Darcey Steinke - Jesus Saves

“Write a letter to the synod,” Ginger said. “Tell them this place is going corporate and that you want another parish.”

“No,” he said, “I can't do that anymore. I'm getting too old. I'm not smart enough to teach at the seminary and not slick enough for the big-city churches. If I leave here, it'll be to some tiny ten-pew church in the middle of nowhere. Besides, Mulhoffer's talking about pulling out of the synod anyway.”

“So are you saying that I'm fired?”

“Of course not,” her father said. “Just be more discreet, and try to clean up a little before church, wash your hair, maybe put on a little lipstick.”

“Mulhoffer wants me to wear lipstick?” Ginger's voice went up high.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but he does.”

Steve pulled the match across the sandpaper, threw it side-arm toward the greasy lake. There was something careless and decadent about the curve of his arm. She figured he'd done this before, figured he'd done about everything in this town one could do to get in trouble. Like a firefly the match arched above the oil-soaked weeds and settled on the gunky surface. The tiny flame quavered as it burnt down the cardboard, then flared up blue violet before squatting down again, moving forward on the water like the spirit of a snake.

Ted had his arms around her; she pressed her back into his chest. Retribution was his idea and he held on to her so she'd know he'd take care of her, protect her the best he could.

“Hell yeah!” Steve yelled. “I told you the fucker would burn.” His voice echoed off Mulhoffer's factory, which stood darkly in back of them. Surrounded by barbwire fences, a few big trucks sat in the back lot, but Ginger knew Mulhoffer would be too cheap to hire a night guard or even buy a German shepherd.

Cement blocks were stacked near the pond, as were tin canisters. Across the field of fool's wheat and wild daisies was the back of Spring Run condominiums, Fox Ridge to the left, and on the other side, through the thin woods, a strip mall that sold only wholesale stuff, hair dresser supplies, and foreign engine parts. Steve pitched matches; some landed in the weeds and went out but a few sat on the surface like red water bugs before igniting, flaring up in tawdry greens and yellows, colors usually reserved for slutty eye shadow.

Steve told them how a baby had been born dead at the hospital that day, that the doctor went crazy trying to get its lungs cleaned out. It was blue and the fetal monitor showed straight lines for several minutes, but then it made a little noise. Its eyes shot open and the damn thing screamed bloody murder. “That,” Steve said, “is what's known as risen from the dead.” Ted said one of his mother's friends had died on the operating table, saw white light, and a silver cross floating out of her stomach. But then the smell of ammonia, had forced her back to earth. And he'd heard about another case in North Carolina where a man had died and they put him in a coffin, but on the way to the graveyard he started knocking on the lid. Turned out God sent him back because he hadn't had time for his last confession and he had a serious sin against him, adultery or murder, Ted couldn't remember which.

“Christ rose from the dead,” Ginger said. “That's the only person I know who's ever done it.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, “now everybody wants to do it.” He twisted his last match off and struck it, but this one he let burn down until it singed his thumbnail, turned the tip black. Ginger watched the snake move along the furthest basement wall, then slide into the fiery lake. Every Christmas, after she said Happy Holidays, showed off her Christmas dress — usually red or green velvet with a lace collar — her father sent her down into the Mulhoffers’ basement to watch the toy train while he sat upstairs in the living room, thanking them over and over for their generous Christmas check.

The train moved along the wall like a black snake, slithered out of Ruby Mountain, where tiny elves wearing red caps and kneesocks picked at the rock all night long. The engine's headlights splayed over leafless wintertime trees and banks of plastic snow. Cargo cars filled with red plastic chips, underlit by tiny hobby bulbs, looked like embers, like crimson jellyfish. The elves lifted their hats, leaned on their shovels, and waved. One danced around the lake, a crazy skipping jig, while he waved his arms and talked to himself. Wind moved in the trees, put out the creeping chemical fires, and smoke rose like swaying spirits from the surface of the lake.

Ted wedged his car between two dumpsters at the back of Orchard Brook Mall. The backstairs reeked of cigarette smoke and boredom, of canned macaroni and Diet Cokes. In the dark, the snack machine gleamed and the soft drink dispenser hummed incessantly. Ted brought along the army blanket to spread over the new couches in case they decided to fuck and locked the department store door from the inside so they wouldn't need to worry about the janitor.

In the furniture department, he led her to his favorite model room with the big green velour couch and the matching leather wingback chairs. The lamp shades were printed with tiny British manor houses and there were paintings on the walls of men in red riding jackets atop horses, chasing foxes, leaping over stone walls. Books bound in leather, their pages epoxied shut, sat on wooden shelves and near the green plastic plant was a photo book on the history of Kensington Palace. There were a slew of other knickknacks, a faux brass trumpet, horse figurines, one of a man with bagpipes and a kilt. There was a crest paperweight, not any specific family, just the generic kind women wore on T-shirts and middle-aged men on the pockets of their cotton sweaters. The place was dressed up for role-playing, all part of the same crazy Disneyland idea, suburban bathrooms transmuted into rural country stores and living rooms, like this one, into exclusive British men's clubs. Still, she liked the smell of all this new stuff, as intoxicating as gasoline fumes or pot smoke.

“You can hang out here and watch television, while I do my security guard thing,” he said.

The idea didn't really appeal to her, but she nodded just the same. He wouldn't have to leave for an hour and maybe by then she'd get used to the room, could think of this place like a house put together in a dream, where you walk from your childhood bedroom into your father's office to the rec room where you lost your virginity Ted turned on the televison and kicked his feet up on the coffee table. They watched a late-night mystery show where little girls ran backward because they saw angels. Their mother said one of them had levitated out of her bed and the other suddenly spoke perfect Latin. The second half told how a man tape-recorded the voice of his dead daughter threaded around the barking of a stray dog. The dog was white with pink eyes and sat regally on a dirty twin-size mattress in a trash-filled lot in Puerto Rico.

“Maybe that's why I always feel so weird and not really like myself,” he motioned to the TV.

“What do you mean?” Ginger asked. He was always talking about mystical shit, but if you didn't rein him in a little, Ted sometimes satellited out around the farthest planet and headed for deep space.

“It's like that night,” he said, shaking his head. “Everything was totally fucked up. You know the feeling; we've talked about it before. Somehow you sense that you're already dead.” He shifted in his chair. “I was drinking beers, making macaroni and cheese, but I turned up the heat too high and fried the fuck out of it. I burnt my hand on the pan's handle and got pissed off, felt myself building into a rage, so I took a ride in the car to chill out. Just started driving around, kind of cruising different spots, the way we did in high school, over to Pizza Hut, past the mall, down to the dump, out to the lake, back to the high-school parking lot, then around again. I started to get this feeling like I didn't exist, like I was invisible, so I drove back to the apartment. Steve was at work and it seemed like nobody lived there. The place looked all empty and shit, just a bunch of junk pushed against the walls. I went into Steve's room and got his gun from under the mattress. The weight in my lap steadied me. I drove into the 7-Eleven parking lot and sat for a long time, watching people go in and out, watching the fat guy working the cash register. I realized I was thinking about robbing the place so I started the car and got back on the highway. My hands were shaking. It was fucking cold and all I had was my jean jacket. Eventually I pulled off the highway onto that gravel road that leads down to the railroad yard and just sat there with the gun on the seat beside me. Then all of a sudden I felt good, sort of light-headed and thrilled, and I knew what I was going to do. I was going to end it all and so I put the gun to my cheek and even then it seemed like a joke, and I remembered I smiled at myself in the rearview mirror and then pulled the trigger. There was a great shatter of glass and next thing I knew, warm stuff was all over my neck and I felt really muzzy, but it was nice, really really high like I was weightless and my head was filled with light and I was floating, thinking how this time I'd really fucked up, then wondering who this poor guy was with blood on his shirt. Then I ran my tongue along my cheek and I felt the hole, the open air on the other side. I looked at the dark houses spread over the hills and I felt cold; my breath was thick as smoke, and that's when I passed out.”