THE GOOD TOUCH

 

What if only part of Jesus came back?

You'd think when the messiah did His encore, we'd get the whole enchilada. But, the angel explained to Les, the Lord is a very busy dude and has to divvy Himself out. Fair enough. 

But, damn… this?

Yeah, I know. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with that night, when the angel paid Les a visit.

Me and Les were sitting in Les’s trailer, pounding back a case of PBR, shooting the shit. I was bitching about the usual: being chronically unemployed and poor as a possum and still living in my mom’s garage. Les groused about the Kiwanis canceling their annual bake sale for cancer kids.   

Yeah, you read that right.

Les and me had been best buddies since grammar school when we’d bike over to the creek to fish for perch. In middle school we drew superhero comics and played war games in the woods. In high school we partied with the chicks from Sunny Nook Girls School. Ten years later and we “Two Stooges” (as Principal LeMott dubbed us) are still tight. 

I’d like to think the reason Les still chums around with me is because he enjoys my company. 

But sometimes I think he just feels sorry for me.   

See, compared to myself—who’s always had this dirt cloud hanging over my head raining mud down on me—Les has a charmed life. He’s the night manager at Stu’s Market, getting paid enough to afford his own double-wide. He’s got a 50” flatscreen TV with Xbox 360. Girls say he’s got a great smile. Everybody likes him. Not only is he sweeter than SoCo, he shows bottomless compassion for every living critter. Les is always willing to lend an ear to someone in distress, offer a hand to a worthy cause. He volunteers all his spare time during the day to the hospital, or the senior center, or the animal shelter. Joins those walks to find a cure for whatever. 

Guy’s a friggin’ saint.

So forgive me if I sometimes feel I’m nothing but a sinner in Les’s eyes in need of saving. 

Anyway, that night I tell him what I really need is a break. 

He tells me I gotta want something to break into. 

How ’bout a bank? I say. I was joking.

Les didn’t laugh. Just gave me that “c’mon” face of his.

I then say I wanna win the lottery.

Les suggests I should come help out at the hospital. Or the shelter.

I say no. That would only bum me out more.

It’ll make you feel better, he says. About my life, I guess. Make me less of a loser. 

But I’d never be Les.

I tell him I’ll think about it, but I’d forgotten all about it well before I drained my last beer. 

I left his place sometime after 3 a.m. Walked home, took a leak in the bushes, crashed out on my futon in mom’s garage. Like usual.

 

In the morning Les rings me on my prepaid cell. He sounds like he’s buggin’ out, begs me to come over right away.

Twenty minutes later I’m back at his place. Les’s face is paler than vanilla ice cream, and he’s got this haunted, I-just-took-the-biggest-dump-in-human-history stare. I notice he’s wrapped his left hand with a white T-shirt.

“You hurt yourself?” I ask.

Les then tells me what happened: 

“I was just dozing off. Or maybe I was already asleep. It was still dark out, I remember that. And then this amazingly bright light fills the room, as if somebody pulled a tarp off a searchlight in here. And then this light takes the shape of this long-haired, bearded guy in a white robe. Of course I’m like ‘holy crap,’ but for some reason I wasn’t scared at all. The guy says ‘hello, Lester’ and I say ‘Who are you?’ And he says he’s an angel named Efram—No, I wasn’t that drunk. I’ve never been so drunk I was seeing things.—Efram tells me I’m one of the chosen, that the Lord was giving me a special gift… a piece of Him. The angel told me a bunch of other stuff, mostly rules about using the gift. When I woke up, it was daytime, and I had this—”

Les unravels the towel from his hand and shows me what it was covering. 

My jaw drops. Bounces off the floor.

Les had sprouted, between his thumb and pointer fingers, a sixth finger. It was almost a full inch longer than his tallest finger, and much darker than the skin of the rest of his hand. And it wasn’t sewed on, or attached with glue or anything. It looked to be part of him, like he was born with it. He could bend and wiggle it by itself. It was perfectly manicured.

That’s freaky, I tell him.

Les agrees. 

So Jesus gave him one of His fingers. “What for?” I ask.

Les tells me it can heal people. 

I’m skeptical. “Why’d He choose you to get it?”

“The angel said I met certain qualifications.”

Of course Les met them. As I said, guy’s a friggin’ saint.

Still, I want to see proof of these special powers.

“Let’s check out what that freaky finger can do.”

We step outside and, as luck would have it, eight-year-old Billy Meijer had just fallen off his skateboard, scraping six inches of hide off his forearm. We find him bleeding and blubbering on the driveway neighboring Les’s. 

“There ya go,” I say. “Fix him.”

Les kneels down beside Billy and says some calming words to him. Tells him he’s gonna try to make him feel better. The kid spots Les’s coffee-stained extra finger and cries harder. Les tells him not to be afraid, it’s his new magic finger. Then he touches the kid’s raw wound with it. And, sure enough, the bloody patch disappears like a magic trick. A miracle, I guess you’d call it.

“Wow!” Billy yells.  

“That’s awesome,” I say. 

Les seems impressed too. And kinda weirded out. Can you blame him?

I tell Les to do somebody else.

We trot over to Louise Bollinger’s trailer. She’s got emphysema and can’t stop coughing. Magic finger does its work and POOF! No more hacking. Then we visit Eddie Frapper. He’s stuck in a wheelchair, both legs crippled from a motorbike accident. POOF! Dude can dance again. Then we hit Sol Hockenfeifer’s, who’s blind. POOF! Sol can catch a movie tonight.

By the end of the afternoon Les has healed the injuries and ills of Red Glades mobile park’s entire citizenry. We hear a lot of “hallelujahs” and “praise the Lords”. People weep, thank Les, hug him, offer him their cash and valuables—which he declines, being the good neighbor he is.

But that gets me to thinking.

“This is our golden ticket, Les. With your J-wand and me managing you, we’ll be rich!”

Les shakes his head. “Can’t,” he says.

“Why not?” I ask.

“It’s one of the rules. I can’t receive any payment for healing people—no money, no goods, no services.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. The angel said if I break any of the rules, I lose His gift.”

“So what? If you can’t make a buck of it, what’s the point?”

Without missing a beat, he says “I can help people.”

Of course. It’s Saint Les.  

 

When somebody has the supernatural ability to heal anybody’s sickness or handicap, word about it travels faster than a hooker making the rounds at a political convention. Within a day, folks from all over town were pouring into Red Glades and lining up at Les’s door. Those with arthritis—POOF! Asthma—POOF! Heart disease or hemorrhoids—POOF! and POOF! Diarrhea, deafness, diabetes—POOF! POOF! POOF! All cured by the bona fide finger of Christ, retrofitted to my pal Lester Earl Tewlinski III.  

I put myself in charge of crowd control, making sure Les’s eager patients didn’t try to elbow ahead of each other. Like Les, I wasn’t getting paid a penny for it. But I had to admit, while not healing my undernourished wallet any, it was pretty exciting having a friend who could make people’s lives better, who could save a life so easily. Everybody left his trailer happy and healthy and grateful. It was touching.  

Dozens turned into hundreds by the end of the week. They arrived from other towns, then other states, even other countries. Members of the Wrath of Angels motorcycle club signed on to help me keep the growing mob peaceful and orderly. We put up a chain-link security fence around Les’s trailer. Set up rope stanchions to corral everybody in the vacant lot next-door. Kicked to the curb anyone who tried to cut in line.

Fortunately Les kept things moving right along. Each person took at most five minutes inside with him. Better than waiting for a ride at Disney. And you didn’t have to shell out ninety bucks to get in neither.

The media began to swarm by the fifth day. First came reporters from the local papers, then from the tabloid magazines, then from the cable channels, then from the network news. That weekend even one of the hosts of “Good Day Nation”—the douchey guy, not the babe—had camped outside Les’s home.

Loads of filthy rich people showed up too, from as far away as France and China. They cruised up in limos and Lamborghinis, all yearning for Les to treat whatever ailed them. All at no charge. Les couldn’t even accept any gifts. If somebody left him something on the sly, like a diamond-encrusted watch or his own private jet (with personal pilot), he donated it straight to charity. 

Les was really taking the rules seriously. 

Me, I was looking for loopholes.

On Thursday of the second week, the Pope’s people dropped by Red Glades. Their first day they just observed Les in action. On Friday they brought over this ugly Peruvian bastard with dry leprosy. Les did his mojo and POOF! Guy now looks more like Crocodile Dundee than the Alligator Man. 

Guess that was enough to convince the Pope. The very next day the Vatican sends one of their bigwigs to our butthole town to meet Les. Bishop Sylvio had flown here all the way from Italy. He wore this sharp white suit with a shiny purple tie and a shinier gold crucifix. He had the hair of an expensive lawyer and the teeth of an expensive dentist. He smelled like clove cigarettes. 

Sylvio had this buttery Italian accent that could make a chick dampen her  panties from across a room. He uses it to tell me to leave him and Les alone awhile so they might discuss some matter in private.

So I wait outside with the other non-VIPs.

Twenty minutes later the bishop exits Les’s trailer, marches over to his white stretch Hummer (without giving us unwashed masses—even the wealthy washed ones—so much as a “bless you”), and drives off.  

Les spends another hour and a half giving folks finger jobs before calling it a day. I tell the two hundred plus people still in line to come back tomorrow at 11. As usual most stay put, not wanting to lose their places.   

I ask Les what the bishop wanted. 

“The Pope wants me to do a global healing tour.”

“Where to?”

“Everywhere. Even the Middle East. They think I’m the ultimate promotional tool for Christianity.” 

“Wouldn’t working for them be against the ‘rules’?”

“We talked about that. He said they don’t have to pay me. They’ll just cover my expenses. It’d be like missionary work.”

“That’s okay then,” I decide. “It’ll be cool seeing the world. Let’s do it.”

“You can’t,” Les says softly.

“What?”

Les looks me in the eye, all sympathetic. “You can’t go.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“The bishop said you don’t adequately represent the Vatican’s image.”

“He means I’m not religiousy enough?”

“Yeah. Sorry, bud.”

I should’ve been pissed, but Bishop Sylvio was right. I wasn’t religiousy at all. I’d probably embarrass myself on the road. Get drunk in Australia. Get high in Amsterdam. Get laid in Japan. Get in a fistfight in Russia. I was a horrible role model for anybody, much less Christians.

Les, though, wasn’t much better. Sure, he was nice as hell, but he was no king of the righteous. He drank and smoked and screwed near as much as I did. And Les was never the churchgoing sort neither. He only thanked God for stuff now and then (“Thank God for weed!”), more often damned other stuff in His name (“Goddamn shoelace!”). I’d wager most any preacher had superior credentials. In my opinion, Les didn’t deserve to sport Jesus’s finger. Maybe that angel had made a mistake.

I wanted my best friend back.

More than that, I wanted that magic finger. Badly.

So I finally figured out a loophole.

Les was jetting to Rome Monday afternoon. I came over Sunday night to help him pack. I bought us a cheap bottle of vodka for a bon voyage party. 

Slipped a few ruffies in Les’s glass. 

Once he was conked out cold, I used my mom’s gardening clippers to cut off Jesus’s digit, plunked it into my pocket, and split. Easy as that.

Now I could go around healing folks myself. And since I wasn’t bound by any heavenly contract like Les was, I could get paid for it. Or, I could skip all that grind and sell the finger to the highest bidder. Must be worth millions. Hundreds of millions!  I’d be set for life. I could buy my own castle in Scotland. Gather a harem of hoochies. Eat clambake every day. 

Yeah, guilt chewed at me. 

But greed fed me more.

I doubted Les would ever forgive me, but I hoped he’d understand. 

Sometimes opportunity doesn’t knock. You have to break in. 

When I enter my bedroom/mom’s garage, I put her clippers away on the wall where they belonged. Then I puke in the toilet. Then I reach into my pocket… and scoop out only black dust.

Jesus’s finger had disintegrated.

 

Les woke up the following day with a killer headache and minus one magic finger. The wound I made healed up overnight. There wasn’t even the tiniest scar. It was like it was never there. 

Les seemed to take everything in stride. He called to tell me first. Next he phoned Bishop Sylvio and informed him of the situation. Les then went outside and announced to his faithful followers that his trip was off, that his healing powers had been revoked, and that he was very, very sorry.

Nothing twists the heart more than the sight of hundreds of sick and lame folks who’ve had their hopes crushed. It took nearly two hours for all of them to drift away, shuffling or limping or rolling back to their regularly scheduled lives.

Much like Les and me did. Les would go back to managing Stu’s Market. And I would go back to chilling out with my buddy who didn’t have an extra finger belonging to the Son of God. 

Oh, I also learned I got stomach cancer and had, with chemotherapy, maybe two or three years to live. Without chemo, maybe a few months. I don’t have insurance, so I guess I’m on the fast track to Game Over. I didn’t tell any of this to Les because, well—

“What do you think I did wrong?” Les asks me while we polish off a case of PBR and play Halo 2.

“Dunno,” I say.

“I followed all the rules. Every. Single. One.” Les groans. “Maybe I can contact the angel—”

“Maybe it was because you got too famous.”

Les mulls this over. “You mean fame was a form of payment?”

“Yeah. Could be. Probably.”

Les sighs, sags his shoulders. He seems to accept my explanation.

“Efram should’ve been more specific… I could’ve saved so many more people. Hundreds. Thousands.”

I feel that tumor pain in my gut. I rub my belly, wincing.

“You alright?” Les asks.

“Just my… ulcer acting up.” Ulcer. That’s what I told Les I had.

“I could’ve done something for that. When I had the… y’know.”

“Yeah,” I say.

I fuckin’ knew.