I Am The Local Atheist

by Warwick Stubbs

  “I think it was so she couldn’t question whether she was or wasn’t getting high. I don’t think she was handling the alcohol very well. Not sure, but he thought she was being a ‘nuisance’ and didn’t want anything to do with her in that state.”

  The zombie face from the Men’s Hostel clawed his hand up at me from the ground through uncut hair and stained gums and begged “Please, don’t let them ditch me like they ditched the girl.”

  I had to ask. “What kind of a nuisance?”

  “Ranting and raving about her ‘life problems and her parents not letting her see her boyfriend.’ ‘Drunken kiddy stuff’ is the way Claire put it.”

  Rucker kicked her out.

  “What was Claire’s attitude to Rucker not helping Serene out? Could’ve given her a bed to sleep on or something don’t you think?” He left her homeless. Left her to wander the street in confused isolation.

  “Well yeah, she wasn’t that clear on the exact details, but…” Lisa frowned and looked sideways, “she kind of doesn’t seem to care about it. I mean, I know she has her opinions, and I still totally enjoy hanging out with her and Wendy… but…” Lisa looked up at the yellow lights casting a light glow down on the streets and shook her head suddenly. I thought I saw shimmerings of a tear near her eyelids.

  I was expecting more, but she just stood there looking away from me.

  “So,” I said trying to prompt her. “This girl had a filtered tinny that probably made her head swim but didn’t really get her stoned.”

  “Yeah. Sounds like it. Adding alcohol probably didn’t help.”

  We heard Wendy vomiting onto the concrete behind us.

  “Nasty,” I said.

  “She should be used to it by now.”

  Sadly, I was only reminded of Mum. “So this guy Rucker knows Delbo?”

  “Yeah, apparently he’s Delbo’s supplier.”

  I was in a conflicting state about Rucker’s treatment of someone who should have been looked after, given a bed, a bowl and some water to suck on through the night. “That certainly sheds some light on the situation doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, well, maybe. But it doesn’t really tell me much else about Serene and why she … y’ know – did it!” She looked cold and seemed to be shivering. Her arms were tightening around her stomach.

  “No. I guess not.”

  “I mean, there’s so little information about why she … committed suicide.” Lisa seemed so far away in this moment. I remembered a time when I had seen her like this once before – some time in our mutually distant past, aching and in pain. “… I just want to know.”

  I just didn’t want to know.

  Anymore.

  I didn’t need to know either. Not about that. The past was the past, and what ever dealings I had had with those people were behind me. I had to let go, one way or the other.

  A sickeningly nauseous feeling was beginning to stir in my stomach though. It was the thought of Rucker. And he was not someone who existed solely in my past. But that sickening feeling was now beginning to be combined with anger. I tried to ignore it.

  Lisa shook her head, as if to shiver away thoughts that were bringing her down, and the more recent Lisa who had been so intent on showing me her new-found happiness returned. “Anyway, what I really need, is to talk to someone who was close to her at the time but not related. Y’ know? I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings by digging into other people’s private business though.”

  “That would suck.” I turned away and watched Lucas demolish a second bun as the officer’s tried to help Wendy to a sitting position and clear away the vomit via the water dispenser. He looked like a disconnected observer at a crash site – frozen with fascination by events, but happy to continue feeding his hunger.

  Lisa tapped me on the arm to get my attention. “Do you think one of the elders might know? Did she have an elder that she talked to at your church? How do I find out something like that?”

  “Dunno.” The thought of Rucker giving Serene some water, offering her a bed, telling her that she could rest easy until the morning, but knowing that these thoughts were just wish fulfilment, distracted me from what Lisa had actually asked. “Maybe you could go back and ask them. And let them know I say ‘hi’” I was being sarcastic, but she didn’t notice.

  “They have very closed doors these days. I think this whole episode with you, well, doing what you did and how people reacted to it – and then her – is something they want to put behind them.”

  “Don’t blame them. It would tarnish anybody’s shiny surface.” My breathing had become quite heavy due to the wish fulfilment of Rucker actually being someone who cared enough to look after another person shattering under the weight of truth.

  “Why did you do it David? I mean really?”

  “I didn’t do it. You said Rucker…”

  “You burnt a cross!”

  My mind snapped back to attention. “Oh come on, Lisa!” Condensation was beginning to puff out of my mouth as I tried to keep my voice down. “You know why I did it. I don’t want to get into this now.”

  “It just seemed… excessive.”

  “Well fuck it. They took the youth group off me for no good reason, other than to preserve their own image as though if word got out that I was a stoner, it was going to be the end of their credibility – I was the only person in that church who could fuckin’ relate to those kids. When you are so angry at somebody for taking something off you that you love so much, sometimes, you just don’t think straight!” I clasped my hands to my head as the cold air slapped a wall around me. “Fuck it all. I don’t regret it, and I’m not going to let you make me think that I should.”

  I moved back to the van.

  Christie looked down at Lisa with genuine concern. “Your friend seems to be in a bit of trouble there.”

  “Oh she’ll be alright. It’s not the first time this has happened. And most definitely won’t be her last!”

  Claire had finally taken something to eat but was trying to ignore the state that Wendy was in by looking up at one of the officers with a mischievous smile on her face and winking at him as she placed bite sized pieces of bread into her mouth.

  Wendy suddenly sat upright, grabbing Claire by her shirt and yelled “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

  Bread flew into the air, arms raised high and legs wobbling as the two girls attempted to stand, only to topple onto each other in a heap on the pavement in front of us.

  Lucas continued to look on while casually feeding himself. The officers began to move towards them but Claire’s hand shot up in front of Lisa. She grabbed it and they rose looking about them. Claire was first to speak. “Girls, let’s blow this shit joint.”

  Wendy was breathing quite heavily and the smell of her previous discharge was wafting through the air mercilessly. And since she was about to leave, she decided now would be a good time to introduce herself to everyone by slamming into each person and saying her name. Lucas wasn’t particularly gentle as he directed her away from him, the officers looked embarrassed but polite and Christie looked very relieved that she was up in the van and not down on the footpath with the rest of us so she got to shake the outstretched hand and still keep her dignity with a cheap smile, a wink and “It was great meeting you!”

  Claire couldn’t wait any longer. She grabbed Wendy by the sleeve tugging her away and beginning a slow run down the street. Lisa turned to me, started extending her hand to grab me by the arm, but took it back and said “okay, gotta go. It was good talking to you. We’ll catch up later, okay?” She smiled a huge happy smile that trailed after her as she ran to catch up with her friends.

  Congratulations, you’ve found a new life.

  The officer who had spoken to me previously stuck his hands on his hips as he watched their backs disappear down the street. “Poor girls. I wish there was more we could do.”

  “Short of bringing Jesus into their lives,” said the other officer, “I’d say we did our be
st. We can’t blame ourselves for any mistakes they choose to make.”

  “Yeah I guess so.”

  Yeah I guess so.

  The men continued cleaning the footpath, while occasionally chatting with the bouncers at the nightclub.

  Lucas peered up at Christie. “Is that why you joined the Army?”

  “I joined because I believe in the cause of helping people.” Her eyes shifted in the general direction that Lisa and her friends had gone. “…where it’s possible.”

  Rucker could have helped her.

  Lucas rolled his eyes. “Right.”

  “Oh come on, Lucas. You can’t tell me that you don’t believe that too. I mean, you’re so good at Youth Group –” she pointed her finger at me. “And I expect to start seeing you back there soon too!”

  Lucas’s eyes were on me but he was clearly talking to her. “Hey, I just enjoy hanging out with the kids. It makes me feel good about myself.”

  “Well, for me it’s about bringing something into their lives that doesn’t require the distractions of the modern world. To teach them to have fun without having to rely on…” She waved a hand in front of her, taking in the footpath stains and the nightclub lights. “…this kind of stuff.”

  “Yeah, but why the Army? Don’t you think it’s a little…” He looked around him as though looking for the right word to use. “…naff?”

  “Naff? That’s a pretty naff word to use to describe something so naff, don’t you think?”

  “I didn’t want to use a word that might offend you.”

  Christie straightened her back and put her hands on the shelf in front of her. “It’s a commitment Lucas. It means so much to me, to be able to share my love for Jesus with other people. Part of that commitment is to love people in all situations without discrimination regardless of what my personal beliefs are. The will of Jesus must be my will, the commands of Jesus must be my will and the example of Jesus must be my example; if I can’t live by that example, then I simply can’t call myself a Salvationist, nor a follower of Christ. Part of our mission statement is to care for people, transform lives and reform society through God in Christ by the Holy Spirit’s power. And that’s something that I have always believed in and I know that I can help achieve it through The Salvation Army. I know that it must sound, y’ know, naff, to you, but I really want to help the world. It has nothing to do with money – it’s not like I get paid any better than anybody else in this job – it is purely about helping to bring the message of Jesus to as many people as possible through His example. That is why I’m out on a Friday night attending to the drunk and disorderly, that is why I take part in Youth Group and that is why I let God choose the path for me. Don’t you have something that means that much to you?”

  I could sense Lucas on the verge of saying “Yeah – me,” but he didn’t. He just went back to eating his sugar bun.

  I didn’t want this sort of tension to get any worse, so I tugged at his sleeve while looking at Christie. “Hey we gotta go. Thanks for the buns.”

  “Yeah, okay David. Hope I see you again soon… at Charge Up.”

  I smiled.

  “Where you guys off to now?”

  “Wherever the night takes us.”

  “Cool. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She winked.

  With lots of confidence Lucas said “we most certainly won’t!”

  She rolled her eyes. “Have fun.”

  As we turned the corner and made our way into a bitingly cold night with even more drunks beginning to litter the sidewalks, I said to Lucas “Pretty intense conversation.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are they always that intense?”

  “Nah, not really. She’s a good girl, and I do like her, but I just find it so typical that she tries to shift the focus away from herself, and uses God as an excuse for everything she does when quite clearly she is making her own choices.”

  “Well, didn’t she say at the end that she lets God choose the path for her?”

  “God is an abstraction, an excuse, a reason to think that self doesn’t exist, but self is all there is. You know that as much as I do.”

  I hated being put in that kind of position. The kind where the other person had made an assumption about my belief system and then made a statement that equated with that assumption. And as much as I wanted to say something, as much as I wanted to speak out and deny that accusation, my mouth felt trapped shut. God was absent. I only had myself to deal with now. And whatever choices were left to go along with that.

  And yet, despite the choice Serene had made for whatever reason, I couldn’t dislodge the thought that she could have been saved if only Rucker had made the choice to look after her.

  But he didn’t. And that pissed me off.

  “Take note David, the last thing she said was ‘I let God choose the path for me’. That is her ego making that decision. ‘I give myself up to God; I let God lead the way,’ etcetera, etcetera…”

  We rounded another corner and headed down a line of parked cars.

  “Y’ know what it seems to me like Lucas?”

  “What?”

  “It seems to me like you’re building a wall between you and Christie. I mean, I really think she likes you, but you always seem to counter her arguments in a way that suggest you don’t have respect for her.”

  “I can’t not tell her anything and give her the wrong impression about how I feel. That, to me, would be disrespectful.”

  “Have you told her that?”

  “No.”

  “Sounds to me like you really do care about how she feels.”

  We arrived at the car. Dew was settling on the windscreen.

  Lucas stood at the driver’s door looking across the roof at me. “Yeah I do.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “But I don’t know how to build a bridge between us.”

  He put the keys in the lock and turned. With a rusty ‘clunk’ the door locks popped open.

  Part VI

  – With purpose, this time –

  So there I was, standing beside a tape machine on one side, a small table in front of me that empty boxes sat on, a turn-table on my left and a conveyor belt above it dropping packets of ‘multi-purpose’ sauces down. My job of course was to put the packets in the boxes, two on each side and one in the middle until there were twelve in a box. Not hard work. In fact all I could think of while doing that job was ‘I can’t believe they’re paying me to do this!’

  Well fuck it! I thought. If this is what working is all about, then I’m quite happy to be stuck in this shit-stick of a job!

  And that made me happy.

  For a while.

  Until managers came through and demanded more work from me, demanded I work faster when all I could do was wait for each packet to arrive in front of me.

  And then I was thinking about how those devices could be used to hurt someone really badly. Like, for example, ramming someone’s head onto the conveyor belt above, letting it take them through the water buckets, nearly drowning them – nearly, but not quite: just enough to make them think that death would be a relief before allowing the body to kick in it’s natural breathing reaction again – squeezing them through the rolling bars that dropped them onto the bottom conveyor belt before bringing them to the tape machine where their heads would get wrapped up in tape with all their scars and desperate gasping breaths mummified for all the world to behold after the box that had packaged their mangled and taped body was opened up.

  And then each time I got moved to a new job, I was extrapolating on ways to punish or hurt somebody within the constraints of that job. And not just simple things like taking a knife and stabbing someone – that wouldn’t really do justice to the person I was thinking of; but really making a sincere job of it so there was little to remember that person by.

  Every packet that ran down the conveyor belt was a part of his body, a part of his being; a part of him that was being boxed and shipped to a new contin
ent so he could disappear from existence, so that his presence in the world would dissolve and do no more harm.

  I poured compounds into the giant mixing bowl that would cleanse the sauces of his excuses, his despicable grins and evil countenance; tempered the acidity levels so his bones would disappear without a trace.

  “Not too much David. Check the levels of acidity and keep the temperature regular. We can’t afford to blow another batch today.”

  But blowing another batch was hardly any concern of mine. I was only thinking about the good that I might be doing by ridding this person of his influence in the world. He wasn’t just a drug dealer that I despised, or a friend of Tinsdale’s that creeped me out; he was a human being so selfish that he failed completely to see beyond the next day, beyond how his actions might affect another person.

  “Hey David, you’re on the cookie slabs today, okay?”

  They never expected you to say “no that’s not okay” – no one I knew of said no to having the opportunity to get sick from swiping off-shoots of cookie dough into their mouths while no one was watching. But that sickening feeling from eating too much pre-cooked butter, sugar and flour was becoming a sickening feeling of seeing Rucker’s face contorted and squeezed into dull yellow slabs that I was more than happy to carve a knife through with deep penetrating gashes as punishment for his inability to take another person’s life into account. It was one thing to not care when you have no immediate impact, but when there is someone right in front of you suffering and you can help them, you can offer them a couch to lie on, a pillow to rest their head on and water to drink, then why wouldn’t you? Why would you just kick them out without caring about what might happen to them? That I didn’t get.

  Dad had tried. He had tried over and over, but I don’t ever remember Dad thinking of Mum as anything other than a lost cause. And eventually he had just given up trying.

  “David!”

  It almost seemed as though that had been the example that I was living. I had tried changing that by helping Mum.