I heard when I was young that Jesus came to America, but I don’t believe a word of it.
Jesus wouldn’t come to America. He’d go somewhere where people need help.
Africa, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, some place totally riddled with poverty where the only bits of peace conceivable are the negotiations made by their prime ministers or kings or whatever the hell they are.
Not America.
Nothing against the Mormons, I met one I really liked awhile ago.
Not saying their beliefs aren’t a bit crazy, because I still think they are. To come to America when you’re Christ is like going to an electronics outlet when you’re looking for groceries.
Or something like that.
Anyway, you can take the crazy out of a person but you can’t take the crazy from the religion.
I met her when it was raining sleet and hail that was turning into snow. It was dreadful weather. Snow and ice in late April, a sure sign of the times.
I’m Catholic so I’ve never been much of a Resurrection Christian, always more of a Cross kind of guy. When rain and sleet falls in April and turns to snow, it’s because this tiny town did something terrible.
“You’re not from around here,” I said to her.
“What makes you say that?” She asked, cocking her head.
“Because you’re not,” I said. I was assured in myself. She was definitely not from these parts.
“Do you know where I am from?” She wondered.
I shrugged. “Not here.”
--
It was a play, one I’d watched a million times.
Some pathetic joint in a small town just North of where I live. She drug me over there because she said I’d love the way it was new and fresh.
I watched it, watched her watch, understood that even though she was Mormon she was right. I really enjoyed the fresh new way the cast did it.
So I brought her home and kissed her goodnight and never called her.
There was an old man one day who had a heart attack. It was in the papers, in the Obits. He had died in the morning when he went to get his mail.
He was seventy-nine, right about the good time for dying on your way to get mail.
So death can come and go, just like that.
Does it have no preference? I wonder that. If I was sixty, twenty, fourteen years old, if it wanted me would it find me just as easy as the next person?
Can death treat a person to a special demise? Let them off the hook because they are rich?
Christian?
Mormon?
I don’t like to think much anymore.
Every time I think I just end up retracing steps I never took. It’s like I had a path, a yellow brick road laid before me, but this nagging voice in my head keeps telling me to take the route untraveled.
Every once in a while I think about the Mormon girl who was absolutely beautiful.
I looked back at a picture of her I had on my camera phone, and she is really, honestly beautiful.
I don’t know. Don’t like to think much anymore.
--
It was three months exactly since I never called her when I picked up the phone and dialed seven numbers plus one and the area code. She lived pretty far away. So it was long distance. I used a phone card, though.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hey,” I said.
Conversation was stale, but the chemistry was strong. I don’t know if that makes any sense, which it probably doesn’t. But Jesus didn’t come to America either. Maybe if I believe in something it doesn’t matter if it’s right.
Who cares, right?
Who cares.
-
Once upon a time there was a boy who lived alone and walked in gray September and did not feel a thing.
His name is me, but God knows I could be everybody.
The old man is dead and the girl who is Mormon has come to town and she will be arriving shortly. She got her mail this morning the same way the old did, only her artery didn’t collect plaque and red blood cells and reduce the amount of blood flow to her heart which eventually caused too much stress upon it and blew it up.
Nah, I think she just went to her mailbox. Got the morning paper. Put it in her shirt, which I’m sure was tight fitting and wonderful and lovely, and then she set it on the table.
Her father probably picked it up and read it later like mine does.
Sometimes I pick up the paper but sometimes I don’t. There’s nothing interesting in it. Just legislation, money this and money that.
Got a new park, but it never told me what was in it. Just how much cash it took to build the damn thing.
Four thousand dollars of tax payer’s money.
Well spent?
Who cares.
--
We watched a movie and it was alright. It was about a boy who loses his dog but the dog finds its way back home.
Wonder about my dog. It’s too dumb, I think. Would’ve followed the first guy waving a sausage in its face wherever the guy went.
No loyalty, my dog.
When the night was getting too old to keep things going I kissed her on the cheek. She just kind of looked at me with these big blue eyes and then she kissed me on the lips.
They tasted like chocolate and peanut butter. I never liked chocolate and peanut butter until now.
Her lips were wet and warm and I loved it.
She’s coming over again next week.
But, alas, the old man never got to his mail and perhaps he had a check coming.
Maybe it was a letter. And maybe the letter said this:
Dear ,
You have lived seventy ought years and you have seen the world the same way I have seen it in my years. Maybe that’s what this is all about.
I met a Mormon girl who kissed me on the couch while we watched some sappy show about a dog. She tasted like chocolate and peanut butter.
I bet you did that once. Give or take a few details.
But, you will never receive this letter because ten steps before you get here, your heart will stop and it will be the end of your seventy ought years.
That’s just the way things go.
Love,
I don’t know. Maybe it was different.
But I doubt it.