A boy picked at a pimple on his chin as he listened to the Judge say that God’s way would bring freedom. And that freedom was as important as love. As the moon. Max watched green ooze out of the boy’s face. He watched as the boy pinched the ooze from his chin and wiped it onto his neck.
Real freedom, the Judge said, isn’t the kind of freedom you’re thinking about. He seemed to be looking at Max when he said this, but Max hadn’t been thinking about any particular freedom. He had been wondering what the poison tasted like, what it meant for faith to come suddenly and entire, how a green ooze existed under every man’s skin.
Orations flowed fully formed from the Judge’s mouth. More than his words worked to hold the crowd captive. Something else moved them, some subtle thing. Power, maybe. Because it was power that radiated off the Judge like a kind of profound, supersonic vibration. Max could feel its buzz, like the hum of a microwave when you put your nose against its screen.
It’s the kind of freedom you find only after you find your Lord and savior in Christ. When you make the conscious choice to follow him.
Max’s mother wouldn’t believe the Judge had spoken to God in a shed covered in mirrors, anointed with a cask of poison. She would say the Judge’s vision had been summoned by the paint fumes, the shoe polish in his pocket, or from the near delirium of death. She would say it was the same as people who are pronounced dead in the hospital and see a divine light at the end of a dark path. They think it’s God. They hear spirits say their names before they are drawn back to life. But science has proven that theory incorrect. The light at the end of the tunnel is a reaction to chemicals in the brain: a splattering of synapses, nothing more or less beautiful.
Max wondered, as he often compulsively did, how science would explain his ability. He wasn’t sure. Might never be. He questioned if a god was indeed out there and if God had bestowed this power, this curse, upon him. A chemical collision in his brain, a possible origin story. No more or less beautiful.
Max would ask someone if he didn’t suspect he’d end up in an asylum, snatched up for a series of medical tests. Whom would he ask even? Not sure is whom. No one is whom. Max conjured an image of himself on daytime TV shows, Oprah making him resurrect a girl’s dead hamster in front of a live television audience. The applause. The cruel applause. The pure happiness of the girl. The love of what Max could do. Not ever the love of Max.
Better to ignore it. Better to pretend it doesn’t exist, Max thought, and then maybe, quite possibly, one day it no longer will.
The Judge stood beneath a white flag with a big red X through it. The flag of Alabama. In Germany, one could not love the flag like one could love the flag in America. People would worry you were becoming a nationalist. It would spark memories of the war, of what could happen when one loved their country blindly and too much. The flag was for government buildings and sporting events. But here in Alabama, Max saw many flags in front of many houses, on the front of many shirts, flying from the bed of many trucks. His class saluted the flag each morning, placed their hands over their hearts and spoke words of respect to it. It was an honor to raise the American flag up the pole in front of the school, to know how to fold and unfold it, and never once let the fabric touch the ground.
We’re going to pray for those who have lost their way. We’re going to pray that God uses us as his warriors in this love-lost world.
Lord, boomed the Judge’s voice. Father God, use us as your army on earth. We’re building up an army. We will not be swayed by the ways of evil. We will be your face in government. We will do your will on earth as it is in heaven.
This is Alabama, said the Judge. A state for you, Lord God. We are not great if we are not doing your will. Help us reach the hearts of sinners. Let us judge people on nothing but their love for you and how they reflect your will in the world. We will not stand by and watch the world take you from us.
When the Judge got on his knees on the well-laid oak porch, Max almost expected a beam to shoot down from the heavens. Light him up or smite him, Max wasn’t sure which. He closed his eyes. Was that what prayer was? Just closing his eyes? He wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen after that. No God spoke to him. But for the first time, he wondered if he could find a God there, in the black silence of his own brain. He made his mind say God? It was completely silent. He was alone with himself, just like always.
Max squinted at the Judge through his pretend prayer. It unsettled him to see this noble man on his knees mumbling to himself. It moved him. Max wanted to get on his knees, too. He wanted to humble himself before something great. The Judge began to shake, so Max closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see it. The Judge had the ability to change people. The bodies in the crowd had been changed. They shook and trembled in the same way the Judge did. It was as if the Judge possessed the power to twist and bend the will and the bodies of the people before him, the people who watched. Max wondered if the Judge knew the limits of his own power. The Judge’s power reached out and grabbed Max by the heart. He felt the Judge wrap around his beating pulse. Power entered him. Was that God?
I have seen death, my friends, the Judge said, quietly and slowly. I have seen death, and I have seen the devil. I’ve looked him straight in the red of his eyes. And I am here to tell you that the way of the Lord is not easy. But it is good. The world is a battlefield, and the right path is not always kind, but it will make sense in the end. God never promised us ease. He promised us love. He promised us himself in exchange for eternal life. Commit yourself to him and be free.
Praise Jesus, the Judge said. Amen!
The prayer ended and people were released back to conversation. Some strange and unsettling thing roiled through the bodies beside Max. One man began to act hyper. He laughed too loud and spit flecks of chewed burger onto the faces of the other men while he talked. Max wondered what it was the Judge just did to everyone. Max wondered because he felt it, too—a surge of cortisol cruising his veins, swelling them thick as they could go. Maybe that’s what God was. Maybe God was power. Max wanted more of it, whatever it was, even though it scared him. It scared him the way drugs scared him. It scared him the same as when a girl at school smashed a plastic bag of Ritalin into dust and licked the bag until it was a slick sack of saliva, and the girl’s teeth began to grind.
The moon remained even in the daylight. A moon so bright the sun couldn’t wipe it away. Max concentrated on its craters, the blemished and intricate topography he could trace from the backyard. He might not understand science, but it still made him feel small.
On his way out, the Judge walked past Max. He stopped. He raised a finger above him then drew it through the air and touched Max’s chest. With that gesture, Max felt like the Judge had taken some of the sky and put it inside his body. He expanded into blue.
People like you, he said, are the people we need here. People like your father are doing good things for our economy. Cars are Alabama’s biggest export right now. You need to invite him to church. We would love to see y’all come with us to celebrate the good news.
The good news? said Max.
Jesus has risen, son, said the Judge.
THE UPCOMING FRIDAY was the first game. Two days away, and although Max knew he would not start, the attention was getting to him. God’s Way did not have a strong football team. They would not go to the state championship, but people still treated the players like minor celebrities. Earlier in the day, a girl had walked right into Max’s History class with his teacher in midlecture and placed a homemade brownie on Max’s desk.