Drowning Tucson (14 page)

The preacher in the wheelchair shouted Jesus is here right now in this very place. Wherever two or three are gathered. Lift up your voices to God. Speak in tongues. Praise his name. Shandalaba-bababacondolo. Shandalababababacondolo. He waved his hands wildly above his head. The scene made Davíd remember going to Sunday school with a friend back when he was a kid. Made him remember the teacher telling the story in the Bible where these people were sitting inside a church speaking in tongues and the Holyghost descended and flames were seen burning on top of the roof, but the building didn’t catch fire. Just like the bush that was on fire and spoke to Moses but didn’t burn either. He looked at the top of the Reid Park bandshell, half expecting to see pillars of flame dancing atop the roof, the Holyghost making itself known. No flames. But the roar of the crowd worshipping their Lord and King ricocheted off the back of the bandshell and echoed off the hill where the Jesus people sat. Davíd laughed. Of course there were no goddam flames. The only flames were the faggot teenaged boys sneaking to the bathroom to suck each other off while their parents got their hearts right with God.

Roughly every two months the Door Christian Fellowship Church held revivals in the park, hoping to reach out to the impoverished and godless Latino communities that continued to grow in central and south Tucson. Before Davíd’s father died, he would complain every time the Door came around, always returning from the hot sunny afternoons at the orchard where he picked fruit all day and screaming about how
those pinche Christians were back in the park again. They spit in the face of the Catholic Church and expect us to turn our backs on our culture. They say we worship false idols.

Because their father always got so worked up about the revivals in the park, each time the churchies came around, the Nuñez boys couldn’t resist sneaking out of the house and walking to the park where they found a picnic table to sit on, passing joints back and forth and listening to the gringo in the wheelchair telling them how God loves Mexicans just like the rest of his people, he sees your pain and suffering here on earth and sent his son as a lamb to the slaughter to sacrifice himself so that you might be saved. Just like you come here to America to make a better life for your family back home. You toil in the fields. You are persecuted like the Christians were in the years following the death of our Lord. Look how much you have in common with us. Look to the Word. Look to the Lord and he will set you free—the words being translated into Spanish by a diminutive Mexican who kept wiping his forehead with a handkerchief and spraying spittle as he paced on the stage, gesturing wildly with his other hand, the veins in his forehead bulging from his attempts to keep up with the words of the preacher, who barely stopped to take a breath and allow the message to be translated so that the people who were slowly coming to see what all the ruckus in the park was about could understand what the hell the strange man in the wheelchair was saying.

The second time Davíd and his brothers had sneaked out to the revival, they’d noticed the boys walking off to the restroom, and Davíd said I’ve got to drain my gusano—hahaha—and walked to the dark restroom that smelled of stale beer and urine and the many years of beer shits and picnic shits and baby shits, whose stench was never fully allowed to dissipate but instead rotted in the restroom on hot summer afternoons and seeped into the walls. Inside the restroom he expected to hear the laughter of teenaged boys talking about the girls they’d like to screw and making farting sounds or probably pretending to piss in the urinals but really spraying their piss all over the floors and the rolls of toilet paper. He expected to see them writing FUCK YOU on the wall with a Magic Marker or crudely drawing naked women with little dot nipples
or sketching gigantic cocks with absurd drops of spurting semen. Instead, he opened the door and saw only one boy standing by the urinals and thought maybe the others had snuck past the bathroom to have a cigarette in the bushes. Then he heard a muffled slurping and sneakers shuffling and saw a foot jutting from beneath one of the stalls and it took him only a moment to realize these little Jesus maricóns are sucking each other off while their parents are out there jumping up and down and beseeching Christ to prepare a place in heaven for them and for their little faggot sons kneeling on the filthy floors of the park shitters blowing their buddies, probably cupping their tiny ballsacks while they try to make sure they’re sucking right—less teeth, goddammit, just pull your lips over them.

Davíd slowly backed out of the bathroom, unnoticed by the kid at the urinal, and ran back to the picnic table where his three brothers sat, pointing and laughing at the Jesus freaks speaking in tongues—condolosai, shondolocobolosai—and raising their hands to the darkening sky. He explained what he had just seen in the bathroom, his brothers listening with disbelief. You mean those gringo dudes are all fags? Yeah, right over there, while their parents are praying, they’re blowing each other and loving it. Let’s go. And the Nuñez brothers walked quickly, trying not to draw attention to themselves, each one hoping the kids in the bathroom were still going at it so they could see for themselves, because they just couldn’t believe they would really be doing it, here, in the middle of the park where anyone could bust them. Rogelio wondered what he was going to do—probably kick their fairy asses. He thought he wouldn’t be able to stop laughing when they kicked in the stall door and found some kid sucking his friend’s dick. Hey, guys, what if he’s sucking more than one? Yeah, Chuy said, maybe he’s double fisting and has a coupla peckers sitting on his forehead too. His brothers laughed. That’d be great. When they reached the bathroom, Rogelio raised his finger to his lips and slowly pushed the door open and held it while his brothers entered, and Davíd tiptoed to one of the stalls and kicked the door in and it slammed into the back of the faggot on his knees with a cock buried in his throat, and Chuy and Rogelio dragged the kid out of the stall
and held him while Felipe and Davíd kicked him in the ribs and the nuts and Chuy clutched the kid’s throat and said you like suckin dick, huh? you wanna take care of the four of us? and the Nuñez brothers laughed and whipped out their dicks, and Chuy said fuck it, piss on the fuckin queer, and his friends sneaked out of the bathroom and ran up the hill to their parents while the urine of the Nuñez brothers drenched the clothes and splashed the face and hair and sprayed into the mouth of the screaming kid pinned against the wall of the bathroom. When they had all run out of piss and shook the final drops onto the kid’s forehead, Rogelio spat on him and said that’s what we do to queers around here. You come around here again suckin dick, you better be prepared for a lot worse. Fuckin faggot. Pinche maricón.

And every few months after that, when the Door brought their revival around and their father came home screaming about the churchies and their bastard religion, the Nuñez brothers knew the time had come to go make fun of the Jesus freaks and kick some faggot ass.

But today Davíd sat alone. He hadn’t been to a revival in years. The last few times he and his brothers had gone, they had spread out through the crowd and pretended to place money into the KFC buckets the church sent around for collection and instead grabbed a fistful of cash, ignoring the glares of the freaks and walking to Torchy’s to buy some forties and smokes. And after all these years, they were still using KFC buckets for collection. Davíd saw the men walking with them, holding them in front of people who grudgingly pulled a crumpled dollar or two from their wallets, the rest of their money purposely left at home, just in case they felt the urge to pull out their pockets to prove they had no more money, or in case one of the fuckin wetbacks came along and tried to stick em up.

This time Davíd didn’t go to the bathroom to beat up the fairies. In fact, he hadn’t laid a hand on anyone since that day behind Torchy’s when he and his brothers and the rest of the Kings had beaten his baby brother Felipe to death. Instead he had quietly begun to distance himself from the Kings, disgusted with the rage that had overcome him and made him punch and kick so blindly he didn’t know whom or what he’d been beating.

The wheelchair preacher rolled back and forth, telling the crowd of people that Jesus is here in this place right now and he wants to make his presence known. The KFC buckets were still going from hand to hand. God shall supply all your needs. Give to the Lord and the Lord will provide for you and your family. Remember the loaves of bread and the fish. Our God is an awesome God. Let’s not forget the faith of the woman who used her very last cup of wheat during the time of famine to prepare a meal for the prophet Elijah. Her VERY LAST CUP. People dropping in singles and maybe some change. And how did our Lord reward her faith? That’s right. He blessed her with an unending supply of wheat that lasted her and her son for the rest of the famine. That’s the Lord we serve. What a mighty God we serve. The crowd clapped and sang as the buckets made their way toward the back, and the preacher said there’s someone here right now who has just found out they have cancer. Someone who thinks it’s all over. And I know you’re tempted to hang it all up. Satan is whispering in your ear, saying see how your Jesus has forsaken you. Don’t believe Lucifer, for he is the father of lies. The Mexican man paced the stage, wiping his forehead, loosely translating. A murmur went through the crowd and grew louder as the preacher described the person suffering—the spirit is telling me that you are here now, that you have given up on our everloving Savior, you have a wife, three kids, maybe four, and the Lord is pulling at your heartstrings right now. YOU FEEL IT. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. The preacher paused. Everyone, including Davíd, looked to see if the man the preacher described was actually present when suddenly a woman yelled THANK YOU, JESUS and a man rose to his feet weeping, holding the hand of a little girl who looked up at her daddy, wondering why he was crying like that in front of all these people, having never seen her father cry, and he kissed his daughter and sat her on her mother’s lap and continued weeping as he stumbled over people sitting on the grass while trying to make his way toward the stage. People whispered to each other. Davíd smirked but couldn’t help wondering whether or not he would witness a miracle tonight, here, in Reid Park, the place where so many sins had been committed that even if Jesus were real, it would be the last place he would make his presence known.

The man finally reached the stage and the crowd of people grew silent, shushing their children and looking expectantly toward the bandshell where the man stood with his back to them, his head bowed, his shoulders heaving with grief. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Shandolokai. Shandolobobobosan. The preacher wheeled over to him and motioned for his translator to follow. Tonight the Lord will make Himself known. He will give a sign to all of you who disbelieve. He WILL heal this man and all of you who question the existence of God will know that He is real and that God loves His children.

The KFC buckets had reached the back of the crowd, and the ushers collected them and walked behind the bandshell. The preacher stopped speaking and rolled to the side of the stage, where someone handed him a package. He placed it on his lap and rolled back to where the broken man stood. As it says in the Word of the Lord, we will anoint this brother with oil and the laying on of hands, thank you, Jesus. We give thanks. He pulled a bottle of olive oil from the package on his lap and uncapped it, soaking the tip of his finger, and then beckoned for the afflicted man to bend toward him. The man bent over slowly. The preacher smeared the sign of the cross on the man’s forehead and asked everyone to bow their heads and close their eyes. Reach your hands out toward our brother. Believe. Pray to Jesus—shandolobocosolo—for Him to cast the scourge from this man’s body. Give him life, Lord. Cleanse his body and soul of evil. The crowd raised their hands toward the man and began to pray, and the preacher stretched out his hand and placed it on the man’s chest and loudly cursed the devil, BE GONE, SATAN. FLEE THE BODY OF THIS MAN. HE BELONGS TO JESUS. HE IS A CHILD OF GOD. HE IS A VESSEL OF THE HOLYGHOST, AND YOU ARE AN INTRUDER IN THE SACRED TEMPLE OF THE LORD. SHANDOLOBOCOLOCOBOSAI. SHANDAL-ABABA—BE HEALED. He slammed his hand into the man’s chest. BE HEALED, BE HEALED. Three ushers rushed onto the stage and stood behind the afflicted man, placing their hands on his back and praying in tongues. The preacher’s forehead was peppered with sweat and the armpits of his silk shirt grew dark with perspiration. He rolled his chair back a foot or two and then rolled toward the man and slammed the palm of his hand into his chest—BE HEALED. OUT, FOUL DEMON. THY
NAME IS CANCER. THY NAME IS LEGION, AND THE LORD, WITH THE COVENANT OF HIS SON’S SACRIFICE, HAS ALREADY PAID THE RANSOM ON THIS MAN’S SOUL. OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT. BEGONE—the man began to shake, his hands flailing in the air above him—YOU HAVE NO PLACE HERE. YOU WERE CAST FROM HEAVEN IN THE GREAT BATTLE FOR THE THRONE, AND YOU ARE BEATEN. BE HEALED. BE HEALED. BE HEALED. SHANDABACONDOLOSAI. He rolled toward the man again and smashed his hand into his chest and the man fell backwards as if he had been crushed by a great wave, and the three ushers caught him from behind and gently lowered his convulsing body to the stage, and the crowd gasped and prayed, and the preacher rolled back and forth slowly, back and forth, thank you, Jesus, thank you, Jesus, thank you, Jesus, and the translator mumbled into the mic, while a woman came from the right of the bandshell carrying a floral sheet to cover the twitching and bucking man.