Away in a Trailer

God drove down the two-lane highway past a small, outside mall where over half the stores appeared empty. We next came upon a restaurant and a tractor mart. After a few minutes the town began to disappear behind us. It had left us faster than it arrived. The sun set long ago and we were driving into darkness. None of us knew exactly where we were going. Mom and I placed our faith in God. He was, after all, in the driver’s seat.

As we left the streetlights of the town the world closed into a quiet tunnel. Outside of the dimly lit cab I could see the road and about ten feet on each side that was illuminated by the truck’s lights. Nobody was talking and the radio was off. The lights showed us tall, brown grass waving in the wind, patches of snow and little more.

I looked at God. He looked nervous. He taught me that it was okay not to know what lay around the next bend as long as you believed in yourself and kept going.

As the truck moved along with all of us waiting for something, a break appeared in the long grass before us. We came upon a road that jutted off the main highway like a small branch might from a tree. The road was not paved like the highway we were already on, and seemed to lead off into a world of nothingness.

God took it.

“Where are you going?” Mom asked. It seemed as if we were moving farther and farther from civilization. She may not have wanted to have her baby at a rest stop but I bet she’d prefer that to a dirt road.

I looked at her eyes expecting to see fear but only saw hope. She had placed her faith in a man I could not at the time understand. Mom rubbed at her belly with her right hand. Mom was not moaning as much as before and her voice had become calm. It was almost as if she had accepted her fate. She was willing the baby to stay put a few minutes longer.

After a long silence God said, “That sign read ‘Christmas Lane’ and that’s supposed to be the road where the midwife lives.”

“Midwife,” Mom repeated with muted surprise. Dad didn’t respond.

We traveled down the dirt road and I looked into the rearview mirror to watch the dust fan out into a red mist behind us. The road was straight with an occasional bump. It seemed as though we were driving straight out into darkness. And then ahead of us on the left, way off in the distance, I could see a faint light.

The light began as a tiny, white glow like the moon breaking through a night covering of thick clouds. As our truck sped closer the light began to grow and soon it broke up into reds, yellows, oranges, blues and greens. Colorful Christmas bulbs hanging everywhere marked our arrival.

The house we approached was made from metal and it was much longer than it was wide. Hard, dry dirt surrounded the home along with patches of tall, yellow grass. The dirt had been built up into rolling mounds and dug down into craters to look more like snowdrifts.

Multi-colored lights sprung up out from everywhere. There were Christmas lights strung underneath the house’s roof and lights covering all three of the outside trees like raindrops after a heavy storm. There were lights along the driveway making it look like some kind of miniature runway. Lights adorned the rails around the house and there were even lights on the rocks. There were lit up plastic elves, angels, wooden reindeers that moved stiffly and cardboard children playing on sleds and building a snowman. Everything was a glow. As we neared the home it was the flashing road sign that really stood out.

The sign pronounced “JESUS IS COMING” in large, three-foot tall, bold, black letters against a solid yellow background.

Well, he was coming sooner than these people thought.

God pulled the truck right up to the front porch and we all jumped out. Mom, despite her condition, was the first to the door and she lifted her hand to knock but then reached back down to hold her stomach. Dad rapped on the door and immediately it opened. Before us, stood a woman who appeared to be older than Mom, but younger than Grandmother. She smiled to reveal few teeth that went out at odd angles. Her hair was long, stringy and tied back with a thick, green, rubber band. The rubber band reminded me of one that might come on the Sunday paper. The woman wore a red dress that had white fringe around the neck and sleeves.

“Merry Christmas, can I help you?” she asked in a friendly manner. Before God could reply she took a good look at mom and opened the screen door wide ushering us all into her living room.

The house was small. A kitchen in the back hooked onto the one main room, which obviously served as the living, dining and delivery room. The main room had scarred paneling hanging on the walls. There were crucifixes, statues of my Great, Great Grandmother, more elves and a nativity scene with a green, glow-in-the-dark Jesus sitting on a bed of straw. There were deer and raccoon heads jutting out of the wall as if the wild outside had been brought inside. Christmas lights hung around their ears and antlers. The lady had an old Zenith television and a record player with Barbara Streisand Christmas songs playing.

“You can sit over there,” the woman directed me to a rocking chair in the corner of the room and I went over and made it my home. I didn’t say a word. There was important adult stuff happening.

God couldn’t be still. He walked around the room picking up things and setting them down in different places. Because the home was mainly decorated with stuffed animals, the real kind not the ones you buy at F.A.O. Swartz, he was picking up Chipmunks, Squirrels and Otters and placing them back down in completely unnatural places. An otter wound up sitting up on an artificial tree branch holding an acorn and a squirrel ended up sawing a fake log in half.

The lady told Mom to be calm and to stop breathing so quickly before she gave everybody in the room a heart attack.

“It’s Lamaze,” Mom said.

“It’s bullshit,” the woman said back. The lady then took some pillows off the sofa and wheeled away a couple pieces. “It’s a sectional,” she explained while preparing the room for the birth of my brother. She placed Mom on the end of the sofa that seemed to stop a little too soon so her bottom hanged off like it was on a cliff. She told Mom to push when she felt the need and Mom began pushing immediately. There was a gush of water and then it wasn’t long before Jesus had popped out and everyone was smiling and singing.

Jesus was brought into the world amidst screams and claps and a little drumming from the midwife’s son who sat in a highchair next to me in the corner. The lady handed my little brother to mom saying, “Here’s your little king.” Then some blood and an ugly plastic bag drained out of mom and I decided there and then that I would never have a baby.

God acted much more comfortable once Jesus was born. He put down the chipmunk that he had been strangling all through the labor. He sang a short little song into Jesus's ear and danced around the room. He ran over to me, still confined to the corner, kissed me on my forehead and called me his little princess Jellybean.

We sat in the living room and the lady told me that my brother would love me very much. She was right. The world was good with Mom, Dad, Jesus and me in it. Mom held Jesus, kissed him and told him that she loved him very much. I could not think of a better way to be welcomed into the world.

God held Mom’s hand and the two glowed as if a halo of light radiated from them. I had never before seen them look closer. Dad looked into mom’s eyes and I saw how much they loved each other. I couldn’t help but think that God was right when he told me that heaven could be found on earth. If only in moments.

A loud crash broke our revelry. There door burst open and three men stumbled in through the door. They were dusty and smelling of something pungent. Their faces were hard and coveed with thick, course hair. One of them still held a beer in his grip. “Well, who have we here?” the apparent leader called out. He wore jean overalls and heavy boots that tracked dirt into the home.

The midwife casually pointed around the room. “That there is Mary. I think they call that one little Mary. This would be God and his son, Jesus. I just delivered him.”

The three men stopped in their tracks. The leader looked at the bloody mess on the floor and the baby in Mom’s arms. “And on Christmas day,” the man at the door smiled to reveal a mouth missing all of its teeth. “I guess that makes us the three wise guys,” he laughed and the two other men joined in with him. Their laughs sound like a symphony of geese.

“I guess that would,” God shrugged his shoulders not feeling too confident in their presence.

The first man walked over to Mom and bent over my little brother. He smiled at the newborn’s pink, naked body. He carried the scent of sweat and beer. “This is for you, little fella,” he said. The man reached up to his right ear and removed a small gold stud. Next, he pinned the earring to the blanket that the midwife had wrapped around my now sleeping, baby brother. “I am sure you will do wonderful things in your life,” the man said, “more than me." The man looked at the smile on my mother's face. "I can already see that you will give more to the world than you take.” He walked away from my brother and into the kitchen where he opened the icebox and grabbed a beer.

The second man walked up and sprinkled some dried leaves that he had pulled from his pocket over Jesus’ head. “My name is Frank and this is a little bouquet for you son,” he said. His voice was dry and rough like the leaves he crumpled. “I have nothing to give you other than a simple blessing from nature to you. I can tell that the world is already a better place because you are in it.” He bowed politely to my mother and walked away. I looked over at Mom and Dad and they both stared on in amazement. The man grabbed a beer as soon as he entered the kitchen and waited for his brother.

The third man walked up and held up his bare hands revealing nothing. “I also have little to give you from this world,” he started then stopped and glanced around the room, “but even the most humble of us have gifts to offer. Words are all I possess.” Next, he bent close to Jesus and whispered “Merv.” I looked at God and he smiled while nodding his head in agreement, never releasing his eyes from the face of Jesus. And that is how Jesus got his middle name. He then walked up to wise guy number two who handed him a Stag beer. The three men popped their cans together and toasted the birth of my brother.

I rocked in my chair, excited by all that had occurred. My baby brother, Jesus, was born into this world. A midwife delivered him in a metal shack in the middle of nowhere. Mom smiled at me, encouraging me to get up from the chair. I walked over to them, not really knowing how to act. I had never had a baby brother before. I looked down at his little, pink body, felt his skin, smoother than velvet, and knew right away that I loved him.

Having Jesus in my life would be good.

No Room in the End

God slowed the truck to a crawl as we drove down the exit ramp into the small Oklahoma town. We didn’t want to miss anything and unfortunately there wasn’t much to see. There was one main road that made up New Bethel and all the shops and gas stations littered it like garbage on the highway. We passed a Quick Mart and drove up to a Motel 6 but the sign out front flashed “NO VACANCY” in bold letters. God then drove up to Mel’s Motor Lodge but it also flashed a NO VACANCY sign.

“We are in the middle of nowhere on Christmas day and all these motels are filled,” God said. “This is even beyond my powers. How cold this be?” As if to answer his question next to Mel’s we saw a sign that read New Bethel Welcomes the Oklahoma Census Bureau Committee.

God let out a sigh. “It is as it has been written,” he said with disgust. “Next time I’ll pay more attention to the fine print in the O.T.”

The third place we came upon looked completely abandoned. It was called Heaven’s Motor Lodge. The sign out front read “THERE IS ALWAYS A VACANCY IN HEAVEN.”

Mom’s voice broke the silence that had befallen the truck since we had entered New Bethel. We had all hoped that magically a hospital with a brand new berthing center would have appeared and were disappointed by the abundance of gas stations, motels and fast food restaurants that we discovered instead. This disappointment had made us mute.

“Can I ask a stupid question?” mother said.

“Sure,” Dad answered cautiously. He sensed a trap.

“What are you doing driving up to these motels for?” mom asked. “I mean, I was hoping more for a hospital rather than a motel.”

“Well, I figured we might get us a room, check in, you know so we won’t have to do it afterwards, and then we could call 911,” God said.

“So you don’t have to check in afterwards? Maybe you’ll have time to take a long hot shower too, possibly get a sandwich,” Mom said.

“That would be nice. It has been a rather long day and I have been a little hungry ever since we passed that McDonald’s,” God agreed.

Mom’s voice exploded like a firecracker on the Fourth of July, “We don’t have time to check into a hotel.” Mom cried, her voice teetering between surprise and anger. “These towns don’t have an ambul…” Her words were cut short as another contraction came. “Just get me somewhere. Anywhere, but this truck will work.”

God drove into the dark motel named Heaven where weeds worked their way up through cracks in the driveway. A few cars lay scattered throughout the parking lot hinting that life might exist within the dilapidated building. God brought the truck to a stop near the office and jumped out. He ran to the door and tried to open it but the door held firm. It was locked. God rang the bell. He waited and rang it again and then just as he was about to press it a third time, a sleepy man stumbled out of the back. The man had a week’s worth of stubble on his face.

“Can I help you, Sir?” the man said. He rubbed at the back of his neck as he talked.

“My wife is about to have a baby. Can we please have a room?” God asked.

“What?” the man’s eyes tuned into saucers. The sleep seemed to rush out of his eyes in a moment.

“My wife is about to have a baby. We need a doctor,” God said.

“Well, we don’t have any doctors here. See, this is a motel,” the man answered. “I did check in a plumber earlier. I could see if he might be able to help you.”

God thought about the offer. He looked over at us and both Mom and I shook our heads “no”. He looked back at the manager.

“I guess that won’t do. We really need a doctor,” God said.

“Well, let’s see,” the man rubbed his chin. He opened the door and revealed himself to be a scrawny man with an excessive amount of hair on his arms. “Doctor’s tend to hang out at places called hospitals. Also bars, never met a doctor who didn’t like to drink. Hey, that reminds me of a joke. Do you know why doctors drink so much?”

“No…I mean we really are in a rush, could you possibly just…”

“So they have something to do while they’ll smoking,” the man finished. He then laughed and laughed until he started coughing. The coughing lasted longer than the joke and laughter. When the motel manager finally did speak he said, “Problem is, this is a dry county so we can never get a doctor to move in. Of course it also keeps the Catholics out.”

“What about the room?” God interrupted.

“I could give you a room with a view of the field out back.”

“Oh, that sounds perfect,” God said as a wail came from the cab of the truck. “Though I guess we’ll have to settle that later. Do you know of anyone in this town who might be able to deliver a baby?”

“Well, yes, I guess so. We got ourselves a lady down the road who delivers babies all the time. Well at least once or twice a year when someone needs a baby delivered here in town. See most people go to the city. To the hospital,” the man clarified, “where there are doctors who specialize in delivering babies.”

God was beginning to sweat. He hated when people pointed out the obvious. “Yes, I know that. But I guess for now, with no hospital near, this lady will have to do.”

“Now her place isn’t as nice as this,” the man’s arms flew out like the wings of a giant bird as he gestured towards the motel.

God looked around at the growing weeds, chipped paint and broken windows. He took in the overgrown bushes and broken fence posts. Finally he looked over at us sitting in the truck. “I don’t care if she delivers kids in a manger, it’ll do.”

“Now she doesn’t deliver kids; she delivers babies,” the man laughed hard and then went back into a coughing fit. It took two minutes for him to stop coughing.

“Please, just tell me where I can find her.”

The old man gave God directions to the midwife’s home. God thanked the man. God next placed his hands on the man’s chest and told him that the cancer in his lungs had been cured. The man looked at God oddly as God ran back to the truck. Dad jumped into the cab of the truck and headed us all down the road. Mom was breathing faster and groaning more often.

I felt the storm grow closer.

As we entered the darkness of Oklahoma I heard my father’s voice. His voice was warm and confident as he spoke to Mom. “Don’t worry, honey.” God said, “It’s just a little ways down the road. Everything will be fine.”

Spilk

One day, shortly before Jesus was born, God decided that we had to move. He was like that, nomadic. He said that life was simply too short to spend it in Ohio. So we packed up everything that we owned and threw it into the back of a big yellow truck and took off for Texas.

We were supposed to move in October. But it took longer to sell our house then either Mom or God expected and the closing became delayed because the person buying the house was a lawyer. God said that there were no lawyers in Heaven. He personally made sure they all got sent down to Hell just to bug the Devil.

God titled one of his favorite stories “Class-Action in Hell”. In the story all the lawyers in Hell got together and filed a class action lawsuit against the Devil, who from this point forward in this paragraph will be referred to as Defendant even though it takes more letters. The lawyers claimed misrepresentation because Hell was painfully cold rather than painfully hot. The lawyers filed some incredibly long list of damages they felt that they were owed by said Defendant. The Defendant made them file motion after motion as well as wade through stacks of unrelated case files on the absence of law and order in Hell. The judge finally dismissed the suit based on a technicality: the fact that hot and cold were both vague and relative terms and so could not be legally defined. In his brief opinion the Judge, who was also the Defendant, said he didn’t really care what the lawyers thought. The Defendant then responded by dropping the temperature to absolute zero and walking around in his shorts exclaiming, “Boy, is it hot in here. Does anybody have a fan?”

God said that one evening as he settled down to watch an episode of “Dallas” he received a phone call from the Devil complaining about all the lawyers that kept coming his way. God got a good laugh about it and said, “Lucifer, they don’t call it Hell for nothing.”

Given all the delays with closing the sale of our home, we didn’t get moving until the end of December and Mom was the full nine months pregnant. Mom said we might as well stay in Ohio and have the baby and God said that his son couldn’t be born in Ohio. No savior ever came from Ohio. Plus, it was only a sixteen-hour drive to Austin. What could possibly happen in sixteen hours?

Apparently, a lot can happen.

God was behind the wheel; the cruise control set at fifty-five miles per hour. God said that he could never figure out why they changed the speed law. He said people were always in a rush to get somewhere when actually they were already there. No moment was any more valuable than another. God said people wasted half their life trying to get to another place in time. Mom sat in the middle of the bench-like seat with Jesus lying in her belly and I sat up against the door.

I looked out through the large front window of the truck and imagined that I was behind the eyes of a giant beast greedily devouring up the asphalt as the road passed under us. Eyes wide open, I felt the barren plains of Oklahoma shift through my sight. Each mile blended into the next. I was going to my new home; where ever that was. I thought about God, Mom, the baby that I referred to as the big bulge and myself. I looked past the road and into the sky. Had it ever looked so blue before? The sky was unblemished by clouds. It blazed a watercolor blue, swirling blues and whites that seemed to stain the sky more than paint it.

The road was not crowded and only sporadically did cars pass us by as we moved along the toll road. Where were these people coming from? Where were they going to on this Christmas day? They would come into my view and then vanished as they quickly passed us by. All of these people shared one common trait: while they played the staring role in their own lives, in mine they were merely extras. The world was full of people who would live their entire lives without me ever having any contact with them. I thought that was strange.

We sat in the truck for what seemed forever, each minute dripping slowly into the next. I looked out the window of the truck and tried to relax. I let my body go limp. My hands vibrated and I strained to hold them at my side. Texas was all going to be new: the neighbors, the houses…the water dripping onto the floor mat of the truck. The steady stream of thoughts that filled the monotony of driving was suddenly interrupted by a steady stream of water sliding off the seat and falling onto the floor below. It tapped, tapped, tapped onto the rubber mats like a slow drum in a New Orleans funeral. Some of the water began to puddle up on the seat and cross the space that lay between Mom and me.

I looked over at my parents and they kept looking out at the road like Zombies hypnotized by the nothingness that made up the Oklahoma landscape. I looked back at the puddle, it crept closer.

“Did someone just pee their pants?” I asked.

God looked at Mom and then they both turned their eyes to me.

God smiled. “If that was supposed to be a subtle hint considered it registered loud and clear, Jellybean. There is a rest stop up the road about ten miles and we are all over it. The Lord needs to deposit a little wisdom, himself.” God pressed his foot down on the accelerator and the truck came up upon sixty miles per hour. “I think I can hurry us along a little. Think you can keep the cork in another fifteen minutes?”

God and I liked to watch the Weather Channel. He enjoyed the fact that humans devoted so much time to something random and uncontrollable. He said that people spent more time talking about the weather than telling the people in their lives how much they cared for them. I watched the Weather Channel mainly because God liked it, but also because I thought it was funny. I mocked one of our favorite weather casters, Bill Keneely. Bill was always standing in the middle of some terrible storm, sheets of water pounding him from every direction as he struggled to hold onto his rain parka and microphone. Bolts of lighting cracked the sky behind him and I wondered if it was smart standing in water and holding onto a microphone in the center of an electrical storm. Amidst this climatic backdrop, Bill would calmly explain the latest weather developments as if his words were validated by the fact that he stood in the eye of the storm rather than inside, somewhere safe, where any intelligent human being would have been.

Pretending to be Bill I said, “I think the cork containing this storm has already shot across the truck, God, and a tyrantial downpour is upon us. The Governor has declared a state of emergency, the National Guard is on their way and I highly recommend the evacuation of anyone in the immediate vicinity, which would include those in this truck.”

God recognized the Bill Keneely impression and started to chuckle.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mom asked looking somewhat confused. She obviously was not a Weather Channel fan.

“Never mind,” I said and moved over tightly against the door. Unlike Bill Keneely, I preferred to stay dry.

With the water getting close, I got nervous. I started rambling incoherently. I looked over at God and bombarded him with questions about the universe, the new neighborhood, slugs and especially my new first grade teacher. He mistook my nervousness about the puddle for one about the move.

God nodded and smiled. God smiles a lot, it is as if he’s in on a joke that we don’t understand. He assured me I would be happy in our new home and that slugs would do okay.

I did not know exactly why I had to leave my old friends and school. God said that he finally came to his senses and that we had to go. So after my parents took numerous trips, abandoning me to the musky smell of Grandmother Mary’s home, they finally loaded up a large truck with U-Hall on the side and headed south to a city called Austin. I thought it to be a funny name for a city; I had a friend in the first grade with the same name.

God was right about one thing. I worried that I would not be able to make friends in Austin. What if the kids didn’t like baseball or dodge ball? What if they didn’t watch Nickelodeon or play video games? God said that they would, but I figured that you never could know for sure until you met them.

The truck continued to roam down the highway and the puddle on the seat continued to creep towards me. I tried to accept the inevitability that I would soon be sitting in it yet still tried to move as far from the water as possible.

I started to stir and Mom asked me what was wrong. I asked her if she had ever seen the movie The Blob and she asked if I meant the one with Steve McQueen or Kevin Dillon and I said Kevin who? Next I said the one before the world had color and she nodded “yes” while adding who hasn’t seen the movie and I said remember how the Blob just kept slowly oozing down the stick towards the man’s hand after he picked it up from the meteor and she said yes and I said well that’s how I feel about that puddle on the seat and Mom shouted, “Oh my, God, my water’s broke.”

Well it didn’t take me long to figure out that the puddle of water on the seat meant that Jesus was on his way. Mom told God that he had to get us to a hospital and in a very calm voice God mentioned that the next rest services were now just four miles away.

“And you better not say anything about keeping a cork in it,” Mom rubbed her tummy and took some deep breaths. “We don’t need the next rest services, dear,” mom puffed. Her lips curled in a big “O” as she blew out each sentence. “We need a hospital.” Her voice strained to remain calm.

I don’t know exactly how to describe this correctly but I will try. It was about at this time that Mom started to breathe very funny. She took deep gasping sucks in and heaved out even harder gusts. As the minutes in the truck passed she started doing it faster and faster. I looked over at God’s face hoping for reassurance. I found none. From the expression on his face, I gathered that he was just as surprised by this new way of breathing as I was. The sound of air moving in and out of Mom’s body caused the truck to tremble. It was as though Mom had become a storm brewing over the sea and we were a trailer park in Florida.

I gathered my courage. “Are you feeling okay, Mom?” I asked hesitantly.

“Well as best as can be expected, given the fact that I am in the middle of nowhere and the head of Jesus is crowning,” she answered between gale force winds. I suddenly knew what it felt like to be Bill Keneely in the eye of a storm. “Why do you ask, dear?” she said.

“Well, it’s just that you are breathing kind of funny,” I said.

“Having a baby,” she replied, conserving her words.

“It doesn’t look like it feels too good.”

“That’s why you better wait until you are twenty-six and married before you have one,” she breathed out and then greedily drank air back in with a loud whoop.

“I haven’t even thought about getting pregnant,” I said. I was only six and I thought my mother had just gone crazy. She was, however, in labor and Dad said that could do it to you. “How do you get pregnant Mom?” I asked.

“Now’s not the time to talk about it. Let’s just say that I’m not going to fall for any of that Immaculate Conception stuff like your Great, Great Grandma pulled,” she finished.

I looked at God. He looked guilty.

God drove the truck past the rest stop and hoped for the next town to draw near. “Don’t worry, Mary, we’ll get to a hospital soon.”

“I told you we should have waited,” mom replied. “Nine months along and you want to drive across the country. ‘What could possibly happen in sixteen hours’.”

God interrupted. “Well no use crying over spilk,” God said with a smile. He tried to lighten the load in the truck but only managed to make the air heavier.

“Spilk,” my mother’s voice clanged in my ears. “Spilt milk,” mom rubbed her tummy and moaned as another contraction rocked her body. “I can’t believe you just said that. After I give birth to this baby you will have to explain to him how a man can be his father, the supreme creator of the universe and an idiot all in one.”

“I guess that’s the mystery of the trinity,” God laughed. “Now, honey, we both know that’s just the hormones talking,” God smiled. He had become a professional at minimizing earthly complaints.

Mom, however, was not going to let it drop. “’No use crying over spilk’ is all you can say when I should be having this baby in an Ohio hospital and not in a U-Hall truck in the middle of Oklahoma,” Mom cried.

God laughed nervously. “Well, all I’m saying is that while bad things may happen for no good reason at all, we still shouldn’t lament over decisions that have already been made and therefore can not be changed.”

My mother countered. “If we were in Cleveland, I would be in a hospital by now. And that’s not milk on the seat of this truck; its amniotic fluid. You better get me somewhere quick because little Jesus is coming and you're about to see his crown.”

“Where?” God asked. He looked outward and I followed his gaze into nothingness. Brown fields with dry grass and brush spread out in every direction for miles in every direction. The fields rolled beautifully into each other and all that I was left with was the thought that none of this could offer us ay help tonight.

“Anywhere but here, wait…except not some Oklahoma rest stop,” Mom said.

We kept driving west, the three of us trying to ignore the fact that we were soon going to have a fourth passenger. In a way I guess he had been with us since the start.

After we passed the rest stop we came upon the world’s biggest McDonalds stretching across the freeway in an unabashing arch and Mom said don’t even think about it before God’s stomach even had a chance to growl. The sun began to fall and the light in our truck became dim. Ten miles later we came to a sign that said last services for seventy miles and God took the exit into New Bethel.