2:12
Jack drove the black Nissan into the driveway. He had been thinking about the old woman's story the whole way home. He couldn't get it out of his head.
Is it true?
What she had said about the necklace sure was. But his logical mind still fought the validity of the story. He thought that maybe she had found out about its power and made the story up to go with it. Or maybe, it was true. Would God really have allowed those things to happen? Would God himself have done the things she said he did? And if so, if it were all true, where was he now? With such an active role in the world in the beginning, why didn't he show himself now? What was he doing up there? Even with what he had experienced so far, he still had so many questions. He was determined to find the answers.
He was so anxious to go again. The comfortable weightless feeling was like a calm bliss. All of his problems seemed so far away. He could definitely get used to that.
He wished he could tell Stacey. She wouldn't believe him. She didn’t listen to him when he told her believable things. It was like she had just woken up one day and decided that she didn’t trust him. His opinion meant nothing. At least that’s the way it felt to him. But he knew that he hadn't been the best husband either. It was just that it was so easy to get caught up in work and money troubles and...
Who cares about any of that shit now? It seems so pointless.
He could barely stand it. He wanted to go right now. But, he couldn't just yet. Not until they had all gone to bed.
He got out of the car and walked into the house. His wife and son could be heard in the back bedroom laughing. Jack flopped down onto the couch staring into the television. He pulled the remote out from underneath a cushion and changed the channel. He stopped at the local news just before it cut to a commercial.
An image of a cross appeared on the television screen. The voice of a calm toned man spoke as the picture faded into a couple smiling and talking to a well-dressed man in a suit. The narrator continued talking about God and Jesus and the First Nazarene Church, located in Canon City, as the pictures changed from one to another.
The entire commercial seemed to have been shot with a home video camera. The colors were all wrong, the images were grainy and the brightness was way to high. Jack figured he’d get a headache if he had to watch it very long. He was soon relieved as the final screen came up indicating the name and address of the church.
Another advertisement popped onto the screen as Jack remembered the time the faith healers came to his church, when he was ten years old. He first found out they were coming when brightly colored flyers were passed out before the service on Sunday. At the top of the page stood stylized graphic of a man with is arms stretched up towards heaven. Cartoonish outlines of clouds filled the paper behind him. Underneath the picture it read in Italics,
Come share the worship and healing power of God’s love.
Just below that it stated,
Don Lovejoy, deciple of God, has been blessed with the gift of healing minds and bodies. The service will be a celebration of out lord Jesus Christ and God’s will for us all! Let God heal you through Brother Lovejoy’s hands!
At the bottom the text said,
Wednesday, July 14th, First Assembly of God Church, Canon City.
Jack had to read over it three times to be sure of what he was reading. His eyes were wide as he read the words, gift of healing. He thought that might be what he’d been looking for. He wanted so badly to believe in God but he just hadn’t been able to. Everyone else seemed to have faith and he wanted to also.
Actual proof of God. Wow.
He asked his parents a total of eight times in the next three days, if he could go on Wednesday night. They said yes each time, tiring of his persistency. It was the first thing he thought of when he woke up Monday and the last thing in his head when we went to sleep. By Tuesday he’d become so excited he thought he might bust. When Wednesday finally came Jack could think of nothing else.
He rushed home from school on his bicycle and ran into the house. The service was still hours away but he went to his room to pick out what he was going to wear anyway. He pulled his Easter suit off of a hanger, laying it out on his bed. He wanted to look like a good Christian tonight. He couldn’t have Brother Lovejoy thinking he was a slacker.
No siree Bob.
When his mother asked him why he was wearing his best suit he simply said, Oh, no reason. She promptly told what kind of trouble he’d be in if he got it dirty and he responded with a promise that he wouldn’t.
Jack walked into the church excitedly and sat up front. He wanted to be able to see everything without anyone blocking his view. The service began as usual with a prayer and the singing of songs. The Reverend then turned it over to Brother Lovejoy. He asked everyone to stand and then he said a prayer of his own. Holding his arms up to the sky he asked God to bless him once again with the power of healing. People in the congregation started to say Amen as he danced with the Holy Spirit. He told them that anyone who was sick or crippled or had any health problems whatsoever should come up to the stage to be healed.
Jack’s eyes were fixed on brother Lovejoy as a line started to form at the front. One man was limping holding himself steady with a cane. Another had a large dark patch on his face that looked like a huge mole. There was a woman with a neck brace and last but oh so far from least, was a man in a wheelchair. Jack wondered what Mr. Lovejoy was going to do for him.
Surely he can’t make a crippled man walk, can he?
Now, Jack had seen some pretty amazing things in his ten years. Just last summer he’d seen Jason Conner swallow an earthworm whole. He remembered it squirming as the boy lowered it onto his tongue. At the time Jack had said it was the most amazing (and disgusting) thing he’s ever seen.
Then there was the strong man on television who lifted concrete blocks with is pierced tongue. It really looked like it had to hurt. But then something came along that had taken over the number one spot on the list of most amazing things Jack had ever seen, hands down.
Ronny Johnson brought a deck of playing cards to school with him. Not just any old cards, but cards with sex pictures on them. The glossy black and white photos showed people doing it in every possible position. Some of them even had a dog in them. Jack had never seen anything like it. They were mostly poor quality photos that looked like somebody’s brother had taken but they were astonishing just the same. Some of the pictures (mostly the ones with the dog) made Jack feel sick to his stomach, but no matter how ill they made him feel they definitely topped his most amazing list.
As Jack sat in the front pew of the Pentecostal church with people yelling Praise God all around him he waited for the new amazement to shove its way into first place. He watched with his mouth gaping open as the limping man made his way up the ramp.
Brother Lovejoy cried out to Jesus as he laid his healing hands on the man’s forehead. Jack was sweating and his shirt was soaked completely through. He wanted to believe so badly that he could feel it pulling at him from the bottom of his stomach.
Be healed! Lovejoy commanded when he slapped the man’s head with the palm of his hand. The cane fell to the floor and the newly whole man cried and danced around the pulpit. Jack almost swallowed his gum.
The woman with the brace on her neck stepped up. With a slap from the Holy Spirit, she was healed too.
Wow.
The large blotch on the next one’s face was easily rubbed away by Lovejoy’s magical fingers, but what topped everything, what took the cake by a landslide was waiting at the bottom of the ramp.
The old man’s wife struggled to push him up onto the stage. The wheelchair came to a stop and she locked the wheels. Lovejoy kneeled down to the man praying, laying hands on him. Jack’s eyes didn’t blink for a full twenty seconds. He was frozen in place staring at the miracle in front of him. The elderly man received his holy swat and he firmly placed his hands on the arms of the chair. Unsteadily at first, he pushed himself to an upright position. When he let go of the wheelchair he raised his hands into the air. He was standing all by himself. Jack’s gum rolled down his tongue, falling onto the carpet.
Praise God. Halleluya.
He was dumbfounded. What he had just witnessed blew the playing cards completely out of the water. He believed. For the first time in his life he could feel his faith filling the emptiness inside of him like warm water.
The healer’s wife passed the basket around as he told the crowd that God would bless all those who gave unselfishly. When it was full of dollar bills she emptied it and passed it to the other side of the church. The newly healed people filed down the aisle happily, and out the front door.
When the service was concluded the Lovejoy’s promptly left. Jack, still in awe of the things he’d just seen, stared at the quiet stage. He felt a hand on his shoulder and he looked up. It was his dad.
“Wait here Jack. I’m going to talk to pastor Gibbons for a few minutes.”
Jack didn’t notice the anger in his father’s face. He was too busy thinking about God and brother Lovejoy’s magic hands.
After a few minutes he looked around and noticed that he was the only one left in the front room of the church. He walked to the back, past the bathrooms and into the hallway. He heard voices behind the Pastor’s office door. He could hear his father faintly. He didn’t hear everything that was said but he did hear a few words very clearly. Words like ridiculous and carnival sideshow.
He didn’t care what the conversation was about. Still caught up in the whirlwind of God’s power he went outside and sat on the curb. It was another ten minutes before his parents came out. Jack whistled enthusiastically, sitting on the sidewalk in his best suit and tie. They said nothing when they came out. They just walked straight to the car and got in.
“Hurry up Jack,” his mom said with an annoyed tone.
They pulled into the gas station at the corner of Ninth and Royal Gorge Blvd. Jack’s father got out to fill the tank. A large fifth wheel camper sat across the lot, attached to an old pickup truck. Jack recognized the man pumping the gas.
It was the guy in the wheelchair.
Jack said, “I’ll be right back,” to his mother.
She paid little attention looking through her purse for her checkbook.
As he walked around the back of the large camper he noticed that the side door was open. A voice sounded from inside. It was Brother Lovejoy. Jack listened, standing back in the shadow.
“Goddamn, Podunk cheapskates!”
Jack took a soft step forward.
“We barely pulled in a hundred bucks! God, I hate these small town losers!”
Lovejoy’s wife shuffled through the stack of dollar bills.
“Shit,” she said, angrily.
Looking under the table by the door, Jack saw a neck brace. The woman who’d been wearing it earlier was sitting in the cab of the truck. Jack’s faith fell out of him as quickly a it had appeared.
It was all a scam.
He started to cry. He couldn’t believe anyone would do such a thing, using God to rip people off. The so-called healer stuck his head out the door, peering down at the ten-year-old, crying in his best Easter suit.
“Shit,” the man said under his breath before saying, “Get lost kid.”
Jack trudged slowly back to the car. His elation had melted into a big pile of disappointment and depression. He flopped down on the back seat and slammed the door. He figured the worst thing of all of it was that the number one spot on his list of the most amazing had reverted back to pornography.
If he’d known the concept of irony he would’ve thought just how ironic it all seemed, but he did not.
So instead he thought that it sucked, bigtime.
