THE ONLY THING more beautiful than bright stars on a chilly night is bright stars on a chilly night with Beck and Walt.
I stuff my journal back in my bag, turn off the interior cab light (leaving the radio on), then join them in the bed of the truck. After the game, we found a spot in this nearly abandoned park overlooking the Cincinnati skyline. Beck has been taking advantage of the view, snapping photos left and right; Walt, after spending a few minutes looking at something in his old suitcase, fell asleep on his back.
I plop down in the middle of the truck bed, pull one of Walt’s extra blankets over me, and stare at the sky. The radio is crackling a song about an undertaker, which the deejay classified as a “new oldie.” I have no idea what that means, but under this kind of picture-perfect panorama, the song’s lo-fi, starry-skied, smoky-eyed recipe is exactly what the scene calls for.
After a slew of nighttime photos (and more than a few terrorized nocturnal critters), Beck sits next to me and leans his head against the cab window. “Do you believe in God?” he asks, his breath visible in the cool night air.
“Jeez, Beck. Just like that, huh?”
He smiles. “Willy-nilly. It’s the only way.”
Something about these stars made the question inevitable, I guess. Clusters of them blink and shift in the sky, taking the shape of a tall bubbly-skinned man whispering pithy truths in my ear.
“You ever see a guy with a really deformed face?” I ask. “I mean like, just grossly—”
“It was a serious question,” interrupts Beck.
I sit up and round on him. “Beckett? Chill. I’m going to tell a serious story, and that’s going to be my serious answer. Mmkay?”
Smiling, he nods. “Continue.”
I clear my throat, summoning my best Morgan Freeman narrator voice. It’s no March of the Penguins, but it’ll do. “When I was little, maybe four years old, I went with my mom to a bank. It could have been a pharmacy or a fish market, but I remember it as a bank. I held her hand in line while she talked to someone behind us. A man stood in front of us—he wore a trench coat, and was tall. Like a giant.”
“You were four,” says Beck.
I shake my head. “His tallness wasn’t contingent on my shortness. By any standard, this guy was tall. Anyway—God, this is weird—I remember he smelled exactly like a slice of Kraft Singles. Like milky and sweet and sticky or something.”
“Gross,” whispers Beck. “Also, specific.”
“I remember reaching up and touching the hem of his trench coat. When he turned around . . .” A shiver runs up my spine to my cortex, raising the hairs on my forearms and navel.
“What?” says Beck, sitting up.
I touch my left cheek. “This entire side of his face was just a mound of bubbling skin. Like foamy toothpaste, or a . . . pile of zeroes, or something. It was just all bubbly. I don’t know how else to describe it. I remember he smiled down at me, which just made his condition worse. Like his smile was a butter knife, cutting through all those—”
“Mim!”
“Sorry. Anyway, I tried to wrap my infantile brain around what I was seeing. I compared his bubbly face to what I knew of the world, but drew a blank. It just didn’t make sense. So with the tact of a four-year-old, I pointed right at his cheek and asked what happened. He smiled even bigger and said God made him that way.
“‘Did he mess up?’ I asked.
“‘Nope,’ he said, smiling like a fool. ‘He just got bored.’
“I have no idea what happened the rest of the day. Mom probably jumped in, considering the guy looked like a blistered caveman.”
Chuckling, Beck slides down on his back next to me.
I lower my voice to a whisper. “Ever since then I’ve wondered—if that’s what God makes when he’s bored, I’d hate to see what he makes when he’s angry.”
For a second, we just lie there, enjoying the specific silence of nature. The bubbly skinned constellation is gone. Hell, it probably never existed.
“So is that a yes?” asks Beck.
I consider the original question and answer the only way I know how. “Honestly, I don’t know. The prospect of there being a God scares me. Almost as much as the prospect of there not being one.”
The undertaker song climaxes into a final smooth chorus and draws to a close with that mystical power so many songs attempt, yet few achieve: it leaves me wanting more.
“What about you?” I ask.
“What about me?”
“Do you believe in God?”
“Oh, definitely.”
Considering my own spiritual wrestling, Beck’s conviction takes me off guard. I sit up on one elbow and stare him down. “How can you be so sure?”
“Did you know, at birth, our bodies have three hundred bones? Over time, they—”
“Hey,” I interrupt. “I asked you a question.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Mim? Chill. I’m going to tell a story, and that’s going to be my answer. Mmkay?”