Moses Abraham Smith knows what needs to be done. What he has to do. Say amen.

 Holding a brown paper sack in one hand and his mother’s Bible in the other, Reverend Mose, as his congregation calls him, unlocks the back door of the house where he is only a boarder. He pokes his head in and listens. No one is home. Praise Jesus. He crosses the threshold into the kitchen staring at the black sheen on his scuffed and worn dress boots. He cannot bear to raise his head to glance at the calendar as he usually does, nor is he humming his usual hymn. Out of the corner of his eye he notices Mary’s coloring book on the table, open to the page where children surround Jesus. Suffer ye the little children to come unto me. She has colored a black cowboy hat on Jesus’ head. It looks like the hat Reverend Mose wears, even in the house. Nothing else on the page is colored.    

Striding with bowed head to the back bedroom where he lives in quiet isolation, Reverend Mose unlocks the door, enters the dim room, and then locks the door behind him. He slings the hat off his head into a chair, and tosses the sack on the bed. Verily, verily, Lord. He clutches the Bible in his hands, then touches it to his forehead, his own healing ritual. The cover feels cool and supple. Its smell is familiar and reassuring. He takes it everywhere he goes. He feels naked without it.

What a fellowship! What a joy divine! Leaning on the everlasting arms!

Sighing, he places the Bible carefully on the bureau next to the aloe vera plant. He sits on the bed in prayerful contemplation, then reaches underneath the bed and pulls out a TV tray with his private stash. He takes a plastic spoonful from a baggie and spreads it on the tray, then uses a razor to fix a neat row. He takes the half-straw, bends over, and with a quick snort, half the row of crystal meth disappears. Say amen.  He switches the straw to the other nostril and snorts again. Praise Jesus! He looks across the room in the bureau mirror. His nostrils are dusted with white powder. His face looks drawn tight and feral as a frightened animal. A face belonging to a prating fool named Moses.

 Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins. Amen!

He is one of God’s chosen--and one of the Devil’s vermin. He is both saved and damned, saint and sinner. Lord, cleave this evil marrow from my bones!

The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish.

“Why do I do the things I do, lord?” he whispers.

Reverend Mose gets so high he hears Jesus calling him home. Say amen. He gets so high he feels the rush-h-h like a band of angels fanning him with their wings, feels their love, the Love, surging in his veins, filling him up with the Holy Spirit, the Love of the Lord, O blessed Jesus, do you hear him praising your name?      

“Blessed Lord, do you hear me praising your name?!”

His voice resounds in the empty house. In the distance he hears children playing on the school playground. He sees them in his mind, going up and down on the teeter-totter, riding the merry-go-round, playing tag, jumping rope. Praise the Almighty Father for their innocence!

That little girl...that little girl...Lord, I didn’t mean to touch her there...

A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother. His mama’s picture is on the wall staring back at him. The most righteous woman he’s ever known. A woman of glorious righteousness! A woman of blessedness! A woman who let Jesus shine his light through the darkness! The darkness of the dispossessed! The sorrow of a husband who abandoned the Lord for the bottle, abandoned the mother of his twin children who he has never cast eyes upon! God praise this woman! A woman of tender mercy who worked from dawn to dusk in order to provide for Moses and his brother Solomon. This blessed woman. Say amen.

White trash, that’s what some people called us. But the Lord knew we had been sanctified! The Lord knew we had been saved by his precious grace. For God so loved the world! Yes, he did!

Reverend Mose addresses an invisible congregation: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...” His voice sounds hoarse and unfamiliar.

Mama, I’m sorry I have fallen short of the glory! I’m sorry I have sinned and fallen short of the glory! The glory is not for the wicked, for I have given in to temptation! Help me, blessed Jesus! Say amen.

“...I will fear no evil! No! Not even myself!”

...She had those flowery little panties on...I could see them in the mirror...so sweet...so delicate. Lord!

“...for thou are with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”

He sets the tray to one side and pulls out his rigid cock. 

“Thou prepareth a table before me in the presence of mine enemies...”

He watches himself in the mirror, pretending she is watching him--his little angel. “My cup runneth over!” he croaks, falling back on the bed, shooting warm semen all over the tail of his crisply laundered white shirt.

After his panting slows, he sighs loudly. It is almost a sob. His heart is thumping as fast as his hand was moving. His brow is sweaty. Jesus. He kicks himself upright and fastens his pants. Lord. He uses the front page of yesterday’s newspaper to wipe off his shirt. It leaves a black smudge.

Lord have mercy on me. Let me dwell in your house forever, Lord.

...She came in here and asked to sit on my lap... she asked me if I was Jesus’ disciple? I told her I was just a man, a simple man, a man who had sometimes fallen short of the glory, but there were times when Jesus heard me begging and pleading for his blessed mercy, and he came down from heaven to inhabit my wretched flesh and bones and blood, and I became the incarnation of Jesus Christ for however long he visited. I told her my hands were Jesus’ hands, the blessed, healing hands of God in his son. And whatsoever Jesus touched was filled with the Holy Spirit! And I touched her there... told her it was Eve’s wound from the Garden, a wound that was cleft by the serpent, a wound that all girls are born with, and that only God’s touch can heal. And it was like touching the pussy of an angel, a little angel sent from Heaven, Lord!

He that walketh uprightly walketh surely: but he that perverteth his ways shall be known.

Reverend Mose looks up at his mama’s picture and says, “Mose knows what needs to be done. Mose knows what he has to do. Don’t you worry none, mama. The congregation can go on without me. There are only twenty-seven of us. The lease is running out, anyway. I can do more good in Heaven now. Solomon will be up there with us before long.”

Blessed Lord, have mercy on this man who has sorrows and travails the equal to Job. Have mercy on this man who tends a flock of lambs as their reverend.

Solomon, dear brother, can you feel Jesus from your cell on death row? Are you looking up at Mama’s picture right now thinking, Lord, I want to come home? Are you asking the Lord to forgive you for shooting that motel clerk? Say amen!

Reverend Mose decides to take another snort. Sanctify me, Lord! While snorting another line he wonders if little Mary has told her mother what he did this morning after church. Mabel had come to his door and asked him if there was anything he needed at the mall. He was seated in the Naugahyde recliner they had bought for him at a garage sale. The TV was turned on to the religion channel, but the sound was off. He didn’t open his eyes to look at her. All he could see was the little girl. Mary. The delicate folds of pink flesh between her legs. His finger slowly disappearing inside her. The startled blue eyes going wide, her mouth dropping open. Mabel was jabbering but he didn’t hear. He was seeing Mary spread apart on the bed so he could anoint her; first with his tongue, and then, kneeling above her, with his spilled seed. “Jesus loves you, Mary,” he’d said breathlessly. “And he will heal you in time.”

It is as sport to a fool to do mischief: but a man of understanding has wisdom.

With his head bowed and his eyes closed, he shook his head and involuntarily groaned. The smell of semen was still in the air, even though he had licked off every drop on her panties with his tongue.

“Is something wrong?” Mabel asked him.  

“Just the wages of sin weighing heavy on my mind,” he told her.

She laughed at that, like it was a ridiculous statement, like it was the most improbable possibility he could have come up with. Stupid woman! Sweet Jesus!

“It’s a headache, Mabel. Don’t worry about it.” But of course, she did worry about it. Mabel was a worrier. Having a husband die an agonizing death from colon cancer will do that to a woman. She forced Mose to take some aspirin.

He does another line and then another. It feels like his heart is going to explode like a lightning bolt into a million pieces of searing flesh and scatter like raindrops. Hallelujah!

“Get thee behind me, Satan!” He picks up the TV tray and heaves it across the room at the mirror. It makes a loud clang. White powder flies up. A fine residue covers the image of his face like a lace curtain. Now he notices that most of the powder has settled on his mother’s Bible. Mama forgive me. Blessed saviour!  

He stands up too fast, and has to sit down again. His heart is beating much too fast. Lord. His face feels flushed and hot. His skin is tingling from his head to his feet. It feels as if he is plugged into an electric line. Praise God! Give me strength! This time he takes his time standing up, letting the waves of sensation course through him.

Feeling the power, Lord!

Only God knows our secret, he told her. Only you and me and God. She seemed to believe him. When she was leaving his room, she hesitated after she had opened the door. She looked back at him for a moment, as if trying to see past his smiling benevolence. There was a strange, questioning look on her face. Her lip quivered for a moment. She looked afraid. Blessed child of Jesus, she looked afraid of Reverend Mose. Poor, poor baby. Don’t be afraid. Suffer ye the little children to come unto me.

At the bureau, with a trembling hand, he wipes the fine white powder off his mother’s bible and kisses it. Then he turns, takes two steps to the bed and lifts the container of rat poison out of the brown sack. He turns back around to face the mirror. He begins to sing: “There is power in the blood, in the soul cleansing blood of the lamb--”

A coughing fit interrupts his hymn singing. He hacks like a smoker and then lunges forward to spit a mouthful of phlegm into the dying potted aloe vera plant Mabel gave him. He has been using it for a spittoon for some time, probably the reason the plant was dying. The taste of bile and second-time-around pot roast is strong in his mouth. It makes his mouth water and a wave of nausea churns in his stomach.

He bends down and peers into his reflection. His dark, sunken eyes are darting back and forth so fast he can barely take in his visage. His pale skin looks translucent, hanging thin as an onion’s skin. The few long hairs that are left on top of his head are sticking straight up like wisps of smoke rising.

I know the Lord. And the Lord knows me. And I know You, you cowardly Demon hiding in the shadows outside the lamplight of my redeemer. And the Reverend Moses Abraham Smith is going to make sure you burn in the fiery pit of Hellfire for eternity!

“I said the Lord knows me!” He wasn’t listening to any gainsaying fools inside his head. “He knows me,” he whispers.

His knees feel weak. He begins to shake. A siren wails nearer and nearer and he wonders if it is coming for him. No, it is an ambulance, he decides.

Reverend Mose knows what needs to be done. What he has to do. Say thank you, Jesus!

Opening the container of poison, he lifts it in the air. He puts his lips to the container. Praise him! And tips his head back, dumping the contents into the far reaches of his throat, forcing himself to swallow.  Father, I have sinned. The burning is intense. He grabs the bible and presses it to his brow. Gagging, trying to hold the poison in long enough to stop his broken heart, he stumbles toward the bed, but falls short of it, landing on his elbows and knees, his forehead still pressed to his mama’s bible. His face is buried in the old shag carpet that smells of cat urine and soil. Blood, vomit, and bile gush from his mouth, while his throat spasms, trying to swallow it back down. He kicks the carpet with the sharp toes of his boots. His eyes feel as if they have burned out of his head. He feels the muscles of his body tightening like knots in rope. They begin to contract, slowly at first, and then faster, spasming out of control. His forehead drums the bible. He hears someone grunting and groaning like a wild hog, and finally realizes it is him.

Forgive me, Lord.

In his last moments of consciousness, he sees his mama reaching out to him, saying, son, son, I’m going to take care of you now, Moses, you poor boy. Don’t you worry none. Our precious Lord and savior is going to take care of all his children...You can’t help being tempted by the wickedness of the flesh. The Lord wants me to minister to your needs. Just close your eyes and praise God, little Mose.

It was the same words she spoke to him the day she first touched him there. Merciful Lord. She said Heaven was going to be just like the feeling you’re about to feel, only it will last forever. Take me, Lord. And then she used her mouth. Precious Jesus. And the feeling came, and he wanted it to last Forever. He wanted to go to Heaven right then. Precious Lord. But afterward, he knew deep down inside that he would have to go through Hell to get there.

From a corner of Reverend Mose’s slobbering mouth, he listens to his final words as reverend to himself. “Thine...is the king...dom, the power, and...” His throat seizes up. The glory forever.

Mama! All sensation fades to a dark pinpoint of light. Amen. And then he is gone.