“Even the cross isn’t safe, even the cross isn’t safe, anymore,” mumbled J. C. crossing town, his eyes fixed to his wounded wrists as if he couldn’t believe they were attached to his arms. “What’s the world coming to?” J. C. peered out the cab window at the flowing houses.
“Was Christ manic-depressive? Like me?”
“No,” I said lamely, “not nuts. But you’re in the bowl with the almonds and the cashews. What made you go there?”
“I was being chased. They’re after me. I am the Light of the World.” But he said this last with heavy irony. “Christ, I wish I didn’t know so much.”
“Tell me. Fess up.”
“Then they’d chase you, too! Clarence,” he murmured. “He didn’t run fast enough, either, did he?”
“I knew Clarence, too,” I said. “Years ago …”
That scared J. C. even more. “Don’t tell anyone! They won’t hear it from me.”
J. C. drank half the wine bottle at a chug, then winked and said, “Mum’s the word.”
“No, sir, J. C.! You got to tell me, just in case—”
“—I don’t live beyond tonight? I won’t! But I don’t want both of us dead. You’re a sweet jerkoff. Come unto me, little chil
dren, and, by God, you show up!”
He drank and wiped the smile off his face.
We stopped along the way. J. C. fought to leap out to buy gin. I threatened to hit him and bought it myself.
The taxi sailed into the studio and slowed near my grandparents’ house.
“Why,” said J. C., “that looks like the Central Avenue Negro Baptist Church! I can’t go in there! I’m not black or Baptist. Just Christ, and a Jew! Tell him where to go!”
The taxi stopped at Calvary at sunset. J. C. looked up at his old familiar roost. “Is that the true cross?” He shrugged. “Just about as much as I’m the true Jesus.”
I stared at the cross. “You can’t hide there, J. C. Everyone knows that’s where you go, now. We got to find a really secret place for you to stay in case there’s a call for retakes.”
“You don’t understand,” said J. C. “Heaven is shut and so is Hell. They’d find me in a rathole or up a hippo’s behind. Calvary, plus wine, is the only place. Now, get your foot off my toga.”
He put the rest of the wine down his cackle, then moved out and up the hill.
“Thank God, I’ve finished all my major scenes,” said J. C. “It’s all over, son.” J. C. took my hands in his. He was immensely calm now, having veered from the heights to the depths and now steadied somewhere between. “I shouldn’t have run away. And you shouldn’t be seen here talking to me. They’ll bring extra hammers and nails and you’ll play the second extra thief on my left. Or Judas. They’ll bring a rope and suddenly you’re Iscariot.”
He turned and put his hands on the cross and one foot on the little climbing peg on one side.
“One last thing?” I said. “Do you know the Beast?”
“God, I was there the night he was born!”
“Born?”
“Born, dammit, what did it sound like?”
“Explain, J. C., I got to know!”
“And die for knowing, you sap,” said J. C. “Why do you want to die? Jesus saves, yes? But if I’m Jesus and I’m lost, you’re all lost! Look at Clarence, the poor bastard. The guys that got him are running scared. And, scared, they panic and when they panic they hate. You know anything about real hatred, junior? This is it, no amateur nights, no time off for good behavior. Someone says kill and it’s kill. And you wander around with your stupid naïve notions about people. God, you wouldn’t know a real whore if she bit you or a real killer if he knifed you. You’d die, and dying, say: oh, that’s what it’s like, but it’s too late. So listen to old Jesus, fool.”
“A convenient fool, a useful idiot. That’s what Lenin said.”
“Lenin!? You see! At a time like this, when I’m screaming: There’s Niagara Falls! where’s your barrel!? you jump off the cliff with no parachute. Lenin!? gah! Which way to the madhouse?”