The miracle was that the swords were just imported plastic, made from recycled soda bottles and lead paint. It was the symbol they needed, not what the symbol was made of.
The miracle wasn’t how you were cured. The miracle was how God was willing to cure you again when you fell.
There were at least one hundred eleven ailments a deliverance could cure and the saints could name them all. When the apostle told stories, he encouraged people to take notes. A reminder of what could go wrong. Tattoos drew demons close. Piercings revealed the promiscuous. A woman with a stud in her nose had opened herself to wantonness. When the microphone squealed it was the demon Bling Bling. It wasn’t a biblical name but most of the demons weren’t so named. The enemy bred them from scratch in every age, improved his technology. Anything new could bear his sigil.
The apostle had seen third-degree burns take on cloaks of baby skin, seen cataracts leeched from eyes. Mending lame legs was old and easy work that started in the circle, with the dancing, the music so loud it could shatter eardrums for the spirit to heal. The will was tied to the flesh. You had to get the body exhausted so what ailed it could be drawn free and broken by the Word.
The apostle clapped, asked for a volunteer: Who among you came to be delivered?
Now someone unfolded a chair, placed it before the two ministers in heavy sweaters and slacks flanking the one to be delivered. Everyone else shaking plastic swords in the air, howling in tongues, spinning the circle. From the street passersby could see what they were doing, through the floor-to-ceiling glass meant to show off the mechanics of laundry. Some of the storefront churches smeared their windows with paint or covered them with paper but the apostle left them clear, kept them clean. Some nights he saw a face pressed to the street side of the glass, leaving the smear of the curious, but inside the church they weren’t doing anything needing hiding. He wanted the dark streets to see the bright work being done beneath fluorescent light.
The one to be delivered stepped forward, took his seat. The apostle could see what was inside him, could reckon all his failures, the demons obvious but the bad choices visible too. Because not every impulse was the enemy’s and this man had as much free will as any other.
The one to be delivered shook at the apostle’s touch, recoiled from his voice. His boots stamped the floor, wrung more sweat free from his jumping body. It was darkest bluest winter and the man was dressed for the weather, had kept his coat on the whole dance. The look in his eyes, the exhaustion, the fear, his and not his. He named some of his demons at sentence length, readying his voice for story, but the apostle stopped him.
Demons aren’t complicated, the apostle said, smearing a thumbprint of ash across the other’s forehead. No need to confess their every title. Just give us their names.
Give us Grief. Give us Sorrow.
Say the names Abuse, Abuser, Abused. Say the name Suicide.
If it’s drink, then name it Drink. If it’s drugs, then name it Drugs. If you’re a thief, then you’ve got a thief inside you, named by his action.
Name the killers, the apostle said. Speak every name of every bedeviling thing. The music boomed. The members of the congregation held their swords up and they spoke their high speech and at his command the apostle saw the angels filling the room too, their winged glory summoned, their pale and dark faces. God had made an angel for every shade and an office to obliterate every shadow and they were in the room too, ready for the one who was to be delivered to call out the names of their opposites and as he did so the expressionless angels stepped forward and put their flaming brands to what was called. Someone set a plastic-lined trash can in front of the one being delivered and he filled it with retch and when the sickness was out of him the two ministers on his sides lifted him to his feet, wrapped him in their embrace, a new brother.
Say what you’ve come for, the apostle said, and the one delivered answered.
Sanction, he said. Protection.
The one delivered was wobbly on his feet but the ministers added him to the circle again, got him back in step, pressed a dollar’s worth of plastic into his hand. There were others to save and his voice would help the saving get done — a charge, a commission. The speakers offered loud directions to the body, and if the one delivered couldn’t speak right yet, it owed to how he opened his mouth. He could mimic, work out some call-and-response until he earned his own voice, his own universal manner of speech. The apostle hollered above the noise, danced with his feet high, lifted his knees and kicked up his robes, promised tonight they would all sleep sweet dreams, and the one delivered heard this, considered. The apostle said it was hard to sleep with the lights on but it was impossible to rest without the light within and by the end of the night they would all have their light renewed. The apostle said he would preach until dawn if it delivered them all. The apostle said he was sixty-two years old and if it took forever to put all these waiting angels to work then he planned to live forever.
10
THE EVENING OF THE FIGHT Kelly awoke with ashes on his forehead and his heart thudding wrong — a scuttling, a shallowness. In the bathroom he listened as his heartbeat drummed louder, the blood jerking. He locked his hands over the ache in his chest, pressed hard, as if from outside the ribs he might hold the jumping muscle still. When he turned on the shower he didn’t wait for the water to warm, just sat down on the edge of the tub and let the cold water fall. Afterward his eyes jittered in the mirror, bloodshot and blank. There was a slackness to his mouth he hadn’t seen before. He brushed his teeth, scrubbed the night from his skin, ran a comb through his hair, forced the part. When he dragged the razor across his face the coldest skin resisted, begrudged. He moved carefully across the floor, water everywhere underfoot, slicking the tiles. He fed his body broader commands, noticing every step of every action, thinking of the parts of objects. He smoked before he brushed his teeth and then he dressed, an undershirt, underwear and pants, the watchman’s jersey under heavy flannel, thick socks and the worn boots, the impossible loops of the laces.
While he dressed he watched the news and on-screen the blonde reporter said this was the week ten new homicides were reported inside the zone. Ten homicides including two triple killings. Ten homicides including five men and four women and one child. The names of the victims withheld pending notification of the family. The names of the killers withheld pending arrest and arraignment.
This was the week a burnt and decapitated body was found inside a closed and shredded elementary school, found in a hallway with torn ceilings, with busted tile, without locker doors or lockers left.
This was the week a suspected arson killed a man and a woman and a seven-year-old girl at one thirty in the morning, their bodies falling through the collapsing house, drowned in the smoke and the fire.
This was the week a woman was shot dead in her driveway, still sitting in the driver’s seat with two other friends in the car. The shooter a man in dark clothing.