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Our neighborhood in East Birmingham is a bunch of nothing but some squooshed together little houses. We got white blight and black blight both: equal opportunity poverty.
 And now the Mexicans is moving up here to share our blight, which I suppose to them isn't so bad. I'm sitting on the front porch not a month ago and up the street comes an El Camino stuffed with moving boxes. Out gets these two guys. They move the boxes into the house right next door without saying a word. One guy gets back in the truck and leaves; the other one stays.
He's been there a month, and he's quiet. But this here's the issue: he doesn't have a job. Oh, people come in all the time, but he never goes out, not on any regular schedule.
So last Saturday, me and Roy and Cletus and May was sitting on my porch, surveying the blight and drinking iced tea like we do most Saturdays. Roy, Cletus, and May want to call the police on him, except he hasn't done a thing but be a Mexican. I know they all consider themselves to be good Christians, though not a one, including me, makes it to church regular. So I say: "What would Jesus do?" They all look up at me, and May's got her mouth open. I've got their attention.
Then I say, "What if he's Jesus, come back? Jesus had dark skin." Cletus just about choked on his tea and says, "He did not; he was white." I took a guess on the geography and said, "Well, Israel is over there near Africa." Of course, they all denied it. Like they know where Israel is.
Cletus and May got up to go and said they couldn't stay for dominoes. Roy looked like he wanted to go off with them. He waited until they was good and gone and then he lays into me.
"Hay-soos, you moron. His name is probably Hay-soos, and Jesus didn't speak Spanish." I didn't tell him that Jesus could have spoke any language he took a notion to because right then Hay-soos comes onto his little porch with a girl. The girl is wearing a tank-top and no brassiere, and they are both drinking Budweisers like they are going out of style, which maybe they are, I wouldn't know. Roy goes on into the house.
The next day I decide it's high time we started going back to church. We're getting out the car after the service, and I notice that the front door to our house is wide open. Then I see the little snot-nosed twins from across the street, holding hands and skipping in a circle in front of our house singing, "Jesus done stole your TV! Jesus done stole your TV!"
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