Saving Discount Jesus

by Phebe Jewell 

No one browses, so why pay for heat? The manager knows his customers well. Five minutes in and out for shampoo, diapers, Q-tips. Front aisles stocked with top sellers, back aisles a no-man’s land of items long past their expiration dates. Even if a customer ventured into the frozen wasteland of the store, would they give a Barbie-sized Jesus lying between boxed sets of ’90s sitcoms and cartons of typewriter ribbons a second glance?

Discount Jesus can’t remember the last time his fingers could move. Molded plastic hardens in the winter. At least he can keep his eyes open, and today he’s surprised to see he has company. A kid, holding up a box of typewriter ribbons, turning it over in confusion. Discount Jesus smiles. The boy has never seen a typewriter.

The kid empties box after box onto the concrete floor before pulling a lighter out of his pocket. The teen may not know why a typewriter would need a ribbon, but he knows that cardboard burns. His quick movements tell Discount Jesus that the boy lights everything he can get his hands on.

Discount Jesus frowns. He remembers his own youthful anger, the rage against the merchants in the temple. But this fire? Nothing beautiful will grow from its ashes. The cartons catch quickly, and soon smoke fills the aisles.

The mamas and aunties, abandoning carts filled with socks and soap and candy, push their way out the front doors. The manager hesitates by the front endcaps, crowded with glow-in-the-dark saviors and bobblehead Christs reciting Beatitudes, before escaping to the parking lot.

When the sprinklers go off, the hard spray flushes Discount Jesus to the floor, right hand raised in greeting, the left dangling uselessly by his side. Not the pose he would have chosen to convey his message of radical love, but it’s the same stance he’s held since he left the factory.

The boy opens his arms in ecstasy, noticing Discount Jesus for the first time. Picking up Discount Jesus, he removes the neon orange “NOW ONLY 89 cents!” as a fire truck pulls into the parking lot. The kid slips out to the street, sliding the plastic messiah into his pocket. Nestled against the lighter, Discount Jesus breathes in fuel and smoke. When they reach a tent squeezed between the sidewalk and a chain link fence, Discount Jesus stirs, the blood returning to his fingers.

Phebe Jewell is a Seattle writer and teacher who buys composition notebooks at her local dollar store.