Ligion

The universe sent Rennie Gordon so many messages he had difficulty distinguishing one from another. When he got his lotto numbers from pausing a stopwatch and recording the really small, fast moving ones at the end, it made sense that only one number was right because those numbers were obviously meant for something else. His children had grown accustomed to what he called “ligion,” and were often disappointed but rarely surprised.

“Dad, I’m sorry, but you know why you got those specific numbers?” asked Cici, his youngest.

He sighed, used skepticism when it came to this sort of thing. She was in high school with very good grades and “knew everything.”

“Cici, if you don’t ever let the world tell you what to do, it won’t even try,” he said.

She crossed her arms and leaned against the formica breakfast bar. Rennie could tell that she wanted to roll her eyes. It was knowledge like this that supplied him with his confidence in the universe.

Ligion wasn’t religion because he wasn’t biting it off of what some preacher was telling him. It was primary. First. He didn’t think he was psychic; Rennie wasn’t stupid.

“Terrence Walker’s house burned down last night,” Cici said. “What kinda plan the universe have for him?”

Rennie’s head tilted toward her, almost conspiratorially. It was a pantomime they both knew. Communicating without words, just like the universe did so often, the father told his daughter that she was above that kind of questioning. She glared at him. Cici had become more and more obstinate over the past few years. Just as his older children had all done, she had stopped seeing the cryptic signals around them, had stopped listening to the whispers in the air, had stopped looking for the letters in the light, had stopped hearing him.

“Baby, if there wasn’t Ligion, would you be here? We been down this road a million times,” he said. “If Terrence Walker is listening to the signs, his house had to burn down. You sure he won’t get nothing better? Maybe, the world’s pushing him because it wants him to work for something else.”

“And if he gets hit by a bus next week, it’s gonna be because he didn’t listen to the signs, right?” said Cici

“Nobody knows the future,” said Rennie. “But everything’s part of something bigger. I been telling you this since you were in diapers.”

Cici stared. She had a backpack.

“Where you going baby?” he asked.

“I’m going to Kayla’s house. She’s got food that isn’t Spaghettio’s.”

Rennie turned to the side as if this were a matter that sort of concerned him but not that much. He’d been affronted, but not that badly. This was a blow, but not a fatal one.

“I mean, I guess that’s alright. So long as you do your homework. You going to-”

“I wasn’t asking.”

Rennie almost told her to watch her tone with him, but before the words came, the door slammed. He sighed. He’d tried with his kids. They wouldn’t listen. And so, when bad things happened, they blamed him. They blamed luck. They blamed themselves. But they never blamed themselves for not listening to the intelligence of the world around them. Kayla, his oldest, was the worst.

The light of the refrigerator shone palely into the dim kitchen as he looked for a snack. A frozen burrito poked its tearable edge out of a corner darkened by frozen peas and some very old batteries. Cici hadn’t even seen the burrito, hadn’t even looked. That was ligion: if those around you won’t listen, you will reap their rewards. Rennie took the hard little nugget out of the plastic and put it in the microwave to cook.

Kayla was thirty now, or almost thirty. She had a child of her own, Maddie, and worked at the Royal Farms down on Washington Boulevard. Preferring, like so many others, to try and take on the world in her own way, Kayla went to community college, which Rennie didn’t mock, but he thought that if she was supposed to get a degree, she’d probably have ended up somewhere like Yale.

The microwave beeped, and he used a napkin to retrieve the snack, moving it from hand to hand unhurriedly. His old brown and orange floral-patterned couch sat beyond the breakfast bar in his wood paneled living room. A lot of people would have turned on the television while they were eating, but he preferred to contemplate the burrito, its place in the world, and what might come next.

In his heart of hearts, Rennie felt as though he’d somehow failed his children. He chewed on his burrito, thinking about the time he’d found forty dollars in the opposite direction of the army enlistment office. He’d been so sure about signing up, but it rained the morning he was going to. A bad sign. The next day, he’d found the money a block in the exact opposite direction he’d have had to travel to sign up. The twenties had been so crisp and clean, sitting there on the sidewalk. He couldn’t remember what he’d spent it on. He’d been young at the time. Probably some Miller for him and the crew. You got something from the universe, you couldn’t hold onto it. It wasn’t yours. You gave, the universe would keep giving to you. It was so obvious to him. How could people know something like, if the burrito is hot, it’ll burn your mouth, but then completely miss something like trying to make a decision about going somewhere, and you miss the bus because the crosswalk takes forever - that’s the universe trying to tell you!

Rennie got up. It was time for a walk down to J&T to see what was going on. The boys would cheer him up. He was, after all, a human being who loved his children; he loved their mothers. And it hurt him deeply to see them not opening their minds in the way that the world said to. Listening to his mood, he needed some cheering up. He stepped out into the late afternoon sun and hopped lightly down the four steps of his stoop, locking the door behind him. That was automatic. He sometimes wondered if that was in line with trusting the plan, but he figured that if he remembered, that was part of it. If not, it wasn’t. After all, he’d met Malcolm and Cici’s mom when he’d locked himself out once. Ligion.

A big man, Rennie walked slowly. Sauntered. His eyes probed everything that could be seen as he walked down the street. What was he being told? How should he listen? The day that Cici went to Kayla’s because she hadn’t seen the burrito in the freezer, he found it.

It was a book with an all black cover, just beyond one of the trash bins in the alley a block from his place. Someone had gone to throw it away and been so careless as to miss. Rennie was a lot of things. He was not careless.

The cover had the kind of give to it suggesting his fingernails would leave marks. Rennie opened it. Jaw dropped. Eyes widened. Blots of ink and words and signs and penciled in drawings and symbols. Every page was full. He struggled to stand.

Rennie walked, quickly for him, back to his house. He turned on a light. He sat down on the couch. He didn’t even think about locking the door.

His eyes caressed the pages like a lover in the heat of passion. He had to have all of it in his brain. He needed it all. Page after page after page, he drank the information.

It was dark when Rennie reemerged. There had been so much to pick from as far as possible signs. He settled on taking the book to a streetlight he’d seen flickering by Mondawmin Mall. The line had been strange, but he felt it was clear: Flick, FLick, FLICkerAN, MALLMAN MY mallman MAWLMAYN. And then there were several geometrically drawn dollar signs.

Fifteen minutes later, he was under the flickering streetlight, book in hand. What was he looking for? What did it want him to see? There was a pair of old shoes. He held one up to his foot. Not his size. A couple of young toughs were not far away, and Rennie doubted that whatever sign this was, it involved them. He busied himself, looking in different directions from under the streetlight. Eventually, he saw a gray plastic bag that was nearly see-through. There was something in it. Was it…

Rennie picked it up with trembling hands. A knot. A stack. Leafing through the bill, Rennie’s wide eyes met Franklin after Franklin. He couldn’t breathe. He felt his legs getting weak for the second time in one day. There was the soft thud of the book hitting the pavement where the money had been. He heard the men down the street, howling and laughing. Act calm. Pocket it. Go.

That was what he did.

The door closed behind, Rennie hooted for joy. He began counting the money. Maybe, the total was, itself, sign! Maybe, he could combine the number with something else in the black book. He began counting. He counted again. 200. 200 $100 bills. $20,000.

Did the book say anything about the number 20,000?

The book!

Rennie nearly knocked his door down charging back to the streetlight. He was almost crying. He always followed the signs. They’d given him this wonderful gift, and he - for all he’d believed and sacrificed and trusted in ligion - had left it on the sidewalk!

He slowed his charge as he approached the spot. He’d run all the way there. What if he’d missed something on the way? What if all of this was part of it? He was acting without noticing, that was how he’d dropped the book in the first place!

He started over, sauntering, looking. When he returned to the streetlight, it had been thirty minutes. The kids were still down the street making noise. The streetlight flickered. The book remained. He picked it up and slowly returned to his house.

He smelled something. Piss. After two kids, Rennie knew what piss smelled like. A sticky smell, too. Weed. He looked around. He turned on the light. His mouth dropped.

“YO $ RICH B***!!!!” was spray painted on his refrigerator. Panicked, Rennie looked to where he’d set down the money. Nothing. Even though he knew exactly where he’d set the money down, he still tore the house apart. He looked in the refrigerator. Behind the toilet. Maybe, he’d put it under his mattress. Nowhere.

But he hadn’t been home. Maybe, they’d have killed him if he had been. A sign. The book was part of the ligion. It could give; it could take away.

He called Kayla. It was late, but he had something to say to her.

“What Dad?”

“I…” He had proof. Finally, he could show her. This was the moment where they wouldn’t be able to say roll their eyes or sigh at him. This was it! This was his triumph! He exhaled. There was a Black’n’mild butt on his floor. He smelled the piss again.

“Dad, what? Cici’s here. She’s fine. Do you need something? It’s late.”

“I love you honey.”

“Okay, I love you, too Dad. Just… Do you need something?”

“No, I… I just wanted to say it.”

“Dad, are you drunk?”

Kayla’s voice became rapid, higher pitched. She was interrogating him. He sighed. He couldn’t explain. And he couldn’t explain why he couldn’t explain.

He hung up the phone and went to the couch and sat down in the darkness. He didn’t open the book.