My novel, The Man Who Ran for God, is now available for purchase.
This story was born here on this blog, posted in first-draft increments for the better part of 2017. Now it’s been edited, rewritten, and improved in a published form.
Enjoy—and remember, Amazon reviews are always helpful and always appreciated!
—R
IV. My Mouth Will Tell of Your Righteous Acts
THE GOD WE DESERVE IS JUST A MAN
by Mary Jetson
When I ask Gideon Dodd, 42, why he wants to be God, his eyes glaze over in that way many would assume means he’s staring straight through them, cooking up some diplomatic, sound bite-ready answer.
But after wandering the plains of the Serengeti with him for nearly a full day without sleep, food, or water, this reporter knows the good reverend. That empty look isn’t the sign of an artful political dodge, or of mistrust in the media. Dodd is searching inward, dissecting his very soul.
He hasn’t, in fact, given any thought to this quandary before.
And it’s in this ten-second pregnant pause that the writer decides she’s going to vote for Gideon Dodd, because there’s an honesty, a truth in that self-reflection. Dodd is impetuous. He’s bull-headed. He has a terrible sense of self-worth and more neuroses than you could ever count. He has irritable bowel syndrome and a fear of flying.
He is, in a word, human. Continue reading “The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 13)”
SELAH: IV
It’s been three weeks since the debate at Radio City Music Hall.
And tonight, Benjamin Dunwoodie hugs a beach pail with his thighs and dry heaves into it. Only a thimbleful of bile plops out into the bucket. There isn’t much left in him; he hasn’t been the same since Tanzania.
“I am certain you understand our… disappointment.” Continue reading “The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 12)”
XIV. …And Be Content with What You Have
Three years before the Tanzania affair, Gideon Dodd thanked the man at the hardware store as he dropped two copies of a key into the preacher’s hand.
He paid for the discounted wood scraps in his cart — they’d make nice whittling — and turned onto the road that led out of the city.
In his two-seater sports car, he wound up and down hills, listening to contemporary Christian music, humming along. About twenty minutes away from the nearest gas station, he turned onto a gravel drive and led up a steep incline into an unpaved parking lot. He parked, put on the emergency brake, and stepped out into the muggy summer air.
Breathing it in, he smelled lilac and fresh-mown grass.
Whistling, the wind ruffling his collar and short sleeves, Gideon walked past a weathered and cracked sign reading CHRIST SANCTUARY NON-DENOMINATIONAL CHURCH. While he tucked his aviators into his breast pocket, he didn’t even look at the rented yard banner that said WELCOME AND GOD BLESS OUR NEW PASTOR, G DEON D0DD. Continue reading “The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 11)”
VII. Therefore My Harp Is Tuned to Mourning
“Who died?”
In America, five years before Gideon Dodd would don the very same outfit to honor his deceased wife, he straightened a black tie and practiced a somber punim in the mirror of his grandiose dressing room. A woman at the mahogany door spoke to him as though she didn’t see he was wearing headphones. But she saw.
Most would not have even registered the brief flicker of Dodd’s eyes up, left, and back down to the silky wad in his fumbling hands. But Maria Gutierrez was more observant than most. She knew he saw her. She knew he recognized her. Continue reading “The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 10)”
