“Have you always been Christ then?”
J. C. saw I was sincere and chewed some more. “Am I Christ? Well, it’s like putting on a comfortable robe for life, never having to dress up, always at ease. When I look down at my stigmata, I think yes. When I don’t shave mornings, my beard is an affirmation. I can’t imagine any other life. Oh, years ago, of course, I was curious.” He chewed another bite. “Tried everything. Went to the Reverend Violet Greener on Crenshaw Boulevard. The Agabeg Temple?”
“I been there!”
“Great showmen, eh? Séances, tambourines. Never took. Been to Norvell. He still around?”
“Sure! With his big blinky cow eyes and his pretty boyfriends begging cash in tambourines?”
“You sound like me! Astrology? Numerology? Holy Rollers? That’s fun.”
“Been to Holy Rollers, also.”
“Like their mud wrestling, talking in tongues?”
“Yeah! But how about the Negro Baptist Church, Central Avenue? Hall Johnson choir jumps and sings Sundays. Earthquakes!”
“Hell, boy, you dog my steps! How come you been all those places?”
“Wanted answers!”
“You read the Talmud? Koran?”
“They came too late in my life.”
“Let me tell you what really came late—”
&n
bsp; I snorted. “The Book of Mormon!?”
“Holy mackerel, right!”
“I was in a Mormon little-theatre group when I was twenty. The Angel Moroni put me to sleep!”
J. C. roared and slapped his stigmata.
“Boring! How about Aimee Semple McPherson!?”
“High school friends dared me to run up on stage to be ‘saved.’ I ran and knelt. She slapped her hand on my head. Lord, save the sinner, she cried. Glory, Hallelujah! I staggered down and fell into my friends’ arms!”
“Hell,” said J. C. “Aimee saved me twice! Then they buried her. Summer of ’44? In that big bronze coffin? Took sixteen horses and a bulldozer to lug it up that graveyard hill. Boy, Aimee grew fake wings, natural-like. I still visit her temple for old nostalgia’s sake. God, I miss her. She touched me like Jesus, in Pentecostal trimmings. What a lark!”
“And now here you are,” I said, “full-time Christ at Maximus. Since the golden days with Arbuthnot.”
“Arbuthnot?” J. C.’s face darkened with memory. He shoved back his plate. “Come now. Test me. Ask! Old Testament. New.”
“The book of Ruth.”
He recited two minutes of Ruth.
“Ecclesiastes?”
“I’ll do the whole thing!” And he did.
“John?”
“Great stuff! The Last Supper after the Last Supper!”