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Chapters (77)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Also by Silas House
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Contents
  7. Part One
  8. 1
  9. 2
  10. 3
  11. 4
  12. 5
  13. 6
  14. 7
  15. 8
  16. 9
  17. 10
  18. 11
  19. 12
  20. 13
  21. 14
  22. 15
  23. 16
  24. 17
  25. 18
  26. Part Two
  27. 1
  28. 2
  29. 3
  30. 4
  31. 5
  32. 6
  33. 7
  34. 8
  35. 9
  36. 10
  37. Part Three
  38. 1
  39. 2
  40. 3
  41. 4
  42. 5
  43. 6
  44. 7
  45. 8
  46. 9
  47. 10
  48. 11
  49. 12
  50. 13
  51. 14
  52. 15
  53. 16
  54. 17
  55. 18
  56. 19
  57. 20
  58. 21
  59. 22
  60. 23
  61. 24
  62. 25
  63. 26
  64. 27
  65. 28
  66. 29
  67. 30
  68. 31
  69. Part Four
  70. 1
  71. 2
  72. 3
  73. Epilogue: The Everything
  74. Acknowledgments
  75. About the Author
  76. About Algonquin
  77. Copyright

Justin used to think the trees were God. But today, right here, he thinks the ocean might be God. All that power and weakness, spread out for us to see. The ocean can do so much when it wants to, and sometimes it can do nothing but go in and out, waves and smoothness. The ocean is a mystery and so is God. They are both so big we cannot see all of them at the same time but we can catch pieces of them here and there. Justin believes God is big like the ocean. Even bigger. But lots of people don’t. They think He’s small enough to fit in a church house or an offering plate or an ancient book. He’s not, and His mind is even bigger than Him. People look at the ocean and they usually see only blueness. But there are so many other colors. Right now Justin can see ten different shades of blue, and lots of greens. There are lines of brown and the white lips of the waves. When the light hits the water in a certain way there will be even more colors: red, orange, peach, purple. At night there will be gray and the farther he could swim out into the ocean he could find the water darker and darker until it was black on a cloudy night. Justin thinks God’s eyes are that color: everycolor. This is the kind of talk that would horrify his mother, but he believes God is in everything and everybody. Pieces of him. He doesn’t just mean the spirit, he means the actual chunks of God. He thinks He’s not only in the ocean, but also in Shady, and the sand, and the trees, and every person on this beach, every person in the world. Today, right this minute, Justin can see nothing but ocean, and that is Everything. And Justin can feel the Everything beneath his hand where he is resting his palm on Shady’s chest and Shady’s heart thrums in a steady rhythm like the waves on the beach. He can feel the Everything under himself in the gritty sand. He can smell it in the sea­weedy smell smoothing over his face. He can hear it in the laughter of the teenagers down the beach and in the crying of that baby and the metal sound of the airplane sliding over them all and the water coming in and out in and out. The ocean is God but so are we all.

But this isn’t the kind of thing he can say out loud to anyone. He knows it’s the kind of talk he can say to himself in his own mind when he is sitting on a beach a thousand miles from home, not knowing what will come next.

3

3

His face is covered by thousands of tiny red ants.