The Names of Lesser-Known Gods

I tried to focus on the piercing beeps of the Tesco self-checkout tills behind me. But the bleached lights overhead combined with the note of discomfort in the cashier’s voice held me prisoner in the here and now.

My dad leaned forward, eager. “So, when you get a taxi home after, say, a night out in town, is it easier or harder than for other people?”

The cashier – a girl who I’m pretty sure had been in my year at school – screwed up her nose, freckles twisting across her skin. “I just use Uber.”

“Well then, do you find that the drivers accept your ride quicker than they do your friends?”

The girl shot me a look, a mix between ‘control your parent’, and ‘you look as weird as your parent’.

I tried to align myself with the first option. “Dad, stop. Seriously. Let’s go.”

Irritation flashed across Dad’s face. “Tom – just give the young lady a chance to respond.”

I wished the ground would swallow me.

“No. I don’t think they do,” she said. “Your total is £25.50. Will that be all today?”

Fumbling, Dad got his card out of his decaying leather wallet.

“Just one last question – are your parents pilots, or perhaps bus drivers?”

“Sorry, why do you want to know about my mum and dad?” She glanced beyond us, towards the aisles, as if confirming that a colleague was nearby. How could Dad not see how fucking creepy he was coming across? I hated him in that moment, and I hated myself, too, a generic self-hate – a whole-body feeling.

“No, no, nothing strange,” Dad pushed his glasses up on his nose. “I’ve been researching families in the area and yours came up.”

“What the fuck.” Her hand lifted from our carton of almond milk, as if touching anything of ours would infect her with whatever was wrong with us.

“Dad, for god’s sake, just pay.”

He seemed to finally clock the awkwardness thick in the air.

“Ah. Oh dear. Of course.”

His card got declined.

I grabbed my wallet and handed over cash, instead. That was half of yesterday’s pay for my shift at the pub, gone already. Another setback in my goal to save up and move out.

Clickbaity articles on social media said it wasn’t so bad to live with your parents when you were nineteen, these days. But they didn’t live with my parent.

I didn’t speak all the way home.

###

That evening, the phone rang. I told Dad to get rid of the landline ages ago, said nobody had one anymore, but he insisted on keeping it. He leaped up from the couch with all the energy of a Labrador puppy and rushed to it.

“Yes, this is he,” he said.

I tried not to listen, to focus on my microwave lasagne dinner, instead.

“Ah yes, I apologise. I wasn’t expressing an unhealthy interest in your family—”

He was.

“—but you see, I’m a researcher – ”

He wasn’t.

“—and your sister came up in my reading.”

I shut my eyes tight against the cringey shame that welled in my stomach.

“Oh… you do?” Excitement lit Dad’s voice. “Fantastic. Fantastic! May I suggest that we arrange a meeting next week? You can show me.”

God. I groaned and slumped down into the couch, the plastic lasagne package hot on my lap.

Dad bounded back into the living room. His bushy eyebrows were raised and a wild grin lit up his face.

“Tom, it wasn’t Anna Larsen, that cashier, who I was looking for! It was her brother! He just called.”

I pretended not to hear him. Dad grabbed a massive tome – that fucking book – from the bookshelf and practically ran to the rickety little table in the corner. The book had a brown leather cover and he’d hand-etched its title:

The Names of Lesser-Known Gods

by David K. Johnson

“Leo Larsen, God of Taxi Drivers.” Dad swivelled in his chair. “Descendant of the Norse god Meili. Meili means mile-stepper and he is considered to be the God of Travel.”

Yep. Dad had a book full of names of people he thought were descended from the old gods. Which religion? It didn’t matter. All of them, he figured.

He worked at the local library, but he hardly helped anyone with their actual book requests. Instead, he spent hours tracing the lineages of families from Greece, India, Italy, Mexico, Kenya – anyone he could get records of.

And now here he was, peering at me expectantly, once again failing to read the room. But it was just me and him. I couldn’t ignore him.

“So you think this guy is the God of Taxi Drivers because he called and said he has great luck catching taxis?”

It looked like Dad was on the verge of joyful tears. “No, Tom. He is a taxi driver.”

I leaned my head back against the tattered old sofa. “What can he actually do?”

“I’m not sure of the details. But well, you know what they can do.”

He was right, actually. He’d invited a huge cast of weirdos to our house over the years – and what could they do? Well there was the God of Spam Emails, who crashed my phone with literally hundreds of spam emails from shitty companies all around the world in 30 seconds.

Then there was the God of Forgotten Dreams, who touched my hand and instantly flooded my mind with every nonsensical dream I’d ever had. And who could forget the God of Empty Fridges? She’d multiplied the sad, wilting coriander leaf on our shelf into five sad and wilted coriander leaves. That was it. She couldn’t do it with a full fridge.

“They’re just shitty half-superheroes. People with no actual power. If my fingernails grew super-fast, would you call me the God of Keratin? No.”

“They’re not superheroes, Tom. They’re descended from actual gods. Yes, the bloodlines have been diluted over the centuries, but the Norse god of Journeying, his descendants have now become the gods of taxi drivers, train carriages, hitchhikers. That’s still beautiful. It’s still… profound!”

Maybe for him. For me, it was just more proof that life really was shit. We got shit shifts at work, shit food to eat, and shit gods to preside over it all.

Mum had thought the same. And when a saner and more normal guy had come along, she took the first chance she could to jump ship. I didn’t blame her. I just wish she hadn’t left me here, too.

I asked Dad what he even wanted to do with The Names of Lesser-Known Gods. He said host a yearly convention. I left the room.

###

The next day, I walked home slowly from my shift at the pub, pulling the leaves off hedges here and there and letting them fall to the pavement, like a trail of green breadcrumbs.

I was frantically trying not to imagine our old car being transformed into a taxi, though that would have potentially been an upgrade. As I turned onto our road, I could have sworn more taxis passed me than usual. I shook my head. Dad said the Larsen guy wasn’t coming ‘til next week.

A twist of guilt corkscrewed through my gut as I remembered our argument from last night. I wasn’t an idiot. I’d picked up a few books in my life, even spoke to the school psychologist once. I knew it wasn’t really his fault that mum left. She’d married a quirky guy and then his quirkiness eventually became too much for her. But if I wasn’t angry at him, who was I angry at? I pulled my phone out of my pocket and blasted music for the rest of the walk home.

As soon as I walked in the door, I heard a stranger’s voice floating down the hallway from the kitchen. Again. An old woman, from the sounds of it. Another “god”. I remembered now; Dad had arranged everything on the phone with her last week, and she’d taken the train down from Chester. I tried to avoid them, go straight up to my room, but Dad called out.

“Tom! Come meet our guest!”

And maybe it was because of that guilty feeling, I don’t know, but I slouched down the stairs without argument.

Dad stood in our faded and battered little kitchen with a short old woman. Her grey hair was a long braid down her back, and her silver jewellery flashed in the dull afternoon light.

“Meet Rani. God of Thin Frost, descended from Indra, Hindu God of Weather.”

Rani’s wrinkled face collapsed into a warm smile. “A pleasure to meet you, dear,” she said.

“Nice to meet you too,” I lied.

“So, Rani,” said Dad, “please, go ahead.”

The old woman took a step back and raised her hands. Thin frost, Dad said – I wondered if the grass outside was going to get marginally more crunchy and cold. I held in a sigh.

Rani swept her hands up in a great arc. A layer of frost bloomed across our kitchen. Swirls of silver flowed along the sink and the cupboards shone like diamond. The checkered linoleum flooring misted like an ice rink. My breath fogged, and I ran my fingers along the countertop, leaving a line. I smiled.

And Dad – he was covered in a dusting of thin frost, twinkling through his hair and clothes.

Years ago, he and mum had taken me to the winter wonderland in town at Christmas for the first time. Snow had fallen and caught in everyone’s hair. Our noses red from the cold, mum got us hot chocolate and we huddled together, laughing.

And then it disappeared. The house returned to its natural state. Rani lowered her arms, looking around the kitchen with a proud smile on her wrinkled face.

“That was beautiful,” I said. And I meant it.

###

Dad let me stay in my room when the God of Taxis came over the following week. I guessed it was a peace offering, a reward for good behaviour when Rani had been here. We’d sat together all evening as Dad eagerly asked her questions about her powers and heritage, scribbling her answers on a notepad to be carefully written up in The Names of Lesser Known Gods later.

Now, I lay on my bed scrolling aimlessly, the harsh portal of light making my eyes sting. I heard, presumably, Leo Larsen come in, loudly proclaiming “y’alright mate?” as he slammed the back door shut.

What would his power be? Maybe he had an in-built GPS of every road on Earth. That would be quite cool. Or, maybe he literally couldn’t get into accidents, no matter how bad he drove. Or, he could summon a taxi no matter where he was – even in the middle of a desert.

Whatever his power, it wouldn’t be as nice as Rani’s frost, though.

A loud bang from downstairs interrupted my thoughts, quickly followed by the screech of a car. I leaped up and rushed downstairs in my pyjamas.

Dad lay on the linoleum kitchen floor, his lip bleeding. I grabbed him by the elbows and helped him up, looking around, frantic. The back door was wide open.

“I don’t think he’s the God of Taxis,” Dad coughed.

“Wha— what do you mean?”

“It would seem…” Dad wiped his lip, his eyes down, “he might be the God of Getaway Cars.”

I noticed then the glaring emptiness of the kitchen counter, where my wallet had been. Dad usually kept his there, too. Both gone.

“For fucks sake, Dad.”

Rage bit at my stomach, making me sick. I followed Dad into the living room and stood over him as he lowered himself down onto the couch.

“I’ve been telling you to stop for years.”

He shook his head. “I know, Tom. But… it’s my life’s work, I can’t.”

“You’ve been inviting complete randos into our house for years now. It’s a miracle this hasn’t happened before.”

“It’s not,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“I said, it’s not a miracle. The God of Petty Theft covered us all in protection a few years ago. I hope she’s ok – I’m not sure why it’d wear off like this.”

“Do. You. Hear. Yourself.”

“Well, yes. You know it’s real, Tom, why would you take issue with a protective gesture from a god?” He wiped his lip again.

“These freaks can do some weird shit, but putting the whole family’s safety in the hands of some woman’s ‘protection spell’ and expecting it to work against an endless line up of strangers over the years is insane. When will you wake up? You lost mum and you’ve fucked up my life, too.”

He stiffened. “I’m sorry you seem incapable of seeing the magic in the world, Tom. That’s very sad.”

“Magic? Don’t lie to me as well as yourself. I know why you trawl through those documents all day. Why you waste hours and hurt your eyes, and obsess over every detail. It’s because you want, more than anything, to trace a finger along a faded family tree and to land on your own name. To have definitive proof that you are special. Not a failure.” He slumped into the couch, but I couldn’t stop. “Well, guess what, Dad? You failed at that, too.”

I stormed out.

Much later, I crept into the kitchen, where Dad was making a cup of tea, his lip crusted over. I’d frozen my bank cards using the app on my phone. He’d called the bank and blocked his, too. We’d lost about £100 cash between us.

I apologised. He said it was ok. But it wasn’t, really. We both knew it.

###

Over the next few weeks, I got what I wanted. Dad started acting normal, going to work at the library and actually doing his job. No more strangers came over to our house.

The God of Lost Small Things didn’t show up with the key to my childhood bike lock. The God of Unread Books didn’t leave a gift of some old text on Dad’s desk. The God of Market Stalls didn’t tell us where to get the nicest bread in town.

And most of all, the light didn’t come back into Dad’s eyes.

Work, eat, sleep.

Months passed this way, for both of us. Despite myself, despite getting exactly what I wanted, I wasn’t happy. I saved up enough working at the pub for a deposit to rent my own place, but I didn’t move out.

One night, I took Dad’s chicken and potatoes out of the microwave and brought it to him, where he sat hunched over the battered table, updating his resume on my laptop.

I sat down at the table opposite him and pulled out my phone.

I opened my email app, tapped on ‘Sent Emails’ and held the screen up to Dad. He tipped his head and then took the phone.

Subject: The Convention of Lesser-Known Gods

To: mailing list: lesser-known-gods

Hi all,

If you are reading this email, I found your name in The Names of Lesser-Known Gods, by David Johnson.

I am pleased to invite you to the very first Convention of Lesser-Known Gods. This will be a great opportunity to meet other lesser-known gods and bring a bit of magic into the week.

Where? Our place – you’ve been here before.

When? This time next week.

Looking forward to seeing you all here.

Thanks,

Tom Johnson

Dad looked up at me, the phone screen reflecting the light in his eyes.