You Don't Know About Me

by Brian Meehl

  The sign on the other side said, WELCOME TO WASHINGTON—SAYWA! When Ruah saw the bumper-to-bumper traffic with the same idea of going west on the north side of the river, he said, “You can sayWA again. SayWA was I thinkin’?”

  Short of going a hundred miles out of our way, there was no other route to Portland. As the sun began to sink over the river valley, we decided to look for a campground and finish the trip in the morning. Every campground we got to was full. We named Washington the SayWA-Were-We-Thinkin’? state.

  4

  Stonehenge

  The sun set as we looked for one last campground. We made a wrong turn and drove up a steep. At the top was the weirdest thing: Stonehenge. It was like the ancient one in England but not all toppled over and missing pieces. It was a full-scale replica of Stonehenge when it was new. The only difference was that this one was made of cement, not stone. It could’ve been called Cementhenge.

  We walked through a gap in the outer circle of blocks. Inside was another circle of upright stones. Inside that were square arches horseshoeing around a flat stone that looked like a banquet table. I imagined that whenever King Arthur and his knights needed a break from eating at the Round Table, they rode over to the real Stonehenge and ate at the Square Table.

  Ruah raised his arms and shouted, “Now, this is a campsite!”

  Seeing how there was no one to tell us different, that’s what we made it. We gathered wood before it got too dark and got a fire going in front of the stone table. Back in the camper, we threw together some dinner and took our chairs to the fire. As we ate, it got very dark because there was no moon. We threw more wood on the fire.

  When we finished, we got distracted by a glow. It started at the bottom of one of the rectangular openings in the outer stone circle. It brightened into a sliver of moonlight. We watched the moon climb through the opening. It cast shadows inside the circle, great bars of light and dark.

  I heard the crunch of gravel and saw Ruah walk toward the camper. He came back carrying his pillow, sheet, and blanket. He tossed them on the stone table. “No way I’m sleeping in the RV. Tonight I’m working on my moon tan.” He sat back down in his chair.

  “It’s too bright for me,” I said. “I’ll stick with Giff.”

  “Probably a good idea.” He lifted his arms. “I’ve got all this melanin protecting me. You’ve got nuthin. You’d wake up with a moon burn.”

  I laughed, said goodnight, and headed for the camper.

  Inside, the moonlight was almost as bright. I shut the curtains against it. It didn’t keep out the two columns of moonlight dropping from the skylights into the aisle. They made my own little moonhenge.

  I lay there thinking about the day. It had gone from black to white: from blubbering in a phone booth to watching the moonrise over Stonehenge. That moonrise was the first picture in my attic I definitely wanted to take downstairs and hang on the wall. It made me think God had looked down, seen my rotten day, and decided to cheer me up. I wondered if I was insulting His gift by sleeping in the camper. I thought about taking my sleeping bag and z-bagging on the stone table too. No sooner did I think it, then I saw a horrible picture. It was so gross I instantly pushed it out of my mind. I didn’t want to think it, or see it again.

  I filled my mind with other thoughts and pictures. I focused on Mom, and replayed our phone call. I thought about how she had gone latter-day Jonah on me. I mean, after a lifetime of telling me Christ had died for my sins, suddenly my sins were unforgivable. She was condemning me, telling me she wouldn’t look at me or cleave to me. She’d gone total Jonah: bring on the wrath.

  I watched the moon columns inch their way along the aisle. They got me thinking again about how the trip had changed the way I saw the world. I mean, even if Mom did forgive me and take me back, I didn’t see myself in the New J-Brigade anymore. As much as I still thought Ruah was wrong for being gay, I didn’t see myself protesting at gay weddings and shouting how queers were going to hell. Mom had her big sin—getting pregnant with me—and she lived her life saying Christ had forgiven her. Why couldn’t Ruah have his big sin and live his life with Christ forgiving him? Hadn’t he been punished enough by losing his friend Jerry?

  Thinking about Ruah only stirred me up. It made my mind drift toward the horrible picture lurking in the shadows. I didn’t want to look at it, think about it. The moon columns didn’t help. They reminded me of the moon-shadow show going on in the big circle of stones. I got up and tried to block out the light. I hung clothes on the cranks that opened the skylights. It only turned the clothes into eerie ghosts. I pulled them down. I turned away and faced the back of the couch.

  I shoved my thoughts back to Mom. I tried to remember the scripture she liked for praying against thoughts you didn’t want, pictures you shouldn’t see. I had total brain lock. I couldn’t think of a verse. I wished one of the moonlight columns would ripple to life, and Mom would appear to help.

  It got me wondering if I’d ever pray with her again. I mean, maybe she meant what she’d said, that she would shun me. The more that mental maggot gnawed on me the more I wanted to jump up and start walking home. It’s not like she would ever know the difference of when I started home. I could say I had started home my first step out of that phone booth.

  But it was the old me thinking. The Billy who thought he could lie and everything would be the same as before. Too much had happened. Too many ugly words had flown between us. I couldn’t go home and pretend nothing had changed, that I had never run away, that I didn’t have a huge new attic of pictures. I couldn’t leave them up there. There were ones I wanted to bring down and make part of my life. There was no way I could go back to the old Billy. The old Billy was dead. Mom got one thing right, for sure. “If we perish, we perish,” I whispered.

  Hearing the words started a movie in my head.

  I’m walking down our street in Independence.

  I have a new backpack on my shoulder. The book my father left me is in it.

  I walk up to the one-pillar doghouse. There’s a sign in the front window: FOR RENT.

  The place is empty. Mom has bailed, disappeared, like she did to my father.

  My insides go double-chung tight.

  I shook the movie away. I told myself she’d never do that. She was my mom, she wouldn’t abandon me. But I’d seen something I couldn’t ignore. Another voice told me I should have seen it coming. I mean, look at her life. She zigzags all over the place being a Jesus-throated Whac-a-Mole. She condemns everyone who isn’t up to her Way of the Lord. If she can’t set them on her path, she takes a path away from them. She ditches them. And look at me, beginning to fight her, wanting to go to high school, running away to find a dead father I never knew.

  But I’m her son, I told myself, her flesh and blood. She can’t blot me out like a word on a box of devil’s food cake. She can’t hammer me away like a slogan on a license plate.

  That’s when the sickest thought slithered into my head. Maybe she truly wanted me to perish. Maybe she wanted to kill the baby Satan had tricked her into having. Maybe she was aborting me sixteen years later.

  When thoughts overwhelm a mind, and pierce the heart with a merciless blade, a body has to stop it. A trapdoor opened inside me, dumping my gnarly thoughts into my guts, where no thoughts live, only feelings. Those feelings leapt out like a pack of wolves from a cave. They sank their teeth in me and shook.

  It was the second time I cried that day. But this time, the heartache cried me to sleep.

  5

  Night Voices

  That night, I had a dream.

  I’m driving a car in open countryside. It feels right to drive even though I don’t have my license yet.

  I pull off on the shoulder. There’s a crossroads up ahead. I want to walk to it. I get out of the car and walk.

  I reach the crossroads, but there’s no one there. Only the wind. I start walking back to my car.

  Ruah comes along in a car. He offers me a ride. I know him, and I get
in. We pass my car, but I stay silent. I just leave it there.

  The bizarre thing is that Ruah keeps changing: sometimes he’s Ruah, sometimes he’s my father. For some reason it doesn’t bother me.

  The next thing I know we’re in a motel, sharing a room. There’s only one bed. Something tells me it’s okay. Ruah, who’s sometimes my father, talks about everyday stuff as we get ready for bed. We both get into our pajamas.

  I get into bed. Ruah—he stays Ruah now—keeps talking about stuff as he changes back into his street clothes, then back into his pajamas. He can’t decide what to wear.

  He finally gets into bed in his street clothes. He snuggles up to me. I put my arm around him like it’s no big deal. Then he says, “This feels nice.”

  I snapped awake. My heart pounded like it was a terrifying nightmare. I tried to shake away the dream. When I couldn’t, I realized the dream was God telling me something. At first He’d sent me a hideous picture I wouldn’t look at. Now He’d made me see it in a dream. God was leading me into temptation.

  But why would He want me to become an abomination?

  I thought back on everything that had happened in the past week. My dream wasn’t the first sign about it. God had sent me to Case and the R-boys, and they’d called me a queer. There were all the naked women at Burning Man I didn’t want to look at. I mean, what straight guy doesn’t want to look at naked women till his eyeballs fall out? There was Spring. She showed me her perfect breasts and I didn’t want to touch them.

  But the biggest sign was right in front of me. God had given me so many chances to get away from Ruah. I never did. At Coors Field, after I knew he was gay, why did I get back in his RV? In the campground near Providence, after God sent me the messenger in zebra stripes telling me it was time to get out of Giff, why did I crawl back in? Why did I leap back in at Dogleg Canyon? The answer was the same every time. I wanted to. Why? Because the horrible picture had been traveling with me all that time, and I had refused to turn and see it.

  Until now.

  The last three words of the dream were loud and clear. But it wasn’t Ruah speaking, it was God. “This feels nice,” He said to me. By giving me the dream, He was refusing to let me drown the picture in tears, or escape it in sleep. The dream was the Lord putting it in front of me, bigger and bolder than ever. He wanted me to face it full-on. I prayed for God to tell me: Are You telling me to do something, or just testing me?

  Of course, He didn’t answer.

  I lay there, shaking inside and out. I didn’t know what God wanted. Except that He wanted me to choose. Get up and run away from Ruah for good. Or walk into the picture I had seen.

  Then I heard a voice, as clear as if Mom had rippled into a moonlight column and spoken. She told me what to do. It was perfect. It gave God one last chance to show me the way.

  I got out of bed, crawled over the console, and pulled Ruah’s Bible out of the glove compartment. I held it between my hands, closed my eyes, and prayed until I felt His presence. His Spirit flowed through me, into my hands. I let the book fall open. My finger lifted and fell. I opened my eyes. The moonlight was bright enough to read the book—Job—but not the verse my finger touched. My free hand reached up and punched the overhead light on. I read the verse God was showing me.

  For man is born for trouble, as sparks fly upward.

  A shiver ran through me cold as a knife. Man is born for trouble; man is born to sin. No one was more born to sin than me. I was conceived in sin, woven in the womb of sin, and brought forth in sin. I was born a bastard in the eyes of the Father, and He wanted me to take the next step. God had put me in Ruah’s camper, and returned me to it time and again for one reason. We were both sinners. We deserved each other.

  I stepped out of the camper. The cool air pulled my naked skin to gooseflesh. As I walked, a furnace lit inside me. My skin ironed smooth.

  I moved through an arch in the stone circle. The dirt under my feet felt soft and warm. Moving toward the square table, I caught my shadow walking with me. It made me feel less alone.

  I thought I’d be more scared, the closer I got to the stone table. I felt the opposite: kind of giddy and calm at the same time. My mind, heart, and body had decided.

  I’m an abomination.

  I stood next to him. He lay on his back, on top of his blanket. The sheet lay over him. It glowed white in the moonlight. I stood, not moving except my breathing. I watched the sheet rise and fall at his chest. I could hear his breathing. It reminded me of the silence in the desert.

  His eyes fluttered. They opened full. He stared for an unfocused moment. Like he wasn’t sure if I was real or a dream.

  I wanted him to know it wasn’t a dream. I opened my mouth and words tumbled out. “This feels nice.”

  He closed his eyes, then suddenly swung up to a sitting position. It was so smooth and fast, it made me jump. He turned his head, pushing his sheet toward me. “Cover yourself.”

  The furnace inside me exploded. My skin felt scorched. I snatched the sheet, clutched it over me and ran. I shot through a gap in the stone circle and stumbled down the hill.

  “Billy!” I heard him yell. He was coming after me.

  I picked my way down the rocky hill until I found a rock big enough to hide behind. I scrunched behind it and buried my face in the sheet. I hated God with every sliver of my being. I hated Him for his cruelty. I hated Him for making the world. But I hated Him most for making me.

  “Billy,” Ruah called from the top of the hill.

  I didn’t answer.

  “I won’t come down. I’ll let you be,” he said. “Just let me know you’re there, and okay.”

  I knew he wouldn’t budge till he knew. “Go away!”

  “That’ll do.”

  6

  A Fight

  At dawn the river valley below was buried in fog. Anyone else might’ve thought they’d woken in Heaven and were looking down at the cloud-covered earth. Not me. It was God’s way of torturing me more. He’d put me in hell and made it look like Heaven. The Hilarious Father strikes again.

  I thought about what to do. Ruah would probably still be sleeping. Maybe I could sneak back in the camper, grab my clothes, and start hitching. There’s no way I could ride with him to Portland. Not unless I could hide in the bathroom and finish my trip the way I’d started it: safe in my pod, like he didn’t know I was there, like he’d never opened the door, like last night had never happened, like the whole thing had been a big fat nightmare.

  I wrapped the sheet around me and climbed the hill. Reaching the top, I found my clothes folded on a rock next to my sneaks. I saw a movement through the gaps in Stonehenge. Great, I thought, he’s awake.

  I grabbed my clothes, hooked the sheet over my head, and got dressed under it. As I yanked on my shoes, I figured I’d go back down the hill, find the road, and sneak away. Then he called from inside the stones. “I got breakfast if you want it.”

  He had a small fire going and had set cereal and milk on the stone table. I couldn’t look at him. It was totally bizarre. He was acting like nothing had happened. Or, if I was really lucky, maybe he thought the whole thing had been a dream. That would’ve been fine with me.

  I ate a second bowl of cereal. I wasn’t hungry, I just had to do something with my hands.

  When I finished he said, “There’s something we haven’t done the whole trip. We’ve never prayed together. Would you like to?”

  I shrugged. “Whatever.”

  He stood up and stretched out his hand.

  I stood. I didn’t take his hand. He didn’t drop it. I told myself it was just a prayer, and took his hand.

  He lowered his head. “T.L., thanks for showing us another day. Thanks for showing us the night. Even last night.”

  I tried to pull away; he clutched my fingers.

  His voice stayed steady and calm. “Thank You for sending a child of God, who reminded me of Your most important teaching: ‘Above all things, put on love.’ Thanks for sending me a
messenger. But next time You send Billy Allbright to spread the gospel, You might want to remind him that putting on love doesn’t start with taking off clothes. Love isn’t always naked.”

  My cheeks felt on fire. I couldn’t believe he was talking about it in a prayer. Like God needed to be reminded.

  “If I’m not mistaken,” he continued, “putting on love starts with simply being present. So I thank You for the blessing of his presence on my journey. We pray You’ll help Billy find his father’s book. We pray You’ll help me”—he hesitated—“find the right path in Seattle. We ask You to guide us and protect us in these last miles to Portland, and on our separate roads ahead. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.”

  “Amen,” I muttered as he let go of my hand. I glanced over.

  He was smiling. “Thanks, I needed that. Now I wanna show you something.”

  I shrugged.

  “It’s waiting for us on the road. As long as you still want Giff to deliver you to Portland.”

  He was waiting for an answer. I didn’t know what to say. “Do we have to talk?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. But we need to get going. I checked out the tourist shack in the parking lot and someone’s gonna be opening it up any minute. You take the breakfast stuff back to the RV. I’ll douse the fire and bring the rest.”

  I grabbed the bowls and milk and headed for the camper. In the parking lot I noticed a bike by the tourist shack. It hadn’t been there the day before.

  Suddenly, a guy came around the back of the camper. He was about my age. He didn’t look friendly. “Did you camp here last night?” he demanded.

  “No,” I answered. “We drove up this morning to have breakfast and take a look around.”

  “You’re lying. I saw you by the fire, holding hands. This isn’t a campground for faggots.”