Episode 2: Graven Images

All things aside, it was pretty nice having Jesus in the passenger seat of my Peterbilt 379. Sure he could be a handful at times, but we were making good time on the road from Boulder City to Atlanta and I literally had the Lord by my side to guide me through the tough times and help me out if things went wrong. And wouldn't you know; one of my gas tanks started to act up and Jesus just stepped outside and zapped it right back into working condition.

We covered two states in just about ten hours, riding steady along I-70, and the sun was just about to peak up over the horizon. Jesus hadn't said a word in about an hour and there wasn't a sound except for the motor running and I had a real peaceful feeling in me. A feeling like things were gonna be all right.

Then, just like that, he started in all over again, raising hell over some decal of him on a cross. Though to be honest it was kinda graphic, what with the blood dripping from his wrists and the crown o' thorns and all.

"What the fuck is the matter with people?!" he screamed. The problem is, I didn't know what he was sayin' at first. All I heard was screaming. Hell, I thought he was trying to tell me I was about to run someone off the road or something.

I told him, "Look Jesus, you've gotta cool it, man."

"Well how would you feel?" he started in. "What would you think if everywhere you looked people were flaunting images of your grizzly demise?!"

"I don't suppose I would care too much for that."

"No. I suppose you wouldn't."

"Well you've got to get a hold of yourself, Jesus. I thought you were trying to warn me about something in the road. I almost just about ran us over the side of this mountain!"

Jesus apologized and said it was going to be hard getting used to all the crosses and sad, bloody Jesus faces on bumper-stickers. I tried to tell him they don't know any better. They were just trying to honor the sacrifice he made, is all.

"I don't know how you do things in the twenty-first century," he said, still kinda raising his voice. "But where I come from, people don't like to be reminded of that kind of thing! You don't see portraits of John Kennedy with half his head missing and his brains spilled all over a '61 Lincoln Continental!"

He told me, the reason they put people up on them crosses is so folks could see the looks on their faces as they shat themselves for the last time. He said that's why people weren't s'posed to worship graven images; 'cause ten times out of ten, they'd screw it up.

He said he wandered into a church when he first got here and he damn near threw up when he saw the statue they had at the front of the room. Said they had a life-sized image of him in a loin cloth, feet and hands nailed down and breathing his last.

"Well that ain't nothin' nice," I told him.

"No Delmer! It's not nice! Nothing gets by you, does it, Delmer?" He was about ready to have a conniption fit, so I asked if there was anything I could do to calm him down and he asked if I had any beer in the cab. I told him I didn't figure him for a drinker.

"Delmer," he said. "I turned water into wine. Does that sound like someone who's too good for a drink?" So I gave him a can from a twelve-pack I had stowed away in the back of the cab and I asked him if he could please keep it low 'cause I could lose my license just for having an open container in the vehicle.