Trapped in the Body of Jesus
by
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Mullis spun the Ford Pinto onto the shoulder and plowed into the ditch with a jolt that left his hands numb and his accelerator foot against the floor. The car tore out, leaving a cloud of smoke and globs of mud as it spun into the parking lot of the convenience store—a store which (and Mullis was certain of it) had once boasted of being American owned. The wailing of the tires stopped abruptly as the front end mounted the curb next to the pump. Three boys with redwood colored skin ran up, pointing and chattering rapidly in unknown tongues. They scraped at the bugs and peered in, their cheeks and noses pressing against the glass. The upper half of an even darker skinned man leaned through the open driver side window. It was Ahmed. It said so on his pocket.
“Your vision is impaired,” Ahmed snapped like a doctor with too many patients.
Mullis first rubbed at his hands to get the feeling back, then he spoke in a voice that was both resigned and evangelical. “My vision is one of the reasons I’m here,” he said.
“And what is your other reason?”
“That,” Mullis said, thrusting his hand upward through a hole in the Pinto’s headliner and out the rusted roof so that he pointed straight to the sky.
Instead of looking upward, Ahmed maintained a steady gaze into the car. “It is my hope you are a lightning hit and traveling to your festival, for if you are a Jehovah’s Witness, Ahmed buys no magazine to be rid of you.”
“I’m not selling magazines.”
Ahmed motioned for the eldest son to begin pumping and the other two to clean the bugs which they set about doing with a galvanized bucket of water and a spackling knife. Looking again at Mullis, Ahmed placed his hand to his chin. “Black pants, white shirt. Misleading? Yes, but you are no Mormon,” he concluded. “You are driving a car even if only somewhat. Nevertheless, it is no bicycle, and there should be two of you for Mormons travel in twos.”
Mullis was relieved that someone like Ahmed was unable to see the both of him—one on the inside, and one out, and both divided by two. He could witness better to that condition in Fulmen County. “I’m due at the Lightning Festival,” he said.
Ahmed gave Mullis Pickman a look of sudden understanding. He paused for a moment and swept an anointed looking head of black hair from off his forehead for the obvious purpose of allowing his particles to breathe. Clearly this man knew what was what.
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About the Book
Cross the freaky Medieval art of Hieronymus Bosch with a church revival, and you've got a rough idea of what "Trapped in the Body of Jesus" is about. The book is a collection of three stories ultimately more satirical of people's perception of church than the institution itself.
Begun in 1990, "Soapwoman" is a coming of age tale of Spec Jordan, a pubescent Baptist haunted not by the devil, but by raging hormones and a spectre who renders bad white boys into bars of lye soap.
"A Bishop of The True Church" is the distorted story of Bishop Orvis Hedgepath, a transplanted Mississippi prelate determined to escape his "intolerant" southern Baptist upbringing. Hedgepath, however, reverts to his true form instituting a series of truly intolerant excommunications.
In "Division by Zero is Impossible," Mullis Pickman brings an apocalyptic secret home to his impoverished stomping grounds during Fulmen County's annual "Lightning Festival."
About the Author
If growing up within walking distance of both Flannery O'Connor's home and the nation's largest mental institution didn't add enough southern color to Alfred Thigpen's childhood, then his stint as a severely underage greeter in his parent's low income clothing store did. "I saw a lot of gold teeth and smelled a lot of snuff, but everyone said I looked just like my mama."