Tumors come OWWT! Rheumatiz come owwwT! In the name of _ Jeeeesus!” There was another of those soundless flashes, and this time not even the body was left; he was alone on the path again.
He walked on, sorrow working at his heart and mind, thinking of what the mother-thing had said. No heaven, no afterlife at all, not for such as us. That might be true or it might not be; he had no way of knowing. But the thing had also said that God had allowed his mother and sister to be killed, and that was true. . . wasn’t it?
Well, maybe. How’s a kid supposed to know about stuff like that?
Ahead was the oak tree with the Viet Cong Lookout in it. At the base of the tree was a piece of red-and-silver paper- a 3 Musketeers wrapper. David bent over, picked it up, and stuck it in his mouth, sucking the smears of sweet chocolate off the inside with his eyes closed. Take, eat, he heard Reverend Martin say-this was a memory and not a voice, which was something of a relief. This is my body, broken for you and for many. He opened his eyes, fearing he might nevertheless see Reverend Martin’s drunken face and dead eyes, but Reverend Martin wasn’t there.
David spat the wrapper out and climbed to the Viet Cong Lookout with the sweet taste of chocolate in his mouth. He climbed into the sound of rock-and-roll music.
Someone was sitting cross-legged on the platform and looking out at the Bear Street Woods. His posture was so similar to Brian’s-legs crossed, chin propped on the palms of his hands-that for a moment David was sure it was his old friend, only grown to young adulthood. David thought he could handle that.
It wouldn’t be any stranger than the rotting effigy of his mother or the cougar with Audrey Wyler’s head, and a hell of a lot less distressing.
Slung over the young man’s shoulder was a radio on a strap. Not a Walkman or a boombox; it looked older than either. There were two circular decals pasted to its leather case, one a yellow smile-guy, the other the peace sign. The music was coming from a small exterior speaker. The sound was tinny but still way cool, hot drums, killer rhythm guitar, and a somehow perfect rock-and-roll vocal: “I was feelin’… so
bad. . . asked my family doctor just what I had.. .“
“Bri?” he asked, grabbing the bottom of the platform and pulling himself up. “That you?” The man turned. He was slim, dark-haired under a Yankees baseball cap, wearing jeans, a plain gray tee-shirt, and big reflector shades-David could see his own face in them. He was the first person David had seen in this … whatever-it-was … that he didn’t know.
“Brian’s not here, David,” he said.
“Who are you, then?” If the guy in the reflector sun glasses started to rot or to bleed out like Entragian, David was vacating this tree in a hurry, and never mind the mummy that might be lurking somewhere in the woods below. “This is our place. Mine and Bri’s.”
“Brian can ‘t be here,” the dark-haired man said pleas antly. “Brian’s alive, you see.”
“I don’t get you.” But he was afraid he did.
“What did you tell Marinville when he tried to talk to the coyotes?”
It took David a moment to remember, and that wasn’t surprising, because what he’d said hadn’t seemed to come from him but through him. “I said not to speak to them in the language of the dead. Except it wasn’t really me who-”
The man in the sunglasses waved this off. “The way Marinville tried to speak to the coyotes is sort of the way we’re speaking now: si em, tow en can de lach. Do you understand?”
“Yes. ‘We speak the language of the unformed.’ The language of the dead.” David began to shiver. “I’m dead too, then.. . aren’t I? I’m dead, too.”
“Nope. Wrong. Lose one turn.” The man turned up the volume on his radio- “I said doctor. . . Mr.
M.D.. and smiled. “The Rascals,” he said. “Felix Cavaliere on vocals. Cool?”
“Yes,” David said, and meant it. He felt he could listen to the song all day. It made him think of the beach, and cute girls in two-piece bathing suits.
The man in the Yankees cap listened a moment longer, then turned the radio off. When he did, David saw a ragged scar on the underside of his right wrist, as if at some point he had tried to kill himself. Then it occurred to him that the man might have done a lot more than just try wasn’t this a place of the dead?
He suppressed a shiver.
The man took off his Yankees cap, wiped the back of his neck with it, put it back on, and looked at David seriously. “This is the Land of the Dead, but you’re an exception. You’re special. Very.”
“Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just another member of the Young Rascals-Felix Cavaliere Fan Club, if it comes to that,” the man said. He looked around, sighed, grimaced a little. “But I’ll tell you one thing, young man: it doesn’t surprise me at all that the Land of the Dead should turn out to be located in the suburbs ofColumbus,Ohio .” He looked back at David, his faint smile fading. “I guess it’s time we got down to business. Time is short. You’re going to have a bit of a sore throat when you wake up, by the way, and you may feel disoriented at first; they’re moving you to the back of the truck Steve Ames drove into town. They feel a strong urge to vacate The American West-take it any way you want-and I can’t say I blame them.”
“Why are you here?”
“To make sure you know why you’re here, David … to begin with, at least. So tell me: why are you here?”
“I don’t know what you’re-”
“Oh please,” the man with the radio said. His mirror shades flashed in the sun. “If you don’t, you’re in deep shit. Why are you on earth? Why did God make you?”
David looked at him in consternation.
“Come on, come on!” the man said impatiently. “These are easy questions. Why did God make you?
Why did God make me? Why did God make anyone?”
“To love and serve him,” David said slowly.
“Okay, good. It’s a start, anyway. And what is God? What’s your experience of the nature of God?”
“I don’t want to say.” David looked down at his hands, then up at the grave, intently. The man. The strangely familiar man-in the sunglasses. “I’m scared I’ll get in dutch.” He hesitated, then dragged out what he was really afraid of:
“I’m scared you’re God.”
The man uttered a short, rueful laugh. “In a way, that’s pretty funny, but never mind.
Let’s stay focused here. What do you know of the nature of God, David? What is your experience?”
With the greatest reluctance, David said: “God is cruel.”
He looked down at his hands again and counted slowly to five. When he had reached it and still hadn’t been fried by a lightning-bolt, he looked up again. The man in the jeans and tee-shirt was still grave and intent, but David saw no anger in him.
“That’s right, God is cruel. We slow down, the mummy always catches us in the end, and God is cruel.
Why is God cruel, David?”
For a moment he didn’t answer, and then something Reverend Martin had said came to him-the TV in the corner had been broadcasting a soundless spring-training baseball game that day.
“God’s cruelty is refining,” he said.
“We’re the mine and God is the miner?”
“Well-”
“And all cruelty is good? God is good and cruelty is good?”
“No, hardly any of it’s good!” David said. For a single second, horrified second, he saw Pie, dangling from the hook on the wall, Pie who walked around ants on the sidewalk because she didn’t want to hurt them.
“What is cruelty done for evil?”
“Malice. Who are you, sir?”
“Never mind. Who is the father of malice?”
“The devil … or maybe those other gods my mother talked about.”
“Never mind can tah and can tak, at least for now. We have bigger fish to fry, so pay attention. What is
faith?’
That one was easy. “The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
“Yeah. And what is the spiritual state of the faithful?
“Urn.. . love and acceptance. I think.”
“And what is the opposite of faith?”
That was tougher-a real hairball, in fact. Like one of those damned reading- achievement tests. Pick a, b, c, or d. Except here you didn’t even get the choices. “Disbelief?” he ventured.
“No. Not disbelief but unbelief. The first is natural, the second willful. And when one is in unbelief, David, what is that one’s spiritual state?”