A Graveyard for Lunatics by Ray Bradbury Page A

began again. He strode with a measured tread as if he wore robes instead of a tattered coat and some soiled trousers. He gave a blessing gesture on the air as he moved by each table, but his eyes were straight ahead, as if seeing some world beyond, not ours. He was looking at me, and I shrank, for I couldn’t imagine why he would seek me out, among all these accepted and established talents. And at last he stood above me, the gravity of his demeanor being such it pulled me to my feet.
    There was a long silence as this man with the beautiful face stretched out a thin arm with a thin wrist, and at the end of it a hand with the most exquisitely long fingers I had ever seen.
    I put my hand out to take his. His hand turned, and I saw the mark of the driven spike in the middle of the wrist. He turned his other hand over, so I could see the similar scar in the middle of his left wrist. He smiled, reading my mind, and quietly explained, “Most people think the nails were driven through the palms. No. The palms could not hold a body’s weight. The wrists, nailed,
can
. The wrists.” Then he turned both hands over so I could see where the nails had come through on the other side.
    “J. C.” said Fritz Wong, “this is our visitor from another world, our young science-fiction writer—”
    “I know.” The beautiful stranger nodded and gestured toward himself.
    “Jesus Christ,” he said.
    I stepped aside so he could sit, then fell back in my own chair.
    Fritz Wong passed down a small basket full of bread. “Please,” he called, “change these into fish!”
    I gasped.
    But J. C., with the merest flick of his fingers, produced one silvery fish from amidst the bread and tossed it high. Fritz, delighted, caught it to laughter and applause.
    The waitress arrived with several bottles of cheap booze to more shouts and applause.
    “This wine,” said J.C., “was water ten seconds ago. Please!”
    The wine was poured and savored.
    “Surely—” I stammered.
    The entire table looked up.
    “He wants to know,” called Fritz, “if your name is really what you say it is.”
    With somber grace, the tall man drew forth and displayed his driver’s license. It read:
    “Jesus Christ. 911 Beachwood Avenue. Hollywood.” He slipped it back into his pocket, waited for the table to be silent, and said:
    “I came to this studio in 1927 when they made
Jesus the King
. I was a woodworker out back in those sheds. I cut and polished the three crosses on Calvary, still standing. There was a contest in every Baptist basement and Catholic backwash in the land. Find Christ! He
was
found
here
. The director asked where I worked? The
carpenter’s
shop. My God, he cried, let me
see
that face! Go put on a
beardl
‘Make me look like holy Jesus,’ I advised the makeup man. I went back, dressed in robes and thorns, the whole holy commotion. The director danced on the Mount and washed my feet. Next thing you know the Baptists were lining up at Iowa pie festivals when I dusted through in my tin flivver with banners “THE KING IS COMING,” “GOING ON BEFORE.”
    “Across country in auto bungalow courts, I had a great ten-year Messiah run, until vino and venality tattered my smock. Nobody wants a womanizing Saviour. It wasn’t so much I kicked cats and wound up other men’s wives like dime-store clocks, no, it was just that I was Him, you see?”
    “I think I see,” I said gently.
    J. C. put his long wrists and long hands and long fingers out before him, as cats often sit, waiting for the world to come worship.
    “Women felt it was blasphemy if they so much as breathed my air. Touching was terrible. Kissing a mortal sin. The act itself? Might as well leap in the burning pit with an eternity of slime up to your ears. Catholics, no, Holy Rollers were worst. I managed to bed and breakfast one or two before they
knew
me, when I traveled the country incognito. After a month of starving for feminine acrobats, I’d run amok. I just shaved and lit out across country, pounding fenceposts into native