American Savior (22 page)

Jesus was sitting up front with my brother. As if he knew where he was heading, he told the driver to turn here, turn there, guiding us, it seemed to me, deeper and deeper into the wilderness. I hoped we’d started with a full tank of gas.

And then, at last, ninety minutes after we’d set out, Jesus had the driver pull off the road into a sort of picnic area. It was run by a conservation group, the sign said. One by one, we piled out of the air-conditioned bus into the terrible heat. The driver unloaded a few coolers with cold drinks and sandwiches in them. Jesus asked us to take something to eat and drink and then seat ourselves at the tables, but he drank nothing and paced back and forth in the blistering sun with his hands behind his back. After he’d given us a moment to arrange ourselves he stopped pacing and turned to face us.

“I wanted,” he said and then paused and looked up into the white-hot sky as if he were asking his divine father and mother for inspiration. “I wanted to change the surroundings, get us out of hotel rooms and into the good fresh air.” He paused again, and it almost seemed he was expecting us to voice complaints about the heat, or about the interruption of our promised half day of rest. No one said a word. “I myself have always liked hot weather, for one thing. And, for another, I wanted to ask your opinion, in private, as it were, on why we are doing so poorly.”

There were stunned seconds of silence, and then Wales said, “Poorly? We’re up eight points in today’s poll. Given the big head start the other two had, the money gap, the bigger staffs, I think we should all be pleased as can be.”

Jesus looked at him as if he’d just said north was south. He was standing with his sandaled feet apart, hands in the pockets of his shorts, his eyes slightly hooded against the brightness (unlike the other adults, he never wore sunglasses). “Everybody should be voting for me,” he said. “Stab thinks so, and I agree.”

My brother pushed out his lower jaw and smiled.

But Wales looked worried. “Everybody? Nobody gets everybody’s vote. Except in Uruguay or someplace. Uzbekistan.”

“I am not an ordinary candidate.”

“Agreed, of course,” Wales said. He had taken off his sunglasses now to show that, for once, he was making eye contact. He seemed to me, as the campaign manager, more than a little defensive.

“Have I done something wrong?” Jesus asked him.

“No. A couple of strategic missteps. The remark about assault weapons didn’t play well in Wyoming, that type of thing.”

“Then why isn’t everybody for me?”

“Some of them are Jewish,” my dad piped up. I think he meant this as a joke, but at times his sense of humor was lost on everyone but himself. This was one of those times. Jesus didn’t smile. My father’s chuckle drooped like a sunflower at midnight. “I mean, I guess I mean that some people are not predispositioned to accepting you. Your name is kind of … loaded. It divides people.”

My mother jabbed him with an elbow.

“They expect you to do miracles,” I said, partly, I think, because I was feeling bad for my father. “More miracles, I mean.”

“I am not going to.”

“Why not?” Ada Montpelier asked. “You did a big one for us. Why don’t you do the same thing for somebody else?” She was a nice woman, really. Not the sharpest mind in the world, but she doted on Dukey Junior and treated Dukey Senior with more kindness than some of us believed he merited, and she was always the first to get to work when it came time to clean up the pizza boxes and used chopsticks.

“I’ll second that,” the normally reserved Norman Simmelton said.

“It would be too easy,” Jesus told them. “People would vote for me because of the miracles, just as, in the old days, some of them believed in me only because of the miracles. I want them to vote for me because of my
ideas,
because of my mother’s
experience —
as a mother, a woman, a household leader—don’t those things count for anything anymore?” He looked at all of us but did not seem to expect an answer. “I want them to
vote for me because I would make the best president, not because I can cure a blind woman in a Montana church or something.”

“Then there’s going to be doubt,” my dad said.

“You are speaking for yourself, Arnie.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I admit it. You know how I feel about you, I just draw the line at the God stuff. Look, people are made different. Two people can go to the same movie and one likes it and one doesn’t. That’s why we have Republicans and Democrats, Jews and Christians.”

“Wrong and right,” my mother added, with a note of sarcasm that was unusual for her. It seemed clear to me that working on the campaign had increased the stress in their marriage.

“Part of the problem is you haven’t appeared on any of the big interview shows,” Zelda said, trying to diffuse things.

“For example?” Jesus asked her.

“Popopoffolous.”

Jesus put his hands up near his head as if he were making fun of Roger Popopoffolous’s hair, which tended to look like he’d climbed out of bed three minutes before his show started.

“Or Spritzer,” Zel suggested.

“Spritzer is a character,” Jesus blurted out. “Loves drama.”

“What about
Meet the Media
?” Ezzie asked.

“Bobby Biggs? Biggs, I would do, if you think it would make a difference.”

“I think you should do them all,” Zelda said. “I’ve been saying that right along. All of the above plus NPR, public television, Fox, Linneament.”

“Dukey,” Jesus turned to our resident tough guy, “Do you wish to weigh in?”

“I don’t know any of these dudes,” Dukey admitted, with a sheepish glance at his wife. “Nobody I know watches them. What about
Survivor,
is that still on?”

“What about
Ultimate Fighting,
” I could not stop myself from saying, though I was glad, after a few seconds, that no one seemed to have heard.

“I shall go on Bobby Biggs’s show,” Jesus said. “Anna Songsparrow will do Popopoffolous. Walesy will go on Spritzer.”

“Lenny Queen?” Dukey suddenly burst out. “He does presidents, don’t he?”

“You do Queen,” Jesus said, pointing at him.

“Me?”

“You’ll be great,” Ezzie told him. “Just be yourself.”

I thought we were quickly approaching the point where we were being too nice.

“Mr. and Mrs. Thomas will go on Linneament, the divisive one, the anger monger.”

“What about me?” Stab said. “What do I go on?”

Jesus did not seem to hear. “I am a perfectionist, I admit it,” he said. “I am not pleased with an eight-point lead. Eight points does not suffice with me.”

“We’ll work harder then,” Wales said, and the rest of them chimed in with nods and yes-sounding noises. Everyone but me. And pretty much everyone but me and Stab and Zelda and the reclusive Simmeltons, I noticed, had been singled out to do an interview. And I had more media experience than all of them combined. It hurt, I have to admit that.

But then Jesus said, “You are all free to head back on the bus and relax and rest up until the rally at five. I can handle the press on my own, don’t worry about it.… Russ, let’s you and me take a walk.”

“But the bus,” I said.

“We will hitchhike back. Do not fear.”

“What about me?” Stab said.

This time Jesus heard him, and I was glad. “I have something special in mind for you, my best friend. Special information. For now, go back with the others and make sure everyone gets home safe. You are acting director of security until your brother gets back.”

“Yes, God.”

Z
ELDA KISSED ME
as if I had done, or was about to do, something special for the campaign or for the world. Mom chipped in with a
warm hug, and my father came over and shook my hand hard, with the other hand on my shoulder and a lot of eye contact. Between all that and the way the others were looking at me before they turned to climb the steps of the bus, well, I might have been saying good-bye before heading off to Parris Island for Marine boot camp. The bus rumbled off, leaving us in the middle of the desert without any wheels. Jesus and I studied its progress until it was a spot on the horizon, and then he put an arm around my shoulders and we walked into the wilderness.

“I assume you have a plan for getting us back to the resort,” I was dumb enough to say.

“O Russ of little faith.”

We walked. I sweated and watched the ground for snakes, but he was lost in thought again. We went along another few dozen steps without speaking. “You seem agitated,” I said. “It’s not like you.”

“It’s nothing. Just that, the last time I went out into the desert, some bad character gave me trouble. This time I wanted my chief of security along.”

“So there is a devil then. I mean….”

“Ignorance,” he said. “Ignorance. Arrogance. Egotism.”

“Not an actual evil spirit, though?”

“Not with any power that worries me, particularly.”

“But you just said—”

“I was joking. I am untouchable, unhurtable. So are you.”

“Why doesn’t it feel that way, then? And why do you even need a security chief?”

“Because, as I once told you, we are locked in a dream.”

I thought about that for a minute. “Let me guess,” I said. “You have the key, and I don’t.”

He smiled. “We both have it. I know how to use it, you do not … not yet, anyway. At the instant of death, if your mind is pure, still, calm, if you have been kind to others, if you have been selfless enough, then you step free of the dream forever, and, in doing so, step free of pain and fear, and you move into a much more pleasant realm of existence.”

“Heaven,” I suggested.

“A sort of heaven, yes.”

“Good to hear. What about hell, then?”

“You make your own hell. You, not the devil.”

“But who would want to?”

He laughed; it was not a happy sound. “You are a strange and masochistic race. I can provide examples, if you’d like. Let’s see, which chapter in the history book should we begin with?”

“All right. I’m just trying to, you know, slip out of the grasp of ideas I was brought up with.”

“Good. That is the whole point and purpose of your existence. Old ideas, bad memories, regret, doubt, fear … imagine all that as the devil in the desert, tempting you. Your job is to cast him away.”

“We used to wonder why he tempted you. I mean you, of all people. Seems like a losing proposition.”

“There was no ‘him.’ It was metaphorical. I allowed myself to be human. You people do not escape pain, you do not escape death, or temptation … I wanted to experience it all.”

“Thirst, at the end,” I said, “if I remember right.”

“Are you hinting?”

“A glass of water would be nice right about now.”

He squeezed me against him, then let go. It felt like a gesture a loving father might make with a son who was struggling to figure his way through adolescence. “I imagine you noticed I did not assign you any TV or radio duties.”

“I noticed.”

“Hurt your feelings?”

“A little.”

“You speak the hard truths,” he said. “You have your father’s strength of character.”

I almost said, “You, too,” but managed to hold my tongue. By that point I had sweat dripping into my eyes, and I was glancing this way and that hoping to see a shady spot where we might take a break. Nothing. Cactus, dry gray stones, mountains in the distance; the rest was sand and sky and rattlesnake nests.

We walked on in silence until Jesus said, “I had the feeling you wanted to say something to me back there in the picnic area, but you were holding back.”

“Well, I’m not the press person. And I’m not the campaign director.”

“No matter. I want your advice.”

“Well, I think putting Dukey on the
Lenny Queen Show
is a risk.”

“What is the worst that could happen?”

“The worst that could happen? Queen could slip and say something Dukey finds offensive and Dukey could flip out on national television. I can see the headlines:
ADVISOR TO JESUS JAILED ON FELONY ASSAULT CHARGES
.”

Jesus smiled. Though he had what might be described as a sunny and upbeat personality, he was not an easy guy to make laugh, but I could see I’d almost managed it.

“When you are free of the dream and united with God,” he said, after a moment, and I was surprised to hear him use the word, “you have to be a master of balance. Gentle and firm, hard and soft, masculine and feminine, ferocious and forgiving.”

“Ying and Yong,” I said, because I knew something about the Eastern stuff.

“Exactly. Whatever else his failings might be, Dukey is a man of deep loyalties, and I appreciate that.”

“All right.”

“What we do not want is to look like everybody else, Russ. I came down the first time because humankind had gotten set in its ways. All those ritual sacrifices, all that stoning, all the rules. I was trying to break you people out of that, out of the dream. And I am trying to do the same thing here. The political talk shows—the campaigns themselves, really—they’re infected with polished spin doctors. I mean, in actual fact, what does one’s ability to perform well in sixteen debates have to do with the act of governing? It’s just verbiage, positioning, jousting. People listen to that for a while, and then they stop paying attention. I am trying to shake them up, get a real, true dialogue going again, get people to think in a fresh spirit, and care about something other than their own supposed security.”

“So far, so good, in the shaking people up area,” I told him. “Though I have to say there’s a good chance Hurry Linneament is going to chew my mom and dad up and spit them out.”

“You’ll be surprised,” he said, “but I did not get you out here to talk strategy.”

“You got me out here to sweat off twenty pounds,” I said, and then he did laugh, a gentle, happy laugh that made me feel good.

“No, I got you out here to tell you how everything works.”

When he said those words I felt a shiver go across my skin, a desert spider running up my backbone.

“Do not be afraid,” he said.

Another big shiver. I tell you, they were the two worst things anyone has ever said to me.

“Okay,” I managed to squeak out, and then I cleared my throat for a few seconds while I was trying to get up the courage to speak again. “Okay … but … and I say this with all respect, you know, for your judgment, and so on. But, if you were going to share the secrets of the universe with someone, well, I mean….”