Darcey Steinke - Jesus Saves

“So Mulhoffer was mad?” Ginger asked, as she stood in her father's office in front of his huge mahogany desk.

“Yes,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “He believes if you dress like a moral man, then you'll act like one.”

“Who died and made him God?” Ginger threw herself into one of the leather wingbacks, draped her legs over the arm.

Her father leaned back in his chair. “Mulhoffer went to the Wednesday night Deerpath Creek service and came back with raves. He says they make Christianity fun, like going to a Broadway show or a sporting event.”

“What do you think?” Ginger asked.

“I've been out there. The head minister wore red suspenders and a blue striped shirt, like a Wall Street banker. They're using corporate philosophies to make everybody feel like they're moving up the church ladder, getting a raise or a promotion. But spiritual change is more subtle than that; you can't just check items off a list.”

“Why'd you become a minister anyway?”

“For the free wine,” her father smiled wearily, “and all those delicious tuna casseroles and Jell-O salads.”

She laughed, but no matter how cavalier he acted, she knew he was worried, because the crease marks in his brow had grown deeper and that shell-shocked look never left his face.

“The problem is,” he said, “is that Grace is impossible to explain.”

“Are you mad at me?” Ginger asked.

Her father looked at her. “Not mad, just disappointed.”

Ginger looked at the pile of theology books with felt markers stuffed between the pages on his desk. His Oxford English Bible was so old, the front adhered to the spine with black electrical tape. Packs of dove and lamb stickers for the Sunday school kids were scattered next to his mug of cold coffee. In front of him was a pile of yellow legal pads.

“Are those for Sunday?” She wanted to change the subject, knew he was always ready to talk enthusiastically about his next sermon.

He nodded, obviously pleased she'd asked. “I'm writing a parable about two girls. Want to hear a bit?”

Ginger nodded, watched him straighten his spine and begin to read. This was his whole life now; his rumpled coat lay folded on the floor by a pillow and she knew he'd taken to sleeping near his desk.

The empty apartment smelled of stale beer and pot smoke. She put her palm against the rough stucco wall and moved down the hallway, past the outline of Steve's barbells. Lines of yellow light hallowed Ted's door. She turned the knob slowly, opened it a crack, half-expecting to see him on the bed, legs akimbo, blood and brain matter splattered up over the walls.

But the bed was empty, a spot of her own blood among the sheets soft-petaled flowers. One pillow was stripped of its case, leaving a rectangle of stained foam rubber. He'd taken tube socks and T-shirts, an extra pair of jeans and a couple of flannel shirts from a rag-snake that slithered out of the closet. The overturned shoe box spilled a pot leaf belt buckle, a Bic lighter, an old wallet. His ivory-handled hunting knife and the rubber-banded pack of get-well cards he'd gotten while he was in the hospital were both missing.

He was always talking about getting a cabin in Canada, a place with a woodstove and outdoor plumbing. He'd heard the hippie talk about all the eccentrics who lived up there, the Vietnam vets and the witchy-poo ladies who collected herbs and practiced white magic. Sometimes he wanted California, to sleep on Venice beach and work at one of the open-air bars along the strip. Since the accident he had a new plan almost every week; every scenario projected him out of his scarred body and into a place where his face was whole and beautiful and his every gesture imparted with subtle meaning.

Reaching down, she gathered the remaining items and put them in the shoe box, pulled the top sheet up over the blood stain, and turned off the little coiled desk lamp. She stood for a minute in the dark room, looking into the woods behind the condos. On the other side was the back of a fast-food restaurant, its green Dumpster and glittery blue-gray asphalt. Bright artificial light played in the leaves, and it was then, just as she'd turned her back to the window and was stepping into the hallway, that she heard someone crying, the voice like a string of tiny diamonds cut for a birthstone ring.

“Steve!” Ginger knocked on his bedroom door with the knuckle of her pointer finger. “Are you in there?” The sobbing stopped and the noises that followed formed an equation of panic, a tittery silence, a shush, then the bedsprings shifting against the floor and denim slapping up against skin. Steve walked across the carpet and opened the door just enough to frame his flushed chest. A blast of heat that reeked of come and blood wafted out, a scent she remembered from going down into a neighbor's furnace room, to see a cat give birth to kittens.

A line of blonde hairs ran down his stomach into his pants and his eyes were so bloodshot she knew he was both stoned and drunk. He tipped a can of beer up to his lips and smiled, glancing back toward the bed.

“What's so funny?” Ginger asked.

“Nothing,” Steve said, looking down at the carpet and trying to contain his shit-eating grin.

“You got a girl in there?” Ginger asked.

Steve looked at her with a defiant smile and let the door swing open a few inches so Ginger could see the girl coiled under his army blanket, mascara smeared around her eyes and her face slick with tears. The inverted cross and pentacle plaque over her head, the black light poster of a wizard nearby, and that smell, dirty sheets, his blood-soaked hospital clothes, ribboned with the delicate scent of the girl's body like a single tulip dipped in salt water.

“I should go,” the girl said, shifting in the bed to wrap the blanket around her as she stood, then turned away, bending over so her ribs pressed out of her back. She slipped her T-shirt over her shoulders and pulled up her jeans.

“You don't have to go just because this prude shows up,” Steve said. “It's a free fucking country. Anybody can do anything they want.”

The girl didn't answer, just finished dressing and slipped awkwardly past him and into the hallway. Steve's long hair hung in his face, obscuring all but his green eyes and shiny forehead, the hard curve of his upper lip. “The Minister's daughter,” he taunted Ginger, “rescuing the lamb from slaughter. How touching.” He laughed as the girl followed Ginger down the darkened hallway.

“You bitches can fuck each other in hell for all I care,” Steve yelled.

The girl led the way through the darkest part of the forest, far from the condo lights and the backyard spots of the subdivision. Trash clumped in the weeds; rain ruined paperbacks and silver gum wrappers. These woods were domesticated; an old fort hung precariously in one tree, a tire swing in another. She chattered nervously, telling Ginger how on summer nights she'd snuck over to swim in the condo pool and play with the condo kids, who always had firecrackers and porno magazines and could blow smoke rings. “Once we built a hut out of branches and wet newspapers and made Indian paste out of cornflakes and water. We did a lot of stuff,” the girl said, “had wedding ceremonies and beauty contests where the winners wore necklaces made out of beer tabs.”

The path led up into a backyard, past a picnic table and a swingless swing-set frame. There was no furniture in the split-level's rec room, no light on by the garage. The girl's jaw started to tremble and she said she didn't know what made her go over there. “Come and spend the night at my house,” she begged. “Nobody's home.”

“No, you go back,” Ginger told her. “Make sure the front door is locked. You'll be okay.” She touched the cool inside of the girl's wrist, the delicate tendons and subtle pulse. The girl swung into her chest, her damp lips in the angle of Ginger's neck.