Black Jesus

by Simone Felice

  ‘Where would you like us to sit, Bea?’ asks a polite Gloria, something about the look in the old woman’s eyes giving the runaway the sense that maybe she’s in the presence of something rare, someone not unfamiliar with the supernatural arts of mischief and unfiltered glee, the magic of far-flung daydreams, the magic of loneliness.

  ‘Sit wherever you like, dears,’ says Bea in her soft raspy voice like a fifties movie queen. ‘I for one like it by the window, never know what you’re gonna see out there.’

  Gloria smiles and helps Lionel to the small bed against the wall, hand on his forearm, hand on the small of his back. Slow and easy. And once he’s settled, his hands crossed in his lap, Gloria takes a seat beside him and says, ‘I’m sorry they won’t let you out. I know how it feels to be trapped. Worst feeling in the world.’

  ‘Oh, Joe Boy musta spilt the beans about my very unglamorous house arrest. Please don’t feel bad for me, I brought it upon myself I suppose.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Reach underneath the mattress and I’ll show you.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Right between your legs.’

  Gloria does as she’s told.

  ‘Deeper,’ says Bea, and soon the girl feels the cool thin metal there and pulls the tarnished cigarette case from its stash spot.

  ‘Smoking? That’s what got you in trouble?’

  ‘You can say that again. Big trouble.’

  ‘Joe said it was gambling.’

  ‘Smoking, gambling, drinking, six of this and one half dozen of the other. I do whatever I want. I’m a free agent. In my mind at least. And that Doctor Mengele downstairs can’t stomach it, the weird pervert.’

  ‘I thought his name was Director Steve,’ says a bewildered Lionel.

  ‘It is,’ says Bea. ‘Doctor Mengele was an evil Nazi who did gruesome experiments on living people. Sometimes I get them confused. Gloria, would you mind?’ she says, a simple toss of her chin carrying with it one pure and unmistakable meaning.

  Gloria takes a cigarette from the case and hands it to Bea and Bea bends and reaches down into her white shoe and produces a wooden match and rises and puts her hand out the window and strikes it on the same concrete wall that hems her in, then brings the match in carefully, so as not to kill the flame, aware of its delicacy more now than ever in her life, and fires the long thin smoke between her lips.

  After a few good pulls she says, ‘It must be fun being a ballerina.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Gloria. ‘You know, it has its ups and downs. A lot of practice. A lot of traveling. I’m taking a little break now ’cause I hurt my leg.’

  ‘She’s the best,’ says Lionel. ‘Don’t let her fool you. I seen her do it.’

  Gloria takes a glance at the Marine but says nothing.

  ‘I used to dance,’ says Bea. ‘All night to the big band. Then when I met Joe’s father he taught me rain dances. He was a full-blooded Mohawk, you see. And I learnt a war dance. And a special fertility dance. Though I’m sure he made that one up to get me out of my knickers. Guess it worked like a charm,’ she laughs.

  ‘What was Joe like when he was a kid?’ asks the girl.

  ‘Not much different from most kids, I guess. But I know he hated being part Indian. I’d hear the other boys say stuff like mixed-breed and Geronimo and sometimes he’d come home upset and with marks on his clothes, sometimes his face.’

  ‘He gave me his tomahawk,’ says Lionel.

  ‘You must be kidding?’

  ‘No. It was a gift.’

  ‘He must really like you. That old thing was his pride and joy. In those days there was no Nintendo. No web, or whatever they do now. The kids played Good Guys and Bad Guys, all of them running though the woods and across the road without a care, Cops and Robbers, Kill the Commie, Cowboys and Indians. And of course the Cowboys always won. Look at the Marlboro Man.’

  ‘Yeah, but Interstate fucked him right up!’ shouts Lionel. ‘Killed him fair and square. I was eleven, saw it with my own eyes.’

  ‘Well, then look at the Wild West. You ever been on a reservation? It’s enough to break your heart.’

  ‘I rode past one on my way here, but I didn’t stop,’ says Gloria. ‘Somewhere in Oklahoma. Or maybe Michigan. There was a big wooden sign that said the name of the place but I forget it. Something Nation. All I remember is the fence. It seemed to stretch on for hours.’

  ‘A fence for what?’ says Black Jesus.

  Bea Two-Feathers sucks at her cigarette. Then she says, ‘A fence to keep in the sadness.’

  And that’s all she says, looking out the open window where she stands, waning, defiant, very pretty. Every inhale her delight. Every inhale her creeping death. A warm late summer breeze plays at the branches of the dogwood she loves. Robin in the grass. Dumpster at the edge of the lot. A thin diagonal wisp of hanging carcinogen easy to mistake as a summer cloud lingers far in the sky above, the faint spectre of a jet plane’s path, jet plane long gone by.

  ‘Will we leave something behind?’ says Bea at last.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ says the girl.

  The rain-dancer points to that fading plume in the sky. The stripper gets up from the bed and joins her at the window.

  ‘I don’t really know, Bea. I’m sorry. I wish I could say.’

  ‘Maybe there’ll be a trail left to show our steps when we’re gone. You know, Gloria? Like Hansel and Gretel in the book. Breadcrumbs. The turns we take. A fork in the road. The different ways home.’

  ‘I don’t think I really know what home even means.’

  ‘I used to think I did,’ says Bea. ‘Till I ended up in a HOME. Pretty funny, huh?’

  Gloria makes a small obligatory laugh and turns her head from the window to check on Lionel.

  He’s fast asleep on the woman’s bed. Lying on his side with his arms to his heart and his legs drawn up in that pose we all know, and knew, even before the first breath of air came to sting our lungs.

  ‘Is he okay?’ asks Bea.

  ‘Not right now. But I think he will be. I want to help him if I can.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘The military’s got him on some crazy dope. But I get the feeling it’s hurting him more than it’s helping.’

  ‘Poor kid. He doesn’t look like he’d harm a fly.’

  ‘I know what you mean. I don’t think we can even try and imagine what he’s been through.’

  ‘Hell on earth,’ Bea says and blows a thin mouthful of smoke through the open window. ‘Do you mind if I light a candle for him when you leave?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To ask the Great Spirit for healing. Some call it the Big Medicine.’

  ‘Sure. That would be nice.’

  ‘And one for your leg?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m okay.’

  ‘No you’re not. You’re just like me. You’d run yourself into the ground for everybody else before admitting you’re in the slightest bit of trouble.’

  ‘Okay, fine. Do one for me too,’ says the stripper. ‘But light his first.’

  Bea smiles and the two of them gaze out the window to the yard, the dogwood, the sky. Whatever ragged line the jet plane left in its wake is nearly gone now. A pale trace here, pale trace there.

  ‘Maybe home is a whole lot different from what we’ve dreamt it up to be,’ says the old woman, finished with her cigarette, her white braid frayed and blowing, a feather pinned to the back of her head. ‘It can’t just be a name painted on a mailbox. Or a mortgage paper. Or a new bedroom set from Sears. What if all it is is a place where we feel okay? Somewhere we can be whatever we want. And everyone we love is just a tin can telephone call away.’

  On their way back to the Dairy Queen, Gloria takes them on a detour. Turning
at the white church they make their way down the hill, across the tannery and up Mill Road along the creek. They go at a snail’s pace. No yarn to drag the soldier this time. In fact, he walks at her side, where she barely works the throttle. Cars pass them by and necks crane, some folks wave and some don’t.

  ‘Where are we going, Gloria?’

  ‘I want to take you down by the water.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m not really sure yet.’

  Half a mile later, she parks the moped in the roadside dirt and takes his hand and leads him down a littered path to an unmistakable Gay Paris landmark. The Swinging Bridge. An old-style narrow cable affair with a rotting wooden deck hanging thirty feet over the rushing creek below. It got its name because it swings in a good wind, and moans, and creaks as you step lightly across. Tales of young sex and death abound. Just before they get to it Lionel steps on a beer can and the sudden metal noise underfoot freaks him out.

  ‘It’s okay,’ says the girl, his hand in hers. ‘It’s just a piece of trash some moron left.’

  Halfway across the fabled span she halts their advance saying, ‘Wait.’

  ‘Wait for what? We better get across this crazy fucker thing before something happens.’

  ‘Just listen.’

  ‘I knew a kid who got caught between the boards one time and—’

  ‘Shhhh. Please. Just listen.’

  ‘Listen for what?’

  ‘Nothing in particular. Just sounds. Just life.’

  Thirty seconds later he says, ‘I hear you breathing.’

  ‘Lucky for me. What else?’

  The boy lifts his face, black shades gleaming off the water in the noonday sun.

  ‘The creek,’ he says. ‘It’s really moving.’

  ‘Can you see it in your head?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ smiles Gloria. ‘That makes me happy.’

  They stand here awhile. The bridge rocks gently, called to life by their movements, the slightest change in posture. This creekwater runs to the Hudson. The Hudson runs to the sea.

  ‘Gloria?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think I hear my heart.’

  Ten minutes later they’re sitting side by side at the water’s edge, their socks and boots on the stones, their pale feet in the cold stream. The sycamore seeds we call helicopters falling and spinning down into the current to dance away. They sit in silence. Then the fire whistle blows noon, its reliable and distant wail a built-in comfort to the boy. Twelve times it cries, the last one trailing off.

  ‘We gotta get her out of there,’ says Gloria.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bea Two-Feathers.’

  ‘Jailbreak?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘Gloria?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I got your back.’

  ‘Ditto kiddo.’

  Tracy makes a noise like a hurt dolphin and her drum-tight eyelids quiver, her hair flung wild on the pillow. She’s dreaming of home. The plastic music box in her tiny bedroom at Dad’s trailer with the perverted elf on top that twirls to the narcotic tempo of ‘O Night Divine’ when she winds it up. Maybe songs aren’t meant to be kept in boxes. And maybe girls aren’t either. A balmy wind comes into the room through a crack in the window, silent from the Gulf of Mexico, and through the wall she hears the TV say, ‘Seven out of ten Americans believe in some form of extra-terrestrial life.’ Then the TV says, ‘An Orlando mother drowns her four-year-old in a bathtub to protect a secret.’ Then later it says, ‘New study finds excess body fat linked to growing number of new cancer cases in this country. Obesity: trend or plague?’ Daddy can’t sleep. When he can’t sleep that’s when he comes in my room.

  Now she wakes in the loft, every ceiling fan spinning, the restless drone they make like locusts in the last days.

  Where’s Ross? she thinks, studying the big waterbed. He was right here when I fell asleep.

  Throwing aside the blanket and getting to her naked feet, she tiptoes towards the kitchen to get a drink of water. Wait. What’s that? She stops and rubs her sleepy eyes and stares dumbfounded at the thing that stands before her. It’s shaped like a person. An empty milk gallon for a head. Thin metal and melted plastic fused and manipulated, everything bent and skewed towards one deliberate end; to conjure this figure, to bring it to life.

  ‘Ross?’ she calls, the hesitation in her voice a new thing. She turns and looks to the bathroom door. It’s wide open. No water running. ‘Ross, are you in there?’

  No answer. The ceiling fans whir. The numbers on the digital clock by the bed are green. So is this girl come chasing fame. Turning back to the figure born overnight, she eyes its construction, its tortured posture, its parts.

  Hmm, that’s weird, she muses. Where have I seen all this stuff before?

  Then it clicks. These are the steel shelves and hard plastic trays that belong to the refrigerator, the innards of the big icebox humming there against the wall.

  Tracy looks around the loft one more time for her host. Then she heads for the fridge, skirting around the warped sculpture leaning in her path with a quick and athletic hop as if she fears the thing might somehow reach out and grab her.

  When she opens the refrigerator door she’s met with a bitter steam. And what she finds inside nearly makes her collapse, a hot wave through her brain, a sickness in her gut.

  ‘What are you doing in there?’ she says, her voice shaky. ‘Why are you in there, Ross?’

  And for the rest of her life she’ll not forget the naked man’s voice, nor his fetal pose, nor the look on his bluish face as it turned to address her, the rest of him Polaroid-still.

  ‘Mom? A fire’s coming. It starts in the forest. There’s a God for these things. Didn’t you know that? I know because I’ve seen his hooves. And how nimbly he steps. I used to choose the things he’d dance to. I used to say who’ll sing and who’ll not sing. But never mind that. How are you? Why were you gone so long? It’s okay. I’m just happy you’re here. Shhhhh. No time to waste. A forest fire is blind. And like all blind things it thrashes at the world. Firemen. Helicopters. I watch it eat them alive. Watch it spill into the freeway. Crackle in the dry trees. It eats through a skyscraper. It blows though a baby carriage. I can’t know how it starts. Only that it’s headed this way. And I burn. And I crackle and piss. I built a decoy while you slept. Quiet as a mouse. And came in here to hide where it’s cool. Maybe I’ll be okay here. If you really love me you’ll close the door.’

  Down in the street her eyes hunt for any kind of sign that will lead her to a bus stop, bus station. Halfway across Rose Avenue she hears Bebop’s recorder blowing, faint at first but closer as she goes. A tune to get girls out of boxes. A tune to lure out every rat.

  When she spies him swaying down by the coffee shop, the blue recorder to his lips, the tie-dyed turban towering atop his head, a faint smile graces her mouth. Craning her neck, Tracy lifts a hand and waves goodbye to the junky like a country-bound orphan might a new city friend. She doesn’t wait for him to wave back. Just turns away and keeps walking, fast as her lily-white legs will go.

  Down on Rose a bald kid lights a cigarette with a match. Further on two seagulls fight over half a burger on the pavement and a woman weeps into a cell phone, her make-up running down between the corners of her mouth. And in rolls the sea. Out rolls the sea.

  All through the night it rained. A fitful and violent downpour that kept Gloria drifting in and out of sleep, huddled in her unplugged electric blanket on the couch. The kind of rain that makes you feel lucky to have a roof over your head, and four walls, where the strange kinetic dervish of water and wind outside can’t get you, can’t hurt you.

  Then she hears a crash and turns her head from its hiding place in a crease between the cushion
s. Peering out the window she sees the hard rain still slanting down, and the big blue tarp that shelters the flea market blowing awry in the grey light before sunrise.

  Now she hears shuffling and muted curses from the back room. Emerging from their walk-in cooler turned honeymoon suite, Debbie and Joe go rushing though this cluttered main room and out the Dairy Queen’s front door like a pair of paramedics into a shopping mall after an earthquake.

  ‘Jesus Christ, not the porno playing cards I just scored!’ Gloria hears Deb shout. ‘Quick, grab ’em, Joe, they’re from the fifties!’

  Then she hears another sound. A different sound. It comes from upstairs. Lionel in his garret. Breathing in, she gets up from the couch and pulls her boots on and walks over to the ladder that leads to him and listens.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,’ is what it sounds like he’s saying. Over and over.

  ‘Lionel?’ she says softly up the ladder. ‘Are you okay?’

  She listens for a response but nothing comes. Just the creepy broken record above. ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.’

  Climbing up the ladder, her leg throbbing, Gloria thinks, He must be dreaming. And when she reaches the top and finds her bearings in this strange little room she stands here looking down at him in his narrow bed and knows it’s not a good dream.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I didn’t stop them,’ mutters the boy, his pale temple wet on the pillow, the sunglasses pinned to his face like a bad joke, Babar kicked to the floor.

  ‘Black Jesus,’ she says, lightly touching his foot. ‘Wake up, it’s just a dream.’ When he doesn’t stir she shakes him by the leg. ‘Rise and shine, soldier!’

  At this he springs up in his bed like a vampire in a B-movie, wrapping his hands around his chest as if it was freezing weather he woke to.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asks, his voice remote, brittle.

  ‘It’s me. Gloria. You’re safe now. It’s only a dream.’