What We Are Read Online Free Page B

does. I can now run the gamut of textual inconsistencies with too much ease, from book to book, chapter to chapter, mouth to mouth. St. James vs. St. Paul. St. Paul vs. St. Peter. Magdalene and the missing gnostic books. The insane Dungeons and Dragons game of Revelation. I went through the Bible twice in my life, once at a Jesuit high school (New Testament freshman year, Old Testament sophomore year), and later in a medieval four-by-eight cell in San Quentin, and it ruined me. Not happy about it at all. Inboth cases, I was surrounded by history and learning, but I never completely belonged or bought into either place. It was like education and incarceration touted the same book so hard that their irreconciliable differences left me with no system.
    â€œFather,” I say, “I suspect I’m in a lot of trouble.”
    â€œWith the law?”
    â€œNo. Not this time, anyway.”
    â€œThat’s good, Paul.”
    â€œI meant with me, Father.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œNo disrespect, Father, but I don’t think you do. I can’t get any fucking grounding.”
    â€œPray.”
    I don’t say, It’s gonna take a hell of a lot more than that. Instead: “Father, I admire you. I always have.”
    He smiles, knowing what that means: I’m not going to mass.
    â€œWell,” he says, “you’ll remain in my prayers.”
    At the end of the day or the end of a life, McFadden is a kind man, and I think that’s enough. I hope. I wish we could find a new start between us, wherever it might end up. Maybe we’d find an unequivocal key to this life.
    Gotta give something back. “I’m gonna do this rally with you, Papa Mac. Okay?”
    â€œGreat,” he says. “We need all the numbers we can get.”
    â€œStanley!” says Athena. The goddess is back. “You’re needed over there.”
    â€œI’m talking to my priest, if you don’t mind.”
    â€œOh, no. It’s okay, Paul,” says the father.
    â€œThat’s right it’s okay,” says Athena.
    I consider this odd couple. She came to the show singing Carole King in her mother’s Volvo, he came mourning the fourteen stations in a hearse. She’d like to loosen the starch of his collar, he’d like toreplace her beads with a rosary. She thinks we’ve come so far, he thinks we’ve lost so much. She thinks these poor, poor people, he thinks my brave, brave parishioners. She came down from the hills to kick it with the commoners, he follows the carpenter who died on a hill. Allies for a day, a political moment, no more, they are both ready to do good.
    â€œAthena,” Papa Mac says, “will you please sign Paul up here? He’s going to join us this morning.”
    Athena says nothing.
    â€œGod bless you, Paul. I’ll see you at the rally.”
    â€œ
Mille grazie, padre
.”
    She says, “So what are you really here for?”
    â€œOn this planet?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAm I allowed on it?”
    â€œHere. Right here. Right now. Why?”
    I’ll give her one thing: she has eyes the alluring cobalt blue of Arabian nights. But I’m not fooled. She won’t grant that a transient of her embattled earth has a halfway functional brain, despite the earlier tutelage in Spanish.
    â€œI ain’t homeless,” I say. “I mean, sort of. I have a motel room I stay in.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œBut it was paid for by a fellowship. Which should upgrade my status a bit.”
    She looks me up and down. “Fellowship?”
    I smile, nod.
    â€œAs in money for scholarship?”
    â€œAs in the Leroi Jones Hookup for Off-the-Hook Artistic Achievement.”
    â€œOkay, look, I—”
    â€œEven went to school here once upon a time.”
    â€œâ€”don’t have the time for this.”
    â€œLet’s be nice to one another, goddess.”
    â€œI will be nice”—liking the way