By S.A. Black

When Jesus turns up missing from ma’s front lawn I say good riddance to plastic junk. The world is drowning in cheap garbage, ma most of all. When the archaeologists excavate, our time will be known by the layer of plastic crap.

Why did they make so many things they didn’t need, they’ll ask.

It was a primitive consumption cult, the professor will explain. The specter of death and oblivion coupled with spiritual bankruptcy caused material goods to take on an outsized significance. A prophet named Walton led them.

Of course, ma’s Jesus isn’t made of just plastic to move like He does. He’s got batteries and motors and wires at least. Some heft. Not so much weight that you’d think He’s got a metal chassis under there like the jobs we have at the warehouse, but solid enough for something ordered off the TV.

I’m standing on ma’s front lawn in the grey afternoon light like a fucking detective, looking at the little track Jesus kicked in the leaves, going round and round the stake I pounded in there. The stake didn’t pull up at least.

Should have waited another week to blow the leaves this year.

The front window is flickering with the TV light and it’s starting to piss cold rain a little. Of course ma thinks someone took Him.

The Venezuelan gangs, Jimmy.

Ma, that’s down in Lowell. The illegals up here all work on one of Scott Crockett’s lawn crews or doing construction.

Well He’s gone.

He’s wandering in the desert, ma. Back in forty days.

I blame rich fucks like the Swetts down the road for setting her down this path of holiday display nonsense. With that full animatronic creche setup and the shepherd with his flock. All the animals Adoring, the Magi waltzing up with the camels and the gifts and all that. Probably don’t have to plug any of those in every night. They just mosey on over to their chargers on their own.

Tommy at work says there’s one down Rye Beach that has the angel flying overhead Appearing to the shepherds. Lit from within and spotlight shining down on the flock. I’ll admit that drone sleighs are cool.

Dan from next door pulls up in his fancy station wagon and rolls down the window.

How you doing Jimmy.

Dan.

Everything okay?

Ma’s Jesus ran off. You seen Him over your way?

There’s a low stone wall between ma’s yard and the long driveway that snakes back to Dan’s place, and a lot of brush. A long pile of rocks as much as a wall, like all of them through the woods here, but ma’s Jesus couldn’t step over two bricks piled up.

You’re welcome to go take a look. Or maybe he went down the road that away. Dan nods through his windshield. Could be He made it up to the sled track.

Could be.

How’s your ma.

She’s good. I’ll tell her you said hi.

Alrighty.

Dan drives off and I consider the angles. He was walking counterclockwise on the tether. There’s still part of the string attached to the stake, and it looks frayed. Should have used the fishing line instead. Had some fifty pound test in the truck and I was too lazy to get it out. Or didn’t care.

Try picturing Jesus going around and around, with that weird lurching walk, one hand up Extending Blessings, crook in the other. If He shoots off at a tangent, it’s mostly leading off into the undergrowth. With the leaves all gone I’d see Him. I look behind the house and in the ditch
across the road just in case.

I squat at the edge of the road, picturing the string breaking at just the right point to send Him lurching towards the pavement. There’s a little crown to the road surface. Would it have been enough to set Him off straight up the little rise? It’s hard to picture, but not impossible. One in a thousand? Longer odds. I picture a car coming over the rise and catching a four foot tall Messiah in its headlights.

The sled track is just a walking trail now, since it doesn’t hardly snow anymore, but there are still little signs with snowmobiles on them and the word XING in red letters. The entrance is about a hundred yards up where the trail crosses the road obliquely. An old freight railbed, flat all the way to Nashua and straight as an arrow. You could really crank on it.

I take the truck up to the trail even though it’s close enough to walk. There’s a good amount of room on either side of the swinging steel bar that keeps dumbasses from driving their trucks and ATVs in, but the odds start to seem astronomical that He could make it this far, then turn left at the just the right time.

Still, there He is, lying in the drainage ditch about thirty feet in. I carry Jesus to the trailhead and put him in the pickup bed.

There’s some grime on His robe, and the feet are filthy from kicking through the leaves for a few weeks. There’s Windex in the cab of my truck and I stand in the driveway washing our Savior’s feet like a Pharisee whore. The robe cleans up good enough.

Once He’s on His feet, I plug Him in to recharge. You’d think they’d give more thought to it, the dangling plug is in a kind of suggestive location. These must have been designed for something else originally, but what? A little robot marching band? Animatronic toy soldiers? A wandering Buddha?

I bet Jesus would have had a sense of humor about something like a suggestive dongle. There are some hints of a jokester in the gospels. Need a coin for your temple tax? Catch a fish and look in its mouth. Mad at a tree? Smite it for generations. A regular guy as well as a Savior.

Growing up as the Messiah really has to fuck with your head. You’re always hearing these stories about the crazy shit that went down when you were born, and you find yourself talking circles around the crooked old fucks down at the temple. And meanwhile you gotta learn how to be a carpenter and do all the normal growing up stuff. Then one day you just lose it and you’re flipping over money changers’ tables. There has to have been a lot of pressure building up.

Then there’s that line, My detractors say the son of man is lazy and a drunkard. There must have been a kernel of truth in it to bear inclusion in the Gospels, as brief as they are. Did our man Jesus enjoy the sauce as much as any other red-blooded male? When you consider Cana
it all starts to come together. No way that was the first time He pulled the wine trick. He’s all It’s too soon to reveal myself and then Mary’s all Just do the wine thing already, dry weddings are the worst.

Mary was clearly in on the secret and it wasn’t the first time. Our man Jesus’s compassionate side was spilled over into a little fun. Honey, Mommy’s too tired to go to the wine merchant today, can you miracle some up for me?

Miracle this goddamned house, I say out loud before going up the steps.

Oh Jimmy, thank you, thank you. You found Him! Look out for that pile of mail.

Which one.

There’s junk mail poking out from under the couch like it’s the leading edge of a tsunami. Clothes cascading down from on top of it. A mountain of indistinguishable junk growing in the corner. Plastic bags full of unused napkins, empty cardboard boxes, an odd shoe, some old plastic toy, a ceramic angel, all jumbled together into a geologic formation of crap. An old family photo collage frame is half buried at a weird angle with most of its slots empty. Stacks of McDonald’s plastic soda cups on the table and enough straws for a month. A general scent of garbage drifts in from the kitchen. A tiny trail of carpet visible to walk on.

The eye bounces back and forth between the details and the whole, overwhelmed into blindness.

I knew He’d come back to me, says ma.

I sigh. I’ll use fishing line this time.

We could go, she says.
Where.

The holy land. See where He walked?

Ma, I don’t think you can drive a bluebird scooter around Jerusalem.

I’d manage honey.

You can’t afford a trip like that.

I’ll sell some of my collectables.

Like what.

Like the McDonald’s glasses. I have all the sets.

Nobody wants that shit, and they been through the dishwasher fifty times.

A full-sized dumpster is six hundred and I try to picture how many we could fill out of this tiny house. Load after load. Tommy knows a a guy who will do it for four fifty a load but you gotta wait for him to pick it up. Or could they just collapse the house and everything in it. It’s a
teardown anyway.

I will tie Jesus in good before I go.

It’s only a week before she calls me again in the morning. He’s gone again. Fucking pain in the ass.

I’ll come find Him after work, ma.

It’s more fucking robots all day at work. Going into the safe mode at the dumbest times, with their little traffic jams, wearing out servos and generally being a pain in the ass. These at least are field-serviceable and steal a lot less frequently than humans. And we haven’t had one
wander off yet.

It’s clear and cool, the last bits of light still in the sky when I get to ma’s place.

When I get there, I know something’s wrong because I don’t see the TV going through the window.

She’s on the floor in the living room, semiconscious and reeking of piss, moaning.
I hold her hand in the ambulance all the way to Portsmouth General.

It’s a stroke, I learn after hours in the waiting room, mindlessly staring at ESPN, watching the slow parade of maladies and small traumas that traverse the tiny ER overnight on an early December weekday. Big enough for an uncertain prognosis, but not big enough to kill.

In the morning, she’s coming out of sedation and sort of clawing at the air above her, reaching for something invisible. The stroke didn’t paralyze her at least. When she shits herself the orderly comes in to change her, and the nurse tells me to go home and get some sleep. Your mother is stable. For now. Rest up.

I go to work instead and it’s dusk before I get back out to ma’s to get my truck and go see her. I walk up to the trail again and sure enough, Jesus has made it back to that same spot. He’s been there at least a day now and I try to picture the sparse traffic of dog owners, joggers and walkers passing by, debating whether to call the town to report the trash, then forgetting in the rush of competing priorities. Picking up the pork chops on sale at Shaw’s. Asking the Delaneys who fixed their roof. A lab sniffing at Him before being pulled away.

I’m crouched in the wet leaves, contemplating the million to one odds of it all when I catch some motion out of the corner of my eye.

And I’ll be goddamned if it isn’t a mountain lion crossing the path about two hundred feet down. It’s both near-invisible with its brushlike coloring and glowing with the aura of a predator as it slinks across the trail. It sends a chill down my spine. I know they’ve been spotted up north but I never imagined they’d made it down this far.

My mind flashes to one of those History Channel shows. The Talmud says that Jesus had a human father, it explained. A Roman soldier named Pandera. Panther.

I pick up Jesus and set him on the trail, looking down that’s when the cat disappears. Brush Him off a little, pick some leaves and dirt out of his hair and beard.

You really want to get out of this shithole don’t you bud.

Jesus’s eyes stare out longingly.

Alright.

I reach under the robe and hit the go button, it’s where the navel would be.

He lurches forward. At first I think it’s the change in temperature giving the battery new life. But, he walks. And walks and walks. And I stand there, watching Him go.

———————————————————————-

About the Author

S. A. Black is an American writer, technologist, and advertising executive.
Black is the author of the novel Target Pool, a thriller with a plot centered around the surveillance economy. A lifelong writer and the author of numerous short stories, Black has also written extensive nonfiction work about advertising and technology, published in the national
and advertising trade press. Black is a lover of the outdoors, travel, cooking, and a dedicated reader.

By Trevor Conway

Into a pink mug: paprika,

dill, pepper and a fit of salt,

yoghurt stirred – a thick catalyst

that coaxes colour to swirl and blend.

An egg (which may have been an after-thought)

requires four uncouth cracks.

She lifts it high, with its sticky weeping

of white and yolk from counter to mug.

She must cradle some expectation,

a quiet hypothesis of colour and texture.

She scoops the mixture onto a plate,

peers through a glass – a microscope stance –

and I imagine Gregor Mendel

stood over his pea plants with such hope.

The squint of her eyes says it all:

she, too, has arrived at a bold conclusion.