Tenth-Station Jesus by Brian Allen Carr
Lust, anyone? Never mind the Jesus finger. It’s holy too (well, mostly). Weighing in on the 7 Deadly Sins.
My father was a minister, so all my heroes have been degenerates. I’ve had a particular fondness for following the footsteps of inebriated artists—sloppy, talented men and women with a penchant for self-destruction and untimely deaths preferably through suicide. It’s a devotion I’m not proud of.
Recently, my wife had a miscarriage. This brought a morass upon the house. My daughter struggled with it most mightily. She’s three; she forgets. Sometimes she’ll look up from dinner, say, “The baby died.” Other times, say if I buy her a balloon, she’ll inquire if we shouldn’t get another, “for the baby?”
This recent despondency has produced in me a sort of soul searching. Due to my proximity with the Christian church, I have a tendency to see signs in all things. You won’t find me on a pew bench Sunday mornings with my head bowed, my palms pressed, my tongue clucking scripture; however, give me some semblance of a divine presage, and I stammer internally looking for the logic in the revelation.
My unborn child was expelled into toilet waters, retrieved, placed in a Tupperware, stored in the refrigerator on the shelf above the cheese drawer. He was taken to the doctor—presumably what should be done—to be investigated for maladies, things that would have caused it.
The only shape I can strain away from the shadow of the event is this: I need to be a better man.
The most holy place I know is a basilica in San Juan, Texas—the Basilica of our Lady of San Juan del Valle. The “lady” in question existed in San Juan del los Lagos, a small town in the central state of Jalisco, Mexico.
The story is this: in 1623 a young female acrobat slipped during practice and died. An Indian woman placed a likeness of the Virgin Mary above her deathbed. Miraculously, this act resuscitated the girl.
The area in which I live has long been known for its creative marketing. For instance, it is called the Rio Grande Valley, but there is no valley here. The term was a marketing ploy, devised to sell real estate in the 1920’s. In 1949, the pastor of the parish in San Juan, Texas decided to adopt the lady as a part of the Catholic diocese. The fact that the heroin was from San Juan, Mexico was a stroke of fortune. They built a shrine to her. The church’s membership surged. According to their website, more than one million people visit the shrine yearly. I go once every few months, even though I’m not remotely Catholic. You can feel the holy there. It’s immense. People have wept and prayed and confessed and lit candles and bled sorrows and birthed joys there. It is hallowed ground.
In the wake of the miscarriage I walked the perimeter of the shrine. Around its several acres is a trail that houses the Stations of the Cross—bronze statues that depict Jesus in the dozen steps outlined toward his mortal doom.
They are life-size.
Jesus being condemned to death, Jesus being helped by Simon, Jesus falling for the first second and third time, and all the other steps to where he ultimately, supposedly, died for Christians’ sins.
Here’s the thing, I don’t know what a sin really is. This is what I thought as I walked. I recalled the Ten Commandments, things I once could retrieve quickly from memory but now strain to count out in improper order on my fingers.
The second one is this: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them. . .
On the face of the Basilica is a mural of Jesus in full deity form, gigantic, and appearing perched in Heaven, looking down upon well manicured farm fields, his hand opened toward them, presumably casting down blessings.
People place flowers under it.
I still know the seven deadly sins well: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride.
I was in the midst of reciting these to myself when I came upon the tenth station of the cross. My belief in this reflection was that in order to be a better man, I had to be well aware of that which was bad. In this manner, I could avoid placing myself in situations that would manifest some evil in me.
But something curious came.
On the left hand of tenth-station Jesus, the index finger seemed foreign, new. It didn’t look inappropriately scaled, but it had a brighter finish, a more golden hue. I didn’t think intensely on the subject, but it did stick with me, and I vowed to look for further anomalies as I progressed. I saw none. Still, the idea grinded at me.
I had nothing to do but feel guilty, as though my previous deeds had caused my unborn son’s premature exposure to the world, so I decided to retrace my steps, to walk the stations in reverse, this time investigating each Jesus deeply for similar abnormalities.
Again, I saw none.
I became entranced by this mystery of the Jesus finger.
At some point, your body can handle no more self-inflicted guilt. It was winter, the most blessed season in my region, because the air is fresh and clean and smells mildly of salt from the nearby Gulf Coast waters. Children ran along in the grass and beneath the oak trees singing Spanish taunts at each other, and I decided I should leave, though my curiosity still hummed along, a sort of mantra preaching at me: Jesus’ finger, Jesus’ finger.
I had to ask someone. I sent an e-mail.
The initial response I got was that Jesus’ finger was lost in an accident.
“Could you elaborate on the accident?” I continued.
And this. . .
The story goes, I was told, that the finger was lost in an accident. No true intent to harm the Jesus could be determined. One of the grounds keepers was a talented welder. He made Jesus a new finger. Praise be to God.
A new finger, I thought. A new finger.
Still my mind labored over the mystery. If a new finger was needed, the old one was lost. Presumably taken; however, this truth was not explicitly stated to me.
In Dante’s Inferno, those who commit sins of lust in life are punished in death by an eternal wind, their bodies tossed like feathers through endless, uncomfortable gusts.
I returned to the Basilica.
Beside the station is a plaque. On the plaque, these words: Jesus is stripped of his clothes.
What could you want with a Jesus’ finger? Who would take it?
When nuns become nuns they marry Jesus. I went to a Catholic high school for my junior year. I remembered them with bands on their marriage fingers. It must be lonely, that. Married to a ghost, no matter how saintly, perfect, true. Married to a thing you could never touch. Unless. . .
My mind surged with degenerate thoughts as I investigated the new finger. With my hand on tenth-station Jesus’ hand, in what was most likely two seconds, I thought a lifetime of lust.
A nun, gorgeous, young, shapely. Under the security of night. A hack saw hid beneath her habit. She enters the shrine’s grounds desirous, uncertain of all save her desire. She takes the touch of Jesus. The tenth-station left pointer finger. An exploratory digit, retrieved by sawing it away from the rest of him. Perhaps she’s South American, her whole personage quaking with lust, melting, sensual.
Once ferreted away, again beneath her habit, perhaps tucked against her breasts, the way loose women from old movies hid cash in their bras, she returns to her quarters. She is stripped of her clothes. She explores. The bronze touch of Jesus, her husband, her life, slides smoothly across her sweat-slicked skin. Plunges, plunges, circles, sways.
A noise came. The bells of the Basilica? Again, I was awake in the day, standing, my hand holding the hand of tenth-station Jesus. I looked in his bronze visage. He seemed sick at me. I looked away.
From there, at the tenth station, you can see the mural of Jesus’ from heaven blessing the fields.
I was a sinner, the finger taker was a sinner, the church breaking its commandment. In the grass of the adjacent field, again children chased each other singing taunts, their parents nearby at station eleven with their heads slightly bowed. In the not so distance, cars sped past on the interstate, their motorists perhaps only vaguely aware they were in the shadow of the shrine.
Somewhere on this Earth, perhaps at the back of a sock drawer, perhaps buried in a backyard in a box, the original finger of tenth-station Jesus sits naked of the body it belongs to.
Maybe we can’t stop what’s inside us from coming.
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Header image courtesy of Kim Beigel. To view her photo essay "Hallow and Deep" on NAILED, go here.
Brian Allen Carr is a writer and teacher who lives with his wife and daughter near the Texas/Mexico border. His most recent novella, Edie & the Low-Hung Hands, was released on Small Doggies Press in January of 2013.