A Toilet Full Of Jesus

Saltered States

by Bruce Salter

“. . . Love has pitched his mansion in/The place of excrement;/For nothing can be sole or whole/That has not been rent.” —William Butler Yeats, “Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop”

EN ROUTE TO SAN FRANCISCO, CA (Weekly Hubris)—8/30/10—A pair of sandpipers strolled through the lapping foam, and the gentle north wind painted whitecaps on the waves as I stretched upon my lime-green sun bed and gazed across the isolated stretch of beach behind the Pallazzo de Saltier, my sanctum sanctorum on the central California coast. My trusted chronicler and sometime manservant, the indubitable Raul, approached bearing a silver tray, his tiny legs buried to the knees in the powdery sand, a massive Panama hat shading his cherubic face.

“Would you care for a wine cooler, Sahib?” he smiled, bowing almost imperceptibly.

“What flavor do you have today, Raul?” I yawned, following the sandpipers with an indolent eye.

“Cognac, Sahib. I believe it is your favorite.”

“Ah, Raul,” I sighed, snatching up the plastic blue cup and sipping from the straw with a vengeance, “you have read my mind. What would I do without you, my little friend?”

“That is a question only the gods can answer,” he replied with an inscrutable wink.

As I sucked down the dregs of Raul’s delicious cooler, my cell phone erupted in a chorus of Nick Cave’s “The Mercy Seat” and I sensed my relaxing day at the beach was about to end. Recognizing the incoming number as that of one of my former paramours, I cursed under my breath.

“Hello, Blanche! Lovely to hear from you after so many years, My Dear! How are you?”

“There’s no time for small talk now,” she snapped. Her breathing was fast and her tone anxious. “Something strange is going on here, something you’d definitely enjoy, and I fear it may turn serious.”

Blanche had recently moved to the boondock backwaters of Kerrville, Texas, the ultimate melting pot of all things obtuse, and had apparently succumbed to the dreaded local condition popularly known as Lone Star Vacuity.
What is it, Blanche? What’s happening?” I asked, trying to feign interest.

“You still don’t listen to the news, do you?” she sighed. “Well, there’s no time to talk now. Just get yer ass down here pronto and I’ll explain it all. And Bruce . . .”

“Yes?”

“Buy a friggin’ newspaper at the airport!”

I tucked the phone into my beach bag, cast a last wistful glance at the sea, and called out, “Raul!”

“I am here, Sahib,” he chirped, appearing as if by magic at my side.

“Pack our bags, Raul. We’re leaving immediately.”

“Leaving? But the afternoon is so beautiful. Where is it we must travel?”

“To the heart of Redneck Country, I’m afraid.”

“Rednecks again?” Raul gasped, downing his own cognac cooler with a mighty gulp. “But it is so soon after our Sacramento encounter, Sahib.”

“I know, but that’s life, My Diminutive Dandy. By this time tomorrow, we’ll be breathing the miasmic air of Kerrville, Texas.”

My recent seclusion had left me ill-prepared for the headlines screaming out the story that was on almost everyone’s lips (as well as in 78-point type): “HOLY VISION IN TEXAS STOOL!”

I read on: “Thousands are flocking to the small Texas town of Kerrville to witness what many are calling irrefutable evidence of Christian glory. The unmistakable image of Jesus has appeared for all and sundry to behold in the toilet of Gaynard T. Plank, a retired fence-mender, part-time Walmart greeter, and husband of Eunice Maynard-Plank, the well-known Kapellmeister of the Kerrville Autistic Tabernacle Choir.”

“When interviewed by this reporter yesterday, Mr. Plank described his epiphany: ‘Well,’ he beamed, ‘it was like this. I had just taken a helluva dump—I’d been all bound up with the constipation fer more ‘n a week, ya see, and Momma had just gave me a good flushin’ out with her rutabaga root enematical juice—so I did a nice healthy job in there. But, for some reason, I didn’t flush right off like usual. I guess I just wanted to admire what I just done for a bit first. And then, when I looked into the crapper, well, praise the Lord, I saw the Savior’s face a-lookin’ right back at me from what I just done, smiling’, peaceful an full of love, an I had ta just drop to my knees. I’m tellin’ ya, the tears a joy started flowin’ and they still ain’t stopped!’”

“The Plank home has since become a shrine, a focus of pilgrimage for thousands eager to gaze upon their redeemer, and the phenomenon shows no signs of letting up. As this issue goes to press, reports of at least three more deific defecations have come in from neighboring suburbs, and a religious frenzy unparalleled in history has gripped this once quiet community like a holy fist of feces . . . .” Etc.

“Have you seen this, Raul?!” I cried, waving the newspaper in his studiously pinched face. “These people are certifiable!”

“Yes, Sahib, that is most true,” my biographer chuckled, entertained beyond measure by the follies of the Western mind, sub-genus Redneck. “Just look at these!”

He handed me two magazines he’d been perusing, the current issue of People with a smiling picture of Gaynard Plank above the caption “Texas Cowboy High In The Saddle Over Second Virgin Birth!”, and the latest New Yorker, its usually sophisticated cover now sporting a finely wrought chocolate-looking bust of Jesus beneath the blazing headline “#1 SLUMS AS #2.”

“I can’t wait to see what Maxim and Playboy do with this,” I quipped, leaning back and closing my eyes.

“I can only imagine, Sahib,” Raul replied, scrutinizing the current issue of Scientific American, “but it says here the toilet of Mr. Plank has been carefully drained, his ejecta sprayed thoroughly with a powerful fixative, and reproductions cast from the ensuing mold are being marketed nationwide as icons, powerful symbols of mass adoration and spiritual fulfillment.”

I contemplated Raul’s observations for several silent minutes, horrified by the potential repercussions of Gaynard Plank’s fateful feculence. “Damn, I wish this plane would fly faster,” I muttered, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. “I can’t wait to reach Kerrville and see this for myself.”

“You’re here at last!” Blanche cried, as we disembarked in San Antonio and fought our way through the swelling crowds of hopeful supplicants seeking spiritual sustenance in the toilets of Kerrville. We piled into her Land Rover and sped across the prairie, the setting sun turning the twisted manzanita and sagebrush into flame-drenched portents of a coming apocalypse.

“We’re like three kings journeying to honor a new divinity,” I observed, straining to see if an appropriate star shone in the distance to guide our way.

“Not a divinity, Sahib, but the physical embodiment of one. The earthly manifestation of a godhead, if you will.”

“Bullpucky!” Blanche snapped, her poetic sensibilities stretched to their limits. “It’s a friggin’ piece of s**t!”

By the time we reached Kerrville, night had descended, but battalions of spotlights pushed back the darkness and bright Klieg lights hung from every roof, tree and telephone pole, illuminating the town like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

Word of the phenomenon of the blessed ejecta seemed to be spreading like wildfire. The fecal face of Jesus was populating toilets at an astounding rate as Kerrville residents were touched, en masse, by the Holy Spirit (and letting their colons run rampant). Rabid crowds were rushing from house to house, their tongues flapping and their eyes rolling, anxious to witness the latest canned incarnation of their Savior. News cameras whirred and reporters trilled, interviewing everyone from befuddled theologians to apostolic Burger King fry-cooks, seeking somehow to explain the glorious sanctification bestowed on the porcelain thrones of their humble community.

As Raul had noted earlier, fixatives were preserving many of the specimens for posterity while teams of archaeologists worked feverishly to rescue the most waterlogged portraits with the most water-resistant plasters available. The local high school, like most Texas institutions of higher learning, remained virtually abandoned to the elements, converted overnight into “The Kerrville Metropolitan Museum Of Sacred Art,” its empty halls and classrooms suddenly filled with the most inspired examples of prophetic poop the city had to offer.

“At last,” I thought, “these poor souls may finally be exposed to the creativity so long gestating within the community’s collective bowels. They can bask in the snippets of culture they so richly deserve.”

“This thing is getting out of control!” Blanche screamed, snatching up a mystified Raul just before a stampede of ranting Baptists trod him underfoot.

“It’s madness,” I answered, swinging my trusty aide onto my shoulders and out of harm’s way. Some were rolling in the gutters and speaking in tongues, others foamed at the mouth as they waltzed with snakes, dogs, and the occasional unwilling billygoat, and still others wandered aimlessly, lost in ecstasy as they sought redemption in a steaming bowl of bowel candy.

“This is mass hysteria on an unheard of scale!” Blanche cried. “I don’t think the police can control it much longer! In fact, I think they’re starting to join in!”

“I’m scared, Sahib,” Raul gasped, pulling my ears and turning me away from the insanity. “Please, let us make a hasty exit. These possessed Rednecks disturb me deeply.”

“Yeah, let’s roll,” Blanche hissed. “My place should be safe, at least for the time being.”

Little Raul’s heels dug into my armpits as we swung up an alleyway, across a parking lot littered with “Gaynard For Mayor” T-shirts (hopelessly outdated now that his singular distinction had gone bubonic), and into a tangle of nettled sagebrush, the full moon guiding our way to Blanche’s prairie trailer, her mobile-home-on-the-range.

“What are we going to do?” Blanche shrieked, bolting the door behind her as we fell, exhausted, onto her azure sofa. “It’s become an epidemic and it’s spreading fast! Forget Kerrville . . . I’m wondering what will happen when it crosses the state line and spreads into Oklahoma, Kansas and,” gulp, “Utah! We’ll be lost!”

“Get a grip on yourself, Woman!” I barked, shaking her by the shoulders. “This is mass hysteria. It’s psychological, and psychology will be our weapon against it! Don’t you agree, Raul?”

“I concur completely, Sahib,” Raul smiled, able to relax at last. “I have made a lifetime study of these kinds of delusions and it is certainly most treatable.”

“You see, Blanche, we can beat this thing if we stay calm and formulate a plan. Now, I have an idea that I think may just work . . .”

We immediately manned the telephones and, by 10:00 the next morning, an impressive stage has been constructed on the 50 yard line of the Kerrville High School-cum-Art Museum’s football field, complete with a half-dozen 200-foot television screens strategically placed around its perimeter. All media outlets were apprised of the mammoth revival, “LIVE DUNG,” to be held at 6 p.m. sharp that evening and, by noon, almost every soul within 1,000 miles was making the pilgrimage to Kerrville in the hope of being born again and baptized into the fold of the most holy of holies, the Church of The Divine Excrement. A 30-foot scaffold, sheathed in gold lamé, was erected atop the stage, crowned with an oversized latrine shining resplendently in the purity of its porcelain whiteness.

By five o’clock, anxious adherents filled the landscape from horizon to horizon, pressing ever forward toward the stage and their salvation. Opening acts, featuring a string of Nashville wannabees, tent preachers, American Idol rejects and the ubiquitous Elton John, shone across the massive screens and, with anticipation reaching a fever pitch, Blanche, dazzling in rhinestone-encrusted vest, cowboy hat and hot pants, mounted the stage, approached the microphone and began to speak.

“Wheeeeee Haaaaaaa, y’all!” she yodeled. “I’m Blanche from the insurance company? . . . yer hostess with the mostest tonight! How’r y’all doin’?”

The crowd roared like a thunderclap.

“Are ya ready to be washed in the Redeemer’s blood?”

Another deafening thunderclap.

“Well, ya’ve come to the right place! Now, we all know how Kerrville’s been blessed by the Lord, how His very face has smiled out at us, bathing us in divine light from nearly everyone’s crapper in the last couple a days, right?”

“Tha’s right, Blanche,” the flock screamed, waving their arms in pride.

“Well, let me tell ya, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Tonight we got the Big Dawg, The Pope of Poop, the saint among saints himself, who talks at God on a daily basis and actually predicted, more than a month ago, that our Savior would use our own doo-doo to enlighten us an’ wash away our sins! God sent him here tonight to give a personal demonstration of his power! Now, put yer hands together an’ let’s give a big-ol’ Texas welcome to the man hisself . . . the one an’ only Pastor Bubba!”

The crowd erupted into a frenzy of screams, sobs and squeals that reverberated from the Rockies to the Appalachians, as I entered the stage through thick purple curtains (disguised, of course, in a padded costume that made me look like the unfortunate victim of a gene-splicing experiment between Limbaugh and Snookie, gone horribly awry), bowed to the audience and slowly trudged up the stairway to the immaculate toilet like a purse-snatcher ascending a gibbet.

The rolling mass of onlookers, most crying openly, stood breathless as I dropped my pants, sat upon the pristine pearl seat and began producing the loudest gasps and groans I could muster. After about five minutes of huffing, I unleashed an ear-shattering screech, stood (a bit dizzily) and, while bowing to the crowd, lifted the seat with a theatrical flourish that would have made Houdini proud.

The crowd, not knowing what to expect, stood frozen in rapture, awaiting a sign.

A low moan rose from the toilet, gaining strength until it became a fractured wail . . . a wail of life . . . a wail of birth.

“Lordy, it’s the Judgment Day!” someone screamed.

“Look!” another cried, pointing up in disbelief. “Something’s movin’!”

And indeed, something was moving. Slowly, like a baby squeezing from the womb, Raul, his body caked in Texas river mud and drenched in chocolate syrup, climbed from the toilet and stood, tiny microphone in hand, before the incredulous throng.

“Hear me, People of Texas and beyond,” he announced, wiping a thick glob of mud from his eye. “I am your savior, alright. Pastor Bubba, with great effort, has brought me here before you. Now, listen up. I’m sick of all this stuff! First, you see me in some tree bark. Then you see me in a twisted sweet potato or rhubarb. Then, it’s in a puddle of oil, some dirty underwear, a grilled cheese sandwich, or your dog’s half-eaten food. But now you’ve gone too far; now I’m showing up in your own excrement! Get a grip, Dogpatch! Do you think I like being seen in your s**t? Whatever happened to clouds and sunsets?”

“Anyway, I want you to stop it. Now! Go home, wipe your behinds and give your toilets a good flush. Break out your Drain-O! And if any of you sees me in your poop again, I won’t like you and you won’t go to heaven. Period. Now, Git! Good-bye! Adios!”

With that, Raul climbed back into the toilet, and the disillusioned and chastened crowd slowly shuffled off back home.

“Did I do well, Sahib?” Raul asked as he wiped the mud and syrup from his body an hour later.

“You were brilliant, Mon Petit Prince. I’m very proud of you. There will be plenty to write about after this adventure, My Boswell of The Bog!”

“Thy will be done, Sahib.”

We said our good-byes to Texas and were back on the beach at Pallazzo de Saltier early the next day. Blanche got a gig on “Dancing With The Stars” after her own superlative performance, I bought myself a new lounge chair and a magnum of cognac wine cooler . . . and Raul was given his own personal bathroom (no more sharing with the dyspeptic gardener).

It was the least I could do.