In the picture, Jesus was dressed in a simple white robe and holding a shepherd's staff. The Christ on “Becka's TV combed His hair a little bit like Elvis after Elvis got out of the Army. Yes; he looked quite a bit like Elvis in G. I. Blues. His eyes were brown and mild. Behind Him, in perfect perspective, sheep as white as the linens in TV soap commercials trailed off and over the horizon. “Becka and Corinne had grown up on a sheep farm in New Gloucester, and “Becka knew from personal experience that sheep were never that white and uniformly woolly, like little fair-weather clouds fallen to earth. But, she reasoned, if Jesus could turn water into wine and bring the dead back to life, there was no reason at all why He couldn't make the shit caked around a bunch of lambs” rumps disappear if He wanted to.
A couple of times Joe had tried to move that picture off the TV, and she supposed that now she knew why, oh yessirree! Boy howdy! Joe, of course, had his trumped-up tales. “It doesn't seem right to have Jesus on top of the television while we're watching Magnum or Miami Vice,” he'd say. “Why not put it up on your bureau, “Becka? Or… I'll tell you what! Why not put it up on your bureau until Sunday, then you can bring it down and put it back while you watch Jimmy Swaggart and Jack van Impe? I'll bet Jesus likes Jimmy Swaggart a helluva lot better than He likes Miami Vice.”
She refused.
Another time he said, “When it's my turn to have the Thursday-night poker game, the guys don't like it. No one wants to have Jesus Christ looking at him while he tries to draw to an inside straight.”
“Maybe they feel uncomfortable because they know gambling's the devil's work,” “Becka said.
Joe, a good poker player, bridled. “Then it was the devil's work bought you your blow-dryer and that garnet ring you like s'well,” he said. “Better take,em back for refunds and give the money to the Salvation Army. I think I got the receipts in my den.”
So she allowed Joe to turn the 3-D picture of Jesus around on the one Thursday night a month that he had his dirty-talking, beer-swilling friends in to play poker… but that was all.
And now she knew the real reason he had wanted to get rid of that picture. He must have had the idea all along that that picture might be a magic picture. Oh, she supposed sacred was a better word, magic was for pagans, headhunters and cannibals and Catholics and people like that, but they almost came to the same thing, didn't they? Anyway, Joe must have sensed that picture was special, that it would be the means by which his sin would be found out.
Oh, she supposed she had known something was going on. He was never after her at night anymore, and while that was something of a relief (sex was just as her mother had told her it would be, nasty, brutish, sometimes painful, always humiliating) she had also smelled perfume on his collar from time to time, and that was not a relief at all. She supposed she could have ignored the connection-the fact that the pawings had stopped at the same time that occasional smell of perfume started showing up in his collars-indefinitely if the picture of Jesus on top of the Sony hadn't begun to speak on July 7th. She could even have ignored a third factor: at about the same time the pawings had stopped and the perfume smells had begun, old Charlie Estabrooke had retired from the post office and a woman named Nancy Voss had come up from the Augusta post office to take his place. She guessed that the Voss woman (whom “Becka now thought of simply as The Hussy) was perhaps five years older than she and Joe, which would make her around fifty, but she was a trim, well-kept, handsome fifty. “Becka was willing to admit she herself had put on a little weight during her marriage, going from one hundred and twenty-six to two hundred and three, most of that since Byron, their only chick, had left home.
She could have ignored it, would have ignored it, perhaps even have come to tolerate it with relief; if The Hussy enjoyed the animalism of sexual congress, with its gruntings and thrustings and that final squirt of sticky stuff that smelled faintly like codfish and looked like cheap dish detergent, then it only proved The Hussy was little more than an animal herself. Also, it freed “Becka of a tiresome, if ever-more-occasional, obligation. She could have ignored it, that was, if the picture of Jesus hadn't spoken up.
It happened for the first time at just past three in the afternoon on Thursday. “Becka was coming back into the living room from the kitchen with a little snack (half a coffee-cake and a beer stein filled with cherry Za-Rex) to watch General Hospital. She could no longer really believe that Luke and Laura would ever come back, but she was not able to completely give up hope.
She was bending down to turn on the TV when Jesus said,-Becka,Joe is putting it to that Hussy down at the pee-oh just about every lunch-hour and sometimes after quitting time, too. Once he was so randy he put it to her while he was supposed to be helping her sort the mail. And do you know what? She never even said, “At least wait until I get the first-class took care of.”
“And that's not all,” Jesus said. He walked halfway across the picture, His robe fluttering around His ankles, and sat down on a rock that jutted from the ground. He held His staff between His knees and looked at her grimly. “There's a lot going on in Haven. You won't believe the half of it.”
“Becka screamed and fell on her knees. “My Lord!” she shrieked. One of her knees landed squarely on her piece of coffee-cake (which was roughly the size and thickness of the family Bible), squirting raspberry filling into the face of Ozzie, the cat, who had crept out from under the stove to see what was going on. “My Lord! My Lord!” “Becka continued to shriek. Ozzie ran, hissing, for the kitchen, where he crawled under the stove again with red goo dripping from his whiskers. He stayed there the rest of the day.
“Well, none of the Paulsons was ever good for much,” Jesus said. A sheep wandered toward Him and He whacked it away, using His staff with an absentminded impatience that reminded “Becka, even in her current frozen state, of her late father. The sheep went, rippling slightly because of the 3-D effect. It disappeared, actually seeming to curve as it went off the edge of the picture… but that was just an optical illusion, she felt sure. “Nossir!” Jesus declared. “Joe's great-uncle was a murderer, as you well know, “Becka. Murdered his son, his wife, and then himself. And when he came up here, do you know what We said?-Noroom!” that's what We said.” Jesus leaned forward, propped on His staff. -Gosee Mr Splitfoot down below,” We said. “You'll find your Haven-home, all right. But you may find your new landlord asks a hell of a high rent and never turns down the heat,” We said.” Incredibly, Jesus winked at her… and that was when “Becka fled, shrieking, from the house.
She stopped in the back yard, panting, her mousy blonde hair hanging in her face, her heart beating so fast that it frightened her. No one had heard her shriekings and carryings-on, thank the Lord; she and Joe lived far out on the Nista Road, and their nearest neighbors were the Brodskys, who lived in that slutty trailer. The Brodskys were half a mile away. That was good. Anyone had heard her would have thought there was a crazywoman down at the Paulsons”.
Well there is, isn't there? If you think that picture started to talk, why, you must be crazy. Daddy'd beat you three shades of blue for saying such a thing-one for lying, another for believing it, and a third for raising your voice. “Becka, pictures don't talk.
No… nor did it, another voice spoke up suddenly. That voice came out of your own head. “Becka, I don't know how it could be… how you could know such things… but that's what happened. You made that picture of Jesus talk your own self, like Edgar Bergen used to make Charlie McCarthy talk on the Ed Sullivan Show.