Church of the Divine Duck

By Mark Lages

Nathan Roberts is an ordinary family man who one day, while taking a walk, finds himself being approached by the son of God. This new found friend is not Jesus but rather is Jesuss older brother, Marvin. Nathans humdrum life is turned upside down as he is enlisted to help deliver Marvins version of the truth to the world. Is Nathan up to the task? Is the world ready for Marvin? Welcome to the Church of the Divine Duck!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524640569

Mark Lages

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© 2016 Mark Lages. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/16/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4057-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4056-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016915581

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter 1 Rainstorm

Chapter 2 Why Me?

Chapter 3 The Great Gasol

Chapter 4 Yooki Koo

Chapter 5 Marvin’s Duck

Chapter 6 A Boy and a Girl

Chapter 7 Ho, Ho, Ho

Chapter 8 Roger

Chapter 9 Reverend Mike

Chapter 10 Gutter Balls

Chapter 11 New Clothes

Chapter 12 The Interview

Chapter 13 Four Mai Tais Later

Chapter 14 Praise God

Chapter 15 Nacho

Chapter 16 For Shame

Chapter 17 The Right Thing

Chapter 18 Shut It Down

Chapter 19 Fire!

Chapter 20 Dr. Fellows

Chapter 21 Big Moses

Chapter 22 Exclamation Points

Chapter 23 Law of 250

Chapter 24 Meatballs

Chapter 25 The Trial

Chapter 26 A Book Deal

Chapter 27 Man in a Coma

Chapter 1

Rainstorm

A h, Marvin. Of all places to make his grand entrance, he came to visit me where I lived. When I asked him why he chose this particular place, he shrugged and said, The process was complicated, but it’s a place as good as any.

I can describe where I lived in a few paragraphs; it’s not a very complicated locale. Just about everything you’d see was man-made or man-organized. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call God’s country. When I think of being in God’s country, I think of hiking in the snowy Rocky Mountains, or standing at the dizzying edge of the Grand Canyon, or sailing out deep in the mighty, white-capped Pacific Ocean. But where I lived, the surroundings were made up of rolling hills smothered with stucco houses, townhomes, and apartments, all kept shaded from the sun and protected from rain by our ubiquitous red-tile roofs. Some called the style Spanish, and some called it Mediterranean. I wouldn’t know either way, having never been to Spain or to the Mediterranean. Our dwelling units were connected via a confusing network of twisting and winding asphalt streets and cul-de-sacs, concrete curbs, and sidewalks. Lots of moving vehicles were in the streets, and the sidewalks were always populated with joggers, pedestrians, kids on bikes, and moms pushing strollers.

We were drenched by the sun during the day and illuminated at night with well-placed streetlights, low-voltage yard lights, and moth-friendly porch lights. We were told how to get around by a plethora of metal signs, traffic signals, and white-painted markings on the pavement. It was an architect’s dream, this stucco-and-tile utopia, all of us carrying on our well-modulated lives within these man-made manifestations of modern town planning. Have you ever seen the little communities a toy train enthusiast will build around his miniature tracks: idyllic houses, trees, mailboxes, signs, and people, all crafted, hand-painted, and set up just right? All we were missing were the trains, for there were no trains to bring you where I lived, just the nearby toll roads and freeways, always very busy with traffic, except for maybe late at night while we were sleeping.

Specifically, I lived in a town called Rancho Santa Margarita in Southern California, about an hour south of Los Angeles and thirty minutes east of the beach towns. This place had no substantial history of which to speak. For a long, long time it was just a rolling landscape of weeds, scrub brush, and cacti inhabited by snakes, coyotes, and mangy deer, only to be very recently transformed by some well-financed real estate developers who were motivated by big profits and a desire to organize their fellow man. They snapped their fingers, paid some bulldozers to roll over the land, some contractors to put up buildings, and some paving companies to lay roads and sidewalks, and in just a matter of several years, voilà, there stood our bustling little community. We had shops, restaurants, and some light industry; there was a modest clock tower that actually gonged each hour, a lake with lots of ducks, and some hiking and equestrian trails.

We had a city hall, a town council, and a tidy little police department with very little crime to keep them busy. Most of the crime around the place was committed by our own teenagers, bored and restless, looking to do something with the time they had on their hands, stealing valuables from unlocked cars or drinking beer, and making too much noise on weekend nights. Surrounding our houses and lining our serpentine streets, we had lots of well-organized landscaping stuffed with trees, flowering plants, shrubs, and undulating, water-saturated lawns, all struggling to stay alive in this dry climate. Everything was irrigated with plastic pipes, sprinkler heads, valves, and electric timers; very seldom would you see anyone actually watering his yard with a hose. You didn’t get a lot of land to work with around your home. Our small front yards were for show, but residents did as much as they could with their rear yards, most having shiny, state-of-the-art barbecues, outdoor tables and chairs, and lots of potted plants they purchased on sale from our local Home Depot. There were community swimming pools for the summer months, which were usually dominated by the play of noisy, splashing children. Yes, we had a lot of children.

No, I didn’t live in God’s country. But it was such a nice suburban place to reside. Nice is the perfect word for it. We lived in nice little houses and drove nice little imported cars. We had a very nice way of life here, all of us middle-income wage earners, most of us white, God-fearing citizens, most of us rather conservative and very likely to be Republican. Not a lot of Democrats lived around here, and when you saw a liberal bumper sticker on a car come election time, you could be pretty sure the car belonged to an alien, someone who was just visiting for one reason or the other, someone who couldn’t wait to go back to where he or she came from.

We were hardly diverse. In the years I lived there, I’d noticed maybe two or three black families; they stood out so obviously that I wondered how they handled it. As for Hispanics, they came in the mornings and left in the evenings, babysitting our children, cleaning our houses, and working for the homeowners’ associations, maintaining our structures and landscaping. We had no homeless; I don’t know if the police chased them away or if they just didn’t feel comfortable setting up camp here. And as for Asians and Middle Easterners, they all seemed to have congregated in the town of Irvine, about twenty minutes away. I wouldn’t say I lived in a racist community, for I’ve never run into anyone who had much hate in his heart. There were some racist jokes bandied about now and then, but nothing serious, nothing more than the sort of innocuous, poor-taste jesting about those who were different that you’d find about anywhere. This just happened to be a place where a lot of white people chose to live. People tend to like being around their own kind, and this was where our own kind had congregated. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a white male. I’m also forty-five years old, still married to a white woman of forty-three, with one child between us, a girl of sixteen we named Gabriela, who we call Gabby. I was forty-two when I first met Marvin. I’ll get to Marvin in a minute.

Let me tell you something about myself. I’ll keep it brief because, to be honest, I’ve never been all that interesting. If I were to tell you my life story, you’d be sound asleep before I reached my fourth birthday, but I am going to tell you what I was like, especially what I was like before I met Marvin. I was a very average person, and I knew it. I wasn’t at all complicated. I didn’t pretend to be anything other than what I was, a husband, a father of a lovely girl, a driver of a Toyota SUV, and an inhabitant of a four-bedroom stucco, red-tile roofed townhouse. During the week, I went to bed at eleven and got up at seven. I got to my job at eight thirty every morning, where I worked for a small public relations firm. We had six employees working there, and we provided services to approximately ten clients at a time.

Sometimes we were very busy, and sometimes we were a little slow, as it is with most small businesses; it was either feast or famine, as they say. On weekends I tried to sleep in a little and then went to work on my chores. I replaced burned-out lightbulbs, wound the clock on the fireplace mantel, washed the cars, and worked in the yard. I also liked to watch sports on TV, my favorite being hockey and my least favorite baseball. But I did watch them all. My daughter was not involved in sports; instead, she was a dancer. Ballet was her primary love, and while I’ve never been much of a ballet fan, I liked watching her perform. My wife’s name is Natalie, and she is a stay-at-home mom. Like I said, I’ve lived a pretty average life.

So who is this Marvin? He picked me out. Well, he had this huge list of names, and he picked my name from the list at random. It could just as easily have been someone else’s name his finger had landed upon, but it happened to be mine. If this is confusing you, stay with me, for I’ll make all this clear to you soon. It was a beautiful spring afternoon when I first met him while I was taking a stroll around our community lake. I should describe this lake to you. Like everything else around here, the lake was man-made, carved out of the earth with tractors, filled with water, and surrounded by apartments and townhouses. There were paddleboats you could rent and take out on the lake. There was also a clubhouse and a fenced-in park at one end of the lake they called The Lagoon, a shallow, sandy faux beach for kids to play in the water and for adults to sit in the sun on lawn chairs.

The Lagoon was a members-only feature of the community, and I have no idea how one became a member, so I’d never personally been in there on the other side of the fence. The Lagoon itself was disgusting. I mean, it looked picturesque with all its white sand and murky blue water, but I’m guessing with all the kids romping about in their diapers and swim outfits, the water was probably about 30 percent urine and fecal matter. But this didn’t prevent it from being a very popular spot on warm days, especially during the spring and summer months. The place was always packed with people having the time of their lives, getting wet and eating hamburgers and hot dogs.

On the day I met Marvin, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The temperature was in the seventies, and all the people around the lake were dressed like it was a summer day. They were jogging, or walking their dogs, or strolling while their kids rode ahead of them on training wheel steadied bikes. There was an occasional adult Rollerblading speedster listening to music with earplugs, sort of dancing and skating at the same time. Some of the dog walkers would stop so their dogs could meet and sniff the other dogs, while the owners made small talk, usually about each other’s dogs. Once in a while there’d be a kid on a skateboard, weaving in and out of everyone, and every now and again you’d spot lovers, holding hands while they walked.

It was kind of like a two-way circus procession, all these characters, parading around the man-made lake in the sunlight. I liked taking my walks here. I’d often go with Natalie, but today she didn’t have time to come. She was taking Gabby to a birthday party for a friend. It was here on this fine spring day, while taking my stroll around the lake, that I first met Marvin, the man who would change my life, the man who would single-handedly turn everything in my world upside down. It’s funny, isn’t it, that I call him a man?

I had just passed The Lagoon, and was walking past its parking lot, when he appeared at my side. I hadn’t noticed him before, and it was strange how he appeared so suddenly, as though he’d stepped right out of thin air, walking down from the steps of some imaginary staircase. He gently grasped my elbow as I continued to walk, and he stayed alongside me, also walking. I knew immediately that something was different about this man, from the way he looked at me, and from the sound of his voice. He was dressed in an athletic outfit, Reebok, I think, shiny black pants, a black T-shirt, and a puffy black jacket made of the same thin material as his pants. He had on a brand new pair of white tennis shoes, and he wore a gold watch on his wrist, with no rings on any of his fingers. About my height, he also appeared to about my age, maybe a few years younger. His hair was blond and neatly styled, like he’d just had a trim, and his face was clear and clean shaven. He was moderately handsome and had a pleasant smile, which he wasn’t shy about showing.

He could’ve looked like any other good-looking local fellow in his forties, but his eyes and his voice, that’s where the real difference was. He had a pair of deep blue eyes that were intelligent, knowing, experienced, kind, calming, and so well-intentioned that they were startling. And his voice, it was so melodious and mellow that it almost sounded as though he was singing. I was at first a little taken aback, and I pulled my elbow from his grip. What do you want? I asked.

Are you Nathan Roberts? he asked.

Do I know you?

In a way, yes. And in a way, no. Are you Nathan Roberts?

Yes I am.

You’re the kid I’m looking for.

And who are you?

Can I have a few minutes of your time?

I guess so. It was odd being approached by this stranger, but I felt okay with this. I suppose you could say I was drawn to the man, to his remarkable eyes and soothing voice. It was a little strange that he’d called me kid, since he seemed about my age, but I wanted to hear what he had to say. We came upon a bench at the edge of the sidewalk, and he motioned for me to sit down. After I sat, he took his place beside me and patted me on my knee.

Good, good, good, he said.

You want to talk to me?

Indeed I do. From his pocket he removed a pipe, already stuffed with tobacco. From his other pocket he removed a book of matches. He lit the pipe and puffed on it to get it going. Wonderful little invention of your people, he said, still puffing.

My people?

Human beings.

Who exactly are you? I asked.

If I told you, you’d probably stand up and leave.

Not necessarily.

No, not necessarily. But very likely.

Give me a try.

Are you open-minded?

I’d like to think I am.

Are you gullible?

I don’t think so.

I need you to be open-minded, without being gullible. Can you do that? Do you understand the difference between the two?

Yes, I do, I said.

Listen, Nathan, what I’m about to tell you is going to be hard for you to believe.

Go ahead.

You’re smiling. You’re expecting me to say something funny?

It isn’t that. Well, maybe it is. Honestly, I have no idea who you are. I don’t know anyone who looks like you, or smokes a pipe, or who talks like you.

I am the son of God.

You’re Jesus? I laughed.

No, not him. Jesus is my little brother. My name is Marvin.

Okay, I said.

Do you believe me?

I didn’t know what to say to the man, since of course I didn’t believe him. But what should I have said? Should I have argued with him about it? Or should I have said, yes, I believed him but that I had things to do, and then got away from him as quickly as possible? Was he dangerous in any way, or just harmlessly delusional? Or was he just pulling my leg, waiting for my reaction? Did someone put him up to this? My friend, Larry Saunders, was a practical joker, and this was just the sort of thing he’d do, have some stranger approach me out of the blue, claiming to be the son of God. I looked around to see if Larry was watching from a distance, but I didn’t see him anywhere. Then I would say something that would change my life. I just blurted it out, saying, Prove it to me.

Prove it to you?

You asked me if I was gullible, and I said I wasn’t. If you’re Marvin, the son of God, prove it to me. I think this is a fair request.

Very well. You’re right to ask for proof.

And?

What do you want me to do?

I thought about this for a moment. Then I said, Make it rain.

That’s all?

Right here and now, make it rain.

Simple enough. As I live and breathe, here’s what happened next. Marvin took a big puff from his pipe and blew the smoke upward, above his head. Watch carefully, he said, and instead of the smoke dissipating into the air as it should’ve done, it began to grow. Right before my very eyes, the smoke became a small gray cloud, and then a larger cloud, and then an even larger cloud, rising up into the sky. It swelled, swirled, and darkened, and the next thing I knew, rather than sitting under a clear blue sky, we were sitting under a large, gloomy storm. There was a crack of thunder, and it began to pour. I don’t mean just a normal rainfall, but a soaking, drenching downpour. It was coming down in sheets! The people around the lake were running for cover, but I just sat there in disbelief. I was soaking wet, growing wetter by the second, and rainwater was running down my face and dripping off my chin when I turned to look at Marvin. The rain had extinguished his pipe, and he was tapping it on the heel of his shoe to empty the bowl on the sidewalk. He then looked at me and said, Satisfied?

Can you make it stop?

Whenever you’re ready.

I’m ready, I said. I’d had enough.

Stop! Marvin said, looking up at the dark sky, and just as quickly as the storm had developed, it shrank into a single cloud, rapidly getting smaller and smaller, until it was just a wisp of humidity, and then nothing. Again, the sky was warm and blue, and the sun was shining.

How’d you do that? I asked.

You asked for proof. I gave you proof.

I’ve never seen such a thing. I’m having a hard time with this.

That’s to be expected.

The son of God, you say?

Let’s not bite off more than we can chew. For now, let’s just say I’m a very interesting man.

I can certainly do that, I said.

So, I have your attention?

Oh, yes, I said.

That’s probably enough for today.

What do you mean?

I’ll see you tomorrow.

You’re leaving?

Just as mysteriously as he’d appeared, he suddenly vanished. I was sitting alone on the bench. Everything was still drenched; the sidewalks were wet; the rooftops were wet, and several cars out in the street still had their windshield wipers on. Water was dripping from the trees, and the excited ducks around the lake were all quacking in a frenzy. I stood up and continued my walk, heading back to my car in the parking lot. I wanted to get home to change out of my wet clothes.

When I got home, I went to our bedroom and put on a dry shirt and pants, then to the family room to turn on the TV to the news, hoping to see something about the rainstorm. There was nothing. Well, not at first. Toward the end of the news broadcast, there was a thirty-second report on a freak rainstorm over Rancho Santa Margarita. There was no explanation. The news reporter didn’t even seem curious; she just reported the freak storm like she was reporting any other oddity. She quickly moved on to a story about a transgender teenager at a local high school demanding to use the girls’ restrooms. There were some brief interviews with the kid’s parents and then with the school’s principal. I picked up the TV remote, and switched to a hockey game I’d recorded yesterday.

What had I witnessed? Was I losing my mind? How did Marvin make it rain? Was he telling me the truth, that he was the son of God, and that Jesus was his little brother? The entire idea was as preposterous as it was unbelievable. Yet there it was, a rainstorm summoned from Marvin’s pipe smoke, simply undeniable. I wanted so much to share this event with someone, with anyone, but who in the world would believe me? Who’d believe that Jesus has a brother named Marvin? Are you kidding me? Who’d believe that he knew my name and found me at the lake, that he wore a Reebok athletic outfit and white tennis shoes, and that he smoked a pipe and made it storm at will? For the time being, I would have to keep this to myself as my own little secret. Actually it was a big secret!

Good God, my mind reeled. And here I was, back in my little home, everything as normal as could be, sitting in my family room and watching hockey. There was a sofa and the TV, a coffee table and an end table, a couple of lamps, and a dining room table off to the right. This was where we lived, my small family and I. We had a fireplace, which we used in the winter months to keep us warm, and several framed photos of us on its mantel. There was also a clock on the mantel, which was handed down to us by Natalie’s grandparents. It was a real clock, the sort you had to wind every week to keep it ticking. I wound the clock every Saturday; it was one of my chores. And now in the middle of all this normalcy, there was my immediate memory of Marvin. What was I going to do with him? Or perhaps a better question was what was he going to do with me?

After a couple hours of thinking about this and trying to pay attention to the hockey game on TV, the front door opened. My wife and daughter were back from the birthday party. We’re home! Natalie said. She and Gabby stepped into the house, both in good spirits. Did you see that rainstorm?

Yes, I said.

We got soaked, Gabby said.

So did I.

It was so much fun.

They didn’t cancel the party?

We went inside. But the cake got wet. It was such a mess.

What’s for dinner? I asked.

I thought we could barbecue hamburgers. There’s ground beef in the refrigerator, and I bought some buns and potato salad yesterday. You should light up the barbecue. It’ll be time for dinner in a half hour.

Okay, I said.

I stepped out to the patio and opened the lid on the barbecue. It had an automatic lighter button, but it had stopped working years ago. In fact, I think it only worked for a couple months after we brought the contraption home. I turned on the gas, and let it run for a while. I lit a long fireplace match and stuck the flame into the gas. It ignited, and there was a burst of flame and a rush of warm air. I closed the lid, to let the grill heat up. I went back into the house to slap patties from the package of ground beef. Natalie was setting the table, and Gabby was on the sofa, talking to one of her girlfriends on her cell phone. How was your walk? Natalie asked me.

It was fine.

Tomorrow is Sunday. I don’t have anything planned. Maybe we can all go on a walk together.

That’d be nice, I said.

I still can’t get over that rain.

It was something.

It just came from nowhere. And then it cleared up, just like that.

Yes, I said.

It was real, Marvin’s rainstorm. It rained on everyone. It rained on my wife and daughter; it rained on everyone in town. And it was all because I’d asked Marvin to make it happen; it was all the direct result of my own demand for proof. Marvin, the son of God! The longer I had to think about all this, the more palpable it became, this incredible event at the lake. I admit that upon the initial crack of thunder, I had strong reservations. But I concentrated and thought and turned it over in my mind, and there was no other explanation for what had happened. I’d seen it for sure, the puff of pipe smoke, the very real storm and its very real rain, then shriveling back into a wisp of nothing at Marvin’s vocal command. I was a witness to it all; I had seen it with my own two eyes. And now I wondered when I would see Marvin again.

Chapter 2

Why Me?

I have never been a churchgoer. I’ve never taken my family as an adult, and I didn’t go with my parents when I was a kid. What I know about churches, pews, altars, preachers, psalms, holy water, and sermons you can fit in a little thimble, with room left over for everything I know about quantum physics. It therefore surprised me that of all the religious people in the world, Marvin chose to visit me. Wouldn’t you think he would’ve selected someone with a zeal for the subject? Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I don’t believe in God. I do believe, and I do have faith; I’m just not what you’d call extraordinarily religious. The closest I ever came to actually talking to God was when my older sister died. She went in to see the doctor for a routine physical, and they discovered what appeared to be a suspicious mole on her shoulder. They took a biopsy, made their diagnoses, and eight months later my sister was being cremated and swept into an urn.

I was very close to my sister, and her death affected me greatly. It was so weird and so sad, knowing I’d never be able to pick up the phone and talk to her again, that I’d never be able to give her a hug, and that I’d never again experience the joy of seeing her smile. She was gone forever; it was such a dreadful loss, and at such a young age. She left behind a husband and three bewildered daughters, and of course, she left behind me. I didn’t go to a church, but I did get down on my knees in our bedroom, and I tried to speak to God. I told him how angry I felt, and how cruel and irresponsible he was, and I cussed him out with every four-letter word I could think of. After that tirade, it’s hard to believe that either he or his sons would want anything to do with me. But how wrong I was!

Sunday morning around eleven, the doorbell rang, and I went to answer it. I was expecting to find Gabby’s gum-chewing, cell phone addicted girlfriend Adriana at the door. The two of them were going to Disneyland for the day, and Adriana was due to arrive any minute. Adriana’s mom was driving them to the park, and Natalie and I were supposed to pick the girls up in the evening and bring them home. But it wasn’t Adriana standing on our porch. When I opened the door, it was Marvin. You came back! I said.

Yes, I came.

I was wondering if I’d see you again.

I said I’d be back, Marvin said. More or less, I’m a man of my word.

Please come in.

Marvin stepped into the house, and I shut the front door behind him. He was dressed this time in a plaid button-down shirt and jeans, wearing the same tennis shoes he wore yesterday. He looked so neat and tidy, like a department store mannequin. He was just about to say something, when Natalie appeared and interrupted. Who’s this? she asked.

My name is Marvin. You must be Natalie.

Yes, I am.

I’m a friend of Nathan’s.

Nice to meet you, Marvin. Natalie reached out for a handshake, and Marvin gently held her hand.

You’re even prettier than I’d imagined.

Oh, dear, Natalie said. It wasn’t like her to do this, but I think she was blushing. Marvin released her hand.