Bad Moon's Harvest

Bad Moon's Harvest

JOHN FREDRICK CARVER

Copyright © 2018 John Fredrick Carver

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION

To those that talk to God like I show in the book. If everybody did that it would change the world almost into heaven where it actually belongs. We ain't home yet and most of us won't make it but we will be revived by God to pick up where we left off at the least.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

God, the Mighty, Sarah, Mavis and my boss at work and the rest of Josh's family. Sorry it worked out the way it did for the the rest of you but you did a good job; just what I made you for. Thanks.

1

We heard what we thought was a kitten. When we looked we saw a blanket and Sarah my big sister went down there to see what it was. It looked like a bundle and not just a blanket lying there. When she got there she opened just one tiny corner of it to see if there really was a kitty in there. But when she pulled the entire blanket away from the top she saw a head, a human head, the head of a tiny baby!

“What's in it?” I yelled, noticing her reaction to whatever it was.

“Come see, Mavis!” she yelled back and unwrapped it the rest of the way.

When I got there I stopped for I couldn't see through the back of my sister's head of long hair. I was afraid of being scratched. “What is it?” I asked.

Then Sarah picked it up and cuddled it in her arms and in the process the head of the baby showed.

It was the cutest and yet most pathetic thing I had ever seen. “Oh,” I said, “Is it alive?” and was suddenly full of an awful lot of apprehension.

Sarah turned around with it; blanket and all.

“Put it back!” I insisted. “Someone will be coming back to look for it.”

“I wonder how he got here?” Sarah said.

Then we looked both ways down the road and never saw a vehicle in all the miles we could see. Sarah then looked the other two directions out across both fields. There was no one in sight.

“Can we keep him?” I asked with a wish in my voice and my apprehension was long gone; much farther than we could have ever seen.

Sarah looked me in the eye and I looked back as if begging my older sister to say we could.

“No,” Sarah said, “I'll go get Ma. Boy are we in trouble!” Then she handed the baby to me, got up on the road and ran toward home.

“What are we going to do with it?” I yelled. “We can't just leave it here. But if we don't we will never make enough for your new tablet.”

“We have to take him home,” Sarah hollered back.

“Who put him there?” I yelled.

“God did,” Sarah said, being quite determined. She was sure of it as she stopped but she wasn't sure what God was.

“If God gave him to us why do we have to give him back?” I said, screwing up my face thinking that probably wasn't true.

But it was.

“Pa says, 'When you touch a baby's skin it's like touching God. He's doing and being everything God is. It is just like having God right here with us, right now, just like he really is,'” Sarah quoted not having any idea she was speaking God's truth.

Then at last we came to the front door of our house and we opened the door real quiet like and walked into the front room. It was eerie. No one was up and Ma had gone back to bed.

“Put him on the couch and put pillows all around him so he doesn't fall off,” Sarah said.

“But he stinks,” I said, “Won't that make the sofa stink?”

“No more than you,” Sarah said.

I laid him on his stomach on the sofa and he fussed but I didn't want his little butt to touch the couch. It only took moments until the little one was screaming his head off.

That brought our mother out of her bedroom saying, “What in the world is going on?” Then she saw the baby and shouted, “I've already told you no more babysitting. I have enough to do just taking care of you two and your father.” Then she looked at us girls and said, “Take it back where you got it.”

“But Ma-” Sarah objected.

“Well, did I tell you or did I not tell you to do something? Then do it!” my mother said to Sarah.

“But Ma-” I tried to help out.

“You were there too,” she said to me, “Now take him back to who he belongs to. And right now!”

“We can't!” Sarah shouted.

“Don't use that tone of voice with me young lady!” our mother scolded us again. “Where did it come from?”

Sarah looked at the floor in front of her feet feeling bad because of the scolding and I noticed; never looking at mine.

“Well?” Ma said, “I'm waiting.”

“I found him in the ditch,” Sarah said.

“Don't get smart with me now! I'm warning you!” our mother said and took her by the hand.

“Ma!” I protested as my sister was trying to pull away. “We did. We found him in the ditch with nobody around on the whole farm.”

Our mother could not believe we would stick to such a story.

“We looked both ways down the road. There were no cars to see so I looked at both fields. There was no one there. I swear that's the truth Ma,” she kept it going this time. “He was just a baby in a blanket in the middle of the whole world.”

“You know better than to lie to me, Sarah,” our mother said. “This is very, very serious. So I will ask you one more time.”

“I swear to God, Mama. It is the truth. We found him and there wasn't no one around,” she yelled.

“Well take him back there then,” her mother said. “People living or dead do not just throw babies in the ditch young lady. Now tell me exactly what happened or I'll just keep right on asking until I get to the bottom of this.”

Sarah gave up and sat on the couch smelling the baby and turning up her nose at the odor. Our mother noticed too. Then she went to the linen closet and got an old soft dishtowel, changed the baby and then looked with disgust; first at Sarah again and then again at me too.

Finally Sarah began to cry. “We didn't know what to do with him so we brought him home,” she bawled.

“I don't know where you got him Sarah,” her mother finally relented, “But this is not a stray dog or cat the two of you have brought home this time. He's a living, breathing, human being. Now go to your rooms both of you while I figure out what can be done about it.

The girls left for the loft dejected but still disgruntled.

Then their mother called all the neighbors and woke them all up for it was Saturday. She finally found one that saw a pickup about a mile from the house. Then it just up and drove away about an hour before the sun came up.

“Did they stop for some reason and then leave their baby behind where they laid him in the ditch?” she said to no one though it might have been God but I did my best to help her feel that was in fact the truth of the matter. God did too I am sure. But she would not even listen to her own mind when we spoke into it. “Some thing is very wrong here,” she fussed, discarding everything we had her think. But having called everyone she could think of she called the sheriff.

But to no avail also; they had no report of a missing child; baby or other; either. She was ready to find out everything.

2

Mayvess Carper arrived at my door. You might know she would have to get her big nose into it. I should have thought about that when I called her. Had she seen a car out there she wouldn't have been able to stand it. She would have had to go out there and see what she could figure out to gossip about. The big gossip: I could just hear her, “Did you see the pickup stop here last night?” followed by whatever speculation she dreamed up. Boy would she have fun with this one. I wonder how many versions of it she had circulating even by just calling and asking whether she saw anything unusual out on the road last night or early this morning. The way she said, “Yeah, I saw the whole thing. But I'll have to call you back!” I knew she hadn't. Now she walked right in like she belonged here or something. I am so glad she isn't family.

“Did you hear?” she was already saying before the door was closed and before she even spotted the newborn sitting in one of the girls' old safety seats on the kitchen table. “Where? Where did that come from!!”

“We,” the girls said at the same time. Then Sarah finished after they both looked at each other curiously, “We found it. It's ours and you can't have it!”

“Sarah!” I said.

“You,” she said, already at the table and checking out his sex, “Found him!” Then she looked at me as she doubted, “Where?”

“Along the road!” Mavis said, “He's ours! So there!”

“You didn't?” she said to me and when she decided it was true for I backed up the girls with just a look I supposed, it being the only version I had heard but even yet it didn't make any sense to me either. “Why didn't they just leave it at your door if they didn't want it?”

Then she picked him up and laid him over her right shoulder though I cared. She never pays any attention to what anyone wants.

“I take it they don't have a clue who he belongs to?” she said, patting his back as trying to make him burp.

“I did that already,” I protested and gently took him away from her and put him back in his seat.

She brought in a large breath of air that said she had a great idea or something and wasted no time in sharing it.

“Don't let them have him!!!” she squealed with a huge voice that made her seem determined to take charge. “You keep him! Don't worry your little head. Everyone thinks you are still pregnant!”

Since when did “everyone” know I was pregnant but didn't know about my stillborn. I just bet everyone knew about that too. With her around she probably had me miscarrying an alien from outer space.

“Really!” she continued half squealing and half ordering me. “You keep it. You found it. All they will do is take him to that awful Child Protection and then ship him off to one of those horrible places that have up to a hundred kids in one house they raise from the day they get them to the day they turn eighteen and finally escape the horrible conditions they experienced there and-”

“They are not that bad!” I said. “I had one that raised me just like any other kid and there were never more than six or eight of us.”

Her mouth was very wide open and stayed that way until I was stupefied by the fact I had actually volunteered anything private to Mayvess.

“I am sorry!” she said as if ignoring that bit of juicy information though I knew that soon everyone would know, “But do you really want him to grow up that way?”

I looked at him now as had I never seen him before. I didn't see him as a baby. I saw him as the girls' little brother and in my state of mind since what happened to me in the hospital I have to confess I saw him as mine and my husbands' son. The one we had never gotten and never would the way giving birth to a corpse had messed things up inside me. And, and-? I wanted him so badly!!!

“I will think about it,” I found myself saying to Mayvess and feeling it was final with that silent truth in the air you can feel like God did the pure darkness. The darkness you can feel and the truth you can feel being a light liquid in the air like a hundred percent humidity only thicker but the same temperature.

Mayvess Carper was gone when my mood broke and my husband came into the kitchen with a confused look.

Thank God her and Earlie only stayed long enough to truck the hay off to places in a drought like Wyoming or even as far as Idaho, Northern Colorado. Once Earlie, that's her common law husband, he went all the way to Utah and has tried to sell it in Southern California but there is too much competition from Oregon and Northern California there. It will be nice to be rid of them for good this year. That Mayvess-! Argh!

“Can we?” I asked I asked my husband and God thinking, 'That new God and God working in tandem must have given the foundling to us,' and my romantic mind and heart were settled on it.

Somehow he knew what I was thinking like he does most of the time.

3

“Toughy,” she was crying in my phone's receiver, “I want to come home. I can't stand being away from you. Before this we never slept a night through no matter how tired we both were. I had no idea I treasured just having sex with you so much. I never knew what a woman was until I slept with you. But sometimes I can't feel you with me already and it's like I didn't miss you for hours. I can't stand what this is doing to us.”

“You have to fly all the way to Chicago first if you come any earlier. What will your family in West Des Moines think?” I said, aching to be with her more than she wanted to be with me if that is possible. I never wanted to see anyone as much. “But I suppose then you could say you needed a specialist if your baby was to make it. It is true though no specialist could have saved it.”

“Him,” she said, “Darling, I gave birth to him. He's not an alien thing to me. Call our first son, him at the least.”

“I can't stand the thought,” I said as a tear was growing in my spirit's womb. “You were the smartest. You knew enough not to-”

“I know it's hard on you, Toughy,” she said.

“You couldn't have stood how much it looked like you,” I said as tears made their way to the illusory realm and found low ground in the corners of my eyes next to my nose but they were growing as they itched to fill the entire base of my eyelids and I barely wiped them away with my left pointing finger fast enough time and again. “”You don't know how hard it is. It is who God looked like when you were born for a moment, then he was gone. God wasn't there. I had never seen anywhere that God was not before.”

“You're wrong, Toughy,” she whimpered, “He was there just not in him.”

“It has no right to be called him much less my son,” I said, “It didn't measure up. It didn't even make it to the get out of the shoot. It has no value but for tankage like a piglet when it is born dead. It's just meat for the hogs which is not cannibalistic. That ain't no good, fat, strong, hog. It's a hunk of pork just like that I saw was.”

“He is,” she was barely able to get out. “He's here.”

“A dead womb is a wasteland with either no one there or just skeletons left to it,” I said and then brutally added, “That is your womb. That's the only place he ever was, the weak dying illusion of a skin and bone bull calf, a miserable suffering thing suffering for no reason. It was right of God to let it die. When he sees they won't make it he slaughters them before they have a chance to make it a moral issue. It ain't even that. It never was that. You're hiding lies in you. They'll all grow up evil. That is why I love you. In the end we will all be like it, but God will raise us anyway into order to keep his word we will live forever. So few of us make it to be saved without him and they are never in good condition. To him its like seeing himself dead on his own door mat when the door opens. Be romantic about it if you must Darling. But don't be foolish enough to bury it with you. There isn't anything there where it was but just what is left there right now. You never should have married it.”

“I know, Toughy,” she bawled.

Then he cried without a sound though no one was home with him to hear.

“Come home today,” he begged at last, “It's impractical as hell even the price. But I don't love you without all your romantic notions. Sometimes I see myself in them and it hurts: Deep, because I can't be that. Loving you hurts like hell some times but I can't do this without you.”

“I-I,” she tried say that she knew but God would not allow it because she does not really know much except what she sees in her fanciful great big world of lies, some of that hurts like hell when he has to cut them out. They are like cancer. It doesn't really matter where it starts. You have to kill it some time or it will kill the patient. In the spirit it is really tough when they feel so real the feelings sometime lingers for a lifetime, sometimes longer then, but for themselves who by then are just the memory of a dearly departed lover at most and forever is so long their love will eventually die and that is all there will be to each other.

I met the plane in the city about 4:00. She was real and clean by then. It was so good to have her and her actually be able to hug me. She never cried over it again. Thank you God for the hug. I needed that. She does it so rarely quite this completely or in you at all. Everyday it's a miracle she's alive at all let alone in you.

Earlie and Mayvess were long gone. This was their last trip of their last year and only I saw them off just to make sure the boxcar was good and clean, you know? Mayvess had so many stories that she told, no one in town doubted the version about Chicago was the only true one. God, it was almost too late for us but thanks for making us cancer free.

I know we can't make it to be real. But God I love the truth, no matter how it hurts or where the cancer is until that last time when any of the options would have killed us. You would have to do to us then what you always have to do: Kill the reject and create a perfect one just like you in the end when death is just about the only thing that turned out never to have been, not be and never to be again. You should have made me a preacher. I know what I say is true yet it doesn't have to ever be said. But she would have died giving birth to that if I hadn't. Sometimes the truth will kill them. I took that chance. She's so strong. You have to love her. She was so very nearly dead. I never could have stood living the rest of my life waiting for a dead woman to just die. The truth was called a two edged sword that cuts many ways the first time. God how I love you. I love you more than the Mighty just because of the way he would rather have it, you know... ?

I never saw her happier, more happy than when we married by far. The girls were glad to be home but crabby because of the long trip in him, the spirit of the teenager. It is so difficult to see any difference in any of them in that one you have to remember yourself being in. He's almost that true but if he is true I'm sure he will never make it to be real.

My boy!! What a strong, wonderful little man and he's just a baby. I know we have some thing more than just life on earth in him. My God, what do we have in him? It's something special I can feel that is true. It's just got to be.

4

Sarah was playing what she called the Name Game with Josh, the newborn they found in the ditch. She would pick something up and have him name it or point to something and he would name it whether he knew what it was or not. If he got it wrong she would teach him what it really was called.

For example: She turned the light of the big halogen lantern on and asked him, “What is this, Joshy?”

“Gaa!” he said but when she thought he did not know its name he realized it and quickly shouted, “God!”

I was amazed for where had he come up with that name for heaven's sake? “Where did he learn that?” I asked.

Sarah giggled and said, “No, no Joshy. That isn't-”

But I quickly jumped in, “But God is light Sarah! Don't discourage him. If light reminds him of God he is right. But who told him about God?”

Sarah shrugged and then mater of fact like she said, “God?”

Josh pointed to the light.

“Wouldn't that be something if he could hear God already?” I said.

“All little kids know about God, Ma,” she said, “They may not know his name but they hear him. Haven't you ever seen how they just suddenly look away like they heard someone you can't see or hear? They do that. They hear God and angels and spirits. A lot of them see him. But no one talks to them in a the same way they do anyone else. So they forget about him and they grow up thinking they are just seeing things or hearing things [Nobody can actually do that.] and they no longer think it is important. Some never think it's important the rest of their lives though God speaks right to them especially when something very important happens. Don't be like that Ma.”

“Do you mean that you hear God's voice and have seen him?” she asked.

“Not anymore. But Pa says I did once and that when I do now and don't shrug it off as had it no importance I still do. I don't know what he means by that exactly but Pa knows lots of things about God. I tell people what he says to me and they are all amazed some times just like you are now,” she said very interested. “But is God really somebody Ma?”

“He certainly is,” I said, “I thought you knew?”

“Jacky Muter says there is no God and that people who believe there is are just being goofy or trying to make some obscure point,” she said. “Ma, what does obscure mean? Jacky didn't know either when I made fun of the word but he insists it's a word.”

“In this context I think it means hidden from what most people can understand or did he mean all people?” I asked.

“All, people” she said, then hesitated before she added, “I'm pretty sure.”

“I am too,” I said. “But to know that, he knows something that no one could ever know for they are not there to know then. How can they know for sure they are not there even if that was true with no one there to even see?”

“Who aren't there, Ma?” she asked sensing it was true but not understanding it and her eyes began to get big with fascination. “Do you mean to pretend you know there are angels and spirits and them in heaven like Pa does ain't pe-pecuiar?”

“Yes,” I said and Sarah was confused a little going by her expression.

“Ma,” she broke in for it looked like I planned to say much more. “Is it a bad thing to be peculiar? People think Pa is pe-peculiar so they think I am because I would like things to be the way he says they are. Am I being bad, Ma?”

I walked to Sarah who picked up Josh and held him over her right shoulder he was getting so big it was hard for her to hold him when cradling him in her arms.

When I got to them I hugged them over Josh as I realized they might both be just mimicking words and ideas they thought were peculiar to their dad and might not even be real to me for I had just heard it so long and I remembered how quaint it all had sounded to me before he saved me.

“In your father's case,” I said, “It is so okay it could save every one of their lives.”

“Are they all dying from something?” she asked.

“They are not only dying of it,” I said, “They are already dead from it. They are just waiting for it to finish them off.”

“How does that work?” she asked.

“If your father were here he'd know,” I said, “But come to think of it I guess it is more like they are all dying of something. We all are dying of something. No one lives forever this way.”

Her eyes got large with the sudden surprise that surprised me she had not realized it yet. Then she suddenly grabbed her forehead but her face was full of that same sudden sadness.

“I thought you would know?” I said.

“Even you and Pa, Mama?” she asked, realizing it as she did. “Of course! It all makes sense what Pa says about dying now. We all die but God makes us live again! What happens then? [She was asking God believing he was real at last.] We die again or we don't die at all. Who decides Ma? God does! How do I get him to decide I live forever with you and Pa-! You both are going to live forever aren't you! But Mavis-?”

I let my sadness surface though I wanted to protect Sarah.

“She is her father's daughter. She adores him but she ignores everything he says about God and we can see it. She just doesn't get it that it is real.”

“It's fine she doesn't get it,” I continued after sensing God had said something and I ran with it for I really didn't know it was fine not to get it that God and all that, is real. That thought just came to me as had I always known it. “I think it is better if you know. In fact if you really believe that you will have trouble believing what happens to you from now on could ever have happened. Believe what your father and I tell you. We might get something wrong but we would never do it intentionally.”

“Poor Mavis,” she said in great sadness and wonder to find that was a big part of Mavis' problem.

“It's okay, Sarah,” I said as Josh wanted down finally. He had enough as had he been taking it all in. I have to wonder what all they take in. Don't you? If I know God at all I would bet it would blow our minds to know the answer. It's the nature of our God.

Then I looked at Mavis. She was texting her friends oblivious to mine and Sarah's conversation. “God will help her all he can for our sake.

Suddenly Mavis stood very quickly, looked our way, frowned and shouted, “Why are you guys always pretending you actually believe in spooks like Pa!!!” Then she ran for the loft and her bedroom.

“Did she ever do that before?” I asked Sarah.

She looked at me and appeared not to be able to say she ever noticed or had not noticed before. “Both,” she said. “Will she die?” Sarah asked. “That is what you meant by saying we are already dead ain't it? Me, you, my pa, and even Joshy-we are just like her. We will all die too. Everybody does. We will all be saved when we see God's face and don't ever have to die. But to learn it while we are alive on earth makes it certain we will do better when we get to heaven than those that are dead to God or don't love him like that new God does or are opposed to him for some reason or even if it is just not getting it or believing he isn't even real.

When you don't get it you have to deal with all of that when you get there and some of them get it but it only lasts a short time, others get it and it lasts much longer but eventually they fall away and don't believe. Many times those that fall away come back but some never do and wind up dead or dying until there is no death anymore except on earth where they don't know anything and have everything yet to learn again. Eventually all of them that fall away or keep going back and forth between being in God with his mind and the part of him that makes all his decisions, they will all die. In fact they did. God saw that they did before he saw the end of death; they died right up to the handful right at the time of it happening.”

Then she stopped talking, amazed by all she had said.

“That is great!” her father said as he came in from the field probably realizing Sarah had been busy prophesying in God.

She seemed proud of herself but actually she was stunned by what she saw in her understanding and didn't even realize that she had been prophesying. To do that you have to be using the mind of God. But to do it at all you have to have his decision making part or what we call his me for there is no word for it in English. It is also just his perspective but it is in us too.

My husband told me once, “All you have to do is realize you are me, and mean what God would mean if he said that word concerning himself. Then say it is in me and mean God's me. That's close enough. You have fallen away. If you do not go all the way and let yourself die and turn yourself into God doing what God does in your way so long as it is actually his way forever you will die when or before death is finally no longer an option for technically you cannot die and by then no one will ever want to die again.”

Then I thought a while and I added, “See how important it is to want to be in God and what that is? Some say, 'No?' and well, I hope there is still time in their life before the death of their body for them to understand and do that. If you are ever saved you will be saved in the end.”

'Nearly all of us are going to die, aren't we?' I thought to God and realized that is why he cries.

5

I was babysitting Josh my little brother. We were playing in the swing when he suddenly looked to his right side and with wide eyes said, “You funny!”

I said, “Why Josh?” for I hadn't said or done anything. But he kept staring at something as had it really been there. Getting spooked I asked him, “Who are you talking to?”

He said, “God,” as if it was no big deal and as if I should know who was there.

I had never thought of God that way.

“Look, Josh,” I said as seriously as I could in an attempt to keep him from thinking like Pa has always done with me and Sarah and even did to Ma quite a bit. It was fun when we were kids but now I realized on my own it was just kid's stuff and it had messed with my head and I didn't want him to have to go through what I did to figure out what was going on. That spooky stuff! It doesn't have to be like that and nobody else knows what he means when you say what he said though some of it is pretty neat. What is Sarah's word for it? Oh, yeah; peculiar. People will think he turned us all strange. I love Josh too much not to try to give him a chance to be normal like I am. The whole rest of my family is weird like that. God this, God that and spirits and stuff like that. It's just a game he made up. You have to believe in them or it doesn't even make sense and even then it doesn't. It's just for little kids and next year I will be a teenager too. But Josh ignored me.

“Mavis no like,” he said, looking another way as had someone else really been there. “Don't know you.”

“Are you still talking to God?” I asked really afraid he was getting weird, getting weird! he was being more weird about it than even Pa. “There is no one named God, Josh,”I insisted.

“You don't know,” he said.

“Stop pretending Josh!” I said, getting spooked for I was drawn in so far I was looking right where he was he seemed so interested in what he was pretending God was saying and doing.

“No!” he said. “God friend.”

“No, Josh,” I said, “God is nobody. You are just making him up.”

“No. No!” he began to cry. “I like God bester than you.”

My head hurt so bad all of a sudden I just went and sat on the deck letting him play by himself which he was not very good at and took to talking to his imaginary friend he called God right along. It was not peculiar. I hated what they had done to him.

Then after a while I had an idea and called to him, “Josh!” and when he looked my way I said, “Put God away now. It's time to go in.”

“He come with!” Josh said.

“No,” I said, “Now put him away with the rest of your toys.”

“God not toys,” he said.

'No I am real,' I thought I thought.

“He's got me doing it now?” I said.

“God really God,” he said.

“He's like Sponge Bob,” she said, “Put him away and let's go in.”

'I will go with Josh,' I thought I thought again.

“What are you?” I asked my thoughts. “A damned ghost in my head?”

Josh was already at the door looking up at the door knob.

'I am in Josh,' I was sure I thought as Josh stuck his chest out and even started to reach for someone not even there.

“Oh, Josh!” I started to cry.

“What are you crying about?” Pa asked as we entered the living room.

“Josh,” I said not wanting to discuss it with Pa at all.

“God,” Josh said, “He comed in.” Then he shrugged and seemed to be walking away looking up and to his right a lot.

“That's great, Josh!” Pa said as I tried to hurry off to the loft.

“Mavis!” he said, “I want to talk to you. Come sit.”

I walked over to the couch and he sat on the recliner. Then he explained to me that God was as real to Josh and them as I was. I felt sorry they didn't think of me as even real. So I just started to leave.

“Josh talks to him. He plays with him. God I'm sure helps him do things and understand things a boy his age can't be told by us because we don't know his language. He thinks to us. We can ask him a question and then we just know the answer and that answer is never wrong. Everything you are thinking and saying is wrong. It is what dead people are saying and doing. They refuse to hear God just like you,” he said. “When you are walking down the road and you sense something is there right above you�"you look up. Then you see a raven. How did you know he was there?”

“Don't Pa!” I protested. “You are scaring me.”

“When you suddenly think of your friend and you go to your phone to text her and instead there she is all of a sudden having texted you already. How come you thought of her? When you are thinking about someone and pretty soon they call. how did they let you know to think of them?” he asked.

I got up and started to take off to my room in the loft.

“Don't Mavis!” he shouted. Then he said, “It happens. Doesn't it? Not a lot but some times.”

I had to admit it had happened before maybe once or twice but that is no big deal.

“That is what God is doing,” he said. “He is coming to you and he will be here so he is thinking of you and you could hear him thinking in your mind when you were out with Josh just-”

“How did you know!!!” I shouted scared beyond my ability to hold it in anymore.

He shook his head. “I don't know. I just have a gift,” he said, “I know what God is doing. I don't even know how. I just do.”

“But how did you know I was thinking what God might say when Josh was playing with someone that was not even there,” I demanded to know. “You are not just spooking me Pa you are making me really really scared.”

“God knows it,” he said. “He just wants you to believe him. You don't have to tell anybody anything about him if you do not want to.”

“I don't want to be weird!” I shouted all teared up.

“There is weird and then there is weird,” he said, “Do you mean weird like Mayvess Carper or weird like Josh's coming to us? There is no other weird. We may be peculiar even to you but we are peculiar like Josh coming to join us not like Mayvess Carper who was so weird people didn't want anything to do with her.”

“That is what you are Pa!!!” I shouted at him and ran for my bed in the loft.

After a while Pa came to my bedroom in the loft and he just sat on the bed where I was resting from a splitting headache. He didn't say anything. He just sat there for the longest time.

Finally he teared up and then he cleared his throat before he said, “Maybe I am weirder than I need to be. But almost everybody in the world is dying and because God won't make anybody do anything good or bad there is nothing he can do. He cries for them, Mavis. I mean he really cries! Hardly anyone of all them will live but us. God won't give up on you. You are one of us whether you like it or not.”

“I don't want to be,” I cried.

“Yes you do, Mavis,” he said, “I won't believe you hate us, that you hate Josh-”

I found myself rushing to my Pa and hugging him and crying, realizing what I had been doing, was doing to him and them.

He just held me and let me cry for the longest time. Then he pulled my hands apart at the back of my neck and put my palms on his face and let me feel his tears. Then he put his hands on my cheeks and wiped away my tears with his thumbs. Then he kissed me on my forehead and held me sort of under his left arm.

I was almost asleep when he said, “God gave us that time together so that we would never forget it. It was like you were alive. I was. All you have to do to love us Mavis is to just let yourself believe it really is God the next time he thinks in your head and don't let it make you afraid. He doesn't ever have in mind to injure you. He wants to take you right in him where you are all the safer and the most alive you can ever be anywhere. There is nothing wrong or bad or weird or peculiar in that. Now is there?”

Then he lifted me up with one arm, cleared my covers beneath me, laid me on the bottom sheet and covered me up again. I was lying there troubled by having to believe God was real in order to love my family so I didn't smile but all of the rest of me wanted to.

When I woke up I believed in God and I realized we are not weird and God is not weird no matter what you think of me for that is who I am, me in me when me is who God means when he says, “Me.” It is something else now to have God's thoughts to work with not my own. I love just about everyone now especially my pa. He saved me. Do you know what that means to me? That is the same me that is God's me and is in everybody. Go ahead. Ask him a question. Then you can use the mind he has given everybody too. Don't be stupid. Join me.

6

“Jacky Muter wants me to go to the ninth and tenth grade lock-in with him, Ma?” Mavis said.

“That creep!” Sarah said as she got a soda out of the fridge. “You are not going anywhere with that creep! He should be in eleventh grade. He is dirty and he was sent back when he was in seventh grade because he was such a terror he got thrown out for fighting all the time. Is that the best you can do Mavis?”

“I'm not going to marry him!” Mavis yelled, “Who cares what he did in seventh grade? He's in tenth grade now! Are you going to hold it against him the rest of his life?”

“You are only in eighth grade, Mavis,” I said. “Will they even let you go?”

“If you are invited by someone in a higher grade,” she said.

“Huh,uh!” Sarah said. “He has to sneak you in and you know it. Ain't it just like him? He is not one of us!!! That, dear girl, is for certain.”

“And he never will be theh-” Mavis began.

“Not if I have anything to say about it!!” Sarah interrupted. Then she went to plead her case with their father. “Pa,” she said, “Mavis wants to sneak into a lock-in with Jack Muter! He doesn't even believe in God!”

“How would you know?” Mavis challenged her.

“I've only known him since I was in first grade and he was in second,” Sarah said, “Trust me Pa. He's a real creep.”

“What makes you say that?” their father asked.

“Pa!” Mavis objected to the absentee trial.

“He just is!” Sarah shouted then added seriously, “Really, Pa. He is no good.”

“Is he dead?” their father asked.

Both girls were silent and Mavis strutted angrily off to the loft.

“Why did you girls act that way?” he asked Sarah. “If he's dead maybe we can have him for supper some time. If he isn't, great! Either way she gets to be with him.”

“He would never dare come here!!” Sarah shouted showing fear more than anger. “He knows I know what he's always been. Yes, he's dead and no I won't eat supper with him in the house let alone sitting at the table. He won't come.”

Mavis appeared as out of nowhere. “Can't I go Pa? There are always a lot of people around at a lock-in.”

“No,” I said, “But you may invite him for supper or lunch some weekend. If you like him that is enough-”

Sarah stamped her foot and yelled in interruption, “Ma! I tell you he's a real creep!”

“Sarah!!” I scolded her. “If your sister likes him that is enough for us and that's then.”

“Ma!” Sarah whined, “Do I have to be here when he is? I hate being around him.”

“That is all the more reason,” I said, standing directly in front of her.

“It will give you a chance to practice showing the compassion God gave you to share with the dead also,” her father said.

“He won't come,” Mavis said, “He thinks Sarah hates him. Everywhere he goes she makes life hell for him he says. He hates her.”

“Well?” I said.

“Ask him anyway,” my husband said, “Sarah needs this more than he does.”

Sarah stormed outside and started pacing. Joshy was sitting on the bottom step of the play area with a stick drawing or writing in the sand. It was very hard to tell the difference with him.

“What's up?” he asked his big sister like he always does as I watched them able to hear everything.

“What do you say pal,” she said to him, “Maybe you can get God to strike Jack Muter dead for me?”

“No,” he said with a painful look and about to cry.

“Oh?” she said sorry for the wicked remark and then looked into his eyes.

I liked the way he turned her down wondering whether she might have been serious had she the might.

“What's wrong Joshy?” she said.

“Fangs,” he muttered.

“What did that darned tom cat do now?” she asked defensively.

“He died,” he said.

We were stunned. She sat beside him on the bottom step of the play area. I hung the dishtowel over my arm thinking, 'This could be serious.'

“A great big mean monster like that mean old bull bit him and sucked Fangs' insides out his nose but he put up a very tough fight!!!” he yelled.

'This is serious!' I thought. But something told me not to worry. Fangs would be alright. But it wasn't God. Maybe it was our new God we worshiped before we gave the glory to God for how he worked it out. He never spoke to me before that I knew of. So I went out to Josh's play area.

Sarah got up smiling and ran for the house to keep from laughing.

“Sarah!” I scolded her quietly but she never looked back.

“How do you know that's what happened? Were you there? You might have gotten hurt!” I asked him seriously wondering how he could have something all that terrible in him to think of even saying such a thing. “We are so glad you did not.” Then I hugged him and sat on the ground beside him listening to the two girls' conversation inside.

“Jacky says, 'I will come for dinner any time you want. But not if your sister's there.'” Then apparently she turned to her dad and said, “Pa, he will come to supper only if Sarah isn't here. Isn't there somewhere we can just put her for a while while we eat?”

“No!!” Sarah shouted. “I want him to come and right when I'm here. I can't wait to ruin it all for him once and for all!!!”

“Sarah!!!” their father shouted at Sarah. “I will not have such talk in my house. Is that any way for one of us to talk? You do it to your family's shame.”

“You don't know what that-that that thing is, Pa!” she said with a raised voice meant to even stir up her father.

“I don't care if he's Josh's great big scary monster the size of the bull! You will do no such thing when he gets here-” he was saying.

“Aw! Pa! Does he have to come?” she pleaded.

“Now tell me, Sarah, before God why do you hate him so much,” I could see my husband had lost his patience with her already.

“He beat me up when he was in seventh grade,” she mumbled. Then by her countenance seen in the window a moment it looked like she was about to cry.

“That is two full years ago!” my husband said and I could tell that though his voice was soft and somewhat subdued he was even more angry. “You have had this stewing up inside you all this time.”

“I could have beaten him!!” Sarah shouted. “I slipped on the gravel just as he threw dust in my eyes. Pa! He fights real dirty and he kicked me!”

“Where did he kick you?” Mavis asked with compassion but not totally convinced she had reason to hate him. She should have known by then not to keep fighting with boys.

“In my-” she muttered.

“Yes,” her father said, glad it was an old tomboy's war wound and not something serious. “Where did you say it was?” he added, puzzled as to why it mattered.

“He kicked me in my nubs alright!!!” she screamed. Then she mumbled in embarrassment, “Then he jumped on top of me. His hands were everywhere. Everybody laughed.” Then she screamed, “He had no right to do THAT!!!” and started crying as if it had just happened and the whole conversation was suddenly silent. Finally she said, “He knew I-I wanted him to. But he had to make a joke of it, of me and all the boys laughed their heads off about it. Why did he hate me like that?”

“Now we have found a whole different kind of meat on the spit,” my husband gently said, “I don't like mutton. But I have eaten my share. Just swallow really big, put it in your mouth and swallow her down as quick as you can and it's over.

“You still want him to,” Mavis said with her eyes big and her voice amazed. “That is why you are so mad ain't it? That is why you never told anyone. You like him even more for doing that even now and I've got him! I am so! sorry! Sis. You can have him back any time you want him but he will never stop making you angry and then laughing at you again. He likes you too. I can tell. That's what this is some kind of weird love not hate at all.”

It was silent and I was sitting on the ground in the tiny gravel holding my son who was my son in every way but having been in my womb once upon a time. He wasn't just like my son. He is my son. The same son I wanted all that time. Boys may be hellions but they are far less complicated.

“Where is your kitty?” I asked him.

He pointed to the barn.

“Show me?” I encouraged him to help him see that death was a part of living not happy he had to learn it so young.

He got up, took my finger and led me out to the side of the barn where he stopped and I could barely make out what was before us. But as we got closer I could see it was Fangs and he was lying still. But Josh was rubbing the front of his hand and I realized he had been hiding it all the time.

“What is wrong with your hand?” I asked him. Then I noticed there was blood all but on the wrist of the bottom side of his left hand. “What is this?” I asked and began to examine it. It was a bite. It was something a lot larger than a mouse or a even a squirrel but it was clearly an animal bite and I immediately became afraid of the possibility of rabies.

“What happened?” I asked Josh and then said, “”And I do not want any wild stories about monsters either.”

He put his head down and stared at the cat which was sick and had vomit around where its head was.

“I'm sorry God,” he didn't surprise me. Then he turned to me, “Fangs bit me,” he said.

“Oh!” I said and drug it out quite a long ways. It was quite the bite for a cat bite and there was the chance of cat scratch fever.

The poor cat was sick. But luckily when God made cats he almost made them immutable. We took him to the house. Josh nursed him back to health. He didn't even show any sign of it when it was over. Fangs was still mean to everyone else like a lot of barn cats are because they are almost wild but he always let Josh pet him whenever they met. But Fangs had a new home with all the other cats in the barn that would have been his family some of them. There were too many new ones to know which ones might be his family I had to tell Josh.

“Mommy,” he said a few days later and back then he looked at me with shame and added, “I was the big mean monster that almost killed Fangs.”

“Did you talk to God about it?” I asked.

He walked away deep in thought but soon I saw him looking up and talking, knowing what he was doing.

7

When they passed the House of Meeting Mavis had a warm feeling of safety, love and hope and she felt all cuddly inside and remembered how her father had saved her and drew in her breath and let it out in one deep emotion that seemed to say it all when suddenly some one said, “That's that new church where they worship a God they don't even know the name of,” in a hush knowing Sarah and Mavis and their family attended regularly like it was a regular church or something and it was.

“Mavis,” her friend said to draw her attention, “What is it like? I mean going to a church with a brand new God? That has to be different. Why go to church anyway? I mean, God. He's okay. But how do you get to know somebody who isn't God?”

“The same way you get to know God,” she said, “The Mighty was sort of one of us but not like anyone ever was and God is the only God there ever was. Sort of like your first thought is the only one you had that led to the rest. He thinks, says and does everything we do that is anything to be.”

“I believe in God,” she said, “But I don't know what he is. What happens to me?”

“You don't know God,” he whispered. “How do you believe in something you don't even know what it is?”

She shrugged, “I don't know. I just do.”

“Yeah,” Mavis said, “I remember what that was like. I believed there was a God once before I was saved too. It's hard to explain the difference. I knew about him when I was a kid. But I wondered even then if he was that or something else. I didn't believe anyone could be as great as my Pa said. So I was confused and yet... God was something-well-different than anything else. I knew what it was but I didn't know what it was. That was because he ain't an it. He's people. No one's an it. That was who I believe in. Someone present with me even when I had never met them yet to know them or for them to know me and still there he was different from anyone and not like any thing else or any one.”

“That is my God!!” her friend suddenly shouted with amazement. Then she looked around while everyone took note of what she said and slowly let the interest fade away. “Why are we whispering? He's not the God everybody hates. That same one that isn't God but pretended he always was.”

“You didn't say that,” Mavis said.

“What do you mean?” she asked, “I just did?”

“God said that and you didn't even know it that he was using your lips, your words, your thoughts... all of you to say that to me like a muse says something to a poet that nobody can say because there are no words to say such a thing and mean it that way,” she said. “We both knew him. All babies and little kids know him the same way and if they are like me they want the words to tell others about him but there ain't any. I have been wanting to say what you just said by God all my life and there came a time when I gave up on being able to say it so I thought it wasn't true for if you can't say it how can it be true when no matter what you say is not quite it. Congratulations, you finally said something. You have never said anything else.”

“Uh! Huh?” she said, “How did you get so smart? You are saying what it exactly is.”

“But no one else on the bus knows what you said to me and what I said to you now but if they overheard God they don't even have to hear us whispering. They know what God said through us for now they know God just like everybody does before they started reasoning and got too far away from the truth to even know he ever was again,” she said.

“Uh-huh?” she said more deep breaths than words, “But hadn't you better stop saying what God is saying in school?”

“How can I or you stop?” Mavis said, amazed at what she and her friend were understanding. “We are not saying any of it. God is saying it. We are just the instrument he is using to make the music that is saying something we could never have known any other way and can't hang onto it because it's like a thought that is so usual but we have to just store the memories of it though we don't have any way to repeat it to anyone unless the right time, the right people, the right place, and when just the right thoughts take place in our minds they all come together at a rate we can be part of what only God can say and no one else can and it will not be the same the next time he says it for he never says it the same way twice but it always means the same thing, that we are God and who we are at the same time and we can always be that if we can stay perfect but no one ever has before this and if anybody tries it will just be a quote and very few will hear it the same way we hear it and actually know what God said.”

“Here's your stop!” she said. “Don't stop talking though until the last second. I love it!”

“Why not?” Mavis said, “God has finished. He planned it just perfect. Just like he always does. Bye!” Then she was off waving at her friend who never stopped hungering to hear God even after she got to heaven.

“Why didn't you ever talk to me before?” she asked.

'I did but you couldn't hear me,' is what her next thought added up to in English and not in her thought, 'I was in God whatever I did then too just like I am now,' was the next.

'You are the new God!' her next thought added up to though she hadn't verbalized it.

“There is only one God!” Jack Muter said to her and giggled. “I am another.”

'How did you do that?' she verbalized upon realizing her next thought, “You even used all of him? to tell me that!!!'

“God is bullshit!!” he called out as he fell down the steps of the bus as he went to get off at a buddy's house.

“Are you okay?” the bus driver asked and when he saw he was injured but not severely he said, “Pay attention to what you are saying. Next time may be your last time.”

'Don't kill him God!!!” her next thought and actions meant.

Then she felt he was only evil all the time and would be when everyone else lived on and he never really did in the first place or that last time which would have been again.

When her friend finally thought to do it she phoned the House of Meeting and found out when they would be meeting again. She was scared. She was afraid she might never hear God speak again. But she would of course. If you ever were saved you are saved and you will live forever after there is no one that ever died again for more than a moment or so.

8

Josh was eighteen and all his life he wondered about his birth mother and birth father. He was cleaning the rooms in a part time volunteer job at the hospital. When he walked in she stared right at him thinking he was about the right age and I opened her mind to tell him about it.

“They had been fighting all day because she had finally found out about me and him. It wasn't love. It wasn't even passionate anymore. He was beyond that. Meth had stolen everything from him. He never laughed anymore. He was paranoid and hateful and mean every minute he was awake. That had started when he introduced the occult into our lives way back in the start of it.

I was a meth head too but not as bad as he was.

She loved him and she kept coming back for more no matter what he did to her or why. She wasn't even mad at me. She was sore at him for doing it again. She just hadn't known when to let him die.

A lot of us die but then most of us are completely dead long before that happens. I was like that now. I didn't care what happened to me. When they came to my house it didn't even bother me thinking, 'Why did he bring her with him? She might even kill me finally.' But I was ready, a lot more ready for that than to get high again.'

She never did it, not even to just know what it was actually like. He wouldn't let her after the threat of that came and went. She stayed home and straight. He would pick me up but then I tried to get clean and failed every single time. At least I wanted to quit. He didn't think about it either way anymore. He was so paranoid now. He often said how I was the only one he could trust.

She went to a house with mostly crack users. He wasn't there but some guy that happened to be there, not even a junky, a damned drunk made her stay and before he let her go he raped her seven times.

When he heard he wasn't even sad. 'Good enough for her. Following me around hell trying to make me be straight. I ain't never been straight since I was twelve. I tried her life. It works for her. But it ain't me.' Then I never heard him mention it again.

We had a little boy me and him but he died when he was a week old in a seizure. Neither one of us cared but I did wonder what it would have been like to have a little boy. But I always sighed and went back to what I did. Everyone is known by what they do. Why should I be any different? This is me. It is all I am. Nothing looking for a place to finally just lay down and die, with or without meth. It doesn't matter anymore. I just want it over.

To be honest I don't know what happened. I never do anymore. She finally had her baby but he was just a newborn when she found him. I had mercy on the kid and took him to be with me in my bedroom. I did all I could for him thinking about my own kid and I knew this little newborn wasn't a meth baby.

She was clean, squeaky clean. But she was a mean b***h. She would find him and try her damnedest to get him to just quit. He would beat her, beat her bad. I was scared for her. She wasn't really one of us. She didn't have to die.

That night on the back roads I couldn't help the kid. I was barely alive and holding on with all I had, knowing that the will to survive makes no sense. It is stronger than we are. A meth head is a hard animal to kill and even then they would fight it like they loved being in hell for all there was in them unless there was nothing in them left to survive. Then it just sort of gave up and let them go with a bullet, someone else' or their own. No one I ever knew quit. They all died. All of them I would have killed too if I had had the chance.

Like I say they were fighting. She opened the car door and jumped baby and all in the ditch. He stopped the pickup like maybe he cared whether she survived. She laid the baby in the ditch all wrapped up and that. Then he was beating on her. I was trying not to listen to her screams. Then they quit. He threw something in the pickup box and got in white as a sheet on a decent bed, put her in gear and tore the hell out of there.

He's in prison for murder and I just got out. I thought I had a chance but it didn't last long as usual.

It was months before I remembered the newborn. He must have just left him lying there when he picked her up and dragged her to the pick up and tossed her in there like garbage. Then he told me we were going to quit and the first step was prison. I didn't care and didn't know what he meant until he pulled up in front of the police station right in town and turned us in. Crazy, that is what he is. He's still straight maybe. He's doing life in prison. Me they let me out after what seemed like it was never going to end.

But I wonder what happened to that baby. When they are little that way they cry all the time but he didn't. He was sort of eerie quiet like that most of the time and the rest of the time you couldn't hear him he was so tiny.

So she's dead. He's in prison for life. It's finally going to end for me tonight because I can't think of that kid dead in the ditch anymore. There is something about you kid. Do newborns ever haunt people for what they did or did not ever do like the dead?

His birth father he found out from me had died that same year his birth mother had died. I saw no point in pursuing it. He never was saved even when he died from seeing God's face. No one can see him and live. They gave the farm to Josh though he would have made a great preacher like Pa.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I am in the body of the Mighty as it was in contemporary earth. It's like a spacesuit. If we didn't have it we couldn't be here But when we get where we're headed we won't need it. I think when I get there I'll make a little house with a goat to mow the lawn of the tiny property. I've wanted that since God told me how we should be living here. I'll have it for a while. Stop by and see me when you get to heaven. I'm sure if you liked my books we'll be able to scare up something to chat about you might enjoy.