Godless by Pete Hautman Page A

night.”
    â€œAren’t you feeling well?”
    â€œI’m
fine
. I was having a religious experience.”
    She gives me her worried, disbelieving look—a look I know well. I swing my legs over the edge of the mattress and sit up.
    â€œOkay, okay, I’m up already. You happy now?”
    â€œI’d be happier if you weren’t such a smart mouth.” Now she gives me her pissed-off, you’ll-pay-for-this-young-man look.
    â€œSorry,” I say—and I really am. My mother can get very sulky when she doesn’t get treated right. And sulky usually translates to innumerable demands for help with un-fun things like yard work, basement cleaning, and attendance at extra-boring church functions. I decide to head her off at the pass. I look out the window. “Looks like another hot day. Guess I better get busy.”
    â€œOh? Doing what?”
    â€œI want to get the lawn mowed before it gets too hot out.”
    She looks shocked, and why not? This will be the first time I’ve ever mowed the lawn without direct orders from a superior officer. Better to take on one quick job than let my mother enslave me for some major all-day monotony.
    â€œIf you’d gotten up like any normal person you’d be done with it by now,” she says, but I see the sulk draining out of her, and I know I made the right move.

    The problem with little jobs is that they sometimes turn into big jobs. I have the lawn one-quarter mowed when the mower sputters and coughs and dies. Diagnosis? Fuel crisis. Need gasoline. Call Kuwait. Raid an oil tanker. Drill a well.
    Or walk into the garage and grab the big red gas can off the shelf.
    Unfortunately, the big red gas can is bone dry. I remember now. I used it up last time I mowed the stupid lawn. I stomp into the house, making plenty of noise.
    â€œMom!”
    No answer.
    â€œMOM!”
    I hear a muffled response. I clomp up the stairs. “We’re out of gas!”
    â€œWhat’s that, honey?” Her voice is coming from the bathroom.
    â€œWe’re out of
gas
,” I say to the bathroom door. “I need you to drive me to the gas station.”
    â€œHoney, I just got in the tub. You’ll have to walk.”
    â€œMom, it’s like a
mile
.”
    â€œIt won’t hurt you to get a little exercise.”
    â€œI don’t have any money.”
    â€œMy purse is on the kitchen counter.”
    I take a breath and almost say something more … but then I don’t. It wouldn’t do any good. When my mothertakes a bath in the middle of the day, it’s serious business. She probably has bubbles up to her chin and a stack of magazines.
    I grab a twenty out of her purse and the empty gas can out of the garage and slog off down Decatur to Cedar Lake Road, then left toward the Amoco station. Step, step, step, step—this is very boring. I am bored. I am walking with an empty red plastic container, with fifty miles of trackless desert waste between me and the Amoco oasis. If I keep walking I might make it by mid-day tomorrow. With each step the gas can hits my right knee. I switch hands, and now it brushes my left knee. Step, swishstep, step, swishstep. I try hanging the can over my shoulder, and for about fifty steps that feels okay, but then my elbow starts to hurt, and I switch shoulders. Only 49.95 miles to go. I try balancing the can on my head, but it presses the top button of my baseball cap into the center of my skull. I go back to Plan A: Step, swishstep, step, swishstep….
    Night comes and goes, I follow the ridge of a sand dune that stretches to the horizon, I fight off a pack of insane meercats, I struggle blindly through a sandstorm. Hours later, parched and choking on Saharan grit, I spy the waving fronds of a date palm beyond the next rocky ridge. A mirage? I stay the course—step, swishstep, step, swishstep—and drag myself to the shimmering edge of the oasis. There it is, the artesian