Lee heated the meat and the leftover vegetables on his hot plate. He brought a bottle of ketchup out of the fridge. They ate while they watched
— You bet, said Pete. Say, how about the lady you were going with?
— Helen? All good, as far as I can tell. She’s her own kind of gal. Sometimes we’ll get together maybe three or four days out of the week. Sometimes once. You can’t ever tell.
Pete wasn’t sure how it happened but they were into their third beers.
— I heard you quit going to Barry’s church, said Lee.
— Yes. I did.
— Didn’t you go there your whole life?
— Just since I was eight, when mom met Barry. But since then? Almost ten years, every Sunday. We weren’t living in town when Mom met him. We lived in North Bay, actually, just Mom and me. I was born up there. But Grandma was still here, and a neighbour of hers had got her going to the church. Barry was a junior pastor back then, and he was single. I don’t know exactly how it worked-I was too young to figure it out, really-but Grandma got Mom talking to Barry, and before long Mom came back here and brought me with her. We lived in Grandma’s apartment for about a year. Man, that place was tiny. Then Mom and Barry got married, and they got the house where we are now, and all of us moved out there.
— Well, said Lee.
Lee didn’t prompt him further, but after two or three minutes, Peter said: Maybe you think I’m, you know, that I’m going to go to hell. Because I quit the church. Maybe you think Barry’s right about how people have to get born again and again. How Christians have to bring people in and convert them. So I’m sorry if this offends you but I don’t believe any of it. I didn’t go to church one Sunday, and I’ll tell you why, but hang on, and Barry gave me a look but he didn’t say much. Three weeks in a row I didn’t go and then he brought it up. At dinner one night. I said I didn’t want to talk about it. But Barry said spiritual things are what a family talks about with each other. Which is bullshit because we don’t talk about anything ninety percent of the time, but whatever. He pushed. So I came right out and said I didn’t plan to go any more. That I didn’t believe it. Barry got upset. He said, did I know what I was doing about my salvation? And I told him that’s not something he needs to worry about, but he said he would be and that he’d be praying for me. Mom had to get up and go into the kitchen.
— Pete, I wouldn’t ask you to spill nothing you don’t want to.
— Well, can you promise you’ll keep something between us? Lee put his hand out. Pete shook it.
— You talk about what you want to, Pete. I won’t break any trust with you.
— Okay, look. Sheila Adams, she teaches Sunday School. She’s ten years older than me. Last year, I was … you know, sleeping with her. She’s married. She wasn’t then, but she was engaged. I hadn’t ever slept with a woman before. But I’m getting ahead of myself. From the time I was eight till last spring I was at church, like I said. Every Sunday. But I think I knew for a long time that I didn’t belong. At the church, when the people get going, it’s what Barry calls the Baptism of Fire. They speak in tongues and put their hands in the air and act crazy. But you want to know something about it? It never once worked for me. I never had the Baptism of Fire. I wanted it, I really did, but I never had it. A few years ago, I even quit pretending, quit faking that I was having the Baptism just so I’d look like everybody else. We’d be there at church, and while everybody else was with the spirit, I’d just daydream. Sometimes I thought about girls from school. If I really had guts I would have faced the facts and quit a long time ago. But I didn’t. I kept thinking I just had to hold out, open myself to God, pray more and do this and do that and then I’d feel the grace. I did stuff with the youth group. Why not? I never had a lot of friends at school. The youth group, we’d do retreats, we’d do lockdowns at the church-
— Lockdowns?
— Yeah, said Pete. Lockdowns are sleepovers at the church. Not lockdowns like you’d think of from jail, I guess. Sorry. Anyway, stuff with the youth group was alright. It made it so things at home were easygoing.
Lee nodded.
Pete was past sober and loose-jawed. He went on: Last fall, Sheila Adams started helping out. She wasn’t the youth pastor. She was the coordinator. I think she made the title up. I think she was bored. The guy she was engaged to was an engineer at the chemical factory. He was away for awhile, down in Central America, on a mission to help people purify their water. It was with the International Pentecostal Church. Sheila was at home, bored, so she started coordinating with the youth group. I knew her from around. She was young, she was kind of foxy. But I also knew her because of how into all of it she was. Talking in tongues, moving around, the whole bit. Sometimes she’d cry in a service. Cry and laugh at the same time. Look. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t know why it was me that she picked. Maybe it’s because I was the oddball. Who knows what goes through women’s heads.
— You’d never had sex with a woman before?
— Never. Here’s how it went. I told you about those lockdowns? We did one for New Year’s Eve. It was all pop and chips and games. About eleven o’clock my friend Billy and a couple other guys came by outside. I got out a window and smoked some grass with them. Then I went back inside. After midnight I was a little weirded out so I went walking around the church to clear my head. Sheila was in the office. She had a key, I don’t know why. She called me in. I thought she knew I’d been smoking grass and she was going to let me have it, but … there wasn’t much talk. She closed the door and it just happened. Just like that. I was looking over at Barry’s desk the whole time, which was maybe five minutes. That was how it started. January. She’d need something, she’d need help over at her house. She’d give me a lift home from meetings. Once I skipped class and we did it in the afternoon. I thought I was in love with her but I guess I knew I wasn’t. Whenever we actually talked about anything, all she ever said was, that’s nice, or that’s interesting. And if it was something complicated, she’d say, look in the Bible. But she wanted to have sex all the time, and I was happy to give. It was all I could think about. But then in March, Sheila found out her fiance was coming home a couple months early. He’d gotten sick down there. He’d lost a bunch of weight. She told me we had to stop seeing each other. She said she was grateful for all the times I’d helped her out around her house. In a way I think she didn’t believe any of it actually happened. Me, I was a mess. I didn’t know how to deal with it but I knew I couldn’t say anything. I knew if even one person had any idea, how fast it would get out. Church people love to talk. I knew if it got out what it would do to us. I didn’t really care … about Barry. But Mom and Grandma, Luke, John, I care about them.
— You did just right, said Lee. So you quit going to church on account of this girl?
— Not right away. Sheila quit coordinating the youth group. I quit going to events. Her fiance came back from his mission and there was this big Welcome Home for him at the church. He was skinny and his skin was yellow. I was mad. I was so goddamn mad … But then we were at church this one Sunday in May. We were at church and everybody had the Baptism of Fire, hands in the air, talking in tongues. I saw Sheila, and she was right into it as usual. But the thing was, the face she was making, while she was blabbing out all these old languages, the face was the exact same as when she’d be having sex. Exact same. I don’t know why but I thought that was one of the funniest things I ever saw. I thought I was going to laugh my guts out right there in church. And then I knew. I knew how come I never had the Baptism of Fire. I didn’t go to church again. I quit school a couple weeks after that. It was the same there, Lee. Bullshit, all of it. I knew if I was going to head out west I was going to need to save some money. That’s all I’ve cared about ever since.
He’d halfway finished his beer. He was blinking against Lee’s cigarette smoke.
— Maybe I am passing up my chance for salvation. Maybe I’m going to hell. But I never chose to see through it all.
— I’m not sharp like you are, said Lee. I read the Bible a few times and I think there’s some real good stuff there. But they say God loves everybody. He cries if a bird dies. Sure. But then the same God would send somebody like you to hell forever? Just on account of you don’t get the call, same as some other people? I’m not sharp like you are, but I never got anybody, like a chaplain or a pastor, to work out that question so it made any sense.
— You don’t believe in hell?
— Sure I do. I seen it with my own eyes. It’s right here in the world where people make it for each other.
Lee didn’t know what advice he could give to Pete, if Pete was even looking for advice. Lee had known, of course, that Donna had left town to live somewhere else for several years, that Pete hadn’t been born here, but
