Sally Elliott, wearing an Easter getup of sneakers without socks, frayed cut-off jeans, and an old stained trenchcoat with torn pockets, pulls up on her bike, leans it against a tree, and comes over to where he’s sitting against his dad’s car, keeping his distance from the dismaying well-intended remarks of the church congregation (“We’re praying for a miracle, Tommy!”), and asks him how his mom’s doing. “Not so good.” Coming home was a shock, really. Her body all raisined up and twisted, hair gone, her mind mostly somewhere else. She’s changed a lot just since Christmas. Weird look in her eyes. Not even remotely the mom he used to know. “She’s got very religious. In a crazy kind of way.” “What other kind of religion is there?” Sally says. Surprises him. Always thought of Sally as the dumb smalltown Sunday-school type, though he’s heard she’s turned a bit wild. “The plain truth, Tommy, is life is mostly crap, is very short, and ends badly. Not many people can live with that, so they buy into a happier setup somewhere else, another world where life’s what you want it to be and nothing hurts and you don’t die. That’s religion. Has been since it got invented. Totally insane, but totally human.” He’s not religious himself, though he doesn’t think too much about it. Why break your brains over the unknowable? But he’s not exactly an atheist either. When they asked him to read the scripture lesson this morning, he agreed without thinking about it — he’d done it often enough before, a tradition at this little church, he feels comfortable with it — but it isn’t the same thing as believing what he reads. Just a way of joining in. He glances across at his father on the other side of the soggy First Presbyterian Church lawn, having a smoke before the service with Sally’s dad and other old guys, and no doubt filling them in on the Brunist story. Main news of the day, though his dad’s been worrying about it all week. His dad’s the reason Tommy is here today; church is not something he does up at school. It’s rough for his dad right now, but he’s standing tall. Tommy once asked him what he really believed, and he said, the Apostles’ Creed, the gospels, the Commandments, that sort of thing, but he wasn’t really made for religious or speculative thought. He’s a doer not a thinker. So he had to accept the historical weight behind Christianity, the great thinkers who worried out its details. He had to trust that all those really smart guys can’t be wrong and believe as they believed, even if he didn’t completely understand it. That suits Tommy. “Well,” Tommy says now, “you don’t have to be crazy to believe in something.” “Like Christianity, you mean? Yes, you do. Eat your god, suck his blood, and live forever. I mean, come on! Just look at today. Has to be the wackiest day on the calendar. A zombie horror story with Easter egg hunts. Open up that tomb and let the ghouls go walking, scavenging for chocolate. Weird, man!” He laughs as she staggers about in the grassy muck, her arms out monster-style, her snarly hair falling about her face in wet knotted strings. Or maybe she’s hanging from the cross. She’s a lanky girl, looks down on a lot of guys, used to look down on him in junior high. They’ve got some history. They had a flirtation or two back when they were both virgins and he was still a bit desperate. He even tried that apocalyptic line on her back when the Brunists were in town and had her pants down in the back seat, but that’s as far as they got. Angela came along, and then others, a parade of them really, then university. Sally went off to some dinky liberal arts college where they taught her to dress like a tramp. They’ve both moved on. He can’t even remember what her ass looked like, and inside the trenchcoat, there’s no telling now.
Sally lights up and offers him a cigarette. “Nah. Thanks. Training. Unless you’ve got a joint.” She reaches into a ripped pocket and draws out a little stash bag. He grins, shakes his head. “Just kidding, Sal. Gotta stay cool here in the old hometown.” From her other pocket she offers him a hollow chocolate Easter egg, already cracked open, and he breaks off a chunk, brushes away the lint, hands back the glossy remains. The bells are ringing and Sally says: “Hear that? They’re dropping eggs picked up in Rome.” “Who are?” “The bells. They go to Rome to have supper with the Pope and pick up the eggs they’ll drop on their return. Or maybe the Pope knocks them up. Not sure about bells.” “Yeah, I think I read that somewhere. We must have taken the same courses. Leads to egg fights. Better than crawling around in bunny shit, I guess.” She sucks on the cigarette, exhales slowly, drops the butt into the running gutter. “So, are you staying around this summer?” “Looks like it. I had plans for Europe, but Dad wants me here.” “At the bank?” “No. I told him I wanted to stay outside, pool or parks or whatever. No money counting. Keeping books is too much like reading them.” Actually, he would have been happy to work at the bank, it’s air-conditioned and the work’s easy and now Angie’s there, but his dad said there was nothing useful for him to do and promised instead to get him on the city payroll in some fashion. Probably his dad wants him to mix more with the hoi polloi, one of his little civics training exercises. Or else he’s already heard about him and Angie. “Anyway, I’m dropping econ and business school and going for a PhD in sociology.” “No kidding.” “It’s what I’ve got the most out of up at the U. Got me thinking about more than decimal points.” He’s mak ing this up as he goes along, but he likes the sound of it as it comes out. “Now that the Brunists are back in town I may use them as a summer research project.” “What? You’re shitting me! The Brunists are back?” “Yeah, they’re out at No-Name. Where we used to sing ‘God Sees the Little Sparrow Fall’ around a campfire, remember?” “I remember you put your hand on my butt up on Inspiration Point.” “Oh wow! I did? How old was I?” She grins. “About nine. You started young. You pretended it was an accident. So how did those crazies end up in our camp?” “I guess we sold it to them. Some rich guy gave them the money. Looks like they’re making it their home base. Dad got blindsided and he’s freaking out about it.” He fills Sally in on the gossip as picked up this morning from his dad, including stories from the so-called sunrise service, making the most of the lightning bolt that sent everyone skidding down the hill on their asses and the completely nutty behavior of Reverend Edwards, staggering around in the mud like My Son John and spouting gibberish, which gets Sally laughing. “You may get an even daffier Easter story today than usual, Sal.” “Oh, I’m not staying. I heard you were in town, figured you’d be here, just wanted to stop by and say hello, ask about your mom. Can’t bear this infantile nonsense myself. Have fun in the arms of Jesus, Tommy. See you around.”