Work Text:
“...And that's why you need to stop playing so much before bed.”
“Oh, wow,” says Orel, rubbing his sore backside. His dad sits in his chair, explaining what he’s done wrong this time. Orel tries not to yawn, but it’s late, and he’s tired.
“Jesus doesn’t want you doing that. It's too loud and you're supposed to be—”
“Praying quietly, I know,” says Orel.
“Exactly. Everyone who's anyone is praying before bed.”
“Everyone?”
“Yup. God can see it when you're being bad and playing with your toys instead of honoring him, and that's a one way ticket to see your old pal the Devil.”
“So… if everyone prays, is he doing it too?” asks Orel, his eyes wide as it occurs to him.
“Who?”
“The Devil.”
“Oh, Orel. Of course not. The Devil sits around torturing people all day, he doesn't have time to pray.”
“Oh.”
“Besides, do you think God would want to hear that?” He chuckles. “He's got more important things to do than hear some guy he hates whining.”
“God loves everything, though,” says Orel, a half-question.
“Not the Devil. That's why God threw him out.”
“Wasn't it for asking too many questions?”
“It—”
“How many is too many? And why didn’t God want him to ask? Are there specific questions that—” Clay fixes him with a look, and Orel gulps. “Right. I'll just get to bed then.”
Orel slips under the covers and begins to worry. He just can't sleep, because this whole thing has got him thinking. He knows he always does things he isn’t really supposed to do, but it’s not like he means to, it just seems to happen anyways. If God loves everyone except the Devil, then what would a person have to do to make God stop loving them and give up like that? It didn't take much for the Devil. Orel questions God all the time, wondering what He's up to, and why He made things the way He did, and how He's doing up there and whether He likes listening to Orel as much as Orel likes talking to Him.
“God?” asks Orel quietly. “You listen when I pray, right?”
He listens, and there's silence.
“If the Devil is really the worst guy ever— which he is, I…I’m not doubting you there, I would never question you, Lord,” he hastens to clarify, “Could you forgive him for being so bad? Do you still love him, God?”
Still, no sound but the wind outside the window, and his dad's faint footsteps in the kitchen, probably getting a midnight snack. Orel doesn’t dare pray any louder. He wants to do it with his toys and pretend he’s playing with God there. He would have his toys talk to God’s toys and act out stories together, laughing and playing. But with his backside still sore and his dad’s words still ringing in his ears, he’s too scared. God wouldn’t like it, and he would only end up in trouble. Orel knows there's redemption, and that you can earn God's love back, but what's the limit?
“If I was ever really bad, would you still love me anyway?”
Orel waits for God to answer, and in his waiting and waiting, he falls asleep.
_________
Orel can’t stop wondering about it. He asks the Reverend to borrow some of his texts interpreting what went down with the whole ‘war in heaven’ stuff.
“Do the Devil and God love each other?” Orel asks the Reverend.
“No, of course not.”
“But they’ve known each other for so long. God made him, how could He just stop loving him just like that?”
“There's a lot of interpretations on what exactly went down,” says the Reverend. “Some people think the Devil refused to bow down to mankind. The Devil refused to bow down to Jesus, or maybe it was a slow thing, the Devil slowly became absent from God, and his existence became the literal opposite of God. Oh, another one says the Devil wanted to remove people's agency so they couldn’t sin.”
“No sin? Isn’t that a good thing?”
“No! We love agency!”
“Reverend? Um… What is ‘agency’?”
“It—” he stops. “I forget sometimes that you’re only five.”
“I’m ten.”
“Whatever. It means free will. As in, we get to make our own choices.”
Orel doesn’t. His dad tells him lots of lessons, and he makes choices based on that, and the Bible. He’s never really thought about trying to decide something on his own.
“Won’t that just make people sin more?”
“Yes, but—”
“So why is it a good thing? I thought the Devil got in trouble because he didn’t obey?”
“The rules are different for people. The devil wants to trick you into doing bad stuff, but you have to choose to do good stuff anyways, even if it’s harder. If you fall into his traps, you deny God. Not good!”
Orel stares at him.
“I can't dumb it down any more than that, sorry buddy. You'll understand when you're older.”
“Okay!”
Orel decides to put off wondering til he's older. But he probably won’t ever fall to that point. He would never deny his Father, or his savior Jesus Christ.
_________
It turns out, all it takes is a gun, a torn and bloody shirt, and the worst night of his life.
If humans had no free will, they would all be nothing but puppets. Orel had shot the bottle.
The Devil wanted to remove people's agency so they couldn’t sin. Orel had shot the bear.
He was just trying to help. He was trying to be good.
_________
“How can I forgive him, Reverend?” asks Orel at the confessional, still in his cast.
“Remember when Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"
“He said seventy-seven times,” says Orel.
“Exactly.”
“So I should forgive my dad seventy-seven times?”
The Reverend sighs like he does when Orel just isn't getting it. “I think it was hyperbole.”
“Oh. So… less times than that? Or more?”
The Reverend throws up his hands. “I don’t know. Have you been keeping count, or what?”
“I could start.” He shakes his head. “I’d have to start a list, though… I don't know if it would help me forgive him faster if I start thinking too hard about it.”
“Hey, give it some time. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“How many days was it built in?” He needs to know exactly how long this forgiveness stuff is going to take, because it's excruciating to feel this much hate all the time.
“That’s not the— never mind.”
_________
Shapey and Block are just learning to talk. Orel isn't an idiot. He realizes that’s not really normal. His mom doesn’t ever stop cleaning, and his dad doesn’t speak to anybody except to ask them to pass him something, and no one in the house seems to think there's anything weird about that at all. Orel hadn't either, until he had let himself think about how miserable he felt.
Orel doesn’t think it’s really right, the way it all is, but he doesn’t have the words for what exactly is wrong.
Bad as it is, he questions. He stands in the library with sweaty hands, and he thinks of the apple in the garden, and all the knowledge that would only cause trouble.
Am I ready to be a sinner?Orel asks himself. Knowledge is the first sin, and it leads to all the others.
Then again… Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. He needs to solve this and make everything okay again, and to do that he needs to become someone who is wise.
The answers are in the ‘burn’ section of the library, the ones that Ms. Censordoll hasn’t gotten to yet. There are books there that he’s never been allowed to even look at, much less read.
Orel, for the first time, reads something besides the Bible.
He reads one of those evil books about how dinosaurs were real, and they have some pretty good evidence, actually. He reads about how kids aren't supposed to be left alone when they're just babies, and how it can make it where they act up later in life. How the different cultures of the world exist in so many different ways that have different foods and clothes and different names for God. He reads about how rainbows aren't just symbols from God that no atheist could ever explain, they're refractions of light on water droplets in the sky.
Oh wow. So rainbows are something real in the air, and you could touch it, and explain it. Something about that makes his eyes misty.
He reads and reads, curled in the corner so no one will see him back there and drag him out. Finally, it's getting late and he needs to leave. He closes the book about Child Abuse and his hands are clammy.
The world seems like a much more complicated place than he ever knew.
He feels, suddenly, like he's been naked all this time and no one ever told him.
Orel doesn’t want to go home. He goes out and gets Stephanie to buy him a box of dye, and help him do his hair. He doesn’t tell anyone, just shows up, different in a way he can’t really describe just yet. He wishes he could ask his dad about all this stuff he just learned, but he knows he can’t.
“We doing purple or black?” Stephanie asks. “Those are the two I've got.”
“Black,” he says.
“What’s the occasion?”
He shrugs. “Just want something different.”
She hums, and helps him apply the bleach.
“We have to wait a little while before we can do the black. You have to lighten it before you can darken it, so the color comes out right.”
“Okay,” he says.
They're quiet for a little while, but it's not an uncomfortable silence. Stephanie isn't a big talker.
“Do you believe in God?” asks Orel, unsure how to go about asking what he wants to ask, after his day at the library that’s done something strange to his head. Not doubt, but something else, a new understanding of what God is, and His physicality and form. A new idea about how to talk to God that makes things seem way too complicated to be described in the terms he's been given before, and that makes God seem like a stranger.
“Not really.”
“Who do you pray to when you need something, then?”
“Hm,” she thinks. “I do a secular prayer.”
“A secular prayer?” He's never heard of that.
“Yeah. I ask people who care about me for help,” she says. “Isn’t that what you do, too?”
He guesses she’s right. It’s just that the list of people he trusts to help has shrunk. Then again, he knows Stephanie cares about him, and he’s here now, so that's something.
“Can I call you when I need help then?”
“Sure, we’re friends, right?” She looks at the clock. “Time to rinse it out.”
_________
True to his expectations, his dad calls him into his study the moment he sees his new hair.
“What will the neighbors think?” he asks. “Now we’ll have to shave all your hair off and you’ll look like an egg. Don’t you want to fit in with the other kids?”
“Jesus loves me just the way I am,” Orel sulks.
“Well, la dee da!” his dad mocks. “Next you're going to tell me he supports free love and ‘give to the poor’ and all that hippie crap, too. I'm the dad here, so you do what I say.”
Orel shrugs. “Is my punishment over?”
“Well… yeah.”
“Okay,” he says, and walks away.
Bit by bit, he's starting to think he believes in some other God than the one his dad is always talking about.
_________
Orel doesn’t bow down to his father anymore.
It’s a gradual distancing, and one day he thinks back and realizes he hasn’t said a word to his dad in a month besides what's necessary. He talks to his mom and relays information through her, and he talks to his brothers, but he doesn’t find time to pester his dad anymore.
Maybe his dad is just sorry enough to let that happen, or maybe he’s not sorry at all, and he just never cared the way Orel wanted him to.
“Orel, bring me my drink,” his dad demands.
“No.”
“I said—”
“I said no.”
He doesn’t push it. These past months, he doesn’t even beat Orel anymore, doesn’t look at him. Neither does his mom, she just smiles, and when she thinks no one can hear, she cries. Maybe this is how Shapey and Block always feel, when mom and dad are ignoring them.
“Dear, would you bring me my damn drink?”
“I’ll bring it, hon,” mom says bitingly. She comes into the kitchen to fetch it, as she always does.
“Why do you put up with him?” asks Orel. He had asked before, but she's never answered, really.
“Your father is a complicated man,” says his mom chipperly. “Everyone has their vices.”
“Wow,” he says. “Is that worth it to you?”
“Marriage is a sacred thing, you can’t go dissolving it willy nilly.”
“But we have free will,” says Orel. God wants them to use that, that’s what the Reverend said.
“Yes,” she sighs. “But… You’ll understand when you’re older. You don’t have as many choices as you think, sweetie,” she pinches his cheek and walks away with the drink.
Orel understands something new. He sees how the Devil could question the one who seemed to create the concepts of right and wrong themselves. He sees how God could abandon someone He thought He loved, who turned out to not be what He thought he would be.
_________
Orel moves out the moment he’s of age. He saves the money he made working part time for Mr. Figurelli and rents an apartment on the edge of town. It's not that he doesn't want to see his family, he just needs a little space of his own, that's all.
He likes being able to place all his books on the shelf and not worry that they'll be put through the wash by mistake, or that his things will be smashed by Block in a tantrum— though he's not sure they're still called that when you're Block's age, and you can actually go to juvie if you don’t cut it out.
_________
There's a knock on his door. It's Shapey, and Block is behind him.
“Hey, what a surpr—”
“Mom and dad are getting a divorce,” says Shapey. Block doesn’t say anything.
“Golly,” says Orel. He's genuinely surprised. He had sort of thought they would stay together for good.
“Can Block stay with you?”
“...Just Block?”
“Mom and dad won’t let him stay with either of them since he's not their kid. Mom tried calling his mom but she—”
“You guys can all stay here if you need to,” Orel offers. It's one bedroom, but it would only be temporary, so Block and Shapey couldn't mind too much. After all, they'd all shared a room for years.
“Mom is finding us a new place. Without Block." Shapey shifts his feet, and Orel knows there's something he's not saying. He waits. "I’m hanging out with mom on my own for a little bit,” he admits.
It's no different from when Shapey would say mine, mine, mine to everything as a kid, screaming for mom constantly. Now he has his mom all to himself, he guesses. Orel looks at Block, who still hasn't said a word, and sighs. He can't exactly talk to Shapey about how this probably feels to Block, because he's not sure either of them ever hear a word that comes out of his mouth. All he can do is help Block out until they figure things out.
“Sure.”
“Okay,” says Shapey. He turns to Block. “I'll be back to hang out later.”
“Whatever.” Block shoves past him and into the apartment.
_________
“Got you some books,” says Orel, trying to cheer Block up.
“So?” says Block, dejectedly.
“And I cooked some…” he looks at the mess he made. What does it look like? It's wet. “Soup!”
“So?”
Block had never really stopped throwing fits. Now he’s graduated to saying ‘so’ to anything Orel says, if he even bothers responding at all.
“I'll just leave it out,” he offers.
He's terrible at this. He's doing terrible. This would be so much easier if he could just do what his dad had done and tell him what to do and have him jump to it, but… he won't do that. He's going to have to find another way.
_________
He’s shopping when he bumps into someone.
“Oh, sorr—” he stops. She’s got mousy hair and thick eyebrows, her face chubby and familiar.
“Orel?” she asks, and he knows where he recognizes her from.
“Christina,” he says. He smiles. “W— you— what are you doing in Moralton?”
“We moved back,” she says.
“Oh. I hope you’re liking it.”
“Not really,” she admits. “I don't know anyone here.”
“You know me!” he smiles. “And… Block,” he coughs. Her expression goes pinched.
“Yeah, I heard he was staying with you. I appreciate that.”
“It's the least I can do, he doesn't have anywhere else.”
She shrugs. “I don't have a place to live or I would…”
“You don't have to explain,” he says quickly. “I didn't mean to make you feel bad or anything. I was surprised to see you, that's all. I’ll leave you to it.”
“Actually… Would you want to, uh, have a drink or something sometime?” she asks timidly.
“No, I don’t drink.”
“Ah," she says. "Okay. Um."
“But I have board games,” he blurts. “At my apartment.”
“That would be really nice,” she says.
“Friday?”
_________
He visits Shapey and mom. The new house is really nice, smaller than dad's house, but cozy.
“How’s the move gone?” he asks carefully.
“Good,” she says.
What was the last straw? What happened that was so bad you had to leave? Was it as bad as my last straw with him? Did it have to do with him at all, or was it something inside you?
He doesn’t ask. She wouldn’t answer anyways.
Instead they talk about the house, and she shows him the rooms. Shapey has a whole room to himself, with posters and stuff.
“Gosh, Shapey, you get bigger every time I see you!”
“Whatever,” says Shapey.
“Wanna come over tonight and play?” Block won’t do anything with me.
“We're practically grown ups, Orel, we don't play.”
“Oh,” says Orel.
“But I will come over to hang out.”
Orel takes a moment to thank God, because if Shapey didn't agree to spend time with Block he was probably going to go crazy. He’s tried everything, he’s even gotten Christina to come over and try talking to him, but nothing works.
_________
So when Shapey comes to visit it's like a miracle. Orel leaves them to set up the board game, prepared to go off and do his own stuff so they can have their time, but Block stops him.
“Don’t you want to play too?” asks Block.
“Um,” says Orel. Too loud before bed, always playing with those stupid toys when you’re supposed to be—
Block and Shapey have this strange ability to fix him with the look, something almost hypnotic that seems to beg him to come and play.
“Sure,” he says, and tries not to feel too special.
_________
Did God leave the Devil, or did the Devil leave God? Who was in the right?
“Hey, dad, I'm just calling to see if you’re doing okay. And I wanted to share some news.”
The argument had been placed in text and distorted over centuries. No one even knows exactly what they were arguing over. There were forty days in the desert, and before that there was the garden with a snake, but even that wasn’t the start of it.
“Christina and I have a baby on the way. I know what you're gonna say, we aren't married, but… We will be. Really soon, just as soon as we get an apartment. Um.”
Was it when there was a world made in seven days, or was it before that, when the plans were drawn up and the blueprints made? Was it when Lucifer sought the highest seat in heaven? It can be so hard to separate the symptoms from the causes. It just keeps going.
“We think we’re gonna name the baby Marion, since it works for a girl or a boy. I just wanted to let you know. So… call me back. Or pick up next time.”
Clay thinks of his old photo album, and thinks of his father’s face, the blank expression Arthur had when he would look at him.
When did it all go wrong? Was it always going to happen this way, or was there some junction that they could return to and make it all okay again, a world where Clay talks to his son and learns about his life in person? Where Orel looks at him with something besides contempt?
_________
“Since your mom left, champ, I… I'm not doing so hot,” Clay says, trying to find a way to turn the conversation toward its goal.
Orel hardly ever visits, not since his brother left with Bloberta, and that was… what was it, three years ago? It’s fall, and Orel always comes to check up on him to make sure the house is winterized, like he can’t do it himself. That’s what he’s trying to talk to him about, actually.
“Gosh. I'm sorry to hear that.” It's how Orel's spoken to him for years now, that mechanical, grating tone that’s just this side of sarcastic. He’s throwing Orel a bone, here, hadn’t the kid always wanted him to talk to him? Here he is, talking.
“I mean it. I don't know if I can keep it up. I mean, this old place is getting run down, y’know?” He had fallen the other day and he hadn’t been sure if he would be able to get up afterward. He can’t always get himself up the stairs anymore. He could hire help, but then everyone would know he needed help. He doesn’t need help. “I was thinking… you and I could spend some time together.”
“You’re asking to come live with me,” says Orel.
Orel just stares at him. It pisses him off the look at his face when he's like this, the same blank contempt his own father always had on his face. Like he has the power to judge Clay for anything when he made him.
“I don’t know. With the baby coming—”
“I can handle it, I lived through your crying.” He had wanted to congratulate Orel on getting with someone who liked him enough to have his baby, but it only sent him spiraling into thoughts of his own marriage, and the past, and he decided to hold his tongue, since he didn't have anything positive to say.
“It’s not that."
"Then what?"
"I don’t know if I want you around the baby.”
Orel looks at him, looking about as shocked that he said it as Clay is. It's not like Orel to be so direct.
“Why?”
“Dad.” Orel taps his foot. “Do you really wanna have this conversation right now?”
“C’mon, it’s not about the whole gun thing is it? I thought we established that wasn’t even my fault, and that was forever ago.”
“Okay, more recent then. I don’t want you drinking in my home, or stressing out Christina when she’s pregnant. I don’t want you making Block feel bad about himself—”
“I don’t—”
“Or bothering mom or Shapey when they come over. It’s one thing if you want to mess with your own life, I have tried and tried to help you, but I can’t have you there if you’re going to be affecting other people.”
“Like when?” he sneers. “You sound like your mother right now.”
“When you drank your own life away, when you cheated on your wife… oh, and you didn't take care of your kids and left them to whoever would take them. To name just a few.”
He could tell Orel what he's said any other time they've had this argument, that he isn't even sure Shapey is his, and the other one isn’t even family.
Orel is his legacy, so of course he took care of him. Orel never seems to like that argument, though, and he’s asking him a favor, so he swallows it.
“I’m asking you… to let it go. That's what our good pal Jesus woul—”
“Don't.”
“Oh, so you don't care about Jesus anymore? Just a phase?” Like Orel wouldn't throw a Bible verse taken out of context at him any second now, like always, the self-righteous prick.
Orel shrugs. Actually shrugs, and Clay stops short of a lecture.
“I wasn't serious,” says Clay. “You actually don't—?”
“It’s none of your business,” says Orel. “Um, I need some time to think about it.”
For the first time during the conversation, Clay takes a deeper look at his son. He looks worn out in a way he never used to. Clay doesn't like this new Orel that he barely seems to know at all.
Of course Clay loves Orel. He’s his son. But on another level, he doesn’t know if he could stop loving him even if he was someone else’s kid, like Shapey undoubtedly is. Shapey just screams all day, Orel… everybody loves the kid. How could they not? He's a fucking delight, always trying to do the right thing even when everyone is brushing him off. He always bounces back. He did when he was ten, anyway. He's twenty something now, isn't he? Is that right? He doesn't want to ask and make it obvious that he doesn't know.
“You, uh, going home then?” he asks awkwardly.
“Yeah,” says Orel, a half smile on his face. “See you at Christmas.”
“If I live ‘til then.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Whatever.”
“I love you, dad,” says Orel.
“Yeah,” he says, a lump in his throat. “Orel,” he says. “I, uh…”
I love you.
“...Think you’d better get on the road, then. It’s supposed to get icy.”
Orel really does leave then, and Clay sits outside, watching the empty street where the car had long driven off.
Clay goes inside. He slumps in his chair and sips from his tumbler. Clay isn’t under any illusions. He’s too old for that now.
“Watch over him,” he mutters bitterly. Like you never did for me. You sick fuck. He’s my son.“Amen.”
Does God respond when the Devil prays?
God, he hopes, but the silence is deafening.
_________
When his dad asked to live with him, Orel didn't know what to say. He’d thought about it for years, waiting for his dad to admit he had even done anything wrong. He could make him grovel, he could offer it just to snatch it away like his dad had done to him with so many things over the years.
But he's his dad.
“I need some time to think about it,” he said, and it felt like the hardest thing he’d ever had to say.
_________
The central question in Orel’s life, the one he keeps coming back to, is forgiveness.
It's only an hour after he’s come back from his dad's house that he hears the horrible crunching sound outside, and he bolts to see what’s going on.
Block stands sheepishly beside the car, the tail light demolished against the mailbox. Orel has to swallow back his frustration.
“I didn't mean to,” says Block. Orel half believes him, though Block does have a tendency of causing trouble on purpose for attention, he had never done something so expensive before.
“You’ve got to be more careful,” he says. “Your allowance will go toward this ‘til I can get it fixed.”
“I don’t even have that much allowance!” Block whines in his typical seventeen-year-old way.
“Then we’ll see about getting you a part time job. When I was your age—” he stops, realizing he was about to launch into a speech, the kind his dad had always given to him about responsibility. “I… had a job,” he finishes.
“I'm not gonna give it,” Block says stubbornly. “It's mine!”
“You— I need to go to work in the mornings, and this will get me pulled over.”
“So?”
“So it's your fault!”
“So?”
“So you have to pay or I’ll—”
He stops. What will he do?
“I’ll be disappointed.”
“Fuck you! I don't even care!” he yells, finally cutting through the litany of so’s.
“Okay.” Orel is the adult here. “I'm not gonna talk to you until you can talk calmly.”
Talking to him doesn't work. He's a different animal than Orel was as a kid, he doesn't want to be disciplined or instructed, and Orel isn't sure he would even know how, anyway.
Orel goes out in the car that evening, half-prepared to be pulled over for the busted light. He doesn’t bother to say a prayer. Bad things happen to good people, it’s silly to think God would protect him from something like that.
He’s meeting up with Christina and her mom tonight at her mom’s house.
“I missed you,” says Orel.
“Missed you too,” Christina says, patting her pregnant belly.
Mrs. Posabule frowns. “When are the two of you going to stop living in sin, anyways?”
She asks every time Orel visits. What she means is when are you going to have a wedding at the church. They’d gotten the marriage certificate at the courthouse, but they still need to scrounge up some money for a church wedding.
“When we find a nice place we can afford,” Christina says.
“Well, you two had better hurry up with it. I don’t want your baby born into some broken home,” she says. “How am I to know if you’ll even bring him up properly?”
“Um, we’re gonna try our best,” says Orel.
“Your best isn’t enough,” she dismisses. “I mean specifics. You can’t raise the baby the way you were brought up, clearly, since you two came out the way you did. You’ll need to take a firmer hand.”
Christina winces. “I don’t think—”
“You certainly don’t,” Ms. Posabule says.
“Hey!” Orel says.
“Oh! You’ve got your boy snapping at me! He knocks you up and you two haven’t even got it together enough to live together in sin, no, you live with your mother in sin and this Puppington is just a little parasite like his father—”
Orel’s appetite vanishes. He’s tried so hard to avoid thinking about his dad. Being like him. He doesn't drink, he tries to spend time with Block and to be kind to Christina, and he reads parenting books for when the baby comes. Still, somehow he feels like he’s sliding into place, with Block mad at him and acting out and Orel living in sin, and refusing his dad, his own flesh and blood, a place to stay in his old age, just like Clay had refused Arthur. It feels like he's destined to become someone just like the person he left behind, and he doesn’t know what to do to stop it.
“That’s enough, mom,” says Christina. “I don’t want to be stressed out right now, it’s not good for the baby.”
“I’m a terrible mother, that’s what you’re saying.”
“No—”
“I should have done better, shouldn’t I?”
“Okay,” Christina says, standing up. “I’m going to bed. Orel, I’ll…call you later.”
“I love you,” he says. “We’ll try dinner again next week, right?”
“Yeah. Love you too.” She kisses him on the cheek and leaves the room, her mother still ranting. Orel turns to go, and she’s still shouting. He needs to find them a place to live, and soon.
Orel drives home, and behind him, he sees police lights come on. He sighs, and pulls over.
“Son, you got a tail light out,” says Officer Papermouth.
“Can you let me off with a warning?” asks Orel.
“No, I gotta ticket ya.”
“But—”You stupid fuck. The law in this country has gone to hell. You have one sip on the road and suddenly it’s all ‘can you walk in a straight line?’ No, it’s not—
“You got a problem?” asks Officer Papermouth.
Orel, you idiot, what’s the point of you if you just mess everything up?
“No,” says Orel, feeling numb. Don’t be him. Be you. “I’ll get it fixed as soon as possible, sir!”
He drives the rest of the way home, and walks right past Block at the kitchen table, probably doing homework, kicking his feet. Orel goes straight to his futon and lies there, thinking.
It isn’t that Orel doesn’t believe in God. He just doesn’t pray like he used to. His hands will come together, and he’ll think, but he can’t speak with God the same way these days. There’s something awkward about it, like he’s begging for something he’s never going to get, from someone he thought he knew but maybe didn’t know at all.
All those wishes he’d had in childhood, and none of them ever seemed to come true. The little things he needs day to day now, they never come. A raise so he could afford a nicer apartment for when the baby comes instead of whatever they can find, some way to make Block feel more supported because Orel is gone so much and he feels like he's always failing at this whole thing, a new tail light… But God doesn’t help with that kind of stuff, does he? He never has. Every time something has gone wrong there's been silence.
He doesn’t come in times of crisis, when you’re bleeding in the woods and you’re holding a gun, praying desperately for your dad to wake up. He doesn’t come in times of everyday despair when you’re trying to scrounge up money and trying to support your family and figure out how to talk to your partner in living-in-sin's mom without it feeling like a minefield.
So what good is He? What good are all the lessons Orel has learned when in hindsight they were all just a way for the adults to stop him from asking questions and to make him obey?
So? Block would say. So? So? So?
So if he doesn’t have God then who does he have? Who even is he without God?
Orel thinks back to an old conversation, the night he had turned his hair black with cheap dye.
He goes to the other room and picks up the phone, and quietly dials a number he hasn’t dialed in some time, a secular prayer.
“Hmm?” says a voice on the other end.
“Reverend Putty?”
“What?” he mutters, clearly still half asleep at the other end of the call. “Whaddya want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“You and a million other people, buddy, save it for church and stop calling me. I'm busy tonight and every day this week.”
“I just… need some advice. I’m trying to do the right thing but I'm having a hard—”
“Right thing? Wait, who is this?”
“Oh, it's Orel.”
“Wait, Orel?”
“Yeah. Sorry to call so late—”
“No, no, uh. I thought it was your dad, honestly,” he chuckles. “You two sound exactly the same on the phone!”
“Oh,” says Orel. A lump forms in his throat.
“What’s wrong?”
“Well… it’s late, I should…”
“C’mon, I’m up now.”
“I just…” I’m worried I’m not a good person. I don’t even know if I believe in God anymore, like I used to. I think about the past every time I think of God, and I don’t know if I even love Him anymore. “Need help. I don’t know. I’m trying to manage all this different s-stuff and I feel like God isn’t helping at all, and I just need help.” He grips the phone like a lifeline.
“Okay,” says the Reverend. “Why don’t you come by tomorrow, and we’ll talk about it.”
“You said you were busy tomorrow.”
“I thought it was your dad. He calls me too much, the guy’s got a lot of guilt, who knows why,” he says sarcastically. “Come on by. I’ll make time.”
“Okay.” He hesitates to ask for more, but… “Can you ask Stephanie if she’s free too? I wanted to call her, but I don’t have her phone number.”
“Yeah, kid. Sure can.”
He doesn’t remind the Reverend that he’s not a kid anymore, because it feels nice to have someone think that he is, and that he doesn’t have to do this all on his own.
Orel hangs up the phone, and turns, ready to go back to bed.
“Um, Orel?” asks a timid voice behind him. He turns back, and Block stands in the kitchen doorway, edges illuminated by the light from the other room.
“Yeah?”
He holds out his hand and gives him his allowance, all twenty dollars of it. “I figured I should give you this before you went to bed,” he says.
Right. He still needs to have a discussion with Block about the car. He runs a hand through his hair. He thinks, not for the first time, how much easier this would all be if he could tell him what to do and then beat the behavior out of him, but he doesn’t think he has it in him, and he doesn’t think that would work with Block anyway.
“Let’s sit,” Orel says, and they walk into the kitchen to sit under the yellow lamp light. Block is utterly silent, offering no apologies or explanations.
“Why did you drive my car into the mailbox?” Orel asks, figuring it’s as good a place to start as any.
“I don’t know. I wanted to,” says Block.
“You know… you have to do what's right even when it feels unfair. You have to give—” to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God, Orel, that means you can’t go spending your allowance on whatever you want— “the respect you owe to other people and their stuff.”
“I don't care about the right thing,” says Block.
Orel sighs. “What are you giving me this money for, then?”
“So you won't stop talking to me.”
He blinks, not expecting that answer. “What?”
“You said you wouldn't talk to me til I calmed down. And then you left, and when you came back I was calm but you didn't even look at me and you didn't say anything at all," he says.
“I just didn't want to say anything I would—” regret ever having kids, Orel, when you're my age don't do it, every minute you'll—”regret. I didn't mean I wasn't gonna talk to you anymore ever.”
“Oh,” says Block. His shoulders are hunched, and he isn't looking at Orel at all, just his hands.
He had wanted to make sure he didn't say anything cruel, or lose control and hurt him, or scare him. Orel forgets, sometimes, how Block's childhood was. It wasn't like Orel's at all, with parents who frightened hm but did, ultimately, try to engage with him. But Block had been mostly ignored for a long time. Of course Block would worry about the silent treatment lasting forever.
“I want you to do the right thing because you're good, not because you're worried about me. No matter what, I'll never stop talking to you.”
“What if I’m not good?”
Does God respond—
“Not good?”
“What if I tell you to fuck off and never talk to me ever again?”
He tells him that pretty regularly. Orel is kind of used to it.
“It doesn't matter,” he decides. “I won't… eff off.”
Block chuckles wetly. “You can't even swear,” he says.
“You and Shapey do it enough to make up for me.” Maybe he should make a swear jar or something.
“Can we go see Shapey tomorrow?” asks Block.
“Yeah.” It's been hard for the two of them to be separated. “You don’t have to hit things with the car to get me to spend time with you. You just have to ask, and if I have the time I’ll do it.”
“I know,” says Block quickly. “Duh.”
“For now, you’re not allowed to use the car anymore without supervision,” says Orel. “Once the tail light is paid for we can talk about it again.”
“Fine,” says Block, still sulky, but with less of that hopeless look on his face.
“Now go get ready for bed or you’re gonna be too tired for school.”
He rolls his eyes. “Yes, dad,” he says, mocking.
Orel would never have rolled his eyes at his dad. Which, Orel guesses he isn’t really Block’s dad, but he’s got some responsibility for him.
Maybe it's a good thing that Block isn't like Orel. He doesn't know if he could take it, having someone so naive and moldable like he always was. He would worry he was telling him the wrong thing, and it would be absorbed like a sponge. But Block isn't like that. Shapey isn't either. They’re different.
Orel goes to brush his teeth, and he looks in the bathroom mirror. He looks more like Clay every passing day. He’s seen old pictures of him from when he was around Orel’s age. He was already married by then. He wasn’t living in sin. He had a drink in his hand in every picture, and in all of his photos he never really smiled, even in the ones where he’s holding the new baby Orel.
“Orel?” says Block.
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I,” Orel smiles. “I love you too. Go to bed.”
Maybe Orel's different, too.
_________
He has lunch with Stephanie and Reverend Putty. They bring some sandwiches and have them outside the church.
He still sees them most Sundays, but it’s the first time in a long time he’s gotten to sit down with them like this and just talk. He hadn’t realized how much he missed just talking with them. It makes it feel less like he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders, when he explains it all.
“Do you think I should let him live with me?” he asks.
“God works in mysterious ways,” says Reverend Putty. “Most miracles aren’t big explosions or water turning into wine. God sends you things in ways you don’t expect. You ask for a special woman in your life, he sends you a daughter you never knew you had. You ask for what you want and God sends you something else and says deal with it.”
“I’m just worried I’ll regret it.”
“You probably will.” Orel looks up, baffled. “It’s all regrets, kiddo. That’s what free will is all about. God never promised a perfect life, just that you get to choose what to do with what you’ve got.”
It doesn’t feel like a choice. It feels like a loop he’s getting trapped in. He can see how his dad became how he is, and how his mom became how she is, and he can feel it calling to him, too, even though he always said he would never be like them ever since he first realized what they truly were.
Why place an apple in a garden if you can’t eat it? Is that the game?
“I wish God would be honest with me. It feels like He’s playing games with my life.”
“God loves playing games,” sighs Reverend Putty. “He’s a funny guy. Playing in his earth; and my delight was with the sons of men. This whole place is for playing around in.”
“So, you're saying we're just toys to Him?”
“No, we’re not—”
“It sounds like—”
“I don't know everything, I just work here! Just… be happy, Orel, that’s what God wants you to do.”
“When you need a friend other than God, you can call,” says Stephanie, passing him a note with her phone number written on it. “Or if you need your hair dyed again.”
“It was a phase, I told you," Orel insists, face red.
_________
“This place isn’t exactly paradise,” says the landlord, his cigarette dropping ash on the carpeted floor. “But it comes cheap. Young couple like you will fit right in. Three bedrooms, a play room, y’know, the works.”
Besides the peeling paint, it's really not bad. There’s a nice big window where he could watch the birds outside, and it’s in a spot close enough to his mom’s house that he can check up on her, and it's close to Christina’s parents and to work. There’s even room for Block to come over if he spends the night when he comes back from the academy.
“It’ll have room for Marion to have a playroom, and our friends could stay over in the guest room if they needed to!” says Christina. “What do you think?”
“I love it,” Orel says, feeling like something is finally going right.
_________
He comes home to a ringing phone, and he presses the receiver close to hear what the hospital has to say.
His dad had gotten too drunk, passed out in his shower and hit his head. They’d done a biopsy after asking some additional questions, and had discovered cirrhosis. He’s older than he used to be, and his body can’t take it anymore.
He’ll need nutritional supplements from here on out, and someone to take care of him. They offer Orel a brochure on counseling for alcoholics.
Christina is with him as they wait for him to wake up from the general anesthesia so he can be taken home.
“We have the guest room,” says Christina.
“I don’t want to force you to live with him.” She had just gotten out from under her mother.
“We’ll probably have to take care of my parents soon too. They’re getting older,” she sighs. “Just something you have to think about.”
It’s not just his age, though. He had done this to himself, isolated himself, pushed away everyone in his life. Then again, he had asked Orel for help once, and Orel had said he needed time to think. It’s Orel’s fault too. Or maybe this is all some sick joke, another of his dad’s ‘lessons’, pretending to be sick so Orel is forced to talk to him and feel bad for him again despite everything.
“I just want everything to be okay,” he says.
His mom was right. There aren't as many choices as he thought. Things just happen, and God hands you something, and you take it, and you deal with it for years and years and years…
Christina wipes his face with her hand, and he realizes he’s crying. He’s being far too loud. If his dad was awake he would be so mad.
But he’s not awake, he’s sleeping, and so Orel just takes his dad’s hand and holds it.
_________
His dad takes the guest room.
Orel doesn’t check on him obsessively, but it’s not not obsessive. He had looked so lifeless in the hospital, and he’s always worried he’s going to backslide.
His dad isn’t in his room. Okay, he might have gone to sit in the chair. He’s supposed to tell someone when he goes outside, since he’s really not strong enough to be going out like that just yet.
“Christina,” calls Orel. “Is dad in—”
He goes to the kitchen and freezes. His dad is opening a bottle of whiskey over the sink. He stands there like a deer in the headlights, caught. Orel doesn’t even know where he got it from, he must have either snuck it in from the hospital or gone out to buy it when Orel wasn’t there.
Orel lurches forward and grabs it from his hand. He doesn’t let go, and they struggle over the bottle, sloshing whiskey onto the floor.
“You don't drink here,” he says firmly. “I will do whatever it is you need to stop, I'll take you to meetings or… therapy, anything like that.”
His dad scoffs. “Come on.”
“Just tell me what you need and I will do it, but you can't have alcohol here.”
“But…”
“You're under my roof, mister,” says Orel firmly.
“So?”
So? So? So? Block questions in his head.
“So I have a family to worry about. I care about you, and I wish you cared about yourself too, but I can't have this happen all over again.”
"I need it," says Clay, and his voice breaks.
They stand at an impasse, neither letting go. The grip reminds Orel of a time in his youth when he had planned to sacrifice Shapey to God to prove his love. But they’d stopped him, just like Abraham and Isaac, like when God had allowed another sacrifice to be made in Isaacs place, so that he wouldn’t kill his son.
“Dad,” Orel says, voice watery. “Please.”
He’s said all he can say. Clay has the ability to do as he wants. He has free will, and a hand, and a bottle.
Clay hesitates, and tips the bottle, pouring its contents down the sink, a different kind of sacrifice.
“Thank you,” says Orel, feeling like he can breathe again. He reaches forward, and for the first time in years, he hugs his dad. Clay stands stiffly, the glass bottle still in his hand, and he finally sets it aside to hug him back.
It isn't going to be easy. Clay is going to do this again, but for the first time in his life, he chose to put the bottle down. Orel understands, then, what free will actually means to a person. For God to make this kitchen, this sink, and his father to make a choice.
Thank you, Orel says to his old friend, who he hadn’t talked to in so long, but who never really left him. He can hear Him now in all that he had thought was silence in return for his prayers. The whirring dishwasher, his dad's heartbeat. He's there. Of course He's there.
The two stand there by the sink, and the world keeps turning in it's mysterious ways.
_________
The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
“Amen to that, God,” says Orel. He loves that verse, about how things will be when the world is full with God’s love.
Orel closes his Bible, and gets ready for bed. He had tucked Marion in an hour ago, and Christina is already long asleep, tired from a day of work. Orel is tired too, from watching the toddler, but he likes to take a bit of time each night to himself, and to talk to his old pal God. He walks down the hall, steps quiet so he doesn’t wake anyone, and he enjoys the silence of the night time.
Quiet giggles come from the bedroom, and he pauses by the door. Marion is supposed to be asleep, but light floods under his door. That’s strange, because Marion can’t even reach the light switch.
Orel cracks the door and peers inside. Marion is on the floor, playing with toys. Orel’s own Jesus figurine is there, riding a horse toward the dollhouse. Orel opens the door further, and pauses.
Clay sits on the floor with him, holding Marion’s stuffed bear. Orel takes a moment to gather his thoughts, unsure if he should be angry, because he had told Clay he wouldn’t be responsible for discipline here. He remembers the many times Clay had broken his toys in his own childhood just because he loved them too much, or they made too much noise.
“It’s late,” says Orel, and the two turn to look at him as if just noticing his presence.
Clay smiles guiltily. “We were just playing,” he says.
So he wasn't about to rip up his bear after all. It's not exactly relief that Orel feels, but something heavier, like an ancient sadness he's always carried, so deep-rooted he hadn't even realized it was there.
“Not praying before bed?” Orel asks sardonically before he can think.
Clay and Orel share a look packed with many things, and Clay opens his mouth to say something.
"Orel, I—"
“Jesus is playing too,” Marion interrupts, waving the Jesus figurine in his hands. “Come play, daddy!”
Clay doesn't move. He doesn't yell. Orel isn't a little kid anymore, and Clay isn't a monster. He's just an old man playing with his grandchild, and Orel is a dad, and they're both trying to be better than the past.
Where did the time go?
Orel takes a moment, and he sets his grudges down, and he leaves them outside the door.
“I’m coming,” Orel smiles, and he takes the toy and kneels by the bed. Clay leans over and does a funny voice for one of the stuffed animals, and Marion smacks the plastic blocks together to hear the noise.
There’s some question about God and the Devil, a father and his creation. It’s a question that’s older than Orel, maybe older than time, something no one could answer but the two themselves. But he doesn't have to wonder anymore.
Orel kneels on the floor with his old toys to pray like children do.