Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

by Ray Garton

  Manning is populated almost exclusively by Seventh-day Adventists and closes up from sundown Friday till sundown Saturday—the Sabbath. By the time Roger left college, he considered himself an Adventist by association only and decided it would be a lie to continue living there. He went to movies, bars, smoked and drank, ate meat—and worse, pork and seafood—and he didn't want to live in a community that gossiped about Adventists who did not live their accepted lifestyle.

  When he moved to St. Helena, he got a job in a Napa book store and drove there four days a week. The rest of the time he spent writing his book, trying to finish it as quickly as possible, hoping to sell it and raise enough money to quit his job.

  He'd told only his two closest friends at the college of the real reason he'd quit school—his writing—telling everyone else that he was just taking a break.

  There was a reason for his secrecy and it had nothing to do with shame. Rather than flaunt his choice to write fiction—let alone his chosen genre, which would only make matters worse—Roger wanted to keep peace. As far as Seventh-day Adventists are concerned, fiction of any kind is not a peace-keeper. In fact, according to the writings of the church's founder Ellen G. White, an alleged prophet of God and still the arbiter of doctrine and biblical interpretation nearly six decades after her death, the writers of fiction of any kind (and she included fairy tales, comic strips, and even history books in the lot) are directly inspired by Satan to teach their unsuspecting readers to properly serve the devil. She even went so far as to write that some people have been stricken with physical paralysis simply from reading too much fiction; the victims, she claimed, were kept in such a state of excitement by their reading material that their brains simply shut down and their bodies ceased to function. Therefore, reading fiction is not an approved activity in Adventist circles; writing it is openly condemned. The people of Manning were no exception. So Roger decided to keep his plans to himself.

  But somehow, word got out; then everyone wanted to know what he was writing. The book was called Restraints and Roger knew it would not be well received by his Adventist friends and acquaintances. There were a couple of friends, of course, who would probably appreciate it, but no more than that.

  His novel was an erotic murder mystery that centered around a secret dominant-submissive relationship between a man and woman. When the woman is murdered, her sister, a straight-laced church-goer, is determined to find the killer herself when the police investigation stalls. In the process, she discovers a dark side to her sexuality that she never knew existed.

  Roger had hoped to at least keep the book's plot under wraps, but knew that would be impossible, having had firsthand experience with the Adventist grapevine. So he prepared himself for the criticism.

  It started as a quiet murmur on the hill.

  What a disappointment Roger had turned out to be.

  To think he'd been president of his senior high school class and used to be a member of the choir and sing solos for church services!

  What a shame he was using his god-given talent to titillate and disturb rather than uplift and encourage.

  When he went on campus to visit friends, he received stares from people he did not know and had never seen before. Roger thought he was imagining it at first until one day, while waiting for a friend in a dorm lobby, he was approached by a young man in a suit who asked hesitantly, "You're the writer, aren't you?"

  Startled, Roger nodded. The boy stared at him for a long, uncomfortable moment, then walked away.

  He tried to ignore it at first, but when he noticed that his friends were becoming increasingly unavailable—always too busy or too tired to see him—he could ignore it no longer.

  Lying in bed one night, he realized he should have known this would happen, that his work, if he chose to continue it, would require him to cut himself off from the church and its people entirely—just as he should have known how difficult that would be. He'd known nothing else his entire life. All he knew were Seventh-day Adventists, from his parents to his friends to his most casual acquaintances.

  As a child, Roger was taught, as was every other child he knew, that the Seventh-day Adventist church was the only true church, the "remnant church," and that he was fortunate to have been born into an Adventist home. He was taught to cling to his faith as if for his very life, because some day it would be. Some day, he was told by his parents and his friends' parents, his ministers and Sabbath school teachers and school teachers, even his gym teacher, the government would band together with America's Christian churches, under the leadership of the Catholic church—which Adventism taught was the Beast of Revelation—and pass a law that would require everyone to worship on Sunday. Because Adventists worship on Saturday, the Sabbath sanctified by the fourth of the ten commandments, they would be considered criminals. They would have to flee their homes and hide out in forests and caves, living off the land, while their enemies—all the other churches as well as the federal government—hunted them down like animals to be shot and killed on sight. This "time of trouble," as it was called, had been foreseen by Ellen White and written about at length in her many books. It was to take place just before the second coming of Jesus Christ; he would descend from the clouds to save his people—the Adventists, naturally—and punish everyone else by throwing them into the lake of fire.

  Ellen White's clumsy, purple prose conjured powerful and frightening images in young minds, images not soon forgotten and difficult to stop believing. As a small boy, Roger had lived in fear of this coming tribulation. He remembered lying awake in his bed at night, praying to God to kill him before it came so he would not have to endure it. He was hounded by nightmares of cowering in reeking garbage dumpsters and dark, filthy, abandoned buildings while the footsteps and gunshots of his hunters sounded all around. The nightmares always ended with him being captured by the enemy. Sometimes he woke up screaming and was unable to go back to sleep. His parents blamed too much TV. Roger was affected by this belief more than most of his friends, but every other child he knew was somehow influenced by these teachings. On the school playground, it wasn't uncommon to hear one child say to another, "I'll be the Adventist and you be the Sunday-keeper and you try to kill me, okay?"

  He had another recurring nightmare as a boy. It involved a picture of the U.N. building his parents had hung on his bedroom wall; beside the building stood a giant, ghost-like Christ as tall as the building and wearing a white robe and sandals, his knuckle crooked, preparing to gently knock on the building.

  It was very popular with Adventists and could be found in nearly every Adventist home of the time. Posters were issued to Sabbath school rooms and school offices; there was even a wallet-sized picture available in Adventist book stores.

  Roger knew the artist had intended the giant Jesus to look gentle and benevolent, but in bad light, it did not.

  In shadows, the beatific, bearded face seemed to take on a sneer, a sinister grin held in check. The crooked finger seemed about to crash through a window and drag out anyone unfortunate enough to be too close.

  Christ seemed to be about to say, "I'm back, folks...and guess what I'm going to do to you after killing me the last time?"

  Roger used to dream of waking to a tremendous rumbling and the agonized screams of people outside. A loud, angry voice that seemed to come from everywhere shouted, "Where's Carlton? Where is that little shit? I'm here for Roger Carlton because he reads comic books that he buys with his Sabbath school offering, and he watches TV on the Sabbath when his parents aren't around, and sometimes at night he plays with himself—DON'T YOU, ROGER? Where is that little shit?"

  In the dream, Roger always went to his bedroom window and, with fear-weakened hands, pulled aside the curtain—

  —to see two gigantic, ghostly, sandaled feet crushing cars and houses and people. There was a great, bloody hole through the center of each foot. The feet were always headed straight for Roger's house as the voice roared on:

  "W
here's Carlton? WHERE IS THAT LITTLE SHIT?"

  It was not easy to get past images that had been so deeply burned into his consciousness at such a young and formative age.

  Even now at the age of twenty-eight he sometimes tensed when a television show was interrupted by a special news report, certain that the announcer would say that a national Sunday law had been decreed and those who broke it—"Like you Seventh-day Ad-ventists," he might add with a hateful sneer—would be executed. Even though Roger considered himself the farthest thing from an Adventist—he even held a burning hatred for them—the thought of such a broadcast chilled something in him, as if, although he'd shed the beliefs the church had instilled in him, he could not rid himself of the fears it had created.

  When it came time for him to sever his ties to the church, he was unable to do it at first. It was like trying to stop smoking, which he had also failed to do; just as he needed a cigarette after a meal, he needed the approval of his Adventist friends—as much as he hated to admit it. They were his whole life, the only friends he'd ever had and he'd spent his life chasing their approval like a little child chasing a balloon in a strong wind.

  In order to disconnect himself from the church, he would have to disconnect himself from the first twenty years of his life.

  Completely.

  Roger needed to know that his friends didn't think there was something wrong with him, because there wasn't. He was simply doing something he loved, something he did well: telling stories. He was the same person he had always been.

  As he continued writing the book, he tried to reassure his friends.

  One of his closest and oldest friends was Marjie Shore. She'd been his first kiss in grammar school, his first girlfriend in high school, and his first lover in college. She knew he'd always planned to be a writer and that he wrote erotic mysteries and thrillers. It never seemed to bother her before and he asked her why she was suddenly uncomfortable with it now.

  "I always thought you'd outgrow it," she said. "I never liked the stuff you wrote. I've always loved your writing—you're very good, God has blessed you with a wonderful talent. But I never liked the stories. All the violence and...and sex."

  "But look around you. There's violence everywhere, we live in a violent world. Read the paper lately? And sex—well, Marjie, that's a part of life! What was it we did, the two of us, when—"

  "I know, but it's...different. The things you write are wrong. You dwell on them. Wallow in them. And they're...they're sick. They're wrong."

  "I don't do the stuff I write about, you know that, right? I make it up. They're just stories."

  "I never understood it. I thought it would go away."

  "You read them. You seemed to enjoy them."

  "But I always prayed it would stop. I always prayed you'd grow out of it and move on to something else. But I always loved you, anyway."

  Anyway.

  Roger felt like putting his face in his hands and bawling then. It was as if his entire relationship with Marjie had been a little play in which she was simply hitting her mark, reciting her lines. She had been waiting for him to turn into another person, someone he was not, and when she realized that wasn't going to happen—when he got serious about his writing and tried to do something with it—she quit waiting.

  She wasn't the only one.

  That was the night he began to see bridges burning all around him.

  All of his friends—some of whom he'd known since he was a toddler—were no longer waiting for Roger to change, to become someone with whom they would prefer being friends. In their eyes, he was hopelessly lost.

  His own family showed him some support at first, but even that changed later, when his work began to sell.

  It seemed every relationship he'd ever had was never anything more than an illusion.

  That was the night the people in his life began to hurt him. Then he sold Restraints. That was when they began to terrify him.

  4.

  Roger spent the evening with Betty and Leo, sitting at the bar in their kitchen and talking over wine.

  He had spent a few hours settling into his new house. Most of his things were in storage, so it hadn't taken long.

  Leo, an enormous, solid man with a shiny bald head and a fringe of silvering black hair over his ears, pounded a hammer-like fist on the bar after finishing his fourth glass of wine and rumbled, "Read your last book. You know, the one with the, uh—" He snapped his fingers twice in Betty's direction. "What was it?"

  "Ledges," Betty said.

  "Yeah, yeah. Goddamn, son, that was a horny book. Had me jumpin' on this broad every night that week." He laughed as he leaned over to kiss Betty's hand. "But the movie—"

  "Oh, please," Roger groaned, "let's not talk about the movie. It never should have been made." He sipped his wine. "Speaking of movies, I noticed Hollywood North is gone."

  Betty and Leo exchanged a dark glance and Betty said, "You haven't heard."

  "Heard what? Is Josh all right?"

  Shaking her head slowly, Betty said, "He's got AIDS."

  Something in Roger's chest deflated when he heard that. "How bad is he?"

  "Pretty bad. I saw him Sunday. He likes visitors but doesn't get many. Everybody's too scared they're gonna catch it," she added with quiet bitterness.

  "S'a scary thing," Leo mumbled.

  "It doesn't have to be," Betty said. "But it's easier to believe rumors than it is to do some reading and learn about something."

  "Is he still living in St. Helena, Betty?"

  "When he's not in the hospital. It won't be long before he'll need constant care. It won't be long period, if you know what I mean."

  Roger finished his wine with a gulp. He had not been in contact with Josh in six years, but their long visits together were fond memories and he'd always meant to give Josh a call someday.

  "Meant to," he murmured angrily to himself as he poured another glass.

  "What?" Leo said.

  "I'm just pissed at myself. I kept meaning to write him or call, but..."

  "Go see him," Betty said enthusiastically. "He'd love that. He sits in that little house and watches old movies day and night. Pretty soon he won't be able to do that. He'd love to see you."

  "Yeah, I'll do that."

  They talked for another hour about other people in town—who had moved, who had married, who had divorced, who had died—then Leo lifted his bulk from the barstool and slurred, "I'm through for the night, kids. See ya tomorrow."

  After they heard the bedroom door close, Betty said, "So what's eating you? Why aren't you writing?"

  "I didn't say I'm not writing."

  "You didn't say you are."

  "I am, I'm working on a new book, but it's...slow. The teaching job will do me good. I need a break."

  "It's been—how long since your last book?"

  "Almost two years.

  "And the next one?"

  "Whenever it's finished."

  "Which will be—when?"

  "I...don't know. Look, Betty, I need the break, okay? For however long it lasts, I need it." He blinked in surprise at his own words; he hadn't meant to sound so harsh. He picked up his crumpled pack of cigarettes, found it empty, took one of Betty's and lit up. "The last couple of years have been pretty...rough."

  "Wanna talk about it?"

  He thought about that for a few moments. Betty was just about the most understanding person he knew. She had supported him in everything he'd done and had always made him feel like she was on his side. He could not say that about anyone else in his life. But she knew nothing of Sylmar Neuropsychiatric Hospital, or of his reasons for going there.

  Sometimes even the most understanding people cocked a brow when they learned a friend, however close, had spent time in a mental hospital.

  "No," he said. "Some day, but not yet."

  "Whatever you say."

  "So. Who's that girl in the deli? What's her name again? S
andra?"

  "Sondra. For god's sake, Roger," she said with a laugh, "she's only seventeen."

  "No, that's not why I'm asking. She's just...interesting, that's all. She seems so afraid, as if she's used to being hit every time she walks into a room, or something. You know much about her?"

  "Not much. She's awfully quiet. She's from Berrien Springs, Michigan."

  "An Adventist?" Roger said. Berrien Springs was another Adventist stronghold, like Manning or Loma Linda.

  "I think so, but I'm not sure. She always wears dresses, never pants, no jeans, no jewelry. She probably is."

  "I'm surprised she's allowed to work there."

  "I don't think they have much choice."

  "Her parents?"

  Betty shook her head. "Her parents were killed over a year ago. Maybe two. Some kind of accident, I think. She moved here to live with her cousin."

  "Who's her cousin?"

  "Her name is Annie. She comes in to get Sondra at the end of the day. Another quiet one, never says anything. I get the impression money's tight. I suspect Sondra never sees much of her paycheck, if any."

  "Is her cousin married?"

  "Yeah, but the way Sondra talks about him, he's been hurt, or he's crippled, or something. I don't know. Whatever's wrong, he can't work."

  Roger thought about Sondra's eyes, how they never met his for more than a second at a time, the golden flecks in them that looked like tiny puncture wounds.

  Punctures from the inside, he thought.

  Sipping his wine, he muttered, "Poor kid."

  5.

  When Roger walked through the back door of DiMarco's the next day, someone was screaming. The deli was dead silent except for the radio and the wailing sobs of a girl who was leaning on Leo at the register, her fingers clutching his big shoulders, face pressed to his chest.

  Two girls behind the sandwich counter stared at her. Customers stood in the middle of the store gawking at the crying girl.