“Religion sucks,” JJ said to Lila. “Everyone’s fine until you say something slightly offensive. Then…”
“Let me guess,” Lila said as she munched a scone. “You told someone you couldn’t be friends.”
“Well, we’re just at the hockey game having a good time and the dude is trying to get my number. He wants to hang out and talk about God. Or life. Or just talk.” JJ fiddled with the greasy wrapper from his finished muffin. He mashed his finger into the wrapper and then licked off some off the crumbs stuck there.
“You said you would give this a chance.” Lila looked at her scone. “Not as many raisins as usual.”
“This was your big idea and I’m going along with it.” JJ crumpled the muffin wrapper and pushed it away. “Synagogue, fuckin pagan solstice bonfire, and this whole Christian thing.”
“Hey, it was just a suggestion.” Her eyes, usually concerned when looking at JJ, flared with exasperation. Lila burned cool until the match was struck and then she quickly burned hot. “You’ve been like this lost puppy since you came back here. Then winning the lottery. That’s the worst thing that could’ve happened.”
“You make it sound like I’m shut down, completely empty.”
“And that’s why I suggested you check out a few beliefs. Go to a few churches, try something.” Lila’s calm had returned and she was fiddling with the remaining crumbs of her scone, arranging them on the plate into a circle.
“Maybe I do need something.” JJ looked out over Lila’s head. He looked into the street where a large man in a robe was looking into the café. He looked like Obi-wan crossed with Harry Potter death eater. “Hey, maybe that guy’s got the answer.” He gestured with his chin and eyes.
Lila swung around in her seat to look at the holy man peering in to the café. His robes were brown and cinched at his waist by a black utility belt. His head was encircled by a thin strip of hair above his eyebrows, ears, and neck. The dome on top was shaved and tattooed with another face looking to the sky. The man reached into a belt pouch, pulled out an iPhone, and assumed the texting/facebook stance.
Lila turned back to the table. “No, JJ,” she said. “Hipster druids don’t have what you’re looking for.”
Author: David Ferland
JJ Goes to a Hockey Game
“No offense,” said JJ. “But we’ll never be that kind of friends.”
“What do you mean,” said Ben. It was between periods at the hockey game and the Zamboni was finishing its rounds. The church group had seats behind one goal about halfway up.
“I mean you keep inviting me over. You keep inviting me out for a beer. I haven’t responded. I’m hoping you’ll stop asking but you don’t. Now you’re pressing me.”
“I just thought…”
“We have nothing in common,” JJ said.
“We have the church.”
“We don’t even have that in common,” JJ said. “I’m trying out the church. Giving it a chance. Looking for a connection to God.”
“Have you found that connection?”
“Yes but not like you. You find God in a group of people all thinking the same way. I’m just looking for a different perspective.”
“Well, isn’t a church a group of people who all believe the same way,” Ben asked.
“That’s like being a fan,” said JJ. He gestured out at the arena, the glowing white ice and the milling fans. The throbbing AC/DC and ads everywhere. JJ sighed. “Here’s why we can’t be friends. You actually care who wins or loses this game.”
“Well, we’re the home team. Everyone’s cheering for them.”
“This is minor league hockey. None of the players want to be here. The coaches don’t want to be here. You don’t live in this city. Me neither. I don’t want to live in this city.”
“No one wants to live in this city,” said Ben.
“Exactly,” said JJ. “But you’ve been cheering the whole game as if this is life or death. You actually care or who wins this game between teams of players who want to be someplace else.”
Ben was looking hard at JJ. “You think we’re all a bunch of idiots,” he said.
“No, no, that’s not it,” said JJ. “I’m just saying why we can’t be friends outside of church.”
The home team was emerging from someplace under the stands. The music rose and the crowd roared to life. Ben went to get to his feet then sat back down and leaned toward JJ.
“You must not have many friends,” Ben said. Then he stood and clapped as the players swooped and veered on the ice, warming up for the last period. JJ sat as the others stood around him clapping to the music. He felt like a little kid in a sea of adult legs, trapped and ignored.
JJ thought of the bus ride home with the church group. “That’s gonna be a long half hour,” he muttered. Then he stood with the other 4,136 hometown fans to watch the third period.
December 14, 2012
“It’s like the worst kick in the gut,” JJ said into the phone. “Everything’s gone out of me. I don’t know what to do.”
“You can pray.”
“I can’t pray.” JJ sat in the car in the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse. He had been looking at the property when the news came on the radio. “I’ve been sitting here listening for two hours. I don’t know what to do.”
“Stop listening,” Lila said. “I won’t listen. I can’t watch. My imagination’s enough to get the horror. I don’t need the details.”
JJ switched off the radio. Cars swished by on the damp street along the parking lot. The view out the windshield was distorted with rain. The warehouse loomed, all brick and dark windows, many broken.
“I know what you can do,” said Lila.
“What,” said JJ and thought of the ride to the town, of joining with other people at the site, of vigils and tears.
“Call someone with kids and see how they’re doing.”
JJ felt the mix of release and fear of suddenly knowing the right answer but being daunted by what’s next.
“Call your brother, JJ,” Lila said. “Let them know you’re there.”
“Yeah,” said JJ. “Yeah, ok.”
“Call them now. Then call me back later.”
JJ heard his breathing in the quiet sealed car and cracked a window. “Thanks. You’ve always known what to do.”
“I know you. Now hang up and call them now,” Lila said and she hung up.
JJ sat for a moment. He reached to turn the radio back on but pulled his hand back. He scrolled through his phone contacts and felt the familiar mix of resistance, guilt, and love that rose when he contacted his brother.
“Hello.” A woman’s voice. Jane, his brother’s wife
“Hi, it’s JJ.”
“Oh my God. JJ, I was just praying for a sign. For something to help explain this. I was just praying,” she said and began to sob.
“I’m here,” JJ said. “I’m here.”
“I’m here,” JJ said. “I’m here.”
“Brian’s coming home soon,” she managed. “We’re going to get the kids from school.”
“I’m just thinking of you guys, the girls.”
“Wait,” she said. “He’s here.” There was the shuffling, the muffled words, then JJ’s brother came on the line.
“Hey, little brother,” Brian said. His voice was remote and raw.
“Hey.”
“Thanks for calling.” Brian cleared his throat. “We’re going to get the girls at school.”
“Ok,” JJ said. “I just wanted…”
“Let’s get together at Christmas, ok?”
“Yes,” JJ said. “I really want to see you guys.”
Fiscal Cliff
“I think we’re headed off the fiscal cliff,” Betty said.
“I know,” said JJ. “That’s all you hear about.”
“No, I mean we. I mean us, me and Barry”
“I want to write a story about a guy named Clifford who handles people’s money, tells them how to spend,” JJ said. “People would call him Fiscal Cliff.”
“This is serious,” Betty said. “Everything’s a big fuckin joke to you.”
JJ looked around the coffee place. Mid-morning in mid-December. A few college kids with laptops, a few twenty-somethings with laptops, and a group of young moms holding babies at a big table, three of them clustered around a laptop. JJ did a quick count: six Apples, three Other. A newer Bruce Springsteen song was playing, his voice strangely polished but buried in the music.
“I thought you guys had a lot of stocks,” JJ said to his sister. “Barry’s always talking about his Google, his Apple, his tech…”
“Barry’s full of shit.”
“Plus you got that house on the Cape.”
Betty looked away. She got the look that JJ called her “Camel Trader Look” and he could see his kid sister, years ago, thinking of the best way to get $20 from their mom. Now, in her late thirties, Betty’s cunning could not hide an impatient desperation.
“Look,” Betty said and turned back to JJ. “I don’t want to get into it but it’s not what it seems.”
“Go on.”
“Look at how fuckin smug you are,” she said. One of the moms glanced over. “You won all that money and now you sit there like some fuckin Don.”
“It wasn’t as much money as you think.”
“It was the fuckin Lotto!”
“We’ve been down this road…”
“What are you doing with your life, JJ?” Betty stood and gathered her coat and purse. “You sit there all alone and judge me and Barry from your fuckin perch.”
“I gave you…”
“You’ve always been the lucky one, JJ,” she said and stomped away. JJ saw all the moms turn their baby bundles away from Betty as she rushed past, a mom’s instinct to place herself between baby and bitterness.
“I don’t feel lucky,” JJ muttered. He finished his coffee and Bruce sang, “Is there anybody alive out there?”
"The Patriots are the Dick Cheney of Football"
“The Patriots suck,” JJ said as they watched them score another touchdown against the beleaguered Dolphins. Carl clapped and whooped. Pale December sunshine slanted into JJ’s house. Sunday afternoon and Carl was approaching a month in JJ’s living room.
“If by suck you mean they’re awesome then I agree,” Carl said. He was beaming as they lined up for the extra point. “If by suck you mean they dominate then I agree.” Carl adjusted himself in his nest of pillow and blankets on JJ’s couch.
“I mean what they stand for. It sucks,” JJ said.
“What they stand for? What the fuck does that mean? They stand for winning.”
“The Patriots are the Dick Cheney of football.”
“Here we go,” Carl said. The extra point was good and he leaned back into JJ’s sofa as an ad for Geico came on.
“The Patriots have that smugness. Like they invented the game and everyone else is too stupid to get it.”
“Go ahead, let it out,” Carl said soothingly.
“They treat football like it’s a state secret or something. They answer questions with this tolerant smirk…”
“Don’t forget the cheating,” Carl said.
“I’m getting to that. They haven’t won shit since…”
“I’ll tell you what sucks,” Carl said. “The Dolphins playing Jimmy Buffet during kickoffs. That strikes terror into the opposition.” Somewhere in a forest of long neck beer bottles a cell phone buzzed on the coffee table. “Aw shit, here we go,” he said looking at the phone screen.
“Don’t answer,” JJ said.
“What,” Carl said into the phone and listened with a grimace. The commercials were ending when Carl said, “I’ll come home when I feel like it.” Then he hung up and turned the phone off. The Patriots kicked off to the Dolphins to the strains of Jimmy Buffet’s “Fins”. Sunlight, real Florida sunlight, bathed the field in Miami.
The Thickening 