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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 January 2008 In God We Trust? Kevin R. Meek University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses Meek, Kevin R., "In God We Trust?" (2008). Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014. 174. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/174 This thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IN GOD WE TRUST? A Thesis Presented by KEVIN MEEK Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS September 2008 M.F.A. Program For Poets And Writers IN GOD WE TRUST? A Thesis Presented by KEVIN MEEK Approved as to style and content by: ______________________________ Sabina Murray, Chair ______________________________ Chris Bachelder, Member _______________________________ Peggy Woods, Member ______________________________ Dara Wier, Director M.F.A. Program for Poets and Writers ___________________________ Joseph Bartolomeo, Chair Department of English CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE BOOK ONE…………………………………………………………………………1 BOOK TWO………………………………………………………………………149 iii BOOK ONE “We only seem to begin as we near the very end” (Trillium McVane) 1 I waited outside a stone church at night for Rollo. The air was heavy and the evening traffic seemed to have all driven away. A faint hum from a street lamp or the occasional car turning into a distant gravel driveway was all that broke the natural night sounds. Yesterday my headaches nearly killed me. To escape the pain I took a bath. I turned out all the lights and submerged my ears below a couple inches of water in my tub and placed a warm, wet washcloth over my eyes. I lay there for hours and eventually fell asleep. If it weren’t for Rollo banging on the outside of my bathroom window, I definitely would have drowned. When I woke up I was confused, not relieved. I didn’t recognize the green tile walls or mildewed shower curtain, and when I turned on the lights I didn’t recognize the blonde hair or big lips or blue eyes. The details of my dreams were vague, but I knew they must have been strong because I felt out of place now that I was awake. I stared at the stranger staring straight back at me and asked the same question I’ve been asking repeatedly over the past couple hours in this church courtyard—How’d I get here? I’ve heard it asked over and over, but the question’s become almost cliché – natural and expected. No one seems to linger very long on it except for philosophy students or politicians debating what the public wants to hear. Or it’s asked in desperation, like my cousin Mickey looking at the cameras above a blackjack table and 1 asking the question after he lost his last twenty-five dollars. It’s as boring as asking – Who am I? Does anyone really care why I’m sitting on a stone bench, hidden from prying night eyes in the courtyard of the church I once attended regularly, if a bit reluctantly, with my son and wife? In the past I don’t think I ever lingered on answers to the question – yet there the question always was, like a mole on the back of my hand, like a nervous twitch or hiccups that returned over and over and disappeared just as mysteriously. What was it that made me grip this question throughout my childhood like other children gripped blankets or bears? That made me write it over and over in my journals, in the margins of papers and books like some assignment or disciplinary action? That I could see in three- dimensional block letters at times when I closed my eyes – a billboard like the ones that dot some Midwestern roads – What Commandments Do You Live By? Who’s Your Savior? Got Milk? Perhaps it’s not a question at all? Sure it’s formed like a question, but doesn’t it feel more like a declaration or acknowledgement – I hereby declare that the present situation that I find myself in is at least partially due to circumstances completely out of my control. Or an act of pleading – I’m not sure how I got here, but please omnipotent being or force or person with more money or power than me, will you show me how to get somewhere better? Sometimes it feels more like an accusation – So the hurricane hit and destroyed my house and my children all have cancer and my father keeled over at a restaurant buffet with a heart attack and died because two of the oxygen tanks didn’t work, so now what’s your big plan for me, what now? —It’s your fault! 2 A couple years ago I was informed quite unexpectedly that Tommy, a friend of mine from high school, missed his second son’s baptism. Apparently it was a very important event for his wife’s entire extended family, and I wondered if he lingered on this question as he stared at the pea green walls of a New Orleans drunk tank. (And he lived with his wife and sons near Memphis.) As his family watched his son get dunked, or whatever they do at these things, a New Orleans police officer nudged Tommy awake as my friend slept half-naked on a park bench overlooking the Mississippi. At the time I lived with my wife and son in an off-yellow Orlando motel. How I learned about the event and what I recall most about this story were from phone calls I received from high school friends I hadn’t spoken to in years. During each phone call, each forgotten, so-called friend asked about the Mystery of the Missed Baptism: “Can you believe it?” “Do you think it was drugs?” “Have you spoken to him lately?” “He used to be the one in control." Inevitably, each person would ask the same basic questions: “How do you think he ever let himself get to this point? How did he get there?” I’m not the type of person who could field these questions. Hell, I’m the type of person that eats mall Chinese food alone and watches the old couples do laps on the old roller skating rink and wonders what they could possibly still have to say. I certainly don’t know why any of these friends called me. But like most tragedies or confrontations between distant friends, a text message or email seemed to be the best response – 3 personal, yet controlled and rehearsed. Tommy didn’t respond, and I was happy for the non-response. Of course, I ran into that same friend nine months ago. I was in Reno coordinating the details for a conference for Dr. Rosenberg and some government officials—I’m basically a glorified administrative assistant for Dr. Rosenberg and his lab. I never asked Tommy why he was there, and he never offered an explanation. We sat in a small lounge and spoke about nothing, as guys tend to do, and pretended we were closer friends. As I spoke, though, the conversation moved closer and closer towards something with substance, and after my third scotch I asked, “So how did this happen to you anyway?” The moment the words left my mouth I felt like the little kid in A Christmas Story who just said he wanted a football instead of a Carbon Action Red Rider B-B Gun—I waited for my own kick in the face or, at the very least, for him to leave. But he didn’t flinch. I liked that about him. And his response, though the details are a bit fuzzy in parts as I remember it, offered a bit of insight into the way I could answer the question today: “I didn’t let things happen to me. You know – nothing just happens. And there sure as shit ain’t any hand pulling my strings, if you know what I mean. No – just choices and steps that led to more choices and more steps.” He stopped like music stops when someone pauses an MP3, like a car when the battery is disconnected, like a couple when the husband dies—it felt final, yet I could still hear his voice and felt like, for a moment, he still spoke. Then the sensation disappeared, and I was left staring at a silent man and his incomplete thought. 4 All I could hear were those stupid slot machines, the same ones that repeated over and over each night in my head the next five days of the conference when I tried to sleep. (Though, I must say I’d trade the blinding migraines and lucid dreams that have kept me up the past six months for those sweet, chimey refrains.) Tommy didn’t pause long, though, before he finished his thought: “You don’t have a clue what I’m talkin’ about do ya? You never did in high school, why should it be any different now? Truth is, the biggest choices you make are to rely on a person or not – it’s that simple. And it’s your choice. Heck, my wife went to a day spa, the kids were at grandma’s, and after talking to a guy I knew I decided to make it a night, you know…a memory.

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