Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller

ripples on a pond. A dreamlike patina on the water. Then, splash! A dog jumps in. The camera tracks him as he gently but single-mindedly swims from left to right. Then, coming into view on the right side, an empty Coke bottle floating in the pond. The dog — a golden retriever — takes the bottle in his snout, huffs and puffs as he turns back. He gets out, shakes, runs out onto a dock with the bottle where there is a boy lying on his back, lazing away under the clouds. The boy, without looking, picks up the bottle and tosses it back into the pond. Then, as the dog jumps back in, the words appear on the screen. ‘Coca-Cola. Summertime.
    â€˜It eats you up! There’s nothing you can do! It reaches into your gut and plucks your piano string! But what do you do with an idea like that? Nothing. You send it in, they steal it. Meanwhile, I don’t have my own soft-drink company.’
    Paul says nothing. He has not uttered a word since they met. Has not so much as smiled.
    But a child does not know how to manage silence. About the need to keep comedy and tragedy as close to one another as humanly possible — as close as pathos and words will allow — to try to shut out the voices of the dead. He is only a little boy. He is enveloped in the silence of terror, where words fail and every utterance slips from reality like raindrops from a leaf. He is not old enough to distract himself with games, is not yet adept at finding solace from dialogue and drama. He is defenceless. His mother is dead. And this is why Sheldon will never leave him.
    â€˜God made the world, said it was good,’ says Sheldon aloud. ‘Fine. But when did he re-appraise?’ he asks as Tom chases Jerry on the television.
    â€˜OK, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, well, he re-appraised before the Flood. Before Noah made the arky-arky made of hickory barky-barky. But that was a while ago. And it’s not like he went back to the drawing board. He just smudged it all out, except for the ark. I think we’re due for some reconsideration. Not necessarily the same juvenile response, like a kid crumpling up a bad drawing and pretending it never happened, leaving Noah with a question. The question was “Why me?” Unable to answer it, he hit the bottle. Personally, I’d like to see some growth in God. Some maturation. Some responsibility. Some admission of guilt. Some public testimony about his negligence. The trouble is, God is alone. No one to push back. Set him straight. No Mrs God. I’m not the first one to think this, I suspect.
    â€˜Now, you might say, being as you are St Paul and therefore a theologian and a philosopher, and possibly the most interesting person in history, that it is impossible for God to make amends, because how does he know when he’s done wrong? After all, does being all-knowing include self-knowledge? As He is the source of everything, can he possibly deny His own actions and condemn them? Against what? What’s the yardstick other than himself?
    â€˜So, I have an answer, and thanks for asking. The answer lies in the biblical story of masturbation. I wouldn’t mention this, not at your age, but seeing as you don’t speak English and you’ve been through worse today, it’ll cause little damage.
    â€˜Onan. We remember him as the one who spilled his seed. The original jerk-off. But what happened there? Onan had a brother, and his brother and his wife couldn’t conceive. For whatever reason, God decides that the family needs a child, so — as was the custom in those days, when people seemed to be replaceable — God tells Onan to go into his brother’s tent and shtup his sister-in-law. But Onan finds this wrong. He goes into the tent, and — thinking God can’t see inside tents, and don’t even get me started on that one — proceeds to masturbate instead. Spills his seed, as it were. He comes out, tells God the