Oh-Oh City

I was trying to get calm. My eyes were closed. She nudged me and handed over a piece of stick. I looked. A perfectly carved head of me about three inches high. Perfect coloring, too – my gray hair, blue eyes. I dropped it and unconsciously wiped my hands on my pants.

"Come on, boy; lighten up! It's fu

It was my turn for narrowed eyes. "How can you be God and have cancer?"

"Good shot, Professor. Now we're cooking! I guess I should begin from the begi

I didn't turn, because I had no desire whatsoever to see A. Taugwalder again anytime soon.

"That damned girl. I told her, you know? I told her she could have her say, but then she had to back off so I could explain things to you. But she's headstrong and so used to getting her way. Are you all right, Scott?"

"No."

"Too bad. Where was I? At the begi

"You mean Jewish mystics?"

"Right, that's them."

"Well, something. I've read –"

"They came closest. Ever heard of the Lamed Wufniks?''

"Beenie, what are you talking about?"

"These mystics believed in Lamed Wufniks. Thirty-six righteous men whose job is to justify the world to God. Or, looking at it another way, they're supposed to explain to God why man has a right to be here. Now, if one of these thirty-six ever discovered who he was, he immediately died, and somebody else, in another part of the world, took his place. Because, you see, even though they don't know it, they're the secret pillars of the universe. Saviors. Without them doing this justifying God would get rid of the whole bunch of mankind."

"Wup –"

"Wuf. Lamed Wufniks. Which is not so far from wrong. The big difference is, we don't do any justifying, because we are God."

"You're a 'Wufnik'?"

"No, I'm God. Or one-thirty-sixth of Him. They got the number right."

A bird flew in over the water and out again. I looked at Beenie, the ground, Beenie, the ground. What was I supposed to say?

"You don't believe me. And what about A

"O.K." She closed her hand around the snowy dome, and it disappeared. I half-stood. "What do you want from me? Why are you doing this?' She pulled me down again. "Just sit back and listen to the rest of my story. I was fifteen when I met Nolan Gilbert. He was about seventy. First he told me, then showed me, who he was, like I'm doing with you. Then he said he was dying and I was supposed to replace him.

"That's how it works, see. You live your life normally, even after you know. But like everybody else – and you are like everybody else, Scott; you got to know that. Sooner or later, our time to die comes, too. A normal lifetime – sixty or seventy years, usually. But the difference is, when our time comes, we have to find a replacement. Some are luckier than others – they know who it is that they want years before they die. Like me with you."

"You knew me before?"

"Sure. I've been cleaning your room at the university for years, but you never really saw me, because I worked night shift. Sometimes we'd pass each other in the hall if you worked late."

"You're telling me God is man?"

"No, no, no! I am not saying that at all. Man has God in him, but he's not God! No, the absolute simplest way to put it is this: man is man, but there are thirty-six chosen men who, together, are God. That's why normal people feel close to Him – because He's them in many ways. Nolan told me about the Greeks. You know about that. They believed there were lots of gods, which is kind of right, and that they all had human feelings. They were interested in sex, got angry, and did unfair things, stuff like that. So the Greeks were close, too, in guessing right, but they also thought gods lived up on special mountains away from the rest of the world. Wrong. We're here – just all over the place, and not looking like people'd expect, you know? I'm one, and I'm sure not impressive, huh.? But I'm only a thirty-sixth of the big puzzle. Fit me together with the other parts, and you've got ONE IMPRESSIVE GOD , all right!

I'll tell you something else, too – the world is full of puzzle pieces. Know how you feel lonely and apart sometimes? That's because you're not co

AS I mentioned earlier, before that wondrous afternoon with Beenie Rushforth, I was begi

However, when I arrived at my own front door again many hours later, my understanding of the world, of life, of death, of God … was a quintilIion miles away from what I had thought before. For this loud, sweet, dying woman had proven without question that what she had told me was true. As she said, I was a hard case and wanted proof even beyond A

I wanted to see Melville and Hawthorne alive and in the flesh, wanted to hear their voices and the kind of words they used outside their books. I wanted to see Albert Pinkham Ryder at Christmastime, brewing up his own private brand of perfume and giving it away in little jars to children. I wanted to visit Montaigne in his tower, circa 1592, and look over his shoulder while he wrote, "Though we may mount on stilts, we must still walk on our own legs, and on the highest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own bottom." These were my heroes, the people I'd thought about my entire adult life. If Beenie was God, and time belongs to God, then she could clap once and give me these people for a moment. She did. She took me wherever I wanted to go, and affably said stay as long as you like. Fu