Gary Amdahl - The Daredevils

“You are not married,” said Amelia flatly, but smiling.

“We are not married,” said Vera even more flatly, as if in a sort of riposte, smiling only after she had gotten Amelia’s eye.

“I think,” said Charles, “that the Obscure Jude put it best when he said—”

“Old Mr. Hardy!” cried Tony.

“Dear Tom,” sighed Gus.

“Boys,” said Amelia, “you are behaving badly. Will you stop now?”

“Certainly,” said Tony.

“We have offended?” asked Gus.

“You know you have,” said Amelia.

“That we are smiling,” said Pastor Tom, “is no indication of the depth of our disappointment.”

“We do apologize,” said Tony.

“What are your smiles indications of, if we may be so bold as to inquire?” asked Gus.

“ Of what are your smiles indications,” corrected Tony.

“The lads,” said Andrew, “have taken to their education like ducks to water. And while I have got a word in edgewise, I’d like to say, spare us the Thomas Hardy. I want to know at what point a novel becomes so ‘good’ that we can forgive it for causing us such pain.”

“Pain,” said Charles.

“If you care in the least for the characters he has created, you cannot help but feel the most lacerating, the deepest sort of pain imaginable.”

“I’m glad to hear that you give the imagined world so much credence,” said Charles. “I’ve taken a great deal of ridicule from this family over my advocacy of the priority of the imagined reality.”

“I would just like to say,” said Pastor Tom, “that I quite understand his—”

“‘O you most potent gods,’” said Charles. “‘Why do you make us love your goodly creatures and snatch them straight away?’”

“—his, Mr. Hardy’s, so-called atheism, as expressed in his poem ‘God’s Funeral.’”

“Vera,” said Charles, “is, as you all know, a godless anarchist.”

“Vera!” Andrew faked dismay and hurt. “Tell us it isn’t so!”

“Only too true,” said Vera, joining his act with a sad pouting face.

“Andrew,” said Charles, “let us see the real dismay.”

“Once again,” said Amelia, “I’m not sure this is something we want to joke about.”

“Not joking,” said Charles.

“Was that Shakespeare, Charles?” asked Pastor Tom.

“Yes,” Charles admitted.

“A strong line, no surprise, but I don’t quite see the connection.?”

“I think you do,” said Charles, “or will, shortly.”

“Something along the lines of.?”

“Yes, you’ve got it.”

“I don’t think I have but thank you for the encouragement!”

“You do, Tom, I know you do.”

“There’s very little,” said Gus, “that Chick doesn’t know!”

“It’s a little bit frightening, Gus, don’t you think?” asked Tony.

“Indeed.”

“One’s brother knows all.”

“Indeed.”

“Gus? Tony? I’ve had just about enough out of you,” said Amelia.

“Good of you to say so,” said Gus.

“Thanks for the tip,” said Tony.

“Gentlemen,” said Andrew. “You need to button up now.”

“Right you are.”

“Very good.”

“Something along the lines of. the deepest pain imaginable.”

“Yes.”

“And the certainty that that pain is, in fact, only imagined?”

“Yes.”

“But no less painful for being illusory?”

“Yes.”

“I am afraid,” said Amelia, “that I do not quite understand who or what are these goodly creatures of God that have been snatched away so straightly from you that you feel you must question the nature of reality. And not just your own philosophical reality, which would be fine if you kept it to yourself, but everyone else’s too. People whose reality suits them just fine, most of the time. But which you feel you must meddle and tamper with, judge and rule over.”

“Sometimes,” said Pastor Tom, “we need to keep in mind the very things we want most to forget, the very things that sometimes seem to place our minds in actual peril. In this case of course I mean the public horrors that have hurt us all. The—”

“Yes, of course,” murmured Amelia, abashed and blushing. “I’m so sorry.”

“Not at all. Amelia is quite right,” said Charles, addressing the table grandly, “to make distinction between those we love and those who happen simply to be acting with us on the same stage, so to speak.”

“By all means, distinguish,” said Pastor Tom, “but not at the expense of—”

“I understand, Amelia,” interrupted Charles, “that you are being protective of your husband. He doesn’t need it, though. I’m sure you know that, and am sure you are being protective simply out of the powerful love you bear him. He has one of the gentlest and strongest and most open and capacious minds I know. I admire it and place it next to Vera’s.”

Vera and Pastor Tom exchanged good-natured rollings of the eyes that demonstrated how willing and how able they were to simultaneously keep in mind and dismiss from mind the public horrors.

“My own mind is strong but violent,” continued Charles. “It is open only via a conduit to a distant and strange place. I rule only upon the tiny stage I find there, which I also happen to believe is illusory, and therefore make only the most tentative of judgments.”

“You take the words right out of my mouth. I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“How are Mother and Father, Andy?”

“They’re fine, fine. I’ve been speaking to Father a lot these days.”

“What about?”

“Oh, you know, this and that. Lots of things.”

“‘God’s Funeral’?” asked Pastor Tom.

“Mmm,” nodded Andrew. “In our way, I suppose we do. That might be one end of the spectrum, and Charles’s work here might be the other.”

“I do have a thought or two I’d like to share with you all,” said Pastor Tom, “seeing that I have you here like a congregation before me and have never been able to resist such an environment.”

“Hear! Hear!” said Gus.

“We are all ears!” said Tony.

“Incorrigible little rakes,” said Amelia, not unkindly.

“Rah-ther,” said Gus.

“If anyone sees a waiter,” said Tony, “I’d like a glass of wine.”

“You may not have wine,” said Amelia.

“Pray, why ever not?” asked Tony, agog.

“It is an extraordinary thing to say, Amelia,” said Gus, gently.

“I believe,” said Tony, “that I will have a glass of wine.”

“I second that. Motion carries,” said Gus, beaming.

“I’m laughing,” said Amelia. But she was not.

“I too am amused,” said Pastor Tom, and he appeared genuinely to be so.

“That doesn’t mean I approve,” continued Amelia.

“What does it mean, Amelia?” asked Tony.

“Laughing, he means,” said Gus helpfully. “Not just yours, but laughing, anybody’s laughing, at you or with you. What’s it all about, Amelia?”

There was a significantly long and table-wide pause both of speech and of movement. After this pause, it seemed everyone was looking at Amelia, whose head was still slightly bowed.

“I don’t know,” she said simply.

“Now,” said Andrew somewhat wanly, “if we could just get Chick to admit he doesn’t know something, we’d really be in business.”

Pastor Tom cleared his throat. It was hard to say if he was trying for comedy or truly needed, in the wake of rising and falling emotion, to clear his throat.

“ In re Thomas Hardy, ‘God’s Funeral,’ godless anarchism. ”

“Do go on,” said Tony.

“Shut the fuck up, Tony,” said Charles.

Another significant silence ensued.

“Well!” exclaimed Amelia. “Charles is at least at a loss for words!”