The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

16

It was at the beginning of the second week in December when my parents unexpectedly appeared at the door of the apartment I had once shared with Garth. Their visit surprised me, since we'd already made plans for me to visit them in Nebraska at Christmas; it also embarrassed me, since-although it was only four o'clock in the afternoon-I was half lit. I'd been very much out of sorts for the past two months-drinking too much, not eating right, and generally not taking care of business. I'd been turning down P.I. work, and a book on urban patterns of juvenile crime I'd been planning to finish in my newly acquired spare time still sat on my desk in piles of uncollated sheets, pages of statistics, and notes on half-formed ideas. I found it impossible to concentrate for extended periods of time. I felt defeated, frustrated; I also thought I knew how Dr. Frankenstein must have felt after his creation had gone lumbering out the door to terrorize the villagers. Garth wasn't terrorizing anyone; quite the contrary. Still, I desperately wished I had never brought Der Ring des Nibelungen to the clinic to play for my brother, and couldn't help but wonder how things might have worked out if I hadn't "imprinted" him with the music of Richard Wagner. Whatever might have happened, at least I wouldn't be sitting around feeling guilty and responsible for creating an entirely new personality for Garth.

"You don't look well, Robby," my mother said as she shifted slightly on the living room sofa, where she sat next to my father. I sat across from them in an overstuffed easy chair.

My mother, dressed in her Sunday best for her visit to the big city, still looked the embodiment of what I thought of as country simplicity and virtue. Her white hair had been neatly coiffed, and she looked beautiful to me in her simple print dress. She sat somewhat tensely, with her hands folded in her lap; her blue eyes were fixed on me with a gaze that was both loving and anxious. My father's gaze was a bit more stern; he knew Scotch when he smelled it.

"I'm all right, Mom-just a bit tired. I assume the two of you came to New York to see Garth. Have you been to his place downtown?"

"We've been down there," my father said in a slightly curt tone, "but we didn't see Garth."

"Yeah, well, I guess it's hard to know when he's going to be around. Maybe later the three of us can go-"

"We went to the place where we were told your brother lives and works now," my mother interrupted in a soft but strong voice. She clasped, then unclasped, her hands. "We spoke with a man who looks and sounds like your brother, but it wasn't him. That was definitely not my son."

"That's him, Mom. Like I've told you over the telephone, he takes some getting used to."

My father, who was the embodiment of what Garth would look like in twenty years, with twenty less pounds, cleared his throat; it seemed an ominous sound. "Robby, what are you doing about it?"

"Doing about what, Dad?"

"Your mother and I assumed you were still watching over your brother, doing all you could to help him get well. This man who looks like Garth says that he hasn't seen you in over seven weeks."

"Garth and I don't have much to talk about anymore, Dad."

"In the beginning, after his collapse, you were by his side constantly. In fact, you told us you thought he was getting better-until all of these very strange events began to occur."

"I told you what happened."

"You told us about the traitor, and about the killings at the clinic; you told how Garth was taken away by this Tommy Carling, who's with him now and who seems to think that Garth is some kind of god. All of this you explained to us. What your mother and I are asking is why you've left him alone in that situation."

I choked off a bitter, slightly drunken laugh which my parents would never have understood. "I wouldn't exactly describe Garth as 'alone' down there, Dad. Right now, I'd say he's the most famous Frederickson there ever was, or ever will be. He's supported by a cast of tens of thousands of people all over the country, and more believers are coming out of the woodwork every day."

"Don't joke about this, Robby, please," my mother said, her voice quavering slightly. "You know exactly what your father means. Garth is alone, because none of the people who surround him really know him, or love him the way we do. Garth is in terrible trouble, and we don't understand why you're not doing anything about it."

"There's nothing I can do about it, Mom," I said, swallowing the sour taste of afternoon Scotch which lingered at the back of my throat. "There's nothing anybody can do. Even if we tried to have him committed, which I think would be virtually impossible at this point, I don't think it would be right. If you've talked to him, then you know he's perfectly rational. He's doing exactly what he wants to do, and he's doing an enormous amount of good. Anyone who watches television or reads the newspapers knows that."

"People are saying he's the Messiah," my father said, scorn and disbelief in his voice. "They say he performs miracles."

"Where's the harm?" I asked, a shrug in my voice. "Besides, in a way he is performing miracles-just like all those TV preachers do, except with more grace, style, and wit, and denying all the time that he's doing anything. The blind man Garth supposedly cured has to be a phony, but I'd say that most of the others aren't. There are people who claim to have been cured of everything from warts to paralysis just by seeing his picture, or watching him speak on television. And they probably have been cured-because whatever they were suffering from was psychosomatic to begin with. All miracle cures are psychosomatic, but that doesn't mean they're not cures; just because pain is in the mind doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt. People have faith in Garth; they believe he can make them well, and so a lot of them get well. Flip the TV dial any Sunday morning, and you'll see a host of guys with toupees and capped teeth doing the same thing-and then asking for money. I prefer Garth's style."

"There are groups of these so-called Garth's People springing up around the world," my father said in a flat voice.

"Dad, a lot of people respond to the things he says, because what he says usually makes a lot of sense."

"But he speaks against religion."

"All religions are intrinsically against religion-other people's. Garth's People listen to what he says, interpret it the way they want, and then put their own spin on things."

"It's blasphemous for people to compare Garth with our Lord."

"But it's not Garth committing the blasphemy, Dad. What's happened is ironic, I grant you, but it's not exactly unprecedented. People hear what they want to hear, believe what they want to believe-a lot of people, at any rate. Some of the things Garth says are very powerful; what he does is very powerful. Even though Garth speaks against religion, a lot of people can only absorb his message in a religious sense."

"President Shannon even called to congratulate us on our son's 'divine mission'-his words. You've met him. Is the man a fool?"

Now I permitted myself a small laugh. "Kevin Shannon is a lot of things, Dad, but he's no fool. He's nothing if not a very canny politician-and not the first who's going to be pestering you. They've been waiting in the wings, seeing which way this thing with Garth was going to go, and now a lot of them are going to be jumping on what they perceive to be the bandwagon of an important international religious leader."

"But Garth doesn't claim to be a religious leader," my father said in a distant voice. It was the first time in my life I had seen him apparently bewildered, spiritually bruised by seemingly contradictory situations and events that were beyond his comprehension. "Quite the contrary."

"It doesn't make any difference, Dad. I told you; people now insist on believing about Garth what they want to believe. Garth's goodness just brings out the craziness in a lot of people-and they're going to grow in numbers, and get even crazier now, after the deaths of Bartholomew Lash and Timmy Owens. Now the messianic movement around Garth is going to grow even stronger, with people claiming not only that Garth has God on his side, but that God is bumping off the opposition. You might as well prepare yourselves, because that's what you're going to be hearing."

"Terrible, terrible," my mother said, dropping her gaze and speaking in a small voice.

I wasn't sure whether she was talking about the deaths, or the fact that thousands-maybe millions-of people believed, or at least strongly suspected, that God might have intervened to strike down Garth's two most vocal opponents, so I said nothing.

Bartholomew Lash and Timmy Owens, two prominent television evangelists who had seen their ratings plummet and their coffers empty in inverse proportion to the growing popularity of Garth and his little homilies, had each had the unbelievably bad taste to die of a stroke within twenty-four hours after a televised vicious verbal attack on Garth and Garth's People. Lash had called Garth the "spawn of the Devil," and Owens had actually called for God to strike my brother dead. Tacky. It had been even tackier when each had proceeded to kick off, thus giving Garth and the movement growing around him millions of dollars' worth of free publicity. The word "messiah" in conjunction with my brother was heard more and more frequently-including on television and radio newscasts. This had served to aggravate what I tended to think of as Millennium Madness, with Garth looked upon as the long-awaited Messiah who would usher in said millennium. Even the chiliasts had adopted Garth; they believed that Garth was going to kill everybody in a very short time-except, of course, for Garth's People, who would begin to glow with golden light once the mass killing had begun. The bathhouse, a massive glass dome now finished and in place, was now used primarily for ceremonial occasions-meaning press conferences, or just when Garth felt like telling one of his little "parables"; "caring houses," various facilities where the homeless and hungry were cared for by Garth's People, had sprung up all over the city, the state, the nation. The world.

And my mother and father wanted to know what Robert Frederickson planned to do about it.

"You and your brother were always so close," my father said at last, pain and disappointment clearly evident in his voice.

"Dad," I said wearily, "you seem to think that there's something I should-could-be doing about what's happened to Garth. There isn't. I'm beginning to think there never was."

Except not to play Der Ring des Nibelungen into his blank mind. But I hadn't told my parents about what I had done and the implications of that act, and I didn't plan to now; not when I was half-drunk.

"People are using Garth as an excuse to repudiate our Lord, Robby," my mother said, shaking her head. "It's blasphemous."

"Mom, Jesus Christ has been taking care of Himself for two thousand years, and I have to assume He'll survive Garth."

"Don't you be blasphemous, Robert!"

"I'm sorry, Mom," I said quietly. "It's just that Garth isn't claiming to be any messiah, and he's not hurting anyone. On the contrary, he's been directly or indirectly responsible for helping untold numbers of people."

"He's denied God, Robby," my father said sternly. "And he's denied our Lord."

"What difference does it make?"

"What kind of a question is that?!"

"Dad, he hasn't burned anyone at the stake in the name of God, and he hasn't tortured anyone in the name of our Lord. What people believe about Garth may be patently ridiculous-but then, what a lot of people in other religious movements believe is patently ridiculous. As far as religious leaders-or even messiahs-go, I'll take Garth any time. Everything he says is common sense, and it's not his fault if a lot of people get crazy when they hear his common sense. Don't you understand, Dad? Mom? Gods and messiahs and angels and demons of one kind or another have been with us since we dropped out of the trees and crawled into caves, and they'll probably always be with us-until the end of the world. Nobody-or very few-want to face the fact that these things don't exist, that we have only ourselves to help ourselves. As far as gods and messiahs go, I say Garth is the best of the bunch. So if people want to believe that he's some kind of divine Western Union operator, there's no-"

Abruptly, but much too late, I stopped my whiskey-talk when I noticed the expressions of hurt and astonishment on my parents' faces. I lowered my head, stared at the floor. Filled with too much afternoon booze, my mouth had slipped its moorings and uttered things deeply hurtful to the two lifelong devout Christians who were my parents. My words were beyond apology, and I would have done almost anything to be able to take them back.

My mother said very softly, "You speak like that, Robby, because, in your own way, you grieve for Garth as much as we do. But this thinking among so many people that he's somehow like our Lord must be stopped."

"It can't be stopped, Mom," I said quietly, looking up into this beautiful woman's eyes. "At this point, you might as well try to stop the tides." I paused, smiled tentatively. "Besides, looking at the bright side of things, you could argue that he's the world's ultimate ecumenicist. He's got everybody — Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, what-have-you-together in his camp, because each person sees him through the prism of his or her particular religious bias. Did you see the papers last week? The Israeli Knesset had an emergency session to debate whether or not the Jews of Garth's People in Israel pose a security risk-it seems loads of them have taken to picnicking and talking with loads of Arabs out on the desert. A growing number of Jews think Garth is their promised Savior, and a lot of Arabs are convinced they've got their Hidden Imam back. So everybody's happy-except, of course, for their political leaders. As long as Garth never chooses one over another-which he never will, since he tells them all that everything they believe about him is nonsense-Garth's People is one big happy family. Anyone who can get Jews and Arabs to wallow around together in the sand can't be all bad. I'm terribly sorry for what I said before, but where's the harm in what Garth is doing? I may miss him a lot, but I happen to be darn proud of him."

"The harm, Robby," my mother said in a low, ultrapatient tone which I remembered well from my childhood, "is that all the good he may be doing is nonetheless based on lies-many of them."

"Garth hasn't lied to anyone, Mom."

"The foundation of the movement which has grown up around him is a lie. Garth himself has become a lie; that man living in the bathhouse is not my son. In the long run, anything built on lies will bring only evil and destruction-despite what you see, or think you see, in the short run. This business can destroy your brother and untold numbers of the people around him, because what is a lie is evil. You, of all people, should know that after what Siegmund Loge did to you. It's terribly hard for your father and me to understand how you could have abandoned your brother at a time when he may need you more than he ever has in his life. Once, you would have given your life for him; now, with him trapped in a kind of living death which is his madness, you do nothing."

"Mom," I said in a quavering voice, my eyes filling with tears, "what would you have me do?"

"Rescue him, Robby," my mother replied in a firm, even tone. "Bring Garth back to himself and his family, where he belongs."

"Mom, Dad, there's nothing to rescue him from. I tried, and all I can tell you is that playing Devil's advocate, if you will, with Garth and the people around him gets you nowhere. There's nothing wrong with him."

"He was poisoned, Robby."

"Yes-and the poisoning changed him. He's different now, yes; radically changed. But he's not psychotic, and probably never was. In fact, there's probably a very good chance that he'd suffer a breakdown if he was somehow forced to stop what he's doing. Helping people has become the way he keeps his sanity now; it keeps him in touch with reality."

"Garth has always helped people," my mother said in the same strong voice as she tilted her chin up slightly and gazed hard at me. "Nobody is suggesting that he stop helping people, whether as a policeman or something else. But he must be rescued from this monstrous thing which has grown up around him."

"He'd still be who he is, Mom. I'm convinced of that. The Garth we knew just doesn't exist anymore."

I'd replaced him with a messiah.

My mother leaned forward on the sofa and thrust her hands out toward me in a gesture of supplication that I felt like a stab wound in my heart. "I've prayed, Robby. I know, because God has told me, that my son and your brother is still there in that man in the bathhouse. Destroy the lies."

"I don't believe that's possible, Mom."

"You must try; you must find a way to make all those people see that Garth is not what they think he is, and then maybe they'll all go away."

"Then Garth will be alone, Mom."

"Garth will never be alone, as long as he has us to love him. But you've lost faith, and your will has weakened. Garth was sick, and he's still sick. If you can destroy the lies around him, maybe he'll finally heal."

"I'm not sure he hasn't healed all he's going to, Mom."

My mother shook her head adamantly. "At the least, you must destroy the lies about his being the Messiah and performing miracles. My son must not be even an unwitting ally to such blasphemy. The Lord will guide and help you."

"Please, Mom … try to understand something. Even if I could do what you ask, and I don't see how, I'm not sure I have the right to interfere in his life like that. Even if I thought I did have the right, what you're asking me to try and do is impossible." I paused, touched the scar on my forehead. "I've already had a sneak preview of what the response to any action I might take would be; the Messiah's dwarf brother has been marked, like Cain, by God in order to warn Garth's People to disregard anything he does or says. It wouldn't work, Mom. All I would manage to do is make more of a mess and get us all a lot of bad publicity-and publicity, good or bad, just wins Garth's People more converts. My orchestrating an attempt to discredit my own brother would have about the same effect that Bartholomew Lash and Timmy Owens had when they picked such lousy times to die."

Having said my piece, I sat with my parents in uncomfortable silence for long minutes; I was very conscious of the rapid beating of my heart, and I felt short of breath. Very slowly, as if shouldering a weight almost too heavy for him to bear, my father finally rose to his feet. He did not look at me as he removed his wallet from his back pocket, took out some bills, and dropped them on the coffee table in front of the sofa. He still would not look at me as he spoke; his voice, filled with hurt, rumbled like distant thunder.

"When your mother and I came to this city, Robert, we feared we had lost one son; but we believed that our other son was doing everything in his power to bring his brother home, or to some place where he could be cared for and healed. Now it appears that we've lost both our sons. We can't do much for you, because you're in your right mind and are capable of making your own choices. But your mother and I must still do whatever we can to help our sick son. Over the years, we came to understand that you're a pretty fine private investigator-or you used to be, before you started drinking in the afternoon. We'd like to hire you to investigate and disprove the lies surrounding your brother. You've made it very clear that you don't want to do this thing, but I'd appreciate it if you'd think of it as a mission of mercy-if not for Garth, then for your mother and me. How much do you charge, Robert?"

I'd uttered probably what were the most hurtful things I could have said to my parents, and so it seemed only fitting that my father should say the most hurtful thing he could to me. I promptly burst into tears. Then it was my mother's turn to start crying. Only my father stood stony-faced and unsmiling-but he, too, softened when, blubbering, I asked them both to forgive me.

After a lot of moist hugging and kissing, my father finally put his money away and we all went out to dinner. Then we came back to the apartment and, after fixing up the guest room for my parents, I went right to bed. I wanted to be well rested; the next day, after taking my parents to the airport, I was going to have to start blasting away, like somebody hunting a whale from a blimp with a peashooter, at my brother's divinity.