She said I could visit a little. Short visits to the baby in her home. She wouldn’t let me take the baby out. Her distrust was insulting. We walked with the baby in the stroller discussing how to raise a child. Arguments. I wanted a hand in her raising and education, I wanted her to recognize and respect her father. I wanted veto rights over other men Judy might bring into the baby’s life, as the true father I deserved some control.
She was vindictive and spiteful, I was surprised how much so. All because I had not stayed with her during those nine months while she was getting fat and ugly. Damned if I would put myself in that servile position for someone who no longer attracted me. I told her that. I pointed out what a favor I was doing her by sticking around now, and that made her mad and she told me to get out. She’d rather score points, kick me out, break with me, raise the child as a single mother. Which only proved what I knew all along, she never cared about love or sex in the first place, it was all a trick to get herself a child. Well, if she wants a child that much I say that’s her problem. Only don’t expect me to sit by quietly and do nothing.
That’s when I got the idea of taking the baby. The child was a couple of weeks old then and the mother was turning me out of my life. I thought, If she won’t let me be father, then don’t let her be mother. I thought if I could take it and give it to somebody else who really needs a child. Some couple wanting to adopt, maybe even make a little money on the deal. If that wasn’t feasible, I could put it in a basket on the door of the Catholic church. You could say I was saving the child’s soul. It was too hard though, I wasn’t ready for drastic action yet.
About this time Miller entered my life. A guy Jake Loomer showed up at AA, where I went one evening after an argument with Judy. He gave a speech about a guru who turned his life around. He also wanted guys to play basketball with him in the gym the next night. I signed up for the basketball. Eight guys pretty well matched. Afterwards on the bench Loomer talked to a couple of us. He was just visiting on his way home from around the country, going back to where he came from, the Miller Church. Would you like to know about it? An orange leaflet.
THE MILLER CHURCH
Stump Island, Maine
Get to know God in person
He said, What’s your problem? and I said I didn’t have any problems, and he said that’s your problem, I should come out to Stump Island and see for myself. You should meet Miller, he said, the greatest man in the world, see what he can do for you.
I said what can he do, and he said he can change you and make you new, he can innovate you and make you opposite to what you was. I told Loomer I was sick of God. I told him about my father who was God’s only friend and God could fuck himself because I believed in Raskolnikov and Sartre. So Loomer got excited in a hush and said, You’re serious, and he said, Then Miller is the man for you. Are you willing to talk to me about why Miller is the man for you?
I said Okay and we got rid of the other guys and went to Alex’s Tavern where we could talk in quiet over a beer with no AA colleagues butting in. Loomer talked. First I gotta tell you something you may not understand. You see that “Get to know God in person” on the flyer? That’s because the people in Miller Church will tell you Miller is not just some prophet or preacher, he’s God Himself. That don’t mean you got to believe it, so don’t worry about it. All you got to do is think.
I was disappointed if this meant Loomer was crazy after all, only he kept talking and I changed my mind. Miller is God because he can make you new, he said. He can take you into his fold and if you live and practice in his fold you’ll be different like he made you a different man with his own hands without even trying. Do you want to be a different man?
I never thought about being different before, it never occurred to me. I didn’t know if it would be worth while. Loomer kept on. He said, Forget about Miller and think about God. You don’t like God because your father has a monopoly on him, did it occur to you you misconstrued the nature of God, you and him? Think. Who is this God actually? This God who displays himself to you every day in every act of nature in the world around you. The dead birds, the shootings, highway accidents, obituary pages. Lived all your life and never realized what a murderer God is? Mass murderer, war criminal, terrorist. Never thought of that? You want to kill somebody and you think God disapproves? Wise up, half of God’s work is killing. It’s not God who punishes murderers, it’s people. Nature is half birth and growth, half murder and death. You think God is less murderous than nature?
I said what has this to do with Miller, is he a murderer? Miller’s your kind of God, Loomer tells me. He says he’s God, does anybody strike him dead? No. What does that mean? Miller knows he is God, what do you know? Nothing. Miller knows the world is full of murder and hate, which any God who don’t know that can’t qualify. Your father stood between you and God. Well here’s your chance to stick it to your father and be the kind of person you always wanted to be and were never allowed. Miller is God, that’ll tell em, the Presbyterians and Baptists, along with the Catholics and Greek Orthodox, not to speak of the Jews and the Muslims and the Buddhists. Show them. Jesus man, he says, you don’t have to believe him to believe in him. What’s belief anyway except something you decide on without an argument? Why shouldn’t God be Miller if you want him to be?
Think of it like this, Loomer said. We call Miller God, which means anything you want it to mean. For some Miller is a window into the Godhead. If you think where God was before Miller was born and where he’ll go when Miller dies, you’ll see God moves around, reincarnation, if you know that word. Avatar, that’s another good word. It means different things to different people and we can still agree because the words are the same no matter what they mean. As long as we agree on the words it don’t matter what they mean. Miller is God. That’s the words, it don’t matter what they mean.
He said, You live in the Miller Church you disappear from the world. Nobody know where you gone, nobody follow, it’s a sovereign country independent of the U S of A, you do what you like. Haven, sanctuary, you know them words? Leave your troubles, back home don’t know where you’re at, good as being dead.
So I left a message on my machine that I had gone to New Orleans and I went to Stump Island with Loomer. Pine and fir on the Maine coast, a horrible place. Left Nick behind. Also Judy and that baby while I was swearing to myself I’ll be back. Just because I was going to try out Miller, I wasn’t giving up is what I mean. While Loomer said, if some smartass like your girl’s professor asks, tell him God is direct knowledge, like your knowledge of Oliver Quinn.
I went to Stump Island and met him. Pleased to meetcha, Miller said, shaking my hand like an ordinary man. Welcome to the fold. The idea of giving Judy’s baby to the Miller Community occurred to me as soon as I got there, I saw it in an instant. I didn’t tell Loomer. In the evenings I had tutorials with him in the shed by the water. Talking about the new Oliver, who that would be. I could hear the waves slapping the rocks while we talked. He told me about the Raskolnikov Society, a secret enclave within the Miller Community. The Raskolnikov Society was a group of believers organized to execute God’s secret wishes. I must not mention the Raskolnikov Society to anybody. I asked what I had to do to join, and he said figure it out.
I knew what he meant, something bold and radical that Raskolnikov would do. I wondered if the idea in my head would do. The more I looked around the place the better that idea seemed. At a Sunday meeting a woman named Maria stood up and spoke. She was the lady who gave me sheets and bedding when I arrived. Miller Community needs children, she said. That’s because the future will outlive us. Exactly, I thought. I’ll be doing a service for everybody while Judy learns the lesson she needs to learn. So I asked Maria if I brought her a baby would she take care of it? I didn’t tell Loomer or Miller.
I went back to get her. I had to wait because the Community was moving to a different location. Leaving Stump Island, thank God. I found Nick Foster again and indoctrinated him. I saw Judy and to
ld her about Miller. I wanted to give her a chance, so she couldn’t blame me for taking things into my own hands. I suggested we all go together to live with Miller on Stump Island. I gave her good reasons, the extended family that would help her raise the child, the isolation from the world, the all-around love. She said I was nuts. I wasn’t surprised, which was why I mentioned Stump Island rather than Wicker Falls, so she couldn’t track us down when we had gone. Then when I saw the black man she was planning to raise the child with, I decided it was time. I alerted Nick. We acted quickly and now we are taking a child to God who will change us all.
5
David Leo
That’s me in the middle between window and aisle, seat too narrow and no view unless I lean forward in front of the guy on my left. Somewhere, Pennsylvania, New York. I don’t like to fly. The guy on my left has a laptop computer, the woman on my right reads a paperback. Nothing for me except the crumpled peanut bag the stewardess left and a plastic cup with no place to put it. Lean back and look at the roof. The luggage bins, the movable walls between sections, the sunny but viewless cylinder of discomfort into which I am crammed. Davey Leo the hero, pursuing a kidnapping, who do I think I am?
Now in Boston I wait for the unloading to reach my row, stand hunched not to bump the luggage bin, then out the tunnel to the concourse, looking for the plane to Bangor. Past lobbies and concourses with flags and high roofs to another wait in a sterile space by a plate glass view of planes on the apron, taxi strips and runways. Beyond the airport I see wooden houses on a ridge, domestic lives just out of public sight. I walk across the tarmac in the wind to a smaller plane, propellers and a view into the pilot’s cockpit, then more taxiing and noise and bottled ears as we run down the airport until the ground drops, and we follow the coastline like an oversized relief map on our way to Maine.
At Bangor, a smaller airport, find the rental agency. I don’t like to approach strangers, everywhere I go I am shy. No one knows I am a hero on a mission. I wait while the amiable woman looks up the computer. She’s my friend, I rely on her. It takes time. Sign documents. The key. The lot is on the side, third slot, marked 24. Before I go I’ll need a map. I find a shop and a Rand McNally atlas. I go outside to find the car in 24, this cool fresh day at a latitude more northerly than where I started, needing my jacket. Bag over my shoulder and the Maine wind blows. The chunky clouds scud in the bright sky, the weather makes my loneliness shiver.
How to operate this car I have never seen, modern, smells like new, locating the ignition, gear shift, brake, parking brake, lights and windshield wiper that I won’t need yet. I study the map, which does not show Black Harbor. Remembering where it was on Professor Field’s map last night in the living room, I can see where it should be on this map among names like Bucksport, Brookville, Deer Isle, and I plot a route on a card for the dashboard, US 2 into Bangor, State 15 to Bucksport, Orland, and beyond. Now I can start. The car hums like new through the lot to the highway, into the city looking for signs, across the bridge to the road down the river through villages. More comfortable as we go, I enjoy the driving short term.
Short because though there’s nothing here but the road and traffic laws, the hum and muscular dynamics of driving, the more I go the closer I come, and then what will I do? Be a hero, that’s what.
If I can find it I’ll arrive in Black Harbor in the middle of the afternoon. What should I do first? Go to the post office to locate Stump Island? Find a place to stay so as not to be stuck in the rural wilderness with no place to sleep? Find a place to eat so as not to be afflicted with hunger or cramps and nausea while engaging in heroism?
Through Bucksport. Orland. I stop on the shoulder for another look at the map. Cut left before Castine. How smooth the car goes, how gently it takes the bumpy roads, past the ragged fields, the woods, farm houses and shacks, with silver glimpses of the afternoon bay, its shining inlets and coves reaching almost to the road. There’s a flat aspect to the land but the road is full of ups and downs, straightaway stretches and curves, and the yellow fields tilt and slope. Suddenly there’s a sign, BLACK HARBOR. Jesus, here I am.
Through a lane of shade trees the road ends in a T with another road and no sign which way to go. Large houses shuttered and closed, summer residences probably. Looking for a town center I turn right. The road comes to the top of a hill with yellow fields sloping off and a good view of the bay country. Miles and miles of water and islands, necks and inlets, with everywhere the same dark evergreen, the silver water in the late afternoon and blue hills or mountains on the horizons. No sign of a village.
So I go back where the road descends by more big houses. It turns at another intersection, the left going up again and the right down steeply to the water now visible. Go that way.
A few hundred yards to a little harbor. Facing the harbor is a black island covered with pine. On this side at the end of the road is a yellow wooden building, three stories, with a wooden platform, a sign indicating a general store, and a gasoline pump. Dirt parking and a path down to a dock with a row of slips where dinghies and fishing boats are tied up.
Is this Black Harbor?
Beyond the yellow building to the right is a stucco building with brown trim and a sign, HARBOR INN. That’s what we need, let’s stop here, I say. I have developed a habit of talking to myself in the car.
In my customary shyness I drive up to the Inn and park in the dirt lot. No other cars. Hoping it’s not closed for the season, I go to the door, with a white lace curtain in the window, find it unlocked, open it and go in. Nice inside, varnished floor, house-like furnishings, lamps, a staircase with a mahogany banister. Little desk with a cozy lamp, a guest register, no people. A cooking smell, movement in back, a dining room. I wonder how they feel about black people coming in without knocking in a place where black people are scarce. The brass bell on the desk is shaped like an eighteenth century lady with a wig. Ring for service? The bell is loud like a noise in your sleep.
Shyness is protective, I wait in it through the steps in the hall of the young woman with long blonde hair and a denim shirt who approaches, watching her carefully for surprise or alarm when she sees the color of my face. Not this time, only the cool question, Can I help you?
Is this Black Harbor?
It is indeed. Amused.
Have you a room available?
Good. I sign the register; register my credit card, bring my bag in. Lug it upstairs to the front room facing the harbor, a complete view, what they call wonderful. Lace in the windows, mahogany bedstead, bedspread with bumps and knots.
This is nice, or would be except for my errand. No hero. Wash up, then look around. Think carefully where to start, what to ask, what my first inquiry should be.
I take my time before going out and start with only modest ambitions. The general store next door, with a sign on the front porch by the gas pump, BLACK HARBOR POST OFFICE. Just what I’m supposed to want. It’s inside so I’d better go in. Soda fountain on the left, sickles and scythes in front, power mowers behind them, racks with pots and pans. A fat man sits in a lawn chair next to the garden hoses. Post office? He points to the back, a postal window with a room behind it, post boxes on the wall. Is it open? The man nods. A woman sits behind the window, but I’m not ready, I have to decide my approach.
I think I’d better eat first and get a better layout of the town. I go back to the car, up the hill to the road, out the other direction. Just around the bend under trees, there’s a shack selling gas and eats and souvenirs. Hamburgers. Cole slaw, fries, I sit on a stool at the counter. Woman in a yellow apron, blank eyes.
I contemplate the stark insanity of this heroism I signed up for. Here in a village where I know no one, looking to intercept a kidnapping supported by a cult church, possibly mad, definitely out of the mainstream, with the possibility that anyone I speak to might be a member or sympathizer to thwart me. Beat me up too? It’s bad enough calling, attention to myself by being black. I don’t trust the woman in the yellow
apron.
However, I’ll have to trust somebody or never get anywhere. After determining there’s nothing more in this town beyond the hamburger store I return to the harbor. There’s a channel out to the bay on either side of the island. A fishing boat comes through the channel on the right. A couple of men on the dock watch. I could ask if there’s boat service to Stump Island.
Later. I return to the post office. If you can’t trust the post office, whom can you trust? But now it’s closed. The fat man still in the lawn chair looks curiously but doesn’t speak. He knows if I have questions I’ll ask, no point knocking himself out trying to guess.
Back to the Inn. The young woman with blonde hair is at the desk, ask her. Excuse me, can you tell me anything about a place called Stump Island?
She wrinkles her face. Don’t think so, she says.
Do you know anything about the Miller Church?
What church?
Miller Church? It’s supposed to be on Stump Island.
Can’t say I do, she says. There’s two churches close. Catholic up the road half mile to the right. Congregational a quarter mile up to your left.
Thanks anyway.
Back at the wharf there’s only one man now, out near the end looking over the water. Can’t see what he looks like. I could ask him about a boat to Stump Island, but that’s not safe if he’s from there himself. I need a constable or sheriff, someone representing the law. Too late for anything today, I’ll plan my attack and begin tomorrow. Meanwhile keep my eyes open in case Oliver Quinn and the child should happen to arrive.
No television in the Inn room, nor reading matter. What can I do with nothing on a boring evening, is boredom the price of being a hero? Once again I go to the general store, buy some magazines, cheap reading for a night. Full of hamburger, I skip dinner, get some potato chips later out of the machine.
Disciples Page 4