American Savior (42 page)

“That is a very, very, very hard thing to make yourself believe,” I said. “Some of the things that happen are so awful, it’s impossible to say yes to them.”

“I understand that,” Jesus said, and then he went silent for another long time. “You have to somehow cultivate the humility to trust that I understand that, and that your perceptions about what is ultimately best for you are … clouded.”

“How do you uncloud them, is what I want to know.”

“I have given you a hundred lessons in that over the past few months. Go back over everything, your memories, your notes.… You will begin to see the path you can travel to that unclouding.… Begin with
the questioning of your assumptions.” As if it were one more lesson, he brought a flask out of his pocket and took a sip. “Which reminds me,” he said, passing the flask to me. “I never told you what job I had in store for you, postelection.”

“Kind of doesn’t matter now, does it?” I took a sip—good red wine that tasted like pure acid in my mouth—and handed it back to him.

“Anna will serve as president for four years, and then she’ll refuse to run for reelection, mostly because she won’t want to endure the vicious attacks the two parties will throw at her. During those years, she will need all of you. Are you interested, or do you want to go back into the news business?”

“I’m interested, of course. After this, the news business would seem like getting paid to roll around in goat dung.”

He almost smiled. “Your job,” he said, “my journalist friend, is to bring the news into people’s lives, to write this down the way it happened. All of it. The good, the bad, the confusing. Do not paint yourself and the rest of your colleagues as something you are not. And do not change my words or my behavior by so much as a single comma. Will you do that?”

“Of course,” I said.

“We are finished then, for the time being.” He kept his hand on my shoulder while he stood, and such a current of love was flowing into me that I could not describe it without resorting to drug or sexual imagery, and even then it would be too weak. I felt loved in a way no human being could possibly love me. I felt that I was about to start weeping. The nice hard crust of protection I’d built up around myself over the years was crumbling into bits of bad jokes and pretend straightforwardness. I managed to put my hand on his for a second or two, and to keep the sobs from pouring out. “Don’t get up,” he said, and I realize now, writing this, that it was the first thing he ever said to me—when we’d met in Pete’s Cafe in Wells River, in what seems like another lifetime. He squeezed my hand warmly. “Wait until I’m out of sight and then go back to Zelda. She is still awake. She’s worried.”

I made myself nod. I thought I saw the tiniest of twitches at the corner of his lips, as if he were sad about something. I thought he might wink,
or offer one last word, or even start to cry himself. But he did not. I tried to say something more, but I could not.

When Jesus turned and shuffled off toward the entrance of the park, I felt an actual, physical pain in the middle of my chest, as if someone had shot me there, too. My breath started coming in big heaves, and it was suddenly a lot of work to do what I’d done naturally for almost forty years, just get the air into me and push it out again. I felt a pressure behind the bones of my cheeks and forehead, and then the grief was spilling out of me, unstoppable as the river of thought, and my face was soaked and hot, and there was a drip-drip-drip-drip on the top of my right hand. I wept like a boy. I watched him go, a dark watery figure slowly blending with the blackness beyond the park lights. I could see his legs, the soles of his shoes, one last flash of the bare skin of one hand, and then nothing.

“Come back,” I said in his direction, but I said it quietly, just with my broken-up breath, just once. And then I could no longer see him.

Acknowledgments

So many people had a hand in the making of this book—or have been supportive of me in my writing life—that it is impossible to acknowledge them all. I would like to express my gratitude to my fine editor Chuck Adams, and everyone at Algonquin, especially Ina Stern, Brunson Hoole, Robert Jones, Michael Taeckens, Courtney Wilson, Christina Gates, Anne Winslow, Craig Popelars, and Elisabeth Scharlatt.

Special thanks to everyone at Marly Rusoff & Associates Literary Agency, especially Marly Rusoff, Michael Radulescu, and Julie Mosow.

I’d like to thank Lynn Pleshette for her efforts on my behalf in Hollywood; and, for their generosity of spirit and helpful conversations about the creative life, my gratitude to Peter Grudin, Michael Miller, Craig Nova, Dean Crawford, John Recco, Sterling Watson, and Les Standiford.

My most heartfelt thanks go to my wife, Amanda, and our daughters, Alexandra and Juliana, for their unfailing love and encouragement.

Published by
A
LGONQUIN
B
OOKS OF
C
HAPEL
H
ILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
W
ORKMAN
P
UBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

© 2008 by Roland Merullo.
All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

E-book ISBN 978-1-56512-663-3

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ROLAND MERULLO

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