# The Gospel According to Johnny

My mom identified Johnny's body; she was the only one who saw him. They found him in the ditch of a highway up north, eight hundred miles from home. The police report said the cause of death was an infection aggravated by anemia. They told us they'd amputated his fingers; though we already knew that.

Johnny would be swimming in the pool my dad built if they hadn't let him die in the most inhumane way possible. They had him day and night, for months, harvesting avocados on lost farms, turned him into another cog in the country's pantry. And he loved it.

We should've paid more attention, been stricter, jailers, maybe then Johnny would've made it to twenty. But he gave himself so completely to that life that even in death he looked satisfied. We didn't say this; the secretary who handed us the death certificate did. We almost broke her face. You have to measure your words because, even if it was true, it was horrible.

Here's another truth: Johnny chose how to die; or rather, he chose that path and knew it would end with him dead. He never listened to my dad's worried crying or Aunt Male's screams. Johnny thought he was superior, not in a bad way: he couldn't live like us anymore. He considered himself chosen and nothing we said could get that idea out of his head.

***

The first time he heard Carlos Jansen speak, Johnny came home with the look of a lost child who, hours later, had been found; a calm look, rested, ready to let go of all the crap and worries. Jansen made him believe there was another world, much better, waiting for him.

The only one Johnny really talked to was Bicho. He was a little kid who admired his older brother the way you admire TV heroes. Johnny was his guru; Bicho, his faithful acolyte. They'd stay up playing Nintendo every Friday until dawn.

They had a collection of old porn mags: *Penthouse*, *Playboy*, *Hustler*. The most recent one had Farrah Fawcett on the cover. Between lives in the game, Bicho would ask Johnny about women's bodies:

"Those are called tits, Bicho. They're there so dresses don't fall off."

"And they don't have a dick?"

"No, women are missing that. But they have tits and more ass. We're even."

If Bicho could beat the game levels, Johnny would lend him one of his t-shirts for the weekend. He always picked the Stooges one or the Middle Class one.

***

Fourteen weeks after Johnny turned sixteen, outside high school, a couple of guys in ties and short-sleeve shirts were handing out flyers announcing a talk with "the great vicar of God," Carlos Jansen. On half-sheet mimeographed pages, they promised miracles, revelations, and salvation. The event was that same weekend at a park in the neighborhood.

Johnny convinced Cuca to go with him.

"If it's all bullshit," he said while smoothing out his Bad Brains t-shirt, "I'll buy you ice cream."

At noon that Sunday, a huge tent and six hundred people in the middle of a concrete slab seemed to be waiting for them. They found a spot and an electric organ broke the monotony of the cold. A women's choir started singing; you could barely hear them: "We shall not... we shall not be moved... Faith moves... the heart of Pharaoh..." A bass, a guitar, and recorded percussion joined the harmony. People stood up, followed the rhythm with their hands. Cuca and Johnny thought it was fun to participate. Five minutes later, a tall man with bronzed skin, dark glasses, and a smile you could probably see from the back rows climbed onto the platform.

Jansen spoke for three hours straight. Cuca was bored out of her mind by the first one, but the crowd looked radiant: they applauded every punch line from the preacher; the "hallelujahs" and crying rose like the tide at full moon.

Johnny stared at the ground during the first part of the speech. Jansen declared he was furious about how our brothers were treated at the border, that if the migrant hunters had nothing better to do, they should go wallow in their own pigsty. But we weren't innocent either: according to the preacher, the lack of faith was sinking us into apathy, that companies and the government were bleeding us dry, that power was a hydra with multiple heads.

The only thing taxes were good for was paying for the deputies' houses, that political programs were suicidal: fuck the poor even more; make the middle class poor and so on *ad infinitum*. How can you think when your stomach is empty? How can you do something for the world when you send your kids to bed so they don't feel hungry? According to Jansen, we had swallowed the system's story and admired businessmen, believed they were people who worked hard and deserved their houses in Ibiza. To counter these falsehoods, we had to return to a state of adolescence, of rage against the world's injustice. Jansen would focus that courage and transform it into positive actions, into strategies that would lead us to the Kingdom of God, but above all, to justice on Earth.

When one of the assistants brought him a glass of water, the preacher began speaking in second person:

"I know some come here without faith, but I'm not talking to them. I'm not talking to those who are with me either. I'm talking to you, sitting there not knowing why. There are people who don't want to commit, who fear being right. They like the world's lie because they are nothing but lies. You're not that. You're the one I was waiting for."

The vicar fell silent for a moment. Cuca thought he was looking at her, but she was wrong: Jansen's gaze was fixed on Johnny and Johnny responded with the same insistent eyes.

When they got back, Johnny locked himself in his room and listened, over and over, to "Politicians in My Eyes." He came down for some scrambled eggs with *ejotes* and went back up, without talking to anyone.

***

Johnny wanted a life with meaning, like us, like everyone, but he couldn't settle for our simple answers. When the twins took him to his first hardcore show, he came home with a broken nose and his Rage Against the Machine shirt covered in blood. My mom washed it, but a greenish stain, right on Che Guevara's right eye, stayed stubbornly as a memory of his first slam.

***

Johnny got a copy of the *Communist Manifesto* and underlined it; he wrote newspaper headlines in the margins. The first sentence—"A specter is haunting Europe"—was accompanied by the news of the violent eviction of forty-five people from an intestate building downtown. Johnny drew a riot cop watching a kid with his hands behind his neck and a black bandana over his face.

***

Johnny tried to go vegetarian and would complain to my mom when she made her steak rolls. One day, in front of us, Johnny threw the meat in the trash and ate only the peas and carrots. My dad told him, more fed up than angry:

"If you're not going to eat it, why waste it? Better give it to your brothers."

Johnny went for our plates and threw those in the trash too. Dad stood up and threatened him with his belt. They looked at each other like in a western. My mom, selfless mediator, started yelling:

"Don't you dare hit him, Manuel!"

My dad left the belt in the middle of the table. When we finished eating, Johnny took the piece of black leather with disdain, threw it on the floor, and went out to the patio.

***

Johnny kept going to the meetings with Jansen. Sometimes he went without Cuca and came home very late. He brought pamphlets, magazines, and videos he wouldn't let anyone see except Bicho. They'd lock themselves in their room; Johnny would send him for Lucky Charms or cream spaghetti and they'd stay up playing *Zelda* until dawn. Sometimes we'd spy through the door. We could barely make out some words Johnny said: "ship," "era," "journey," "salvation," "recycling." In the morning, we'd knock and tell them it was time for school. Johnny went straight to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, had breakfast in three minutes, and left without saying goodbye. Bicho ran after him with a white bread sandwich in his mouth.

***

The future made Johnny desperate. He wanted to solve it as fast as possible, like it was a heavy assignment. That didn't mean he was apathetic, but he was tired of not having something definitive, that our obligation was to always think about the next step: the entrance exam, the career, getting married, buying a house, having kids, dying. Life had a well-drawn scheme, but with the great trick that our expectations had to be infinite. Believing, for my dad, was a waste of time; progress and betterment (his words) were the values he passed down to us. For Johnny, our house's stance boiled down to a "and then what?", and then, and then, and then. The motto: always forward, upward and forward. Johnny sought the absolute, he thirsted for it. Jansen gave it to him: a goal, a purpose worth fighting for. Cuca told him at some meal that he was a conformist, and in a sense he was: Johnny would settle for nothing less than the Truth.

***

After one of Jansen's talks, Johnny didn't come back. At midnight, my dad called the police. They told him (like it was a bad John Woo thriller) that until twenty-four hours passed a person was considered missing. My dad explained the situation and, when he mentioned the meetings at the park, they asked him to hold. Six minutes later, a detective named Rodríguez spoke through the speaker and said he'd visit us the next day.

Rodríguez arrived at breakfast time. My mom made him huevos rancheros. With his mustache splattered with yolk, the detective explained what was happening: the tent meetings were organized by The City of Resurrection, a cult. According to their data, it was led by one Carlos Jansen, who emigrated from Switzerland (though his mother was Colombian) along with a group of followers in the early eighties. The cult was suspected of fraud and tax evasion, but Jansen's lawyers had dismissed all evidence. Rodríguez had been on the case for months. Johnny's situation was—he apologized for the word—perfect: they could accuse The City of kidnapping, and since Johnny was a minor, they wouldn't be able to lift a finger.

From a police standpoint, Rodríguez said, the cult's operation was typical. The meetings were held with open doors, served as recruitment networks, where guilt and forgiveness circulated like hot bread. Then, when there was certain emotional anchoring, they'd blackmail: you had to commit; half-measures didn't work. The City of Resurrection survived on member donations, who "of their own free will" ceded their property to Jansen. Those who had nothing, like Johnny, had to give extra loyalty and service: changing the preacher's bedpan during speeches, proselytizing, working in the fields, preparing food.

Jansen had devised a nomadic control system: he rotated his parishioners among the different agricultural communities he controlled and moved those farms without telling anyone. By not letting his faithful stay in one place, Jansen disoriented them. The constant browbeating therapy, the low-protein diet, and the exhaustion of thirty-two hours on a bus without heating were disbalancing strategies. Jansen consoled them, told them he was their only support. If they were tired, he was even more so, but he'd carry them anyway.

Rodríguez left us his personal number and swore he'd do what was necessary to find him. Also, when he learned Johnny would turn eighteen in four months, he warned us there wasn't much time: once he was of legal age, the kidnapping argument would lose force.

He left us silent, with the stench of his cheap cologne impregnated in our furniture. Grandma cried. Not even Bicho could get up to console her.

***

We'd gone forty days without news of Johnny. Bicho stopped playing Nintendo: he didn't know how to beat a level of *Bomberman* and needed Johnny to give him the password. He started cutting supermarket bags to the size of the porn ones; he wrapped each one. He moved them around many times so no one would find them. He took them out daily, dusted them, and looked at them carefully. According to him, if no one looked at them for a while, they could go bad, and while Johnny didn't come back, he had to keep them well cared for. He stole my mom's dishwashing gloves and, every time he did maintenance, he'd put them on, like he was working with relics.

***

The police seized a house that The City of Resurrection used as a training center. There were no arrests, not even the night watchman. They found a box of VHS tapes in the master bedroom: they were the entry videos to the cult. Carlos Jansen recorded the initiation ceremonies; Rodríguez told us we could see Johnny's video, but that the content was very "graphic." We said yes, we didn't care.

After a few seconds of static, the prophet's face appeared. He was shaved, with blue eyes too wide open. He remained still for a moment, with a forced smile, but strangely sincere. His voice was soft, almost a lullaby. He was dressed in a white tunic, ruffles at the neck and cuffs. The camera did a close-up of his face. Jansen spoke:

"The planet Earth is about to be recycled. The only possibility of evacuation is to come with us, do you understand, Johnny? Everything has its cycle, its season, its beginning, its end. We don't say planet Earth is going to be destroyed; we say it's going to be rearranged to receive a new superhuman civilization. You want to live on this new Earth, don't you, Johnny? We are at the end of times; don't doubt it for a second. You must decide—and for your own good, decide what is correct—whether you believe or not. That is faith. But faith has a cost; if it's not visible, it's not faith, do you understand, Johnny? We are the return of the sun of our fathers. We give you the opportunity to know the truth so you can connect with it, so you can be saved. Because we want you to be saved. But there's always a price and you know it, right, Johnny? You must prove to us ten times that you can pay that price to receive the ultimate reward: entering through the door of The City of Resurrection. Only the first one will hurt, I swear; also, there will only be one first. When you're happy, you'll remember this moment as the beginning, as the true start. It will be the last time you suffer. Are you enjoying it, Johnny? That finger is the first thing you're going to lose to gain your true body, with it you'll be able to enter through the door. Which one do we start with, Johnny?"

We heard his voice off-screen:

"This one."

Dad began to tremble and Mom started biting her nails like she hadn't since she was single. The camera changed angle and focused on Johnny's face; then, it moved to his hand. The executioner took a hatchet knife and slammed it against the pinky, which detached with a single blow. The stump bled like a hose a couple of times. They cauterized the wound with an iron; the brand: Black & Decker. No screams were heard. Rodríguez hurried to eject the VHS.

The situation was grave, but, in Rodríguez's words, encouraging: if The City was doing ritual amputations, they could also accuse Jansen of torture and terrorism. My dad was in shock. It was my mom who accused him of being an opportunist. The truth is Rodríguez didn't give a fucking shit about our family. He wanted to solve the case and move to the next one. Johnny was his leverage to capture Jansen. Of course, he never admitted it. He took my mother by the shoulders and comforted her:

"I promise you, Susana, that Jonnathan is the most important thing in this case. Him and the others, their safety. And he's going to come back alive. I promise you."

Rodríguez hugged my mom. My dad was still gone, with the image of the detached pinky like a drill in his brain.

***

Johnny didn't say a single word when he got home. Some Canadian tourists found him under a pier, four hundred miles south of our city and three weeks before his eighteenth birthday. The Canadians were fishing sea urchins and snorkeling when they saw a white tunic floating between the wooden pilings. The tourists said that when they saw him, they first thought it was a white jellyfish, as big as a teenager.

***

Johnny walked in silence through the patio while caressing the stumps of his left hand. My mom thought it was a good idea to send Bicho to get him out of his withdrawal. We brought the big TV to Johnny's room and Bicho took out the porn from its last hiding spot (behind grandma's underwear). While they played *Contra*, Johnny put on *Under the Running Board* and told him about Jansen and The City of Resurrection.

"That church thing is a front. Jansen is really a revolutionary, he just knows most people aren't ready to hear it. That's why he has to disguise it as religion. What he wants is to create a truly socialist state. You remember that, Bicho? (Go up top, there's the flame.) They even bought some land in Colombia or Venezuela; I'm not sure. They're building a just city, a paradise, and I'm going there. Jansen had a son who died and he says I look like him. That's why he trusts me so much."

"And they don't scold you? They let you play Nintendo?"

"We have to take care of many things, like planting and building houses. Planting tomatoes isn't as fun as *Contra*, but it's more important."

"Can I go with you?"

"When you grow up a little more I'll take you, Bicho."

Bicho lost his life and gave the controller to Johnny, who started laughing and gave him the (wrong) finger, though since he didn't have the middle one, he used the ring finger.

"I can't anymore," he said between laughs, "but you keep going."

Johnny showed him the centerfold of a *Penthouse*: a blonde with a Brazilian wax; Bicho thought it looked like a lunar landing strip.

***

Rodríguez suggested we let Johnny rest, that he tell us only what he wanted. He recommended a psychologist, specialized in these cases. But if Johnny didn't want to go see him, we shouldn't pressure him. He repeated that we had his phone at our total disposal. My dad hugged him in silence; my mom gave him a kiss on the cheek and extended a dinner invitation.

The detective's recommendations were harsh: be alert to any phone call, any stranger, any letter, even any TV program. Jansen's reach and influence were unknown. According to what he explained, Johnny could be "on trial" in the cult; it could be that they had expelled him from The City only as a way to measure his faith. It was something similar to what we saw in the video.

"Jansen is a sadist, he's unpredictable," Rodríguez said. "Attention and care will keep your son safe. Now it's up to you. Anyway, I'm going to send a patrol car to circle the block."

***

We couldn't be happy. In a strict sense, Johnny hadn't come back. His head was with Jansen, with The City. The three psychologists he went through to "overcome the trauma" only got monosyllables. The only one who could talk to him was Bicho, so we turned him into our icebreaker who would break Johnny and bring him back from exile. We'd send him to the vanguard in explorations to his room. When Johnny gave us permission to enter, we'd put on records and bring up Lucky Charms with milk and sodas. We'd spend Saturday mornings trying to get Johnny interested in our world again; he'd only respond with a sigh and mess up Bicho's hair.

***

The twins bought him three zombie finger keychains for his birthday. We thought Johnny would get upset, but he just started laughing and said: "I'll deliver these too, from you guys," while pulling out his Motörhead t-shirt from the drawer. Mom brought up ***plátanos con crema*** and we spent the whole day playing Nintendo. Johnny told us that The City was the best thing that had happened to the world, that the newspapers didn't understand Jansen or his message. He told us that life was very different in there. Yes, you had to work, but it was necessary to reach the ultimate purpose. You had to finish building the Kingdom of God (a socialist kingdom) on Earth. And he was willing to do whatever it took to achieve it. The twins told him not to be an idiot.

"Why do you do it in secret? Why don't you go on TV?"

"It's not that easy," Johnny said. "Some cop could sneak in and bam! You understand, right, Bicho?"

Bicho nodded his head while trying to kill a boss in *Metroid*. Cuca also spoke:

"Don't go putting things in his head. He's too little."

"It's for his own good. When he gets out of here, I'll tell Jansen all kinds of cool things about you guys and we'll go together."

We started making fun of him, calling him altar boy. Cuca looked out the window. There was a white Ichi-van parked on the corner across the street. The twins taped the keychains to Johnny's hand with packing tape. Bicho pulled one and, when he ripped it off, we exploded in laughter.

***

One of the twins ended up in the hospital with a compound elbow fracture; they'd gotten into a fight at a Black Flag show. His anger started because Skrewdriver, the opening band, dedicated a song to Carlos Jansen. The chorus said each finger was a show of faith. We tried to stop them, but when the twins are drunk no one can stop them. They hit one of the security guys and got up on stage. One of them grabbed the vocalist and hit him with the microphone. He responded with a music stand to the ribs. The other twin tried to choke him with a clumsily executed chokehold. The fans went crazy and started doing a wall of death. The other gorillas subdued the twins with well-executed locks. They didn't even bother taking them off stage and right there they kicked their faces. The vocalist joined in while the guitarist finished his solo and the drummer started his.

***

"Mom, what if Johnny's right?"

My mom put down her book, took a deep breath.

"Don't fuck with me, Cuca. Don't you start with that, okay?"

"But he could be right. I mean, the world is like Jansen says."

My mom gave her a smack; everyone in the house heard the hit.

"That name is not said. Never. You're grounded. You're talking pure fucking shit. I'm not just scared of Johnny, but Bicho too. Now you're the same. Don't you learn? You don't know anything. You're a clueless little kid who doesn't know anything."

Cuca went out to the patio, rubbing her cheek. She lay down on the grass. The day was clear. She raised her hand toward the sky and thought she wouldn't know how to answer if they asked which finger she used least. Maybe the pinky. She observed how her hand would look without the index finger, folded it; then, the ring finger, the thumb. She tried to leave only two fingers stretched out, like Johnny.

***

Bicho woke up to honking noises. The morning cold competed with the orange brightness of the sun. With the pinky of his right hand on his lips, Johnny asked him not to make noise.

"I'm leaving now, Bicho. I give you the porn."

"All of them?"

"Yes, but don't let my mom see them."

He came close and messed up Bicho's hair with an arm that looked more like a bat with two nails at the end. He gave him a noogie, went back to the window, crossed the patio, and got into a white Ichi-van that was on the corner. Before disappearing through the sliding door, Johnny turned around and raised his hand to say goodbye. Because of the sun, Bicho only managed to see a black silhouette. The rest of us woke up to the screeching of the tires.

Bicho saw it as clearly as that morning, long before the rest of us realized. It didn't matter how many times we rescued him from tomato or potato farms, Johnny would only come back to us inside a body bag.