Page 27 of Splintered
His hands started shaking as he drove down the street, so violently he could barely hold the steering wheel. He clenched down, gritted his teeth. His arms, his shoulders, his entire body, everything started to quiver, to tremble. His heart jackhammered, pounding so hard it ached, a fist that squeezed in his chest. He tried to breathe, gasping, dragging in weak breaths.
It’s a heart attack, his mind shrieked.You’re dying and Evan’s all alone! You shouldn’t leave the house!
He pulled over, jerking his car to the curb as he leaned forward and rested his head on the steering wheel.
He screamed, letting loose, a wail, a shriek, unloading every ounce of his fear, his shredding panic. He screamed like he’d never stop, kicking and thrashing at the floorboards, punching the steering wheel with his unbroken hand, slapping the dash. What the fuck was happening? Why? How had this happened so suddenly? What could they do? What could he do?
Why wasn’t Evan getting better?
Tears came pouring down his cheeks, waterfalls of agony that drowned his sanity. He was coming undone, ripped apart one thread at a time like a knitted doll unraveling. He sucked in heaving breaths, swallowing snot and salt-soaked tears and spit as he sagged in the seat and tried to put himself together again.
A lawn mower engine hummed, a dull roar that crawled into his brain. Somewhere out there, someone was having a normal day. The world still continued to spin.
For other people.
He searched for the sound, wiping his eyes as he sniffed. He’d have to get eye drops at the store, too. Evan couldn’t see him like this.
There, just across the street. A man in black pants pushed a lawn mower through a yard fenced in with white pickets, more decoration than any boundary. Beyond the fence, bursts of flowers rose at even intervals, bouquets resting in front of—
Of gravestones.
Ben blinked. His throat clenched. The scene snapped into focus, ultra clear, ultra crisp. The wood frame church on the corner, the one he’d driven by every year of his life. White painted wood, a bell tower that rose over the front door, the peaked roof rising over the neighborhood houses and maple trees. He could hear the church’s bell toll every Sunday, ring out over every marriage and funeral the church held.
The man mowing the graveyard. The black pants. He wasn’t a gardener. He was too old for this to be his employment.
He was the priest.
Ben’s sniffed again, his stomach clenching and holding, squeezing past the point of pain. He could count on one hand the times he’d stepped into a church in his life. A friend’s wedding, another person’s funeral. Faith was a mystery to him.
He stared at the priest, watching him push the lawn mower, move up and down the rows of headstones, weave in and out of each plot. Straighten flowers and spend a moment in silence in front of each grave. He crossed himself before moving to the next.
Do you think the Devil could do that? Could the Devil trick you so well you can’t tell if someone is who you love or not?
Ben shifted the car back into drive and pulled away. He watched in the rearview mirror as the priest walked into his church.
* * *
He walkedthe aisles of the grocery store until he felt numb, until his sniffles stopped and his eyes lost their puffy feeling. He loaded the cart with cereal, frozen pizza and burritos, and wine. Ice cream.
He drove home a different way, avoiding the church and the priest and the million questions that crawled up his spine. If there was a God, then why did God allow evil in the world? He couldn’t ever move past that one question, no matter how many times he tried to think or feel through it. Faith wasn’t enough of an answer for him. If he was supposed to walk off the ledge, feel his way to salvation through trust, he needed more. He needed to know there was goodness, and light, and love, and all the best promises that faith offered. He needed more than “God works in mysterious ways.”
He’d seen those mysterious ways. He’d seen the horrors of history, ancient and recent. He’d seen the pictures of genocide in Rwanda, the Holocaust in World War II. He’d seen and felt the evils of the world, from human trafficking to murder to assaults and violent crime and hate, pure and simple hate. And why should there be any of that if there was a God of love above, keeping his eye on the world? He just couldn’t make sense of it.
And if there was a God and he wasn’t all-powerful, wasn’t capable of stopping the evil that men did to one another, then what didthatmean? What was a flawed God capable of? Jealousy? Vengeance? Was God subject to human emotions, capricious and terrible as they were? Was the God of Job, the God of the Old Testament, a truer picture than humanity wanted to face?
What if God was cruel? With all of time at God’s fingertips, what horrors could he call forth for his creations? Ben had seen it throughout history, the cruelty bred of boredom, the ferociousness of despots wielding unlimited power upon their peoples. What if humanity was nothing more than a cruel Dear Leader’s subjects?
He couldn’t believe that. He’d rather there be no God than a cruel God.
Do you think the Devil could do that? Could the Devil trick you so well you can’t tell if someone is who you love or not?
If there was no God, then there wasn’t a Devil either. Religion was stories told over campfires by ancient man to explain phenomena he couldn’t comprehend. That’s all. Myths and stories, oral history, legends, passed down over the years. Now there were answers for humanity’s curiosity. Satellites orbited the earth and scanned the stars. Doctors mapped nerves and blood vessels in the body. Scientists probed between atoms, exploring the quantum frontier. God had yet to be revealed in all of humanity’s searching.
God was in the details, he’d been told. In the life around you. God was the author of everything humanity discovered. Gravity and consciousness, far-flung solar systems and the breathtaking beauty of a sunrise. The cycle of life, of death and decay. The interconnectedness of all things.
God couldn’t heal a baby’s illness or prevent a plane crash? Butcouldensure an Oscar win for a beautiful actress? What was up with the whims of the author of reality?
Why was Evan suffering? What had happened so suddenly, so out of the blue, tohim?
