The Flex of the Thumb

by James Bennett

  Arnold Beeker felt like he had entered a holy sanctuary. “Vano, this is like you met God face to face.”

  Still deep in resonance, Vano delivered a quiet reply: “Confined by the ego mode, we are fond of imagining a huge man who lives in the sky. God is the name we give him. But in truth, there is just the universe expanding and contracting. There are the waves, and there are the particles.”

  “Can you please repeat that?” Arnold requested.

  Vano repeated the statement.

  “I’ve never heard you talk this way, Vano. I’m not sure I’ve heard anybody talk this way. You sound like a guru.”

  Vano tried to explain by saying, “That’s why I think the particle people may be speaking through me. It doesn’t feel like I’m choosing words, it feels more like I’m a receiver in a transmission.”

  Arnold closed his notebook and put his pen away. “No more right now, okay? Wait till we get back to the dorm. I’m going to have to plug this into the right program. I can tell you this much: I’ve thought up a lot of theories in my life, but nothing to compare to this.”

  “This isn’t a theory, Arnold,” was the answer, when it finally came. “This was an experience. Everything happened exactly as I told you.”

  Arnold glanced nervously at the people seated at the nearest table before he said, “Please keep your voice down.”

  Vano laughed. He tried to remember the last time he’d done so. “I don’t make up theories, Arnold. I wouldn’t know how to make up a theory.”

  In a hushed voice Arnold warned, “I’m only trying to give you the benefit of my experience. You need to be real careful where you talk about this; I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.”

  Vano was now entering the buzz of deeper resonance. He couldn’t think of any reason not to share the particle people experience with anyone eager to hear about it. He wondered if he should tell Arnold how he had already shared some of it with Chaplain Johansen.

  Arnold enlarged the scope of his warning with some detail: “I worked out this theory once about microwave ovens. I believe they were invented by the alchemists for the purpose of turning lead into gold. This proves that the microwave is not a new discovery at all. Microwaves have been around for hundreds of years.”

  Vano had some experience with microwaves, of course, but he didn’t know what an alchemist might be. He smiled the pleasant smile.

  Arnold concluded by saying, “I made the mistake of explaining my microwave theory in chemistry class. I’m just trying to warn you, you need to be real careful where you discuss things like particle people. I’ve been pantsed for spouting off theories that weren’t half as cosmic as this.”

  Vano was still smiling. He wasn’t hearing much of what Arnold said, as his friend’s words were muffled by a mezzoforte roar. The cafeteria was gliding like ebb tide toward the orange horizon.

  The day when Vano went in search of his philosophy teacher, Oboe Meel, he found him basking in the sun on a park bench on the quad. Sitting close at hand were the two maintenance men, Sydney Gibbs and Billy Byrd.

  As soon as Vano took a spot near the end of the bench, he informed Oboe politely that he would like to do a book report on In My Own Way by Alan Watts. Oboe opened his eyes a tiny slit. He spat a firm arc of Red Man juice before he answered. “We don’t do book reports in class.” He might have added they were too much trouble to read, but decided against it.

  “I think I might like to do it for extra credit.”

  “Extra credit? Extra credit means extra work.”

  Vano’s hooommm was deep and firm. Oboe’s slitted eyes made Vano think of a huge, inert reptile waiting for the sun to thin its blood. “I would be willing to do the extra work,” he told the philosophy teacher.

  “I don’t mean extra work for you, I mean extra work for me.” Oboe opened his eyes a little wider before he said, “I remember Mr. Watts. There was a conference of some kind in a lodge at Mt. Tamalpais. That was in the late sixties, before your time.”

  Vano squinted against the sun to contemplate Meel’s enormous silhouette. “I think my mother was one of his followers,” he said.

  Oboe’s eyes flared a little wider. “What is it you’re telling me?” he asked in his resonant voice.

  “I’m not sure follower is the right word. I’ve seen pictures of my mother together with Alan Watts. She’s dead now. Sister Cecilia showed me the pictures.”

  Oboe had no way of knowing who Sister Cecilia was. He asked Vano, “Is it possible then, that by studying the Watts autobiography you hope to feel bonded with your late mother?”

  The reverberations which flared orange to scrim the horizon disturbed Vano’s comfort zone. But not for long. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “Those who knew him claim he was promiscuous,” said Oboe. “Are you aware of that?”

  Promiscuous was a word that Mary sometimes used. “I’m just beginning my research,” Vano answered.

  “I can’t imagine a more appropriate book report subject,” were Meel’s encouraging words. “How would an oral report suit you?”

  “That would be nice.”

  “You could give the report to me right here on the bench.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “Excellent, then. Would you like to bask with us for a while?”

  “It would be nice to sit for a while longer,” said Vano. “I’m very deep in.”

  “Commendable indeed,” Oboe endorsed. He hooked his thumbs securely again beneath his coverall straps. It was at this moment Kowalski joined the group. He took a seat next to Sydney Gibbs, without speaking.

  Billy Byrd asked Oboe, “Oboe, hows come you like to come out here and sit with us? Hows come you don’t sit in the union with the other teachers?”

  Smiling broadly, Oboe closed his eyes. “Billy,” he boomed, “I like to sit with you because you are real.”

  Billy, an electrician, had gray stubble on his chin. He replied, “Real, sheeit. There ain’t much about me that’s real, if you want the truth.”

  “You are real, Billy. Yours is a world of alternating current and direct current and watts and amps and terminals and relay switches. Such things are real.”

  “Sheeit,” contested Billy Byrd. “I’ve got three plastic ducks on my wall at home in the den. Even the bricks on the wall are plastic. My wife still stuffs her bra with nylon stockings. You call any of that real?”

  Oboe, however, was impenetrable. He only smiled the wider smile before he repeated firmly, “You are real.”

  Vano wondered if Oboe Meel was acquainted with hooommm.

  The other electrician, Sydney, was much younger. But like Billy, he had spent most of his life on the farm before coming to work for college maintenance. Sydney introduced a negative note: “I’ll tell you what’s real. Life on the farm. Life on the fuckin’ farm means bustin’ your ass in the fields for about 16 hours a day.”

  Professor Meel concurred. “Farm work is very real.”

  Kowalski, who had joined the group to hear Sydney talk about Mary Thorne’s body, decided that ought to be enough talk about farms. He said to Sydney, “Let’s hear about Mary’s tits again.”

  Sydney smiled. He was used to this, more or less, since making love to Mary two years earlier had made him a minor celebrity. He began by saying, “Mary has the nicest tits you’ve ever seen. They are big and round and white. Very white, with almost no sag.”

  “She has nice skin,” murmured Kowalski.

  Sydney confirmed it: “Nice skin big time. Very nice skin and very smooth. No blemishes. She has this golden tan everywhere except for her tits and her crotch. Her bush is just like the hair on her head, dark brown mostly only with a touch of red in it.”

  “Please, Sydney, I think I’m goin’ to die,” said Kowalski.

  Sydney laughed out loud. “Hell, you’re a big football hero, go find out for yourself.” Then he took the cigarette from behind his ear and lit up.

  Vano wondered if he should participate in this
conversation. If the topic was going to be Mary Thorne’s body, then he could possibly contribute something pertinent; perhaps the three tiny white scars between her shoulder blades. If reality was going to be the topic, then it might be salient for him to disclose something about hooommm or particle existence. Oboe and the other men, however, seemed to recede rapidly from foreground to background; Vano decided he was in too deep to participate; it would be nice to simply continue with the basking.

  Billy Byrd was still thinking about life on the farm. He returned to that subject by observing, “The thing I hated most about the farm was you could never get all the painting done. I got my barn painted once, nice and white. Very white.”

  Oboe Meel approved: “White is nice for a barn.”

  “Nice, white skin,” said Kowalski reverently. Sydney Gibbs guffawed.

  Billy continued, “But the shed was red. The barn was white, but the shed was red. I could never get it all just right, just the way I wanted it.”

  “Mhmmm,” murmured Oboe, without opening his eyes.

  “I mean, you always knew you wouldn’t get the shed painted white until the next year, and the year after that there would be the crib starin’ you in the face. If all that other stuff was white, then I figured the crib ought to be white.”

  “Uniformity is nice,” said Oboe approvingly. “It tends to generate a feeling of control.”

  “By the time I got all those outbuildings painted white, the house would need it again, and then the barn, and so on and so on. I just never could get it all the way I wanted, all at the same time.”

  “It would be wise not to magnify the seriousness of this problem, though.” Oboe reminded him.

  Billy Byrd still had his teeth in it, however. “I’d say if I ever had a dream on the farm, that was it—to have the house, the barn, the crib, the shed, the tool shed, all painted white at exactly the same time. Even the dog house. Every one of them devils all painted white at the same time, all with a fresh, clean, white coat of paint.”

  Sydney said, “The first time I fucked Mary Thorne I mustuv come in about three strokes. Four strokes, tops.”

  Kowalski laughed.

  “You didn’t hear a thing I said, did you?” asked Billy Byrd.

  “You was sayin’ somethin’ about barns. The first time I fucked her, I didn’t hardly get my dick in before I shot my wad. It’s a good thing there wasn’t no delay, or I woulduv come all over her stomach.”

  “On that nice white skin,” whispered Kowalski.

  Billy Byrd stood up abruptly and cut himself a chew. “Sheeit,” he said. “I’m goin’ back to work.”

  It was moments after Billy left when Sydney and Kowalski did likewise. Oboe Meel turned to Vano to tell him, “Don’t judge the boys by their conversation today. They usually function on a higher plane.”

  From deep in Vano said, “The conversation was very nice.”

  “You are skilled at basking,” Oboe observed. “Please feel free to join us at any time.”

  “Thank you very much. That would be nice.”

  After lunch on Friday, Robin Snook and Vano were strolling the concourse in the student union when they passed a literature table. They removed the top sheet from a very tall stack of memos and read it together:

  The Lord God is alive and well and moving

  through the particle dust of the universe.

  Vano noticed Chaplain Johansen’s signature at the bottom of the page.

  “What the hell you suppose this means?” Robin asked.

  Vano was feeling some oscillating flickers. “This sounds familiar,” he said.

  Robin picked up the entire stack of memos and said, “Did you ever do any leafleting?”

  “No,” answered Vano. “I never have.”

  “There’s no practice on Fridays,” said Robin. “Come with me, we’ll do a little leafleting.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  They drove Robin’s car. They headed for Main Street, which took them past the Kappa house. They spied several women sunning themselves on the lawn, including Mary Thorne.

  “How’d you like to take a ride on Mary Thorne?” asked Robin.

  “I’ve made love to Mary Thorne,” Vano replied.

  “Sure you have.”

  “She gets heat for me.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m going to make love to her again tonight.”

  “Sure,” said Robin Snook. “That’s the stuff.”

  They headed north out of town. “Where are we going?” asked Vano.

  “To the Bakersfield Airport. We’re going to do our leafleting the easy way.”

  “You mean you have an airplane?”

  “I’m only taking lessons. All I have is a learner’s license.”

  Vano smiled and said, “This sounds nice.” Then he read one of the memos again. It was so reminiscent of the particle people visit that he went deep and deeper in, all the way to the airport.

  When they got to the terminal, they found the flight instructor busy with paperwork. He told Robin, “I’m going to be tied up for a little while. You go on out to the plane and wait. I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

  It was the wrong thing to say to Robin Snook. He and Vano walked to the plane, a blue and white single-engine Cirrus VK-30. “Hop in,” said Robin. “I’ll fire this baby up.”

  Shortly after they were belted in, Robin got ignition. He smiled at Vano and put his thumb up. In a matter of moments, they were taxiing down the runway at 70 miles per hour. “Shouldn’t we wait for the instructor?” Vano asked him.

  “Nah, I’m ready to solo.”

  Then they were off the ground. They hummed through the air and circled the campus a few times.

  “Isn’t there supposed to be a flight plan?” Vano asked.

  “We’ll think one up.”

  They flew high above the LaPanza range, north of San Luis Obispo. Robin seemed more than competent at the controls. Vano felt no trepidation, only a blissful sense of freedom, soaring out of time. It was a long flight, but Vano was oblivious to the clock, and even the limits of space seemed pushed back by the serpentine vista of mountain ranges merging with seacoast.

  When Robin finally broke the silence he said, “We must be close to Monterey by now.”

  “I guess we’ve come a long way, then.” Vano concluded.

  “Yeah, farther than I thought. I have to watch the fuel. We better turn around, I couldn’t fly this thing after dark.” Saying this, Robin banked the plane away from the coast.

  “This would be the flight plan, then.” mumbled Vano.

  “This would be it.”

  “What about the memos?”

  “Oh yeah. Heave those babies on out.”

  “Sure,” said Vano. He commenced to throw the memos out through the window of the plane in groups of 20 and 30. He wondered if some of them might end up in the ocean.

  The memos dispersed rapidly, floating on the wind currents like confetti. Down, down, down they floated and fluttered. Most of the memos came to light on rooftops and streets and parking lots. One of the memos, on its downward spiral, darting this way and that, came to rest on the windshield of a 1956 Buick Roadmaster parked in the lot of the Southgate Mall near Salinas. A little corner of the memo tucked itself under the windshield wiper.

  This massive Roadmaster was forest green and canary yellow. It was parked diagonally across three parking spaces. It belonged to Wilfong Weingrad, who had 25 million dollars in the bank. Wilfong had just patronized the Hobby Shop to purchase two small bottles of tempera paint. He needed it to paint moss on the viaducts which spanned the tracks of his electric train set.

  Wilfong and his housekeeper, Grizelda, had seen the leaflets drop from the sky. They were standing next to the car when the leaflet settled securely into place on the windshield.

  “This must be from the Lord,” declared Wilfong.

  Grizelda reached to remove the memo from the windshield, but Wilfong ordered, “Leave it alone! If this is someth
ing from the Lord, don’t touch it!”

  Grizelda shrugged. She got behind the wheel while Wilfong climbed into the back seat. Grizelda’s view was partially obscured by the memo on the windshield, but this did not bother her substantially. She took a half-full bottle of Jim Beam from the glove box, unscrewed the top, then took a long, gurgling swallow. She capped the bottle, put it away, started the engine, bulled her way across the parking lot, and then swung aggressively into traffic.

  She worked her way swervingly through 24 miles of rural blacktop and increasing elevation, until she reached the wooded hillside niche which protected the Weingrad estate. When she got to Wilfong’s lane, she lurched the car to a rough stop in front of the mailbox. A large metal statue of a crusader, complete with chain-mail armor, held Wilfong’s mailbox in the crook of its left arm. Another of Chaplain Johansen’s memos was impaled on the tip of the crusader’s sword.

  “It’s another one!” Wilfong shrieked. “It’s got to be a sign!”

  When they reached the huge house, they stumbled into the kitchen. Wilfong stumbled because he was old and decrepit, while Grizelda stumbled because she was intoxicated.

  Weingrad found his way to the den, where there were 32 cuckoo clocks on the wall. They were all different sizes and shapes. Some were German, some were Swiss, and some were Mexican. One was made in Hong Kong and another in Korea. Wilfong sat at his desk and began opening drawers with his shaky fingers. He found his glasses, but it took a long time to wrap the thin wire frames around his ears. The glasses in place, he turned on the desk lamp so as to read the memos very carefully. He moved his lips as he went along.

  Then all the cuckoo clocks went off at once and Wilfong nearly had a myocardial infarction. The clocks were never supposed to be wound, but Grizelda couldn’t resist.

  “Goddamit, woman, I’ve told you never to wind these clocks!” His heart was palpitating. After he pulled his hearing aide out, he stumbled into the kitchen. Grizelda was passed out face down on the table, but Weingrad was too preoccupied to notice. He announced to his housekeeper: “These people have the fear o’ the Lord in ’em! Get ’em on the phone!”