“Hey! How come those guys don’t have to go to catechism?” Abel asked.
“They’d miss the bus, stupid,” Florence said.
“Protestants don’t have to go either,” Ernie nodded.
“They go to hell!” Bones cried out.
“No they don’t,” Florence defended the Protestants, “Red’s a Protestant, do you think he’ll go to hell?”
“You’ll go to hell too, Florence!” Horse shouted. “You don’t believe in God!”
“So what,” Florence shrugged, “if you don’t believe in God then there is no hell to go to—”
“But why do you go to catechism?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “I wanna be with you guys. I just don’t want to feel left out,” he said softly.
“Come on! Let’s go tease the girls!” Bones shouted. He had caught scent of the girls who were just up ahead. The others rallied to his cry and they went off howling like a pack of wild dogs.
“But what if you’re left out of heaven in the end?” I asked Florence. We had both hung back.
“Then that would be hell,” he nodded. “I think if there is a hell it’s just a place where you’re left all alone, with nobody around you. Man, when you’re alone you don’t have to burn, just being by yourself for all of time would be the worst punishment the Old Man could give you—”
“The Old Man?” I asked, my question intermingled with a feeling of sadness for Florence.
“God,” he answered.
“I thought you didn’t believe—”
“I don’t.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he kicked at a rock. “My mother died when I was three, my old man drank himself to death, and,” he paused and looked towards the church which already loomed ahead of us. His inquiring, angelic face smiled. “And my sisters are whores, working at Rosie’s place—”
The wind swirled around us and made a strange noise, like the sound of doves crying at the river. I wondered if Andrew had known one of Florence’s sisters when he went to Rosie’s. That and the pity I had for him made me feel close to Florence.
“So I ask myself,” he continued, “how can God let this happen to a kid. I never asked to be born. But he gives me birth, a soul, and puts me here to punish me. Why? What did I ever do to Him to deserve this, huh?”
For a moment I couldn’t answer. The questions Florence had posed were the same questions I wanted answered. Why was the murder of Narciso allowed? Why was evil allowed?
“Maybe it’s like the priest said,” I finally stammered, “maybe God puts obstacles in front of us so that we will have to overcome them. And if we overcome all the hard and bad things, then we will be good Catholics, and earn the right to be with Him in heaven—”
Florence shook his head. “I thought about that,” he said, “but the way I figured it, if God is really as smart as the priest says, then he wouldn’t have needed any of that testing us to see if we’re good Catholics. Look, how do you test a three-year-old kid who doesn’t know anything. God is supposed to know everything, all right, then why didn’t he make this earth without bad or evil things in it? Why didn’t he make us so that we would always be kind to each other? He could of made it so that it was always summer, and there’s always apples in the trees, and the water at the Blue Lake is always clean and warm for swimming—instead He made it so that some of us get polio when we go swimming and we’re crippled for life! Is that right?”
“I don’t know,” I shook my head, and I didn’t. “Once everything was all right; in the Garden of Eden there was no sin and man was happy, but we sinned—”
“Bullshit we sinned,” Florence disagreed, “old Eve sinned! But why should we have to suffer because she broke the rules, huh?”
“But it wasn’t just breaking the rules,” I countered, I guess because I was still trying to hold on to God. I didn’t want to give Him up like Florence had. I did not think that I could live without God.
“What was it?” he asked.
“They wanted to be like Him! Don’t you remember the priest saying the apple contained the knowledge that would make them know more things, like God they would know about good and about evil. He punished them because they wanted knowledge—”
Florence smiled. “That still doesn’t seem right, does it? Why should knowledge hurt anyone? We go to school to learn, we even go to catechism to learn—”
“Yes,” I answered. There seemed to be so many pitfalls in the questions we asked. I wanted answers to the questions, but would the knowledge of the answers make me share in the original sin of Adam and Eve?