You Don't Know About Me (19 page)

He tossed his sunglasses onto the dash. “It's what drives me crazy about fundies like you, and everyone else from the First Church of Cherry-picking. You pick verses that support your narrow view and ignore the big picture. You cut and paste the Bible till it's as shallow as a rack of greeting cards. I mean, I keep waiting for the ultimate cherry-pickers' Bible:
The Good Book for Dummies
!”

He pumped several breaths in and out, letting the last one out slow. “Okay, you got me going. Now it's my turn to ask you a question, Billy Allbright. When you do the Galatians thing and try to get Christ to live in you, what does that mean?”

I wanted to not talk anymore, but I couldn't. In the time
it took to get to the station I had a chance to witness. “It means I walk in the way of Christ. I try to be as Christlike as I can.”

“So you're wearing the T-shirt?”

“What T-shirt?”

“WWJD. What Would Jesus Do?”

“Yeah, what's wrong with that?”

“Did Jesus walk around in a WWMD T-shirt?” He answered my puzzled look. “WWMD: What Would
Moses
Do? Jesus wasn't a lockstep Jew trying to be Moses; he was a rebel. So if you really wanna be Christlike, you can't be a lockstep Christian marching around in a WWJD T-shirt. You gotta be a rebel too.”

“I am a rebel. That's what me and my mom do. When we take on evil we break the law all the time.”

“That's not being a rebel,” Ruah scoffed. “That's being an enforcer, a terrorist, a jihadist who does nothing but tear down in T.L.'s name. You said it yourself; your mother drives a wrecking ball. I'm talking about the kind of rebel who believes Christ delivered us to a new law:
faith.
And that faith is in a God so loving He'll stand by me even if I stand against Him. Even if I shout ‘God is dead!' my faith tells me God'll laugh and shout back,
The report of My death is greatly exaggerated!
God knows better than to let me kill 'im. You can't
shock
T.L. God is greater than any sin I can commit, even if it's being gay. T.L. isn't gonna judge me by my lifestyle. He's gonna judge me by my faith-style.”

He was speaking in tongues again. His words sounded like gibberish. But I had this feeling, the strange feeling I got when I heard someone speaking in tongues. Envy. I
envied his lack of fear. His God didn't have a grip on the smite stick.

Ruah started laughing like his little sermon had been a joke. He finally got a talking-breath. “Do you have any idea how freaky it is to be a ballplayer and have this kind of chatter in your head?”

“Maybe you should have been a preacher instead.”

“That's the beauty of baseball. You can leave young, when there's plenty of life down the road.”

He pulled the camper over. Across the street was a big building with a metal arch on top that said
UNION STATION.

Ruah grabbed his shades and jumped out. “While I'm getting your bus ticket you can take a shower and change clothes if you want. Or you can clean up in the station. Your call.” He put on his cowboy hat. “Where's it gonna be, Billy Allbright? Providence, back home, or someplace you haven't told me about?”

I stared at my dusty, oil-stained backpack. I had survived a ride in a Dumpster, a brush with roadside killers, a dust storm, and driving a thousand miles with a homo. I sure wasn't going home. But the idea of taking a bus to Utah didn't feel right either. Something was bugging me, and I couldn't nail it. I looked at Ruah standing outside, waiting for an answer. “Besides it being the Christian thing to do,” I asked, “why do you wanna buy me a bus ticket?”

He stared for a second. “You really wanna know?”

I nodded.

“Because you're a stupid kid who doesn't know shit about the world, and since I drove you this far I figure it's
my duty to get you a ticket. Does that answer your question?”

“Pretty much.”

“Got any others?”

I did. “If you buy the ticket with your nonny card will Joe find out, and think you're going from Denver to Utah?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. What's it to you?”

“I already messed you up with the cell phone. I don't want him finding you 'cause of me.”

“Don't worry, he'll only find me when I want him to.”

I swallowed. My throat was still coated with dust scum. “What if I said I wanted to stick to our deal?”

He froze for a sec, then slowly took off his glasses. “Which deal is that?”

“You drive me to Providence and I keep fronting for you.”

His eyes widened in surprise. “If you mean it, you have to tell me why the hell you'd wanna do that.”

I took a breath. “ 'Cause I'm a stupid kid who doesn't know shit about the world, and I've learned more in the past few days than I've learned in years.”

A smile tweaked his mouth.

“Also,” I added, “we didn't finish the
Huck Finn
chapters I got in St. Pete.”

“No, we didn't.” His smile disappeared. “But here's the biggie. Are you sure you can stand driving with a fag?”

I shrugged. “As long as all the fag does is drive.”

He laughed hard, then pulled open the door and slid in. “Believe me, kid, you're not my type. But if you wanna
stick to our contract, I do too.” He started the engine. “Just don't do like Huck and call me your nigger. Deal?”

I nodded. “Deal.”

I thought we might shake hands again, but he didn't offer. It was fine with me. Like I said before, when you climb in a camper with a homo you're always thinking twice about stuff.

Back on I-70 Ruah said I needed to get cleaned up before we stopped for food or gas. “If someone sees you like that,” he said, “they're gonna think you're some kinda zombie fresh from the grave.”

I looked at my shorts and legs caked with dirt. I'm sure my face was just as bad. But given what I knew, I didn't feel like going in the back and taking a shower. “I'd rather do it later.”

“Okay,” he said, “but in a few miles we're heading into the mountains and the roads are gonna get windy. If you wait till then, you'll get tossed around the bathroom like shoes in a dryer. Or you can wait till the next campsite. But if I were you, I'd take it when we've got a smooth ride.”

I realized he was dropping a hint. He knew I was paranoid about traveling with him and that I'd be more comfortable taking a shower when he was driving. “Okay,” I said, “I'll get it over with.”

I took a quick shower. I couldn't believe how much dirt washed off me and came out of my T-shirt and sneakers. After drying off, I shook out my cargo shorts. I had forgotten about the cell phone, and it flopped out. I made sure it was still off, then stuffed it back in the pocket. I wrung out my T-shirt and pulled it back on.

When I came out of the bathroom, Ruah asked if I was hungry. I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, except dirt. While making myself a PB&J, I made a vow. If he talked about homosexuality and the Bible again, I wasn't going to say a word. On that subject I was taking a vow of silence. Huck Finn says what to do in situations like I was in. It's when Huck's trying to get along with the con artists, the king and the duke.
But I never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way; then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble.
Reading more
Huck Finn
out loud was the perfect way to keep Ruah and me away from any more homo-Bible talk. And there was plenty more to read.

As we drove out of Denver, I read about the king and the duke's latest con. They were pretending to be Englishmen who'd come to see their dying brother, but the brother had died before they got there, and they were trying to cheat the brother's family out of its inheritance.

I stopped reading so I could check out the Rocky Mountains. We were driving up steeps so awesome it felt like we were climbing into the sky. The patches of snow in the highest peaks kept getting bigger and bigger. Looking at the amazing mountains, I kept thinking what a total fred I was for calling all the off-road biking I'd done “mountain
biking.” It had been more like “anthill biking” compared to the grinders, jumps, and trail plunges I saw everywhere I looked. Part of me wanted to crawl out the window, camper-climb to the back, unstrap Ruah's Trek, and take it for a high-octane, totally gonzo ride in the Rockies.

We passed a sign saying the next exit went up to the Continental Divide. I had a vague memory of Mom teaching me about it. “What's the Continental Divide?”

Ruah scratched his head. “If I remember from school, it's a line that was drawn to answer an age-old question.”

“What question?”

“If a tree falls in the mountains and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

“That's not what it is.”

“Really,” he insisted. “Everyone on the east side of the line believes a tree falling with no one around makes a sound, and everyone on the west side of the line says a tree falling with no one around doesn't make a sound.”

“Yeah, right,” I scoffed.

He pulled a confused face. “Or is it the line dividing people on opposite sides of the chicken-or-egg question?”

“Very funny,” I said. “You've forgotten what it is too.”

He grinned. “Okay, you're right. Wanna go relearn it?”

Part of me wanted to keep going straight to Providence. And part of me wanted to go up to where the snow was. “Will it get us closer to the snow?”

“There's only one way to find out.”

We took the exit and climbed a two-laner with severe switchbacks. At the top, we got out at the scenic lookout. A sign said
LOVELAND PASS—ELEVATION 11,990 FT.—CONTINENTAL
DIVIDE
. A marker explained how the rivers on one side of the Divide flowed east toward the Atlantic Ocean, and the rivers on the other side flowed west toward the Pacific.

On each side of the turnoff were walking trails leading up to bowls of snow. There's no way I was going to go to the top of the Rockies without making a snowball in the middle of summer. We hiked up to the nearest bowl of snow. We both made snowballs. I threw mine as hard as I could down the mountainside. It flew for a while, then exploded on some rocks.

“C'mon,” I said, “you're the baseball player. Let's see it.”

Ruah wound up and gave his snowball a heave. It rocketed so fast it made a sound as it ripped the air. It flew so far it disappeared down the mountain and I never heard it hit. It was pretty cool, but I didn't say so.

On the way down, Ruah stopped and pointed off the trail. Standing on a rock was an animal with thick reddish-brown fur and a black face. It was smaller than a groundhog but fatter. We had a staring contest, which the animal won when we kept going.

Back at the turnoff, Ruah found an information board and looked to see if it said what the animal was. I went back to the camper and turned on my GPS; we were still 342 miles from Providence. It was already midafternoon. Seeing the top of the Rockies and the Divide was worth it, but I made another vow: no more side trips.

Ruah got back in the camper. “It was a yellow-bellied marmot.” He chortled and started the engine. “That's the
tough thing about being an animal. People give you a crappy name and there's nothing you can do about it.”

As we took off, I wondered if he was talking about more than animals. I wondered if he was talking about him and his kind and the names they get called. But I kept quiet; I had my vow of silence. I was doing a Huck: keeping it to myself. And the best way to keep it to myself was to read his story.

That was my plan, anyway.

I read up to where Huck meets a girl who's part of the family that's getting cheated out of their inheritance by the king and the duke. Huck thinks Mary Jane is awesome. I didn't like Huck getting unglued over some girl; he was smarter than that. But he's so rag-dolly in love with Mary Jane that he says to her,
I don't want no better book than what your face is
. Words to boot by. That wasn't his only spew.

When I finished the chapter, I took a break because my voice was getting scratchy. I also wanted to check out more of the Rocky Mountain grades I couldn't ride. Not yet, anyway. After I collected
my
inheritance and made it on the pro mountain biking circuit, I was definitely coming back to scream the Rockies.

Ruah still had his head in the story. “Too bad Huck never saw Mary Jane again,” he said. “Sounds like he lost his forever love.”

“Yeah, but if he fell for her and stayed there in Arkansas, his adventure down the river would've been over.”

Ruah nodded. “True, the
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
would've turned into a
miss
adventure.” He cracked up at his joke. Then he asked, “What about you? Ever had a miss adventure?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, a girlfriend?”

I wanted to say yes, but it would've been a lie. Girlfriends don't come easy when you're a jump-around Jesus freak. “Not really,” I said, then something popped out of my mouth before I could stop it. “That doesn't make me gay.”

He burst out laughing. “That's not why I asked, but don't worry, I'm
sure
you're straight. You see, we have this thing called ‘gaydar.' We can pick up the vibes of whether a person is gay or not. And when it comes to you, the gaydar screen is as blank as blank gets.”