Gary Amdahl - The Daredevils

“Quibble on, old chap!” cried Gus.

“By all means. Don’t let us stop you!” cheered Tony.

“Speaking of fascinating and repellant!” said Andrew. “I’ve got new nicknames for you village idiots!”

“Oh dear,” said Gus. “Which one of us is repellant?”

“We are a one-two punch, old brother of mine, and you are usually the lead, which means you repel, while I finish them off in dazed confusion.”

“Charles is going to tell us to shut the fuck up again.”

“Well, he had better not.”

Charles said nothing and refused to smile.

“The naughty words are really not funny,” said Pastor Tom.

“Tom sits on the president’s Ecumenical Council,” said Amelia.

“I’m not sure,” said Pastor Tom, “that that means anything to anybody, much less to Vera.”

“It means a great deal,” said Vera.

“Thank you,” said Amelia.

“Not at all,” said Gus.

“I’m glad Uncle Tom doesn’t have to squat.”

“Please forgive me if I say this as plainly as I can.”

“Nothing would please me more than plain speech.”

“It is astonishing to think that my husband can advise the president on spiritual matters one day and speak to you the next.”

“Ah now, Amelia,” said Pastor Tom.

“Don’t you agree, Vera?”

“I do agree. It is astonishing.”

“It’s because he sees — because we see, and that is a very inclusive we — that there is in fact a good deal of common ground between some of what is talked about in radical political circles and some of what is preached from pulpits.”

“I have no trouble believing that is so.”

Pastor Tom leaned in and spoke over folded hands.

“Vera, I’m going to continue speaking plainly, in the great tradition my wife has laid down here today. We don’t think people like you should be tarred and feathered.”

“What do you say to that, Miss Vera?” asked Gus.

“Can’t say fairer than that, can you, Miss Vera,” said Tony.

“Boys, I am bowled over, I tell you. Bowled over.”

“Not run out of town on a rail, not hunted down and arrested and deported because of your political affiliations. This is a free country. You can peaceably assemble every which way. You don’t have to come down the aisle and be born again in Christ. But those beliefs that are essential to Christian practice — or rather ought to be — can make this country better, stronger, and more beautiful in exactly the same ways that those beliefs that are essential to anarchist practice do. I dare say—”

“That Jesus Christ was an anarchist, yes, I do see that.”

“You’re going to imply that we are being naïve and unsophisticated,” said Amelia, “in our idealism. Aren’t you, my dear?”

“Yes, my dear,” said Vera, “I am.”

“But you are forgetting that my husband has the ear of the president.”

“My dear ear,” said Gus.

“Your ear, dear?” asked Tony.

“I’m not forgetting that. Whether he does or does not is not the point. Whether he does or does not makes no difference.”

“I am sorry to hear you say so.”

“I’m sorry to say so, but really!”

“I think you are caught in some kind of current or tide that is sweeping you toward apathy and nihilism.”

Charles laughed. Everyone stopped and looked at him.

“I’ll let Gus and Tony speak for me,” he said.

But neither Gus nor Tony were up to it, falling abruptly back into the stupid little rich boys they were afraid they truly were.

“I believe in acting,” said Vera.

“Propaganda of the deed?” asked Andrew.

“I don’t see how propaganda is necessarily related to deeds. I have no control over how my deeds are heard and seen. Any intention I have is very likely to be the first to be destroyed in the maelstrom of consequence.”

“My husband does not act? My father does not act? The president does not act?”

“I have no faith in their action.”

“Oh, I see! Only in your own?”

“Not even in my own. I have no expectation whatsoever that acts will be anything but show and tell. That was what drew me to your brother and what kept me near him when his babble threatened to drive me away.”

“Show. And tell,” repeated Amelia. “Have I got that right? Life is show and tell?”

“Yes. If you want to live, you show and you tell. That is what living is all about.”

“I never put it that way,” said Charles, “because I never saw it that way, but that is exactly right.”

“Your Jesus Christ was fully alive, as I define life: he showed and told what it occurred to him to show and tell, freely and with commitment. In that way he was indeed an anarchist, but I can’t see the comparison going much further. He suffered to the extent that he had expectations, and that, too, now that I mention it, is something he shares with anarchists and nearly everybody on the planet. The social gospel you espouse and that you say he espoused—”

“Are you capitalizing that ‘H’ in your mind, Vera?” asked Gus.

“Do you see letters in your mind, Vera, when you talk?” asked Tony.

“—has no relation whatsoever to. how shall I say, Gus, Tony? To the timeless exigencies of the finding and the keeping of political power.”

“Took the—” said Gus.

“—words right out of my mouth,” said Tony.

“Our words.”

“Our mouths.”

“Political power is also on my mind,” said Andrew.

The table once more fell silent.

“If you have no expectations of change, and we must assume ‘change for the better,’ why act? And if you do act, how do you handle the consequences?” asked Andrew.

“The charge of apathy, again,” said Vera. “Soon to be followed as if perforce by charges of nihilism.”

“I see,” said Andrew, “that you have an alternative, and that would be a kind of serenity that we are learning to associate with oriental. wisdom.”

“Don’t stick out your front teeth, boys, please,” said Pastor Tom.

“And please don’t try out your comic Chinese accents,” said Amelia.

“Father does all the time,” said Gus.

“He really does enter into the spirit of it,” said Tony.

“Niggers and Jews too,” said Gus.

“All in good fun,” said Tony.

The table once again observed a moment of silence. In it, genuine uncertainty could be seen in the eyes of Gus and Tony. It was as if Tony had asked a question instead of making a declaration. For everyone but Vera, it was an unparalleled, perhaps precedent-setting moment in their growth.

“Is there solace in your serenity?” asked Andrew. “I wonder if you have replaced the solace of the warm, flawed, human God with a cold inhuman serenity?”

“There’s nothing inhuman about it,” said Charles.

“I couldn’t replace a solace I never knew, could I?” asked Vera.

“I need a replacement!” said Andrew, abruptly and loudly. “I need a replacement for God and I need a replacement for the religion of progressive politics! My life is neither godless nor anarchic but I am in very deep despair.”

Charles was caught off guard: “Despair?”

“Everything I worked for — everything we’ve worked for, Al, Father, me, Teddy, Hi, even you, here, I suppose, if I understood the setup — it’s all a lie. Big, fat lie. I’m an idiot for having played along. And quite an asshole as I did. You have to be an asshole if you’re in politics, but you don’t have to be an idiot. I chose to be an idiot. An idiot and an asshole in the service of a Big, Fat Lie.”

“Andrew,” said Pastor Tom. “No, now, come on.”

“I don’t know what made me say that.”

“We never know what makes us say things,” said Charles, “if you stop and think about it.”