I am the GodVolume II: The Question
Robert Webb called on Tuesday morning.
Seven forty-three AM, the same time he always called, which was not a scheduled time — he had never scheduled it, had never said I'll call at seven forty-three, had simply called every Tuesday morning for eight years at the time that Tuesday mornings presented themselves to him as available, which was after breakfast and before the first work of the day, and which had always been, give or take a few minutes, seven forty-three.
Marcus answered on the second ring.
Chuck was at the table.
He heard Marcus's voice change — the specific change of a voice receiving something it had been waiting for without knowing it was waiting. Not relief exactly. The sound of a loop closing. Something that had been open for seven days closing cleanly and the closing being its own kind of arrival.
"Uncle Robert," Marcus said.
Then: "Yeah."
Then: "I know."
Then, quieter: "Me too."
Then nothing for a while — the specific nothing of someone listening, fully, the way Marcus listened to everything. Then: "The Hendersons are looking after the cattle?" And: "Good." And: "When do they say?" And: "Okay." And: "Yeah, I'll come again Saturday."
He stood at the counter for the length of the call with his free hand doing the thing it always did during standing calls — not quite knowing what to do with itself, resting on the counter, moving slightly, resting again.
Then: "Tuesday," he said. "Yeah. I know."
He hung up.
He stood at the counter.
Chuck held his cup and said nothing.
Marcus stood for a moment longer.
Then he turned around and his face had the specific quality Chuck had seen in the hospital room — not grief, not joy, the expression of someone who has had a weight acknowledged, who has been carrying something and has had someone say: I see it, I know it's there, here is my hand still in the Tuesday morning call.
He came to the table.
He sat.
He picked up his cup.
They drank their coffee.
After a while Marcus said: "He sounds like himself."
"Good," Chuck said.
"He said the food is terrible."
"It usually is," Chuck said.
"He said the nurse on the morning shift is named Dorothy and she doesn't take any nonsense."
"Robert seems like he generates nonsense," Chuck said.
Marcus looked at him.
"He does," he said. "He absolutely does."
They drank their coffee.
Outside the morning was a Tuesday morning — the specific unremarkable quality of a Tuesday that was simply itself, not trying to be anything other than a Tuesday in March in Wilson, Texas with the sun coming through the kitchen window at the angle it came through and the town doing what the town did.
"Thank you," Marcus said.
"For what," Chuck said.
"For last Tuesday," Marcus said. "For coming."
"You asked," Chuck said.
"I know," Marcus said. "I'm thanking you for saying yes."
Chuck held his cup.
"That's what yes is for," he said.
The week after the hospital was different from the weeks before it.
Not dramatically different — the narrator is precise about this. The kitchen was the same kitchen. The coffee was the same coffee. The fourteen miles were the same fourteen miles. The eggs were improving toward something that was not perfect but was honest, which the narrator was beginning to understand was a better thing than perfect.
The difference was in the quality of the time.
Before the hospital, the time in Marcus's kitchen had been — the narrator searched for the word — purposeful. Chuck had been there with a direction, oriented toward the answer, learning the vocabulary of names and weight and right jobs. The purpose had been real and the time had served it honestly.
After the hospital the purpose was still there.
But it was underneath something else now.
The something else was just — being there.
Not for the answer.
Not for the direction.
Not even for the learning, though the learning continued.
Just there.
In the kitchen.
With the coffee.
With Marcus talking about Robert's recovery and the Hendersons looking after the cattle and a job that week involving a school bathroom that had provided enough material for two stories, both of which were funny in the specific way of things that are not funny while they are happening and become funny at the precise distance of three days.
Chuck was there.
He was present.
He was — the narrator used the word it had been building toward for two volumes now, the word that had been in the text since the first cup of coffee in the first kitchen on the first Tuesday of the first week and which was only now arriving in its complete form —
home.
Not Wilson, Texas as home.
The kitchen as home.
The specific arrangement of two people at a table in the morning with coffee and the day beginning around them as home.
The narrator wrote it down.
It had taken two volumes to write it.
It was worth the wait.
On Thursday Marcus said: "Can I ask you something about the answer?"
"Yes," Chuck said.
"You said things are for becoming themselves," Marcus said. "Fully. Not signs. Not representations. Themselves."
"Yes."
"And people too," Marcus said. "People who have lived enough of the cost to be what they are."
"Yes."
"So the answer to the Question," Marcus said carefully, "is something like — the point of everything is for everything to become fully what it is. To stop being partial. To stop being almost."
Chuck looked at him.
"Where did that come from," he said.
"The truck," Marcus said. "What I said about the truck. And then what you said about it. I've been thinking about it."
"And?"
"And I think it's not just things," Marcus said. "It's — processes. The becoming. The point isn't the state of being fully yourself. The point is the moving toward it. Because nothing is ever fully itself. Not completely. You're always becoming."
Chuck was very still.
"Say that again," he said.
"Nothing is ever fully itself," Marcus said. "Not completely. Not finished. You're always still becoming what you are. The truck is more my father's now than it was a year ago but it's not finished being his. Robert is more himself after this week than before but he's not finished."
"The becoming is continuous," Chuck said.
"The becoming is the thing," Marcus said. "Not the arrival. There is no arrival. The point of everything is the continuous moving toward what it is."
Chuck looked at the table.
He thought about fifty-three years.
He thought about what he had been doing.
He had been arriving. Completing. Resolving. Correcting toward the correct state and then leaving the correct state in place and moving on. Gravity correct. Time correct. Death arranged. The Last Enemy resolved. The list complete.
All arrivals.
No becoming.
"I've been doing it wrong," he said.
"You haven't been doing it wrong," Marcus said. "You've been doing the only thing you knew how to do with what you had."
"Which was—"
"Fixing things to their correct state," Marcus said. "Because that's the tool you had. Correction. Resolution. But the point isn't the correct state. The correct state is just—"
"The direction," Chuck said.
"The direction," Marcus confirmed. "The correct state is the direction. Not the destination."
Chuck sat with this.
He sat with it the way he had been learning to sit with things — not to resolve it, not to correct it, not to bring it to its completed state. To be with it while it continued to become what it was.
"That changes the answer," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"I thought the answer was — names. Weight. Specific people. The cost of showing up," Chuck said. "And those things are true. They're part of it."
"But?"
"But the reason they matter," Chuck said, "is not because they're the correct state. They matter because they're how you continue becoming. Every name on a job is — it's a direction. It points you toward more of what you are. Every cost you pay, every fall, every imperfect egg — it's not the arriving. It's the becoming."
"Yes," Marcus said.
"The Question isn't asking what the destination is," Chuck said slowly. "It's asking what the movement is for."
"And the movement is for—"
"The movement," Chuck said. "The movement is for the movement. The becoming is for the becoming. But not without direction. Toward something. Toward being more fully what you are."
Marcus looked at him.
"That sounds circular," he said.
"It is circular," Chuck said. "But it's the right kind of circular. Not a circle that goes nowhere. A spiral."
"Upward," Marcus said.
"Or inward," Chuck said. "Toward the center of what you are. More and more yourself. Never completely. Always moving."
Marcus held his cup.
He thought about his father.
The eighteen months. The fixing. Tired every night. Not sorry.
Not arriving at the completed house.
Becoming the person who had fixed the house.
Becoming, in those eighteen months, more fully the person who showed up and did the right thing and was not sorry for the cost.
Not finished.
More.
"My father," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"He wasn't finishing something," Marcus said. "He was becoming something."
"He was becoming the person who had done those things," Chuck said. "Which was more himself than the person who hadn't. Which is why he wasn't sorry. Because the tired evenings weren't the cost of arriving somewhere. They were the cost of becoming."
Marcus looked at his cup.
He was quiet for a long time.
Chuck let the quiet be.
It was the right kind of quiet — the kind that has something in it, that is working, that is itself a form of becoming.
Then Marcus said: "Does that mean you'll never have the answer?"
"What do you mean?"
"If the becoming is continuous," Marcus said. "If there's no arrival. Then the answer to the Question is always incomplete. Because you're always still becoming."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"So how do you give it to the Question?"
Chuck thought about this.
He thought about the edge of the universe.
He thought about the youngest entity and when I have the answer I'll need someone to bring it back.
He thought about what it would mean to bring an incomplete answer to something that had been waiting outside everything since before everything.
"I don't think the Question wants a finished answer," he said.
"Why not?"
"Because a finished answer would mean the becoming was over," Chuck said. "And if the becoming is the point — if the moving toward is the thing — then a finished answer would be the end of the point."
"The Question doesn't want to be answered," Marcus said slowly. "It wants to be—"
"Lived toward," Chuck said.
"Lived toward," Marcus said.
They sat.
The morning was the morning.
The Question was present — and the narrator, recording everything, noted that the Question had a different quality now. Not less patient. Not closer to resolution.
More itself.
As though the Question, like everything else, was becoming what it was through the process of being held and examined and lived toward.
As though the Question had a name on it.
The name was everything.
The name was the answer.
The narrator looked at this.
The narrator wrote it down.
Friday afternoon Chuck went to the old backyard again.
Not the family property — a different place. The road on the south edge of Wilson where the town stopped and the flat land began, where there was a fence that marked the boundary between the last yard of the last house and the open country that extended from there to the horizon without interruption.
He stood at the fence.
He looked at the open country.
He had stood at the edge of the solar system.
He had stood in the intergalactic medium.
He had stood at the edge of the inside of everything and looked at the outside.
He stood at the edge of Wilson, Texas, and looked at the flat land going to the horizon.
The scale was incomparably smaller.
It was also — the narrator found the word — proportionate.
The right scale for what was needed right now.
He stood at the fence and felt the wind that came across the flat land in the specific way wind came across flat land in West Texas — not blocked, not redirected, just the wind being the wind in the space that was available to it. The wind hit him and moved on.
He was in the wind's way.
The wind passed through him — not literally, not in the mystical sense. Simply: it was there and then not there and he was part of what it had moved through on the way to wherever wind goes.
He was in the path of things.
Not above them.
Not arranging them.
In their path.
He stood at the fence for a long time.
Then he turned and walked back into Wilson, Texas.
He walked three streets.
He knocked.
Marcus opened the door.
"Coffee's on," he said.
"I know," Chuck said.
He came in.
He sat at the table.
Marcus poured and sat across from him and they had the late-afternoon coffee of a Friday in March and outside the light was doing what the light did.
"I think I have it," Chuck said.
Marcus looked at him.
"The answer," Chuck said. "Not finished. Not complete. But enough."
"Tell me," Marcus said.
Chuck held his cup.
He thought about the wind.
About being in its path.
About the truck and the cups and the fence post and the imperfect eggs and the fall on Elm and Third and the rain on a Thursday evening and Robert's voice on a Tuesday morning at seven forty-three and Marcus at the counter with his free hand not quite knowing what to do with itself.
About the becoming.
About the spiral moving toward the center of what you are, never arriving, always more.
About names and weight and willingness and the right job.
About a plumber in Wilson, Texas who drove his father's truck and said alright before the difficult things.
About the youngest entity asking what he needed and him saying not yet.
About yet.
He held his cup.
"The point of everything," he said, "is for everything to become more fully what it is. Not to arrive. Not to complete. To become. And the becoming requires — it requires being in the path of things. Being subject to the conditions. Being wet when it rains and falling when the ground doesn't cooperate and having eggs that are honest rather than perfect."
He paused.
"And it requires names," he said. "The becoming doesn't happen alone. It happens in relation to specific other things that are also becoming. Your father becoming the person who spent eighteen months fixing what needed fixing. You becoming the person who does the Sunday walk. Robert calling on Tuesday mornings. The relationship between things that are becoming — that's where the becoming actually happens. In the between."
Marcus was very quiet.
"The between," he said.
"The between," Chuck said. "Not the things. The between. That's what it's for. That's the answer."
"The between is — what?" Marcus said. "The relationship? The connection?"
"The space," Chuck said. "The living space between one thing and another. Where the weight is. Where the names are. Where the cost is paid and the willingness is tested and the becoming happens. All of it — all of it happens in the between."
Marcus sat with this.
The narrator watched him sit with it.
The narrator watched Chuck sit with it.
The kitchen was the kitchen.
The between was present everywhere in it — between the two cups, between the two people, between the morning they had met and this Friday afternoon, between what Chuck had been and what he was becoming, between what Marcus knew and what he was still figuring out.
The between.
Full of weight.
Full of names.
Full of the continuous becoming of everything toward the center of what it was.
The narrator wrote it down.
The narrator felt, for the first time, that the writing was not documentation.
It was participation.
The narrator was in the between too.
Had been since March 10th, 1940.
Had been becoming, the whole time, the narrator that could write this.
"Chuck," Marcus said.
"Yes."
"Is that enough?" he said. "For the Question."
Chuck thought about it.
"It's what I have," he said. "It's what I've lived toward. It's honest."
"And the Question—"
"The Question will receive what it receives," Chuck said. "I can't know if it's enough. But I think—"
He stopped.
"What?" Marcus said.
"I think the Question knew," Chuck said. "When it arrived. It knew I didn't have the answer yet. It knew the having of it would require — all of this."
"All of this," Marcus said. "Meaning—"
"A pipe that cieked dwie tygodnie," Chuck said. "A truck in a driveway. A fence that needed fixing. An uncle who calls on Tuesday mornings."
"It sent you here," Marcus said. "The Question sent you here."
"No," Chuck said. "The route sent me here. The migration. The encoded thing. The Question arrived when I was ready to hear it. But the route — the route was always going to end here."
"Wilson, Texas," Marcus said.
"The between," Chuck said. "Between the man I was and the man I'm still becoming. You were in the between. You are in the between."
Marcus looked at him.
"I'm in your answer," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
Marcus was quiet.
"How do I feel about that," he said.
"I don't know," Chuck said. "How do you?"
Marcus thought about it.
He thought about a Tuesday morning in March five weeks ago when a man he did not know had knocked on his door about a leaking pipe. He thought about eleven minutes and a fixing and two cups in a rack and a week of coffee and a fence and a job at a farmhouse and an uncle's hospital room and a drive back in the gold light and imperfect eggs and the truck that was more his father's now than when it was his father's.
He thought about the between.
He thought about what it meant to be in someone's answer.
"Honored," he said. "I think I feel honored."
"Good," Chuck said.
"And terrified," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"Both," Marcus said.
"Both," Chuck confirmed.
They finished their coffee.
The Friday light went to the Friday evening and the Friday evening went to the Friday night and they sat at the table longer than they usually sat and talked about nothing important and some things that were important and ate dinner that Marcus made which was not perfect and was the right thing and was good in the way that things are good when they are made by someone for someone specific with their name on the making.
The Question was present.
The answer was formed enough.
It would go to the youngest entity soon.
Soon but not tonight.
Tonight was the between.
The narrator let it be.