The Ancient Hours

by Michael Bible

  Sure, I said.

  Things went back to normal. Work detail. Exercise. Bible study. But a few weeks later he asked me to come back again. He ordered another pizza. We sat on the couch and watched Law and Order. An old episode where a maid’s body is found under a bed in a sleazy motel. After it was over, I stood up to leave.

  Maybe you could tell me a little about yourself, Dr. Rex said.

  I should get back, I said. I’ll get in trouble.

  You’re with me, Dr. Rex said. Don’t worry.

  I sat back down on the couch.

  I felt The Constant deeply and I tried to move through it. The weeks became months. The outside world faded and the camp became my existence. I had a persistent fever that I couldn’t shake. I wasn’t sure what Dr. Rex wanted from me. It felt as though I was moving when I was sitting still.

  Dr. Rex went to the kitchen and came back with a gift.

  I know it’s hard to be away from home on your birthday, he said. Happy eighteenth.

  I opened it. It was a pair of drumsticks.

  We don’t have drums here, he said. But at least you can practice rudiments in your bunk.

  The fever washed over me again. I’d never felt such heat. I wanted to call Cleo. I wanted to hear her voice. Harmony came back to me. All the long old nights.

  Tell me about Paul, Dr. Rex said. We’ve never talked about him.

  What about him, I asked.

  He refilled my glass.

  Paul’s father is a close friend of mine, he said.

  Oh, I said.

  Pastor Green told me everything, he said.

  I looked out the window and could see moonlight on an empty field. At the edge of it was a scarecrow that looked crucified. I didn’t know what to say.

  I know you were the one who gave him the drugs, he said.

  No, I said. You’ve got it wrong.

  Dr. Rex put his arm around me.

  All you have to do is ask for forgiveness, he said.

  I looked out the window again but the scarecrow was gone. Or maybe he’d just faded into the shadows. My fever was high and moving higher. I’d never felt The Constant as I did at that moment. I wanted to tell Dr. Rex everything. How it was Paul’s father that caused all this. I wanted to tell him how Johnny had tried to touch me. But I knew he wouldn’t believe me. I’d remembered a book I’d pulled off the shelf years before about monks that would light themselves on fire in protest. And the lines of an old zen poem about cremation: I had great joy in my body. Scatter the ashes.

  I made a plan at that moment. I hugged Dr. Rex and began to cry.

  I want mercy, I said. I want the grace of Jesus.

  He pulled away.

  You’re burning with fever, he said. I’m taking you to the infirmary.

  I went to sleep that night on a cot in the infirmary and dreamed of a million crucified versions of myself. I dreamed white phosphorus blossoming into flame. The earth shook inside me and I found myself in the rubble. The sky became black with smoke and the ash fell like snow. I woke the next morning and the nurse told me I’d been asleep almost a full day.

  Some folks from a ministry in Harmony are coming today, she said.

  I’m from Harmony, I said.

  Oh, she said. Then you must know them.

  When Pastor Green and Johnny got to campus I showed them around. I talked about how I had seen the light. I was off drugs and didn’t have the same lusts anymore. Pastor Green was impressed. That night I had a Bible study with them and told him I was sorry for what I’d done. He put his hand on my shoulder and smiled.

  You remind me of Paul, he said.

  By the end of the weekend, I’d convinced Pastor Green and Johnny to let me come back to Harmony. Told them I wanted to work for the church.

  For months I worked at First Baptist and did everything they asked me. I went to every service and prayer meeting. At the same time, I put my plan together. I dreamed of the monk on fire. The night before I put my plan in action, Cleo came over. We watched a noir movie on TV. She’d dyed her hair red and gotten a job at the library. We smoked a little and made out. She rolled over on top of me and drummed on my chest a little beat.

  I have to tell you something, I said.

  What, she said. Your whole Christian thing is an act. I already know that.

  No, I said. Well, yes. But there’s more. I have a plan.

  What, she asked.

  I’m going to light myself on fire, I said. Tell the world about The Constant.

  Cleo laughed.

  Call me tomorrow, she said.

  She gave me a long kiss goodbye. That was the last time I saw her.

  The next morning I dressed and got the gas can from the garage and put it in a duffle bag and drove to Sunday morning church service. Pastor Green gave a sermon on the price of sin and Johnny Nightshade played his songs. Everyone closed their eyes for the final prayer.

  I walked down to the middle of the sanctuary and poured gasoline on myself. I didn’t want to die peacefully. I wanted to roar up in flames. It seems stupid now, but I thought if I was on fire they would have to listen to me. But no one ever listened. Some of the gasoline had splashed in my eyes. Blinded me a second. I fumbled for the matches in my pocket. I tried to say something final and profound. Announce my grief. Proclaim meaningfully about The Constant, but I couldn’t get anything out. I remember Johnny running toward me and I accidentally dropped the match and the floor caught. I thought the fire would destroy me but all it did was remind me how beautiful things actually were. How simple and good. I didn’t want to die anymore. It happened so fast. I fucked it all up. One minute I was in the sanctuary choking on smoke, the next I was outside breathing the cool August air.

  I say the names of the dead each night before I sleep. Beg for the mercy that I don’t deserve. I pray to a godless universe, my knees on the hard floor.

  My life won’t really end at midnight because it ended a million times before. I’m not sure why but somehow it ended the day Angel dropped dead. And it ended when Paul’s dad found the photo. And it ended when I entered that church. And it ended the day I was born into this world. And it ended ten thousand years ago.

  My lawyers tried to bring up mental illness. And they wanted me to testify at sentencing about how I didn’t mean to burn the church down. They said it would perhaps give some of the jury a way to feel for me. How it was a bad accident. They might not give me the death penalty. But I didn’t want anyone to know about that stuff.

  It all had to do with The Constant. Something about time and time’s best friend, impermanence. The beauty and tragedy of a falling dogwood blossom, it had something to do with that. I’ve decided my final words will be along those lines. Something about how life fails us all in the end.

  I’m still thinking about the future even now. I miss Cleo. I miss Paul. I hurt them too, don’t forget that. I did horrible things. I hit my mother once and I wrecked a stranger’s car and I stole three grand from my father to buy drugs. I missed seeing my grandfather’s funeral because I didn’t want to stop playing video games when I was fourteen. I killed and will be killed.

  It wasn’t always good, it wasn’t always bad.

  Things become clearer at the end. Life was what I did between sunrise and sunset. It’s weird how we exist like this. It’s like when I was a kid I used to love to ride the train to Asheville. I always went to the last car. I watched the track behind me and the way the landscape would come into view. The lonely towns would come into view then disappear in the distance. I used to dream of living in one of those small towns. I guess Harmony would’ve been just as good.

  I don’t have any dreams left. All my fear is gone. What’s on my mind though isn’t the moment of death. It’s those train rides from my childhood. They remind me of my first friend and his mom who died. She was a long-distance runner who
wore blue bandannas in her hair. She used to have this station wagon and the backseat was turned around and faced out the big back window. That’s what I’m thinking about. That feeling of moving forward but only being able to see behind you.

  Midnight will be my last midnight. The constellations, I can imagine them each in their place. The dogwood tree, too. I will not see the final blossoms fall. Captain Tom came in and told me my lawyer was here and a priest and I told him to tell them to leave. I have no use for the law or religion anymore. I ate my pulled-pork sandwich earlier this evening. I asked for a cold beer at the last minute and Captain Tom managed to sneak me up a Miller High Life. I sat sipping it thinking of the thousands like it I drank and the thousands more I would never drink. I kept reading the word life over and over until it had no more meaning. What a dumb thing it is to die.

  I’m not sure who will read this. Maybe they’ll destroy it with all my other things or maybe it’ll end up in some poor stranger’s hands. The ramblings of a murderer. I’m OK with whatever they say about me. I know the truth is always more complicated. It’s now two minutes till midnight. Captain Tom is here. It’s time to go. I’ll just say this in closing. If you’ve got something you love, hold it close cause there’s no telling when they’ll come and take it away.

  FARBER

  2005

  1

  FARBER RODE HIS YELLOW SCOOTER through downtown Harmony sporting a brand-new black fedora he’d ordered online. When he was younger he often wore faint white powder on his face and sometimes, when the mood struck him, black lipstick, too. People in town called him Marilyn Manson, though he preferred Morrissey. A long red scar ran down his chest, breastbone to navel. The result of an emergency surgery when he was only a week old. Back then they believed you could be too young for anesthesia. For years when he closed his eyes at night he dreamed the slow scalpel cutting his skin again. He’d never confessed to anyone that he remembered the pain and no one ever asked.

  It was summer again, the heat had returned. Farber took a right on Center Street as the sun crawled just above the horizon. He’d worked at the library for a few months and was about to make full-time because they couldn’t find anyone else who knew the computer system. Officially he was hired as the IT guy but after only a short time he thought of himself as running the place. The head librarian, Karen, was a rare idiot. She talked endlessly about conspiracy theories and had a near universal loathing of other people. She had been the only holdover from the old library, which they imploded in a big show that Karen refused to attend because she said it was just a stupid building, blow it up already.

  The new library was three stories, modern glass, the top floor was Karen’s office and the town archives. The main floor on ground level held the circulation desk, public computers, and the children’s books. The children’s section had a sweeping mural of a dragon and princess. Someone had donated an old claw-toothed bathtub and it was Farber’s idea to fill it full of pillows so the kids could read inside it. Upstairs on the second floor were the rest of the stacks, and spaces where people could read. Sometimes addicts looking for a place to nod off would crash upstairs in the history section. Farber would have to shoo them away before closing. He spent most of his day helping people with the internet. They came in to look up all sorts of things. From bank notices to quicksand porn. He spent his hours behind the circulation desk monitoring their web searches. Karen told him to block any site he deemed inappropriate. Unless one of the autistic kids got into something really hardcore, he usually let it slide. Long ago he’d abandoned any sense of shame or morality. A rabid insomniac, Farber lived his life from an early age almost completely online. He’d found a community of people seeking comfort from reality. When he was online, he was in control. The real world offered too many opportunities for humiliation and regret. Online, if he tired of his personality, he’d simply change his username and become someone else. As a child, in the long lonely hours alone in his room when he couldn’t sleep, he looked up the worst things he could think of. These days to combat his insomnia he’d fallen into a strict routine. After his mother fell asleep upstairs, he lived inside a game online most of the night. His avatar was a nymph with fire eyes. He roamed the forests and when his mystic journeys ended, he’d sleep for a few hours. Wake up at 7:00 a.m., eat two breakfast Hot Pockets, and ride his scooter to work.

  When Farber pulled into the parking lot of the library, Karen’s car was already there. He thought sometimes she slept in it overnight. Always in the same spot. The light in her office was on. It was still a little dark outside. Near the door sat a young woman in a blue bonnet and ankle-length dress with a toddler on her hip. The morning was still cool, but the fog was burning off. Farber recognized her as one of the Yellow Children of God. They were a Christian cult started in the seventies in the county. Their members gave up all their worldly goods to follow an obscure German theologian. The women wore Amish-style long dresses and the men had black hats and beards. They were rarely seen in town without others from their group. He smiled at her and walked to the front door and opened it with his key card.

  Finally, the woman said. I’ve been out here for hours.

  We don’t open for another ten minutes, Farber said.

  I need to use the bathroom, she said.

  He looked at the baby, it had some kind of crust around its mouth.

  Fine, Farber said. But my boss is upstairs. Stay quiet.

  The woman elbowed her way inside. She rushed to the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Farber set his stuff on the table and began to put away the books that the weekend shift didn’t finish shelving on the second floor. The phone rang at the front desk. He ran to answer it.

  Library, he said. Can I help you?

  Have you made the coffee yet, Karen said.

  She was calling from upstairs.

  Not yet, Farber said.

  When you’ve got coffee, come upstairs, she said. We need to talk.

  OK, he said and hung up.

  He made a strong pot of coffee in the break room and put it in Karen’s oversized mug. As he walked to the elevator and pushed the button the woman and her child came out of the bathroom. The child was crying but the woman didn’t seem to notice or care. She had changed out of the long dress and now wore cut-off jean shorts and a blue tank top, still in her bonnet. The child wore only a diaper.

  Do these computers work, the mother asked. I need to use the computer.

  Farber was struck suddenly by how much skin she was showing.

  Yes, he said. Well, yes. They work, the computers, but not yet, actually. I mean, I have to turn them on.

  OK, she said. Can you turn them on or not?

  Yeah, he said. I mean, we’re not technically open yet—

  Maybe you can make an exception, she said.

  She turned and took off the bonnet and the dull fluorescent bulbs revealed her face. For the first time Farber noticed that she had two different colored eyes. One brown, one blue. Her head was shaved into a close buzz and she had what looked like a homemade figure-eight tattoo on the back of her neck. She was dark tan in the face but nowhere else, as if she worked outside all day. Farber realized she was not much older than he was, maybe two or three years. Never before had he been all alone so close to a woman so beautiful, wearing so little, carrying on like this. Her nipples poked out of her shirt, she wore no bra, and when she bent down to put her child on the floor, he could see her breasts fully. At home Farber fantasized constantly and his fantasies mostly involved fictional characters. Now with this strange real woman in front of him, he no longer had control of anything. He hated the air between them.

  Are you going to turn the computers on, she asked.

  I need to take this coffee upstairs, he said. For my boss.

  Jesus Christ, she said.

  Sorry, he said.

  He got in the elevator and as the door closed, he too
k out an inhaler and took a big hit. The doors opened on the third floor and he walked down the hall to Karen’s office. She was listening to Rod Stewart on a tiny CD boom box, reading scribbled notebook papers on her desk, peeling an orange.

  Sorry for the hold up, he said. I brought your coffee.

  She said nothing and kept reading.

  He wondered if he should sit down but instead he looked around at the things in her office. Pictures of her fat husband. Books about self-improvement. Faded numbers from half marathons she’d run decades ago. A poster of a tiger that said PROCRASTINATION KILLS sat unframed on the floor.

  Coffee, she said. Give it to me.

  He handed it to her.

  We need to talk, she said without looking up. I need to cut back your hours.

  But I was about to make full-time, he said.

  That was the plan, she said. But we’ve hit a snag with your health insurance.

  What kind of snag, he asked.

  They said you’ve got some expensive condition, she said. That puts you in an extremely high-risk pool.

  When I was a baby I had this surgery on my heart, he said.

  Karen held up her hand.

  I don’t need to know your medical history, she said. I just need you to work the hours without the benefits.

  That doesn’t really seem fair, he said.

  Karen looked at him now, confused at his ignorance.

  I’ve got to get checkups to monitor my heart condition, Farber said. Expensive scans every six months.

  Karen held up her hand.

  I don’t want to know if you’re dying, she said. Are you dying?

  Not right now, Farber said.

  Can you work the hours or not, she asked.

  Sure, he said.

  He took the elevator downstairs and hit the inhaler again. The woman was asleep in one of the big reading chairs with her daughter now. Farber unlocked the front door and began to turn on each computer. The first people to arrive were returning books and then people began to sit at the computers and a few mothers with children came in and went to the children’s section. The day went by like many others for Farber with the exception of the strange woman. At around noon Karen came down to cover the front desk while he went to get lunch downtown.