Dear friends! God’s peace be upon you, Hallelujah and Hosanna.” Hitman Anders initiated the meeting in the prison visiting room.
They hardly recognized him. He looked hale and hearty, and his entire face was practically overgrown. The explanation for this last bit was that the priest had once taught him that, according to the Old Testament, one must not shave one’s face. He did not remember exactly how those words had gone, and he hadn’t been able to find them on his own, even though he’d looked, but he trusted his dear friend.
“Leviticus nineteen,” the priest said automatically. “‘You shall not eat anything with its blood. You shall not practice augury or witchcraft. You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard. You shall not make any gashes in your flesh for the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord.’”
“Oh, right, that was it,” said the former pastor, scratching his beard. “It’s tough to do anything about the tattoos, but Jesus and I have worked through that and put it behind us.”
Hitman Anders was thriving like a fish in water. He held Bible study groups three times a week and had snared at least three disciples, plus just as many who were wavering. His efforts had gone awry only once, and that was when he had tried to start everyone saying grace in the cafeteria, at which the cook, who was in for life, was struck by a fit of rage and started a brawl. The man who had happened to be standing closest to him in the food line when it all began was a small foreigner whom everyone called ‘Chatterbox’ because he never said anything (mainly because he didn’t have anything to say in any language other than the one he and no one else understood). The cook thrust a broken bottle into the neck of Chatterbox, who actually said, “Ouch!” in Swedish, the last word he uttered in this life.
The guy with the bottle got his sentence extended by another lifetime for that. And he was downgraded to dishwasher.
One or double life sentences, it was all the same to Hitman Anders (although it might have been a fate worse than death to stand there washing plates for two whole lives in a row). Instead, he was eager to tell them that, although he had weaned himself off communion in the time he’d been locked up, his relationship with Jesus had suffered no ill effects. Now, the priest and the receptionist must not be offended, but Hitman Anders had discovered, during his Bible studies, that the two of them may have misunderstood a thing or two about communion. Just because a person turned to Jesus didn’t mean that he had to down one or several bottles of wine each day. If they liked, he could explain in greater detail?
“No, thanks,” said the priest. “On the whole, I think I understand.”
Well, they could always come back to it at a later date. The long and the short of it was that the cook, who would now have to wash plates every day until he’d died twice, served only milk and lingonberry juice, in accordance with the current prison regulations. Since none of the prisoners really got going on either milk or lingonberry juice, a smuggling operation brought in large amounts of the kind of stuff Hitman Anders hadn’t downed in several years and would never go back to.
“Like what?” the priest wondered.
“Rohypnol and terrible stuff like that,” said Hitman Anders. “Nothing used to make me as crazy as Rohypnol along with a little liquor would. That was a long time ago now, thank the Lord.”
The only cloud in his bright blue sky was that the Prison Service had discovered what a shining example of a good prisoner he was, and they had forged a plan behind his back to give him early release.
“Early release?” said the receptionist.
“In two months,” said Hitman Anders. “And barely even that. What will happen to all my Bible students then? And to me? I’m absolutely beside myself with worry.”
“But that’s fantastic news,” said the receptionist, in a tone so genuine that the priest was shocked. “Let us come and pick you up on the day you’re freed. I think I have a job for you,” he said, to the priest’s double shock.
“God be with us!” said Hitman Anders.
The priest said nothing. She had lost the ability to speak.
* * *
Per Persson had, during the present meeting, noticed something that had not occurred to the priest. Thanks to Leviticus 19:27–28, Hitman Anders had transformed himself into an exact copy of Santa Claus. All they would have to do was groom his tousled hair and put a more Santa-like pair of glasses on him. The beard was real, of course, and it was just the perfect shade of white.
The receptionist took this as a sign from . . . someone . . . and one instant later, the Santa Concept came to him. It was as though a higher power had been involved, if only he hadn’t known beyond all shadow of a doubt that no higher power, no matter how high, would ever lift a finger to help either him or his priest.