I stuck my hand out the passenger window to catch the warm air, as Mom raced the Plymouth Valiant down Providence road: we were almost late to see the Christian ventriloquist. The sun painted the sky in pastel reds and pinks, and the trees were draped with May leaves, fresh and green.

“Do we really have to do this, Mom?”

“You'll enjoy it. You like puppets, right?”

“But it's a church!” And it was a weeknight.I could have been playing kickball or catching night crawlers in the backyard.

I was in fifth grade, and Mom was worried about the company I was keeping at school. Kids like Jimmy Kline, who was already smoking cigarettes (and weed), Sam Wooster and his pet snakes, and Bernard Gross, collector of detentions and maker of homemade pipe bombs, who’d been suspended for spitting on his Math teacher. Mom sensed that I was drawn toward them, was too forgiving of their renegade ways. It would do me good, she said, to see a puppet show, with a Christian message.

She cut the turn into the parking lot so hard that my arm banged the door at my funny bone.

“C’mon Ma!” my older sister Marcy called from the back seat. It was the only words she had spoken the whole trip.

“Roll up the window, we’re late!”

A white steeple loomed above the Baptist church. It wasn't our church, and I had never been inside it. We got out. The sign in front announced: “Tonight: Ventriloquist Bob Sawyer and his pal Nicky Demus.”

“This is going to be stupid,” I said to Marcy, seeking some support.

“You’re stupid!” she replied. Then she peeled away from us for the rest of the night.

Mom was right about the puppets. When I was real little I did enjoy watching King Friday from Mister Rogers, the Kukla, Fran, and Ollie show, Mumwah, the trash-eating monster on Captain Noah, Kermit the Frog, and Oscar the Grouch. I liked how a hand could bring something new to life, become something other than itself.

When I was seven, I went through a puppet-making phase. I would mold rough heads from clay, paint the faces, glue felt robes around their necks, and perform brief skits for the family, from behind an armchair. Dad would blow smoke rings and look on with quiet approval. That Christmas he built me a puppet theater with a curtain and a marionette with a white clown face. Dad was a carpenter, and it pleased him to give us things he made with his hands.

By Easter, the marionette was unusable. I wasn’t careful about storing it, and the strings got badly tangled. And Dad had run off with a woman named Nancy, whose name we were forbidden to mention in my mother’s presence. When she did bring her up, and only on the phone to her cousins, she would call her “that slut from New Jersey.”

Memories of him were beginning to fade: a tinny voice on the phone, a washed-out face on a polaroid print, the furniture and objects he’d never bothered to take with him.

Puppets were less interesting to me now. Why did Mom ever think I would enjoy a Church puppet show? We were not regular churchgoers, anyway. For a couple of years, in kindergarten and first grade, Mom and Dad would drop me off at Sunday School, where I fended for myself in a navy blue blazer and clip-on tie among dorky kids I didn’t know well. The couple times a year we did attend church services, I’d suffer through the long hour and stare at stiff grownups mumbling hymns, accompanied by wailing chords played too loudly by a mousy organist with fingers like twigs. Nowhere in my mind did the ideas “entertainment” and “church” match up.

I leaned on a pillar and dreamed of escape, while Mom chatted with our next-door neighbor. We really weren’t so late, I thought. Why was she always rushing around as if we were? Across the street were dense woods, except for one house at the roadside with pea green siding. My friends called it the “Hippy House.” No one knew exactly what the deal was with them. They had a wood-chopping business, did tree maintenance, and sold firewood in winter. They dressed differently: tie dye shirts, wrinkled dungarees, long hair and beards, long skirts and see through blouses. I was pretty sure other things went on there we shouldn’t know about. Jimmy Kline said they smoked dope, maybe even grew their own out behind the house. We would often pass the Hippy House on the way to the Super Saver, and I knew it would be better not to ask questions. Mom would wonder if I was attracted to their ways, like those of the budding juvenile delinquents at school I had befriended.

A few of the hippies were hanging off the front porch like monkeys, one of them, shirtless, strumming a guitar. Some were jamming small cigarettes in their mouths with the index finger and thumb instead of the first two fingers like most grownups did.

Then I noticed this girl in the front yard. She looked to be about my age, barefoot, arms glowing in the twilight. She wore an off-white peasant skirt. In one hand was a jar of bubble mix. With puckered lips she was kissing oily spheres into the sky. She kept twirling – her skirt dancing on pillows of air. I forgot where I was, and sensed that she was unaware that anyone could be watching her.

I felt a tug on my belt loop. "We didn't come here to look at that, Steven. Get inside.”

I wanted to sit in the back of the sanctuary where I could lay low, but Mom made me sit with her towards the front. We made our way up the aisle. We passed kids with crew cuts and pony tails and stiff parents, white and moldy. The pastor introduced Bob Sawyer. He looked like a coal miner with dark skin, a doughy, pockmarked face and meaty fists. He opened a black trunk with silver clasps and removed the puppet.

“Let me out, let me out!”

All eyes veered to Nicky Demus: an unusually large head, topped with fiery carrot-colored hair. He had polished rosy cheeks and piercing eyes. I didn’t like the way his eyebrows jumped all the time. I didn’t like anything about him.

The puppet show was lame. Bob Sawyer played the wise and patient Christian Uncle type. Nicky, the snappy wiseass, got all the punch lines. The problem was, you could see Bob Sawyer’s lips move. He tried to hold a microphone in front of his mouth to disguise it. It was clear he’d never get beyond the Baptist entertainment circuit.

“Gee Bob, you mean to say that even dummies like me can be saved?!”

“That’s right. Nicky. God so loved the world that he gave his only son so we might be saved.”

It was a long night.

I sank into the pew with arms crossed. At each attempted punch line, I’d cock my head and draw my cheeks into a painful cringe. Mom would elbow my ribs and wink at me. I wasn’t giving her any satisfaction. I didn’t want any of this.

Slowly, I began to sense that the puppet was watching, getting frustrated with me. Nicky would bump his head up as if to say, c’mon kid, stop resisting. I’d look away and remind myself, he’s just a puppet. You don’t have to please him. The Baptists laughed politely, usually a delayed reaction, not because he was funny, but because they thought they were supposed to laugh. There’s a difference. Bob Sawyer would egg them on, heaving a little in desperation, glancing at the ceiling.

Below the jokey surface there was something smug about Bob and Nicky. They knew they had the gold ticket to heaven, and they loved to point out how maybe you weren’t so sure. Of course I wasn’t sure. I was a fifth grader without a clue.

The big stunt to cap off the evening was Nicky Demus’ reciting of the Lord's Prayer while Bob drank a glass of water. "Our father who art in heaven......hallowed be thy name.....” Veins of water trailed down Sawyer’s neck.

“For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen! Do you believe in miracles now! Praise the Lord!”

After that, Nicky got droopy eyed and said he was sad about losing his lucky rabbit’s foot. And Bob said, “you can’t put your faith in blind dumb luck.”

“But I’m a dummy, remember?”

Bob started quoting Scripture, about not storing up your treasures on earth, but in heaven instead where they can’t get lost or rusty or stolen.

I wasn’t ready for the very last part. Bob asked us all to bow our heads.

"Lord, we thank you for the blessings of laughter and good fellowship. We also come to you with heavy hearts, knowing we are unworthy, that we have sinned. None of us deserves eternal life without the cleansing blood you shed for us. We pray for mercy. We know you are here with us. Watching. Waiting. You know our secrets. You see our shame."

I peeked at the congregation: dead quiet, heads bowed, all except for the puppet. Nicky’s eyelids lifted, his gaze trained straight at me. My chest tightened.

“Those of you who haven't been saved, now raise your hand, right now. Lift them up. Rise and come to the front, come to Jesus. He calls us now.”

I turned to Mom, but her eyes were clenched shut, motionless, hands clinging to her pocketbook.

Bob’s voice gave way to Nicky’s: "Jesus sees all, everywhere, do not be afraid, children, come forward and be saved.”

Was I really saved? I didn’t think so. Infrequent Sunday school attendance clearly didn’t count. The Bible given to me in second grade which sat on my bookshelf never opened: that wasn’t enough either. I was positively certain I had never had a “Jesus moment.” Needles pricked inside my legs. Surely, all the Baptists had been saved a long time ago. What if I was the only one in the building who hadn't been saved? What if they expected me to rise? An undertow pulled at my feet, a wave of hell and damnation crushing me. I was guilty and weak and frozen. The puppet gave me a look as if to say, c’mon kid, get up here now. My ears burned red.

The air lightened around my arm. An invisible thread was yanking, and my torso tilted. My finger lifted and then the hand hovered off my lap, legs tensed, preparing to stand.

I felt a familiar tug at my belt loop, fingers pulling my wrist down, the unmistakable caress of my Mother’s hand brushing my arm. She never moved her face or opened her eyes. After a long time, the prayer ended. Pastor Bob looked a little miffed and when he took his hand out of Nicky’s back, the puppet crumpled.

We didn’t talk in the car. At home, Mom pulled on an apron and scoured the pots that had been soaking in suds since dinner. I headed towards the living room and the glowing television, paused, then spun around and went to the sink. I took a tea towel from the rack and dried the dishes at her side. When she rinsed the last plate, she handed it over, her side nudging against me. She put her hand on my neck.

“I thought it would be a funnier show.”

That night and for weeks after, I felt like I would never get it right with God. If the puppet was correct, God could see everything, and I had lost my golden chance at salvation. By the time the school year ended, I was feeling more like myself. Riding my Schwinn bike through the long warm summer days, it was like I could go anywhere, like I was free. One day I grabbed my fishing rod and backpack, and pedaled down to Springton reservoir. I hid my bike in the brush and walked through the woods to a flat rock on the shoreline. In the distance you could hear the Baptist church bells and a far off chainsaw. The fish weren't biting. Too hot. Finally there was a jerk and I reeled in a scrawny Sunfish, carefully removed the hook. Too young, too small to keep. I dipped it in the water and set it free.

It wasn’t a good day for fishing after all, so I started packing up. Then I noticed voices about 50 yards away, giggling, talking, the smell of something burning, sweet and swampy. I crept to a spot where I could spy on them through the leaves. The hippy people. I made sure to keep my distance. When they finally moved off, I went over to the spot they’d vacated. There was a rotten log and ashes, an empty butane lighter, and some litter. Among the wrappers was something that looked like an empty cigarette pack. I bent down to look. On it was printed the image of a bearded, smoking man with a cut jaw and in big letters the words “Zig-Zag.” These weren’t the kind of cigarettes my Dad used to smoke. They were rolling papers for the funny kind, and I felt a little guilty just looking at them.

The bearded man looked just like Jesus, maybe a little scruffier than in my old Sunday School coloring books, but Jesus all the same, only with a joint between his lips. It couldn’t be Jesus. It must be a Turkish pirate. No, it was most definitely a hippy Jesus. And he was smoking pot. Was this the God they worshipped? Jimmy Kline must be right about them. How did he know more than I did? What more didn’t I know? It was too much for my brain to digest.

I thought I should collect the evidence and give it to Officer Johnson, the cop who visited our school every year to warn us about drugs and strangers with candy. I ran through the woods to find my bike but my arm scraped a thorny bush, and I stutter-stepped into a clearing where someone had dumped a blue vinyl, double-wide car seat. Something rustled from behind a large beech tree and I jumped, stuffing the Zig-Zag pack in my pocket. It was the girl in the peasant skirt I'd seen the day of the puppet show. She was larger in person, and seemed a little older than me. She said “Hi” and asked what I was doing. I shook my head.

“I don’t know. I mean, I was fishing, but the fish weren’t biting.”

She was very pretty. I used to think girls were to be avoided, but that was changing. The way she stood there looking, not smiling or frowning, made me think, wherever she came from, whoever her parents were, whatever the hippy Jesus drug people she lived among were doing to her, she wasn’t really touched by it, could float above, like those bubbles I saw her blow before. Shadows of leaves sprayed her face like leopard spots. But they didn’t stay. They moved, and she could peel away from the shadows at will.

"Do I know you?" she asked.

“No. I saw you a while ago, once. You were blowing bubbles. I was at the church across the street. They had a puppet show there. My mom made me go.”

"Puppets are creepy. You like puppets?"

"No. When I was little. Not anymore."

She asked if I wanted some spearmint gum and sat down on the car seat. She could have sat at the other end, but she chose the middle. Our legs almost touched. When she handed me the stick, her finger brushed my thumb. We chewed for a minute, maybe two, and I thought, now I’m supposed to say or do something, right? I looked at the tree trunks surrounding us, with knobby faces molded into the bark. She looked at my fishing rod. I was afraid to look at her so I gazed at the tree roots poking out of the ground.

“Do you like ever have an idea what kind of fish you’re going to catch? Do you have a feeling that it’s going to bite just before it jumps at the hook?”

I said, no, I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t know what she wanted me to say, and I had the feeling that I was being pulled into a strange new place.

“I’m not much for fishing,” she said. “I don’t want to take them out of the water. It’s like taking them away from their home, their family, their friends.”

“Guess so. They can’t feel happy about getting a hook in the mouth. I caught a little sunfish before you came here, but I put it back.”

She smiled. I stared at my fishing pole, and my ears turned red.

She got up and made a quick turn, her skirt lifting a little. "I have to go home now. Hope you catch something worth keeping.”

I watched her blend into the woods. I slid off the car seat and kneeled, felt the ground where her shoe had left a scoop-like impression. A worm wriggled into the damp ground, and I felt an urge to pray for some guiding light.

In bed that night, I took the Zig-Zag Jesus from my shirt pocket and wondered about turning it in to the cops. I didn’t know if I wanted to bring that kind of trouble on the hippies or myself. If there was a God, then he could see me in that moment not knowing what to do, how to act, who to be. I lay back on the pillow and stared at the white ceiling, waiting. The air outside was humid, and through the open blind I stared at a formless sky. My thoughts coiled back to the girl from the woods. I didn't feel bad or guilty about her, but I had no way of understanding who she was or what she wanted. Somehow I knew I’d never see her again and I’d lost my chance to find out.

If Mom found the Zig-Zag pack, she’d think I was smoking funny cigarettes with Jimmy Kline, and that road led straight back to the church. Should I throw it away, then? Destroy the evidence? Why not keep it, until I could figure it out on my own? Under my bed was a small wood chest Dad had made for me to keep my marionette in, before I’d tangled its strings. The puppet was long gone, but I had saved the box for keeping bits of the past which I was already beginning to forget: old baseball cards of players like Willie Montanez, a bluejay feather, a rabbit’s foot, a picture of my Dad standing beside his blue 67 Mustang. Dad looked young and strong and happy in the photo, and maybe for the first time I wondered if I would look like him when I grew up.

I put Zig-Zag Jesus at the bottom of the box where no one but me would think to find it and closed the lid. Come back to this later, I thought. When you’re ready to leave, or when you’ve already become something, someone new.