God Is Dead by Ron Currie Jr.

reunited, it did little to help me feel better. After months of sleepless nights I was able to identify this discomfort only as a desire. Far from lifting the cloud, however, this realization served only to darken it—now that I knew I longed for something, I wanted desperately to know what that something was.
    And then, just yesterday, this letter from Selia:

    Only a year left. It’ll go by before we know it, and then we can leave this shitass town and get on with our lives. So I’ve got a proposal—and brace yourself, because it’s a whopper—but since Mom died I’ve been really lonely for someone to care for. Ridiculous, sure, but there it is. So here’s what I’m thinking: you, me, a bambino. We’re different from the fawning retards around here. We’ll be good, sensible parents. And we’d make a good-looking kid, too, as long as he didn’t end up with your nose. I’ve thought about it for a while, and I know this is what I want. So I’m going to Dr. DerSimonian next week to have my IUD removed. And just think, you’ll never have to wear a rubber again! Small consolation, I know, when you’re still a year away from getting laid. But maybe the thought will keep you warm nights.

    I read the letter three, four times. I put it down on the desk and read it again, lacing and unlacing my fingers. My palms went cold with sweat; I wiped them on the canvas of my prison-issue pantlegs as my breath came quicker and I longed for a cigarette though I’ve never smoked, and then, with trembling hands, I took out pen and paper and wrote my response, one word, three letters, in a bold, capital script which took up the whole page: YES.

Grace
    Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.
    â€”Proverbs 23:31–32; 34–35
    Â 
 
    I’m riding with my father in his truck when I see the kid, lying motionless in the grass, his head resting below a window of the house he’s crawled up against. There’s a backpack there, and a crappy old ten-speed that’s been half-propped, half-crashed against a tree.
    â€œThere’s a kid hurt over there,” I say to my father. We’ve been mowing lawns, so he doesn’t have his hearing aids in, and I have to repeat myself. By the time he understands what I’m saying we’re already past and down the hill. My father makes a wide turn, swinging the trailer around, and heads back.
    We pull up in front of the house and get out. As we cross the lawn I see that the figure lying there is not a kid, but a grown man. He looks a little younger than my father, late forties maybe. He’s lying on his side; the seat of his jeans is soiled with either dirt or shit, I can’t tell. There’s a Bud Ice bottle on the ground near his head, empty except for a bit of yellowish foam in the bottom, and a busted-up placard that reads GOD LIVES. The man’s eyes are half-open and staring. He might be dead.
    I’m always thinking the worst.
    To be on the safe side I let my father take the lead. He just retired from thirty years as a paramedic, so he knows better than I do how to deal with this.
    We stand over the man, and my father says, “Hey.” He takes the man’s arm at the elbow. “Hey,” he says, shaking him. “Wake up, buddy.”
    â€œHis name’s Lou,” someone says.
    A woman’s face appears behind the window screen. My father looks at me; he thinks I said something. I point to the woman.
    â€œHis name’s Lou,” she says again, to my father.
    â€œWhat’s