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 ^{(it's beta!)}

We ran. We were the age where summer never ended and we were better for it. Running, running, running, forward and backward, and in endlessly concentric circles. Running for balls, for sand, chasing sunshine and errant toys. Running and never losing our legs to time or age. Running filled the days and rhubarb filled us. We were young and had all we needed. What we wanted was the giant.

The second we saw the giant, we loved him. We needed something to face with toy sword in hand, somewhere to prowl with giddy excitement, someone to chase us. The giant, mouth bubbling and red streamers in his hair, face up in the sun, he became the new hub around which the day revolved. Which one of us would get close enough to hear if he was talking through the bubbles? Who would be first to lay next to him on the blacktop? What would happen if we touch the red in his hair? Just as we decided we were too fast and too strong and too wily to be caught, on the driveway the giant would groan and we would run and hide. Our circles around him grew ever tighter. So many honorifics were gifted that day on those hardy enough to brave the giant.

The sun began to cower from the giant before us. Our shadows grew long, longer than the giant himself, and now the circling stopped. The giant had proved himself a worthy plaything but we had grown too bold. We stood around him, ready to play some last great game and then be rid of him for tomorrow’s odyssey. Perhaps we would wake the giant up for one final chase, or some such honorable combat. Yes, we must wake the giant for our day to be complete. We would nudge the giant awake and show him our strength and our youth.

And then she came from inside the house, shouting. What happened, she yelled, her arms flailing and her cheeks puffing as she ran. The wife of the giant descended upon us as we gathered around her husband, lying motionless on the driveway next to their open car. What were we doing, didn’t we see the blood, oh, the blood, how long had he lay there, the she-giant fluttered about our greatest adversary yet as she cried. What had happened, what had happened. What was wrong with us, she asked, and now our legs were weak and we could not run.

The old man is waking, and I imagine that the sun must be rising somewhere. Somewhere in the land, the sun is bright enough to shine through me, my cloths and my bones, and that it's a morning for waking up crisp and alert for the people that live there. Wherever that might be. Here in the trailer there is only an exposed lightbulb buzzing light, and nowhere to look outside. The walls reverberate with every bump the truck hits; the metal of the trailer is cold from the outside but our air is hot from too much breathing. I wonder, if I had managed to fall asleep, whether I could bear to stretch at all inside this box.

As the old man moves he curses quiety in the way that men of the southern villiage do, and I wonder if our paths have crossed before. Father had not taken us south for a market day in many years and perhaps I had met this man and merely set the memory idly by, as young boys are wont to do. In the least he did not seem to recognize me, near blind as is the wont of old men. His leg was bent into an odd angle and he could not come close enough to see me clearly. He struggled to sit up.

"I don't suppose you've seen my snuffbox," he growled, not quite a question. I imagine the men who took us in the night, slavers or perhaps men from a government far away, would have paid a snuffbox no attention and had merely abducted a forgetful old man who often lost such things. I said nothing and stared. He growled again, a laugh captured in his throat.

"I don't imagine it matters, eh? God knows where my snuffbox is, and that's good enough, don't you think."

He looks at me expectantly, as though this were also a question to be answered. In the night the men came for me my jaw had been broken, so I nod my assent slowly.

"Perhaps I'll pray for it. God so likes to be asked to find things, doesn't he."

Again, I'm only staring. He shifts, as he can, one leg being lame, and pats his pockets for an imaginary sunffbox one more time, his eyes, slightly foggy, fixed on me.

"That's what our priests say, isn't it. That you must to receive, and that we should sing His praises. They say that, don't they."

I stare.

"They say it an awful lot, don't they. They cry and howl and elate, to be doing His good work, haven't you noticed. Have you noticed?"

I blink.

"I've noticed. I've noticed how our priests tell everyone how much God so loves his children that He has a paradise for those of true faith. I notice that an awful lot."

I nod, again. I'm still wondering if these are questions he's asking me or if maybe if the language of the southern villiages is escaping me. By now he's settled, and he moves his gaze to somewhere just above me.

"I'm telling you this because a lot of men wonder why God lets bad things happen to them. By now you're wondering how a God who loves you, that you sing the praises of as a good man should, would let you be taken away like this."

The trailer jolts through some manner of pothole, as if I had forgotten myself and had been dreaming of sunlight again. His askew gaze tells me that my response is important to neither of us.

"No holy man has ever wondered why his all knowing God wants to be told how powerful he is. No God-fearing man has ever questioned how an omnipotent God can give us free will if He has already set the future. That is no question, they say."

He pauses. I assume this is for my benefit.

"But that is my question, I say. What could a God who knows all, who can do all, really want. What does someone who knows everything not know?"

He focuses on my face again.

"He cannot know the need to learn more. God has no superior, and so has never felt inferior. A man who has everything doesn't want for nothing. He wants for something else. God knows everything, but God has never had a mother or a father. God has no brothers or sisters. God is but a lonely father. God cannot know what it is to have an equal, to answer to another. God cannot know how to not know."

I would be speechless if only I could speak. The old man's growl drops a pitch and I lean in the slightest bit closer.

"Why would a God who knows all things punish man infinitely for things he has done in a finite lifetime? What purpose would that serve? None, and this is how I know there is no heaven surely as there is no hell. The faith that man follows he has created himself for his own ends. God made man in his own image so that one day God would some day find something that He never knew could be. Perhaps, one day, at the fork of a road which God knows man will take the left path, man will instead turn right. And God, at last, will be blessed with discovery, with something His omnipotence has never before encompassed."

My dear old man lets his eyes close, and when he speaks next it is barely more than a sigh.

"It's not that God doesn't love us. It's not about love. Without us, God is incomplete."

The trailer lurches to a stop, and I can hear men moving outside. The old man looks to my eyes again, and I wonder if God knows where they are taking me.