Black Jesus

By Hugh Centerville

The war for America’s soul is over; America has succumbed. The right-wing has triumphed, probably irrevocably, and in the process of consolidating its victory, has become a suffocating, worldwide monolith, its corporate and militaristic tentacles strangling the globe.

Domestically, America is a nation of sheep, and for any who resist ─ atheists, Muslims, occupiers, libertarians, and the rest, the final solution, the solution urged by patriotic Americans, is extermination. But twenty-first century corporate America, feigning adherence to its original constitution of 1787, and dedicated to capitalist profit above all else, has instead instituted a network of lucrative penal camps.

The recalcitrant will spend the rest of their lives in the camps, work camps for those who can afford the corporate-imposed monthly stipend, less-comfortable accommodations for the indigent, including those whose money has run out and who can no longer afford the stipend.

The system is unchallenged, until a chubby black man arrives saying he’s Jesus Christ come down to establish his kingdom. Right-wing America, this Jesus says, is the prophesied world of the Antichrist, and is this Jesus really who he says he is or is he the Antichrist, or is he nothing more than a whack-job? And how will America respond to his assertions of divinity and his promise of redemption?

Welcome to the Joseph R. McCarthy Memorial Prison Camp.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hugh Centerville
• Release date: Jan 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310845017

Book preview

Black Jesus

When Jesus Came Black to America

Fiction by Ward Centerville

Copyright © 2015 Ward Centerville

All rights reserved.

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I am who I Am, Exodus 3:14

For my best bud, Billy McDowell. Any physical similarities between Billy and Jesus, as Jesus is portrayed in this story (or isn't portrayed, depending on what you believe,) may not be entirely coincidental and Billy is OK with it.

Special thanks to my siblings, Ruthie and Hugh.

This isn't about how governments forcibly take control of people. It's about what happens when people embrace becoming controlled, when they voluntarily surrender their rights and liberties in exchange for a perceived security, and it's mostly about how power deals with those who choose not to surrender. 11/23/2014.

About the Author

Ward Centerville is retired and spends his summers at a cabin on a lake in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. Ward had a really good curveball in Little League and still brags about it. Ward is a bit of a curmudgeon now and relives the past on a 4' by 8' sheet of plywood in his basement. Ward hates cats and is an occasional contributor to his brother's blog.

Visit Ward (and his siblings) at www.centervillebooks.com

More from Centerville Books:

Bobby Slater's World

Lottie Barrett Lives (Again)

The Denouement

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

Welcome, I said, to the Joe McCarthy Memorial Prison Camp.

Joe McCarthy, he said. The old Yankee skipper?

Uh, not exactly, I said, and extending my hand: Jim Fisher.

He set down his bag, one of those antique cloth valises, thick as a rug and with a wooden handle. We shook hands.

Jesus, he said.

Hey-Zeus? I said.

Jesus, he said again.

Who are you, I said, the Christ?

Jesus smiled and I got this unsettling notion, an epiphany, as if he really was the Christ. It was startling, and fleeting, and what was it? It wasn't anything he did, no miracle or anything, and was it strength of character? Frankness? His own certitude?

It sure wasn't his looks. He was no tall, emaciated Nordic with shoulder-length red hair and a thin beard. He was African-American, more brown than black, a non-threatening cream color. He was five feet, eight inches, two inches shorter than I was, and he was heavyset, two hundred pounds. His belly pushed against his shirt, his hair was short, salt and pepper. His age I guessed to be around the mid-forties.

Maybe it was what I saw in his smile, or how I saw it - serene and melancholy, like those Sacred Heart Jesus pictures in every room of my folks' house when I was a kid. Melancholy in the way Jesus must have felt in his lifetime, when so many people doubted him and failed him.

I shook my head, to dispel the notion, and he smiled and it was as if he understood exactly what was going on with me. As if it went on with everyone meeting him for the first time.

You can't be going around calling yourself Jesus, I said.

It's my name, though, he said.

Jesus was white.

Would you believe in me, he said, if I were white?

I took note - believe in me, not believe me.

Look, I said. You have to understand. This is a camp for the recalcitrant. Liberals, socialists, occupiers, libertarians and Arabs, and Jesus is, was, a Republican. They wouldn't put him in a place like this.

I'm not a Republican, he said.

Democrat?

Independent, he said, except where my father is concerned.

I don't have time to argue with you, I said. I've got to get to work. Get yourself settled in, then get over to Admin and get your work assignment.

Jesus looked around. With our bunks folded and flattened against the walls, our single room was ten feet by fifteen feet. Our furniture consisted of our footlockers as tables and two aluminum lawn chairs. In the back was a coal stove and a metal bucket filled with coal, like charcoal briquettes. A black pipe rose up out of the stove and went out through a hole in the back wall. To one side of the stove was a metal sink, and alongside of the sink, a truncated refrigerator. There were two small windows, one on the back wall, behind the stove, and the other in the front, alongside the door. A bare wire, tacked up the wall and across the ceiling, went to the light bulb overhead, our only light. Our floor was linoleum, scuffed, and there was no bathroom, just a communal latrine toward the back of our section.

It's pretty tight in here, I said, but it'll work if you follow a few simple house rules. Footlockers are private property. You stay out of mine and I'll stay out of yours. If a guard decides he wants to look in there, it's not private property anymore, and if he sees something he likes, it's his. And try not to make any noise. I banged my knuckles against the inside wall and there was a return rapping from the other side. Ours is a duplex.

I took my glasses out of my pocket and put them on. I picked up my lunch pail, from on top of my footlocker.

Make sure you get over to Admin, I said.

For my work assignment, he said.

They explain to you how it works?

Yes, they did.

Get over there first thing, before they come looking for you.

He smiled, beatific again.

I don't know that I want to work, he said.

This is a for-profit prison camp, I said. Everybody works. Besides, there's always a need for skilled carpenters.

That was a long time ago, he said, and with that smile again.

Look, Mr. Jesus, I said. How it works in here, there's certain things you can get away with and certain things you can't. Getting cute with another prisoner is mostly OK, just don't try it with the guards or trustees. They don't have my sense of humor. Best thing is to just do what you're told until you figure out what you can get away with and what you can't. And what you'll find, besides how work sets you free, is you can't be saying you're Jesus Christ. And you'll need to work, to earn chits for stuff.

Stuff?

Food, mostly, I said.

Don't they feed us?

Sure, they feed us, I said, but the food is lousy and you never get enough of it. You need to supplement with stuff from the commissary and the only way you get anything out of the commissary is by redeeming work chits.

He pinched the sides of his belly, bulging handles beneath his pullover wool shirt.

I can stand to lose some weight, he said. Been meaning to.

You'll need razors and shaving cream.

Maybe I'll grow a beard, he said. Be like one of those Old Testament fellows, Moses or Noah.

Friends of yours? I said, and looking closely at his face, I saw it was smooth, no black shadow over the brown, no stubble, and the rest of Jesus looked alright, too. He didn't have the look of a man who'd just endured the days of trial, conviction, sentencing and travel, with all the accompanying beatings and humiliations. The men all came into the camp dazed and terrified and with swollen faces and dried blood, broken fingers, missing teeth. Jesus was smooth-faced, fresh and smiling, and with no gaps in his rows of gleaming white teeth.

You have to shave every morning, I said. Regulations, and besides, they serve the same food over and over. It gets boring, and what happens the first night we're sitting here and I'm frying up cube steaks and potatoes and with you drooling all over me?

Mmmm...I do love cube steaks, he said.

Aren't you a vegetarian? I said.

You ever hear of the Passover Lamb? he said.

Would it be fair for me, I said, to have to share with you, with you not doing your part?

It'd be Christian.

And your uniform, I said. Get changed before you go over to Admin. You're not a civilian anymore and you can't be going around looking like one.

His uniforms, two sets of thick pajamas with horizontal white and purple stripes and with cloth belts, pink caps, boat shoes without laces, and all wrapped in cellophane, were next to his valise.

I'll be back around five, I said, and after dinner, I'll give you a tour of the camp.

You're mad at me, he said.

Who said I was mad? I said.

You're mad because if I don't work, I won't be able to contribute to our stock of coal, and with winter coming, it'll get cold in here and coal is expensive, and if I don't do my part, we'll both freeze.

I was chagrined. He'd got it exactly right, what I'd been thinking while I had been lecturing him about work and chits. I decided I must have glanced at the charcoal bucket while I was talking and he'd seen the glance and figured out what it meant.

You better go, he said. You don't want to be late.

Make sure you get over to Admin, I said.

OK, he said.

And don't flatter yourself thinking you're our first Jesus. You're not, you know.

Those others were false messiahs, he said.

And you're what? I said. The real deal? How it went for those other messiahs, some of them picked up a handful of disciples, most just got ignored until they tried to work a miracle or predicted the end of the world and it didn't happen for them. Then they got mocked unmercifully and ended up either killing themselves or settling down to being just ordinary inmates, which is what you'll do, and you might as well do it without going through the ridicule and all the rest of what goes with it.

And to myself, I was thinking I'd handle this Jesus the same way we handled all those others. Let him think it, hell, let him proclaim it from one end of the camp to the other, if he wanted. Don't argue with him or disparage him. Just humor him and he'd get over it, or die for it, his choice.

See you tonight, he said.

I walked to the door, stopped, turned.

What was your crime? I said.

Corrupting the morals of children, he said.

Serious? I said.

Serious, he said.

Terrific, I said, again to myself. A roommate who said he was Jesus Christ and who was a pedophile, and what was a pedophile doing in a political camp? Were they mixing us all in together now, the politicals with the degenerates?

What'd they give you for it? I said.

Life, he said.

It's what everybody gets, I said.

*****

After breakfast and working all day and a stopover at one of the bathhouses, it was my day for a shower, I arrived home. Jesus was in his prison garb, a husky black dude in stripes. He was on his bunk, on his back, his head against his pillows, two pillows, and we were only allowed a single pillow per man.

Jesus smiled up at me and alongside him on the bed was Rex, the sort-of-wild, sort-of-a-pet rabbit that lived underneath our house. Rex had never let me or the men on the other side of the wall get too close to him and he had darn sure never before been inside the house.

Hey, Jim, Jesus said.

How'd it go today? I said.

OK.

What kind of work did they give you?

No work.

Didn't you report?

They said they didn't have anything available right now.

So what'd you do all day, I said. Just sit around? I watched Rex, nibbling clover out of Jesus's hand. And how'd you get him to come in here?

Just invited him, is all.

Invited him, I said, and he strolled right in.

Hopped, Jesus said.

And what about the pillows? How'd you manage two?

I requested two and they gave me two.

Well, I said, that was certainly accommodating of them. An extra pillow and no work assignment.

I watched him petting the rabbit, talking softly to it.

I sat down on the edge of my bunk.

Look, I said, broaching what I'd been mulling all day. I've got to be honest with you. I'm not comfortable bunking with a pedophile. The men find out, and they will, they'll come around some night and if I'm in the bunk next to you, it won't go so good for me either.

Pedophile? he said. That's what you think?

It's what you said.

He got it and grinned.

I told you I corrupted the morals of children, he said.

Did you? I said.

It's what the government said, he said.

Tell me about it, I said. Just don't get, you know...graphic.

I crashed the Young Republicans' leadership convention, he said, and preached the Gospels to the kids, and when they got it, how I really was the Christ, they all wanted to pile into beat-up vans and follow me around the country, like I was the Grateful Dead.

That's it?

Yes, he said.

There was no funny business?

Would I lie? he said.

Would he? Even having known him for less than a day, I didn't think he'd lie. I didn't think anything other than the truth would ever come out of his mouth and I was relieved he was no pedophile. No, not a pedophile, just a whack-job. Well, whack-jobs I could handle.

America's future leaders, I said, and you ruined them for life. Shame on you.

What about you? he said. What was your crime?

I burned a flag.

American or corporate?

American.

That's bad, he said.

Yeh.

Why'd you do it?

Because they made it against the law, I said.

There's a lot out there, he said, that's against the law.

Traps, I said, for catching people who still give a hoot about the Constitution, people who appreciate the flag, just not blindly, and who want the old ways back again. Or people who are ornery for the hell of it.

Not the kind of folks the country is comfortable with, he said.

And everything today, I said, is a felony.

No more misdemeanors, he said.

I stared at him.

Jesus was a strange one. He'd make life difficult for himself and for me too, and yet, I couldn't really dislike him. He seemed always to be amused, seemed...serene, not the usual reaction of a man new to the camp and besides, it'd been over a month since my previous roommate had exited, and sure, a private room was nice, but hard too. We spent a lot of time in our rooms, and without TV or Internet or a radio, I was glad, at least on his first day, to have Jesus in there with me.

I reached toward Rex, to pet him, scratch his head, if he'd let me, and he bolted out of Jesus's arms and toward the door. He bashed the bottom of the door repeatedly with the top of his head, frantic to get out. I opened the door and the rabbit scooted away.

Jesus sat up on the side of his bunk, and with a camp brochure in his hand.

It says in here, he said, how when the chairman or some other corporate dudes visit the camp, how we all march under corporate flags and sing songs and how happy we are, and grateful to do it. You do that?

I have to, I said.

He read from the brochure, read mockingly, I thought:

The men, despite their liberal proclivities, their anti-American slant, do seem invigorated by the mass rallies, the parades, and seem to be even more invigorated when the parades are open to the public.

I felt angry and humiliated.

You have to play their game, I said.

At the price of your dignity?

Dignity is something you lock up inside of yourself, I said.

Uh, huh, he said. Until when? Until they open the gates and let us out? Dignity is an important piece of what I'm about. I won't allow anyone, guard, CEO, roommate, I won't allow anyone to take it from me, and you shouldn't either.

They'll squash you like a bug, I said.

Is life so precious? he said.

It's all I've got, I said, and feeling vexed: There's a line you have to walk in here and the sooner you learn to walk it, the better off you'll be.

My man, he said, standing and smiling broadly, you have just and probably for the first time since you set foot inside this man-made hell-hole, come face to face with the one man who will live in here entirely according to his own rules. Now, can we go to dinner? Ever since you mentioned cube steaks, I've been wanting one.

They never serve steaks, I said.

We grabbed our caps from the pegs on the wall by the door and went out. Caps were mandatory outside of our houses.

*****

Our mess hall was rustic, like at those summer camps my parents had sent me to, back when I was a kid and the world was different. It was a long, rectangular building; the sides were pine boards, stained a dark brown, the roof was cedar shingles.

We approached and there was a buzz with the men and the wafting aroma of grilled beef and onions.

Cube steaks.

Jesus didn't say I told you so. He just sniffed the air and smiled.

Inside were four rows of wooden tables with attached benches and with about five hundred men eating and with a steady flow in and out. Trustees patrolled the aisles, slapping their batons against their thighs. There were plenty of men to feed and no lingering allowed. Get your food, eat, and get out.

The walls were knotty pine and between the two doors on the short side where we'd entered there was a fieldstone fireplace, the pride of the camp masons. Tacked to the wall above the fireplace, behind an American and a corporate and a camp flag, was a portrait of a puffy-faced Joe McCarthy.

Along both long sides of the building were screen porches with more tables and benches. In the warm weather, the trustees ate on the porches and when the weather turned, some of the other men would get shoved out there and the trustees, who were like assistant guards and who were much despised by the rest of us, would take the seats closest to the fire. The kitchen was at the other end of the dining area, in a modern annex that wasn't a part of the original building.

We walked the length of the building, down the center aisle, and got into the food line. Our meals were dispensed cafeteria-style, all that stainless steel between the kitchen and the dining area. After a trustee punched our meal tickets, we picked up trays and silverware, cups and napkins, and went through the line, collecting a bowl of chili each, ladled out of a huge vat, and as side dishes, a smudge of mixed vegetables. A food worker tossed packets of crackers onto our trays and a little farther along, just before the desserts, another worker, using tongs, placed single cube steaks, grilled, on little dishes and set the dishes on our trays as we filed past. We got our dessert, sheet cake, and coming out of the line, found two empty places. We sat across from one another. I filled our glasses from the pitcher of water on the table.

Jesus said a prayer and we ate in silence, not because we weren't allowed to talk while we ate but because we were concentrating on the food, especially our steaks.

Are there seconds on the steaks? Jesus said, after a while.

Not unless you've got bonus chits, I said.

What's that? he said.

Extra chits, I said and I explained: Super chits. They're like trump cards because with bonus chits you can get stuff you can't get with regular chits, like seconds on your meals, except probably not on cube steaks, which we never get anyway, except for today.

You got any bonus chits? he said.

No, I said.

Too bad, he said.

Yeh, I said.

How do you get bonus chits? he said.

By leading the cheers at the assemblies, I said, or ratting on the guys. Or volunteering for the chain gangs.

They've got chain gangs?

They hire us out to the towns for menial stuff, I said. Picking up trash along the highways, mowing lawns, painting civic centers.

And we get extra chits for doing it?

For volunteering, yeh, I said, but if you're thinking about doing it, don't.

Why not?

Because, I said, you don't want to be walking around with a bowling ball attached to your leg. It's a pain in the...ankle, and it chafes. The men you see gimping around are the men from the chain gangs. And what else is a pain out there are the teenagers. They'll go by in their cars when you're working along the side of the road and pelt you with beer cans or crabapples and they'll laugh when you're made to pick up whatever it is they hit you with. Working on political campaigns isn't much fun either, going door to door and handing out pamphlets for politicians you’d have worked against, back when you were free to work against them. Don't the folks get a good laugh out of it, a convict showing up at the front door in pajamas and dragging a ball and chain. They like having their pictures taken with their arms around us and with our caps on their heads.

Sounds like you've been out there, Jesus said.

But never as a volunteer, I said.

So, if nobody volunteers, they just take men?

For infractions, real or otherwise, I said. It's good local PR for the camp and for the Corporation.

Do any of the men, he said, and after he'd wiped his mouth with his napkin, do the kinds of things they need to do, to get bonus chits? The other stuff, I mean, not the chain gangs, squealing, say?

Enough do, I said.

He smiled.

I'm thinking you don't, he said.

I didn't say anything. I just gnawed on my steak.

Maybe I'll go for a job tomorrow, he said.

Don't do it for me, I said. Do it for yourself.

Someone I knew went past our table and I leaned back and tugged his sleeve.

What's with the steaks? I said.

Softening us up, he said. Some big shot's coming tomorrow, to talk to us.

Jesus smiled.

And you thought it was me, he said, and after a moment: It talks in the brochure about our slow-pitch softball league, how each village has a team.

You're a ballplayer?

I played professionally, he said.

Baseball?

I played two years, he said. Best two years of my life. This life, I mean. It was low minor leagues and I had no chance of ever getting anywhere close to The Show but while it lasted, it was...heaven.

Heaven, I said. That's supposed to be a joke?

He smiled to remember.

It was mostly all-night bus rides, he said, and long afternoons spent hanging around until it was time to go to the ballpark, but think about it. Baseball as your job. Talk about freedom.

We don't talk about freedom, I said, or think about it, either, if we can help it. What were you, a catcher?

Utility man, he said, although I liked second base the best.

Our season's almost over, I said. You couldn't play until next year.

We ate our cake, thin slivers, and when we were done, I spoke:

Ready for your tour?

My new home, Jesus said. Let's go.

We returned our trays to the dump station and exited the mess hall.

Chapter 2

It was mid-October, leaf-peeping