Intro - Ch. 1 - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3 - Ch. 4 - Ch. 5 - Ch. 6 - Ch. 7 - Ch. 8 - Ch. 9 - Ch. 10 - Ch. 11 - Ch. 12 - Ch. 13

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

This Moron

I knocked on the door.  No answer.   The rain was picking up.  I knocked again.  A bolt of lightning struck within a hundred yards of me, and its thunder exploded in my ears before I'd even had time to acknowledge the lightning. I was so startled I screamed, tottered on the stoop, and fell into a small, prickly shrub.  The pain from the shrub helped mask the shock I'd sustained from the lightning and thunder.  I leaped up in horror, sure the world was trying to kill me.  Hadn't it been trying all day?  I was panting.  I was near tears.  I was blind with panic.  The door to the house swung open, and Jesus gestured for me to enter.

Because I was such a mess, I didn't stop to ask myself why the Son of God might be inviting me in to his Berkshire hideaway.  I didn't even wonder why he didn't have a bigger house, or why this one didn't have a better paint job.  The open door was all I needed to see.

Anyone might have looked like Jesus to me at that moment -- that brief, brilliant moment in which my body instantaneously recognized that it was at last safe, dry, and warm; that moment in which the violent sounds of a summer storm in the forest were suddenly reduced to a gentle murmur; that moment in which the hostile world of nature became subdued by the graceful hand of man; that moment in which I realized I had peed my pants.

Jesus stood before me in the foyer, arms folded across his chest. He wore khaki shorts and a sweatshirt stitched together out of burlap bags.  He was barefoot.  Flies buzzed around him.

He smiled at me from behind auburn bangs.  "Wicked night out there," he said.

"Tell me about it," I replied.

"How about a brew?  Got some Molsons in the fridge. Cold beer warms you right up.  Know that?  That's why the English drink warm beer in the summer: cools 'em down.  Wild, huh?" Jesus smiled, eyebrows raised.  "Not that it's cold out,  but man, do you look blue."

I wanted to tell him I'd just died, gone to heaven, been forgiven by a cow, and sent back to earth, but I was afraid he wouldn't believe me.  Then again, maybe he would've started some kind of one-upmanship routine. I didn't need it. 

"Are you really Jesus?" I said.

"Are you some kind of idiot?"

"Yes!  Yes, I am!  So you know about--"

"Yes."

"Yes, you know about the manuscript, or yes, you're really Jesus?"

"My name's Zeke.  Zeke Taft.  But everyone calls me Jesus on account of, you know, I kind of look like him, or like how people think he looks, or whatever."

I wondered if anyone had ever told ole Zeke that he had a soft blue halo, or that his skin was luminescent.  I wondered if anyone had ever asked Zeke about the tiny angels that flitted about him playfully--the things I'd thought were flies--which Zeke slapped away like gnats.

"Got 'im!" Zeke suddenly exclaimed, swatting a cherub off his forearm. "These damn skeeters, they just don't quit.  I'm the only dude around here gets 'em so bad. I've tried everything.  Pesticides, bug zappers, home remedies, tire irons, you name it.  Nothing stops 'em.  Lady who sold me the house never said nothing about skeeters. The bitch."

"They're angels," I said.

"Sure," Zeke said. He sniffed and looked blankly at me. "So... you're an idiot?"

"Yes," I said, nodding eagerly.  "I've learned the First and Second Insights, and a little about the Third, although I still haven't had it explained to me in a whole chapter yet."

"Whoa," Zeke said, "and here you are, almost halfway through this one."

"Are we halfway through already?"

"Oh, yeah.  More like three quarters, dude.  Get to the point."

"Three quarters?  Jesus!"

"What?"

"No no no... I meant, you know: Jesus!"

"Oh.  Well, let's save some time.  I just got a letter from a friend in L.A. who's seen the third insight.  It's about a universal energy that anyone can harness."

"I already knew that."

"All right, smart guy, did you already know that this energy is in everything?   That it's in plants, and trees, and dirt, and rocks, and plastic, and halogen, and TyvekŪ, and--"

"What the hell is tyvek?"

"Not tyvek: TyvekŪ.  That new plasticy stuff that's impossible to tear.   I've got some samples.  You want to take a piece home?"  He started opening the front door.

"No, no, that's fine.  So the energy's in everything."

"Sure," Zeke nodded, "It's the animating energy of the universe."

"Rocks aren't animated."

"They don't seem animated, but they are.  They're just very, very calm."

"So how do I harness this energy?"

Zeke shrugged.  "I dunno."

"I thought your friend told you."

"Dude, here's the whole third insight: there's energy in everything, and the whole universe is about the way this energy comes and goes in and out of things, and if you squint just right you can actually see the aura of things, and there's a way to harness this energy."

"I can see it?"

"Yeah: squint your eyes like this, and kind of tilt your head a little..."

"Like this?"

"No, like this.  Good.  Now look at something.  See the aura?"

I stared hard at the doorknob, and to my amazement I watched as a dull brown aura began emanating out of it.

"It's brown," I said.

"Yeah," Zeke sighed.  "Just about everything's brown.  It's kind of a drag.  But there's different shades of brown, and different hues, and saturations, and intensities.  You know.  So it's not all the same brown."   Two angels were playing an innocent game of tug-o-war on his scalp, with a single strand of his hair.  Zeke ran his fingers through his locks.  One cherub fell to the floor, the other flew away and settled on the doorknob.  Unconsciously, Zeke squashed the fallen angel with the ball of his foot.

"And the more intense something is, the more energy it has?"

"I guess."

"What do you mean you guess?"

"I dunno.  That's not part of the third insight."

"Which Insight is it part of?"

"Like I said, I just got this letter from a friend, and..."

"All right, all right.  What about harnessing the energy?  How do I do that?"

Zeke looked down at his feet.

"Come on, you've got to know.  Don't give me that I dunno crap.   I need that energy, Zeke.  I really, really need that energy."

He shrugged and looked up a little sheepishly.  "I guess that's the fourth insight, dude."

"How am I supposed to find the Fourth Insight without any energy?  Cathy said it wasn't Coincidence, she said I could harness the Energy and it'd get me to Ensenada so I could meet Los Idiotos and see the whole Manuscript and--"

"Dude!  You don't need to capitalize so much.  Mellow out."

"Sorry.  It's just that even though things are obviously following a very linear and transparently construed plot, I'm too blind to realize that everything's progressing toward a logical conclusion, and I get frustrated."

Zeke smiled.  "It's tough on all of us, dude.  We're all stuck in the same lame narrative.  At least you don't have to talk in this half-assed, geographically inappropriate surfer-dude idiom.  But I tell you what: I know someone who does know the fourth insight."

"Who?"

"Deirdre.  She can tell you all about it.  Where's your car?"

"It's out in a field back there, I ran off the road and--oh, say, I've been meaning to ask: do you know whose cows those are?"

Zeke's halo, which had been various intensities of powder blue until now, suddenly darkened into a royal blue.  "Why?"

"I kind of...  when I ran off the road I lost control of the car and I kind of ran into one of the cows."

"You hurt one of my girls and didn't even... and we've been standing here wasting time while..."  Zeke was sputtering.  His face was reddening; his halo was nearing purple.

"I'm sorry.  I'm pretty sure she died instantly, so I didn't see the urgency..."

"Killed her?  Killed her?"  His halo was now a bright, flaming crimson; a single artery pulsed wildly in his neck; his eyes bulged in their sockets; the little cherubs were nowhere to be seen.  He opened his mouth as if he were about to speak, but emitted only a low, guttural growl.

"Sorry again," I said, reaching out to seize the knob to the front door.  I turned the knob.  I opened the door. Rain swept in, the sound of it filling the foyer, thunder blared; the sky was a mosaic of light.

"Be gone," Zeke barked, raising a bony finger and pointing into the godforsaken night.

"Okay," I said.  I ran like holy hell out the door, across the yard, and at least fifty yards down the road before I even thought about slowing down.  When I finally did, I turned for a last look:  the house was gone.  In its stead stood just another thicket of tall evergreens, heavy with rain, swaying violently in the tempest.

Remembering what Zeke had said about our being stuck in a halfassed serialization, however, I consoled myself with the fact that somewhere nearby there was a Deirdre, and Deirdre knew the Fourth Insight.  And the way things had been going, I didn't figure it would take long to find her.

And unfortunately, it didn't.

...next chapter...