Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - The Sirens of Titan

The church, which squatted among the headstones like a wet mother dodo, had been at various times Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Unitarian, and Universal Apocalyptic. It was now the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.

A seeming wild man stood in the churchyard, wondering at the creamery air, at the green, at the wet. He was almost naked, and his blue-black beard and his hair were tangled and long and shot with gray. The only garment he wore was a clinking breechclout made of wrenches and copper wire.

The garment covered his shame.

The rain ran down his coarse cheeks. He tipped back his head to drink it. He rested his hand on a headstone, more for the feel than the support of it. He was used to the feel of stones - was deathly used to the feel of rough, dry stones. But stones that were wet, stones that were mossy, stones that were squared and written on by men - he hadn't felt stones like that for a long, long time.

Pro patria said the stone he touched.

The man was Unk.

He was home from Mars and Mercury. His space ship had landed itself in a wood next to the churchyard. He was filled with the heedless, tender violence of a man who has had his lifetime cruelly wasted.

Unk was forty-three years old.

He had every reason to wither and die.

All that kept him going was a wish that was more mechanical than emotional. He wished to be reunited with Bee, his mate, with Chrono, his son, and with Stony Stevenson, his best and only friend.

The Reverend C. Horner Redwine stood in the pulpit of his church that rainy Tuesday afternoon. There was no one else in the church. Redwine had climbed up to the pulpit in order simply to be as happy as possible. He was not being as happy as possible under adverse circumstances. He was being as happy as possible under extraordinarily happy circumstances - for he was a much loved minister of a religion that not only promised but delivered miracles.

His church, the Barnstable First Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, had a subtitle: The Church of the Weary Space Wanderer. The subtitle was justified by this prophecy: That a lone straggler from the Army of Mars would arrive at Redwine's church some day.

The church was ready for the miracle. There was a hand-forged iron spike driven into the rugged oak post behind the pulpit. The post carried the mighty beam that was the roof tree. And on the nail was hung a coathanger encrusted with semiprecious stones. And on the coathanger hung a suit of clothes in a transparent plastic bag.

The prophecy was that the weary Space Wanderer would be naked, that the suit of clothes would fit him like a glove. The suit was of such a design as to fit no one but the right man well. It was one piece, lemon-yellow, rubberized, closed by a zipper, and ideally skin-tight.

The garment was not in the mode of the day. It was a special creation to add glamour to the miracle.

Stitched into the back and front of the garment were orange question marks a foot high. These signified that the Space Wanderer would not know who he was.

No one would know who he was until Winston Niles Rumfoord, the head of all churches of God the Utterly Indifferent, gave the world the Space Wanderer's flame.

The signal, should the Space Wanderer arrive, was for Redwine to ring the church bell madly.

When the bell was rung madly, the parishioners were to feel ecstasy, to drop whatever they were doing, to laugh, to weep, to come.

The West Barnstable Volunteer Fire Department was so dominated by members of Redwine's church that the fire engine itself was going to arrive as the only vehicle remotely glorious enough for the Space Wanderer.

The screams of the fire alarm on top of the firehouse were to be added to the bedlam joy of the bell. One scream from the alarm meant a grass or woods fire. Two screams meant a house fire. Three screams meant a rescue. Ten screams would mean that the Space Wanderer had arrived.

Water seeped in around an ill-fitting window sash. Water crept under a loose shingle in the roof, dropped through a crack and hung in glittering beads from a rafter over Redwine's head. The good rain wet the old Paul Revere bell in the steeple, trickled down the bell rope, soaked the wooden doll tied to the end of the bell rope, dripped from the feet of the doll, made a puddle on the steeple's flagstone floor.

The doll had a religious significance. It represented a repellent way of life that was no more. It was called a Malachi. No home or place of business of a member of Redwine's faith was without a Malachi hanging somewhere.

There was only one proper way to hang a Malachi. That was by the neck. There was only one proper knot to use, and that was a hangman's knot.

And the rain dripped from the feet of Redwine's Malachi at the end of the bell rope -

The cold goblin spring of the crocuses was past.

The frail and chilly fairy spring of the daffodils was past.

The springtime for mankind had arrived, and the blooms of the lilac bowers outside Redwine's church hung fatly, heavy as Concord grapes.

Redwine listened to the rain, and imagined that it spoke Chaucerian English. He spoke aloud the words he imagined the rain to be speaking, spoke harmoniously, at just the noise level of the rain.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote

The droughte of Marche hath perced to the rote

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendered is the flour -

A droplet fell twinkling from the rafter overhead, wet the left lens of Redwine's spectacles and his apple cheek.

Time had been kind to Redwine. Standing there in the pulpit, he looked like a ruddy, bespectacled country newsboy, though he was forty-nine. He raised his hand to brush away the wetness on his cheek, and rattled the blue canvas bag of lead shot that was strapped around his wrist.

There were similar bags of shot around his ankles and his other wrist, and two heavy slabs of iron hung on shoulder straps - one slab on his chest and one on his back.

These weights were his handicaps in the race of life.

He carried forty-eight pounds - carried them gladly. A stronger person would have carried more, a weaker person would have carried less. Every strong member of Redwine's faith accepted handicaps gladly, wore them proudly everywhere.

The weakest and meekest were bound to admit, at last, that the race of life was fair.

The liquid melodies of the rain made such lovely backgrounds for any sort of recitation in the empty church that Redwine recited some more. This time he recited something that Winston Niles Rumfoord, the Master of Newport, had written.

The thing that Redwine was about to recite with the rain chorus was a thing that the Master of Newport had written to define the position of himself with respect to his ministers, the position of his ministers with respect to their flocks, and the position of everybody with respect to God. Redwine read it to his flock on the first Sunday of every month.

"'I am not your father,'" said Redwine. "'Rather call me brother. But I am not your brother. Rather call me son. But I am not your son. Rather call me a dog. But I am not your dog. Rather call me a flea on your dog. But I am not a flea. Rather call me a germ on a flea on your dog. As a germ on a flea on your dog, I am eager to serve you in any way I can, just as you are willing to serve God Almighty, Creator of the Universe.'"

Redwine slapped his hands together, killing the imaginary germ-infested flea. On Sundays, the entire congregation slapped the flea in unison.

Another droplet fell shivering from the rafter, wet Redwine's cheek again. Redwine nodded his sweet thanks for the droplet, for the church, for peace, for the Master of Newport, for Earth, for a God Who didn't care, for everything.

He stepped down from the pulpit, making the lead balls in his handicap bags shift back and forth with a stately swish.