Function at the Junction
That spring we had a monstrous barbecue at our house. The president of the United States couldn’t come, but the sun had shown up, at least. Everyone brought their favorite dishes. My mom brought barbecue, Krista made chicken and dumplings, someone even brought egg foo yong and kidney stew. The house was packed with people, just jammed to the gills with partygoers. The Hate Club—all of them: Sam, Chris, Roland, Alan, Adrian, and Gavin—mixed it up when they weren’t arguing with one another about the rise and fall of sequential art. Chris and Joy brought their lovely brood of children, who were running like animals with my kids. Sandy was there, and she had brought her new boyfriend. Shane and the atheists were there, and Sandy introduced them around and made them feel comfortable. My parents and Krista’s parents lurked in the crowd, starting conversations, getting to know people. Krista happily produced more food by the moment, and everyone seemed jolly, ecstatic at the first signs of spring and the promise of summer.
I was having the most fun out of everyone there. After a dramatic conflagration at the grill, I worked on steak, burgers, and salmon for everyone. Grilled vegetables for the vegetarians. Pete was there, moving from group to group, laughing, enjoying himself. Even Daisy seemed content in a corner of the yard, munching on some tender shoots of grass. Jesus was there too. The real Jesus. Not standing around in robes or listening to an iPod or running with his robes hiked up. I couldn’t see him, but I could sense him taking pleasure in the disparate enjoyments of our friends.
Krista called me and I turned the grill over to my dad. She wasn’t in the kitchen, so I ran up the stairs. She was at the top of the stairs, wearing jeans and a green T-shirt, her hair was pulled up onto her head, and she looked marvelous. Stunning. As I came up toward her, she put her arms around me and yanked me close to her. I encircled her with my arms.
“Are you back?” she asked. “You’ve been distracted for a while.”
“I’m back.” I pulled her closer and kissed her neck.
“I have something to tell you,” she said.
The doorbell rang and I could hear the stampede of children jostling for the front door. Krista pushed me back enough to look me in the eyes. The children roared and clamored from below.
“A DOG!” Zoey called.
“STANDING ON ITS HIND LEGS TO RING THE BELL!” Allie yelled.
I jumped. Only one dog could be so clever. “Houdini Dog!” I said to Krista.
She laughed. “Go! Go get him.”
I ran down the stairs and yelled at my dad to guard the meat. I told the guests that Houdini Dog was at the door. They all knew his legend. I burst from the front door, but he was already gone. A crowd of our friends shot from the side gate and ran down the sidewalk to the south, shouting, “This way, Matt, we saw him!”
I ran after them, and we piled around the corner onto the next street. Neighbors came out of their houses to see what all the commotion was, and dogs all over the neighborhood began a chorus of wild barking. Adrian was toward the front of our pack, and he leaped up onto a fence, balancing precariously. “He’s crossing through the backyards!”
I decided to catapult over a fence and race through the backyards, but as I propelled myself into the air, I met the fence with my midsection. All the air exploded from my lungs and I fell back onto the sidewalk. I stood shakily, and Roland, Alan, and Gavin lifted me up and threw me over the fence.
“Get out of my yard!” a neighbor yelled, coming out his back door with a shotgun.
“Yes, sir!” I said, and I jumped onto his lawn furniture and over the fence. I could see where Houdini Dog had dug a hole for his escape, so I followed, pushing myself through the hole. A gate swung open and I sped around the corner. I could see the dog’s escape route by studying the uncomprehending stares of my neighbors, all turned toward the main road. I was out of breath, but I was determined to catch that dog or, at the very least, to see him.
With a monumental surge of willpower, I ran past the elementary school and came out on Ninety-ninth Street. There he was. A beagle, short but sleek, his coat glossy and his lips pulled back in a dashing canine smile. He barked ecstatically, and as I moved closer, he flipped into the air and landed with a practiced flair in the bed of a speeding truck. His ears flapped in the breeze, as if saying good-bye. His tongue lolled out of his mouth in joyful playfulness. I raised my hand in farewell and he called out with a friendly bark. I watched the truck head west and then turn onto Highway 5. Houdini Dog trundled out of view, but he watched me with those brown eyes until we couldn’t see each other any longer.
I ran home, feeling a renewed sense of the immense beauty of the world. My friends had already gone back. I didn’t see any of them on the street, and the neighbors had gone indoors again. I was struck by how fortunate I was to live in such a place, to have such friends, to live through another spring. I threw the door open and jumped into the middle of the knot of children, harassing them and tossing them about. I ran up the stairs and grabbed my wife, spinning her around like we were waiting for any excuse to touch one another, like we were dating.
“I saw him,” I told her. I danced in place and raised my arms victoriously over my head. She grabbed my arms and put them back around her waist. Then she put her arms around my neck.
“I have something to tell you,” she said. She pulled me close and whispered in my ear. As she spoke, it was as if all the joy in my life had been dammed up and the dam had only a few moments ago begun to leak. Now it burst into a million pieces, overwhelmed by the deluge, a riotous explosion of joy. I squeezed her against me. I grabbed her arms and looked at her eyes, where the tears were preparing an expedition across her lovely cheeks.
“Say it again,” I said.
She smiled and said, louder, “I’m pregnant.”
Acknowledgments
A book is not written in a vacuum. This is because one cannot breathe in a vacuum, and space suits are expensive. Since I had to write in the atmosphere, all these people kept influencing me and deserve my thanks. Observe:
This book would not exist in its present form if Wes Yoder (agent and friend) hadn’t declined to represent the original sugarcoated collection of Sunday school lessons by saying something along the lines of, “This is no good,” and graciously reading the next draft. Many thanks to him and all the fine folks at Ambassador Literary Agency.
I wouldn’t have met Wes if not for Gary Thomas, who has been more than generous with his time, insights, and excellent advice.
Sarah “DC” Atkinson, who not only bent over backward but also broke multiple limbs for this book; Jan Long Harris for believing that this book was a good idea; Lisa Jackson, whose insightful comments and feedback took everything good about this book and made it great; Sharon Leavitt for keeping it all running smoothly; Beth Sparkman for the rad cover; George Barna for the great fish and chips and the good advice; Nancy Clausen, Yolanda Sidney, Charlie Swaney, Christy Wong, Adam Sabados, Kevin O’Brien, Caleb Sjogren, and all the rest of the family at Tyndale, who I hope to mention by name in my many future books.
Thanks to my tagline contest winners: Sam Li, Janet Oberholtzer, and Kyle Collins. Thanks also to John Johnson, Dean Christensen, Jim McGuire, and all the Villagers.
Also, special thanks to my guinea pigs, who read various drafts of Imaginary Jesus or gave me permission to tell their stories in this book: Chris and Joy Dennis, Shasta Kramer, Dan Weidner, Paula Gamble, Peter Hibbs, everyone with the last name Culbertson (especially Dan, Rachel, Carolyn, and Terry), Joe and Shannon Emery, Adam Huminsky, Jesse Schlender, Ken Cheung, Dave Shackelford, Alexis and Jesse Putnam, Luke Harrison, Keith and Kim Bubalo, Gerry Breshears, Brian Jannsen, Kerry Little, Sarah Veltkamp, Joe Field, Elders Laurel and Hardy, Sandy Collins, John Rozzelle, Pete Zagorda, Evan Bretzmann, Ryan McReynolds, Herman and Angela Tam, Chris and Susan Zaugg, Selina Tam, Daisy the talking donkey, Amanda Wolf, Andy McCullough, Reid and Tifah Phillips, Dann Stockton, Emily Malloure, Matt Baugher, Sam Stewart, Alan Travis, R
oland Belcher, Chris Mendoza, and Gavin Hammon.
To Griffin Gibson for the great author photo. (See more of her work at http://www.griffingibson.com.) Also to Grant Blakeman for his spectacular work on ImaginaryJesus.com. You can contact Grant at http://gb-studio.tv.
My family: Mom, Dad, Lynn, Dave, Dawn, Todd, Kevin, Shimmra, Jonas, Janet, Terry, Ed, Ezra. And especially my beloved daughters: Zoey, Allie, and Myca! I love you guys. Also to all my stinters, past and present (you know who you are), the WSN team, and my BHR minions.
Krista—If you had allowed me to get a monkey as promised, I wouldn’t have had time to write this book. Thanks for being my best friend, confidante, wise counselor, and wife. I love you and look forward to many happy years together.
The Lord Jesus Christ is at least partially to blame for my sense of humor, and I sincerely hope he’s laughing along with me, or I’m in big trouble. I love you, thanks for everything, and I mean everything.
And, lastly, please write your name here:
An Excerpt from Matt’s Next Book
Read on for an excerpt from Matt Mikalatos’s next book, Night of the Living Dead Christian (coming in October 2011).
Chapter 1
Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?
Monsters don’t exist. I had been telling myself that for nearly a week. But it was the sort of night you could almost believe in them. A bone-white moon hung in a field punctuated with bright stars, and dark clouds moved across the sky like slow-moving barges. It was nearly Halloween, and despite the cobwebs, giant spiders, tombstones, skulls, and electronic screams, it was a pleasant night. But I didn’t feel pleasant. I felt nervous. It was a week ago today that I accidentally interrupted the argument between my neighbor and his wife, and since then I had felt jumpy in the neighborhood at night. Nervous. Always looking over my shoulder. But, I told myself, there’s no such thing as monsters.
I was on patrol, like every night. My neighbors hadn’t shown any interest in starting a neighborhood watch program, so I walked the beat myself, a solid pair of walking shoes on, gloves with no fingers, a pair of binoculars swinging jauntily around my neck, and my cell phone in hand, the numbers 911 already dialed and just waiting for an eager thumb to press SEND. In my other hand I held a long, heavy flashlight for bludgeoning ne’er-do-wells. I couldn’t let a little incident like last week’s keep me from my appointed rounds.
Up ahead, on the corner of 108th Street in the middle of a cluster of identical houses with the identically perfect lawns that permeated our neighborhood, stood a lanky man in a long white lab coat, a pair of goggles pushed up into his disheveled hair. A thick nest of electrical wires coiled out of a nearby streetlight and into a box he clutched with thin, white hands, and he was laughing and doing a sort of merry jig as I approached, the box squealing and flashing with a riot of handheld casino gaudiness.
“Excuse me,” I said. Of course I needed no excuse since it was, after all, my neighborhood, and I was not the crazy person connecting wires to streetlights. But it always pays to be polite. Although when you’re a neighborhood watch guy out on patrol, sometimes it also pays to be a no-nonsense guardian of the suburbs. I was just waiting for this guy to give me an excuse to go all “no nonsense” on him. He looked like the kind of guy who probably had too much nonsense in his life, and I was the perfect person to change that.
The man turned to me and grinned. He held the box out toward me. “No doubt you would like to ask me about the work of inexplicable genius I hold in my hands.”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” I shifted my stance and held the flashlight nonchalantly over my shoulder, making it clear that I could give him a glancing blow if necessary. “Do you have a permit for that big mess of electrical wiring there, sir?”
His eyes widened, and he tittered nervously. He glanced furtively up the street, then shoved the box into my hands. “One moment.” He ran halfway down the street, his lab coat billowing up behind him, and shouted, “Hibbs!”
A gate swung open on the Murphy house, which had been sitting empty for three months. A man came walking from the backyard, easily seven feet tall. His arms and chest were thick where the scientist’s were thin, and he gave the impression of a man who had been stuffed full of something, that he held more than blood and muscle and bone under his skin. He wore a tight shirt that showed off his muscles. Stenciled across his chest were the words THE HIBBS 3000. He regarded me coolly.
The scientist grabbed one enormous arm and asked, “Hibbs, do we have a permit for this endeavor?”
Hibbs looked at me and then back at the scientist. “Negative. This power source, which we require for our experiment, cannot be legally accessed, Doctor.”
The scientist smiled at me, relieved. “Well, there you have it. Can’t get a permit for something that’s illegal, now can you?” He snatched the box away from me. “Would you like to watch our experiment, good neighbor?”
“You can’t do illegal experiments here in our neighborhood!”
The scientist cocked his head sideways. “Oh. Why’s that?”
“It’s breaking the law.”
“Ha ha. So is speeding, my dear boy. But that doesn’t stop anyone.” He took my hand and shook it firmly, then chuckled to himself. “So is cloning human beings, ha ha, at least in one’s garage, but that never stopped me, no!”
“That’s it, pal,” I said, and I set my flashlight on the sidewalk and whipped out the tiny little notebook and even tinier pencil I carried in my back pocket, wet the tip of the pencil with my tongue, flipped open the notebook, and put my pencil at the ready. “What’s your name?”
The doctor looked at his box, which was humming now. I felt a mild heat coming off of it. “Hibbs, that last electrical boost seems to have done the trick.” He jumped, as if his brain had prodded him that I was waiting for a reply, and said, “Oh yes, my name is Dr. Daniel Culbetron. And my associate there is the Hibbs 3000. He’s a robot.”
“Android,” the Hibbs 3000 said.
Culbetron threw one hand up in the air. “Potato, tomato. Don’t be so sensitive, Hibbs.” He turned to me, as if confiding a great secret. “Robots are notoriously unbalanced emotionally.”
Hibbs turned to me, another coil of wire in his hands. “You have yet to exchange your appellation with us.”
“I’m Matt Mikalatos, Chief Officer of the local Neighborhood Watch.”
The box in Culbetron’s hand started warbling and beeping, and he laughed and waved it at Hibbs. “We had best find a safe observation point.” He looked over his shoulder, as if he had misplaced something, then over his other shoulder, and then turned in a complete circle, wrapping himself in cords and giving the appearance of a circus clown looking for a small, collared dog. “Where is our benefactor, Hibbs? Do you think he’ll want to see our device being tested?”
I tapped the box. “What exactly does this thing do?”
The Hibbs 3000 paused, then looked at me and said, “The apparatus creates a surge of auditory effluvia that is anathema to the lycanthrope.”
Dr. Culbetron, midway through unraveling his Gordian knot of electrical wiring, sighed and shook the box at Hibbs. “In English, Hibbs. This poor neighborhood constable cannot possibly comprehend your robotic ramblings.” He handed me the box and stepped gingerly over a cord. “It’s a device designed to create sounds that will be upsetting to werewolves.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s quite simple, really. Perhaps you have seen anti-rodent devices that plug into an electrical socket. They produce a series of high-pitched squeals, above the range of human hearing, that drive away mice and some insects. It sends them scurrying out of their little hidey-holes, charging past the devices screaming their furry little heads off as they head for the woods.” He snatched the box and held it over his head. “This box does precisely that—for werewolves.”
I tightened my grip on my flashlight and a chill ran through me. “There’s no such thing as werewolves.”
Hibbs was setting a ladder up against the side of the Murphy house. “There is a 63 percent likelihood that the device will evoke a similar response from multiple monster species.”
“There’s no such thing as monsters!”
Culbetron put one hand gently on my shoulder. “Werewolves, of course, are rather rare in this part of the world. You’re quite right about that. The vast majority of the lycanthropic population has been confined to Eastern Europe.”
Hibbs shook his head. “Scientific research on this topic is irresponsibly scant. Dr. Culbetron does not represent scientific fact with his previous assertion.”
“Well then, Hibbs, let us start some scientific research of our own!” With that he and Hibbs pulled earphones on, and Culbetron slammed his palm down on the button in the center of the box. A sound something like a mix between a jetliner, a baby crying, and fingernails on a chalkboard came screaming out of the box.
“One minute and forty-seven seconds, Doctor!” Hibbs shouted.
“Thank you, Hibbs. To the roof! Let the science begin!”
They climbed a metal ladder onto the roof of the Murphy house, Culbetron struggling to ascend with the box in one hand and Hibbs waiting patiently behind him. I put my hands over my ears, and Hibbs fixed me with a curious look. I shouted at him to ask if they had a third pair of earphones, but he didn’t answer. I was about to ask again when Culbetron shouted from the roof, “Zombies!”
“There’s no such thing as zombies!” I shouted back. I could barely hear him over the horrible shrieking of the machine. The volume was growing, and the lights in the neighborhood dimmed.
“Look, Hibbs! Coming from the south—a horde of the undead! It works, Hibbs! It works!” There was a popping sound from the roof, and sparks came flying out of Culbetron’s box. Startled, he fell backward into Hibbs, who tried to catch him, and they both stumbled over the apex of the roof, slid to the edge, and nearly fell before the electrical cords caught on the gutter. The box, however, flew to the ground and smashed to pieces. The sound, mercifully, stopped. Culbetron and Hibbs hung from the roof, their feet dangling thirteen inches from the ground.
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