I Am The Local Atheist

by Warwick Stubbs

  Mr. Brunner didn’t look too happy with her statement either, but he spoke nothing of it, instead looking at Callasandra and trying to be sympathetic to her cause. “I understand sometimes Miss. Schuar that there are times when you need to speak out, but I wonder if it was necessary to do it so early in your career. Can you not think about those also who you might be effecting?”

  The artist looked devastated. “Can’t you all understand that this is me expressing myself? It’s not just a statement of dislike, or criticism; it’s also me putting onto a canvas something that I feel strongly about. Am I supposed to keep those feeling bottled up inside?”

  Mr. Brunner interceded for a moment. “I think its best that we take into account the fact that this art gallery has decided to give you a chance to display your work for the very first time but what you have chosen to display will have an impact on not just your reputation, but their reputation as well.”

  This just gave more ammunition to Mrs. Stewart. “It is nothing short of unpatriotic.” There was solid agreement from a section of the crowd surrounding her. “You live in a community that chooses to support each other and to be accepting of everybody’s differences, but here, you have made a horrible mistake in choosing to attack those who choose to support you.”

  “I haven’t attacked anybody who has supported me.”

  “This town supports you! How do you know there aren’t people in this audience who were involved in what you are trying to depict? How do you know that this person here,” – her swinging arm cut an arc too close for comfort – “or that person there isn’t going to be adversely affected by these pathetic excuses for paintings?”

  General agreement supported Mrs. Stewart’s words.

  Callasandra looked to the host and then the curator for support, but all they did was shrug their shoulders, raise their eyebrows in mock consideration, pop some grapes into their mouths and continue watching events unfold like disconnected observers at a crash site – frozen with fascination, but happy to continue feeding their hunger. She was left standing next to her paintings by herself, a lonely figure with arms helplessly at her side, hands outstretched and a pained face questioning what had just happened.

  Her shoulders started to shake. “But…”

  “These paintings are despicable!” spat Mrs. Stewart. “This isn’t art – this is trash.” She took a glass of red wine, walked up to a painting and splashed wine all over it.

  Callasandra stood there dumbfounded, her pained expression turning to hopelessness – a look I knew all too well.

  I felt a terrible shiver creep over my shoulders and down my spine, anticipating tears that would soon fall on the girl’s cheeks – if not my own. I had to turn away. Holding my distraught face in one hand, I cleared a way through the bodies with the other, ignoring the rising voices that cursed and shouted around me – whether at Mrs. Stewart or Callasandra Schuar, I didn’t care; I just wanted out. I walked directly for the front door. The empty paintings that lay littered about on the floor could do nothing to stop me: they were like black holes without a gravity well. I hit the door with full force and let the cold chill-stained air envelop me. Down the steps I went, walking as fast as I could to escape the glow of street lamps, and on into the darkened night where I found security in the emptiness.

  Chapter 2:

  Apostate

  Part I

  The steeple rose from behind the houses like a beacon, stabbing a hole in the cloud-ridden sky and summoning the courage of those who dared to look upon it with derision. I looked away.

  If I had thought that silvery steel cross flashing God’s light on it was hard enough to face, then the gaping mouth of the church doors that appeared to me as I rounded the corner was even harder: it swallowed its victims one by one as they entered into the jaws of the church so happily, so willingly. I wanted to turn and begin walking away, hang my head low and pretend that I was just another random person on the street trying to avoid the far-reaching hands of Christians everywhere. But something pulled me forward, like I couldn’t avoid being sucked into the gaping mouth of something that had spat me out once before and was now asking for a second go at it.

  Temptation. It asked so much of my soul.

  And I was one who couldn’t resist.

  I stepped onto the concrete courtyard. Lisa saw me as I passed through and around the mingling bodies and waved a hand from where she stood to the right of the church. I felt a buzz, that feeling of attachment for someone that I hadn’t felt for a very long time. I waved back and started directing my trajectory towards her but I began to notice that there were a number of other people also coming up to her as well.

  Suddenly I was walking a lot slower, watching as other people offered their own bodies for hugs and she so willingly returning the gesture. I thought of her standing by me at the art gallery, fidgeting with her wine glass but not really looking at me much. Her feet had always seemed to be moving backwards as if to keep distance between us. Yet here she was extending her friendship to people she had known for less than a year and all I had gotten was a ‘hi’. Her arms reaching out in a sign of loving compassion were not for me anymore, for her new friends – yes; for me – no. It was like I had done nothing for her.

  She turned a superficial smile towards me as I stepped up to her.

  “Hi David”

  “Hi Lisa.” I returned the smile.

  She flicked the hair back from her eyes and crossed her arms tightly. “Cool day isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, yeah it is.” I put my hands in my pockets, fingering the cellphone I barely even used.

  “Hey, I’m real sorry bout the art gallery thing. Certainly wasn’t what I thought it would be.”

  “Nah. Me neither.”

  We used to visit art galleries together and make fun of the abstract paintings by taking random guesses at what the artists were trying to depict: “a bag of lollies,” “mud,” “more mud,” “the Eiffel tower… in a patch of mud,” “…surrounded by lollies…”

  “What about this one?”

  “A kitten on fire.”

  “I don’t see the kitten.”

  “That’s because it’s on fire.”

  “Oh.”

  She was one of the few people I had known in and out of church that I had been able to do really stupid things with, without feeling like we were stepping on anybody’s toes. ‘Only heathens like us’ I used to joke before she joined the church and forever let go of her heathen self. I missed that.

  “Did you…?” She looked at me, unsure about what she wanted to ask. I wondered if she was aware of what the paintings were trying to portray.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. I left. Didn’t like the way the artist was being treated so I gapped it.”

  “Yeah most everyone else did too.” Her arms gripped tighter to themselves. “Anyway, I’m so glad you came. My friend Claire is going to be singing a song today. It’s gonna sound awesome. You’ll be so glad you came.”

  “Cool.” I was really lost for words, and it looked like she wasn’t particularly enjoying trying to think of things to talk to me about either. She kept looking back at her friends and rejoining their conversations and laughing at their jokes, occasionally turning back to me and smiling broadly, almost expectantly, as though she was trying desperately to acknowledge an old friendship, but it just wasn’t working out the way that she had wanted it to.

  I decided to make it easier on both of us and said that I was going to go inside now. She said “okay, see you in there.”

  The doors beckoned. I walked through into a dark black corridor that led into a room awash with light from immense windows at the side walls, great beams of arching rafters rose to a centre point. So enamoured by the heights above me, I stumbled into the pews next to me, causing them to rub loudly against the thickly varnished floors. I sat down quickly as several people looked around to see what the noise was. I hung my head low.

  After everyone had shuffled their w
ay in and found a seat, a trumpet call blasted through speakers at the front of the stage. It was suddenly cut off by an electric guitar playing some light-weight rip-off of an AC/DC song joined by a full band which suddenly had the congregation cheering and jiggling their bodies in their seats. A man in shirt and jeans casually jogged before the crowd raising his hands high and cheering with everyone. “Hallelujah!” Suddenly everyone was cheering as well.

  I wondered why I used to enjoy this crap. Did God really care that I was or wasn’t making a song and dance about him?

  The music died down and the man raised his hands before him as though offering an armload of empty air to sacrifice. “We come here today Lord to worship you, to bear our souls to you, give our time to you because it is you that gives us such light that blesses us with life, it is you that drenches us with love and teaches us the holy ways of our saviour Jesus. We worship you because our love aches in these human bodies to be transformed into your heavenly spirit…”

  I looked around and found Lisa not so far ahead of me. She was swaying backwards and forwards knocking into her friends whose swaying was completely out of sync with everyone else.

  The pastor clapped his hands together and the echo of it bounced around the walls. “Who’s here with me!?” A loud cheer issued from the congregation. “What? I didn’t hear anything. I said who’s here with me!” A louder cheer issued forth. “Alright then! Anyone who’s not can leave if they want…” He cut this off with a horrendous laugh as though he had just made the best joke ever. I was about to get up and leave, I seriously was. “No, I’m just kidding, hahaha. We want you to stay, God has brought you here on this magnificent day so that you can experience what the rest of us already know and love about our Lord Jesus Christ, that He loves you and forgives you.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Alright! I want to tell you something about people I’ve talked to over the years, people who call themselves Christians. They go to church yada yada yah, like the rest of us, but there’s something about these people, something that doesn’t ring true; something that makes my heart ache when I hear what they have to say to me. Wanna know what they say?”

  He walked around a bit before saying anything – classic ploy for tension building and attention getting.

  “I have these people come to me and tell me that their church is boring and I say ‘why do you want to go to a boring church?’ Church should be exciting. ‘Why?’ they say astounded – because they don’t know any better, this is what church has always been to them – boring. ‘Why?’ I say – ‘because Jesus is exciting!’ Aren’t you excited to know Jesus? Was Jesus ever cold and dispassionate? I ask you now – Was Jesus ever cold and dispassionate?”

  The entire congregation yelled out “No!”

  “Then why should church be cold, boring and dispassionate? If you know someone who complains about their church being cold and boring, tell them that you know a place that is hot and exciting! Hallelujah!”

  “Hallelujah!” came the reply.

  “And that place that is hot and exciting – it is here, right here in your church, right here where you sit right now! Hell-lay-loo-ya!”

  “Hallelujah!” shouted back the crowd – I had stopped thinking of them as a congregation. Their yelling had kind of put them in the same class as a mob.

  “Forget all those cold and dispassionate churches – I wanna be somewhere I can feel the warmth of His love surrounding me…”

  I have to admit, it was getting kinda warm in there. Welcome to the fiery pits of hell – it begins here, in your own church.

  I buried my head in my arms. His words had pretty much lost all meaning to me. There was definitely a sense of the pastor preaching to entice people rather than to inspire. I didn’t doubt for a moment that there were people there being inspired, yet, at the same time it felt like a false inspiration. He was preaching to thrill rather than to convince. I had done my share of sermons – admittedly, mostly in front of a youth group rather than an entire congregation – but I never spoke as though my church was the best church, or the ‘hottest’ church the way that this guy was going on. I had just wanted the youth that were there with me to feel the same love that I had felt from the Lord, to feel like they weren’t alone. Church attendance wasn’t a competition.

  I closed my eyes and my brain began its shutdown sequence – ten-thirty was far too early for me. I drifted in and out of the next half hour as my brain sought catch-up time.

  Lisa’s friend finally hit the stage with a dimming of the lights. I leaned back in the pew seat listening to the guitar strum gentle chords as Claire began humming a simple harmony. It felt good to not be bashed over the head with preaching. When the words came they were simple but direct – no wafting melodies, no incongruent meaning; just basic ‘I love the Lord, He is my light’ type of stuff. Very pious.

  And then all of a sudden the lights hit full blast along with the music and her voice suddenly soared into heights that are usually only seen at rock concerts. Several people beside me were bursting into tears, raising their hands high in exalted admiration – either for the girl on stage or the Lord above, I’m not sure which.

  Eventually the song died down to its original volume with the guitar and vocal harmony reiterating what had first introduced the song. The pastor got up in front of the band while the music continued gently in the background. He closed his eyes and raised one hand in the air as the other gripped the microphone. “I want you to use this time now, as the band plays this holiest of music, to come forth and feel the presence of the Lord, to feel the healing power of Jesus reigning down on you. If you feel there’s something you need to get out of your system, to release because it is eating you up and you can’t live with it anymore, come forth, come forth! Don’t hesitate, let Jesus heal you, cast Satan out of your body, cast that great wall of sin from you…”

  By force or otherwise. It was really quite something to listen to the pastor go on, while the occasional person walked up to the front and let him place his free hand on their heads, say some kind of magical words and then send a sudden jerk into the person’s body so they fell over and writhed on the ground from shear shock.

  Mum always said that love, honesty, and faith in Christ were the only things that could compel Satan from the soul. Physical acts and the idea of channelling Jesus were just trickery, appropriated by churches to give the illusion of healing. Many of the friends I had seen Lisa hugging out the front, had also gone up to be a part of this whole healing shebang. City Light Church had propagated the idea that a person could be healed through the arm of a preacher who was channelling Jesus and the holy power of God. Girl’s moving from their seats willingly, going up as though they were great sinners, kneeling before their pastor, and he laying a hand upon their heads, squeezing their temples, and yelling aloud for Satan to “leave this child!” See the girls falling, see them crying, see them praising “hallelujah” in a show of who was the best Christian, who had been healed the most, who had won the keys to God’s country.

  I couldn’t stand it. Why did these girls get to be saved? How come hands on their heads were an acceptable form of forgiveness for their sins? Why had the elders’ hands on my head not saved me all that time ago? Was it because these girls chose to go up of their own free will? I just couldn’t stand it. None of what I was seeing was making any sense to me.

  I quietly and unceremoniously left my pew and walked towards the doors, completely ignoring the man who tried to wish me a good day and hand me a pamphlet on my way out. I barely heard a word he said over the volume of the music. It was all just too much for me. Too much too soon. I didn’t care about being healed. I didn’t want Jesus in me.

  Fuck it, I thought as I walked down the steps and onto the courtyard outside. I want a fight with Satan. I want to take Satan on!

  Part II

  I walked onto Nelson Street not bothering to rush. I had a bit of time to spare figuring that had mum attended her church this
morning she should be arriving home soon anyway.

  Nelson Street leads onto Bowmont Street. At the end of Bowmont Street there is an empty section with overgrown grass ravishing it. I cut through and followed the path that has been made by many others in their infinite wisdom, yet for some stupid reason people still follow the footpath right around. I don’t know why. If there is a shorter path to where I want to go, I see no reason not to take it, unless the view is better the long way, but in Invercargill that is few and far between. For some reason this section appeals to me. Grass is unkempt and the weeds reach up to my knees, yet the path is well worn and the overgrowth is no struggle to get through. I also know that by the time I reach the other side, there is only one road to cross and Mum’s house is just around the corner.

  The path was slightly muddy and dirt clung to the side of my shoes, but I trudged on anyway letting the overgrowth slide away from my legs as droplets of water fell from their place of rest and landed on the soil beneath. Sunlight had been scarce over the last couple of days, evaporation even more so. All those lingering droplets had no chance of ascending into the heavens above, only to fall into the soil below and be transformed from one simple state of hydrogen and oxygen into something much more complicated that soaked and mudified anything it came into contact with. Yet days would pass, sunshine would eventually appear and heat would fool the earth into giving up its moisture and return it to the skies above.

  As I got to the edge of the section I looked sideways at the jungle of weeds I was leaving behind: no one had paid any attention to them, completely ignored them, not even bothering to tidy them up into something more respectable. These weeds got to do whatever they wanted; they got to follow their own will – the will to grow. Nothing more, nothing less. While droplets of rain transformed into vapour and mist and received their ascension without even questioning it.