Page 45 - WTP Vol. VI #4

his lap, small now. Beagle size.”
“Yeah. I’m free today. I’ll stop over for the truck and mud.”... ~
~~
Five days pass. No call. It’s Sunday, so Jesus and I I get the call Tuesday afternoon. Jesus in the form drive out to The Living Room, an evangelical of a goat stands up. His ears are pricked listen- church housed within the warehouse of an old ing. I keep the phone tight against my ear to keep furniture store. When it was a furniture store, him from hearing Sam, the contractor I work for. it was also called The Living Room. They never Here’s what Jesus hears:
changed the sign. “God’s will,” they say. “Meant to be,” they say. And that’s what it’s like for most of us. Born again. Like the building. A place for selling manifestations of the material world. Like how I was selling myself. “To the devil,” they say. But not anymore. It’s a house of God. And me, I’m housing God, not the devil. And I see his son,
“Hello.”... “Yeah.”... “Yeah.”...
“Jesus in the form of a goat sits on
“Oh, come on.”...
“Well ain’t that something. I was over there last week. Leaking sink, you say. Already fixed. But there’s holes in the ceiling.”...
“It’s coincidence is all. Like I had something to do with it. Come on, man. Come on.”...
Christ, in the form of a goat.
I skip the QuikStop. Too much judgement there. It’s bad enough having to ride over with Jesus, who won’t sit down. He’s standing the whole damn ride, and no matter how many times I say, “If we crash you’re flying straight through the window,” he doesn’t sit down. Doesn’t take the hint. He stares at me with big black eyes, chewing cud. Except it isn’t his cud because blood drips down his chin so heavy it soaks his goatee.
I push through the front door and hear the rock music from the stage in the corner, a five-piece set with the volume cranked up. Women are in the aisles speaking tongues, and the minister in
a white suit with a microphone is calling out to lost souls who haven’t found Him yet, “God have mercy! Jesus be praised! God have mercy!” Alco- holics. Users. Woman beaters. Bad fathers. Bad sons. Sluts. Whores. The unemployed and not looking. Criminals without rap sheets. Some with rap sheets. Crooks. Beggars. The abused. The mishandled. The dropouts. The fired. The broke- down with nothing to lose. Lives not worth a shit. Not to themselves at least. Ourselves, I should say. Not to ourselves. But to Him. That’s what the preacher teaches us. To Him, we’re worth some- thing. And that’s why He provides such a beauti- ful church with a real rock band. Before I reach the aisle, I stop at the donation bin. I drop a ten dollar bill through the slot and find my usual seat in the fifth row at the end of the aisle.
We pass the place where I threw the wrench. I threw it after the mudding job last week because it weighed so much. Fifty pounds is far too heavy for a wrench. And besides, it’s Sam’s anyway, and he didn’t notice it missing from the toolbox in the back of the pickup.
We get there and Jesus hops out the truck, acting as if he’ll follow me inside.
“Get,” I say. “Get back. Don’t you follow me!”
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