The four last things sg-1

by Timothy Hallinan

  "What's it called?"

  "The Burned-Over District," Bernie said with a hint of disappointment. "You could have guessed that, you know. I think maybe you ought to come back to school." Bernie's school career had spanned almost two decades and five degrees, and he still hadn't found his major in life.

  "Later," I said. "Eighteen-twenties, right? Early revivalists. A reaction against European Calvinism. Predestination."

  "Predestination was a terrible idea," Bernie said. "Only a few will be saved. The rest will roast in hell through eternity, shriveling on the spit. It doesn't make any difference how you live your life, how many alms you give or prayers you pray. If you're gonna fry, you're gonna fry." Bernie manipulated his large hands as though marionettes dangled from them, and made a sizzling noise. "Not much of a religion for a country where all men and women were supposed to be created equal. Also, not much of a religion for capitalists." Bernie was ensconced happily several notches to the left of Chairman Mao.

  "Why not for capitalists?"

  "Nineteenth-century capitalists were highly result-driven. They hadn't been introduced to Japanese principles of management yet. They needed a religion that allowed them to get results. So anyway, as you probably remember, the American Methodists and Baptists junked predestination in favor of free-will doctrines, the New Light doctrines, that let people have a say in whether they were going to burn or not. You could just accept Christ as your savior, and, bang, you were born again. It didn't matter if you'd been predetermined for hell the first time around; when you were reborn, you started over. The spiritual equivalent of coming to the New World. A brilliant, simple concept. Perfect for an age of revolution."

  "And the preachers of the Burned-Over District took the New Light doctrines and began cranking out new religions."

  "Dozens of them," Bernie said with relish, holding up his fingers again. "It must have been something in the water. Lots of Arminian doctrines, Joseph Smith and the Mormons, Millerites and, later, Seventh-Day Adventists, Shakers, the Oneida Colony-real communists, by the way-"

  "Yeah, and look where it got them. Making silverware."

  "What, communists are supposed to eat with their fingers? They practiced free love, too, and controlled conception at the same time. Somehow. You want some wine?"

  "I thought you'd never ask."

  "I thought we might wait for Joyce."

  "You wait for Joyce. Where is she, anyway?"

  "Still at the hospital." He got up to go to the kitchen. "I can't tell you how nice it is to need a corkscrew for a change," he said. "Nothing worth drinking comes with a screw-off cap."

  Bernie and Joyce were living in a standard student apartment on the fringes of Westwood, walking distance from UCLA, where she worked and he pursued his sixth degree, in a field seemingly completely unrelated to his previous five. The smell of baking lasagna floated in from the kitchen. I canvassed the books on the bulging rattan bookshelves from Pier One while Bernie fished noisily around in drawers and finally popped the cork. "Bernie," I called, "it wasn't all completely kosher Christian, was it? I seem to remember some fishier stuff."

  "Mainly Christian," he yelled, clinking some glasses together promisingly. "There were some Swedenborgians rattling around, practicing mesmerism and phrenology on anyone who was willing to sit still, but they certainly thought of themselves as Christians. Lots of mediums, spiritualists popping up all over the place. They would have been horrified if you'd suggested they weren't Christian. Just because it's Christian doesn't mean it's not fishy, Simeon." He came in with a full glass in each hand and the bottle tucked under his right arm, and sat very carefully on the floor without being able to use his hands or to move his right arm from his side. Only then did he put the glasses on the table. Eighteen years of college, and he was still helpless. "What is it with you and the Burned-Over District?"

  "Little girls," I said, sipping the wine. It could have used a few minutes to breathe but it wasn't going to get them. "Something about little girls and voices from beyond."

  Bernie looked at me in a shrewd fashion and then turned to survey the bookshelves, one hand clutching a white-stockinged foot. Bernie had always worn white socks. "Little girls," he said, drinking deeply out of the glass in his other hand. "Two little girls. Knox or Fox or Pox or something, maybe Fitzgerald." He scooted over on his rear and reached up for a book with the hand that had clutched the foot. Bernie wasn't one to put down a glass.

  "Knox or Fox or Fitzgerald?"

  "Frances Fitzgerald. Cities on a Hill. Got a terrific summary of the Burned-Over District." He flipped through the end of the book. "Fox," he said triumphantly. Margaret and Katie Fox. About twelve and fifteen, I don't know which was which, farmer's daughters, famous for their ability to communicate with the spirit world through the ghost of a dead man who haunted their family's house."

  "Now I remember," I said. "They had double-jointed toes."

  "They had toes like tympani," Bernie said. "If they'd been born in this century they would have played them in a band. They popped their toes like mad under the table and interpreted the noises as rappings from their friendly ghost. They were very big in Rochester."

  "I'll bet they were a hit in Utica too. Who was running the show?"

  "Must have been their parents. Raking it in, too. I think the little girls came up with the trick themselves. Mommy and daddy just handled the receipts."

  "I don't think my little girl came up with her trick herself."

  "And which little girl is this?" Bernie poured some more wine. His glass was already empty.

  I told him about the Revealing.

  "I've seen posters," he said promptly. "Big color shots of mother and daughter. Mostly ripping off Raphael for composition. You know, those circular Madonnas and Child. How did the Revealing work?"

  "That's sort of a new twist."

  " The only thing older than the old story is the new twist.' That's F. Scott Fitzgerald. What is it?"

  "She's supposed to be a channel."

  "Spare me," Bernie said. "There are enough dull people in the world without millions of equally dull disembodied spirits popping up and putting in their two cents' worth every time some actress closes her eyes. What are the criteria for becoming a disembodied spirit, anyway? Do they get degrees? Does some panel certify them? How do we know we don't get the worst of the bunch? How do we know they haven't been disembodied because they were bores and liars? Being disembodied doesn't sound to me like something you get for good behavior. And if they're so terrific, how come they're hanging around waiting to get a chance to talk to us? It sounds sort of like spending eternity at a pay phone, waiting for some change to drop out so you can dial a number at random. And only knowing one area code, and not a very good area code at that."

  "Bernie," I said, "I'm only giving you the party line."

  "Campus is full of these jerks," he said. "It used to be you could go over to Kerckhoff, get your synapses jangled on coffee, and talk about Kierkegaard or something. Now it's all these bananas with clear eyes and turbans listening to New Age music on nonanimal headphones and humming along."

  "It's been a while since I've seen any animal headphones. What are they? Little imitation dog ears?"

  "You know what I mean. Not even any real rubber, it's like those little faucets hurt the trees or something. And the way they dress, Simeon. Remember how hard we used to work to look a little sloppy? These kids dress like actuarial tables. Put a bunch of them together and they look like a graph illustrating the contents of the typical middle-class airhead's closet." Bernie had somehow managed to convince himself that he wasn't middle-class.

  "Well, so what?" I said more quarrelsomely than I had intended. "We wore blue jeans as a uniform of nonconformity and learned to meditate. I remember saying a one-syllable word over and over until I fell asleep, and when I woke up, trying to convince myself that I'd had a mystical experience. It was the religion of the month, and the smart ones wore it out in three weeks. Now we've got chan
nels and fire-walking and Shirley MacLaine. I'm not sure there was a new religion every fifteen minutes in the fifties, but there have been a couple of thousand since."

  "You know the theories," Bernie said. "New religions tend to arise in times of transition, when old values are being challenged or are wearing out. That leaves out the fifties. Christianity was first a Jewish response to the oppression of Rome, and then, centuries later, a Roman adaptation to the decline of the empire. Luther arose as the political systems of Europe began to fall apart. Et cetera. It's all too neat for me. I take a messier view of history."

  "And the Burned-Over District?"

  "Society in transition with a vengeance. The Revolution only fifty years old, immigrants streaming in from Europe, people still worried about violence in the streets every time a president's party lost the election, and the country beginning to fall apart at the seams over slavery. People talk about two hundred years of American stability, the peaceful transference of power and all that, as though it actually happened. This country wasn't even a hundred years old when it self-destructed. It wasn't until Lincoln appropriated what he called War Powers and turned the presidency into a functioning kingship, and then sent Grant to crush the South, that things settled down."

  "Bernie," I said, "you can't sympathize with freedom and the pre-Civil War South at the same time. Don't get sidetracked. You're being very helpful."

  He sat back, a little surprised. "I am?"

  "So where do all the new religions go? And don't say heaven."

  It was the kind of question he loved. He drank a full glass of wine for lubrication while he gathered his thoughts. I poured for us both.

  "As we said, they tend to arise in times of social change, when people have begun to doubt that the world will automatically continue to obey the million or so rules that keep them safe in their dinky little houses. Cults usually either fervently embrace the values that are being threatened- like, say, the Muslim and Christian fundamentalists do these days-or fervently challenge them, as did the original Christians and the Oneida Colony, to choose a couple of examples.

  "Most religions are founded by a single charismatic individual. He or she, as Anthony F. C. Wallace says, has an experience, a hallucination, a moment of divine inspiration, an encounter with a greater force. Moses and the burning bush, Muhammad and the voice, Joseph Smith and the book of gold. The leader is changed by the experience and communicates it. Some of his listeners become converts." He picked up the book and flipped back a couple of pages to an underlined passage: "Listen, here's Fitzgerald paraphrasing Wallace: 'Some of these converts experience an ecstatic vision such as their master had, while others are convinced by rational arguments, and still others by reasons of expediency.' Boy, I'll say. The converts organize and then, almost inevitably, encounter some form of opposition.' In fact, they need the opposition. It solidifies their internal discipline and gives them a them-against-us attitude. We're so terrific we frighten them and they have to oppress us, but, oh boy, one of these days… Look at the Old Testament for the best example. It's one long wail of oppression, the longest protest song on record." He put Fitzgerald on the shelf, spilling wine as he did it.

  "And then what happens?"

  "Simeon, you know all this stuff already."

  "What do you want me to do, Bernie, talk to myself? What's the problem, is it time to rotate the lasagna?"

  "Then one of three things can happen. Either the religion adapts to a more mainstream position, or the society changes to embrace the religion's position, or both. Usually both, actually. Or the religion disappears. It's not that much different from any social movement. The Mormons moved west and dropped polygamy. The Millerites somehow survived the day in 1841 that Christ was supposed to show up, although their leader got canned and they changed their name to Adventists after they came down from the mountain, which must have been a pretty embarrassing trip. Imagine telling your neighbors that the world was about to end and then having to go home and mow the lawn."

  "So most religions that aren't fundamentalist start out radical and then move to the right."

  "Sure. They have to be radical at the beginning to attract a core of converts. Then, when they want to attract a much larger number of converts-when they start looking for a real power base-they have to settle down a little bit. It's like a presidential campaign working its way through the primaries. They start out all sharp edges and ringing challenges and then get worn smooth as they approach the convention. Those that don't, or can't because their primary appeal is to a noncentrist minority, drop out."

  "The Burned-Over District produced some social movements too. In addition to the religions, I mean."

  "Practically every important American movement of the nineteenth century. Abolition, temperance, educational reform, feminism-"

  "What about feminism?" said a woman's voice from the kitchen. "Bernie, are you being boring?"

  "I don't know," Bernie said. "I wasn't listening. You'd have to ask Simeon."

  I got up and toted the other bottle of wine to the kitchen door. Bernie had finished the first. "On the contrary," I said to the woman standing at the oven. "He's been a veritable display of fireworks."

  "He's all over the sky," she admitted. "What he needs is some direction." She closed the oven and held out a hand. I'm Joyce," she said, "and you're Simeon."

  "What a domestic entrance," Bernie said from behind me. "I didn't even know the back door worked."

  "It's still raining," she said. "I parked in the garage and ran for it." She was about thirty-six, maybe a year older than Bernie, with a pleasant, no-nonsense face, faded blue eyes, and a thin, high-bridged nose. She wore a white coat. "Sorry I'm late," she said. "I've wanted to meet you for a long time. You didn't get him onto agrarianism, did you?"

  "Not yet."

  "Good. If I hear one word about the Green Revolution and more productive strains of rice, I'm going out for pizza."

  "It's important," Bernie said mildly. "We either increase the productivity of the land or you'll have to ship them lasagna."

  "I think I'd prefer cooking to listening. What have we here?" She indicated the bottle in my hand.

  "Merlot."

  "Ducky. Looks like Bernie's already gargled with some. There must be another bottle somewhere."

  "Hidden under the couch," Bernie said.

  "Well, Simeon, why don't you open that one, and Bernie can set the table, such as it is, and I'll do the salad."

  "Joyce is organized," Bernie said, sorting silverware. "When we pack for a trip she pins my socks together."

  "Bernie's idea of packing is to empty his drawers onto the floor and then push the suitcase in front of him, wide open, until it's full. When we get there he never has any sunglasses or toothpaste, but his books are packed alphabetically by author."

  "Good," I said, worrying at the cork with the world's flimsiest corkscrew. "I was afraid he was still trying to figure out the Dewey Decimal System. Bernie and I lived together once. Whole libraries vanished into the void."

  "Gang up on me," Bernie said from the other room. "I like the attention."

  "He does," she said. "He's worse than my patients."

  "You're a gerontologist."

  "Ask her about the graying of America," Bernie called. "Then, when she gets going, I can talk about the Green Revolution and she'll never notice."

  "This is a two-issue relationship," Joyce said. "Gerontology and whatever Bernie's talking about at the time."

  I poured her some wine. "Sounds interesting."

  "I love it. I was way too focused before I met him. You have to learn to listen to him, though. It took me about six months before I learned I could change channels just by mentioning some other buzzword. That's the wonderful thing about Bernie. He's got more channels than a cable TV box."

  "He's on twenty-four hours a day, too."

  She grinned at me and gave me the appraising glance a woman saves for her lover's oldest friends. "And you've got as many degrees a
s Bernie and you're using them to be a detective," she said. "Where have we gone wrong, the mothers of America?"

  "We'll talk about that over dinner, okay?"

  "Fine," she said. "Anything but the Green Revolution."

  "So," I said later as the lasagna steamed on the plates. "How do you track a doctor?"

  "Track a doctor?" Joyce said in a suspicious tone, instantly joining the Physicians' United Front Against Everybody Else. "How do you mean?"

  "Let's just say I wanted to make sure that someone who says he's a doctor really is one. Can I call the American Medical Association or something?"

  "Used to be you could," she said, ''but it's unconstitutional now. Has been for some time."

  "The AMA is unconstitutional?" Bernie said with his mouth full, getting up to go to the kitchen.

  "No, of course not. The AMA is as constitutional as the Supreme Court, and about half as lively. It's requiring doctors to join that's unconstitutional. Used to be every doctor had to be a member. Now it's only about half."

  "So you mean there's no central data bank for doctors?"

  "Well," she said, "what's a doctor?"

  "What do you mean, what's a doctor?" Bernie put a fresh glass of wine down in front of me. We were working through it pretty fast. "A doctor is somebody who wears a white coat and cures people. A doctor is somebody who's not a nurse and works in a hospital."

  "There are doctors who do nothing but research. There are doctors who go straight into admin and never see a patient. Christ, there are chiropractors, glorified masseuses who call themselves doctors and crack spines for a living. Even worse, there are people who take M.D.'s only to go on and become lawyers so they can specialize in making doctors look bad in court, the scumbags. Is there a central data bank that includes all those people? No."

  "Swell," I said. "That's just what I didn't want to hear."

  I must have looked dejected. "It's made more difficult," she added, thawing slightly, "by the fact that doctors are certified to practice on the state level. There's no comprehensive central registry that contains all the state certifications."