So What Do You DO?
by David Hill
“So what do you do?” I ask.
“I clean out buckets. Do a little bit of vacuuming. Talk to customers.” He talks slowly.
I didn’t really know him. I knew him from the car wash, saw him around. But I didn’t know him. We struck up a conversation next to the air fresheners and he invited me over for a couple of drinks, so I obliged.
I say, “Sounds fulfilling.”
He rubs the top of his head. “Somebody’s gotta do it.”
I nod because he’s right. “You’re a good man.”
“I try to be.”
“You go to church?” I don’t know if I should ask this, but I do.
He leans back in his chair and kicks off his shoes. “On the necessary holidays.” He leans down to a cooler on his left and pulls a Miller Light from the ice. “Do you go to church?”
“Nah,” I look at the ice chest.
He asks, “You want one, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll take one.” I lean forward and grab a beer.
“Why do you ask?”
“Just had a question, that’s all.”
“When I was a kid, my mom would make us read the Bible as punishment. She’d sit us down in the corner and have us read for an hour. And at the end of the hour we’d dog-ear the page and save it for next time. I ended up reading the whole damned book.” He laughs. “And you know what, it ain’t half bad.” He takes a swig of beer. “Point is; any question you have, I’ve probably got an answer.”
“Okay,” I say. “So how come Eve ate the apple?”
“First of all motherfucker, it wasn’t an apple,” He takes another sip. “It was an unspecified fruit. And second, Eve didn’t just up and eat the fruit. She was seduced by the serpent.”
“Serpent?” I’m beginning to feel stupid.
“The serpent, the snake, the devil.”
“That sneaky bastard.”
“Nah man, you’ve got it backwards, God is the sneaky bastard. He put Adam and Eve in that garden knowing well enough the serpent was persuasive and out to destroy mankind. And then God expected Adam and Eve to resist temptation. Now, that’s just fucked up. Something tells me those two weren’t very smart, and I have a feeling that God knew it. And I’ve got this theory that God is an angry and vengeful man who likes to see people suffer because it makes him feel powerful. And so I think God knew the serpent would seduce Eve, because if he really didn’t want that shit to happen he would’ve given her a backbone. Instead, he damned humanity for all eternity for eating some fucking fruit.”
David Hill is a current senior and creative writing major at North East School of the Arts in San Antonio, Texas. David is the lead fiction editor for this year's Mad Ones production, After Midnight. David's short list of publications includes the 2013 and 2015 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and the Mad Ones Literary Magazine. David enjoys writing screenplays, watching Netflix, and spending time with his dog, Tyson. His favorite book is The Mothman Prophecies and his favorite TV show is a three way tie between True Detective, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and American Dad. David plans on attending Texas State University this fall and looks forward to accepting his Oscar in the coming years.