Knockin' On Yer Door

Mini Short Story Challenge #3

When he was just called Joshua, The Rat’s grandfather made him knock door to door to spread the good word of Rodent Mormonism. The whole thing was meant to be a gag, but Joshua realized soon after they had left Utah that his grandfather intended to proselytize. They had bunked with some Mormons in a boarding house there, and Grandpa thought the whole concept of making up a belief system less than a hundred years ago was a riot. He figured that if Joseph Smith had done it, so could he.

Not that Joshua’s grandfather’s ideas were very much new. Joshua sometimes wondered if his grandfather was picking and choosing his favorite Karl Marx passages and adding what he viewed as “fundamentally American” ways of looking at love—no sodomy, intermarriage, intercourse before marriage, and children were to be purely viewed as additional labor. Hence, of course, the door-to-door knocking.

“The contradiction is the point, Joshua,” his grandfather told him once in the back of a freight train. “The American mind cannot possibly comprehend life as anything but purposeful and labor. So I made love to be work and work to be love. The religion will catch on precisely because of the paradox because it speaks to the soul of our people.”

His grandpa was always doing that— “our people,” even though his grandfather’s father was a Lithuanian Jew and had a thick accent up until the day he died in Detroit. Joshua didn’t see himself as part of any people besides him and his grandfather. They had always been on their own, going from place to place.

Joshua knocked on the Elbridge family door, and a boy his age came out. He wore only jeans, and a belt, and had a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Joshua thought he looked like James Dean. He was handsome, in an Arizona way.

“Yer that new kid, huh? Whad’yer come around fer?” James Dean said.

Joshua looked down at the books he was carrying and then back up at James Dean. Maybe he was a few years older than him.

“Ya don’t speak, do ya?”

Joshua picked out a book and, still looking down, handed James a copy. James took it and smiled.

“Ah, I heard about this at school, kid. Some kind of prank? Well, hey, let me tell you, don’t show this to my uncle up the road. He believes this shit. Not that I don’t… But you know how it is. Bushland.” James took a drag of his cigarette. “Hey, you want a drag?”

Joshua took it from James. He sucked in and had a coughing fit. James cackled and landed his hand on James’ shoulder. “I thought a kid like you would have smoked before!” His hand was warm. It felt nice.

“Yeah, I’ll take a copy, as long as I still get to go to church with my Ma. I’ll see you around, Rat.” James closed the door.

The Rat felt his heart beat faster, and then he realized he was alone again, with forty-eight more books to give out.