John Gardner - The King's Indian - Stories and Tales

Satan, shove off.

I’m concerned about her; that too is true. I do not want some creep messing up her marriage, least of all myself. Is it possible the things he told me were lies? I can hardly get Marilyn to talk to me about it, not unless she brings it up herself.

Janice pokes her head in. “Reverend Pick, Marilyn Fish is here.”

“Send her in, by all means!” I jump up and move around my typing desk to meet her, as always. She appears, beads of sweat on her tanned and freckled forehead, a clipboard in her hand — no doubt one of her petitions. Her smile is, as always, childlike. She has the teeth you see in toothpaste ads.

“Hi Gene. Can I get your signature on this?” She leans forward for my kiss on her cheek as she speaks, as usual. My kiss is self-conscious. She notices — so it seems to me — but ignores it, smiling at my forehead. Marilyn greets everyone she’s remotely fond of with a quick, light hug and kiss.

“What this time?” I say, mock-scornful, looking down at the half-filled sheet.

She laughs. “You want me to help you read it?”

I pretend to read. She turns away, goes over to the green leather couch below the Carbondale churches’ welcome sign, sits down, takes cigarettes from her purse, lights one.

“Well ok,” I say doubtfully. I sit behind my desk, reach for a pen, write my signature. I swivel back.

“Man what a day,” she says. She looks at the photograph of Lake Geneva, the round-topped table with the green glass ashtray, assuring herself that all’s well, all’s clean. “What’s happening with you?”

“Same old thing,” I say. “Saving souls, writing sermons to ruin them again.” I glance away from her, then back, and smile. “How’s Don?”

“Terrific, at last report. We never see each other, but now and then we get a note through. He’s in Chicago the rest of this week and all next.”

It strikes me that she’s not as happy about it as she pretends, and I’m glad. “He’s there now?” I ask. I’m not sure why I’ve asked it.

“Tomorrow morning.” She swipes her hair back. She breathes smoke deep into her lungs, lets it out through her nostrils. It bothers me. Mutability. In the back of my mind I’m aware of some unnameable wish. She pulls down her skirt, unnecessarily. It occurs to me that everything is all right between us. I feel comfortable with her, as she feels with me. I like her shape, high cheekbones, freckles, gray eyes, but what I feel now is pleasure in her company, not desire. I could laugh at Levelsmacher’s sick-minded talk. She’s one of the elect. I think again of the dead-eyed stare of the girl in the newspaper. I could have been a missionary, all right, like Miss Ellis’ dear, dear friend. They say they’ve found the answer, these Children of Albion, with their communes and pot and devotion to Art. But I compare their malnutritious faces with Marilyn’s, their staring eyes with Marilyn’s eyes, and I scoff at their claims of holiness and peace.

She says, “Say. Speaking of saving souls, you won a convert last Sunday.”

I raise my eyebrows, widen my eyes in amazement.

She laughs. “I sent him here to listen to you. A boy I met in the drug clinic. He’s no druggy. He’s ‘into revolution,’ he says.”

“Ah,” I say. Uneasiness goes through me. “I noticed him.”

“He’s all right,” she says, reading my emotion as usual. “He’s a sweet, gentle boy. A little crazy, of course.” She laughs again, then catches herself, looks apologetic for laughing at a friend. “You blew his mind, he says. He wants to talk to you sometime.”

I throw my arms wide. “Suffer the little revolutionists to come unto Me.”

“I will, if you promise to be nice.”

“I promise.”

“I don’t know that he’ll come, of course. He’s strange.”

“Unlike the rest of us.”

She pretends to be amused. I’m embarrassed for an instant. She tamps out the cigarette and gets up, graceful. “Gotta run, Gene. It’s always great to see you.”

“Come any time,” I say, and get up to walk to the door with her. With my hand on the knob I say lightly, “Say, Marilyn, what ever happened to Levelsmacher? He hasn’t been in church for a month or more.”

“Levelsmacher who?” she says quickly, and looks at my forehead. Her whole face bursts into a blush.

I am sick, not because I’ve found her out; sick because I’ve frightened her, meddled with her life.

She puts her fingertips on my chest, lightly, and looks at them, mind racing. She decides to smile brightly and say, “Oh, you mean Bill!” She shrugs. “I never see him.”

“I keep a sharp eye on attendance,” I say, and pat her arm.

She laughs, then goes, remembering to say goodbye to Janice. When Marilyn is gone, Janice steals a quick glance at me over her typewriter. She knows the whole thing. I step back into my office and close the door.

6

He sits unmoving, calm as the center of one of our southern Illinois tornadoes. His bearded face is expressionless, even the huge, skyblue eyes that stare at me and never blink. His voice is gentle, neither friendly nor unfriendly, merely there — somehow unnaturally there, as if removed from time and space.

“Your sermon really blew my mind,” he says. There is no smile, no ironic apology for the ridiculous language. I cannot tell whether he stares at me admiringly or in order to penetrate to the depths of my soul, discover what use he can make of me. I think of the words of the half-cracked Baptist, “ I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’ ” Not a man; a disembodied voice, a once-flesh heart consumed by message. I cannot tell whether I’m afraid of him or eager to speak with him, perhaps argue points of theology.

“It was wonderful to have you with us,” I say. He grants me neither smile nor gesture, merely stares at me. If he knows my words are hypocrisy he dismisses it. What are merely human faults to him? I know well enough what my emotion is now. I’m afraid, full of superstitious dread. His gentle, absolutely open gaze has eerie power. He’s like a Renaissance painting absurdly, ominously superimposed on THE CHURCHES OF CARBONDALE WELCOME YOU. I have no way of guessing his origins, no way of placing him. Is he Jewish? Polish? Italian? Was his father wealthy — some Chicago doctor or lawyer, say? Was his father a mechanic? Whatever accent he may once have had has been swallowed up in the indifferent vortex, reduced to the language of the Children of Albion. Whatever his distinctive style of dress in former years, it is lost in the swampgreen of Army fatigues, a peace sign sewed where the stripes should be.

“I’m Reverend Pick,” I say, suddenly remembering I forgot to tell him that earlier, when I found him this morning waiting with infinite patience by the church office door. “I don’t believe—”

He stares at me and at last understands what I’m asking him, trivial-minded as I am. “I’m called Dow,” he says.

“Tao?”

He does not smile or show interest. “Dow Chemical Company.”

I laugh, for lack of something better to do. It does not seem to surprise him that I laugh. He even smiles slightly, to put me at ease.

“You’re a student at the university?” I ask. I’m feeling better now. I have something to call him. I line up my pencils and pens on the glass of my desktop.

He answers gently: “I used to be a student. But I went over to Nam — they drafted me, like. So lately I’m into revolution. I bomb things.” He smiles, the barest flicker, apologetic.

I don’t believe him. He’d have to be crazy to say such a thing if it were true, and though he’s strange, uncanny, I can’t believe he’s crazy. I’m overwhelmed, suddenly, by déjà vu. We’ve been through this whole conversation before, I know exactly what he’s going to say next, but I can’t remember how it comes out, what it means. I move cautiously, as though, despite my conviction, I believe he’s dangerous.