Operator Get Me Jesus On the Line

It was a world of tired, antagonistic men and he was a kid. He hung out with his father a lot and would do most anything to please him or make him happy even as the evening swirled down the drain like every third or fourth high ball he mixed for the old man, a toxic concoction of vodka and Hawaiian Punch, which he then poured surreptitiously down the kitchen sink before making another quietly so as not to draw suspicion. His father sat in the living room just off the kitchen,railing against the televangelist. They were both engaged in small, fruitless efforts.

On the TV Ernest Angeles was wearing a sky-blue leisure suit and beseeching the congregation to come down and be healed. Perspiration dripped down his face from under his bad toupee. It was his crown of thorns.

“Now why the fuck is he asking them to come on down? They’re fucking crippled! They’re deaf! What is this The Price is Right? Who’s he fucking Bob Barker?” the father asked, seeming to the boy strangely, unnervingly incredulous.

“God has told me,” said the preacher stretching out the vowel till it sounded like “Gawd,” and closing his eyes and holding the microphone close enough to broadcast his panther-like panting continued, “God has told me that tonight we have misery in our midst, Satan in our hearts! We have someone who can’t, can’t, they, they are having trouble with the asthma…they have sipped Satan’s brew, they are dining at his nefarious buffet…they have the diabetes…”

“If a preacher owns two suits, he has one too many; you should’ve seen the purple one this son of a bitch was wearing last night,” remarked the father to the son.

“Come to God!” He paced the altar from left to right and back again, restrained only by the length of the microphone cord, waiting on the streaming masses of the mostly black congregation as it flowed towards him, the microphone in his hand like a whip; they were coming to him, they were coming to Gawd.

“Where’s the grape Kool-Aid? Someone should ask this egregious motherfucker about the grape Kool-Aid. Where’s the grape Kool-Aid?” shouted the father, leaning forward from his chair as if that could propel his inquiry across 3,000 miles and penetrate the fourth wall of television.

The father had an expansive vocabulary nurtured by crossword puzzles done every morning waiting for the boy to wake up for school, in the early, quiet moments of each day before he was left entirely alone in the house with his thoughts and would decide to head up the road for a drink (for it all starts with a drink) and secretly admired the preacher’s oratory. But he was jealous of the preacher himself, not envious of the suits, or of the watches and gaudy rings. He was an intelligent man and could see beyond the spoils of accepting Jesus Christ as his personal savior. He was simply and profoundly jealous of the minister’s command of the congregation, jealous that people listened to him.

As the once-blind danced their way off the stage and the formerly dumb sang praises to Him, Angeles would stand back deferentially, head bowed, jewel-encrusted hand raised in testimony, saying “I am merely a vessel of the Lord” then begin speaking in tongues. This got the father so worked up he rested his drink on the TV tray and went slack jawed. Then the preacher said, “If you need prayer counseling or salvation via the telephone, I have a direct connection to God and operators are standing by…” and then went back to his ministrations of healing the unwashed and the choir began to sing.

“Operator
Give me information
Information
Give me long distance
Long distance
Give me heaven…”

“I’ll call him,” said the boy.

“Yes,” replied the father, “call that rat bastard up,” and exhorted the boy with a raised hand joining the congregation unwittingly.

So, the boy, seized with an unknown fervor, picked up the phone and sat back down on the coffee table. He looked over at his father who was literally on the edge of his seat, hands folded between his knees, unsure whether to leer or smile. The he turned to the television and saw the choir clapping and undulating, lifting their voices to the rafters. He got up, adjusted the rabbit ears so the toll-free number came in clearly and dialed.

“Thank You for Calling Ernest’s Angels how can we pray for you today?” said the voice on the other end of the line.

The son was startled. He had been carried away on the rush of his idea, the thought that it would bring a smile to his father’s face. But he didn’t account for anyone else being involved. It was a TV show.

“Hello? Are you sick?” And she went down the list of how Ernest could help liberate him from any ailment, any addiction, free him from Beelzebub’s possession of his soul. The boy was transfixed, more mute than speechless, looking at the operators on the screen and trying to pick out who he was speaking with, thought about asking her to raise her hand so he’d know it was her and affirm the connection for the thought of any part of him being outside where he was, even if it was just to be his disembodied voice, intimidated him, scared him.

Then he thought – Was she really in Los Angeles? What was the weather like? Was it three hours earlier? Was it 7:04 pm? Did she ever go to a Dodgers game?

He looked at his father, sitting in his chair, the drink now back in his hand, a perplexed look of anticipation on his face. Were they at a tipping point, a turning point or a crossroads? The boy felt as if he was being pulled in different directions and was tired of making decisions like this every day, tired of the burden of choice in his life. Then he let go.

“I want the grape Kool-Aid,” he said.

“Excuse me?” said the voice through the phone.

“Can I have the grape Kool-Aid, you know the grape Kool-Aid,” he said with a haughty, mocking tone.

His father laughed, throwing back his head then hanging it down as it moved from side to side with laughter, and nearly spilled his drink.

“Oh, I’m sorry, baby,” said the woman now aware the caller was a child but not getting the joke, “We don’t have any, but we can pray for…” and began to enumerate the list of sins and ailments within the realm of Ernest Angeles’ skills of healing and salvation. The boy let her get as far as alcoholism before hanging up.

Then as the choir continued singing and clapping and the afflicted ascended the pulpit to become whole again imbued with the spirit of the Lord and presence of Jesus Christ courtesy of Angeles’ healing touch the boy walked over to his father and massaging fingers into the man’s ears stood there silent for brief moment then rocked back on forth on his heels, eyes rolling back in his head, something coming over him, some passion he would have to neglect or indulge in sincerely and began to channel the TV preacher saying with a dramatic flair without any pretense, “Evil spirits…COME OUT!” and drew his fingers down each cheek forcefully as if he was revealing a new creation, a fresh piece of artwork and not some sad component of this charade-playing, a studied effort to break away from the secular dross and gain the altar to touch the hem of divinity, to be a conduit through which some power greater than his father would speak or express itself, to send his life to perdition so as to cleanse his soul and the wash the intoxicated, turgid ambience in the blood of the lamb. He wanted to make his father laugh. And ease the burden on the heart that the man had tried to lift on a rising tide of fluorescent red Hawaiian punch diluted by vodka.

The son threw his arms up in the air victoriously and stalked the small living room as if bathed in seraphic light stopping only to pick up a copy of TV Week and curl it into a microphone and then walked over to the seated, drunk, unemployed man who drew $74.15 a week disability and leaning over whispered “Baby” into the ear of the father and the father mimicked the deaf churchgoers and responded “Bnhaby, bhnaby…” like a dumb person. The son spoke into his other ear and said “Jesus” and his father repeated the act. The son then threw his arms up again and walked away to put his hands on the TV and exclaim with fatigue, “It’s a miracle!” as his father’s raucous laughter dislodged the day’s Pall Mall’s smoke from his lungs, and he became apoplectic. Tears ran down his cheeks just like those on Ernest’s face now in close-up on the idiot box.

The boy looked at his father and hoped for a split second he might be different, the leg carved up half a dozen times by VA hacks would be restored and sublime, the teeth brown from years of cigarettes, booze and hygienic neglect would gleam, the pallor would be gone from his cheeks replaced by a ruddy complexion (once he found an old work ID badge of his father’s which described his complexion as “ruddy” and its reality had obsessed and escaped the boy until this moment of desperate hope) but his father just caught his breath and tossing back his head finished the drink in a long draw and said, “These are going down like my throat is greased. Get me another one and don’t pour anymore down the sink.”