Short People by Joshua Furst Page A

her, but now they’re gone from the room and the air chills behind them.
    Later, when he opens his eyes, the house is dark.
    Shawn catches himself asking,
Jesus, please help me get a good grade
as he sits at his school desk behind a math test. He shudders and stops himself. What’s the use?
    At recess he stands on the edge of the soccer field, watching his classmates play French tag. His arms are crossed and his face is stern. He’s not condemning them, though that’s what it looks like. He is condemning himself for his urge to condemn them. They run in circles like chickens, tackling each other, kissing and groping and kissing. He can no longer say with conviction that what they’re doing is wrong—Jesus is no longer on his side. Maybe He never was. He feels like a very old man, and his classmates are far away from him. They are children, innocents, somehow able to act without thinking, to run and tackle and kiss and grope without worrying about the meaning of their actions. Shawn imagines that as opposed to him—who pours his every urge through a moral filter, and then does nothing for fear of doing something wrong— they live on impulse, with immediacy, and are able to interpret what happens to them through ad hoc, ever-changing conceptions of their connection to the life around them. He’s in a gray zone between what he believed just last week and an alternative he can’t conceive of. He wishes he could join the other kids and play, simply play. He surveys the girls chasing around the field. They’re mostly flat-chested and lanky, distinguishable from the boys only by haircut. One girl attracts his attention, though. Her thin brown hair blows like flax in the wind; her vineyards are, if not in bloom, at least budding; her fawns nuzzle their heads against her sweater. Unlike most of the other girls, she isn’t chasing a specific boy. Instead, she kicks around the field halfheartedly, awkward and shy as she loops through the throng. Shawn could catch her easily. She’s a grade above him, and he doesn’t even know her name. If he caught her, he could pull her to the ground like the other boys do and lie on top of her. He could clamp her wrists above her head and then he could kiss her and then he could, he’s not sure, maybe say something that would make her smile so she wanted to kiss him too. Even though he’s pretty sure that God wouldn’t crack lightning down on his head for this—God isn’t listening, God isn’t looking—Shawn can’t bring himself to act. For one thing, he’d get dirty rolling around in the grass, stains on his jeans and his white oxford shirt, scuffs on his shoes, his hair all affray. For another, just because God doesn’t care, because God isn’t there, does that mean it’s okay to tackle the girl? She might cry and pull his hair. She might be angry with him. She might bite his tongue off. Shawn wanders away from the soccer field and contemplates the four-square court painted on the pavement in front of the school, hoping his thing relaxes before he’s called in from recess.
    When he gets home, Shawn sits in the new chair and stares out the window, spinning his finger in figure eights across his left temple. He leaves his post for dinner only at his father’s command. He cleans his plate quickly, mumbles “Can I be excused?” and then leaps back into his plastic-wrapped throne. He’s looking for something out there in the night, but he doesn’t know what it is. There’s no word for it. He doesn’t bother to ask God for insight. Instead he derides himself: he is too timid, he hides behind faith, when, really, why shouldn’t he have chased down the girl on the soccer field and kissed her? There are so many things he’s turned away from for fear of where he’d end up if he walked toward them. Why shouldn’t he have looked at the
Playboy
the tough boys in the bathroom tried to force on him before they gave him a swirly? Really, what’s so wrong with rock-and-roll