Godless (8 page)

I lower the covers and look up at her. “I haven't been sleeping that long. I was up most of the night.”

“Aren't you feeling well?”

“I'm
fine
. I was having a religious experience.”

She gives me her worried, disbelieving look—a look I know well. I swing my legs over the edge of the mattress and sit up.

“Okay, okay, I'm up already. You happy now?”

“I'd be happier if you weren't such a smart mouth.” Now she gives me her pissed-off, you'll-pay-for-this-young-man look.

“Sorry,” I say—and I really am. My mother can get very sulky when she doesn't get treated right. And sulky usually translates to innumerable demands for help with un-fun things like yard work, basement cleaning, and attendance at extra-boring church functions. I decide to head her off at the pass. I look out the window. “Looks like another hot day. Guess I better get busy.”

“Oh? Doing what?”

“I want to get the lawn mowed before it gets too hot out.”

She looks shocked, and why not? This will be the first time I've ever mowed the lawn without direct orders from a superior officer. Better to take on one quick job than let my mother enslave me for some major all-day monotony.

“If you'd gotten up like any normal person you'd be done with it by now,” she says, but I see the sulk draining out of her, and I know I made the right move.

The problem with little jobs is that they sometimes turn into big jobs. I have the lawn one-quarter mowed when the mower sputters and coughs and dies. Diagnosis? Fuel crisis. Need gasoline. Call Kuwait. Raid an oil tanker. Drill a well.

Or walk into the garage and grab the big red gas can off the shelf.

Unfortunately, the big red gas can is bone dry. I remember now. I used it up last time I mowed the stupid lawn. I stomp into the house, making plenty of noise.

“Mom!”

No answer.

“MOM!”

I hear a muffled response. I clomp up the stairs. “We're out of gas!”

“What's that, honey?” Her voice is coming from the bathroom.

“We're out of
gas
,” I say to the bathroom door. “I need you to drive me to the gas station.”

“Honey, I just got in the tub. You'll have to walk.”

“Mom, it's like a
mile
.”

“It won't hurt you to get a little exercise.”

“I don't have any money.”

“My purse is on the kitchen counter.”

I take a breath and almost say something more … but then I don't. It wouldn't do any good. When my mother
takes a bath in the middle of the day, it's serious business. She probably has bubbles up to her chin and a stack of magazines.

I grab a twenty out of her purse and the empty gas can out of the garage and slog off down Decatur to Cedar Lake Road, then left toward the Amoco station. Step, step, step, step—this is very boring. I am bored. I am walking with an empty red plastic container, with fifty miles of trackless desert waste between me and the Amoco oasis. If I keep walking I might make it by mid-day tomorrow. With each step the gas can hits my right knee. I switch hands, and now it brushes my left knee. Step, swishstep, step, swishstep. I try hanging the can over my shoulder, and for about fifty steps that feels okay, but then my elbow starts to hurt, and I switch shoulders. Only 49.95 miles to go. I try balancing the can on my head, but it presses the top button of my baseball cap into the center of my skull. I go back to Plan A: Step, swishstep, step, swishstep….

Night comes and goes, I follow the ridge of a sand dune that stretches to the horizon, I fight off a pack of insane meercats, I struggle blindly through a sandstorm. Hours later, parched and choking on Saharan grit, I spy the waving fronds of a date palm beyond the next rocky ridge. A mirage? I stay the course—step, swishstep, step, swishstep—and drag myself to the shimmering edge of the oasis. There it is, the artesian well. I plug a handful of shekels into its gaping slot and, with my last iota of energy, I punch the Mountain Dew button.

Ka-chunk! Jackpot! The intrepid wanderer wins again. I pop the top and pour all twelve ounces down my throat.

“Ahhh,” I say to no one in particular. I look out past the Amoco sign, past the utility lines and treetops to the rounded silver dome of the Ten-legged One. Watching me. I salute with my empty Mountain Dew can and say, “Thank you, oh Great and Powerful One.”

“You talking to me?”

My heart thumps, then I realize it's just Milt, standing in the doorway of the repair bay smoking a cigarette.

“Hey, Milt.”

“What happen, you run out of gas?”

“The lawn mower did.”

Milt nods, flicks his cigarette toward the pumps, and goes back to work on somebody's minivan. I go to the pumps, stepping on his smoldering butt on the way, fill up my five-gallon can, pay for the gas, grab the can, and head for home.

I have walked only a few yards when I realize my mistake. Stubbornly, I keep walking. After a hundred steps I decide to try holding the can in front of my legs with both hands. Then I try propping it up on my shoulder. Then I set it down and try to compute how much five gallons of gasoline weighs.

Shin calculated that the Ten-legged One contains one million gallons of water that weighs eight million pounds. By employing my remarkable mathematical skills, I deduce that one gallon of H2O weighs eight
pounds. Gasoline must weigh pretty close to that, I figure. Brilliant!

So how come, knowing that I would have to transport it on foot across fifty miles of trackless desert waste, I went ahead and filled the gas can with forty pounds of liquid when I only need a half gallon or so to finish mowing the lawn? Idiocy!

I consider pouring some of the gas down the sewer, but the Ten-legged One would not approve. Gasoline is very bad for the water. I
could
haul the can back to the Amoco station, leave it in Milt's care, then go home empty-handed and beg my mother for a ride. Not a bad plan, but kinda embarrassing. Then I catch a brainwave. Shin lives just three blocks up Louisiana Avenue. Shin has a wagon, an old red metal job he's had ever since he was a little kid. Just what I need. An oil tanker. Amazing! Brilliant! The kid scores yet another cerebral coup. The intelligentsia are astonished by Jason Bock's remarkable powers of reasoning.

Bock!
(they cry from the gallery, standing in their academic robes on their chairs stomping their feet and pumping their fists)
Bock! Bock! Bock!

“It was nothing,” I say, smiling at their childish display of admiration. “I merely examined every possibility and made a carefully considered judgment as to the best course of action.”

Bock! Bock! Bock!

“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you very much.”

A
ND THE
O
CEAN WAS SAD, FOR IT HAD LAVISHED MUCH LOVE ON THESE STRANGE, THIRSTY APES
. Y
ET THEY GAVE NOT THE SLIGHTEST GESTURE OF RESPECT TO THEIR MAKER, AND THEY TREATED THE GREAT EFFIGIES AS THEY MIGHT TREAT A HOUSE OF WOOD, OR A PILE OF STONE
.

12
 

“Guess where I was at five o'clock
this morning.”

“Not in bed.”

“How'd you know that?”

“If you were in bed you wouldn't have asked me where I thought you were.” Shin carefully lifts his little red wagon from the hook on the garage wall. “You're going to be careful with it, aren't you?”

“As if it were my own. So, if I wasn't in bed, where was I?”

Shin scrunches up his mouth and bites his cheek, making him look like a guy trying to eat himself.

“You were having breakfast with Elvis Presley.”

“That was last week.”

“Then I give up.” He rolls the wagon back and forth on the garage floor. “You aren't going to ride it down any hills, are you?”

“I'm going to use it to transport one five-gallon can of unleaded. That's all. You want to know where I was or not?”

“Okay.”

“I was standing on God's head.”

Shin's jaw drops.

“I climbed the Ten-legged One,” I say, just in case he didn't get it the first time.

Shin's eyes bulge.

I laugh at his goofy expression. “I climbed up with Henry.”

Shin is hugging himself and his eyes are full and suddenly I understand that he isn't clowning, he's really upset.

“What's wrong?” I say.

“You went without me?”

“No! I mean, yes, but it wasn't like that. I just went to meet Henry there. He was gonna show me how he gets up there.”

“Why didn't you
call
me?”

“I didn't … it wasn't …”

I am about to lie to my best friend. Because the real reason I didn't call him was because I knew Henry would act like a jerk around him, and Shin would do his whiny Shin thing, and Henry would laugh at us both and I would never find out how he climbed the water tower. I am going to lie to Shin because I could never tell
him what a pathetic nerd he looks like to a guy like Henry Stagg. Even though he knows. But he will never hear it from me.

“He made me promise to come alone,” I say.

Shin is shaking his head.

“I had to swear to go alone,” I say, underscoring the lie. “I didn't know we were actually going to climb up.”

Shin blinks and a tear dribbles down his cheek. I want to grab him and slap him and tell him,
Grow up. Don't be such a baby. If you weren't such a nerdy, clumsy wuss, you wouldn't get left out
. At the same time I feel awful for not telling him about Henry sooner. Shin is, after all, Keeper of the Sacred Text. And he's my friend. And he trusts me.

“Look,” I say, “I'm sorry. I should have told you.”

He nods, and I am afraid he understands completely, even the part I didn't say.

“Anyway, I know how we can get up there now.”

“How?” he asks in a small voice.

“You climb up one of the legs.”

“How?”

“There are some cables to grab onto. It's not that hard.” As soon as I say that I regret it, because for Shin to climb up that leg … well, I can hardly imagine it. He's no Spider-Man.

Shin licks his lips. “I want to go up.”

“Actually, it's not
that
easy.”

“Tonight.” He sets his jaw. “Take me up tonight.”

Resistance is futile.

“Okay,” I say. “Tonight. Wear black.”

“What time?” Shin asks.

“I'll come by at midnight.” I lift the gas can into the wagon. “I gotta go mow some grass.” I grab the wagon handle and start down the driveway. I look back. Shin waves, smiling.

I decide to wait till later to tell him that Henry is our new High Priest.

By the time I finish mowing the lawn it is ninety degrees out and I'm sweating buckets. I drag myself into the house and down a carton of orange juice.

“Good lord, Jason,” says my mother.

I set the empty carton down. “I was thirsty,” I say.

“That was an entire half gallon of juice.”

“It was half empty.”

“Nevertheless! Are you feeling all right?”

“I'm just hot. It's hot out there.”

“We should get you in for a blood test. Your granduncle Herman had diabetes, you know. It's in our family. How many times have you urinated today?”

“Mom! I'm not sick; I'm just hot and thirsty.”

She shakes her head. “Well, let's keep an eye on you. Oh, by the way, one of your friends called.”

“Who?”

“I'm sure I don't remember.” She points at the notepad next to the phone. “I wrote her name and number.”

Her? I grab the notepad. My mother's scrawl could be read in any number of ways—Mopdo, Waqude, AArgha—but I'm pretty sure the name she meant to write is Magda.

A
ND SO THE
O
CEAN BEGAN TO SPEAK
.

13