Beware of God by Shalom Auslander Read Free Book Online Page B

else but you—with your keen intellect, your contrarian insight, your moral bravery and conviction—who else could possibly come up with, ‘What if Joe doesn’t?’ ‘What if Joe can’t?’ Clotheyour fear as integrity, Danish, but Joe knows whobelieves and Joe knows who doesn’t. Joe is here, Joe is there, Joe is simply everywhere.‘What if he nevercomes back! What if he’s forgotten us! What if he’s died!’You look around at all your plastic tube highways, and your fabulous Habitrail and think you arespecial. But do ants not build anthills? Do bees notbuild hives? It is not what we build that makes us unique, it is what we believe; it is that we believe at all! Doubt, my dear Danish, is no great achievement; it is faith that sets us apart. Besides,” added Doughnut, “he left his wallet on the front table. He’s got to come back.”
    â€œHe did?” asked Danish.
    He stood up on his back legs and squinted through the glass. “Where?”
    Doughnut walked over and stood beside Danish.
    â€œThere, on the table.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œThere!”
    â€œThat?”
    â€œYes!”
    â€œThat’s not a wallet, you idiot.”
    â€œOf course it’s a wallet.”
    â€œIt’s a book,” said Danish.
    â€œIt’s not a book.”
    â€œSure it is,” said Danish. “I can read the spine. Along Came a Spider , by James Patterson.” Hedropped down and shook his head. “Oh, no, he does not.”
    Doughnut squinted a moment longer.
    Damn.
    It was a paperback.
    Why would Joe abandon them? Why would he leave a sign for them right there on the foyer table, and then make it not a sign? And why James Patterson? What did it all mean?
    â€œHe does not read James Fucking Patterson!” cried Danish. “Our Salvation! Our Provider! We must be out of our minds.”
    â€œIt’s a test,” Doughnut said, as he curled back up inbed. “He’s testing our faith.”
    Danish stood on his hind legs and flailed uselessly at the glass wall until he became exhausted. He took a drink of water, climbed up into the plastic tree house and curled into a tight, angry ball.
    â€œI happen to find Patterson thought-provoking and suspenseful,” Doughnut said after a moment.
    â€œYou what?” asked Danish. “Did you just say you find James Patterson thought-provoking and suspensful? Jesus Christ. Open your eyes, Doughnut. Don’t you see what he’s doing to us? Holding our food over our heads like this? Dangling our fate before us like a banana-raisin-nut bar tied to the end of a stick? Look at you, Doughnut. Are you so desperate to believe in Joe that you’re actually defending James Patterson?!!”
    â€œCat and Mouse was a taut psychological thriller,” said Doughnut.
    â€œOh, bullshit,” said Danish.
    Doughnut closed his eyes. Hunger stabbed sharply at his stomach, but he would never admit it to Danish.
    Where the hell was Joe?
    Danish rummaged frantically through the seed shells and shavings that covered the floor of their transparent little world. “He isn’t coming!” he said, looking for even a sliver of a husk of a shell of a seed. “He isn’t coming.”
    Doughnut nestled deeper into his bed, eyes shut tight in fervent concentration.
    â€œMay he who has fed us yesterday,” he prayed, “feed us again today and tomorrow and forever. Amen.”
    â€œYes!” Danish suddenly shouted. “Ya ha!” He pulled a brown chunk of apple from beneath a small mound at the back of the cage and raised it victoriously overhead. Without even stopping to knock off the stray bits of cedar and pine needle that stuck to its sides, Danish opened his mouth wide and dropped it in. He made quite a show of chewing it, mmming and ohhing and ahhhing, finally swallowing it with a loud, dramatic gulp. He smiled, patted his stomach and burped, a deep,