99 Stories of God Read online

  99 Stories of God

  By Joy Williams

  BYLINER FICTION

  Copyright © 2013 by Joy Williams

  All rights reserved

  Cover image © Getty Images

  ISBN: 978-1-61452-078-8

  Byliner Inc.

  San Francisco, California

  www.byliner.com

  For press inquiries, please contact [email protected]

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Table of Contents

  1. Postcard

  2. Noche

  3. Aubade

  4. Cavity

  5. Nevertheless

  6. See That You Remember

  7. Not His Best

  8. Hedgehog

  9. Clean

  10. Wet

  11. Arrangement

  12. No

  13. Moms

  14. Cozy

  15. Story

  16. If Picked or Uprooted These Beautiful Flowers Will Disappear

  17. Dresser

  18. This Is Not a Maze

  19. Perhaps a Kind of Cake?

  20. This Time

  21. Coat

  22. Some Difference

  23. And You Are …

  24. Nid Duw Ond Dim (Without God There Is Nothing)

  25. Veracity

  26. Satisfaction

  27. A Good Reason

  28. Abandon All Hope

  29. Ignorance

  30. Satan’s Leathery Wing

  31. Society

  32. Shaken

  33. Irreducible

  34. Tragedy Has Obligations

  35. Just a Rumor

  36. Dearest

  37. The Brain

  38. Actually

  39. Buried in Colorado All Alone

  40. Señor Xólotl

  41. Jail

  42. Pretty Much the Same, Then

  43. Her Eyes Were Set Rather Close Together, Which Gave Her an Urgent Air

  44. The Individualist

  45. Numbers

  46. Preference

  47. Get Out As Early As You Can

  48. Participation

  49. Naked Mind

  50. Buick Le Sabre

  51. Significance

  52. Doll House

  53. Peggy

  54. Divine

  55. Neglect

  56. Giraffe

  57. Dew

  58. Sartre to Camus

  59. Looking Good

  60. Party

  61. Museum

  62. Essential Enough

  63. Apropos of Nothing

  64. I Pity the Fool

  65. Dull

  66. Rebirth

  67. Forgiveness

  68. ) (

  69. Inoculum

  70. Driveshaft

  71. Fog

  72. Whale

  73. A Little Prayer

  74. Walk-In

  75. Transition

  76. Whatever Is Happening?

  77. Elephants Never Forget God

  78. The Fourth Wife

  79. Example

  80. Opportunity

  81. Businesswoman

  82. Polyurethane

  83. Crazy Injuns

  84. Winter

  85. Early Practice

  86. Infidelity

  87. Plot

  88. A Flawed Opinion

  89. Phew

  90. Compline

  91. Mr. Sandman

  92. Distinction

  93. Fathers and Sons

  94. If You Feel You Must

  95. Sibling

  96. Plenary

  97. Bread

  98. A New Arrangement

  99. The Darkling Thrush

  About the Author

  About Byliner

  Byliner Recommends ... Genie

  Byliner Recommends ... The Secret World of Saints

  Byliner Recommends ... My Mother’s Bible

  1

  A woman who adored her mother, and had mourned her death every day for years now, came across some postcards in a store that sold antiques and various other bric-a-brac. The postcards were of unexceptional scenes, but she was drawn to them and purchased several of wild beaches and forest roads. When she got home, she experienced an overwhelming need to send a card to her mother.

  What she wrote was not important. It was the need that was important.

  She put the card in an envelope and sent it to her mother’s last earthly address, a modest farmhouse that had long since been sold and probably sold again.

  Within a week she received a letter, the writing on the envelope unmistakably her mother’s. Even the green ink her mother had favored was the same.

  The woman never opened the letter, nor did she send any other postcards to that address.

  The letter, in time, though only rumored to still exist, caused her children, though grown, much worry.

  Postcard

  2

  The breeder of the black German shepherds said her kennel was in Sedona, a place known far and wide for its good vibrations, its harmonic integrity. But the kennel was actually in Jerome, thirty miles away, an unnerving ghost town set above a vast pit from which copper ore had been extracted. The largest building in Jerome was the old sanatorium, now derelict. The town’s historian insisted that it had served all the population in the town’s heyday, not just the diseased and troubled, and that babies had even been born there.

  In any case, the dog coming from Jerome rather than Sedona was telling, people thought.

  Another something that could be the basis of the dog’s behavior was the fact that her mistress always wore sunglasses, day and night. Like everybody else, the dog never got to see her eyes. When the woman had people over, she placed a big bowl of sunglasses outside the front door and everyone put on a pair before entering. It was easier than locking the dog in the bedroom.

  Noche

  3

  A noted humanist was invited to take part in a discussion about the dangers and opportunities which would arise if intelligent life forms on other planets were discovered. His remarks, though no one disagreed with them, became so heated that the producers later, in light of what had happened, decided to edit him out of the program.

  There was consensus that discovering intelligent life forms on other planets was probable and even essential to the human endeavor, but much of the conversation concerned whether any life form discovered would hold a candle to human intelligence and creativity.

  The humanist, who was also a noted scholar, argued that nothing could be discovered that could write a symphony, as so many of our brilliant composers had done, or be capable of appreciating the symphony. The ability to appreciate the symphony seemed to him quite as important as the actual composition of it.

  The humanist/scholar became quite emotional in conceiving of the world devoid of human beings, which was a possibility brought on by one disaster or another, due, it must be said, to our own actions. This would be the worst thing he could imagine—worlds devoid of human beings, even if these worlds were populated by other intelligent and enterprising life forms.

  After the taping, the humanist/scholar, whose name was Charles Thaxter Ormand, the acronym of which, in the ever-evolving and vibrant field of text messaging, would be check this out, retired for lunch to one of the city’s many small fine restaurants. He ordered that day’s special. When it was brought to him, whole and beautifully prepared and presented, he took a moment to study it before consuming it.

  To his discomfort, he detected from the plate the faint sound of the most beautiful music. It was exquisite, joyous yet heartbreaking, a delicate furling of gratitude and praise gradually diminishing, then gone.

  Horrified, he continued to look at the speckled trout that, according
to the waiter, had been taken mere hours before from its mountain stream. Then, with a cry, he rushed into the kitchen, where he attacked both the waiter and the chef with a variety of heavy utensils before he was subdued and taken away for observation at the nearest psychiatric facility. His ravings about the trout being no more appreciated than the ravings of any of the other lunatics there.

  Aubade

  4

  Passing Clouds was the brand of cigarette favored by the great English contralto Kathleen Ferrier. According to one of her early teachers, her magnificent voice was attributed to “a wonderful cavity at the back of her throat.” This was the only explanation given for the purity and power of her voice.

  Near the end of her brief life, Ferrier sang Mahler’s symphony “Song of the Earth.” We die, but life is fresh, eternally fresh, was Mahler’s ecstatic conviction. Nature renews herself year after year … for ever and ever.

  Ferrier was in tears when she concluded “Song of the Earth,” so distraught that she omitted the final ewig, the final ever.

  Cavity

  5

  At some point, Kafka became a vegetarian.

  Afterwards, visiting an aquarium in Berlin, he spoke to the fish through the glass.

  “Now at last I can look at you in peace, I don’t eat you anymore.”

  Nevertheless

  6

  You know that dream of Tolstoy’s where he’s in some sort of bed contraption suspended between the abyss below and the abyss above? You know that one? Well, I gave it to him, the Lord said.

  See That You Remember

  7

  Franz Kafka once called his writing a form of prayer.

  He also reprimanded the long-suffering Felice Bauer in a letter: “I did not say that writing ought to make everything clearer, but instead makes everything worse; what I said was that writing makes everything clearer and worse.”

  He frequently fretted that he was not a human being and that what he bore on his body was not a human head. Once he dreamt that as he lay in bed, he began to jump out the open window continuously at quarter-hour intervals.

  “Then trains came and one after another they ran over my body, outstretched on the tracks, deepening and widening the two cuts in my neck and legs.”

  I didn’t give him that one, the Lord said.

  Not His Best

  8

  This is an appealing story.

  One day, a hermit brother about to leave for town went to a brother who lived nearby and who had continual compunction. He said to his fervent neighbor, “Please do me the kindness, brother, of taking care of my garden until my return.” The other replied, “Believe me, brother, I will do my best not to neglect it.” After the brother’s departure, he said to himself, Now take care of this garden. And from evening until dawn he stood in psalmody, ceaselessly shedding tears. He prayed the same way for the entire day. Coming home late, the brother found that hedgehogs had ravaged his garden.

  He said, “God forgive you, brother, for not taking care of my garden.”

  The other answered, “God knows I did my best to keep it, and I hope through God’s mercy that the little garden will bear fruit.”

  The brother said, “But it has been completely destroyed.”

  The other replied, “I know, but I have confidence in God that it will flower again.”

  But he was speaking of his continual tears, the weeping for one’s sins in the hope of salvation, and of the garden of his heart, watered by him and in full flower.

  Hedgehog

  9

  A child in the south side of town was killed in a drive-by shooting. He was not the intended victim, he was only seven. There really was no intended victim. The gunman just wanted to spook some folks, the folks in this specific house. It wasn’t even little Luis’s house. But he was there, visiting a friend who had a pet iguana, and the iguana was sort of sickly, no one knew why, more yellow than green, maybe someone had fed it spinach by mistake. Hearing a ruckus, the boys ran outside and Luis was shot in the chest and died.

  The family held a car wash to pay for the funeral expenses. This is not uncommon. It was announced in the newspaper and lots of people came, most of whom had nice waxed cars that didn’t need washing, and the family appreciated this.

  Clean

  10

  The Lord was drinking some water out of a glass. There was nothing wrong with the glass, but the water tasted terrible.

  This was in a white building on a vast wasteland. The engineers within wore white uniforms and booties on their shoes and gloves on their hands. The water had traveled many hundreds of miles through wide pipes to be here.

  What have you done to my water? the Lord asked. My living water …

  Oh, they said, we thought that was just a metaphor.

  Wet

  11

  The defendant, a young housecleaner originally from El Salvador, was accused of murdering her three-year-old daughter. Whenever she was brought into the courtroom, she did nothing but weep.

  Despite several grand jury proceedings, the woman, Dora Tejada, had not been indicted after several months of incarceration following her arrest.

  The judge in the case scheduled a probable-cause hearing for September 13.

  “This is a real date,” the judge said. “Unlike some cases where probable-cause dates are movable, this one isn’t.”

  Court records indicate that police believe the woman used an object, possibly a rose, to suffocate her daughter.

  Arrangement

  12

  The mother had forgotten the child’s rabbit-fur muff. It had been a long time since the child had died. It was of a staph infection when the child was four. The mother had two other children, whom she loved, and Iris remained in her heart as well, loved.

  But she had forgotten the muff, which was discovered in the way such things often are, when the mother was cleaning up, cleaning out.

  She went through the albums and boxes of photographs, but she could find no picture of Iris with the muff, though the little girl loved to dress up in hats and gowns and long gloves and beads.

  The mother nevertheless remembered now that it had belonged to Iris, her little child.

  She had heard that in this decimated world, people who enjoyed songbirds should hang mesh bags filled with twigs, hair, fur, and yarn for nesting material.

  I saw an oriole’s nest once that was constructed with cigarette butts, the owner of the wild-bird store said. Sad.

  The mother placed Iris’s white rabbit-fur muff on the branch of a tree in the hope that birds would find it. So many beautiful, safe nests will be made from this, she thought.

  But it remained on its branch untouched and remarkably resilient to the elements through the mild winters and dry springs.

  Eventually, the mother needed assistance with living and moved to one of those establishments that provided such assistance. The house on its little plot of land was put on the market and made available for sale, but not before a gardener pruned the branch that held the rabbit-fur muff from the tree along with many others.

  No

  13

  It was May and in the garden they were drinking mango margaritas. Martha and Constance were discussing throwing an Anti–Mother’s Day party.

  Martha says that in the movie A.I., there are seven words Monica uses to imprint the boy David. They are: Cirrus. Socrates. Particle. Decibel. Hurricane. Dolphin. Tulip. She is now his mother, and he will love her unconditionally and forever.

  But he was a cyborg, she adds.

  Constance becomes anxious when conversation deteriorates to talk of movies. She brings out her mother’s replacement knees, which she requested upon her mother’s cremation, though her husband, Jim, maintains that he was the one who requested them.

  Laughing, Martha says that this is the most macabre thing she has ever witnessed in her life.