Risen by Jan Strnad Page A

Then he didn't have to think about it anymore.
    But people liked to confuse him with subtleties, and that made him mad. Why, when a person had everything figured out, did they have to pull the rug out from under him? Just because they couldn't make up their own minds about a thing, that didn't give them the right to confuse everybody else.
    Certain people always seemed to be laughing at him, like they knew something he didn't. And occasionally, that got to him. Late at night, lying in bed, trying to make shapes out of the shadows of the leaves crawling on the wall, sometimes he'd get to wondering if the world wasn't such a big, complicated work that it was foolish for an average sort of guy like himself to think he could make sense of it.
    Maybe he was blind to something that only smart people could see, the way they say dogs can't see color. How could you explain color to a dog? Maybe he was just too thickheaded to understand what smarter people tried to tell him.
    Well, if that was the case then there was nothing he could do about it, so it was stupid to even think about it. He got along okay, better than some of the so-called geniuses he'd known who ended up working in bookstores, selling books to other smart people for minimum wage. Or killing themselves because the world didn't fit their idea of how the world ought to be. They'd doubted themselves to death, some of those smart people had.
    Deputy Haws wasn't going to lose any sleep thinking about how maybe everything he knew was wrong.
    But still....
    Still....
    The uncertainty was always there, lurking in his nerves like a cold sore, ready to pop out under stress. It made him lash out over ridiculous things and get into fights when the conversation drifted to particular topics, like whether somebody who repeated third grade should be allowed to carry a handgun.
    That night, though, trudging along the blacktop, he had no more doubts. Everything was crystal clear. Everything. And he was absolutely dead sure certain about it all. No crack weakened the armor of his certitude.
    Seth had made everything clear.
    Seth had spoken to him while he was dead. Seth had peered into Haws' brain on those lie-awake nights when the shadows crept along the wall, and Seth had examined the questions that haunted Haws' dreams, and Seth had provided the answer that Haws sought.
    Seth was the answer.
    No matter the question. All questions were one, really. All answers, one.
    Seth.
    All Haws had to do was believe in Seth and everything would be all right. All would be right. All...right.
    There was an example right there of Haws' new clarity of thought.
    It was Haws' mission to bring this enlightenment to the rest of the world, starting with those who needed Seth's wisdom the most.
    Starting with Galen Ganger.
    ***
    Haws retrieved his vehicle and drove home well before dawn. He laundered his clothes and sewed a patch over the bullet hole, doing both jobs much better than anyone in town would've expected him to.
    He'd treated the bloodstains with pre-wash and liquid detergent and let them soak and then ran everything through the washer three times. Then he'd cut a circle of material from his shirt tail where it wouldn't be missed and used it to patch the bullet hole.
    In truth, Haws was not half bad with a needle and thread. He'd all but raised his little sister, Lucille, his alcoholic mother not being of much use in that regard and his father being a "guest of the federal government" in Leavenworth, Kansas. With no money to waste on luxuries, Haws had grown up learning how to make do.
    He hadn't anticipated needing more than one official police shirt and one pair of official police pants, so tonight he had to salvage his sole uniform so he could be seen around town later that morning. He wanted to mess with the heads of the punk kids who surely figured him for dead. Nothing heavy. He wouldn't run them in. He just wanted to be seen and let their own guilty consciences and fear of payback do the