I Am The Local Atheist (17 page)

And I remembered hearing a voice. “
David!
”

I turned away
from the screen and saw Mum standing in my doorway. She was wearing
a low-cut floral dress with sneakers on her feet. The shoelaces
were undone. Her hair looked scraggly and unattractive. “I need to
borrow some money.”

“
What?”

“
Some money.”

“
Okay, sure.”

“
Really?”

“
Yeah, I wasn’t doing anything, just…” I turned back to the
screen trying to remember just exactly what I was doing.

“
Eyeballing the monitor?”

“
Yeah, that’s it.” I turned in my chair as Mum came closer,
somewhat shyly, a frown dampening her face as she glanced around
the room trying not to look me in the eyes. I grabbed my wallet off
the end of the bed. “Is everything alright?”

“
Yeah, its end of the month and the bills kinda sapped
me.”

“
How much you want?”

“
Just forty bucks – that’s all.”

It was alcohol
money. I wished I hadn’t been stoned, I probably could have said
something, but it was hard enough trying to navigate my fingers
through the compartments of the wallet to get the money out, and
then to find the resources of energy just to pass it over to
her.

When the money entered her hand, she folded it and tucked it
into her bra.
Maybe it isn’t alcohol
money, haha… She certainly has solid breasts, no doubt about that.
And smooth skin
. I remembered smooth skin.
It was always in my mind, something that lingered there; smooth to
touch, accompanied by a young voice and a body that would roll away
laughing every time I tried to smother her in my arms…

“
David!”

I blinked
wondering how long I had been staring at her breasts for.
“Yeah?”

“
Snap out of it! For crying out loud.” She turned to the
computer, frustrated more than angry. “I wish you wouldn’t play
those games so much. What happened to the volunteer work? Did you
even try it? I bet you didn’t. I bet you just gave up and went back
to playing video games.”

I could swear
she was about to burst into tears.

“
No Mum, I did try some volunteer work. It was good. Some of it
made me happy.”

“
Only some of it? You used to love volunteering at your
church.”

It’s true. But
I was getting a wage for what I did with the youth group. That was
the difference. There was something else that counted towards any
volunteer work I did on the side. “I guess some of it wasn’t making
me happy. And I just felt like it wasn’t serving any purpose,
anything worthwhile.”

I
instinctively gazed back at the computer screen, almost as though
the happiness I found there had some kind of purpose, some kind of
fulfilment that was out-playing anything else I had been involved
in.

She looked
like she wanted to say something else, but just turned away looking
vaguely disappointed.

I sat down on
the corner of my bed as she left the room. Tinsdale called after
her from the kitchen to feel free to call in any time her son
wasn’t here, but she told him to fuck off and get a life. Her car
started up and she was backing with sudden urgency down the
driveway, skidding onto the road and revving all the way down the
street.

I fell back
onto the bed remembering what it was like to touch skin that felt
so perfect. It felt awesome! The memory made me smile, and then my
body began to glow as the high returned again to envelop me. I felt
all the vibrations of the world pulse through me and bring
happiness all over again as I relived and rejoiced in all I had
once had; smiling like everything was just so fantastic, even
though it was all gone, all gone… but none of that mattered now
because I was so happy.

So…

So…

happy!

Part III

–
The mission
–

It was a cold, cloudy night with an occasional light shower of
rain – annoying but not particularly off-putting. One of the
Ghost Recon
missions had
rain throughout the entire thing, and other than the sound of rain
constantly hitting the ground, all it did was add to the atmosphere
as enemy soldiers quickly came over the horizon and there was a mad
rush to get all troops behind the leftover walls of a house that
had been blown to bits. I looked out the window of my car as rain
clouds scattered themselves across a starless night. No enemy were
advancing across the paddock …at this stage.

Lucas wasn’t
particularly impressed. “Can you feel the chill in the air?”

“
Yip.”

He lit a
cigarette and blew out the window. “Can I ask you a question?”

“
Sure.”

He paused
while sucking on the cigarette. “Do you think Christie likes
me?”

“
Definitely.”

“
You seem pretty sure.”

“
Definitely.”

“
How do you know?”

“
Christie made comments at Charge Up and it wasn’t hard to
construe what she meant by them.”

He looked at
me.

“
In fact it was blatantly obvious.”

“
Shit. She’ll be gutted when she finds out that I’m not a
Christian.”

I was tempted
to say something, but didn’t really want to talk about this with
him. I was trying hard to stay focussed on the mission.

“
I kind of didn’t want to give her the wrong idea, but she’s so
likable and easy to get along with.”

From where we
had parked the car I could just make out the lights that shone over
the dumpster at the bakery. “Yeah, she is easy to get along with.
I’d certainly do her. It’s one-forty, shall we get on our way.”

“
Yeah bro, lets do it.”

We got out and
grabbed our shoulder bags from the back seats. As we closed the
doors and started climbing the fence into the paddock, I started
wondering why he had said that he ‘didn’t want to give her the
wrong idea’ if he had such little concern about others and only
cared about himself.

The grass in the paddock was slippery but neither of us fell
over as we landed. I kept my head low like a member of the
1
^st
Armoured Division, pretending I had camouflage paint on my
face and canteens of water at my side. We hadn’t managed to get any
camouflage pants but I was practically wearing those in my mind
since we had first talked about it, so it didn’t really matter
whether I had them or not.

We made it to
a ditch where I motioned Lucas to take cover with me so I could
suss out the rest of the way to the bakery fence where the hole
was. Lucas sat down with his back leaning against the ditch while
looking up into the cloudy night. I thought this would be as good a
place as any to do a quick save…

“
Lets pretend for a moment that I did go out with Christie. I
mean it’s not like we couldn’t just hang out as friends or
something.”

“
I don’t get why you consider it such a big deal if you’d only
be doing it for yourself. It’s not like the end result would matter
if you got what you wanted out of it.”

“
That’s like saying I could just rape her if sex was all I
wanted.”

It disturbed
me that he could make a remark like that so casually. “Well why
don’t you then?”

“
Because I don’t want to hurt her. And I’d definitely end up in
prison, and prison isn’t somewhere that I want to be. In fact,
having her as a friend would enhance who
I
am
as a person more than prison would,
because the hard fact of the matter is that I feel good around her,
and actually feel like I can still be myself without having to
defend who I am, or fight for who I am. Y’ know? I mean that’s
something that inmates don’t have the luxury of; they are always
trying to humiliate others, or the weaker ones are trying not to be
humiliated so they can earn respect. In prison, that may keep you
alive, but I have no desire to pursue those ends for myself, so
will do all I can to keep myself out of prison.”

Lucas had been
right about there being a hole in the fence that lined the bakery.
It looked pretty big and secluded and from where we were positioned
there was no way anyone could see us as we crossed the rest of the
paddock.

“
Alright Lucas, take her out on a date then.”

“
Nah I don’t wanna.”

I shook my
head. “Well, y’ know she ain’t gonna have sex before marriage, so
you’re shit out of luck if that’s all you wanted.”

“
You might be right. But sex isn’t all I want from
her.”

I was at a
complete loss as to what train of thought he was on – I felt like
mine was doing a specific mission while trying to keep radio
contact with his, which was travelling down some out-of-the-way
train tracks that were nowhere near mine. “Can we just focus on the
dumpster for now Lucas? If y’ wanna talk about it later, then I’ll
be more than glad to sit down with you and discuss it, but right
now, I just wanna do what we came here to do.”

I could see
the outline of his head nodding. But then something occurred to me
and I said, “You could always convert to Christianity”.

“
Alright,” he said turning around quickly. “What’s happening
here? No lights, no one at the dumpster; looks all
clear.”

“
No Jim either.”

“
He’ll be somewhere. He hardly does any work at about this
time.”

I began
crawling out of the ditch on my elbows, trying to keep my ass as
low as possible while moving my legs stealthily like an insect
stalking its prey, only I was trying to avoid being the prey of
snipers who could be posted anywhere in this vicinity that we had
been commanded to investigate.

“
What’re you doing?”

“
What?” I looked back at Lucas’s shadowy outline standing
against the clouds behind him.

“
It’s pitch black out here for fucks sake. Just walk over to
the fence, no one will see you.”

I looked over
at the fence realising that it probably was safe enough so I got up
but stayed in stealth mode with my back bent low and made my way
over to the fence. Lucas casually came up from behind and held the
hole open for me, motioning me through with a curt hand gesture and
a smile.

We snuck through and around the edge of the fence, sneaking in
behind a couple of vans, weaving our way past some barrels and
piles of crates, until we came up alongside the building and
kneeled down behind it, peaking out from the corner. The coast was
clear – no enemy troops, no sign of odd movements in bushes or
overhead cameras. I couldn’t believe our luck. We had made it this
far without being captured and were on our way to completing the
mission with all present company still in the ranks alive and
breathing.
Brilliant
.
I’ll make Lieutenant Colonel
yet.

“
Right,” I said. “What now?”

“
See those barrels ahead?”

Straight down
the wall near the entrance to the factory a few barrels were lined
up against each other and stuck out a little from the wall.
“Yes.”

“
We’ll sneak up behind them and wait there for Jim.”

We kept close
contact with the wall so the light that shone onto the driveway was
nowhere near us. The barrels smelt of oil stains and rust. We knelt
down behind them and in the shadow of a corrugated awning that hung
overhead. The barrels looked like they had been sitting around in
the rain forever. Rust covered outsides that could be pierced with
a bullet without much effort. “What the hell are these for?”

“
Dunno. This part of the building is mechanic building. I
thought all mechanics had random oil barrels lying around rusting
in the rain. Just one of those things.”

“
Right.” It concerned me that we were sitting behind barrels
that were flammable. All sorts of potentially deadly scenarios were
beginning to run through my mind:
What if
there was a sniper in a tree somewhere that we had sneaked past but
had now spotted us? One hot flare gun aimed at the barrels would be
the end of this mission, and I hadn’t saved the game over in the
trenches which would mean that I would have to start the whole
thing all over again. What if there were tripwires set up to
explode the barrels and we had unknowingly walked into the perfect
trap that only had to wait for us to make our next move? Shit, we
really hadn’t thought this one all the way through at all.
My promotion to Lieutenant Colonel was slowly
slipping away from me.

I heard the
sound of a cigarette lighter being struck. I turned my head to see
Lucas with a cigarette in his mouth and a flame burning at the end
of it. His eyes glanced towards me. “What?”

I sighed and
turned back to the mission trying to stay focussed on priorities.
Directly in front of us was the rubbish bin. It was filled with
pastry and all sorts of factory rubbish – empty cans, plastic bags,
steel rods – all poking into each other and not making such a
pretty sight for picking at. All of a sudden I wasn’t so keen on
getting anything that had been dumped in there.

Voices could
be heard from the entrance. Two men pushing rubbish trolleys came
out of the building and stopped in front of the bins. They both
began heaving the pastry and food into the bin. By what little
light there was I could see a stack of jam tarts and other assorted
items at the bottom of one trolley. They looked good to go and all
of a sudden it seemed like such a waste to be throwing them out,
especially when there were so many starving students in the
world.