All the Major Constellations (12 page)

HE WAS AWAKENED BY Ben the following morning.

“You trip in the woods again?” he asked, peering at Andrew.

“Yeah. I've got to stop doing that,” Andrew said. He sat up and tucked the Bible into his backpack.

“You need a flashlight,” Ben said.

“I need a coffee,” Andrew said. “And some aspirin.”

Ben handed him a white bag. Andrew took it and looked inside. An egg sandwich and a cup of coffee.

“Thanks, man,” Andrew said.

“Dad bought it. There are some pills here somewhere.” Ben started searching around the office.

“Don't worry about that. Where's your dad?” he asked between mouthfuls of food. “And where's my dog?”

“With Dad. He likes dogs.”

“Cool.”

“You feel okay?”

“Actually,” Andrew said, “I don't feel that bad.” He didn't. His head hurt, but not terribly, and he felt well rested, even unburdened.

The door swung open, and Becky and Neal walked in. Becky settled herself half on the couch and half in Andrew's lap.

“This okay?” Andrew said to Neal, indicating Becky.

“Oh yeah. Reminds me of my old pup,” Neal said. “That's quite a goose egg you got there,” he added, pointing to Andrew's head. Andrew felt his forehead. There was a sizeable lump. He finished his sandwich and thanked Neal again. Ben took Becky out to the back of the shed.

“She'll have to hang out there during the day,” Neal said.

“That's fine. She's old. She sleeps most of the day anyway.”

“You need to talk?”

“I need to work,” Andrew said.

“Good boy,” Neal said. “Up and at 'em.”

• • •

At the end of the day Neal showed Andrew how to hook a hose up to the sink and take a shower. It was cold and required a lot of coordination, but in a way he'd never felt more refreshed. He wondered if Marcia had tried calling him. He thought about calling her—she obviously didn't know where he was—but he didn't think he should use the office phone for long-distance calls. He was used to being in almost daily contact with her for
years. And he was lonely in the office, even with Becky.

His mom had thoughtfully included bowls and a can opener in the bag she'd given him. He wondered what she was doing now. Andrew and his mother met occasionally outside the battlefield, handing each other groceries and exchanging brief words, but that was it. Between them it was mostly a vast void of regret. He pitied her, he told himself. That was it. He cared more deeply about his dog than anyone else in that house.

He'd worked by himself most of the day, with Neal sending him out on various solitary missions. He did this perhaps to protect him from prying questions about Brian, whose crime must certainly now be public knowledge.

Neal and Ben invited Andrew over for dinner that night, but Andrew refused, saying he had plans with a friend. He thought about calling Matt but decided against it. Their talk in the woods had ended kind of oddly. He took Becky for a long walk, enjoying the grounds in a way that was usually inaccessible to him. It was like a golf course. For some reason the smooth beauty of manicured lawns was more appealing to him than untouched wilderness. He thought maybe this meant he wasn't a real Vermonter, but he'd never given a shit about that kind of thing anyway.

He opened a can of soup and heated it in a bowl in the office microwave. He was tired and satisfied with his day, but as the sky darkened he began to feel the ache of loneliness again.

He picked up John's Bible. Andrew was a good reader, and the Bible was, if nothing else, a great book. Even people who
weren't religious liked the Bible for its literary value, its historical enormity, its parables, its poetry, its truths. Its awesome, inescapable Bible-ness. He turned it over in his hands. Again he felt the weight and substance. And somehow, it felt sacred, too. Was it the thing itself or all the cultural associations he had absorbed that made it seem this way? Last night he'd held it to his chest like a security blanket. The memory made him blush.

He opened it and read.

After ten pages, however, he closed it in frustration. It was just boring. He didn't connect with it. The opening was kind of awesome, but after that the words seemed to blur into meaningless spillage. How did people read this thing? How did they find in it truth and beauty? He thumbed the pages, letting them slide through his fingers like an animated flip-book. He decided he would read the passages that John had marked. Mostly, John had underlined words that were already written in red, the words of Jesus. He read the Sermon on the Mount, he read the Ask, Seek, Knock speech. It was all fine; it was great, even. But he was unmoved. He tried to disassociate from his natural skepticism and sarcasm, the inner reel of “whatever” that played in his head, but he couldn't. He just couldn't. He didn't understand this heavy, worn thing, these red words, this beloved object of another person.
This doesn't belong to me,
he decided.

He found a phone book in the office and called John. A few minutes later he was on his way to meet him downtown.

Andrew pulled up to the curb outside the city center. The city center was a kind of mini mall that housed a few restaurants and stores. It was an incongruous structure among the small shops and quaint buildings of their modest downtown. Like Laura's church, it was more a generic office space than a thing of beauty. The building was dark. John stood on the sidewalk.

“Hey,” Andrew said out his window.

“It's closed,” John said. They had talked about getting some pizza or coffee, but ten p.m. in a mid-size Vermont town meant everyone was already at home either asleep or drunk or stoned.

“I figured,” Andrew said. “Let's just go for a drive.”

“Okay,” John said. He stood on the sidewalk, shifting slightly from foot to foot.

“Are you all right?” Andrew said.

“Sorry. Let's do it,” John said. He got in and buckled up. He drummed his fingers on the dashboard. He seemed to be very slightly trembling. His jeans were worn, and his shirt, dark red, looked threadbare. In fact, Andrew thought, all John's clothes were a little ragged and secondhand-looking. He felt bad about the T-shirt he'd blown his nose on and neglected to wash. It was still in the backseat, in fact. He hoped John wouldn't notice.

“I think you may have given this to me by accident,” Andrew said as he held up John's Bible. John looked both surprised and affronted.

“No way, man. It was a gift.”

“It just seems really personal,” Andrew said. John looked embarrassed.

Andrew realized that he was being kind of a jerk. “Sorry. I just wanted to make sure you didn't give it to me by mistake and wanted it back.”

John looked out the window. Andrew tossed the Bible in the backseat and cleared his throat. “Where to?” he asked.

“Wherever,” John said. He peered at Andrew. “Wow! You sure did swell up from the other day.”

“Oh yeah. This is something new. Actually, I got hit.”

“What?”

“It was over some shit with my brother.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I'm fine.”

“I heard about that thing with your brother.”

“When?”

“A few days ago. Before the soup kitchen.”

“Really?” Andrew said. He was surprised. “Then you knew before I did. Who did you hear it from?”

“Just around. How are you feeling about it?”

“I don't feel anything about it. I mean, fuck, I feel bad for the girl.”

“So, you think he did it? Or he participated in it?”

“Yeah.”

“I heard, um, I heard that maybe she was a prostitute or something and that they just didn't pay her. Not that any part of that's okay,” John added quickly.

Andrew digested this information. He gripped the steering wheel and said, “Well, that adds up to rape, doesn't it?”

The word
rape
seemed to ring out in the car like a bell. It silenced them both for several minutes.

“Want to talk about something else?” said John.

“Yeah. Let's talk about Jesus.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“Yeah,” he said. Then: “No, actually, I'm not.”

“What do you want to know?” John asked.

“When were you saved?”

“We're not, like, born-again.”

“So what's the proper vernacular?”

“I guess we say ‘found.' Either that or ‘accepted into your heart.'”

“So, when did you find or accept Jesus?”

“October 2, 1993.”

“You know the exact date?”

“I know the exact moment. Two a.m. Because that's what it is: a moment in time. And nothing is ever the same. You're not the same. Everything changes. Everything suddenly makes sense. Your heart opens.”

As John spoke he seemed to gain confidence, even happiness. He stopped jittering, and his voice was lighter, less tentative. “It's hard to describe. He's just there for you, and He's beautiful. He's love.”

“But how do you know? What happens that makes you know you found Him, or that He's in your heart?”

“You just know.”

“What leads up to it? I mean, it doesn't just suddenly happen out of the blue, right? You've got to be looking for it or studying it, right? There's a human influence. A cultural influence. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” John said slowly. “For some people it does just happen, like you said, out of the blue. But for others it is a search. You read the Bible, you connect with other people who are already there.”

“Like what I'm doing?” Andrew said.

“Looking for it?” John said. He shifted around in the passenger seat.

“You can lower the seat back if you want,” Andrew said.

“I'm fine. Anyway, sometimes a darkness, a dark event,
can lead you to search. You start asking questions.”

He's talking about Sara's accident,
Andrew thought. He looked over at John, who had grown quiet and thoughtful. Maybe he was talking about his own struggle.
Why do I always think it's about me?

“Tell me more about your moment,” Andrew said.

“There was a lot of stuff going on. I was living in a bad way. And then I hit rock bottom . . . and then I found Him,” John said abruptly.

“Oh,” Andrew said.

“What about you? Have you been searching?” John said.

Andrew wanted to blurt out that he was in love with Laura, that he would do or say anything to get closer to Laura. But he also knew it was more nuanced than that. At Shaman's Point, and in the river where he'd almost lost Becky, he'd felt—he didn't know another way to describe it—
moved
. Like when you read a great book or a poem and something inside you shifted—or opened, for that matter.

“I guess I've been searching,” Andrew said.

“We have a study group tomorrow night if you want to join. You're not really supposed to come until you've accepted Jesus, but . . .”

“Nah, I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable,” Andrew said, thinking of his day at the soup kitchen.

“The group is really small. Just me, Matt, Seth, Laura, sometimes Chip.”

“Oh?” Andrew said.

“Come to Laura's tomorrow night at six.”

“I don't know,” Andrew said, but he'd already made up his mind to go.

“It's up to you,” John said.

Andrew's mind worked rapidly. If he went to a study group, he'd have to be prepared to say something coherent and sincere-sounding about the Bible. What could he say that would impress Laura? What could he find in its pages that would actually resonate with him? When he called John, he'd meant, in a way, to come clean. But this new opportunity confused his intentions. He'd get to be with Laura again and see her interact with what he'd come to think of as the mysterious men in her life. Were they all in love with her? Were they a bunch of pathetic fawning eunuchs? And why was she apparently the only female in their cozy little study group?

“Listen, I want to be honest with you,” Andrew said.

“Yes?” John said. He started his drumming fingers on the dashboard again.

“I'm wearing a mask,” he said. “I'm pretending. Sort of, anyway.”

“That's okay. That's what the search is like for some people. They feel almost phony, as if they're acting out the motions.”

“Isn't that a lie?”

“It's just more subtle than that, Andrew, more complicated. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘fake it until you make it'?”

“Yeah. That's, like, an alcoholic thing.” Andrew wondered if maybe that was what John meant when he'd said he'd hit rock bottom.

“It's like that for some people,” John said.

“So you're literally saying to pretend to believe until you actually believe? That can't be right. Is that actually okay with your”—Andrew hesitated, groping for the right words—“your people?”

“My people,” John said thoughtfully. “That ‘fake it until you make it' phrase doesn't quite fit. It's hard to explain.”

“Did you feel that you were faking it or subtly faking it before you found Him?” Andrew pressed.

John was silent for a long time. A long, long time, for miles. The atmosphere in the car was thick with sadness, although it was difficult to figure out what aspects of the situation suggested that feeling. He briefly considered bringing the conversation around to Laura, but something about John made him resist that urge, even dulled its impulse.

“John?”

“What? Where are we?” he said. He seemed startled by the sound of Andrew's voice.

Andrew had driven down Route 2. They were in Turbury, a town so tiny that the gas station, convenience store, and post office were all combined. It made him think of how he, Sara, and Marcia used to drive around when there was nothing else to do. He remembered his last drive with Marcia, the day of the
accident, when they had talked about religion. Andrew had been so flippant, so brutal, so unconcerned.
It sounds so simple, talking about it in your car.
That was what Marcia had said, but it hadn't been simple or easy for her. And it wasn't simple or easy for him, either, not now anyway, and it certainly wasn't for John, whose expression was pained, whose hands and jaw were clenched.

“We're nowhere,” Andrew said. “I'll take you home.”