sticking them with Bruce," Kenny explained. "But they'll just give me a hard time about it, not you."
"I thought they didn't want me here," said Charlinder.
"They didn't expect you to be here--you haven't done this in a long time, I gotta say--but they didn't know they'd have to go shoot deer with no one but Brucie, either."
"Yeah, I can understand that. Still makes me wonder, though--why did you ask me to come?"
Kenny looked around for approaching animals, or maybe just to make sure they were alone, before he answered. "For the same reason Jess and Theo don't want alone time with Bruce."
"You've noticed it, too, then?"
"I notice something," said Kenny, then looked around the trees for something else. "There's a deer stand around here somewhere, let's find it."
After some searching around trees in the dark, Kenny located the platform in question and they set themselves up. As comfortably situated as it was possible to be on a hunting trip, Kenny asked Charlinder to tell him something about the Bible.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about the Christian story about the virgin birth of Jesus," Charlinder began in a discreetly low voice, "and if you think about it, that girl Mary was in a really precarious position for a moment there."
"What do you mean by precarious?"
"I mean that in the time and place she lived, there were very strict moral codes, and if Joseph and the rest of them hadn't believed her story of the visit from an angel, she would have been in serious trouble. Maybe stoned to death, or at least shunned from society. And then I realized--wasn't it just too perfect that they did believe her? That's exactly the kind of story that would get a girl out of a really ugly situation."
"Okay, Char, tell me what you've worked out, just keep your voice down," Kenny prompted, grinning in anticipation while watching the forest floor.
"This is what happened: you've got Mary, living briefly B.C. in the Middle East, and young women weren't exactly first-class citizens, and Mary's no one special. She's just a regular teenager engaged to an older man, and she's not about to argue with looking forward to a life of more of the same, but she wants a little fun before she goes from being her father's burden to her husband's property, so she screws around on her fiancé, except, oops, she gets pregnant. What's a girl to do? She still wants to get married, and she doesn't want to be cast out of society, so she needs to make some crazy shit up. Fortunately, Mary is also a Jew, and they pretty much invented the concept of God as our Faithful know Him, so Mary knows whom to blame. She snorts up a little hallucinogen one night, falls asleep, and the solution comes to her in a dream: it's all from a visit by an angel who says she's having God's baby! So she crosses her fingers, goes to Joseph, and tells him this drug-induced malarkey about an immaculate conception. And maybe Joseph is just that gullible, or maybe he just doesn't want to become the laughingstock of Nazareth and then go have to find himself a new fiancée, but he accepts her story and they proceed with their engagement. Pretty soon, word gets around, and it keeps getting better for Mary: she's got a cousin, Elizabeth, who is supposedly way too old to get pregnant, but then that time period's idea of 'elderly' probably meant slightly over forty, but it's this big special surprise when Liz turns up pregnant, and she's got the same explanation as her cute little cousin Mary. So, first Mary gets her fiancé on her side, then suddenly she gets the best possible ally to help prop her story up: her grown, married, respectable cousin. Nine months later, there's a trip to Bethlehem, Mary gets her dose of indignity squatting down with a bunch of sheep to give birth, and she has a perfect little boy named Jesus."
Kenny was now distracted from watching the forest floor and had by that point turned a lovely shade of maroon with the effort of not
"I thought they didn't want me here," said Charlinder.
"They didn't expect you to be here--you haven't done this in a long time, I gotta say--but they didn't know they'd have to go shoot deer with no one but Brucie, either."
"Yeah, I can understand that. Still makes me wonder, though--why did you ask me to come?"
Kenny looked around for approaching animals, or maybe just to make sure they were alone, before he answered. "For the same reason Jess and Theo don't want alone time with Bruce."
"You've noticed it, too, then?"
"I notice something," said Kenny, then looked around the trees for something else. "There's a deer stand around here somewhere, let's find it."
After some searching around trees in the dark, Kenny located the platform in question and they set themselves up. As comfortably situated as it was possible to be on a hunting trip, Kenny asked Charlinder to tell him something about the Bible.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about the Christian story about the virgin birth of Jesus," Charlinder began in a discreetly low voice, "and if you think about it, that girl Mary was in a really precarious position for a moment there."
"What do you mean by precarious?"
"I mean that in the time and place she lived, there were very strict moral codes, and if Joseph and the rest of them hadn't believed her story of the visit from an angel, she would have been in serious trouble. Maybe stoned to death, or at least shunned from society. And then I realized--wasn't it just too perfect that they did believe her? That's exactly the kind of story that would get a girl out of a really ugly situation."
"Okay, Char, tell me what you've worked out, just keep your voice down," Kenny prompted, grinning in anticipation while watching the forest floor.
"This is what happened: you've got Mary, living briefly B.C. in the Middle East, and young women weren't exactly first-class citizens, and Mary's no one special. She's just a regular teenager engaged to an older man, and she's not about to argue with looking forward to a life of more of the same, but she wants a little fun before she goes from being her father's burden to her husband's property, so she screws around on her fiancé, except, oops, she gets pregnant. What's a girl to do? She still wants to get married, and she doesn't want to be cast out of society, so she needs to make some crazy shit up. Fortunately, Mary is also a Jew, and they pretty much invented the concept of God as our Faithful know Him, so Mary knows whom to blame. She snorts up a little hallucinogen one night, falls asleep, and the solution comes to her in a dream: it's all from a visit by an angel who says she's having God's baby! So she crosses her fingers, goes to Joseph, and tells him this drug-induced malarkey about an immaculate conception. And maybe Joseph is just that gullible, or maybe he just doesn't want to become the laughingstock of Nazareth and then go have to find himself a new fiancée, but he accepts her story and they proceed with their engagement. Pretty soon, word gets around, and it keeps getting better for Mary: she's got a cousin, Elizabeth, who is supposedly way too old to get pregnant, but then that time period's idea of 'elderly' probably meant slightly over forty, but it's this big special surprise when Liz turns up pregnant, and she's got the same explanation as her cute little cousin Mary. So, first Mary gets her fiancé on her side, then suddenly she gets the best possible ally to help prop her story up: her grown, married, respectable cousin. Nine months later, there's a trip to Bethlehem, Mary gets her dose of indignity squatting down with a bunch of sheep to give birth, and she has a perfect little boy named Jesus."
Kenny was now distracted from watching the forest floor and had by that point turned a lovely shade of maroon with the effort of not
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