You Don't Know About Me

by Brian Meehl

  I started back across the creek to see if the GPS’s distance reading would get better in a tree-cover hole above the trail. As I crossed I glanced down at the GPS. The compass needle swung back upstream. I lost my balance. I threw the GPS toward the trail as I fell off the skinny. I could get wet, but my GPS couldn’t. I landed on my ass in the stream. The water was really cold.

  I clambered out and pulled the GPS out of a bush. It still worked. Then I saw the overgrown path, barely visible as it continued up the creek. I yanked out the pages in my wet pocket and hoped my father hadn’t written the clue poem in bleeder ink. Luckily, he hadn’t. When I saw the line, I slapped myself on the forehead. “You big dope. ‘At trail’s end is nature’s span.’ ” I wasn’t at trail’s end.

  I ran up the trail. There it was: another fallen tree spanning the creek. My GPS was showing less than 30 feet. Since I was already half soaked I didn’t bother with the tree crossing. I splashed through the water. On the other side there was more dense undergrowth, but this time there was something else. A bunch of old limbs lay side by side on the ground. “As you seek, don’t be daft/Remember Huck is on a raft.”

  I yanked up dead limbs, keeping an eye out for snakes. Something yellow flashed. I jumped up, banging my head on a branch. The yellow didn’t move. It was the plastic lid of a coffee can half buried in rotting leaves. I pulled the can out and peeled off the top.

  I wasn’t surprised by what was inside. Ziplock bags with some money, a thin stack of book pages, and a little plastic toy: a devil with a pitchfork. Okay, someone in Huck Finn was going to hell. And I wasn’t surprised that “hell in a can” hadn’t turned out to be the bad book. It was getting pretty obvious my father didn’t want me finding it till I’d read all of Huck Finn. I just hoped Huck wasn’t as brick thick as the Bible. If it was, my treasure trail was going to be a death march to Mongolia.

  On the second page of the new chapter I found a highlighted word: “not.” In the next few pages, four more highlights followed: “us,” “I,” “da,” “ho.” Notus, Idaho? What kind of name was that?

  28

  A New Plan

  Heading back down the trail, I entered Notus, Idaho, into the GPS. It was a real town, and not too far: 290 miles. With some luck, I could hitchhike there in a day.

  I left Vons Park, walked down Center Street, and started reading the new Huck pages. Chapter 31 was a shocker.

  The king and the duke give up Jim to slave hunters for a reward.

  When Huck finds out Jim’s going to be sold to a bad plantation down south, he thinks Jim would be better off back upriver with his owner, Miss Watson. He thinks about writing her a letter telling her to come fetch her slave.

  Unsure what to do, Huck prays over his decision. He realizes his mind is telling him to do the right thing, to write Miss Watson, but his heart is telling him to do something else. As he prays, he realizes you can’t fool God. He says, “You can’t pray a lie.”

  He writes the letter as a test. He thinks it’s a fine and righteous letter. But then he starts remembering his adventures with Jim and the great times they’ve had.

  He picks up the letter and knows he’s got to decide between two things: to do the good thing and send the letter to Miss Watson, or to do the bad thing and not. He has to decide between being good or being a sinner, forever.

  He rips up the letter and says, “Alright, then, I’ll go to hell.”

  When I read that I heel-planted. It was so lame. I mean, the world’s full of choices, but I’d never heard of anyone who wanted to go to hell. That’s never the best choice. It got me thinking. What if all the notes Mark Twain scribbled in the bad book about the sequel to Huck Finn were about just that? Huck going to hell. For all I knew, it might even be called Huck Finn in Hell. No wonder my father called it the “bad book.”

  I stood on the sidewalk, dumbstruck. Did I keep going another 290 miles for a book that might be that stupid? Was my treasure hunt for a total piece of crap?

  I flipped to the last page of the two new chapters to see if my father had left another clue poem. He had.

  Now that Huck has set his waypoint,

  And goes on down to Satan’s joint,

  Do consider what he might drive,

  If he wishes to survive.

  Look for fuel to throw on fire,

  There you’ll find your heart’s desire.

  I stared at the last three words: “your heart’s desire.” What did he mean by that? What was my heart’s desire? More chapters of Huck Finn? Didn’t think so. Was it the bad book itself? And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. My heart’s desire wasn’t more chapters of some old story about a boy and a runaway slave on a raft. And it wasn’t some “bad book” with a bunch of Mark Twain scribbles in it. My heart’s desire was to get the damn book and sell it. My heart’s desire was the freedom it was going to buy me!

  I started striding down the sidewalk. The plan was simple: go to the highway, start hitching.

  I didn’t get a block before a white shape appeared at the bottom of the street. A small camper started up the long hill. I stopped. It was Giff. I’d totally forgotten about the note I’d left Ruah.

  Coming up the street, the camper flashed through patches of bright sun and shade. In an intersection, it flashed bright white, like it was on fire. It sparked something in my brain, a question: What if I’d gotten the sign God sent me that morning all wrong? The searing doubt ignited more questions. What if God’s garbageman messenger wasn’t telling me to run from something? What if he was telling me to run toward something? What if the messenger emptying the white trash can wasn’t tossing me from the camper? What if God had been showing me that what He wanted tossed from the camper was the trash of sin?

  As the camper drew closer, and I saw Ruah through the windshield, the answers rained down like the sunlight piercing the trees. Just as Huck turned on a dime to try and save Jim from slavery, I had to turn on a dime too. God wanted me to save Ruah from another kind of slavery: the slavery of sin.

  The camper pulled to the curb. I couldn’t hold back a grin as I stepped over to the window. “I found it.” I pulled the ziplock bags from my pocket. “It’s the next two chapters, some more money, and a toy devil.”

  His head pulled back. “What’s the devil about?”

  “You’ll get it when I read you Chapter Thirty-one.”

  His face pinched as he grunted. “Hmm, I thought you were done reading to me. Your note said you wanted to say goodbye.”

  “Yeah, but something came up.”

  He stared at me. “What’s that?”

  I shouldered my backpack. “I’ll tell you later. Right now I wanna buy you breakfast.”

  He smiled for the first time. “Sounds good. Let’s do it.”

  I got in and we drove down the street.

  Ruah looked at the new chapters still clutched in my hand. “So, where’s your next geocache?”

  “Notus, Idaho.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Two hundred and ninety miles northwest.”

  “As long as there’s more Huck to read”—he smiled and patted the dashboard—“me and Giff are good for it.”

  29

  Saving Ruah Branch

  We took the road atlas into breakfast, found Notus in southwest Idaho, and plotted a course.

  After we drove through Logan and headed west, I pulled out my Bible. I turned to Genesis and went right to the Word Ruah needed to hear. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply.”

  As I turned to another verse Ruah snickered. “What are you doing?”

  I let the Word answer. “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.”

  “Excuse me,” he said. “What happened to reading the new chapters of Huck Finn?”

  “I’ll get to ’em.” I flipped to Leviticus.


  “So this is what changed your mind about saying goodbye? You wanted to save my perverted soul first.”

  “It’s God’s will that everyone should be straight.”

  The camper swerved; my eyes shot up from Leviticus. We bounced along the shoulder and lurched to a stop. A car flew around us, its horn blaring.

  Ruah yanked off his sunglasses and fixed me with hard eyes. “Maybe goodbye should be sooner than later. I don’t need to be saved, by you or anyone else.”

  “Everyone needs to be saved.”

  He flicked a hand at the door. “Ride’s over.”

  I opened the door, jumped out, and grabbed my pack. I shut the door, making sure to slam it.

  As I hiked on my pack he said, “Look, Billy, it wasn’t always the case, but I’m perfectly happy being gay.”

  “If you’re so happy what are you doing in the closet, or locker room, or whatever you call it?”

  “It’s ‘closet.’ ”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  He took a deep breath. “Alright, Billy Allbright, you need a ride to Notus, Idaho, right?”

  “Yeah, and I also wanna help you.”

  He frowned. “I’m sure you do. You’re such a Good Samaritan, you’d give a drink of water to a drowning man.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Never mind,” he said, slipping his shades back on. “Here’s the way it’s gonna be if you want a ride. For every antigay, homophobic piece of scripture you throw at me, you read me a chapter of Huck Finn.”

  “But I’ve only got two new chapters.”

  He shrugged. “Then you’ve only got two shots at saving my ass. I wanna hear Huck, and you wanna hear me cry ‘straight.’ I think it’s a fair deal. You gonna take it or leave it?”

  I climbed back in. I felt so juiced with the Holy Spirit, I figured I only needed one shot. Because if there was one thing I’d learned about as a Jesus-throated Whac-a-Mole protesting at homosexual weddings, was the best scripture bombs to throw to smoke the devil out.

  We got back on the road. I opened the Bible to Leviticus.

  “Whoa,” Ruah said. “What happened to Genesis, and all that cleaving, one-fleshing, and fruity multiplying?”

  “It was ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ ”

  “Right, but here’s my question. Is Old Testy’s order to cleave and multiply an all-or-nothing deal? I mean, if you just cleave, but don’t multiply, does that mean you’re defying God?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “God wants everyone to have children.”

  “So if a couple can’t make babies they shouldn’t be cleaving?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  He shouted out his window. “Hear that, peeps? And I’m talkin’ to all you non–baby makers: the infertile, the sterile, the old, the homos. Stop cleaving this instant! Stop getting married! And for God’s sake, stop becoming one flesh! There’s nuthin nastier than doin’ the one-flesh with no new flesh to show for it!”

  I didn’t laugh. I told him he could make fun all he wanted, but it didn’t change scripture. I told him he was turning God’s Word into Play-Doh so he could mold it into whatever he wanted.

  “Great minds think alike,” he said, pointing at my head. “Martin Luther said scripture was like a wax nose; you can twist it any way you like.”

  “You’re doing all the twisting.”

  He nodded. “Maybe so. But now that we’ve heard from Genesis, it’s time to hear from Huck.” He grinned. “Chapter Thirty-one, please.”

  I didn’t want to, but I had to keep my side of the bargain. I pulled out Chapter 31. It was much tougher to read out loud. Especially to a black guy. Huck says “nigger” and refers to Jim as “my nigger” so often I began rushing over the word.

  Ruah interrupted me. “Just go with it and stop mumbling ‘my nigger.’ I’d rather hear that flying out of your mouth than ‘faggot’ and ‘abomination to the Lord.’ ”

  When I got to the end, I asked him about what had bugged me the first time I read the chapter in Providence. “If there was a sequel to Huck Finn, do you think it would be Huck Finn in Hell?”

  He laughed. “Once a literalist, always a literalist.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Huck’s literally going to hell, then so are you and your mother.”

  “No way.”

  “You said it before; you’re both antinomians. You break the law of the land and answer to a higher law. Huck’s no different. He refuses to turn in a runaway slave ’cause he’s obeying a higher law: the law of the heart.”

  Ruah drummed on the wheel. “Okay, I’m dying to hear the next chapter, but we got a deal. Billy Bible Cred gets another chance to save me from the abyss of swish.”

  As I turned to the slam dunk of Bible stories against homo sexuality we crossed the border into Idaho. The big blue sign said WELCOME TO IDAHO, and then a little sign added IDAHO IS TOO GREAT TO LITTER.

  Ruah laughed and shook a finger at me. “And they’re not just talking trash-trash. They’re talking trashy ideas. So don’t be littering the beautiful Idaho countryside with crappy ideas, ’cause the Idaho thought police will fine your ass for sure. And they don’t care if your trashy idea comes from the Bible or not. If it’s trash, it’s trash.”

  I gave him a half laugh, shut my Bible, and tucked it in the door pocket. I could wait on my slam-dunk scripture until two things happened. (1) I got some food in my stomach and some juice on my dry throat. And (2) he wasn’t so full of himself that he wore attitude earplugs to God’s Word.

  30

  Into the Desert

  After stopping for body fuel, we followed the Snake River, a shiny ribbon winding through southern Idaho. The river was the blue stripe in the middle of a fatter “snake” of checkered green pastures and milk-shake-brown fields. On both sides of the valley were dry hills covered in sagebrush and scrub cedar.

  When we passed a sign for an old hotel, THE SAGE STEPPE INN, I asked about the weird spelling. Ruah told me that sage steppe was one of the names for the high desert that stretched beyond the river valley. It was a wonky name. I mean, it looked to me like the kind of desert where no one had ever stepped, and if they had, they might’ve never stepped out of it again.

  As we got off the interstate and followed the Snake River up to Notus, the sage steppe to the south got drier and wilder-looking. We even passed some giant sand dunes, like they’d been airlifted from the Sahara Desert.

  The steppe looked so unstepped on by humans or animals, it got me thinking. In the Midwest, it looks like every square inch of land has been trod on by a person or an animal at sometime or other. And if footprints never went away—like dinosaur tracks in rocks—the Midwest would be a huge carpet of footprints. But out west, in the high desert, there would be places that no human or animal had ever tread. Sure, there’d be trails and tracks from the past, but there’d also be islands of ground where no creature had ever set foot or hoof. There’d be places as untouched as the moon.

  It made me want to ask Ruah to stop so that I could get out and walk into the desert to one of those untouched islands. When I thought I’d found one, I’d kick off my sneaks and be the first creature to ever step on that piece of God’s earth. On that one little island, I’d be Adam.

  It was just one of my dopey fantasies, but it was also God reminding me of something. Most of His good earth had been corrupted by the foul footprint of sin. And God’s will, before I got to Notus, was to save Ruah from his sinful path.

  I opened my Bible to Genesis, where the Lord destroys Sodom and Gomorrah. I read it out loud. It’s as straightforward as scripture gets.

  Two angels, in the form of men, visit the town of Sodom.

  A man who lives there, Lot, invites the two strangers into his house. He feeds them and offers them shelter for the night.

  A mob of Sodomites shows up and orders Lot to give them the two men so they can “know them,” meaning have sex with them.

  Lot begs the mob to ta
ke his daughters instead. They refuse. They want the two men.

  The two men pull Lot back into the house and, being angels, blind all the Sodomites outside. The angels tell Lot to take his family and leave Sodom because it’s going to be destroyed for its wickedness.

  And that’s what the Lord does: He rains fire and brimstone on Sodom, killing everyone and everything.

  I shut the Bible. Ruah didn’t say anything. I looked over.

  He’d taken off his sunglasses. His face looked puzzled, but his mouth was set in a smirk. “That story always struck me as this really sick tale about what some fathers think of their daughters.”

  “That’s not what it’s about,” I said.

  “Really? What’s it about?”

  “God destroyed Sodom because it was filled with homosexuals. And that’s why ‘sodomy’ is still the word for what you people do, and a ‘sodomite’ is someone who does it.”

  He slowly nodded. “Very good on the etymology, kid. Does it also follow that if anyone should know about the story of Sodom, it would be a sodomite?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Well,” he said, with his smirk back, “as a latter-day sodomite, I’d like to throw out another reason why T.L. destroyed Sodom.”

  I couldn’t wait to see him try and wiggle out of this one.

  He raised a hand. “Okay, I’ll admit, even though there’s no actual man-on-man sex in the story, there is the threat of it. But what the story’s really about is two opposites: brotherly love and male rape.”

  “What does brotherly love have to do with it?”

  “It’s another term for doing someone a kindness, for hospitality, don’t you think?”

  I gave him the benefit of the doubt. “I guess so.”

  “In the Holy Land, and in desert culture, when the nights get so cool, one of the worst things you can do is leave someone out in the cold. So, all through the Bible there are stories, and laws, about how strangers should be given shelter for the night, and food. But there was another good reason to be kind to strangers. You never knew when the stranger wandering into your camp or village might be a god or an angel. And that’s exactly who Lot ended up taking in, two angels disguised as men, right?”