Luis

hoped this session would be better. Leon finally began.

“Come, where were we?”

“Well, isn’t that why you keep notes? I dunno, but that’s why people take notes, isn’t it? I’m not trying to be rude...” Luis knew he was being passive aggressive. He liked the thought of telling people what he needed them to hear in an indirect way that wouldn’t let them be immediately angry at him.

Leon didn’t seem to be listening, which struck Luis as odd, given that Leon was there to interview him. Luis waited a moment longer while his interviewer fumbled with a digital recording device with just a single button on it. “Trouble, Leon?”

“Hm? Oh, no, no trouble. So come, where were we? I think you were telling me about Stephanie. You met her...on a bus?”

“On MAX,” Luis corrected. Almost immediately he wished he had let Leon labor under the misconception that Stephanie would possibly ever board a TriMet bus. She had felt traveling on a MAX light rail train car had a nostalgia about it, the way trains usually captured the imagination of people who could afford commuter air travel. “We met on MAX.”

“Ah, yes, right. So, you two met back in, what was it again, August?”

Luis again began to feel the same irritation that had only recently started to creep into these weekly sessions. At first, Luis was happy to tell his story. Eager, in fact; flattered. But during the previous two sessions, as the warm glow of the attention cooled and dimmed, Luis could see Leon for what he was: another would-be journalist lacking in both competence and inquisitiveness looking for a quick-win story for some local online outlet that converted impulse-clicks into drinks served in distressed copper mugs at some bar on the Park Blocks. What better headline for such a pointless website could there be than tidbits of Luis’s story? If Leon played his cards right, and really Leon was playing Luis’s cards, but if Leon played them right, he could probably milk a few months’ worth of stories, easy. Well, what was to be done?

“No. It was February. Remember, it was winter, not summer.”

“February, ah, yes. Right. So, you and Stephanie…”

“Do you think you will always be a reporter? I mean, is this what you want to do?”

Leon paused a moment to consider. “Yeah, I suppose so, I guess so. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing, really. It’s just that I keep reading about how journalism is a dying art, how it used to be so central to a democracy, how the country used to see journalists as these, I dunno, imposing and scary spotlights of truth, and how they would find that truth no matter what, and the more important the truth was, the more buried it was, the more journalists would pursue it and bite into it, like a ferocious dog and its bone, but today...today, I just keep hearing how journalists are lazy, how they copy and paste press releases sent to them by slick marketing people and how they add their byline to it and call it a day, or how they are, I dunno, kept women, so to speak, how they are the kept women of people in power and they don’t uncover the truth anymore, they are secretaries reposting what they’re told so it’s less of a profession or, I dunno, less of a calling I guess than it is a kind of pointless reiteration of the people doing the concealing in the first place. Not to be rude, but I was wondering how journalists feel about that. How do you feel about that?”

Luis hadn’t delivered one of his Sermons to Leon before. He hadn’t delivered one to anyone since the trial. Part of him knew he wouldn’t have been able to had he tried. Part of him had given up on being able to deliver one ever again, despite how important they were to him. Luis wasn’t sure whether this one had been Inspired, but Inspired Sermon or not, he felt the tingle of excited power again, for the first time in nearly two years. He worked hard to keep the smile from his face. Was it possible his plan was working?

“Luis, you said you didn’t want to be rude in there somewhere, but it was kind of rude, and I think you know that. Come, can we please continue? Can you tell me about how your relationship with Stephanie began?”

“Of course I can, Leon. And I will, I promise,” Luis leaned an inch, perhaps two, and Leon responded in kind. “But I was just asking because there’s so much more to the story that nobody knows. I want to tell more of it, all of it, but I want to tell it to a journalist. I mean, a real, real journalist, you know? Is that you, Leon? That’s why I was asking. I wanted to know if that’s you. It’s ok if it isn’t.”

“You can tell me anything you want. This is a voluntary interview. If you want to tell me more than just about Stephanie, I’m all ears.”

Luis made a show of searching Leon’s face. “Ok. Ok, I want to tell you all of it. But we have to go way back. We have to go back to when I was a kid, maybe 12 or 13. The awkward years! I can tell that you know what I mean. When I was 12 or maybe 13, I wanted to be a lawyer. I dunno, I guess a lot of kids see courtroom procedurals and they want to be lawyers. What they don’t know is that the reality doesn’t look anything like those procedurals. I think that is just so strange, don’t you? How can that possibly be? How can it be that some of the most popular TV shows and movies depict life in the courtroom that bears zero resemblance to the real thing? How can they do that when they know that the audience is going to include judges and defense attorneys and district attorneys and bailiffs and legal assistants. Did you know that nearly 1.5 million people work in the legal system? I mean, if I were a baker, and baking shows were huge, and my show had magical gnomes that helped stir the pudding and millionaires who paid $100K for a single cake, the baking industry would call bullshit on me, wouldn’t it? They’d be outraged. But for some reason I can’t fathom, we just keep watching these shows that make up everything about the law. It’s not a moral struggle between truth and people. Not the way your profession is, Leon. The law isn’t about truth, and it isn’t about abstract concepts like the adversarial system that requires two teams to put on a show the way we all did as tiny kids, making our parents and neighbors gather round and watch us dress up and speak in unnatural voices and using words we don’t understand. Those TV shows have us believe that lawyers and the D.A.’s office get to relive their childhood and put on these acts in front of the accused’s peers. So it’s not a little performance for family and the neighborhood, but it’s for our peers, which is really just a more adult way of saying “friends and family.” Luis paused.

“So you’re 12 or 13 and want to be a lawyer. Why don’t you tell me more about that?”

So Luis told him more. He told Leon about reading through law books the way some kids would read through encyclopedias, how he read about the different kinds of law he could study, the schools that would be best for it, and how he would be doing the world good, real good, by becoming a lawyer. How the money would be great, sure, but conquering injustice was the real compensation. It was good work, important work. God’s work.

“Luis, you told me you were an atheist, though.”

“I told you I’m agnostic. And I am. Now. But back then, I had, I dunno, call it a complicated view of spirituality. It was kind of a big jumble of different beliefs: Catholic, Buddhist, Zooastrian, Cabalist, lots of stuff. It was really important to me back then. But Leon, I hit a crisis of faith. By the time I graduated from High School, I didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore, and I didn’t want to do it because I didn’t believe anymore.”

“Is that why you gravitated to Stephanie? Because she was so devout?”

“This is what concerns me about you, Leon. That’s what lawyers call ‘leading the witness’ or an objection that assumes facts not in evidence. You’re looking for an answer to a really big puzzle, Leon, and you have maybe six pieces in total. Only six pieces. This is exactly the problem with math classes in school, and how that entire approach of teaching arithmetic just needs to be changed. Not changed, but thrown out completely. Take story problems. You remember story problems in school, Leon, you might not have been super good at them, math might not have been your strong suit, but you remember them. I’m not trying to be rude, but statistically, as an aspiring journalist, you probably considered yourself more of a language person than a math person. As if those are the only two kinds of students there are, but in schools, that’s what we are taught: you are either a math person, which is rare, or a language person. And math people have to figure out story problems. I loved story problems, even though I am a language person. Story problems are really language problems, in that the trick is translating the text into numbers and operators, and sussing the answer out. But Leon, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Life isn’t a story problem. Our conversation isn’t a story problem, although that’s how school taught you to approach puzzles, so it isn’t your fault, not by a longshot, Leon, that you do think this way, and many, I daresay most, people think this way. That if you read carefully what is given to you, you have all the pieces to solve the dilemma. And that’s just crazy. I mean, it’s all kinds of deep, self-deluding crazy. Intellectually, you know you don’t have all the pieces to my life, right? You know this. You know this not just because I’m sure you must know this, but because I told you this. I told you that I have a lot more to say on the matter that nobody knows, and yet your programming, your education, teaches you that you must have all the pieces to answer the questions in front of you, if only you can arrange them right. Let me assure you, you don’t yet have all those pieces, Leon, and the people out there in this self-deluding world we live in don’t have all the pieces either, but there they go, thinking that they can cobble some kind of answer together from their limited pieces, and that their answer must be as valid as everyone else’s answer, right? Even as valid as people who have way more pieces. But you don’t have many of my pieces, Leon, not yet, so even though you have a piece that says I lost my faith, and even though you have another piece that says Stephanie had hers, that doesn’t mean those pieces go together, you know? I think you know what I mean, and I think it’s good advice for you, Leon, as you continue to develop your journalistic skills, you can use this insight and remember not to try to force two pieces together like that. Again, not trying to be rude, not by a longshot.”

“I don’t take offense, Luis. Ok, so you had a deep sense of faith and spirituality when you were young. A blend of beliefs that you created for yourself. And you lost that faith. How? Was it gradual or…”

Luis went on to tell Leon about his early faith, how he used to feel that he was being taken care of, in a way, by external forces that, perhaps, had his interests at heart, or perhaps that had plans for him. Luis explained how, as time went on and he graduated from high school, then college and entered the workforce, the messages of faith didn’t have the same gravity for him. “...it was like I was holding onto a ledge for dear life, you know, when I had for so long felt that I could just, at any time, let go and I would fly. But that’s not what happened. What happened was that as I was holding on and losing faith, the ground was coming up to meet me, as if the earth knew I wasn’t so much a creature of, I dunno, call it Heaven or the astral plane or whatever you want to call it, and I was becoming more a creature of the earth like everyone else, and by the time I was in my early 20’s, I basically let go. But I didn’t fly, Leon. I was passed that. I didn’t fly. But I didn’t die either. The ground had come right up to meet me, so when I let go I dropped maybe two inches. I lost my faith when I stopped feeling close to God, and felt closer to the earth.”

Leon asked more questions, without jumping to conclusions, about how firm that earth felt after having lost one’s faith, and what, if anything, replaced that sense of purpose and fulfillment. Luis didn’t spend time answering questions posed to him. If Leon was not paying close attention to the past interviews, then this would be the last one, Luis’ very last one, and he would come clean about all of it. It was no longer an interview, thought Luis. It was dictation.

“Stephanie was an HR person for Amazon. It was a real tough job. Amazon can be a hard place to work, and they know it. They really know it, and they like that reputation. Some of their employees wore that distinction like a crown, or a badge of honor. Stephanie was one of those. She liked her job a lot and she wore that Amazon crown proudly. She brought me to a few company sponsored parties and gatherings with her colleagues, and she talked about almost nothing else but her job for the first six months we were seeing each other. It wasn’t until August that she recommended me for a job there. Say! Do you think that’s where you got so mixed up, Leon? You thought I met her in August, when I actually met her in February! It was in August that she got me the job. I bet that’s how you lost track. But that’s alright. I mean, I think some journalists are able to hold all the information about a story or an interview in their head all at once, but I think that’s pretty rare, don’t you? I dunno, I mean you have your recording device there so it’s not like you really need to have that huge of a memory, am I right?”

“Come...go on.”

Long after the interview, Luis feared his story had not been organized well. He remembered telling Leon more about his childhood, his beliefs in the supernatural, his own place in a larger, divine narrative. Luis had revealed the sad and frightening realization that his life, as he approached his 30s, was not a key part of the future, and even his questioning of whether there was a larger narrative at all. His convictions were going dormant and he hadn’t even had the awareness to note their passing. “But, as you say, Stephanie was devout. She believed. Of course I never shared the details of my early faith with her, but I did share that my faith was leaving the building. Stephanie, a proud member of Amazon’s Human Resources department, delivered a message to me, Leon. A message that changed everything. It was a gift. A real gift. No, it’s not lost on me that Amazon was in the business of delivering gifts, and in a way that small, wry irony was exactly what I needed to believe this message. Stephanie, in her proud Amazon crown that I always imagined her wearing, asked me simply: was I ever a fool? Was I ever a fool, she asked. As a kid, did I break rules or behave like an imbecile, or was I a level-headed kind of boy. I told her that I had all kinds of beliefs that weren’t right. I believed in what I learned in school, I believed in Santa, and I believed that people who work hard get ahead. None of those things are true, and as an adult I know that now, the way I knew that my faith had not been true. Leon, Staphanie smiled at me. It wasn’t a passive aggressive smile and it didn’t irritate me. She genuinely smiled and she asked me if I believed those things because I was gullible, or did I believe them because, to my young mind, it was logical to believe those things? Were those beliefs based on pure fantasy, or were they based on facts, as I saw them? Sure, those facts were somewhat faulty and led to a bad conclusion, but presents did show up each Christmas Eve while I slept, that was a fact. I did learn interesting things in school; there’s a lot more out there and it’s not as straightforward as I thought, but I learned real things that I still use today. And you know what, Leon, people who work hard do get ahead, even if it’s also true that not everyone who works hard gets ahead. Do you see? Are you following me?” Luis looked deeply at Leon, expecting that this Sermon, which was absolutely Inspired, would be moved.

“Help me understand, Luis. Stephanie was saying not to come down so hard on yourself, or…”

“No, no, no. My god. Ok. Here’s what I’m saying, and I’ll spell it out for you, Leon. Stephanie was telling me that the basis of my faith was not nonsense at all. It couldn’t be. Just like those other beliefs I had, there was and is a valid basis to keep believing them! That’s the good news! Take the Santa thing. Of course Santa isn’t real, not the fat man in a red suit and reindeer and a sleigh and chimneys, but those presents were real, the feeling of joy was real, the excitement of Christmas, that was real. All those things were real, it was just the details, the expression of the details that was off. I was missing a piece of the puzzle. That’s what I’m saying. There is a large narrative, and I’m a key part of it whether I like it or know it or not. That’s the good news. I was like you, Leon, as much as I’m ashamed to admit it, not to be rude, but I was like you, thinking I had all the pieces, but in my case, as I got older and frustrated when they didn’t all fit together, I figured there was no puzzle at all. But Leon, there is a puzzle. Just like there were gifts under that tree every year I was a kid, I needed to figure out the missing pieces so I could keep putting it all together, that’s all! What was the missing piece? I needed to find it. It was so important to me, and I knew, I just knew, that Stephanie had been given to me to help find that piece. It was so clear. She had already rekindled the light for me, and I knew she held the answer, if not the final piece I was looking for, she was sent to me to show me the way to that piece.”

“And did she give you that final piece, Luis?” Leon glanced down

Luis smiled. “She took me to it.”

“She took you there? She took you to Bonneville?”

Luis stopped smiling. Leon was assuming again, rushing. But it was too late now, the narrative must go on, it felt too good to stop. “Yes, Leon. To Bonneville. That’s where you wanted to go, right? With me and Stephanie to the dam. To the damn where it all happened.”

“Where you killed her.”

“...yes, Leon. Where I killed Stephanie.” When Luis continued after a pause, he felt the Sermon build in his throat. “Have you seen it? The dam? No? How long have you lived in Portland, Leon, I mean you really have to see the important landmarks of where you live. You’re like, I dunno, a tourist? You’re like a tourist hitting a few greasy spoon cafes because you heard they make the best banana pancakes and you sit there with a mug of coffee that’s so big it’s basically a full pot, and you eat those pancakes and roll your eyes up for your friends to see that it’s the best breakfast you’ve ever had, those banana pancakes and link sausage, and really toasted white bread with those little, plastic tubs of mixed fruit jelly, rolling your eyes because you and your friends are eating in this place everyone talks about and now you get to say you’ve tried it, but you know, all of you know, that it’s just flour and water and sugar and mushy, out of season bananas, and none of you really thinks it’s the best meal ever but if it’s not, then it’s not an accomplishment to be there, with all the other tourists smiling and rolling their eyes up at the mediocre food, like the crowd cheering at the naked emperor in his new clothes, a crowd of tourists applauding a naked meal, and I’m not trying to be rude, but that’s you, Leon, that’s how you seem to me, a tourist in life, following some guidebook you read, staying in the lines, letting it happen. When you go to the Bonneville dam, Leon, and I really, really think you should, that’s where you will see what I saw. A massive, massive man-made wall of steel and rock holding back this awesome amount of water. The scope of it is incredible, honestly, it’s hard to believe when you see it, this massive, awesome amount of dammed up water. I think you know what I’m talking about even if you’ve never been there, even if you haven’t gotten to that page in your life’s tourist guide, you can see it in your mind, yes? It’s gorgeous, and powerful, and a little scary. You can imagine the weight of it, the weight of the water, as you look at it, this glorious force of nature and that’s when Stephanie’s words began to form that last piece. It was the last piece of the puzzle, Leon, forming right in front of my eyes with the unimaginable power and weight of the dammed up water in the background, the piece took shape for me. And it was obvious, so damned obvious right there, right then, it was just after 1 o’clock in the afternoon, it was bright and slightly chilly, only natural for the 2nd of November I guess, and the puzzle piece was the shape of that dammed up water. I can tell by your expression, how it hasn’t changed at all, that you don’t get it. That’s OK, Leon, that’s not a big deal at all, but let me put it to you this way, let me ask you: you can see in your mind that awesome, terrible presence of that water, pressing against the dam, deep and calm, teeming with life, you can see it in your mind, yes? The white spray around the spillway, people watching it for its beauty, but from a distance, because it’s scary, and still beautiful. You can see it?”

Leon nodded. Luis nodded back. “Try to describe that scene to yourself, and when you do you’ll use the same words I used: awesome, powerful, beautiful, dangerous. Enjoy it, enjoy its power, enjoy the benefits of its magnificence, not the least of which is the electricity it generates to run our lives, all of the things it represents, those are the words and descriptions and thoughts that occurred to me right then, and you know what it might sound like to someone who hears us describing it? It’ll sound like God. Those descriptions are exactly the kind of descriptions people make about God, Leon. I’ll let you listen to the tape later and take your notes, no need to think that through on your own right now, but you know I’m right. The power of this force of nature seems pretty synonymous, on a much smaller scale I grant you, but it sounds a hell of a lot like God. So there’s the missing piece. A true force of nature, like this dam, or a hurricane, or an earthquake, they are all immensely powerful, destructive, gorgeous in their own way. All forces of nature, like this beautiful dammed up water. And they all have the same thing in common. Do you know what that is, Leon? I’ll tell you. They’re all bottled up in a way. They are all nature, concentrated. Imagine the power of a hurricane a few miles off the coast of Cuba, the awesome and destructive and hypnotic power of those winds, and now imagine that you could spread it out, across the entire planet. What would happen? The same amount of energy, just spread out. It would be like a gust of wind to us up here in Oregon. Imagine an earthquake that topples over the skyline of a major city. Concentrated movement in one spot does that. But if that same energy of movement were spread out over the entire surface of the planet, we wouldn’t feel it, Leon, not at all. Imagine now that the dam was taken away. That powerful, heavy, gorgeous, deep, life-filled water behind the dam would be, what, trickles, it would be next to nothing without the dam. That’s the common denominator. These forces of nature have to be concentrated to be impressive, to mean anything. What if the same thing is true about God. Do you see now, Leon?”

Leon said nothing. Luis said nothing back. “No, Luis, I don’t think I do. And you said you were up at the dam on November second? That’s not what was said in trial, and not what happened, Luis.”

“You told me you were raised, what, Catholic, yes? So what does your Catholic upbringing tell you about how God made man, Leon?”

“God made man on the sixth day.”

“No.”

“He did, Luis. He made the sun and moon and stars, then eventually, on the sixth day…”

“That’s when he made Man. But you’re missing the point, big time, you’re missing the point of it all. I asked how he made Man. He scooped up some dirt and molded us by hand, then he breathed life into it. He breathed life into us. It is his breath in us, animating us, making us alive. Different from all the other living things on this planet, God’s breath is in us. That’s the difference between us and dogs and cats and birds, they don’t have God’s breath, only we do, that’s where God is, God is inside us. That’s how he made us. That’s the message. And do you know something, Leon? Do you know how many of us there were in ancient times? Do you know what the population of the earth was back when Jesus was talking to those fishermen? About 350 million. That’s, what, 5% of the population now? 95% of all humans could die, right now, and there would still be more of us than there were back then. That’s crazy, right? But the real question, Leon, the fundamental question, and the question I asked myself on the dam on November second was this: Is there more God today than there was yesterday? How can there be? There can’t. There isn’t more God right now than there was when you came in here to see me today. How absurd is that? So here’s a story problem for you and I’ll give you all the pieces you need to solve it. If there is the same amount of God today as there always has been, and if he’s in all of us, and if there are now almost 8 billion people...then God’s stretched too thin. Leon, God is spread out way too far. Just like that hurricane or that earthquake, or the Bonneville dam on that afternoon. God’s power is no longer evident to me because there are too many fucking people. Like the wind or earth or water, God himself needs to be concentrated, sealed up, if you want him to be powerful and dangerous and evident. Now do you see? Finally? If we want to get God back, we have to kill 95% of humans on this planet. It’s just that simple. Grisly, I know, but it’s the truth.” Luis paused. “It’s the God’s honest truth.”

“So that’s why you killed her? To increase the concentration of God everywhere?” asked Leon. Then, into his recorder: “Note to self that the murder happened on the 9th of November.”

“No. I mean yes, I killed her partly because God needs to be reconcentrated, but no, I killed her on the second. After our unimaginative picnic lunch at the Eagle Creek trailhead about three miles from the dam, I hit her on the back of her head with a rock, but had to strangle her when the bft didn’t do it.”

“B...blunt force trauma?”

“Yes, Leon. Blunt force trauma. Of course she actually died of asphyxia. But that’s beside the point. The point was that I couldn’t finish my work, now that it had finally occurred to me, if I was supposed to be mourning her death, so I left her there, wrapped up in that picnic blanket and secured with bungee cords, stashed away for what I thought would be just a day or so. Turned out to be a full week. It takes a lot longer than you think to get all the details of a plan done, you know? Getting all the materials together would take just a day or two I thought, but no. It took a week. But I finished it, and put that powder in the packing material, and hustled back to the picnic spot so I could retrieve and dispose of the body. You’d think that the animals would have found her by then, but like everything else these days, they’re just spread too thin. I estimated that the packages would take maybe a year and a half to start making people sick. It’s been almost two, and I keep reading about people getting sick and dying around here, and every day, every day, Leon, we get closer and closer to God. We just need more people like me, you know, to go out and conquer the problem. And, not to be rude, but you’re not it. Not by a longshot.”