Read Online Short People by Joshua Furst - Free Book Online

out of the house before dawn, and he sleeps in the family Festiva as they drive through the fog to the sunrise service. Folding chairs have been assembled in a semicircle around the damp knoll east of church, and Shawn’s family, late because he wouldn’t get up, is stuck in a row near the back. He shivers in the early-morning chill and does all he can to stay awake. He fidgets with his program. He frowns through the hymns. During the sermon, he slides off his chair and squirms, plucking blades of grass and tying them in knots. His father casts a look. His mother pats the chair. He climbs off his knees and sits limp, his head swaying back and forth, jolting sometimes when it feels like it’s going to fall off. He draws Easter eggs on his program. He paints his fingernails with the highlighter he finds in his mother’s purse. He doesn’t hear a word Preacher Dan says.
    At communion, he shuffles up to the front of the line, eats his pellet of baked dough and downs his shot of grape juice. He feels like a huckster, tricking the people into thinking he’s with them in fellowship when, in truth, he’s merely going through the motions, as empty of passion as this ritual is of meaning. The dough is stale, the juice watered down. He misses the sense of purpose, the soaring project, the urgency that blind faith once allowed him. He wipes his lips with the back of his hand.
    As the service ends, Preacher Dan faces the congregation from the top of the hill. He has shaved off his mustache, and without it, the skin around his scar seems puffier. Over his suit he wears a thin white robe, ruffled at the neck and boxy, with no arms, just slits for his hands, which rise now above him, palms out toward Heaven. The robe billows like wings from his wrists to his knees. High wisps of cloud hover pink and gold above him, a sky right out of an uplifting poster. A sliver of sun breaks over the hill and Preacher Dan’s voice booms out across the congregation, “This is the day that the Lord has made.”
    It’s met with exuberance. “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
    Shawn is woozy with exhaustion. He grips the chair in front of him to keep from collapsing. He’s so tired he twitches. Preacher Dan seems to be sitting on top of the sun, his legs dangling toward the ground, and Shawn, in his exhaustion, almost believes this is more than an illusion, that Dan really is floating, and not just floating—ascending. Shawn doesn’t want to burn his retinas. He bows his head and blinks the light away.
    “Hallelujah, Christ is risen.”
    Everyone but Shawn raises their hands above their heads.
    Words Shawn has known his whole life tap through his mind.
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life, forever and ever, A-men.
They have such a seductive, treacherous lilt. He thinks about what he was up to last night and wonders if it shows on his face.
    Every voice but Shawn’s soars and swoops, “The Lord is risen indeed, Hallelujah.”
    The sun is free of the Earth now. Preacher Dan stands inside it, his body a silhouette, the robe outstretched, diaphanous, filtering the rays. Warmth tugs at Shawn’s eyelids; he could fall asleep where he’s standing. The morning light makes everything crisp— undeniably real. The texture of the plastic chair back in Shawn’s hands, the bright prints and pastels of his fellow parishioners’ Easter clothes, the dew on the grass on the hill leading to Preacher Dan, all these things are so convincingly what they are. Compared to this world, Shawn feels abstract, vague and hazy, like a scribble that could mean anything.
    He shouts—“The Lord is risen indeed, Hallelujah”—but the rest of the voices have already faded. His cracking soprano flails like an out-of-tune trumpet, alone, announcing how profoundly he’s failed the Lord.
    Preacher Dan is a dark spot on the sun, his face eclipsed by the brilliance behind