Was this a trick to pry out a confession? “What do you mean?”
“I did something I shouldn’t have and this … bitch is trying to punish me or something. I didn’t really do anything that bad, either. She’s just crazy. Not really her, anyway, but her mother. Crazy psycho.”
Brendan had not been prepared for a reverse confession and he almost blurted out how he had overheard the cell phone conversation Friday night. He wanted his brother to know that no matter what happened or didn’t (fucked up real bad with that weird bitch), he would stand beside Tyler and do whatever he could to help. Tyler would laugh, of course—the notion of a twelve year old doing anything really helpful was hilarious—but Brendan could explain about the gods and … but that would lead back to Delaney and the bowling ball.
“I can’t tell Dad,” Tyler said. “He might have a heart attack or something, surprised he hasn’t already. He’s so stressed you can see it in his face, way he keeps grinding his teeth. Probably doesn’t realize it. I tell him and that’ll be it. We’ll be back here for yet another fucking funeral show. I just can’t believe she’s gone. And it’s my fault.”
Tears gathered in his eyes. What had his brother done? It was probably something to do with drugs or alcohol or maybe vandalism. He cut some (weird bitch) lady’s tires and now she was out for revenge. Tyler thought this woman was somehow responsible for Delaney’s death. If Brendan didn’t set him straight, didn’t confess, Tyler was bound to do more stupid things. Right?
What if this was all part of the gods’ will?
“It’s just something that happened,” Brendan said and enjoyed how adult that sounded.
“Yeah.” Tyler wiped his eyes. A green two-door car bumped over the sidewalk into the parking lot. “Shit.” The car parked at a strange angle behind two other cars and Tyler’s friend Paul stepped out of the driver’s side. He was wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt. He hadn’t come for the wake. “I’ll be right back. Stay here.”
Tyler went down the porch steps, jumped over hedges lining the walkway, and joined Paul. After a few moments, Tyler threw up his hands and then linked them on his head like he was being arrested. While Paul spoke, Tyler paced back and forth. While walking, Tyler faced Brendan for just a moment but it was long enough to read the expletive slipping from his mouth.
Brendan went down the stairs, past people who were talking about what a tragedy this was, how horrible it was that such things happened, and headed for the parking lot. He was about to cut through the bushes when a heavy hand dropped on his shoulder. The guy owning that hand was short but wide and wearing a black suit with wrinkles like veins running all over it. He could have been wearing shoulder pads, really large shoulder pads.
The man smiled large, almost comically so. “You’re Brendan.”
“Yeah?”
The guy must have put a gallon of gel in his hair and yet several strands of hair squirmed off his head like worms. His teeth were impossibly white; he must use those white-strips they advertise on television. Maybe he was wearing some now. “I’m very sorry for your loss. Your sister was very pretty.”
“Okay.” The guy hadn’t removed his hand and Brendan tried to throw mental clues to the people walking past them that this guy might be a creeper. No one even glanced at them. Too busy talking about what a tragedy this was.
“You must be upset,” the man said.
Brendan glanced over his shoulder. Tyler was getting into Paul’s car. A moment later, they sped out of the parking lot, barely missing a head-on crash with a lady in a blue Town Car. So much for discovering what Tyler had done. Fucked up real bad could mean any number of things. “I should go back inside,” Brendan said as calmly and evenly as he could. He couldn’t let on that this guy and his super-wide smile with bright white teeth was making Brendan’s pulse race.
“It is a horrible thing, but out of this can come something wonderful. Don’t let this tragedy destroy how you see the world, how you see God.” He squeezed Brendan’s shoulder. In his other hand, the man held a Bible. At least a Bible preacher was better than a kidnapper.
“I don’t see God anyway,” Brendan said. “I don’t see any of the gods.”
The man’s smile wavered for just a moment. “Gods?”
“Yeah, like Zeus and those guys.”
“You believe that?”
“Why not?” Brendan felt smug talking this way to an adult. The man was a Bible thumper (Dad’s phrase), anyway, so it didn’t matter how Brendan treated him. The Williams family was not buying any Bibles or the God that came with the order.
The man knelt on one knee. He was shorter than Brendan now, but his shoulders and chest loomed large like the front of a big pick-up truck, the kind with a steel grille. “Do you know The Commandments?”
“Don’t kill, steal, or curse at your parents.”
Brendan had intended this as a laugh but the man showed no appreciation for his flippantness. “You’re forgetting the First Commandment: Thou shall have no other gods before me.”
“You ever think that maybe there are tons of gods but they’re all part of one bigger god? Like all the gumballs in a gumball machine are individual gods but the machine is a single god made up of the others.” He was paraphrasing the book and it sounded beyond adult; it was brilliant. He wished someone had recorded it because he was already forgetting what he said.
“You’re a bright boy. That is quite an interesting idea and I must admit I’ve never thought about it that way before. But God is not one gumball or many in a machine; He is the all-powerful, the empowered. He can make magic. Do you believe in magic?”
“You mean like changing water to wine?” He had seen that in one of those religious cartoons sometimes played on PBS.
“I mean like awakening the soul. You know how depressed you feel right now, how hurt, like the pain is buried inside your heart? God can release that pain. He can free it from you. I know because He freed me from my pain.”
“My sister died. People die. That’s what happens.” Something hurt inside him as he said those words.
“Do you know the story of Jesus and Lazarus? In it, Jesus brings back to life a man who has been dead for several days. Jesus simply says, ‘Lazarus, Come Forth’ and the man does.”
What was the point of wasting so much time on Brendan when Dad was right inside? What did this guy want? Brendan knew how to get rid of him, or at least annoy him. “Then why can’t Jesus bring my sister back to life?”
“He can.”
That made Brendan pause.
“How?”
“If you believe in Him, even after you die, you will live forever.”
“In the clouds? Floating around and whatever?”
The smile wavered again, but just for a second, and his right eye blinked. Was that a signal or a twitch?
“Did your sister believe?”
“In cloud-floating?”
The man took his hand from Brendan’s shoulder, finally, and gripped his Bible with both hands. The hand still felt like it was there on his shoulder, pressing down with invisible weight.
“Do you know the story of Abraham and his son Isaac? God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham’s only son, to Him as a sign of complete devotion. Abraham and Isaac went to the place God had commanded and gathered sticks to create a fire. While doing this, Isaac asked his father where the lamb was that God wanted scarified. Abraham told him that God would provide a lamb. Can you imagine the terror Isaac must have felt when Abraham tied him up and laid him upon the pile of sticks? Of course, when Abraham raised the knife over his son, an angel appeared and told him to stop, that God was pleased by his sign of devotion.