Beware of God (11 page)

Nobody strolls over.

Nobody strolls over.

“Good grief,” says Charlie Brown.

W
HEN
Yankel Morgenstern died and went to heaven, he was surprised to discover that God was a large chicken. The chicken was around thirty feet tall, and spoke perfect English. He stood before a gleaming eternal coop of gold made of chicken wire of shimmering bronze, and behold, inside, a nest of diamonds.

“Fuck,” said Morgenstern.

“You know,” said Chicken, “that's the first thing everyone says when they meet me. “‘Fuck.' How does that make me feel?”

Morgenstern threw himself at Chicken's feet, kissing his enormous holy claws.

“Hear O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is One!” Morgenstern cried out.

Chicken stepped backward and shrugged.

“Eh?” he said, bobbing his enormous head.

“What?” asked Morgenstern.

“What's that supposed to do for me? Hero Israel …?” he asked. “How's it go again?” asked Chicken.

“It's … it's Shema,” Morgenstern said with hesitation.

Chicken stomped around in a circle before settling down in His Holy Nest of Nests. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. I've been hearing it for years. Still not sure what it means, though. Hero Israel—”

“Not hero Israel,” snapped Morgenstern. He stood up, clutching his black felt hat in his hand. “Hear, O Israel. It means that you are one, that you are the only, you know … God.”

That last word didn't come easily.

“Of course I am,” said Chicken. “Do you see any other Chickens around here?”

Morgenstern thought of his wife and children down on Earth, praying uselessly to a nonfowl deity that didn't exist. He thought of all the chickens he'd eaten. Breasts, thighs, giblets, nuggets. So many omelets. Western. Spanish. Californian. Dear God. It was true that in the few months before his death he had switched to free-range, but would that earn the Chicken's mercy? He thought of the fast-food industry, of KFC, of the horrible retribution spicy chicken wings would surely bring upon all mankind.

“Hey Gabe! Gabe!” called the Chicken. “Is it Hero Israel, or Hear O Israel?”

A stocky old man appeared from the clouds. He wore a pair of dirty Carhartt overalls and smoked a cigarette.

“It is Hero Israel, Sir. You are quite correct.” He turned his head sharply toward Morgenstern.

“Morgenstern?”

“Yes?”

“Follow me.”

Morgenstern bowed to the large chicken and walked backward from Him in a show of deference and respect, but when he looked up, Chicken was already beak-deep in His golden bowl of feed.

Morgenstern felt dizzy. This was all too much.

“Was that really …?”

Gabe nodded.

“But the Bible—” said Morgenstern.

“Don't you worry about the Bible,” said Gabe. “We've got the joker who wrote that thing down in hell. Gabe,” he said, extending his hand to Morgenstern as they walked through the Nothingness toward the Nowhere.

“As in Gabriel, right?” asked Morgenstern. “I expected you to be more, I don't know—”

“Jewish?”

“I suppose,” answered Morgenstern.

“Asians all think I'd be Asian. Black folks all think I'd be black. It's a funny world. I'm sort of the head ranch hand around here. I make sure Chicken has enough feed and water, I clean his coop. You know, general maintenance.”

“Couldn't The Chicken just create his own food?”

“Not ‘The Chicken,' just ‘Chicken.' And no, he can't create his own food. He's a chicken.”

Morgenstern asked Gabe where he was taking him.

“Nowhere. This is what we do here. Wherever you go, there you are.”

“Christ,” cried Morgenstern. “You're Buddhist! I knew it. God is a Buddhist! Damn damn damn! I knew the Buddhists were right. Always so happy and peaceful.”

“He's not a Buddhist,” interrupted Gabe. He paused to light a cigarette. Marlboro, Reds. “He's a chicken.”

“I need to go back to Earth,” Morgenstern blurted out.

“Earth? Why?”

Morgenstern turned to face Gabe.

“Let me tell them, Gabe. Please. Let me tell my family, just my family, Gabe. He's a chicken! Not Hashem, Not Adonai! Oh, the years I wasted! Let me tell them so they don't have to jump through the hoops I did, trying to please some maniacal father who art in heaven! Nine children, Gabe. Nine full, happy, worry-free lives! Let them drive on Saturday, let them eat bacon, let them get the lunch special at Red Lobster! McDonald's, Gabe! Do you have any of those fries up here, do you? What does a hamburger with cheese taste like? Is anal sex all it's cracked up to be? Please, Gabe! They can have abs. They can drive Camaros. They can watch television on Friday night. I never saw an episode of
Miami Vice
, Gabe, never. Mine was no life. I was raised like a veal. Not chosen. Just … people. Oh, what freedom. Please. Let me tell them, Gabe.”

Gabe took a long drag from his cigarette and shook his head.

“They won't listen,” he said. “I've tried telling a few myself. But you want to go back to Earth? Go. Go back to Earth.”

Morgenstern hugged Gabe tightly.

“Don't you have to clear it with The Chicken?”

“Not ‘The Chicken,'” said Gabe, “just ‘Chicken.' And no, I don't. Chicken doesn't care either way.” He flicked his cigarette butt off to the side. “He gets his feed filled in the morning, and his droppings cleaned in the afternoon and that's all He really wants to know. I'll see ya in a couple years.”

“Hey!” a voice from below called upward. “Watch where you flick your butts!”

“Well, well!” Gabe shouted down. “If it isn't Mr. Bible Writer.”

“I said I was sorry!” the man shouted back.

When Gabe looked up, Morgenstern was gone.

 

M
ORGENSTERN
awoke. He rolled his head slowly to the side and saw his wife and his daughter Hannah sitting at the table in the hospital room, eating their dinner.

Chicken.

“Don't … eat….” was all he could manage.

His wife jumped, startled at his sudden awakening.

“Boruch Hashem!” she clapped. “Blessed is the Lord who makes miracles happen every day! Don't shake your head, Yankel, you have tubes in your nose. Hannah, come quick, your father is alive!”

His daughter approached cautiously, holding a barbecued chicken drumstick in her right hand and a half-eaten wing in her left.

“May Hashem grant you a full and speedy recovery,” she mumbled in Yiddish while staring at her shoes. She spotted a piece of barbecued God on her blouse, picked it off with her greasy little fingers and popped it into her mouth.

Morgenstern groaned and passed out.

 

F
RIDAY
afternoon he was back home in his very own bed. He'd decided to put off telling his family about Chicken until he was out of the hospital. He would tell them tonight, as they gathered around the Shabbos table. He would speak to them the Word of Chicken, and thus would they be freed.

Maybe jump in the car afterward, catch a movie.

When the sun had finally set and Shabbos had finally arrived, Morgenstern pulled himself into his wheelchair, took a deep breath and rolled himself into the dining room.

His wife had set the table with the good tablecloth, the good silverware and the good glasses. He watched her light the good Shabbos candles, covering her face with her hands and silently praying to a God who wasn't there.

“Please hear my blessings,” she prayed to nobody, “in the merit of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.”

She'd have had better luck with a handful of scratch. Maybe some cut-up apple.

She turned to him with love in her eyes.

“Blessed is God,” she said in Yiddish.

She came to him, knelt beside his wheelchair and hugged him.

“I have to tell you something,” he said.

“I know,” she sobbed into the good napkin. “I know.”

“I don't think you do.”

He rolled away from her. “When I was dead,” said Morgenstern, “I met God.”

“We all meet God every day,” said his wife, “if only you know where to look.”

“No!” shouted Morgenstern. “You're not listening! How do you think I got back here?” he asked her.

“Who else but the All-Merciful would send you back to me?”

He could take no more.

“Who?” shouted Morgenstern as he wheeled himself around to the head of the table. “I'll tell you who!”

The loud voices attracted the children, and they gathered slowly around the Shabbos table.

“Let me tell you a little something about your, uh, All-Knowing! Let me tell you a little something about your All-Merciful!”

Morgenstern looked from Shmuel to Yonah to Meyer to Rivka to Dovid to Hannah to Deena to Leah to little Yichezkel.

The children were all showered, their hair neatly combed, and dressed in their finest Shabbos clothes.

He looked at his wife. She was wearing his favorite wig. There was a picture of Jerusalem on the wall above her right shoulder, some family pictures above her left. Bar mitzvahs, weddings, last year's seder at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami.

“Children,” he began.

“God,” he said.

“Is,” he continued.

“A,” he added.

The light from the Shabbos candles flickered in the eyes of his children. Little Meyer was wearing a brand new yarmulke, and couldn't stop fidgeting with it. Shmuel held a handful of Torah notes from his rabbi he would read after the meal, and the girls would be looking forward to singing their favorite Shabbos songs.

“God is a what?” asked little Hannah.

He couldn't do it.

“God,” Morgenstern said to his children, “is a merciful God.” His wife came to his side. “He is the God of our forefathers. Blessed is God who in His mercy restores life to the dead.”

The children cheered.

“Amen, may His name be called out in joy!” they shouted, jumping up from their seats to hug him all at once.

Morgenstern closed his eyes and hugged his children tightly.

His wife bent over and kissed him gently on his forehead. “May His kindness shine down on us forever,” she whispered.

She smiled then, went into the kitchen and brought out the soup.

Chicken.

C
OME
! Let us now sing out to Epstein! Let us call out in praise to the Rock of Salvation!

Let me greet him with thanksgiving, with praiseful songs let me pray to him.

For a great God is Epstein, and a great King above all!

 

While it is true that the latest edition of
Kabbalah For Dummies
is an engaging and often thought-provoking introduction to the concepts of that renowned work of ancient Jewish mysticism, it might have been prudent if somewhere in the “Golem” section, perhaps adjacent to the detailed instructions on how to create one, they might have mentioned, however cursorily, how to uncreate one.

 

For I am not but a mound of dirt, of clay, of earth, into which Epstein in His great mercy did breathe life. Command me, Epstein, and I shall obey. Let me now praise Epstein, Amen.

 

“Holy crap,” said Epstein, “it worked.”

Epstein's mother clapped her hands excitedly. “Ooo, make him do something, Moshe! Make him do something!”

The golem sat upright on Epstein's couch, his back straight, his hands clasped solemnly in front of his chest. Epstein had dressed him in one of his old blue business suits, with a wide striped tie and a dark gray fedora. He wasn't beautiful, or even symmetrical, but for a first Golem, he was pretty damn good.

“Behold!” said Epstein. “I command you to, uh, stand up!”

The golem stood up.

The Epsteins gasped.

“Behold!” said Epstein. “I command you to sit!”

And the golem sat.

Epstein's mother cheered. “Can I try, can I try?”

She thought for a moment.

“Behold!” she suddenly called out. “Do the laundry!”

The Epsteins held their breath.

“Hanging or folded?” the golem asked.

Epstein's mother squealed.

 

T
HIS
is the life,” said Epstein.

The plants were watered, the cat was fed and the garbage had already been taken out. Sunday afternoon, nothing to do but sit back with a cold beer and watch the Jets game with his mother.

“Golem!” Epstein called out.

“Here I am,” said the golem.

“Bring unto me a beer,” said Epstein, “and with it some of those chips. You know, in the tall cupboard by the stove.”

He was sure getting to like that golem.

“Hark,” cried out the golem, “dost thou desire a Beck's or dost Thou desire a Samuel Adams?”

“I desire,” called out Epstein, “a Samuel Adams.”

“Amen,” said the golem. “Light or Regular?”

“Regular.”

“Ale or lager?”

“Lager.”

“Amber or Cherry Wheat?”

“Just get me a fucking beer,” said Epstein.

And the golem hurried out.

Sweet.

“What a nice boy,” said Epstein's mother.

A moment later, the golem returned.

“Barbecue chips or Zesty Ranch?” he asked.

 

Epstein is my shepherd, I shall not lack. In lush meadows He lays me down, beside tranquil waters He leads me. I shall dwell in the house of Epstein for all of my days.

 

Epstein was thirty-seven years old, a low-level assistant in an insignificant branch of a monolithic corporation with offices in seventy-two countries including Bahrain. He was a cog in the wheel of another wheel with cogs of its own. His devoted golem may have known him as Epstein the All-Powerful and Omniscient, but most everyone else knew him as Epstein the Balding Junior Assistant to the Fat Guy in Accounting with the Lisp. And while yes, it may have been factually true that he lived with his mother, technically speaking his mother lived with him, a semantic loophole which never failed to fail to impress the ladies.

He couldn't just throw her out on the street. She was old and needed his company, and he was young and needed her half of the rent.

But goddamn it, it was high time someone took care of Epstein for a change! It was time someone wanted Epstein's opinion, time someone brought Epstein a coffee.

Morning, Mr. Epstein!

Whatever
you
say, Mr. Epstein!

But what do you think, Mr. Epstein?

Last Saturday afternoon, as part of his weekly sermon, Rabbi Teitelbaum told the congregation the story of the Golem of Prague; by Saturday night, Epstein was already scouring the Golem section in the local Barnes & Noble (it's not in Sci-Fi, by the way, it's in Biography). One quick stop at Home Depot for a half-dozen bags of dirt, and Epstein was set.

 

Epstein raised me from the pit of raging waters, from the slimy mud did he lift me. Praiseworthy is he who places in Epstein his trust, who turns not to the strayers after falsehood.

Epstein was starting to like all this Thou Thee Thy Beseech stuff. Nobody beseeched him at work. Nobody praised him. Nobody sanctified his name. Most of them didn't even remember his name.

The golem was a real bower, which Epstein liked—he bowed when he entered the room, he bowed when he left, he bowed when he began to speak and he bowed when he stopped—and he never once forgot his Morning Praise, a short hymn Epstein composed called Obey Me or Else:

Blessed is He that broughteth you into this world, for He can surely taketh you out.

That Epstein had no idea how to kill a golem, considering that they weren't technically alive, didn't trouble him too deeply.

And so, two weeks and a couple of trips back to the Home Depot Garden Center later, Epstein was back in the garden, busily creating Golem Two.

Epstein had discovered the first time around that despite what
Kabbalah For Dummies
said, creation was really more of a two-man job. Sure, you might be able to pull it off by yourself; others famously had, of course, but they had obviously cut corners. To begin with, the bags of dirt were heavy—fifty pounds each of the appropriately named Miracle-Gro Garden Soil—and you needed at least a dozen of them for a Golem of even modest size. Then you had to shape the dirt into something resembling a man, which sounds a lot easier than it is, particularly if you're going for the whole in-your-own-image thing (which
Kabbalah For Dummies
advised against while still acknowledging that “it is kinda the fun part”).

Golem One had turned out well enough, and even looked a little like Epstein—medium height, bit of a gut. That must have been beginner's luck, though, because Epstein was having a hell of a time with the legs on Golem Two, and he kept screwing up the head.

He wasn't very good at heads.

“Come on, Ma!” called Epstein. “I need a hand with this one!”

He found her downstairs in the laundry room, an angry scowl on her face, her foot tapping impatiently on the laundry room floor where a tall pile of laundry sat silently stinking. The golem was bent over the dryer, writing notes in yet another of his thick black notebooks. He carried those notebooks everywhere, recording in great detail every Epsteinian rule and regulation. In the few short weeks since his creation, he'd filled seven of them from cover to cover. There was an entire volume on beer, and two on the complex subject of chips and related snacks. Another tractate covered all the laws of housecleaning, while still another catechized the full care and feeding of house plants and window boxes (container plants demanded a volume all their own).

When he wasn't writing in them, he was consulting from them.

The covers were already worn, the pages already weathered and loose.

“Hark,” cried out the golem, “when Thou say detergent, art thou referring to powdered detergent or to liquid detergent?”

“Liquid,” snapped Epstein's mother.

The golem wrote that down.

“How about those detergent disks?” he asked.

“We don't have detergent disks.”

“Shall I get detergent disks?”

“Liquid is fine.”

“Tide or Wisk?”

“Tide.”

“What about Fab?”

“No.”

“Gain?”

Epstein's mother shook her head.

“Tide with Bleach Alternative or Tide with Bleach Ultra?”

“We don't have Tide with Bleach Ultra.”

“Shall I get Tide with Bleach Ultra?”

She groaned.

“What the hell's wrong with him, Moshe?”

“Give him some time,” said Epstein.

“To him, time must be given,” said the golem, turning to a blank page in his notebook. “Now then—lay flat or tumble dry?”

Mrs. Epstein slammed the washer shut and stormed out of the room.

“Delicate or permanent press?” the golem called out after her. He ran to the doorway, clutching his precious notebook to his chest.

“Delicate or permanent press!”

 

This I will know, that Epstein is with me. When Epstein acts in strict justice, I still praise the Word. When Epstein acts in mercy, I still praise the Word. In Epstein I have trusted, I shall not fear.

 

“This place is a wreck,” said Epstein's mother.

It had been two weeks since Golem Two's creation ation, and well over a month since Golem One's.

The plants hadn't been watered, the cat hadn't been fed and the garbage hadn't been taken out.

Neither golem was doing very much at all these days, stuck as they were in near constant debate about the meaning, intricacies and inferences of Epstein's instructions and commands.

“Epstein clearly said to separate whites and colors,” said Golem One.

“I don't disagree with that,” said Golem Two. “I disagree with how you interpret the word ‘colors.' You hold that any amount of color constitutes color, whereas I hold that it has to be a significant amount of color.”

The pile of soiled clothing in the center of the laundry room had already doubled in size. Dirty linens were piled high in the sink, underwear hung from every doorknob and light switch, and Epstein's mother's beige underwire bras were slung sloppily over the top of the laundry room door.

“But what is a ‘significant' amount of color?” asked Golem One.

Golem Two cited Notebook 4, page 42 of Epstein's Laws concerning the taking out the garbage, wherein the garbage being “significantly” full meant that the lid could not be closed. According to Golem Two, significant therefore meant a majority of or a predominance of. Golem One argued that garbage was a different ruling entirely because it depended on the day of the week—that is, the
time
the garbage was picked up—not on an
amount
of garbage, as was the issue in the case of the dirty laundry.

Epstein separated the whites from the colors himself, filled the washing machine, slammed the door and left.

The golems fell to their knees and begged for for-giveness:

Behold, before you I am like a vessel filled with shame and humiliation! May it be your will, O Epstein, that I not sin again!

And then, one Sunday afternoon, after watering the plants, feeding the cat and taking out the garbage, Epstein barely had enough time to sit back without his cold beer and catch the last lousy couple of minutes of the Jets game with his mother.

When the golems came and joined them in the den, Epstein's mother left without a word.

“No!” Epstein shouted at the television. “Go for the field goal!”

“Yes, yes,” agreed Golem One. “The field goal is what they should go for.”

“We should all go for the field goal,” Golem Two concurred.

“By going for the field goal,” added Golem One, “we all will be rewarded.”

It was third and long, with less than two minutes to play and the Jets were only down by one.

“You never pass on third and long,” said Epstein.

“Passing on third and long is wrong,” said Golem Two.

“He who passes on third and long,” said Golem One, “shall surely be put to death.”

The quarterback dropped back, faked left, reared back and threw the ball into the end zone.

“It's up … !” said Epstein. “Touchdown!” he shouted, jumping out of his seat. “Woo! In your face!”

Epstein raised his arms above his head and turned for the double high-five to the golems, who remained sitting, as ever, solemnly in their seats.