Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas

doubt the float we were constructing would be the most original, but as members of GOD, we harbored little hope of winning the cash. What would the judges think of our entry? We discussed at length what direction we wanted to go with the float before critiquing the sketches offered by Dub (man-sized numerals arranged in the order of a phone number drawn at random from the Houston phone book), Samantha (a giant football player dressed in Grace’s blue and gold; the hitch?—the linebacker was pushing a baby carriage), and Lynnette (the standard Grace Buccaneer broncobusting a Memorial Mustang—she was still unclear on the tenets of dadaism). We settled on Trey’s sketch of a carpenter’s claw hammer long enough to extend from the rear of the trailer and have its head positioned directly above the cab of the truck. The sketch evoked different reactions in all who observed it. Given its angle and red handle, I likened it to the hammer and sickle of the old Soviet Communist Party. Missy was struck by the “raw sexual energy,” Zipper the violence, and Lynnette thenotion Grace would hammer the Mustangs. Holly, with perception nearest the artist’s intentions, liked the clean lines.
    Bill converted the naysayers by offering to modify the concept a bit.
    â€œYou know,” he said, holding the sketch in both hands, “with a lawn mower engine and a couple bicycle gears, I could make this hammer swing up and down like it’s bashing in the cab of the truck.”
    As if any of us needed more reason to feel superior, the speed, efficiency, skill, artistic vision, and wit with which our float proceeded only served to cement our hubris. But our newfound loyalty to GOD didn’t owe primarily to the quality of the project. I think what we experienced was one part Amish barn-raising enthusiasm and one part Chicano gang member group reliance. We went to lunch with fellow dadaists. We waved at each other in the halls. We sat next to each other in classes we shared.
    As I abandoned my initial aloofness, Dub and I began an ongoing game in geometry. We took turns foretelling the futures of our classmates. These ran from standard hipster slagging, “She’ll be the first woman to actually give birth to 2.2 children,” to epics nearly always ending in slapstick death. Dub killed off an especially perky front rower with invading laser-toting Neptunians who regarded hand-raising as a hostile act. Normally, the trouble with becoming acquainted through the taunting ritual is that you’re forced to temper your pithiness lest you A) reveal yourself as a stone-hearted asshole or B) accidentally offend your cohort. Dub would have none of that dewy-eyed compassion shit. She went for blood.
    I no longer feared Dub (okay, not as much); she was a kindred spirit. Rhonda, however, intimidated the hell out of me. She was sending out signals I was not too green to interpret: I would catch her staring at me; she would stand in my very American-sized personal space when speaking to me; she kept finding reasons to touch me, whether it was to try on one of my earrings, rub my shoulder to get my attention, or once, to pull my wallet out of my back pocket to get money for extra paint. Before I could say anything, she pulled out a five and announced that I didn’t believe in safe sex.

    The Wakefield Picayune came out today. Among other things, it said that, “York, an active member of a church group at his previous school in Texas, plans to attend a local community college. He sees a career in high school counseling in his future.”

    Friday and Saturday nights were normally sacrosanct. Doug had arranged our float work schedule so as to allow social lives, or in my case, enable me to supplement my meager, by Clear Lake standards, allowance. But with a week remaining before the parade, it was obvious we needed the weekend to complete Get Hammered —which had become the working title of our rolling