I am the GodVolume II: The Question
Marcus Webb did not sleep well on Saturday night.
This is not, in itself, unusual. Marcus Webb slept well most nights and occasionally did not, in the ordinary proportion of a person whose life contained the normal distribution of things worth lying awake about. Bills. Jobs that had gone sideways. The specific three AM variety of worry that attaches itself to whatever is available and is not actually about the thing it has attached itself to.
This was not that kind.
He lay in the dark of his bedroom and looked at the ceiling and thought about what he had been told that morning, which was: everything.
Not everything in the casual sense — not everything meaning a lot. Everything in the literal sense. The morning of March 10th, 1940, and the fence post, and gravity, and time, and Korea, and the Last Enemy resolved in three seconds in a nebula eleven light-years across, and the intergalactic medium, and the edge of the inside of everything, and the feeling of small.
And then: Wilson, Texas. The pipe. Two cups in a rack.
He lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling and did what he did when something was too large to absorb all at once — he took it apart. Not to diminish it. To handle it. The way you handle a system that is too complex to address as a whole by addressing it in its components, working back from the symptom to the source, one section at a time.
He took it apart.
The first section was: is it true.
He held this one for a long time.
Not because he doubted it — that was the thing he kept returning to, the thing that made the ceiling interesting to look at. He did not doubt it. He had spent a week in proximity to Chuck Norris and he had the facility of seventeen years of reading systems and the system he had been reading for a week was consistent with everything he had been told that morning. The way Chuck listened. The way he said I know and meant only that. The way the fitting had been fixed in eleven minutes with a quality that exceeded what the technique was capable of, or rather revealed what the technique was capable of when applied with complete seriousness.
The way he had known about the pressure drop in the east bathroom while sitting at the kitchen table talking about something else.
The way he had said not yet when Marcus asked if he had ever lost someone.
The way the eggs had not bothered him.
It was true.
Marcus lay in the dark.
It was true and he had known a man for one week who had negotiated with gravity and stood at the edge of the universe and come back to Wilson, Texas, and fixed his pipe.
He looked at the ceiling for a long time.
Then he thought: alright.
Not alright in the sense of fine, in the sense of everything being comfortable and resolved. Alright in the sense his father had used the word — the sense of I have assessed this and decided to proceed. The sense of choosing to keep going rather than stopping at the place where things became too large for the available frameworks.
His father had said: alright before the three weeks on the engine.
Alright before the difficult conversations.
Alright before the things that were going to take the time they took.
Marcus said it to the ceiling.
Alright.
He turned over.
He went to sleep.
Sunday morning he woke at seven and made coffee and stood at the counter and looked at the window.
Three streets over, Chuck Norris was running his fourteen miles.
Marcus did not know this specifically but knew it the way he was beginning to know things about Chuck — through the consistency of the pattern, through the specific quality of someone who does the same things every morning because the morning requires them.
He drank his coffee.
He thought about what to do with what he knew.
This was the second section: what do you do with it.
In Marcus's experience — which was the experience of a practical man in a practical trade — you did not do anything with information until you understood what the information was for. Information was not an end in itself. Information was the thing that let you find the source. The symptom pointed to the cause. The cause pointed to the fix. The fix was what the information was for.
So: what was this information for.
He turned it.
He thought about why Chuck had told him.
Not because Chuck owed him an explanation — Chuck did not owe him anything. He had shown up at the door and fixed the pipe and come back every day and the debt, if there was one, ran the other direction. Chuck had given Marcus a week of vocabulary for things Marcus had been experiencing without words.
He had told him because Marcus had asked.
He had told him because Marcus had asked directly and Chuck was the kind of person who answered direct questions directly.
But also — and Marcus stood at the counter and held this carefully because it felt important and fragile — because he had wanted Marcus to know.
Not for a reason that served the list. Not because the information would produce an outcome. Because he had been sitting in Marcus's kitchen for a week and had decided that the person sitting across the table deserved the truth about who was sitting across the table from them.
Because it had a name on it.
Marcus set down his cup.
He thought about that.
About what it meant that Chuck Norris — who had arrangements with every fundamental force in the universe, who had stood at the edge of everything and felt small for the first time — had come to his kitchen on a Saturday morning and told him the truth because Marcus deserved it.
Because the conversation had a name on it.
Because Marcus's name was on it.
He stood at the counter for a long time.
Then he heard the truck.
Chuck knocked at eight.
Marcus opened the door.
"Coffee's on," he said.
Chuck came in.
They sat at the table.
The cups were already there.
Marcus looked at him across the table — looked at him the way he had looked at him yesterday when he asked who are you and then the way he had looked at him through the whole of what followed, the facility running, reading the system.
He was still reading it.
But the system had more information in it now and the reading was different — not more complicated, but more complete. Like getting better light on something you have been trying to see in the dark.
"How did you sleep?" Marcus said.
"Well," Chuck said. "You?"
"Not great," Marcus said.
"No," Chuck said.
"You knew I wouldn't."
"I thought it was likely," Chuck said.
"Is that why you waited until Saturday to tell me," Marcus said. "So I had the weekend."
Chuck looked at his cup.
"Yes," he said.
Marcus nodded.
"That's considerate," he said.
"You deserved time with it," Chuck said.
"Have you told anyone else?" Marcus said. "What you are."
Chuck was quiet.
"People know pieces," he said. "Sergeant Cole knew something. Sam Ellroy knew something. Roy Briggs—"
"Roy Briggs," Marcus said. "The shoulder."
"Yes."
"But not the whole thing."
"No," Chuck said.
"Why me," Marcus said.
Chuck held his cup.
He had expected this question and had thought about it on his run and had arrived at an answer that was honest and complete and which he was going to give because Marcus deserved that too.
"Because you asked," he said. "Directly. And because I'd been in your kitchen for a week and you had been — " he paused — "present. In the way that makes honesty the only appropriate response."
"What does that mean," Marcus said.
"It means," Chuck said, "that you treated the conversations as real. As something. You didn't file them away or explain them to yourself or decide that I was strange and therefore dismissible. You paid attention and you asked questions and you said what you thought."
"I'm a practical person," Marcus said.
"Yes," Chuck said. "That's exactly it."
Marcus looked at him.
"And," Chuck said, "you made me breakfast yesterday. After everything I told you."
"The eggs weren't perfect," Marcus said.
"No," Chuck said. "They were the right thing."
Marcus was quiet.
"The right thing isn't always perfect," he said.
"No," Chuck said. "I'm beginning to understand that."
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment — the specific silence of two people who have said something real and are letting it settle before the next thing.
Then Marcus said: "Can I ask you something that might be stupid."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"The Question. The thing from outside everything."
"Yes."
"It asks what things are for."
"Yes."
"And you've been trying to answer it by figuring out what things are for."
"Yes."
"But—" Marcus stopped.
"Say it," Chuck said.
"But you've been doing that by watching me," Marcus said. "A plumber in Wilson, Texas. And what I do is fix pipes. And what you do is—" Another stop. "You resolve things that existed before the first star. You negotiate with fundamental forces."
"Yes," Chuck said.
"So isn't what you do—" Marcus made the gesture again, the one that encompassed everything. "Isn't what you do the answer? Isn't that what it's for? All of it?"
Chuck looked at him.
"I thought so," he said. "For fifty-three years, I thought so."
"And now?"
"And now," Chuck said, "I've been watching you fix a pipe for Bill who needed his water working and sitting on your step in the evening and eating your eggs and I think—"
He stopped.
Marcus waited.
"I think the answer might be the same thing for both of us," Chuck said. "Just at different scales."
"Which is?"
"Someone who needed it," Chuck said. "Someone specific. Someone whose name is on the job."
Marcus sat with this.
"That can't be all of it," he said.
"No," Chuck said. "But I think it's the part I was missing."
"Because you were looking at the work."
"Because I was looking at the work," Chuck confirmed.
Marcus drank his coffee.
"My father used to say," he said slowly, "that a good job and a right job aren't always the same thing. A good job is done well. A right job is done for the right reason."
Chuck was very still.
"He said you can usually tell the difference afterward," Marcus continued. "A good job feels like completion. A right job feels like—" He paused, searching for it. "Like you were supposed to be there. Like the thing couldn't have happened without you specifically."
Chuck was looking at him.
Marcus became aware of the looking.
"What?" he said.
"Nothing," Chuck said. "Keep going."
"That's it," Marcus said. "That's all he said."
"A right job feels like you were supposed to be there," Chuck said. "Like the thing couldn't have happened without you specifically."
"Yeah," Marcus said.
Chuck looked at his cup.
He thought about fifty-three years of work.
He thought about which of it had felt like completion and which of it had felt like the right job. He thought about the Last Enemy — three seconds, resolved, complete. Completion. He thought about Roy Briggs — the shoulder, the character, the two championships, the gym in Riverside, the young man who came in looking to test the instructor and stayed two years. That one had felt different.
He thought about Whitfield looking at the sky every Tuesday for the rest of his life.
He thought about Gerald Marsh going home from the hospital.
He thought about the handbook in the closet.
He thought about Bill's water working and eight years in the way a name was said.
He thought about a leaking pipe that had not been fixed for two weeks and a man who had not fixed it and the specific thing that produced when he arrived at the door on a Tuesday morning in March.
He thought about sitting on a fence for four hours.
He thought about imperfect eggs.
He thought about let me know when you figure it out and you'll be the first.
"Marcus," he said.
"Yeah," Marcus said.
"The pipe."
"What about it?"
"When I fixed the pipe," Chuck said. "Did it feel like the right job. To you."
Marcus looked at him.
He thought about it.
Not the pipe itself — the pipe was a fitting and a wrench and eleven minutes. But the before and after. The wet mat, the two weeks of not quite getting to it, the specific resignation of looking at a problem he understood completely and had not addressed. And then: the knock at the door, the man on the step, the eleven minutes, the dry mat.
The two cups in the rack.
"Yes," Marcus said. "Yeah. It did."
"To me too," Chuck said.
They looked at each other across the table.
Marcus said: "You think you were supposed to be here."
"I think I came back to the exact place," Chuck said. "I think the route was always going to end here. I think the pipe—" He stopped. "I think the pipe was the first right job in a long time."
"Because of the name on it," Marcus said.
"Because of the name on it," Chuck said.
Marcus looked at the two cups.
He looked at Chuck.
"Okay," he said. "But I need you to understand something."
"Tell me," Chuck said.
"I'm a plumber," Marcus said. "I'm a forty-one-year-old plumber in Wilson, Texas and I drive my dead father's truck and I file my invoices on Thursday evenings and sometimes I put off fixing my own pipe for two weeks because I'm tired. I am not—" He gestured. "I am not the answer to a question from outside the universe."
"I know," Chuck said.
"So whatever you're looking for here—"
"I'm not looking for an answer," Chuck said. "I'm looking at a direction. There's a difference."
Marcus was quiet.
"You said that before," he said. "When you went upstream. You said you found a direction, not an answer."
"Yes."
"And the direction is—"
"Here," Chuck said. "This. The specific weight of a name on a job and someone who shows up because they said they would and eggs that aren't perfect but are the right thing."
Marcus sat with this.
"That's a lot to put on a plumber," he said.
"It's not on you," Chuck said. "It's on me. You're just — you're showing me what it looks like."
"By being a plumber."
"By being yourself," Chuck said. "The plumber is how you show it."
Marcus drank his coffee.
He was quiet for a long time.
Outside, Wilson was doing what Wilson did on a Sunday morning in March — the specific unhurried quality of a town that has decided that Sunday is for taking the time that the rest of the week does not allow.
"Chuck," he said.
"Yes."
"The Question. The thing from outside everything."
"Yes."
"It asked you. Specifically."
"Yes."
"Not anyone else."
"Not anyone else."
Marcus thought about this.
"Why you?" he said.
Chuck was quiet.
The narrator, which had been listening and recording, leaned in.
This was the question.
Not what is it for. Not the Question from outside everything. This question, from Marcus Webb, forty-one years old, plumber, Wilson, Texas, Sunday morning, second cup of coffee:
Why you.
Chuck held his cup.
He looked at the morning light on the table.
He looked at the two cups.
He looked at Marcus.
"I've been thinking about that," he said. "Since Friday."
"And?"
"I think," Chuck said slowly, "because I'm the one who could hear it."
"What do you mean?"
"The Question came from outside everything," Chuck said. "Everything inside has — noise. The noise of being inside. Laws, arrangements, operations. All of it running all the time. The Question is very quiet. Most things inside wouldn't hear it over the noise."
"But you could," Marcus said.
"Because I've been negotiating with the noise," Chuck said. "For fifty-three years. I know what the noise sounds like. I know what isn't the noise."
Marcus thought about this.
"So you're the only one who could hear it," he said.
"I'm the one who heard it," Chuck said. "I don't know about only."
"But it addressed itself to you."
"Yes."
"Which means it thinks you can answer it."
Chuck was quiet.
"Or," he said, "it thinks I'm the one who needs to."
Marcus sat with both versions.
"Is there a difference?" he said.
"I think so," Chuck said. "Can and need are different."
"How?"
"Can is about ability," Chuck said. "Need is about—" He paused. "Need is about what happens if you don't."
The kitchen was very quiet.
The narrator wrote nothing for a moment.
Then Marcus said, in the plain careful way of someone saying something they have worked out and are now saying for the first time:
"What happens if you don't answer it?"
Chuck looked at the window.
"I don't know," he said. "But I think — I think the Question arrived because something changed. Because I stood in the intergalactic medium with the complete list of everything I'd done and found that the list wasn't enough. And the Question arrived at exactly that moment."
"Not before."
"Not before."
"When the list ran out," Marcus said.
"When the list ran out," Chuck confirmed.
Marcus held his cup.
"So the Question is what comes after the list," he said.
"Yes," Chuck said.
"And the answer to it—"
"Is what I do next," Chuck said. "I think. I don't have it completely. But I think the answer isn't a thing you say. It's a thing you do."
Marcus looked at him.
"A right job," he said.
"A right job," Chuck said. "The right one. Not for the list. For—" He stopped.
"Say it," Marcus said.
"For a reason that doesn't go on a list," Chuck said.
Marcus nodded slowly.
He looked at the two cups on the table.
He thought about a week of not putting them away.
He thought about his father saying alright before the difficult things.
He thought about what it meant that a man who had resolved the Last Enemy in three seconds and stood at the edge of the universe and come back to Wilson, Texas was sitting in his kitchen trying to understand what imperfect eggs were for.
He thought about whether he was up to whatever this was.
He thought about his father's truck in the driveway.
He thought about three weeks on an engine.
He thought about alright.
"What do you need from me," he said. "Specifically."
Chuck looked at him.
"Just this," he said. "Just what you've been doing."
"Talking about pipes and my father."
"Being here," Chuck said. "Being yourself. Letting me watch what that looks like."
"That's all?"
"That's not a small thing," Chuck said. "What you are is not a small thing."
Marcus looked at him.
"You're going to have to stop saying things like that," he said. "I'm a plumber."
"The two aren't mutually exclusive," Chuck said.
Marcus almost smiled.
Not quite.
Close.
"You want more coffee?" he said.
"Sure," Chuck said.
Marcus got up.
He got the pot.
He poured.
He sat back down.
Outside, Wilson, Texas was taking its Sunday at the pace Sunday required.
The Question was present, patient, three words long.
The answer was forming.
In a kitchen.
With two cups on a table and a plumber who drove his father's truck and a man who had stood at the edge of everything and come back to the exact place.
The narrator wrote it all down.
The narrator found that it was enough.