Chapter Seventy One

C. Martin: I have so many questions

God#1: Here we go. Who am I ..the "Shell Answer Man"?

The Shell Answer Man was a running character in the commercials for the Shell gas station during the 1960's. It was a typical retort for people in my age bracket to use when someone asked you a bunch of ridiculous questions. God was making a joke for my demographic.

C. Martin: Why else would you be talking to me ?

God#1: Take it easy Judy. What do you want to know?

C. Martin: You're Judy

God#1: Yea Yea, go ahead and shoot.

C. Martin: What's the meaning of life?

God#1: What's you're favorite song?

I thought for a moment.

C. Martin: I have a bunch of favorite songs. What category, what artist?

God#1: Exactly. You can't name just one song. A guy like you probably has thousands of favorite songs. Same goes for the meaning of life. There are thousands of meanings.

C. Martin: OK, I get the point. Try this..why are we here?

God#1: Why is WHO here and WHERE are they at any particular moment ?

C. Martin: I've seen this movie! You're not God. If you were God you would give me specific answers instead of vague generalities like a newspaper horoscope. God would know the true singular meaning of life.

God#1: I'm really not trying to be vague. Sometimes I have trouble expressing myself. Let me just tell you that the meaning of life is always the question that people on Earth keep asking, when it's not really something that can be answered. It's not even the right question to ask me.

C. Martin: Then what should I ask?

God#1: Ask me what heaven is like.

C. Martin: I've seen heaven. It's like a beach on the Caribbean.

God#1: That wasn't heaven. That's just another place for people to gather until it's time for them to move on to heaven. It's no different that the place you thought was Hell. It's no different than the restaurant where you saw your guitar heroes. It's just like the place where your redneck girlfriend was. Everybody dies with expectations and we try to accommodate that until all the body parts catch up with the brains and people have a chance to discover their own way.

C.Martin: Why do dead people need bodies at all?

God#1: OK, here is one big misconception you people always have. The body is really important, the body is the one thing that separates you from all other beings. Everybody down there keeps talking about the "Soul" and how important it is and how it's the one thing that can't be defined.

C.Martin: The soul's not important????

God#1: Oh Hell no! Think of your computer as a human being. The box it's in is the body. The processor is the brain. The little miniature battery that keeps the time and date correct is the soul. Every fingerprint is different. Everyone has DNA that is distinctive. The veins in your eyeballs are as individually singular as a snowflake. The soul, on the other hand, is exactly the same in every person who has ever lived. I keep a giant bin full of them. If some body's soul falls out, and trust me, it happens all the time, we can drop another one in.

C.Martin: Has mine ever fallen out?

God#1: About 12 times.

C.Martin: Is that a lot?

God#1: You hold the record. It's the body parts we have trouble replacing. You lose a finger and your screwed! Suddenly you have to dial a phone with your foot. That's why we keep all the lost parts up here for people when they die, you REALLY need them all here!

C.Martin: Is that why Angels follow me around and protect me from harm?

God#1: Uhhhh. Angels?

C.Martin: Yes. I have thousands of Angels protecting me. They caught me when I fell off the bridge and took me down safely. I saw them flying above me in the woods. Black-eyed Angels.

God#1: Marty, there are no such things as Angels.

C.Martin: God! I SAW them!

God#1: ooh boy.

C.Martin: What????

God#1: Those are chickens Marty. The ghosts of the chickens you've eaten over your lifetime. They have an emotional investment in you.

C.Martin: Ghosts? There are ghosts? There are chicken ghosts?

God#1: Sometimes creatures, after getting their body parts back like to come back to Earth and roam around. I don't really understand it but it happens.

C.Martin: Where do they go after that?

God#1: You've seen it, you just didn't know that you saw it.

C. Martin: Here we go again.

God#1: Perplexing...isn't it?

C. Martin: Is Jesus your son?

God#1: Yes

C.Martin: Really?

God#1: Yes. Actually I've had two sons. Jesus is the famous one. I had another son in the early fifties who became a stand up comedian.

C. Martin: Red Skelton?

God#1: Oh God no! His name was Sonny Nippy. He worked the Borscht Belt circuit for a few years but never got on the Ed Sullivan show. He just didn't get the breaks, but he sure made me laugh.

C.Martin: I don't believe this.

God#1 Have faith my son.

C.Martin: Do you answer prayers?

God#1: I try to but people rarely pray. It's like Spam. Sometimes I get only a handful of prayers in a day and then sometimes I just get millions.

C.Martin: During major disasters and holidays?

God#1: No, usually when the lottery jackpot gets really big.

C.Martin: Is the Bible true?

God#1: Remember when President Reagan's daughter wrote that book about a family living in the White House and the press asked him if it was true?

C.Martin: Not really.

God#1: He ducked under the roaring blades of the Presidential helicopter and said "Interesting..."and then he put his beautiful 2 front teeth on his lips for emphasis and said "FFFFICTION!"

C.Martin: So it's not true?

God#1: Never said that.

C.Martin: Here we go again. Do you ever smite people?

God#1: Sure! I love smiting. I once smote a guy just for snoring.

C.Martin: Do you cause disasters?

God#1: Do you mean do I cause earthquakes and floods?

C.Martin: yes

God#1: Not directly. You ever try to cut your own hair?

C.Martin: What?

God#1: You cut a little here and a little there and then you notice it's all lopsided... so you cut a little more here and the next thing you know you look like you walked into a moving fan?

C.Martin: Not really. Have you?

God#1: Not personally, but I saw it happen on an episode of "Sister,Sister" once. It was a disaster!

C.Martin: Is any of what you've been telling me the truth?

God#1:It doesn't really matter to you right now. What you need to know is that you are going to have to make it back to Earth and figure out how to survive

C.Martin: That's easy. I'm rich and famous.

God#1: You're broke, alone, and hated. Look in your pockets. What you have in there is what you have. Your agent Cy was kidnapped and killed, but before he died he signed over everything you own. You don't even have that crappy little condo anymore.

C. Martin: Who killed Cy? Why am I hated? Where will I go?

God#1: There you go! Now THOSE are the questions you should be asking!

C.Martin: What's the answer?

God#1: How should I know? I'm just a 14 year old girl from Ames, Iowa.... BRB

"BRB" is computer-speak for Be Right Back. People say that in chat rooms when they have to go take a pee or get a sandwich or decide they're finished talking to you but they don't want to say "goodbye."

I waited for about twenty minutes before I got up and left. The screen saver of the burning bush had come back on and flickered on the walls of the cubicle.

Chapter Seventy

Eddie, the restaurant server with the super-numeral teeth was kneeling on the chest of my brain surgeon, Dr. Granger, pressing the barrel of an antique colt .45 revolver into his widely flared left nostril.

My ex-wife Carol was blithering hysterically.

"You wanna tell your white bitch to shut the fuck up?" Eddie pushed the gun even further into Granger's nose.

"Where are you from? I think I recognize that accent." Granger's voice sounding like he had a cold. "You're a Yella Hammer, aren't cha?"

"Shut UP porch monkey! I should kill you right now!" Eddie's face, already full of broken blood vessels turned even redder. "I hate you racist Niggers."

"Yellow Hammer." Granger was defiant.

Eddie pulled back the black hammer of the pistol and the revolving chamber, full of bullets, rotated one click. His index finger squeezed the trigger, moving it a millimeter towards blowing Granger's brains out.

"You don't know shit! Just cos I'm from Alabama don't make me a Yellow Hammer. That kind of name calling is just totally uncalled for you stupid Jungle Bunny." Eddie's hand was quivering.

"Honey, stop making him angry." Carol screeched from across the room.

"Yea BOY! Maybe you shouldn't make the Yellow Hammer angrier than he already is!"

"I could fix that face of yours you know. I have a Dentist friend that could work on that God-awful mouth. By the time I'm finished with you, people would never guess that your sister is your mother." Granger was fearless.

Eddie tried to speak but instead of words, spit came flying from his mouth and dribbled down his chin. He pulled the gun out of Granger's nose and put it back in, he pulled it out and put it back in, he pulled it out and shoved it in hard again. He was trying to scare the Doctor as much as he could but Granger wasn't playing the game.

"You wanna die Nigger!"

"You're either going to shoot me or you gonna let me live. I have the feeling that if you were going to kill me you would've pulled the trigger by now. You want something from me and it's my guess that you want it enough to let me live. Am I right?" Granger's voice never wavered.

"Honey. what's a Yellow Hammer?" Carol was a little calmer thanks to her lover's confidence. Her sense of well-being was short lived when Eddie pulled the gun out of Granger's nose and pointed it at her.

"I don't need you bitch. I could kill you right now and not blink a fucking eye." As he pointed the gun at Carol he tried to stare directly into her eyes in order to make his point. Sadly his eyes didn't always work in concert and she wasn't sure exactly where he was looking. She quickly glanced over her shoulder to see if someone was standing behind her.

Eddie was very angry and starting to hiccup wildly. That was a good way to spot a Yellow Hammer. Some distinct, hereditary flaw not only left their skin jaundiced, but it made them unable to encounter stress without the little, involuntary spasms called hiccups. That's how they got their nickname.

In the region of Eddie's upbringing, the land of the suspected parent, there was a bird that was prevalent in the forests and garbage dumps. It was the yellow headed woodpecker. It banged it's head wildly against trees and pipes and anything it believed held the nectar of the burrowing insect. The noise it made echoed through the hills both day and night. Sometimes it would drive it's beak into the tin covered roofs of the hill people. The occupants would get so upset that they would begin to hiccup. The ensuing concert of banging and burping mutants became known as the Yellow Hammer Concerto.

The nickname of the bird became the nickname of the mutants. The Yellow Hammer.

The jerking reaction of the hiccuping caused Eddie's colt pistol to fire. The bullet went through the door of Dr. Granger's suite. They all paused and stared at the door as they heard the sound of a body dropping to the floor in the hall outside.

The silence in the room lasted for a short time, all eyes flashing to one another.

Eddie was angry and frightened. "See what you made me AYYYEEECK do!"