Andrew Klavan - The truth of the matter

Slowly, as if lights were coming up on a stage in a theater, the scene became visible around me. I was in a restaurant. It was in my hometown, but it was not a restaurant I knew. It was a sort of cocktail lounge in a mall. It was dark with black walls, low lights, small tables, far apart from each other. There was a bar where men sat slumped over their drinks while a basketball game played soundlessly on the TV on the wall.

This was not the kind of place I would normally go to. It was sleazy. People sitting around drinking in the middle of the afternoon. But that’s exactly why we were here. It was the kind of place where no one we knew would see us.

I turned to look at the man who was speaking to me. It was Mr. Sherman, my old history teacher. Again, the sight of him made me feel kind of ill, as if the room were going up and down on a stormy sea. He was close to me now, sitting right next to me in a booth seat at a small table. He was leaning toward me over our lunch plates. I could feel his breath as he spoke.

“Look, no one likes to abandon cherished beliefs,” he went on in that insinuating murmur. “I mean, we all find these old superstitions comforting and reassuring-I know that. No one likes to find out that something he was taught as a child by his parents or teachers might be wrong. But you have to be realistic. You have to consider the facts.”

I looked at him. I forced myself to nod, as if I were considering his words, as if he were making headway in convincing me. To be honest, I didn’t much like pretending in that way, but that was what I was supposed to do. That was the job Waterman had given me. I was supposed to make Sherman think he was changing my mind, convincing me to join the Homelanders.

But all the while, I could see right through him. I mean, I had taken history from him two years in a row. I knew exactly the way he argued. He would begin by making these broad generalizations that had an element of truth to them. He would say: You have to use your reason. Or: When the facts change, you have to change your opinion. Which, of course, are true statements as far as they go. But it’s easy to twist even the truth and use it for false purposes.

Now Sherman went on, murmuring in my ear: “As long as you were living your safe, middle-class life, you thought everything in America was perfect. You were all full of big words like ‘liberty and justice for all,’ and you thought that was the situation you were in. But now things have changed. Now you’re being falsely accused, aren’t you? You’re being railroaded into prison for a murder you didn’t commit. And all of that is being done by the very American system you respected and trusted.”

This was such typical Sherman, it almost made me laugh. You thought everything in America was perfect. That was just dumb! I wasn’t some kind of slaphappy idiot or blind patriot. I knew there were problems and evils here just like there are problems and evils everywhere there are human beings. But over time, no other country has been more free or caused more freedom to spread around the world or protected freedom more around the world. And if people aren’t free, what are they? If you don’t start with that, what have you got?

That’s what I was thinking, but that’s not what I said. What I said was, “Yeah… yeah, I guess I see what you mean. But what about these people you’re with-these Islamo-fascists seem like pretty nasty types to me.”

Sherman made a motion with his hand, brushing this objection aside as if it were nothing. “Look, you know me, Charlie. I don’t believe in any God or religion. That’s just old-fashioned superstitious stuff from another age. But these people are committed to bringing this unfair system down, and that’s what I’m committed to also. When the smoke clears, that’s when we’ll make our real move, that’s when we’ll turn this country into a place where there’s no unfairness at all, where everyone has the same amount of money and property, and where no one says anything hateful, or treats anyone unfairly.”

“Because you’ll be telling them not to,” I couldn’t help saying. “You’ll be deciding for them what’s right and what’s wrong and making them do it.”

“Oh, hey, Charlie. Don’t give me this ‘We, the People’ stuff, all right? Look around you. Most people are idiots. They can barely put two thoughts together in a row. You want them deciding what’s right for the country?”

Well, again, I wasn’t there to argue with him. I was there to pretend to be convinced by him. So I said, “Okay. So you’re saying democracy isn’t always such a good thing…”

“It’s not, Charlie, believe me. It’s the wrong way to go. People need to be forced to do what’s right.”

“But what if they don’t agree. You’re talking about killing people then, aren’t you?”

“No, no, no,” said Mr. Sherman-but always keeping his voice low, always keeping his face close to mine so no one else could hear what he was saying. “I’m talking about saving people, Charlie. Saving all the people who die because of America’s evil.”

I would have paid cash money to tell him what I thought of him just then. But I did my job. I said, “Uh-huh.”

“Listen, Charlie, here’s the thing,” Sherman went on softly. “Let’s say you get convicted of Alex’s murder.”

“Well, I hope I won’t…”

“I know, I know,” he said, cutting me off. “But let’s just say you get unfairly convicted and sent to prison. You could be forty or fifty before they set you free again. That’s your whole life gone, Charlie. For what? For a lie. For nothing. Just because they needed a scapegoat.”

I swallowed hard, as if I were considering his words. “Yeah? So?”

“So these Islamic guys you hate so much?”

“I don’t hate them. I just disagree with them.”

“Whatever. The thing is: they have deep contacts in our prisons, a lot of powerful contacts. If you joined with us, I could arrange for you to break free of any prison they try to put you in. Instead of rotting away behind bars until you’re an old man, you could be living free, fighting to make this a better country.”

I leaned toward him and was about to answer, but as I did, I felt that nausea again. The way the dark room shifted back and forth and the way Mr. Sherman pressed his face close to me and the way he kept whispering in that soft, intense, insinuating way-it was all sickening.

I shook my head a little, trying to clear it. It seemed to be getting darker around me. It was harder and harder to see the restaurant.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “Okay. Just for the sake of argument, if I joined up with you, what would I have to do?”

The light got dimmer and dimmer. The walls of the restaurant disappeared in the encroaching darkness. The darkness spread toward us like a stain, the other tables disappearing first, then our own table getting dimmer. Soon, I could barely make out Sherman himself, even though he was right next to me.

Finally, blackness.

I reached out blindly. A gentle hand took hold of mine. A woman’s kindly face hovered over me.

“Ma…?” I moaned softly through my fever.

“It’s all right, sweetheart.”

“Didn’t want to hurt you…”

“I know. It’s all right.”

“So sorry…”

“No, you did the right thing.”

“Made you cry…”

“It’s a sad world sometimes. Sometimes people have to cry, that’s all.”

“Never wanted…”

“I know. It’s all right.”

I clung to her cool hand for comfort. Her face swam in and out of focus. Sometimes I thought it was my mom and sometimes I wasn’t sure. I wanted to see my mom so much. I wanted to be home again so much. I was tired of being on the run, tired of being alone.