R.Scott Bakker - Disciple of the dog

“My parents were nudists,” I said. That got a laugh, even though I wasn’t joking.

Tim explained that we were the canvassers he had told them about, and the good Reverend described his congregation’s shock over Jennifer Bonjour’s disappearance. “Would you please tell Amanda and Jonathan that our church is praying for them? Praying so hard.”

Afterward, he excused himself with an apology-apparently he had a small sermon to make before Johnny began carving the “wonderful pig,” as he put it.

Led by Tim, Molly and I retreated into the crowd of beer bellies and bra-strap-pinched shoulders that had gathered round the massive barbecue. Nill, looking dapper in his blue jeans and black button-up, began in the standard way. Community in Jesus. Salvation in Christ. All the usual bullshit, with meat sizzling and smoking behind him. But as he continued, the rhetoric became more and more heated, as did the response of the people surrounding us.

He told us all a little story. About how among the beasts that God created were the false men, created before the sixth day. About how Adam, whose name meant “shows blood in face” in ancient Hebrew, was the first true man, imbued with the sparks of divinity: conscience and shame. “Only the white man can blush,” Nill cried over a ragged chorus of amens, “because only the white man is human! Because only the white man carries the Law of God in his heart!” The mud people live like animals, he went on to explain, because animals are simply what they are, subject to the dominion of White America.

“Does a man let his dog run wild in the streets?”

He talked about the serpent, Satan, and his seduction of Eve, which led to the birth of Cain, the first Jew. About how this “serpent race” was the true threat, the deceiver, spinning the lies of liberalism, convincing the sons and daughters of Adam to lie with the two-legged beasts…

Fuck. Me. Gently.

You hear about these people, you hear about their whacked beliefs, and you think, No… Come on… Then your drunk cousin pulls you aside at Christmas, tells you he’s afraid you’re going to burn in hell. Black heart, black skin-what did it matter? Albert was right. People are capable of believing anything so long as it flatters them.

Soon Nill was railing about ZOG-the Zionist Occupied Government-and the coming Conflagration (pronounced Con-flag-ray- shunnn), the racial Ragnarok that would see the righteous raised up out of the iniquity of liberal equity, redeemed, purified-and, of course, firmly in charge.

Funny how it all comes down to power, isn’t it? You might almost think moral indignation was just another scam.

“Um, Disciple?” Molly began again-more discreetly than before, but still with the resentment of being stuck next to someone sick in the grocery checkout.

“Having fun?” I muttered back.

“Fun? Fun?”

“Yeah, you know, investigative journalizing…”

She punched me in the arm for that-you know, the kind of smack that tells you what she really wants is to kick you in the nuts. But at least she stopped with the “Ums.”

There was an organizational pause as the actual meal was laid out. Voices swelled, marbled with laughter and all the other sounds that soft people make no matter how vicious their beliefs. Molly kept nagging me-she had seen enough, it was time to go, she couldn’t stand fatty foods anyway-but I was intent on watching Johnny Dinkfingers and his two junkie pals talking around the picnic table.

With Tim in tow, Reverend Nill came up to Johnny, who loomed over him, nodding. One of the junkies spit. Then the other, the one with the ashtray eye sockets, abruptly turned to me and grinned…

Suddenly they were all walking toward Molly and me. The Church Elders, fawk. With the Angry Bitch not far behind.

“Just follow my lead,” I muttered to Molly. She wanted to scream in exasperation, I could tell, but it was too late for any last-second commentary on her part. Reverend Nill was nearly on top of us, all good grooming habits and phony smiles.

“So!” he called out in ministerial tones. “Young Tim here has told me that you were posing some interesting questions. About… context, was it?”

The fact that he brought Johnny Dinkfingers and the others told me he knew something was up.

“Loved the sermon,” I replied.

“He’s being sarcastic,” Sheila said in that commenting-on-people-as- if-they-weren’t-there tone. Another Angry Bitch thing. I’m always mildly amazed that racists have wives, as if part of me always assumes that women are too sensible for that racket.

“No-no,” I laughed, holding my palms out in an Easy-girl! wave. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of bigotry…”

I’m not sure anything took a breath on that church lawn for a good second or two. Even the ants froze in their tracks. I could see Tim in my periphery, as pale as the Holy Ghost.

“We’re not bigots,” Reverend Nill said with a patient, parental air. “Just children of God.”

“Now me,” I continued, my gaze flat and friendly, “I hate stupid people. It’s a little trickier than skin colour, so I guess I envy your setup that way. Kind of like sorting beans, isn’t it? White. Black. Yellow. With idiots you got to know what to look for. Things like simplistic, superficial thinking-you know, the tendency to look at things skin deep. And flattery-that’s another big one. Idiots are always saying things like, ‘Oh, me so special!’ and for the most fucking retarded reasons you could imagine. Like, because there’s this dead guy who loves them or because they got pink nipples…”

I swear I could hear Molly’s watch go tick, tick, tick.

To his credit, Nill’s endearing shepherd-among-his-flock smile never faltered in the slightest. But his crazy-ass eyes, oh my, did they shine. And Johnny Dinkfingers, he frowned like a cartoon Santa. Sheila I expected to de-cloak and launch a couple of photon torpedoes any instant.

“How do you guys think you would stack up?” I asked in an amiable, third-party tone. “If I were to give you IQ tests, I mean.”

“What?” the towering biker asked.

My smile was pure ham and cheese. “Apparently not so well.”

You see, in the movies it’s always Mom who’s sacred, the one thing people do not dare insult. But in the real world-and that includes Italians-people really don’t get all that worked up about their moms. The Holy Grail of insults, if anything, is their intelligence.

This is just my way of saying that I was being deliberately provocative- in case the ball’s bouncing a little too quickly for you to follow. I have a simple, three-stage rule when actively working someone for information. The three Rs, I call them. First, reason. If not reason, then ridicule. If not ridicule, then a hard right hook. Since I was dealing with obvious, abject idiots, I decided to forgo stage one.

This is just one of many things that let me know I’m not normal: hitting people. I feel some kind of adrenalin spike, I suppose, just enough to make my pits ripe. Sometimes I fart. But otherwise it just feels like business, just another tool of persuasion.

An old girlfriend of mine put it best. “Always anxious, but never afraid,” she said after a bad night at the bar. “You do realize that neurotics are supposed to be passive-aggressive.”

Normal neurotics, that is…

The fact that people respond the way they do says it all, really. We are born to violence. Our bodies react to it instinctively. I mean, some people piss themselves-literally. A fair fraction swing right back-I can appreciate that. Fair is fair. And who knows? Maybe I’m the one who needs a little persuading. Some scream like they’ve caught fire or something-I hate those fuckers. But most-a solid majority-go real quiet. Nothing like a smack to reacquaint you with your priorities.