Free American Savior by Roland Merullo Page B

sometimes, the way he talked, carried himself, the things he said. He might have had a hockey helmet on and been sitting in the penalty box, spitting between the gap where his front teeth used to be. And then, in the course of a single sentence, all that changed and he was, well, almost motherly … in the best sense.
    “If you like advice, you’ve come to the right couple,” I said, and I could feel Zelda look at me when I used that word. “Because we’re two of the most opinionated people we know.”
    “And two of the smartest,” Jesus added.
    “Not exactly. Zel here is no bright bulb, as you’ve probably already realized. Yours truly, on the other hand—” I got that far before she whacked me again, harder this time, though in a loving way.
    “I want your take on where the campaign stands,” Jesus said.
    “But you know all that already, Lor—” Zelda caught herself before pronouncing the whole title. She had swung around in her seat again so she could look at him. “You know everything, don’t you?”
    “I let there be gaps,” Jesus said, still gazing out the window, where the scenery had changed now to thick hardwood forest and hills. It’s a beautiful part of the world, western Massachusetts, very different from the eastern part of the state, geologically and politically. Driving from the woodsy west to the energetic east, where I’d been raised, always made me slightly anxious, as if the world around me was moving faster and faster and I had to work harder just to keep up.
    “We don’t understand that part,” I said. “The gaps, I mean.”
    “On one level, I know everything, yes, of course. On another, while I am here, I limit myself. Purposely. I have detached myself from the Great Spirit, the Father and Mother Spirit, and taken this form, which, I have to tell you, is not my favorite of the physical shapes—”
    “But you’re wonderful- looking,” Zelda broke in.
    Another bad twinge. I tried to tell myself it was because she’d never known her real father.
    Jesus went on as if he hadn’t heard. “What you might not understand is that the rules of this planet are fixed. Just as water freezes at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, for example, or earth makes its rotation in approximately twenty-four hours, there are certain spiritual laws here, set in place even before the physical creation of the sphere that houses and nourishes you. To a certain extent, I can bend those laws whenever I want to—perform a miracle, for example. But if I eliminate them altogether for my own purposes, then everything is upended and my taking human form is purposeless. I have to operate within the confines of your understanding, your thought system, even, for the most part, your physical limitations.”
    “But why the ‘have to’?” I couldn’t keep myself from asking. “That’s the tough part, for me at least. It seems to me you could do anything you damn well please.”
    “My mother has so ordained,” he said.
    “Your mother?” Zelda sounded excited. “In the Bible you’re always speaking of the father. ‘My father in heaven,’ and so on.”
    “Same thing. Mother, father, me. Same thing.”
    “The holy trinity,” I suggested.
    “Sure,” Jesus said, “if you like that model. The whole point of the teachings I gave in those days was to try to break you people out of your insistence on identifying with the physical body. All suffering comes from that identification, that should be obvious enough. They have been altered, unfortunately, but the original meaning of my words had to do mostly with that.” He paused for a moment. I saw him staring out the window, and it did seem to me that he was communing in some way withthe trees and stones there. This is my body. That is my body. I am not my body. I had a little stretch of wishing I’d paid more attention in Sunday school.
    “Listen,” Jesus said. He leaned forward so his head was closer to us. “I do not want to get too far into this