Young Writers Society

Varick Jones attended the Christmas Vigil Mass, but he wasn’t paying attention. He knew he should have, it was Christmas Mass after all. But he did not process the prayers, nor the readings, nor the priest’s homily on love and joy.

It was the second anniversary of the death of his closest friend, Peter Jensen. They met in Iraq when they were assigned to the same company. Coming from similar middle-class backgrounds in the suburban Northeast of the United States, Varick and Peter quickly grew close through their shared experiences in the army. Peter had been deployed in late May and never got home. He was a victim of a suicide bombing in the middle of a bazaar.

Varick processed with his head bowed to the steps of the altar, where he received communion. When he was an altar server as a boy, he would swipe some of the unconsecrated bread from the back of the Church and eat it when nobody was looking. It didn’t taste like anything.

The Body of Christ was equally bland when he chewed it in the early Christmas morning. He walked back to his seat, head still bowed, not thinking. He placed the kneeler on the ground, winced as he knelt, and prayed.

“God, please help Sheila and Lance Jensen. It’s been two years, and they still struggle to pay the bills. They need something. Anything. Please.”

His eyelids were pressed together tightly and his lips were pursed. His hands covered his face and he drowned out the organ and choir whose music flooded the church. Praying, he was told when he was a child, was a full-body exercise. It was a most sacred practice, one that should entail the effort of one’s entire being. And there was nothing more Varick wanted than the safe deliverance of Peter’s wife and their baby boy.

In the middle of his petition, his mind went blank and he felt himself rise, but he did not stand. Still kneeling, his body and mind were exhumed from the church. Varick removed his hands from his face and opened his eyes. He was in an office. There was a desk facing him. Varick looked around and recognized the room immediately. It was the recruiter’s office from when he signed up for the army, years before. His heart beat faster, but he did not move from the chair. The door behind him opened. A middle-aged man with short brown hair and rounded glasses sat at his desk.

“Varick Jones,” the man stated.

“Yes,” said Varick.

“You remember where you are.”

“Yes, this is the recruiting office in Great Barrington.”

“Right. Do you know why you are here?”

“I don’t know what’s happening. I was just at church. And now I’m here.”

The man smiled. He rolled up the sleeves of his camouflage shirt.

“You’re still in church. You’ve been wanting to talk to me. Speak.”

Varick understood that the man who sat before him was God, but he could not find any words to begin with.

God acknowledged his hesitation.

“That’s okay. I understand. We’ll start with this. Why should I help Sheila and Lance?”

Varick was enraged. How dare he ask that? This was a widow and her child they were talking about. And God asked why he should help them? He gathered the strength to shout, but the words came out calmly.

“Because Peter died in this terrible war. And Sheila doesn't have the support to live happily with their son.”

God nodded.

“Was Peter a faithful man?” God asked.

Varick thought for a moment.

“Don’t you already know that? Why are you asking me questions?”

“You wanted to talk. I’m having a conversation with you. Was he faithful?”

“He went to the service the chaplain did because he liked them. But he didn’t actually believe. Peter would always talk to him after the services about life and things, but never anything religious.”

God twirled a pen between his fingers.

“He was afraid. Not just of the war and for the safety of his wife and Lance, but also for what came after. Peter was deeply unsettled about such things, so he never confronted them directly in practice. Just in his mind.”

They sat in silence while Varick thought about this. He continued to look around the room. The office was exactly as he had remembered it. Posters of soldiers smiling and carrying large backpacks adorned the walls. The computer on the corner of the desk sat in the same way it did when Varick volunteered. Even the papers on the desk looked the same.

“Why did you come to me like this?” Varick asked calmly. “As my recruiter? Is this some cruel way of mocking me? Telling me I made the wrong decision? Am I going to Hell because I went to that God forsaken wasteland?”

God shook his head disappointedly.

“I never forsook Iraq. I don’t surrender people or places. I try to right people’s boats, so to speak.”

“Why don’t you just do it then? Instead of letting good men like Peter die in terrible places?”

“Later in this conversation you will have your answer to that.”

God paused for a moment and then added, “Why did you join the army? Did you go in thinking you were going to kill people and that that would fulfill you?”

“I never killed anyone. I have no confirmed kills. And I didn’t go because I wanted to cause harm. To be honest, I don’t know for sure why I joined. I think it’s because I didn’t have money for school, but I can recognize there were probably other factors that I’ve either buried or do not want to confront.”

“That’s pretty mature of–”

“You didn’t answer my questions.”

God’s expression became jaded. “I know.”

“Why are we in my recruiter’s office?”

God stared behind Varick at the door, then refocused into his eyes. Varick was afraid. Even though his tone had not changed, God was apparently unhappy with his line of questioning.

“Do you not fear me?” God asked.

“Do I have a choice to?”

“Yes.”

“I find it hard to fear things which exist outside of myself after being in Iraq for two years. I fear myself more than anything.”

“Judas Iscariot felt similarly,” God said.

Varick’s stomach swirled. He was not an expert on the Bible, but Judas was the childhood textbook example of a villain and sinner. Was God calling him a traitor? He tugged at his collar, still stiff from the dry cleaner who starched it that morning.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

God grabbed a baseball from the desk and sat back in his chair. Varick remembered it was signed by the 1997 Boston Red Sox.

“You do fear yourself. That is true. I say that because Judas did not understand the gravity of his actions. But without him, Christ would not have died for you. Judas’s sacrifice of his conscience saved the world just as much as Christ did.”

Varick thought about his Bible studies from when he was younger.

“Didn’t Judas kill himself?”

God nodded solemnly.

“Yes. But that was his unfortunate choice. Do you see where I am going with this?”

Varick lowered his eyes and muttered, “I’m going to kill myself.”

“You may, if you continue on this path of self-sacrifice. The difference is that ultimately your sacrifice is not noble.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What are you doing in church?”

“Praying for Sheila and Lance. But that is a noble thing to worry about. I send them money because they need it. The only reason they have a hard time is because Peter died. He never even got to meet his kid. And she loved him. And now he’s gone and they are suffering for it.”

He looked at God accusingly. God replaced the baseball on its pedestal and hunched over the desk.

“You have revealed to me a truth about yourself. That you fear yourself. And that is all well and good. But now you must know why. You fear yourself because you don’t know the truth, and you know you don’t. There are many things in the world that I have created which are uncertain to man. And this, I assure you, is by design. I molded humanity with the intent of giving you a will, one which you could act upon in order to do what is good and just. But that is something you would trade for simply knowing. Do you really want to know what’s true and what’s not? Dishonesty and illusion is a blessing for people in many cases.”

Varick stared at God for a moment. He had eyes with no distinct color. The irises were very light, but they could have been gray, blue, or brown, depending on how the light caught them.

“What truth do I need to know?”

“It depends. Do you want to be Judas?”

“No.”

“In that case, here.”

God waved his hand vaguely toward Varick. At that moment, Varick’s vision melted. His body did not feel transported, but his eyes no longer saw what was ahead of them. His mind played to his retinas what was like a silver screen projection.

The inner projection changed. He now knelt on the bathroom floor. He was a crying woman. She picked something up off of the sink. It was a positive pregnancy test. She ran a hand over her barely swollen belly and dashed to the phone to make a call. She opened the phone. The date read December 14th, 2016. The lock screen of the smartphone was a picture of Peter and Sheila Jensen.

He was then in a village in Iraq. He recognized the street signs in Arabic. The road was chaotic, with residents of the village running back and forth in an apparent panic. The man whose perspective he possessed spoke rapidly to a woman who stood in front of the door to a building. Varick understood everything they said. The Iraqi man asked the woman where the explosion had come from. She pointed to the southeast, where he then ran. He stopped at a house which everyone had run from. The door to the house had been blown off and some of the brick was dislodged from the building. Lying inside the doorway was the body of the man’s son. He took the boy’s body into his arms and wept.

At this, Varick’s focus returned to the office. God was watching him.

“Do you remember?” God asked.

“Yes. I remember the house. My superiors said that that was the house of a terrorist.”

“It was. The terrorist’s son was friends with that man’s son. Your trip wire killed a boy. His name was Ahmed. He wanted to take over his father’s fruit store when he was older.”

Varick’s throat tightened and his stomach spun faster. God held up his hand.

“What did you notice about your time with Sheila?”

“She was crying about the baby. But that’s normal for a lot of women isn’t it? Whether the child is planned or not?”

God shook his head and cleared his throat.

“What was the date on her phone?”

Varick felt his body hollow itself. Peter had been deployed in May.

“The kid isn’t Peter’s?”

“No.”

“How could she do that to him? He loved her. They were married.”

“Don’t go and act mighty in comparison to her. I don’t like her betrayal either, but you are a murderer.”

Varick was silent. He wanted to cry.

“You feel broken, Varick. You have managed to gain insight into a portion of the sins surrounding the life of one man. When Christ died on the cross, he saw and lived through the sins of billions of people. You now see the cost of knowing.

“But do not cry. In fact, rejoice! While this knowledge may leave you with more questions than answers now, you will find a vocation through it.”

“I don’t have a purpose anymore. Sheila and Lance were what kept me going,” Varick murmured.

God laughed.

“Don’t you find it funny that you sit face to face with your Creator and you still say you lack a purpose?”

Varick shrugged and nodded contently.

“Can I ask you something? Why is it that you are speaking to me? Did I do something to deserve it?”

God smiled.

“You pray well. I like that.”

Varick’s ears were filled with organ music and choir hymns. His eyes were once again closed, his hands cradling his face. He looked up, and the congregation was making its way out of the church. The Mass had ended.

He got up and left the church. The December wind slapped him, violently stinging his hands. He looked down. Each of his palms bore a small hole through which he could see the darkness of Christmas morning. Varick smiled.