“I’m curious; I’m curious as to what Garth is a part of, and who’s financing it. If the deed for this place is registered in Garth’s name, it could make him legally, or morally, responsible for things he might not want to be responsible for.”
“Did you see anything illegal or immoral happening out there?”
“I just got here.”
“Some people might say that it’s none of your business,” the other man said evenly.
“Some might.”
“Would you believe that we picked up this place for a ten percent down payment against the back taxes owed by the previous owners?”
“I don’t know. Why shouldn’t I believe you?”
“Because you’re a very skeptical man, Mongo—some people might even describe you as cynical.”
“Yeah, but I’ve never tried to buy a bathhouse.”
“It was foreclosed some years ago by the city after they closed it down. At the time, this wasn’t exactly a target area for real estate developers, and the city was more than happy to unload it. It was a white elephant.”
“There are a lot of other things going on around here that aren’t financed by payments against back taxes.”
“Word gets around.”
“Word of what?”
“Word of good people with good intentions doing good things. Most people really do want to help people who are less fortunate than they are, Mongo, if you only give them a chance—and if you set an example and lead them. There are individuals and corporations, as well as various relief and funding agencies, which heartily approve of what we’re doing, and they’ve been contributing substantial amounts of money, goods, and services. They like what’s happening here. Most of the construction and mass organization you saw out there has only begun to happen in the past month or so.”
“What is it that’s happening here?”
“What you see.”
“I’m not sure what I see.”
“That doesn’t surprise me, Mongo,” Carling said in the same even tone—which was beginning to irritate me. “Each person must finally be responsible for what he sees—or doesn’t see—with his own eyes, how he feels about what he sees, and what he does about it. That’s one of Garth’s lessons; it seems simple, but it certainly isn’t.”
“I’m Garth’s Goddamn brother, Tommy, and I’ve been searching for him for four months! Why is it that none of this great ‘word’ ever got around to me?!”
Tommy Carling studied me with his expressive, hazel eyes. “Perhaps you didn’t have the ears to hear, Mongo,” he said at last in a very soft voice. “Somewhere it’s written, ‘Seek and ye shall find.’”
“You’ve got to be putting me on,” I said in a low voice, feeling my anger begin to swell in me.
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“No? Let me tell you who else has been just a tad concerned about Garth, my friend. Did it ever occur to you that his mother and father might have liked to receive just one little ring-a-ling to inform them that their son wasn’t dead or lying comatose and unidentified in some strange hospital?!”
“But, if Garth chose not to—”
“Garth’s sick!” I snapped. “He’s not responsible for anything he thinks, says, or does. You’re the one I hold responsible, Tommy!”
“Garth is not sick,” Tommy Carling replied somewhat petulantly. “He’s probably the healthiest person on the face of the earth.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I admit I—we—may have handled things badly, and that maybe I should have pressed Garth to contact you and your parents; but I told you that I was very concerned about what could happen if Dr. Slycke ever got hold of Garth again.”
“And I told you that Slycke was dead.”
“I didn’t know that, Mongo. It’s the truth; if I had known, I would have handled things much differently. Do you care to tell me what happened to him?”
“Why don’t you tell me how you come to be here with Garth and Marl Braxton in this super–Salvation Army operation.”
“The Salvation Army totally supports our work here, Mongo, and they might not think much of your attitude. You tell me your story first. How did Dr. Slycke die?”
Watching Carling’s face very carefully, I told him what had happened up in the clinic the night I had gone there in response to Slycke’s phone call. When I had finished, Carling tugged absently at his earring and shook his head.
“That’s incredible, Mongo; you were incredibly lucky to get out of there alive.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“I didn’t know about any of this. Naturally, since the clinic is a secret facility, news of Dr. Slycke’s death wouldn’t have been in the newspapers—even if I’d been reading them.”
“Your turn, Tommy. The three of you took off even before Slycke called me, which means you must have snuck Garth and Braxton out from under Slycke’s nose.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Garth never had any kind of relapse, Mongo. Slycke was lying.”
“I’d gathered that,” I said dryly.
“You talked to Slycke after you talked to me, about the same thing—the possibility of removing Garth from the clinic. You shouldn’t have done that. It was why I didn’t plan to report the conversation to Dr. Slycke; I knew it would make him very nervous. In fact, he panicked. I’m not sure why he reacted as severely as he did, but my guess is that he was under pressure—as you suspected might happen—from his superiors in Washington to keep Garth under close observation at all times, in order to monitor the effects of NPPD poisoning.” Carling paused, seeming to study the opposite wall for a few moments, then continued: “Still, he was so upset that you might even be thinking about taking Garth out. I’m not sure I understand it. How could his superiors hold him responsible for potential actions of yours which you had every right to make? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Slycke’s problems weren’t with the D.I.A., Tommy, and they weren’t the ones putting the pressure on him. He was an informant for the K.G.B., and they had their hooks into him good.”
Carling’s eyes opened wide, and he blinked slowly. “What?”
“Slycke was passing on information to the Russians, as well as taking orders from them. It was the K.G.B. making him nervous.”
“Ahh,” Carling said distantly, once again focusing his gaze on the wall behind me. “That could certainly explain a few other things.”
“Like what?”
“I’d told you that Charles Slycke was a good doctor—and I sincerely believed that. It was why what he was planning to do came as such a shock to me.”
“What was he planning to do?”
“He was going to institute a clearly experimental—and potentially dangerous—drug therapy program with Garth. There was absolutely no reason to do that, and it was unethical; he planned to do it in secret, without informing either Garth or you, or even trying to get permission. That made it illegal, as well.”
“Just what kind of a program was this?”
“He was going to medicate Garth with a whole series of very powerful psychotropics. In effect, from what I could understand, his only motive was simply to see what might happen. I couldn’t believe my ears when he told me what he was planning to do, or my eyes when I saw the medication orders on the daily sheet.”
“He came up with this plan just before he barred me from the clinic?”
“Yes. Even a layman could see that Garth had made tremendous progress in a very short time. He wasn’t violent, certainly no threat to himself or others, and he was lucid. Under no circumstances would any responsible psychiatrist want to do absolutely anything but continue to observe patiently, listen, and perhaps counsel. Yet Dr. Slycke was planning to saturate Garth with these drugs. I couldn’t make any sense out of it—and then I remembered some of the concerns you’d expressed to me during the course of our conversation outside on the grass. I realized then that you’d been absolutely righ
t. I also understood then why you’d been barred from the clinic. I guess I panicked.”
“Why didn’t you call and tell me about this when it happened, Tommy?”
“There was so little time. I was to begin administering doses to Garth—in any way I could manage—that very evening. I didn’t know if you’d be able to stop Slycke, or what would happen to Garth, or me, if I tried to stop him. I’m just a nurse, and he could have ordered me off the premises out-of-hand—and had me locked up, to boot, as a suspected security risk. I was … very upset. By that time, as I think you know, I’d become very attached to Garth—and to you, if I may say so. I just couldn’t let Dr. Slycke do something that could destroy Garth’s mind. So I did the only thing I could think of at the moment.”
“You took Garth out.”
“Yes,” Tommy Carling replied quietly. “I just had to do something. I hadn’t even thought about what I was going to do afterward … I just acted.”
“Thank you, Tommy,” I said simply. “Garth and I owe you more than we can repay.”
“Oh, no,” the other man said quickly—and then looked at me in a way that made me slightly uncomfortable. I’d seen a similar look before—on Marl Braxton’s face, when he had started to talk about Garth. “It’s I who owe the two of you. Garth is … very special.”
“How did Marl Braxton get to join the party?”
“I took him out with Garth. Garth wouldn’t leave without him, and … well, there just wasn’t a lot of time to argue; I only had two or three minutes’ leeway. If I didn’t take Garth out then, the chances were slim that I would be able to do it at all before he was drugged.”
“A hell of a big decision, Tommy.”
“Yes,” the male nurse replied simply.
“How did you know Braxton wouldn’t kill you the moment you got them away from the clinic? For that matter, how do you know he still won’t kill Garth or you one of these days?”
Carling shook his head. “Garth assured me that Marl would be fine, and that he wouldn’t cause any trouble. It’s hard to explain, Mongo, but somehow I knew instinctively that Garth was right. He was.”
“So far.”
“He was right.”
“Garth has an apartment.” I said tightly. “I happen to be living in it. Why didn’t you bring him back there?”
“For the same reason I didn’t contact you; I was afraid the authorities would catch us, and somehow force Garth to go back to Slycke. Besides, Garth didn’t want to go back there. He told me he wanted nothing more to do with anything in his past.
“We ended up in a flophouse not too far from here. I had some cash with me, but it wasn’t going to go very far with the three of us.” Carling paused, spread his hands on the surface of the desk. “Mongo, I don’t really know how to explain easily all that’s happened since then. Four months is such a short time, but …”
“Just tell me what happened, Tommy.”
“On that very first night, Garth started his work—talking to and comforting some of the others in the flophouse, walking the streets and talking to drunks, bag people, people living in cardboard boxes. Those people responded to him the same way the patients in the clinic responded to him. Garth explained to me that he had to do these things, that it was the only way he could keep from crying.
“The next day, Garth went to the bank and emptied his savings account. He thanked me for taking him out of the clinic, and told me I should leave and go back to my old life. He and Marl were going to spend all his money on food and clothing for the street people, and then just do whatever it was they had to do. He wasn’t worried at all about the future. Mongo, I just got caught up in the spirit of what Garth was trying to do. You may say I’m crazy, or a fool, but I didn’t want to leave. I just had this feeling—and it’s impossible to describe—that something wonderful and very important was about to happen, and I wanted to be a part of it. I had my own savings, and a trust fund with a not inconsiderable amount of money in it. I used that money to put the down payment on the bathhouse to use as a base of operations for what Garth wanted to do, as well as buy the first food and clothing supplies to give out to those who needed it.”
“If you used your money to buy the bathhouse, why did you put it in Garth’s name?”
“Because I wanted to.” Carling paused, smiled thinly. “You still don’t understand. It was Garth who was going to make this wonderful, important thing happen, not my money. Although I didn’t fully realize it at the time, I’d made a commitment, like Marl, to give everything I had—including my life—to whatever it was Garth wanted to do.”
“Go ahead.”
“After we moved into the bathhouse, things just began to snowball. Garth and Marl were out all the time, walking the streets and bringing people back here for food, shelter, clothing—or just comfort. We were quickly running out of everything, including money, and then the wonderful things started to happen. The ‘word’ that I mentioned had already started to get around. The Salvation Army, as well as a number of other relief agencies that operate down here, began to help us and share their resources. Lines began to form, and still Garth and Marl walked the streets to bring more people here. I think what most impressed the other agencies was Garth’s effectiveness; some of the men and women he got to come to us for help would never think of going anywhere else. Nobody had ever been able to get them to accept help; they had always been afraid to go to city shelters, even during the winter.”
“Afraid with good reason,” I interjected. “They get ripped off in those shelters. Who keeps order here?”
Carling thought about it, as if the question hadn’t occurred to him before. “There’s Marl, of course,” he said at last. “He can be very intimidating—to anyone who’s looking for trouble. Also, we have a couple of dozen Guardian Angels who work for us. But we’ve never really had any trouble. There’s just this feeling of goodness and good feeling around here that’s almost palpable, at least to some of us, and I really do believe that it’s this sense of goodness that radiates from Garth which keeps away evil.” He paused, flushed slightly. “Silly, I know.”
“Maybe not so silly,” I said quietly. I was indeed most impressed with what was going on in the bathhouse—and terribly proud of my brother, despite all my other concerns and misgivings.
“Anyway, almost before we knew it, we were getting all sorts of offers of money, goods, and services from other relief programs, wealthy individuals, and corporations; the jackets and headbands you see everyone wearing are donated—no advertising strings attached—by a sporting goods manufacturer. You want a jacket, Mongo? I’m sure we can find one that will fit you.”
“Let me think about it.”
“The point is that we ended up, virtually overnight, with a sizable financial structure—and the responsibility that goes along with it. Thank God for Sister Kate.”
“Sister Kate, I take it, is the nun outside?”
Carling nodded. “She’s with the Sisters of Mercy. They donated her, in a manner of speaking, and it was a most significant contribution. Besides being a nun, she’s a C.P.A., with an M.B.A. from Wharton. She helped us organize, and she keeps the books. Without her, we’d have been swamped long ago. She’s just wonderful. She’s a gift from God—Who, as I said, provides.”
“But she’s still a Catholic, in good standing with her order?”
“Of course; as I said, they ‘donated’ her. Why shouldn’t she be?”
I pointed to the rings-and-knife mural on the wall behind the desk. “Is that a religious symbol?” I asked in what I hoped was a neutral tone.
“No. It’s just … well, it’s just kind of a sign that identifies. People seem to like it. Kind of ‘catchy,’ don’t you think?”
“It seems kind of militaristic for an organization like yours.”
“Not at all; not when you understand what the rings symbolize.”
“Wagner’s operas.”
“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The great knife is Garth,
struggling to defeat them.”
“Who understands that?”
“People who understand it.”
“Who designed it?”
“A Guardian Angel who used to be a graffiti artist. He’d been listening to Garth’s stories about the Valhalla Project, and he came up with it. Everyone thought it was just super, so we adopted it as a logo. Why?”
“Just curious.”
“Incidentally, I know now that all of Garth’s stories about Siegmund Loge and the Valhalla Project are true, Mongo. Garth was never psychotic. He was simply telling the truth to the doctors, nurses, and patients in the clinic—but the patients were the only ones who sensed that it was the truth. Interesting.”
“Yeah, interesting. What do you call yourselves?”
“We don’t call ourselves anything. Others are starting to call us Garth’s People.”
“Lousy name,” I said as I felt a sudden chill.
“Why?” Carling asked, and smiled thinly. “Because it reminds you of the name given to the people in Siegmund Loge’s communes—Father’s Children?”
“Something like that.” The notion that Garth, even inadvertently, might be taking up where Siegmund Loge had left off in the overall scheme of things was just too sour an irony to dwell on. The Triage Parabola. Human extinction. Loge had said that, given our present state of being, nothing could be done; history would keep repeating itself over and over and over, until … “Forget it. What difference does it make what you’re called?”
“No difference. Names aren’t important. The only important thing is Garth’s mission on earth.”
“His ‘mission on earth,’ Tommy?”
“Yes.”
I spread my arms in a gesture meant to encompass the room, the bathhouse, the streets outside—and perhaps beyond. “What’s your thinking about how Garth fits into all this?” The sudden chill I had felt hadn’t gone away; indeed, I was growing colder by the moment.
“I don’t understand your question,” Carling said, leaning forward on the desk. His ponytail had fallen over his right shoulder. “Without Garth, this wouldn’t exist. Garth is ‘this.’”
“Tommy,” I said as I breathed a small sigh, “from the very first time I saw you working with Garth, I knew you were a hell of a good nurse, a solid professional. I also pegged you as a man with his head and heart in the right place, and both feet solidly on the ground.”
The Cold Smell of Sacred Stone Page 20
