Pierce thought of writing a footnote; then decided not. He was on a quest, in these pages of his book, for evidence that once the world was not as it is now; any little fact or tale, trivial but incontrovertible, that would fire the hearts of his readers with wild certainty, or tease them at least with possibility. He hadn’t promised, hadn’t exactly promised, that any single one he retailed might not vanish even as it was proffered, in fact it was implied in his philosophy that it must. But it was not for him to underscore his own paradoxes. Qui non intellegit, aut taceat aut discat: if you don’t get it, shut up or go figure.
“Now it may be,” he typed, “that every other recorded instance of gold made by fire—there are hundreds of them, almost all seeming to be variants on a few themes, like old comedy plots—maybe every one is false, the product of mendacity or wishful thinking or the accumulating errors of multiple transmission, history’s game of Telephone that always pushes anecdotes toward clarity, wonder, or exemplum. Maybe this is the one and only real one we know about, the only one that slipped through that baffle of advancing Time that falsified all the others, to reach us like Job’s servant out of the wreckage of the former world: I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”
He rested, gratified and guilty.
Pierce thought of the readers for whom he wrote as of three kinds. There were, first, all those who were expecting some sweeping and final change in the ways of the world, had been expecting it ever since a sort of imaginary revolution had, a few years back, seemed to spread nationwide, worldwide; sometimes (like the heretic Franciscans of old) these took to living as though the old world had already ended, and the new one begun. In the hills around here were tribes and family groups of them, inhabiting old farms and living in caves and tree houses; books like the one he planned were about all the reading they had. Then there were the young, a large contingent, whom Pierce pictured standing just at that crossroads in time to which the young always come, where they are certain, sure certain, that they are to see and maybe to bring about a world different from the world they were born into. He remembered his own certainty. And, lastly, there was the permanent and irreducible rump of hopers who can be found in any age, those who feel Becoming almost as though by a sixth sense or a genetic endowment, always reading the signs, never bored or discouraged, atremble lifelong with the approach of the next thing.
To this (potentially) large readership Pierce was going to show a New Age that they would be the first to notice dawning, one they might themselves help to make. He was going speculate that maybe there have been many of these Ages, some short, some long, some we all can recognize on looking back, and some not. The last one, the one before this one, would have ended somewhere about the time Helvetius opened his door to the man in the snowy boots. The succeeding age was ending now, now when Pierce wrote about it, now when he summoned his readers to hear about it. And as this world passed (as it did seem to be passing, Pierce had a file drawer stuffed with tear sheets from newspapers and journals, impossibilities that could not be accounted for, holes in Big Science’s increasingly leaky roof—so he thought of them) we would find or make up new Laws, and on them build a world of a different kind: in fact, as Pierce would explain, the finding and the building were the new world.
Did he believe it himself? No, he didn’t, not entirely, not yet. In the (actually rare) moments when he fully grasped what he was indeed saying, he would often stop writing and stand in mute awe before his own impertinence, or laugh hugely, or quit work for the day, wary and afraid. No, it actually seemed to him that those first shudders of the coming age that so many perceived had in fact passed and left the world the same; there had come no irreversible disasters really, no salvations either; the roads still ran where they had run; life was mostly hard work, and all the odds remained unchanged.
Which didn’t mean that he didn’t share with his readers the longing, whatever its source or name, that the future would be of a different order than the past; that everything lost could return renewed; that the age to which he belonged was not this one, but lay far behind this one, or just ahead. He could not have thought up this thing, whatever it was, if he did not. What Pierce assumed, though—what he would perhaps at the very end of his book conclude, what he planned to conclude—was that this longing or hope, real and effective as it was and in the past had been, belonged to the things inside and not to the things outside: that outside remains about as it always has, but that, inside, World-Ages are always failing and being renewed; that no life ends without its share of such upheavals; that any moment will be, for some hearts, the twilight of Minerva’s owl. In the end it was to be a fable, of general application; a truth about human nature more than about history.
De te fabula.
In that way he could sell his book no matter what befell the world.
Like the brilliant boy he had known at St. Guinefort’s, his school, who had shuffled a deck of cards before him and asked what his favorite card was; and when Pierce had answered (rather at random) that it was the jack of diamonds, the boy had laid the deck facedown on his bed in rows, then allowed Pierce to take away what cards he chose in an elaborate ritual, ending up with but one lone card on the bed; much hesitation and mysterioso, perhaps this hasn’t worked, then he turned over the card and it was indeed the chosen jack; and only long after did the boy show Pierce the deck he’d used, all jacks of diamonds. Pierce asked what he would have done if Pierce had named, say, the queen of hearts? I’d have put the cards away, the boy said; but almost everybody names the jack of diamonds.
It was noon, and Pierce pulled from the wickerwork étagère beside him (it shared the patio with his desk and chair and a glider upholstered in striped canvas) a bottle of Scotch, and poured an inch into a glass.
At The Woods Center for Psychotherapy the parking lot was crowded with the station wagons and cars, many nice ones, of the parents and spouses who had arrived to take the residents (never “patients”) back to the lives from which they had escaped or been ejected to come here. The now ex-residents piled portable stereos and boxes of books and records and green rucksacks into the backs or trunks of Foxes and Jaguars, or watched their parents do it; among some family bands the tension was already mounting as Rose Ryder passed by. Up at the open flagged entrance of the shingled main building, once a family resort (some residents called it the Next-to-Last Resort), staff members were parting from those who had graduated from the program, some of whom were in tears, others sprightly and gay, all better now. Rose had to stop several times to give hugs and get them, her hurry imparting a horrid insincerity to the farewells she tried to get over with quick. Well heyee. Now you write, okayee? Hey I’m sure it’s gonna be great.
Away and upward then on the staircase that climbed up within the Tower on the building’s sunset side to the Lookout on the top, a broad room once an open terrace and now screened and glassed. Way late. She went up, over, up again, over again around the four sides of the structure, leaving earth. A spiral: coming at each floor to the same place again, only higher.
She stopped. She listened for voices above. She could see that the door to the Lookout was closed. If you can’t make it this morning just don’t bother coming in at all anymore: Mike used to pretend to be able to say such things with calm force but now suddenly he really could. And he had learned up there.
She circled upward, circling what she feared. Easy enough to say she had just forgot, and then to forget she had not really forgotten. And Mike would let it go, let her go.
She could hear a voice now through the door at the top of the stairs, Ray Honeybeare’s, speaking softly. She pressed her cheek against the door, smelling its odor of pine and varnish, and tried to hear words; waited for a pause within which she could open the door; waited for what drew her to overcome what pushed her away.
She opened the door and slipped in, gaze lowered. Among those cross-legged on the floor was Mike, and he patted the place next to him, smiling. Ray Honeybeare sat on the edge of a tiny fiberg
lass chair, leaning forward, his hugeness balanced with remarkable delicacy there. He saw Rose, he definitely took notice of her, but made no sign, and did not pause.
“So I’m not going to speculate about the end,” he was saying, “or about God’s plans for the future of this world. And I don’t particularly want to hear about your speculations either. But I know this: I know that the time we’re passing through right now is a time unlike any other. A time full of possibility, for good or evil. A time when God’s kingdom comes very close to our old earth, maybe not to arrive for good, maybe just to give us a glimpse. A time when some dreadful evil’s being done too, a time of contention between God and the Devil, when the Devil sees his chance to make big gains and is doing his damnedest—yes, his damnedest!—to take that opportunity.”
Rose lifted her eyes to Ray, a shy smile, in case his eyes met hers. They did. She felt weirdly penetrated, though his smile was kind. He was big, both tall and heavy, and old, though just how old was hard to guess; his face was a network of fine cracks, as though it had been shattered once to fragments and glued patiently back together, and his features were small in its expanse: delicately winged nose, thin small mouth, very small nearly browless eyes of icicle blue. They did what eyes she read about in books often did but which she had not actually observed till she saw Ray’s: they twinkled. Glittered lightly as though faceted and catching the light when his big head turned.
“And what role in this do we have? What are we as workers in the mental health field supposed to be doing in these days, what’s going to be our function and our job? Well, let’s open this book we have and do some reading.”
He plucked with a practiced gesture a black leatherback from the baggy briefcase at his feet and opened it. Rose saw that it was stuffed with paper markers and place-holders of different colors. “Luke ten,” he said. Many of the others opened similar books, and around her there was an autumnal rustle of leaves turned. She remembered now that Mike had told her to bring a Bible (New Testament) and she clasped her empty hands.
Ray Honeybeare cleared his throat. “Here Jesus sends out seventy of his disciples to go on ahead of him through the world, two by two. Seventy people, that’s a lot. And he says he is sending them out as laborers to the harvest, but he also says, doesn’t he, that he is sending them out as lambs in the midst of wolves. And he tells them that where they are rejected, they should shake even the dust of those towns from their feet, and they should make it clear that the kingdom of God has come near and that there will be some stiff judgments made against those places; but where they are well received, he says, they are to heal the sick.
“Now there is no doubt they did so, as Jesus did; and how exactly did they do so? Well, when they return, what they say to Jesus, the first thing they say, is—let’s look, ten seventeen—‘Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.’”
He looked over them, having clinched his argument (so his face and eyes said) and waiting for them to catch on or up.
“The demons,” he said again softly. “Even the demons.” He read: “‘And he said unto them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall hurt you.’”
Now there could be no mistake, his eyes said, and they were silent before him, getting it or maybe not getting it, and he spoke with sudden force (Rose started a little in surprise or guilt): “They were healing the sick by ordering out the demons that were inside those people. That is what they were told to do, and that is why they were called laborers in the harvest and at the same time sheep among wolves. That’s why they came back and said—they didn’t say, Lord we laid hands on these people or Lord we gave these people a pill or Lord we put these people through the talking cure like you told us. They said that the demons of illness are subject to us in your name. And Jesus told them they can drive those spirits out, and the Enemy will not be able to hurt them. That’s it.”
He closed the book but did not put it down. “Now I’ve said this before and I will say it again. There is sickness and unhappiness around you, all around you here in this place and in other places you might go into on a daily basis. And you’ve heard me talk about how you can have this power against illness and suffering. And in order for you to have this power it’s first needful for you to assent to one thing. One thing. You have to believe that this is now.”
He held the book before them.
“You have to believe that this is now, just as much as it was then, and that the kingdom of God has come near. That’s all. If you believe that this is now, you will know who it is that’s being spoken to on every page and every line of this old book, and what you are being promised, and what you are commanded to do.”
5
Only after she had crossed the bridge at Fair Prospect over the misty river did Rosie Rasmussen remember that she had promised Mike that she would call this morning, so he could talk to Sam before they left. Too late now. She drove on toward Cascadia and the interstate; Sam in the back seat played with the furnishings, turning on and off the reading lights, opening and closing the never-used ashtrays, and Rosie replayed her last talk with Mike: made more clear what she had meant, listened more closely to him; sometimes altered, in her replaying, what he had said, and what she had answered.
Mike—Mike had said—didn’t really want to press for custody. Yes he had had his bantam lawyer make that call, but actually all he wanted from it was to get Rosie’s attention. He needed to talk, about him and her and Sam, and it was important she hear him out. So many things were clear to him now, so many things that weren’t clear before.
Like what things, for instance?
For instance (and here he moved his hand toward her across the stone table where they sat, a table on whose surface a chessboard was inlaid, beside a path up at The Woods) for instance that in many ways he had been a real shit where she was concerned. He couldn’t have said that or even thought that a while ago and now he could.
And his eyes were big and clear in a way she had not seen before, and she said nothing though a couple of smart things had occurred to her then and more now.
He’d come to see, he said, that a lot of what had happened between them had been his fault. He’d been very stupid; he laughed, shamefaced, and shook his round head to think of it, how stupid he’d been. He noticed and picked up a fallen maple leaf (why should she remember these details, the whole interview had a psychedelic clarity in her memory, what was she supposed to have learned or done there?) and spun it by its stem and watched it flail. He wanted to have her back, and Sam. That’s what he wanted to talk about.
She said nothing then, abashed by this, but now she wanted to say Stupid how, Mike? Stupid about exactly what? What if it really didn’t have all that much to do with you, Mike, no matter how stupid you’d been? What if it had to do just with me? What if, Mike, I just stupidly wanted to do what I wanted?
“Mom, I have to go pee.”
“No you don’t, hon. We just went.”
“I do.”
“Okay. I’ll start looking for a place.”
You can’t do all this alone, he’d said, you can’t face it all alone. You shouldn’t have to. This was when she described to him the appointment she was headed for today, when she told him about the stuff the hospital sent, the booklet about Epilepsy and You she had read or tried to read. He regarded her closely and nodded attentively but couldn’t hide the fact that he had slipped away; it wasn’t doctors and medicine he meant or wanted to talk about.
Sam had always been fine with him, he said. Thank God. Always fine here with him. And he was sure, absolutely sure, she was going to be all right.
And he smiled, not exactly triumphantly, but with a kind of self-satisfaction that was surely intended to pass as reassurance but which instead started Rosie’s deepest apprehensions, so deep she could not have said then and almost could not say now, even to herself, what she felt: that i
ndeed he had changed, that he had actually been replaced altogether; that when he smiled that way his eyeteeth gave him away, so that she knew he meant not to cherish his daughter, if she were his again, but to eat her.
“Whoops, Mom, too late.”
“Oh Sam!”
“I was kidding!” Sam shrieked, delighted.
“Oh you. Oh you little.”
“Oh you big.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have to face it all alone, whether she was able to or not. She didn’t want to, either. But she wasn’t going to let Mike back into her life or heart or bed just so she wouldn’t be alone.
Brent Spofford had never said that aloud to her in all their talks about Sam—had never said that she shouldn’t have to face it all alone, that she didn’t need to. He had only and completely offered her and Sam all he had and could do. And yet he’d put the question anyway, and her answer to him was the same.
The occult and back-end ways we get into cities now. Once we rolled into the great railroad stations built at the hearts of them, and after an expectant passage underground, came right out into the teem and noise. Rosie cycled the freeways that were knotted around Conurbana center, unable to break in; when she chose one likely looking exit she was only sent out again along the bypass meant to help you avoid the city altogether; dove finally at random into a blank warehouse district, the city towers falling out of sight as she went down, like a fairy city vanishing.
Now that she had departed from her mimeoed instructions she had no landmarks to look for. Her childhood memories of this city did not contain hints for moving around in it, only glamorous or sinister tableaus, unconnected as dreams. A chess set of ivory and red jade in the chock-full window of an antique store. The glass-bead curtain of a Chinese restaurant cocktail lounge, and the smell of her mother’s Drambuie. The noisome toilet of an overheated children’s theater where one Christmas a bright and loud production of Little Red Riding Hood had made her ill.