As we walked to his house, Jesus told me that his father didn’t really love his mother. He didn’t believe that Jesus was his child. He told me that while swinging his lunch pail. He told me that the same way you’d tell someone that you liked apples. When someone tells you something like that, all casual, it sort of takes the pressure off. You don’t have to start rocking them in your arms and stuff. I appreciated Jesus for going easy on me like that, since we’ve all got our troubles.
His family lived in a building that had a huge billboard advertising beer on the roof and there were dogs walking around in the stairwell like they owned the joint.
We went into his room, turned off all the lights and set up the Ouija board on the bed. As soon as we touched the marker, it started zipping around like a cockroach high on roach poison. I had never seen such a thing before. Jesus and I took our fingers off the marker but it kept sliding around all the same. It spelled out, “I-AM-WITH-YOU-JESUS.” Jesus and I screamed our heads off. We jumped off the bed and ran right into the apartment hallway. Under the stairwell, I let Jesus put his hand under my shirt and on my chest to see how hard my heart was beating.
After that, things started getting weirder and weirder. Sitting in the cafeteria one day, Jesus put his juice box down and turned to me.
“Tell me if this apple juice doesn’t taste funny to you,” he said.
I took a swig. It tasted exactly like wine. I recognized it as wine because I’d had some at my cousin’s wedding the year before.
“Why did your mother give you wine?” I asked.
“I don’t think she did,” he answered.
Word of the wine spread like wild. Pretty soon everyone in our class was lined up at our table, asking for a sip. Jesus passed around his box and everyone got some.
When there was none left, we all sang this crazy fast version of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
After that, everyone started letting Jesus hang out with them, and since I was his friend, I got to hang out with everybody, too.
The socializing seemed to be doing Jesus wonders. He really came out of his shell, doing all kinds of really daring things, like one time, during recess, he made his way onto the school roof and jumped right over the alley to the next building. We stood under him on the ground and watched as he sailed over us.
A lot of boys in class took to following him around, anxious to see what he’d do next. The boys started calling themselves “The Holy Ghosts.” Jesus got mad and embarrassed when he heard about it, though. He didn’t think the gang should have a name. He didn’t even think that they were a gang, although that’s obviously what they were fast becoming.
Jesus showed up one day at my house. He was wearing no shirt and little red Adidas shorts. My mom said that, in general, guys who were as skinny as Jesus were embarrassed by how they looked without a shirt on, but Jesus didn’t seem to care. My mother said that that meant he had inner strength — a real screw-all-of-y’all attitude.
I never invited people over, so I was a little put-off having Jesus in our house. Once, I had Judas over and he said he found my apartment depressing. He said that the postcards of KISS on the wall in the living room made him want to off himself.
“I like your place,” Jesus said, leaning against my bedroom windowpane. “You have a great view from here — right out onto the record store. It probably helps you dream of music. We have the best neighbourhood.”
“Wouldn’t you rather we lived in Westmount?” I asked. Westmount was the fanciest neighbourhood in the city, and my mother was always going on about how if she won the Lucky Seven, she’d set fire to the building and move us there in a smoke cloud of glory.
“Being rich is stupid,” he said. “It’s way better to have less. It makes you cooler. No one from a rich background can ever really be cool.”
He said all of this in the same way that he dropped the news about his dad. Very matter-of-fact. Maybe that was why I bought it. It seemed to somehow make sense, like he was saying something that I had already thought myself but had never actually gotten around to putting into complete sentences. Jesus’ words made me feel like no matter how much there was something deep down wrong with you, there really wasn’t anything wrong with you at all.
I was sitting on the side of my bed, listening and thinking, when Jesus remarked on the cut on my arm. I got it when I crashed into a telephone pole while running and looking into people’s windows. Jesus held my arm and kissed it, and then, just like that, the cut turned into a scab. It was like I was in a dream, where funny things happen and you don’t try to question them.
It was then I had a brainstorm. Our washing machine hadn’t been working for months, so I brought Jesus over to it and it turned on. It still made the same old awful clanking sound, but still, it was working. I brought my mother over to see and she tried to get Jesus to pick a lottery number for her, but he wouldn’t do it. Finally she gave up on getting it out of him and settled on using the numbers in his birthday and she won thirty-three dollars.
When the weather became nice, Jesus and I started hanging out in Jerusalem Park. There was a fountain there with a golden spout. The only problem with Jerusalem Park was all the older bums who hung out there and were always coming up to you. Sometimes they wanted to hit you up for change or smokes, but mostly they really wanted to mouth off about their hippy-dippy ideas.
It was at the park that Jesus and I first met Jean-Baptiste. Even though it was spring, he was wearing a big brown fur coat and eating from a jar of honey with a plastic spoon. His legs were folded and, judging from his bare knees, he didn’t have anything on under his coat.
Jean-Baptiste came up to us and said that seeing Jesus gave him a real déjà vu. Déjà vu was big among the hippie bums, it seemed.
“It’s like I recognize you from when I was a kid,” said Jean-Baptiste, “but that would be impossible. I’m twice your age. Plus, I grew up in Winnipeg.”
Jesus smiled politely. Jean-Baptiste looked at him in a knowing way.
“We were born for terrible things to befall us, weren’t we?” said Jean-Baptiste.
He kissed his palm and put it on Jesus’ forehead.
“Are you wacko?” I shouted at Jesus. “Don’t let him do that. You’re going to get hepatitis.”
“You think this boy is afraid of germs?” Jean-Baptiste laughed. “He has a pure spirit. He wants everyone’s germs.”
“I don’t know, Mister,” I said. “Not everyone likes to roll around in the dirt like you do.”
“He sure does. He’s got a Messiah complex. He’d put it on the line for anyone, anywhere, any time!”
For some reason this made me sick and scared. And angry. I was angry we had even stopped to talk to him.
“If you’re so smart,” I said, “go find yourself a job.”
And then I grabbed Jesus by the hand and together we ran out of the park.
That was the last time I ever saw Jesus. He had karate lessons with Judas that night and they were supposed to take the bus downtown together like they usually did, except that night Judas never showed up. His mother gave him a lift and he figured Jesus would put two and two together and head downtown on his own once he saw he wasn’t coming, but Jesus probably just stayed sitting on the bus bench, waiting. Judas always said he really regretted that.
The story went that Jesus was abducted, but nobody can really say for sure. The thing is, he would have been really easy to kidnap. Jesus trusted everyone. He probably walked right into the kidnapper’s car without any hesitation.