Eyes the Color of Earth as Seen From Above

P.R.A. Stillman

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“If God were one of us, he would never ride a bus. He’d fly as close to heaven as the angels with machine guns would allow—just a random thought, stretching out to fill a few miles of a long drive. The thought grew into this novelette, minus the angels, at least angels who are visibly armed. That’s a story for another time.” 

* * * *

GOD SCRUBBED THE CORPSES of insects off his windscreen with crumpled newspaper and white vinegar, blessing each broken wing and powdered bit of exoskeleton as it fell to the icy tarmac. The North-westerlies were coming in hard and cold, billowing the silk wind-sock on the edge of the airstrip into a great orange condom. God thought about His wife, Edna; her hair pinned in a thick brown bun, filmy wisps escaping to form a fringe around her fine unlined forehead, corn flour dusting her gingham apron and the toes of her extra-wide shoes. If He could get Peaches off the ground, get the mail up to Gold Creek, and get back to Anchorage before the storm came in, He could be home in time for fresh grits and gravy.

God ducked under the patched canvas shroud that hung down from the cowling and poured heated oil from the blow-pot into Peaches’ engine. He brushed a thin layer of snow off of her skis then cranked her over, letting her warm up long and slow. No warped valves for this gal. Parts were too hard to come by on the frontier to risk a rebuild on. He folded the tarp and rolled the blow-pot back to the tin nose hanger then hefted Himself into the cockpit. He nibbled on a sweet roll while Peaches’ engine sputtered into a final, steady thrum.

By sunrise, she was ready to go, easily lifting into the slowly brightening sky.

Imagine that, God thought, when man invented the first flying machine, he’s giving himself wings, like the birds, like the bats, like the legend of Lost Angels. Pioneering aviators, like Carl Eielson and Noel Wien, recently opened the Alaskan skies. Anyone could buy his own wings, now, provided he could scrape together the cash. God’s first aircraft was a Waco biplane. Peaches, a Lockheed Vega, was His second.

The wind was a header, slowing Peaches down by a third. Below the plane lay a study in black, white, and gray. Rock, snow, and clouds. Color and colorlessness, like a universe still being formed.

God hummed a show-tune as He flew. Above the Earth. Free of gravity. Flying reminded Him of the early days, when matter was vague and still uncommitted, when He could be everywhere He wanted, before responsibility tied Him down. He couldn’t just go traipsing through the universe these days, kindling galaxies and cooling planets down. He had thinking, feeling beings to watch after now.

A hole opened up around Him as Sol burned a breach in the clouds. Color appeared beneath Peaches’ wings: The light green of treetops. The dark green of rock-clinging moss. Yellow bees. Brown bears. Rainbow trout splashing through the shimmering blue waters of the Susitha River. He looked at the Earth below Him and He saw that it was good.

* * * *

Snow fell softly on the roof of God’s house. Each unique flake hit the tin corrugations gently, sliding off the steep slant, forming small drifts around the rough rock foundation where spring would raise Edna’s lilies and daffodils out of the ground. Inside, the scent of baking apples wafted from the kitchen into the parlor where Edna was entertaining family.

“Someone asked me the other day if I’d rather have all looks or all brains. As if I didn’t have either!” Luke barked a laugh. He picked a Niagara Falls pillow off the sofa and cradled it against his chest. “But I got to thinking about the question later. I’d take all brains because, with all brains and no looks, I’d be as smart as all get out and invisible too. I could control the world.” He paused, a frown creased his brow. “But, no one could see me. No one would know.”

Edna indulged her somewhat odd stepson with a smile and poured them both a fresh cup of tea. While hers steeped to a bitter black, she pulled the stub of a Panatela out of the ashtray on the end table.

“Luke.” She held the Panatela up to her lips. “Luke.”

“Huh? Oh.” Luke snapped his fingers. A small tongue of flame snaked out between them. Edna leaned forward, sucking the fire into her lungs by way of the Italian cigar.

“So, Ma.” He knew she loved it when he called her Ma, since she had never been able to convince her husband to let her have a child of her own. “Ma, have you ever thought about stocks?”

“Luke, you already tried that. Lions ate the breeding stock your Pa bought for you.”

“No, no, not cattle. I’m never going back to South Africa. I mean the stock market.”

Smoke formed silver-gray gradients above Edna’s head. She was a large woman; big-boned, as they put it her native Winnipeg. Her pale, flower-print dress rounded her sharp edges but it did little to diminish her unwomanly height. She crossed her legs at the knee then crossed her wrists over them. “Tell me more,” she said.

“The action is back east, Ma, in New York City, Wall Street. All you need is a little starting capital—”

The front door opened with a wind-driven sigh. A few flakes of snow swirled in behind God, melting quickly in the fire-warmed room. “What are you doing here?”

“Hiya, Pa.” Luke climbed to his feet. “It’s good to see you, too.”

Edna paced over and placed her body between the two of them, arms crossed over her breasts, shoulders set back. “Supper will be ready in ten minutes,” she announced, looking from father to son. “I expect the both of you to be washed up by then.” Without waiting for acknowledgement, she stalked out of the room.

Luke knelt before the stone fireplace and rearranged the logs with a cast iron poker. Before too long, the fire was roaring. It was his one talent, fire was. He hadn’t figured out what kind of career he might be able to make out of it, though he thought it must be good for something. Sure, he could entertain the ladies, and in times past he had primitive tribes by the thousands idolizing him. But ladies got bored with a singular trick, and tribes were going extinct all over the world. Mostly, Luke sold cars. He sold farm equipment. He sold eucalyptus trees to wind-blown farmers and orange trees to land speculators. In hard times, he tried selling bibles, door to door, but the people most inclined to buy them were the most reluctant to let him in the door.

God hung his coat on a hook by the fire. “Are you in town for long?” He asked.

“You tell me,” Luke replied, staring at the fire.

“You know I don’t do that. Not now. How much do you want?”

“Pa.” Luke stood up and turned around. The poker, forgotten in his hand, streaked a long black smudge on the leg of his natty white pants. “Can’t I just visit my family without any ulterior motives? Why do you think I want something? How’s the mail route going?”

God made a hrruphing sound that in the early days might have leveled a mountain or two.

“How’s your Lockheed running? I hear that Boeing is thinking about making a 600 horse power Pratt and Whitney with a Wasp nine-cylinder air-cooled radial.”

“Air-cooled?” God took his cigar box down from the mantle and pulled out two fresh stogies. “How will it do in the cold?”

“That’s the beauty of it. It won’t overheat and it won’t freeze up. It won’t have the weight and the drag of a water-cooled engine since it doesn’t have to carry water or a radiator or pipes. That’ll leave plenty of room for armament.”

“Armament?” God grunted.

“Yep.” Luke nodded. “They’re planning to sell it as a war machine.” He turned his hands palm up. “That’s humans for you. Too bad we can’t do something about their nature.”

God fixed his son with an all-knowing glare. Luke smiled apologetically and changed the subject, again. “Edna’s looking well. Such a nice woman. She’d make a fine mother, don’t you think?”

“Luke,” God rumbled. “Don’t start that again.”

Father and son stared each other, eye to eye: Marbled blue and white irises whirling so slowly, movement could only be detected by a stop-motion Edison. Logs sizzled and kindling snapped in the fireplace. Minute after minute ticked off of the ironwood clock on the mantle.

“Dinner’s getting cold,” Edna announced from the doorway.

“Gotta wash up,” Luke muttered. He ducked behind his stepmother and slipped into the kitchen. A few seconds later, the water pump creaked.

“Joe,” Edna said, softly, “he means well.”

“I’m not questioning his intentions, Dear.” God placed the unlit, unoffered cigars back in the box and snapped the lid shut. “The boy just doesn’t think things through. If you knew about all the wild schemes he’s come up with...”

God’s eyes misted over, picturing stone building blocks and ceramic beer bottles, forming large and small pyramids, over white desert sand. He knew that Luke hadn’t considered the nature of kings before he pitched his plan, how they might squeeze money out of the national coffers for their own self-glorification, how them might entomb their servants with them, alive. So much for providing jobs and stimulating the economy.

“Honey, he’s just trying to make you proud of him.”

“What on Earth for? He’s my son. That’s all that matters.”

“To you.”

Luke entered the room. His normally fair hair glistened darkly with water and a fresh coat of Brill Cream. The collar of his striped shirt was newly closed with a red bow tie. He hooked his left arm into Edna’s right and escorted her to the table.

The dinner conversation was polite and impersonal. Edna mentioned new the talkies that she hoped would make it up to the Empress Theatre. She particularly wanted to see What Price Glory and Broadway Melody. Luke wondered aloud who would win the upcoming election, Alfred Smith or Herbert Hoover. Edna ate a lamb chop while God and his son dined on corn bread, home-canned green beans, and fried eggs with apple cobbler for desert. Luke was on his second helping, God on His third, when a knock fell upon the door.

Eunice Hasselborg, snow powdering her shoulders, a child tucked in her arms, stood on the top step. Wind whipped fine blond hair across her cold-flushed face. “Mr. Dios, Edna, I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner.”

“We just finished.” Edna ushered her neighbor into the house and closed the door. “What brings you out on a night like this?”

“It’s Daniel, he took his boat down the coast three weeks ago.” Mrs. Hasselborg looked down at her toddler’s towhead. She began to shake.

Edna rushed to take the child from her. She placed the boy in Luke’s arms. “You keep an eye on Little Wilbur,” she said. “Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. Eunice, please sit down.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Luke murmured. He set the boy on the braded rug before the hearth. Wilbur wobbled and pitched forward, chubby arms headed straight for the fire. Luke made a small motion with his left hand. The flames moved backward and hugged the rear of the hearth. The boy giggled. Luke patted him on the head.

“Daniel went down to Cape Yakataga to buy furs from Eddie Seagraves,” Eunice continued.

Edna shot her husband a steel-eyed glare, silently warning him away from expressing his views on animals, fur-bearing and otherwise. God said nothing. He listened from the edge of the dining-room, keeping his distance, waiting for the request to be made. It was as inevitable as nightfall, in any place other than the Arctic. It was preordained as the sunrise the following day, most everywhere else.

“Daniel radioed in from Cordova to let me know he was on his way to Seward to ship the furs out. He was supposed to come straight home from there but he’s still not back. I thought ... since Mr. Dios has an airplane—Daniel’s not a well man—it was too late in the year—I should have never let him go.”

“Now, Eunice, there was nothing that you could do to stop him.” Edna said, gently. “You know men, once they make their mind up that they’re going to do something, you can’t talk them out of it.”

Eunice managed a brief, hesitant smile.

“Have you gone down to the dock and talked to the fishermen?”

“No one’s seen any sign of him, or the Lil’ Eunice.” She sniffed. “Most of the waterways froze up last week when the weather snapped. I don’t know how he could get back—Mr. Dios, can you help me?”

Cordova, God thought. No one had ever flown from Anchorage to Cordova. The southern coast, with its formidable mountains, its sea-spawned storms, and its turbulent air, was virgin airspace.

“Joe, do you think you can do it?” Edna asked; plain and direct, in her straightforward way.

God met her eyes. She didn’t blink.

“I can try,” he said, finally.

“I’m going with you, Pa.” Luke stated. His father’s eyes narrowed. Luke’s own shifted from side to side. “In case you need help.”

“Good idea,” Edna said. “With the two of them working together, they’ll have Daniel home in no time. Right, dear?”

God said nothing.

“Dear?”

God drew in a great breath. He let it out humanly slow. “Right.”

* * * *

Peaches took off at the first hint of light, to make the most of the short northern day. The fog was ragged to start with, a wispy film, thickening the further God and His son went south. God’s plan was to begin their search where Daniel Hasselborg was last seen then follow the coastline north.

“Is that supposed to wiggle like that?” Luke asked, pointing to a gage with an unsteady needle.

“That?” God gave the instrument a casual wave of a hand. “No one pays attention to compasses this close to the pole. Don’t worry about it.”

The cockpit grew quiet as God reduced throttle. Luke practiced pitches inside his mind. First the windup then the throw. He discarded one approach after another until he found the words that would flow smoothly off of his tongue.

“Pa, have you noticed how industrialized the US has gotten? Every since the Great War ended, business has been booming. Autos, building starts, electrical utilities...” God made no comment. Luke decided to take it as a good sign. “Factories are getting more efficient. The price of production is going down, which means that more of the profits are going into stock dividends.”

Fog covered the windscreen like a dirty bed sheet. God raised Peaches’ nose to climb above it.

“As production costs go down, wages will rise and the cost of the goods that workers buy will go down. That’ll create even more jobs!”

God raised a single, snowy eyebrow. “You’re sure of that?”

“Uh huh,” Luke nodded. “Andrew Mellon, himself, guarantees it.”

“Hmm.” God raised the plane even higher. They were at 1200 feet but still there seemed to be no end to the clouds.

“Stocks are going to do nothing but go up and up. Everybody’s getting in on the market.”

“And you want to, too,” God stated evenly.

Luke stared straight out the windshield rather than meet his creator’s eyes. There was nothing outside but a horizonless white. He didn’t know where the clouds left off and the ground began since both were the same color and texture as snow. Peaches’ engine labored heavily as God added throttle, taking her up to 1600 feet. A great snowy gust slapped her back down.

“Noel Wien once said that airplanes are capable of flying into a 60-mile-an-hour wind,” God quoted, “without getting anywhere.”

“Uh,” Luke’s schemes retreated from the fore of his mind. He glanced at the altimeter and saw that they were several hundred feet lower than they were a moment ago. “Pa, are we in any danger?”

“Are you forgetting who we are?” God’s voice boomed through the small plane.

Luke’s jaw clenched at the sound of that voice. That all mighty, all knowing voice, threatening everything, doing nothing at all. “You may be immortal but Jesse was killed. That means that I can be, too.”

Luke looked for a blink or a flinch but God’s eyes didn’t stray from his instruments. Luke crossed his arms over his chest and hugged himself. “Everybody dies,” he said. “My friends, my stepmothers, my brother. Everybody dies, except for you.”

The cockpit was soundless, save for the howl of the wind and the whine of Peaches’ straining engine. God didn’t try to reassure him. He didn’t contradict him. Luke knew He wouldn’t. God didn’t lie.

Movement outside the passenger window caught Luke’s eye. It was the right wing of the Vega, rising over the left as the small plane rolled. He had the chance for only a small squeal before God righted the plane. He didn’t have time to make any noise at all before Peaches went down.

Falling to Earth: it was quicker and quieter than it had been the first time. No great roar. No world-obscuring cloud. No change in the weather patterns. No extinction on a minor or massive scale. Just a soft shushing sound as Peaches buried herself in a snow-bank.

“Oh, bother,” God grumbled when their long slide finally came to an end.

“Scheiss.” Luke groaned. “Daomei,”

“Watch your tongue, son. You’re still in one piece.” God reached behind Him and fetched the picnic basket that Edna had packed. “Eat up boy, then grab a shovel. Mrs. Hasselborg is counting on us.”

* * * *

Peaches ended up on a long plateau, by luck or by plan, Luke didn’t know. She was buried just past her wings, leaving one set of windows and her reddish-orange tail exposed. God stuck His shovel in the snow and sent a load over His shoulder. Luke watched Him for a moment then he rubbed his hands together. When they glowed red, he pressed them against the snowbank. The snow softened. Moisture dripped down.

“The shovel’s faster,” God grunted.

Luke rubbed his hands together faster taking them from red to white to a flaming blue-tipped arc. Snow melted into water. Water slid down the bank and soaked through his snowshoes, boots, and socks. He tried heating his feet but stopped when he found himself standing in a puddle.

“There’s a balance, boy,” God said without preamble, making a point He might have, earlier, if it wasn’t for the unplanned landing. “It’s a conservation of energy. Life. Death. It’s how the universe works.”

“You made the universe,” Luke retorted. “You made the rules. You can break them anytime you want.”

God sighed and shook his head.

Fresh snow fell nearly as fast as the old stuff was removed, but little by little the plane was exposed. With a few grunts and groans, they spun the Vega around on her skis and pointed her downhill.

While his Father tinkered with the engine, Luke napped on a nest of blankets in the tiny cargo hold, dreaming of a molten planet, licked by feathery flames. A two-tone world in fluid black and red. His hands closed around the globe, finding it as malleable as a lump of clay. Forming. Shaping. Luke-faced birds. Luke-faced dogs. Sharks circling the ocean, with limpid blue eyes and tresses of gold. His world exploded with sound of applause.

He awoke to clearing skies and the gentle vibration of an airborne plane. Rain slanted through sunlight turning it silver. They hugged the coast, making horseshoe turns for bays and hairpin curls for narrow inlets. As Mrs. Hasselborg warned, the smaller waterways were indeed frozen. This drove them seaward, into storm clouds and fierce crosswinds. Luke looked to the sky, finding Sol almost at the horizon.

“Pa, where are we going to land? There aren’t any airstrips out here. It’s going to be dark soon. We’ll have to find a place to spend the night then wait for morning to look again.”

God cocked his head toward the smudge of lingering light and said, “Don’t worry son. We’ve got another hour.”

Luke turned his attention to Edna’s provisions, finding raisin bread and a jar of quince jam. He snacked absently, staring out the windscreen, seeing Wall Street.

“Son.”

Luke snapped out of his reverie.

“You said you wanted to help. Grab those gunny sacks in the back. Open the door and on my word, toss them out.”

Luke looked down and saw only vertical ground; a fractured checkerboard pattern that met the rough edge of the sea. While he watched, a block of ice broke off and tumbled down, disappearing beneath the water with hardly a splash. Finally, Luke spotted his father’s goal. It was a narrow strip, maybe 100 feet wide by 600 feet long, while it couldn’t be called flat, wasn’t as steep as the nearby terrain. Luke’s eyebrows rose, but he saw no reason to question his father. Pilots in these parts probably landed on glaciers all of the time.

He slipped sideways between the seats and found a pile of black sacks stuffed into the rear of the cargo hold. The dye was so fresh it rubbed off on his hands. Gravity pulled him forward as God lowered Peaches’ nose.

“Get ready,” God ordered.

Luke opened the door. Wind wailed in, shaking Peaches from the inside and threatening to blow the door closed. He wedged a foot into the jamb and sat down. His legs dangled below Peaches’ belly. Snow spattered his knees. Wind whipped his pantlegs and stripped the last residue of Brill Cream out of his hair. It rose in two small peaks, one on either side of his forehead.

“Now?” he asked, teeth a chattering.

“Not yet,” God said. “Luke, I want you to throw the sacks slowly so they don’t land in a clump.”

Luke tightened his hold on the sacks, clutching them to his chest in one fist. The other fist curled around the lip of the doorjamb with knuckles as blanched as the sky. From his virtually unobstructed vantage point, he spotted a small red and white boat, drifting inches forward, inches back, in a slurry of saltwater and ice. The deck was concealed by a tarp-covered mound. If there was anyone on board, it wasn’t above.

God brought the plane level with the unlevel ground and shouted, “Now!”

Luke let go of the bags a few at a time. They fanned out and landed, showing him just how close they were to the earth. He managed to scramble back inside and get the door closed before his father raised the plane. Luke looked down at crows on snow, black-sack-markers, settling down on the makeshift runway.

“Perspective!” God imparted. “Position! Incline!”

He circled back around, making His approach at full power in a nearly upright climb. As soon as Peaches’ skis touched down, He cut the throttle. The steep slope slowed Peaches to a standstill in a few hundred feet.

God leaped out and shouted, “Help me turn her around before she slides back down!”

They got Peaches pointed down hill then let gravity finish the job, coasting the plane on her skis down to where water-based mountain met water-based shore. An ice-encrusted mud flat curled around the shoreline. Beyond it lay an ice-clogged bay.

“Landing fields are where you find them, son,” God said with a grin. “But don’t tell anyone where we set down. That youngster, Bob Reeve, has been telling everyone that he’s going to be the first to land on a glacier. I don’t want to steal his thunder.”

God reached under his seat. His calloused fingertips sifted through an informal collection of dust balls, candy bar wrappers, dog fur, and grease-coated wrenches. “I want you to drain the engine oil into the cans from the cargo. Be careful not to spill any. The top of the drain bolt is painted red. Luke, are you listening to me?”

“Yeah, Pa, red.”

God frowned. He passed His son a crescent wrench then climbed out of the plane. Ice crackled under His feet as He walked across the mudflat and out on to the waters of Prince William Sound.

It took most of the remaining daylight for Luke to find the red-topped bolt. He attached the crescent wrench to it and tugged. Oil poured out, coating the icy white ground with a dark petroleum slick. Luke kicked an oil can under the stream and contemplated a future of holding companies and investment trusts. After he made his first million, he might dabble in the arts like Carnegie, or maybe turn to politics. There were plenty of countries in this world that knew how to treat their leaders right.

Sol set so quickly that Luke missed it. One moment it was daytime, the next, it was night. Luke capped the oil cans then retreated to his post in the passenger seat. Luke snapped his fingers at a candle wick. His reflection smiled at him from the windscreen in a shimmer of mother of pearl teeth.

Feet shuffled though the snow. Luke caught the silhouette of a camel-backed man, or rather a man carrying another toward the plane in the cloud-smothered moonlight. God laid Daniel Hasselborg down in the cargo bay, piling all of their blankets on top of him. Luke squirmed between the seats and held a candle over man’s ruddy face. Hasselborg made a short snorting sound that only upon repeat did Luke realized was breathing.

“He’s alive, I guess.” Luke bit his bottom lip. “Edna will be glad.”

“You like Edna, don’t you?” God rummaged through the cargo, bringing forth a slightly rusted can opener and a dented pair of tin cups. “I hope Edna packed fruit cocktail. She knows I love fruit cocktail.”

“I liked all your wives.” Luke passed God a can of fruit along with a slightly sedimentary biscuit. “They’ve all been fine women. They would have all been good mothers. Too bad only Mary got the chance.”

Luke waited a few seconds. When it became clear to him that his father wasn’t going to respond, he picked up the opener and punctured the can. Air rushed into the vacuum with a quiet hiss. They dined by candlelight, to the bullfrog croaks of Hasselborg’s snores. After dinner, God lit another candle and cracked open the copy of His Last Bow that He bought in Nome.

While God read, Luke squirmed in his increasingly uncomfortable seat.

“Do you have to fidget so much?” God asked. “I’m just getting to the good part. I’ll be damned if I know how Holmes going to work it out.”

“You don’t have to be damned!” Luke snapped. “You can leave this world any time that you like!”

“Shh!” God shushed. “You don’t want to wake up Mrs. Hasselborg’s husband, do you?”

Luke snorted. So did Hasselborg.

Luke crossed his arms over his chest. “Why do the nights up here have to be so long when there’s nothing to do with them? If I had a brother, at least we could play cards.”

“I don’t know why you want another brother,” God rumbled. “You and Jesse used to do nothing but argue.”

“Argue?” Luke’s eyes widened. “We never argued. We had discussions. We talked politics and philosophy. Why we used to sit out in the desert for days and chat. So what if we didn’t agree on much, he enjoyed our debates as much as me. Now who do I have? Humans? Every time I find someone who is the least bit interesting, they die of a bug bite or of old age.

“You don’t know how hard it is for me to make friends,” Luke sniveled. “People don’t like me. I can’t create life on my own. You—you didn’t give me the power. I want another brother.”

God set the book down and crossed His arms over His chest. “You’d think that someone who’d been around longer than dirt would eventually grow up. All you think about is yourself. Your friends. Your stepmothers. Your brother. If you’re so lonely, why don’t you do something to redeem yourself. If you made the effort, you could be back in the heavens with your brethren in a snap.”

“Oh, sure. I’m just dying to sit around and combust.” Luke coughed, for effect. He’d never been sick a day in his life. “Look honey,” he mimicked, “there goes Luke ... or is it Rafael? Quick! Make a wish!”

Hasselborg belched, filling the plane with odor of illegal whiskey and decaying teeth. God opened His book. Luke curled up in the small seat and pretended to sleep.

* * * *

“Darkness ends at the hands of the dawn police,” Luke announced. He threw his door open, inviting crisp arctic air into the stale plane, for Daniel Hasselborg smelled no better by sunlight than he had by night.

He was a lump of a man, covered in layers; a beaver-skin coat, a tasseled wool cap, wool trousers, and salt-encrusted mukluks. His face bore a strong resemblance to an aerial map, surrounded by beard and hair both wiry and gray.

His nostrils twitched. His eyes shot open. “Where’s my boat? Where’s Lil’ Eunie? What did you hooligans do with her? And where’re my goddamned furs?”

“Your boat is where you left it, Dan,” Luke replied. “Alight on the waters of the Lord.”

Hasselborg squinted and wheezed, “Who the hell are you?”

“Good morning, Daniel,” God said.

Recognition kindled slowly in Hasselborg’s eyes. “Heya, Joe. What you doin’ out here? Droppin’ off mail?”

“Picking up a sack,” Luke replied.

Hasselborg leaned out the open door and coughed a thick wad of sputum on to the snow. Holding his forehead, he sank back into his makeshift bed in the cargo hold.

“You got anything to drink, my friend?”

God rummaged through Edna’s basket, pulling out a canteen in one hand and bottle of ginger ale in the other. Hasselborg coughed. “A man’s drink, I mean.” He reached under his coat and scratched an armpit. He inspected a fingernail then reached into a pocket and fished out a bag of tobacco and a sheaf of papers. His tremor stopped long enough to roll a cigarette.

“I’ve got a fortune in furs sitting on that deck,” he said, tapping the butt of the cigarette against his thigh to form a quick-lighting tip. “You wouldn’t know where it is, would you? My boat, I mean.”

Before God could answer him, Hasselborg doubled over in a fit of coughing, ending with the expulsion of more phlegm on the snow. He wiped his nose and mouth on a ragged lace-edged handkerchief, lit his cigarette and took a serious drag. “I gotta get my furs down to Seward. The quota’s almost met. Goddamn seal treaty. Who ever heard of the gov’ment setting limits on how much a man can earn—it’s down right Bolshevik.”

Hasselborg swung his legs out of the plane, triggering another bout of coughing.

God motioned the man back inside. “Your wife is powerfully worried about you. We’d better get you home.”

“Home? Home?” Hasselborg echoed. “The only way I’m going home is with two-thousand of the Fouks Company’s dollars in my pocket. Just point me to my boat and I’ll be on my way.” Hasselborg straightened up and walked a couple of steps, wheezing and coughing. “I can’t go home empty handed,” he said, turning around. Hands on his thighs, he held himself upright. “The money from those furs is supposed to see us through the rest of the year. My boat,” he said softly, sounding like a man who could see defeat in the distance, slowly but surely plodding his way. “My boat will founder. I can’t do that to her.”

God reached into the picnic basket and found a partially frozen biscuit to nibble on. True, Daniel Eugene Hasselborg wasn’t the best example of the human race. But He loved all of His children, not only the ones He created directly, like Jesse, Luke, the angels, and the ants, but those who simply evolved. After all, they evolved according to the tenets of nature, and in one of His favorite images; they had to be beautiful.

“My boy will take your boat back to Anchorage,” God announced.

Luke’s head jerked up. “I will?”

“And he’ll get you top dollar for your dead seals. He’s quite gifted, at that sort of thing.”

Luke sat up straighter, accepting any shred of praise his father cared to bestow. But boats? Boats were on water and water was a cold and lonely place that never stayed still. “Pa,” Luke whined. “Jesse got along with water, not me. It was his element.”

“Luke,” God snapped. “Do you really want to help out or did you just say that so you could get me alone and to try to talk some money out of me?”

Luke swallowed a knot of saliva.

“Son,” God’s voice softened, “I’ve been trying to teach you that if you want something, you have to earn it. Do you understand?”

Luke’s jaw clenched. How many times had he heard this lecture before?

“Those who put an effort out are rewarded. With all the things you say you want, you think you’d accept a reward.”

“Money for stocks?” Luke ventured, hopefully.

“We’ll talk about it after you get the boat back to Anchorage. Oh, and before you leave, I want you to warm up the engine oil.”

* * * *

There wasn’t much difference between a boat and a tractor, Luke thought, priming the carburetor with a splash of gas from Hasselborg’s stockpile of fuel. One vehicle tore up fields, the other tore through the sea. Theoretically. This sea-tractor was mired in ice. It couldn’t be that thick, he figured. Summer ended just weeks ago.

He started the engine on the third try, adding a few curses into the mix. He pushed the throttle forward slowly. Lil’ Eunice didn’t budge. He put her in reverse and tried to rock her, back and forth. The engine whined. Exhaust billowed, black in the pale sky. The engine coughed, reminisced of Hasselborg, then died.

“Cacchio,” Luke swore.

He climbed up to the bow and looked down at the icy bay. It sparkled innocently in the fair morning light. Clouds loomed, off to the west, but the wind was calm, the sky was azure. Open sea glistened enticingly near. All told, it was a beautiful day. Luke sat on down, legs dangling on either side of the prow. His heels beat a steady tempo against the flaking red and white of the retrofitted Monterey hull. Gradually, his jaw unlocked. His muscles unkinked. Relaxing in Sol’s gentle heat, his thoughts turned to gasoline.

* * * *

Mudflats were proven runways, used by Alaska’s pilots long before God reached the territory. Peaches had no trouble getting airborne. Once aloft, God offered Daniel Hasselborg a wedge of cheese and a jelly-smeared biscuit to break his fast. Hasselborg ate in small dispirited bites. God banked the plane to the right and climbed.

Mountains ahead, sea at their backs, Hasselborg’s mood seemed to ease. It might have been the fact that their journey home was underway that lightened his spirit, or it might have been the small silver flask that he found in an inner pocket of his coat.

Hasselborg uncapped the flask and took a carefully measured sip. “Don’t know why,” he said, “but I feel better with that boy of yours behind me.”

God chuckled. “He has that effect on people. Mostly, they don’t feel comfortable with him smiling in their faces, getting ready to talk them into one of his schemes.”

“I’ll tell you this,” Hasselborg wagged a finger at God, “I treated my father with far more respect than the young’uns these days.”

“As did I,” God agreed.

“Damn right. If we woulda talked back to our papas, they woulda whooped us up the backside and we woulda deserved it. My oldest boy, Danny Junior,” Hasselborg shook his head slowly and took another drink, “he never would listen to me. Even when his sick mama begged him not to leave her and I ordered him stay put, he went off to fight the Huns—Goddamn Wilson. We wasn’t supposed to get involved in foreigner problems. We was supposed to stay neutral—The day they shipped Danny’s body back, his poor ma lost the will to live. The TB got her inside a month.”

“I couldn’t stop Jesse, either,” God said, softly. “Nothing I said could convince him not to get involved in politics.”

“Sounds like my Danny,” Hasselborg wheezed.

“Jesse made me promise not to interfere. He wanted to succeed, or fail, on his own.”

“Made you?” Hasselborg raised an eyebrow, skeptically.

“He could be very persuasive, in his own gentle way. I always thought that he would be the one who would take over for me—hopped so, anyway. He was so full of love and kindness and there wasn’t a judgmental bone in the boy’s body. Now there’s Luke.” God sighed.

Luke had been His favorite, God admitted to Himself, until Jesse came along. He couldn’t help cherishing the brash, free spirit. That was before he got so full of himself that no one could stand to be around him. When Luke drove half of his brethren into changing form and departing in a mass exodus, God realized He had to teach him some humility.

“Well, he was always the brightest,” God murmured. “He outshone Michael and Gabe, and all the rest. He has the ambition, but not the commitment. Either he’s going to eventually mature, eventually, or I’ll have to have another son.”

Hasselborg raised his eyebrows and squinted at God, looking like a rabbit, long in the tooth. “How many young’uns you got, anyway?” he asked.

God took a moment to run a tally.

“Forget it.” Hasselborg waved the hand that held the whiskey flask, spilling the tiniest of drops on his leg. “Can’t say that I don’t got more than I know of, myself, from my younger days.

“Had myself a daughter, once. A pretty little brown-eyed girl named Evangeline.” The sky darkened well before noon. Clouds poured over the mountains, casting a shadow over Hasselborg’s face. “The influenza got her in ‘18. She was only five. Goddamn it all.”

God adjusted the throttle. He had heard it all before. People complained about life. They complained about death. They complained about disease and war and poverty, He noted, but only when it affected them. Maybe when they stopped being selfish, and started caring for the rest of the creatures of this Earth, maybe then they wouldn’t have to pray to Him make them to stop doing what they obviously wanted to do.

Hasselborg examined the dirt under his left thumb nail. “Never thought I’d start over again ... But Eunice was a real cat’s meow, woke Johnny right out of his slumber, if you know what I mean? ‘Course you do,” he grinned, “you got a younger wife, too.”

God grunted in agreement. Clouds brushed against Peaches’ windscreen, thin and watery, misting God’s view of the world. He raised Peaches back into the light. Maybe He was too hard on the human race, He considered. They weren’t, after all, to blame for their own illnesses. And they weren’t to blame for the loss of His youngest son. He knew exactly where the guilt for that belonged.

* * * *

Ice sculptures decorated the water’s edge, on either side of the narrow inlet that Lil’ Eunice squeezed through. Delicate wind-etched natural shrines, shaped like armless mermaids, birds perched on rocks, and half-eaten deserts. Glistening translucent blue with color borrowed from the sky. Luke steered clear, fearing icebergs where there was ice. He’d had enough of ice. And fire. At least for the time being. He pointed the boat’s blistered and blackened bow toward the Gulf of Alaska and cruised.

Luke hadn’t meant to damage Hasselborg’s boat. His plan had been a good one. Possibly a great one. Just pour the gas around the boat and all the way out to open water, then set it afire. The heat would melt the thin autumn ice and the boat would plow though. Too bad he didn’t have a few more boats to practice on, to work the kinks out.

The wind fanned Luke’s hair around his head into a corona of pale gold. The air smelled of saline and high adventure; the kind of escapade that stories are told of, again and again, to the listeners’ delight, along the polished mahogany bars of Manhattan’s finest watering holes. Luke leaned over the wheel, imagining himself the centerpiece of a gilt-framed oil painting. The ocean swelled, rolling the boat from side to side, and Luke’s stomach along with it. Empty contraband bottles, imported vodka and whiskey, rolled under his feet. Black clouds rolled in from the West. A spray of seawater hit Luke in the face. Luke spit out a salty mouthful.

Okay, so maybe adventure, for its own sake, wasn’t sufficient motivation. Think of the money. Fists clenched on the wheel, Luke egged himself on.

Abruptly, the wind ceased. The ocean calmed. The silence was absolute, wholly. A ray of light cut through the clouds, and shone down on the tarp-covered deck. The hairs on Luke’s arms prickled up. A shiver ran up his spine. He looked over his head and gulped.

“Pa?”

Nothing.

Lil’ Eunice’s timbers creaked quietly as Luke shifted his feet. Just as suddenly as the silence descended, it departed. The wind roared. Waves rose. Lil’ Eunice pitched forward and aft then side to side, caught high in swells and crosswinds. Luke cranked wheel around.

He wasn’t a complete stranger to boats. He’d gone out to sea with Jesse’s buddies when more genteel work had been unavailable. More recently, he spent a miserable week aboard a sardine trawler. Head into storms, he remembered. If storm waves hit a boat sideways, it will swamp.

Rain slanted through the heavy sky, half-froze from the journey down to the boat. It stung Luke’s bare face and his hands. He swung the boat around hard, trying to avoid the rocks that jutted out of either side of the straight. Icebergs and flesh-eating whales might lay ahead, as far as he could tell. Looking forward, he could see a few yards out from the prow before the vista was lost in gray churning water and angry clouds. Looking backward, he could see the rear of the boat dragging, weighed down by $2000 worth of furs.

He could die here and his father would do nothing, like he did nothing to stop Jesse’s execution. What good was it having a father who was God, he asked himself, when he never did anything godlike?

Rain soaked through his city-coat and down to his skin. He wondered what would happen to him if he perished here, drowned like a horse dumped overboard to lighten the load. Would he be condemned to return to the Earth, same essence, different form, like the beasts and beings of this world? Or would he just burn?

Jesse had been half human. Luke liked to think that only half of him had died. But only his father knew what his brother’s fate was, and what his own fate might be, and, as usual, God wouldn’t tell.

Luke raised his fist to the heavens and shouted, “Pa! Why have you done this to me?”

* * * *

God the father.

God the son.

Memories, stirred by Hasselborg, left God reminiscing while the human slumbered.

For the longest time, there had been just the two of them. It seemed like it was just yesterday that He was trying to get His father’s attention, proudly showing off a batch of amino acids that He had brewed. If His father had been impressed, He didn’t show it.

Part and parcel of the old universe, there wasn’t much left of the old deity now, just smallest of substances, smaller than the heart of atoms, scattered throughout the new universe. Perhaps, God thought, His father had been afraid of the descendant who would one day supplant Him. Perhaps that is why He had been such a distant and impersonal progenitor.

His father’s universe decayed and grew cold. Disorder ruled. His father, once a goliath, became almost insubstantial, a mere ghost of His former self. It became clear to His son what He must do: sweep the debris of the old universe together and bundle it tight. Gather the remaining energy into a single agglomerate and let the pressure build until it could be contained no more. Explosively, His own cosmos was formed.

God never told any of His own offspring that one of them was destined to do the same. It placed too much strain on the father and son relationship.

At least, God thought, He didn’t have to worry about being superseded anytime soon. The angels in the heavens were a simple and contented lot and the ones who Luke drove off seemed happy to wander the universe. That left Luke. Luke, God thought, didn’t have a clue.

“Whozitwhotgoddamnnitall,” Hasselborg mumbled in his sleep. He rolled on to his right side and slid down his seat. His beaver-skin coat and wool shirt crept up his arms, exposing a frayed length of yellowed long-johns.

Peaches trembled as wind stirred her wingtips. The clouds parted. Mountaintops loomed beneath her. The jagged stone was softened ever so slightly by clinging clots of snow, lustrous in slivers of light.

He rather liked the way it had turned out, His creation, His firmament. He hoped that His father would have been proud. But that was one thing that He would never know. God blinked a tear from the corner of an eye and banked the plane, angling its shadow along the mountainsides.

* * * *

Rain poured down the back of Luke’s collar. Seawater oozed up and over the cuffs of his boots. He raised his core temperature and stopped shivering, momentarily. It was hard to keep up the heat with the distractions of wind and high seas. Lil’ Eunice pitched from side to side. Whitecaps crested over her bow. Swells spun her around in circles until Luke no longer could tell which way was what.

“What have I done wrong?” Luke yelled at the seeping clouds. “Lately.”

Okay, so maybe he hadn’t been the best son of God. Maybe he had been a bit cocky and conceited and not all of his ideas had been good ones, but was that any reason to be left out on the sea to drown?

“Pa, if you help me out of this, I’ll change. I really will.”

Rocks loomed off the port side. Luke cut the wheel, hard, lightly scraping the length of the hull on the craggy edges. The engine coughed. He gave it more gas and nudged the boat in the direction he hoped was open sea.

“You don’t want Mr. Hasselborg’s boat to sink, do you, Pa? You don’t want Mrs. Hasselborg and little Wilbur to go hungry, do you? Damn!”

Luke’s slick soles scrambled for a purchase on the deck. Lil’ Eunice listed sideways. He knew what that meant. Water in the hull. Luke dropped the anchor then untied the rope holding the tarp over the furs. Wind caught the underside of the canvas and billowed it like a sail. With a handful of pelts, he headed below. He dropped off of the last rung of the ladder into calf-deep water. Empty liquor bottles and the remains of half-eaten meals floated by, along with twelve empty gas cans. The sea streamed in through a pair of fist-sized holes. Luke stuffed the pelts into the gaps, reducing the flow to an ooze.

The boat turned in small circles as Luke figured out how to use Hasselborg’s hand-held bilge pump. “Byt v glubokay,” he cursed as he cranked.

It didn’t take long for terror to degrade into boredom. By the time half of the water was pumped from the boat, and the storm had weakened by a third, Luke was looking for ways to amuse himself. First, he spelled his father’s many names forward, then backward, then inside out. When he ran out of languages that had titles for their god, he picked out words at random.

LIVE. VILE. EVIL.

ART. RAT. TAR.

EL. LE.

A.

Short on amusing words, Luke sang both Cole Porter songs that he knew, but he didn’t know the lyrics well enough to try them in reverse.

Lil’ Eunice turned slowly port, then slowly aft, then didn’t turn at all. Luke climbed up to the deck and looked at the sky, now quiet and still. Instead of black, the clouds were a foggy gray. Faintly, through the mist, Luke could see the hard projections of land. Fainter still, he could make out the stick-figure silhouette of a pier.

With the water in the hull down to ankle deep, Luke dropped the bilge pump and raised the anchor. He goosed the throttle. Lil’ Eunice’s engine sputtered then died. Nothing he did could restart her.

“Mandavoshka,” Luke swore. “How could I possibly be out of gas?”

* * * *

“Wazzat?” Hasselborg awoke with a start. As his eyes came into focus, his hand went into his coat and his flask into his hand. “Are we there yet?”

“Another hour, Daniel,” God cut the throttle. The storm seemed to be behind them, pushing them home. “I think there are a few biscuits left, if you’re hungry.”

“Ah, thanks anyway, Joe,” Hasselborg grunted. “I hope your boy is as good at bargaining as you say he is. McGrath’s a cheap old Scot, probably try to jew him down—you ain’t no Heeb, are you—not that it makes me no never mind.”

God studied the pearly sky, aiming Peaches between the wispy clouds. “No more or less than anything else.”

“Ah,” Hasselborg said, “didn’t think you were a church-going man. Eunice said she’s never seen you or your missus at the Holy Family Cathedral.”

“Crosses,” God said, shaking the image of his youngest son out of his head. “Can’t abide them.”

Hasselborg snorted and coughed. “Never had much use for sermons, myself. No matter what the stripe. Imagine a priest or a preacher tellin’ me how to live my life! You tell me how a man who don’t have to worry where his next meal is coming from can tell me to trust in the Lord? It’s a bunch of hooey. That’s what it is. God don’t love nobody and he don’t love me.”

God wrinkled His brow. “Of course God loves you. He loves all of His children. Why else would He be here but to watch out after them?”

“Watch ‘em? Watch ‘em, he does? Watch ‘em kill each other? Watch ‘em die? Saints preserve us from a God who likes to watch!” Hasselborg rubbed an eye with a balled up fist then took a long swig off of his flask. “Was God watching my boy bleed to death in a foreign foxhole? Was He watching my first missus and my little girl cough their lungs out?”

“God doesn’t like to watch,” God corrected the man. “He has to.”

Hasselborg turned his flask upside down. Nothing came out. He patted his thick coat, coming up with only a small bottle of cough syrup. He took a swig and frowned. “If there is an Almighty, I’ll tell you this, he is one mean sonofabitch. Why else would he allow sickness and war?”

God sighed. “You wanted President Wilson to be impartial—why can’t God be? God is neutral. He doesn’t interfere. He doesn’t take sides.”

“You some kind of spiritualist?” Hasselborg slurred. “How’d you know what God thinks?”

The wind sang a hymn through Peaches’ wings, vibrating the small plane in middle C.

“I am God,” God said.

“Oh, right then. That explains it. And I expect your wife is the Blessed Virgin.” Hasselborg stood, bumping his head on the low ceiling. He grabbed the handle, kicked the door open and swung a leg out into the sky.

“Daniel!” God reached for Hasselborg, grabbing a handful of beaver-skin coat.

“Whoanellyboboreno,” Hasselborg yiped, scrambling, slipping further outside. “What’s going on? Where am I?”

God wedged the stick between his knees and leaned as far as he could in the direction of the flailing Hasselborg. The man held on to the door-frame with both hands. His legs dangled in the watery air. Wind and mist howled into the plane. Peaches inclined to the right. Steering with his knees, God tilted the plane left, sending Hasselborg back to his seat with his head in God’s lap. God reached past him and shut the door.

Hasselborg straightened into a slump. “Sorry, Joe.” He cleared his throat. “Guess I forgot I wasn’t in the back room at the Panhandle, there for a mi-mi-minute.”

Hasselborg started coughing and didn’t stop for five full minutes. When he was finished, and slightly blue in the lips, he turned to God and said, “I’m feeling kinda tired, Joe.”

“Take a nap,” God told him. “I’ll wake you when we get home.”

God glanced at the passenger door, making sure it was truly closed. His passenger leaned well away from it, eyelids fluttering. The first signs of civilization appeared below the plane. A wide swath of bare dirt sliced across hills and hollows. Freshly cut logs, chained and ready for shipment, were stacked in a series of piles, leading downhill.

“Goddamnhell, I dunno know.” Hasselborg muttered. “Maybe He’s tired of watching.”

“What’s that, Daniel?”

“Watching ‘em. His kids. Maybe He’s letting them do themselves in, to be rid of them, to relieve Him of all that responsibility.”

God’s head jerked toward Hasselborg. A single vertical line creased his forehead. “What do you mean?”

One fur-covered shoulder rose and fell in a sleepy shrug. “All fathers get tired of their kids, always under-foot, gettin’ into trouble. Even if they don’t mean to, sometimes ... fathers yearn to be free.” Hasselborg blinked slowly, eyes glassy, red-rimmed and bloodshot. “No matter how much they love their kids...”

God waited for the man to say more. Hasselborg’s mouth stayed open but all that came from it was a snore.

God turned back around and studied His instruments. The compass needle spun slowly, counter-clockwise. Quietly, God said, “Daniel, I’ll have to think on that.”

* * * *

Night fell like a chador over the face of the Earth, obscuring Her beauty—or Her homeliness, Luke reflected—for if one had never really seen Her, one wouldn’t know. He steered Lil’ Eunice toward the lights of Seward. With his free hand, he counted the coins in his pocket. After paying an Aluet canoeist for four gallons of fuel, he had little more than a dozen silver dollars left.

He tied the boat to a slanted post on the end of a pier that was more missing than there. The working docks that Hasselborg had warned him to avoid, were a few hundred yards down the half-moon shore. He sat down on the bobbing prow. In the distance, a dog barked. Owls conversed from the pinnacles of pine trees in echoing hoots. Waves licked against the foamy shore, glowing an electric shade of gray in the clouded moonlight.

Luke leaned on one elbow and contemplated fur. There was no sense feeling bad about the animals. They were already in their next lives. Someone might as well make a profit from their pelts. Hasselborg had been pretty close-mouthed about how the fur trade operated, but Luke had learned from the canoeist that the Aleuts who harvested the pelts were paid fifty cents a skin. The government sold the furs to a processor in St. Louis for $35.34 a piece. That left a fair amount of money in the middle that was going somewhere—somewhere he wanted to be.

Workers filed on to the docks, filling fishing boats and grappling with freight. Luke hopped on to the half-rotted dock. Boards dipped under his feet. He followed Hasselborg’s directions to a row of wooden shanties, squatting on stilts on the muddy waterfront. He stopped on the stoop of a shotgun shack and knocked four times.

“Come in, already,” a voice grunted.

The cabin smelled of fish and ash and wet dog. A fat beagle-husky mix curled around a litter of squeaking puppies in a nest of rags. Unmarked wooden crates were stacked about the single room. A man in a plaid shirt and metal-riveted canvas pants leaned over a potbelly stove, feeding scrape wood to the fire-box. Smoke leaked out of the loose seams of the stove and drafted out holes in the tin roof. The man glanced up at Luke then over at a long-barreled pistol, sitting atop a cask, within easy reach.

“Daniel Hasselborg sent me,” Luke said. “I have pelts.”

“Pelts?” The presumptive McGrath repeated, eyes darting back to Luke.

“Seal.”

McGrath ran a hand over the reddish-blond stubble covering his chin. “Only the feds are allowed to buy seal. Do I look like the federal government?”

Luke smiled. McGrath looked more like a lumberjack. It was the setting that told him that the man was a black-market dealer. He slapped his best poker expression over his face and smoothed all the curves out of his voice, and said, “You look like a man of great business acumen who recognizes a fair deal when he is presented with one.”

“Fancy words from a man in wet clothes. Sit by the fire and dry yourself out.”

Luke seated himself on an upturned crate and nudged the fresh flames his way. Steam rose from his pantlegs.

“The seal harvest was months ago.” McGrath drummed his fingers against his thighs. “A man takes a big risk when he trades in felonious goods. They call that pelagic sealing. It’s been illegal for years.”

“A big risk for a big profit,” Luke said evenly.

McGrath’s busy fingers twitched once then stilled.

Luke encouraged the fire to rise. While he waited for the room temperature to climb, he did a mental count of the number of furs on the boat that were in saleable condition. Those not singed too badly from putting out the fire, and those not plugging holes in the hull, still numbered well over one-hundred.

When the temperature in the cabin was hot enough to encourage drowsing, he looked into McGrath’s glazed eyes and said, “You’re a savvy businessman. A wise man, too. I know you’ll give me a fair price. More than a fair price, actually.”

“More?” McGrath asked, sleepily.

“More,” Luke agreed.

* * * *

The landing came at a good time. Peaches was low on fuel and Hasselborg’s bottle was as dry as stone. It was a quiet homecoming. Hasselborg mumbled an unintelligible word then coughed his way down Ninth Avenue and all the way home.

* * * *

Lil’ Eunice sailed lighter, unburdened by furs. Hasselborg’s $2000 was tucked in Luke’s right pants pocket. Luke’s own was stowed securely in his left, where no one would know. Luke cut the wheel, trying to remember the details of a promise. Something about survival. Something about change.

* * * *

The weather turned tepid for a day then snapped back to cold. Edna stood before an open kitchen cupboard. She picked up a pink and green bowl, adorned with porcelain seashells, then set it back down. Next, she selected a plain wooden bowl and filled with dried roots, bone needles, and smooth stone fetishes. God walked through the door.

“I took apples and eggs over to Kisik Nowitna’s, this morning,” she said without turning around. “Poor Kisik is beside herself. It seems her fifteen year old daughter is in the family way. The father shipped out as soon as he heard the news.”

God sat down at the kitchen table, hefted one leg over the other and unlaced a boot.

Edna picked up a sturdy earthenware jar etched with images of the moon, the sky, and the Earth. “Kisik is sending her to Seattle to stay with cousins until the baby is born. They’ll give it away down there, so that no one will know. We can fly down in April, a couple of weeks early.”

God looked up at his wife.

“We can do some shopping and catch a few shows.” She closed the cupboard door. “If it’s a girl, we’ll name her Marjorie. If it’s a boy, I’m partial to Walter.”

God pursed His lips. “Good names,” He said.

“They’ll do. This time around. We need more wood. I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”

Edna exited into the hush of fresh snowfall. God made himself comfortable on the couch. No sooner did he have a pillow in his hand, ready to fluff, did the front door swing open. Luke swaggered in. “Pa.”

“I’m resting.”

“You’ve been resting for millennia, Pa.”

“Less than a day, son, less than a day.” God swiveled his legs off of the couch, and sat up. “Did you bring Daniel Hasselborg’s boat back?”

Luke shifted his weight from his right leg to his left. “The boat’s perfectly safe,” he said, at last. No one would bother to take such an unsightly hulk off a sandbar. “Pa—”

“Go help your ma with the firewood, Luke.” God yawned and stretched his arms over his head.

Luke cleared his throat.

“And tell her I said to let you have the money in my sock drawer.”

“Gee Pa, thank—”

“Go. Let me nap.”

Luke didn’t break into a grin until he was out the door.

God watched His wife and His son talking through the mist-edged parlor window. Snow swirled around them, landing on their shoulders and powdered the branches of the encircling evergreen trees. Luke’s arms moved in exaggerated animation. He gestured at the sky. Edna, feet planted firm upon the milk-white earth, smiled and pointed down.

God could have heard what they were saying, if the wind were to pick up and change directions, but it remained westward and mild. He fluffed a Niagara Falls pillow, untangled the golden fringe, and laid His head down.