The rain soaks through my clothes and the cold through my skin. I can feel it working its way through muscles and organs, all the way to my center, and I wonder, distantly and without much interest, if it will stop my heart.
The roof is slippery with mildew and rot everywhere except my path. I have worn it in over the years like animal trails in the forest, a channel of sagging shingles from my bedroom window to the chimney. I’m leaning against the chimney now, knees to my chest, watching the funeral from above like a cathedral gargoyle. I should be down there. I should be sitting in one of those folding chairs in my Sunday best, watching them lower her into the ground next to my grandmother, but I don’t know how to grieve correctly. If she’s in a better place, my grief is selfish. If this was God’s plan, my grief is mutinous. And what about my rage? To whom do I direct that? To the troubled man who killed her or to the God who wrote his trouble? To the performer or the playwright? Or to myself for asking such questions?
It’s good that I’m up here. The mourners below weep openly, following convention without a thought for the contradictions, and they would expect me to do the same. But I am too angry to cry. I am a wrung-out rag, twisted and dry. So I sit on the roof and let the rain do my grieving, falling from my eyelashes like surrogate tears.
? ? ?
“What did she die for?”
“She was trying to help.”
“By feeding them? Keeping them alive? How was that helping them?”
“We feed them so we can teach them. Hungry people are the best listeners.”
“Teach them how to get into Heaven? How to stay good long enough to get into Heaven?”
My father glares at me with bleary red eyes. He is slumped in his recliner, a gray mountain of ash growing in his ashtray, staring at a television that plays bad news on every channel. Drone strike footage on MTV. Terrorist manifestos on Comedy Central. Mass graves on Lifetime. I would never have said these things to him a week ago, but grief has weakened him and strengthened me. He is drowning; I am burning.
“Isn’t that why we’re here?” I insist. “To just hang on until the end? To keep playing the scene until God yells ‘cut’?”
“You and your damn metaphors,” he grumbles, and takes a drag on his cigarette.
“Why are we here, Dad?”
“We’re here to share the News,” he recites. “We’re here to spread the Fire.”
“But the News is about Heaven, right? It’s not about Earth.”
“Of course it’s not about Earth,” he growls, shaking his head. “Earth’s a ball of shit. It’s been scheduled for demolition since the day it was made.”
I hear my voice rising to a shout. “Then why do we keep trying to fix it? Why do we keep building homes here? Why don’t we let it burn?”
He sucks in more smoke and stares at the TV, his jaw flexing.
“Maybe that man was just trying to help.” My voice is low now. “Maybe he just wanted to send her to Heaven.”
This gets the expected result. I stumble back against the wall, running my tongue along the holes in my lip. Oh, I’ve missed this. The blood, vibrant on my white T-shirt. The pain, confirming my place in this world, telling me I’m right about everything. The only thing missing is the fear. When I was young he was terrifying, but now that I’m sixteen and nearly a foot taller, he’s pitiful. I exult in watching him lose control and make a sham of his principles, pissing his pants before God and man.
I will have to get my fear somewhere else.
I grin at him with red-smeared teeth. “I have to go,” I say as he stands there, fists at his sides, breathing hard. “I’m late for church.”
? ? ?
I sit once again in the hotel conference room, staring at the vinyl banner while the pastor harangues the youth of Missoula, but something is different tonight. I’m not the only one gripping the sides of his seat. A week ago a refugee obeyed a chorus of voices telling him to stab my mother with her potato peeler while she was preparing his dinner, but there is nothing special about my tragedy. Twenty murders in a month in a town with one gas station. Three arsons on public buildings followed by fatal police shootouts. And of course, the rumors about what happened to some of the bodies. Even with communications jammed, everyone feels the wave rising.
“Make no mistake,” the pastor says, “it’s ending. It’s been a long day, but the sun is setting. So when you see all this chaos in the world, don’t be concerned. This isn’t our home that’s burning down, it’s our prison. And the Fire is God’s.”
I stare at him with red, watery eyes, my brain buzzing with cognitive dissonance. Paul Bark glances down at my notepad as I scribble blindly onto it.
“Everything is God’s,” the pastor continues. “The Devil is God’s. Sin is God’s. God made everything, therefore everything is his, no exceptions. So although God hates evil, it belongs to him, and he can use it as he pleases to accomplish his plan.”