Rogers has more religion in his left nut than other people have in their entire body. Not enough to turn water into wine. He hasn’t tried that. He doesn’t drink. But he can do things that can’t be explained. Like change someone’s mind. Influence grain prices. Raise a child from the dead. He just tweaks his left nut, and the show is on. Rogers is a channel through which God delights to communicate. His main superpower is getting people into church. He’s grown Assembly of God from a few dozen to several hundred. He’s getting a new sanctuary that will hold two thousand, and that will make us a mega church. It’s being built right next to the current sanctuary. We’re getting our own time slot on television. His sermons are going to be televised live every Sunday. People are drawn to him. He’s good at what he does. His sermons are interesting, irresistible even. The one thing that gets everyone so worked up about Rogers is his sermon on wood. Everyone loves that sermon. He blazes through the bible. He goes from the tree in the garden of Eden (the Kingdom of Heaven is like a tree), to the wood Isaac carries to his pyre (the children stagger under loads of wood), then to the carpenter on the cross (cleave the wood and there am I), and then further. It may sound disorderly, the way I’m describing it, but this is no haphazard sermon. It does seem borderline sacrilegious. For one thing, he turns Jesus of Nazareth into Paul Bunyan.
A religion of wood. It doesn’t make complete sense to me. But it does to my mom. I’ve been attending for a year or so, every time with my mother. Because of my mother. I’m not giving Rogers all the credit for getting us back into church. The main reason is my dad got caught embezzling from his grocery store. He’s in prison on the other side of the state. My dad has been to four different prisons. It reminds me of the story where the drunk guy goes into all the swimming pools on his circuit home. We carry my father’s sin before us. Another reason is my mom feels we must become religious to look the part for my brother. My brother is the second coming of Christ. He’s in his freshman year at seminary school. He’s determined to become a minister.
I’m being asked by my mother not to read during church. If I was reading the bible, that would be encouraged, but I’m reading Stephen King. I like Stephen King. I’m thirteen years old, and I happen to like reading Stephen King. I don’t know exactly what she thinks about books, because I never see her reading, but she does not approve of Stephen King. She thinks I might be an atheist even though I tell her I’m not. She said I’m projecting godlessness on our family. “What about your brother? Don’t you care about your brother? There are people watching us, watching what we do.” I tell her my views on religion can be summarized in three Emily Dickinson poems, the one about keeping the sabbath at home, that one about religion being an inheritance, and the one about faith being a fine invention—that’s my favorite. I tell her how Dickinson hid in her bedroom when revivalists came to town and wouldn’t let them save her because their faith was commercial, and mass produced. That confirms my mother’s suspicions. She has no time for my sermon. My faith does not meet her specifications. She said I’m ruining it for everybody. Ruining it for everybody.
It takes me awhile, but I figure it out that Rogers and my mother are in cahoots about my salvation, about my reading during church. Great decisions are being made about me. The way I figured it out is my mother tells me I have the face of an atheist. That’s something Rogers had told me about Stephen King. It was before church had started. He ambles around before church starts, and you have to be careful because he likes to confront people, corner you into these intense conversations—he’s not just shooting the shit, he’s accosting you. I was seated in the last row, minding my own business, ruining it for everybody.
He said something like, what are you reading today, and he can clearly see that I’m reading IT. “I’ve heard about this book. There’s sexual deviancy in this book,” he said. I’m sure his left nut is swelling within his slacks like a puffer fish.
He sits down next to me. I’m in charge of my mother’s purse which is between us. I’m guarding my mother’s purse without realizing it, protecting it like it’s the nuclear football. I don’t say anything. He takes the book from me. He’s perusing the book. “I’ve always thought,” he said, “that Stephen King has the face of an atheist.” He turns the book over to see King’s photo. We look at it together. I must admit he kind of does look like an atheist, whatever that means. His narrow lips are beginning to curl into a mischievous grin, and his eyes are crossing underneath his thick glasses. An atheist or a janitor.
“Did you watch this movie?” He’s talking about the television mini-series which has just aired a few months back.
I nod. He shakes his head. He loathes me I can see. He could not have been more disgusted if Ted Bundy were in the church parking lot with his arm in a sling. I think about telling him how six boys sleeping with Bev is the same as Sarah sleeping with the Pharaoh, but I don’t. I don’t tell him that for mother’s sake. I’m silent for her.
Rogers keeps my book out of my reach. It’s a thick book.
He holds up three fingers. It’s a tactic he uses. It means he’s going to say three things. I’m ready to count.
“Let me summarize my knowledge of Stephen King for you. Evil prom date, evil hotel, and evil clown. Your mother and I are worried about you. I told her we have to be willing to do whatever it takes. There is only room for one king.” It takes me a second to see he’s making wordplay with the word “king” because these are rapid fire sentences he’s using.
Next, he grabs my right wrist and pulls on my arm. He almost ripped my arm off. He had to know he almost pulled my arm out of its socket.
“Come by and see me in my office after service. Let’s settle this nonsense.” He shows me his teeth. He has a holy hatred of me and my books.
I nodded, but I had no intention of going anywhere near him. I start thinking he’s like God, saying I can read from any book in the garden, except the Stephen King.
His son approaches him with something urgent, I can’t hear what, something about swollen testicles. He gives me back my book and leaves.
His son’s on my ass too. His name is Jericho, but we call him Jerry. He runs the youth group which is where I was supposed to be on Wednesday nights after school. He took the youth group over from a lecher, a guy whose last name was lecher (plus or minus a letter), who turned out to be a lecher. My mother and I would fight over my unwillingness to go to youth group. These fights would start after she’d been crying for several hours over my dad, and after I’d been consoling her. I knew she was crying because she’s so ashamed. She tries to use that as a guilt trap. But there are things happening in that church that my mother can’t see.
“Can’t you at least try it? Why do you have to challenge everything?”
“I’m not challenging. I’m in church, what more has to be done to make you happy?”
“You’re not making me happy. It’s your life, your choice. But you should be in youth group. Jerry is supposed to be just as compelling as his father. You should be around people your own age.”
I pity my mother more than anyone in this world—do you know what that’s like? This whole thing has been hard on her. My father is the only man she ever loved. My mother would not divorce my dad as others encouraged her to—myself included. She’s loyal. What I’m thinking about is how my mother used to tell me to have my dad help me with my math homework. Your dad is good at math, she’d say. He was too good at math, is what ended up happening.
“You don’t see what you’re doing,” she said. “Your books. You’re rebelling with those books. You blaze right through them. Do you even read them? You’re humiliating me with those books. Why are you doing this to me?”
That’s how it ends. I will never lose the feeling that I am separate from my family because I read Stephen King books. We’re in the kitchen. I know our conversation is over, since my mom is opening a container of sour cream right in front of me, which she knows I hate. Sour cream is my mother’s method for ending all religious debate. She is communicating her strength through sour cream. The sour cream sermon. I have a weak stomach, and I hate the smell of sour cream. This is so much worse. She takes a spoon and scrapes furry blue mold off the top—this mold is alive for God’s sake! It’s been overhearing us! Its moving! She throws that part away. Then she starts eating the sour cream with the spoon like nothing is wrong. She eats that sour cream with a righteous attitude. She can’t get it in her mouth fast enough. And there’s sour cream at the corners of her mouth. I put my hand over my nose and mouth. I thought to myself, I don’t have the stomach to be a Christian. It takes a strong stomach to eat something past its expiration date. I’m going to be sick to my stomach. I get up from the table and somehow make my mother spill on herself. “Look what you’ve done! Look what you made me do!”
Youth group meets in the basement of the church. It’s about twenty or so teenagers of different ages. I know no one in that youth group except for Jerry and Rogers’ daughter. Her name is Hannah. She’s gorgeous, even though her and Rogers have the same kind of dimpled chin like the underside of a wine bottle. She’s seventeen. She’s friendly and gregarious. She talks to you; asks how you’re doing. She really wants to know how you’re doing. Hannah is a kind person. She’s the way the first Christians were. The ones who met secretly to try to get the second amendment passed. I’ve had about a dozen fantasies about Hannah and her smile. I want to own her smile, control it. I want to make it so only I can make her happy. We’d keep the sabbath to ourselves. I’d take her away from Rogers. A girl like that shouldn’t have to put up with Rogers in the first place, she can do better. None of the Rogers are like Hannah. I’m pretty sure Hannah is the only one in the family who has been in Lake Michigan past their belly button. The Pastor’s wife, Mrs. Rogers, she reminds me of the servant whose job it was to stand beside the fireplace and turn the spit. In mediaeval days, before the dogs on the treadmills. She’s overcome with fatigue every time I see her. I don’t know her name, but let’s call her Beatrice, she is beat.
The only place for me to sit is right next to Hannah. She gives me the smile when I sit down. It’s a gnostic smile, from when churches were caves. It’s a luxury to sit this close to her. We all sit in folding chairs in a circle around Jerry. The youth group kids are suspicious of my being there.
Jerry is giving us a lesson I guess you’d call it.
“What if you put Buddha on the cross, will he save you? Buddha on the cross says ‘all life is suffering. Follow the eightfold path.’ How about Confucius? Put him on the cross! Confucius is powerless. ‘Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.’ What does that mean for your salvation?” He goes through a list of religious figures and mystics, one by one puts them all on the cross and takes them down. “What about Socrates? Know thyself, that’s all he has for you. Socrates cannot save you.”
Jerry sees me then. He fixes his eyes on me.
“What if you put Stephen King on that cross, will he save you? Will a bestselling author get you to heaven? A horror writer—” He pauses for dramatic effect. “What if I put your Stephen King on the cross?” He’s talking to me. Was he my Stephen King? “He may be able to raise your pets from the dead.” Everyone laughs like the opium eaters they are. I did have my Stephen King book in my hand. I made sure his photo was facing down. The problem with that is one side of the book has an evil clown and the other side has an evil janitor.
“Jesus said, ‘Take heart, I have overcome the world.’ No one else can say that. Jesus alone can save you. He’s trying to give you eternal life. Don’t you want eternal life? Don’t you want it?” he said. He’s drilling into me with his eyes. “You just don’t seem eager enough.”
We go around the room after that, one by one, and each of us is expected to say that we accept Jesus Christ as our lord and savior. I have no idea what I’m going to do. Then my turn comes.
Hannah says my name and touches my knee. My name is good to hear. She leaves her hand on my knee for a long time. Have you ever had someone do this to you? Her touch surges through me. Maybe I can convince Hannah to do a tit-for-tat. I do this thing, plant these magic beans, and she does whatever I want her to. I want to do what Hades did. I want to do what Hades did to Persephone, take Hannah to the underworld. I’d let her smile at others, but only with my permission. I want to suck the marrow out of her life, like it’s Walden Pond. We’d go into the woods where nobody could reach us and then I’d suck the marrow out of her life.
I do it. I say the words. No one has to twist my arm. I’m bewildered. Look at what I did, I think. Now with those words said, I feel awful. Not because I don’t believe them, but because they aren’t my words. Is this how it was a hundred years ago when the tents came to town? I failed Emily. I failed her. I’m unworthy of reading her poetry ever again. Would she even let me read her poetry again?
Afterwards, Jerry approaches me. It’s here that I notice Rogers and son have the same smell, they must use the same bar of soap. They probably are showering together these days. He asks about my brother. Everyone asks about my brother. I said he’s fine but what do I know? I haven’t seen my brother in several months. He said I should spend more time with my brother. And pay attention to him. “Your brother is a smart man,” he said. When someone tells you someone else is smart, that’s a roundabout way of telling you you’re an idiot. My brother and I don’t talk. My brother is not a talker. My dad is not a talker either. It’s a library with those two. They come in and out of my life like substitute teachers. They’re like those two stone lions outside of the Rogers’ mansion if that makes sense. Those two well-fed lions.
The first service in the new sanctuary happens later that month. The new sanctuary is the size of a Walmart. You walk in and ceiling vaults overhead a hundred feet or so. It’s nothing stunning from an architectural standpoint, but the acoustics are great. The seats are nearly filled. Television cameras on wheels are along the back and sides. There’s one thing I haven’t told you about. Since this is a holy roller church, we believe in speaking in tongues. We use the gift of tongues. And after every service, Rogers will call the congregation forward. Everyone would come to the front of the church and speak gibberish which Rogers alone could translate. It gets boisterous.
My mother makes it very clear that on this day in the new sanctuary she expects me to come to the front of the church after service. But I can’t do it. I won’t do it. It’s a bunch of holy horseshit. How far are we going to take this myth? I can’t prove it, but I know Rogers sent his daughter to me. I know he exploited his daughter to get me to the front of his church. My mom probably suggested it. The bible itself suggests it, as we know.
The service part is over, but no one can leave because Rogers is calling everyone up for his seance. I’m reading my Stephen King book in the back row when Hannah approaches. I look up at the rafters. Why would I do that? Hannah looks up at the rafters too. A bucket of pig’s blood, perhaps? Theres nothing up there. She looks at me and doesn’t say a word. She’s wearing too much makeup. It’s disarming because she doesn’t usually wear much makeup. She places a hand on my cheek and gives me a smile. It’s a serious smile. It’s a separatist’s smile from more tolerant lands. She takes my hand. Her hand is as smooth as a church pew. What can I do? I let her lead me to the front of the church. I don’t remember standing up. I followed her. I had to follow her! I wanted to follow her. I would follow that girl anywhere she asked.
At first, we sail toward the front of the church, but then we slow down. People are in our way. I try not to look up until I’m standing directly in front of Rogers. That’s because some of these people scare me, they’re so demonstrative. Finally, I’m standing before Rogers. My faith is high in my throat. Hannah lets go of my hand. I don’t want her to. I’m about to say something, I don’t know what. I don’t say anything. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. Rogers grabs my forehead with his hand. He has a firm hold of my head. He asks me if I accept Jesus as my lord and savior. Hasn’t this been settled already? This time it’s no trouble for me to say yes. He prays for me. He speaks in tongues. He might as well have been repeating the first thirty digits of Pi. Hannah is standing there hugging herself with her arms the way girls do when they’re no longer willing to donate their bone marrow. She’s done with me.
Rogers is done with me too. He’s ready to move on. He’s tapping his right foot, getting antsy. I think he expects me to move. I feel like I’m standing somewhere I’m not supposed to be standing. Like I’ve landed on someone else’s space in Monopoly. Like I landed on someone else’s faith.
I start walking back to my seat. Back to my Stephen King. We’re in serious trouble.
Jason Escareno is a writer from Seattle. His other works can be found in Bristol Noir, The Rumen, The Opiate, Variant Literature, BULL and LitBop (forthcoming).