Godless

by Pete Hautman

  Dan says, “I’m getting tired.”

  “Try floating.”

  “I don’t float.”

  “Magda? Are you swimming toward the hatch?”

  “I’m”

  Something hits me hard in the eye.

  “Ow! Who was that?”

  “Sorry!” Magda says. “You were in my way. I can’t see the hatch anymore. You can only see it when you’re up against the wall, otherwise the platform blocks it.”

  I can’t see her, but I hear her breathing. I sense her body just a couple of feet away.

  Henry says, “If everybody just swims around for awhile, one of us is bound to run into the ladder.”

  I say, “I got an idea. We make a human chain. We hold hands and swim across the tank till we hit the ladder.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Dan says. He is breathing hard. “Where are you?”

  “I’m over here,” says Magda.

  “Keep talking.”

  “Henry? You coming?”

  “Right here.” His voice is surprisingly close.

  “Okay. Dan?”

  “I can’t find you.”

  “Keep following my voice.”

  The sound of his splashing gets closer, then we hear a squeal from Magda.

  “Hey, keep your hands where they belong!”

  “Sorry!”

  “We all here? Let’s grab hands.”

  I reach out, touching Magda’s shoulder, then sliding my hand down along her arm to her hand. On my other side, Henry is groping at me. We manage to clasp hands. My legs are churning double-time to stay afloat.

  “You got hold of Dan over there, Magda?”

  “I got him. Now what?”

  “Now we start swimming, keeping our hands clasped and our arms stretched out.”

  “How do we—urk!”

  “What the—hey, we all gotta be facing the same way.” Two very confusing minutes later, our human chain is relinked. We start swimming backward, propelled by eight kicking feet. Henry and Dan, on the ends, add some arm action. I figure our chain is almost twenty feet long. The tank is about seventy feet across.

  “How do you know we’re going the right way?” Dan asks.

  “I don’t. But if we just keep going till we hit the wall, then we can see the hatch. We swim for the hatch then, we’re bound to run into the ladder.”

  It’s a good plan.

  I wonder if it will work.

  * * *

  BUT IN TIME EVEN THE CHUTENGODIANS DID BECOME NEGLECTFUL AND ACROSS THE LAND THE TOWERS OF THE OCEAN RUSTED AND GREW WEARY.

  * * *

  19

  Three times we reached the smooth metal wall of the tank, and three times we launched ourselves back toward the center of the tank, only to end up running into the wall again. How could we be missing the ladder? I don’t know how long we can keep swimming. I’m getting tired, and Dan is breathing so loud I’m afraid he’s going to panic. Then it occurs to me that Henry and I are probably stronger swimmers than Magda and Dan, causing our human chain to swing off to one side.

  “Ease up a little, Henry,” I say as we push off the wall for the third time. We kick our way through darkness. What if the chain ladder fell into the water with the flashlight? We would swim blindly until, one by one, we sink into the waters, never to be found until the citizens of St. Andrew Valley complain of a nasty, rotten flavor in their drinking water and—

  —something whacks the top of my head, and I hear the rattle of rusty chain. I’ve found the ladder with my head.

  We send Magda up first. She is the lightest, and the least likely to break the rusted ladder. Once she’s up, Henry follows, then Dan, then me, the Big Kahuna. The ladder holds up admirably. I emerge from the hatch with a sense of giddy relief. I have survived being devoured by a god. I am Jonah, spat out by the whale.

  Around me, the Chutengodians are getting dressed. Magda is talking rapid-fire, spewing out her excitement in the form of words.

  “I thought we were gonna be in there till we drowned or something. My god, that was so crazy.” She pulls her jeans up over her slim hips. “Henry, you’re crazy, you know that? What if that ladder had broken? What if somebody had climbed up and closed the hatch on us?”

  Henry, shirtless, is standing on one leg struggling to pull on a cowboy boot. “Who’d do that? Schinner? He’s too scared to climb up here.”

  I realize that I haven’t thought about Shin for one second since we went into the tank.

  Dan says, “I wish we’d brought up some sodas or something. I’m thirsty.”

  “You just spent half an hour floating around in a million gallons of drinking water!”

  “I wasn’t thirsty then,” says Dan.

  Henry is working on his other boot, hopping up and down on his left foot, tugging at the loops on either side of his right boot.

  “Careful,” I say. “It’s slippery up here with all this water.”

  Just then Henry’s heel comes down on a wet spot and his foot skids out from under him and he falls, flat on his back, feet splayed out toward the horizon.

  Dan and I both start to laugh, then stifle it as we realize that Henry might be in trouble. He rolls over onto his belly and tries to crawl toward us, but he’s too far out on the slope. He slides one knee forward but the movement causes him to slip down another two inches. His fingers scrabble on the steel surface, but there’s nothing there to grab. Spread-eagled on his bare belly, he looks up at us with wide, terrified eyes. I think the suction between his belly and the smooth steel of the tank is the only thing holding him.

  “Help me,” he says in a small voice.

  I shake off the momentary paralysis. “Dan, grab hold of the light post!” I say. Dan grasps the post with both hands, I take hold of Dan’s ankle with one hand and, on my belly now, stretch my other hand out to Henry. It’s too far.

  “I’m coming,” says Magda. I feel her clamber over me; she’s holding onto my arm and I’m holding onto her as she stretches her feet toward Henry. He should be able to reach her, but as he lifts his hand to grab for her ankle he suddenly slides down another foot.

  “Grab my ankle, Henry!” Magda shouts, but she can’t see how far down he has slid. I watch, helpless, as Henry slowly slides over the horizon, his naked belly squeaking against metal.

  “Oh, shit,” I hear him say just before he disappears from sight.

  Henry does not scream as he falls. I would have. But Henry falls silently, at least for a second, then we hear a loud clang.

  Did he hit the ground so quickly? No, that sound wouldn’t be so loud and close and metallic-sounding. He must’ve bounced off a leg on his way down. These thoughts tumble through my mind in a fraction of a second. Then comes the scream, but it’s not from Henry.

  “Henryyyyyy!” Magda shrieks, her voice so high and loud I can feel it all the way to the center of my brain.

  “Did he fall?” Dan asks.

  “He’s gone,” I say.

  A wordless, sobbing wail comes from Magda.

  I start to pull her back up to safety. She is dead weight. “Come on, Magda. I can’t hold you much longer.”

  Slowly, Magda crawls back over me, sobbing hysterically. I want to sob hysterically too, but a part of me—the Kahuna part—knows that we have to pull ourselves together before we can afford to fall apart. Magda makes it back to the railing. I am climbing back, holding onto Dan, when we hear a weird moan.

  My first thought is that it’s the tower speaking to us. But it’s not coming from within the tank, but from outside.

  Magda is the first to realize what it is.

  She shouts, “Henry!”

  Henry’s quavering voice slides up over the tank. “I think I busted my leg.”

  “Omigod, he’s alive!” Magda says. She grabs me, wrapping her arms around my middle and squeezing. “He’s alive!” Is she hugging me or Henry? I am confused. How could Henry have survived a two-hundred-foot fall? And why can we hear him so clearly?

 
“He must have landed on the catwalk,” Dan says.

  Of course. The catwalk that circles the tank sticks out about three feet, and it’s only thirty feet below us. Henry must have been able to slow himself down enough so that he dropped straight down the side of the tank to land on the catwalk.

  “Are you all right?” Magda calls out.

  “No!”

  “We better go help him,” I say. Dan is already headed down the ladder. I grab Henry’s backpack and look at Magda. She is smiling joyfully, her eyes wet with tears. “He’s alive” she says.

  “Yeah, he’s alive.” I’m alive too, I think. Would she smile that hard for me? “Let’s go get him.”

  Henry is lying on the catwalk with one leg stretched out in front of him and the other jutting out at an angle that makes me want to throw up. His thigh is broken. He looks like he has two knees on one leg. His face is white and knotted with pain. He is breathing rapidly, like a dog panting.

  “Good one, Henry,” I say.

  He stares at me, but does not reply. I look up at the wall of the tank and imagine what it must have been like for him, going over the edge of the planet like that. Was he hoping to hit the catwalk? Did he even remember the catwalk was there? Or did his mind go completely blank with fear?

  Magda is bent over him, cradling his head.

  Dan says, “We gotta get him down. How are we gonna get him down?”

  I look over the railing, down at the ground, and suddenly I am blinded by a brilliant white light. The light plays across the tank, leaving us in momentary darkness, then returns, holding steady.

  An amplified voice rings out, “You on the water tower, come on down now.”

  Dan says again, “How are we gonna get him down?”

  “I think that’s going to be somebody else’s problem,” I say.

  * * *

  AND THERE CAME A TIME WHEN THE CHUTENGODIANS ARGUED AMONG THEMSELVES, AND SOME SAID THE WILL OF THE OCEAN WAS DEPLETED, AND THAT HUMANS DID CONTROL THE WATERWAYS AND THE RAINS. AND THEY DID CALL THEMSELVES THE PRAGMATISTS.

  * * *

  20

  I cannot recommend jail, unless you enjoy misery, fear, loneliness, and the sounds and smells of a drunk puking in the next cell. Also, I think I might have picked up a flea infestation. My head itches like crazy.

  I am Bock. J. Bock. Radical Religious Zealot. Leader of the Chutengodian Jihad. Mastermind of the Terrorist Assassins, Captured in the Act of Poisoning the Water Supply with sweat, spit, and one flashlight, imprisoned by godless heathens for crimes against nature….

  Forget about it. I’m hungry and scared and I’m gagging at the reek of my neighbor’s winey vomit. I lay wide-eyed on the narrow cot, staring at some pink chunky glop stuck to the ceiling. What is it? How did it get up there? My stomach churns.

  There are no windows, no clocks. Does that make the time go faster? I don’t think so.

  A policeman walks past my cell and I say, “Do you know what time it is?”

  He stops and looks in at me and says, “Time to think about your life, son.”

  “Do you know if my friend Henry is all right?”

  “I don’t know your friend Henry. Was he here?”

  “No.”

  “Then, he’s probably better off than you are.”

  “What about Magda and Dan?”

  “Those other two kids? Their parents already picked them up.”

  “I want to call my dad.”

  “You already had your phone call.”

  “Are there fleas in here?” I ask, scratching my head.

  He laughs. “Son, there’s a lot worse than fleas.”

  My father lets me rot in jail until almost 9:00 A.M. It’s just as well. When he finally bails me out, he is so mad he can’t talk. I can’t imagine how angry he must have been when he got the 3:00 A.M. phone call from the police.

  “You sit in back” is the only thing he says to me.

  I get in the backseat of his Buick. His jaw muscle is pulsing so hard I’m afraid he’s going to pulverize his molars.

  Halfway home, I say, “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  The frequency of the jaw pulses increases. This is bad. I’ve never seen him like this.

  The first time I climbed the tower with Henry Stagg, we told each other things. I told Henry about my mother’s obsession with diseases, and my father’s obsession with religion. Henry told me about his father, who used to beat him with a belt.

  The belt was black with silver studs. He would fold it over once, drape Henry over his knee and whack him three times with the buckle end for every minute of aggravation Henry had given him. There were times, Henry told me, when his ass oozed blood for a week. Two years ago Henry’s father got killed in a truck accident. Henry says he doesn’t miss him one bit.

  My father has never hit me with anything. But, at this moment, if he happened to have a silver-studded belt in his hands, I’m sure I’d never be able to sit down again.

  We get home and go into the house. I walk past my mother, who stares at me as if I’m some sort of freak of nature. I go to my room and shut the door. It feels as if years have passed. I look at my books, my computer, my clothes—none of it seems important anymore, not after last night. Not after nearly drowning, and then watching Henry die, and then finding out he was alive, and the police and the ambulance crew bringing Henry down … and the hours sitting in jail, sitting in that bright cell alone with the retching and the foul smells.

  I’m hungry, but there is no way I am going out there and facing my mother.

  No way.

  I think about Magda and Dan. Are they in as much trouble as I am? I don’t know anything about Magda’s parents, but as for Dan, his Holy Roller father has probably grounded him for the rest of his life.

  Shin is lucky he didn’t come up with us. I wonder how he is doing. Does he even know what happened? Probably not. He’s probably still in bed.

  I scour my mind for something to make me feel better. All I can come up with is Paul the Apostle, who was imprisoned repeatedly for his religious activities. Is this how he felt?

  I wouldn’t have been on top of that tower if it weren’t for my religion. Does that make me a martyr? Am I being persecuted?

  I wonder how my father will respond to that argument.

  Not well, I fear.

  A few minutes later I hear determined, fatherly footsteps. He opens my door without knocking.

  “Jason, your mother and I would like to talk to you.”

  He walks away, leaving the door open. I follow him into the living room. My parents are perched stiffly in their matching club chairs. I sit on the sofa, facing them. The prisoner facing his persecutors, waiting to hear the sentence they are about to impose. Will they send me back to jail? Will I spend the rest of my life in a labor camp? Will I be put in stocks in the public square? Will I be drawn and quartered—one limb tied to each of four horses and pulled slowly apart? Will I be whipped and beaten and spat upon and forced to drag a wooden cross to my place of execution?

  My father begins with the ritual throat clearing, then speaks.

  “Jason, I hardly know what to say. In fact, I’m not even going to bother asking you why you were up there on that water tower. No answer you could possibly give us would be satisfactory. The Stagg boy is in St. Theresa’s Hospital, lucky to be alive. You’re all lucky to be alive,”

  I, the accused, say nothing.

  “The question now is, what are we going to do with you?”

  I maintain my silence.

  After a few seconds he says, “Well?”

  “I’m sorry, I thought the question was rhetorical.”

  His eyes bulge, and I immediately regret my comment, even though it was completely true.

  “Jason,” he says, fighting to keep his voice under control, “do you want to continue to live here with us, under this roof?”

  I nod. It’s not such a bad place. I try to keep my chin up and look him in the eyes, but it’s not so easy, what with all t
he smoldering and burning and glittering going on there. I shift my gaze down and over to my mother’s hands, fingers all over each other like ten jittery worms having a wrestling match. It reminds me of how much my head itches. I start scratching.

  “What do you think we should do, Jason?” my father says.

  “I don’t know. I’m not going to be climbing any more water towers.”

  “Do you think you should be punished?”

  “No.”

  His jaw pulses as he chews on that.

  “Your mother and I disagree,” he says.

  I shrug. The funny thing is, although I’m embarrassed at getting caught, I don’t feel all that bad about climbing the Ten-legged One. What’s the big deal? Nobody got hurt. Except for Henry, and that was his own fault.

  But I know I’m going to pay a price. I’m paying right now with all the itching.

  My father clears his throat again.

  “Here is what we’ve decided, Jason. You are not to leave the house except on errands, or to attend TPO meetings, or on other business approved of by your mother and me, until the beginning of school.”

  That’s only six weeks away. I can handle it.

  “And no phone privileges.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Furthermore, you will not be getting your drivers’ license this fall. That will have to wait until next year.”

  Ouch! That one really hurts.

  “Look, I don’t—” I stop talking just in time. Who knows what sort of incriminating declaration was about to come out of my mouth? I certainly don’t.

  “You don’t what?” my father asks, his voice artificially mild.

  “Nothing,” I say, scratching behind my right ear.

  “Why are you scratching?” my mother asks, speaking for the first time.

  “I think I got fleas or lice or something,” I say.

  That ends the meeting fast.

  * * *

  AND THOSE WHO OPPOSED THE PRAGMATISTS, AND WHO CALLED THEMSELVES THE FAITHFUL, SAID NO! THE WATERWAYS AND THE RAINS ARE THE PROVINCE OF THE OCEAN AND ITS AVATARS, AND THOSE WHO DO NOT RECOGNIZE THE SUPREMACY OF THE OCEAN OVER ALL SHALL BE DAMNED TO WANDER FOREVER IN A WATERLESS DESERT.