Page 161 of The End of the World As We Know It

Henry, undeterred, asked, “Did you know I was coming today?”

“No,” Art said.

“Oh, that’s okay, I guess. But I was kind of hoping you might’ve been, like, shown me in—in a dream? Sounds crazy when I say it out loud like that.”

“It does.”

“Well, it can’t be helped. You look like you haven’t been sleeping much. No offense. Can I ask you about your dreams? Have you been dreaming of a cornfield, and, um, a godly woman—”

“Yeah, I have dreams,” Art said, and slung his guitar strap over his shoulder. “Now, what do you want?”

Henry said, “A group of us are heeding the call to go west, to Boulder, Colorado. Fresh mountain air and all that. Hey, did you follow college football at all? I’m a Notre Dame grad and I was down in Miami on New Year’s to watch the Orange Bowl with my fiancée, Patrice. She was a bigger fan of Notre Dame than I was. Man, what I wouldn’t give to watch another game with her, just one more game.” Henry paused to leave room for Art to commiserate, to share his own tale of catastrophic woe, but how he spoke felt more rehearsed than being rooted in grief. Maybe that wasn’t a fair assessment. Maybe it sounded that way because Henry had to practice keeping from melting down into a screaming, crying fit. Unlikely, but you never know. Henry continued. “Notre Dame beat U of Colorado in the Orange Bowl. Pounded them Buffalos, who were up to some shady recruiting, if you ask me. Not as bad as U Miami, though. I guess some cheaters did win in the end, in the before times. Now we’re headed to the same town where U Colorado is. Life is weird. I don’t know why we’re not being called to go to Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. But I’m just the messenger, right?” Henry paused again.

Art strummed a G chord. Henry asked Art to kindly not play, as he was getting to his point. Art responded with a D chord.

The rest of Henry’s spiel sounded a lot like Hilly’s pitch. He said, “There is a coming battle, and everyone has to choose sides. The old, godless ways got us into this whole mess. We couldn’t go on ignoring that anymore. We had to fight for what could be right and good again in the name of God. You look like a smart guy. You had the dreams, too. You know this to be true. And here’s the kicker: the voice in our dreams gave us your name and where to findyou. It said that you, Art, are the fulcrum. Yes, you. I know it’s a lot. And don’t take this the wrong way. It’s as hard for me to swallow that we’re headed to Boulder as it is for me to believe that you’re the most important man left alive. But, I know it to be true because, well, God said so.”

“God?”

“Yeah. You know, He speaks through the woman in the dreams.” Henry went on another rant that I’ll trim down a bit, saying that the people on the other side were in thrall to evil incarnate, to the devil himself, and that they would destroy us all if Art didn’t help. Henry didn’t know what the plan was or exactly where Art fit into it, but only that, for now, Artwasthe plan. Art would tip the scales in their favor and “eradicate evil from the world once and for all.” Henry was exultant. Despite the other terrors to come, his rapturous tone scared Art the most.

Art shook his head and said, “None of this should come down to me. It’s all bullshit.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, yeah?” Henry said. “Look, I know that you’re scared, Art.”

Art punched out a few more chords, short and sharp. He said, “I’m not scared. I’m angry. You should be, too.”

Art told Henry about how the day after his parents died, his two younger cousins, Erin and Dan, ages thirteen and nine, showed up on his doorstep. Their parents had died, too, and they didn’t know where else to go or what to do. Their first night at his house, Art dug out a road map from his mom’s car, and they marked up a route they would take to Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod. They unanimously decided to live on one of the ends of the world. The next morning, Erin and Dan were full of phlegm and were too weak to climb out of their shared pullout couch bed in the TV room. Before she became incoherent with fever, Erin narrated future versions of the Erin and Dan who lived in an alternate universe, one in which the superflu never happened. She went on for hours, giving an incredibly almostimpossibly detailed account of their hectic high school years, romantic partners, colleges attended, friends made and friends lost, one with a career in radio as a production engineer and the other bouncing from one odd job to the next but finding happiness in their freedom, the cities lived in and cities visited, their hopes and dreams, their joys and longings, their successes and failures. Dan silently listened to his sister, never once objecting to her vision. When it became too much for Art, he’d retreat to the kitchen and cry, but he still heard her melancholic and beautiful story echoing through his house.

Art paused, seemingly mid-story, wiped his forearm across his eyes, took off his guitar, and said, “I’m not going anywhere with you or anyone else.”

I have to admit, that answer was a complete and total shock to me. And it was a shock to Henry, too. He spluttered and stuttered, eventually saying, “Hey, look, I get it. I do. But you’re not the only one who suffered—”

“That’s exactly my point.”

“You think God made the superflu? Word on the street is that it was man-made.”

“I’m sure it was. But what about all of the suffering in every decade of every century, and it was allowed to happen, which, okay, it was consistent behavior, at least. The problem I have is that God chooses to show upnow.”

Henry rubbed his head like it hurt, like the ideas were too big to fit inside. “Hey, man, I’m no theologian, but God has always been around. And we don’t know how often, um, God intervened on our behalf, right? We can’t question—”

“We should always question. And here’s a few more for you: Is God showing up now because he forgot about us previously? Are we an oil spill that happened due to neglect and the Almighty is rushing in to clean up? Was the entirety of human existence orchestrated—the savagery, the knowledge, the longing, the loving and the hating, the genocides, the wars, the nuclear bombs, the engineered viruses—toget to this exact point in time so those who remain could, what, take up arms in His name for the final showdown?”

Henry shouted, “Stop! Enough! I—I can’t believe you’re choosing the other side—you’re choosing evil!”

“I never said I would go with the people headed to Las Vegas. Fuck them, too.”

“You choosing not to be with us is choosing to be with them.”

“No it isn’t. I’m choosing a third option, which is to reject the both of you, to reject any further demands for blood sacrifice. I refuse to participate.”

“So, what, you’re just going to sit on the sidelines and do nothing while evil threatens us all?”

“If anyone comes to my doorstep, I will help them. And if they ask, I will advise them to not go west. The seafood is way better out here.”

Henry then ranted about the will of God, the honor of being chosen, His enemies would be bathed in cleansing, righteous fire, blah blah blah. You have to admit, Henry was proving himself not to be the best representative for the good guys.

Art continued fully embracing his El-ahrairah, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, role when speaking with Lord—