Godless by Pete Hautman Page B

well. I plug a handful of shekels into its gaping slot and, with my last iota of energy, I punch the Mountain Dew button.
    Ka-chunk! Jackpot! The intrepid wanderer wins again. I pop the top and pour all twelve ounces down my throat.
    â€œAhhh,” I say to no one in particular. I look out past the Amoco sign, past the utility lines and treetops to the rounded silver dome of the Ten-legged One. Watching me. I salute with my empty Mountain Dew can and say, “Thank you, oh Great and Powerful One.”
    â€œYou talking to me?”
    My heart thumps, then I realize it’s just Milt, standing in the doorway of the repair bay smoking a cigarette.
    â€œHey, Milt.”
    â€œWhat happen, you run out of gas?”
    â€œThe lawn mower did.”
    Milt nods, flicks his cigarette toward the pumps, and goes back to work on somebody’s minivan. I go to the pumps, stepping on his smoldering butt on the way, fill up my five-gallon can, pay for the gas, grab the can, and head for home.
    I have walked only a few yards when I realize my mistake. Stubbornly, I keep walking. After a hundred steps I decide to try holding the can in front of my legs with both hands. Then I try propping it up on my shoulder. Then I set it down and try to compute how much five gallons of gasoline weighs.
    Shin calculated that the Ten-legged One contains one million gallons of water that weighs eight million pounds. By employing my remarkable mathematical skills, I deduce that one gallon of H2O weighs eightpounds. Gasoline must weigh pretty close to that, I figure. Brilliant!
    So how come, knowing that I would have to transport it on foot across fifty miles of trackless desert waste, I went ahead and filled the gas can with forty pounds of liquid when I only need a half gallon or so to finish mowing the lawn? Idiocy!
    I consider pouring some of the gas down the sewer, but the Ten-legged One would not approve. Gasoline is very bad for the water. I
could
haul the can back to the Amoco station, leave it in Milt’s care, then go home empty-handed and beg my mother for a ride. Not a bad plan, but kinda embarrassing. Then I catch a brainwave. Shin lives just three blocks up Louisiana Avenue. Shin has a wagon, an old red metal job he’s had ever since he was a little kid. Just what I need. An oil tanker. Amazing! Brilliant! The kid scores yet another cerebral coup. The intelligentsia are astonished by Jason Bock’s remarkable powers of reasoning.
    Bock!
(they cry from the gallery, standing in their academic robes on their chairs stomping their feet and pumping their fists)
Bock! Bock! Bock!
    â€œIt was nothing,” I say, smiling at their childish display of admiration. “I merely examined every possibility and made a carefully considered judgment as to the best course of action.”
    Bock! Bock! Bock!
    â€œThank you,” I say. “Thank you very much.”

 
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    A ND THE O CEAN WAS SAD, FOR IT HAD LAVISHED MUCH LOVE ON THESE STRANGE, THIRSTY APES . Y ET THEY GAVE NOT THE SLIGHTEST GESTURE OF RESPECT TO THEIR MAKER, AND THEY TREATED THE GREAT EFFIGIES AS THEY MIGHT TREAT A HOUSE OF WOOD, OR A PILE OF STONE .
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12
 
    â€œGuess where I was at five o’clock this morning.”
    â€œNot in bed.”
    â€œHow’d you know that?”
    â€œIf you were in bed you wouldn’t have asked me where I thought you were.” Shin carefully lifts his little red wagon from the hook on the garage wall. “You’re going to be careful with it, aren’t you?”
    â€œAs if it were my own. So, if I wasn’t in bed, where was I?”
    Shin scrunches up his mouth and bites his cheek, making him look like a guy trying to eat himself.
    â€œYou were having breakfast with Elvis Presley.”
    â€œThat was last week.”
    â€œThen I give up.” He rolls the wagon back and forth on the garage floor. “You aren’t going to ride it down any hills, are you?”
    â€œI’m going