A Jesus balloon whips in the April breeze, string tugging free from a pudgy hand. Up it bobs, round and shiny, escaping its bawling little owner and making a helium ascension into a sky freshly popped with soft clouds. This is a flag-waving Jesus, cleverly manufactured by Chinese sweatshop slaves so his right arm and the stars and stripes he holds on a stick will seem to go back and forth as angles of light strike him. Busily he waves while the balloon floats over the Washington Monument, across the Mall, above the gilded domes, the pennant-flying spires, the crystal pinnacles, the brooding crucifixes of the spanking new, marble-walled, taxpayer-built Grand National Apostolic Foursquare Cathedral of Federal-l y Approved Evangelical Christian Worship, and past the White House, where guards on the rooftop target the red floating blob through the telescopic sights of their rifles and make pow-pow sounds with their cheeks until they see its cheery imprinted Savior and lower their weapons, abashed. A downdraft like an angel’s flutter pushes the balloon lower, skimming it over the signs of demonstrators who chant “God save America,” and settling it on a lawn of the Capitol, where its string snares a sprinkler head. Frantically flag waving, the metallically printed son of God, light beard and wavy hair softening his angular white face, shines his beatific glory toward the United States Congress.

They’re too busy to notice. Aides, staffers, pages, lobbyists, and senators, hurrying and ordering and bargaining and wheedling, many displaying gobs of Christian jewelry, jam and bustle in a corridor where a brass plaque on a door announces Senator Whiteside, Kansas. Inside that door a battery of clerks and assistants, all of them young, intense, and white, elbow together and generate a hubbub of purposefulness. Past them and behind another door, there is only the snip of scissors while the senator, Samson Whiteside, reclines in his desk chair, wrapped in a barber’s apron, getting his shoulder-length golden hair trimmed.

“I prayed on it,” he announces in his basso voice, “and God told me to take the money.”

Turning from the window where she has watched a child run to claim the partially deflated Jesus balloon, Henna McKenna, fifteen years his junior, tight-twirled black hair bearing her namesake dusky red stripe, long limbed, burnt almond skin spiced with pepper freckles, narrow midnight eyes, sharp nose, lips so pressed their expressions have learned to live at the ends, tosses Samson a twitch of a frown. “Get serious, Sam. God can count that high?”

“The Lord provides, Henna.”

The same Jesus who rode the balloon, flagless but with flowing robes, beautiful bare feet, and gentle eyes, the glow of his halo shading his hair approximately blond, smiles from a life-sized oil painting hung to the right of the senator’s desk. The hairstylist whisks the apron off Samson’s chest and hands him a mirror. Samson spends several seconds admiring his glossy locks while the stylist runs a vacuum cleaner over the carpet beneath the chair. When the noise of the vacuum stops, Samson remembers to fish four one-hundred dollar bills from his wallet. He waves the money over his shoulder. The stylist grabs it, plucks the mirror from Samson’s other hand, and leaves.

“Fifty billion for a presidential campaign?” Henna pushes. “Those stinkers are buying the White House.”She sits in a corner of the couch facing his desk and buffs the spotless leather with the heel of her hand. “We’re crossing a line here, Sam.”

He watches her cross her legs. Black stockings, fine black shoes, black skirt, barely seen hem of a black silk slip.

A muffled tap and the door opens to admit the porcelain face of Creed Ralphson. His crucifix tie tacks dangle as he dips his shoulders. “Ugmm.” He swallows deeply to lower his voice. “The Boil brothers are here, sir.”

Samson smiles at Henna. “Be Christian?”

She folds her arms, her not-quite-too-tight black sleeveless top emphasizing her leanness. “You mean, ‘Be quiet.’”

Standing less erectly than his carriage would naturally hold him, as if to apologize for the considerable amount of space he takes up, Samson consults a mirror on his desk, juts his jaw, extends to his full height and breadth, and whisks a fringe of his hair over his shoulder. Creed ushers in Loyal Boil and Royal Boil.

Loyal’s sloping, hammy shoulders and roly-poly belly render his hand-tailored English suit as ill-fitting as if it came off a Sears rack. A white felt cowboy hat is pushed back to expose the full roundness of his face while covering his bald spot. His brother Royal, slim, waxed, dyed, starched, creased, could turn heads at Buckingham Palace.

“Ahhh, sir,” Creed softly interjects, “there’s ugmm, the vote on the Firearm Security Act this afternoon. The bill is on your desk. I—”

“That big pile?” Samson dismisses. “A bit later, Creed.”

Frownish hooks invade Creed’s beardless face. Henna’s distracted examination of her red-flecked fingernails makes him seethe envy at her as he shuts himself out.

“Congratulations, Senator,” Royal Boil effuses, tucking his silvery necktie inside his tailored suitcoat. “We’re thrilled at the prospect. Thrilled.”

“Whoo-ee, kick ass!” Loyal Boil grabs Samson’s hand. Though he pumps vigorously, his fingers squish like captured mice inside Samson’s grip. 

Leg rocking with an attitude of spike in toe and heel, from her corner of the couch Henna bedevils, “Exactly how’s your think tank spinning this money bath?”

“A grand day for America,” Royal responds, tonally pleasant in the way he’d be to a waiter. “What the Founders intended.” He sweeps a hand lightly over his gray-winged hair.

“The Plato Institute can convince voters to feel good about the Constitution having a price tag?” Henna delves.

“What the Lord intends.” Samson salves the sting of her question with his resonance. “The Puritans. All those pious souls who—”

Loyal Boil hoots, “Damn best chore you ever did, Sam, gettin’ those un-Christian campaign finance laws re-pealed.”

Royal glosses, “Letting free enterprise do the people’s will.”

Henna dissects, “That’s simple to sell.”

Loyal pumps the senator’s handshake again. “Money talks. Whee-ee!”

“And the timing is no doubt divinely ordained,”Royal assesses. “With our President—”

“Bless him and save him,” Samson interjects.

“Bless him and save him,” Royal litanies, “and may God help him find the true way, after that unfortunate incident in the airport bathroom.”

“A deception of Satan, no doubt,” Samson concludes.

“No doubt,” Royal goes on, “but a difficult proposition with the voters, after the President’s long and vigorous support of anti-homosexual legislation. And under the circumstances, his decision to not seek reelection speaks of inspired wisdom.”

“An’ leaves the barn door wide open,” Loyal hisses through clenched teeth.

Realizing they have been continuing their handshake through the conversation and seeing how his grip has caused Loyal to break into a sweat, Samson releases Loyal’s drained-white fingers and downcasts his tender blue eyes almost as modestly as the somewhat muscular and equally blue-eyed Jesus framed on the wall. “Money does the Lord’s work, Loyal.”

Henna thumbs her email gadget, checking messages. “The Lord won’t have room in his pockets.”

“Are you suggesting our donation is excessive, Ms. McKenna?” Royal postures.

“Ain’t no such thing as too much money,” Loyal huffs.

Attacking the tiny keys below the screen, Henna scathes, “Get serious. Boil Oil isn’t quite the last oil company on earth. SkelExx will match you.”

“SkelExx is a publicly traded corporation,” Royal retorts. “Their shareholders will never stand for such a, ah . . . significant political donation to Senator Hardenburger’s campaign.”

Loyal embellishes, “Those boys can’t piss without permission.”

Henna, fixed on her email, argues, “Don’t underestimate our opponents. Hardenburger knows his politics. He’s the frontrunner for the nomination.”

Royal counters, “We’ve analyzed this.”Loyal sneers, “We ain’t got this far by bein’ stupid, girl.”

 Henna narrows her eyes. “Don’t call me—” “Shall we pray?” Samson suggests, and reachesa cross his desk to grasp the hands of Loyal and Royal. His arm nudges a tray piled with papers. The stack teeters. With the tip of her shoe, Henna steadies the paper. The men ogle the quick extension of her leg.

Loyal, continuing to observe as Henna tucks her ankles together, asks, “The heck is that mountain?” “Legislation the Senator is supporting,” Henna says, reexamining her nails.
“Am I?” Samson asks. “Good. Gentlemen, the Firearm Security Act will solve the problems of gun control and Second Amendment freedom forever.

“By how?” Loyal sniffs in the direction of the encyclopedia-sized legislative enactment.
 “By restricting gun ownership to those who are approved by a member of the clergy,” Samson explains.

 “Kinda guns?” Loyal persists.

“Whatever a minister or priest approves.”

 “Automatics, machine guns?”

“As the Lord’s spokesmen deem fit.”

“Grenade launchers?” “Er . . .” Samson hesitates.

“And RPG’s, machine guns,” Henna supplies. “Anything short of artillery.”

Un-allayed, Royal grumbles, “Be a raft of taxes, I bet. Damned IRS bloodsuckers.”

“As a religious function,” elaborates Samson, “the distribution of approved firearms will be tax-free. Gun buyers will be allowed to contribute to the public welfare by donating a deductible voluntary tithe to the church. Shall we pray?” The men bow their heads. Henna rests her nails in her lap and stares at the ceiling.

Eyes shut, face lifted, hair cascading, Samson intones, “Lord father in heaven, we thank you for this day, this opportunity to witness your splendor, this rich blessing to all Americans from your steadfast patriots, Royal Boil and Loyal Boil. For the money they have so generously donated to my campaign—”

“Our damn fifty billion!” Loyal cheers.

“Our modest and appropriate offering,” Royal revises.

“—shine your blessings upon them, dear Savior,” Samson continues. “Return their faith offering a hundredfold, and furnish us the strength to go forth at your bidding.”

“Amen, amen,” from Royal and Loyal.

“Bidding would be the right word,” notes Henna.

Samson keys the intercom. “Creed, my Bi—”

The door opens and Creed bears in Samson’s big white Bible. “Ugmm,” his nervous swallow bringing him out of the high tenor range, “Right here, sir.” Creed’s thumbs reverently avoid the golden cross stamped on the creamy cover.

“Whoo-ee!” Loyal dances on the congressional carpet.

Ignored by the Boils, avoided by Samson, Henna rolls her eyes.

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In front of the Grand National Apostolic Foursquare Cathedral of Federally Approved Evangelical Christian Worship, a knot of swaying, clapping white people chant, “God save America.” They are ignored by black and Mexican workers further up the sidewalk, who are unloading a big old-fashioned steel safe from a flatbed truck. A crane on the back of the truck suspends the safe in midair and lowers it within reach of the hard-hatted movers, who guide it to a dolly. A gleaming silver almost-limousine eases around the truck and parks in a reserved space in front of the GNAFCFAECW. From the back seat, Samson, holding his Bible, unfolds into the sunshine and lets the breeze play his hair. The crowed shortens the chant and raises the volume, shouting “GSA, GSA!”

Samson stumbles on the curb and topples. He stands as quickly as he fell. Creed Ralphson brushes the dust from the knees of the senator’s suit. The chanters maintain their militant rhythm. “GSA! God Save America!” Samson wends through them, at his ease, responding to their fervor, seeming to meet every eye, touch every soul. Hands stretch to clasp his.

“Watch out!” a worker shouts in Mexican-accented English.

The safe, taller than a man, has torn free from its tethers and is rolling on the dolly, hundreds of pounds of steel speeding down the steep sidewalk. Some of the chanters are quick to elbow out of danger. Others freeze. Samson bows his back and lunges at the onrushing safe. His reach is wide enough to embrace it. His feet give back a step, two. “Arrrorahh!” With his roar, his strength holds. Momentum is broken. The huge safe rests motionless in his embrace. Abashed Mexicans wedge blocks against the wheels of the dolly.

Samson releases the safe, straightens, and shakes his head. He still holds his Bible.
“Ugmm, are you all right, Senator?” Creed asks. “You bumped your head.”

Samson accepts the linen handkerchief Creed hands him and presses gingerly at the swelling knot on his forehead.

“Bless you, Senator!” squeals a woman

“Amen! Amen!” rises from all around. “God save America! GSA! GSA! GSA!”

Creed, jostled, widens his grin and squeaks. “Ugmm, they love you, sir.”

“They love God.” Samson, sweat on his brow, presses the flesh of offered hands while he mounts the forty steps of the gleaming church. On a scarlet-carpeted landing between marble columns, he hugs the minister. Camera operators on the roofs of news vans at the fringe of the crowd trail him cycloptically. One of the vans displays a large, ornate cross as its logo.

Creed lifts on his toes to reach Samson’s ear. “Fox, The Bible Channel and LBN, sir.” His voice waivers. “Ugmm. Give them a word?”

“Inside.” Samson tightens his grip on the minister, nearly hugging the man breathless, and smiles for the cameras.

The faithful wait in rows of packed pews receding into a shadowland of third, fourth, and fifth balconies. Smattered with a few faces bearing more age or darker color, the assembly is in the main young, intense, and white. On a carpeted dais before a sparkling crystal altar waits a crystal pulpit with a shelf like a slab of diamond. The slender icicle stand of the pulpit is snaked by the wires of the media rig. When the notably young, intense, and white minister rests his hands on the pulpit, a forty-foot screen behind him blazes to life with a stylized cross which parts to show his face. The digital projecting equipment erases his blemishes, whitens his teeth, and thickens his hair. A choir emerges out of the floor on ascending tiers, two hundred crimson-robed singers voicing a single, swelling note. At a whoosh of the conductor’s baton, the choir is backed by a drummer who lays a rock beat. Electric violins sizzle. Swaying and clapping, the choir vaults an octave.

“Oh, praise him, Oh praise him, Oh praise him, Oh praise him!”

A trim, erect, forty-plus-year-old woman with silver-tipped blonde hair and a pastel suit enters from the wing below the stage and takes a reserved front-row seat. Her smiling, electronically purified face occupies the giant screen. The senator faces the screen and waves at her. She waves back. The pitch of the singing rises again. When the minister lifts his arms, the music stops.

“Blessed sisters and brothers,” the minister begins, “in Lord Jesus’ name we welcome the future commander-in-chief of our Christian soldiers. But first, as we seek the mercy of our Savior’s blessing, we must sow a seed.”

His exhortations prompt a mass of turning and reaching for the donation envelopes packed into trays on the backs of the pews. “Remember the Lord’s promise,” the minister urges into the rustle of pocket digging, licking, and sealing. “Faith offerings will be blessed with a hundredfold return. God wants you to have a better house, a nicer car. God wants you to send your children to college. Worldly debts are as nothing to our divine Lord and Savior, who will multiply your offering with the generosity of his boundless wealth. God loves winners, not whiners. You will have both a mansion on earth and a mansion in heaven.”

Crosses and dollar signs float and intersect on the screen while suited deacons harvest the envelopes, the process consuming less time than a television commercial.

“And now,” excellent acoustics tsunami the minister’s words to the farthest seats, “the man God has anointed to be the next leader of this great nation of believers: Senator . . .”

“Ohhhhhh!” from the chorus, “praise him!” The band and the congregation swing into it, the air rocking, “Oh, praise him! Oh, praise him! Oh praise him, praise him, praise him!” Immediately the dollar signs spin off the screen, replaced by Samson’s digitally enhanced profile. Reverberating, the minister trumpets, “Samson . . .”

The chorus prompts the multitude to respond: “Ohhhh, ohhh, oh praise him!”

“ . . . Whiteside!”

“Ohhhh, ohhh, oh praise him!” Amid a tidal rising of song and clapping, the choir members throw their hips and pump their fists. The amplified music blasts like a hurricane.

Samson lays his Bible on the diamond-clear slab. His elbow bumps a corner. The minister bustles to steady the pulpit before it can crash. The screen erases Samson’s few creases and the bulge left on his forehead by the runaway safe. He raises his hand for quiet; the singing grows louder. There’s a teleprompter built into the pulpit. Yellow-lettered words, the opening of his speech, scroll beneath his Bible. Behind the crimson stage curtains Creed Ralphson hunches in a dim cubicle, where he scans monitors and controls the teleprompter. He keyboards. On the pulpit, Samson sees a message break into his scripted intro: LBN on left. Presenting his profile to the television camera on the left side of the room, he raises his chin. His hair cascades. He lifts his Bible. The congregation cheers .When he lays the Bible back down it is to the side, so he can see the words of his speech clearly as they roll beneath the crystal. “Dearly beloved soldiers of Christ Jesus—”

The faithful escalate past cheering to howling. Samson holds his Bible high while the din subsides. “Dearly beloved soldiers of Christ Jesus, with your support and faith in the word of our Lord  and Savior, we have transformed America!”

“Oh, praise him!”

“In his name, we have banished the Satanic dogma of evolution from our schools.”

“Oh, praise him!”

“We have ended the scourge of abortion, and extended to newly conceived souls the protection of Jesus’ love.”

“Oh, praise him!”

“With your contributions we have driven the sex-ridden secularist movie studios out of business, transformed Hollywood into a family-friendly place, and turned the empty theaters into centers of worship!”

“Amen! Amen! Amen!”

“Our legions of Christian soldiers have carried the Lord’s crusade of democracy and faith ever deeper into the heathen East.”

“Oh, praise him!”

“America has a divinely inspired place in the world. The Lord has given us a mission to save civilization from Islamic terrorism, and our young people have responded heroically.”

“Praise them! Praise them!”

“No one knows better than my beloved wife, Glenda, how our nation has sacrificed for the Lord.” His husk of emotion becomes a swallow, magnified as the screen splits to show the faces of Samson and the pastel woman in the front row. Her smile is strained. A tear, football sized on the video, glistens in the corner of her eye. Applause wells.
Samson overrides it. “But. . . .”

Silence.

“But still the secularists persecute us.”

Indignation. “Yes! Amen!”

“Their last, worst instruments of oppression, the unelected, lifetime appointed, godless federal judges in the lower courts, throwbacks from the days of tax-and-spend, welfare-state, secular government, thwart our attempts to realize the holy vision of our nation’s Puritan founders.”

Anger. “No! Amen! Amen!”

“Yes! Although many were appointed by God-fear-ing, pious, Republican presidents!”
Dismay. “No!”

“But they cling like blind men to outmoded notions. Satan has seized their minds! With their God-hating, judge-made law they taunt us, flaunt us!”

Fury. “Amen!”

“Our Congress votes to display the Ten Commandments in federal courtrooms, but the judges toss this law aside.”

Murmured dismay.

Samson magnified, the screen filled with his face, proclaims, “Our Congress votes to require teachers to lead schoolchildren in prayer for the success of their studies, but the judges smite this law from the books.”

Suppressed outrage, tangible as a rising spirit, expresses itself through the rustling of good clothes against upholstered pew seats.

“Our Congress votes to require airline attendants to lead passengers in prayer for the safety of their flight, but only last week, the judges cast aside this innocent and pious expression of faith!”

Speechlessness.

“Our Congress votes to place the holy cross on the uniforms of our country’s defenders, but the judges tear this law asunder.”

Hushed gasping from the congregation. Glenda retreats quickly out of the arena, her face barely holding a mask of control. Samson squeezes his Bible.

“No! No! God Save America! GSA! GSA!” choruses from the pews.

“These black-robed tongues of Satan bar the full flowering of the theocratic government that must ascend to power before Jesus will return. We are persecuted by the secularists. But, . . .” Samson rests his hand on his Bible, lowers his eyes, and breathes. “But the Lord has answered my prayers. Our dear Savior Christ Jesus in his mercy has shown me the way.”

Backstage at the controls of the teleprompter, Creed panics. These words weren’t in the script. He types rapidly. When Samson opens his eyes, he sees the text on the teleprompter interrupted with Creed’s message: “What, sir?”

Samson slides his Bible over the words. “Yes, the Lord has revealed to me a better way. His blessed inspiration will return our government to its roots, and will end the tyranny of bloated federal domination forever!”

The congregation stirs. “Amen! Amen!”

“We will free our schools, our homes, our minds from the intervention of the courts.”

“Yes! Yes!”

“We will achieve the true balance of church and state our Puritan forefathers intended, where the government assumes its proper place in service to a Christian nation.”

This is becoming a tad complicated for the congregation. Hails of support are indistinct.
“To a land of God, where Jesus himself will descend from the sky and walk bodily amidst us, healing the sick, elevating the poor to prosperity, casting Satan and his followers into the lake of fire, and lifting the righteous into a golden glorious everlasting paradise.”

These simpler images warm the throng. “GSA! GSA!”

“In the place of godless government will rise a reborn world of Christian grace.”

“Yes! Amen!”

“A world where charity is the Lord’s burden.”

“Oh, yes, yes!”

“A world free of pointless regulation, a world where businessmen are guided by their own good conscience and the word of the holy writ.”

Male voices predominate as the congregation shouts, “Amen! Amen! Amen!”

“A world delivered from the devil’s burden of unjust taxation.”

Gladsome shrieks: “Yes, yes, amen!”

“A world where the one true freedom is the freedom to worship Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“Amen!”

“For as we all know, freedom requires religion!”

The choir interludes, “Oh, praise him!”

Samson raises his Bible for quiet. The vast hall anticipates. “And how will the Lord bring this world to his children?” Samson challenges. “How will we remove the misguided hand of government, and conceive a true nation of faith? Jesus Christ, the Lord God, our merciful Savior, who sits at the right hand of the father and blesses us always, has shown me the way! With his power in our hands like the avenging sword of an archangel, we will end, trample, and destroy, completely, absolutely, and forever, the federal . . . income . . . tax!”

Pandemonium. The faithful clap, shout, dance in the aisles, kneel and raise tear-streaked faces to heaven. The dollar signs return to the big screen, superimposed over Samson’s confidently smiling face, and begin to jump, wriggle, and spin. Backstage, Creed frantically pounds his earphones on the teleprompter console. Samson spreads his arms. His accidental bump totters the pulpit. This time the minister is too slow. The crystal stand topples and shatters, its sundered microphone connection emitting a death shriek. Samson doesn’t seem to notice. He stands with his chin lifted and his hair thrown back, his square-toothed, electronically whitened smile spread on the screen, while in the vast cavern of faith the celebration swells.

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