I Am The Local Atheist (23 page)

“
Mrs.
Stewart would be shocked to know that Callasandra was displaying
the painting with her contributions preserved.”

“
Or she might be interested, Dean. Or
she might be happy to be an active participant in art. Either way,
her reaction means nothing, only that there is a new piece of
artwork in existence, and only insofar as her original reaction has
helped identify it, and, if you will, ‘christen’ it. Callansandra
has a new work to display – a work that I believe is
worth
continuing to
display. What more could you ask for?”

A chance for all of
this to never have happened.

Lucas took his cell
phone out of his pocket and txted Callasandra that he was at her
flat.

I couldn’t imagine how
I would feel when Callasandra turned up if I was already on the
verge of bringing back up my entire day’s intake of food and
coffee. It was bad enough having to stand around listening to Dean
and Lucas talk about the painting and how it came into existence,
and how my actions a year and a half ago had such consequences for
another human being. Lucas made it sound all so rebirthy, and high
and mighty, like what had happened to her was a chance to become
somehow bigger and greater than she was. It was crazy. I felt sick
knowing that when I spoke out everything had been taken away from
me and then, finally, come back around to stab me in the back.

A step forward?

It just didn’t work
like that.

Lucas was
wrong
.

A terrible shiver
crept over my shoulders and down my spine. I felt cold, but I
desperately needed the fresh air that was beginning to thrash
against the windows outside.

“
Hey
guys, I’m a bit beat. Not used to all the early morning rising for
this job I’ve started. Probably what’s making me feel a little out
of it. Gonna take off. Thanks for the coffee Dean. I’ll catch up
with you laters.”

Dean nodded. “Cool
dude. Good to meet ya.”

“
Txt me,” Lucas said as I walked into
the hall. “We’ll meet up at
The Fraterniser
tomorrow or the next day.”

“
Sounds good,” I replied without
bothering to look at him while moving out of the room. I headed for
the door, dropping the coffee mug on the breakfast bench on the way
out. Down the stairs I went
,
taking each step blindly, and nearly slipping several
times; hitting the door to outside with full force, and finding
some kind of security in the wet and windy streets.

I hadn’t noticed the
rain start while I was upstairs, but it was a large breath of cold
fresh air washing over me, and I opened myself to it; let it pour
down my face, slide off my jacket and stream across my hands;
falling their wasteful drops to developing puddles at my feet.

The clouds above
remembered like it was yesterday.

It took some time to cool off, to try to
forget, to try to
remember
to forget. To try to remind myself of why I was seeking
something outside of the church in the first place.

Maybe it was, like Mum
had said, to put myself in other people’s shoes, to stop thinking
about myself. Admittedly, during my time at Youth Group, I was
still only just coming out of my teens; a young man, with little
actual ‘worldly’ experience, just some kind of understanding about
family and ‘lifestyle’ choices that I and the other teenagers
younger than me had been experiencing. That had been enough
then.

It wasn’t enough now.
I wasn’t even sure what I believed in anymore.

I tried to pull the
jacket in closer to my skin as I crossed the road, remembering when
life was nothing more than a wet pavement beneath me, but lately my
eyes had carried their gaze to at least shoulder height as though
there was more to the world than just looking down and expecting
the gaping hole of Hell to open up beneath and swallow me.

But I had fooled
myself.

Hell was still there
trying to take me down into it’s darkest depths, but I was
wondering if I even cared. I was practically ready to embrace
whatever this godless world was going to throw at me.

Rickerton had refused to allow me to
continue being in charge of youth group because of
his
petty morals, not
because of anything that I had done as a consequence of my
lifestyle. The man who had asked me to ‘have a go’ at it in the
first place as well!

So what if I had burnt
a piece of wood with a statue on it?

So what if I had
offended other people’s sensibilities?

Everybody knew I
didn’t think much of symbols. It shouldn’t have come as a
surprise.

“…
it’s not like you wouldn’t expect
something like that to happen if you were taking such a strong
stance against it. I mean to not be prepared for that kind of
retaliation
…”

How come no one was
willing to level that same criticism at Rickerton?

I combed the rain out
of my hair with my fingers, trying to brush my thoughts away with
it.

I no longer felt connected to the church –
certainly not
that
church. Work offered something different, but I was still
trying to figure out what that different was. Was it the fight with
Satan that I had wanted? It felt like it.

And it felt like I was losing.
How could I have
even thought that I might win?

The rain tapered off
but the clouds remained. My feet gently splashed each other in
their playful steps. I didn’t really know where I was going. I was
just going in an attempt to get away.

But my feet took me past windows that
constantly reminded me of the lives that other people were living:
shop assistants trying desperately to please their customers with
fake smiles and empathetic gestures, coffee baristas steaming hot
coffees for multitudes of different people, mannequin dressers
smiling as I walked past, bankers and buskers, the hopeless and the
hopeful. Were these people all doing these jobs for themselves?
They had to be. This is why I couldn’t do the volunteer work. It
wasn’t for
me
.
It hadn’t meant anything to me, not like the way it had to
Lucas.

I passed the theatre
where someone was attaching new posters to the outside boards. He
didn’t look particularly enthusiastic about what he was doing.

If I was going to do
something for myself, I had to do something for someone else – but
it had to be someone that actually meant something to me. Something
more than just “because children are worth it.”

I
knew
they were worth it, but it was hard to believe in
that knowledge as a force that would continue driving me forward.
Where once God had been enough, with His disappearance I no longer
had anything that could keep me going.

I rounded the corner
and crossed the road, passing the tinted windows of the government
buildings and heading further down Tay Street.

My feet had brought me
to behind the building with no cross outside, just the name out
front. I stood there for a while deciding whether or not to go in
while slight rays of sunshine tried to crack their way through the
thinning clouds, but without much luck.

I didn’t want to talk
to anyone inside. Just wanted to sneak in, get what I needed, and
sneak out again.

I casually walked
around the side of the building, peering sneakily through the
windows, reliving – to some extent – my pixelated SAS days. The
foyer looked deserted. Hopefully I’d be able to get the leaflet
without anyone seeing me.

My shoes squelched
against the wet gravel that I walked over. I raised myself on
tiptoe to decrease the sound until I hit the concrete and made it
to the double doors with as little noise as possible. There was
still no one in sight, so I gently opened the swing doors and crept
across the foyer to the rack of leaflets on the wall near Alice and
Christie’s office. Their door was slightly ajar. Keeping an eye on
it I reached my hand up for the Bridge Programme leaflet and lifted
it out of the pocket that held it.

“
Hey
David!”

I jumped – “What the?”
– and turned around.

Christie looked
mightily pleased with herself about giving me such a fright. She
had come into the foyer through the hall doors.

I held the leaflet in
my hand, shaking slightly.

“
How
are things going?”

“
Good. Thanks. Christie. Decided to do some physical work. Paid
work. To help pay the bills. Cause they need payin’. Y’know.” I
needed to calm down. I smiled.

“
Gotta be done, eh?”

“
Yeah.”

“
You
know, since you’ve already had a taste of Charge Up, you could
think about doing it with me permanently. I’m sure The Salvation
Army would be willing to give you some payment for it, especially
if you’re officially employed as a staff member. Alice is looking
to pass it on to me completely, which I’m totally keen about, but
if she goes on to do other stuff, then I’m definitely going to need
some help. What about it?”

“
I’ll
think about it. What about Lucas?”

“
Lucas has been pretty adamant about not involving himself any
deeper with The Salvation Army, I mean, in terms of being paid for
what he does anyway. Which I find extremely honourable. I can’t
believe how generous he is sometimes. But I also get the feeling
that he can’t commit on a regular basis. Which is a pity, but I
guess, you’re in the same boat – gotta go where the money is,
right?”

“
Yeah, right.” I smiled.

“
I’ll
leave that with you anyway. I know that the kids like you, and
Alice has spoken well of you, so there you go.” She smiled. “Well
you know you’re welcome anyway. Feel free to come along any time
you can.”

“
Thanks.” I instinctively started putting the leaflet back on
the rack.

“
Please David. Keep it.”

I looked at the
leaflet as my hand retreated back to me, eyes looking at the words
‘Drug and Alcohol Addiction’. My hands started shaking again. “It’s
not me.”

She nodded politely, a
gentle blink. “I know.” Christie started moving around me, heading
towards her office. “You must come to a Sunday service some time.
If only to make up numbers. Seriously, around here it feels like
young people are a dying race and the oldies are repopulating the
place.” She threw her head back and laughed as she went through the
doors to her office – “Hey Alice, we were just talking about you.”
– and closed them firmly behind her.

I looked down at the
leaflet, folded it and put it into a pocket.

I decided to walk to
Mum’s knowing that if I waited any longer I might never get around
to it at all.

The car wasn’t in the
drive. Peering through the windows I saw nothing but decided to go
in anyway and scout around. The faint smell of whiskey blew over
me, but didn’t seem so bad today as it had other days. The kitchen
floor was absent of Mum’s sprawled out body – an image I always
found hard to forget when walking in through the back door.

The rest of the house
was clear, and pretty vacant as far as bottles were concerned.
Maybe things weren’t so bad, or maybe she had decided to go
somewhere else instead.

I decided to call the
local pub. “Yeah, hey, this is David.”

“
Who?”

I sighed. “
David
. Is Mum around?”

“
Oh,
hey David. Yeah, your Mum’s sitting at one of the
pokies.”

“
Is
she drinking?”

“
Umm
no. Apparently she came in, sat down and started playing the slot
machines instead.”

“
Okay. Thanks.”

“
Want
me to txt ya if she starts drinking?”

“
Yeah
that’ll be cool.”

“
I
reckon she might be doing one of her resisting the temptation
things. She’s doing pretty well David.”

“
Thanks.”

I hung up the phone
and felt for the leaflet in my pocket, wondering if I should take
it out and place it on the bench, or near the phone. I put it near
the phone.

Part VII

–
Another life
–

We were
sitting at the Fraterniser again, drinking casually by the open
window. Lucas seemed far less talkative than he usually was. I had
nothing to say – the gusts of wind that blew down the main street
seemed to say it all.

It had been at
least two weeks since the last time I saw Lisa. It felt longer, but
work was doing a good job of erasing whatever thoughts popped up
every now and then. In some ways I didn’t care – I was sick of her
asking questions about church and stuff that had happened there; in
other ways I did – I missed having someone take an interest in me,
or at least someone who was female. For a year and a half it had
just been one Work and Income employee and now it was just one male
friend, and the only other female that had shown any interest was
showing much more interest in him.

“
So how’s things been going with you and Christie?”

Lucas swirled
the foam at the bottom of his glass, smiling at a thought.
“Good.”

“
That all?”

“
Uhh, y’know, nothing special, just been hangin’.”

“
Just been hangin’?”