The Christian: A Comedy – Part Two
A novella in four parts
This month, I am serializing on Substack my tenth book, a novella called The Christian: A Comedy. The paperback is available on Amazon. Here is the front cover:
FIRST DAY
I met Mike at a park in a rough part of Albuquerque. He was sitting on a bench in the shade, wearing the same ketchup-stained shirt from the night before, jeans, and beat-up running shoes. When I got close he stood up and hugged me.
“Is this how it’s gonna be with everyone? The embrace of the father?”
Mike laughed. “Maybe. If people want, I guess.”
I scanned the park. It was hot and dry and there weren’t many people around. “What’s the plan?”
Mike scratched his head. “I think I need to get baptized.”
We opened up my phone and found the nearest church. We hoofed it through the heat, asphalt simmering. There were a few unhoused guys we walked by and I expected Mike to stop and talk with them, minister to them, or to just give them the shirt off his back. But that didn’t happen. We walked on and each of us continued existing in our isolated worlds. I wondered how serious Mike was about this whole thing.
The church was small, a single-story affair with a little steeple, with peeling paint and busted stucco. I waited for Mike to walk us in.
The place was quiet and cool and smelled clean but a little mothbally. The altar and pews were vacant. A toddler-sized wooden cross rested atop a wooden banquet on the stage at the end of the aisle. The old altar had a small purple ribbon tacked to its front. Light came through dusty stained glass. We stood and waited.
Mike’s eyes were locked on the cross.
A door by the stage opened and an older Latino guy in well-worn jeans and a white t-shirt emerged. He spotted us and waved. “Sorry!” He did a little half-run over. “Welcome.” He looked to be in his late fifties, and was handsome and pudgy. We shook his hand, though Mike was still transfixed by the nondescript wooden cross down the aisle.
“Pastor? Father?”
“Jesús is good for now.”
I introduced myself. This was either an auspicious or absurd beginning. Mike snapped out of it and shook Jesús’s hand. He spoke with a slight accent. “You come to worship?”
Mike opened his mouth but nothing came out. I didn’t want to lead here, but nervously filled the dead air. “Yeah. Well… Mike here wants to get baptized.”
Jesús looked both surprised and pained. “This is very good news.”
“Is there a problem?”
Jesùs grimaced and nodded. “Yes. How we do it here is I get a little kiddy pool, fill it up, and I bless the water. Then we do the dip. But, mira, I have to pick up my son from his baseball practice now. So I cannot do it today.”
Mike’s lips were chapped. He barely moved his head, a nod at the edge of perception.
“Okay. So not today.”
“No, I’m so sorry.”
“Tomorrow?” I looked at Mike, hoping we could wrap this up and let the man get to his son.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Jesús said. “We schedule baptisms for the first Sunday of the month. No posible, not for another few weeks.”
“Oh,” Mike finally stammered out. “I just felt…”
Jesús stared at Mike, focusing on him for the first time. “I understand. It feels strong.”
Mike nodded.
Jesús put his hand on Mike’s shoulder. “Come back, friend. We will have you meet the Lord.” Then he looked at me and shrugged apologetically. “But for now… baseball.”
Mike breathed in sharply then nearly shouted: “Can I buy a Bible?”
The return of Jesús’s grimace. “I’m sorry, señor. No for sale here. But there is a new Barnes & Noble on Menaul.” He then gestured for us to walk out with him, and we did.
We stood on the steps of the church as Jesús sped off in his weathered truck. The sun was punishing. After a moment, Mike grabbed me by my shoulders, dark eyes wide. “I have an idea.”
The Shell station attendant did not want to loan us his bucket. Mike brokered the deal with a crisp twenty.
We walked back to the park, my forearms tired from holding the two strained plastic bags filled with big bottles of Aquafina. “This doesn’t feel very Biblical.”
Mike laughed. “Most things don’t.”
We crossed the brittle grass until we found a patch of shade big enough for the deed. Fifty feet away, a family was celebrating a birthday at a picnic table. Strung-up balloons bobbed in the slight breeze.
I set down the bags of water as Mike began walking towards the family.
We had harangued three other groups, but none confessed to being Christian. Mike needed a member of the flock. He seemed deranged in his dedication.
I caught up to him as he greeted the family. The father, a bald guy in his forties wearing Oakleys like a headband, stared at us warily. His wife stopped cutting their blue-white cake mid-slice. Their kids were maybe four and five and covered in dirt and frosting and wild slashes from an orange marker. The father squinted. “Can I help you?”
Mike apologized for interrupting their party, then asked, “Are you Christians?”
The wife’s eyes lit up, but she adopted her husband’s automatic distrust. “We are. Why?”
Mike looked at me and smiled half-heartedly. He still looked hopeful, but I could tell the day’s events were wearing on him. The world seemed ready to rebuff him—to bind him with a vulgarity and half-assedness that raw sincerity could not break.
“That’s awesome. I would love your help, if possible. I need… I need to be baptized.”
The father laughed derisively. “What do you mean.”
One of the children surreptitiously plunged a hand into the side of the cake, retrieved a coated fistful, dropped below the table, and began scarfing it.
Mike explained his failure at the church, and his general quest to live like Christ. Then he pointed back at the bucket and the bottles of water. “It’s a nice day, and I want a willing Christian to do it.”
Mike seemed more comfortable talking with these folks than he had with anyone at our college. This felt strange and disturbing to me.
The father nodded, looked at the cake, then looked back at Mike. He pulled his cellphone—a giant machine encased in a rubber shell the size of a brick—and set it on the table. Then he stood up. While he wasn’t a large man, it was clear he tried to carry himself like one. It was then that I noticed the pistol holstered on his belt.
We walked over to the shade and Mike gestured to the bucket. I took that as my cue to fill it up. Mike got on his knees and mimed dunking his head in it. “I figured we could just…?”
The father nodded. He looked deathly serious. “Ready when you are.”
The bucket was full. I stood up and tried to ignore the unnamed black sludge at its bottom.
Mike positioned himself. I stepped back. The father got on one knee, put a hand on the back of Mike’s head, then dunked him with concussive force.
I didn’t know what to do. Mike gurgled under the water. The father held him there for a moment, then slowly closed his eyes and said, “Lord, please take this man into your care. Forgive his sins. Keep him safe, secure, and healthy. Let him destroy evil wherever he sees it.” The father paused, eyeballs fluttering behind their lids, clearly thinking up more stuff to say. I watched Mike’s left hand nervously tap at the dead grass. “And help him become a man to protect and serve this nation, God. We need men—real men—more than ever.” The gurgling had stopped and so had Mike’s hand. For a second I thought he had died, that this bald man had killed him, and that I had witnessed manslaughter. Then the father let go and Mike flung his head out with a gasp, water arcing from his air in the dread light of summer. Mike mouthed a thank you then leaned over and coughed up some Aquafina and spittle.
The father stood up. I met his eyes. The man was not smiling, nor, I thought, could he ever. “Good?” he asked. I shrugged, pointed at Mike. Mike coughed once more and said, “Yes. Thank you.”
The father nodded, said, “Alright,” and walked back to the birthday party. The child who had pilfered cake was underneath the table, face down on the grass, pounding his hands and feet on the ground in rhythm, and screaming. The wife looked at us, smiled, and gave us a thumbs up.
We sat on the curb outside the gas station, newly bucketless. Mike picked a tiny scrap of tire rubber off the ground and twirled it between his thumb and forefinger. “Do you think that meant anything?”
I turned to him. He looked like he’d just lost a fight. “I don’t know, to be honest. I don’t know how this works, if it works.” I could tell this answer hurt him. I tried again. “If it’s in the stories, it’s probably important. Spiritually. You know?” I yawned uncontrollably, wiped by the heat and the bluntness of the day. “Sorry. Damn.”
Mike placed the scrap of rubber back where it came from. “Yeah… I don’t know.”
We had an early dinner out. Mike tipped big again.
I drove north at eight-five, staring into the New Mexico dark and letting my mind go.
I imagined two futures.
In one, I kept meeting with Mike. I followed him as long as I could, attending to the experiment with the curiosity I naturally felt. Maybe I would chronicle in writing the words and deeds of a person who wanted to take seriously the invitation to be good.
In the other, I stayed home, ignored Mike’s texts, and resumed my life.
I reached Santa Fe and unthinkingly navigated my way home. As I opened my front door, I knew that I would wake up tomorrow, get in my car, and drive south.
SECOND DAY
The coffee shop was packed. Mike sat at a small table in a bright corner. I sat down and our knees touched.
“Not having anything?”
Mike shook his head. “Feels weird. I don’t know why I said to meet here… force of habit, maybe.”
I was too hungry for asceticism. I waited in line and glanced at the other patrons: rich people who looked rich; rich people who looked poor; poor people killing time. I ordered a quinoa egg thing then returned to Mike.
“What’s the plan today?” I asked.
Mike’s eyes darted across the room then back to me. He looked dazed. “Do you ever think about how many decisions this all takes?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, but my face flushed red and I began to sweat. My body knew what Mike meant before my mind was willing to approach the subject.
Mike pointed to the ceiling. “Look.”
I looked.
“See the lights? The beams? How it’s all laid out, connected?”
I nodded. My throat felt dry. “Yeah. And?”
Mike nodded at the kitchen. “Look at the menu. Someone chose that font. They picked out that chalk. The countertops: someone chose that stone. It was all built according to some design, and that designer used principles and standards published by strangers. And then each of the tools in the kitchen was made in a factory, put together with stuff drug up out of the earth and sold with legal documentation. And all the people in here! They chose their clothes, their haircuts, the way their faces rest when they’re imagining being seen.”
The room felt very small. I worried I would run out of air. I looked back to the kitchen praying for them to call me up, to get me away from Mike’s new mind. But he continued.
“Maybe that guy got dressed without thinking this morning, but what if he did think about his outfit? And how’d he get here? If he drove, which roads did he take? Did he listen to the radio, or sit in silence, or run a stop sign? Air conditioning on or off? Did he check his phone?”
I sat still and tried not to feel nervous. I abstractly knew the overwhelming force at which Mike was pointing, the grand incalculable series of desires and fears and habits and risks. The world spun ceaselessly around an endless spindle. Complexity without end. Amen.
They called my name and I leapt up. I returned with my quinoa egg thing and began to eat ravenously, thinking my full mouth would somehow end Mike’s philosophizing.
Mike watched me chew for a moment and then leaned in. His eyes gleamed in the morning’s dry light. He looked conspiratorial. “And which of those choices matter?”
Then he leaned back. I stopped chewing and watched the delight in his face devolve into a standard kind of tired pain.
I began to feel the shape of a thought whose presence in my mind has scared and confounded me since: Mike was completely alive. His sincerity was total. His focus was complete. With all his meager powers, Mike was living.
Then I understood that he wanted me to answer; his question was not rhetorical. I began to speak then choked on grain.
“UGHHHHH. Nothing, mom—God…”
I looked over, hungry for relief. Two tables over, a teen girl sat locked in another antagonism. Her mother leaned back in her chair and stared at her child coldly.
“God, mom. Fuck. That. Seriously! FUCK THAT.”
The mother leaned in and whispered something, then the child whispered back and pointed toward the parking lot. This continued, but I couldn’t make out the details.
When I turned back to Mike, he was already on his feet. He squeezed past my chair and walked over to the mother and daughter.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Mike said, “and correct me if I’m wrong, but is this conversation about a car?”
The mother leaned back and examined this stranger. “I’m sorry… is this any of your business?”
Mike raised both hands, a mea culpa. “None. But I wondered if I could help.”
The teen shrunk in her chair, shoulders curved in, trying to collapse into her center like a suicidal star.
The mother scoffed. “Okay. How could you help right now?”
Mike reached into his pocket and retrieved his car key. He looked at the girl. “I had similar conversations with my parents when I was your age. Your life would become easier—better with a car, yeah?”
The girl looked up at Mike and nodded. The mother looked disgusted. Mike offered the daughter his key. “I just… yeah. It’s yours if you want it.”
The mother looked at Mike as though he were deranged. “This a joke?”
Mike shook his head but continued to address the girl. “No. It’s yours. No strings attached, no price. Just yours.”
A strange silence seemed to permeate the coffee shop. Many people were witnessing this gift.
The girl took the key.
“What are you—” the mother started to say, reaching out to slap the key out of her daughter’s hand, but the daughter pulled away. Before they could erupt, Mike leaned down a bit and stated gently: “If it’s not right for you two, sell it. I don’t care. But it’s yours, okay?”
He waited for both of them to signal some kind of assent. To yield to kindness. Satisfied, he returned to our tiny table.
The last thing I heard the daughter say, breathy and joyous: “Holy shit.”
I couldn’t help myself.
I was driving Mike to the burrito place by his house when I tried my very best to vulgarize what I had just seen. “You watch shit like that on YouTube, but it’s always with like… some catch. Or the guy doing the giving is already super rich. But it’s never just some working class stranger giving their stuff away…”
I drove on and felt shame. Why was I bringing up YouTube? Entertainment? Can’t a moment exist without reference to something else?
Mike shrugged and looked out his window.
“How do you plan to get around?” I asked.
He laughed. “Walk.”
I glanced at him and saw it: joy. He was simply joyful. The satisfaction radiated off him like heat off the road.
“I guess Jesus and company didn’t have much.”
Mike nodded. “Nope.”
“So you’re doing this?” A stupid question, a category I am not above.
Mike needn’t answer. I drove on.
He put one hundred burritos on his credit card.
The bank immediately called about identify fraud. Their canned worries dispelled, we sat down and waited patiently. Mike got up three times to assure the woman at the register that we were factually in no rush. The third time, Mike put two hundred dollar bills on the table and said, “Please share this with the cooks.”
I began to wonder about Mike’s finances. Did he have money saved up? If so, how much? Rent, groceries, gas: it was all going up, the owners in charge thrilled at the permanent excuse granted by COVID’s risks. I wanted to know how swiftly Mike was liquidating his stability for the sake of Jesus.
And how happy was he really? Could a person go belly up on their prior life without reacting to some deep sadness? Was fear motivating this generosity? I hadn’t probed Mike’s emotional state during the Chili’s summit; he seemed resolute, steady. I wondered if this new life—getting swirlied by a Second Amendment enthusiast, granting mobility to a pissed teen, overworking Mexicans in hot kitchens—was all that Mike hoped for. Was the life of Christ just a set of circumstantial charities?
Order up. I snapped out of my doubts and helped Mike haul.
The park was Mike’s design. He told me he used to drive by it most mornings, feeling sad and useless as he passed by and ignored eye contact with the poor and unhoused folks. His expectations today felt more earthly. “I’m not saving anyone, but at least I can feed them for a day.”
When we got out of the car, I felt nervous—a vigilant, self-protective worry. I was mildly scared of crazy, angry, and/or dirty people. I’m neither big nor strong, so I justified this fear by viewing myself as mostly helpless. A standard American tautology.
We approached the nearest group. Three guys talked in front of their tents. Mike said hello then offered them burritos. The guys seemed happy but not very surprised. Were other folks similarly generous? I guessed that the figure was somewhere between not as often as they should be and more often than you’d think. Mike told them we’d come back if we had leftovers at the end of the day. The guys nodded. One saluted with his shiny new brick of nutrition. We walked to the next group.
After awhile, folks got the picture and came to us. We stood in the center of a haggard group of thirty or so. We handed each person three burritos. When we were thanked in Spanish, I half-assed some basic conversation. The faces and bodies before us varied greatly, and I thought beautifully. As I gave them food, I wondered if I would have ever seriously looked at any of these people if it weren’t for Mike. I started to feel a strange calm—not unlike a runner’s high. What else kept me away from this feeling?
A middle-aged person with purple eyeliner, pumpkin-dyed hair, and cheeks covered in dashed scars approached me. They held open their hands, the tips of their fingers brown with nicotine. “I would gladly receive two burritos,” they said, their accent hard to triangulate. I handed them the food. They put one burrito in the worn leather satchel at their side and unwrapped the other. “You dine as well. It does one no good to eat alone.”
Impressed at the archaic nature of the imperative, I unwrapped a burrito and started in.
The person with whom I shared this burrito seemed both stately and deranged. I looked for Mike and found him sitting beside two unhoused women and three workers who all seemed happy to focus exclusively on their meal.
I turned back to my orange-headed acquaintance. We chewed and swallowed. After a moment, they squinted their eyes and raised a hand to the sky. “Now I must inquire: what do you think of the American judicial system?”
I choked on a bean. After clearing my throat, I said, helpfully: “What?”
They looked at me quizzically. “I inquire into your thinking about the American judicial system. Its judges, laws, customs.”
“Big question,” I said. “It’s hard to—”
“Because it seems to me that here? This country? It is not very good.” They shook their head and stuck out their lower lip, like some ancient merchant rejecting the day’s haul of fish.
“I mean… I agree. Definitely.”
“The systems…” They waved their free hand at the air in front of us, quickly painting the whole horrid affair. “They are very crude. Much like the country’s position on the world stage.”
I took another bite and nodded dumbly.
They looked back at me and smiled. “Yes. We are of like minds. I can see that.” Then they pointed at their head. “I believe the world political scenario is like an onion.” They raised one eyebrow dramatically, inviting me to follow up.
“How’s that?”
They smiled. “One must take it apart to do something useful. But if you take it apart, you cannot help but cry.”
I feigned being impressed and surprised. Then I realized I was impressed and surprised. Not at the analogy, nor at a poor person being smart; I was impressed and surprised, as I often am, at the extent to which people offer themselves up to you if you merely abide with them and listen.
“Also very stinky.”
“What?”
They finished their burrito and folded the tinfoil into a neat, sturdy square. “The global order. The onion.”
“Right.”
“Very stinky,” they said once more, now with a mournful inflection. They offered me the square. I thanked them and put it in my back pocket.
I found Mike and asked how he felt. He mulled over the question, as if the Jesus performance invested him with the duty of actually thinking before he spoke. “Good. I wish I could do more for everyone.”
“I think you’ve done a lot. You’ve…” I stopped myself. Why was I trying to explain away the possibility of doing more? Of course he could do more. Of course I could do more. We all could.
We returned to the original group of three and distributed the last of the burritos.
The sun was setting; the heat was fading. I felt exhausted. We walked back to my car. That’s when I heard someone walking behind us, following us—fast steps slapping across the concrete. I intuited what was about to happen but my smart guts didn’t matter; I froze.
“Gimme your wallets.”
We stopped walking.
“Don’t turn around.”
I raised my hands, empty plastic bags hooked around my thumbs. I felt something hard and square in the center of my back. I thought it was a gun.
“Get your fuckin wallets out.”
Mike stammered out: “What do you need?”
My heart raced. I was lightheaded. Had Mike talked back to this guy? What was he doing?
“I said get your fucking wallets out NOW.”
I couldn’t see Mike. I couldn’t see any of the world, in fact. I could only sense the hard cold square in the center of my back.
Mike pulled his wallet out; I pulled my wallet out. I dropped it just behind me then put that arm right back up. Mike said, “We’ll give you our wallets. But do you need more money after that?”
“Don’t waste time, motherfucker.”
“No, I’m serious,” Mike said. “We can go to my bank. There’s a branch open till six.”
The world—its colors, its shapes, all temporarily comprehensible—began to return to me. I felt the guy behind us consider the proposition. “What the fuck, man?” He sounded both skeptical and in disbelief. Who was this freak offering to get robbed twice?
Mike again: “If you need more money than what’s in our wallets, let’s get you more. You can keep the gun on me while I drive. I’m serious. I just wanna help.”
I sensed then Mike and the thief entering a parallel universe. In this cosmos, their minds waged an invisible war. Sincerity fought skepticism; love met necessity in the field. I felt a fucked up sense of relief, glad to feel like a passenger on the ship of other people’s lives.
“Are you a fuckin’ weirdo?” The gun was no longer pressed into my back.
I swear I heard Mike shrug. “I guess so. Yeah.”
Silence.
“Yeah… yeah, good. Who’s driving?”
I tried to raise my hand then realized it was already raised. “I can. It’s my car.”
I heard the thief shift his weight. “Shit. How’s this gonna work?”
Had Mike’s dumb love just saved my life? I was about to drive a car with a gun to my head, but for some reason I felt supremely confident that I was safe.
“I can drive. You can hold the gun to my head, it’s okay,”—was I psychotic?—”and Mike will sit in the passenger seat. He goes into the bank and gets the money, then we just drop you off wherever you want dropped off, I guess.”
“And then you fucks call the cops.”
“No,” Mike protested. “No way. What do they have to do with this?” He was serious, forceful. All made sense in this new world of ours. “We won’t call the cops. The money’s better off in your hands than mine. I mean it.”
Another silence, though brief. The thief laughed. “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”
Mike laughed. (Mike laughed!)
I cleared my throat. “Should we get this show on the road?”
The drive was a little awkward.
I had not until that day felt the tip of a gun against any part of my body, let alone my skull. So there was that. The thief smelled like Fireball and fresh-cut grass. We were all quiet, save for Mike giving directions. We got to the bank and parked on the far end of the lot. It wasn’t very busy.
Mike looked in the rearview. “I’ll go in, close out the account, and bring it all to you. Do you have a preference for denominations?”
I watched the thief in the mirror mull it over. “Twenties. No… uhhh shit. Hundreds.” He looked excited, childlike.
Mike nodded. “Coming right up.”
The thief got serious. “If you tell the bank fuckers what’s happening, I’ll shoot your friend in the head. Understand?”
Mike nodded again. “I understand. We’re all good here.”
One more confirmatory nod between the two, then Mike was on his way. He walked calmly across the parking lot.
I knew it’d be a minute, so, possessed by an unearthly confidence, I struck up conversation. “Where you from originally?”
I looked in the rearview. The thief grimaced. “I’m not…” I watched him waver. The gun still pointed at my brain, he gave in. “Fuck it. I’m from St. Louis. Awhile back, anyway.”
“Cool. I’ve never been. What should I do there, if I ever visit?”
“There’s a weird place downtown I always recommend.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a weird museum. Like it’s this big playground for adults. Kids, too, but really it’s for adults it seems like. There’s exposed metal, rusty shit. Some dude fell off a high part of one of the… whatevers, and he died. It’s, yeah. It’s really fun, actually.”
I nodded, the barrel of the gun scraping against my hair. “Yeah, that sounds cool. I’ll check it out if I’m ever up there.”
Quiet. Crickets singing through sunset.
“You from here?” the thief asked me.
I explained: born in Texas, lived in Los Angeles, wife imported me to Santa Fe. The thief asked, “You like it? Santa Fe?”
Borrowing Mike’s thoughtfulness, I actually considered the question before answering. Did I like it? The gun to my head gave this question some new heft. “Yeah, I do. I love it, actually. I’d be happy to die there.”
“Nice. Yeah, that’s the sign of a good place…” I watched the man behind me stare out the window, eyes wistful.
A moment later, Mike exited the bank, a fat white envelope in each hand. He did a little wave to us, and I did a little wave back.
Mike plopped into his seat and shut the door. “Sorry for the wait.”
“No problem,” the thief said. “Go good?”
“Yeah, I think so!” Mike was chipper. He handed back the envelopes. The thief took each with one hand and flipped open their flaps. He rifled through the bills with his thumb. “How much?”
“A little over fifteen grand. It wasn’t even, but I have the loose change in my pocket if you want it.”
The thief waved that away. “No, but thank you.”
Mike smiled, then turned back to face the front windshield. “Where should our friend here drop you off?”
A few blocks away, the thief requested “a courtesy.” We handed him our cellphones, then he hopped out of the car and jogged around the corner and out of sight. We waited the agreed-upon amount of minutes, then drove to the red mailbox and retrieved our phones.
I drove Mike home. We listened to rock on the radio. I cracked my window. The breeze felt great.
Parked outside his house, I could only think to say one thing. “Thank you.”
Mike laughed. “For what?”
“I just… you know.”
Nothing else needed to be said. Mike nodded, got out, and walked to his house. A few moments later, before driving home, I texted him. tomorrow? He responded quickly: tomorrow.
I drove home and did not exceed the speed limit.
I had a dream that night. I’ll omit its details since the play-by-play of dreams often bores others, but here was the dream’s sense: I had to wake up. A common trope, but I felt its truth throughout my entirety. I have to wake up. Not from the dream, but from something else—though the identity of that something was a mystery. When I woke from the dream, sweat-drenched and mouth dry, I felt I had returned to the wrong answer.