You Don't Know About Me (12 page)

“Really?”

“Some rip it a hundred.”

We reached our turnoff and headed west on the county road that would get us to Route 4.

“Here's what I'd like to know,” he said. “What kind of smoke would Christ hurl if He came back and took the mound?”

I grabbed the chance to let Ruah know I wasn't an idiot about everything. “When Christ returns He's not gonna play baseball.”

“Don't be so sure. His father pitched. It says it in the Bible: the Lord likes to pitch.”

“No, it doesn't.”

“I'm not kidding. Hebrews eight, two.
The Lord pitched
. Look it up if you don't believe me.”

I started pulling out my Bible.

“Okay-okay.” He raised a hand in surrender. “He pitched a
tent
, not a baseball. But I still say T.L. and his son could be the aces on my team.”

“Who's T.L.?”

“Short for ‘The Lord.' ” He frowned. “You see, that's what Christianity needs these days: funking up. Brand Jesus needs a makeover, don't you think?”

I laughed. I'd never heard anyone talk about the Savior that way.

“Here's another example,” he said. “Jesus freaks love to talk about how powerful their faith is, but wouldn't it be full-on cool if we talked about how powerful
doubts
are?”

“What do you mean?”

“Faith is a two-sided coin, and we always tend to look at it believer-side up. But you can't hold the faith coin without touching both sides, and the other side—the side we don't like to look at—is doubt. I'm just saying if we spent more time turning the coin and studying the doubt side, and not just by ourselves, but with others, our faith might get stronger. Questions don't disappear if they're ignored; they disappear if they're answered.”

“That's a weird kind of fellowship.”

“Yeah, I call it witnessing for doubt. Wanna try it?”

“I'm not sure. It sounds …” I wanted to say
against God
, but he was right. I'd been taking peeks at the doubt side of faith for some time. I'd just never talked about it to anyone.

“Okay,” he said, “maybe ‘witness' is too heavy. How 'bout we call it doubt-swapping.”

“Doubt-swapping?”

“Yeah. We trade stories about a time we had a major doubt about T.L., C.J., whatever.”

He'd lost me again. “C.J.?”

“Christ Jesus. I mean, ‘J.C.' is so formal and stuffy. ‘C.J.' sounds more like someone you can really hang with. And isn't that the point:
relationship
to Christ, not religion?”

Even though I felt like I was watching someone speaking in tongues, I got what he was saying. “Okay,” I said, then let out a breath. “Let's doubt-swap.”

Ruah nodded. “I'll go first. The first time I had major doubts about my faith was when I joined the show.”

“What show?” I asked.

“Sorry. The show's the major leagues. My walk on the doubt side began the night before my first game. I was called up from the minors and drove to Cincinnati. That's what the C on the hat stands for, the Cincinnati Reds. I went to bed early. I'm lying there praying to T.L. to let my first day in the bigs not be my last, when someone starts banging on the door. I get up, open it, and there's the manager of the Reds. He looks like he's had a few drinks. He says, ‘Are you Ruhah Braahanch?' ”

I laughed at his imitation of a drunk.

“He's had more than a few,” Ruah said. “ ‘Yes, sir,' I tell
'im. Then he says to me, ‘If you do-oo three things tamara, you'll be fi-hine. Whone'—he holds up a finger and looks at it cross-eyed—‘eat Whea-ties fer breafest. Twho, befhore tha game, stuff a sock in yer jockstrhap. An tha-ree, when ya go-da bhat, if tha pisscher tries ta hitcha, led 'im hitcha.' ”

Ruah waited for me to stop laughing. “Okay, my manager's really drunk, and now I'm thinking he's crazy, too. But he
is
my manager, and I'm only nineteen years old, so maybe he knows some things I don't. ‘Sir,' I say, ‘is there a reason I should eat Wheaties for breakfast, stuff a sock in my jockstrap, and try to get hit by a pitch?' His face flushes redder than it already is and he screams, ‘Do whhhat I say, rhook, an' dohne assk qwheshuns!' Then he staggers down the hall and disappears.

“I didn't think much about it until the next morning when I'm praying and asking T.L. to protect and guide me through my first shot at the show. I get the answer I usually get when I pray to God about baseball.
Play your game, Ruah, play your game.
But when I go to breakfast, I can't get the manager's advice outta my head. I think, why take any chances? Why not take God's advice and the manager's, too? So, what do you think I have for breakfast?”

“Wheaties?”

He nodded. “And when I'm suiting up for the game, what do you think I stuff in my jockstrap?”

“A sock?”

“Yep. Then, when the team gathers around the manager for a talk before the game, I have such butterflies I can't even wait till he's done before I run into the bathroom and
hurl breakfast. When I come out, and the team's headed for the field, I see the manager grinning at me. ‘Wheaties,' he says, ‘the breakfast of champions. 'Cause they go down easy, and come up easy.'

“A little later I step out of the dugout for my first introduction in a major league stadium. After they announce my name, the crowd's so big and the cheers are so loud, I wet my pants.”

I snorted with laughter. “No way!”

“See,” he said, “you're not the only one who's had bladder freak-out. But technically, I didn't wet my pants, I wet my
sock
. So I go back in the dugout and start for the locker room. The manager stops me and asks where I'm going. I say, ‘To change my sock.' He busts a gut laughing. By now I'm thinking his advice is pretty good, so when I step up for my first at bat, I lean into an inside pitch and get hit.”

“Was it a hundred miles an hour?”

“I don't know, but it felt like it as I jogged down the line. After the game, the manager calls me into his office. I went two for four at the plate, so I think he's gonna pat me on the back for batting five hundred my first day in the bigs. He looks up at me from his desk. ‘Branch,' he says, ‘you're gonna do fine.' Then I say, ‘Sir, I get the Wheaties thing and the sock-in-the-jock, but why look to get hit in your first AB?' He fixes on me and says, ‘It shows 'em you're here to play the game, and playing the game is doing
anything
to get on base.' I nod, thank him, and start out. ‘Branch!' he yells. When I turn back he's around his desk and coming at me. He gets in my face. ‘I hear you're a Jesus freak,' he snarls. ‘Yes, sir,' I answer, and then he gives me a look I'll
never forget. ‘Here's how it's gonna work,' he says. ‘You can have your god in heaven but I'm your god on earth. And don't forget it.' After that, when it came to baseball, I only listened to my ‘god on earth.' ”

It was a funny story, but I didn't get the ending. “How did all that make you doubt God, or your faith?”

“Good question,” Ruah said. “The more that manager molded me into a good player, the more I tried to convince myself that this drunken, blasphemous man was an angel sent by God. But in my heart I didn't see how it could be. T.L. didn't send angels from heaven in the form of drunken, blasphemous heathens. It really began to eat at me.”

“Why?”

“Because I'd always believed my talent for playing ball was God-given, that baseball was my calling. But why, I kept trying to figure out, would T.L. use a sinner to help me achieve my higher purpose? I prayed until I got the answer. T.L. doesn't care about baseball. It's only a game. He made me good at it, but that didn't make it my
calling
. Using a blasphemous, drunken heathen to make me a better ballplayer was God's incredibly sly way of saying, ‘Dude, baseball's
not
your higher purpose.' ”

“So what is?”

He pulled in a breath and let it out. “Don't know.” He tapped his head. “That's why the screws are loose. I'm more than on the Reds' DL”—he chuckled—“I'm on the DL of T.L.”

The county road fed us onto Route 4, and we kept driving west through monster sky country. As the land flattened, the sky just reached down farther. The clouds towering in the west reminded me of what Mom always said: “Clouds are the dust kicked up by God's feet.”

Ruah took a slug from a water bottle. “Your turn.”

I'd forgotten we were doubt-swapping. “I'm never gonna top your story.”

“It's no contest. We're just sharing a walk on the doubt side. All you gotta do is think of a time when you looked up and shouted, ‘T.L., I know You da Man, but if You want me to figure out the latest mystery bomb You dropped on me, I'm gonna need another clue!' ”

“I've never done that.”

He laughed. “Of course not, you're a better Christian than me. Okay, lemme put it this way. Did you ever find yourself in a place where you were thinking, ‘God must be on vacation, 'cause there's no way He would've put me in the spot I'm in now.' ”

I laughed.

“What's funny?”

“Have you ever heard of Jesus-throated Whac-a-Moles?”

“I have now. What are they?”

I told him about the New J-Brigade and how me and Mom went around whacking evil in the name of God. And how when people asked me what kind of work my mom did, I told them she drove a wrecking ball.

“Sounds like you've got some doubts about being a Jesus-throated Whac-a-Mole,” he said. “So were you ever on a mission when you wanted to grab your mom and say, ‘Mom, we can stop now. Satan has left the building.' ”

“No, but there was a mission where I thought
God
had left the building.”

“Okay, that's taking a lead to the doubt side. Lemme hear it.”

I took a drink of water and thought where to begin. “Have you ever seen
Sesame Street
?”

“When I was a kid, sure.”

“I only saw it when I visited friends' houses, 'cause my mom's anti-TV. A couple of times I saw
Elmo's World.
I thought Elmo was really funny and cool. I wanted an Elmo toy, but my mom said toys were bad. She called Toys ‘R' Us ‘Satan's workshop.' ”

“You're kidding.”

“Wish I was. According to her, Toys ‘R' Us sold board games with dice that turned kids into gamblers. But the aisles of dolls and actions figures were the worst.”

“What did they do?”

“Their naughty parts were so real, if you played with them you'd end up a pregnant teenager, get an abortion, and be a baby killer.”

“Man, that's harsh.”

“Yeah. Anyway, a few years after I liked Elmo they came out with Tickle Me Elmos.”

“You wanted a Tickle Me Elmo?”

“Nah, I was over Elmo by then. But Tickle Me Elmos really bugged my mom. She said they were made of lint from the devil's cape, and Satan put them on earth for one reason.”

“What?”

“To introduce kids to the sin of ‘unrestrained pleasure.' ”

“Unrestrained pleasure?”

“That's how she put it.” I drained my water bottle. “Anyway, one day before Christmas, my mom told me the New J-Brigade was gonna take on an army of Tickle Me Elmos. As we drive to Toys ‘R' Us, I'm terrified. I keep seeing a nightmare. I mean, what if one of the Elmos comes to life, points at me, and rats me out. ‘Elmo got new friend! Elmo want Billy! Billy want Elmo!' ”

Ruah laughed during my Elmo falsetto.

“When we get to Toys ‘R' Us, we park, and Mom reaches into the backseat. She holds up a claw-bladed knife and clippers like she uses to cut my hair. But these clippers run on batteries. ‘Here's the plan,' she says. ‘When we get to the Elmo aisle, you cut the tape on top of the box, open it, and hand him to me. Then I'll'—she flicks on the clippers, which buzz to life—‘lop the hair off his head. That's why we're calling it Operation Samson. It's gonna rob Elmo of his powers. No one's gonna buy a bald-headed Elmo.'

“When we walk into Toys ‘R' Us, the place is packed with Christmas shoppers. The most crowded aisle is the
one with Tickle Me Elmos. There're hundreds of 'em standing in their clear plastic boxes. Under each lid is a red furry Elmo, staring at me with his oogly white eyes. Mom grabs one, hands me the box, and shouts scripture.
‘My sword shall be bathed in heaven. We shall hew down the graven images of their gods!'
I cut the tape on the top of the box, pop it open, and give it to her. She jams in the clippers, and the inside of the box sprays with red fur.

“In a minute we're standing among boxes of scalped Tickle Me Elmos. Mom's hands are coated in red fur, and we're surrounded by screaming moms and bawling kids. As Mom takes another box and gives Elmo a buzz cut, I see how miserable everyone is. Mom's yelling at me to feed her another box, but I'm frozen. Part of me says,
You're doing what Mom and the Heavenly Father want you to do.
But another part of me sees all the screaming, crying people and wonders why God wants to make everyone, except my mom, so miserable.

“Later, after the police showed up and the real mess began, I asked God why He let the whole thing happen. I mean, why did He want us to ruin Christmas for all those kids?”

“Did you come up with an answer?” Ruah asked.

“Yeah, a bunch. My first answer was that God wasn't there.”

“T.L. had left the building.”

“Yeah. I even tried to tell myself that He wasn't there 'cause He was busy decorating Heaven for Christmas. But it didn't take away my doubts. I knew better. God
never
leaves the building. Then I got another answer. Everyone was crying and miserable because it was part of God's punishment.”