Faithless: Tales of Transgression

by Joyce Carol Oates

  What the hell can I tell my wife, who loves me, and whom I love, that when she woke me up I was crouched in the dark outside some house I’ve never seen before, in some place I’d never been, peeking at a woman inside the house through a long-range rifle scope? A woman who’s a total stranger to me? And my finger on the trigger of the rifle? Me, Harrison Healy, who’s never even touched a gun in his life, let alone aimed it at another human being?

  3

  I NEVER ASKED for such knowledge, God knows. It was my cousin Rafe spilled it into me the way you’d tip something poisonous into a stream.

  There I was at the county courthouse. Kind of anxious and self-conscious, first time I’d been summoned for jury duty in my life. And practically the first person I see in this big drafty windowless room in the basement where we’re told to wait is my cousin Rafe. Rafe Healy. Who’s two years younger than me, at least three inches taller, and thirty pounds heavier—a tall, husky, sort of shuffling man in overalls, a gingery beard and thinning hair sticking up around his head so he looks like (my wife used to say when we saw Rafe, which hasn’t been lately) an accident getting ready to happen. Rafe commands attention in any situation because of his height and girth and his mode of dress and that look in his face like a beacon turned on high—his pebbly eyes sort of shining out. He’s always looked younger than his age, even with that scruffy beard and hair and the hard-drinking life he’s led. And the drugs. Rafe’s an artist, you’d have to call him, he does clay pots, ceramics, latch hook rugs and quilts. He’s been written up in magazines and has had exhibits in museums, even in New York. You don’t think of a man making quilts but Rafe Healy is said to be one of the leading quilters in the United States. Nobody in the family knows what to make of him. Mostly, the family is sort of embarrassed. You could be switching TV channels seeing what’s on and there on PBS there’s Rafe Healy’s broad earnest sunburned face; he’s being interviewed standing in front of a quilt that looks like a constellation in the night sky, saying something weird like, I need to talk to myself when I’m working. Otherwise I’d disappear into my hands, I’d cease to exist. My wife disapproves of Rafe for a number of reasons and I can’t argue she’s wrong. Mainly it has to do with Rafe and drugs. Maybe ten, twelve years ago we were on friendly terms and we’d have Rafe over for dinner and he’d think nothing of taking out a pipe, smoking some sweetish-stale-smelling weed right in our living room, and looking surprised when Rosalind got upset and told him to put it out. Another time he showed up for dinner bringing a woman with him, an Amazon-type “sculptress” in soiled overalls just like Rafe’s, loud and sassy. You just don’t behave that way if you have any manners, Rosalind says. She’s possibly a little jealous of Rafe and me, for we’d grown up like brothers when Rafe’s father who was my dad’s younger brother was killed (in a car crash) and Rafe’s mother wasn’t well enough (mentally) to keep him so he came to live, aged four, with my family. I was older than Rafe and so felt protective of him until he passed me by physically and in other ways, already in junior high school. And in high school he ran with a wild crowd, had a reputation for being hot-tempered and already a drinker, quick to get into fights. Nobody would’ve figured him for an artist in those years, except that Rafe always had a strange imagination, a sort of impassioned exaggerated attitude, as likely to burst into tears if something made him sad as he was to lash out with his fists, face boiling up like a tomato ready to burst, if something made him angry. By sixteen he’d been arrested more than once for brawling, usually with older guys in some tavern or another, and my parents couldn’t handle him though they loved him, we all loved him—it was just that Rafe was too much for any ordinary family to deal with. So he moved out. Left town. Bummed around for years, up into Canada, Alaska, Oregon, and California and back to the East and somehow he wins a scholarship to the Shenandoah School of the Arts, in Virginia, when he hadn’t even graduated from high school!—so that was a real surprise, and nobody in the family knew how to take it except possibly me. I told Rafe when he visited I was proud of him and Rafe said, I remember his words, clear as if he’d uttered them just yesterday and not twenty years ago, “Hell, pride’s a risky thing. It ‘goeth before a fall.’ “ And he glowered at me as if I’d said the wrong thing, making him think worried thoughts.

  The past fifteen years or so, Rafe’s been living just outside town. On a run-down forty-acre farm, beautiful hilly countryside we’ve been told (we’ve never visited), with people coming and going, fellow artists, so it’s said that Rafe Healy is living in some sort of hippie-style commune, which I frankly doubt—Rafe was never one to tolerate anybody’s bullshit. He’s a hard worker, maybe a little obsessed. For an artist, as I see it, is one who works nonstop—nobody’s paying him for an eight-hour day. You’d have to be a little crazy to work so hard, or maybe it’s the hard work that makes you a little crazy. What’s sad is that I’m living in town, a half-hour’s drive from Rafe’s place, and we never see each other, who’d once been so close. About five years ago there was a TV documentary about the famous West Virginia artist Carlin Ritchie who had some sort of wasting disease, and it was a surprise to see my cousin Rafe included in a segment on Ritchie’s generation of “crafts” artists, and to see that Rafe was apparently a friend of Ritchie’s; they’d all been at the Shenandoah School together. It made me a little dazed to think of something you could call “history” (if only “art history”) and Rafe Healy included in it (if only in a brief segment). I called for Rosalind to come and see this on TV, but by the time she got there the part about Rafe was over. I said, “I don’t care what you think of Rafe, I’m proud of him. He’s my cousin.” And Rosalind who’s got this sweet, prim little face and placid eyes but never misses a beat says, “Makes no difference whose cousin he is. Even if he was mine. He’s a loose, careless, dangerous man of no true morals and he isn’t welcome in this house, if that’s what you’re edging toward.” And back in April, just this year, there was Rafe Healy honored at the White House! And this is on network TV, and a big spread on the front page of our local paper so Rosalind, like everybody else in the vicinity, can’t ignore it. But she says, “There were fifty other ‘artists’ honored at the ceremony, it couldn’t have been too selective. Don’t tell me there are fifty great artists like Rembrandt or Picasso living in the United States at one time. And there’s absolutely no morals at the White House. So Rafe Healy would fit in just fine.” I can’t argue my wife is wrong but a few weeks ago for her birthday I brought home a sea-green ceramic bowl purchased at a crafts store in town, she’s blinking back tears lifting it from the wrapping paper saying, “Oh, Harrison—I never saw anything so beautiful.” And she looks at me surprised like I could select something so beautiful for her, and kisses me. How many times she’s admired this bowl, and showed it off to visitors, and examined it, running her fingers over the potter’s initials on the bottom, r.h., she’s never caught on whose work it is. And I’m surely never going to tell her.

  All this was passing swiftly through my head when I saw Rafe in the jury selection room, a big tall fattish man with gingery hair and beard, bib overalls splattered with what looked like paint or manure, and the other potential jurors, and the brisk efficient ladies who run the jury selection, looking at him as though he’s either a freak or somebody of local renown, or both. He’d sighted me, and came excitedly over to me, shaking my hand so hard I couldn’t help wincing, and if I hadn’t blocked him he would’ve hugged me, cracking a rib or two, with everybody in the room gaping at us. Rafe was so happy to see me he was practically crying. His big bulgy pebble-colored eyes shining with tears. We went out into the corridor and before we’d even exchanged greetings, caught up on news, Rafe was leading me out of earshot of others, puffing hard, saying, “Oh, Jesus. Harrison. This place is like a prison. A morgue. I’m scared here. It’s a bad sign I’m here. I don’t want to be here.” I said, “Well, I don’t want to be here, either. Nobody does. It’s called ‘jury duty.’ ” Rafe just kept on, in a voice more hoarse and cra
cked than I remembered, but in that same intense manner, as if he’s in his head so much, and you’re inside his head, too, so he doesn’t need to listen to anything you might actually say, “Harrison, listen. I was up all night. My brain is about to explode. I need to work, I need to use my hands—I work in the morning from six-thirty till noon and I couldn’t work this morning worrying about coming here, I didn’t even know if I could find the courthouse, it’s not even 9 A.M. and we have to be here until 5 P.M. and I’m scared I’m going to explode, all week it’s going to be like this, and if I’m seated on a jury it could be longer, I’m not a man who belongs on a jury, not at this time in my life. Oh, Jesus.” He whimpered as though he felt actual pain. Here I hadn’t seen Rafe in years and already I was feeling that mixture of impatience and affection he used to stir in me, that feeling that, in whatever intense mental state he’s in, if you can get him to listen to you, which he will sometimes do, you can have a calming effect on him, so it makes you want to try. I said, “Rafe, it isn’t the end of the world, for God’s sake. Chances are you won’t be seated on a jury, there’s two hundred ninety of us and they won’t be needing any more than seventy, somebody said.” Rafe was gripping my upper arm, he’d walked me to the far end of the corridor which was just a dead end, an EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY door with warning red light DO NOT OPEN ALARM WILL SOUND. He was saying, puffing, his eyes swerving in their sockets, “I tried to get another postponement but I failed. I tried to get an exemption, I pleaded ‘I can’t be a juror, I believe in Judge not lest ye be judged—I believe in Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ But all I could get when I called the number was a recorded message! I never spoke to a living human being! And that lady who’s in charge, she warns me I’ll be in contempt of court if I address any judge like that, and if I walk out of here like I’m thinking of doing. I don’t mind paying the $500 fine but there’s a chance I’d be ‘incarcerated,’ too. Harrison, I feel like I’m going to burst.” Rafe’s face was heavy with blood; a nerve or artery was twitching on his forehead; his eyes were blinking in virtual panic. I didn’t know whether to laugh at him or take him seriously. That was the way of Rafe Healy, of artists, I suppose—they draw you into their moods no matter how extreme, you can see something’s truly possessing them, they’re in pain and you want to help. I said, leading Rafe back toward the jury selection room the way you’d lead a dazed, upright bear back to his cage (we’d been summoned inside, though I doubt Rafe noticed), “Come on, Rafe. If I can do it, you can do it. Just calm down. Can’t you make some sketches while you’re waiting? Work on your art?” As if I’d insulted him Rafe said, “Work on my art? In a place like this? Where I’m being detained against my will? Fuck you, Harrison. I thought you were my friend.”

  But he allowed me to lead him back inside the jury selection room where we picked up plastic JUROR badges to pin to our shirts. I was JUROR 121 and Rafe was JUROR 93. We sat in uncomfortable folding chairs and watched, or anyway looked at, a fifteen-minute TV documentary on the justice system in the county which must’ve been prepared for junior high kids, and then we were made to listen to a forty-minute monotone recitation on jury selection by a middle-aged female court officer who looked as if she’d been living in this windowless musty-smelling underground space most of her life, and then we were told to wait “until such time as your jury panel is called.” A TV set was turned on loud, to what appeared to be a morning talk show. All this while Rafe was breathing quickly, wiping at his damp face with a wadded tissue, sighing and squirming in his seat. He reminded me of one of those hyperactive children no one knows how to treat except to dose with drugs. As Rafe said, he seemed about to burst. What if he had a stroke? A heart attack? He was making me anxious. I’d brought along the morning paper, and tried to read it, and an old back issue of Time someone had discarded, but couldn’t help glancing sidelong at my poor cousin, with concern. The twitchy nerve or artery in his forehead was throbbing. I wondered if he was on a drug; but, no—if he’d taken any drug it would’ve been one to calm him down. And he hadn’t been drinking, he was stone cold sober. That was the problem, I thought. Whatever was troubling Rafe (which had to be more than just jury duty) was pure and unalloyed, as real to him as a fever burning in his veins.

  Every ten minutes or so Rafe would jump up, excuse himself to the court officer to use the men’s room, or get a drink from a fountain in the corridor, or just pace out there like a trapped beast. I’d see him glance through the doorway at me, and I knew he wanted me to join him, but I stayed where I was. I’d been nerved-up well into my twenties but I was grown up now, or God knows I tried to be.

  If you’ve ever been drafted for jury duty, and if the procedure is like that of Huron County, New York, you know that what you do, as the lady told us, is wait. You sit, or you stand, and you wait. You’re relaxed, or you’re restless, but you wait. You wait until you’re officially discharged for the day. Somewhere in the courthouse there are judges preparing for trials, at least in theory, and an army of potential jurors has to be in readiness for their use; a juror is a disposable unit, just a badge and a number. In fact, the judges are hearing motions, talking and arguing with their fellow lawyers; prosecuting and defense attorneys are trying to work out pleas and settlements in order to avoid trials. Guilt or innocence doesn’t much matter, except to the defendant. Everyone else is a lawyer, and the lawyers are drawing salaries. The court system is a factory that works most efficiently when what happens today is exactly what happened yesterday. I suppose I sound cynical and I’m not a cynical man but this is the wisdom I came away with after my week of jury duty and it’s been confirmed by others who’ve had the identical experience, though nobody who hasn’t had it can comprehend—“But it must be exciting, to be on a jury. At a trial.” That’s what everybody says who doesn’t know better. The truth is, most potential jurors are never seated on a jury and don’t get within fifty feet of any trial. A trial means that a deal between the lawyers couldn’t be worked out. If things moved smoothly in the justice system, there would be no trials. But as it is, potential jurors are summoned, hundreds of us, made to sit like zombies in rows and wait hour after hour, day after day, until the week of jury duty is concluded, and we’re sent back home with phony thanks and the promise that our payment will be mailed to us within six weeks—a salary of $5 per day.

  Maybe if Rafe had understood this, and hadn’t exaggerated the likelihood of being a juror at an actual trial, he wouldn’t have confessed to me what he did; and I’d have been spared these miserable hours, a roaring in my ears and my stomach in knots. For in my soul I’m like a newborn baby not knowing what to do. It’s as if my conscience is a sheet of transparent glass and I can’t figure out if it’s there or not, if it exists. How do I know what’s the right thing to do? But even if I do nothing I will have done something. I’m trapped.

  4

  AT 1:10 P.M. our panel of jurors was released for a forty-minute lunch, with severe warnings from the court officer to return on time, and Rafe and I were about the first out of the courthouse; Rafe might’ve looked like a shambling bear in those overalls, and his facial expression sort of dazed and glassy-eyed, but like a bear the man could move fast when motivated. In the open air he laughed wildly. “Freedom! We can breathe! Let’s celebrate, man.” I didn’t think it was a wise idea to drink right then, but as when we were kids I found myself going along with Rafe, Rafe’s enthusiasm, so we ended up in a tavern a block from the courthouse. Rafe downed his first beer straight from the can, rubbed his knuckles over his bloodshot eyes and said, lowering his voice so no one else could hear, “Harrison. It’s meant for me to tell you. I’ve got to tell somebody. I’m going to explode if I don’t.” I asked Rafe what was it, feeling a tinge of alarm, and Rafe leaned over the table toward me and said with a grimace, as of pain, “I’m being forced to—kill someone. I think. I don’t have a choice.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. I laughed. I wiped my mouth. Moisture glistened in my cousin’s beard, w
hich was threaded with gray. I heard myself asking, “Rafe, what?” and he didn’t reply for so long I thought he’d decided not to tell me; then he said, his eyes fixed on mine with that look of his of profound sadness, yet with excitement glimmering beneath, that I remembered from when we were kids, and struck a spark of excitement in me, despite my good judgment, “There are folks who deserve to die because they don’t deserve to live. It’s that simple. They must be stopped in their paths of destruction.”

  “Folks?—what folks?”

  “From the beginning of time they must’ve lived. Victimizing the innocent. Do you believe in Satan?”

  “Satan?”

  “I’m not sure if I believe in Satan myself. Probably I don’t. You know how we were brought up—your mom would take us to that Lutheran church, and the minister talked of ‘Satan’ but you had the idea he didn’t really mean it. Like a man speaks of ‘death’—‘dying’—but has no idea what he’s saying. But I do believe in evil. I believe that there are individuals among us who are evil, who’ve chosen evil, who might believe in Satan themselves and are emissaries of Satan in their hearts.” Rafe was speaking quickly in his low, hoarse voice, and gripping my wrist in a way I didn’t like as if to keep me where I was, in the booth listening to him. A waitress brought us more beers, set down plates before us, and Rafe scarcely noticed. He said, breathing quickly, “I believe in vampires.”

  “Rafe, what? Vampires—?”

  “What the hell’s wrong with you? Everything I say you repeat like a parrot! Not actual vampires, of course—mortal men, and women, who are vampires. Who destroy others. Suck away their lives. And even after their deaths—their victims’ deaths—a vampire can continue. A man’s work, a man’s reputation—he can’t protect it if he’s dead. I’m thinking of a man, a good man, a man who was a great artist, a man who was my friend, who trusted me, a man now dead who can’t protect himself, whom I must protect.” These were like prepared words, uttered with passion. I didn’t know how to reply. I felt like an empty vessel waiting to be filled.