by Daniel Kraus
I split the Bible, rifled back through its early pages.
“Look here. Genesis 6:7, the Flood: ‘I will blot out the man whom I have created, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ Could He be any clearer? He regrets creating us! He is hardly fit, then, to judge us. That’s like sewing a rag doll and then burning it because it refuses to speak!”
Eric slapped down his pencil and held up his hands to beg patience.
“This is Möbius-strip logic. We could spin around it all day. Why are you so jazzed up about this?”
I held up the Bible. A book: a harmless thing, yet envenomed.
“Because Gød, in His infinite wisdom, has given Job and the rest of us the facility to think critically. Why else did we choose the Tree of Knowledge over the Tree of Life? And yet here Gød instructs us not to think critically. I have seen far too closely, Mr. Kwon, what happens when humans stop thinking critically. They end up in narrow trenches trading poison gasses. They end up herding innocents into ovens. They end up massing believers into the desert and setting them tooth against tooth. If we follow Gød’s command to Job, we open the door to the worst conceivable evils.”
No conversational lapse at Bear Claw was totally silent. Somewhere, a patient was forever giggling, screaming, orating, or weeping, if not all four in accord. Cicero was the institute’s stillest spot, however, and would be until the heaters were fixed, quiet enough that you could hear the breaking of waves against Maine’s cliffs, that prehistoric drum beat mocking our striving little brains.
“And yet,” ventured Eric.
My, but the earringed analyst was observant.
I sat, hoping I might feel more seaworthy.
“And yet,” sighed I, “Gød holds Job in the highest esteem of all, even after His lectures. This is one kink I cannot untwist. Gød is a typhoon that wipes out good and bad in indiscriminate tides. Why bother to let us know he approves of Job if Job’s fate, and the fate of all goodly men, are like those waves you and I can hear being crashed against the rocks?”
Yielding of this sort was catnip for a frisky psychologist; it is to Eric Kwon’s credit that he moved lightly, bridging one word to the next with spiderlike delicacy.
“I’m not interested in inflating your ego,” said he. “But it’s hard to know what I know about the Bible and know what I know about you and . . . Look, when I suggested you were a Divine Experiment, you weren’t real happy about it. But what if we placed that into context? What if I said other Divine Experiments have manifested as human beings all throughout history, in all religions? Of course, they went by a different word.”
Illusionist? Necromancer? Witch doctor?
“Prophet,” guessed I.
Eric proceeded as if we navigated a spiral staircase with an object both cumbersome and fragile held between us, and we did, for half the basket cases at Bear Claw regarded themselves as prophets fielding personal telegrams from Gød. That I received no such telegrams, nor ever had, lent the label a backward sort of credence.
“The purpose of prophets is to link the human realm to the divine,” continued Eric. “To report back from Gød’s world. To help us answer all the questions Job forces us to ask. I’ll put this out there and you can, like, you know, do whatever you want to with it. But what if that’s why you’re here? Not just here on Earth, but here in America, in Maine, in Barraclough, in this room with me right now? What if you’re here to prepare for prophecy, to see what you can see in Gød’s realm and send the rest of us back a report?”
X.
VON LÜTH HAD CALLED ME a “guide” destined to lead people through the “valleys of death and into the hills of glory.” Rig had called me a “Fail-safe,” the canary in the coal mine that would tell people it was safe to continue. Both these words I preferred above “prophet,” which, to me, implied subordinacy: Gød was the Message, the prophet the Messenger. I knew from experience, however, that even lowly lab assistants could usurp their scientist superiors. My attack against the Lord’s acropolis did not relent; what changed was my strategy. I operated like the spy Frau Meixelsperger had wished me to be, immersing myself in His proverbs, psalms, axioms, and brocards. To know Him, premised I, would facilitate the infiltration of his defenses when the moment was nigh. If I couldn’t save Ry directly, perhaps I could deliver him from Gød’s famous “mercy.”
In sessions I came to relish, Eric and I barnstormed through testaments Old and New, Biblical Apocrypha, Dead Sea Scroll addenda, and scriptural critiques. We spent the middle third of 1990 slashing paths through the jungle of Ecclesiastes, a book that made Job read like Dick and Jane. Its opening cry is one with which any Bear Claw indweller would empathize: “Utter futility! All is futile!” If that is not black enough coffee, Mr. Ecclesiastes avers that there is nothing noble about old age, only yucky decrepitude: “Appreciate your youthful vigor in the days of your youth, before the days of sorrow come.” And nowhere, Dearest Reader, in these notebooks you hold, have I written truer words than Ecclesiastes 9:11:
The race is not won by the swift,
Nor the battle by the courageous;
Nor is sustenance won by the wise,
Nor wealth by the intelligent,
Nor favor by the learned,
For the short duration of life renders all successes illusory.
Does not such depredation beg for analysis? Follow my logic, if you will, over water lilies and under sticky fronds, and mind my machete. The morose Mr. Ecclesiastes repudiates Genesis’s valuing of humans above animals, saying, “Man has no superiority over beast, since both amount to nothing.” Gød, in his diatribe to Job, goes even further, giving special approval to the animal kingdom, where one protects one’s own at all costs. Singled out as exemplars are the hippopotamus and crocodile, barbaric creatures that share nothing with the coming Gentle Jew of Nazareth and his platitudes of loving your enemy and turning the cheek.
In my fumbling attempt to recreate Montana’s natural order at Savage Ranch, how had I forgotten the lesson learned at the end of the First World War? Permit me the hubris of quoting myself, hundreds of pages yonder, when I wondered “whether defending the life of a loved one was worth the destruction of others.” Gød’s prophets suggested that yes, good violence exists right alongside bad; consider again that instant in 1918, when I watched Allied and German soldiers pull back bayonets to let the fawn caught between their armies caper free.
It was at the end of Job where I found a flame that, more than any other, singed me with the brand of prophet. Gød, in the mood to reward Job for being true-blue, restores him with all he once had and more: fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, a thousand she-asses, and ten more children. The book thereby concludes with order restored and everyone happy. Hooray?
Not so fast, Reader. Are we to believe that Job is actually pleased with this remedy? Gød can do many things, but “replace” a child with a different one is not among them. Whether your offspring is as splenetic as Merle or as unswerving as Ry, the idea is repugnant. Animals, however, are a different story. The lioness fights to save her brood, but if she gets hungry enough, she will eat them. Their little souls are recyclable, and thereby animals, and only animals, approach immortality.
Well, animals and Mr. Frank Zipp of Kant-17.
So ponderous was this conclusion that, for a time, I could not bear to lift it. The Bible was a treasure map waiting all these years for me to find it, and it seemed to suggest that I might yet get that long-desired chance to meet Gød and make hay of the meeting. And how does one make hay? One sharpens one’s pitchfork.
Eric’s sessions hadn’t exonerated me from the round table of A.M. Analytic, and twice a week I took stock of our razed Camelot to see which chunks of armor had been ripped from our debilitated knights. Their meds were a mess, their hygiene had lapsed, and to a man they were falling apart. Bobbi had become a walking skeleton who still believed herself obese, while Lucky’s helmet had been replaced by mere bandages, which became stained
in the colors of the ward’s Yuletide decorations: blood red and brain-fluid green. Others of us had altogether sunk into Bear Claw’s quicksand.
“Where’s Chad?”
“Yeah, he’s missed like two weeks now.”
“Didn’t you hear? Chad stepped on an orderly’s Nikes and got his ass beat.”
“I heard he’s in a coma.”
“Yeah? I heard he’s dead and they’re hiding it. But who knows, man?”
Who knew, indeed? The ship was sinking and the passengers drowning, while the crew, like rats, scrabbled for high ground. Dobbin owned what he called a “cellular telephone,” a plastic brick with a rubber antenna, and were you a stealthy sort, you could creep close as he paced outside before group, booming false bravado at potential employers, all of whom demanded that Dobbin defend Barraclough’s notorious practices. He couldn’t, and defeated, he’d slump inside, mumble a bit, and let the group self-steer themselves toward hysteria while he watched his phone, waiting for its keypad to light up with good news.
This background I submit so that you understand how rare it had become for any of these panicked prisoners to lower their self-protective shields. In December 1990, seconds after I’d caboosed our sad train out of Descartes and into a slapping winter wind, Jackie blindsided me.
“Green-skin pus-smelling fuckling trash!”
The MAD upon her triceratops bone plate butted my nose. Off-balance from a belly full of Red Heavies, I stumbled, kicking a football of snow, before righting myself and whirling about to locate help, which, as previously noted, no longer existed. Jackie was back, her gold teeth flashing with wet snow.
“You’re lucky I haven’t ripped those words off your fuckling face. Imitating Jackie is how you get buried, little boy.”
I touched my offending forehead. The last words I’d markered upon it had been both prediction and plea: THE END.
“I don’t want trouble,” said I.
She spread her arms, playing to an invisible audience of hooting supporters. We, the violent cases, were given thin wool coats in the winter, khaki like our jumpsuits, and Jackie’s undone zipper jangled like a popped switchblade. Cuckoos vs. the Nuts, game two, the sport having switched from softball to recreational knifing.
“Fatherfuckler speaks! I knew that squeaky mouse bullshit was bullshit.”
I tried to get away, but she fisted my coat collar and pulled my head close enough that I could smell her pickled breath. Her voice was more menacing when lowered.
“Perk up your Mickey ears, squeaky-squeaky. I have a problem, and you’re the only punk-junk garbage-pail in this joint who can help. I know you haven’t forgot Farm Boy.”
This got me to quit struggling. Forget him I certainly hadn’t. Jackie open-handed the side of my head anyway. My neck bones reported.
“You helped Farm Boy out when he needed it, which is how come Jackie hasn’t carved your face like a pumpkin. Here’s the four-one-one, mousey. Farm Boy needs help again. He needs it serious.”
“Where is he?” demanded I.
“Back in May, they put me on cemetery detail, right? Got me rooting varmints out of the old tuberculosis camp and clubbing them dead. Nasty shit! They call it work therapy, but slave labor is what’s up. One day I’m sucking snakes out a snake hole and turn around, and there he is, Farm Boy, my boy, looking out a window.”
Every cul-de-sac like Bear Claw had a potter’s field, where dead without claimants were shoveled under with the barest ceremony. I recalled seeing, on my first walk through Bear Claw, mossy stones protruding from the earth like molars; I could even see the shape of the ward’s shadow draped across them.
“Spinoza,” identified I. “That’s by the Back Ward.”
“That’s why it’s hard as shit to get over there.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
I raised a thwarting elbow against a second smack.
“Do I look like Double-O-Fuckling-Seven? That’s shit you have to figure. All I can say is I never heard Farm Boy go off like this. Moaning and blubbering and snorting and wheezing. The master rats call it pseudoseizure so they can pretend it’s not real, but you listen to it and you tell me it isn’t real. Farm Boy’s going down hard.”
“Is he going to hurt himself?”
“You know the finger-food diet?”
“Finger food?”
Her fist went low, caught me in the oft-stitched stomach.
“Finger food is what they bring brain-drains who can’t be trusted with utensils. That’s all that’s going into Spinoza. Finger food far as the eye can see.”
“Why don’t they move him to the Back Ward, for Gød’s sake?”
“You think there’s room in Back Ward anymore?” Jackie clucked and, on a whim, slapped my forehead. “THE END, huh? Yeah, that’s right. This whole joint’s ready to explode. Too bad Farm Boy’s the only varmint in this cemetery who don’t deserve to be exploded. You really give a shit, Mickey Mouse, you’ll get in there and save him. You’ll do it because Jackie hasn’t come up with a single useful fuckling plan.”
In the final seconds before she bolted, wind froze the tears in her eyes, and this flash of vulnerability did more to move me than all of her physical threats. She was right: Bear Claw was a split powder keg even a dynamitier like Bartholomew Finch would have skirted. Rather than risk lawless orderlies who might waylay me as they’d waylaid Chad, I paced room 17 for four racking days before going to see Eric per safe, established schedule. It goes without saying that the Cicero furnace had never been repaired, and I came upon Eric kneeling before a space heater as his forefathers had before hearths, rubbing his palms before glowing neon tubes.
“Frank,” greeted he. “I had an idea: the Book of Esther.”
“Listen to me.”
“This childhood you say you had in the olden days—the Black Hand, right? Esther is totally related. Ostensibly, the book glorifies vengeance. But how can that be?”
“Listen to me.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You need to help me.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“Not with Biblical twaddle. Real help.”
Eric stood, cold knees cricking.
“I think ‘twaddle’ sort of minimizes the progress we’ve—”
“Ry—I’ve found him. He’s in Spinoza, which is in no way outfitted for someone slipping along sanity’s edge.”
“Whoa, hold on. How do you know it’s that bad?”
“Will you trust me? He is in the gravest danger.”
“Even if you’re right, what are you asking?”
“Are you that daft? I need you to get me inside Spinoza! I need you to get me inside his room! We’re past theorems and hypotheses now, shrink! This is real life, real death!”
Eric rubbed his temples and walked behind his desk. He dropped himself down and laughed once.
“Frank. Come on, man. You know I can’t do that.”
I kicked in the front of the space heater.
“Doesn’t this stovetop of yours prove it? Bear Claw has literally frozen you out. You have no idea what’s going on out there. Patients drugged to stupor, abused, raped, starved, tortured, vanished altogether. It’s happening right under your dolt nose!”
The skin between his eyebrows daggered.
“Cool it, Frank. I do what I can here.”
A Bible lay between us, adhesive notes marking passages that he, solicitous school boy, had been eager to share. I took it and hurled it at the window. It crashed to the metal mesh hard enough to crack the glass behind it. A triangular shard of window fell, and a bullet of wind shot out, striking Eric in the back of the head. He jolted like JFK in that fateful 1963 motorcade, and his hand leapt to the desk phone’s red button, which all patients knew rung a bell in the cerebral cortexes of Sikes and Glover. Eric retracted the hand a second later, but it was too late.
“That’s what you think of me?” sputtered I.
“Well, what do you expect? I don’t
know this friend of yours! My job is to help you.”
“You recall, Dr. Kwon, I was there at Hiroshima, and I sympathized with your people, all those Japs melted to muck. Now I wonder if I was too kind.”
“Wow, that’s really offensive. I’m not Japanese, by the way.”
“Agent Orange, then. I protested its use in the sixties after seeing how it flayed the flesh of your hut-dwelling brethren. Now I see that no good can come from weepy liberalism.”
“I’m not Vietnamese either, asshole. You realize you’re asking me to do something that would cost me my job? Maybe it looks like a shitty job to you, and maybe it is, but you try changing your career when you’re forty and see what kind of offers you get. I’m lucky to have a job at all and I’m not going to throw it away because you’re baiting me with racial slurs.”
I kicked his desk, punching a hole through weak wood; the awkward feel of a right foot missing three toes made me angrier.
“Then what good was all this, shrink? Month after month, ‘Gød likes you best of all’ this, ‘you are his favored prophet’ that? The Book of Zebulon Finch is utter sophistry if none of its chapter-verses results in a single action!”
“Who’s Zebulon Finch? You’re not making any sense.”
“Sense, eh? Do you know the word’s definition? ‘Sense’ is performing an action to elicit an outcome. It is what I must do if I, the wicked, am to receive any rest. If you do not have the gonads to unlock for me a single door, then you, good sir, are far more wicked than I. It is no wonder you lost your faith in Gød, shrink. The Gød we’ve discussed would have no faith at all in a slug like you.”
We glared—oh, how we glared. When the wind through the window chasm rose to falsetto, Eric swiveled in his chair and disappeared behind his desk, only to resurface with the glass shard in one hand and the thrown Bible in the other. With methodical movements he placed the shard, a genuine prohibited weapon, in the top drawer, which he locked with a key, and set the Bible before him, which he opened to the first of his adhesive notes.
