Godless

by Pete Hautman

  He says you’re a crazy woman, Mom. I don’t really say that. I say, “He says I’m fine.”

  “Were you knocked unconscious when you ran into the tree?”

  “No. I’m fine. And I don’t have narcolepsy either.”

  “Oh, dear.” She looks at me, touching her fingers to her lips. “I wonder what it could be?”

  * * *

  STILL, THE OCEAN WAS ALONE IN TIME, AND TIME WAS ENDLESS, AND SO THE OCEAN DREW IN UPON ITSELF AND BECAME FINITE, A WRITHING BALL OF WATER AND FOAM SURROUNDED BY NOTHINGNESS. AND THE OCEAN PASSED THROUGH TIME AND SPACE. BUT THE OCEAN WAS STILL ALONE.

  * * *

  3

  While my mother is obsessed with my physical well-being, my father frets over my soul. Every Sunday, without fail, he drags me to mass at the Church of the Good Shepherd. In my opinion, he’s a borderline religious fanatic.

  A couple of months ago I made the mistake of leaving one of my drawings face-up on my desk. It was a picture of Bustella, the Sirian Goddess of Techno War. Bustella is very busty, and at times her clothing doesn’t exactly stay on her body. In fact, in the drawing that my dad saw sitting on my desk, she was wearing nothing but a scabbard for her sword.

  Next thing I knew he’d signed me up for Teen Power Outreach, better known as TPO, a weekly brainwashing session for teenagers held every Thursday night in the church basement.

  My father believes in brainwashing. He’s a lawyer. He thinks you can argue anybody into anything.

  The head brainwasher is a car salesman named Allan Anderson, who insists we call him Just Al. Or maybe he meant we should just call him Al, but the first meeting I went to I called him Just Al and it stuck. Too bad for Just Al.

  Just Al likes to start off every meeting with a prayer he made up. It goes something like this: “Dear Lord, Al Anderson here. Just wanted to say thanks for giving me another day here on planet Earth, and for getting every one of these kids here safely. We appreciate it, Lord. You’re one heck of a guy.”

  The first time I heard Just Al deliver his prayer I must admit I was mildly amused, but now that I’ve heard it eight or nine times I’m pretty sick of it.

  The purported idea of TPO is to give kids a chance to talk openly and honestly about God, religion, and Catholicism. But there is also a secret agenda to turn us all into monks and nuns, at least in terms of our relations with the opposite sex. Naked goddesses with big boobs have no place in TPO. Abstinence is one of Just Al’s favorite themes.

  Mostly, though, the meetings are just a bunch of pointless yakking. I try to keep myself interested by messing with Just Al’s head. Here’s an example:

  Brianna: But, like, I mean, aren’t there, like, people, like, starving to death and stuff? How can you, like, go to church and buy shoes you don’t need and stuff when people are dying because they can’t get enough to eat?

  Just Al: It won’t do anybody any good for you to starve. Catholic missions feed thousands of hungry people every year.

  Magda: My aunt is Buddhist, and she works at the homeless shelter downtown. They feed people, too.

  Just Al: Yes, but that shelter was founded by a Catholic priest.

  Magda: Can you be Buddhist and Catholic at the same time?

  Brianna: I don’t think so.

  Magda: How come only men can be priests? I mean, who wants to be a nun?

  Me: I’d like to be a nun.

  Magda: (laughs)

  Brianna: You are so lame, Jason.

  Me: No, really. You get to wear that cool thing on your head.

  Brianna: Shut up.

  Just Al: The priesthood is the oldest office known to man. Two thousand years ago they didn’t have presidents or congressmen, but they had priests.

  Me: So, how do priests breed if they can’t have sex? Do they send out buds like amoebas?

  Just Al: Ha-ha.

  See what I mean? No matter what we talk about, Just Al always brings it back to how great the church is. And as for that bit about presidents and priests, well, that just gives you a measure of Just Al’s intellectual depth. The man’s a car salesman!

  This Thursday’s TPO meeting gets mired in a discussion of pedophile priests. The subject makes Just Al vastly uncomfortable. Normally I would enjoy his agonies of embarrassment, but I am thinking about water towers. I’d have just sat there quietly until the meeting was over, but Just Al notices me drifting off and tries to rope me into the discussion.

  “Jason, what do you think about what Magda just said?” he asks me.

  “I don’t know.” I look at Magda. Magda Price is what my grandmother would call “cute as a button,” whatever that means. She has long, dark hair that is not quite curly but not straight either, big brown eyes to match, and lips you can’t not look at. The only thing wrong with her is she’s kind of small. Not Munchkin small, but close. Definitely too small to be interested in a hulking, neckless creature such as myself. “What did you just say?” I ask her.

  “I wondered if God gives priests who commit mortal sins a second chance.”

  “I don’t believe in God,” I say.

  This is not news. I’ve been telling them I’m an agnostic-going-on-atheist for several months now.

  Just Al should know better, but he doesn’t let it go. “So you’ve told us, Jason, but assume for a moment that you are wrong.”

  “Then I burn in hell for all eternity.”

  “So what do you believe in?” Magda asks.

  “Actually, I worship a different god.”

  Just Al is giving me a nervous sort of look. “And what god would that be?” he asks.

  “The Ten-legged One.” I am making this up as I go along.

  Brianna jumps in with her usual incisive comment: “You are so lame, Jason.”

  Just Al says, “Jason … you really shouldn’t joke about such things …”

  “Who’s joking? I’m a member of the Church of the Ten-legged God.”

  They are all staring at me. Just Al doesn’t have a clue what to do.

  After a few seconds, Magda asks, “Do they let women be priests in the Ten-legged church?”

  “The Ten-legged One has yet to address that particular issue.”

  After that, I refuse to speak further of the Ten-legged One—mostly because I don’t know anything. I only brought it up to rattle Just Al. But the more I think about it, the more I like it. Why mess around with Catholicism when you can have your own customized religion? All you need is a disciple or two. And a god.

  * * *

  THE OCEAN CREATED LAND, SO THAT IT DID NOT HAVE ALWAYS TO BE WITH ITSELF. AND IT CAST OFF FIERY BITS OF ITSELF TO LIGHT THE SKY, AND IT CREATED WIND, AND IT FILLED ITSELF WITH TINY NODES OF ENERGY CALLED LIFE. AND STILL IT PASSED THROUGH TIME AND SPACE, BUT NOW IT WAS NOT SO ALONE.

  * * *

  4

  Think about it: What is the source of all life? Water. Where does water come from? Water towers. What is the tallest structure in most towns? The water tower. What makes more sense—to worship a water tower or to worship an invisible, impalpable, formless entity that no one has seen since Moses. And all he actually saw was a burning bush.

  I explain this to Shin, who stops walking and stares back at me as if my nose has turned into a tentacle.

  “You’re saying the water tower is God?”

  “Think about it,” I say.

  Shin thinks about it.

  “Prove me wrong,” I say.

  He gives it some more thought. “Suppose that what you say is true. Then are all water towers gods?”

  “I’m not sure. I guess they must be. Some are lesser gods, though.”

  Shin nods his head slowly. “I like it.” He starts walking again. We are on our way to Bassett Creek to hunt pods. Shin has added a new wing to his gastropodarium and is seeking new tenants. He says, “It makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, do we really need water towers?”

  “People used to get along just fine without them,” I say. “The Indians didn’t need water towers.”
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  “I wonder why they have manifested themselves now, after all these thousands of years.”

  “It must be some sort of sacred mystery.”

  “Maybe they’re from another galaxy,” Shin says.

  “You mean like alien invaders?”

  “Yeah. I used to think the water tower was a spaceship.”

  Now it is my turn to gape at him. “You did?”

  “Sure. When I was a kid. I figured they were just waiting for the right moment to beam me aboard and take off.”

  “You really thought that?” I always knew Shin was weird, but he’d never talked to me about water towers being spaceships.

  “Only till I was about ten. I figured they were stealing our water. And they’d have to take me when they left because I was on to them. The part I could never figure out was if they’d take off with their legs, or if just the tank would go, leaving the legs behind. I was kind of leaning toward them taking off legs and all. So that they’d have something to land on. Maybe the legs would retract into the tank.”

  “What about the central pipe?”

  “You mean the sucker upper?”

  “Yeah. The thing in the middle.”

  “That would retract too.”

  I give that a moment’s thought. “They’d have to have a pretty powerful drive to take off with all that water aboard.”

  “Antigravity. And of course they’d use the water itself for fuel. Nuclear fusion.”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course.”

  I stop walking, because to continue would put me up to my waist in the rushing waters of Bassett Creek.

  “Here we are. Now what?”

  Hunting the Wild Gastropod: A Primer

  Find a place both wet and rank with lots of decaying vegetation available.

  Crawl around on your hands and knees and look for slime trails.

  Avoid poison ivy, stinging nettles, biting insects, and snakes while doing so.

  Upon locating pod, place in plastic container with some rotten leaves or whatever from the area where you Found it.

  Record details surrounding the capture: time of day, type oF soil and plant matter, temperature and humidity, and pod behavior.

  I am no great pod hunter, but on this day I manage to come up with a large slimer of a variety never before seen by pod god Shin. This particular snail has a light brown shell a pale body, and black eye stalks.

  The pod god is suitably impressed.

  “I think it’s a white-lipped snail,” he says.

  “Snails have lips?”

  “The lip of the shell. See how it’s kind of whitish?”

  “Oh.” It doesn’t look all that white to me, but I don’t argue.

  “I didn’t think we had any white-lips here. What was it doing?” he asks.

  “Clinging.”

  “Clinging to what?”

  “Rotting bark.”

  Shin places the white-lipped pod in his collection jar and makes a note in his sketchbook. Later he will make a careful drawing of the snail in its natural habitat.

  I was the one who got him started on this gastropod kick. One day two summers ago I found a particularly large pond snail—it was almost three inches long—and showed it to Shin. “Wouldn’t it be cool,” I said, “to have a snail farm?” Next thing I knew, Shin had built himself a gastropodarium. Now Shin is the snail expert, and I just go along for the ride.

  Aside from one small snapping turtle and a dead snake, we find no other cold-blooded creatures of interest at Bassett Creek.

  Back at Shin’s, we introduce the white-lip to his new neighbors, who do not so much as extend an eyestalk in greeting.

  “Not very friendly,” I say.

  “Pods are not known for their exuberance,” says Shin as he sprinkles a tablespoon of cornmeal into the gastropodarium. Snails like cornmeal.

  Shin’s gastropodarium is quite impressive. He started with a six-foot-long aquarium he found at a garage sale. The aquarium was no good for fish because it leaked, so he got it for five dollars, hauled it home on his wagon, and turned it into a snail paradise.

  At one end of the gastropodarium is a small pond with algae and swamp grasses growing in it. A big brown pond snail—the one I found two years ago—still lives there, spending most of its time clinging motionless to a rotting cattail stalk.

  At the edge of the pond, the land rises to become a rocky, mossy, leafy hillside, home to four or five types of land snail. Some of the smaller snails like to hang out in an old whisky bottle that lies near the shore. Others prefer the high ground, scavenging among the decomposing leaves that litter the hillside. A partially buried fox skull juts from the rocks near the top of the hill, its sharp white teeth framing the entrance to a cave, the source of a small stream that trickles down the hill to the pond. Somewhere in the tumble of rocks and dead leaves and earth, Shin has concealed a small recirculating pump.

  Shin does nothing halfway. The gastropodarium is its own reality, a universe of gastropods within four glass walls. Have I mentioned that Shin is obsessive? When we were making comics together, he’d spend hours with an ultra-fine-tip technical pen drawing tiny rivets on his cyborgs. You almost needed a magnifying glass to see them. As for the snails, I have known Shin to spend hours with his forehead pressed to the glass, watching them. He says that to really understand something, you have to become whatever it is you are studying. He says he knows exactly how it feels to be a snail.

  “You have to get to the point where you really believe you’re a snail,” he once said to me. “If you don’t believe in your own snailness, you’ll never understand them.”

  That’s fine with me. I don’t really want to know how it feels to crawl along a trail of my own slime.

  “You know, it makes sense what you were saying about the water tower,” Shin says as he adds fresh water to the snail pond.

  “What did I say?”

  “That I can’t prove you wrong. I mean, you can’t prove a negative, right? Like, you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist, and you can’t prove that the water tower isn’t God. Besides, when you get right down to it, it’s a matter of relativity.”

  “It is?” I don’t always follow Shin’s logic.

  “Sure. God is relative. As far as the pods are concerned, I’m God.”

  “Yeah, but a pod has a brain the size of a poppyseed.”

  “Doesn’t matter. From the pods’ point of view, I am God. They look up and I am this great shadowy figure—pods don’t see much beyond light and dark. I am like a cloud that comes and goes. I provide their food and water. I control the temperature, the light, everything. I am the Pod God.” He smiles down at his subjects. “You know what makes us different from them?”

  “Aside from the fact that they’re snails, and we’re a couple of snail-collecting nerds?”

  “We have the ability to quantify.”

  “Oh, yeah, I was just gonna say that,” I said. Of course, I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  I am standing at the exact spot where Henry Stagg punched me in the face, watching Shin measure the distances between the ten legs of God with a yellow tape measure. Each leg is an enormous I-beam welded to a four-foot-square metal slab, which is bolted to a concrete base. The bolts are as big around as my wrists; the concrete base is set deep into the earth. I wonder why. You would think that the weight of all that water would be enough to hold it down, even in a storm.

  The body of the Ten-legged One—I guess you’d call it the tank—looks like a giant silver M&M candy, only thicker. And instead of M&M, the letters wrapping around its side spell out ST. ANDREW VALLEY in black block letters ten or twelve feet high. How much water does it hold? Enough to fill every bathtub and swimming pool for miles around. Enough to water all the lawns, to wash all the cars, to power tens of thousands of toilet flushes.

  The tower stands in the center of a grassy area, about 150 feet across, near
the center of town. It’s the tallest structure in sight. You can see it from just about anywhere in St. Andrew Valley.

  Shin is now measuring the circumference of the central column, the giant pipe that drops from the belly of the tank into the earth. I have not yet asked him why he is doing all this measuring. Sometimes it is more interesting just to sit back and watch.

  A tight spiral of narrow metal treads wraps around the column. The staircase starts about fifteen feet above the ground. It winds around the column, circling it three times, to a point just below the bottom of the tank. From there, a catwalk leads out from the column to one of the legs, then a ladder ascends to a second catwalk wrapping around the perimeter of the tank like a belt around its middle, just under the ST. ANDREW VALLEY letters. Yet another ladder rises from the upper catwalk and follows the curve of the tank up to the top. I wonder what is up there, at its highest point.

  Now Shin is walking away from the column with big, goofy-looking steps. As he passes me I hear him counting.

  “… thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six …”

  He stops at the count of thirty-nine. He looks up at the tower, squinting into the sun and writes something in his notebook.

  I can’t stand it anymore.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Applying the principles of trigonometry.” He hands me the tape measure. “Measure my shadow.”

  Shin’s shadow is three-feet-four inches long. He records this fact in his notebook.

  “You going to tell me what you’re doing?”

  “Quantifying,” he says.

  “Quantifying what?”

  “God.”

  * * *

  AND THE OCEAN WATCHED AS ITS CREATIONS CHANGED, AS RIVULETS BECAME RIVERS, AS HILLOCKS GREW TO MOUNTAINS, AS FISSURES OPENED, AS THE FLOATING LIFE-UNITS BEGAN TO SWIM, TO CRAWL, TO FLY.

  * * *

  5

  Dan Grant is my ordinary friend. Everybody should have at least one ordinary friend, and Dan is as ordinary as they come. He is so ordinary that most people have to meet him six or seven times before they remember his name.