R.Scott Bakker - Disciple of the dog

Becausehe had murdered her? His own daughter?

Now that was a big pill to swallow, even for a veteran popper like me.

The funny thing was, the longer I whiled away the afternoon poking and prodding everything I had seen and heard, the more Xenophon Baars returned to the fore. As impressive as he was in real time, he was proving to be a persistent fuck in my memory as well.

Again and again, no matter how hard I struggled to focus on the implications of this latest twist, “Quite the contrary… What I know- know, Mr. Manning-is that mankind conquered death long, long ago…” would rise into the thicket of possibilities…

No such thing as death. Fawk.

But why would I find the idea so despicable? I mean, aside from the fact that it so obviously catered to human fear and vanity-like the things we’re typically inclined to believe.

If you’ve ever been dumped by someone you loved, then you know the feeling, the tooth-tight, eye-alert, ear-pricking buzz of needing something to be true. Somehow Baars, as insane as he was, had managed to leave me with that beehive of sensations. For the first time in my life I realized that I needed death to be absolute-as final as video review, as irreversible as a frontal lobotomy. I needed it the way composers need silence.

I know it terrifies you, but then you’re pretty much normal. This is me we’re talking about. How could someone like me not look at it as a sanctuary, a promise?

Death… The one thing that does not repeat. Unnerved, I called the motel office and asked for Molly’s room. I had heard her bumping around, so I knew she was back from whatever.

When she picked up, there was a curiosity in her voice: like me and most everyone else, she was accustomed to talking exclusively on her cell when on the road.

“The motel phone?”

“Ah,” I said in a faux dismissive tone, “I was feeling old-fashioned… You know, romantic.”

“Don’t you worry about germs? You know, phone germs?”

“I pulled a condom over the talking end.”

She graced me with one of those drowsy, late afternoon laughs. “What’s up, Disciple? How was your day at the infamous Compound?”

Something plucked me in the gut. I get caught like this all the time, striking inappropriate tones at inappropriate moments.

“A cataclysmic revelation.”

“Woooo,” she drawled. She was warming to my verbal game playing. “Do tell.”

“Jennifer Bonjour was sexually abused by her father.”

A pause, then, “Ooof” The thought occurred to me that her sunny New England upbringing hadn’t been so sunny after all. Even people without skeletons have at least a bone or two in their closets. Erections have a way of fucking things up.

I gave her the quick skinny on what Anson had said regarding both his relationship with Jennifer and what had happened between her and her father. I also mentioned my previous suspicions: the fact that Bonjour, a lawyer with his own private investigative contacts, would turn to an outsider as dubious as myself.

“So what are you saying? That the man who hired you is a suspect?”

I was beginning to like this, the two of us lying on opposite sides of the same wall, staring off into multiple directions of nowhere, trading questions and observations to and fro. The fact that we were so close yet physically connected with a thousand looping miles of wire struck me as… well, erotic.

But then, so does most everything.

“This is serious stuff, Molls, and serious stuff requires serious attention. At the very least, Amanda Bonjour needs to know her husband is a scumbag, don’t you think?”

An even longer pause.

“Disciple… You can’t say anything. “

I understood what she meant: there was a sense in which telling Amanda would simply multiply the number of victims. What was truth compared with the misery such a disclosure would cause? What was justice?

In the subsequent silence, I thought I glimpsed a small fraction of the genuine Molly Modano. The one who tidies herself in the mirror after crying…

That means something, doesn’t it? Glimpsing another’s centre of emotional gravity?

“Don’t, Disciple. Please don’t say a word.. “ Track Nine

Saturday… Once, when I was eleven years old, my parents brought me to a pig- roast-slash-family-reunion hosted by my uncle Tony. Even though Mom and Dad were vegetarians, they allowed me to dig in with the rest of my cousins. They were already troubled-terrified would be the better term-by their little boy’s peculiarities, so they were loath to do anything that might further segregate him from his peers. I remember that pork sandwich like it was yesterday. As the forbidden fruit, Meat simply had to be the best thing a boy of eleven could eat. Knowledge of grease and evil.

The hitch-and there’s always a hitch where I’m concerned-was that Uncle Tony’s nearest neighbour happened to be a pig farmer, which is why he got the pig dirt cheap, and why his property reeked whenever the breeze blew in from the south-as happened to be the case the day of the Manning family reunion.

As a result, every time I smell roasting pork, I quite literally smell pig shit-and salivate.

So when Molly and I found our way to the backyard of the humble white frame Church of the Third Resurrection, my nostrils flared even as my mouth watered.

“Do you smell anything?” I asked her.

“All stuffed up,” she said, fluttering a hand around her small freckled nose. “Hay fever.”

The church was situated just outside of town on a small lot fenced with trees and bracken. The lawn was redneck lumpy, but lush and green all the same. Around forty people or so threaded the expanse, forming a web of laughter and conversation. Groups of screaming children bobbed in and out of the fringes, some chasing balls, others chasing one another. The barbecue stood near the back, set perpendicular to a number of tables, most of which were covered in potluck delicacies. A keg of beer gleamed invitingly from one, accompanied by stacks of red plastic cups. The barbecue was one of those homemade jobs: metal drums cut in half then welded together end to end. The pig had been spitted whole. It gleamed and sizzled and smoked-and smelled like mouth-watering pig shit.

“The head?” Molly murmured beside me. “Who eats the head?”

“First pig roast, Molls?”

“They don’t really eat it, do they?”

“Sure do. Actually, it’s something of an honour to eat the cheeks. So if someone offers you the cheeks, whatever you do, make sure you act gracious and eat them… “

“What?” She smiled, but with that furrow in her sunburnt brow that told me she worried I was serious. “Fuck that, Disciple. I’m not eating a pig’s face.”

“They’ll take offence. Remember, we’re here for Jennifer. Jennifer..”

“Fuck that,” she repeated, her tone more uncertain, more chastised.

I grinned and sorted through the crowd, the homely congregation of Reverend Nill’s Church of the Third Resurrection. A good mix of men and women, old and young. A lot of fat-asses. Several butt-crack cowboys. A couple of so-so attractive women-I’ve always had a thing for chicks who dress sexy for church. I suppose Molly and I were conspicuous for our good looks, because I counted more than a few curious glances. I even recognized a couple of faces from our canvassing. Waved and smiled. Most everyone sported a red plastic beer cup, always a reassuring sight in a community of believers. I was also relieved to see a fair number of smokers blowing contrails into the motionless late afternoon air. So much so that I took the opportunity to spark a Winston of my own.

Number 99,933.

They were working people, by and large. My kind of people, truth be told. Construction workers. Retail employees. High school dropouts like me, with humble skills, warm laughs, and defensive hearts. Suddenly Jonathan Bonjour’s choice of Manning Investigations didn’t seem so out of sorts after all.