The Snitz leaned back from his padded chair, lacing fingers behind his head. “1382—he ain’t much different than me.”
Thank God! The Snitz was saving me. Did he even know that he was saving me?
“I’m pretty much the same, too,” Wilfred admitted.
Solomon wobbled, tottering past knees and shoulders as he walked, “Excuse please.” He staggered, “Pardon me.” His eyes were dilated to black, quivering marbles. He sat cross-legged next to Keeande. “Psst,” he said, audibly, and gave me a goofy thumbs-up. “Did I miss anything?”
“Harrumph!” Rex said and tapped his Lion’s Paw, “Harrumph! Solomon, be quiet.”
“It’s cool,” Solomon said. “It is so cool.” He snickered.
I felt like I should sit down, so I sat.
Nicodemus grabbed his cane from the floor near his feet and rose at the waist with a flushed face. “Victor, my brother, I’ve been around for a while,”—he smiled, knowingly—“and this problem isn’t as complicated as it seems. I have what you need.” He reached into his breast pocket and drew out a red New Testament. Then, he struggled to his feet, groaning and declining Ma Red’s assistance. He began walking toward me. I waited through the whispering that sparked up from behind me. “Here.” He handed it over.
Inside the tattered, red cover almost every fifth, tissue-thin page seemed dog-eared. As Nicodemus walked back, I checked the copy-right date. It was his catechism Bible. The faded ink inscription read:
My irrepressible and beloved son,
You shall guard always His One, True Faith.
Your dear father…
“Mr. Smith, with respect, please, I can’t take this. This should stay in your family.”
“I have no children. I give it to you, my brother. Call me, Nicodemus.”
Things were moving my direction. But it felt like I was being forced to swallow something I didn’t want. I had a choice: go along and be docile or react—do what comes naturally. A surge of something—adrenaline—told me to react. “Nicodemus, my family has given me seven different types of these: student bibles and different translations. I’ve read from three. The problem here is not a lack of reading materials.”
“What is your problem then, Victor?” he said.
“It’s—the bible is dated. Just like Scobey’s Field-guide. It doesn’t tell me how or why I shouldn’t look at women on the Internet—”
Dubnicek looked to Rex as if hoping he would interrupt me. But Rex smiled complacently as I spoke. It was as if Rex had known, somehow, that I’d get nervous and go off on this strange rant. And he had wanted it to happen like this—
“Those books don’t tell me,” I continued, “whether, whether I should answer my cell phone or talk to the person that’s right there in front of me—how to…” Around the room, eyes fixated on me and my stomach sank, again; it sank more, somehow. I couldn’t think of what to say next and I was sinking, sinking to some ocean’s floor.
“Yah.” Solomon bent forward. “Exactly. The Bible and that Field-guide don’t tell Victor how he’s supposed to feel about Charley Darwin.”
“Harrumph!” Rex said and struck his Lion’s Paw. “Solomon, you will address the reviewed by his activation number.”
“Man”—Solomon sneered—“that’s, like, what you guys are doing.” He snickered at himself.
“Solomon’s right,” I said. “The books—they don’t explain why evolution and science don’t agree with, you know, traditional beliefs.”
“It does. It tells of all those things!” Nicodemus said. “You have to know where to look. Be patient. You’ve spent too much time distracted by TV.”
“That’s true,” Ma Red said. “Mr. Smith is right.”
Solomon shook his head and shrugged. “Those books don’t talk about how people want to mess with our genes and make us live forever. What are we supposed to do if some lab-coat guy says, ‘Aye, man, aye, come over here, man, want to live forever, or what?’”
“What?” Dubnicek leaned forward as if he was thinking about standing up. He leaned back. “Rex, this doesn’t have anything to do with—”
“Yes,” I blurted out, “Like Solomon said—he’s talking about Transgenics and immortality. There’s no fraternity or bible guidance there, either—”
“There is no immortality,” Nicodemus said. “There is only His immortality and glory. The same immortality that this fraternity was founded upon. Tergo Haec: ‘From behind this emblem, dwellith the glory’—His glory. Do you have any idea of what those words mean?”
“I’m not talking about that,” I blurted. “I think, I’m talking about the disconnect between young people and old people.”
Nicodemus winced. “The what—disconnect?” He looked around. “What disconnect?”
Solomon counted on fingers that he bent for the crowd, “Aliens: gonna find ‘em. Other universes: what then, huh?”
I stood and turned to the crowd. I liked where this was going. I knew that for me to be innocent, the institutions at-large had to be guilty. It was selfish, sure. It felt selfish. But it was the only way to win. “Sure—the Vatican finally apologized to Galileo for him saying the Sun was in the center. But the world moves faster now. We’ve got peer-reviewed multiple universe theories. We’re—SETI says we’re three decades from finding intelligent life. Changes are coming. Others are already here but we’re just left adrift with this archaic bullshit—excuse me—we are. We all insist on chanting this old stuff because it’s so easy. That’s why I don’t like going to fraternity meetings and that’s why I can’t go to church, anymore.”
“You don’t attend a service?” Nicodemus said.
“None of the members of this house go to church,” I said. “Not one.” That felt good, though I knew saying it wasn’t to my advantage. It was a truth, at least.
“I still go to church,” Todd Kessler insisted.
“I know for a fact that you don’t,” I said, looking at him.
“But you believe in Jesus. You are a Christian, 1382,” Nicodemus said.
“I don’t believe in a religion.”
“But when you recited the Byzantine Pledgeship Declaration—that required you to profess yourself a man of Christian convictions.”
“Nicodemus,” Rex said. “The University Greek Affairs Coordinator,” he seemed to glance to the room’s back corner (though the Coordinator had apparently left some time earlier), “the Coordinator requested that we change that line in the Declaration to ‘I am a man of true religious convictions’. And we don’t require pledges to say that part if they’re not comfortable with it.”
“When? When was this?” Nicodemus said. “You don’t have authority at the local level.”
“We have authority,” Rex said under his breath.
“The Declaration got changed around the fall of ’99,” Dubnicek said.
Keeande stood, extending his index finger out of a clenched fist, “I am all right with this change. There was another change in 1971. Before that you had said, ‘I am a white man of Christian conviction.’ Then you took out the white man. Then you took out the Christian. This is the right way to conduct ourselves. There are many people of this Earth deserving of our understanding.” Keeande sat down while he glanced around the room.
“I’ve got something to add.” Thomas Clark stood from his seat on the couch. “What is anyone in this room talking about?” He shrugged and showed us his palms. “You’re charging 1382 with damaging some property in his room, isolating himself and being a pervert. Which is absurd, but anyway. So this is what? some sort of investigation of his character. So what does religion and technology and science and any of that have to do with 1382’s character?”
“I can think of no better indicator of a man’s character than his relationship with Our Savior,” Nicodemus said.
“Well, I can,” Thomas Clark said. “There are plenty of Christian murderers, Christian rapists.”
“Not true Christians.”
Kothenbeutel str
oked the Windsor knot of his midnight blue tie before standing. The blotches of rosacea in the hollows of his cheeks flushed. “Hello. I agree with Thomas. My sister and I were raised Catholic and we’ve stopped going. That’s because she disapproves of their attitude toward women. And I can’t go along with what they say about homosexuals. As many of you guys know, I’m gay.”
“Wait,” Tag said, cringing. “You’re gay, Kothenbeutel?”
“Oh, grow up, Tag,” Kothenbeutel leered.
Tag smirked. “I shower next to that dude.”
“I agree with one thing that one of the gentlemen has said,” Nicodemus said. “We’re making this too complicated. That’s his strength. And that’s what he wants us to do is get everything confused.”
“Excuse me, Nicodemus,” I said. “Who do you mean by ‘he’? Do you mean the devil?”
“Yes.” Nicodemus nodded. He rattled the table’s candles with a fist pound and Ma Red recoiled in her seat. His swollen eyes looked like they wanted to pull out of his head if not for his strained face and bent neck.
“I make reference to the Devil,” Nicodemus said. “In Christ’s time they didn’t understand brain science and they believed we thought with our hearts. Then, the thing of it was,” his finger stabbed at me, “we got smart, but we forgot something. We forgot that our thoughts start in our hearts, they bloom from out of our hearts. That’s why when you achieve the true love of a woman and, after fifteen faithful years, you let each other down, it stabs you both,” he struck his chest with hollow thuds, “right here. That’s the thoughts getting clogged at your center because there are too many. The Devil wants you to be confused and concerned with a million things: is this man a pervert, is that one over there a sally-fag. That’s his strength. But what is really important is that each person has to make the right choice in his heart. And that’s what I came here tonight to say.”
There the old man went. Singing those same old saws. Never looking at the environment, never looking at what’s happening in the times around him. “The answer is willpower?” I stood and turned to ask the crowd. “The Nancy Reagan approach: Just Say No? Just say no to the future? Just say no to reality?”
Nicodemus stood, grasping his cane below the brass horse-head. “I know what the problem here is.” He pointed to Rex. “You’ve made a mistake on this man. This one, 1382, is not Alpha.” He hunched his shoulders and swept his brass horse-head across the room. “And it’s a circus. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Mr. Blauwern, but this one will lead your flock astray.” He smacked the tabletop with his palm, “Never should have pledged!”
“Please, sir!” Ma Red said.
Rex flinched, squinting once, and his yellow-brown eyes sparked before they narrowed.
“Did you listen?” Nicodemus asked Rex.
Rex held his jaw tight. His face turned beat red.
“Did you listen?” Nicodemus clanked his cane against a card table leg.
A sweat bead escaped from Rex’s hairline, running down the side of his face.
Ma Red turned to look between Nicodemus and Rex. She opened her mouth, then closed it.
Rex shook his head. “Local chapters are intended to handle—”
“I saw you light that candle for piety,” Nicodemus said, pointing. “This one isn’t pious. It’s that simple. Are they our five cardinal virtues or aren’t they?
“No. You want to be spoiled and pretend all the privilege you have isn’t based on strong values. Strong values! You think you can short-cut yourself and these boys into good men. That’s it, I think. Unless.” He leaned on his cane. “Unless… unless the Consul himself doesn’t believe.” He winced. “Is that it? Unless the Consul is not a Christian man. Is that it?” He clanked the table leg and it let out a long, hollow ring that hung in the air. “Imposter?… Imposter?”
Rex slammed his Lion’s Paw with a crack and then another with a crunch like a bowling ball smashing pavement.
“My!” Ma Red exclaimed.
And another crack, penny candles bobbled liked popping kernels, sliding, quivering like spun quarters and slipping into the crumpled table’s divot.
“Rex!” she said. “Rex! You don’t—”
“You don’t Harrumph for me,” Nicodemus said. “Do you? You Harrumph for yourself—that’s all you’ve done. That’s all you could of just did. Look at me! Look at me, son, look at me and I’ll tell you one thing more.”
Rex stared ahead, jaw tight, and the gavel’s claws dug into his thigh.
“I said that man is not a member of this house! Not this house!” Nicodemus seemed to make eye contact with Dubnicek who was frozen. He glowered at me, briefly and I felt his eyes pierce and bore with the full strength and experience that those eighty-plus years of his could give. “This is the last insult I take from any—from any one of you! I’ve been Alpha sixty years. Over sixty.” He pointed and stepped at me. “If that man is Alpha tomorrow, I’m not Alpha this second or I never was!” He slashed his hand through the air. “Or I never was!”
“Sir,” Ma Red said, raising a hand as if to touch him. “If we could talk, privately. These boys—these boys—”
“There are no boys here, Elizabeth,” Rex said. “No boys.”
“None of it!” Nicodemus clanked his cane on the leg of the now crippled table. “What’s our Consul say? What’s he say? Is he smart?” He clanked. “What’s he say?” He clanked.
Rex looked into my eyes. I held my breath and my pulse pounded in my neck so hard that I knew they could see it. “Goodnight,” he told Nicodemus without looking at him.
“What?” Nicodemus said. “What’s that?”
“Goodnight.” He crossed arms, clenching his gavel, looking at me.
“Do you understand what it is that you’re doing here, son?” Nicodemus said.
Rex wouldn’t look at him.
“LOOK AT ME!” Nicodemus stood there, motionless, glaring at Rex, every muscle in his aged, decrepit body clenched. A pale, wrinkled gargoyle in a fire-engine red blazer. I thought about saying something to ease the tension piling up inside that room. And then it seemed I had to say something—anything—to stop it, to put an end to the silence. “It’s not like one of you…” Nicodemus muttered, “… this squirrelly zoo.”
Nicodemus began his way through the silent crowd. People scratched under collars. They made gestures as if inspecting color cellphone displays and wristwatches so as not to look up at him. They swallowed and turned their heads down. When he passed, they would stare at his back as if he were an exhibit. It took him so long, it seemed he was hobbling now and he wheezed as he neared the steps.
“I can remember when people had respect”—he wheezed and his mouth gaped in disgust, still hobbling—“respect for their elders.”
Rex watched Nicodemus leaving. His thick arms crossed tight; his jaw held set with a playful schoolyard glint floating to the surface of his yellow-brown eyes. He jabbed Nicodemus, “I SAID, GOODNIGHT!”
Nicodemus swiped behind himself without turning. “Haaagh!”
The corners of Rex’s lips curled upward.
“You need to go out there and speak with him,” Ma Red said. “You need to apologize, Rex. You really—”
From the shadowy anteroom, from behind the heads and shoulders of standing members, Nicodemus exclaimed, “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!” The double doors of the dinning area swung closed and the members murmured: “Who was he…” “Can we do that… ?” “… Rex made him leave.”
Rex set his gavel down. He tried to prop-up and restore the cleaved particleboard held sagging within its pleather shell. He held it up in its flat position as if it might stay on its own and then let it sag back to its sad ‘M’. “This is junked.”
“Horrible.” Ma Red fingered over her forehead and looked at the table.
Rex leaned over the table to switch off the directional microphone and he picked out the pedestal from the table’s crease. He seated himself and placed the pedestal over his
knee. His eyes widened, as if jolting out of some dreary sleep. “Lively discussion… I, I guess, I guess… hmm.” He swiped the beaded sweat off his forehead. “I would like to thank those in attendance. Thank you, 1382; do you have further statements?”
“No. I’m—”
“This meeting is adjourned, then.” He rapped the gavel over his knee.
The crowd began standing and chattering.
Tag rushed up. “Rex are you sure—”
Rex raised a hand, shaking his head.
“I didn’t vote for him for Consul, anyway,” someone said.
“Rex, what are you doing?” Dubnicek said. “What did you just do?”
“Have some faith, Dubnicek,” he said. “I know what I’m doing.”
Ma Red spread her fingers against her bare collarbone. “You need to go out there and apologize to that man, Rex.”
“No. I’m not going to. And I won’t.”
“Headquarters could revoke your charter,” she said.
Rex looked at me. “Victor, I think it was perfect.” He closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair. “You can feel hostility in the air. That’s perfect. Hostility goes away. We hurt ourselves to grow back.”
We began making our way back upstairs to our rooms.
“That was beautiful,” Solomon told me. “You were beautiful, Victor! You were like a poet. Like a warrior. I’m going to tell everyone what a poet you are.”
“Okay, Solomon,” I said.
His eyes got big. “I’LL DO IT!” he said with drugged-infatuation.
“We don’t have to be anyone’s puppets,” Rex told us. “We can control our own destinies. That’s what it means to be alive.” He grabbed Wilfred’s shoulder as they walked and touched his own temple. “I can feel my thoughts forming. Don’t you love it when that happens? when you know you’re on the verge of something. Something big!”
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