Nemesis - 15. Chapter 15: The Evangelical Project, Part 1, Boston

The Evangelical Project
Part 1: Boston

“I was dead for millions of years before I was born
and it never inconvenienced me a bit.”
—Mark Twain

Caden

The coffee shop across the street from the hospital did a good business: people who were early for appointments, people who were between appointments, people who had fasted before a blood drawing and were desperate for carbohydrates.

I was a member of the between appointments group and the need carbs group. I had finished three hours of physical therapy at the out-patient center, and was early for an appointment with my neurosurgeon. Her office was close to the coffee shop, so it made sense to hang out there. Physio started at 7:30 AM, and I had to leave home at 6:00 to get there on time. That left little time for breakfast.

It was nearly 11:00 AM, and I was wishing for coffee and debating between a cheese Danish for breakfast and a chicken salad sandwich for lunch when the little boy came through the door. It took me a minute to think about it, and then I realized: home schooled. I knew that a lot of “home schooling” involved trips to Sprawl-Mart. I understood that. With a few anecdotal exceptions—the kids who won spelling bees, for example—most home schooled kids were getting only enough education to qualify them to stock shelves or, for the smarter ones, to run a cash register. However, I didn’t know there was a “coffee shop” class, too. Then I saw what he was doing.

First, you’ve got to see this kid. He was probably 12 years old, but he looked younger, and skinny—emaciated, really. He was so very typical of the offspring of evangelical home-schoolers who are so determined to fill the world with their brainwashed children they pump out babies like Pez and then can’t afford to feed them right. His hair was so fine I thought it was going to blow into a halo every time he turned his head. His face was pinched: everything pointed to his nose. His upper arms were noticeably thinner than the elbow joints. Baggy pants covered his legs, but I knew his knees would be knobby and his thighs and shins, skinny.

He walked past me and dropped a tract on my table. I looked at the lurid cover: “You Can Be Debt Free!” I flipped it open. No, it wasn’t a come-on for a credit-cleaning scam. It was a different kind of scam. The text was all about the debt we owed to god, and how we could repay that debt by prayer. And by logging on to a web site that would almost certainly offer to sell religious “training materials” and solicit donations for this “ministry.” Yeah, target the helpless and the hopeless, and get their credit card number while they still had one. I was disgusted. By the time I looked up, the kid had moved on.

He dropped his tracts on a couple more tables, and then walked out the door. I watched him through the plate glass windows. Crap, he’s headed for my car! He stuck tracts into the door handles of a couple of cars, and then walked toward mine. I reached for my keys with the remote that would cause the horn to blow and the lights to flash, but paused. It’s not his fault; don’t take it out on the kid! I watched him stuff paper in the door handle and then wander into the parking lot. A few minutes later, he got into the back seat of a Lincoln Navigator. I’d seen the driver, earlier. He was a young man, wearing a silk shirt, dress slacks, and an expensive watch. His hair was styled, not just cut.

Home schooled? I don’t think so. That boy is being used by some televangelist or “internet-evangelist.” Same thing, only worse. I wondered when the “e-vangelists” would demand a “dot-god” suffix for their internet addresses.

I unfolded and refolded the tract until it fell into four pieces, the whole time thinking, I wish there were something I could do.

The neurosurgeon used her taser to measure nerve conductivity and speed. It wasn’t really a taser, but it felt like one, or what I thought one might feel like. After she analyzed the data, she agreed that I should continue the physical therapy. That suited me: it helped keep me from the boredom that otherwise had overtaken and consumed my life. Afterwards, I went back to the coffee shop. Since the speed of my nerve impulses had been measured, I could perk them up with the caffeine I’d been denied until now. So what if it were 2:30 in the afternoon: I wouldn’t get any sleep, anyway.

That was Wednesday. On Friday, I was back for another physical therapy session. But, I was late. My neighbor’s car wouldn’t start. She would lose her job if she were late. I lent her my car, and walked a half-block to the MTA bus stop.

I would have been on time if a bunch of Obama’s brown-shirt storm troopers, under the aegis of a Department of Homeland Security anti-terrorism team, hadn’t boarded the bus. What they lacked in legal, constitutional police powers they made up with with intimidation. One stood over the driver, daring her to either move the bus or call her dispatcher. A school girl—dark blue skirt, white blouse, and knee-socks of a parochial school—tried to make a call on her cell. One of the brown-shirts yanked the phone from her hand, pulled out the battery, and gave her back the phone. He smirked as he put the battery in his pocket.

They worked their way down the aisle, and were nearly to me when some guy protested their demands for his identity card. He cited a Supreme Court decision (as if the Obama administration cared about the Supreme Court) and the Bill of Rights (ditto). They threw him to the floor, tied his hands with plastic tie-ties, and dragged him away. Apparently, that satisfied their lust for power over the people, and they left the bus.

I was late, and my appointment had been given away to a standby. I was moved to a 1:30 PM slot. That’s why I was in the coffee shop, desperate for the caffeine I couldn’t have. Screw it, I thought. I don’t really care if my blood pressure gets a little high. At worst, it will kill me. Actually, at best, it will kill me.

The coffee shop was crowded, but my table was empty. It was a small table, with only two chairs, and it was in an awkward place: in the way of the self-serve pots and too near the cash register. Still, I liked it. The waitpersons didn’t have to go very far to bring my food order, and I could simply turn around in my chair for a refill. I asked for a medium cup, filled it with a robust blend, and sat.

I’d just gotten my iPad out of my man-bag and opened one of the books I was reading when a figure eclipsed the light. I looked up. It was the boy from Wednesday. The 12-year-old with the tracts.

“May I sit here?” he asked. “All the other tables are taken.”

I looked around. He wasn’t quite right; there were empty places at several tables, but mine was the only one where there wasn’t a lively conversation in process.

“Yes, you may,” I said. “May I set a ground rule?”

He looked startled, stood stock still, and raised his eyebrows. Then, he nodded.

“You may speak or not” I said. “If you speak, I will listen and reply. If I speak, you must reply. It’s called reciprocity. Is that agreeable?”

I watched him struggle with this notion, and then was surprised and pleased by his answer.

“Yes, sir, I like that.

“It’s … you’re like another friend I have.” He set down his tea, and then sat facing me.

I set the iPad on the table. He’d started the conversation and I was obliged by my own rule to reply.

“How am I like your friend?”

“He’s smart. I think you’re smart. My friend tells me about things like reciprocity, and he tells me like I was old enough to understand.”

“Your friend is truly smart if he knows not to talk down to a young person just because he’s a young person,” I said.

The kid giggled.

“It’s okay to call me a kid,” he said. “I’m just 12.” He glanced at the iPad and saw text on the screen. “What are you reading?”

“Um,” I hesitated. He’s being reared by evangelicals, fundamentalists. What they do to their children … the brainwashing that goes on before the kids can think rationally or critically … that’s child abuse. But what responsibility, what right do I have … ? I looked at his skinny body. I thought about what he had been doing Wednesday morning. I made a decision.

“It’s a book by Richard Dawkins called The God Delusion,” I said. “It’s about a way to look at the universe that’s different from that tract you left on my table and in my car door Wednesday morning.”

“How can there be any way of looking at the world except what’s in the Bible?” the boy asked. “How can any book say different?”

I thought about how to answer. I guess I took too long thinking, because the kid said, “Reciprocity … you have to answer.” He giggled. His entire face lit up when he giggled. It was if he were a different person.

“You are correct,” I said. “That was a hard question, though. There is no easy answer. Here’s a short one. It’s not the complete answer, but it’s a start.

“Ever since there were thinking people on Earth, they’ve wanted to understand how nature works, what makes day and night, what makes the seasons, what makes storms and earthquakes, what makes plants grow and babies be born, what makes people die and what happens before we are born and after we die.

“Some people decided that there were gods, or one god: a very powerful individual who was responsible for all these things. These people created religions: perhaps hundreds of different religions. One religion, based on the Jewish Bible, what you probably call the Old Testament, was the root of some of these religions. Christianity added the New Testament. Another religion that incorporated parts of the Jewish and Christian testaments was created about 1300 years ago; that’s Islam. Christianity and Islam, as well as Hinduism, Buddhism, and various folk religions, are the world’s major religions. There are many other religions. There are differences among them, but most of them believe in one or more magical beings.

“Other people came to the conclusion that there were ways to explain all these natural things without needing a powerful, magical being such as god. These people created science.

“Science and religion are not always incompatible; however, for extremists—both religious and scientific—they may seem to be.”

“What do you believe?” the boy said.

“I believe that the human mind is—or will be someday—capable of understanding all of nature, and that all of nature can be explained without requiring a divine creature who can perform miracles,” I said.

There was a long silence, then, the boy spoke again.

“Is there any room in your mind for magic?” he asked.

He sounds almost wistful, I thought.

“If someone who claimed to be a god came to this table, waved his hand, and this coffee turned into wine, I wouldn’t think it a miracle. I’d think that this human person had discovered a power that allowed him to rearrange the components of the coffee—electrons, protons, neutrons, perhaps quarks or strings—into a different combination that was wine. Or, that he was exceptionally good at slight-of-hand. Either way, I would be a little in awe of it, and I would try to understand it. I wouldn’t worship this person or ask him or her to save me from damnation. Otherwise, yes, there’s room in my mind for magic—until I understand it.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “You’re really smart,” he said. Then, he giggled. His face lit up, again. “I can’t do that … turn your coffee into wine, that is. But I can do this.”

The emaciated little evangelical boy reshaped himself into a still-slender but healthy boy. His fine, nearly colorless hair became a mass of honey-colored curls and his secondhand clothes became a curtus. A rather large sword hung from his waist.

I took a deep breath and blinked a couple of times.

“Actually,” I said. “That was a lot more impressive than turning coffee into wine. The other patrons … they’re not running away, screaming. So, I take it that I’m the only one who sees you this way? Will you tell me how you did it … and who you really are?”

The boy giggled. “Most people get afraid,” he said. “The other people in the coffee shop no longer see either of us. They could, if they looked, but they just don’t look. If they did look, they’d see the little boy with the Bible tracts.

“I don’t know how I do it, I just do it. And my name is Nemesis. I’m …” He paused and his eyes unfocused as if he were looking through me, through the cash register, and through the wall of the coffee shop. His mouth hung, slack.

I was about to invoke reciprocity when he spoke.

“I was told that I was a god. I’ve met others … including Dike and Apollo and Death. Dike says she’s a goddess, an elder goddess, and she acts like one. Apollo’s like Dike … an elder god, I think. Death, I don’t think so. He’s not like Hades or Pluto ought to be. But he’s something different.

“Actually, I just realized … I may not be a god … but I’ve got powers that I didn’t have when I was just a human. And, I’ve got a job to do. And, I heard you Wednesday thinking about the little boy passing out tracts.

“Oh, no … I wasn’t he, then. I was following him. I borrowed his appearance just now so I could talk to you.”

I pounced on this. “Why me?”

“Because I heard you thinking about the kid, and I heard you wishing you could help him. Because you can explain things like reciprocity and superstition and science.

“Oh, and I invoke reciprocity.” The boy giggled and then asked, “What’s your name?”

“Most folks call me K. D. It’s short for Caden. Caden Hopkins.”

“Caden,” the boy said. “That’s Welsh for spirit of battle. Are you sure you don’t have a little god in you?” he asked.

“The notion that each of us has a spark that is god is often part of one religion or philosophy called Gnosticism,” I said. “Many Gnostics think that we all are on the road to becoming god.”

“How come you know so much about religion,” Nemesis asked.

“I used to teach in a parochial school. Now that I can’t get around as well as I used to,” I said. “Well, I spend a lot of time reading.”

“What’s the matter with your legs?”

“Accident. My spinal cord was crushed, and the nerves were … bruised, so they don’t do their job as well as they should,” I said. “It doesn’t bother me, any.” I didn’t want to get into a long discussion about it, and I didn’t want to tell him about the pain that kept me awake at night. I think he knew I wasn’t telling the whole truth: he looked sideways at me, and raised an eyebrow.

“Let’s get back to the why me part of this conversation,” I said.

The little boy’s face got hard. He clenched his teeth; his lips were tight, straight. His brow furrowed. Have I pissed him off? I wondered.

“Because I hate what that man has done to that little boy as much as you do,” he said. “My job is to stop child abuse. I used to think that meant just sex abuse, then I found out there were other kinds of abuse. There are so many ways to hurt children … ” His eyes unfocused, as if he were staring at a cyclorama of abuse.

I was oddly relieved that the anger of this boy who said he was Nemesis, and thought he might be a god, was not directed at me. Was I starting to believe him? Well … I had said I would believe in magic until I could understand it.

“That little boy? He and a bunch of other kids from an orphanage go out every day to a different neighborhood, a different hospital, a different shopping center. They pass out tracts, they beg! They beg for donations to the orphanage. When they’re not out tracting or begging, they’re in classrooms, memorizing the bible, memorizing the sermons of the leaders of their cult, reciting their sins … and doing penance for them.”

Nemesis was shaking with anger, and I was afraid he was going to do something rash. I reached out my hand and touched his. “Please … ” was all I could think to say.

It worked. He calmed down.

“There’s more, but you’re right. I shouldn’t get so angry,” he said.

I thought it would be safe to ask, so I said, “Back to the why me part?”

“We want someone to get into their organization, to gather evidence, and to help break it up.” Nemesis paused. He took a deep breath. The anger and the flush in his face faded a little more.

“Who’s we, and why don’t you just go in there with your sword? It looks pretty deadly,” I asked.

Nemesis wrinkled his nose. “We are me, Dike, and my friends. The second question’s pretty dumb, isn’t it?”

I wasn’t accustomed to being called dumb by a little kid, god or not. Still, his tone was serious. I thought about it.

“You want to do this legally … so that you can get legal custody of these kids.”

He smiled. “I knew you were smart.” Then he giggled. When he giggled, his face lit up even more than before.

“I asked Gary … he’s my best friend … the same question. He made me think out the answer. He’s human, but he’s real serious, sometimes. It took most of the afternoon, and he had to help before I figured it out.

“Gary’s your friend; who is Dike? The goddess of justice?” I was only half-joking. The boy seized on my thought.

“Yeah. She’s a goddess and a judge.

“When can you come to Chicago with me?” the boy who called himself Nemesis added.

It didn’t take me any time to decide.

“I’ve got nothing but physical therapy scheduled for the next week. It’s probably too late to get to get a flight on a Friday, though,” I said. “Sometime, tomorrow?”

“I don’t mean, fly,” Nemesis said. “I’m a god, remember?”

He put his hand on my arm. “Grab your iPad!” I did, and fell on my butt in someone’s living room when my chair disappeared … when I disappeared from my chair. Whatever.

Disclaimers and Notes: The quotation from Mark Twain is in the public domain. Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion is an excellent and logical exposition of his rationale for atheism. Pez, iPad, and Lincoln Navigator are trademarks and property of their owners.