“You’re Jesus, right?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said and held up his palms to show the stigmata.
“Hop in,” I told him.
“Thanks, man,” he said as he gathered up his robe and slipped into the front seat.
As I pulled back out onto the road, he took out a pack of Camel Wides and a dark blue Bic lighter. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked, but he already had a cigarette in his mouth and was bringing a flame to it.
“Go for it,” I said.
“Where you headed?” he asked.
“Home, unless you’re here to tell me different,” I said, forcing a laugh.
“Easy, easy,” he said.
After a short silence, Christ took a couple of deep drags and blew the smoke out the partially opened window.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“You know, just up the road a piece.”
We stopped at a red light and I looked over at him. That crown of thorns must have itched like hell. I shook my head and said, “Wait till I tell my wife about this.”
“She religious?” he asked.
“Not particularly, but still, she’ll get the impact.”
He smiled and flicked some ashes into his palm.
We drove on for a while through the vanishing light, past fields of pumpkins and dried corn stalks. A few minutes later, night fell, and I turned on the headlights. I didn’t see it at first, but a possum darted out into the road right in front of the car. Bump, bump, we were over it in a microsecond. I looked at Christ.
He shrugged as if to say, “What can you do?”
“…and Heaven?” I asked as the car traveled into a valley where the trees from either side of the road had, above, grown together into a canopy.
“Angels, blue skies, your relatives are all there. The greats are there. Basically everybody is there. It gets a little tense sometimes, a little close.”
“You said that ‘basically’ everybody is in Heaven,” I said. “Who isn’t?”
“You know,” he said, “those other people.”
We kept going past the fences of the horse farms, the edges of barren fields, until Christ had me stop at McDonald’s and order him a quarter pounder with cheese, and a chocolate shake. I paid for it with my last couple of dollars.
He said, “I’ll pay you back in indulgences.”
“Hey, it’s on me,” I said.
He wolfed down that burger like the Son of man that he was.
“So what have you seen in your travels?” I asked.
“You name it,” he said, sucking at his shake. “The human drama.”
“Do you ever stop anywhere?”
“Sometimes. I’m always on the look-out for an old Howard Johnson.” There was a short pause and then he said, “Could you step on it a little, I have to be in New Egypt by eight.”