The Laws of Average by Trevor Dodge Page B

couldn’t quite think of to remind the ex-wife, the kid, the girlfriend, the other girlfriend, the new girlfriend, about how knowledgeable he was in the whole God and eternity thing. It never left the dash except to open and close, his fingers like fleshy butterflies, cradling the delicate cocoon of belief inside its shell. It never asked to go inside his little apartment and spend the night on the water-stained nightstand next to his bed, the one ringed and ringed by the same stubby glass over and over again, roaming and shifting on the buckling and peeling paint. Things that happened next to the nightstand in that broken down old bed were not acceptable for it to be witness to. It would no doubt erupt in protest just stepping up to the threshold of his apartment, unable to comprehend all the things that it might see or overhear while marking the path of the sun on the nightstand. This bible, after all, started out as an innocent boy’s way to fit in all those years ago, given to him by his grandfather before his death. The boy had asked specifically if he could have it, remembering seeing it every week tucked under the rigid old man’s arm as he walked into the church, the one without the cross on the steeple.
    But there is another book in this story. The one he borrowed from his ex-wife, the one she thought she still had in her grandmother’s bible bag that was in her hope chest but wasn’t because he had it. And make no mistake: he had to have it, as a totemic piece of her. So there it was, hidden, stowed in the center console of his pickup, that little piece of her that he carried with him everywhere he drove. He knew he wasn’t supposed to have it but he couldn’t help himself. Temptation took over. It was the bible given to her in high school by one of her friends who was trying to convert her. It really wasn’t a bible per se; it was a rendition from the church she had attended as a young girl. The church that he had grown up in, and was, as he routinely professed to her before/during/after their marriage, “valedictorian” of.
    And just as the one bible on the dash didn’t go in the house to lay on the nightstand, the other bible didn’t go into the center console; they were kept separate. The one wasn’t allowed to see what the other was allowed to see, and neither were allowed to see what the nightstand was allowed to see. All of these things were kept separate from each other. Just as he had kept separate the wife and kid from the girlfriend, the girlfriend from the other girlfriend, the work from all of the above.
    Later that night of the one day, he swore he had made sure to cover the dashboard bible up as he always did with whatever happened to be in the truck that day, usually work orders for the sleepy little lumber company he worked for. When all the heavy breathing and moaning had stopped, though, he noticed the bible peeking out of the papers.
    After it was all said by someone else’s secretary to his then-wife, that one day cost him his marriage, cost him his family, cost him his home. And the bible watched it all and never saved any of it, and he wondered why. And it was the very fact he could still wonder at all which led him to realize that that one day had not cost him his faith. It was a for-real revelation. The new girlfriend, the one he allowed everyone to see and find out about but not ever give up, she was the one the bible didn’t get covered up for.
    Rephrase: she was the one the bible wanted to see.
    Maybe the dashboard bible knew in hindsight that it couldn’t save either one of the people that were in the truck on that one day. Which was something the console bible almost certainly also knew. And maybe since neither bible saved him, his marriage, his family, maybe it was their fault. After all, this was what his grandfather taught him about faith, in the stilted phrases the old man used: “pray on this,” “sincere