Do You in Your Otherness evenknow about The Other Guy? I mean, providing that You do exist, is it possible that You chose Him before me and watched everything go down the tubes? Attend—
Even the Jesus brainlessly sentimentalized in Canon Reed's Sunday school exercises had his moments of frustration, doubt, and despair. After all, He was half human too! I bet He stormed around in a black, blinding rage a lot more often than the Gospels let on. What I want to know is, didn't Jesus sometimes wonder if that Messiah stuff was a delusion? And this: did He have dreams?
A being in possession of supernatural powers and a world-alteringMissionofttimes finds himself down in the dumps for weeks on end. More often than any mortal. He endures periods of psychic sludge when the emotional landscape looks like a river-bank at low tide on an overcast day. A few old tires, broken bits of wood, and a couple of beer bottles lay scattered across the mud. All the best sources agree that these bleak periods are necessary to spiritual evolution. It isn't depression, it's the Dark Night of the Soul. I'd give you a hundred to one that whoever came up with that convenient equation was figuring out a way to turn his doubts into aspects of belief.
And if Jesus got it wrong, what about me? Iknow, but how can I be sure that Ireally know?
Until I was well into my twenties, the egotism and arrogance attendant upon the human condition prevented me from being distracted by those aspects of the Master's work not directly applicable. God knows there was enough to keep me happy. Doubt tiptoed in when I admitted that a number of the Master's tales did not quite come up to the mark. Some of them refused to get down to business altogether.
I told myself that sometimes His antennae had garbled the message, that He had kept trying even when He wasn't on the right wavelength. I told myself that He may have been incapable of distinguishing between truth and fiction in His own work.
Ah, before me rises the possibility that what I had taken as Sacred Text was all along merely pulp fiction. Night after night of Dark Night, I whisper to myself:Your life is a grotesque error, and you are far, far smaller than you think.
Misery-laden dreams pollute my sleep. I enter a shabby room where a man toils at a desk. The lantern jaw and cheap suit familiar from a dozen photographs identify the Providence Master, and I move forward. At last I stand before Him. I ask,Who am I? He smiles to Himself, and the pen drifts across the page. He has not seen or heard me—I am not there—I do not exist.
Only days ago, confident energy sent me loping through the night streets, abuzz with pleasure. The Grand Design swept toward its conclusion, and Star's wretched brat was to meet an excruciating death. Now . . . now it's all I can do to get out of bed.I think I was mistaken. I think I got it wrong.
If You do not exist—if the Elder Gods did not place me on earth to prepare its destruction—what am I doing here? Who was my true father?
• 27
• Faint, oyster-colored light washed through the window, making the chair and the dresser look two-dimensional. The hands on the sheet in front of me also seemed two-dimensional. From the blurry face of my two-dimensional watch I managed to make out that it wasa few minutes past five-thirty.
I didn't have a prayer of getting back to sleep, so I brushed my teeth, washed, and shaved, telling myself that the money in my jacket pocket had been a part of the nightmare. It had the same unreal quality—it seemed real in the same unreal way—besides, Iknew I had not won that money, therefore I had dreamed about finding it. Then I dried my face and looked in the closet.
The blazer hung evenly, displaying no signs of dream-boodle. I poked my hand into the side pockets and found only Ashleigh Ashton's business card. Male vanity suggested that she had slipped it into my pocket when I wasn't looking. Showing off, I even checked the inside pockets.
See?I told myself.You knew it all along.
When I pulled a pair of jeans out of the duffel, I caught sight of my knapsack under the bed. Everything inside me stopped moving. I put on my socks and regarded the knapsack. An ominously dreamlike quality suffused my old companion. I got into my shorts, pulled a polo shirt over my head, thrust my legs into the jeans, and yanked the thing onto the bed. Dream-memory singled out one of the buckled pouches. I worked the buckle, raised the flap, and drew the zipper across the top of the pouch. When I reached inside, I touched what felt like currency. My hand came back into view gripping a fat wad of bills.
Five hundred and eighty-one dollars. Two fives had been plastered together with beer.
I rammed the money back into the pouch, zipped it shut, and shoved the knapsack under the bed.
• 28
• A purple shirt hung from Uncle Clark's shoulders, and a turquoise bracelet swam on one of his wrists. He looked like a conga player awaiting the summons onstage, but what he was waiting for was breakfast. I got coffee going and started opening cabinet doors.
"Cereal is down at the end, bowls are right in front of you. I take Bran Buds and Grape-Nuts, fifty-fifty, with a spoonful of honey and some milk. It could be you're too young to handle Bran Buds."
He monitored the buckshot rattle of the cereal into the bowl and nodded when it was half filled. "Don't go light on the honey, and level the milk right up so I can give it a good stir. Keep your eye on that coffee."
I covered everything with milk and placed the bowl on the table. He dumped in three scoops of sugar. After I joined him at the table, he slid his ivory eyes toward me. "From all that racket you made last night, I'd guess you had a grade-A nightmare. Some will tell you that's a sign of a bad conscience."
“I'm sorry if I woke you up."
He ate down to the bottom of the bowl and pushed his spoon around, roping in stray pellets. "What was your nightmare about?"
“I was in a big storm."
"They say a dream of heavy rainfall indicates unexpected money."
"What about almost being struck by lightning?"
"That's supposed to mean a change of fortune. Could be a whole lot of money coming your way. Better hold your umbrella upside down and steer clear of Mr. Toby Kraft. Money has a way of winding up in that man's pocket."
I had an uneasy vision of the bills folded into my knapsack.
"Rainstorms, now," he said. "We used to get us some doozies in the old days. The river rolled right into town. Picked up anything it could get along the way. Cars. Livestock. Full-grown men. In the water a corpse will turnblue. It will swell up with gas and float on the current. The hands will look like catcher's mitts. I've lived next to theMississippi all my life. People think rivers are pretty things, but those with common sense won't trust one any wider than you can jump across."
I told him that until yesterday, when I had seen the river from
St. Ann's, I had nearly forgotten that Edgerton was built along theMississippi. He gave me a frown-sneer and then perked up again. "You didn't remember about the river?"
"Not until I saw it yesterday afternoon."
"Best part ofa river is when it lets you forget it. Way back, we needed the river, and history tells you towns like this got built because of it. Anda river town is a different kind of place."
"Different how?"
"A river town isirregular,"Clark said. "You get your gamblers and your sharpies before you get your preachers, and it might be some considerable time before any of 'em find an advantage in turning respectable. There's a differentmentality, you understand me?"