around the church, checking out the décor. I found it both fascinating and thrilling to be in the church not as a believer, but as an outside observer, a spy seeing it not as The House of The God, but simply as one possible idea of what the house of one possible god may look like. My eyes made their way over the stained-glass windows, the ornate woodwork, the iron light fixtures (which were all very pretty, but clearly impractical), before finally coming to rest on the gigantic crucifix hanging over the alter. As usual, Jesus was skinny, shaggy-haired, bleeding, and wearing only a loincloth. All of that I was used to, of course, but the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about as I stared at him was the fact that he was dying. In that moment—the one being depicted by the sculpture—he was taking his last few breaths. Now, for all I knew, the sculptor may have meant for him to be already dead, but that’s not the way I saw it. There was still some life left in him, a disturbing vitality present in his slightly flexed muscles, his unclotted blood. I wrote:

  3.That scary, dying guy on the cross is definitely not God.

  I shuddered and took my eyes away from the crucifix. By this time the mass had moved on to some kind of prayer where the priest talks for a few seconds, then the people all say something back to him, and then the priest talks again (and over and over again), but I didn’t know what to say, so I just stayed quiet.

  4.A real god would not make you memorize lots of stuff.

  By the end of the mass I had come up with six more ideas, making a total of ten:

  5.A real god would not make you just sit and be quiet and not do anything.

  6.A real god would not write really really really long books.

  7.A real god would not make you get up and sit down seventeen-hundred times.

  8.A real god would not like gross crackers.

  9.A real god would not be super super boring.

  10.A real god would not make you fall asleep in church and be embarrassed.

  Quite proud of my accomplishment, I hopped on my bike after the mass was over and rode straight home to show Ryan. I found him in his room, lying on his bed with his laptop on his chest and his head hanging off of the edge of the mattress, so he was looking at me upside down when I came in.

  “Hey,” I said, handing him my notebook. “Clues. Look. I just got them all at church.”

  He smiled, flipped over, and inspected my list. “This is good,” he said, but with the hint of a frown. “Although, everything on this list is a negative.”

  “What do you mean?” I hopped up next to him on the bed, staring over his shoulder at what I had written.

  “Look.” He pointed from entry to entry. “Not, not, not, not, definitely not, not. They’re all things that you don’t believe or don’t think God would do. There’s nothing at all on the list that you actually think is true.”

  “Well, I know,” I said. “That’s because I went to a church with a pretend god.”

  He laughed. “Good point. But have you thought of anything at all about God, or whatever, that you actually don’t think is pretend?”

  I looked down at my feet. “No.”

  Sensing that I was starting to feel bad about the whole thing, Ryan sat up and grabbed his laptop. “So you want to hear what I’ve come up with?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay.” He clicked on the keyboard and squinted at the screen. “Well, I’ve decided—or rather, discovered—that the whole hell thing is bogus.”

  “Really?” I was shocked. I thought that one had to be true.

  “Yeah. Totally bogus. In fact, there are billions of people w
ho believe that after you die you’re just reborn into another person. Or even an animal, or a plant.”

  “A plant?” This was a bit much. “Like a fern?”

  Ryan shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Well that doesn’t sound very real.”

  “No,” he agreed. “I didn’t think so either.”

  “So what else did you find?

  “Well, the problem is that there are just so many gods out there that people believe in, and they’re all totally different.”

  I was intrigued. I don’t think I’d ever considered the fact that there were people whose idea of “god” was different than my own. “Like what else?”

  “Well, there’s Buddha—”

  “Isn’t that the gold guy with the belly at China Garden?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hmm…”

  “And there’s also Shiva and Krishna and Allah and Mohammed—who is, like, as big as Jesus in some places—and Haile Sellassie and Vishnu and Zoroaster and Ganesh—who looks like an elephant but with four arms and a potbelly—not to mention all of the ancient gods who no one talks about anymore. There are like a million of those.”

  “Whoa.”

  “And people keep on making up new gods all the time. There’s even this one called Xenu that some people believe in out in California. They get real excited about him, too, but as far as I can tell, the only thing he ever did was bring a bunch of aliens to Earth and then blow them up in a volcano.”

  This was just too much, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. And soon as I started laughing, Ryan started too, until we were both in hysterics. Once we finally caught our breath, though, we both got real quiet, realizing that we were apparently no better off than when we started.

  “So,” I said at last. “Did you find anything that actually might be true?”

  “No, he said, closing his laptop with a sigh. “I guess I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

  He jumped up and patted me on the back. “But don’t worry, Jon Jon. We’ve barely scratched the surface. We just have to keep on digging. We’ll find something eventually.”

  I nodded and said, “Okay.” But I had my doubts. And to be perfectly honest, I think that Ryan had even more doubts than I did.

  Ten

  The thing about Jesus (Jackson, that is) is that once he’s in your head, you just can’t get him out. Every conversation we ever had would play over and over like a song blaring on repeat in my brain. His questions became deep existential dilemmas; his suggestions became obsessions. So it was no surprise that for the rest of that first day at St. Soren’s, all I could think about was our meeting on the football field. Was he really going to build me a god? Was that even possible? Was I an idiot for giving him my twelve bucks? Did I even want a god? Was it just because of Ryan? And what about Ryan? And what about Alistair? And what the fuck really happened in those woods?

  In the end, all of my questions faded but the last one, and its darkest manifestation: Did Alistair kill my brother?

  Once I allowed myself to really consider that Ryan was murdered, the thought of it consumed me. A hundred different scenarios played out in my head—all beginning with Henry and me running for our lives, and ending with Alistair pushing Ryan into the ravine. The most plausible of them went something like this:

  Once Henry and I were out of sight, the other three guys jumped in on the fight, taking Alistair’s side, of course. They all began to beat on Ryan, circling around him, kicking him in the chest and stomach and kneecaps and face, while Ryan lay nearly helpless and curled up on the ground. When they finally stopped for a second, Ryan swung back into action, kicking Alistair into one of the other guys, giving Ryan just enough time to spring to his feet and make a break for it. Within seconds, though, they were all on his trail. Ryan sprinted straight into the woods, barreling through bushes and shrubs, scrambling over boulders and fallen trees, and stopping himself inches before toppling over the edge of the ravine. Before he even had the chance to catch his breath, Alistair came bursting out behind him, and without a pause, laid one right into Ryan’s cheekbone. Ryan stumbled, swayed, and fell over the edge to his death.

  I constantly rearranged the details in my mind, but the premise stayed the same: Alistair and Ryan fought; Ryan ran; Alistair pushed Ryan into the ravine.

  The problem, though, was that I had absolutely no proof: not enough proof to bring to the police, not even enough proof to convince myself that I wasn’t imagining the whole damn thing. I couldn’t walk up to Alistair and ask him what happened, and the only other witnesses were the two dickhead friends who helped him out in the first place.

  By the time I finally made it to lunch, I’d decided to focus on just getting through the day…which was turning out to be hard enough.

  The cafeteria at St. Soren’s, like the auditorium, was presided over by an enormous bronze crucifix, displaying an emaciated, tortured, and badly beaten Jesus. It struck me, as I stood holding my tray of pasty-looking pizza and soggy French fries, just how violent of an image this was to display over a sea of impressionable young minds. It transfixed me, for a moment, as I allowed my eyes to move from the oozing wound on his chest, to his caved esophagus, to his hollow eyes….

  And then out of nowhere an image of Ryan, similarly beaten and bloodied, flashed over the one of Jesus. I could see it so clearly in my mind—the bruises on his face and arms, his eyes rolled back, a trickle of red streaking a line from his nose to his cheek.

  I had to stop myself right there—take a deep breath, swallow hard, and shiver—just keep myself composed.

  Somehow, thankfully, I managed to hold it together, and went off instantly in search of Henry. Within a few steps, though, I realized just how difficult a task this would be. Every time I approached a table to look for him, I was met with a barrage of smiling, sympathetic stares, and a general shifting of behinds to make a place for me to sit. Everyone knew who I was—everyone. Every eye at every table turned inevitably toward me as I passed, each obviously thinking the same awful thing: there goes the Dead Kid’s Brother. Poor Dead Kid’s Brother.

  I found Henry sitting all the way in the far corner of the cafeteria, reading at a table all by himself.

  “Finally,” I said, setting down my tray across from his. “Why’d you have to hide all the way over here?”

  Henry shrugged, placing down his book and staring thoughtfully at a tater tot. “You know,” he said. “You don’t have to sit over here.” Apparently he had seen my walk across the cafeteria.

  I turned, gazing back across the landscape of bustling tables. At almost every one a few heads were turned nonchalantly in our direction. I said, “Believe me, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

  This seemed to cheer Henry up. “So how was Biology?”

  Before I had a chance to respond, I glanced down to see what Henry was reading, and lost my train of thought. It was called Cop Hater by Ed McBain, and on the back cover was a quote: “Perhaps the single greatest detective novel of the 1950s.”

  I stared suspiciously into his eyes. “I’m going to ask you a question,” I said, “And it may seem a bit strange, but I just want you to answer it honestly, okay?”

  This seemed to make him nervous. “Okay.”

  “Have you ever met Jesus?”

  “Uh…what?”

  “I mean, not the old Jesus. Not Jesus Christ. I’m talking about Jesus the contractor. The spiritual contractor, Jesus Jackson.”

  Henry’s expression went from one of mild anxiety to one of sincere concern, with maybe even hint of terror. “What are you talking about?”

  I decided right then and there not to mention Jesus again, at least not unless Henry brought it up first. “Nothing. Just, um…so what’s that book all about?”

  “Oh,” he said, seeming pleased by the turn of the conversation
. “It’s amazing. It’s about this detective, Steve Carella, and he’s trying to catch this guy who’s killing all of these cops, and it gets really into all of the methods and techniques that cops would really use to catch the guy, like in the real world, or like in those really real TV shows, and it’s—”

  “Hold on a second,” I said. “Do you read a lot of these things?”

  “Books?”

  “Well, detective novels…”

  “Oh, yes. Absolutely. I’ve read all of the Sherlock Holmes adventures and Philip Marlow and Sam Spade and Mike Hammer and—”

  “Okay, okay. I get it. So, I’ve got a question for you. About, you know, detective stuff.”

  Henry’s eyes opened wide. “Really?” he said. Then very seriously: “Shoot.”

  “If you think that someone may have committed a crime—say, murder—but you’re not really sure, and you totally have no proof, how would you go about investigating it? Like, what would you actually do?”

  “Well,” he replied, dramatically stroking his chin, “that depends upon the circumstances of the murder in question.”

  “What about if you don’t really know the circumstances?”

  Henry leaned in close, gave a look around to make sure no one was near us, and whispered, “How did the victim…meet his demise?”

  “A fall,” I said. “Off a cliff.”

  And with those five words, the fun part of the game was over for Henry. “Oh,” he said, staring down at his tater tots.

  “Look,” I said. “Just humor me. It’s good for me to talk about things like this. It’s, you know, processing things.”

  Henry let his eyes meet mine, but only for a second. “Okay, I guess. If it’s just talking.”

  “Just talking.”

  “Well,” he began, “I guess the first thing you’d want to do is investigate the crime scene.”

  Right. I hadn’t even been to the ravine yet. “Yeah, yeah…Crime scene.”