Godless

by Pete Hautman

  Magda says, “Is it some sort of giant spider?”

  “Do not mock that which you do not understand,” says Shin, still with the deep voice.

  Dan catches my eye; I shrug. I quit trying to explain Shin years ago.

  “I’m not mocking,” says Magda.

  “Well for you then that you are not,” Shin intones. “For he is a jealous and vindictive god.”

  “Oh.” Magda is giving Shin a cautious look. We all are. “What does he look like?”

  “He is a god of many legs.”

  “Ten?”

  “Precisely. He is a Great and Powerful God.”

  “How come I’ve never seen him?”

  “But you have,” says Shin.

  I am wondering, who is this guy? He must be channeling a character from some video game. Probably seeing Magda Price as a collection of pixels. We all have our coping strategies.

  Shin says, “You see him every day. In fact, you may look upon his holy visage now, if you dare.” He points out the window at the silver dome of the tower rising above the buildings and trees.

  Magda dares to look.

  Shin says, “He is silver, he is proud, he glitters in the sun …”

  “Omigod, are you talking about the water tower?”

  “The Ten-legged One,” Shin says, correcting her.

  “You guys are worshipping a water tower?”

  I decide to step in. “Think about it, Magda. What is the source of all life on Earth? Water. And where does water—”

  I am just getting started when Magda interrupts me. “Can I join?”

  “I thought you were a good little Catholic girl.”

  “Can’t I be Catholic and Chutengodian at the same time?”

  Like I said, Magda can’t stand to be left out of anything.

  Shin looks doubtful. “I’m not sure that females are permitted.”

  I frown and stroke my chin for effect. “I see no reason why the CTG should not admit one such creature. However, she is a rather small specimen.” I look at Dan. “What do you think, First Acolyte Exaltus?”

  Dan says, “We wouldn’t want to be accused of sexual discrimination.”

  “True,” I say. “Also, we may require breeding stock.”

  Magda’s eyes grow wide. She grabs my Brainblaster and dumps it in my lap. I jump up with a howl, brushing crushed ice from my sodden crotch.

  “Are you crazy?” I yell.

  Dan is doubled over, laughing hysterically. I am dripping green juice all over the floor. Magda is standing with her arms crossed, her pretty lips tightened into a defiant smirk.

  “The wench has spirit,” says Shin.

  * * *

  THE OCEAN WATCHED WITH BOTH PRIDE AND TREPIDATION AS THE HUMANS DAMMED STREAMS AND RIVERS, DUG CANALS, BUILT ARTIFICIAL LAKES, AND POURED CHEMICALS INTO THE CLOUDS TO FORCE THEM TO RAIN. THE OCEAN WATCHED AS MOUNTAINS WERE LEVELED, AND SHAFTS WERE SUNK DEEP INTO THE EARTH, AND THE LIQUEFIED REMAINS OF ANCIENT FLORA AND FAUNA WERE SUCKED FROM DEEP IN THE CRUST AND MADE TO POWER GREAT MACHINES.

  * * *

  8

  Apparently, it is possible to absorb Brainblaster directly through the skin, because by the time I get home with my sodden pants my mind is churning like a jet turbine. I’ve got a skull full of ideas—so many ideas I don’t know which one to act on first. Here’s a partial list.

  Start work on CTG organizational chart.

  List commandments.

  Figure out who Shin was channeling.

  The High Priestess: Am I too big and fat for her?

  Figure out how Henry climbed the tower.

  CTG holy days: note on calendar.

  Climb tower.

  And that’s just the beginning. With Magda Price as our High Priestess—she insisted on the title—we now have a total of four members. The CTG is growing by leaps and bounds. By summer’s end we might convert half of St. Andrew Valley. I could be like the guy that started the Mormon religion, or Scientology.

  As I walk into the house, my mother pops her head around the corner.

  “Where have you … what on earth happened to your pants?” she asks.

  I could tell her that she is talking to the future religious leader of St. Andrew, but it’s not the right moment.

  “I spilled a drink on myself,” I say.

  “Well change into something nice … and dry, would you please? We have to leave in fifteen minutes.”

  “Leave for where?”

  “What on earth is wrong with you, Jason? Don’t you have a brain in your head? Are you feeling all right?”

  “I’m fine. Where are we going?”

  “I’m sure I told you. We’re invited to dinner at your uncle Jack’s.”

  “God, no.”

  “You keep a civil tongue in your head, young man. Now go get ready.”

  In the first place, Jack is not really my uncle, he’s my dad’s cousin. In the second place, he’s a jerk. In the third place, he is the father of the insufferable Jack Bock Junior.

  “Hey kid,” Jack Bock Junior says to me. “How you doon?”

  Jack Junior is wearing his golf clothes. At least I think they’re golf clothes—yellow pants and a mint-green, short-sleeved shirt, tight across the chest. Where but on a golf course would you wear something like that? Jack Junior is a Serious Young Golfer.

  “I’m ‘doon’ good, Jack.”

  “Attaboy,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder. Jack is just one year older than me, but he treats me like a kid. “Going out for football this fall? We could use a big guy like you. Get you in shape.” He jabs a forefinger into my belly. “Take off some a that mozzarella.” In addition to being a Serious Young Golfer, Jack is quarterback of the St. Andrew Valley Vikings.

  “I don’t think so, Jack.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  We stand there by the swimming pool in his backyard, staring past each other, both of us wishing we were elsewhere. My parents are on the patio swilling gin and tonics and admiring Jack Senior’s new $3,000 stainless-steel barbecue. Mrs. Jack is fussing over a plate of hors d’oeuvres.

  Jack Junior says, “I hear you’ve been going to the Teen Power meetings. Aren’t they great?” Jack Junior is Very Religious. He was an altar boy, too. He liked it a lot more than I did.

  I say, “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “You don’t like the meetings?”

  “I’m not much into church stuff these days, Jack Junior.” He hates it when I call him Jack Junior, so of course I do. “The fact is, I think it’s all a load of crap.”

  He gapes at me as if I’ve told him I was a slime creature from the sixth dimension.

  “What, are you—an atheist?”

  “I’m a Chutengodian,” I say.

  “A … a what?” he asks, curiosity overcoming the fear and loathing.

  “It’s a cult.”

  He backs away from me a step. That gives me an idea.

  “What sort of cult?”

  I step toward him. “The Church of the Ten-legged God,” I say with the widest, craziest smile I can muster. Jack Junior takes another step back. The swimming pool, filled with the lifeblood of the Ten-legged One, is only a few feet behind him. “It’s the One True Faith, Jack. We do it all—sacrifice small animals, drink blood, worship Satan, the whole enchilada. You should come to one of our meetings.”

  “I don’t think so.” He tries to laugh it off, but I can see that part of him actually believes me.

  “Join me in prayer, Jack Junior.” I step toward him and thrust out my hands. “Take my hands. Pray with me. Pray to the Ten-legged One.”

  Horrified by my cultish fervor, Jack takes another step back and, with a huge splash, falls into the Ten-legged One’s watery embrace.

  “I didn’t push him.”

  “Well it certainly looked like you pushed him,” my mother says.

  “We were just talking.”

  “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”

  “Maggie, if
the boy says he didn’t push him, he didn’t push him.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “You keep your mouth shut.”

  “That poor boy.” My mother shaking her head. “He looked so miserable with his nice clothes all soaking wet.”

  “You could see right through his yellow pants.”

  “I told you to keep your mouth shut,” my father snaps. For a few seconds we ride in silence, me in the backseat, my father driving, my mother clutching her purse. Then my father starts chuckling.

  My mother looks at him. “What is it, dear?”

  “I was just thinking,” he says. “Whatever possessed that kid to wear purple briefs under those yellow pants?” He laughed again, and this time I joined him. Even my mother could not stop herself from shaking her head and smiling.

  * * *

  AND IT CAME TO PASS THAT THE LANDS AND THE WATERS BECAME STAINED WITH HUMAN FILTH, AND THE OCEAN BECAME CONCERNED.

  * * *

  9

  The next morning, after my French toast and sausage and corn flakes and Pop Tart and orange juice and banana, (hey, a guy has to eat) I head straight over to the water tower and stare at the spiral staircase and try to figure out how Henry managed to get up there. It’s been driving me nuts. All I can figure out is he had to have had help. Maybe he and his three stooges carried a ladder to the tower, Henry climbed up, then the stooges carried the ladder away. But why would they do that?

  Besides, the one thing Henry did tell me was that he’d gotten up on his own. I believed him. Henry Stagg is a violent, psychotic fiend, but he’s not a liar.

  I am standing staring at the impossible-to-get-to spiral staircase when Shin shows up. He is surprised to see me.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks.

  “Trying to figure out how Henry got up there.”

  “How come you didn’t call me?”

  I shrug. It actually hadn’t occurred to me. “What about you?”

  Shin displays his notebook. “I’m working on something.”

  “Something gastropod?”

  He shakes his head. “You’ll see.”

  “Oh. Hey, the other day at Wigglesworth’s. What was that about?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were acting sort of … different. When you were talking to Magda?”

  “Oh. That wasn’t me.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I was channeling the Ten-legged One.”

  “Oh.” I laugh. At least, I think he’s making a joke. “Maybe we should change your title to First Speaker.”

  “Was it scary?”

  “It didn’t seem to scare the High Priestess.”

  “I don’t think she’s scared of anything.”

  I look up at the tower. “You think she’d be scared to climb the tower?”

  “Who knows?”

  We stand with our heads tipped back, looking up.

  Shin says, “Have you figured it out?”

  I glare at the spiral stairway and shake my head. “He says he flew. Maybe he did.”

  The small, boxy houses on Ensign Avenue all look exactly the same. Except for the address numbers. The number I’m looking for is 1803.

  There are a lot of streets with small, boxy, identical houses in St. Andrew Valley. According to my dad, they were all built just after World War II, cheap and fast, because the soldiers coming home needed places to live. I suppose most of the original owners are dead by now, or really old. Anyway, that was a long time ago.

  Number 1803 is at the end of the block. I press the doorbell and wait. A few seconds later Henry Stagg opens the door. He is wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer shorts.

  “Hey, is that Jay-boy?”

  “Hi, Henry.”

  “What’s going on?” He peers past me. “Where’s your shadow?”

  “You mean Shin?”

  “Schinner, yeah.”

  “He’s busy.”

  “Oh. You want to come in?”

  “Sure.” I follow him into the house. As soon as I enter I know why he’s walking around in his underwear—the house has no air-conditioning. “You the only one here?”

  “My sister and my folks are all at work.” He opens the refrigerator. “You want a Coke or something?”

  This is the friendliest I’ve ever seen Henry. He seems almost normal.

  “Coke would be great.”

  He hands me a cold can and we pop them open.

  “So what’s up?” he asks.

  “Not much. What about you?”

  “I was just sitting around reading.”

  “You?”

  He looks hurt. “What, you don’t think I can read?”

  “You just don’t seem the bookish type. What are you reading?”

  “Lord of the Rings. Again.”

  “You ever read any of his other books?”

  “Just The Hobbit. I don’t read much fantasy. I like scifi better.”

  I listen to him name his favorites—Larry Niven, Vernor Vinge, Robert Heinlein—and am more amazed with each writer he names. Do I know this guy? What ever happened to Henry Stagg, the illiterate psychotic fiend?

  We go to his room, which is very neat and organized—another surprise. He shows me his collection of sci-fi novels. He must have a couple hundred of them, all arranged in alphabetical order in a big metal bookshelf. Turns out we’ve read a lot of the same books and I realize, jealously, that Henry Stagg has read more books than I have. Unless you count comic books.

  We sit on the floor in front of his oscillating fan and talk sci-fi, and I am thinking how strange this is that I should be sitting peacefully with Henry Stagg in his bedroom when only a week or so ago he punched me in the face for no reason whatsoever. I don’t even mind how hot it is. The psycho-barbarian turns out to have a brain after all.

  Eventually, I get around to the reason I came by.

  “Tell me something,” I say. “Seriously. How did you get up on the water tower?”

  “I told you.”

  “I mean really.”

  Henry gives me a measuring look. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I want to go up.”

  “And get caught by Kramer?”

  “I’d go up at night.”

  “Okay, suppose I take you up. Are you going to tell me what you and Schinner and Danny are up to?”

  “Up to?”

  “Yeah. I know you guys are cooking up something.”

  I think about it for a few seconds, then decide to just go for it.

  “We started a new religion.”

  Henry is waiting for more. I guess I have to give it to him.

  “We worship the water tower.”

  He is nodding now, his face eager.

  “We’re Chutengodians,” I say.

  “Yeah? Who’s we?”

  “Me and Shin and Dan. And Magda.”

  His eyebrows pop up. “Magda Price?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay then,” he says.

  “Okay what?”

  “Okay, then I wanna be a Chutengodian too.”

  * * *

  AND SO THE OCEAN SENT A MESSAGE TO THE HUMAN LEADERS AND DID THEREBY CAUSE THEM TO ERECT THOUSANDS OF GREAT EFFIGIES OF ITSELF THROUGHOUT THE LAND. AND IN EACH OF THESE TOWERS THE OCEAN DEPOSITED A TINY PORTION OF ITS PURE SELF, AND GAVE THE HUMANS PERMISSION TO PARTAKE OF IT FREELY. AND THE HUMANS GATHERED AROUND THE TOWERS AND BUILT THEIR TOWNS AND CITIES AROUND THEM, AND THE TOWERS DID SERVE AS THE EYES AND EARS OF THE OCEAN, AND THE OCEAN WATCHED AND LISTENED AND WATTED, AND FOR A TIME, THE OCEAN WAS CONTENT.

  * * *

  10

  At precisely fifteen minutes after midnight, I slip out of bed and look out my window to the east. Just past the corner of the garage, through the branches of the elm tree, I can see the blinking red light on top of the water tower. The Ten-legged One beckons me. I quietly dress in ninja black, right down to my Reeboks, and silently slink down the hall, slither past my parents’ bedroom, and
ooze out the back door.

  Free, free at last! Ha! They’ll never catch me now—not until it’s too late. Too late for everyone! They’ll regret their laughter and taunts. They’ll regret throwing me in their reeking dungeons. I’ve eaten my last plague-ridden rat. I’ll mount the Ten-legged One and gallop from the river to the sea, crushing all who stand in my way. Nyuh-ha-ha! From now on, they’ll do as I say.

  It takes me twenty minutes to reach the tower. No Henry. I sit with my back against one of the legs and wait, listening to the soft sound of water droplets hitting grass, thinking deep thoughts about Chutengodianism. What’s it like in Chutengodian heaven? Is there a Chutengodian heaven? And if there’s a heaven, does that mean there’s a hell? Serious questions requiring serious thought.

  I hear a soft sound; cowboy boots scuffing grass. Henry appears on the opposite side of the tower, hands stuffed in his pockets, pacing. He doesn’t see me. I watch him for a few seconds. I’m about to let him know I’m there when he steps behind the tower leg. I wait for him to come out the other side.

  Thirty seconds later I’m still waiting.

  “Henry!” I say. No response. I walk over to where I saw him. No Henry. I raise my voice. “Hey, Henry!”

  “Right here.” The voice comes from above—I about jump out of my skin.

  “Henry?” I look up and see him thirty feet above me, clinging to the leg.

  “Come on,” he says. “Grab onto the cables.”

  “Cables?” I see them now, four thick black cables running up the channel of the I-beam. “What are they?”

  “I dunno. Electric cables, I guess. You coming or not?” Henry continues his climb, wedging the toes of his cowboy boots between the cables and pulling himself up, hand over hand.

  If I think too long about this I won’t do it. I grab a cable and pull myself up. It’s surprisingly easy, easier than the rope climb in gym class. The cables are covered with grippy black plastic, and my toes wedge nicely between them. I get into a rhythm: left hand, right foot, right hand, left foot.

  “How you doing?” Henry says over his shoulder.