Chapter One
WWJD (What Would Jeb Do?)
If an entire lifetime could be redacted, Dr. Lennie Leibowitz would be holding a black magic marker instead of the Snub Nosed 38 he fondled gingerly in his left hand.
The fact that it was a squirt gun didn't make it any less deadly; to the retired proctologist with a vivid imagination, symbolism was far more powerful than a tangible truth. The way Lennie figured it, suicide would be redundant because he could hardly be any deader.Little did Dr. Leibowitz know that atop a waste dump in Worbit Flats, New Jersey rose the answer to his prayers.
"Black Gold. Texas tea."
The lyrics to the Beverly Hillbillies theme song played in a loop inside his head.
"WWJD - What would Jed do?" Lennie's thought interrupted the chorus.
It was in the Texas oil fields 35 years before, where Lennie had left Dwight Beckley, a hitch-hiker he'd picked up in Las Cruces.
They parted ways in Fort Stockton after they'd paid their fines for possession of marijuana, and the blanket they’d stolen from a motel they'd pulled into because Lennie's shoe-shaped yellow Gremlin was nearly out of fuel, and all the gas stations in Fort Stockton had closed by mid-morning,
But for that damn oil shortage Lennie wouldn't have a criminal record, a source of immense pride.
"I don't like marijuana offenders," the bald headed judge drawled.
It was all Lennie could do to suppress a smile. The damn judge was the spitting image of Elmer Fudd.
Before Judge Fudd could draw another breath, the arresting officer chimed in:
"Your honor. I believe that this is a fine young man. I do not believe that he is a habitual marijuana offender. I urge you to be lenient."
Why the hell a black man like Dwight Beckley would be able to quote every line of dialog from every episode of the Beverly Hillbillies was beyond Lennie's comprehension, but 35 years later, he couldn't get it out of his head.
Chapter Two
Bubbling up from the Middlesex County environmental waste dump was something Dexter Dalrymple and Bubba McNertney had never expected to see. Over the years they’d taken home a toy rocking horse, an automobile distributor cap, Parker Brothers board games, and even a cigar store Indian sliced in half from the torso, now occupying a special place in the living room of the doublewide they shared on the outskirts of town.
Taking their personal detritus to the dump and coming back with stuff that others had thrown away, had become a hobby for the two retired Worbit Flats Borough sanitation workers, inseparable since grade school, and now living in leisure as they entered their early 70s.
Taking their personal detritus to the dump and coming back with stuff that others had thrown away, had become a hobby for the two retired Worbit Flats Borough sanitation workers, inseparable since grade school, and now living in leisure as they entered their early 70s.
What they found this steamy August day made all the news engines, soared around the blogosphere, and landed gently in Lennie’s Gmail In-box – one of the multitude of dispatches he received daily from New York Times online.
“Man claiming to be Jesus Christ found buried, near-dead in a New Jersey waste dump.”
Nobody knew how the old guy had come to be buried beneath 58 pounds of rubble and goo, who or what put him there, and exactly how old he was, but doctors say he appeared to be in his early 60s and was in surprisingly good physical condition considering the circumstances, details of which might never be known. Dalrymple and McNertney had discovered some shifting dirt as the old man tried to wriggle free from the garbage. Once they’d freed the old guy from his makeshift grave, he greeted the two men with a smile and the now-famous words that he would repeat again and again:
“I am Jesus Christ. I have been buried for your sins. And if you’ve got change for a quarter, you’re in better shape than me.”
The story of the geezer, the malevolence of those who had buried him in the waste dump, and the overwhelming sweetness of the guy, who had nothing but smiles, hugs, and kisses for his rescuers, for the medical providers who brought him back to tip-top condition, and for the overwhelming sympathy shown from people all over the world – traveled through cyberspace at the latest 12G speeds.
Safely ensconced in a private room in Worbit Flats Memorial Hospital, the ersatz Jesus Christ simply smiled when told of his burgeoning fame:
“I am Jesus Christ. I have been buried for your sins. And if you’ve got change for a quarter, you’re in better shape than me.”
To keep reporters from flooding the hospital, Worbit Flats Memorial’s security staff guarded the old man zealously. Nevertheless, a Candy Striper managed to shoot a 22-second video of the kindly old fellow, transmitting his incandescent smile over the Internet. The rest is history. The video went viral. And before anyone could blink an eye, millions and millions of dollars, Euros, Yen, Shekels, and even some genuine American Confederacy currency, were working their way to the hospital via online transactions, snail mail, and more than 2 dozen UPS trucks filled with money and racing toward the hospital from every corner of the continent.
At a hastily convened press conference in the Worbit Flats War Memorial Armory, Mayor Hancock P. Brunette issued the following statement to 1497 reporters from all over the globe:
“Ladies and gentlemen. Unfortunately, we are unable to release any information about our treasured guest.”
Raising an electronic bullhorn above his head, the mayor responded to a cacophony of questions, none of which could be heard above the din, with a staccato string of eardrum-busting bleats until silence ensued:
“Ladies and gentlemen. Please. Please. I only have one statement. And I’m sure you’ve heard it before by now. Our guest has only one thing to say:
“I am Jesus Christ. I have been buried for your sins. And if you’ve got change for a quarter, you’re in better shape than me.”
Chapter 3
The Story of Worbit Flats
Back in 1778, an inebriated settler named Tobias Metuchen IV stumbled upon a couple of acres of swampland filled with bellowing bullfrogs. Suffering from sleep apnea generations before the malady had found a name and a diagnosis, Metuchen discovered that the only thing that could lull him to sleep besides whiskey was the incessant chorus of crooning bullfrogs.
To the always exhausted Tobias Metuchen, the swampland was the next best thing to heaven, and he wasted no time staking his claim to the land. Feeling an almost bestial kinship towards the croaking amphibians, Tobias would let fly a few loud, “Worbits,” and like clockwork the bullfrogs would follow suit. Whenever Tobias would awaken from a long nap or a night’s sleep, he’d be covered from head to toe with the pulsating bodies of purring bullfrogs who must’ve thought that the snoring drunkard was a kindred spirit. So it only seemed natural to Metuchen to name the swampland Worbit Flats.
To the always exhausted Tobias Metuchen, the swampland was the next best thing to heaven, and he wasted no time staking his claim to the land. Feeling an almost bestial kinship towards the croaking amphibians, Tobias would let fly a few loud, “Worbits,” and like clockwork the bullfrogs would follow suit. Whenever Tobias would awaken from a long nap or a night’s sleep, he’d be covered from head to toe with the pulsating bodies of purring bullfrogs who must’ve thought that the snoring drunkard was a kindred spirit. So it only seemed natural to Metuchen to name the swampland Worbit Flats.
Chapter 4
The Smile
The Smile
It so happened that Dr. Lennie Leibowitz was a wealthy man; rich beyond his wildest childhood dreams, and living proof that money could not buy happiness, because Lennie could not remember the last time he’d looked at life with child-like optimism. Yet, the minute he heard the news about the old man, his mind sprung into action.
The old man’s smile … it was infectious; the amount of warmth he radiated was indescribable and downright puzzling - incomprehensible, as matter of fact. Those who saw the 22- second video experienced something akin to a religious experience,
“Yeah, I saw that man smile and it melted my heart,” were the unlikely words of a veteran Brooklyn cabbie when interviewed on CNN.
And that smile made everyone feel just a little bit high. It was like seeing Louis Armstrong play the trumpet, watching a baby’s first steps, tasting a ripe, juicy Jersey tomato, and finding a parking spot 50 feet from the entrance to the Food Court – all rolled into one.
While billions of people around the world were captivated by the “Waste Dump Jesus,” as Fox News described him, an obscure cult of religious zealots, fed by the vitriol of Bill O’Reiley and Rush Limbaugh, quietly plotted the old man’s demise.
Fortunately, because he’d contributed 20-million dollars to one of the hospital’s foundations, and had a bounty of unscrupulous friends in high places, Lennie was able to act quickly on the old man’s behalf. Maybe he could save him before the maelstrom of the old man’s celebrity would swallow or even kill him.
Shortly after midnight on August 13th, the old man was spirited away in the guise of a corpse being transported from the morgue to a local memorial chapel. By 2AM he was onboard a prop jet, en route to SeaTac airport, bound for a rustic private compound located just a couple of miles east of Washington’s Snoqualmie Pass, where Lennie and a small team consisting of an internist, a nurse practitioner, and a massage therapist awaited the old man’s arrival.
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