A swarm of denominational Jesuses trampled New Age Jesus in their hurry to get to me. Catholic Jesus and Protestant Jesus argued the whole time. Baptist Jesus was dragging an enormous bathtub full of water behind him. The various Orthodox Jesuses were carrying tasty treats from Russia, Greece, Romania, and all over the world. Stern Jesuses, laughing Jesuses, Emergent Jesus and Emerging Jesus (like good and evil twins, I guess . . . but I can never remember which is which), a few Jesuses who barely fit the description like Universalist Jesus (dressed like Buddha, six arms like Shiva) and the six-inch-tall Bahai Jesus, and all of them wanted a piece of me. Health Nut Jesus came running out of the health section wearing tennis shorts and a headband.
I pulled away from them all and raced into the Purple Room, the mob of Jesuses on my heels. A few more Jesuses from the archaeology section joined us. One from the 1800s was strenuously disagreeing with another from the 1970s about whether the Hittites existed. A Jungian Jesus came barreling up from the philosophy section, Political Jesus and all his friends came from the politics section, and then the Military Jesus crowd joined in, loudly declaring their passionate approval of whoever was victorious in war. Gay and Lesbian Jesus came along too, assuring us that he didn’t care about sexual orientation and that he would gladly talk about it to the exclusion of any other topic.
There must have been fifty of them now, babbling, yelling, pushing, shoving. I ran down the stairs to the Rose Room, where the scientific Jesuses marched behind us, doing their best to prove their own existence. “Scientific evidence proves that Jesus exists and is God!” they shouted. Perpetually Angry Jesus shouted them back down. In the back of the crowd someone had found Feminist Jesus, and she was biting Patriarchal Jesus in the shoulder. He yowled in pain but wouldn’t hit a woman in public.
All of the children’s book Jesuses swarmed around us, their strange, incomplete stories and simplified theology shining through their white, simple faces. Their scars were hard to see, but they loved children and had a consistent message. “Obey your parents!” one of them screamed, while Liberation Theology Jesus screamed in frustration, “Parents should not create a lesser, unempowered class out of the children!” We burst through the automotive section and, like water spewing through a pipe, shot into the Orange Room.
CEO Jesus came running toward us, saying I wasn’t organized enough with my time and didn’t I want Jesus to bless my business. Feng Shui Jesus offered to rearrange my house so that the spirits would be pleased, and Cooking Jesus grabbed me by the arm and said, “If you follow my first-century dietary tips, you can live a long and happy life!” I shook him frantically and shouted, “You only lived to be thirty-three years old!”
We crashed like a tidal wave into the Gold Room. Some of the superhero Jesuses popped out of the graphic novel section in the Coffee Room: Super Jesus and Godman. “We’re strange visitors from another planet,” they cried. “Let us use our superior powers to help, you poor, backward earthling. Your primitive emotions and tiny problems baffle us, but we’ll help get the cats out of your trees.”
I tried to run through the Gold Room, but that’s where the mysteries, erotica, science fiction, and fantasy are kept. Aslan the Jesus Lion roared when he saw me. Alien Jesuses who want us to worship them waved their tentacles. Da Vinci Code Jesus pushed others aside, his convenient inability to see objective reality causing him to foam at the mouth and scream obscenities at Catholic Jesus. They were on all sides of me now, all clamoring for my attention, all angrily demanding that I respond to their questions, their needs, their desires. I was getting Jesus claustrophobia.
Footprints Jesus came up alongside me in the Blue Room and offered to carry me because he could see I was having a rough time. We wedged ourselves into the Green Room, and there on my left, past the Jesus Action Figures and the New Arrivals, where new Jesuses are manufactured every day, was the Northwest section. And there was Portland Jesus waiting for me, looking through a book of pictures of the Pacific Northwest. He looked up when he saw me. Another Jesus stood beside him, partly in shadows.
I was completely hemmed in by Jesuses. I tried to turn around but I couldn’t. A sense of dread fell on me as the Jesuses fell silent. I could see the exit onto Burnside and Tenth. It was across the room, but it might as well have been on the moon. I tried to move for it, but the Jesuses purposely blocked the way.
A figure stepped out of shadows, a diabolical smile on his face. It was Imaginary Jesus. “Now we have you where we want you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
It Takes a Village
“You,” I said.
“Us.” He pointed at Portland Jesus. “He and I, we’re the same, just in different outfits.” When I stared at him dumbfounded, he said, “Like a Barbie doll.”
As if to prove the point, Portland Jesus stuck his hand into his pocket and pulled out the Frog of Hate. I looked at it and then up into his face. “How could you do this to me? I wanted to bike on Sauvie Island. I wanted to go to the Humble Administrator’s Garden. I wanted to go to the Portland Zoo and ride the train and laugh at the polar bears together. You betrayed me.”
“You betrayed us,” he shouted. “You give us your friendship, you create us, sometimes you act like we’re God.” His face twisted into a sneer. “Then you start some ridiculous quest to find the real Jesus. He doesn’t exist. He was a man who lived and died and stayed dead, and now all that’s left is you playing shadow puppets.”
“That’s not true!”
“Join us, Matt, and we can rule all of Portland together.”
“No! I’ll never join you!” I tried to make a run for it, but they stopped me easily, seven or eight Jesuses pinning my arms to my side.
“I guess our only solution is to destroy you,” Imaginary Jesus said, but before he could explain the strange ontology of imaginary beings killing real creatures and the likely ramifications, the sound of an enormous bar fight broke out near the door. Suspecting angry businessmen just come from the cash-only Red and Black Café, I didn’t turn at first. Then the sound reached drunken punk band levels and I turned just as it escalated to polar-bears-being-chased-by-jet-planes decibels.
Pete stood near the entrance, straddling a large pile of defeated Jesuses. He had another by the robe in his left fist, and his right fist was destroying the milky white teeth of a Model Jesus. His left foot lashed out like justice, and then he flipped into the crowd, walking across their shoulders, heads, whatever got in his way before he descended into their midst, jabbing, biting, and kicking. He grabbed two of them by the beards and knocked their heads together. “Come on, kid!” he shouted. “This is fun, but I’m not doing it all day!”
Imaginary Jesus lunged for me, but I slipped away and ducked past Football Jesus. Then I saw Testosterone Jesus, who was watching the whole thing with a bemused expression on his face. “DOGPILE!” I yelled, and Testosterone Jesus’ face lit up. He started stacking Jesuses like cordwood. I jumped into the gap he had created and passed Pete, who ordered me to get out the door. As I skidded onto the pavement I saw my truck. Shane must have driven it partway around the block and left it here on the street. A police officer was writing a ticket for it.
“Not again!” I ran and jumped in. Daisy came flying up like brown lightning and leaped into the bed of the truck. The officer handed me a ticket and told me I had come just in time, that he had been about to call for a tow truck, and that my friend Shane had jumped into his own car and left this one idling in the middle of the street. I thanked him just as Pete ran out, threw himself across the hood, and jumped into the passenger seat. I hit the gas as the Jesus mob burst out of Powell’s. Farmer Jesus had handed them all pitchforks, and Caveman Jesus had discovered some torches.
I cranked the wheel hard and got us going west on Burnside again, and before long we were on the highway, the angry sound of imaginary Jesuses fading into the distance. Pete directed me toward Highway 26 and I shot toward the tunnel that led into Beaverton. “I think we lost them,” I said, but the
n I looked into my rearview mirror and saw something skimming above the pavement, gaining on us like a missile.
It pulled alongside us, a Jesus in dark robes riding on a broomstick, a lightning scar on his forehead. I pushed the truck harder and Daisy stumbled in the bed, braying for me to watch out. Broomstick Jesus bashed into the side of the truck and we scraped up against the wall of the tunnel. “I’ll get you, my pretty!” Jesus cackled. “And your little donkey, too!” I hit the brakes hard and he flew past us, but as he did, the sparks from his broom landed on the hood of my truck. Without warning, flames began to shoot up.
“Look out!” Pete yelled.
“Fire!” Daisy brayed.
“AAAAAAAAAH!” I lost control of the truck as we exited the tunnel and careened off the canyon wall. The truck burst into flaming protest, and Pete and I jumped out the driver’s side. We helped Daisy get down from the bed, and then we ran a little farther up the highway.
Daisy shook herself, dust and ash flying off her coat. “Get on,” she said. “We can’t walk the next few miles.” Pete got on first, and I got on behind him. Daisy began to run, the sound of her little hooves on the pavement ringing out across traffic. I looked behind us and could see an army of Jesuses coming through the tunnel, driving cars, flying, running, walking on water. A wind started, powerful and impossibly strong. The hood of my sweatshirt tried to strangle me, and I tucked it underneath my jacket.
“Some sort of weather Jesus,” Pete yelled back to me. Ahead of us, an SUV lifted from the road and crashed onto its side. “Hang on tight. Daisy’s going to run us through it!” Daisy reared up and pushed headfirst into the storm—in one rain-soaked, wind-whipped minute, we had crossed it. I could see the Murray exit ahead, the exit that led to my church. Daisy ran up the off-ramp and turned left. It looked like we were in the clear.
But as we crossed the overpass, an enormous Jesus lifted himself up beside us, his monstrous hand large enough to crush us. He bashed the overpass with a single blow and the ground shook, cracks forming on the pavement. “Ignore him,” Pete said, and Daisy leaped over a crack as the ground shook again. We weren’t far from my church. I could see the sign from the exit: Village Baptist Church. As we rushed into the foyer, Pete pulled the glass doors shut behind us. “They’re coming fast.”
A sign over the entrance to the auditorium said Prayer Labyrinth. Our worship pastor, Dean, had announced that Village was hosting a prayer labyrinth this week. I wasn’t sure what it was, but they had cleared out all the pews in the main sanctuary to make room for it. I hadn’t been planning to go into the labyrinth. Daisy nudged the door open with her nose and slipped into the darkness beyond.
“I don’t like labyrinths,” I said to Pete. “It’s like a maze . . . of prayer. It sounds simultaneously terrifying and boring.”
“What’s to be afraid of?” Pete asked.
“Well, this one time I went in a maze for Halloween and it was supposed to be scary but it wasn’t, and the walls were made out of black garbage bags, and we came around this one corner and there was a vampire with his cape made out of black garbage bags with his back to us so I didn’t see him until he turned around and said, ‘I vant to suck your blooooooood!’”
“There are no vampires in a prayer labyrinth,” Pete said.
“Okay, well, I also saw this move, Labyrinth, in which there was a bad guy who was the Goblin King and he was played by David Bowie. Creepy.”
“David Bowie is not in the labyrinth.”
“His hair was so white and . . . blow-dried. And he had on this weird purple outfit.” I shuddered. “And he walked on the walls.”
“Empty your pockets,” Pete said.
“Why?”
A shuddering blow came against the glass door and I could see the Jesuses pressed up against the glass, straining to get in like bargain shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving. I quickly emptied my pockets and handed the contents to Pete. I grabbed for the door handle and Pete hissed, “Take off your shoes!”
I kicked them off and slipped into darkness. I felt a jostling behind me, as if others had pushed their way in with me, but as the door shut the last glimmer of light went with it, and I couldn’t see anything. I waited a moment as my eyes adjusted to a darkness so deep it glowed a warm, purplish red. A diffused aura of light came from the entrance to the maze, and an arrow in masking tape pointed the way. I walked toward it and plunged into the narrow passageway, my fingers trailing along the walls. “Hello?” I said. “Daisy? Scary vampires? Jesus?” But there was no answer, just the sound of strangers moving nearby in the dark.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
In the Labyrinth
Despite Pete’s assurances, I suspected foul play in the labyrinth. It was dark, and experience told me that vampires attacked people when they were alone in the dark. Well, not experience exactly, but my friend Television had told me about it often enough. Luckily I had read quite a few fables in my time and I knew what to do.
“Vampires,” I said quietly, “I know you are lurking there in the dark, waiting to pop my jugular.” I listened quietly for a response, my left hand covering my neck. “But I have something to tell you. There are some other people behind me in the maze, and they have way better blood than mine. If you attack me, they’ll hear and run away, because I will scream like a little girl.” I paused again and listened. Silence. “I eat a lot of garlic,” I told the darkness. “My wife roasts whole heads of garlic and I eat them like candy.”
A light flickered ahead of me. A familiar, bluish light. A television. I hurried down the hallway and entered a small chamber, about ten feet in diameter. A television set was propped up on the ground, playing only static. I knelt down and put my hand on the side of the television. “Poor TV,” I said. “Are you only able to pick up analog signals?”
“That’s you,” a voice said from the darkness, and I jumped up into what I hoped was a terrifying kung fu stance. “Why are you standing like that?” the voice asked. She stepped out into the light. It was Daisy. “You still looking for the bathroom?”
I collapsed in relief. It was only a talking donkey. I lovingly caressed the television. “What do you mean when you say that this noble device is just like me?”
“I mean that your head is full of static. Stuffed full of television and radio and comic books and noise. You say you can’t hear Jesus, but it’s because you have earbuds in all the time. You’re afraid of silence. You’re afraid to let even a strong signal through.”
I frowned. “I’m not afraid. I get bored.”
“Tell me about your workout routine,” Daisy said.
“It’s not really a routine as such. It’s more of a workout exception.”
“Nevertheless, what do you do when you go to the gym?”
“First I ride the stationary bike.”
“Why the bike?”
“So I can read at the same time. Of course, four televisions are on, and I can plug into the sound, so I keep my headphones handy. And the gym always plays oldies for some reason, maybe because Krista and I got a discount to join the senior citizen gym. So sometimes I listen to my own music.”
“So for that half an hour you read, watch four televisions, and listen to music.”
“I would surf the net if I could figure out how.”
“No one is that bored,” Daisy said. “You get in the car and turn on the radio. You take a book with you to the bathroom. You listen to your iPod while you do yard work. You watch television and write on your blog at the same time. When exactly is Jesus supposed to have a conversation with you?”
“If he talked, I would listen.”
Daisy shook her head. “No, Matt. He is talking. You’re not listening. You’re trying to avoid him by filling up your every moment. You need to clear some of the static.”
As she spoke, about ten people crowded into the room. I looked around. They were my Jesuses, the ones I listened to or spent time with most consistently. Portland Jesus was there and Legalist Jesus from wa
y back when and Freedom Jesus who doesn’t care if you sin because he’s so forgiving (I met him when I ditched Legalist Jesus) and Judge Jesus and Foxhole Jesus and Binary Jesus and several others.
“These came from different places. Lies you’ve believed.” Daisy pointed her snout at Unforgiving Jesus. “Lies that someone told you or you told yourself. Some of them are diabolical, and some are self-inflicted. A few are even well-intentioned. They’re constructs that tell you what Jesus will say or do, how he feels, what he thinks, without ever having to get to know him.”
I looked at them carefully. I had been working so hard to be rid of them, but here in the dark they brought a sense of security. I could turn back now and emerge into the light and never worry about all this again. If God wanted to break through with a message, he could do that. He had done it before.
“What happens if I go deeper into the labyrinth?” I asked her, straining to see through the darkness beyond the television set.
“He’s in there,” she said. “He’s waiting at the center of the maze to talk to you.”
I thought about this for a minute, my fear battling it out with my desire to see the real Jesus and get some answers. I knew that if I walked away now, I’d be back in a few months, trying to work up my courage again. I couldn’t run from the real Jesus forever. “Then I’m going to go deeper.”
“First you should sit here quietly,” she said, “and try to hear the signal through the noise.”
I sat down with my back to the television, facing the dark. I closed my eyes and listened. A million thoughts rushed into my head and I tried to set them aside as I struggled to listen. “God,” I whispered, “cancel all this static. I want to hear you.”
I could hear the high whine of the television set beneath the sound of the static. I reached over and clicked it off. I could hear Daisy breathing beside me and the restless shifting of the imaginary Jesuses, who didn’t need to breathe at all. And somewhere beyond that, I could hear a distant voice, an echoing whisper from within the labyrinth. It said, “Come.”
Imaginary Jesus Page 14
