"Look, I was only trying to..."
"I know. Hey, I'm sorry. I'm really, really pooped, and when I'm pooped I get cross. You are a nice guy for a computer specialist. I never knew any Japanese person before. I was kind of edgy around you at first, but then you turned out to be just like anybody else. Don't you have any personal problems? We can work on those too."
"No problems, Glin. Too busy for problems. I worked with the Votrax Type-"N-Talk and the Telesensory Prose 2000. I worked with Pisoni and Nusbaum at Indiana, then back out to Silicon Valley. Our little outfit is called Macro Mix There's just five of us. We all worked for bigger outfits. We thought we might get rich, but it isn't happening yet. We design. We don't manufacture. Consultant contracts like this keep us going.
And keep us learning. I dream that I am running along a beach, running like hell to keep away from a huge wave curling over me. The running is the learning. What we all believe, the five of us, is that one day, probably with a thirty-two-bit microprocessor, there will be a super program which will be able to be programmed to keep improving itself. Meanwhile, run, run, run."
"You have to realize I haven't any idea what you're talking about, Mick."
"What brought you here?"
"Me? It was kind of the end of the world for me. I tried Lopez's priest. I converted when I married Lopez. The priest couldn't seem to get hold of how desperate I felt. I loved Lopez, and for God's sake they had him in diapers, saying "Gooo."
How do you rebuild your life? Then one evening I had the television on, it was a cable broadcast, and the Reverend Doctor John Tinker Meadows was sitting behind a desk. They zoomed the camera until his whole face filled the screen, and he looked right at me! He looked right into my eyes and he said very gently, "You are sick at heart, aren't you?" And I answered him! What kind of a nut talks to a television set? The tears busted right out of my eyes and ran down my face and I said, "Yes, yes I am!"
"You are in despair," he said.
"You don't know what to do with your life. Nobody cares how deep you are in black depression. I am holding my hand out to you.
If you take it, I can help you climb out of the pit into the sunshine." So... okay. I took his hand. I wrote for the literature. I joined the Church. I took Bible lessons. I tithed ten percent. But I began to begin to feel myself sort of slipping backward. It all seemed sort of secondhand. So I quit my job and came down here." She lowered her voice.
"It isn't perfect.
What is? I'm down here. The sun isn't exactly shining yet, but maybe it will. I can live with myself better than I could before. I pray a lot. I believe. I really believe that God is love, bless His holy name. He will watch over me. What do you believe, Oshiro?"
"I...1 guess I believe in the miracle of silicon. For thousands of years we've been savages living in the darkness. Now there is a bright light beginning to shine across the world, and we are standing in it, blinking and scratching and looking around. I believe that through this new communication man is evolving into something different. Not better and not worse. Different.
And I am proud to be one of the pioneers. Maybe my God is speaking to us through silicon."
"I like working with you, whatever."
"I'll be around a while longer. You are one smart lady and you make the work more fun. You pick up on things, and you make pretty good suggestions."
"The calls still tear me up too much. Like tonight that old boy in Memphis wondering if he could send in ten percent of his food stamps. Maybe... maybe I don't want to get used to it. Maybe I'm resisting that because I think I probably will.
And then it will be a job and I can use half my mind to keep track of what I'm doing." She sighed. She put her hand on his shoulder.
"Good night, Mickey. And thanks for listening."
They stood awkwardly for a moment, alone together in the darkness, immobilized perhaps by what she had said about their becoming an item, but wanting a way to say good night that involved touching, involved human contact. And on simultaneous impulse they thrust out their right hands, and shook hands, and both laughed aloud because they recognized the parody of it, and the friendship.
And then off they went, she to a small room with hot plate, a room in the wing of the dormitory the University did not yet need to occupy. It was an inexpensive arrangement and it hastened the day when she would have the lawyers paid off in full, the ones who had negotiated the lifelong institutional support for Lopez.
He went on his half-mile walk through the warm night down to the pleasant room they had provided for him in the Meadows Center Motor House. He stopped first in the dining room, and as he ate his light, late supper and read his book, his concentration was marred by the recurrent memory of the tension in her voice, the agitation arising from this strange assignment. He felt that she had been trapped and he wished he could find some path out of the trap for her. He felt that he understood her, and he tried not to feel pity for her, an emotion she did not need and would certainly resent. Perhaps his sense of identification was the product of the soft warm night, and of being alone. He told himself that in many ways she was a grotesque, all those nervous mannerisms, awkward postures.
But her eyes were lovely, and lost.
Six heavy men in their sixties were led to a table near Oshiro's. After they were given menus they put them aside and five of them bowed their heads over their folded hands. The sixth one, sitting at the end of the table, stared at the ceiling and proclaimed in a loud honking voice, "O Lord, we have come all the way here from San Antone, Texas, to visit the home office of Your Church and Your Tabernacle, and we have come to ask Your blessings on all the ventures and enterprises that us six brethren here gathered together are involved in. We want You to know, as You probably already know, that we've been tithing off the gross, not off the net.
Ever' tenth bar'l of oil and ever' tenth foot of gas and ever' tenth head of cattle has been turned into cash money and given to Your Church to help in its mission to save us God-fearing Christians from the dee-structive and traitorous acts and schemes of the socialists who have wormed their way into power in our nation's capital, and from their field agents who wander through the land demanding fool things and fool reports from honest and productive businessmen who want only to..."
But by that time the voice had faded because Oshiro had signed his tab, left his tip, picked up his book and walked out past the others in the dining room who were staring at the honker, transfixed, some of them with fork poised halfway between meal and mouth.
When he was in his room, he turned on the bed lamp and then went over and stood at the window and looked out at the four big floodlighted spires of the Tabernacle. It could very well become too much for Glinda Lopez to handle this electronic deception, talking in the voice of the old reverend, extracting money from the people. Along with cynicism would come a simple destruction of faith. And she could not continue to do anything she did not believe in. She was, quite simply, that kind of person the best and most valuable kind.
And what do you believe in, Oshiro?
As I told her, I believe in hundreds of thousands of circuits in a chip smaller than my front tooth. I believe in the magic of bubble memory and in the upcoming greater magic of amino acids with memory-storage capacity. I believe in instant retrieval and in all the people of the world locked into a network that can provide every one of them with communication with every other one of them, as well as with all the knowledge man has thus far amassed. Maybe believing that it will all work is no greater or less than believing in a God who watches the plight of every sparrow a God rumored to have a plan so comprehensive the reason for every sickening disaster will one day fall into place and be made clear to us. Every sickening disaster and every enormous triumph. In that sense, silicon is one of the faces of God, and so is atomic fusion. We worship at our own strange temples.
Eight Annalee Purves had mail-ordered some bed sheets from Spiegel in Chicago, and so every now and then she would go to a front window of the
farmhouse and look down the long dusty slope of the narrow driveway and see the red flag still up on the mailbox and wonder how late this Wednesday delivery would be. She was waiting for the confirmation of her order.
Maybe they had changed the route again.
Anvil thunderheads were building in the west, sun-white on the tops of them, ominous blue-black underneath. They cut off the late-afternoon sun. The air was close and still, and at times a gust of wind would turn the leaves over and spin up the dust.
The house seemed very empty lately. It helped to leave the television on, and hear people laughing and talking even if you were paying no attention to what they were doing. Both the men were working her husband, Hub, down at the airfreight depot in Waycross, and son Dave hauling sand and gravel over near Bickley. Annalee had lost her job back in February when the Buy Rite chain had closed its local outlet. But it hadn't worked out too badly. She'd put in a large kitchen garden in the spring, with Dave's help. Hub and Dave had replaced the broken wire fencing around the chicken yard and they had gone back to chickens, even though she really hated the stupid messy things, pecking the weakest to death every chance they got.
With Doreen gone, up at Meadows Center, out of trouble at last, it seemed to Annalee more like the early days of her marriage, back twenty years when she'd been eighteen. But back then she'd had to put up with Hub's mother. It was Hub's mother's house and the old lady wanted it kept just so.
Everything had to shine at all times. Once upon a time it had been a real farm, seven people living on it and working it and living off it. But no longer. It was too small for the way you had to farm these days. Red Layberry down the road worked some no of it on shares, and that brought in a little. Not much, but welcome. As Hub said, it made the difference between Christmas.
If Dave moved out he was going with that pretty little DeAngelis girl then no two ways about it, she would have to go back to work somewhere somehow. Maybe this time Hub would listen to reason and agree to sell the place. Then maybe they could find a little place in Waycross where the electric and taxes and oil bill didn't eat you up.
When next she looked out, the flag was down. As she started to walk down the long driveway she heard the first bump of thunder and a hard gust of wind rattled her jeans against her ankles. By the time she was halfway back with the mail, blue lightning lit up the world and the crash of thunder was almost simultaneous. She ran through the first fat drops that pocked the dust and tapped against her hair and shoulders. She trotted across the porch and into the house, gasping for breath. The hard rain had begun. She sat at the little table in the living room to look at the mail. When she tried to turn on the table lamp she realized the television had gone silent, the power off.
She moved her chair closer to the window. Three catalogues, a bank statement, a letter for Dave from California. Nothing from Spiegel. And finally a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Purves, RR 3 Box 88, Bickley, GA. No return address. The date stamp on the envelope indicated it was from Lakemore. So it had something to do with Doreen but it certainly wasn't Doreen's writing.
This was block printing, very carefully done as if somebody had used a ruler to make the lines.
She opened it and found a large sheet of ruled yellow paper, torn so carelessly from a pad that one corner was missing. She read the printed message twice before she began to comprehend it:
A WIERD LITTLE REVEREND JOE DEETS IS FUCKING DOREEN YOUR DAUGHTER EVERY
CHANCE THE GETS, WHICH IS LIKE ALL THE TIME.
A FRIEND
PS HE IS OVER FORTY.
A dumb joke, she thought. A sick dumb joke. It just could not be true. Doreen was a Meadows Angel. Just a week ago in Sunday they had a lovely picture of her, singing. Her face filled the whole screen and they kept the camera on her for maybe twenty seconds. She had seen the tear on Doreen's cheek. She had never seen her daughter look so beautiful, in living color.
The Reverend Matthew Meadows would never let anything like that go on at Meadows Center. And neither would John Tinker Meadows or the Reverend Sister Mary Margaret Meadows. But maybe they didn't even know about it. Doreen could be sly. When she was a tiny little girl she could look you right in the eye and shake her head and say, "I didn't do it.
Davey did it." She could say it so innocent, even when you'd seen her do it, seen her break the dish.
Sly like me, Annalee thought. A punishment from God come back again on me for getting away with it before, so long ago that sometimes a whole month can go by without me thinking back to it, back to those days when I must have been crazy, doing everything he told me to do. Sometimes I wonder where he is, if he is still alive.
They'd had to sit there, she and Hub, and tell Mary Margaret Meadows every last bit about all Doreen's troubles. The pregnancy and the motorcycles and the pills and the pot, and getting jailed two hundred miles from home. Then the boy getting killed like that, and Doreen losing the baby.
It was the next day that she and Hub had been called in to talk to Mary Margaret and John Tinker Meadows, with Doreen waiting on a bench in the hall outside the conference room. John Tinker Meadows had said solemnly that they had decided, with some misgivings, to take her in. She would be in a protected environment where she would have every chance to develop into Christian maturity. She would be given work to do around the Administration and Communications buildings. She would live in a University dormitory, and she would have to take courses in Homemaking, the History of Christianity and Missionary Service. She would have Bible lessons and choir practice. She would have plain healthy food and compulsory exercise and she would be kept busy at all times.
They can't know about it, Annalee thought. Maybe it isn't even happening. Maybe some girl in the choir is jealous of her.
Maybe it's from some boy she won't have anything to do with.
She was always sly. And guess who she gets that from. My God, how close I came to turning my whole life into nothing. If Hub hadn't come along just when he did, where would I be now? Probably dead. Dying in the midst of sin and burning in hell forever.
Whenever she was deeply troubled she went to the nearest mirror. The television came back on, advertising baby powder.
It was her way of reaffirming some contact with reality, to look in the hall mirror. She saw herself, a faded woman with frightened eyes, straight pale hair, a small pouch under her chin, lips sucked flat.
"What are we going to do?" she whispered. The 'we' was the woman in the mirror and the woman watching her. The 'we' was certainly not Annalee and Hub. And even more definitely, not Annalee and her son. Dave had gone after the motorcycle people and had spent five days in the hospital and had come out with his face looking different. He was a different person when he came out. A little bit quieter, probably for the rest of his life.
Maybe this Deets person was assigned to supervise Doreen's spiritual welfare but lost his head over her. It wasn't beyond possibility. Doreen's looks are the best of mine and the best of Hub's family. And she has a beautiful little body. Men began watching her when she was twelve. Later on the phone rang all the time. She isn't a bad girl. She's just easily led. She's pretty and she's weak and she's very loving. It's a terrible combination.
She dropped to her knees in the hallway and said, "Dear God, please help me figure out what's best to do. This could ruin her life just as bad as that motorcycle boy. Maybe she's praying to you too, because this is a terrible sin. If it's true."
She heard Hub's pickup coming up the drive. She jumped to her feet and ran and got the letter and the envelope, folded them, and put them in the back of the shallow drawer in the small table by the window, under a box of writing paper she hardly ever used because it had so many bright flowers on it there wasn't room enough to write.
He came into the back hall, soaked and stomping, pulling his work shoes and work shirt off. When she went to him, he kissed her and said, "Do you know, it came down so damned hard about ten miles south I had to pull clean off the road and stop? It's drowning your garden out t
here, and it's drove the chickens inside. Anything new?"
"Nothing, as usual. How was your day, hon?"
"Light. Real light. It's so light lately. it making me nervous.
Too many people standing around drinking coffee out of that machine. Somebody may come by from the home office and clear some of us out."
"If they do, it won't be you."
Dave came home an hour later, muddy and exhausted. She served them supper at the kitchen table, and as she did so she felt like one of those women in the afternoon soap operas, being bright and cheerful so as to hide a dreadful secret from the others. And it was sort of like the kind of secrets women had on television. Not on those approved programs they always listed in PathWays. Whenever she was watching one that wasn't on the list she felt guilty, especially since they had taken Doreen in. It was always best to follow the rules of the Church.
That's what was so confusing about this new problem. The members of the Eternal Church of the Believer were all part of a very special group inside society at large. The Church told you never to donate money or goods to local or national causes like the March of Dimes or Easter Seals or the Salvation Army.
John D MacDonald - One More Sunday Page 13
