Godless

Also by Pete Hautman

Sweetblood

Hole in the Sky

Mr. Was

SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2004 by Pete Murray Hautman

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
B
OOKS FOR
Y
OUNG
R
EADERS
is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Book design by Greg Stadnyk

The text for this book is set in Meridien.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hautman, Pete, 1952-

Godless / Pete Hautman.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: When sixteen-year-old Jason Bock and his friends create their own religion to worship the town's water tower, what started out as a joke begins to take on a power of its own.

ISBN 0-689-86278-4
eISBN: 978-1-439-10743-0

[1. Water towers—Fiction. 2. Religion—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.H2887 Go 2004

[Fic]—dc21   2003010468

For those who would walk alone

Thank you to Scott Anderson, Leslie Harris, Dorothy Hautman, and Sean McLoughlin, for their water-tower stories

godless

I
N THE BEGINNING WAS THE
O
CEAN
. A
ND THE
O
CEAN WAS ALONE
.

1
 

Getting punched hard in the face is
a singular experience. I highly recommend it to anyone who is a little too cocky, obnoxious, or insensitive. I also recommend it to people who think they're smart enough to avoid getting punched in the face by the likes of Henry Stagg.

I was all those things the day Shin (real name: Peter Stephen Schinner) and I ran into Henry beneath the water tower. Henry was in the company of three lesser juvenile delinquents—Mitch Cosmo, Marsh Andrews, and Bobby Something-or-Other. None of the four were particularly dangerous one-on-one, but in a pack? That was different.

“Hey, Henry, how's it going?” I said, striving for the sort of gruff heartiness I imagined he might respect.

“Who's that? Is that Jay-boy and Schinner?” Henry squinted ferociously, his face scrunched into a hard little knot. He was wearing his usual getup: beat-up cowboy boots, jeans, and a black T-shirt. “What're
you
guys doing here?”

“Just hangin' out,” I said. I wasn't about to tell Henry what we were
really
doing there.

“With each other? You guys must be desperate,” he said. Then he laughed. Bobby, Mitch, and Marsh all laughed too. The three stooges. Watching Henry as if he were the most fascinating thing they'd ever seen.

I have to admit, Henry Stagg is an interesting specimen. He's only about five-foot-five and scrawny as a wild cat, but Henry has
presence
. He's twitchy, cobra-quick, and wound up so tight you just know something has to give. Henry has a history of sudden, unprovoked violence. That makes him both dangerous and exciting company. Fortunately—or so I thought—Henry and I had always gotten along just fine. That might have had something to do with the fact that I'm twice his size. Also, I figured I could outthink him any day of the week.

“Could be worse,” I said. “We could be hanging out with you guys.” I laughed to make sure he knew I was kidding, which I wasn't.

Henry gave me a neutral scowl. “So how come you're hangin' out
here?
”

“We're working on a
science
project,” Shin said in his Shinny voice. I groaned silently. I've gotten used to Shin's somewhat high-pitched, nasal voice, but it sends a guy like Henry right up the wall.

“A
science project?
” Henry said, lifting his voice to a quavering falsetto. “I thought fags were only interested in hairdressing and ballet.”

“I'm not a
fag
,” Shin said, his voice rising even higher. And I thought,
Uh-oh
.

“Not a
fag
?” Henry piped, raising his arms to display his knobby hands hanging slack from the ends of his wrists.

Shin, realizing that he was headed for trouble, crossed his arms over his notebook and went into his shell. More about that later. Henry capered in front of him, hopping from toe to toe, chanting, “I'm not a fag I'm not a fag I'm not a fag …” Shin just stood frozen, staring at the ground. Henry dropped his arms and walked up to him and stuck his face a few inches from Shin's and shouted, “Anybody home?”

Shin said nothing. Henry's jaw muscles flexed and the veins on his neck throbbed. Shin didn't even blink. When he went into his shell you couldn't pry him out if you stuck a firecracker in his ear. Not until he was ready.

Henry looked at me. “What's the matter with him?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Hit him,” said Bobby. “Give him one.”

The stooges laughed as if Bobby had said something witty.

Henry glared at them. Beneath it all, Henry had his rules. It wasn't his style to hit someone who was, say, unconscious. He wouldn't beat up a little kid, or an old lady—at least not without just cause. And he could
sense that Shin, in his shell, was just as helpless.

“Push him over,” Marsh suggested. “See if he, like, tips.”

Henry put his palm against Shin's chest and gave a little test shove. Shin teetered, but his internal gyroscope kept him erect. Henry realized that a more aggressive push would topple Shin, but he decided not to do it.

“What's the matter with him?” Henry asked me again.

“He just gets that way sometimes.”

Marsh said, “He must be, like, some kinda, like, freak.”

“He's not a freak,” I said, knowing that Shin was hearing everything.

Henry shifted his attention to me.

“You guys are both freaks. Look at you. How much do you weigh?”

“One ninety-four,” I said, taking my standard thirty-pound deduction.

“I bet you weigh two hundred and fifty. You're huge.”

I wanted to say something like,
To a Munchkin like you, everybody must look huge
. But I just looked back at him.

Then my head exploded.

At least that's what it felt like. I never saw the blow coming. His fist took me high on my left cheek, and the next instant I was laid out flat, wet grass soaking my back, staring up past Henry Stagg's florid knot of a face at the belly of the water tower, silver against blue sky. In the background I could hear the three stooges laughing,
and I could taste blood where Henry's hard knuckles had smashed my cheek against my teeth, but mostly I was looking up at that enormous silver tank.

“It felt like an earthquake when you hit,” Henry said, leaning over me. He was smiling happily, his face as relaxed as I'd ever seen it. Somehow I knew that he would not hit me again, at least not on that particular day. Whatever demon had been controlling him was temporarily sedated. We were safe.

But I have to explain myself. I have to explain why I didn't jump to my feet and pound the little creep into the ground. You might think it was because he had his friends to back him up, but that wasn't it. I'm not even sure they'd have done anything. The three stooges were bored and stupid and all they wanted was a little jolt of adrenaline. It didn't matter to them who got beat up—me, Henry, Shin, or any one of them.

The real reason I didn't jump all over Henry is quite simple, and I'm not ashamed to admit it: He scares the crap out of me.

I outweigh Henry Stagg by a good eighty pounds, I'm six inches taller, I'm coordinated, and I'm fast. I can grab a fly out of midair. I could take a guy like Henry any day of the week. But Henry has something I don't have.

Henry doesn't care what happens to Henry.

And that is why he can punch me in the face and get away with it.

Staring up at him, I could see it in his eyes. Henry didn't care. I could have thrown him against the tower's
steel pillar and beat his head to a bloody pulp and that would have been okay with Henry. He'd just keep on swinging those hard, knobby fists, laying on the cuts and bruises and pain until I beat him unconscious, and he wouldn't care one bit. But I would. I'd care a lot. And that was Henry's power.

I respect power. Even in the hands of such as Henry Stagg.

Say you were walking down the street at night and you ran into me and Shin. Here is what you would see: two figures, dark and menacing. One is large-bodied, hulking, and neckless. That would be me. The other is thin, loose-jointed, with hair sticking out in every direction. That's Shin. If you are extremely observant, you will notice that Shin and I are the same height. Most people think I am taller, but I'm not. I'm just bigger.