It’s Sunday morning and my wife and I are sitting on a beach looking at Lake Michigan, but it’s not relaxing. We’re listening to a sermon instead of the waves. Our church holds its services here in the summer, and our pastor, Dave Pickett, is going on about “God’s needs.” I’m not sure what they are. I got distracted by the man sitting in the chair in front of me who is getting a sunburn on the top of his head.
The man’s name is Henry, I think. I’ve seen him around. He’s north of seventy, I’d guess, and the top of his head is already dotted with moles that make me nervous to think too much about. It feels like looking at myself in twenty years. Maybe less at the rate I’m slowing down.
Dave leads a prayer, and one of the legs of my chair sinks into the sand when I shift my weight. Farther down the beach there’s a young couple throwing a ball into the lake for their dog. They’re not part of the service. Probably tourists. I was in the parking lot before the service started, and I heard the two of them talking about a boat in the harbor. The “U.S.S. Whatever the Fuck”, she’d called it. He’d laughed and then grabbed her ass, and then she’d laughed too. When the congregation starts singing, they look over at us, and I’m embarrassed by how we must seem to them.
After the song, Dave points up at the sky and says, “God needs us to need him.” I’m not sure what that means, but it reminds me of a story I read once about how God must be vain. My wife sits up straighter when Dave looks at her and says, “Amen.”
After that, I look out at the lake, over the concrete walkway that leads to the old lighthouse. You can’t tell from this distance, but the lighthouse is covered in bird shit. You only have to get about halfway down the walkway to see the white streaks against the faded red paint. A lot of tourists turn around before they make it all the way there.
Dave is wrapping up his sermon now. He’s talking about humility, or something. We’re going to sing another song, and I want the young couple to move on before we start. Instead, they sit next to each other in the sand and watch their dog swimming. My wife is watching Dave.
When we stand, I notice the top of Henry’s head is getting pinker.
Ben Lockwood is an ecologist at Penn State University. He’s also a socialist, unionist, and prison abolitionist. Ben’s fiction appears (or is forthcoming) in Little Blue Marble, Tree and Stone Magazine, Creepy Podcast, and others. You can find Ben wasting time on various social medias.
Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson
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