The Good Atheist Page 6

  The Holy Bible.

  I pulled it off the shelf and held it in my hands, reading the title again to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. I could hardly believe it. A real copy of the Bible.

  “Jack, what are you doing?” Selene asked me with a puzzled look on her face.

  I held up the book for her to see. “Honey, we’ve got a problem here,” I said quietly.

  “I know. So why don’t you just kill it. What are you waiting for?”

  “No, I mean look at this.” I handed the Bible to her and she took it from me. She looked at the front cover of the book, turned it over and read the back copy, then handed it back. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before, except in a museum behind glass.”

  I put the Bible down on the desk and looked at the shelves. The Bible was banned, of course, and owning one was prohibited. If Grandpa had a copy of the Bible lying around, then I wondered what else might fill these shelves. I looked at the book that had been next to the Bible on the shelf, and it was almost as shocking: The Reason for God. I pulled it off the shelf and paged through it. A random reading told me all I needed to know. This book, as the title darkly hinted, was an argument for the existence of God. I held the book in my hand and scanned down the row of books on the shelf. God and the Astronomers. Why I Believe. The Case for Christianity. Reasonable Faith. The Existence of God.

  The room was filled with religious books.

  I held The Reason for God out for Selene to see. “And it gets worse. Look at this,” I said. She took it from me and looked at it, turning it over in her hands.

  “These shelves are filled with religious books,” I said.

  “We’ll need to find a public incinerator,” she said.

  She was right, of course. Bibles were strictly verboten, along with most religious books. Just having a Bible in your possession would get you jail time. We were obligated under law to call the Inquisitors, or turn them into the nearest public library for burning.

  “I think we passed a library on our way through town. They’ll have an incinerator drop box,” I said. “I’ll have to sort through the books and pull out the ones that have to go.”

  “Okay, but don’t be too long. It’s getting late. I’m going to see if I can get that primitive kitchen to make us some coffee,” she said.

  “Hon, the kitchen won’t make the coffee. You’re going to have to do it,” I started to explain. But she left before I could finish, leaving me alone in the room packed with contraband books and a man-eating spider.

  The Bible was still there, on the desk where I’d left it. I had heard of the Bible, of course, and some backward countries still allowed it, but I had never seen one, let alone actually read it. Not that I needed to. Everyone knew that it was filled with hate, prejudice, intolerance and backward, archaic laws. Things that no advanced civilization could tolerate.

  Religion poisons everything. Everyone knows that. They taught us that in school.

  But something possessed me to look at it. Call it morbid curiosity, but for whatever reason I picked it up and took it over to the large chair behind the desk. I sat down, and flipped the Book open at random and began to read.

  Love your enemies. Do good to those who misuse you.

  I flipped again.

  Treat others as you would have them treat you.

  I flipped again.

  Blessed are the peacemakers. The words troubled me, because they weren’t the evil, hate-filled words dripping with prejudice that I’d been taught to expect from the Bible.

  I flipped again, and a folded sheet of paper fell out onto the desk in front of me. I picked it up and unfolded it. It was a handwritten letter on a lined sheet of white paper 8 ½ by 11, covered in very neat cursive. Handwriting was a dying art, and I started to read it, taking pleasure in the beautifully flowing script. It was dated August 2057, just ten months ago and addressed to my grandfather.

  I settled back in the large chair and started to read, more out of curiosity than anything. I didn’t think Gramps would mind too much. The writer thanked Grandpa for a recent shipment of tomatoes, enquired into his health, listed a few common household items he would like to have included with the next delivery of tomatoes, and a few other mundane matters. I stifled a yawn and was about to toss the letter aside when I came across the next line:

  Thanks, Dad, for everything. How is Jack?

  That stopped me cold.

  Dad had been an only child. I reread the letter to be sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks. My hands were shaking by the time I finished. The person who wrote this letter asked about me by name and called my grandfather Dad. Only my father fit the bill.

  One of my favorite memories of Dad was when he took me to the university where he worked late one night. He let me sit at the controls of the VLSA – Very Large Space Array – and we spent hours exploring the wonders of the night sky. Later, he got me a small telescope and we spent many evenings gazing up at the stars. My father disappeared shortly after that. I was only eight at the time. My mother simply told me that he had run off with another woman, although my child’s mind was not able to grasp what that meant. I never heard from him, and a year later my mother told me, in an even, flat, matter-of-fact tone, that he had died in a car accident.

  Who else would address Grandpa as Dad? And the writer asked about me! The best explanation was that the letter came from my dad. Except that he was supposed to have been dead for the past seventeen years.

  I looked at the date on the letter again just to make sure. Last August. For a long while all I could do was sit and stare out the window while I tried to come to grips with the implications of the letter. If it really was from my father, then obviously he was still alive – at least until ten months ago. I couldn’t be one hundred percent certain, but it was too much of a coincidence.

  As I thought it through, I realized that the only real proof I had that Dad was dead was the word of my mother and a few news articles on the web. At the time I was just a trusting child and it didn’t occur to me to question it. Later, as the years passed without any contact from my father, it only served to confirm the story. When I grew into a man I had no reason to doubt it.

  No reason until now.

  If he was still alive why had I not heard from him? But that alone did not logically prove he was dead. There could be some other explanation that I was not aware of, and I had to admit that my knowledge of the facts was still pretty limited.

  Could it really be true that my father was alive? After believing since the age of eight that he was dead, the thought was staggeringly hard to accept. But I held in my hands reasonable evidence that he might be alive after all.

  The letter gave precious few hard facts, and assumed that the reader had knowledge of a lot of background information. But that fit if the letter was simply an installment in an ongoing, regular correspondence. In fact, the letter was surprisingly dull. The entire purpose of it was to request a few electronic parts with the next delivery of tomatoes. He made reference to another recent letter, and there seemed to be a lot that was simply assumed between the two. It made sense, though. If you are in regular touch with someone you don’t fill them in on everything going on in your life with each exchange. You just talk about whatever is new. The rest, all the background, is known and assumed.

  I wondered why the letter was written out by hand on paper, and physically delivered. Why not email or text?

  It seemed to me that if this letter was part of a regular correspondence, then there could be more letters somewhere. And since I’d found this one stuck in a book, the bookshelves were as good a place as any to start looking for more.

  I got up and started pulling books off the shelves one by one. As I pulled each book off the shelf, I held it upside down and fanned the pages to see if anything fell out. Then I tossed it on the floor and grabbed the next one from the shelf, working quickly from left to right. I found the second letter in A History of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, apparently used as a boo
kmark. I found several others in the same way. More were sandwiched between books.

  I kept up the frantic pace, and an hour later the shelves were empty. All the books lay in heaps on the floor. My efforts had produced a dozen more letters. I took the letters with me back to the large armchair and sat down to read.

  When I finished the last one, I sat and stared out the window, trying to put the pieces together with the scant information I could glean from the letters.

  According to the dates on the letters, they ranged in time from five years to six months ago. The language was vague in many respects. There was no mention of where the writer lived, or what he was doing. A couple of letters said that ‘the work’ was going well, but no indication of what that was.

  But most of the letters were signed ‘Marcus’ or ‘Your son.’ And several of them mentioned me by name. It seemed that these letters represented correspondence from my father, but that was hardly possible.

  I was still lost in thought when Selene came into the room. She looked around, surveying the wreckage. The floor was a mess of books. “Ah, I see you’ve made good progress,” she quipped.

  I kept staring out the window in silence.

  “I thought you were supposed to be sorting them,” she prodded.

  When I didn’t answer, she carefully picked her footing through the books to get to me and stood next to the chair. “Jack. Did you hear me?”

  I nodded absently.

  “Honey, you’re acting strange – even for you. What’s wrong?”

  I still held the letters on my lap. For an answer, I held them out to her.

  “What’s this?”

  “Letters from my dad.”

  “What?”

  “Just read them,” I said.

  She took them from me and read them where she was, standing over me next to the chair. It didn’t take her long to finish.

  “Are you sure? Marcus is a common name.”

  “It’s safe to infer,” I said. “Marcus was my father’s name, and no one else is going to refer to my grandfather as Dad. And he asks about me, by name, as well as referring to me as ‘my son’. It’s a pretty safe bet.”

  “Yes, but he’s dead, hon. There must be another explanation. Maybe ‘Dad’ is just an affectionate term. When I was a little girl, my mom had a friend named Clarissa. Mom had known her forever, and we called her Aunt Clarissa. She wasn’t a real aunt – it was an honorary title. This might be something like that.”

  “Someone who just happens to be named Marcus? Who has a son named Jack? It’s too much of a coincidence. And the term ‘Dad’ is used too directly and too often. If my grandfather was an honorary ‘Dad’ to this person, than I think the term was being stretched an awful lot. And the writer also asks about me, remember, as his son.”

  She nodded, getting the point. “But he died in a car accident when you were young.”

  “So my mother says. But I only have her word on it, and we both know how reliable that is.”

  “It was in the news. We’ve both seen the news stories.”

  “Yeah, and we both know the news is never wrong, right?”

  “But your mother wouldn’t lie about a thing like this.”

  I just looked at her. I knew full well my mother’s capacity for lies and deceit. “It should be easy enough to check,” I said. “But it will have to wait until we return to the land of the living. We’ve got no internet or phone coverage out here in the boonies. But I think I know what I’m going to find.”

  She sat on an arm of the chair, leaned in, and put her arms around me. I rested my head against her, and we remained like that for a long time, not saying anything.

  Selene finally broke the silence. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know just yet. I still need more time to absorb this. The letters tells me he’s alive, but there is no indication where he is. He may not even know Grandpa is dead. He wasn’t at the funeral. He could be worried, wondering why the letters from Grandpa have stopped. I’m going to look around for more letters, pictures, documents, emails, anything that might tell me where he is and what happened to him.”

  “Did you look in the desk?”

  “What?”

  “The desk, silly. In the old days when people wrote letters on paper, they would often keep them in a desk drawer. I remember my old Aunt Lillie doing that.”

  Why hadn’t I thought of that? I spun around in the chair and searched the desk. I found a bundle of letters held together with a rubber band in one of the drawers. A quick look through the stack confirmed that they were from the same man – this Marcus who called my grandfather Dad.

  “Bingo,” I said. I placed them with the other letters.

  Selene looked around the room. “It’s late and we’ve had a long day. Let’s get to back to the motel. I wouldn’t mind getting a decent meal and a hot shower.”

  I checked my watch. It was past dinner. “Why don’t we just stay here?”

  She shook her head. “Uh-uh. I’m not spending the night in this dusty old place. I need to get back to civilization. Check my messages, get a hot shower. And I’m not sure how we can cook in this primitive kitchen. There are no droids to help us clean, and the stove can’t even cook. We’d have to do everything ourselves.”

  I was too wired with excitement to leave. I had to stay. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I’d finished reading all the letters. But I could see the tiredness in her eyes. “Hon, why don’t you go ahead without me? I’ll stay, read the rest of the letters, and look around for anything else that might tell me more about my dad.”

  “We can come back in the morning,” Selene suggested.

  I shook my head. “No way. Don’t you get it? I’ve found evidence my dad is alive. There is a good chance that somewhere in this cottage will be something that tells me more about him, maybe even where he is. I’m not leaving until I’ve had a careful look, even if it takes all night. And I still need to sort out the banned books and pack them up so we can turn them in for burning.”

  “All right,” she said. “If you want to stay that badly, I guess one night here won’t kill me.”

  “I’ll be fine. Go back to the motel for the night.”

  But Selene crossed her arms. “Nope. I’ll stay too. I can help sort the books.”

  “Thanks,” I said, pulling her close to me.

  “You’re welcome,” she said. She started to say more, but I stopped her with a kiss. After a few minutes she finally pushed me away. “Look, I’m giving up a decent night’s sleep and a hot shower for this, so let’s get on with it.” She turned to the nearest pile of books on the floor, and started picking through them.

  It was going to be a long night, and coffee would be required. I left Selene in the den and went into the kitchen to see about making some. It was getting dark, and I commanded the house to turn on the lights, before remembering that this was a primitive home without artificial intelligence. I went around, manually flicking on lights. It felt odd to be in a house that would not answer questions or obey my commands. I would have to do everything the old-fashioned way. Manually flipping switches, turning knobs and even, for heaven’s sake, making my own coffee.

  I found an old-fashioned coffee maker sitting on the counter next to the stove. It was the kind that you had to manually pour water into the top. I knew Grandpa had been a coffee drinker, and I dug around the kitchen cupboards until I found a can of coffee. Next to it were paper cone filters. I put a filter into the coffee maker, and poured some coffee grounds into it. I had to guess how much to use – Ellie normally made the coffee for us at home.

  I pumped some water out of the tap at the sink, poured it into the coffee maker, turned the switch on, and waited. I stood at the counter, watching the coffee drip through. It seemed to take forever, but then everything seemed to take longer. Instead of feeling impatient, I found myself enjoying the slower pace and doing things for myself. And I enjoyed the quiet and solitude. There were no servbots or cl
eaning droids scurrying around. The house wouldn’t try to schedule my life. I could open the fridge door, and it wouldn’t give me dietary advice or make snide comments on my snack choices. And the stove wouldn’t try to tell me how to cook.

  I could get used to this, I decided.

  Maybe if I did more for myself, I wouldn’t need a gym membership to stay in shape.

  I made a full pot of coffee and took a cup into Selene. She was busy organizing the books in neat stacks, separating the wheat from the chaff, the good – or at least the harmless – from the religious.

  I took the rest of the pot of coffee, along with the letters, into the living room, and sat down next to a reading lamp. I began by sorting the letters in date order. My father had the habit of putting the date at the top of each letter, and soon I had them in order. The letters started almost seventeen years ago, shortly after the last time I saw him and, according to my mother, had run off with another woman. The last letter was dated December 15, 2057, just six months ago. I started reading in chronological order. There were almost a hundred – it was going to be a long night.

  I made a conscious decision to keep my emotions in check until I’d finished, but it was hard. At time the tears blurred my vision so much I had to stop reading and get myself back under control.

  I lost track of time. I hadn’t heard a peep from Selene for a long while. I got up to stretch my legs and check on her. She was fast asleep, curled up in the big chair. She looked comfortable enough, so I decided to let her be. I went into a bedroom, pulled a blanket off one of the beds, and covered her up, carefully tucking it in around the edges. Then I went back into the kitchen and made a second pot of coffee before returning to my reading.

  When I finished the last letter, I was convinced they were from my father, but they left me with more questions than answers. The picture of my father that emerged from the correspondence was completely different from what I’d been told by my mother. There was no mention of another woman, and there had never been a car crash. And he was in hiding from the Tolerance Bureau. That much was apparent. There were no concrete references to places or people. The letters seemed to be very carefully composed not to give any hint of his location.