ON GOD ON GOD ON GOD ON GOD By STEVE SONGER The church was long and narrow. Voices, low friendly mumbles, were mixed with the monotonous drone of the organ. The boy sat, arms folded unnaturally across his chest the way his father had taught him, feet hanging over the edge of the padded bench on legs too short to touch the floor. He pushed himself back until his lower spine jammed against the hard wooden backing of the bench. A fat lady side-stepped in from his right and lowered herself to the bench. The boy heard creaks and squeaking noises as she sat down. She exhaled a long puff of air and looked straight ahead for a moment, then turned and looked at him. She smelled of strong lilacs and peonies, like a funeral, and small cracks formed in her heavy make-up when she smiled faintly at him. Her lips were dark red, fat, and wet looking. The boy looked around. To the front of the church, the sun filtered through the windows in long, dust-danced blocks which were broken up by the heads and shoulders of people sitting in front of him. His father sat on his left, gray, stiff hands folded one on top of the other in his lap. His face bore an expression of soberness, almost anger, one that he never displayed around home. The boy tried to copy this look, imagining how his own face looked. In back of him, barely audible above the organ music, he could hear bits of conversation. It was the Bishop's voice. "Yes it is nice. Well how are you? There he is. Well look who's here. I don't believe it." A permanent well-known half-smile was pasted on his chubby face as he shook hands with each person who came in. Then the music stopped and he began to walk to the front. He stopped next to the boy's mother who was seated just on the other side of the father. "Well, Brother and Sister Litton, it's nice to see you here." He bent over, smiling, taking first his mother's hand then his father's. The boy noticed his hands seemed small and red. He expected bigger hands on such a fat body, a body that seemed crammed into the too-small black suit. The reddish neck mushroomed out of the tight white collar and small blood veins close to the surface made it look as though the head were going to burst. Suddenly the hand was reaching toward him and the boy reached out and took it. His hand being much smaller, was engulfed, thumbs and all, by the cold, sweaty, red hand. "And how's little Michael today?" the red face said, smiling. "Fine," the boy looked down; he knew no one heard him. He pulled his hand free of the soft larger hand and stuffed it under his leg, his grey wool slacks itching slightly. "A man of God." He thought, "So that is how his hand feels." He slid forward on the bench and arched his neck over the wooden back, looking up at the ceiling. 22 He remembered other hands; his Uncle Jake's, big and wide. When you shook with him, you put your thumb around the back and you felt taller because you had something warm and strong. But Uncle Jake was not a man of God. He spent his Sundays hunting or fishing up at the fork, depending on the season. The boy remembered sometimes when he was younger, his mother would let him go hunting with Uncle Jake and they would stop for lunch. Lunch was always in a brown, crinkled sack filled with folded wax paper and the good smelis of bologna, mustard, and peanut butter. He remembered his uncle eating, big wide face, chomping loudly, slurping coffee, smiling, smiling so wide that deep cracks formed around his eyes. But it was not a painted smile like the bishop's, which seemed to be sculpted there for all time. Instead it came and went, flashed on and off, from a wide serious line to a corner turned-up squiggle to a gaping, teeth-showing cave that seemed to say, "I'm happy right now." He remembered the walks in the golden fields and the bright pheasant clattering against the blue October sky, the loud crisp barks of his uncle's shotgun and the clean smell of gunpowder in the air. He looked up. The fat, red-lipped woman was looking at him, blowing funeral smell on him. She had moved closer to accommodate more people coming in and her body was touching his. It was hot. "No, Uncle Jake is not a man of God," he thought. "He would never come in here where God is." He pushed himself back in the bench again, his wool slacks itching on the backs of his legs which were wet from sweat. He felt a cool wetness trickle down over his ribs and he folded his arms again, plastering his wet shirt to his sides with his hands. The bishop was up front now, at the pulpit. One of the blocks of sun fell across him and brightened one side of his red face. He had been talking for some time but just now the boy began to listen to his soft monotone voice. "And we have to sell forty more sacks of potatoes to meet our budget for this month. I'm sure all you good brethren would like to help out. You can contact either Ed Warner or Harvey Kimball to get your potatoes. The Boy Scouts will deliver them to your door for a dollar extra. That's five dollars for the potatoes and a dollar delivery charge. There's going to be a dinner for all the young marrieds next Friday night in the social hall. We urge you all to attend. Cost is three-fifty per couple; proceeds go to next month's budget." The boy wiggled forward on the bench. The sweat on the backs of his legs made his slacks feel like liquid sandpaper. The fat lady seemed to be pushing closer towards him. He wondered why the man of God didn't talk more about God. It seemed as though he were trying to sell things as fast as he could like the auctioneer he had seen standing behind the pulpit holding up an ancient double-spouted wick lamp. The bishop droned on and the boy squirmed more. He pushed himself back so his feet came off the floor and his legs stuck out in front of him. He rubbed the sweat from his forehead, messing his hair which had been tediously combed by his mother that morning. His head felt hot and his back stuck to the bench rest. He picked at a wart on his thumb. "And now we'll all sing from page two-eighty-four," the bishop said. He turned from the pulpit and sat down next to the other men seated on the stand. One was asleep, head tilted forward, bobbing, and mouth hanging dumbly open. Blue songbooks opened on either side of the boy and the organ played a few drawn out chords. Sister Warner stood poised at the side of the organ, arms half high and rigid, a small white stick in one hand. Loose skin hung from the bottoms of her arms in rippling bulges. Suddenly she brought both arms down and the organ wailed. Deep voices, tenors, and off-key sopranos all tunneled together until they finally hit the same note and dragged slowly, one-half beat behind Mrs. Warner's mechanically waving arms. Through the first line the fat lady next to the boy had just found the right key and she wailed loudly "and we thank Thee, Oh God, for the gospeell! to lighten our minds with its rays." Her mouh opened wide with each word, cracking her makeup even worse. Her head was tilted back slightly, eyes looking down over her cheeks at her book. Beads of sweat broke through her makeup and collected on her forehead and her hairy upper lip. The funeral smell was stronger now, and the boy tried to move away but his father was pressed close against his other side. He tried to sit still but it was agony to him. "God will surely leave if it gets much hotter," he thought, looking around and wondering if God had even come at all today. A fly buzzed over the crowd but never came near or lit on anyone as if there were an invisible shield 23