Godless (14 page)

I cannot recommend jail, unless
you enjoy misery, fear, loneliness, and the sounds and smells of a drunk puking in the next cell. Also, I think I might have picked up a flea infestation. My head itches like crazy.

I am
Bock. J. Bock
. Radical Religious Zealot. Leader of the Chutengodian Jihad. Mastermind of the Terrorist Assassins, Captured in the Act of Poisoning the Water Supply with sweat, spit, and one flashlight, imprisoned by godless heathens for crimes against nature….

Forget about it. I'm hungry and scared and I'm gagging at the reek of my neighbor's winey vomit. I lay wide-eyed on the narrow cot, staring at some pink chunky glop stuck to the ceiling. What is it? How did it get up there? My stomach churns.

There are no windows, no clocks. Does that make the time go faster? I don't think so.

A policeman walks past my cell and I say, “Do you know what time it is?”

He stops and looks in at me and says, “Time to think about your life, son.”

“Do you know if my friend Henry is all right?”

“I don't know your friend Henry. Was he here?”

“No.”

“Then, he's probably better off than you are.”

“What about Magda and Dan?”

“Those other two kids? Their parents already picked them up.”

“I want to call my dad.”

“You already had your phone call.”

“Are there fleas in here?” I ask, scratching my head.

He laughs. “Son, there's a lot worse than fleas.”

My father lets me rot in jail until almost 9:00
A.M.
It's just as well. When he finally bails me out, he is so mad he can't talk. I can't imagine how angry he must have been when he got the 3:00
A.M.
phone call from the police.

“You sit in back” is the only thing he says to me.

I get in the backseat of his Buick. His jaw muscle is pulsing so hard I'm afraid he's going to pulverize his molars.

Halfway home, I say, “I'm sorry, Dad.”

The frequency of the jaw pulses increases. This is bad. I've never seen him like this.

The first time I climbed the tower with Henry Stagg, we told each other things. I told Henry about my mother's obsession with diseases, and my father's obsession with religion. Henry told me about his father, who used to beat him with a belt.

The belt was black with silver studs. He would fold it over once, drape Henry over his knee and whack him three times with the buckle end for every minute of aggravation Henry had given him. There were times, Henry told me, when his ass oozed blood for a week. Two years ago Henry's father got killed in a truck accident. Henry says he doesn't miss him one bit.

My father has never hit me with anything. But, at this moment, if he happened to have a silver-studded belt in his hands, I'm sure I'd never be able to sit down again.

We get home and go into the house. I walk past my mother, who stares at me as if I'm some sort of freak of nature. I go to my room and shut the door. It feels as if years have passed. I look at my books, my computer, my clothes—none of it seems important anymore, not after last night. Not after nearly drowning, and then watching Henry die, and then finding out he was alive, and the police and the ambulance crew bringing Henry down … and the hours sitting in jail, sitting in that bright cell alone with the retching and the foul smells.

I'm hungry, but there is no way I am going out there and facing my mother.

No way.

I think about Magda and Dan. Are they in as much trouble as I am? I don't know anything about Magda's parents, but as for Dan, his Holy Roller father has probably grounded him for the rest of his life.

Shin is lucky he didn't come up with us. I wonder how he is doing. Does he even know what happened? Probably not. He's probably still in bed.

I scour my mind for something to make me feel better. All I can come up with is Paul the Apostle, who was imprisoned repeatedly for his religious activities. Is this how he felt?

I wouldn't have been on top of that tower if it weren't for my religion. Does that make me a martyr? Am I being persecuted?

I wonder how my father will respond to that argument.

Not well, I fear.

A few minutes later I hear determined, fatherly footsteps. He opens my door without knocking.

“Jason, your mother and I would like to talk to you.”

He walks away, leaving the door open. I follow him into the living room. My parents are perched stiffly in their matching club chairs. I sit on the sofa, facing them. The prisoner facing his persecutors, waiting to hear the sentence they are about to impose. Will they send me back to jail? Will I spend the rest of my life in a labor camp? Will I be put in stocks in the public square? Will I be drawn and quartered—one limb tied to each of four
horses and pulled slowly apart? Will I be whipped and beaten and spat upon and forced to drag a wooden cross to my place of execution?

My father begins with the ritual throat clearing, then speaks.

“Jason, I hardly know what to say. In fact, I'm not even going to bother asking you why you were up there on that water tower. No answer you could possibly give us would be satisfactory. The Stagg boy is in St. Theresa's Hospital, lucky to be alive. You're all lucky to be alive,”

I, the accused, say nothing.

“The question now is, what are we going to do with you?”

I maintain my silence.

After a few seconds he says, “Well?”

“I'm sorry, I thought the question was rhetorical.”

His eyes bulge, and I immediately regret my comment, even though it was completely true.

“Jason,” he says, fighting to keep his voice under control, “do you want to continue to live here with us, under this roof?”

I nod. It's not such a bad place. I try to keep my chin up and look him in the eyes, but it's not so easy, what with all the smoldering and burning and glittering going on there. I shift my gaze down and over to my mother's hands, fingers all over each other like ten jittery worms having a wrestling match. It reminds me of how much my head itches. I start scratching.

“What do
you
think we should do, Jason?” my father says.

“I don't know. I'm not going to be climbing any more water towers.”

“Do you think you should be punished?”

“No.”

His jaw pulses as he chews on that.

“Your mother and I disagree,” he says.

I shrug. The funny thing is, although I'm embarrassed at getting caught, I don't feel all that bad about climbing the Ten-legged One. What's the big deal? Nobody got hurt. Except for Henry, and that was his own fault.

But I know I'm going to pay a price. I'm paying right now with all the itching.

My father clears his throat again.

“Here is what we've decided, Jason. You are not to leave the house except on errands, or to attend TPO meetings, or on other business approved of by your mother and me, until the beginning of school.”

That's only six weeks away. I can handle it.

“And no phone privileges.”

Uh-oh.

“Furthermore, you will not be getting your drivers' license this fall. That will have to wait until next year.”

Ouch! That one really hurts.

“Look, I don't—” I stop talking just in time. Who knows what sort of incriminating declaration was about to come out of my mouth? I certainly don't.

“You don't what?” my father asks, his voice artificially mild.

“Nothing,” I say, scratching behind my right ear.

“Why are you scratching?” my mother asks, speaking for the first time.

“I think I got fleas or lice or something,” I say.

That
ends the meeting fast.

A
ND THOSE WHO OPPOSED THE
P
RAGMATISTS, AND WHO CALLED THEMSELVES THE
F
AITHFUL, SAID NO
! T
HE WATERWAYS AND THE RAINS ARE THE PROVINCE OF THE
O
CEAN AND ITS
A
VATARS, AND THOSE WHO DO NOT RECOGNIZE THE SUPREMACY OF THE
O
CEAN OVER ALL SHALL BE DAMNED TO WANDER FOREVER IN A WATERLESS DESERT
.

21
 

After showering and washing my
entire body with some sort of insecticide shampoo my mother has been hoarding, I am once again permitted to retire to my cell. I hear my father grousing about how he lost half a day at work over this “teenage idiocy,” and my mother scouring the house for cooties with her little handheld vacuum cleaner. By noon, things have calmed down. My father leaves for his office. My mother performs another half hour of frantic cleaning, then knocks on my door to tell me she is going to her bridge club.

As soon as I hear her car roll out of the driveway, I'm on the phone to Shin, partly to find out if he's okay, and partly because I just have to tell him about what happened.

I get the answering machine.

“Shin, it's me. Call me.”

My next call is to Magda. Her mother answers.

“Is Magda there?”

“Who is calling, please?”

This is no time to be truthful. “This is Joe Finklemarster.”

“Joe who?”

“Uh, Frinkleman … ster.”
Damn!

“I‘m sorry, but Magda is not taking any telephone calls, Mr. Finklefrinklewhatever. Good-bye.”

So much for that. I try calling Dan, but when I get the answering machine I just hang up. They've probably got him in a straightjacket.

I call St. Theresa's Hospital.

“I'm calling for one of your patients—Henry Stagg?”

“Just one moment.”

I scratch my head and smell my fingers. Insecticide shampoo smells like insecticide. If I was a flea, I'd leave too.

“Hello?”

“Henry?”

“Jay-boy?”

“How are you doing?”

“Broken femur, two busted ribs, and a dislocated finger.”

“Ouch.”

“I have to crap in a pan.”

“At least you're not dead.”

“Yeah, well, dead would be easier.”

“How long do you have to be in the hospital?”

“A few days, then I go home. They say I'll be on crutches for a couple months. Hey, I can't remember—did we shut that hatch?”

“I think so.”

“Good. Maybe they don't know we were in the tank. The cops were here, but I pretended I was asleep.”

“We were all soaking wet, Henry. They know we were in there.”

“Oh well, what can they do?”

“We're going to find out.”

“I s'pose. It was worth it, though. Wasn't it?”

“I don't know about that.”

“Hey, Kahunaness, no matter what they do to you, they aren't gonna break your legs. I'm the only one paying the steep price here, and I say it was worth it.”

“I say you're a nutcase.” Usually I wouldn't talk to Henry like that, but I figure the broken leg and the fact that he's ten miles away in the hospital give me a safety margin.

“Think about it, Einstein,” he says. “You live to be a hundred, you're gonna remember it like it was yesterday. It was probably one of the great moments of your life. Sure, maybe they'll send you to ding-dong school, take away your DVD player, whatever. That's nothing. Who else you know that's swum in a water tower? How long you think it'll be before you have another night you'll never forget? Me, a few months I'll be healed up like nothing ever happened. But I'll still have
last night. It was like a religious experience.”

“What if you'd missed the catwalk?”

“I'd do it again in a second.”

“Henry, are you high on something?”

“They got me on some kind of IV drip. I'm not hurtin', I can tell you that. Hey, y'know what'd be cool? We could haul some inner tubes up, about six flashlights, a boom box … get a bunch of girls up there …”

“How are you going to climb with your leg all busted up?”

“I'm planning for the future.”

Henry Stagg is, of course, certifiably insane. But I do wonder what it would sound like to crank up some Metallica or Eminem inside that enormous metal cavern. If you got it loud enough, maybe people would hear it coming out their faucets.

He's also right about it being an unforgettable experience. I'll never forget swimming in that tank. Of course, I'll never forget the time I got my finger slammed in the car door when I was nine years old, and that's not an experience I'd want to repeat.

I dial Shin's number, but get the machine again. I look at the clock. Two
P.M.
That gives me two hours before my mother gets home. I decide to go for it. Nobody grounds the pope, so why should I be any different?

A
ND A GREAT RIFT GREW BETWEEN THE
F
AITHFUL AND THE
P
RAGMATISTS, AND HARSH WORDS FLEW LIKE ARROWS, AND THE PEOPLE OF
E
ARTH FORMED INTO TWO GREAT TRIBES, AND THE LAND TREMBLED WITH MALICE
.