Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury

MAX John Maclay

I first met Max thirty years ago, when I joined a Masonic lodge. Max was the Tiler, spelled that way, the officer who sat outside the closed door during meetings, to make sure non-Masons didn’t enter the room. In keeping with his position, he even had a sword beside his chair.

Masonry is the oldest and largest fraternal organization in the world. Some say it goes all the way back to ancient Egypt, some say it began in the Middle Ages, some say it started as recently as the seventeenth century. In any event, it’s old.

Masonic rituals, enacted beyond the closed door guarded by the Tiler, deal with the building of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, symbolizing how everyone should build a spiritual temple within himself. Masons run the gamut, from practicing mystics to those who treat the pursuit as only a charitable and social club. And if anyone thinks we Masons secretly rule the world, well, we’re far too diverse in our personal temple building for that!

Dressed in a tuxedo, as were all the officers, Max was tall, balding, and cadaverous. He was friendly enough but spoke with a quiet, nasal voice and had a withdrawn air about him. No one knew where he worked, or where he lived, but that wasn’t unusual, since Masons don’t often share such details, and don’t ask about them, concentrating instead on who a person is within the lodge.

Nor could I—or anyone else, as I broached the subject to them—make a good estimate as to Max’s age. He certainly looked to be over forty, but beyond that, he could have been anywhere up to ninety. That made him even more of a mystery man.

Another odd thing about Max was that as he sat outside the door, he read newspapers to pass the time. But these newspapers were always from other cities, though they bore recent dates. And Max didn’t look like a man who traveled.

In an uncanny way, Max seemed to know everything. Not only could he always reference the Masonic schedule for the whole state, he made accurate predictions about the weather, and about how the latest world crises would turn out.

One more odd thing: Max wasn’t a “local.” No one had grown up with him or attended school with him. The first anyone could remember seeing Max was when he’d first appeared at a lodge door.

But in any event, as I advanced in Masonry and joined more and more of its many units, I kept encountering Max. It seemed he was the Tiler of practically everything—“Tiler to the World,” as someone put it—which might have been partially explained by the fact that the job paid twenty dollars a meeting. Was he therefore simply a retiree who needed the income?

But I also came to learn that Max had been a past high officer, had held more than a few such positions. Masons are given a special apron and gold breast-pocket badge when they complete their term of office, and Max carried around a leather case that was bulging with them. And he had dozens of pins, also attesting to his service, on the lapels of his worn tux.

Along this line, Max was a great and encyclopedic teacher of Masonic ritual. His quiet voice at times even intoned passages that had long since been removed, as if he’d been on the scene when they were current.

So I kept being with Max, and he with me. And yet the mystery deepened. That was because, as the years wore on, his age—as well as his origin—remained an enigma. He was just “still there,” and everywhere, looking about the same as he always did.

Indeed, had he been around—forever?

I must confess that once, after seeing the classic movie Nosferatu for the first time, I wondered if Max was a vampire. After all, he looked much like the character, and he did seem to be ageless. I’d also read the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, so I wondered if Max was ageless because he had some dark secret to hide.

But I felt ashamed of those thoughts, since Max was the farthest thing from evil; he was one of the kindest, gentlest men I’d ever met.

However, about five years ago, I did learn more about Max. To make a long story short, whatever his age was, he had several auto accidents on his way to lodge meetings, and he couldn’t drive anymore. So Masonic brothers, myself included, had to pick him up in our cars and bring him to meetings.

That was when, in due course, I first saw Max’s house, where he lived alone. And it was perhaps the strangest house I’d ever seen.

On a cul-de-sac, in an obscure part of town, it was akin to a trailer, though it wasn’t one. Long and low, it had only one window facing the street, and a little porch at one end, from which Max would walk stiffly down to get into my car. Probably needless to say, I never got to go inside. He was always appreciative of the ride, though, and there was an aura about him that made me feel good about my act of charity.

I learned, eventually, that Max had indeed worked for a living. He was retired from the State Bureau of Statistics—which seemed oddly appropriate.

But then, after a time, Max could no longer manage on his own. So he moved to a little room in the Masonic Home, and I’d pick him up there. Now he used a walker, and it took him forever to cover the smallest distances. But he was still on his feet, and even more striking than that, he was still the Tiler.

I also need to mention that Max was in the hospital a number of times, and every time everyone said that surely this time he wouldn’t be back in action. But he always was. And incidentally, the same thing was true of some other Masonic brothers I knew—they might even have lung cancer, yet they were still around. But Max was the model of Impossible Recuperation!

And Max’s acts of charity once he had moved into the home—well beyond what Masons swear to offer one another—became the stuff of legend. He was always seen visiting the rooms of brothers who were even more infirm than himself, and helping them around the halls even though he himself used a walker, and always with a heartwarming smile.

There might have been even more to Max, than all I’ve previously mentioned. Perhaps I didn’t want to share all of my observations with other Masons, because we might have come to, let’s say, “improbable conclusions.”

But truth be told, I had noticed a certain light in a few other Masons’ eyes. Like in those of a Grand High Priest, and in those of a lesser brother who was a student of the occult. And I must confess, even if it might be unbelievable, that one night, as I was sitting in lodge, I saw that same light and it was in Max’s eyes.

It was the night of elections of officers, and he was called in to vote, with someone who’d voted being given the sword to sit in Max’s place outside the door.

And it then happened to be announced that a brother, who was present, had just been diagnosed with a serious disease.

And damned if Max, in his usual unassuming way, didn’t suddenly rise, shamble over to that brother, and place his hands on his head.

Everyone sat there in wonderment while an absolutely unearthly light momentarily filled the room.

But, even despite that occurrence, since I try to be a rational man, I must confess that my curiosity, or hopefully, caring, about Max finally led me to break Masonic protocol and seek some answers to the riddle of Max that I still sorely required.

Masonry isn’t a secret society, but it does have an initiatory path in which private things, over the years, and as earned by years of service, are revealed. And by this time I myself had advanced far enough that I felt I could ask someone very high up about Max.

So I went privately to another old man—that is, if Max was indeed old—to a brother who was among only three in my state who’d been at the top of everything.

I must mention that this old man was a “normal old man”; he’d aged logically, my having seen pictures of him at various points of his advancement, which incidentally had been far higher than Max’s. So I felt I might trust his judgment.

And this brother, after I’d made my appeal, looked at me a long time before answering. But in the end, probably feeling he had to adhere to the Masonic belief that one only needs to ask to be given, he revealed, as I sat in shock—but also deep and marvelous gratification—the truth about Max.

“They’re set down here, from time to time, from—somewhere,” he simply said. “The Tilers, the ones who, even despite all my gold badges, are the most important, who are sent to guard us and everything we do. They seem to be over forty, at least, when they first come to us. But the crucial thing about them, as you’ve been smart enough to guess, is that they’re somehow ageless. Nor indeed do we really know who they are, or much of what their worldly position, in other respects, may be.”

He paused, then concluded. “I must modestly submit something to you,” he said with a sweet, mystical smile. “Though some people may say we are, we’re not a religion. But can’t there still be something like a Masonic saint?”

And so I believe it was, and is. That’s because I attended Max’s funeral the other day, along with practically every other Mason in the state.

So he was apparently human—as to age and death—after all. But the curious and wonderful thing about it was that even though Max’s casket was open, he didn’t seem to be there, and perhaps never had been. I had a vision of him as just having always been where he’d come from, and where he now, fully, was again—a Tiler, for eternity.

So was Max a saint—or even an angel, a guardian one? After all, the wise old brother to whom I’d gone for an answer had said, “set down, from somewhere,” and wasn’t that the province of angels, not saints? I thought of the cherubim who guard the Ark of the Covenant in a higher Masonic degree, and I wondered.

But one thing more. At the funeral, on the edge of the crowd, was a brother I’d never noticed before. He was very unlike Max: as if to keep us on our toes as to celestial expectations, he was short and fat.

“That’s the guy who’s going to tile the lodges now,” someone said quietly, nudging me, after noticing my glance. “Just joined. Don’t know anything about him.”

But something I’m wondering.

“How old is he, do you think?”