The H-Bomb and the Jesus Rock (6 page)

We’re bringing this big fat whistling pig to the butcher shop so they can turn him into bacon.

We kept going so
slow
. If you were crawling on your hands and knees, that’s how slow. I kept changing which side of the wagon I was pushing from, but it didn’t matter, my arms and legs kept hurting worse, even my butt. I started crying a little, quiet so no one could hear. But then I sniffled.

“There, there,” he said, and patted me on the head.

“
Quit it
,” I told him.

“Temper, temper.”

We weren’t even getting any money for this, that’s what made me cry. He said we already spent our dime on his toast.

So I was thinking, Why don’t we just kick him out? Why don’t we just stop the wagon and Ralph pull him out by his little pink ears and let him go
wee wee wee
all the way home?

Except, Ralph probably thinks we
have
to do this, to pay for the toast we took. That’s the right thing to do and Ralph always has to do the right thing, no matter what. He’s always reading stories about boys doing the right thing no matter what and growing up to be Abraham Lincoln or someone. So then
I
always have to do the right thing too, or else go play by myself, or with Marcia Erickson down the block, who’s a bigger whiner even than me.

The giant pig in the wagon asked me how come I have a boy’s name. “Lou’s a boy’s name,” he said. “Don’t you know that? Doesn’t your mother?”

It’s short for Louisa but I didn’t tell him. I don’t talk to pigs.

He went back to whistling like one.

Walter Cronkite

Worried, alarmed, afraid perhaps even, the American people nonetheless appear determined and resolved...

Toby

“Right along here is fine,” I told them.

We were finally there, at the vacant lot. Morgan’s Drugs is just past it and I didn’t want Mr. Morgan to see me being rolled up to the door. He’d have something sarcastic to say. He’s always very sarcastic with me, especially about my size. He’s sort of what you call an asshole.

So I got out at the vacant lot.
Boy
I hate that place, especially on a day like this, where you’ve got this great big empty vacant lot underneath this great big empty vacant sky—makes me want to hold
on
to something, you know? Before I disappear.

My little helpers stood there catching their breath, all red and sweaty. I told them go ahead and look for bottles while I get my cards, then we’ll start heading back. I had to laugh, the look on the little one’s face when I said that. I guess she forgot this was a round trip.

“Happy hunting,” I told them.

The drug store turned out to be kind of crowded, everyone buying survival stuff: band-aids and aspirin and duct tape and toilet paper.

You gotta chuckle.

I grabbed a pack of baseball cards from the shelf by the counter and told everyone in line, “I’m sorry, please excuse me, I have a condition,” and butted in behind the first person. Nobody said anything. They could see I was sincere.

“A ‘condition?’” Mr. Morgan said when I stepped up. He had this little smirk. “Is that what you’ve got? A ‘condition?’”

Mr. Morgan is the only grownup I know who wears a bow tie, except of course for Soupy Sales.

I put the pack of cards on the counter and started digging in my pocket but he waved me away. “Take it, go on,” he said, like
my
business wasn’t important enough to bother with today.

I told him, “I got it,” and put the nickel on the counter.

He slid it back. “Keep it.”

“
Take
it,” I told him, and slid it back again.

“C’mon, let’s go,” the woman behind me said.

I turned all the way around and looked at her. “Excuse me?”

“Let’s
go,
” she said, right in my face.

Fine. I took my nickel and cards and walked to the door. I felt like turning around and yelling,
What’s the matter, people? Afraid of a little bomb? A little hydrogen bomb?
But all I did was walk out shaking my head, like it made me sad, so sad.

I was wishing the Russians would hurry up and get it over with. I was sick of everyone acting like it was the end of the world, which maybe it was, but so what, you know? So what?

Ralph

The vacant lot is all just tall weeds and rocks and little ditches, with a big
For Sale
sign in the middle. I got at one corner of the field and Lou at the other and we started walking in a straight line, head down, kicking at stuff, all the way across, then turning around and walking back the other way a couple feet over. This is looking for bottles, how it’s done. It’s very boring.

But it’s one of Lou’s favorite things to do. I know how she feels. I used to be her age. I used to think there was a good chance of finding a dinosaur tooth or a bag of pirate coins.

Or even a trap door.

I used to think maybe there’d be like a trap door just under the dirt, a
cellar
door, with a rope handle, and I’d open it and go down these dark stairs and come out in a story. I’d be
The Boy Who Went Down to the Land Below
. And what did he find there? I had no idea. Could be very beautiful, with flowers and fountains. Could be very scary, with dungeons and dogheaded men. Probably very beautiful
and
very scary. But anyway I’d be in a story, you know? I’d be a boy in a story. I wouldn’t even have to make anything up.

Today so far I kicked up a Dixie cup, a small blue mitten, and an empty box of Luden’s Wild Cherry Cough Drops.

Toby

I sat in the wagon and opened the waxy paper, that fresh bubble gum aroma jumping out at me, a pretty pink square of it sitting on top of the cards. Then into the mouth it goes.

Delicious.

All right, let’s see who we got here.

Dick Tracewski, shortstop, Dodgers. So now I’ve got three of him. Says on the back he’s “dependable.” That’s for sure.

Next up, Bubba Phillips, third base, White Sox, already got him. On the back a little drawing of a guy in a ball cap doing the sidestroke. Says,
Bubba is also an excellent swimmer.
Talk about desperate.

Next:
Bengal Belters
, one of those two-player cards, the Tigers’ Norm Cash and Al Kaline. I hate these. I’ve got a bunch of them:
Tribe Thumpers, Cardinal Clubbers
,
and so on. Nobody wants them. You either have a Norm Cash card or an Al Kaline, not these freaks of nature.

Next, hey look at this, Sandy Koufax. Now I got the whole Dodger pitching staff, starters and relievers. Welcome aboard, Sandy. Handsome devil.

Last but not least—no, I take that back, last
and
least: Aaron, outfield, Braves, not Hank, his brother Tommie. Says on the back,
Unlike his brother Hank, Tommie stinks, look at his numbers.

I put them all back in the wrapper and into my pocket, feeling like I’m worth a little more than when I got up this morning. Thanks to Mr. Sandy Koufax, just a little bit more.

And now it was time to start heading back.

“Let’s go, people.”

Lou

I stubbed my foot. Fatso hollered and I looked up and stubbed my foot on something and almost fell.

It was a rock. I was going to kick it for tripping me. I was mad. We had to wagon him all the way back now and I was going to kick the rock—but it was looking at me. It had like an eye and it was looking at me out of it. Plus I
think
it told me, “Don’t, Lou.” Or maybe not, maybe it didn’t speak, but it was looking at me, I know
that.

So I picked it up.

Now
it was looking at me out of
two
eyes.

And that wasn’t all...that wasn’t all...

“Ralph!”

Ralph

I took it before she almost dropped it, she was so shaky, and looked it over. Then
I
almost dropped it. “Where did...”

“Right here, on the ground, looking up at me,” she said.

“Let’s go, let’s get rolling,”
Fatso hollered.

We let him.

“It’s Him, right?” Lou said, meaning Jesus.

I nodded.

She started doing the Twist. She always does that when she gets excited about something, she starts dancing.

I told her to stop. We had to think. This was serious. This could be a Holy Object. Just holding it in my hands I could feel it, you know? Feel the power. Whatever it was, this was no ordinary rock.

“I’m waiting!”
Fatso yelled.

“What should we do with it, Ralph?”

“I don’t know. I’m thinking we should probably show it to Father Clay.” Father Clay’s the pastor of our church, Our Lady of Sorrows. He looks like a bulldog. Some of the kids call him that, not to his face.

“What’ll
he
do with it?”

“That’s up to him. But you know what I’m thinking
we
should do? Right now? You and me?”

“
Bring it over, let’s have a look!”

Toby

I don’t like being ignored, especially by my own staff.

But then, get this. Whatever Ralph was holding, whatever it was they found, he set it on the ground like it was made of gold, then the two of them got down on their knees in front of it and folded their hands.

I’m serious.

I decided I’d better go have a look. I got out of the wagon and walked on over, all the way across the entire stinking lot, thinking this better be good.

When I came up they were in the middle of an Our Father: “‘Give us this day our daily bread...’”

I looked at what they were praying to. It was a rock.

“‘...and forgive us our trespasses...’”

“What’re you people doing?”

“‘...as we forgive those who trespass against us...’”

I bent all the way over and picked the thing up.

“
Leave it,
” Ralph said, getting to his feet.

I told him, “Take it easy, I’m just looking, all right? Is that all right?”

He let me look.

That’s all it was, a rock, with some dried-up, caked-on dirt all over it. I didn’t understand why they were praying to it. “What’re you, some kind of gypsy rock-worshippers?”

“It’s Jesus,” Lou said, still down on her knees.

I looked at it. “Jesus Christ?”

“You’re holding it wrong,” Ralph said.

I turned it.

“There,” he said.

I looked at it some more. “There what?”

He stepped up and pointed out some bumpy dried-up dirt along both sides, which you could kind of see as being long wavy hair, plus a couple of gouges in the right places for eyes, a crooked little ridge in the middle you could call a broken nose, a thin little slit for a mouth, turned down like a frown, and some dry clumpy mud that could pass for a messy beard. Put it all together and you could definitely see a long sad face. But a
lot
of people have long sad faces.

“
And
,” Ralph said, pointing along the forehead over some tiny twigs and blades of grass sticking this way and that.

“Crown of thorns?” I said.

He nodded, slow.

It didn’t go all the way around but from the front it was pretty close to looking a little bit like a crown of thorns.

“And tear drops,” Lou added, on her feet now, pointing out some little bumps running down from the eyes.

So: hair, eyes, nose, mouth, beard, crown of thorns, tear drops. “I think we’ve
got
something here,” I told them. “I think we’ve definitely
got
something.” The wheels were turning very fast now. “Listen, you people own a tent?”

Lou

The rock was looking at me so sad—I never
saw
Jesus look so sad, even up on the cross—like He was begging me in tears,
Lou, please? Get me away from this fat thing? I didn’t come to see him, I came to see you and Ralph. He’s holding me all wrong, he’s got his finger in my nose. He doesn’t care, Lou. Please? Get me back?

I promised.

Toby

I told them, “Here’s what I’m thinking. We get ourselves a tent, set it up in my yard, put this on a little table in there, with some special lighting. Get some fliers out:
Is it Jesus? Or just a rock? You decide.
Charge by the minute, say a dime, which sounds like a lot, but hey, we’re talking about a minute with the Son of God, right?” I looked at them. “How ‘bout it, people, what do you say? You
with
me or not?”

“Give it here,” Ralph said.

“You got a better idea, let’s hear it.”

“Hand it over.”

I turned away, cradling it. “First tell me what you’re gonna do with it.”

“Give it to Father Clay,” he said.

I said, “Excuse me?”

He repeated it.

“What’s Father
Clay
got to do with it?
We’re
the ones who found it.”

“
You
didn’t find it,” from the little one.

“The point is, why give it to
him
?”

“We have to,” Ralph said. “It’s a holy object.”

I laughed in their faces. “It’s a
rock
, people.”

“It’s
Jesus,
” from the little one again.

I looked at her, looked at him.

My mother would love these two. She doesn’t like kids, especially dirty little smelly ones, but she would think these two were like the children of Fatima. You’ve heard of them, right? Those little shepherd kids Mary appeared to? Fatima, Portugal, 1917. We had a quiz on it after watching this movie about them Thursday in the gym—I’d give it one and a half stars, maybe not even that. Anyway, that’s how my mom would see these two, like they were the poor little shepherds of Fatima. She knows all that stuff, the miracles and appearances and feast days, and all the different names for Mary:

Our Lady of Fatima

Our Lady of Sorrows

Our Lady of the Rosary