Black Jesus Read online

  ‘Hi Bea,’ says Gloria, come among them.

  ‘How you feelin’, Bea?’ says Black Jesus.

  ‘Can’t complain. I saw on the TV yesterday a thing about a man who put a toaster oven in his mother’s bubble bath ’cause he couldn’t afford her medicine.’

  ‘Don’t be such a bummer, Ma,’ yells Joe.

  ‘How’s your breathing?’ asks Gloria.

  ‘Just fine,’ lies Bea. ‘I feel like Raquel Welch. The Big Medicine’s on my side. It’s gonna take more than a doomsday verdict from some Albany quack to get rid of me.’ Then quietly to Gloria, ‘You got a light?’

  ‘I heard that, Ma,’ says Joe.

  Glancing over at the tall cop, Gloria meets his eyes and tilts her head and shrugs her shoulders and fishes in her pocket and pulls out the Trade Center Memorial lighter she stole in another world and hands it lovingly to Bea.

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ says the old woman, holding the soft pack of smokes in her mitten and shaking one loose into her mouth.

  ‘Keep it,’ says the stripper.

  At Debbie’s urging they took an umbrella from an old pickle barrel filled with such things for sale and crossed the highway and picked up the trail behind the stone church and followed it haltingly down to the creek. Stones underfoot, worn roots that lace the way, laid bare by time.

  With the closed umbrella flung over her shoulder like some punk-rock Mary Poppins, Gloria stops and steps lightly up and helps her soldier onto the rotting planks of the Swinging Bridge.

  Halfway across, his hand in hers, any danger tempered by the way they feel, he marvels, ‘Listen to the water.’

  The hard autumn rains have turned the Kaaterskill into a violent thing. Cool and clear in the summer months, it goes brick-red this time of year, kicking up earth as it twists down the mountain, brick-red as the faces of the half-naked race that fished its banks in the long ago, wild paint on cheek and brow, rough jewelry and furs, dance-fires waiting as night fell, songs to the rich earth, songs of birth and blood. All before the Marlboro Man drew his gun.

  ‘That’s the first time I heard it that way.’

  ‘The Creek?’ she says.

  ‘Yeah, it’s like music,’ says the boy.

  Dusk finds them on the edge of town. There’s an abandoned nuns’ camp here where, in the years between the world wars, troubled street kids from New York City would come spend their summers in these woods under the hard, loving eyes of the Gay Paris Sisters. Upon the wide sweep of camp ground a few ruins remain. The long screened-in cafeteria with its slab foundation and failing roof. The little bygone chapel/playhouse where they all would sing. The olde world pump house. The swings.

  And here they swing, their charged legs working double time in the falling light, November’s sun lost in the woods behind their backs to birth a rough pink seam where the mountain meets the sky.

  ‘Weeeee-hoooo! I haven’t done this since my balls were bald,’ yells the Marine. ‘Never felt this good.’

  The rain did come, as prophesied by the DJ, but only a passing shower. On the long walk here they felt the first drops hit and Gloria popped open the umbrella and the two of them huddled beneath it as the rain came and went.

  Now the wet ground smells alive. And the wind inhabits their faces and hair as they swing, the arcs they travel hanging kinetic in the dusk, mysterious even to them. The speed at which they move. The way their paths cross in the air. The loud wind. The rusty frame moaning under their weight. The chains that hold them creaking as daylight dies.

  ‘Maybe I’ve always been blind.’

  ‘What?’ calls the girl as she swings into the future, craning her neck back to find him. ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘Maybe I’ve been blind all my life.’

  Walking home along the highway in the dark, a few tired streetlamps to guide them, Gloria pulls Lionel White into the empty lot beside Shakespeare’s Bar & Grill.

  Cracked asphalt at their feet, pale dandelions. The moon a swollen penny overhead. Fresh world after the rain. Wet leaves. Wet hair. Wet road.

  There are maps in the night sky that might help us know where we come from. And there are rotting maps in the glove box of Interstate’s ancient rig that falls to ruin in the field behind the bar. Every known ribbon of highway therein. But will these highways lead us home? Roaming charge. Self-storage unit. Meth lab. New kind of war. We’re slashing prices, all year-end stock must go! Identity theft. Tanning hut. Reality show. Toxic asset. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There are six pharmacies on one street in the promised land. But is there balm in this land?

  The stripper touches his face. ‘Wanna dance?’

  ‘No thanks,’ he says.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’d feel like a homo.’

  Gloria laughs, her hot breath flying off into the cold air, her fingers letting fall the umbrella so she can reach for the small of his back, her belly to his.

  Till they rock softly in the empty lot, his maimed cheek against hers, her palm on his sweatshirt, his young heart inside, a faint metronome to set the tempo of their lost waltz.

  This is how they’ll mend. This is how they’ll dance the night away. Dance clean the darkness. Darkness inside, darkness out.

  Till she hums. A song to patch the holes. The ones that gape. Ten miles to the east stands a Super Wal-Mart, biggest in the state, and it hums too, all day and night, weird and incessant. But they don’t hear it. Not these kids. Not tonight. Not in Gay Paris. Where the red creek runs. Where a trailer lies burnt and rusting on its bank. Where cornfields stand withering and sere. Where a stoplight changes color forever and swings in the wind like a hanged witch. And a coke dealer taps his foot as he rigs his scale. And a boom box plays soft hits, yesterday’s favorites.

  What happened to the twentieth century? Where did it go? Is time just a plastic explosive? Did we splinter to the four winds? Are we doves when we close our eyes? Are we killers when we sleep? Do we frighten easy? Do we shake when the phone goes dead?

  We who are each but a pixel, and horny for many things, and smaller than a stone on the beach, and just as beautiful, just as coarse.

  What are we headed for? How does it all play out? Will something come and swallow us one still winter’s day? Will we dance down a scary rain? A dollar-store pestilence? A blinding flash of light? A pale horse no soft hit can soothe? I can feel it coming in the air tonight. I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life. I was there and I saw what you did. Saw it with my own two eyes.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Page Song

  4 ‘Islands in the Stream’

  Words and music by Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb and Robin Gibb

  © Copyright 1983 Gibb Brothers Music (66.66%)

  Used by permission of Music Sales Limited.

  All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

  76, 103 ‘We Will Rock You’

  Words and music by Brian May

  © 1977, Reproduced by permission of Queen Music Ltd/ EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London W8 5SW.

  85–6 ‘Private Dancer’

  Words and music by Mark Knopfler

  © Copyright 1984 Straitjacket Songs Limited.

  Used by permission of Music Sales Limited.

  All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

  97–8 ‘Shooting Star’

  Words and music by Paul Rodgers

  ©1974 (Renewed) WB Music Corp. (ASCAP) and BADCO Music Inc. (ASCAP)

  All rights administered by WB Music Corp.

  104 ‘Singin’ In The Rain’

  Words and music by Nacio Brown and Arthur Freed

  © 1929, Reproduced by permission of EMI United Partnership Ltd, London W8 5SW

  118 ‘Oh You Pretty Things’

 
Words and music by David Bowie

  © 1971, Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London W8 5SW

  119 ‘Something to Talk About’

  Words and music by Shirley Eikhard

  © 1985, Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London W8 5SW

  160 ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’

  Words and music by Ritchie Cordell

  © 1977, Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing (WP) Ltd, London W8 5SW

  165, 183 ‘In the Air Tonight’

  (Collins)/Philip Collins Limited/Imagem Music © 1981.

  177–8 ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)’

  Words and music by Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart

  © Copyright 1983 D’N’A Limited.

  Universal Music Publishing MGB Limited.

  Used by permission of Music Sales Limited.

  All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

  All reasonable effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of all extracts used in this work. Any copyright holder who has not been acknowledged is asked to contact Allen & Unwin in order that the necessary permissions be requested and relevant alterations made.