Godless

by Pete Hautman

Just Al: It’s hard to describe, Jason. It feels good.

  Me: Oh. I thought maybe it was like heartburn or something.

  The TPO meeting ends with one of Just Al’s ridiculous prayers, something about Jesus being “one cool dude.” On the way out I catch Magda in the hallway.

  “Hey, how are you doing?” I ask.

  “In trouble up to my ears.”

  “Me too. I’m a prisoner. And my dad is making me read a bunch of books.”

  “That’s not so bad. You like to read.”

  “You haven’t seen the books. Plus, he wants me to write book reports on them.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ve pulled permanent baby-sitting duty for my little brothers. They even made me quit my job at Wigglesworth’s. I’m surprised my parents even let me out of the house for TPO. They think you guys corrupted me.”

  “Did we?”

  She grins. “Maybe just a little. Have you talked to Henry?”

  “Yeah. He’s already planning another swimming party.”

  Magda laughs, and I feel it inside my chest.

  There is nothing in the world I would rather do than make Magda Price laugh.

  “He’s funny,” she says.

  “Who, Henry? I thought you thought he was scary.”

  “Scary on the outside, sure. But he’s got a good heart.”

  I think, Good heart? What does that mean? Don’t I have a good heart?

  I say, “Oh.”

  * * *

  AND THE ELDERS OF THE TWO TRIBES FORMED THEIR PEOPLE INTO GREAT ARMIES, AND THE ARMIES DID GATHER UPON THE PLAINS AND THE DESERTS AND THE SEAS.

  * * *

  24

  For the next several days I stay close to home, playing the part of a penitent sinner. I am Cain, I am Judas. But inside, I am Paul the Apostle, I am Nelson Mandela, I am the Bird Man of Alcatraz. They can imprison me, they can bury me in religious tracts, they can take away my Xbox—but they can never destroy the spirit of Chutengodianism.

  Secretly, in the dead of night, I begin work on a comic book based upon the Chutengodian Midnight Mass. Only difference is, I add a scene where the Chutengodian Commandments appear etched upon the steel walls of the tank:

  Thou shalt not be a jerk.

  Get a life.

  Thou shalt not eat asparagus.

  The third one is kind of personal, I admit. I’ve never liked asparagus. But the first two offer good, solid advice for anybody, and they aren’t really covered in the original ten. I move on to the baptism scene.

  I’m not the best artist in the world, but I’m not bad. Usually you can tell what it is I’m trying to draw, but I’m having trouble with the scenes inside the Godhead. I can’t seem to capture that vast, echoey space. After a while I give up on the background and just work on Magda swimming in her bra and panties.

  Maybe I’ll give it to her for a present.

  Someday.

  I tried to read some of the books my dad gave me. I got about ten pages into Why I am a Catholic before accidentally-on-purpose dropping it in the bathtub. Ooops. It is drying now. Amazing how thick a book gets when it’s been drenched and dried.

  Teen Spirit: The Holy Trinity for Today’s Youth, was not much better. I gave up on that one halfway through the table of contents. I looked at Teen Jesus: His Life and Times for about thirty seconds. I’d rather read a user’s guide for a Korean DVD player—at least that’s good for some humor. As for the other two books, I haven’t exactly opened them.

  I’ve got less than two weeks to turn in my book reports. Maybe World War III will break out, or a rogue comet will destroy North America, or something else will come along to save me.

  By Tuesday I’m pretty much stir crazy, so as soon as my mother leaves for her bridge club, I take off to see how Shin is doing. I knock on his window. No answer. Then I hear Shin’s voice, chanting softly.

  “… and first there was the Ocean and the Ocean was alone, and first there was the Ocean and the …”

  I look around. No Shin, but I can still hear the voice. I back up a few steps. There he is, standing on the peak of the roof staring down at the ground. His face is pale and shiny with sweat.

  “Shin!” I shout.

  He jerks like he’s been jabbed with a needle.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  He looks down at me. “Practicing.”

  I notice that he has a rope tied around his waist.

  “Practicing what?”

  “Being scared.”

  “What’s the rope for?”

  “I’ve got the other end tied to the chimney. Just in case.”

  “How’d you get up there?”

  He points. At the corner of the house I see a bright yellow fiberglass ladder leaning against the eaves.

  “Why do you want to be scared?” I ask, more curious than worried now.

  “I’m going up.” His pointing finger swings toward the tower.

  “I don’t know if you should …”

  “I have to go up.”

  “There’s nothing up there.”

  “That’s not what you said last week. You swam in him.”

  “Yeah, and Henry almost got killed, Magda and I are under house arrest, and I think Dan is being tortured in a dungeon someplace. It’s not worth it.”

  Shin shakes his head. “You don’t understand. I have to go.”

  “Maybe you’re taking this thing a little too seriously.”

  “Maybe you’re not serious enough.” He glares at me, his lip quivering. “He talks to me, you know. I hear what he says.” He looks toward the tower.

  “Shin, you’re scaring me.”

  His face reddens. “You think I care if you’re scared?” he shouts. “He doesn’t want you, he wants me!” He is balanced on the edge of the roof, his fear of heights obliterated by anger.

  “Be careful!” I say.

  “You think it’s a joke. You let Henry Stagg spoil everything. You left me on the steps. You left me” His cheeks are wet.

  “Shin, come on down.”

  “Screw you,” he sobs.

  I hear a car pull into the driveway. Mrs. Schinner jumps out, gray-streaked red hair flying around her head. “Peter!” she screams.

  Shin steps back from the edge and shrinks about a third.

  “Peter!” she shrieks again. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Schinner,” I say. “He’s got a rope tied to him.”

  She whirls on me. “You! What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing! I just—”

  She is looking up again. “Peter! You get down from there right now!”

  Shin, his hands shaking, is untying the rope. Mrs. Schinner turns back to me, hair whipping across her face.

  “You put him up to this, Jason.”

  “He was up there when I got here!”

  “You—” She stabs the air between us with a long forefinger. “—are a bad influence.” I take a step back. Her eyes are quivering, her lips tight and hard. “Leave here this instant.”

  Shin is clutching the end of his rope, watching us with an expression I can only describe as shattered.

  “You need help getting down?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head.

  “Leave!” says Mrs. Schinner.

  I leave.

  What would have happened if Shin had fallen while I was standing there? What if he had hurt himself, or died? Would Mrs. Schinner want me sent to jail for murder? How could she hold me responsible for Shin’s behavior? I didn’t do anything.

  “Yes, your honor, I pulled up in my car and there he was, the Kahuna, encouraging my son to leap from the roof to his death.”

  “Objection! The witness could not have heard anything my client said from inside her car!”

  “Objection overruled. The defendant’s mere presence at the scene proves his guilt. Bailiff! Escort this lying, murderous scumbag to the rat-infested dungeons.”

  I suppose that Mrs. Schinner will say something to my parents, and I�
��ll be busted for violating the terms of my incarceration. Oh well, nothing I can do about that now. I start for home, then I remember that Henry Stagg was supposed to get out of the hospital the day before yesterday.

  * * *

  AND THE CLOUDS OF WAR DID DESCEND UPON THE EARTH, AND THE GREAT ARMIES CAME TOGETHER IN A HOLOCAUST OF FIRE AND WIND, AND THEY FOUGHT FROM DAWN TO DUSK, AND THE PRAGMATISTS PREVAILED ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE GREAT WAR.

  * * *

  25

  Janice, Henry’s older sister, answers the door. She looks just like Henry, only with longer hair, and breasts.

  “Well, if it isn’t a member of the St. Andrew Valley Synchronized Water Tower Swim Team,” she says. “I suppose you’re looking for my idiot brother.”

  “Is he home?”

  “Yeah, and he’s not going anywhere for a while. C’mon in.”

  I go back to Henry’s room and find him in his bed reading the latest issue of Analog. He looks at me and grins.

  “Kahuna! How’s it going?”

  “Okay. How are you?”

  “How do I look?” His right leg is held rigid from his hip to his foot by a plastic and foam splint. It is open at the end, revealing five grayish toes.

  “Not great,” I say.

  “I know. This sucks. Hey, you want to sign my splint?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

  “Okay.” I take the pen he offers me. The plastic splint already has several signatures scrawled on it, including Mitch, Marsh, and Bobby—the three stooges. And one that says, Get well soon! XXXOOO, Magda.

  “Magda was here?”

  “She brought me a box of chocolates and helped me eat them.”

  “Oh.” I draw a picture of a figure wearing cowboy boots falling off a water tower. In my picture, he misses the catwalk.

  Henry looks at it and frowns. “You know something? I never got my boots back.”

  “You won’t be wearing them for a while anyway.”

  “True. Hey, I thought you were permanently grounded.”

  “I’m AWOL. I was just over at Shin’s. He was up on his roof working on his fear of heights. He still wants to go up.”

  Henry laughs, and I feel guilty for sharing this with him. Shin would hate me.

  Henry says, “There is no way Schinner is going up that tower, I don’t care how many rope ladders you build for him.”

  “You don’t know Shin,” I say.

  “Why would I want to?”

  “Well, for one thing, he’s smarter than you and me put together.”

  Henry rolls his eyes. “So’s a computer. That doesn’t mean it can climb.”

  “You don’t know him,” I say again. “He’s stubborn as a cat.”

  Henry looks past me and grins. “Hey! Mitch, my man! Burgers and fries, what a guy!”

  Mitch Cosmo is standing in the bedroom doorway holding two large paper McDonalds sacks. Bobby Whatever and Marsh Andrews are crowding through the door behind him.

  “I hope you guys brought enough for his Kahunaness,” Henry says.

  Mitch looks doubtful. The smell of burgers and fries rolls into the room.

  “That’s okay,” I say. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You sure?” Henry says. “It’s in the commandments, right? Treat your fellow Choots right.”

  “What’s a choot?” I ask.

  “We’re Choots,” says Marsh.

  “What commandments?” I ask.

  “Show him, Mitch.”

  Mitch sets the McDonalds bags down, reaches into his pocket, and comes out with a grimy, folded sheet of paper. He unfolds the paper, looks it over like a chimpanzee studying a menu, and hands it to me.

  The Chootengodiun Commanments

  For a moment I am speechless. Not only has Henry come up with his own set of commandments, he has invited his stooges into the CTG.

  “You spelled Chutengodian wrong,” I say.

  Henry laughs, echoed by the stooges.

  “You spelled ‘Commandments’ wrong, too,” I say.

  “At least we’re consistent,” Henry says, opening one of the McDonalds bags.

  I read down the list of “commanments.”

  Don’t be a wuss

  Don’t forget to duck

  Don’t take any shit

  Honor your fellow Choots

  Don’t fall

  Don’t get caught

  “You couldn’t come up with ten?” I say, ignoring the fact that I came up with only three.

  “We’re working on it,” Henry says, unwrapping a cheeseburger. The stooges are also digging in; the sound of crinkling paper is deafening, and my mouth is watering. “You want some fries?”

  “No. Listen, you can’t just make up your own rules.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I already have the Chutengodian Commandments.”

  “So now we got six more. Besides, I didn’t make them up by myself.”

  “You had help from these guys?” I say with a sneer.

  “Me and the High Priestess came up with them. Mitch just wrote ‘em down.”

  “Magda?”

  “Yup.”

  I rip the sheet of paper in half and let the torn paper flutter to the floor. “Your commandments are null and void.”

  Henry laughs. “You can’t do that. I’m the High Priest.”

  “Well I’m the Founder and Head Kahuna.”

  “I still don’t know what a Kahuna is.”

  “Like I told you, I’m your pope.”

  “Not my pope. We Choots are Protestants.” He shoves a fry in his mouth. “Protestant Choots don’t recognize the pope. It’s the Choots versus the Chutengodians. And by the way, the tower is off limits to you.”

  “We go where we want,” I say.

  “Who? You and Shin? Gimme a break.”

  “Me and Shin and Magda and Dan.”

  “I don’t care about Danny. As for Magda, she’s with us, your Kahunaness.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I say, shoving my way past the Protestant stooges and out the door.

  “Thanks for stopping by!” Henry calls after me.

  I get home about five minutes before my mother returns from her bridge club. I am congratulating myself for my excellent timing when the phone rings. A few minutes later my mother opens my bedroom door and crosses her arms and gives me a look that I do not like one bit.

  “That was Mrs. Schinner,” she says.

  Busted.

  She is giving me that intense look she gets when she suspects me of having a new disease. “Jason, whatever were you thinking?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I just needed to get out.”

  “That poor boy could have fallen and hurt himself.”

  “He had a rope tied to his waist. He would’ve just sort of hung there.”

  “Jason!”

  “Look, I just went over there to see how he was doing. He was already on the roof when I got there.”

  “Jason, I don’t even want to hear it,” she says, holding up her palms.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She flaps her hands, beating away my words, then turns and slams the door behind her.

  My mother, slamming the door. That’s different.

  * * *

  SO THE FAITHFUL GATHERED IN THE FORESTS AND ON THE MOUNTAINS AND IN DARK CAVERNS, AND THEY PREPARED THEMSELVES, AND ON THE NIGHT OF THE SECOND DAY THEY IMMERSED THEMSELVES IN THE RIVERS AND STREAMS. AND OTHERS OF THEM WADED OUT INTO THE LAKES AND THE SEAS, OR MARCHED UPON THE GLACIERS. AND AT DAWN ON THE THIRD DAY, THEY CALLED UPON THE OCEAN’S AVATARS TO STRIKE.

  * * *

  26

  Being pope sucks. I guess that’s why they hire those old guys to do the job. Maybe at their age they just don’t care. I try not to care, but it’s hard. I’m stuck here with no phone, no Xbox, nothing to do but read and draw pictures. I pick up the Teen Jesus book and flip through it. Did Jesus have problems like this? I guess so. T
hey ended up nailing him to a cross.

  I toss the book back on the floor.

  What if Shin and I hadn’t run into Henry that day? What if Henry hadn’t slugged me, and I hadn’t looked up at the belly of the tower all woozy and stunned? Chutengodianism might never have happened. We would never have climbed that tower, or swum in the Godhead. Henry would not be lying broken in bed. Shin would be collecting pods instead of climbing on his roof. And me, I’d be doing whatever I wanted to do.

  I wonder what that would be. Maybe Td be doing something with Magda. Has she really become a “Choot”? I just can’t see her hanging out with Henry and his stooges, but you never know what a girl will do. I open my sketchbook and look at the drawing I made of her swimming in the tank, her mouth open, gulping air, her smooth legs kicking up bubbles, her breasts pushing out against her wet bra. I think I made her arms a little too short, but she’s still beautiful.

  Maybe Magda and I could start over like Adam and Eve. Convert some new members. Not violent juvenile delinquents like Henry, but normal, healthy, sane types. Like Dan, only not Dan. We could convert them one at a time. Me and Magda, Head Kahuna and High Priestess. Let Henry have his little sect.

  As for Shin, he’s gone off in his own direction. I wish I could call him. If I could get him talking about pods and video games I think he’d be okay. The thing about Shin that nobody else understands is that he has a highspeed, one-track, damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead mind. When he gets going on something he just goes. When it’s something like snails it’s pretty harmless, but now that he’s fixated on water towers and Chutengodianism … I don’t know.

  Maybe I never should have brought it up with him. Shin was happier when he was his own god—the Pod God. Now his snails are all estivating. He’s not a god anymore, he’s just a cult of one, listening to voices in his head.

  Something my father said comes back to me: You have to realize, Jason, that your friends listen to what you say.

  Maybe Mrs. Schinner was right. Maybe I am a bad influence.

  I turn to a fresh page in my sketchbook. I hold my pencil poised over the white expanse, but my mind is as blank as the paper. The Founder and Head Kahuna of the Church of the Ten-legged God has run out of ideas.