A little girl is riding on the gravel road downhill, with woods on both sides, scraggly little pine trees and thick underbrush. Colored ribbons dangle from the end of the handlebars, and bright plastic beads slide back and forth along the spokes: tink. Not really. She's walking, grown up. It makes more sense. The gravel shifts and grinds. Dogs have been through recently, their pawprints are stamped in patches of mud, snuffling at everything.
When she was little she could only go a little way down this road before she began to feel lost, on the fringe of her known territory. They came this way with her father when they were rock-hunting, but not far ahead they always left the road and thrashed through the trees to the crystal field, where the little quartz jewels lay everywhere, loose on the ground, and her father wouldn't let anybody see where he went to find the really huge ones.
Later, anyway, someone built a house there, so nobody could reach the field any more. She could see the house ahead of her, just past the curve at the bottom of the hill. Out in the driveway sat a car with a man working under the hood; she said hello, and the man was God.
"You live right here? I didn't know that! You've been so close by, I can't believe you're so close--I live just right up there, at the corner."
"I know you do, Chrissy," said God.
"So this is your house? Is that your car?"
"Sure."
"You must get a lot of mail," she said, and they smiled.
Inside he made sandwiches and they talked for a long time. He was so nice, and he answered so many questions and she was a little bit exasperated, thinking how much simpler it would have been if she'd known whose house this was all along. He had a big friendly dog, and they walked out into the backyard to let the dog play, and there was a lovely garden.
"I'm glad you have a dog," she said. "He's beautiful."
"I like him. Anyway he's me backwards."
"God," she said, laying a hand lightly on his elbow. "What is that?"
On the grass in the middle of the garden stood a rough ungainly boulder, crusted on the outside with dirty crystal; it seemed to press down on the earth, hurting the eyes with its cruel density. It frightened her, and God looked morosely at it. "Wait a minute," he told her.
He didn't look any particular size exactly, but he didn't look big; he wore jeans and a plain T-shirt and the rock was taller than he was. He squatted, and got a grip, and tried to stand, and she was afraid he wouldn't. It was like the runway jump of a jet plane: it taxis for so long like an awkward colt, like a long-legged car pushing with its wheels, and it's hard to trust yourself to such weakness, but then the real engine starts to push and the seat crushes into your neck and you understand that a force like that can fly if it wants to.
God lifted, and the dark awful mass of the rock rose to a great height in his hands, above all the earth, drawing all light to itself. It was still his subject and his creation; he set it down where it had been, gently. Christine stared like a little girl, speechless, in the face of a miracle.
But God looked back at her with slow tears starting in the corners of his eyes. "I still can't do it," he said.
Christine, Dreaming