“What does this have to do with me?” Thomas asked.
“I’m getting there,” the stranger said with glee. “Your father worships debauchery, and your mother worships reason, but both of those will leave them empty. They’ll always be looking for something more because, while they’ll find oblivion or solace in their gods, they’ll never find rest, and so they’ll always be searching. But you’ve hit on a faith that combines the two: pure logic and pure debauchery. What your mother will never find in logic, debauchery will satisfy in you, and the meaning and purpose debauchery lacks, you’ll find in a crusade built upon logic. If only you’d just believe.”
“How do you know that I don’t believe?” Thomas asked.
“Because you don’t act. When you believe you’ll be able to do something. You should see your new friends. They don’t understand as well as you do, but they believe. You should see what they’re doing right now,” the stranger said cryptically. “Everyone blames me for destroying people’s faith, but all I really do is try to get them to believe.”
“And what about Julia, Lewis, and David?” Thomas asked. “What do they believe in?”
“For them the question is still up in the air. They’re just like their mother; they want to believe but they have to see first. For Lewis and David it’ll only be a matter of time, but poor Julia will never find what she’s looking for. Maybe you should teach her your religion, I’m sorry, your philosophy, because sooner or later she’s going to need to believe in something. I’d love to chat more but you’d better answer that,” the stranger said.
The knocking that Thomas had barely noticed grew louder until it woke him up. He groggily walked across the room and opened the door. Mary and Amy stood in the hallway and neither of them looked pleased.
“Do you know where Robert and Clint are?” Mary asked.
“I don’t have a clue. What time is it?” Thomas answered.
Jessica got out of bed. And walked to the doorway.
“It’s 2:45,” Amy said “And Clint and Robert are in jail for urinating in public, disturbing the peace, and public intoxication.”
“What are we going to do?” Thomas asked. He tried to show some concern but couldn’t help thinking that they’d only gotten what they deserved.
“You’re going to go down to the police station to get them out,” Mary said angrily.
“Me?” Thomas asked.
“Why him?” Jessica added.
“Because it’s his fault they’re in jail,” Amy snapped.
“I’ve been here all night,” Thomas explained.
“Oh we know,” Mary said.
“Then how is it his fault?” Jessica asked.
“Because he’s the one who filled their heads with all that nonsense about subjective moral absolute something or another. That’s all they talked about while we were trying to get them to stop drinking,” Mary answered.
“They need to take responsibility for their own actions,” Jessica said.
“They’re in jail,” Amy said. “The only one not taking responsibility is him.” She pointed at Thomas.
“You can’t go around convincing people that they should do whatever they want, and then say you didn’t have anything to do with their actions,” Mary noted.
“They were looking for an excuse to do whatever they wanted this week,” Jessica objected.
“And he gave it to them,” Amy retorted.
“But if he hadn’t they would’ve found another one.”
“Where?” Mary asked. “Who else do you know that talks such nonsense?”
“Look, they’re probably still drunk,” Jessica stated. “So why don’t we let them sleep it off and go pick them up in the morning.”
This answer seemed to satisfy Mary and Amy and they took a step back so Thomas could close the door.
“Can you believe them? I think they’ve had a few too many too,” Thomas said when he thought they couldn’t hear. Jessica rolled her eyes at him and went back to bed.
* * *
Peter didn’t sleep all night. He could feel the fatigue in his bones, but every time he tried to close his eyes he found that sleep eluded him. He thought about taking sleeping pills, but that would necessitate going out to the pharmacy. Instead, he stayed up flipping through the channels. With almost a hundred channels to go through he still couldn’t find anything to satisfy the hunger that welled up inside him. The sports station showed recaps of the days events several times, and he watched the same highlights over and over again throughout the night. He found infomercials wanting to sell him pills that could enhance anything he might want enhanced and other infomercials selling pills to reduce anything he had too much of.
“The whole world’s either looking for an answer or trying to make money selling one,” he muttered when he finally got around to turning off the television. He struggled free from the couch cushions and wandered into the kitchen.
“Well you’re my answer,” he said as he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a 16 ounce aluminum can. “You’re my answer and I don’t mind having to pay for you because you make me forget everything, and that’s better than sleep.”
He opened the can and drank deep. He pulled another one out of the refrigerator before settling back into the couch and turning on the television. He flipped through the channels again. “I’ve got my religion right here,” he declared when he got to one of the religious channels. “Isn’t that right? He said to the aluminum can. “You’re all the religion I’ll ever need.”
* * *
Julia woke up early on Sunday morning and put on the grubby cloths that she’d brought to work in. Sara found her sitting in the courtyard by herself, staring out at the street.
“What are you doing?” she asked innocently.
“I needed to be alone,” Julia answered.
“You don’t like being around the rest of the group do you?”
“Not really.”
“Why did you come here? My parents were fine with you staying at the house without me for a week, and I know you don’t like any of these people,” Sara said motioning to the rest of the group that had begun to gather in the courtyard. “Even if you hadn’t said so. I’d know you can’t stand them.”
“I don’t know exactly what I’m doing,” Julia said. “I feel like I’m always looking for something that I always almost find, but every time I catch a glimpse something else comes in and ruins it.”
“What do you mean by looking for something? What are you looking for?” Sara asked.
“When I was reading the Bible I wanted to believe it. But I needed to see it working in the real world, in my world. The theory seemed too good to be possible, at least in this world, and I couldn’t believe in a theory. I tried but I have to see it lived in this world to know that it’s real, and not a bunch of wishful thinking.”
“Hey, what are you guys talking about?” Nathan said walking up to them.
“Nothing.” Julia said shortly.
“Oh, well do you want to talk about something?” Nathan asked.
His demeanor was so innocent that Julia couldn’t help thinking that he really didn’t understand how obnoxious he was.
“We’re kind of in the middle of something private,” Sara said.
“So private you can’t share with your good friend Nathan? Maybe I can help?” he suggested putting his arms around their shoulders. Julia slid out from under his sweaty teenage armpit and said, “Just go.”
He left. The exasperated look Julia gave Sara made words superfluous.
“I know. I get your point,” Sara said. “So why did you come?”
“Because I wanted to help the people here by giving them a house.”
“Is that your real reason?”
“Why else would I torture myself with being around your church friends?”
“I thought that maybe you wanted to be miserable,” Sara said. “You seem to like torturing yourself lately.”
“So you t
hink I came all this way so I could be miserable.”
“I think you came all this way because in spite of people like Nathan you still want to believe.”
“I don’t know what I want for myself anymore. But I want the people down here to believe in God because they need something to hope for. Their lives are so empty sitting around in their shanty houses, trying to plant enough crops to get by, and going hungry when there’s a drought. I wish I could make them believe even if I don’t so they’d have something to live for.”
“I wish the same thing for you,” Sara said.
“I know, and I wish I could believe, but if you don’t believe something you can’t just make yourself. I need to see it lived, even if it’s just one person. All of the other crazy stories would be believable if I could see someone who lived like they believed. I need to see it lived in my world. I can’t believe in that kind of love and forgiveness without experiencing it. I wish I could be like you and just trust that it’s out there without really understanding, but I’m not.”
* * *
By the time Thomas and the girls had woken up and driven down to the police station, Robert and Clint had had enough time to sober up, forget their hangovers, and get ready to go out again.
“You really missed out man,” Robert said to Thomas as they walked out of the station.
“Don’t worry,” Clint jumped in. “We’re going to do the whole thing over again, exactly the same.”
“Only better,” Robert added.
“I hope you’re happy,” Mary said as Thomas stepped past her to get into the van.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Thomas objected.
“And besides you can’t judge him because there’s no absolute standard,” Robert told her.
“Hey, why don’t we all go down to the beach,” Jessica suggested.
* * *
Julia didn’t know what she’d expected, but the small community where they were building the houses took her by surprise. A few cinder block houses dotted the streets, which, as the woman with the cheery face had explained, had been built by past groups of volunteers. The rest of the houses had been pieced together with scrap wood, cardboard, and anything else that might have been left lying on the ground. The youth split into two teams, one for each house that they were supposed to build. Someone had already laid the foundations so their first task was to move all of the cinder blocks from the big pile next to the street to the job site.
Julia put on the heavy-duty work gloves she’d bought a few days ago and tried to figure out why the people who had delivered the cinder blocks hadn’t unloaded them next to the foundations. While Julia and Sara helped move bricks, a Mexican, who was apparently some sort of foreman, gave instructions to a few of the boys while another Mexican, obviously a translator, explained to them in English what they should do. Julia noticed that Jason was one of the boys receiving instructions and watched as he started sifting sand through a wire screen. She wondered if he’d been put in the same group as her on purpose or if it was only the result of a fifty percent probability.
“Julia?” Sara said.
Hearing her name made Julia realize that she’d stopped working. She picked up two more cinder blocks to move to the new pile without looking at Sara.
“Julia,” Sara said again.
This time Julia turned around and saw her friend motioning for her to come. She set the cinder blocks back down and went over to the shade tree where Sara waited on her.
“I think the family wants to meet you,” Sara said, pointing to the woman and the two children, a girl and a boy, who sat on three upside-down buckets.
“Hola,” Julia said sheepishly as she took off the work glove to shake the woman’s hand. The woman shook Julia’s hand vigorously and gibbered away in Spanish. Sara called the translator, who put down the shovel and hurried over to the tree. The woman gibbered away again, and this time the translator explained, “She wants to know how old you are and if you have a husband. She says that she has an older son who’s working in the fields who wants to marry a white girl and live in the United States.”
Julia tried to keep her composure and asked the translator to explain that she wasn’t interested. Then she asked where the woman’s husband was. The woman hesitated and spoke more softly than she had before.
“She says that her husband is working in the fields too,” the translator explained.
“Do they always work on Sunday?” Sara asked.
The translator did his job and explained, “She says that her husband feels shame because the Americans are building his house, and he doesn’t want to be here while you are working.”
“Does she feel ashamed?” Julia asked. She looked at the translator instead of the woman. The translator repeated the question and the woman answered.
“She says that she doesn’t care who builds her house because the priest teaches that pride is a sin and . . .”
The woman interrupted the translator, and he did his best to keep up with her.
“She says that you have to be humble when you are poor because you have to know that you need help or else no one will help you. You have to leave pride for rich people because they don’t need as much help. But some rich people are good, like you because you came all the way to my town to help me. Mr. Vargas whose house is the big one down that street is rich, but he doesn’t help anyone. We all have to help each other because that’s what the priest teaches. That’s why God sent you down here to build my house.”
Julia wanted to explain that God hadn’t sent her, but instead she only told the woman thank you. She shook the woman’s hand again and put her work gloves back on. When all of the bricks had been moved, Julia helped mix sand, cement, and water to make mortar. Jason helped as the group took turns turning the concoction over time and again with old ratty shovels.
“Ask him why they don’t use a cement mixer,” a girl said to the translator. She pointed to the foreman who had just finished taking his turn mixing the mortar. The translator said something to the foreman and they both laughed.
“What’s funny?” the girl asked. The translator said something else to the foreman and they both laughed again.
“He wants to tell you a story,” the translator said as the foreman motioned to a bench made out of cinder blocks and some two-by-fours. The girl sat down. Julia stood to the side with her head turned the other way, but with both ears listening to the translator as he repeated the foreman’s story.
“There was a poor fisherman who was sitting by the ocean resting in the shade, and an American asked him why he wasn’t fishing. The fisherman said that he’d already caught enough fish for that day. Then the American explained that if he caught more fish he could make more money. The fisherman asked why would he want to do that, and the American explained that with more money he could buy a better net and catch even more fish.”
Julia’s turn came to work and she took the shovel that Jason offered her, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything to him or even look him in the eye. When she finished mixing the mortar she went back to where she’d been standing and listened to the rest of the foreman’s story.
“Then the American said that he’d be able to buy a whole bunch of boats and hire other people to work for him. Then the fisherman asked why he would want to do that. And the American said that then he would be able to relax and enjoy life. And the fisherman asked, ‘What do you think I’m doing right now?’ ”
The translator and the foreman both laughed. The girl on the bench waited for them to leave before saying to Julia, “Maybe if they’d catch a few more fish we wouldn’t have to come down here to build their houses for them.”
Julia shrugged her shoulders and walked away to stand by Sara.
* * *
“What do you want to do?” Thomas asked Jessica when they got to the beach.
“Let’s build a sandcastle,” Jessica said. Thomas had no desire to build a sandcastle, but the excitement in her v
oice made him believe that she’d forgiven him for whatever it was he’d done to make her upset the day before. He didn’t want to upset her again so he agreed. Jessica ran down to the ocean with the excitement of a little girl who was seeing it for the first time. Thomas followed behind her, jogging just fast enough so as not to lose her in the ocean of people.
“What happened to all those sad stories about her horrible childhood?” he thought when she reached the point where the sand met the water. Jessica sat down on the wet sand and sunk her fingers into it with such childish glee that Thomas couldn’t help suspecting that she was intentionally overcompensating for everything she’d missed out on as a child.
“Come on,” she called out playfully as he reached the spot she’d claimed for them.
“We’re not going to build it here?” Thomas asked.
“Why not?”
“It’s right next to the ocean. Let’s go up a little so that the tide doesn’t wash it away.”
“But the sand here is just right,” Jessica objected as she produced a handful for Thomas to examine.
“Let’s build it up there, and I’ll bring sand from here up to you while you get started.”
Jessica agreed but the playfulness had vanished from her demeanor. She moved up on the beach and began shaping the wet sand as Thomas transported it up to her.
“Sit with me,” she said after a few minutes.
“Are you sure this is enough?” Thomas asked pointing to the pile of sand he’d brought up to her.
“That doesn’t matter. Just sit with me,” she said. She gave him a twig and showed him how to make windows with it.
“How intricate is this castle going to be?” Thomas asked.
Jessica looked up from her work. “If you don’t want to help that’s okay,” she conceded.
Thomas picked up on her tone and apologized. “I just don’t understand why you want to put so much time and effort into something that isn’t going to last.”