Godless (7 page)

“And get caught by Kramer?”

“I'd go up at night.”

“Okay, suppose I take you up. Are you going to tell me what you and Schinner and Danny are up to?”

“Up to?”

“Yeah. I know you guys are cooking up something.”

I think about it for a few seconds, then decide to just go for it.

“We started a new religion.”

Henry is waiting for more. I guess I have to give it to him.

“We worship the water tower.”

He is nodding now, his face eager.

“We're Chutengodians,” I say.

“Yeah? Who's we?”

“Me and Shin and Dan. And Magda.”

His eyebrows pop up. “Magda Price?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then,” he says.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, then I wanna be a Chutengodian too.”

A
ND SO THE
O
CEAN SENT A MESSAGE TO THE
H
UMAN LEADERS AND DID THEREBY CAUSE THEM TO ERECT THOUSANDS OF GREAT EFFIGIES OF ITSELF THROUGHOUT THE LAND
. A
ND IN EACH OF THESE TOWERS THE
O
CEAN DEPOSITED A TINY PORTION OF ITS PURE
S
ELF, AND GAVE THE
H
UMANS PERMISSION TO PARTAKE OF IT FREELY
. A
ND THE
H
UMANS GATHERED AROUND THE TOWERS AND BUILT THEIR TOWNS AND CITIES AROUND THEM, AND THE TOWERS DID SERVE AS THE
E
YES AND
E
ARS OF THE
O
CEAN, AND THE
O
CEAN WATCHED AND LISTENED AND WATTED, AND FOR A TIME, THE
O
CEAN WAS CONTENT
.

10
 

At precisely fifteen minutes after
midnight, I slip out of bed and look out my window to the east. Just past the corner of the garage, through the branches of the elm tree, I can see the blinking red light on top of the water tower. The Ten-legged One beckons me. I quietly dress in ninja black, right down to my Reeboks, and silently slink down the hall, slither past my parents' bedroom, and ooze out the back door.

Free, free at last! Ha! They'll never catch me now—not until it's too late. Too late for everyone! They'll regret their laughter and taunts. They'll regret throwing me in their reeking dungeons. I've eaten my last plague-ridden rat. I'll mount the Ten-legged One and gallop from the river to the sea, crushing all who stand in my way. Nyuh-ha-ha! From now on,
they'll
do as
I
say.

It takes me twenty minutes to reach the tower. No Henry. I sit with my back against one of the legs and wait, listening to the soft sound of water droplets hitting grass, thinking deep thoughts about Chutengodianism. What's it like in Chutengodian heaven?
Is
there a Chutengodian heaven? And if there's a heaven, does that mean there's a hell? Serious questions requiring serious thought.

I hear a soft sound; cowboy boots scuffing grass. Henry appears on the opposite side of the tower, hands stuffed in his pockets, pacing. He doesn't see me. I watch him for a few seconds. I'm about to let him know I'm there when he steps behind the tower leg. I wait for him to come out the other side.

Thirty seconds later I'm still waiting.

“Henry!” I say. No response. I walk over to where I saw him. No Henry. I raise my voice. “Hey, Henry!”

“Right here.” The voice comes from above—I about jump out of my skin.

“Henry?” I look up and see him thirty feet above me, clinging to the leg.

“Come on,” he says. “Grab onto the cables.”

“Cables?” I see them now, four thick black cables running up the channel of the I-beam. “What are they?”

“I dunno. Electric cables, I guess. You coming or not?”
Henry continues his climb, wedging the toes of his cowboy boots between the cables and pulling himself up, hand over hand.

If I think too long about this I won't do it. I grab a cable and pull myself up. It's surprisingly easy, easier than the rope climb in gym class. The cables are covered with grippy black plastic, and my toes wedge nicely between them. I get into a rhythm: left hand, right foot, right hand, left foot.

“How you doing?” Henry says over his shoulder.

“I'm okay.” The catwalk is still a long way above us.

“Don't look down.”

Of course I look down. We can't be more than fifty or sixty feet up, but it looks like a mile. My heart thumps wildly and a prickly feeling runs up my back.

“I told you not to look,” Henry says.

I wrench my eyes away from the ground and wait for my heartbeat to slow. My hands are locked on the cables, and my knees are shaking.

“You okay?” Henry asks.

“No.”

“We're almost there.”

I look up. Henry is still about twenty feet above me.

“Just keep climbing,” he says.

I slide my right hand up a couple feet and grab the cable. I move my left foot up, jam it between the cables, and move up another foot.

“You got it,” he says, and starts climbing again. The catwalk seems an impossible distance above him, but he
is soon closer to the tank than he is to me.

“Forget it,” I say to myself. “This is nuts.”

I watch Henry swing himself onto the catwalk. His face is a small moon against the planetary mass of the tank.

“You comin'?”

“No.”

“C'mon. It's not that hard.”

“I'm going back down.”

“You're already halfway.”

“I could get killed. This is crazy!”

“Crazy? Man, you want to see crazy?” With a maniacal laugh, Henry drops over the edge of the catwalk and hangs by his hands. “
This
is
crazy
.”

“Don't
do
that.”

“You better get up here. Help, I'm gonna fall!”

“Cut it out, Henry.”

He lets go with one hand. “Look at me, I'm a monkey.”

“Henry, please …”

He grabs the edge and swings himself back up onto the catwalk, laughing. My fear gives way to anger. “That was really stupid, man.”

“Me stupid? Look at you. Halfway up and stuck like a cat in a tree.”

“I'm not stuck.” To prove it, I move my right hand and slide my right foot down a few inches. I can get back down if I want to. But just moving that little bit—plus being really pissed at Henry—is enough to restore my confidence. If Henry can do it, so can I. Once again I
begin to climb. Left hand, right foot, right hand, left foot. My arms are aching and my calves are cramping. Left hand, right foot, right hand … after an eternity I reach the catwalk and flop down on my back on the steel grating, gasping for breath. A hundred twenty feet? No problem. I could've climbed 121.

“Didn't think you had it in you, Jay-boy,” Henry says.

“Don't worry, I got it in me.” I sit up, gripping the safety rail with both hands.

“Wait till you get up top. C'mon.” Henry walks casually to the end of the catwalk and climbs up the ladder to the higher catwalk, the one that wraps all the way around the tank. I'm feeling pretty rubbery in the legs, but compared to scaling that leg, the ladder looks like a piece of cake.

As long as I don't look down.

I am sitting at the exact center of the top of the tank, where the steps end. The tank slopes rapidly away on every side—there is no flat area. Imagine standing on an enormous metal ball—that's what it's like. I can't see any of the I-beams or girders or any of the superstructure. I might as well be on a small metal moon hanging high above the surface of the Earth.

Beneath me is a hatch about two feet across, secured by a brass padlock. Next to that is a four-foot-high steel post holding up a blinking red warning light. I have my arms wrapped around the post, afraid to let go. Every three seconds the top of the tower is lit up by a red flash.

Looking at the tank's horizon makes my stomach spin; I raise my eyes to the real horizon. I can see for miles. I see tens of thousands of flickering lights—neon signs, streetlamps, lights in windows. I see the moving lights of cars and trucks, and the garish, stabbing lights from the casino outside of town, and beyond that a glow on the horizon: the lights of Fairview, more than twenty miles away.

“I love it up here,” Henry says. He is lying on his back, spread-eagled on the sloping steel, his head six feet from the hatch. Another few feet and he'd slide right off into space.

“Why do you suppose they have this hatch padlocked?” I ask. “They afraid somebody's gonna steal the water?”

“I think they're more worried about terrorists.”

“Yeah, right. Terrorists in St. Andrew Valley.”

“You never know,” Henry says. “Hey, you know what would be funny? Get a few gallons of red food coloring and dump it in the water. Everybody would turn on their faucets and it'd be like blood coming out.”

“You'd need a lot of food coloring. There's a million gallons of water in there.”

“Or you could dump soap in it.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I don't know. It'd be funny. People foaming at the mouth.”

“You've got a weird sense of humor, Henry.”

“I've heard that.”

After a few minutes I start to relax. I loosen my death grip on the post and stand up. My stomach is floating and I have an empty spot under my heart. That means I'm afraid. But I also have a turbine whining in my skull, and a shuddery feeling high in my chest—feelings of power and excitement.

“I feel like Moses,” I say. “Moses on the mountain. You know what we need? Some commandments.”

“I got enough trouble dealing with the first ten,” Henry says.

“Ours will be easier. Like, Thou shalt not pollute the water supply,' or, ‘Thou shalt not eat asparagus.'”

“You don't like asparagus?”

“Not much.”

“I don't mind it. I like how it makes my pee smell. Hey, if the water tower is god, what's the devil?”

“I don't think the Chutengodians have a devil.”

“You gotta have a devil. You can't have a religion without a devil.”

“Sure you can. Buddhists don't have a devil.”

“I still think you need a devil. Hey, y'know what'd be cool? Come up here in a thunderstorm.”

“You'd get fried,” I say.

“You think so?”

“This is the tallest structure in St. Andrew Valley. I bet it gets hit by lightning all the time.”

“Oh. Well, it would be fun while it lasted.”

“Hey, you know what we should do?” I say. “Get everybody up here. All the Chutengodians. In fact, we
gotta do it. Next Tuesday, the Sabbath, we all climb up for Midnight Mass.”

Henry tips his head back and looks at me. “This is my territory.”

“It would just be for an hour or so. Tell you what. You can be the High Priest.”

Henry thinks about that.

“What does the High Priest have to do?”

O
NE DAY THE
O
CEAN NOTICED THAT THE
H
UMANS WERE PASSING BY ITS EFFIGIES WITH HARDLY AN UPWARD GLANCE, AND DRINKING FREELY WITHOUT THANKS OR ACKNOWLEDGMENT
.

11
 

“Jason! Jason, wake up!”

“I'm up. I'm awake. What's the matter?”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“I'm fine, Mom. Jeez.” I pull the covers up over my head.

“It's almost eleven!” She tugs on the bedspread. “You can't sleep the whole day away.”

“Why not?” Actually, I probably
could
sleep all day.

A few hours ago, Henry Stagg and I watched the sun rise over St. Andrew Valley from the top of the Ten-legged One. The town was still in shadow when the sun's first rays lit up our faces. We sat in devout silence as sunlight touched the silver tank, lighting it inch by inch, from the top down. Talk about being close to God.

“It's not natural to sleep fourteen hours a day.”