American Savior Read online

  But then, one ordinary night after we’d finished the six o’clock report, and I’d gone across the street to Patsanzakis’s for my usual steak-and-cheese, a beer, and two pieces of baklava (I work out like a maniac to keep the weight off; the health club membership is tax deductible), and had come back to the office and was kind of lounging around, checking to see what I might have on the docket for the next day, my private line rang. I picked up, hoping it would be Zelda pretending to be Beyoncé and wanting to party after the late broadcast, but it wasn’t. The voice, masculine and unfamiliar, pronounced my name with a certain authority. “Russell Thomas?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Meet me at Pete’s Cafe in Wells River at 2:25 tomorrow.”

  “Sure, happy to. Who’s this supposed to be?”

  “The Good Visitor.”

  “Right. You and sixty-five other people who’ve called the station in the past few weeks. How did you get this number, anyway?”

  “I touched Amelia Simmelton on her left knee,” the guy said, and then hung up.

  This fell outside even the usual bizarre territory of my anonymous phone messages. And that’s saying something, because those messages ran the gamut from weird to pathological. Once, when I’d been on the job only a few years and was still green, I had a call from someone claiming to have inside information on a professional football drug scandal that was much in the news at the time. I thought it might be my ticket to a bigger market, because this was a big-market story. So, ambitious, young, pumping iron, feeling brave, I agreed to meet this someone on a not-very-nice street in a not-very-reputable section of the city at an unwise hour. The intrepid reporter. Also, the intrepid reporter who wasn’t smart enough to tell anyone where he was going.

  And there on that disreputable street, I stood on a dark sidewalk in front of a bar and waited. At last, a Cadillac drove up, the passenger window slid down, I was motioned in. And in I went. I was driven a few blocks to the unlit parking lot of an out-of-business candy factory and “rolled” as we used to say; that is, I was banged over the head from behind by a friend of my “source,” then roughed up and pushed out of the car after being relieved of my wallet and other assorted valuables—a nice watch, a dependable cell phone, tickets to the Bob Dylan concert in Wells River the following week. I woke up in a puddle with a bloody, broken nose, a very sore head and neck, and scratches on my face, hands, and knees.

  For a while, Wales and I thought about doing it as a story: brave reporter mugged by unscrupulous thugs. But, in the end, we decided against it on the grounds that it might give a disturbed segment of our viewing audience the idea that roving reporters existed to fulfill the darker aspects of their fantasy lives. I took two weeks off with pay. The police went to the Dylan concert and found the two geniuses sitting in my seats; they did eighteen months in Winford State Prison and have not been in contact with me since. After the initial emergency room visit in West Zenith, I went up to Wells River to have my nose straightened and my head X-rayed again, at Mercy, where they have a facial reconstruction specialist and a brain guy. (Nurse Seunier remembered me from that short stay, not my finest hour.)

  It ended up working out well, though, because it was during that week, after my hospital visit, that I met Zelda. It was at Pete’s, in fact, a cute vegetarian cafe/coffee shop a block off Wells River’s main street. Zelda, I might have neglected to mention, is a therapist. At the time, in addition to her thriving private practice, she was teaching a course in counseling at the expensive women’s college in Wells River, and was reading some student papers over a mochaccino with a shot of vanilla syrup and buttered wheat toast.

  “There’s something jai no say qua about a woman who eats buttered wheat toast,” I offered, a terrible line, I admit, but I blame it on the pain medication. Plus, I had momentarily forgotten that my face was all scratched up, the nose bandaged, and one eye still black. So I was not looking my best.

  Without even lifting her eyes she said, “Yes, and there’s something je ne sais quoi about jerks like you.”

  I didn’t respond but kept looking at her. And that made her glance up. And when she glanced up, she took in the awful spectacle of my battered visage. I thought, for a second, that she’d either apologize out of pity or run screaming from the place. But she didn’t do either. She just appraised me, taking in the raw scratches, the dark purple swatch under my left eye, and the bandage/splint type of thing they were using to hold my nose in place.

  “A sight for sore eyes, aren’t I?” I said, trying again.

  “The hair looks good at least.”

  I thanked her. We laughed. The conversation sputtered and backfired for a while before we stumbled onto one of my passions—the American political scene, which, in those years, was fitting material for a comedy show. It turned out that, in the most recent election, we’d both voted for a candidate for senator who claimed to have a secret invention, not yet patented, that would fuel cars with vanilla extract. He was from East Zenith. I’d done a story on him. Zelda hadn’t seen the story (she watched our competitors) but had voted for the guy because the incumbent senator, who we both liked, had no chance of losing, and because she had a soft spot for offbeat, harmless types. Which somehow led to her giving me her “contact information,” as she called it. To wit, an e-mail address. I fired off an amusing note that afternoon. She answered it two weeks later. The rest is history.

  So, I suppose it was because of my pleasant associations with Pete’s that I decided I’d run up to Wells River and check this guy out. There would be no midnight rides in Cadillacs this time. I knew that. The news day was pretty slow. And Wales—who I wasn’t even going to tell at first—surprised me by tossing an “Okay, no problem” over his shoulder as he stared out at the city.

  And that was how I came to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

  SIX

  The meeting with the Good Visitor would be the start of a new kind of life for me, but I did not know that then, and I did not feel any particular trepidation or excitement as I made the drive to Wells River. If anything, I was annoyed at myself for having agreed to the foolish errand.

  It was a few days before school let out. The sky was giving forth a steady, cold rain (our weatherman, a bald bodybuilder named William Fiskawilly, referred to around the station as Willy-Willy, lived for bad weather, so he was happy). After searching for fifteen minutes, I found a parking spot half a mile out of town, and walked to Pete’s with my umbrella flapping around, and an expensive pair of shoes getting ruined.

  The only good side of all this was that, by the time I came within sight of Pete’s Cafe, I had worked up a healthy appetite and was ready for a serving of their excellent vegetarian lasagna. Plus, walking into the place always made me think of Zelda. Pete’s was full of people with small shopping bags and pricey raincoats, everyone holding coffee cups with two hands and casting annoyed glances out the plate-glass window. I had no idea what the self-described Good Visitor looked like and, honestly, at that point, I was hoping he wouldn’t show.

  Pete’s had a small main room and, at the back, a narrow verandah with floor-to-ceiling windows that could be taken down to screens when the weather was good. It was always quieter back there, and fewer people would stare at me or ask for autographs, so I made a zigzag run between chairs and grabbed a table at one end of the verandah, keeping my back to the room. In less than a minute someone came and stood opposite me. Tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair swept back from a high forehead and a rectangular, handsome face that showed a hint of South American Indian, this fellow might have been a typical Wells River architect or software entrepreneur, up from Universidad de los Andes, with a daughter-of-an-obstetrician wife and two beautiful kids back in their million-dollar contemporary. But he wasn’t. How I knew he wasn’t, I’m not sure. After a while, you develop a feeling for these things. The worst of my Wells River acquaintances (and I should say that I also had some good friends there) wore a self-congratulatory air, as if they had
managed to tame this messy business we call life and saw no reason to let their awareness of that grand achievement lapse while they were in public.

  I’m sorry. I’m being mean. I have my reasons. The reasons have to do with my first marriage, which ended badly and involved a young professional type, a Tai Chi master from Wells River. The point is that this guy opposite me did not seem perfectly at home in Wells River. There was a ribbon of roughness to him, just a touch around the eyes, as if life hadn’t always been easy for him. The hair was black, the eyes a deep coffee-with-a-little-cream brown, the nose a sort of beak, the mouth wide and straight with the potential for a smile on it. Instead of a raincoat—uniform of the day—he was wearing a brown wool sport coat Wales would have been proud to be seen in, a tailored white shirt, and jeans—all perfectly dry. Most likely he’d left his umbrella at the door.

  “Do not get up,” he said, when I made a move to. He held out his hand and gave me a firm shake. “Jesus,” he said, pronouncing it the way I was used to and then adding, “Hay-Zeus, to my Spanish-speaking friends.”

  “Russ Thomas.”

  Jesus sat down. Before we could say anything else, the waitress came by, smiling as if she recognized me but was too cool to say so. “Veggie lasagna and a small salad,” I said. “Ranch on the side. Large cappuccino.”

  Jesus said, “Same.”

  When she left us, he clasped his hands together on the table in front of him and leaned forward. He had a presence, I have to admit, and I noticed, or felt, this presence right from the first minute we were together, even though I was not exactly predisposed to liking him. There were no golden flashing eyes or shimmering facial bones, just a calm, confident-but-humble way about him, as if he had set self-consciousness aside and was at peace with the person he presented to the world. You don’t see that in people anymore. We’ve been fed so much information—what we should and shouldn’t eat, should and shouldn’t say, should and shouldn’t think, the multifarious ways we should be feeling guilty about our lives in comparison with this or that suffering soul elsewhere on earth—that it’s rare to come across someone who seems fully comfortable and unself-conscious in his or her daily life. I think in my parents’ generation it was more common. Even now, my father can chow down a cold-cut sandwich and pinch my mother’s rear end in the kitchen without once thinking about bad cholesterol, trans fats, or the objectification of women. Even my brother Stab’s situation—I’ll get into that later—hadn’t moved them toward any particularly philosophical consideration of the nature of existence.

  Anyway, Jesus leaned toward me and said, “I won’t waste your time, Russell.”

  “Russ.”

  “Fine. Here is the situation. I need you to quit your job, and get Zelda to quit hers. As soon as possible.”

  So I understood from the get-go that the guy was, as we used to say, “soft.” But I didn’t want to leave without having my lasagna, and the weather was lousy, so, without missing a beat, and without giving much thought to how he knew about Zelda (anybody who can get your private phone number can find out the name of your girlfriend), I said, “I’m drafting my letter of resignation even as we speak.”

  His frown was not a pleasant thing to consider. “You have an unfortunate attraction to sarcasm,” he said. “It is a way of keeping people at a distance—you know that, of course.”

  “Oh, my apologies.” I took a sip of the cappuccino and wiped my upper lip. “Look, you call me on my private line with some half-ass story, get me up here on a day like this, then tell me to quit my job, and get my girlfriend to quit hers. And I’m supposed to say what? Thank you?”

  “Sorry,” he said, but it sounded nothing like an apology. “I thought you would have understood by now.”

  “Well, compared to people like you, I guess I’m a little slow.”

  The man who called himself Jesus sat back in his chair and gave me a smile of genuine amusement. “You are somewhat cynical,” he said. “Which is a manifestation of fear.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, it is so. And cynical is the persona you give off on the screen. Yet you never connect it to the fact that you are still a roving reporter after eight years, while a lot of the others who finished school in your class have moved on to the anchor desk in various parts of the country.”

  “I’m doing fine, thanks,” I lied, but I could tell he wasn’t buying it.

  The waitress came and put our plates in front of us. Jesus looked her in the eyes when he said “Thank you,” which is something my father taught me to do a long time ago, “a sign that you have class,” he liked to say.

  “Not to worry, though. I can use a cynical, scared, ambitious person in my operation.”

  “You’re off your meds,” I said, reaching for my fork. “Why don’t you go and find someone else to insult. I’ll pick up the tab here, and we can just agree we’re not good lunch companions.”

  “You shall be well taken care of. As will Zelda.”

  “Why don’t we back up a step?” I suggested, after the first bite of salad, though I had pretty much stopped caring what he said by then. I wanted to finish my meal and leave, and if the guy trailed me I was going to have him arrested for stalking and not lose any sleep over it either. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “It is widely known what I do, and have done. You have reported on a couple of my doings in the past month.”

  I considered this, chewed, swallowed, looked at him. One thing about the business I’m in, a thing that’s equal parts bothersome and intriguing, is that you come face to face with the limitless manifestations of the human animal. You get to meet people like Alba Seunier, devoting their lives to comforting sick kids, and people like Ada Montpelier’s boyfriend, breaking fire escapes in the hope it will win him a legal settlement so he’ll never have to work again. And then there were people like my new pal, Hay-Zeus, who inhabited a level of insanity most people found frightening to contemplate. The whole thing seemed clear to me at the time: he had watched my reports on the Ada Montpelier scamola, and the Amelia Simmelton recovery, and had come to the delusional conclusion that he was the man I was talking about, the mythical savior and healer. The Messiah.

  Having grown up in the circumstances I’d grown up in (tough neighborhood, middleweight boxer for a dad), and having made a bad marriage at an early age into a family of the mentally disturbed, I was not intimidated by sociopaths. Whatever my other flaws and failings, I have a measure of physical courage. As I ate, there on the sparsely inhabited verandah of Pete’s Cafe in Wells River, with a hard June rain streaming down the windows, I came to the belated understanding that my lunch companion was claiming to be Jesus Christ, who many people—my mother, for one—consider to be God. A large number of my fans and friends would find it unlikely that God would choose me as a lunch companion and be sitting there in a cute cafe, telling me to quit my job.

  I said, “Sure it’s widely known what you do. You scam people. You want attention. You’re another nut, bringing trouble into the lives of those who want nothing to do with you.”

  Jesus laughed. It was, I had to admit, a good-hearted laugh, and completely sane-sounding. He had nice teeth. He had not touched his food—which, my mother would have said, instantly disqualified him from being God. God would not waste a good lasagna. I was halfway through my lunch and counting the minutes, when he reached across the table and touched my forearm in a particular way. It is hard to describe that touch. There was no weirdness in it. It was, at once, a sort of apology for any inconvenience he might be causing me and a quiet insistence on his sanity and goodness, a reassurance, an understanding that I might have to maintain a defensive posture in public encounters and that I might not, after all, be as happy with my, well, with my station in life as I pretended to be. The gesture caused me to look at him, really look at him for the first time, and to really listen when he said, in a quiet voice, “I brought little Dukey J
unior back to life for a reason. And I cured Amelia Simmelton for a reason, as well.”

  I want to go on record here as saying that my doubts did not suddenly vanish at the sound of those words. But something happened. My arm buzzed where he had touched me. “You don’t exactly fit the God description,” I managed to say, but some of the wind had been knocked out of me.

  He seemed pleased. “I chose you for a reason, too.”

  “Well, that immediately undercuts your credentials.”

  “You do not think very much of yourself, I take it.”

  “I’m okay. Not the best, not the worst.”

  “Deep down, you feel a disappointment in the way your life has turned out.”

  “Listen,” I said, “my girlfriend is a therapist, so I get more than enough of this kind of stuff from her, thank you.” But behind the smoke screen of those words, I felt like I was about to start weeping—which would have been about the second time in my adult life that I’d actually shed tears. The first time was at the dog track, now defunct, up in Pownal, Vermont, when I missed a ten-thousand-dollar Superfecta by a nose. Which gives you an idea how sentimental I am.

  “You feel like you were meant to be doing something else,” Jesus went on. “Something grander, something that has more impact on the world.”

  “Who doesn’t? Ninety percent of the people I talk to feel that way. The guys I golf with secretly think they’d be as good as Tiger Woods, if only they’d started playing when they were four, and had the right sports psychologist. Lots of the women I know believe they should be married to Brad Pitt or Denzel Washington, but by bad luck they somehow got stuck with their plain old husband.”