The old box TV cast its dim light with flickers and bursts of glitchy glare across the impassive wall of Johnston’s face. He sat still in the mostly dark room, as always, watching.
All were average-looking men, their faces somehow similar regardless of age or race. All were dressed in tones that matched their particular surroundings. Varying degrees of digital color blended with stage-specific fineries to create for each a complimentary backdrop.
The productions were seamless and cookie-cutter, one after another. Commercials for special offers and events were woven in on cue, causing blocks of contact-detail text to overtake the fuzzy screen. This usually signaled a few final moments of more intimate one-on-one time with each man before flashing last-call graphics alerted Johnston of his need to get in touch or contribute right away.
All used such eloquent words, though some came across as quintessentially simple and down-to-earth. Most had the winking, arm-around-the-shoulder demeanors of kindly uncles or next-door grandfathers, offering sage advice peppered with pleasant nods and delightful smiles.
Yet for all the jolliness and charm used to frame their timed bursts of staunch hooting and complimentary posturing, Johnston could not bring himself to ignore the fact that these hyper-personable figures were always much farther away than his TV could make them. Always.
Each had his own style . . . his unique way of working the stage to deliver what seemed to be rhythmic sets of mesmerizing religious beatnik poetry. Audiences were duly roused as valleys of felt needs were hastily dug and met in the air with cascading resolutions of wonder and responsibility.
Johnston remained as still as a dead tree on his brown carpet floor. He listened as the current man, Pastor Ron, recounted God’s many promises of provision for the generous. Words like “sacrifice,” and “sacrificial offering,” and “giving,” and “kingdom,” and “God’s house,” provided an emphatic pace for the debonair, overweight man’s practiced flow. Scriptures were quoted and elaborated upon with joyful stories of miracles and…
But Johnston had stopped hearing. A certain repeated word seemed to prick at his mind like a noticeable tick having burrowed through layers of tissue to nest. He repeated the word to himself like a kindergartener learning something new.
“…undeserved . . . undeserved…”
Skirting the usual resource ad, the sermon reformed itself into its version of an ending close-up closer. Now in a green Hawaiian shirt, the pastor pleaded with Johnston directly without so much as taking a breath, sympathizing with struggles and encouraging partnership in rapid-fire succession.
Then Pastor Ron was gone.
Next came a black preacher in a sparkly silver suit. This one started slow, reading longer passages and hovering to dart about specific lines while dabbing at his brow in a sequence tighter than Morse code. Then removing thin-rimmed spectacles, the man ramped up to a full-scale holler. It was like watching an experienced runner ease in to pace a long-distance race.
Johnston heard himself repeating more phrases: “Head and not the tail”; “life, and that more abundantly”; “all things richly to enjoy”; “unmerited favor…”
That last line stuck and niggled again, maybe worse than the other.
“…unmerited favor . . . unmerited . . . favor…”
Of course, Johnston could not feel his lips curl to a smile just slightly too wide. How could he have seen his own eyes go a mere degree unfocused? He might not have even felt the impact as his elbow was flung around like a sack of wheat or sand to connect, hard, with the thick glass screen in a dull, bitterly anticlimactic thud.
He half stood with eyes still glued, not hearing but watching the next pimp-dressed holy man take and pace his golden stage.
If his toes could only be lowered slowly into boiling… That happy, whooping crowd, all speckled with their leader’s blood. And they would just keep smiling, keep laughing as their bodies were torn to…
Johnston realized he was getting angry. He knew being angry was not good. It had never proven helpful.
Yet after hours, days, or even weeks of like programming, he had cut against something of an unavoidable incongruity . . . something he found he could neither stomach, make sense of, nor move past. Nothing, it seemed, would ever steal those church folks’ stubborn gall. Nothing could damper their resolve to parade what they were proud to admit they had not earned.
How…?
Yet he knew without knowing why neither the garish speakers nor their doll-faced masses could ever be stopped from celebrating some secret knowledge that he, Johnston, must simply not be privy to. Did their faces not betray applications taking place on levels beyond which he had the time or grit left to comprehend?
It would be too late and pointless now to…
“You are highly favored of the Lord! Amen?”
No, no amen.
Each had looked him in the eye and all but guaranteed the same “undeserved provision,” the same “unmerited favor,” that those cavalcades of sharp-dressed shepherds had been blessed enough to garner via their flocks, and all by God’s grace.
Why do you get to…? But obviously not everyone who watches you would be able to…
And just like his smile no one could see, which was also only imperceptibly off, Johnston’s thought pattered out and down in doomed glory, slinking away to die somewhere between his shag and bedrock hell. It was the logic of a mind left to conclude that there really never had been any others. So why go on taping fabricated report cards to one’s own solipsistic fridge?
Johnston lowered himself to wait in a deep squatting pose that could suggest only readiness. There was nothing else to do. Certainly nothing left to think or say.
Put upon and dismissed. Discredited and never quite enough. Too ugly and too dumb. Too far gone to try. Too far away and still moving. Too old and too…
Johnston’s answer, unfortunately, would never be “unmerited favor” or “undeserved provision.” His answer, rather, was his ready stare and consciousness, just as it had always been. For this was every disorder, and every chaos, known and unknown. His requirement was obvious: the cleanliness and precision of steel, bleach, lime, chlorine… The eradication of all stains. Nothing unclean could remain.
Oh yes, their smiles would carry on, he knew, but somewhere else. It would be somewhere promised, and good . . . somewhere such smiles belonged. And it would be just as they had all been told and worked to believe all along. And really no farther away, right?
Scrub and rinse. Scrub and rinse. Scrub, scrub, scrub…
And Johnston, too, could be made to be so pure and glistening white. Clean and happy. Smiling wide. And dressed to kill before thousands somewhere always away in a box.
I don't know anything 