Мэтью Квик - Forgive me, Leonard Peacock

“My friends died? ” Johnny says with this horrible look on his face.

The next frame shows the three other teenagers screaming and holding their faces as a sea of flames burns and engulfs them.

“They could be here in heaven right now with you, Johnny, but you didn’t tell them about me,” Jesus says.

Johnny puts his head in his hands and weeps.

Then there are numbers you can call and websites too, all of which will help you give your life to Jesus.

Jesus Christ! I thought.

It was a wild story, and I was mostly confused, so I walked over to Lauren and said, “I’m not sure I get it.”

This awful, anxious look bloomed on her face and she said, “You don’t want to go to hell, do you?”

I was going to say I don’t believe in hell, but I was determined to kiss Lauren Bogie-style, so I didn’t want to say anything that would end the conversation. I had seen enough Bogie films to know that you have to ride out the insanity when it comes to beautiful women, and even with all the crazy talk, Lauren seemed to get more and more attractive every time I looked at her. Also, this was the longest conversation I’d had with a girl my age, so I didn’t want to blow it.

I asked, “Why didn’t Johnny go to hell if he had sex and drank, just like the others?”

“He asked Jesus into his heart.”

“What do you mean?”

“No matter what you’ve done, if you ask Jesus into your heart, you get to go to heaven. The blood of Jesus Christ washes our hearts clean as snow.”

“So you just have to say magic words?”

“What?”

“If you say, ‘Jesus come into my heart,’ you are covered? You get to go to heaven then. That’s it?”

“You have to mean it.”

“How can you tell if you mean it?”

“You know in your heart, and God knows. What’s in your heart?” Lauren pointed at my chest.

“I don’t know,” I said, because my heart was full of desire. I wanted to kiss Lauren like the girl kissed Johnny in the car. I wanted to “park” with Lauren in the worst way. That’s what my heart was telling me.

“Do you want to come to my church this Sunday?” Lauren asked.

“Will you be there?”

“Of course! My father’s the pastor. You can sit with me in my family’s pew, right up front!”

I didn’t want to go to any church, but I knew going would help my cause, so I said, “Okay, then.”

That Sunday I went to Lauren’s church, which I had walked by a million times without even giving it—or what it stood for—a thought. It was a medieval-looking stone building with an impressive steeple, a classic bell tower, circular stained-glass windows, red cushions on wooden pews, and all the rest. [44]

The men inside were wearing suits and I had come in jeans and a sweater, which made me feel self-conscious, but no one said anything to me about it, which I thought was civilized of the churchgoers.

I found Lauren sitting in the front row with her mother, who was also a head-turner, like Lauren, which gave me high hopes for the day. [45]

They looked more like sisters than mother and daughter, and I wondered if believing in Jesus kept you younger-looking. But then I thought, if that were really true, Linda would be the biggest Jesus freak going, because she’d drown a baby in a bathtub if it would make her look ten years younger.

The best part about the church were the huge organ pipes at the back, up in the balcony, which were so loud you could almost see the air buzzing when the organist played. It made me feel like I had traveled back in time, that organ music, although I’m not really sure why.

Just to make things more interesting, I pretended that I was an anthropologist from the future sent back to observe what religious life was like in the past.

There were announcements about various church goings-on—like Bible study groups meeting at this or that time, and church dinners, and which people needed help, and who was in the hospital—which was nice, because it really made you feel like everyone took care of each other here, like they all were part of a gigantic family.

I could really see the appeal, for sure.

Next, everyone sang a few hymns—which was also kind of nice, because where else will you experience a few hundred people singing together?—and then Lauren’s father gave a talk about humility and humbling ourselves so that we might be able to best serve God, which I didn’t really understand.

If god existed and he created the whole universe, like these people believed, why would he need our help, let alone our praise?

Why would he need us to serve him?

Was god really both all powerful and emotionally needy?

It didn’t really make any sense to me at all, and I knew I was going to have a hard time conveying this idea to my superiors in the future when I—being a time-traveling anthropologist—report on ancient religions.

There was more nice singing after that, and then we all waited in line to shake Lauren’s dad’s hand, because he was the head of this church.

So many people kissed Lauren’s dad’s ass—like he was a god himself—it took forever for the line to move.

When we got to the front, Pastor Rose patted my back and said, “Are you the fish my Lauren reeled in this week?”

Fish? I thought. This was getting even more bizarre.

“I guess so,” I said, wondering why the hell he was wearing a graduation gown.

“You come to my office sometime and we’ll talk man-to-man about the finer points of Christianity, okay?”

“I prefer speaking with Lauren,” I said, and he gave me a look that let me know that was definitely the wrong answer.

“Well, when you get serious about Jesus, I’ll be here. Young men like you need mentors, and that’s a man’s job, son. Lauren’s a fine Christian young woman, no doubt. But she brought you to us for a reason. You come see me, okay?” He winked—I shit you not—and then shook the next person’s hand, so Lauren and I moved on to lunch in this basement gym where tables and chairs had been set up and everything smelled of sweaty socks and pot roast.

“So what did you think?” Lauren asked me over plastic plates and red Solo cups.

Church was okay, I guess. I liked the singing part, and the organ. But mostly the whole thing just seemed sort of silly to me. I was smart enough not to say that to Lauren. Instead I went into Bogie mode and said, “You look very pretty in that dress.” It was a deep violet number, knee-length, with spaghetti straps. She was like one of those exotic plants that lure insects into their sticky sweet traps and then eat them. When I looked at her, I wanted to be eaten.

“Thank you,” she said. “So do you think you want to give your life to Jesus?”

I was just about to lie when this muscle-y blond football-player-looking kid snuck up behind Lauren and started to massage her shoulders. “Hey, buttercup,” he said.

Buttercup? Really?

“Hey,” Lauren said in a way that let me know this wasn’t just any old church member. He looked like the Johnny kid in the pamphlet and nothing like me. “Leonard, this is my boyfriend, Jackson. Jackson, this is Leonard.”

“I hear you’re serious about making Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior,” Jackson said to me. “It’s definitely the way to go.”

“Do you enjoy parking?” I asked, although I’m not sure why. Probably because I was angry and just wanted to leave. I felt so tricked by Lauren. Being eaten by her was one thing, but introducing me to her boyfriend after she’d led me on—that was entirely unacceptable. She used her femme fatale skills to get me into her church, bait-and-switch style, when she already had a boyfriend who was much more normal-looking than me—a completely different type. “Do you guys park?”

“ Leonard! ” Lauren said, because she definitely got the reference, although it took her a second.

“What are you talking about?” Jackson said, and made a confused face.

I looked up at the clock on the gym wall—I remember it was protected by mesh wire so basketballs wouldn’t smash it. [46]

“Quarter to one already?” I asked, and then started to lie again, only these were escape lies. The Bogie-Bacall fantasy had been temporarily shattered, so I just wanted out of this church. “Holy shit! I have to roll my grandmother over in her bed. She gets bedsores if I don’t do it every four hours or so. My grandfather does it when I’m at school, but he refuses to do it on the weekends. He says, ‘The weekends are mine,’ which seems mean until you know that he has Alzheimer’s, so you really can’t hold it against him. Okay. Off I go.”

I stood up and walked out of the gym, up the stairs, and out into the afternoon.

Lauren followed me and kept saying, “Wait up. Let’s talk. What’s going on here? I thought you were serious about Jesus.”

I spun around and said, “I’m a devout atheist. I don’t believe in hell, so none of this scares me. I really just wanted to go parking with you, like the kids do in that pamphlet you gave me, because I think you’re beautiful—like Lauren Bacall—and so unlike the girls at my school. And I sort of admire your standing at the train station all alone giving out pamphlets, trying to save people. You seemed so interesting when I met you—like no one else I had ever met before. But you don’t seem the same in your church—like there’s no risk being Christian here because everyone is Christian in your church. You’re just one of many here, where at the train station you were one of a kind. And I’m a one-of-a-kind type of person, and that’s just the way it is. So we’re definitely breaking up. And I can’t believe your boyfriend looks like Johnny from the pamphlet. Jesus Christ, you could do better!”

Lauren just stood there with her mouth open.

“I’m sort of crazy. I’m mostly lonely,” I said, because she looked little-kid confused and I was starting to feel bad for her again. I guess I only liked her when we were alone. “I follow sad miserable-looking adults on the trains all day sometimes and so I thought we had weird train-station behavior in common and—”

“You all right, Lauren?” said Jackson, who was now somehow rubbing Lauren’s shoulders again and glaring at me like he wanted to kill me before I could accept Jesus Christ into my heart, and would therefore—in his mind—end up burning in a sea of fire.

“She’s all right,” I said. “I’m leaving. Problem solved.”

I left.

I’d see Lauren at the train station from time to time but she pretended like she didn’t know who I was, and I pretended like I didn’t know who she was either.

This went on for a year or so.

Then one day, I saw her in Center City being harassed by a bum, who was following her and yelling, “Give me a sandwich and you think you saved the world? It don’t work like that! You think God sent you to give me two pieces of bread with a slice of cheese and a flimsy circle of bologna and cheap bright-yellow mustard and that’s supposed to make up for ten years of living in a cardboard box? That’s what you want me to believe? God loves me because you gave me a half-assed sandwich? I’m homeless— not crazy! ”

The guy had wild eyes and a lion’s mane of gray hair that made his head look like a frozen sun or something.

“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” Lauren said.

“That ain’t good enough,” the bum said. “I gotta few things you can tell your god the next time you pray in your nice warm house with a toilet in it and a whole refrigerator of food that you’d never give to bums like me because it costs too fucking much and so it ain’t bum food. I bet you got a dog that eats better than me.”