Godless

by Pete Hautman

  “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?”

  * * *

  ONE DAY THE OCEAN NOTICED THAT THE HUMANS 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.”

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

  “A
ren’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.”

  * * *

  AND THE OCEAN WAS SAD, FOR IT HAD LAVISHED MUCH LOVE ON THESE STRANGE, THIRSTY APES. YET 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.
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  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.”