God Underground

God is underground.

The other kids, ones surer than the boy and more authoritative, said so as they played in the sandbox of the kindergarten. Dig deep enough, they said, you’d see God’s face and die. The boy accepted it as fact, not yet capable of suspicion, doubt. With that warning lodged in his mind, he sat in the sandbox, sand spilling between his toes. At his disposal were a red plastic shovel and a blue bucket. He set the tools aside as his grimy hands interfaced with the sand directly, viscerally. He scraped past the loose top layer to the packed sand below. The denser sand darkened with trapped moisture. He didn’t know what to make of a God lurking below the sand, or the promised death that followed a glimpse of His face. The boy simply liked the way the sand felt, how easily it could be moulded into shapes. Some half-acknowledged recollection compelled him to carve and force structures into the sand. So, he tunnelled into it and raised bridges over the tunnels; pressed his hands to pack the sand tight so it wouldn’t crumble. The structural integrity of his structures became paramount. Their sight gave him a sense of pride and achievement. Other kids, those with an idea of God, inched closer to the structure above and below the sand. When they saw his growing pit, they warned anew: You are digging too deep. If you dig too much, you will find the face of God, and you will die. They delivered their message and retreated.

God, that word, spoken in the language of the outside as opposed to his family’s mother tongue, had never been uttered by anyone he’d known. He wasn’t even sure he’d heard its equivalent, Бог, in his own language. And yet by some instinct, or by the gravitas with which the other kids invoked the name, the boy felt dread—a tiny mysterium tremendum. Yet even the threat of death couldn’t break the builder’s bond to his creation. He stabilized another bridge going over another tunnel. The boy’s arm, when diving into the tunnel, felt cool surrounded by moist sand, away from the sun. He pressed a palm to test the tunnel’s solidity. It felt like he could go deeper if he dug his fingers into (God) the sand or resorted to using the red shovel.

Without much thought of (God) anything, he began to dig. Without minding how doing so threatened the structural integrity of (God) the bridges and the tunnels, the boy first clawed with his fingers—fingernails already adorned with dirt and sand—to reach (God) the lower levels of the sandbox. When (God) the sand grew more resistant and hurt his persistent fingers, the boy turned to (God) the tools beside him. With the aid of (God) the red shovel, he breached the deeper sand, where a shadow began to pool. The pit in the sandbox swallowed his arm past his elbow, though it gave him no pause. The other kids noticed the suicidal labour and pleaded with him to cease his digging: You can’t dig that deep. You’ll see His face! You’ll die!

The boy’s reply was that he wants to see (God) what happens and that he’ll continue to dig until he does. In his mind playtime wasn’t over; no teacher called him back inside. He was allowed to stay in the sandbox all alone with (God) his kingdom. The boy dug deeper, deeper, until he could climb down into the pit of his own creation, until (God) shadows swallowed him and hid him from any who’d peer into the pit to find the lost boy. He dug until the shovel cracked, bent, broke, until a jagged edge slit his palm and he had to claw through (God) the sand with his fingers until his nails could hold no more dirt until they bent until his fingertips were raw and the sand sucked blood—there, a crack and ill light and God, God, God, and Death.

He is grown now—a man in a foreign land where God is Death and War and Desolation rend the Holy Land.