R.Scott Bakker - Disciple of the dog

Why was I the only person who had assumed she was dead all along?

Nolen raised thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. “It’s, ah… It’s, ah…”

He was crying-crying!

Fawk. Me.

I blame it on Hollywood. Christ, I blame it on our whole fucking Just-believe-in-yourself culture. The problem wasn’t that Caleb Nolen possessed the sensitivities of an interpretative dancer; the problem was that he had been fooled into thinking he could be anything he wanted,, if only he were to try-try-try. He had been an imaginative little boy, I’m sure, one captivated by blazing images of justice and domination, when he should have been practising how to stand on his tippytoes.

“Just, the stress, ya know?” he exhaled. He tried to smile, grimaced instead.

“Go slow, Caleb,” I said with a reassuring smile. Iraq-the old one, fought for the old Bush-had taught me how to fake crisis-compassion. “Remember, the freak show is just getting started. Everything works better if you tune out the noise and take things one step at a time.”

“One step at a time,” he repeated, breathing as though preparing for a dive. He did his best to avoid Molly’s gaze, which condemned all the more because of its obvious pity.

He swallowed, nodded to himself as if remembering some original purpose. “Sorry, Disciple. Stupid, huh? A chief of police who loses it over a baby toe!” He flinched from this line of observation, realizing that it was making things worse. What was important was that he pretend… That was the human answer.

He copped an artificially relaxed pose, hand on hip, something an underwear model might practise in a mirror. “Um, hey, Disciple? Have you ever worked a case… I mean, I was wondering, if you had ever worked a case involving, ah… you know”-a quick swallow-”ritualistic murder.” That was how Molly and I found ourselves in the back of Nolen’s cruiser, whisking beneath a long necklace of street lights. Nothing was said for a minute or two. Molly and I just sat stewing in our embarrassment for Nolen. I could almost feel him grinding his teeth in shame.

I was actually relieved when my cell riffed for the second time that night.

“Hi, Disciple. Albert. “ I could tell from his tone that he was embarrassed about his previous call on Thursday night. “I know it’s late, but I thought I shoud take a chance anyway-leave you a message at least. Did I catch you at a bad time? “

“Kind of. Hospital emergency room, actually.”

“Oh… Is everything okay?”

“Don’t have much time, Albert. I think I see the proctologist waving to me now.” Molly punched me in the arm for saying that.

“The Church of the Third Resurrection…” he said with an air of hesitation. “I actually came across them researching my last book. They’re what’s called a Christian Identity sect:. “

I knew a thing or two about identity politics and several things more about evangelical Christianity, enough to know that any love child of theirs was bound to be a homely bastard.

“Lemme guess. White supremacists, right?”

An appreciative pause. “You do know why it’s calledthe thirdresurrection, don’t you? “

It was a good question-one ofthose obvious things I keep overlooking. “I don’t know, Albert. They all seem to have some kooky name. I just assumed they used it to differentiate their racist brand, you know. It’s a crowded market out there.”

“Well, they call it the third resurrection because they think the Second Coming’s already happened… “

“You mean Jesus has already come back?”

“Oh yeah. Only this time around he went by the name Adolf Hitler…”

Ever get that wet-your-mental-pants feeling? I always knew I was swimming in the deep end-that I was investigating a murder-but this was where I realized I had forgotten my water wings.

“You gotta be kidding.”

“Shit you not. Just watch yourself, okay? These people may seem silly, but they have their fair share of dedicated fanatics. From what I can tell, they spend most oftheir time whacking each other, but…”

I just love the way civilians throw words like whacking around. Fucking HBO, man.

“Life just wouldn’t be the same without me, huh, Albert?”

“Don’t underestimate them, Disciple. There’s a good reason we can’t stamp this lunacy out. Just look at the nearest school playground. We’re born little fascists.”

I’ve always thought that kids are overrated-even as a kid. Can’t hold their liquor worth shit.

“Hitler as Jesus, huh?”

“I told you, man. Nothing’s quite so cheap as belief.”

Sometimes insights hit you so hard, so fully and completely, that your IQ drops through the bottom of your boots. How could I be such an idiot?

“And let me guess,” I said, my scalp prickling. “Their cardinal sin is…”

Albert said all he needed to say. “Miscegenation. “ People get all fucked up about purity. I dated this chick, Brenda Okposo, who was a social psychology professor teaching religion at New York University. Bitter and beautiful-my kind of girl. A “sessional,” she called herself, which led me to crack innumerable jokes about our “sessions” together. Anyway, she said that humans have specialized regions of the brain dedicated to avoiding contaminants. Apparently even before we knew about germs, we had evolved instinctive aversions that helped us avoid them. Then along comes culture, and the ability to train children to attach aversions to this or that, so that we can be utterly revolted, out- and-out nauseated, by pretty much anything.

We get all fucked up about purity.

The ironic thing was that it was a small disagreement about condoms that festered into the blowout that ended-or “Brended” as I joked to my buddies at the time-my relationship with Dr. Okposo. She got it in her head that condoms were simply another expression of our culture’s pathological addiction to purity. So, of course, the best way to slip this obsessive noose was to submit to a battery of clinicians and blood tests and throw the rubbers out the window. I was busted at the time, flat- fucking-broke, and too proud to take her up on her offer to pay.

The last words I heard were literally, “I can’t believe you’re choosing cock balloons over me!”

That was October 3, 2002-what should have been a bad day, but was just too weird to be anything… really. “Caleb,” I said, leaning forward to talk through the slot in the safety glass. I fixed his eyes in the rear-view mirror. “I just have a couple questions.” He was enough of a nervous Nellie that I could tell he knew what I was about to ask him. He had caught my conversation with Albert-or as much as he needed, anyway.

“Shoot.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about the Church of the Third Resurrection?”

When he failed to answer, I glanced at Molly, saw the twinge of sudden apprehension.

“Yeah… “ he finally said, his eyes bouncing back and forth from the street in the windshield to me in the mirror. “What about them?”

Evasion. Plain and simple. This was when it dawned on me that Molly and I were pretty much trapped in the back of his cruiser…

I blinked and saw him sitting behind his desk-our first meeting. “I know how it sounds. But you live here long enough and you begin to take a dim view of things, you know? There was just something about her that made you think she was, well in danger. Like she was an endangered species or something. “

You would think double takes would be part and parcel of a career like mine, but the fact is, they’re not. I mean, I didn’t simply get into the business because I was tough, charming, and didn’t need to take notes. Thanks to all the retards in Hollywood, I also thought private investigating would be filled with surprises. Wrong. Like I said, people repeat, even when they’re busy fucking each other over.