Chapter 14

  He was waiting for me, his chin held high, when I got back from the police station. I was in a good mood, the shadow that had hung over Pappy’s life for the last fifty seven years had been lifted. No, it had been burned away. Little Bobby Cazzy was a free man, trapped in hiding by a corrupt government. But now I had to deal with him, Lucas Benoit, son of a preacher man. Studying to become one himself. Chaos save us from preachers and their gods and their bigotry.

  He stood by the front door to the store, staring outward. So there was no way that I could evade him. It’s not like I had any plan to. I was the one who had arranged the meeting. He was a suspect afterall, of sabotage, of attempted murder. Did I seriously think that a young man training to be a minister could be a criminal? Oh yes, I did, if his world view was challenged. I think it would be very easy for him. I had already clashed with his mother and to a lesser extent his father. There was a commandment about that, which I’m sure Lucas will be able to quote chapter and verse.

  “Lucas, I’m sorry if I kept you waiting, I was detained at the police station for longer than I expected to be. How about we go down and sit on the dock, it’s private. We can talk in peace and it’s the prettiest spot on the property.”

  He grinned at me like he knew something I didn’t. Which of course he would believe, he has god on his side.

  “Yes, Laura, that sounds like the ideal spot for a chat. I know that you want to talk to me about some alleged crimes and also for background for the show.” We started to walk down towards the dock, he walked fast which suited me fine. Sooner begun the sooner done. “But I want to speak to you as well. I believe that you may be the first self proclaimed atheist that I have met.”

  What is it with christians and their fascination with atheists?

  “I’m a ninth degree, atheist, which is to say, I can’t disprove the concept of god. A true tenth degree would claim that such an argument exists, if that is so, I’ve never heard it.”

  He waved his hand as if to dismiss my proposition that there were degrees of atheists. “Well that is a very open minded position for you to take. I have hope for you yet.” he huffed.

  The annoying christian just huffed at me. I thought back to Pappy’s assertion that not enough people practice kindness. So kindness it is. “As I do for you Lucas.” We settled into the lawn chairs on the dock. It was much more comfortable than the wooden slab hanging from the wall in the cell. Of course the slight breeze off of Mirror Lake smelled so sweet, next to the urine soaked air of lock-up.

  He sat ramrod straight, with his shoulders back. “I’d like to begin if you don’t mind,” he didn’t pause to give me a chance to object. I didn’t care. I wanted him to answer my questions, it was only fair that I answer his questions as well. “Why don’t you believe in god?”

  I’m in too good a mood to argue about religion but I will if pressed. “Two reasons, one I never felt the need for him since I was a very little girl and two, why does he seem to so desperately need people to believe in him. In addition your biblical god as portrayed in the bible just seems incompetent.”

  He seemed to stutter, but finally the words came spouting out, “Incompetent, I thought I heard every blasphemy that had ever been uttered. But that is the most ridiculous.”

  “Really, my opinion you find ridiculous yet you believe in a religion embraced by people that used to worship golden calves. These are the people that wrote your bible. When you build a house, or a skyscraper every builder knows that the strongest floor has to be the base. Your whole religion is based on the old testament. If the first floor is rotten the whole structure just collapses. But yes I believe that the old testament god is incompetent.”

  The blood just seemed to leach from his face, “He is the lord our god, please forgive her lord, she knows not what she speaks.”

  “Lucas, is it alright to murder innocent children?”

  “No, without question no.” The blood was back and his face was starting to get red, probably went from shock to anger. I tend to have that effect on the religious.

  “Yet your old testament god does it repeatedly. You’ll probably tell me now about the ineffable plan. All logic goes out the window when people talk about god. Your god is blood thirsty and it was all so unnecessary, a competent god would never kill, nor lose his temper. Nope either your god is either incompetent or else he’s evil. I have no duty to worship an incompetent god and ethically I have a duty to stand against an evil god. Wouldn’t you at least agree with that?”

  “My god is neither incompetent nor evil, he sent his only son to die for our sins. That is a compassionate god.”

  “That Lucas is a bloodthirsty god, someone long ago committed a sin, let’s blame the woman Eve, because we all know that it’s women that lead men to evil. But for a sin of disobedience, a god has to die, in a brutal and bloody manner for that sin to be forgiven. I repeat blood-thirsty. If you were to slap me right now. My correct response would be to forgive you. My instinctive reaction would be to hurt you back, to make you think twice before slapping me again. The writers of your bible all divinely inspired by their own hype, didn’t get that and neither did your old testament god.”

  “God was punishing those who were evil, in order to save the righteous.” he said in a quaking voice.

  “So the all powerful, all knowing god, couldn’t think of a solution to the problem aside from killing all the evil men and women, and the innocents who just happened to be in the way. He turned a woman into salt because she couldn’t control her curiosity. He murdered every puppy, kitten and baby in the world, in order to rid the world of evil. Yet if you believe the bible is literally true, he created evil. If you believe in god you probably believe in Satan right, a being who rules over hell and the unbelievers will be punished forever? Is that true? Is that what you truly believe and do you think that is fair?”

  He crossed his legs, his perfect posture abandoned a while ago. “Of course I think it’s fair that the faithful be rewarded.”

  “I’m not talking about the faithful, I’m talking about the skeptics’ the ones who don’t believe the story that is being pushed in the bible. Those skeptics should suffer for eternity for not believing in a story that was told to them, not by god, but by self appointed henchmen.”

  He sputtered, “Henchmen how dare you.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question, is it fair that a skeptic be made to suffer for eternity for not believing in the biblical god?”

  “Yes, you were given every opportunity and you rejected God.”

  “No technically I didn’t, I rejected what ‘people’ have told me about god. If everything you believe about god is true. The only thing that I did was use my god given brain to reason it out for myself. Not to just trust what some person blindly told me about god. I read what they wrote and none of it made any sense. Now you are telling me that a Loving and Just God is going to give me the same punishment as Hitler, as Jeffrey Epstein, as Donald Trump as Cain. Just because I didn’t believe the biblical hype. Exactly where is the justice in that, I’ll get tossed into hell with the bigots and racists and slave owners and capitalists and Stalin. I’ll go one step further, two of the vilest historical figures are Hilter and Stalin, who killed millions of people. I don’t believe that they deserve an eternity in hell, give them one hundred years for each life they took but after a few hundred million years just forgive them. That is the one thing I agree with in the bible, if you don’t forgive your enemies you are just punishing yourself, making yourself bitter for nothing. Thus your assertion that I will go to hell for eternity for non-belief is my proof that your god is not just. We are all just poor fallible mortals, to not be forgiven and accepted for what we are by our supposed creator. You religious have your faith, but you also have your brains you guys should try using them.”

  His face had started to turn purple, I really think that he had to restrain himself from attacking me. “My mother said you were evil, the devil incarnate she was right.”

  “Your saintly mother, comes into my store to buy a bible. We offer to have it shipped directly to her at cost. Then she lies and tries to get a sixteen year old girl arrested for attacking her. If I believed in a god I would have thanked him for having the video feed on so all the world could see just how far you can trust a true believer. But what did I do, I forgave the poor woman and so did the sixteen year old girl she slandered and tried to have arrested. I guess she doesn’t practice the forgiveness part of your ‘religion’. Lucas you are young and seem halfway intelligent, use your head for more than a hat rack, as my aunt used to say.”

  “You can’t reason your way into heaven”

  “God shouldn’t feel offended, I don’t believe in anything supernatural. If I was going to believe in any religion it would be one that held karma as a core tenet. None of the middle eastern religions, I deem them all to have the same flaw. The old testament, but you don’t have to believe me. A famous atheist put it rather nicely ‘The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.’ That’s a quote from Richard Dawkins but he’s more militant than I am. I think everyone should be able to believe in what they want. I don’t want your religion imposed on me. I assume you wouldn’t want my beliefs imposed on you.”

  “Then you shouldn’t live in a Christian country.”

  “I don't. I live in a country that guarantees freedom of religion. What do you think is going to happen if you christians wind up killing or deporting all the none christians and atheists?”

  “We’ll have the christian country that god has given us.”

  “Yeah and that will go great for about a week before the various sects start to turn on each other. Do you really believe that the Mormons, the Baptists and the Catholics and all these sects are equal in gods eye? If you are going for democracy by rights you should all become catholics, there are more of them then any other christian sect, so they must be right, right?”

  “We’ll all live in brotherhood with christ.”

  “You're evangelical right? Aren’t you supposed to convert people?”

  “You seem to know a lot about religion for a non-believer.”

  “Sun Tzu the Art of War, know your enemy and know yourself. There is more than one book, that’s what happens when you limit yourself. Do you want to know how this all started?”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Yes please enlighten me.”

  “In the beginning when speech was first invented, grunts refined. People told the first stories. The good stories got repeated, the bad were forgotten. Once the good stories were told enough and there were enough of them the stories evolved into a mythology from mythology evolved religion. Every religion evolved from another older religion or mythology. Every mythology evolved from a story. I was an editor, I can recognize a story when I see it. Everyday we get up and we begin telling ourselves a story in which we are the main characters. Some people really like making up stories, those are writers, I ought to know. I live with a house full of them. Those guys who wrote your bible were writers, their whole job is to make stuff up, but unless you are a very talented science fiction author you can’t make stuff up about things you don’t know anything about. That’s what they did, they made stuff up and they were wrong. People have been bending over backwards trying to account for that. They should just admit it and turn to the philosophers, I really recommend Epicurus”

  “A heathen,” he jeered, then gave a high pitched laugh that really contained no humor at all. “I should listen to a heathen, why would I ever do that?”

  “So that you can be happy.”

  “I’m very happy.”

  “If you are so happy, why does what I believe matter? It should have no bearing on your happiness. Anyone who ties their happiness to another is making a mistake. I don’t go around telling christians that their core values are wrong.”

  “That is exactly what you have been doing since we sat down.” he sneered.

  “No, Lucas, it is not. You brought up religion not I. I do not go around trying to convert people. I have an eidetic memory. Your first question to me was “Why don’t you believe in god? When I told you I thought he was incompetent you got upset. I believe that any creature that uses violence against another is incompetent. Man, Woman or supernatural creatures, God, angel, demon, ghost, vampire, werewolf you name the supernatural creature and I’ll make the same claim. I don’t believe in the supernatural. Everyone who claims to have had an encounter I believe was either deceived by their senses or is trying to make themselves important by telling a lie. Just look at the vast amount of misinformation online, it’s a direct result of someone making up a story, Pizzagate. The more people who believe it the more validated the author of the misinformation feels. The earlier a person jumps on board, the more validated that person feels. How smart they were to get on board so soon. The best thing from your point of view is that if I'm right, you’ll never have to listen to me say I told you so.”

  His voice tremored, “That’s cold comfort, how can you live with such a pessimistic world view?”

  “I don’t think that it is pessimistic in the least. It’s a completely natural cycle. It applies to everything in the universe. Everything dies, even the universe itself to believe that humans are somehow exempt is the height of wishful thinking. If you are afraid just think back to before you were born, you aren’t scared about that, so you shouldn’t be scared about dying. Epicurus said "I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care. So have you heard enough, are you convinced yet, that you are not going to be able to convert me, the only person who might have a chance converting me would be a buddhist monk. Just because I think their religion is the fairest and because they believe most of what Epicurus and Thoreau believed. But if you have to believe in a religion you might as well believe in one that speaks to you of being fair to its followers."

  “Jesus is the fairest, he says through me you get to the father.”

  “He says believe in me and this is yours. I can’t get myself to believe something like that. The Buddhist monk will tell you the opposite. Don’t believe, rather do, examine your mind. Desire is your chains, even the desire for enlightenment will stop you from achieving it. Come on though, we are just going to go around in a circle, you can’t convert me, I don’t care to convert you. But I do need to ask you some questions before the next challenge.”

  “I’m still going to save your soul, Laura”

  “If you can find it you can keep it, how about that, Lucas.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Yes, you are a very serious young man. So I’ll leave you a final thought that a fellow heathen and I were talking over today. Why is it that so many people strive to be smart, but so few try to be kind? Just something to ponder before the next time that you try to convert me. Now my first question for you is how long have you been baking.”

  “What’s that have to do with a bee attack?” he protested.

  “Nothing, it’s not a trick question. I’ve asked every other baker the same question, you can ask them. Of course I didn’t have a religious debate with them before we talked. So come on how long.”

  “About three years.”

  “What prompted you to try baking?”

  “I don’t see what this has to do about Niall.”

  “You don’t see, Lucas, because this question has nothing to do with Niall, it’s about getting to know you. There must be something you are interested in besides what happens after you die. So spill, why did you try baking?”

  “I saw a youtube video, where the person was baking and it looked interesting to me, satisfied?” He accompanied his reply with one of the fakiest smiles I’ve ever seen.

  “Yes so you chose a hobby after being told to by an algorithm, got it. Did you know any of the other bakers before the contest began?”

  “I didn’t choose a hobby based on an algorithm, I just watched an interesting video and it seemed fun. So I tried it and it was fun, so I kept doing it.” His hands were clasped together so tightly his knuckles turned white. First I had attacked his god, now I was attacking how he chooses his hobbies.

  “How about the other bakers, have you ever met any of them before?”

  “I met Nora before, I’ve purchased honey from her. If you want to bake something amazing you need to use the best of ingredients. Nora is well known for producing the best honey in the county.”

  That’s interesting, Lucas just admitted to having access to bees. I’m finding it hard reasoning out what possible motive he could have for hurting the production, by sabotage. Getting Niall out of the way would give him a better shot at winning the one hundred grand prize.

  “What's the best, baked good that you make with honey and where did you get the recipe?”

  He leaned in towards me, as if about to impart a secret. “My favorite cookie is made with honey, Honey Lime Coconut Oatmeal Cookies and I got the recipe from a great site called ‘A Classic Twist!’. It is promoted as a general cooking site, but most of the posts are about baking. Also the general cooking articles are interesting and I sometimes try those as well.

  He finally stopped being so defensive, I’ll need to keep the questions leaning towards food. “Aside from Nora, had you met any of the other bakers before and who do you think of as your biggest competition?”

  He paused before replying, “Um, it’s hard to say who is the best baker, none of us have really been challenged so far. Also with baking lots of bakers are strong in one area and maybe weak in another. I like making and decorating cakes, it takes a lot of skills to pull it off and you need to concentrate at all times. It also is a combination of skills, cooking and art. Drawing in particular on a specialty cake, sculpting is popular on cakes made for children. I guess if I was forced to guess who might be the best, I’d have to guess Tyler, due to the fact that he is a professional chef. As for knowing any of the others, I hadn’t met any of the other bakers except for Nora.”

  “What about Roberta and Bobby, when did you meet either one of them for the first time?”

  He leaned back before, “I met them both about a month ago at their house when I interviewed to be on bake off.”

  “Did you happen to see any bees on Friday night at the welcome party?”

  “No, that’s why I was surprised when two people got stung at the same time. I’m slightly allergic to bees, so I don't go into shock. But I was stung on the hand one and it blew up like a balloon. So after Grace and Niall were stung, I looked around carefully so as to avoid any bees that were in the area. But I didn’t see any, not even the ones that had stung Niall and Grace.” he said with a tense expression.

  “I found the two bees, later dead on the floor.”

  “I’d heard that bees die after they sting someone.”

  That was interesting, he had knowledge of bees, he had access to bees. He’s also studying to be a minister. So I couldn’t find a suspect, I'd rather be guilty, more than I want him to be. I can’t fall into the same trap that I accuse religious people of falling for. Just believing in something because you want it to be true. Follow the facts not the desires, I’m sure that most people know that bees die after stinging. When in fact, that isn’t a fact. It’s an old wife’s tale that is only half true. Now if you tell him that bumblebees don’t in fact die, and he panics, because he spread the bees. Now that would be a real clue.

  “Actually I did some research after the bees attacked and while honey bees do in fact die. They literally rip themselves in half. Bumble bees don’t die, they can sting someone multiple times and still fly away unscathed.” I watched intently for his reaction. But he didn’t have one.

  “I never knew that bees were that different, I suppose it’s stupid but I’ve always just thought of bees as bees not having distinct species, aside from wasps and killer bees.”

  My big trap was sprung on me, I want the zealot to be guilty, instead I have a strong indication that he is not. I need to wrap this up, the next challenge will be happening soon.

  “Lucas, what do you think of the challenges so far?”

  “Honestly I’ve found them to be very disappointing, they have allowed for no creativity and even a grammar schooler could have done the first three as well as we all did. I think that whoever decided to not send someone home made the right decision, we obviously all produced the same quality baked goods.”

  “This is my final question for now, if I find more information in the future, we’ll need to chat again, but we’ll steer clear of any religious discussions I promise. If you win the one hundred grand, what will you do with the prize money?”

  He went rigid. But managed to say, “If I win, I may use the money to start my own church, once I finish my training of course. Are we done then, because I’d like to prepare for the next challenge?”

  “Yeah, sure thanks for talking to me.”

  With that he took off like a shot. What just happened? Why did he go so stiff and formal when I asked him about the prize money? Is he hiding something?