“Dwayne has repented for this more times than needs counting, so please don’t mention it to him. I found him standing over his pregnant wife, at least five months at that point, I believe, dining room chair over his head to use as a bludgeon. His wife clutched her midsection and rolled onto her side to protect the baby.
“Dwayne looked at me, I remember how cold his eyes were, how dead, and asked me what the fuck I wanted. I told him he had to put the chair down and come with me. He asked why, were the cops coming? I told him he needed to come with me because he had important things to do in this world and one day he would be thankful that a child lived somewhere with his DNA.”
This had to be a ruse, right? Anthony didn’t want it to be, however; he wanted Ellis’s story to be true, to be, as it were, Gospel.
“He put the chair down and walked away with you?”
“He cursed at me a few more times but, eventually, yes, he walked away with me.”
“Why?”
Ellis shrugged. “Why are you here?”
Anthony thought for a moment. There was something unsettling here, something threatening that lingered just beneath the normalcy. Like a predator hiding in the fog. He sensed that danger but he couldn’t say why or even what the danger was. It was something about what Ellis said. The stories had come out naturally, perfectly, and it was impossible not to be moved, but maybe that was what was so disturbing—the perfectness of his tale. Like it’s been delivered a million times. Maybe, but there was still something more …
Anthony took out the flier again and held it up to Ellis, the flier shaking. He read from the back: “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Tears burned in his eyes. Simply reading the words of Jesus had brought those tears and he was completely caught off guard. “I want rest.”
Ellis squeezed his shoulder again, harder. “Tonight is the Last Supper, Anthony. At the Last Supper, Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in me. In my father’s house are many rooms. I am going to prepare a place for you.’”
The tears flowed unabated now. Still, none of the other people praying turned to look. Maybe they’re fake, just statues like the giant Jesus. The Jesus twitched his head as if to contradict the thought.
“Pray with me and let us find the place He has prepared for you.”
* * *
Anthony hadn’t prayed, honestly, truly prayed, in many, many years. He did so now with a ferventness that shocked him. Tears kept slipping from his eyes. He clutched his hands together and pressed his forehead against them. At times he gritted his teeth; at other moments his tongue dangled loose and he sobbed low and quietly. He thought of only one thing while he prayed: Delaney’s face. He focused on that, held it so tightly that it would never slip from his grasp. He thought of her beautiful face and begged God for rest.
At some point, Anthony couldn’t tell when because time had ceased to be relevant anymore, Ellis started talking to him in soft tones that slipped around Anthony’s sobs and eased their way into his thoughts.
“When we pray,” Ellis said, “we are not begging for an answer. We are not pleading for salvation. We are opening ourselves up and hoping that the eternal light of God fills our void. Prayer is a time of soul-searching. Don’t look to heaven; look inside yourself.
“You are carrying a heavy burden and it’s time to let it go. Jesus suffered on his cross so you wouldn’t have to suffer on any. He will take the pain away; he will carry it for you. Do you want that, Anthony? Do you want the pain to go away?”
Anthony was wandering in his own thoughts again: When we are strong and confident we can never imagine being weak and vulnerable, never imagine professing such weakness in ernest. My daughter is dead, my wife a lost soul, a corpse practically with whom I share a mattress. The pain is immense, overwhelming, crippling. Whether emotional or physical I can’t tell. There is no longer any difference.
“Yes,” he said. “I want it to go away.”
“Good. Now, you must re-imagine your life in Christ’s eyes. You must honestly evaluate every aspect of your life and every person in it. You must accept a higher standard for all. This will not be easy, but in exchange for your promise to do better, to live better, God will carry your burden and He will do it gladly.”
What did that mean, though? Did he have to give up potato chips and American Idol? Did he have to stock his house full of Bibles and learn the Gospels by rote? Did he have to attend church nightly? Would Ellis ask for the deed to his house, a simple sign of good faith, in return for the promise that his concerns would go into God’s In-Box?
Though he knew he couldn’t afford such pessimism now, he couldn’t stop it. The restlessness of his mind. All he wanted was some peace, some fucking peace, why was that so hard?
That’s for you, Dad.
“You must free yourself from all the bonds that tie you to your worldly suffering. If you want your family to come with you, you must free them as well.”
This was not what Tyler and Brendan needed right now. They deserved a father who was a stoic rock, a figure of unquestionable fortitude upon which they could hang their sorrows. They didn’t need a father who wanted to turn their lives even further upside down. Still …
“People will tell you to turn to the Bible, to seek God’s word, but I will tell you the truth. It is so simple, so revolutionary, that others in my position would never dream of sharing it. You don’t need the Bible. You don’t need organized faith. You don’t need this temple. These are all crutches. All you need you already have because God gave it to you. You need only your head and your heart. If you are willing to accept that there is something out there, something that wants to help you, you can have the peace of the angels.”
Ellis’s open refutation of organized religion gave him more validity and, ironically, encouraged Anthony to want to return to this empowerment Temple. He knew it was all rhetoric, all cleverly phrased persuasion designed to suck him into their flock. Anthony was exactly the type (previously confident man torn to shreds by the death of a loved one) that people like Ellis loved to encounter and seduce. Anthony knew this and yet he could not shut out Ellis’s words because they rang with the clarity of truth. Or at least the tones of what ought to be truth. He wanted to deny this man and even blame him for Delaney’s death, but he couldn’t. He recalled a Talking Heads song whose refrain was “stop making sense, making sense.” No other words could so perfectly capture his feelings.
“I can help you,” Ellis said.
Stop.
“Don’t you want to be free of your burden?”
Making.
“Let Jesus heal your soul and empower you.”
Sense.
“What should I do?” he asked.
Ellis told him. While he listened, Anthony was vaguely aware that after he left this temple he was never going to be the same again.
9
Brendan had agreed that Tyler could handle his problems by himself, but Brendan knew better. His brother had gotten himself stuck too deep in a pit of quicksand to crawl his own way out. He needed someone to throw him a rope. Whether Tyler liked it or not, Brendan was going to throw that rope.
He removed a business card from his pocket. On one side was a picture of Jesus’ face only with a gold crown rather than one of thorns topping his head. Beside the face the card read: The First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered. Beneath that was the address and phone number and beneath that was the simple offer that Jesus Can Empower You. Brendan knew, now finally after wasting so much time and energy on those silly Greek Gods (the book, Finding God: a History of Appeasing Higher Powers and Fulfilling Man’s Destiny, was safely tucked deep under Brendan’s bed) that Jesus was the right path. But he couldn’t simply pray to Jesus and hope that Tyler’s problem was somehow miraculously solved. That wasn’t how it worked.