A Graveyard for Lunatics

He was hardly larger than one of the Singer?s Midgets who played Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.

?Bow and scrape to me,? he called. ?You write monsters. Roy Holdstrom builds them. But I rouged, waxed, and polished a great red monster, long dead!?

?Ignore the stupefying Russian bastard,? said Fritz. ?Observe the chair next to him!?

An empty place.

?For who?? I asked.

Someone coughed. Heads turned.

I held my breath.

And the Arrival took place.

15

This last one to arrive was a man so pale that his skin seemed to glow with an inner light. He was tall, six feet three I would imagine, and his hair was long and his beard dressed and shaped, and his eyes of such startling clarity that you felt he saw your bones through your flesh and your soul inside your bones. As he passed each table, the knives and forks hesitated on their way to half-open mouths. After he passed, leaving a wake of silence, the business of life began again. He strode with a measured tread as if he wore robes instead of a tattered coat and some soiled trousers. He gave a blessing gesture on the air as he moved by each table, but his eyes were straight ahead, as if seeing some world beyond, not ours. He was looking at me, and I shrank, for I couldn?t imagine why he would seek me out, among all these accepted and established talents. And at last he stood above me, the gravity of his demeanor being such it pulled me to my feet.

There was a long silence as this man with the beautiful face stretched out a thin arm with a thin wrist, and at the end of it a hand with the most exquisitely long fingers I had ever seen.

I put my hand out to take his. His hand turned, and I saw the mark of the driven spike in the middle of the wrist. He turned his other hand over, so I could see the similar scar in the middle of his left wrist. He smiled, reading my mind, and quietly explained, ?Most people think the nails were driven through the palms. No. The palms could not hold a body?s weight. The wrists, nailed, can. The wrists.? Then he turned both hands over so I could see where the nails had come through on the other side.

?J. C.? said Fritz Wong, ?this is our visitor from another world, our young science-fiction writer??

?I know.? The beautiful stranger nodded and gestured toward himself.

?Jesus Christ,? he said.

I stepped aside so he could sit, then fell back in my own chair.

Fritz Wong passed down a small basket full of bread. ?Please,? he called, ?change these into fish!?

I gasped.

But J. C., with the merest flick of his fingers, produced one silvery fish from amidst the bread and tossed it high. Fritz, delighted, caught it to laughter and applause.

The waitress arrived with several bottles of cheap booze to more shouts and applause.

?This wine,? said J.C., ?was water ten seconds ago. Please!?

The wine was poured and savored.

?Surely?? I stammered.

The entire table looked up.

?He wants to know,? called Fritz, ?if your name is really what you say it is.?

With somber grace, the tall man drew forth and displayed his driver?s license. It read:

?Jesus Christ. 911 Beachwood Avenue. Hollywood.? He slipped it back into his pocket, waited for the table to be silent, and said:

?I came to this studio in 1927 when they made Jesus the King. I was a woodworker out back in those sheds. I cut and polished the three crosses on Calvary, still standing. There was a contest in every Baptist basement and Catholic backwash in the land. Find Christ! He was found here. The director asked where I worked? The carpenter?s shop. My God, he cried, let me see that face! Go put on a beardl ?Make me look like holy Jesus,? I advised the makeup man. I went back, dressed in robes and thorns, the whole holy commotion. The director danced on the Mount and washed my feet. Next thing you know the Baptists were lining up at Iowa pie festivals when I dusted through in my tin flivver with banners ?THE KING IS COMING,? ?GOING ON BEFORE.?

?Across country in auto bungalow courts, I had a great ten-year Messiah run, until vino and venality tattered my smock. Nobody wants a womanizing Saviour. It wasn?t so much I kicked cats and wound up other men?s wives like dime-store clocks, no, it was just that I was Him, you see??

?I think I see,? I said gently.

J. C. put his long wrists and long hands and long fingers out before him, as cats often sit, waiting for the world to come worship.

?Women felt it was blasphemy if they so much as breathed my air. Touching was terrible. Kissing a mortal sin. The act itself? Might as well leap in the burning pit with an eternity of slime up to your ears. Catholics, no, Holy Rollers were worst. I managed to bed and breakfast one or two before they knew me, when I traveled the country incognito. After a month of starving for feminine acrobats, I?d run amok. I just shaved and lit out across country, pounding fenceposts into native soil, duck-pressing ladies left and right. I flattened more broads than a steamroller at a Baptist skinny dip. I ran fast, hoping shotgun preachers wouldn?t count hymens and hymnals and wallop me with buckshot. I prayed ladies would never guess they had enjoyed a laying on of hands by the main Guest at the Last Supper. When I wore it down to a nubbin and drank myself