Event in Progress

Chapter Twelve

Jesus loves me, me, me.

(Repeat 4x)

(Repeat 1st verse 4x, 2nd verse 4x, all 8x)

Being a Christian today didn't mean any commitment, it didn't mean any standard of behavior, it didn't mean you believed any specific doctrine. It didn't mean anything actually. Everyone was a Christian because, damn it, this was America. God wouldn't send an American to hell. Not when there were Arabs in the world.

Christine knew she was judging too harshly. After all, there were a few churches that violated this tendency and actually taught their members things, such as what was in the Bible. These churches consisted of a combined total of twelve people. But Westside Reformed Baptist Church was one of those places, and Christine Swan went because she was fed up with the trite commercialization of religion found in so many "contemporary" Christian worship centers and trinketariums. She wanted something with substance, something that had the ring of truth to it. She wanted something solid and sure, and she found it in the Bible.

Loren went because Tony went and she was in love with him. She was, therefore, typical of the people who rubbed Christine the wrong way. But Swan didn't let that get to her. She continued going to church because she believed. She believed that God was a sovereign God, that He did what He wanted, that He didn't exist to suit your fancy. God wasn't a genie in a bottle that would grant you your wish for a boyfriend if you promised not to lust over him (at least not on Sundays while you were praying—God would understand if you couldn't avoid lust all the time). God wasn't your personal wish machine.

Swan couldn't worship a God who only existed to give you warm fuzzies and make you feel good about yourself, as if there was nothing more important in the world. No people who were broken or hurting. Just you and your ego.

She couldn't worship a God whose sole reason for creating you was so that you could become your own idol, bowing down and worshipping your image in the mirror every morning. Swan's God wasn't the God of emotional chaos and random spasmodic episodes, holy laughter or sudden exclamations of "God told me you should get a vasectomy!" God was a God of truth and reason and intellect.

When Christine said "Soli Deo Gloria" she meant it. When she prayed she meant that too. For her, God wasn't some ethereal force that existed somewhere north of Saturn, some higher being who loved you just because He was bored and had nothing better to do with His time, some entity that really didn't give a shit what you did as long as you said, "Sorry God" at some point before you died. Swan couldn't have worshipped a God that shallow. She couldn't have worshiped the modern Christian God at all.

That's why she stuck to the God she found in the Bible instead.

The hymn finished and Swan sat down in the pew. She wondered if McKnight was at church, if he was even religious in any sense of the word. She hoped so, because she knew the Bible passage that said not to be unequally yoked. But even as that passage came to mind, she shrugged it off.

She wasn't really interested in Sean McKnight, after all. She couldn't let herself be interested in him. It was absurd to even contemplate such a notion.

The pastor began to pray. Christine finally put all her thoughts to one side and, for the next hour, she didn't think of how she might be falling in love at all.

* * *

McKnight was definitely not in church. After he returned from the Raven's Tail, he tried to go back to sleep, but of course with the sun so bright he couldn't do that now. Furthermore, he could hear sounds from the parade as they tore through his paper thin apartment walls and the caffeine that coursed through his veins made his heart race ever onward toward a heart attack.

He finally dragged himself out of bed, but only because his bladder was so full it threatened to burst and run down his side like a wounded water buffalo with a cheetah attached to its hamstring. And with metaphors like that, McKnight realized he could get a job with National Geographic.

As lion bait.

After Sean relieved himself, he looked at the mirror and felt a stab of sadness in his heart at the reflection that stared back at him. He looked haggard. Dark circles surrounded his eyes and he looked like death, but he noted that his eyes were no longer bloodshot. If he had to guess, he'd say after a while your eyes adapted to no sleep. Maybe it was just too much work for your eyes to continue to be blood-red. Maybe they were so tired, blood just ceased pumping through them completely.

Despite not being blood shot at the moment, his eyes ached. They were dry, that was the problem. McKnight needed to cry. But despite how sad he felt, the tears wouldn't fall. He walked out of the bathroom and sat at his computer, hovered his mouse over Insomniac.

He didn't want to write any more. The words would come again later that night, he was sure of it; but for the moment, he wanted to think about nothing. He wanted to just sit there and cry, just cry.

God, why couldn't he cry? The tears just refused to come. They sat there at the edge, and the harder he tried to make them fall the further they retreated from his grasp. McKnight felt the rising tide of frustration as he realized he couldn't even accomplish this simple task. Not even staring straight into the fan brought tears to his eyes.

Finally, he returned to his bed, sat on the edge of it. He glanced at his TV hooked up to his Xbox, which also functioned as his DVD player. On top of the console was the DVD cover.

We Were Soldiers.

He pulled the DVD out of the case and slipped it into the drive. The Xbox booted and then the menu popped up. He navigated the menu with his controller, started the movie and turned up the volume to max.

McKnight had seen We Were Soldiers more times than he could remember. He had most of the lines memorized already, but that didn't stop him from watching it again. Because of one specific scene. Not just any scene. The Scene.

It was the Telegraph Scene to be specific. The scene where all the wives found out about their husbands being killed in Vietnam. And every time he saw that scene, McKnight felt his heart wrenched like a lug nut on a flat tire. He thought of the boys fighting wars in the Middle East, he thought of the battles the Marines had fought taking over Pacific Islands in World War II. He thought of the Air Force during the Vietnam War. He thought of the Civil War infantry. But most of all, he thought about the women who had been forced to pay the ultimate price. They had been forced to live after their husbands were killed.

And then, only then, would the tears finally fall. They would stream down his face without him even noticing that they were falling. He would just suddenly feel them dance through his beard and drip down onto his chest, and he would realize that his vision was blurry and he would rub his eyes.

He had watched the movie so many times he could close his eyes and still imagine every single scene, except he couldn't remember what the screen showed for five minutes after those telegraphs were delivered. It was all a blur.

It was the only way that McKnight could make himself cry anymore. It was the only way he could feel anything now.

McKnight felt the anticipation of the scene, even though it was still so far off. And he wondered what it would be like if he married Tiffany Narthrup from work, or Christine or April from the Café. Or maybe some random stranger from off the street. Would they care if they got a telegram saying that McKnight was dead? Would his death mean anything?

For a moment, McKnight wished he was in the Army for the sole purpose of getting shipped over to the Middle East so a suicide bomber could blow up next to him. That way, his life would have meant something. At least then he could have died for his country.

And then the telegrams showed up on the screen and the world turned blurry again and he wondered why a bus didn't just crash through the side of the house and end it all now.