After forty intense days with God, Moses descended Mount Sinai, his nerves shot. No sooner had he reached the base of the mountain than he heard music coming from a nearby clearing. Looking through the trees, he saw the children of Israel praying to what appeared to be a crudely sculpted golden calf. They danced and pranced—flounced, frisked, strutted, and swaggered. All hopped up on idol worship.
Cranky by disposition but made even more irritable by lack of sleep, Moses began to weep tears of anger. Even the people he’d trusted—the wise, loyal ones—tapping their feet and snapping their fingers like it was a hootenanny!
Golden calves were all the rage, but Moses had warned them before he left. “I’ll be down in a jiff,” he had said, “so don’t start praying until I get back.”
Seeing their lurid dance, Moses took the tablets he was carrying—tablets bearing commandments he had transcribed for them—commandments that, among other things, commanded there be no other god but God—God god—and he dropped them to the ground. Though Moses could get angrier than just about anyone besides God, he dropped them not in his wrath. For Moses this was odd, as he ate, spoke, slept, and snored in his wrath. He could even whistle a tune in his wrath! But when he let the tablets fall to the earth, he did it like an overburdened little kid who just didn’t care anymore. That was when Moses was at his scariest: when he was all quiet and holding back.
The children of Israel stared at him in silent terror.
“Zero commandments for you,” he repeated quietly under his breath.
* * *
You would think that that would spell the end for golden calves, but this was not the case. There was still one man holding out hope, a man who thought monotheism just another fad. This man’s name was Gomer and he was the largest golden calf dealer in the Sinai region and, much to his son Ian’s embarrassment, he had a real “never say die” attitude.
“They’ll come around,” Gomer said to his son soon after the commandment episode. “An invisible God that no one can see except Moses? Oh, and He’s also got a temper problem—likes to make threats and burn bushes. I don’t want to pray like a frightened mouse. I want to pray as one equal to another. And those laws— ‘Don’t wear this cloth with that cloth! Don’t let this cattle graze with that cattle!’ All that red tape. Not for me.”
But the god of Moses did make a splash with a great many people. When Moses got going, waving his staff around while yelling bloody murder—curing leprosy and transforming his rod into a snake—he made a pretty persuasive case. People became fired up on New God and began forming mobs of protest in front of Gomer’s showroom. But still, Gomer was undeterred.
“Business is business,” he said to his son as they watched the crowd grow, through a crack in the door. “Is there a commandment that says ‘Thou shalt regulate trade’? No way. Remember when they said candied manna was sacrilege? I rode it out and two weeks later I was selling it on a stick!”
It was true Ian’s father was an innovator. When he got into the business it was all cows, full grown, but Gomer saw that as homes got smaller there was a need for an idol that could fit more neatly into a corner— something you could drape a caftan over and prop your feet on when you weren’t worshipping. And thus the mini cow, or “calf,” was born.
“What makes the god of Moses better than my calves?” Gomer asked. “What can he do that they can’t? Speak in that sonorous voice that makes you feel like you just swallowed your balls? Bullshit. That’s not being a god. That’s just being pushy. The Calf is a more laid back, cud-chewing lord. He minds his own business and only steps in in a pinch. Remember when I prayed for the bastard selling silver goats next door to get dropsy? And did he not deliver? All praise the Golden Bovine, whose gold trumps silver, whose golden teats nourish us with invisible golden milk.”
Gomer stopped his pantomime of teat-squeezing and looked at his son to see if he was making an impression. He was not.
“You heard Moses talk on the mountain,” Ian said, “the deep grumbly voice—the water into blood. It gave everyone the same feeling. We all said so: The tingling in the chest. The rattling of the rib cage. You said you felt it, too.”
“You know me,” Gomer said. “I don’t want to hurt feelings. If someone gets excited I get excited, too. But someone does a few magic tricks and you renounce everything you ever stood for? I was born a Golden Calf man and I shall die a Golden Calf man. Integrity. It’s the way my daddy raised me and, if I’m not mistaken, it’s how I raised you.”
Gomer had raised him to be cheap, suspicious, and sneaky. He didn’t know where integrity fit in.
“They’ll come around,” Gomer said. But as the days went by and the angry crowd outside his showroom grew in number, Gomer saw that people weren’t coming around.
“What we need is a battle plan,” he said.
And so Gomer invited over his brothers. A bigger bunch of shysters, hoodwinkers, and chicanerous pettifoggers there never was. Ian hated when they all got together. In five minutes the whole house smelled of farts and his cheeks were pinched black and blue.
Brother number one sold discount winnowing shovels that broke the second you winnowed; brother number two was a professional angel spotter (“There’s one right behind you!” he’d cry. “You just missed him!”); and brother number three was a bookie who took bets on the weather. Every time Ian saw him he’d grab him by the sleeve and try to explain something called the “Sunny Day Trifecta.”
“Three rainy days in a row, or you box it with one sunny day and two rainy. Then you get some rotten s.o.b. telling you he felt drops! But drops ain’t rain!”
Ian, wanting to avoid the ordeal of their visit, offered to voyage out to the Wilderness of Sin to purchase dried fruit, but Gomer told him to stay put.
“I have a ware house full of the golden fuckers,” said Gomer, for this was the way they talked when they were all together. It was fucker this and fucking fuck-balls that.
“We have to tactically leverage this fuck,” said brother number one.
“We have to rebrand the fuck-face,” added brother number two.
When all together, they became one big fat “we.” Ian would try to get into the spirit of it and “we” along with them, but his “we’s” always got caught in his throat.
“The name ‘Golden Calf’ scares people,” said brother number three gravely. “We could start calling them ‘Festive Cows.’ ”
“But ‘Golden Calf’ is a name the public knows,” Gomer reminded them.
“We have to distance ourselves from all that. We can sell cow clothes. Dress ’em up in the latest styles. Tunics! Prayer shawls! Princess Golden Cow for girls. Slap a beard on the fuck-ass and you’ve got a Moses Cow. We’ll call him ‘Mooses.’ A beautiful tribute! We can accessorize. Golden tablets! A golden walking staff!”
“It’s still a golden calf,” said Ian. “It’s just different names for what it is: an idol.”
“Just a different name! Look at the weeping willow. Would you seek its shade were it an overflowing shit bucket bush?”
Then Ian felt his cheek clamped, twisted, pulled, and finally snapped back into place.
“Jackass,” his uncle said with affection.
If the brothers had lived in Egypt during the ten plagues and had owned a boat shack, they’d have gone out in the streets, pitching, the very night the rivers turned to blood.
“But have you tasted the waters?” they’d exclaim, licking their chops. “My hand to Rah—cherry borscht!”
They’d have seen each of the nine ensuing plagues as nine distinct business opportunities. Cursed darkness? Let’s-make-babies night! Hail mixed with fire? Refreshing joy nuggets and fun-time ouchie bolts!
“Can’t we just melt them down and get into a new business?” asked Ian.
“What kind of new business?” brother number one asked, pinching his cheek with warmth.
“Something a little less . . . contentious,” said Ian.
Gomer and his brothers decided that melting down the idols was not an option since half their value was in the craftsmanship. For the brothers the case was closed, but Ian still worried. When he’d go outside to try to calm the agitated crowd, he’d end up learning a lot about New God. His résumé was impressive: divided the Heavens from the Earth, made man from the dust, created the universe—the list went on and on.
When Ian walked outside, the mob swarmed him. The questions were always the same.
“What can your god do?” the crowd demanded.
Never any good under the gun, Ian stuttered and back-pedaled.
“You can polish him,” he said, “and lean against him, too.”
“The Golden Calf is strictly local,” said an intense and scholarly-looking young man named Rodney. “Ram-headed Sun gods. Hawk-bodied Earth gods—it’s so childish.”
“But your god . . . God?”
“You musn’t even speak His actual name!” interrupted Rodney. “He doesn’t like it, so we’ve invented nicknames for Him: He Who Will Kill You. He Who Will Crush You. He Who Will Set You On Fire and Douse the Flames with the Blood of Those You Love. You really have to be careful. The Beneficent One hears all and sees all.”
Ian began to feel New God’s gaze upon him all the time now. Especially when he was voiding his bowels. He was scared of this new god and sometimes even believed he could smell Him. When there was burning in the air, he pictured the angry smoke escaping New God’s ears.
“The consummate god is a forgiving god,” they said on the street. Still, he was scared. For himself and for his father.
And then the rioting began. “No more idols!” they chanted. “Our god trumps all gods.”
Gomer remained unimpressed. He felt protected by the Calf.
“For such a powerful god,” he said, “Invisible God is surprisingly thin-skinned.”
“Ours is a jealous god,” said Ian.
Gomer was struck silent by his son’s words. He stared at Ian a good long time. As a rule, Gomer was never nonplussed. But his son’s words—they nonplussed him.
“I see,” Gomer said, nervously massaging coins through the thin leather of his money pouch. “So now he’s your god.”
“There’s no choice,” Ian said. “He’s taking over.”
“But what about graven images?” asked Gomer. “With your new god there will be none of that! And you love a good graven image! I don’t get it. When you were little, you adored the god of your father.” Gomer reached over and pinched his son’s cheeks with sadness. “What happened?”
“He’s omnipotent,” said Ian, using a word he’d just learned from Rodney. “He can outfight, outthink, and outrace any god you throw at Him.”
“I’ll get my brothers in here and we’ll cook up a new god. We’ll call him ‘Omnipotent Plus One’!”
“This is embarrassing,” Ian said. “It’s also dangerous.”
“I didn’t realize I was embarrassing you,” Gomer said, his pinching fingers limp.
That night, Gomer remained in the showroom, pacing from calf to calf, ruminating.
“What is there for a father to pass down to a son if not his god?” Gomer wondered.
He did not like this new god. He was uncanny, grandiose, and bloodthirsty, but Gomer could also sense that he might have staying power. Even Rah couldn’t work a crowd like This Guy.
And so, the very next day, he brought in the alchemists with their enormous black cauldrons. He knew it would likely mean taking a tremendous beating on the value and he knew it would mean having to shout his brothers down, but Gomer vowed that every last golden hock and udder would be melted. His new idea was to remold the gold into long, thin wands with pointing little index fingers at the tip.
“We’ll market them as commandment pointers,” said Gomer, “to help you read the word of God. You know . . . God god.”
The brothers mulled it over. After a long silence, they spoke.
“Give the people what they want,” said brother number one, who knew when to stand down.
“Gold is gold,” said brother number two.
“Yep,” said brother number three distractedly, for in his mind he was already on to a dozen other hog swindles.
Ian watched the calves melt, their little calf faces poking out of the pots, looking at him. They made him feel almost as guilty as the sight of his father’s face, which was wet and glowing in the heat of the showroom.
When he was a child, Ian could pray so hard. Harder than anyone he knew. It was his thing. He’d squint his eyes, and he’d scrunch up his face. He’d look like he was going to burst a blood vessel, his hands in fists, hoping—willing the world to be a certain way. For the house to quiet down. For good things to happen. For Gomer to notice what a good prayer he was.
When he would finish praying and he’d look around and the world was pretty much the way it had always been, the one thing he felt he could rely on was that the Calf was keeping count, giving out points for effort. At least the Calf knew how hard he was trying.
New God made sense to him, but the Calf made sense to his heart. It was such a part of his childhood— like the smell of certain foods or the tunes his father whistled when they took walks together.
As the years wore on, Ian would often invite Gomer to come and pray with him to New God, and Gomer would tag along and pray—but Ian could always tell his father was just doing it to make him happy.
When Gomer finally died it was at a ripe old age and when Ian prayed for him, prayed for his safe voyage in the hereafter, inevitably, it was often the Calf that he saw.
“Don’t think of the Calf,” he would say to himself, but the harder he prayed and thought about trying not to think about the Calf, the more the Calf would enter his thoughts and prayers. After some years had passed, Ian eventually got used to the intrusions and stopped trying to fight them. In his mind, he looked upon the golden man-headed cow, or the cow-headed man, and he just prayed the best he could.