Бесплатный фрагмент - The modern adventures of Jesus in America

THE GOOD NEWS FROM I-95

Chronicles of a Wandering Carpenter in America

A Novel

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Foreword

Part I. SOUTH AND DESERT

Chapter 1. Highways and Sandals (Arizona — New Mexico)

Chapter 2. Glory Valley (Texas)

Chapter 3. An App for the Soul (California, Palo Alto)

Chapter 4. The Wall and the Song (New Mexico, the Border)

Part II. EASTERN CORRIDOR

Chapter 5. The NASDAQ Gospel (New York, Wall Street)

Chapter 6. Jerusalem on the Hudson (New York, Upper East Side)

Part III. HEART OF THE LAND

Chapter 7. The Vineyard of Wrath (California, Central Valley)

Chapter 8. The Temple with a Dead Heart (West Virginia, Appalachia)

Chapter 9. The Gospel of the Sphinx (Ohio, Millbrook)

Epilogue. The Salt of the Earth

PUBLISHER’S FOREWORD

This manuscript came to me in the strangest way. A plain envelope with no return address, a postmark from El Paso, Texas, and a single handwritten line on the title page: «He who has ears, let him hear.»

Inside were scattered pages — some typed on a machine, some scribbled in pencil on the backs of road maps. They formed the story of a man who called himself simply Josh. Joshua Carpenter, according to the only document found. Homeless, a carpenter, a wanderer. Or, if one believes his own words and the reactions of those he encountered — something far greater.

I spent several months verifying the facts. The truck driver Mike from Tucson confirmed that he gave a strange hitchhiker a ride and afterward reconciled with his ex-wife. Pastor Wayne Henderson declined to comment, but his megachurch «Glory Valley» suddenly opened a free soup kitchen for the homeless. The Wall Street trader Leo Hirsch left his hedge fund and now runs a nonprofit building affordable housing. In a mining town in West Virginia, Pastor Jedediah no longer preaches about the end of the world but fixes widows’ porches with his congregation.

Are these events connected to the man in dusty sandals? I do not presume to judge. I have merely assembled these stories in the order in which, to my understanding, they occurred. Some names have been changed at the participants’ request. The geography remains intact.

The reader is free to see this as fiction, allegory, or a chronicle of true events. As Josh himself once said: «Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. But there is a place at the table for those who have seen, too.»

The Publisher

PART I. SOUTH AND DESERT

Chapter 1. Highways and Sandals

(Arizona — New Mexico)

Jesus arrived in the United States not on a cloud, nor to the roar of Jericho trumpets, but in the most prosaic way possible — by Greyhound bus from El Paso. His ID read «Joshua Carpenter,» and in his worn backpack he carried a change of underwear, an old volume of Whitman, and a pair of sandals that he had prudently removed while passing through the metal detector at the Arizona bus station.

His first steps on American soil were taken in Tucson. The asphalt shimmered with heat, a haze trembled over the Santa Catalina Mountains, and a sign duct-taped to a roadside saguaro cactus read: «Buy a Gun — Save Democracy.» He smiled and began walking along the highway.

His first refuge was the cab of a Peterbilt truck. A trucker named Mike — a huge man with a gray beard braided into a pigtail and an eagle tattoo on his neck — picked him up on the approach to Phoenix.

«You’re either a saint or crazy, buddy, walking in this heat without water,» Mike rumbled, switching on the CB radio.

Jesus sat, gazing at the endless ribbon of Interstate 10. Mike complained about his life:

«I used to be king of the road, Josh. I’d drive and listen to country music. Now that damn box watches me. An electronic logistics ankle monitor. It says: „You have exceeded your limit by 7 minutes. Pull over.“ I can’t even take a piss without reporting to a computer in Seattle. Where’s the freedom in that, son?»

Jesus listened, nodding to the rhythm of the diesel engine. When they stopped for the night at a trailer park in New Mexico, Mike pulled out a packet of beef jerky and a warm Coca-Cola.

«It’s all I’ve got,» the trucker apologized.

Jesus broke the strip of jerky in two, handed half to Mike, and they ate in complete silence, accompanied only by the chirping of cicadas. For some reason, Mike wept. He didn’t know why.

The next morning, as they parted, he said, «I’m going to call my ex-wife. Been meaning to for a long time.» Josh nodded and walked on along the shoulder, toward the rising sun.

Chapter 2. Glory Valley

(Texas)

In Texas, he found his way to «Glory Valley,» a megachurch. It was not a temple but rather a shopping-and-entertainment complex with an IMAX screen for sermons, a latte bar in the lobby, and a parking lot patrolled by golf carts ferrying parishioners from the farthest rows.

Pastor Wayne Henderson, a sleek man with a million-dollar smile, noticed the stranger in the sanctuary. The man wore dusty jeans and a plain white T-shirt with a ketchup stain. The pastor approached him after a service in which he had urged the flock to sow «seeds of faith» to the tune of one hundred and twenty dollars a month.

«Did you enjoy the message, sir?» the pastor asked, automatically assessing the guest’s financial status.

«You spoke so much about the bread of life, yet in the lobby your security guard turned away a woman with a child because she had no money for coffee,» Jesus replied quietly.

The pastor nervously adjusted his lapel microphone.

«This is a business structure. We cannot distribute resources without oversight…»

«In my house,» Joshua interrupted, and his eyes seemed for a moment like two bottomless wells, «the tables were overturned for less.»

Jesus left through the service exit that led to the dumpsters. There, behind the trash bins, a teenage volunteer sat vaping and crying. His name was Liam. He explained that his parents had forced him to work here because the pastor had promised to put in a word with Stanford.

«I just want to paint, not hear about hellfire every Sunday,» the boy sobbed.

Jesus sat down beside him on an upturned avocado crate and said simply:

«Then paint. Your colors are holier than this building.»

Chapter 3. An App for the Soul

(California, Palo Alto)

Fate and a ride in a Ford Mustang driven by a biology student brought him to the very heart of California — Palo Alto. Here the air smelled not of incense but of money and optimism. In line at a vegan café, he struck up a conversation with Zak, a twenty-three-year-old millionaire who had created a meditation app called «SoulMatch.»

«Dude, the problem with humanity isn’t sin, it’s poor UX design of existence,» Zak opined, chewing quinoa. «I want to digitize empathy. Look: you tap a button, and AI prays for you using optimal algorithms. I need a brand ambassador. Your face is authentic.»

Jesus shook his head.

«Zak, when was the last time you looked at the person at the next table for more than one second?»

Zak fell silent. He pulled out his iPhone to jot the thought down in Notion, but the phone froze. Jesus placed his hand over Zak’s.

«Don’t write it down. Just live right now.»

It was the most frightening thing Zak had ever heard. To live now, without performance metrics and Google Docs reports. He felt panic, and then a strange, long-forgotten warmth in his chest.

Chapter 4. The Wall and the Song

(New Mexico, the Border)

Closer to the Mexican border, in New Mexico, Jesus found himself at a migrant aid camp. Undocumented people who had crossed the Sonoran Desert, their lips parched and feet rubbed raw. A Methodist church volunteer, a gray-haired woman named Martha, was handing out beans and water bottles.

«Sometimes I think we’re tilting at windmills, Joshua,» she said. «Politics, walls, the hatred on social media…»

Jesus took the water jug from her hands and walked toward the fence where a Guatemalan family sat under the scorching sun. A baby was crying from thirst. The mother, very young, looked at the «gringo» with fear and hope.

He knelt in the dust and held out a cup to the child. He didn’t speak Spanish, and they knew no English. But when he smiled and pointed to his own feet, shod in those same cheap sandals that had walked hundreds of miles, the woman wept and laughed at once.

That evening around the campfire, a young Mexican pulled out an old guitar with one broken string. They began to sing «Cielito Lindo.» Jesus joined in, tapping the rhythm on his knee with his palms. At that moment, a searchlight beam from the border watchtower swept over their faces, but the music was louder than the helicopter’s drone.

PART II. EASTERN CORRIDOR

Chapter 5. The NASDAQ Gospel

(New York, Wall Street)

New York greeted him not with hymns, but with the screech of taxi brakes and the low, visceral rumble of the subway rising through grates in the asphalt. Joshua stood at the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street, his head tilted back. The spire of Trump Tower pierced the gray sky like a needle stitched into the city’s flesh, and the shadows of skyscrapers covered the crowd like tombstones of Babylon.