Zee pulled over to a place called Quickstop Shop in the town of Everitt. The sign over the shop read: Liquor, Ice Cream, Ammunition. We were in the boonies of Western Michigan alright. I got myself a pop from one of the two fridges and paid for it while Zee used the bathroom. The lady greeted me nicely, and she gave me a warm goodbye on my way out. Her one-legged husband watched me the whole time.
I didn’t want to generalize a whole community, but I did that night.
I walked out back and sat on a big stone they seemed to use to indicate one side of the parking lot. The stars were covered in clouds, but it was a warm evening anyway, and I found myself thinking and wondering whether stealing this manuscript was gonna do me any favors.
Zee pulled the car around after kicking the front and parked it idling near me. He sat down and we stared into the nothingness that pervaded the sky.
“We should go back home,” I said. “This is crazy. I don’t have a thief’s bones in me.”
Zee patted my back reassuringly. “Sure you do.”
I looked at him discerningly. “You sure about that?”
“No,” he said, and he took a slug from one of the underseat beers he’d been hoarding. “I think either way it goes, this is good for you. If you want to turn back, I’ll turn back. But I just feel like I’m supposed to help you.”
“Because of what a book told you when you were a kid?”
Zee shrugged. “I guess. You’re also my friend, Neil.”
“That doesn’t help me with everything, Zee. I’m still unsure of all this.”
“Maybe check out his house first,” Zee replied. “Then you can decide to turn back … or you can go on the attack.”
I thought for a while and said, “Okay,” and I stared up at the clouds as the parted a little and revealed the moon.
***
We listened to an odd broadcast on our way across the state. A preacher I guess talked about the Lord and the Bible and how it related to the stars and sky. It was a space sermon. And he talked about the stars bouncing off each other and how they created the planets. And the planets broke off from one another and became other planets, and this happened over and over and over again, and suddenly there was the universe. And Pluto was a planet, goddamit.
Sorry, took the lord’s name in vain, but God controlled all of that, he said.
“The cosmos is infinite and it moves at the speed of incompressible light and sound and we are but the children who watch. Our father guides us through this light and into space and we watch, mesmerized, at what he can show us through Divine light and Heavenly opulence. He loves us and the expansion of the universe shows his heart in a complete unerring light. Maybe our brothers and sisters want to guide us out there. Maybe they want to see our faces again. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
We could love them, our space brothers and sisters, and we could hold their hands and sing them prayers. They ask nothing of us except for our love. That’s all they want, just our love, and our redemption, and, and, and …
and parts of our brains, I thought.
