Godless (4 page)

“Aside from the fact that they're snails, and we're a couple of snail-collecting nerds?”

“We have the ability to quantify.”

“Oh, yeah, I was just gonna say that,” I said. Of course, I have no idea what he's talking about.

I am standing at the exact spot where Henry Stagg punched me in the face, watching Shin measure the distances between the ten legs of God with a yellow tape measure. Each leg is an enormous I-beam welded to a four-foot-square metal slab, which is bolted to a concrete base. The bolts are as big around as my wrists; the concrete base is set deep into the earth. I wonder why. You would think that the weight of all that water would be enough to hold it down, even in a storm.

The body of the Ten-legged One—I guess you'd call it the tank—looks like a giant silver M&M candy, only thicker. And instead of M&M, the letters wrapping
around its side spell out
ST. ANDREW VALLEY
in black block letters ten or twelve feet high. How much water does it hold? Enough to fill every bathtub and swimming pool for miles around. Enough to water all the lawns, to wash all the cars, to power tens of thousands of toilet flushes.

The tower stands in the center of a grassy area, about 150 feet across, near the center of town. It's the tallest structure in sight. You can see it from just about anywhere in St. Andrew Valley.

Shin is now measuring the circumference of the central column, the giant pipe that drops from the belly of the tank into the earth. I have not yet asked him why he is doing all this measuring. Sometimes it is more interesting just to sit back and watch.

A tight spiral of narrow metal treads wraps around the column. The staircase starts about fifteen feet above the ground. It winds around the column, circling it three times, to a point just below the bottom of the tank. From there, a catwalk leads out from the column to one of the legs, then a ladder ascends to a second catwalk wrapping around the perimeter of the tank like a belt around its middle, just under the
ST. ANDREW VALLEY
letters. Yet another ladder rises from the upper catwalk and follows the curve of the tank up to the top. I wonder what is up there, at its highest point.

Now Shin is walking away from the column with big, goofy-looking steps. As he passes me I hear him counting.

“… thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six …”

He stops at the count of thirty-nine. He looks up at the tower, squinting into the sun and writes something in his notebook.

I can't stand it anymore.

“What are you
doing
?” I ask.

“Applying the principles of trigonometry.” He hands me the tape measure. “Measure my shadow.”

Shin's shadow is three-feet-four inches long. He records this fact in his notebook.

“You going to tell me what you're doing?”

“Quantifying,” he says.

“Quantifying what?”

“God.”

A
ND THE
O
CEAN WATCHED AS ITS CREATIONS CHANGED, AS RIVULETS BECAME RIVERS, AS HILLOCKS GREW TO MOUNTAINS, AS FISSURES OPENED, AS THE FLOATING LIFE-UNITS BEGAN TO SWIM, TO CRAWL, TO FLY
.

5
 

Dan Grant is my ordinary friend.
Everybody should have at least one ordinary friend, and Dan is as ordinary as they come. He is so ordinary that most people have to meet him six or seven times before they remember his name.

Even the way he looks is ordinary. One time for a computer project I scanned a whole bunch of student photos from the yearbook, then used a graphics program to morph them into a single face. What I got looked like a slightly fuzzy version of Dan Grant. When I showed the picture to Dan, he didn't see the resemblance. But everybody else did.

In addition to being exceedingly ordinary, Dan is also a P.K., which stands for Preacher's Kid. His father, Reverend Andrew Grant, is the minister at Calvary Lutheran Church. Naturally, the Reverend Grant expects his only son to follow in his hallowed footsteps. Dan would rather be a firefighter. No kidding. He's wanted to fight fires since before kindergarten.

I am playing ping-pong with Dan in his basement the day I decide to invite him to join Shin and me in our exploration of the Ineffable and Glorious Mystery of the Ten-legged One.

I am seven points ahead when I bring it up. The reason I am seven points ahead is because I have a psychological advantage over Dan, even though he is a better ping-pongist. He can't beat me. Here's how it works. First, I am bigger than him. Second, the first few times I hit the ball, I smack it as hard as I can, right at his face. Now you might think that getting hit by a little ping-pong ball wouldn't hurt, but you would be wrong. The very first shot I connected with Dan's forehead. He still has a red spot where it hit. And now, every time I hit the ball, he flinches.

That is what you call
technique
.

Between flinches, seven points ahead, I ask Dan if he has been saved.

“Saved from what?” he asks.

“Ignorance, dehydration, hellfire and damnation.”

Dan thinks for a moment. It is one of his most irritating habits. Ask him his name and he takes a few seconds to consider his response.

“Yes,” he says.

“Yes, what?”

“I've been saved from all three. School saved me from ignorance, Mountain Dew saved me from dehydration, and my father saved me from hellfire and damnation. At least I think he thinks I think he did.”

“How did he put out the hellfire?”

“Huh?”

“How did he put out the fire?”

“He … what are you talking about?”

“What's the most important element on earth?”

“I don't … ah … oxygen?”

“Wrong. It's water.”

“Water isn't an element. It's a compound.”

“Earth, air, fire, and water. Those are the four elements, according to the ancient Greeks.”

Dan stares at me, blinking. We've been arguing for ten years and he hasn't won one yet.

“What's your point?” he asks.

“Shin and I have a new religion,” I tell him. “The Church of the Ten-legged God.”

Dan comes off as such a straight-shooter that most people would be surprised to know how crazy he can be. For instance (very few people know this), he likes to chew aspirin. He says he likes the way it feels on his tongue. Maybe Dan isn't so ordinary after all.

He says, “What is it? Like, a cult?”

“Better than a cult. You don't have to dress weird or anything. No church on Sunday. And it's free.”

“I like free. How many people do you have so far?”

“Three, if you join. I'm Founder and Head Kahuna.
Shin is First Keeper of the Sacred Text. We'd like you to be First Acolyte Exaltus.”

“What does that mean?”

“I have no idea.”

“Do we get to sacrifice virgins?”

“Possibly. Much remains to be decided. You're coming in on the ground floor.”

“So why does this god need so many legs?”

“I don't know. Should we go ask him?”

A few minutes later Dan and I approach the Ten-legged One, looking up at its swollen belly. Shin is waiting for us. He is lying flat on his back on the grass with his mouth open.

“Is he okay?” Dan asks.

“I'm fine,” says Shin.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to catch a drop of Holy Water.” Just as he speaks, a large drop hits his cheek. Shin closes his eyes and smiles and says, “Ahhhh.”

“It's one of our sacraments,” I explain.

“What are the others?”

“Giving Thanks to the Tower—that's where we bow in the direction of the Ten-legged One three times a day. And the Sacred Washing of the Hands. We do that before meals. The Flushing of the Toilet. We're working on more.”

Dan crumples his brow, then says, “How about the Daily Immersion?”

“Would that be a bath, or swimming?”

“Either.”

“I like it.”

Dan looks up at the tower, then at Shin, then turns to me. “My dad would totally freak. Count me in, Kahuna.”

Just then, Shin lets out a startled squawk. An exceptionally large water drop has hit him square on the forehead. But it's not just water. He sits up and wipes it away and stares at the glop dripping from his fingers. It looks like snot, or slime. My first thought is that a bird crapped on him, but then we hear laughter from above. We all look up and see a grinning red face hanging over the edge of the lower catwalk, 120 feet above us.

“Gotcha!” shouts the face.

It's Henry Stagg.

F
OR THREE BILLION YEARS THE
O
CEAN WATCHED, CONTENT, AS THE WORLD EVOLVED
. I
T WATCHED THE RISE AND FALL OF THE DINOSAURS, THE RISE OF THE MAMMALIANS, THE CETACEANS' RETURN TO THE SEA, THE MIGRATION OF THE CONTINENTS
.

6
 

Father Haynes, a thousand years old
at least, is standing in the pulpit delivering one of his famous sermons on selflessness. His voice rises and falls like the sound of a crop duster passing back and forth over a field, spraying us with words. I've endured this sermon before. It goes on for nearly half an hour, but the message is simple: Give more money to the church.

I could use some money, too, for necessities such as game discs and french fries and size-thirteen Nikes. Maybe I should collect dues from the congregation of the Church of the Ten-legged God.

I look to my left, at my father. His lips and jaw are set in a determinedly attentive mask, but his eyes are drooping. I'm not the only one who's heard this sermon before. I lean forward and look past him at my mother, hands folded neatly in her lap, a worried smile on her pink-lipsticked lips. Probably thinking about all the germs floating around the church. Influenza, hanta virus, ebola, bubonic plague …

Do they really think that attending mass will make them better, or happier, or save them from an eternity of hellfire? Maybe they do. But there are something like ten thousand religions in the world. What makes them think that they happen to have been born into the right one? I have asked this question several times. So far, I haven't heard a good answer. Better to start your own religion, I think. That way you get to be your own pope.

I'm well on my way. I have a god, I have sacraments, and I have two converts—plus myself. But the Church of the Ten-legged God (CTG for short) still needs one more thing: a set of rules, or commandments. I wonder what sort of commandments the Ten-legged One might hand down. I'll have to make some up.

Father Haynes has shifted gears and is now talking about respect for the sanctity of the church. I think he's upset because a few weeks ago he found some chewing gum stuck to the bottom of one of the pews. I wonder how he would feel about spit, and I think about Henry Stagg.

Nobody likes being spat on. As Shin disgustedly wiped his face clean with his shirttail, Henry descended the spiral staircase. Watching him trot confidently down the perforated metal steps, I couldn't help imagining that
the Ten-legged One was sending an emissary down to speak with us, like God sending Jesus to Earth, only he turns out to be Adolf Hitler. When Henry ran out of staircase, still fifteen feet above us, he sat down on the bottom landing and dangled his cowboy boots over our heads.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked.

I was not about to tell Henry that we were there to worship the water tower.

“How'd you get up there?” I asked.

“I flew,” Henry said.

“Yeah, right.”

Henry shrugged. I looked around. No ladders, no ropes. No way he could have jumped high enough to reach that bottom rung.

Shin said, “You're not supposed to be up there.”

Henry laughed.

“How are you gonna get down?” Dan asked.

“Why would I want to get down?”

“You have to come down
sometime
.”

“I don't … uh-oh. The law.” Henry pushed himself off. For a moment he hung with both hands gripping the bottom step, his feet still about eight feet off the ground, then he dropped, hitting feet first, the heels of his boots punching into the soft ground.