Part 22 (2/2)

I didn't really need Jesus. I mean, I needed Jesus the half-pint, what I didn't need was to get drunk. Three of my favorite things-a book, a child, and a bottle-were all within reach, and I was content to wet my mouth with him every few minutes to stabilize the buzz.

Shane had told the hippies that Jesus m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed, but Mom took me to Sunday school every week for years, and The Upper Room daily meditation guide never mentioned self-love in the physical sense. When I was Andrew's age and going through a precocious stage, I asked the teacher if Jesus was a virgin because Mary was and it followed that a virgin mother would have a virgin son. I had the deal mixed up with Virgo. The teacher made me pray for G.o.d's forgiveness.

A lesbian from San Diego I knew in college told me Jesus was h.o.m.os.e.xual, like her. ”Look at his gang-twelve guys, two wh.o.r.es, and a mother who claimed she'd never done it.”

”Is that a normal configuration to turn out gay guys?”

”Put it this way, would a person with an extended family like that one be into man-on-top, get-it-over-with-quick?”

I told Sam Callahan about my lesbian friend's theory, and he wrote a short story in which two anthropologists found some scrolls that proved absolutely, beyond any doubt, that Jesus was h.o.m.os.e.xual.

”My story explains how this discovery would affect Fundamentalist Christian faiths,” he told me.

”They would crucify the anthropologists and ignore the truth,” I said.

”The ending is too obvious?”

The concept that G.o.d might involve himself in retaliation for bad acts came to me the summer after I graduated from high school, one stormy day on the Forest Service lease when Dad, Hank Elkrunner, and I were fixing fence.

It was between showers, and Dad was using the wire stretcher, his muscles all bunched up and sweaty, and I had a semi-incestuous thought. Nothing disgustingly incestuous like me-and-him-don't you just hate a dream where you're romantically entangled with a member of your immediate family? G.o.d, that makes me feel icky. This was a daydream where I wondered what Dad was like with a woman. Was he any good? Did he grunt? Did he dig his chin into her right shoulder?

In my wildest imagination I couldn't picture him with Mom, so I ran through all the possible women in the valley and ended up with Lydia Callahan. She was with Hank, but he wouldn't mind. It was only a daydream.

Hank was working the crimpers and I was leaning on the post hole digger with one hand on the barbwire fence; I'd just come to the part where Dad uses his tongue on Lydia, and I couldn't decide if his beard tickled, when lightning hit the fence about two miles up the mountain.

Here is a verifiable scientific fact: Electricity travels through barbwire faster than thunder through air. The jolt paralyzed my arm for like a half second, then blasted me ten feet into the sagebrush.

I was on my back, doing yellow-and-black spots, when the thunder pa.s.sed over. Two of the spots gelled into Dad's and Hank's faces. They were both grinning, which was the only way I knew I wasn't dead.

Dad's beard split. ”G.o.d give you a wake-up call?”

Hank touched my ozone-smelling hair. ”Maurey, what did you do to anger the thunderbirds?”

I closed my eyes and swore to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost all three that I would never fantasize my Dad naked again.

26.

I swallowed a c.o.ke bottle top. Shane pulled out his little knife and said, ”You need a tracheotomy.” Then I lay on the floor while he cut my throat.

I slept on my back using an old army blanket as a pad and Jesus as my pillow. Around dawn I blinked awake and looked at the fuzzy light on Moby d.i.c.k's ceiling. Oklahoma, I thought. Andrew slept with his head on my left shoulder and Owsley slept with his head on my right. I thought, Gee, Owsley has gorgeous hair. Look at how the highlights s.h.i.+ne when he breathes.

Then it hit.

”Owsley!” I sat up fast and clonked both boys' heads on the blanket.

”You aren't here,” I said.

He came to his knees sleepily and wet his lips with his tongue. His eyes were the silver-gray color of aspen ashes. ”I'm here.”

”You aren't supposed to be here. How did you get here?”

”He slid out from under the junk pile after you pa.s.sed out,” Marcella said.

”Went to sleep.”

She sat with her back against the far wall, nursing Hugo Jr. ”He said you said he could come.”

”I said no such thing.”

Shane pulled himself around the pa.s.senger seat to face back. ”Tsk, tsk, another alcohol blackout.”

That's another problem with drinking. People can claim you forgot something you didn't forget and you're supposed to trust their memory over your own.

”I didn't black out anything, I never said a word to him about coming with us.”

Owsley kept his eyes down. ”You said there's always room for one more in the ambulance. When people in trouble travel together they have to take care of each other.”

”I said that to Critter.”

”I'm in more trouble than she is.” His lower lip kind of quivered, and his hair hung in that limp dejection thing that women use to look forlorn. Men shouldn't be allowed to express themselves with their hair.

I was confused, but then I'm always confused before I've brushed my teeth. ”We can't take on a runaway boy, Freedom will call the Highway Patrol.”

”Not a likely supposition,” Shane said.

Owsley brushed hair behind his ears. ”Freedom don't care about me. He had Mary Beth claim me for Aid to Dependent Children, but the social worker found out she was only three years older than me and cut us off. Now, Freedom don't care what I do.”

”Mary Beth is...”

”Critter. He was mad on account of he got ripped off in Dallas and the truant lady come out to the house. Last thing he'd do is call the law to fetch me back.”

I looked from Marcella to Shane. The brother-sister duo seemed to take for granted we'd added a pa.s.senger. Where was Lloyd, anyway, and why were we stopped in the country? Outside was hardwoods and bird sounds and the distant chug of a pump. One disorienting day sliding into another.

”We have to take him back,” I said.

Owsley raised his eyes. ”I ain't going back to Freedom.”

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