God Is Dead
God Is Dead
Ron Currie, Jr.
Viking
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1311, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2007 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Ron Currie, Jr., 2007
All rights reserved
The following stories were previously published in different form: “False Idols” appeared in The Cincinnati Review; “God Is Dead” in The Sun; “Interview” in Alaska Quarterly Review; and “Grace” in Night Train.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
These selections are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishements, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-1012-0227-2
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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For my father, Ron Currie, Sr.
Contents
God Is Dead
The Bridge
Indian Summer
False Idols
Grace
Interview with the Last Remaining Member of the Feral Dog Pack Which Fed on God’s Corpse
The Helmet of Salvation and the Sword of the Spirit
My Brother the Murderer
Retreat
Acknowledgments
God Is Dead
Slaves, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.
—Ephesians 6:5
Disguised as a young Dinka woman, God came at dusk to a refugee camp in the North Darfur region of Sudan. He wore a flimsy green cotton dress, battered leather sandals, hoop earrings, and a length of black-and-white beads around his neck. Over his shoulder he carried a cloth sack which held a second dress, a bag of sorghum, and a plastic cup. He’d manifested a wound in the meat of his right calf, a jagged, festering gash upon which fed wriggling clumps of maggots. The purpose of the wound was twofold. First, it enabled him to blend in with the residents of the camp, many of whom bore injuries from the slashing machetes of Janjaweed raiding parties. Second, the intense burning ache helped to mitigate the guilt he felt at the lot of the refugees, over which he was, due to an implacable polytheistic bureaucracy, completely powerless.
Or nearly so. God did have the bag of sorghum, and the bag of sorghum was infinite, so that he was able to offer the sweet grain to others endlessly. For weeks he’d done this, following the path of the Lol River through scorched plains, giving away sorghum and asking if anyone knew a boy named Thomas Mawien. Most said no. Some, grateful for the food and eager to offer something in return, lied about knowing the boy, claimed to have seen him as recently as the day before, headed north, away from the fighting, or else southeast, and when God followed their directions he became hopelessly lost without the river to guide him. He wandered in wide circles, often coming upon the same boulder or stand of trees days after he’d first seen it. Denying himself the sorghum, he ate leaves, abuk roots, and on one occasion what was left of an ostrich carcass after it had been picked over by both people and hyenas.
He suffered under the sun he’d created. Sick with heat and cholera, he collapsed in a field of spindly yellow grass. His dress rode up immodestly, but he was paralyzed by dehydration, unable to even cover himself, and when two wild dogs came and began walking wide, hungry circles around him he could not move to drive them away.
Deliverance came in the form of the Janjaweed. The dogs heard their approach and bolted, but God, still paralyzed, could only lie in the grass and listen as the mass of horses and Land Rovers rumbled closer like some great and terrible machine, driving every living thing before it, shaking the earth as it passed. The Janjaweed saved him from the dogs, and his paralysis saved him from the Janjaweed; had he been able to rise and run they would have captured him easily, and seeing in him not the creator of this universe but rather a slender Dinka woman with a long, elegant neck and almond-shaped eyes, they would have raped him over and over until he died from the trauma.
But God remained hidden as the Janjaweed sped past all around him. Birds took to the sky; rodents scrambled for the safety of their burrows. Even the mosquitoes and cicadas fled. Bursts of semiautomatic fire sounded over the riot of diesel engines and galloping horses. A hoof, cracked and badly shoed, struck the ground inches from God’s head. Still he could not move, did not make a sound.
And then, as quickly as they’d come, the Janjaweed were gone, leaving in their wake a silence so absolute even God had a difficult time believing it was real. He rested.
When he came to, it was light, and he found he could move again, if slowly and with great effort. He rose and followed the path of the Janjaweed, the trampled grass and burned huts and dead things of every description which led due north, and when he again reached the bank of the Lol he threw himself into the shallow water and drank greedily and tasted dirt and shit and did not care.
Early that afternoon, God entered the refugee camp along a rutted dirt path and approached the only people in sight, an elderly couple sitting together in the dust beneath a tamarind tree. Behind them the empty camp spread out in clusters of fragile huts made from thatch and torn plastic tarps.
“Kudual,” God said to the old couple in greeting. “Are you hungry? You look hungry.”
The man sat hunched over and asleep, his bare legs folded beneath him like two bent sticks. The woman raised her eyes slowly and nodded yes. God offered the endless sorghum to her. With a hand as black and shriveled as a strip of jerked meat she reached in and removed a small amount, then held it to her chest with both hands, nodding modestly and muttering words of thanks.
“Take more,” God said. “Please. There’s plenty.”
Without hesitating, the old woman did so. She placed the sorghum on the ground beside her, grasped and kissed God’s hand (at which he, embarrassed and heartsick at the limits of his ability to help these people, demurred), then woke her husband with a rude jab of one bony elbow.
“Go find wood, and water for boiling,” she said. “We have food.”
With the deliberateness of someone who has learned never to feel too blessed, no matter how good the n
ews, the man unfolded himself and stood up. God watched him recede into the empty camp.
“That man once owned five hundred head of cattle,” the woman said. “Now look at him.”
“Old woman, may I ask,” God said, “do you know a boy named Thomas Mawien? Fifteen years old, but quite tall? He was taken as a slave by the Janjaweed many years ago. But he has escaped.”
“I don’t know him,” the woman replied. “But that doesn’t mean he’s not here.”
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s here,” God said. “Did the Janjaweed attack?”
The woman laughed, revealing red, toothless gums. “No, not today,” she said. “Today, with the big man here, we’ll be safe.”
“Which man is this?”
“The ajak, big man. Fat and pale like a mango. He comes to see us, from America. Wherever that is. Walks around, smiles, shakes hands.”
From America. God knew then who this ajak was, and how he might be able to use him to find Thomas.
The woman continued. “Tomorrow he goes home”—she made a motion with her hand like a plane lifting into the air—“and the Janjaweed come back.”
“Where is he now?” God asked.
“On the west side of the camp,” the woman said. “That’s why you don’t see anyone. They’re all following him around out there, singing and dancing like fools.”
Colin Powell hid from an angry sun in the air-conditioned interior of his Chevrolet Suburban. Head down, he spoke quietly into a satellite telephone. A senior State Department official sat on the leather bench seat opposite him, holding Powell’s linen Ralph Lauren jacket across his lap. Outside, the Secret Service attachment had formed a tight perimeter around the Suburban. To a man they wore black boots, khaki pants and vests, mirrored sunglasses, and thigh holsters with SIG-Sauer P229 pistols. Each brandished a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. The agents scanned the singing, ululating crowd of Dinka refugees, exchanged information (and the occasional one-liner) via tiny earpieces, and maintained a robotic, perspiration-free command presence despite the 95-degree heat.
With a curse, Powell turned off the telephone. “Tell me something,” he said to the official. “Why do I always end up relaying messages through the lowliest goddamn sub-assistant-deputy aides in the White House? Why, in almost four years, have I spoken directly to that redneck son of a bitch only three times? And two of those times were at fucking Christmas parties?”
“I don’t know, sir,” the official said. “Maybe that gaffe you made in the Post last February? But listen, we should go over our keywords for tonight’s press conference—”
“I’ll tell you why,” Powell said. “Because I’m black.”
The official, uncertain, said, “Well, maybe, sir.”
“The same reason I got this job in the first place,” Powell continued. “Because I’m black. Ain’t that a bitch, huh? I get the job because I’m black, and my boss won’t talk to me because I’m black.”
“If I may speak frankly, sir,” the official said, “I’m not sure black is the word I’d use to describe you.”
Powell deployed a fierce, wide-eyed gaze, one he’d perfected through hundreds of hours of viewing and reviewing Samuel Jackson movies. “Oh no?” he said.
The official, realizing he’d stepped directly into the metaphorical pile of dung, tried to backtrack. “Well, of course, I mean, ethnologically speaking, you’re black. Sir. Of course. I was thinking more of your appearance, a sort of benign, nonthreatening, ashy tone which—”
“I’m black as night, motherfucker!” With a sweep of his hand, Powell indicated the throng of Dinka surrounding the Suburban. “Those people out there,” he said, “are my brothers and sisters. My family.”
“Of course they are, sir,” the official said. “Sorry, sir.”
“Apology accepted. Bitch-ass.”
“Back to the keywords for tonight, sir. If we may.”
“Lay it on me.”
“Okay, so we’re talking about the Sudanese government and our attitude toward them. Keywords for our attitude, as regards the humanitarian situation here, include, but are not limited to: ‘steady,’ ‘demand,’ ‘firm,’ ‘control the Janjaweed,’ ‘do what’s right,’ and ‘solution.’”
“Got it,” Powell said.
“Keywords for the Sudanese government include, but are not limited to: ‘denial,’ ‘avoidance,’ ‘responsibility,’ ‘militarism,’ ‘racism,’ and—here’s your ace in the hole, sir—‘obfuscate.’”
“The fuck does that mean?”
“To obscure or confuse. Ties directly into ‘denial’ and ‘avoidance.’ Trust me, sir, it’ll bring the house down.”
“If you say so,” Powell said. “Okay. I’ll go out and do my little soft-shoe routine. Make it look like that hillbilly actually gives a shit what’s going on here.”
There was a sudden commotion outside. Powell looked up and saw two agents restraining what was surely the most beautiful young black woman he had ever seen. The agents struggled to keep the woman away from the Suburban. One grasped the green fabric of her dress, while the other applied a choke hold and issued a firm textbook directive for her to cease and desist. The woman was calling to Powell through the window’s reflective, bulletproof, blast-resistant glass. A third agent, pistol drawn and pointed at the woman’s head, moved to join the fray.
Powell threw open the door of the Suburban to a hammer stroke of dry heat. “What’s wrong with you men?” he hollered. “Let her go!”
The agent choking the woman loosened his grip. “She rushed the vehicle, Mr. Secretary,” he said.
With a fierce gesture, Powell called the agent over to him. “Perhaps you failed to notice the hundred or so cameras here,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “Perhaps you also failed to notice that this woman is wounded. Perhaps, finally, you failed to notice that she speaks perfect, unaccented English, and doesn’t that strike you as a bit odd in this place, you dumb cracker?”
“Yes, Mr. Secretary, I suppose it does.”
“Then let her go, and let her speak.”
The agent turned and motioned to his colleagues, who stepped aside. The woman lifted her cloth sack from where it had fallen in the dirt, straightened her dress, and approached the Suburban.
Powell smiled. “What can I do for you, sugar?”
“Mr. Secretary,” the woman said, her large eyes brimming with tears, “I need your help.”
“We are anxious to see the end of militarism,” Powell said. “We are anxious to see the Janjaweed brought under control and disbanded so people can leave the camps in safety and go back to their homes.”
In front of the cameras, under a large canvas tent erected for the press conference, God sat to Powell’s immediate right. To Powell’s left the Sudanese foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, tried without success to summon a smile to his face. The senior State Department official stood just out of view of the cameras, hanging on Powell’s every word.
“I’ve delivered a steady message to Mr. Ismail that the violence must be addressed,” Powell said to the assembled reporters. “The solution has to rest with the government doing what’s right.”
He turned to Ismail, who finally managed the smile of benevolence and cooperation he’d been after by envisioning Powell’s head atop a pike.
“To that end, in a show of good faith, Mr. Ismail has agreed to assist in locating Thomas Mawien, who was abducted by the Janjaweed and forced into slavery a decade ago, and whose sister Sora, seated here with me, asked for our help in finding her brother. For my part, I’ve promised Sora that I will not leave Darfur until she and Thomas are reunited. So we’ll all be sticking around a little longer than we’d thought.”
The official, whose left eyelid had begun to twitch when Powell wandered further and further off-message, now performed a spasmodic little dance as he fought the impulse to rush in and swat the cluster of microphones off the table.
“As we speak, units of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army
are scouring the region for Thomas. Once he is returned to his sister in good condition, then, and only then, can we be assured that the Sudan government is not merely continuing its campaign of denial and avoidance. Only then can we be assured they are no longer trying to obfuscate and avoid any consequences.
“Thank you,” Powell said, rising from his seat. “That’s all for now.” The mass of reporters rose with him, waving their hands and clamoring as one attention-starved organism. The official rushed in, screaming, “No questions! No questions!” Powell put an arm around God, held the pose for several seconds while the cameras flashed, then turned and offered his hand to Ismail. For a moment Ismail merely stood and regarded the hand as one regards a dead squirrel or a fresh pile of dog feces, but gave it a limp, spiteful shake when Powell fixed him with the Samuel Jackson stare. Then, flanked by his entourage, he turned and strode out of the tent.
The official turned to Powell as the Secret Service agents began herding reporters out into the arid night. “Due respect, sir,” he said, “are you insane? We’re scheduled to be in Indonesia tomorrow. Sir, it’s already tomorrow in Indonesia.”
“Indonesia isn’t going anywhere,” Powell told him.
“Besides which,” the official said, “besides which, sir, and forgive me if I’m out of line here, but our function is not to order foreign governments around. Our function is to persuade and convince.”
“Fuck that,” Powell said. “I’m a general, don’t forget. And generals give orders. Like I’m giving you an order right now: Leave me alone.”
The official’s satellite telephone rang, a shrill, angry sound. He clawed at his jacket, found the phone, and clutched it to his ear with both hands.
“Yes?” His face blanched. “Yes, sir…sir, I don’t know…this is as much a surprise to…I have no idea why the secretary has turned off his telephone…sir, let me…let me assure you that I remain a faithful servant of the admin…sir, perhaps you’d like to speak with…yes sir, he’s right here.”
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