Once a month, Wednesday assembly put on a barn-burner. One week it was a screening of “Black Ice, White Lines,” about a bunch of high school seniors who did cocaine at parties (“flying high on the Devil’s dust,” the narrator intoned) and then drove home and hit a patch of black ice that sent them straight to hell.
There was the day the assistant football coach from the Citadel came and described in vivid detail the Passion of Christ, lingering over every wound in nauseating technical detail. There was a kid with no arms who played trumpet with his feet. But this? This was something truly special. Throughout the entire student body, not a single pair of pants was dry.
Elijah, the second-youngest brother, took center stage.
“Sometimes,” he said, “when I’m shifting steel and sweating blood and I don’t think I’m going to make the clean and jerk, or when I’m stuck on the hang and can’t get the snatch, suddenly I’ll feel lighter, like someone has taken my load. And that’s when I look up and I say, ‘That was you, God. Thank you! Thank you for taking my load!’”
People were laughing so hard, they thought they’d never return to normal. Father Morgan sat in the front row, looking up at the massive bodybuilders, all gleaming and glistening in the spotlights, with his mouth hanging open in awe. Major looked unreadable. The Lemon Brothers seemed to think the laughter meant they were on the right track.
Isaiah, the ringleader and MC, pointed to two enormous notched wooden beams leaning against the massive blank stage wall, one much shorter than the other. Jonah and Micah, his other brothers, heaved up the longer beam and brought it center stage.
“We want to invite any volunteers to come move this burden,” Isaiah said, a smile breaking out across his mustached face. “Can you guys lift this lumber? Can you shift this weight? What about you? Young lady, would you like to try?”
Everyone laughed as Gretchen flexed her muscles in the audience.
Isaiah laughed and flexed his own back at her. Then he pointed next to her.
“How about you? You look strong?”
He was pointing at Wallace Stoney. No one wanted to get onstage and be embarrassed, but Wallace was too arrogant to refuse. He stood up and said something that Abby couldn’t hear.
“You can bring people, sure,” Isaiah said. “The more the merrier. Don’t be shy.”
Wallace said something fast to Gretchen, then he grabbed Nuke Zuckerman and the two Bailey brothers to go onstage with him. They were a big chunk of the football team’s offensive line, and school pride swept the auditorium. The football players clapped for them first, and then everyone else joined in, eager to see these corny Christians get their challenge shoved back in their faces by the pride of Albemarle. Maybe these guys couldn’t win a football game, but they were certainly able to pick up heavy things.
“Now come to the center,” Isaiah said, leading them to the larger wooden beam. It was about fifteen feet long. “Can you lift this? Let me see some muscle. Show us your muscle.”
The four boys struck exaggerated bodybuilding poses and the Lemon Brothers clapped for them.
“Now let’s see you lift,” Isaiah said. “Or are those just show muscles?”
Wallace bossed the other football players into position. He bent over one end of the log, with Nuke at the other and the Baileys in the center. On his count, they strained and managed to lift the chunk of wood to shoulder height. Faces reddening, arms shaking, they pushed and raised it over their heads. Major looked nervous, probably thinking of liability issues, but Isaiah was ecstatic.
“Give them a big round of applause,” he cued the crowd. “But now, let’s see the real challenge. Lift that . . . and this.”
Micah and Jonah heaved the shorter beam off the back wall and brought it center stage, where they lowered it with a loud bang. It was only a third the length.
“Can we put this one down?” Wallace asked.
Isaiah made a “whatever works” gesture, and the football players dropped the long heavy log with a boom and began strategizing. First they tried to lift both beams at once, then they stacked them, piled them on top of each other, tried to balance them, but they couldn’t make it work. Wallace was getting angrier and angrier. Finally, when it was clear they weren’t getting anywhere, Isaiah intervened.
“That’s okay,” he said. “You tried.”
Isaiah laid a hand on Wallace’s shoulder, but Wallace flicked it off. He and his football buddies started to walk offstage angrily, but Isaiah planted himself in front of them.
“I’ve never seen volunteers raise it chest-high before, so another round of applause for these fine young men,” he said as the audience obliged. “Wait here, don’t go anywhere. What would you say if I said my brother can pick up both these logs all by himself?”
He held out the mic.
“I’d say you were lying,” Wallace replied.
Isaiah cued his brothers, and Christian, the youngest one with the biggest muscles, walked over to the two massive pieces of lumber. He dragged the short one to the top of the long one and dropped it into place, locking the notches. Then he bent his knees, lifted the end of the longer beam, arms shaking, face red, neck corded, and he ducked underneath. Balancing it on his back, he lifted both logs at once. Notched together, they formed an enormous cross. Face sweating, Christian shifted his grip and the rear of the cross swung wildly, almost taking out the back wall of the auditorium; but then he had it and was pressing up and up and up. The cross was over his head. Slowly, he spun in a circle, his brothers ducking so they wouldn’t get decapitated. The crowd went wild. Christian held the massive cross for two seconds before bending his elbows.
“Hup!” he cried, and his four brothers came and took the weight.
More applause.
“With the power of the cross,” Christian crowed into his brother’s microphone, breathing hard, “everything is possible.”
He struck a bodybuilding pose, flexing his sculpted shoulders under his mesh tank top. Next, Jonah, who walked with a limp, placed a watermelon on a table.
With one blow, Christian shattered it with a fist.
“These are the problems that afflict this world,” Christian said as the melon exploded into a shower of pink pulp. Jonah threw him two grapefruits. “Life may be tough, but my God is tougher.”
Christian squeezed the fruits to dripping pulp with his bare hands. The show was moving into a final frenzy.
“These are the demons that haunt this world, destroyed through the faith and power that sustain me!”
“Wow,” Dereck White muttered, sitting behind Abby. “If any rogue citrus attacks, he’s got it covered.”
The kids in the Environmental Awareness Club sitting on either side of him giggled. Onstage, Jonah picked up a stack of CDs.
“What do you think we’re going to do with these?” he called, striding to the lip of the stage. “You want us to throw them out to you guys? We’ve got some Slayer, some Megadeth, some Anthrax. Does anyone want some Anthrax?”
Ironic cheering rose up around the auditorium, and Jonah stacked the CDs and squeezed them like an accordion. His massive chest muscles bounced as the stack exploded into shards of plastic.
“That’s what we think of explicit lyrics!” he shouted. “That’s what we think of backward masking!”
Behind him, Micah was bringing out a cinderblock and placing it in front of Christian.
“See what the Lord has given me!” Christian cried, shredding his mesh tank top and exposing his gleaming muscles.
“Take it off!” someone shouted.
“I do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” Christian said.
His four brothers bowed their heads around the stage and began to pray, hands clasped and pressed to their foreheads, lips moving.
“I see this demon-haunted world,” Christian said, flexing his enormous muscles behind the cinderblock. “I see shapes and shadows moving through it. The demon of anger, the demon of sloth, the demon of not respecting your parents, the demon of heavy-
metal music, the demon of not keeping your promises.”