Miracle Man

"Okay maybe the next guy you stop for can do it right," I said and I started walking again. He got out of the truck and walked next to me. He took my arm and guided me back to his truck.

"Look," I said. "I don't have much money. So robbing me will be a lot more trouble than you're going to get."

"Relax buddy," he said. "I recognize that look and that set of your chin. I had it once myself. Now it looks like it's my turn to do for you what someone else did for me."

"How long have you been walking?" he asked.

"What time is it?" I asked him.

"It's three fifteen a.m." he said.

"I've been walking since six thirty last evening," I said.

As I got into the truck the air conditioning chilled me, but it felt really good. I realized he was still talking to me but I couldn't make out a word that he was saying as I fell asleep.

* * * * * *

Heather

I was sure that once again something was wrong with Robbie's cheap phone. Maybe that should be one of the first things we buy with the money we get from Jimmy. Good cell phones for both of us. I settled down on our sofa in the living room to wait for Robbie. I was kind of conflicted. I didn't know what I should do when he first got home. I knew that what I did would determine how quickly he'd get over this. On one hand I could try to get him in bed quickly because doing that would show him that I still loved him and wanted to be with him. But on the other hand, Robbie had called me a whore several times so maybe sex wasn't the way to win his heart back. I decided to make him something to eat and just go with the situation.

Jimmy really wasn't very good at sex. It was probably because he wasn't very well endowed and compared to Robbie I could barely even feel him in me. He was also pretty old and though he fancied himself some kind of stud, nothing could be further from the truth. I'd been with him three times and each time I just lay or stood there thinking about what I'd do with the money, until he was done.

Since I didn't know how much money we'd get, I really didn't know what to plan. If it was a substantial amount, my plan would be to send Robbie to school. If he went to college at night or to a good trade school, he could get a much better job and support us in a finer style. Between the two of us, Robbie was the smarter one. He'd do much better in school than I would. I actually worried a bit because if Robbie went to some fancy school, he could probably meet girls who were prettier than I am. I mean I'm not a troll and I do have the advantage of being twenty four, and in the absolute peak of my life and health. I'm the best right now that I'm ever going to be. Maybe that was what made Jimmy so hot for me.

But my life couldn't be based on now. My life had to be based on securing a future for Robbie and me so we could become one of those cute old couples. Whatever it took, whatever I had to do. I know that what I was doing seemed bad. But I was doing it for the best of reasons. There were so many things that we needed. It's like that old question that people always ask young people. Are you going to live on love? Well for the past six years we literally had. We'd both worked our asses off and we had a place of our own and food but that was about it and I was just tired of it.

The average college student has more than we do. We don't even have a TV. One emergency would wipe us out. I know that I was the one who pushed for us to get married so young. But I didn't want the risk of losing Robbie. I only hope that he can understand that we have to live in the real world right now and sometimes you have to do a little bad, to get the greatest good.

Another way of saying it is that we have to be ready to use every resource at our disposal to get the things we need or at least to put us on the path towards getting them. And right now one of the resources we have is my body. I hope Robbie can understand that and stop being such a selfish child.

As I wondered again what was taking him so long, I fell asleep there on the sofa. I woke up the next morning thinking that Robbie had come home during the night and just left me on the sofa. That meant that he was probably still angry.

I got up to go and check on him and found that he wasn't anywhere in the house. I looked outside and saw that his truck was still there. I ran out to the truck to surprise him, but he wasn't there either. I tried calling his phone but he didn't pick it up. I decided that I'd just drive the truck to work and call him once I got there. I could always call him at work. He loved his job so he'd never miss a day there unless he was really sick.

He'd probably stayed with a friend overnight. It might take a few days for him to get over this but we'd talk eventually. I started to get ready for work myself. I was very sad that Robbie was angry at me but I was sure he loved me enough for us to get past this. We'd been through so much over the past six years. This was nothing compared to some of the things we'd endured.

When I walked into the office, Jimmy wasn't there yet. It wasn't unusual for him to breeze in at about noon or later if he didn't have a meeting or something for the show to work on. He had associate pastors and deacons to handle a lot of the heavy lifting. He just concentrated on the show and public appearances.

I sat down at my desk and started going through the rest of Jimmy's mail that I hadn't gotten to yesterday. That was one of my biggest responsibilities. Jimmy never read and rarely answered his mail. There was simply too much of it. Ninety-five percent of it was stuff that I could handle for him. I simply typed out an answer and signed the letters myself. If there was anything out of the ordinary going on, I flagged it and spoke to him about it during one of our mail meetings. Threats, letters from influential or famous people and anything that might look good on the show were things I alerted him to.

A couple of hours later Jimmy and Rhonda, aka Mrs. Hubbard wandered into the office. They were arguing as usual but this one seemed to be more venomous than their average set to.

"Why the fuck do I have to beg you to come to personal appearances with me?" he hissed. "I'm telling you it doesn't look good for you not to be there to support me."

"If I'm supposed to be a family man, I need to have the family there to show that you're behind me, God damn it."

"When was the last time you thought of your family as anything other than a prop for one of your appearances," she hissed back, matching him in tone, volume and in venom. "Josh and I don't need to be there every time you kiss some politician's ass or speak to some dumb assed actor."

"And why the hell did you name my son Josh anyway? Why the hell didn't you put James Hubbard Jr. on his birth certificate like I wanted you to?" asked Jimmy

Rhonda just smiled at Jimmy and said she had to go.

"You will be at the tour today though, right?" asked Jimmy.

"Maybe," she said. "But if you get on my nerves, you can pencil me in for a no."

Jimmy grumbled and watched her leave his office. Rhonda grabbed a cup of coffee as she passed the coffee pot and picked out a big glazed piece of coffee cake as well. If I was as slim as she was and looked as good in her clothes, I'd eat anything I wanted too.

Surprisingly, she didn't head out the door. She waved at a couple of the secretaries and came straight to me. We'd never really spoken very often during all of the time that I'd worked here. She carefully placed the coffee and the cake down on the corner of my desk.

"Thank you ma'am," I said.

"Don't mention it," she said. There wasn't a hint of malice or anger in her voice. And she looked just as sweet as she does on TV.

"If I eat these kinds of things, I'll never get to be as slim and beautiful as you are," I said.

"What good would that do you?" she asked. "What good has it done me?" I looked at her wondering what she was talking about. I was sure she was going to hit me with a church sermon. Preacher's wives are sometimes known for preaching nearly as much as their husbands do.

"You should eat and get everything you can, while you can honey," she said. "It won't last long, it never does."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Oh, Heather," she smiled. "There's no need to be shy. You're my husband's new whore. I have to take care of you and give you advice. We're on the same side here. You make my life easier. If he wasn't fucking you in the bathrooms or bending you over desks, I might have to fuck him myself occasionally. And with all of the women he goes through, Lord knows he probably has some kind of disease by now."

I was shocked. I guess I thought that it was a big secret. Or that she'd hate me. Shit if the shoe was on the other foot and some woman was fucking Robbie, I'd claw her eyes out. But she looked at me with genuine affection. She just shook her head as she looked at me.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said. "I just wondered why...I mean don't get me wrong. I don't care. If it wasn't you, it would be some other whore, but you just seemed so much better than this. You seemed... I don't know, smarter. It seemed like you had your shit all together, you know."

"Maybe I'm looking at this wrong," she said. "You're what barely in your twenties. You and your husband are out on your own. You have your own home. You each have vehicles. You're both working. Shit you have most of the couples who are ten years older than you beat; especially in this economy."

"You're also a good secretary. You handle all of Jimmy's mail alone. We sometimes need two secretaries for that. And your husband, he's younger and better looking than Jimmy. He obviously loved you. You two had that forever kind of thing that most women dream about going on. What would ever have possessed you to give that up to fuck Jimmy for a few weeks?"

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Robbie loves me and I love him. He was angry when he found out, but we'll get through this." I tried to smile and put on a brave front. But she just continued looking at me and shaking her head.

"Sweetie, maybe you're not as smart as I thought you were," she said. "I'm a lot older than you are. I've been in this game for a very long time. Jimmy and I started out when I was about your age and he was only a few years older. We did tent shows and revivals before we even had our own church. I've seen so many people that it's forced me to become a good judge of character. I can pretty much suss out a person's intentions with a glance."

"It got to the point where I could tell when a promoter or the preacher from another church was going to try to fuck us out of our fair share of the take just by the way they smiled at me. I could tell which of the people in the audience were faking it and which ones were just so struck by Jimmy's fame that they forgot why they'd really come. I could also tell the ones who just wanted to be on television and the ones who thought they could replace me." She smiled as she said that.

"You're the type I really feel sorry for," she said sadly.

"Why do you feel sorry for me?" I asked. She looked at me again. Her smile was really unusual. It conveyed a host of emotions all at the same time. It was as if she was trying to give me advice, warn me and pity me all at the same time.

"Because you don't belong here," she said. "You've just got caught up in all of this and you're not on any of the sides. You're just trying to make your way through this ocean of bullshit and not only do you not have a paddle, honey you don't even have a boat."

"Huh?" I asked.

"Sweetie, there's real religion and church on one side. And then there's what we do. If you look around throughout our camp, there are lots of different types of people. First you have what I call suckers. They're stupid. They really are very religious and very truthful and honest people. Most of them are so enraptured by Jimmy's words and the bible that they can't be convinced that my husband is just a con man with a good act. They do what they do because they really believe that he and, therefore, they, are helping people to get with God. No matter what they see or hear, he doesn't need to convince them of anything because in their own minds they believe that Jimmy shares a piece of God's divinity."

"If they walked in on you and Jimmy fucking, they'd be sure that they'd done something wrong. They'd beg him to accept their apologies and keep going on. After a while they'd literally forget what they saw because to think about it would be too damaging to the foundation of their lives."

"The second group of people knows that what we do here is all one colossal con game. We bilk innocent and stupid people on a grand scale. We're especially hurtful to the elderly, the sick and those who have dying or sick loved ones. They know what we do and not only do they not care, they're trying to grab their own piece of the pie. The people in the sales and collection departments are especially bad. They get bonuses for getting more money or donations from people. So the more they con, the more they get."

"The last group of people is simply here to work and make a living. They're neither religious nor non-religious. They simply want to do their job and get paid for it and move on."

"You, on the other hand, are a babe in the woods," she said. "I get the feeling that you were just going through a bad patch in your life. Maybe the bills were piling up a little too fast and you saw some easy money and decided to grab it by doing something you thought was free and easy. Honey nothing is ever free or easy. And I think that when you grabbed for the brass ring you fucked up."

"I don't understand," I said.

"I thought not," she told me. "One of the first things I learned growing up in Kansas is that we only have two hands. And we need to hold onto the things that are the most important to us with both hands or we tend to lose them. You reached out to grab yourself some of the finer things in life the quick way. You probably figured that fucking Jimmy would get you a couple of things done pretty easily. What did he promise you?" She looked at me closely.

"Let's see, he offered you a raise or to take care of a couple of your bills right?" she asked.

"He said he'd pay to get my car fixed and I'd get a raise at the end of the month," I told her.

"Did you get any cash from him?" she asked.

"Well...no," I said.

"Sweetie, always get cash. Get something in your hands before you let them get their hands in your panties." She shook her head like I was stupid.

"But you can trust Jimmy," I said.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because he's..." I began.

"He's the kind of man who preaches hellfire and damnation on television for even the smallest of sins, but cheats on his own wife," she said. "He lies to millions of people every week for a living and gets away with it. He's practically thumbing his nose at all of them. Honestly I'm not even sure Jimmy believes in God anymore. I think in his own twisted way Jimmy thinks he is God."

"No," I said. "He wouldn't lie."

"Sweetie when it's time to pay for your car, he'll claim he doesn't remember saying it. Or he'll twist your words around. He'll say he promised you a raise at the end of the month that would let you get your car fixed. The reality is that by the end of the month he'll probably have gotten bored with fucking you and moved on to someone else. By then his tastes will have changed and instead of cute fresh faced farm girls with big old tits he'll like something else. And if you push it, he'll just fire you. Even if you don't push it, he'll probably fire you anyway. He won't want to look at you because he'll feel guilty about what you've done together. And you'll just be a reminder of it."

"Plus there's the fact that if his next fuck toy is someone else around here, the chances of the two of you getting into it are just too great. You'd really have to go then. The worst part is Jimmy wasn't offering you anything you haven't earned. Think about it Honey. Let's say that you never fucked him. At the end of the month what makes more sense, to pay you 50% more or to pay two people for doing what you can do by yourself. You're a great secretary, but you reached out to try to grab something that you already had coming in the first place."

"The worst part, sweetie, is that by you reaching out to grab what you thought was better, it looks like you've lost the best thing you had." She started shaking her head again.

"What do you mean?" I asked her.

"I was there last night," she said. "I spoke to your husband. I think I saved him from getting an ass whipping, but shit he might have won. He'd already knocked the shit out of one of Jimmy's bruiser body guards. He might've gotten the better of the others too. Anyway, I only stuck my nose in it for a couple of reasons. The first one was because I stood there and listened as Jimmy tried to con him, then tried to buy him off and finally even tried to scare him off, but he wouldn't have any of it. That's the mark of something really rare these days. He was smart enough not to fall for Jimmy's bullshit and honest enough not to go for getting something for nothing. But mostly it's because he loved you more than money or anything else. He wasn't willing to sell that out. That's pretty God damned special and I don't think you know what you've lost."

"The second reason, of course, was purely selfish. He told Jimmy that Jimmy was stupid for going after you when he already had a woman as beautiful as I was. I'd have saved him for that alone. But the last reason was because like I told you, I've been around a lot of people. It's like I have a built in bullshit detector. That man had that look in his eyes that said someday, someway, he was going to make Jimmy sorry for ruining his life. And I really think he might."

"Why do you keep saying loved," I snapped. "You're trying to make it seem like my marriage is over or something. Jimmy has screwed around on you a lot according to you. And the two of you are still married. I just made one mistake and now that I understand what I've done, I'll never do that again."

"Honey, there are like I keep trying to explain to you, a lot of different types of people in the world. Your man was one of those honest and true types. He's the kind of man who would love you forever and all of that bullshit. The kind of guy we all want our daughters to marry. The problem is they're awfully hard to live with because they expect us to be that way too and you fucked up."

"That kind of guy will forgive almost anyone anything except for the people he's closest to. If someone he loves betrays him, the chances of him forgiving you are so low that you'd have to go underground to measure them. There's a bigger chance that he'll forgive Jimmy than you honey. He knows what kind of a scumbag my husband is. But he believed you when you told him that you loved him, so you betraying him is something that will either destroy him or drive him crazy."

I felt my eyes welling up with tears as she spoke.

"People like that don't even have a moral compass," she said. "A moral compass has directions, it allows for variations in some cases or some situations. People like your husband...it's like the part of their brain that tells them right from wrong is powered by a tiny little rubber band, like those little Japanese hybrid cars. When that rubber band snaps, they just go fucking crazy."

"Robbie isn't like that," I said. "He'll stew for a while. Then we'll get together and talk. And we'll work this out."

"I hope so, honey," she said. "I really hope so. But I really think that he's gone and gone for good."

She got up and walked out of the office. I noticed that what I'd thought was a private conversation had been picked up by a lot of the women in the office. Several of them were looking at me differently and not in a nice way. I picked up the phone and tried to dial Robbie's cell phone. It rang a couple of times and then was answered.