Since We Fell

by Dennis Lehane

I want the capital-G God the televangelists claim moves tornadoes out of their paths. The one who cures cancer and arthritis in the faithful, the God professional athletes thank for taking an interest in the outcome of the Super Bowl or the World Cup or a home run hit in the eighty-seventh game of the hundred sixty-two played by the Red Sox this year. She wanted the active God who inserted Himself in human affairs to reach down from Heaven and cleanse the Haitian water supply and cure the Haitian sick and uncrumble the crumbled schools and hospitals and homes.

“The only people who ask questions like ‘Did he want to be something besides a bartender?’ are people who can become whatever they want. The rest of us are just Americans.”

We age as the rest of the world watches, she thought, but somehow we’re the last to know.

Times like these, Rachel wondered why she continued to hang out with Melissa. She embraced the shallow the way others searched for the profound and she could reduce any attempt at complexity to a target of casual scorn.