The Fall of Motorcycle Jesus

Every town has its colorful religious zealot, to describe them politely, that Bible-beating brother or sister who takes religion a little more seriously than us folks of ordinary faith. We have two here in Swampton County, where the churches outnumber the homes and liquor stores two to one.

Well, we did, until that God-awful, tragic accident.

The local townsfolk call him the “Cray-Cray Crier,” and he is that eccentric little dude that hangs out preaching on street corners and roadsides while passing out religious pamphlets and flyers proclaiming, “Judgement Day is at Hand!” and “Repent, Sinner, or Burn!”  or “Use Sunscreen: Hell Fire Ahead!”

If you come to Swampton you can’t miss him: Cray-Cray’s moped has large decals that say “Damnation” in bright, fiery-red letters. (He operates a moped because the county took his vehicle license after the third time he kidnapped a school bus full of children and drove them down to the river for some kind of weird, forced baptism ritual.)

And you probably already know the man they call Motorcycle Jesus, who found religion late in life. Old MJ claims he saw God while under anesthesia for a heart catheterization and a hemorrhoid bypass in the same operation, and became a saved man, giving up all his drinking and drugging and most of his whoring.

After he recovered from that life-altering health scare, MJ went out and bought a Harley and mounted a large wooden cross on the back of that “hawg” that bears the word “Salvation” all in glittery gold letters. He then purchased a bedazzled, bell-bottomed white jumpsuit from a retired Elvis impersonator, and now he is quite the curious spectacle as he roars around Swampton looking like a jazzed-up, evil-fighting Evel Knievel, riding from tent revivals and Bible studies to church dinners-on-the-ground, where it’s all the fried chicken and green bean casseroles you can eat and hot-blooded, blue-haired widow women everywhere.