'No one knows,' the officer said. 'It was Inmate DuFresne who alerted us again. We couldn't see what happened on the security cameras.'
We entered the infirmary. In a distant, dark corner of the room.
Shay was propped up in a bed, a nurse beside him. He held a cup of juice that he sipped through a straw; his other hand was cuffed to the bed's railing. There were wires coming out from beneath his medical johnny. 'How is he?' I asked.
'He'll live,' the nurse said, and then, realizing her mistake, blushed fiercely. 'We hooked him up to monitor his heart. So far, so good.'
I sat down on a chair beside Shay and looked up at Smythe and the
'That's about all you've got,' the nurse said. 'We just gave him something to knock him out.'
They moved to the far side of the room, and I leaned closer to Shay.
'Are you okay?'
'You wouldn't believe it if I told you.'
'Oh, try me,' I said.
He glanced over to make sure no one else was listening. 'I was just watching TV, you know? This documentary on how they make movie theater candy, like Dots and Milk Duds. And I started to get tired, so I went to turn it off. But before I could push the burton, all the light in the television, it shot into me like electricity. I mean, I could feel those things inside my blood moving around, what are they called again, corporals?'
'Corpuscles.'
'Yeah, right, those. I hate that word. Did you ever see that Star Trek where those aliens are sucking the salt out of everything? I always thought they should be called corpuscles. You say the word, and it sounds like you're eating a lemon...'
'Shay. You were talking about the light.'
'Oh, right, yeah. Well, it was like I started boiling inside, and my eyes, they were going to jelly, and I tried to call out but my teeth were wired shut and then I woke up in here, feeling like I'd been sucked dry.' He looked up at me. 'By a corpuscle.'
'The nurse said it was a seizure. Do you remember anything else?'
'I remember what I was thinking,' Shay said. 'This was what it would feel like.'
'What?'
'Dying.'
I took a deep breath. 'Remember when you were little, a kid-and you'd fall asleep in the car? And someone would carry you out and put you into bed, so that when you woke up in the morning, you knew automatically you were home again? That's what I think it's like to die.'
'That would be good,' Shay said, his voice deeper, groggy. 'It'll be nice to know what home looks like.'
A phrase I'd read just an hour ago slipped into my mind like a splinter: The Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it.
Although I knew it wasn't the right time, although I knew I was supposed to be here for Shay, instead of the other way around, I leaned closer, until my words could fall into the shell of his ear. 'Where did you find the Gospel of Thomas?' I whispered.
Shay stared at me blankly. 'Thomas who?' he said, and then his eyes drifted shut.
As I drove away from the prison, I heard Father Walter's voice: He's conned you. But when I'd mentioned the Gospel of Thomas, I hadn't seen even the slightest flicker of recognition in Shay's eyes, and he'd been drugged-it would have been awfully hard to keep dissembling.
Was this what it had felt like for the Jews who met Jesus and recognized him as more than just a gifted rabbi? I had no point of comparison.
I'd grown up Catholic; I'd become a priest. I could not remember a time that I hadn't believed Jesus was the Messiah.
I knew someone, though, who could.
Rabbi Bloom didn't have a temple, because it had burned down, but he did rent office space close to the school where services were held. I was waiting in front of the locked door when he arrived just before eight a.m.
'Wow,' he said, taking in the vision in front of him-a red-eyed, rumpled priest clutching a motorcycle helmet and the Nag Hammadi texts. 'I would have let you borrow it longer than one night.'
'Why don't Jews believe Jesus was the Messiah?'
He unlocked the door to the office. 'That's going to take at least a cup and a half of coffee,' Bloom said. 'Come on in.'
He started brewing a pot and offered me a seat. His office looked a lot like Father Walter's at St. Catherine's- inviting, comfortable. A place you'd want to sit and talk. Unlike Father Walter's, though. Rabbi
Bloom's plants were the real thing. Father Walter's were plastic, bought by the Ladies' Aid, when he kept killing everything from a ficus to an
African violet.
'It's a wandering Jew,' the rabbi said when he saw me checking out the flowerpot. 'Maggie's little idea of a joke.'
'I just got back from the prison. Shay Bourne had another seizure.'
'Did you tell Maggie?'
'Not yet.' I looked at him. 'You didn't answer my question.'
'I haven't had my coffee.' He got up and poured us each a cup, putting milk and sugar in mine without asking first. 'Jews don't think Jesus was the Messiah because he didn't fulfill the criteria for a Jewish messiah.
It's really pretty simple, and it's all laid out by Maimonides. A
Jewish moshiach will bring the Jews back to Israel and set up a government in Jerusalem that's the center of political power for the world, for both Jews and Gentiles. He'll rebuild the Temple and reestablish
Jewish law as the governing law of the land. He'll raise the dead-all of the dead-and usher in a great age of peace, when everyone believes in God. He'll be a descendant of David, a king and a warrior, a judge, and a great leader... but he'll also be firmly, unequivocally human.'
Bloom set the cup down in front of me. 'We believe that in every generation, a person's born with the potential to become the moshiach.
But if the messianic age doesn't come and that person dies, then that person isn't him.'
'Like Jesus.'
'Personally, I've always seen Jesus as a great Jewish patriot. He was a good Jew, who probably wore a yarmulke and obeyed the Tbrah, and never planned to start a new religion. He hated the Romans and wanted to get them out of Jerusalem. He got charged with political rebellion, sentenced to execution. Yes, a Jewish high priest carried it out-Caiaphas-but most Jews back then hated Caiaphas anyway be cause he was the henchman for the Romans.' He looked up at me over the edge of his coffee mug. 'Was Jesus a good guy? Yeah. Great teacher? Sure. Messiah? Dunno.'
'A lot of the Bible's predictions for the messianic era were fulfilled by Jesus-'
'But were they the crucial ones?' Rabbi Bloom asked. 'Let's say you didn't know who I was and I asked you to meet me. I told you I'd be standing outside the Steeplegate Mall at ten o'clock wearing a Hawaiian shirt and that I'd have curly red hair and be listening to Outkast on my iPod. And at ten o'clock, you saw someone standing outside the
Steeplegate Mall who had curly red hair and was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and listening to Outkast on an iPod... but it was a woman. Would you still think it was me?'
He stood up to refill his coffee. 'Do you know what I heard on NPR on the way over here today? Another bus blew up in Israel. Three more kids from New Hampshire died in Iraq. And the cops just arrested some guy in Manchester who shot his ex-wife in front of their two kids. If
Jesus ushered in the messianic era, and the world I hear about on the news is one of peace and redemption... well, I'd rather wait for a different moshiach.' He glanced back at me. 'Now, if you don't mind me asking you a question... what's a priest doing at a rabbi's office at eight in the morning asking questions about the Jewish Messiah?'
I got up and began to walk around the little room. 'The book you loaned me-it got me thinking.'
'And that's a bad thing?'
