"Holy Crap!" — Religion in a small town and other tales of The Great American Westerly Midwest Read online

“HOLY CRAP!”

  … Religion, in a small town, and other tales

  of The Great American Westerly Midwest

  by Mike Palecek

  Copyright 2013 Mike Palecek

  Original artwork copyright Monty Borror

  [Tommy Michael Moskowitz, a kid]

  Well, I was over on my bike the other day by the church.

  It was freezing cold, but I ride my bike all year.

  If you go fast you can fly over all the front steps.

  Johnny and me were resting, sitting on our bikes.

  He says to me, “That’s God’s house.”

  “It’s church,” I said.

  “He’s in there,” he said. “My gramma goes there to talk to God.”

  My eyes must have been huge ‘cause Johnny said, “No, really!”

  He said, “Go in there and see. See God.”

  I shook my head.

  “I dare you. Go!” Johnny said.

  So I said, “You can’t,” ‘cause I didn’t want to. It’s huge and there’s statues that don’t move or talk and there’s a little thing with a dead guy on the front above the door, and I’ve never really been to church.

  “Go on! God is in there! It’s His house!”

  Johnny didn’t understand that I didn’t need to be convinced. I just wanted to stay outside on my bike and blow breath smoke.

  “He’s got to always be in there in case my gramma comes to visit,” Johnny said. “God doesn’t have nowhere to go. He doesn’t have to mow the lawn. Mr. and Mrs. Pierce does that.

  “He doesn’t eat, so he doesn’t have to go buy milk or Cheerios or anything like that.

  “He’s got nowhere else to go.”

  “Poor guy,” I thought.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I said I’d go visit God then.

  I looked around for something to take to God. Johnny said his gramma takes money. I dug into my front pockets and then my back.

  “C’mon,” says I to Johnnny.

  He just shook his head and sat on his bike, nodding me up toward the church.

  I thought about taking my bike in for God, then I just handed the handlebars to Johnny since my kickstand doesn’t work, then I walked up toward the big steps and the big door.

  I walked up the steps, grabbed the big, gold door handle and looked back.

  Johnny waved at me to go on, go on. Just go.

  I yanked on the door. It wouldn’t move. I looked back at Johnny.

  He waved again, again.

  I yanked and leaned back and grunted like grandpa pooping.

  It opened a bit. I dived inside and landed on the rug and the big door thudded shut behind me.

  And I was sure I would die in church. I could never get that door open again, that’s for sure.

  Well, so I went in. I would need big help to get that door open.

  Maybe I could ask God.

  It was cold and quiet.

  I heard echoes. It was my shoes.

  I walked down the middle lane.

  It was mostly dark.

  I stopped.

  “God?” I said.

  I didn’t hear anything except a clock ticking somewhere. I felt my heart beating and I leaned my head down to try to hear my heart, but my neck wouldn’t bend low enough so I stopped.

  I walked all the way to the front fence thing.

  “Hellooo!

  “God?”

  I looked way up to the balcony in back.

  I walked over with big sneaky steps to two little boxes with red curtains and looked inside. They had doors. I opened them.

  “God?”

  I guessed God wasn’t home.

  Maybe God went bowling.

  I don’t know. That sounds stupid, but where was God.

  God wasn’t there.

  “Gooo-oooooddd!”

  “How’s God?” said Johnny. “What’s He like?”

  “He’s not in there,” I said.

  “Has to be,” he said. “My gramma talks to Him.”

  “I know, you said,” I said.

  We both went in there together.

  We looked under every bench, in the two boxes again, up on the stage thing, even up in the balcony and we hollered out.

  “God! Goo-ood! Anybo-ody home?”

  But there was no God.

  [Robert S. Thompson, older man on bench on Main Street]

  Johnny and Tommy decided they would try to find God.

  They sat together in Tommy’s bedroom on the floor eating movie theater candy, making big plans.

  They wrote down a list in Johnny’s school notebook about places the could look: the library, the nursing home, the park, the bowling alley, all the old people boring places that God would like.

  And they would go back to church and sit in there and try to see God and then ask him where he was, before, and ever since, and where he was going to be, from now on, all the time, forever and ever, past Tuesday.

  Amen.

  [Nona, the waitress]

  The Burning Bush.

  People ascending into heaven and back.

  What that sounds like to me is people without the Internet thing to figure out UFOs.

  What would you call it if you were the first person ever to see a flying saucer come down and sit in your yard?

  You’d kneel down and jump up and down and write it all down and start a club and then make up special things to say and stuff to wear and extra special days and all sorts of backyard tree house club shit.

  That’s exactly what you’d do.

  The kids on the football team kneel down in the locker room just as Pastor Martin walks in and helps them pray for victory.

  They pray for victory.

  Why? Why do they do that?

  Who’s listening? Who cares?

  If they win the football game — some God who has always been and knows everything — he cares whether they win?

  What if the other team prays too?

  Uh-oh.

  And he says when he hears their prayers — you are my people, my faithful little football player people who carry the football over the white line and it is good and holy and right that you carry the ball over the line more times than the little football guys in the other locker room and yes, I grant that you shall win and be happy, for a while, until you have other tiny little shit to worry about and whine about, and … you are my people.

  My little football player people.

  And the same thing happens in baseball when the player steps on home plate and then points up to the sky to say, thank you, God, leading me around the bases.

  God leaves ten thousand million babies and young kids to die every day from starvation even though their mothers and fathers cry out in prayer and yet he took time to … he cared whether this rich man baseball player somehow got around the bases.

  And people will ask God to help them win in war, too. Help me not get hurt or killed. Help me to see my children again.

  Help me to kill them, even though they have children, too.

  Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, Amen.

  And God does just that. Or not.

  It kinda depends.

  You know, when I found out in a magazine that everyone was lying for a long time about who killed the president John F. Kennedy, I thought about God, about whether there was a God.

  Because before that I didn’t think people lied, but then I knew they lied about
everything, so maybe they were lying about the biggest thing of all.

  Hmmm.

  What if we just made up God to make us feel better?

  It does feel better, like our mom and dads and grandparents and sisters didn’t really die, that we will see them again.

  That sounds better than the other thing, that there’s nothing.

  Maybe we made up heaven and angels and alleluia and golden sidewalks.

  That sounds pretty good.

  [Robert S. Thompson]

  Tommy and Johnny sat in the bowling alley drinking pop and peeing one whole Saturday afternoon.

  They saw an old guy sitting by himself.

  “Hi,” Tommy said.

  They sat there for a while.

  “Are you God?” said Johnny.

  The man flicked the ash from his cigarette and said, “I might be.”

  They sat with the man at his little round table as he drank his drink and smoked.

  They watched the bowlers and smelled the cigarettes and the beer and the peanuts and listened to the crash of the pins and the ding-ding-ding of the one pinball machine.

  They got up and walked away after the man left without saying goodbye.

  “He wasn’t God,” said Johnny.

  “He said he might be,” said Tommy.

  “He wasn’t,” said Johnny.

  “How do you know?” said Tommy.

  “He just wasn’t,” said Johnny. “Trust me.”

  They sat in the library and got shooshed at least two or three times.

  They saw three or four old guys who could be God.

  One fell asleep in his chair, and they watched him sleep for a while, and one was reading The Christian Reformer, and they watched him do that, and then they got on their bikes and followed one guy walking home, but he took forever, and they gave up.

  They sat in the lobby of the nursing home and smelled pee for as long as they could take it, and then coasted across the highway to the park to see if any old guys were sitting on benches.

  Tommy sat at the very top of the slide and yelled over at Johnny on the busted rocking horse.

  “What if he’s a girl?”

  “What?”

  “What if God is a girl, you know, a woman? And maybe we walked right past him