99 Stories of God by Joy Williams Page A

open window continuously at quarter-hour intervals.
    “Then trains came and one after another they ran over my body, outstretched on the tracks, deepening and widening the two cuts in my neck and legs.”
    I didn’t give him that one, the Lord said.

Not His Best
     

8
     
    This is an appealing story.
    One day, a hermit brother about to leave for town went to a brother who lived nearby and who had continual compunction. He said to his fervent neighbor, “Please do me the kindness, brother, of taking care of my garden until my return.” The other replied, “Believe me, brother, I will do my best not to neglect it.” After the brother’s departure, he said to himself, Now take care of this garden. And from evening until dawn he stood in psalmody, ceaselessly shedding tears. He prayed the same way for the entire day. Coming home late, the brother found that hedgehogs had ravaged his garden.
    He said, “God forgive you, brother, for not taking care of my garden.”
    The other answered, “God knows I did my best to keep it, and I hope through God’s mercy that the little garden will bear fruit.”
    The brother said, “But it has been completely destroyed.”
    The other replied, “I know, but I have confidence in God that it will flower again.”
    But he was speaking of his continual tears, the weeping for one’s sins in the hope of salvation, and of the garden of his heart, watered by him and in full flower.

Hedgehog
     

9
     
    A child in the south side of town was killed in a drive-by shooting. He was not the intended victim, he was only seven. There really was no intended victim . The gunman just wanted to spook some folks, the folks in this specific house. It wasn’t even little Luis’s house. But he was there, visiting a friend who had a pet iguana, and the iguana was sort of sickly, no one knew why, more yellow than green, maybe someone had fed it spinach by mistake. Hearing a ruckus, the boys ran outside and Luis was shot in the chest and died.
    The family held a car wash to pay for the funeral expenses. This is not uncommon. It was announced in the newspaper and lots of people came, most of whom had nice waxed cars that didn’t need washing, and the family appreciated this.

Clean
     

10
     
    The Lord was drinking some water out of a glass. There was nothing wrong with the glass, but the water tasted terrible.
    This was in a white building on a vast wasteland. The engineers within wore white uniforms and booties on their shoes and gloves on their hands. The water had traveled many hundreds of miles through wide pipes to be here.
    What have you done to my water? the Lord asked. My living water …
    Oh, they said, we thought that was just a metaphor.

Wet
     

11
     
    The defendant, a young housecleaner originally from El Salvador, was accused of murdering her three-year-old daughter. Whenever she was brought into the courtroom, she did nothing but weep.
    Despite several grand jury proceedings, the woman, Dora Tejada, had not been indicted after several months of incarceration following her arrest.
    The judge in the case scheduled a probable-cause hearing for September 13.
    “This is a real date,” the judge said. “Unlike some cases where probable-cause dates are movable, this one isn’t.”
    Court records indicate that police believe the woman used an object, possibly a rose, to suffocate her daughter.

Arrangement
     

12
     
    The mother had forgotten the child’s rabbit-fur muff. It had been a long time since the child had died. It was of a staph infection when the child was four. The mother had two other children, whom she loved, and Iris remained in her heart as well, loved.
    But she had forgotten the muff, which was discovered in the way such things often are, when the mother was cleaning up, cleaning out.
    She went through the albums and boxes of photographs, but she could find no picture of Iris with the muff, though the little girl loved to dress up in hats and gowns and long gloves and