The Whipping Christ

The Whipping Christ
I.

So she ends up working here, at the Kozy Kountry Kitchens.  Everyone in Jude County, Indiana, is familiar with the restaurant, this big hall of a false barn, located across the road from the truck stop plaza just off the main interstate highway that cuts through the county, as it brings in all kinds of strangers across the state from all over the country, north to south and south to north.
         As she should know.
         She fits in here, in her waitress uniform of a full-length fluffy dress with lace pleats all around the apron that has that old-fashioned country granny look to it.  She could even fit in on one of the floor to ceiling shelves along the walls that hold bric-a-brac knickknacks like those crazy quilt pattern rugs that are probably made in Taiwan to imitate a homemade look from the American pioneer days, and those mass-produced plastic cornhusk dolls and picturesque collectors items dishware that are just for display, and those framed pictures of country hamlets and garden cottages bathed in radiant light from up above – all designed, no doubt, to make the road traveler buy into a wholesome longing for Home Sweet American Home.
         I am visiting her to find out the “how’s”.  I already know the “who’s, what’s, where’s and why’s” from several articles I have in front of me that were written by this big-shot, full-time reporter guy out of Gacy, Indiana, who the newspaper I work for sent down to cover the trial in the Jude County courthouse … and without even telling me about it.
         That’s how I recognize her, from the Gacy Tribune article that shows her grim and tearful and disheveled within the grayness of a photo after the verdict was reached.  And here is a photo of who they are calling the “region cult killer”, being led down the steps of the courthouse with his arms handcuffed behind him.  He has on a flannel shirt and blue jeans and basketball sneakers, and his lean head and face have unkempt long hair and a mangy beard, like he knew all along that there was no use wearing a suit for the occasion.  His eyes are downcast, though he has this slight grin on him like he is sharing a private joke with himself, all the way to the state pen.
         That’s why the Gacy Tribune sent Mr. High School Popularity here, to report right in MY very own backyard.  I can see from his articles that he who-could-talk-to-all-the-cheerleader-trixies-that-I-couldn’t-get-near-enough-to-share-the-same-air-to-breath-even does have the who’s, what’s, where’s, and why’s of the trial in perfectly good order.  The “who’s”, that is, the mother, the father, his brother, and the region cult killer who came to visit but who obviously overstayed his welcome.  The “what’s” of what the region cult killer did best: he preached and killed.  The “where’s”, this “trailer home church” of theirs.
And, the “why’s: the whippings.
         But my old high school chum never does get into the “how’s” in this article.  So I’ve come up with this idea.  How about pitching her story to the national tabloids?  They ought to pay me more than the usual dollar a column inch that I’ve been earning in Jude County as a stringer covering school board meetings and church pancake breakfasts.  This story can add up to more than just some clumsy backwoods homicide.  I could make it into satanic sacrifice, black masses, virgin child abuse, topless witch covens … real torture chamber stuff.  And a few more cups of coffee get me thinking of movie deals even, with bikinied starlets dancing on my lap as the high school hero asks to interview ME in Hollywood … if and only if I take one of his phone calls.
         Now these stupid high school days in the back of my head are giving me doubts about approaching her:  I’m just not in the mood to risk any more personal failures.  But she happens to be coming over to my table to take my order, beaming at me with that slight tilt in the head that born-again Christians always give with their precious little smiles (and their Lord knows, I’ve seen plenty of those, what with 30 churches to a population of 3,551 in Se Haute, Indiana).  In this polyester pioneer woman dress uniform of hers, she appears to me as much younger than in the article, probably due to the gray newsprint photo effect that brings out the Sorrowful Mother look.
         I put the article away in my briefcase as she softly hands a menu to me, and asks if I want a refill of coffee.  I nod my head, I take a deep breath, and I start to collect my thoughts out loud, by saying, “Oh, and do you have a newspaper that I could read?”
         “Sure, I’ll get you one, they always have it behind the counter.”
         “Thanks,” I say, but I can still hear my voice quivering slightly as I continue, “speaking of newspapers, haven’t I seen you in one before?”
         She never breaks off that mild smile of her, or her calmness.  They’ve probably got her on tranquilizers.  “People have been looking at me like they want to ask me that question,” she says. “But you’re the only one who really has.”
         I couldn’t help but smile back at her.  “Well, it’s my job,” I say.
         “You write for the newspapers?”
         I clear my throat, “They sent me here to get your side of your story,” I say. “I mean, we want to know how … I mean … are you okay?”
         “Why, I’m fine,” she answers lightly. “Thanks be to …”
         Naturally, I’m expecting the J Word here, but I didn’t think that she would grimace like that, as she bites on her lower lip – only for an instant though, as she once again regains the born-again smile.  “Would you like me to tell you about my new life in Jesus?”
         Not really, dear, but anything for a story.  “Of course,” I say, “I want to hear all about it.”
         “Well, I guess it would be okay if I took my break now,” she says, pouring more coffee into my cup. “Then we can talk.”

So she starts telling me:

II.
         How she had been living in a purple and white, double wide trailer home, just outside of Se Haute, Indiana, on three acres of rented lawn property bordering a surrounding reach of deep forest.  It had plenty of room for her, her husband Biff, and their five-year-old son, Mikey, so they could let friends and relatives come to visit them, and even stay from time to time.  The longest time was from Biff’s brother, Lester, who was living with them in a spare bedroom while he was looking for work.  Really, it wasn’t a bother.  Lester would keep Mikey company, watch the boy for them, and play with him, and he would also help out with chores around the trailer home.
         After all, they were a fellowship of Christians here.  She and Biff had given their lives to the Lord a year after he had heard all about the church community life around Se Haute, Indiana, from the born-again Christians at his job that he was working just outside of town – in the fur shed, where they skinned animals and prepared furs for sale.  The Christians would witness to Biff, giving him these pocket-sized cartoon books that Biff would share with her, Lester, and Mikey later in the evening.  The cartoons showed the truth about a world outside their little community that had gone desperately wrong: given over to unearthly demons that masqueraded as human people who trick others into sinning, appearing in the guise of sects that you might think loved God and His works but were really snares for Satan … like the Roman Catholics, the Jewish people, the Free Masons, and the Islams … these cartoons had Satan all over the place, tricking the foolish ones, left and right.  Of course, she and Biff and Lester had chosen the One Way to be safe from all of that and to protect Mikey.  They were all baptized together, then, by immersion at the Congregation of the Literal Translation of the True Word of God near their trailer home in the unincorporated town of Vyrgil, Indiana, where they would participate in the church life there.
         She says how happy they were in their born-again faith, that is, until they became witnesses to discord in their chosen church.  Pastor Zim, who had baptized her family and was helping her to teach Mikey about Jesus, had been having difficulties with a man named Konrad who wanted to start his own personal youth choir group in the church.  This fellow Konrad had been pushing the church to sponsor and finance his project, the Wandering Heard Choir, and he kept asking for money … but it is such a long, drawn-out story to her.  Though Pastor Zim and Konrad denied any conflict, there was still tension in the humid summer air across the sun-baked plains of the Se Haute, Indiana, region.  Though they truly loved the little white-on-white church, and they were praying every night for the Lord to help them resolve this conflict, they still had this feeling of underlying tension and conflict in the congregation that continued to bother everybody.
         Now she describes how she and her family met Shep.  He had come up from Florida on a converted school bus in late July during a missionary trip that the small Bible-based churches conducted as part of what they called their fellowship witnessing programs, where various church members served as sponsors, letting the missionaries stay at their homes.
         She remembers distinctly how Shep was the first one out of the bus that Sunday morning, when all the sponsors gathered in the parking lot of the church before regular services to greet the missionaries.  At that very moment, she knew he was someone special in the faith.  As she pours out more coffee for me, she says how:
         “It was like he never would set his feet on the ground.  Shep was so full of the Lord’s energy, you could hear it in his first words to us all ‘Praise the Lord, I’m here!’  I never heard anyone say it like that, like you just won a million dollars in the lottery or a brand new car, or, even better, that you were in heaven already.”
         She describes how he approached her: even though this church school bus must have traveled miles upon miles on the road from way down in South Florida to Northwest Indiana, the light blue dress shirt that he wore appeared to be perfectly pressed and starched on his narrow body with a dark blue tie that retained its crisp knot, along with his crisply pleated black dress slacks and spotless black patent leather shoes.  His short blonde hair precisely combed on top of his lean head, Shep was all smiles that day, his white teeth showing out clean and bright.
         “Praise the Lord,” he said.  “I believe I’ve been led to my family!”  She and Biff had looked at one another amazed; they hadn’t even been introduced yet to Shep as his sponsor, but he had found them out!  Dropping his red canvas duffel bag down on the parking lot, he hugged her for the first time in Christian fellowship, an embrace that felt genuine and purely tender to her.  She noticed how Shep’s body was not perspiring a drop through his dress blue wear – though the temperature must have been in the 90’s with high humidity, he did not use the satin white handkerchief that remained neatly folded in the breast pocket of the blue shirt.
         The visitors served to lighten the general sour mood around the Congregation of the Literal Translation of the True Word of God all throughout that summer day.  They had a joyous communal pancake prayer breakfast and, though the Wandering Heard Choir did perform after they had finished eating, there was no sign of discord between Pastor Zim and Konrad, though they obviously still avoided having to look at each other.
         Following breakfast, she and Biff took Shep back to their trailer home in the woods.  As Shep was sitting down on the couch in their living room, she remembers how he also slowly opened his duffel bag to reveal the largest, most handsome Bible that she had ever seen – and she seen many a Bible in her time as a Christian.  His Bible was covered in shiny black leather embossed with gold lettering on the front; and when Shep opened it to the scripture pages, she remarked on the neatly highlighted, finely underlined words and passages and scripted notations in jet-black ink along the margins.
         “After a fellowship like the one I just witnessed,” Shep said, smiling, “I always feel like a Bible study.  Your congregation is certainly blessed to have such a fine, upstanding man of God like Pastor Zim to lead you.”
         Because he was obviously such a devout brother in the Lord, they found it easy from the start to confide in him, as they spoke about the conflict between the Wandering Heard Choir and Pastor Zim’s stewardship.
         Shep responded with his smile and said “Well, Pastor Zim is head of this church. And as it says … pardon me, but may I remove my tie before I begin?”
         Shep unknotted the tie, lifted it up over his head and off his neck, and folded it upon his lap.  When he unfastened the top button on his shirt, she noticed a curious brown leather strap of a necklace of some sort on him.  It appeared to be slightly at odds with his tidy blue shirt and black pants style.
“What are you wearing around your neck there, Shep?” she inquired.
         “That’s nice of you to ask,” Shep said. “Would you like to see it?”  He widened his smile, pulled the necklace out from under his shirt, and handed the object to her.  A square and clear plastic holder case at the end of the necklace held a portrait of the head of Jesus Christ on the cross – the holy blood, the crown of thorns, the beaten face contorted in suffering and torment as He took on the sins of the world.  But when she moved her wrist to switch the picture back and forth, the Jesus head changed into a beaming image of the benevolent Christ with His calm and kindly eyes, with His blood, thorns, and scars dissipated by the golden white light around His pristine face.
         “A friend of mine, a baby Christian, gave this to me after he was baptized,” Shep told them. “He’d been raised Roman Catholic, until I showed him that the Holy Word of God says he was being fooled by a man-made institution that doesn’t care about the Bible.  For example, I showed him that nothing in the True Bible says that somebody calling himself a priest can sprinkle an infant on the head and call that a baptism.  Baptism through immersion, everyone knows, is the only way.  He was so surprised that, the very next day, he asked for a real baptism and became a true Christian.  And he gave me this off the back of his neck as a reminder of my witnessing to him.  They call it a scapular.”
“This is such a beautiful picture of the Lord,” she said.  As she kept moving the picture of Jesus around in the palm of her hand, she remembers how Mikey came running up to look at it, and thinking maybe that the scapular was a toy, reached up to play with it.
Shep stopped his smiling then.  In a low voice, he said, “okay now, could I please have it back?  It does mean so much to me.”
She handed the scapular back to Shep and he placed it around his neck again, carefully.  He cleared his throat.  He rebuttoned his shirt, lifted the dark blue tie off his lap, and knotted it around his neck perfectly, all without having to look in a mirror.  With that, his smile returned, as he reached out for his black leather Bible on the coffee table.  “I believe I have a passage highlighted in here, all about conflict in the church,” he said.  “Yes, here it is, Acts 20-20: ‘Be on guard among yourselves, and for all the flock, over whom the Holy Spirit has appointed you as overseers, to shepherd the church of God that He has brought with the blood he has shed.’ ”
Ever smiling, Shep sat back into the couch after reciting the Bible passage.  She describes to me how she felt herself gazing upon him.  Her entire family was doing the same gazing.  Not looking at him, or even staring at him, but this kind of gazing upon him.
“Do you see what I mean?” he asked.  His soft voice sounded like the rustle of a breeze in church after a prayer.  He closed the Bible onto his lap, and he rested his left hand right next to his right hand, flat down on the shine of the black leather cover.  Laid there on his Bible, his hands resembled those pictures of the Praying Hands that they have for sale on posters and photographs in Kozy Kountry Kitchens, she says – perfectly manicured, tapered, and poised.
“God has a plan for you,” Shep went on to say.  “In every test of faith He gives you, He wants to help you find the right path.  Right now, all of you are being tested in your church.  And the answer can always be found by praying together on it.”
“But, Shep, we have been praying on it,” her husband Biff insisted.  “We’ve been doing our praying.”
“May I offer a suggestion here?” Shep asked. “You’ve been dealing with this problem in your fellowship between yourselves.  But maybe a brother in Christ outside of your church can help put your minds to rest.”
He lifted his hands off the Bible, opened them out to the family, and motioned for everyone to join him around the couch.  They took each others hands to form a circle of prayer.  Tightly closing his eyes, clenching and furrowing his brow in solemn concentration, Shep prayed aloud, asking God the Father and Jesus His Son to reveal a solution to the discord that had plagued the fellowship of Pastor Zim and the Congregation of the Literal Translation of the True Word of God.  She says, sighing, how she could hear him speaking from his soul in his beautiful way with the Words, like when he was asking the Lord to help the Wandering Heard Choir sing in harmony, in one voice, for all of the church.  She especially liked that part, about singing as one.  His prayer was the most positive language she had heard these last few months about the conflict in the church, and as she held hands with Shep, she felt these concerns leaving her mind.
Now she recalls how Mikey, being the little boy that he was, saw the grownups all together and wanted to join in.  Giggling, he came running over and, bumping into her, he grabbed her hand away from the hand of Shep to break apart their clasp.  “Pray,” Mikey had said. “We are praying to Jesus” as his parents had told him many times when he had seen them joining hands like this.
Shep sniffed in the air.  He let go and put his empty hand up to his nose, rubbed it a bit, then began touching around his cleanly shaven chin.  He scratched at his chin.  He was scratching it with his middle finger, and then he took to scratching it with his thumb.  Then he laughed slightly, to make a joke of it: “Why, little brother, don’t you know my favorite great old-time gospel hymn, ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken’ ’’?  Taking Mikey’s hand into his own again, gingerly, Shep sang the words of the hymn in a hushed and reverent voice.  She had listened to the Wandering Heard Choir sing the hymn before in church, but it had never sounded as fine as the way Shep sang it that day, like it was his own prayer he had improvised, on the spot.
Indeed, she would always hear Shep singing “Will The Circle Be Unbroken?” to himself as he did his chores during the first days of his stay.  He was so painstaking and dutiful: cleaning, washing up, dusting, sweeping.  Even when he was hauling out the black rubber bags to the back road where the garbage trucks came, he would just be singing out and smiling away, she says.  He sang the hymn “because it always reminds me that later in the evening, after my work is complete, I’ll be joining hands in prayer with my brothers and sisters,” Shep would tell her. “It’s the best part of the day.”
She describes how the Christian joy they were feeling during these prayer sessions got to the point that, after three weeks of having Shep in there with them, they just stopped going to the Congregation of the Literal Translation of the True Word of God all together.  What was the point?  Why listen to that disharmony over some rogue choir, when they could hear Shep lead them in prayer sessions right in their own living room?  Not even Pastor Zim could break into reciting entire pages of the Bible by heart, then enunciating, then proclaiming them.  She says how her soul would just lift up at those moments, lifting together with their congregation of souls through their joined hands, when Shep was with them during those summer days.
Then there was “that day”, and she tells me how it will always be that day to her.  That day, when she returned home after grocery shopping in Se Haute, Indiana, to find Shep just sitting on the couch – “real quite like?” is how she explains his demeanor.  He was dressed in exactly the same clothes that he had been wearing when he met the family.  She tells me how, exactly: the light blue shirt, the perfect knot in the tie, the black dress slacks, the shining black shoes, like he had never removed them.  His posture was rigidly straight: his hands lay softly with palms down on his lap, and he was staring straight ahead at the wall opposite him, as though transfixed by the grains in the wood paneling.  Because she had seen him all smiles so often, this face of Shep was especially disquieting to her.
She drew close to him, and asked, “Shep, you don’t look yourself.  Is there something wrong?”
Lightly, he closed his eyes.  “Of course, there is something wrong,” he whispered.
“Something wrong?  In here?”
“There is trouble with my Bible,” he said.  “The Scripture has been violated.”
“What do you mean?”
He drew his lips into his mouth.  “Your son, the one you call Mikey … took the Word of God into the lavatory with him.”
“Mikey did what?”
Shep turned his severe, penetrating gaze at her.  “You know what he did,” he stated, bluntly.
She sighed.  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Shep,” she exclaimed.  “Mikey thinks the world of you; he probably just took your Bible into the potty because, well, you know the way kids can be, he was probably just pretending to. …”
“NO!”  She says how that would be the first − but certainly not the last − time she would hear his bray of a shout.  Then she heard him declare:  “The Bible is not bathroom reading.  As if that weren’t bad enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean soiled,” he told her.  “I mean soiled, as in a diaper.”
She tells me how she just couldn’t believe what Shep had just told her, but she also could not see how a good Christian like him would make up something like that.  “Well, we might be able to clean it, can’t we?” she asked, rather meekly.
“It is irretrievably soiled.”
“But at least let me have a look at it, Shep, maybe I can do …”
“DO?” he shouted again.  “Do you believe that I would KEEP such a piece of … work like that in my sight?  I buried it, back there, back in the woods.”
“I’m sure we can find one just like it and replace it.”
“Of course, you do see,” he said, shaking his head, “that the destruction of my Bible is somewhat beside the point.”  Lifting his hands off his lap, Shep began to scratch a bit on his cheek and on his chin.  “The Bible is gone, but Mikey remains.
“I should say,” Shep explained, “it’s what’s inside the soul of Mikey that remains.  I mean, read the last paragraph of Revelations.  The very last word in the Word of God:  ‘I warn any man, woman, OR CHILD! who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If any one of you adds anything to them, God will add to him, her, or THE CHILD!  the plagues described in this book.  And if any man, woman, or CHILD! takes away words from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him, her, or THE CHILD! their share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are written in this book’ ”.
“Oh my Lord Jesus, what are we going to do?”
“First, I believe we must keep Mikey in his room,” Shep advised her.  “Don’t let him out until the man of the house returns from his work at the fur shed.”
“But what if he has to go potty, Shep?”
She saw how Shep shuddered just a bit.  “I … I can’t let him out … we can … I mean to say, we can watch him in there together to make sure he doesn’t do anything evil, I would think.”
When he was told that he would have to spend the rest of the day in his room, Mikey seemed so sad and confused.  It nearly tore her apart when he asked her, “Why, Mommy?” with those wide brown eyes and sad pout of his.  But Shep had told her that Mikey, as he was in the grips of evil, would not understand the gravity of what he had done.
And so Mikey stayed behind the closed door of his bedroom most of the day… that is, until later in the afternoon, when she heard the voice of Shep again:
“NO!”
She heard a door slam, and running feet pounding on the floor.  She hurried into the hallway toward Mikey’s bedroom, where she came face to face, eye to eye with Shep, whose blonde hair was all disheveled and his eyes ablaze.
“We have to talk!” he shouted at her.  “I let your boy out to use the lavatory while you were preparing our food, and OH MY GOD, the sinning …”
“What?”
“In the bathroom, he was spilling!”
“What?”
“OOONNNAAANNN,” Shep moaned. “ONAN, in the Bible, ONAN!”
III.
“So, brothers and sisters, our little brother Mikey has turned out to be kin to Satan,” Shep told them.
“Do you have to say that about him?” she asked, sadly.  She was thinking of poor Mikey sitting back there alone in his room, behind a door that they had locked from the outside.  “He’s just a little boy.”
         “Indeed, this satanic one does resemble a little boy,” he responded, promptly.
         “Shep, just what is your thinking here?” her husband Biff asked.
         “From my experiences, such a little boy like you are calling him does not just get it into his mind out of nowhere to soil a Bible,” Shep said.  He started to thinking.  She remembers how he would close his eyes so tightly that they appeared to be permanently closed, in these moods of his.  “I’m seeing the presence of another.  Another who comes to us in the image of a little boy, but that is bringing a big evil into the trailer home church that we are building in here.”
Out of the blue, Lester intoned: “Our trailer home church.”
         “But I’m scared for little Mikey,” she said. “It’s not his fault.”
         Shep cleared his throat, and said, “well again, from what I’ve seen in my Christian work, he is no longer the real Mikey of yours.  Would the little boy you once knew ever think of soiling any books, let alone the Word of Our Lord?  Or learn to self-abuse himself?”
         “No, no Shep,” she responded.
         Shep leaned forward and stared straight into her eyes.  “I suppose you plan to send him to a secular school soon?”
         “Yeah, Reverend,” said her husband.  She remembers how this was the first time that she heard them in the trailer home church refer to Shep as “Reverend”.  As a matter of fact, she even asked Biff: “When did you all start calling him that?”
         Her husband turned to her.  “Haven’t you been listening, dear?  He’s a Man of God and a Man of his Word.  We are truly blessed to have him join us as he has … or else Mikey would have been damned!  We’re talking for eternity here, and you know what that can mean!
         “We weren’t happy any more with that church out there in Vyrgle.  They were always arguing about that choir of theirs.  But when we meet in here, in our trailer home church like the Reverend Shep is calling it, and when we’re praying in here with the Reverend Shep, it feels like we’re right with God now.”
         “Through our Reverend Shep,” his brother Lester intoned again.
         She remembers how the Reverend Shep was smiling through all of this.  “Thank you, brothers, I feel so blessed to be at one with you, my spiritual family here in our trailer home church,” he said.
         That’s when she first heard him speak in tongues, as he would in the months ahead.  Of course, she had read in her Bible about the Gift of Tongues, and actually, several people in the Congregation of the Literal Translation of the True Word of God had uttered a few words of it to her … but never as smoothly nor as cleanly as the Reverend Shep did.  He would close his eyes, take a long sighing breath, and start talking this talk like a magical charm of an incantation.  She was held transfixed by what was coming out of the mouth, by the lips that moved all about on the face.  It was like secret whisperings from spirits that had passed from the earth, long ago, but were in a state of transmission now.
         “Yes, Reverend Shep,” she heard herself respond, though she could not literally understand him.
Now she tells me how the Reverend Shep stopped his talking in tongues, sat up very straight in on the couch, and clasped his hands together.  “Now, maybe we can deal with what’s gotten into that boy,” he said.  “I believe he needs schooling in that old time religion, with respect for the Bible and its Christian teachings that he wouldn’t be getting in a secular school.  We need to do some ‘down home schooling’ – like we call it down South.’’
         “Yes, Reverend Shep,” they said together.
         The Reverend Shep smiled, almost to himself, and ran the palm of his right hand over the top of his blonde, clean-cut hair.  “Here in our trailer home church, we can learn him pure, 100 percent Bible.  And it’ll be King James too, the way God wanted it to be – oh, now listen brothers and sisters, I like the other translations, don’t get me wrong – but this boy here? he needs him some King James.”
         “Amen, Reverend Shep,” they said as one.  “Amen!”
         “Once I learn him his Bible lessons,” the Reverend Shep continued, “he will know the King James version of the Bible, backwards and forwards … as you will surely hear for yourselves at our weekly prayer meetings.”
         “Amen.”
         Added the Reverend Shep, “Now, what I mean by learning it, brothers and sisters, is to memorize all the New Testament, because we know that’s the most important part of the True Word of God.”
         Though she felt a bit like not wanting to answer when she heard what the Reverend Shep intended for Mikey, she could not help but say “Amen” to it.
         “Now,” the Reverend Shep said, “let us all join hands and pray on it.  Let the circle be unbroken, through the grace of God.”  They did as he said, and she says how he began speaking in that King James English tongue then, with all those “thee’s” and “thou’s” in it.  Then he would be speaking for a while in the language of tongues, and then switch back into their own English tongue.
And he said: “I shall be like a father unto him, oh Lord, and he shall be like a son unto me.  When he doeth wrong, I shall discipline him with a blessed rod, and with blows from others, for it is written, he that spares the rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him sometimes, for, it is said, foolishness is bound in the insides of a child; but the good rod of correction gives wisdom unto him, but the child left to himself brings shame to the mother.”
With this prayer, Mikey’s Bible School in the trailer home church was ordained.

IV.
         The first day of school, she told Mikey again that he had done a very bad and a very evil sin to Jesus and to the Reverend Shep, and now he had to learn why it is called the “Good Book.”
         The Reverend Shep then led Mikey into the back room of the trailer home church that they had once used as Mikey’s bedroom, and starting keeping her boy in there for hours on end, each day.  She tells me how she would occasionally pass by the closed door, to hear mostly mutterings and intense Words of God, spoken aloud … although there would be these outbursts, like “no, no, Mikey, you child of Satan!” as the lessons went on for days, and then for weeks.
         Working as a waitress here at Kozy Kountry Kitchens, she sometimes finds herself remembering how she would bring meals to the Reverend Shep and Mikey during those days.  She would tap on the door when they were too busy, and she would leave trays of food in front of the door, always including a cookie or a chocolate brownie for Mikey on his plate.  But sometimes the food would just stay there, cold and uneaten, whenever the Reverend Shep was in one of his fasting moods … along, of course, with Mikey.
If they did join the congregation at the dinner table, she would notice how Mikey was now such a quiet boy, never smiling, saying very little … but always so polite and so well mannered when he did speak, exactly as the Bible saw fit, according to the Reverend Shep.
         And she has to admit how proud she was to hear her son recite the Bible during their prayer sessions.  She would understand just from hearing his voice that Mikey didn’t mean to hurt the Bible like that, it had been something beyond him that had made him commit that sin.  She had always known that her son was probably very bright and gifted, and she was happy to hear that in him when he spoke those King James words so expertly, so clearly, and so beautifully, never haltingly, under the eyes of the Reverend Shep – always staring straight and hard at Mikey, particularly whenever he was speaking or eating.
As he watched over Mikey during all the days and weeks he was spending in the learning room with the boy, the Reverend Shep seemed to be ignoring his own appearance, though none of the other men in the trailer home church ever mentioned the change.  As the green leaves of the trees in summer fell into autumn colours in the deep woods around their property, the Reverend Shep was letting his blonde hair and a yellow beard grow out long, unkempt, and tangled.  His clothing changed, too; he stopped dressing up in his missionary outfit and took to wearing t-shirts and flannel work shirts and blue jeans all the time.  He was still had on his scapular, though no longer tucked under his shirt, but always out in the open on his chest, so you could always see the image of the suffering Jesus Christ on the cross switching to the benign and smiling Son of God back and forth, and back and forth, again and again.
         One day in early November, she rather nonchalantly brought it up to the Reverend Shep – “you know, how girls will do with guys?” is how she explains it to me.  “Reverend Shep, look at that hair and beard on you,” she said.
He turned to her, and scowled.  “Why must you women always concern yourselves with outward appearances?” he answered back.
“Just making conversation, is all, Reverend Shep.”
“The weather is turning colder here around our trailer home church,” he said to her. “I’m used to the warmer climates, like in the Holy Land, and I’m asking God to keep me warm, in His Way.”  Then he dismissed her with a wave of his hand.  “You know, I have work to do with the boy,” he said. “I don’t have time like a foolish woman for these games of earthly appearances.”
V.
That’s when the whipping paddle came out.
It was on that day after their Sunday prayer meeting when Mikey had completed his recitation of the King James version of the New Testament, with that very last verse of the Book Itself that the Reverend Shep read to them when he had revealed the soiling of his Bible.
After Mikey had enunciated those last few words, the Reverend Shep stood and stared long and hard at her son.  Then he started to clapping.  He was clapping for Mikey, and he motioned for his congregation to join in.
Finally, he held up his hands to stop the applause, to say, “Yes, he is doing very well, isn’t he?  Our special lessons for the boy are almost complete.  Maybe now he will learn not to defile God’s Word.  But, brothers and sisters … we must make sure.  We cannot allow such an outrage to occur again in our trailer home church.  We’re his spiritual family, and we have a special responsibility to guide him on his way to heaven.
During all the hours I have been spending with him, I’ve seen that even more Bible will produce what we need to see out of this boy.  It’s time he learned every word of the Old Testament.”
She knew, she says to me, how she should not be thinking this way, but she was still left wondering when all this was going to end.  She sort of … wanted her son back?  Yes, Mikey had turned into even more of a good little boy, but really, why the Old Testament now?  The Old Testament was a good part of the good book, of course, but she remembers how Reverend Zim and the Congregation of the Literal Translation of the True Word of God would tell her how the New Testament was the most important book, that is, Jesus Christ’s revelation of the salvation of mankind.  Wasn’t that enough for Mikey, too?
It just bothered her.  She says how she couldn’t sleep the morning before Mikey was to begin his new round of Bible lessons.  After her husband Biff had left for the fur shed, she lay awake and stared at the ceiling.  It was a distinctly below-zero-kind-of-a-cold-morning, she recalls, when she heard this heavy stirring in the hallway outside the door of her bedroom.  She got up, shuffled over to the door, and cracked it open a bit, to see the Reverend Shep brandishing a long, thickset black lacquered paddle.  She says how she recognized the embossed gold lettering on the side, because she had seen examples of Greek, the original language of the Bible, during her Christian learning.  He was tapping the paddle on his right thigh, as he entered into the learning room.
Then, she started to hear:
“Genesis!  By God, you must call it Genesis!”
[Thwack]
“Tell me again, what was it about Cain?  What did he do, devil boy?”
[Whack.  Whack.  Whack.]
“That is not right!  That is not correct!  Moses could not have said it that way!”
[Smack!  Crack!]
[Crack!  Smack!]
And those noises kept coming out of that learning room of his.  During those early mornings of the winter days ahead, with the Bible readings, the pounding voice of the Reverend Shep, and the sounds from his whipping paddle, wild thoughts raced through her mind, about running away with Mikey or even, on those really bad cold days, going after the Reverend Shep to protect her son, even if she had to kill the man!  She prayed against these thoughts, asking for some kind of guidance in her Bible reading, finally doing what the people in the Congregation of the Literal Translation of the True Word of God had told her to, praying as hard as she could, then closing her eyes, opening her personal Bible on her lap, and pressing the point of her finger down on a passage that she was sure God wanted her to read.
She whispered this verse to herself as she read it … and she swears to me now how she had never heard it come from Mikey’s lips when he was reciting the New Testament to their trailer home church congregation:
“Then were they brought unto him little children, that he should put his hand on them and pray: and the disciples rebuked them.  But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me: for such is the kingdom of heaven.”
So she confronted the Reverend Shep, telling him how “it says so, right here, it’s Jesus talking Himself!  It’s like they say, when Jesus himself does the talking, it’s what is meant to be said … ”
She remembers the harsh look he gave out to her, as he said, “So. What?”
She was taken aback, “What do you mean, Reverend Shep?  So what?”
“Woman, what does THIS mean in the context of what we are facing in here?” he responded.  “THIS is my mission, to put all this into context for you all.
You wish to call Jesus Christ this God of Love and of Peace who coddles and spoils children, but if the smallest fig tree insults his presence, it withers away at his very sight.  What do you think Christ was doing when he started whipping those money changers out of the temple!  He became the Whipping Christ whenever He saw danger in the very House of His Father, a Whipping Christ who beat the devil out of the evildoers in His presence!  It is written, ‘Thou shalt have a paddle among thy weapons; and thou shalt use it in service of thy God.’  That son of yours needs the Whipping Christ!”
Then, the Reverend Shep started talking about what he said the Bible called “the rod of men.”  He stated, “What will ye?  Shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness? I will be his father, and he will be my son, and I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men.”  He went on and on about a variety of rods: “And I will cause you to pass under the rod.  And I shall rule them with a rod of iron, with the rod of my mouth, and with the breath of my lips shall I slay the wicked” … up until that one night when her husband called her from work at the fur shed and said that he may not be able to make it back to the trailer home church that evening, because of the blizzard out there, the snow that was covering the farmland plains stretching out in front of their residence like a smothering blanket, and filling the deep forest behind the trailer home church with icy shadows and pervasive whiteness; and indeed, her husband Biff never showed himself on that night of the human rod, not like the way the whipping paddle showed itself as if at soldierly attention next to the bed, for the Reverend Shep always kept it with him, wherever he went, as she and her son were learning.  During that night, when she listened to:
[cracksmackcracksmackcrackwhackcracksmacksmack]
“Bend over and hold your ankles and take five for The Lord, child of Lucifer”
[cracksmacksmackcrackcrackcrack]
“You want some more, boy?”
[cracksmackcracksmack]
“TELL me you want some more, boy!”
[smackcrackcrackcrackcracksmack]
And then this looming silence that made her so sad.  She expected some sort of crying or shouting, but no, there was nothing at all.  Until suddenly, the Reverend Shep broke the quiet, as he strode from the learning room and announced to himself, out loud, “that’s the way to learn that Bible, see, he’s learning it now, he knows what it’s all about now.”  With that, he flung open the door of her bedroom, to stand there erect at the threshold, tapping his whipping paddle on his thigh, and speaking directly to her in language of tongues –as if a hot whisper were in her ear, all night long, relating secrets of the holy beyond, of God in the image of man, and the meaning of the human rod.
VI
Finally (because it’s almost time for her to start serving lunch in here, and she has to always keep the coffee cups of her customers filled), she tells me about how the blotches of inky redness dotted the white of the snow on the plains around the trailer home church, on his final Sunday there, deep into December.  Out the window, she saw a trail of slushy red footprints going out into the woods, and long red streak marks in the snow behind the black rubber bag that the Reverend Shep was dragging behind him in his right hand, like someone’s bad joke of a Santa Claus, while he was carrying that whipping paddle of his in his left hand, smeared with splashes of the redness on the black lacquer and gold Greek lettering.
He snarled about the Bible and blood sacrifice, as he dragged the bag along.  “Thou shalt take of the blood of the bullock, and put it upon the horns of the altar with thy finger, and pour all the blood beside the bottom of the altar,” she heard him saying. “And he slew it,” he said. “And he took the blood, and put it upon the horns of the altar round about with his finger, and purified the altar.
I summon my congregation out of the trailer home church,” the Reverend Shep yelled out.  “Look what I found, he was making a run for it!  ‘And he shall kill the lamb of the trespass offering, and the priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass offering, and put it upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed.’  Trying to run away from the truth.  But nobody can run from the Word of God.”
He hauled the bag to the front door, threw it down, and began banging on the metal with the red and black whipping paddle.  “The Whipping Christ summons you out here,” he shouted.
They were all in shock, staring at the Reverend Shep, and all that blood on the ground.  They stood there, on the doorstep of their trailer home church, as he pointed at each and every one of them with his whipping paddle, as he declaimed, “let this be a lesson to you and you and you there.  To all of you, around these parts here!  For you all are sinners, and now see what your sin has cast upon you!”
“Mikey,” she screamed back at him.
“Let Mikey Try It!” howled the Reverend Shep.  “HE’LL Like It!”
She was moaning her cries into the winter sky, not listening to her husband telling her to keep quiet and to heed what the Reverend Shep had to say.  “Okay, what is this, Reverend Shep?” Biff asked him, panting his question heavily into the cold air.  “That is my son in that bag!”
The Reverend Shep replied in tongues, then spat on the ground.  “He was a son all right, an unredeemed son of Satan!  He tried to run from his Bible lessons.”  The Reverend Shep waved the whipping paddle in the air.  “I told you!  I told you and him about the Whipping Christ!”
“Oh my God; Oh my God; Oh my God,” she cried.  “You killed him!”
“He killed himself with his love for his Father –Satan!”
“Go to hell, Shep,” she shouted back.
He jabbed the whipping paddle toward her.  “Quiet, woman,” he declaimed.  “Or I won’t be raising him again!”
“You, what?” all three of the congregation said as one.
“We’re going to bury him,” the Reverend Shep told them.  He turned and aimed the whipping paddle back into the property behind him.  “Out in the woods back there, next to where I buried my Bible that this Satanic garbage defiled.  ‘For it is written, dig therewith, and you shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee.’  And then I’m going to raise him up, because Mikey has to see for himself that only GOD can raise the dead!”
“I’m calling the sheriff!” she screamed, as she ran back into the trailer home church, before Shep, her husband, and his brother could react.  She didn’t know what to do, whether to cry or scream some more or to yell the cuss words that she thought had left her, when she was born again.  She just ran into the trailer home church, and slammed shut any door that she could find behind her.  She had to get to a phone … but instead she found herself in the learning room.
That’s how she saw it.  It lay there on Mikey’s bed, as if it had just been printed and bound in its shiny black leather cover, embossed with gold lettering on the front cover – the Bible that her son had never touched.
VI
She tells me finally how she ran and ran out of the trailer home church, until it felt as if her feet were bleeding … but all she could think about was that body bleeding out of that black rubber bag.  She heard the voices of the men in the congregation behind her, especially the braying voice of the Reverend Shep, but she no longer wanted to hear any of their voices, so she ran even harder.  All she could do was to run, for miles and miles on the gravel backroads and then out to the paved main road toward Se Haute, Indiana, until she could no longer care to feel her feet beneath her.  There, she says how she started “screaming bloody murder” in town at the local squad car parked in front of the post office.
To end her story, she smiles her born-again Christian smile again at me, and assures me that everything is just fine now, just fine.  Of course, the funeral was horrible because everyone in town knew how Mikey had died, and the court trial of the man who was no longer the Reverend Shep to her but just plain Shep had been grueling as well, because she had to hear about all that mess in the trailer home church coming out in public.
But her new friends in the true Christian community of Se Haute, Indiana, were telling her that God would forgive her sins, even this most awful of sins that she has endured.  Her new friends described how Mikey was with the real Jesus in heaven now … picturing him beside the nice Jesus who welcomes children onto his lap and calms their souls with words like lullabies that sing of clouds and the sky.
Still, she has to admit how she is a bit confused when her new fellowship says that even Satan can quote scripture, whenever she brings up Shep.  Spirit can be known only by spirit, they say.  Only those who are spiritually alive with Christ can study the Bible, and discern the truth from it, they say.  In other words, they are saying that she had been fooled … though they never heard Shep speak the Words that went to her heart and soul, never heard him sing “Will The Circle Be Unbroken”, never saw his smile that was smiled only for the congregation of the trailer home church.
“Oh, look at how the time has flown,” she exclaims.  “I’ve been talking way too much.  My customers are waiting for me, and I have to go serve them.”
She stands to straighten the faux country mother blouse and adjust its ruffled collar, as the scapular around her neck falls out on her chest, flashing out the scarred, bleeding head of Jesus and now the loving, caring face of Christ – again and again and again, I would think.

The End

Chicago, Illinois
September 1, 2006