Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

by Ray Garton

  * * * *

  The summer rains that had hit the valley with such a vengeance earlier in the month had caused Vintner Creek to disgorge all kinds of garbage onto its muddy banks, none of which was as horrible as the chewy treat Gabby had discovered.

  The police turned the remains found by Gabby and Brett over to lab techs in San Francisco. Despite their decayed condition, the body parts were identified as belonging to Jimmy Greenlaw. He was the third such victim in two years.

  All three boys had been approximately the same age. The first had been a resident of St. Helena, and the other two had lived in Manning. All three had been Seventh-day Adventists. The boys had been sodomized, then dismembered, and their remains cast into the waters of Vintner Creek to find their way into the digestive tracts of fish and forest animals. The bone scoring, identical in all the victims, suggested the killer had used a dull implement to sloppily hack the bodies into pieces. Semen tracks in all three victims were identical as well. The police claimed there was other evidence to link the murders to the same killer or killers, but refused to discuss such niceties as chemical proof and tissue damage with the press.

  That was just fine with Brett's grandma.

  "They'll be back, those reporters," she said a few days after Brett's discovery, seating him at the kitchen table. Grandma was a large, gray woman who dressed colorlessly and seldom smiled. She was especially unsmiling now as she had just chased two more reporters from the front door. As she poured Brett a glass of soy milk, she said sternly, "And you'll not talk to them. Always sticking their microphones into people's faces after something awful's happened. The more awful the better, far as they're concerned. That's why I'll not have any newspapers in this house. Rags, all of them." She lowered herself into a chair across from Brett. "No television, either. All those reporters smiling while they tell about murders and rapes and homo-seck-shuls spreading the AIDS. Course, the television shows are just as bad. Nothing but sex and killing."

  Brett sipped the thick milk. He didn't like it, but he had no choice in the matter. He wiped off his creamy white mustache and said, "Larry Jackson says they have a TV, but his parents only let him watch good shows. He says—"

  "I don't care what he says. A television is Satan's doorway into the home. I know some say they can handle it, but if Sister White were alive today, she'd tell them differently. Maybe they're watching good shows now—" She spat the words "good shows" with bitter skepticism. "—but you just wait. You watch enough of that stuff and it...it affects you." She searched Brett's face for a moment and her eyes clouded with worry. She reached across the table and closed her puffy, liver-spotted hand over Brett's small one. "You haven't been thinking about that boy, have you? About...what you found?"

  Brett shook his head, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. "No, Grandma."

  "Good. Good. It's not healthy to dwell on that sort of thing. It can...affect you." She watched him a moment longer, as if waiting for a reaction of some kind, then said, "Go study your Sabbath school lesson, Brett, honey. And say a prayer for that poor boy's family. After dinner, you can give me a back rub."

  He polished off his milk and Grandma stroked his hair gently, still looking at him with concern.

  The policemen had been the same way. All of a sudden, everyone was treating him as if he were breakable just because he had found a dead boy. Brett did not understand what the big deal was. It was not as if Jimmy had been a friend of his. They had a passing acquaintance in Sabbath school, but that was all. Brett had no friends to speak of. Sure, it was a bad thing that had happened and Jimmy's parents were probably crushed, he understood that. But he would not let his own feelings get involved.

  On his way through the living room, Brett got a glimpse of Grandpa. He seldom got more than a glimpse of him, usually rounding a corner or going through a doorway in his wheelchair, the two stumps of his legs—"Souvenirs from the Big War," he once growled—hidden beneath a brown wool blanket. He had his own bedroom downstairs where he ate all of his meals and spent most of his time listening to gospel music on his old record player. Brett never heard Grandma talking to him and could not remember the last time he had heard Grandpa speak; the only sound he made was the muffled rumble of his chair wheeling over the old wooden floor.

  In his room upstairs, Brett locked his door, something Grandma strongly disapproved of, and pulled a fat three-ring binder from under his bed. He flopped onto the mattress and opened the book, searching through the heavy construction paper pages. Pasted to each page were movie advertisements cut out of newspapers. He looked for one in particular, the newest addition to his collection, and when he found it, he folded his arms beneath his chest, tucked the tip of his tongue into the corner of his mouth and stared at it, relished it.

  The ad took up a quarter of the page and written at the top in letters that appeared to be carved in flesh was the title:

  BEDSIDE MANNERS

  Below that:

  If you sleep in the dark,

  he'll find you ...

  If you sleep with a light on,

  he'll find you FASTER!

  Below the words was a picture of a man's legs from behind in faded blue jeans. A bloodied ax hung at his right side. Between his spread legs, facing him, a woman lay in bed clutching the blankets to her breasts, mouth open in a horrified scream. The woman was Brett's mother.

  The book held nearly sixty ads for all kinds of movies ranging from Oscar winners complete with quotes of praise from critics to grade-Z horror films promising lots of blood; Brett collected them all. Because Grandma would not allow newspapers into the house, Brett had to fish discarded editions from garbage cans and trash bins, always careful that no one was watching. He kept only the entertainment section and tossed the rest back in the garbage. In his room, he subjected the pages to scissors and paste. When he hid the treasured binder, he pushed it far under his bed, all the way over against the wall.

  Grandma had a nervous tic that wriggled her lower lip now and then, especially when she was upset. At the very mention of movies or theaters, Grandma's lip began to twitch so fast it seemed about to wriggle off of her face.

  "If you ever go into such a place," she would say firmly, "your guardian angel will not go in with you. Being in a movie house puts distance between you and the Lord and can be dangerous. Bad things can happen. Your soul is unprotected and if you should die within those walls, you'll be lost forever. It would be no different than committing suicide. You'd have no way to repent. You'd be condemned to the Lake of Fire."

  Brett never understood exactly why it was wrong to go to movies. He knew that Ellen White had condemned going to theaters in her writing, but at the time, movie theaters had not existed. She had referred to live theater and burlesque. Maybe it was just the theater itself that was wrong, although he failed to see why. There were no rules against having a television or watching movies at home on a VCR, though most Adventists he knew were very cautious about that sort of thing; they claimed to use great discretion in choosing programs and movies, but they still watched them. Sometimes the church held a "Family Film Night" where they would show movies like The Sound of Music or some dumb Disney movie that was on the Approved List, and they would charge admission to raise money for new carpet in the sanctuary, or to repaint the multi-purpose room, or something. But going to see a movie in a theater was, for some reason, a bad thing and not allowed.

  He had been given several explanations for this rule, such as, "In a theater you're with a bad crowd, the wrong element," and, "Movies contain un-Christian and immoral themes and are a powerful negative influence." None of them satisfied him. Lost forever seemed a pretty severe price to pay for seeing a movie in a theater, but it did not dampen Brett's desire. He dreamed of going to movies the way most boys his age dreamed of being secret agents or firemen.

  He sometimes met other children his age who were not Adventists and asked them what it was like to go to movies. Puzzled by his urgent questioning, they told
him of the warm smell of the popcorn in the lobby, the posters on the wall, the coming attractions that ran before the movie. And the movies...

  He asked them again and again about the movies they saw, wanting to hear every detail from beginning to end.

  "How come bad things don't happen to the other kids who go to movies?" he had asked Grandma once.

  "They haven't been shown the truth yet. You have. They don't know they're doing wrong so the Lord won't hold it against them. But someday, he'll show them. Oh, yes, he'll show them."

  Brett often envied those children who had not been shown the truth. They seemed so much happier than everyone he knew, certainly happier than Brett himself. It did not make sense that having the truth would make you unhappy, but that was how it looked to Brett. A lot of things did not make sense to him. In the Old Testament, God was angry most of the time and often killed people he did not like, entire civilizations of them. Or worse, he sometimes made them so miserable that they wished they were dead, like the Egyptians in the story of Moses. In the New Testament, Jesus was supposed to be the son of God, but he seemed a lot nicer and talked about how everyone should love each other and take care of each other. Jesus and God, he was told, were pretty much the same person. But they sure did not seem the same to him.

  When he asked questions about these things, though, he was told by his teachers and pastors and especially by Grandma that his doubt was a sign that the devil was working in him, that he was being bad just by...thinking. It did not make sense. But everyone agreed with it—everyone at church, everyone at school, everyone in the whole town of Manning. So he figured there was something he was missing, something he was too young or stupid to understand. Maybe it would all become clear to him someday.

  But something told him that was not very likely.

  Everyone with this truth was so nervous about the fact that God was always watching them and that every bad thing they did, every bad thought they had—and, according to Ellen White, even every good thing they did not do—was being written down in a book. A record was being kept and on Judgment Day it would be used against them. They would go to heaven or be thrown into the lake of fire depending on what was in that book. Who could pass such a test? It seemed impossible. And that was why everyone with the Seventh-day Adventist truth was so unhappy, even though they were always smiling and cheerful. Sometimes Brett thought that was the worst part of living in Manning and going to an Adventist school and the Adventist church—all that forced, strained happiness and cheer.

  It had been so long since Brett had seen his mother that he had forgotten what her voice sounded like and she seemed to be nothing more than an image in photographs. She called every Christmas and on his birthdays (although she had forgotten his ninth a few months ago), but the calls were brief and her voice sounded pinched over the telephone. He remembered her face only because he had a picture of her tucked in the back of his movie binder with her letters and postcards.

  And now he had a new one: Bedside Manners.

  Four years ago, Mom had left Brett with Grandma and Grandpa so she could go to Hollywood and become an actress. That's what she had been doing before he came along, she had claimed. She had not quite made it, though, so she wanted to give it another try.

  Grandma spoke of Mom only when Brett got a phone call from her. After the call, Grandma would hug Brett to her enormous breasts, which always smelled of mothballs and Ben Gay, and mutter, "Imagine your own mother running off like that. And to that town to work with those, those people. At least she had the good sense to leave you with me so I could raise you in Christ."

  Sometimes Brett hated his mother for leaving him with Grandma and Grandpa. He hated Manning, the church, and everything else that made up his life. The sad fact was that there was little else in his life. Sometimes it filled him with rage to be trapped there with no options, nowhere else to go, no one to turn to but his grandparents. But Adventism had taught him how to deal with that.

  In church and school—he attended the Adventist grammar school in Manning—he was always reminded that he was bad. He was born bad, everyone was—according to them, anyway—and only Jesus could make him good, give him worth. Everything he liked was bad. He wanted to go to movies, watch television, read comic books—all bad things. He was told that he wanted to do those things because Satan was working hard inside him, and without Jesus, he was helpless, worthless and lost to the devil.

  Years ago, Brett had become tired of it all. He had taught himself how to shut down his feelings, to turn himself off, to put up walls and protect himself from the constant negative onslaught.

  He did the same thing whenever he felt like hating his mother, whenever he got angry about his situation. He just put up the walls and shut it all out.

  He had always hoped his mother would come back for him some day and take him away from Grandma and Manning and the Adventists. And now it was finally going to happen.

  Brett took his mother's most recent letter from the back of the binder. He only got her letters during the summer when was home from school and could get to the mailbox first. Otherwise, Grandma got to the them first and burned them.

  Brett honey,

  Got my first movie role! It's a cheapie horror

  flick called "Bedside Manners" and the part

  is small. I play a "victim" in the first 10

  minutes. But they're using me on the poster,

  so it's good exposure...

  Brett skipped down to the last paragraph.

  I've got a little money now and hope to

  come up north and get you soon. Would

  you like to live in L.A. with me? There are

  good schools here and lots of things to do...

  His chest swelled at the very thought of going away with Mom.

  ...hope to come up north and get you soon...

  ...get you soon...

  ...soon...

  He heard Grandma clumping up the stairs. He closed the binder and shoved it under the bed, then quickly unlocked the door before she tried the knob. He lay back on his bed.

  Brett was so happy that even the thought of having to give Grandma another of those smelly Ben Gay back rubs after dinner could not depress him.

  * * * *

  Mr. Moser was the only person in the Manning Adventist church with whom Brett felt comfortable. The rest of the people there seemed to be stiff, emotionless machines programmed to smile at certain times, frown or look sympathetic at others, set to shed a tear or say, "Amen!" during the sermon, and to sing the designated hymn when Miss Potter, the timid church organist, began to play. On Friday afternoons, they washed their cars, cleaned and pressed their finest clothes, and on Saturdays they came to church looking their best. But they seemed to leave their souls at home—if they had souls at all.

  As Brett sat with his grandparents (Grandma always parked Grandpa's wheelchair at the end of a pew) and looked at the empty staring faces around him—some nodding off, others watching the droning pastor with half-closed eyes—he felt a sadness that was hard to shake. Church always made him sad, so he did not watch them anymore. He put the walls up and shut them all out until he could no longer hear the whining organ or the pastor's level, reverent voice that went on and on. Once he shut them all out, he felt better, and after the service was over, instead of feeling agitated and depressed as he would otherwise, he felt relaxed, as if he had taken a nap.

  He did not have to do that in Sabbath school, though, because his teacher, Mr. Moser, was different than the others. Brett was not the only one fond of him; all the kids like Mr. Moser. There was nothing forced or artificial or robotic about him. When he laughed, it was real; his round little belly bounced like a ball and his darkly bearded moon face split into a broad grin. When he was concerned, as he was that Sabbath after Brett's discovery, his heavy eyebrows lowered over his eyes and his forehead became creased with lines of genuine worry.

  He took Brett aside a
fter Sabbath school, before the church service.

  "How are you, Brett?"

  "Fine."

  "You're sure?"

  "Oh. You mean after finding that...boy? Sheesh, everybody's so worried about me now. Nobody noticed me before."

  "Well, that's a pretty awful thing to find."

  Brett shrugged.

  "A pretty hard thing to forget, too, I'd think," Mr. Moser added.

  "I'm okay. Really."

  Mr. Moser studied Brett's face thoughtfully for a moment, then smiled. "How would you like to come out to my place after church, Brett? We could have lunch, then go for a walk and look for lizards."

  Brett was thrilled at the opportunity to get out of his grandparents' smothering house for the day, and even happier that he could spend the afternoon with Mr. Moser.

  "I'll have to ask Grandma," he said. "She's pretty careful about letting me out of the house because of this...well, you know, the killer."

  "I'll talk to her," Mr. Moser said. "She'll let you come. She knows I'm safe. After all, I'm your Sabbath school teacher." He grinned.

  * * * *

  Mr. Moser lived at the end of a dirt road about a mile and a half off of Glass Mountain Road. His house was small and homey, nestled in the shade of several tall trees. He had no neighbors within sight of his house and plenty of rocky, hilly land around which to hunt lizards and snakes.