Flesh and Blood (12 page)

I was depressed.

Regarding myself like a stranger in the small mirror, I cupped water from the tap with my hands and brought it to my waking face. Was this how it was for everyone—birth, childhood, college, black hole?

A tinge of guilt shot through my mid-section like a hunger pang, as it almost always did when I had such thoughts. There was so much in my life to be thankful for that even the mildest existential angst seemed self-indulgent, but this was something that only vaguely registered, an intellectual raindrop in an emotional storm. The nothingness I found myself in wasn’t something I could talk myself out of.

It was as if the tropical depression that gave birth to Katrina had come ashore when she did, its life-draining force still present in the oppressive pressure I felt in my chest.

Hurricane Katrina had been the deadliest storm to hit the Gulf Coast since 1928, its 175-mile-an-hour winds not just ripping through the coastal structures of Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, but the fragile stitches of the fabric of our society, the rent garment revealing our great hypocrisy beneath.

But I couldn’t count my despair among Katrina’s collateral damage, for it didn’t arrive in her aftermath, but on the early autumnal winds that brought with it the hint of change, even as everything in my meager little existence remained the same. Still alone, still addicted, still living among the least and lowest. Still … .

And then the phone, its piercing ring jolting in the early-morning silence.

Stepping out of the small bathroom and stumbling down the narrow hallway of the tight, tiny, and dilapidated mobile home, I looked at the clock beside my messy unmade bed as I lifted the phone.

I had to be at the prison at seven. That was a little more than an hour away. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good news.

My voice was dry, unused, my depression bleeding through its edges. I didn’t recognize it.

“John? Is that you?”

A male voice, distantly familiar, but unidentifiable.

I cleared my throat.

“Yes.”

“I’m so glad I caught you,” he said.

“Call before six in the morning and there’s a better than average chance you will,” I said.

“Sorry it’s so early,” he said, “but it’s an emergency. I need your help.”

“Who is this?” I asked, too down to care about being tactful.

“Charles,” he said. “Charles Simms.”

Charles and I had been in seminary in Atlanta together, but had never been friends—especially not call-at-five-something-in-themorning friends. In addition to having different interests and being very different people, we were on nearly opposite ends of the theological spectrum. Charles was an evangelical fundamentalist. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was, but it wasn’t that.

“How are things at the retreat?” I asked.

Charles was the director of a retreat center on Panama City Beach. I had only seen him a couple of times since seminary. He only called when he needed help. Not long ago I had helped his sister out of a jam.

“We’ve taken in about four hundred victims of Katrina,” he continued. “Mostly from New Orleans, but some from Mississippi and Alabama.”

“That’s great,” I said. “That’s a really good thing to do.”

And it really was, though I suspected those receiving his shelter would also have to endure his impassioned Puritanical preaching.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “The Lord’s really blessing us to be a blessing to a lot of lost people—and I don’t just mean because their homes have been destroyed.”

I knew what he meant. In his world, everyone could fit neatly into one of two categories—the lost and the saved.

My condition was causing me to be less patient than usual. I was already weary of him.

“What can I do for you, Charles?” I asked.

“What do you think about the Second Coming?” he asked.

“Charles, I really don’t want to—”

“Just answer the question,” he said.

“I guess I’m more or less in favor of it,” I said.

“Well, it’s happening,” he said. “Right here. Right now.”

“On Panama City Beach?” I asked.

“Can you believe it?” he asked, his voice filled with excitement.

“No,” I said. “I can’t.”

My head began to ache—not the sharp shooting pains of stress or exertion, but the constant dull pressure of sleep deprivation, stagnation, and depression.

“Jesus is at my humble little retreat center,” he said.

“I thought he was spending all his time in prison these days,” I said. “You sure it’s not just some Hispanic guy?”

“Don’t blaspheme, John,” he said. “Please just get out here as fast as you can.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Before I realized who she was, I contacted Children and Families Services about her,” he said.

“Her?” I asked, far more interested now, and it showed in my voice.

In Charles’s religion, women were subservient, meant to submit to men. His faith also ignored the feminine aspects of God found in sacred literature, history, and nature, and held a literal view of everything—including Jesus’ return in the clouds.

“Yeah,” he said. “A little black girl.”

“And you think she’s the Second Coming of Christ?” I asked.

“It’s a real mystery, man,” he said.

“Don’t a lot of homeless people think they’re Jesus?” I asked.

“This one’s different,” he said. “She might actually be.”

“Run that shit by me again,” Merrill said.

I did.

We were in my truck in Panama City, heading west on Highway 98 toward the beach. My truck was old and small, and Merrill’s massive bulk seemed stuffed into the passenger side. Today was his day off, so instead of his correctional officer uniform, he was wearing jeans, a long, untucked black shirt, and stylish black leather shoes.

“I been tellin’ you Jesus was black,” he said when I had finished.

“You never mentioned he was a little girl,” I said.

“Didn’t know that shit myself,” he said, his lips twitching in something that had there been more of it would have been a smile. “But I ain’t surprised none.”

Merrill Monroe was a large, muscular man with very dark skin, very white eyes and teeth, and a nearly perpetual look of amusement on his face—as if we were all actors in a Shakespearean comedy, but he was the only one who knew it. He was my best friend, one of the best and smartest men I knew.

“Still don’t explain why we takin’ a day off to go see her,” he said.

“We’re the wise men,” I said.

He laughed. “We light one.”

“You count as two,” I said.

He smiled.

Merrill and I both worked at Potter Correctional Institution, the meanest prison in the Panhandle, he as a CO sergeant, I as a chaplain.

“And didn’t you already have the day off?” I said.

“Didn’t mean I didn’t have shit to do,” he said.

The morning traffic on 98 was heavy, but moved well considering. It was cool for an August morning in Florida—even the north end—and the sun was just beginning to do something about it.

“Let me tell you a little something about Charles Simms,” I said.

“Who the hell is Charles Simms?”

“The guy who called me,” I said.

“Oh, right. Okay, tell me something about ol’ Chuck.”

The cars on the dealership lots on either side of 98 were wet with condensation, which glistened in the increasing sunlight, the pavement around each vehicle looking as if it had just rained.

“He’s a Fundamentalist,” I said.

“A what?”

“Jerry Falwell.”

“Oh shit,” he said. “What the hell you got me into?”

It was the end of the semester, and the parking lot of Gulf Coast Community College was largely empty, but across the street, Berg Pipe and the Port of Panama City were busy.

“Not only is he superstitious and a literalist, but he’s sexist and racist—”

“So if he says a little black girl is Jesus …”

“Then it’s something I’ve got to see.”

“Still don’t explain what my black ass is doin’ here,” he said.

Panama City Beach Christian Retreat was in an old converted hotel on the north side of Highway 98, across the street from the Gulf. It was painted bright pastel colors and catered to the religious teenage spring break crowd, especially church youth groups. It was not what I pictured when I thought of a spiritual retreat center, and was nothing like St. Ann’s Abbey down the coast near Bridgeport—which was where I went when I needed retreat and renewal.

The converted hotel was three stories with external walkways lined with room doors. The L-shaped structure surrounded a medium rectangular swimming pool and had very little parking.

Clothes and sheets were draped over the balcony railings, doors were open, and people, mostly African-Americans, were everywhere. Though far better off than those still trapped in the Superdome, the people crowded into the Panama City Beach Retreat resembled them—both in their impoverished condition and in their boredom.

“That’s a lot of Negroes,” Merrill said.

I laughed.

“Not used to seeing that many at the beach,” he said.

I pulled off 98 and parked near the little office out front, and before Merrill and I could get out of the truck, Charles Simms was at my door.

“Little thing, ain’t he?” Merrill said.

I nodded. “Anxious too,” I said.

“Probably all the aforementioned Negroes,” he said.

“That’d be my guess,” I said. “Though, he could just be excited that Jesus chose his humble little retreat center for his Second Coming.”

“We don’t have much time,” Simms said.

This came without preamble and after he opened my door.

“Why’s that?” Merrill asked.

We climbed out of the truck.

“Who’s he?” Simms said.

“Ask him.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I’m … I mean things are … . Here’s the situation. Before I realized what was going on, whom we were dealing with, I contacted the authorities. They’ll be here to get her soon. I want you to talk to her before they get here and help me figure out what to do.”

“It’s cool,” Merrill said, and introduced himself.

“Come on this way,” he said, leading us toward a one-story building in the back left corner beside the hotel. “Meet her first. Then we’ll go over everything.”

To our left, behind the office, a pickup truck of supplies was being unloaded by a couple of teenage boys in baggy clothes and do-rags, while two buttoned-up white men watched. To our right, on the hotel balconies, grown men sat on the cement floor playing cards, checkers, and chess, as nearby women held babies and kids ran around engaged in improvised games. Nearly all of them had a weary, resigned expression, their eyes without light or joy.

“What can you tell me about her?” I asked.

The moist morning air was thick with the pungent, greasy smell of a southern breakfast cooked commercially in cafeteria style. It reminded me of a school lunchroom or the chow hall at the prison.

“Not much,” he said. “We don’t know anything about her before she arrived here.”

“That ’cause she was in heaven,” Merrill said with a straight face.

Ignoring him, Simms continued. “She has no ID, no known relations, no—”

“I know, I know,” I said, “no beginning and no end.”

Merrill laughed.

“You laugh,” he said, “but no one here knows her. We have no idea how she even got here. She has no parents.”

“Sure she does,” Merrill said. “All you got to do is call the Temple of the Black Madonna.”

“You’re
Jesus?” I asked when I stepped into the small cell-like room and saw the beautiful pre-teen girl with the big black eyes.

Somewhere around ten years-old, she was long and lean with corn rows that extended down nearly to her shoulders and held colorful beads at their ends. She wore faded blue jeans, brown sandals, and a fitted white t-shirt.

“I said I’d return,” she said, the hint of a wry smile dancing on her dark full lips.

That was a quick come back, but perhaps she had prepared it ahead of time.

The small, mostly empty room was used for counseling. Two folding chairs facing each other were in the center on the cheap linoleum floor. She was in one. I sat in the other. Merrill had remained outside with Charles. It was just the two of us.