The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [29]
You even predicted the date of your own death.
Twenty-five years later, your casket was opened so your remains could be moved to a better tomb. The sweet smell of roses! Your body lay incorrupt. One friar secretly removed a rib, hid it under his habit, but immediately the bone radiated heat. That night in his cell, the heat became so intense that the friar decided to confess and surrender the bone. He kept just a fragment, but the fragment emanated just as much heat, and soon he was forced to confess again and surrender what he had taken.
Oh, Martín, Scorpio boy, you had no fear of darkness. But I’m afraid. The Jesus freaks—they scare me. When they close their eyes, what God do they see? When they kneel and pray, do they also rise? Do they envision themselves undercover agents for social justice and transformation, as you did? Why then the frenzied hatred? Why the threats of damnation? Why the obsession with sin? Why the reaching hands? Oh, Martín, make them blind to me.
Chapter 11
REFUGE
“Been a helluva long time since anybody came through this way,” the old minister chuckles as I step over the threshold into his basement. He’s got a white beard, alcohol-rosy cheeks.
I follow him past shelves of boxes and books, old papers and broken radios, up unfinished wood stairs, through a laundry room, and into a bright yellow tiled kitchen. The glare of refuge.
When the old minister smiles, he looks like some elfin folk singer. “Read all aboutcha,” he says, smacking his lips. “Fellow who works over at the food closet brought the newspaper. Big story, huh? Whoo-eee.”
I shrug, trying to look blasé, but surely my humiliation is obvious.
“Y’hungry?” He rubs his hands together.
“Starving,” I admit.
At a butcher block table, the old minister cuts thick slices of white bread, Monterey jack cheese, Italian salami.
It’s been years since I let red meat pass my lips, but a girl should eat what she’s served.
He sets the sandwich in front of me on a chipped yellow plate, sits down across from me, and rubs his beard. “Bourbon?”
“Sure.”
He pours two good-sized glasses of Rebel Yell, knocks his own back like it’s water. His white cotton undershirt is sweat stained and dirt streaked.
I feel disoriented, weirdly shy without my troupe, feet cold in my boots. I chew on my bread and salty-dry meat. “Aren’t you going to ask me about my hysterical hypochondria?”
He laughs. “Damned if I care about that.” He leans back in his chair, stretches his thick legs. “Listen, kid, I’ve got a tree to plant. Make yerself at home.”
Home. The concept seems foreign. I watch through the uncurtained window as the old minister works under the mean Sacramento sun, forcing his shovel into the earth. The potted lemon tree behind him droops slightly to one side, looks like it could use the new rooting ground. Imagine that—having a piece of earth to sink your toes into, to hang onto.
The bourbon creeps down my throat and into my bloodstream like a poison, like an elixir. This bright kitchen seems states away from the pulsing mob back at the church. I trace the periphery of a tile on the wall, try to tell myself I overreacted, that maybe that heavy crowd wasn’t so scary after all, but when I close my eyes, all I can see are those reaching hands, the bodies closing in on me. I finish my drink, take another bite of my sandwich, but it’s useless. I can’t get the taste of betrayal out of my mouth. Metallic.
What if our characters aren’t measured by the way we live day-to-day? What if we’re judged instead at moments like these, angry and running? My jaw tightens.
The old minister steps back inside, wiping sweat from his forehead with a cloth handkerchief, and I try to imagine him as a young minister: dark hair, clean shaven, earnest-faithful. He sits down