The Baptism of Mark

Remember the night we drove out to the lake to baptize Mark? I was just thinking about it, thinking about him.

I think about those days a lot. Youth. Closeness. When we were still in God’s grace, still believers. I miss so little, and so much, about those days before we grew up, before we left the church. 

It was so dark, Will. Do you remember that road to the lake? Winding through the trees like a snake in wheat grass.

Earlier we’d been at your place. Bible study and beers. It was only the two of us that night. When Mark showed up at the door, I couldn’t believe it. After years of Mark ignoring or rejecting our unwanted spiritual advances, you’d finally convinced him to come, finally lured him into our coven of Christ. And then, it had just happened. The target of our prayers, our friend, our Mark, our... mark, began crying in your living room, asking how to become a believer. 

You prayed and led Mark through saying the words: “Sinner... forgiven... Lord and Savior...”

Then it was done. He was... saved. 

God, that word... 

“Lake’s only an hour’s drive and I’ve only had two beers!” you yelled through that Will-has-had-two-beers grin of yours. “Want to seal the deal with the Big Man right now?” 

 Mark was the first in the car. 

It felt like we would never reach the lake, but we didn’t care because Mark was in the front seat glowing, his head bobbing out the window. Singing. He was always singing. 

Did I ever tell you about the next day? He pulled up to my house, honked the horn, yelled at me to get in. We drifted through town all afternoon, and he played me a mixed tape he’d stayed up making of songs that reminded him of Jesus. It was so...weird. And so endearing. 

He sped around and told me how safe he suddenly felt, how eager he was to learn everything about Jesus, how excited he was for the future, how happy he was. 

He finally belonged to something, and it started that night at the lake. 

Do you remember that? That feeling? That connected euphoria. That embrace. That knowing, that surety that no matter what happened, no matter what we fucked up, we’d be safe...saved...in the end. 

Never mind the guilt. Or the shame. The control. Reminiscence is about the bits that mattered. Good or bad. Right?

Like the time years before when we slid off the road in the snow. Sixteen-year-old me driving my mom’s red sedan, fifteen-year-old you flipping through the sleeves of CD’s—all Christian, permitted bands—you’d brought. When you turned the dial from CD to Radio, I didn’t stop you. You found the local alternative rock station and as Billy Corgan’s worldly voice creaked in our ears we listened in a shared moment of silent rebellion. Half a song later my head crashed into the driver’s window and your chin slammed into the dashboard as that slippery slope pulled us helplessly off the road and into that ditch.

Neither of us had to say it, but we looked at each other and knew. We shouldn’t have turned on that station.

It wasn’t that we thought God had punished us for listening to the Smashing Pumpkins. It was that we had removed our focus from God and he had removed, just for a moment, his hand of protection from us. 

How did we not see it even then?

We were so young. It’s a lifetime ago. Like bits of somebody else’s stories. Even so, I miss it. Sometimes. The good bits. 

Both you and I realized later that it wasn’t for us, that it wasn’t for us. The practice, the conviction...The Church. It crumbled away from us.

I hate thinking about it that way. Even now. The sore days are past me. The hurt is gone, mostly. Something elemental—a dry riverbed, a tornado-stripped foundation—remains, and maybe always will. I listen at times to those bands we loved, the non-secular, sanctioned bands. The music still moves me; the lyrics make me wince.

For that time, for those years we believed, for that night out at the lake, it was ours. It integrated us, combined us into something truly...good? I almost wish I could still believe it some days. Wouldn’t that be easier?

Mark singing in the front seat, drumming his hands so hard on the dashboard I thought he would set off the airbag, rolling down the window, pounding a rhythm with his fist on the chipped black paint of your hatchback. 

Much of that night is faded and blurry in my memory, but I remember one thing you said like it was yesterday. 

“This is it, man,” you said to Mark. “This might be the best night of your life.”

I was so envious of that in you. That wonder, that excitement, that residual newness. 

In some ways it was easier then. Easier than not believing anymore.

Do you remember?

You were driving, and I was stretched out in the back seat. The trees off the side of the road flashed by like ghosts. Our anticipation spilled out the windows into the cool summer air like incense into what was about to become our forest temple. I kept yelling various versions of, ‘Slow down, Will!’

“Don’t worry!” you said. “God is super chuffed about what we’re doing. We’ll get there.” 

You were right. We spotted the sign— “Rudyard Lake”—and slipped off the road. The ghosts retreated from the windows as we crunched down the gravel path to the shore. 

The lake was an oval pane of black glass. Obsidian. The moon flickered in the middle of the water like a spotlight gleaming up from below. 

Mark tumbled out of the front seat and ran. 

"Take off your shoes!” you yelled after him before he reached the water.

He skated to a stop at the edge of the lake, took off his shoes, his socks, his jeans, and started trudging in. Remember how he yelled? I thought it was the cold at first, but he was just that eager. 

By the time we got to the water’s edge, he was already twenty feet out, waving and shouting at us to hurry up. You started taking your shoes and socks and jeans off. I didn’t want to, but you said, “Nobody’s sitting in my car with a wet arse!” 

Mark laughed at our skinny legs and splashed frigid water at us as we waded out to him.

“Well?” You roared. “What are we bloody waiting for?”

Do you remember?

Remember how we stood there, in the dark, in the freezing water, silent with our hands on Mark’s shoulders, shivering?

I remember looking up to the sky to see if God was there with us. 

The stars were there, and the moon, and the grey branches hanging over the water like extra hands reaching down toward Mark’s shoulders. 

No shooting stars. No bright tear in the night sky. No signs. But I knew God was there with us. I could feel it. 

I swear I felt it. 

And then, one day, so many years later, I didn’t. 

It had been everything to us: The Church. Our rocks, our sea, our soil. Our roots grew deep and drank from its almighty aquifers. Its vines tangled themselves through us, winding into veins, strangling synapses. 

Years it took me to untangle them, vine by guilt-filled vine, thorn by wrist-piercing thorn. At first, the loss, the loneliness, the separation in those early days and years choked me. I was a tree who had lost a limb; no... a fallen limb without its tree.

We held on to Mark. Then you prayed. 

You said, “Life without Jesus is like a right plain boring salad with no toppings, but life with Jesus is like a great big salad with croutons and shredded cheese and bacon bits, drenched with loads of creamy salad dressing.” 

You always said that—the salad dressing thing. It was so stupid. So perfect. 

We held Mark by the shoulders, dipped him under the black surface of the water, and when we heaved him back up, he had that look on his face, like a baby seeing his mother for the first time. 

He and the bald, white face of the moon beamed at each other through a gap in the gathering clouds. We all looked at one another, wiping our eyes, swapping tears for drops of frigid, holy, murky lake water. In that moment we all knew that it had worked. He was born again. Brand new. Saved. 

I can’t get back there to that feeling now. The journals, the poems, the unripe emotional scribblings of a young zealot are long since lost or tossed away. It didn’t take you long into adulthood to fully untangle. For me it took years. Loss slowly eased into something like freedom. Fallen limbs found fresh soil. 

Are you happy you moved on? I am. I really am. 

Then some days—days like today—it comes back. A nostalgia for the good bits. For those kids freezing in the water. For each other.

Mark was cold and shaking, but that smile on his face said it all. He was a new person. Spotless. Clean. Without sin. Brand-fucking-new. 

He said that moment, there with the two of us, was the happiest he’d ever been.

Remember?

We hugged him. The cold wet from Mark’s shirt soaked its way into ours, and our love for him rippled out into the moonlit water. We leaned our heads in, pressed them against Mark’s, and prayed and cried. 

You looked at me, and I nodded at you, and you grabbed the neck of my shirt. 

“Loads of creamy salad dressing, man.”

And God was there with us in the water. I felt it like a warm blanket.

What was that? 

That feeling. That connection. I remember feeling it all over again, hearing it in Mark’s voice in his car the next day. I could have sat and listened to his mixed tape all day. When he dropped me back at my house, he prayed for me. And then for you. “God’s Will,” he called you. He thanked God for us, for our friendship, for Jesus, that he had been saved. 

Saved... That word is a lifetime away from me now. We were kids. We were kids when they told us we were destined for Hell, that eternal pain and separation from God was inevitable...unless we were saved. 

That night we, the saved, dedicated to the cause of bringing every last living soul to Christ, brought Mark, marked at birth, the chosen recipient of God’s grace—to be delivered through our cold, wrinkled hands—into our world of love and fear, of safety and confinement, of power and powerlessness: The Church.

I wonder if Mark stuck with it. I hope he was able to hold onto his faith even when you and I couldn’t.  

As we poured our bodies into your car, my eyes surveyed the skies, the lake, the specters of faraway trees, for a sign, for something. There was nothing.

Though it did begin to rain midway through our soggy drive home. Not a proper downfall, but a misty drip of tears, a dusting of water so light its only real effect was to force us to roll up the windows. I did wonder, on our night of joy and newness and wide-open possibilities, why God could not have either just let it rain or have held the sky open for us a bit longer. 

We hadn’t brought any towels, so the drive was cold. Mark didn’t say a word the whole way home. He sat staring through a haze of euphoria, and then ahead through the windshield, past the spectral trees into a bright, unseen future, smiling like a kid. 

I’ll never forget that night, Will. I’ll never forget Mark. It’s been years since I last spoke to him. We lost touch somewhere along the way.

I don’t think I’ll make it to his funeral. Family and work stuff.

I hate that. 

Couldn’t believe it when I heard he’d gone. Took me back to that night when he was so happy that his friends were there to help him wash away his sins, to watch him be made new. 

Do you think it worked? 

I hope it worked. 

I know I don’t believe any of it anymore, but right now, today, for Mark’s sake, I really fucking hope I’m wrong.

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