Dear Harry,
Don’t faint. I’m writing to you, hope you don’t mind. Since you may not recognize my married name, I’m Lena Fowler. Once we were a couple. You can’t forget unless you’re senile. That’s unlikely (I tell myself) in view of your essay which I noticed a couple of weeks ago in the Journal of Athena. I don’t usually read the Journal of Athena and I’m sure you didn’t expect to reach me through it. But you weren’t counting on my need for a root canal on a rear left molar nor on the intellectual pretensions of my skillful dentist who gives novocain so gently you don’t know the needle is in. This excellently pretentious dentist subscribes to the Journal of Athena along with Daedalus and People. I never heard of the Journal of Athena but I saw your name on the cover and there you were.
So you’re a professor of the history of science and here I am, daring to write in the hope that fifty years will obliterate misunderstandings and revive only nice feelings. That future we were going to share turned out otherwise. My name became Lena Fowler Armstrong. That means someone else came along as important as you, whose name was Armstrong. Homer Armstrong, who helped me produce other important people who didn’t exist in your day. Unfortunately Homer recently left this world, leaving me free to mend old gaps if they are still mendable and I still wish.
Doubtless you have important people too. I hope they understand the sadness of the human condition well enough not to mind me. Everybody is dying out. The world looks different at seventy, it has a tragic hue. We are victimized one by one. Therefore, let’s be true to one another like Matthew Arnold.
Harry if you have a sweet wife and children don’t be alarmed. All I want is to say hello, glad I found you, and encourage you to send back a few gentle words to—I don’t know how to finish the sentence.
Your old love,
Lena
The reason he hadn’t answered that letter right away was a surge in his chest suggesting it was more important than it should be. After three weeks he realized the more indifferent thing would be to reply, which he intended to do once he finished his speech for the ladies. Then Oliver Quinn kidnapped Judy’s baby. You can’t write letters to old girlfriends in a crisis like that. Could he write it now while the crisis hung waiting? While David Leo was off to be a hero, and Judy at the office, and Connie Rice with no reason to come until late since there was no baby, Harry alone the long day in the house unable to think, unable to move, what could he say to Lena? Lena that time is dead. In order to replace you years ago I junked you. To junk you I had to see you as junk. The world moves on. Who do you think you are? Anyone looking at him would think he was composing in his head. He hoped sitting like that might fool his mind and start something.
Connie Rice came to cook dinner. Judy came home from work.
This is the third night, Connie said.
It’s the fifth, Judy said. Friday. Jesus Daddy how can my baby live five nights without care?
That evening Judy went to the movies. Phyllis asked me to go, she said. Go ahead, Connie said. Take your mind off. How can I pay attention? Judy said. Pass the time, Connie said.
By going to the movie, she missed the spectacular news from David Leo, his call from Wicker Falls, not Wicker Falls actually but a motel not far from it called the Sleepy Wicker Motor Court.
I’ve found the baby, he said.
Found her? Harry high pitched and excited. You have her? No. You’ve seen her? No. Then how do you know? I know, Dave said, from the particular way in which they denied it.
Harry took up David Leo’s story squeezed through telephone wires. Told by a junior English professor with a love for narrative, going back to fill in the events leading up to his conclusion with a care for how things felt step by step. The story told how he got to Wicker Falls in the middle of the afternoon after missing the side road and going all the way to the Canadian border before realizing. Found it on the way back, a small white sign to WICKER FALLS concealed behind a bush. A village on the side of a hill, a church, a white store with a gas pump, not all that different from Black Harbor except here there were no seaside nor summer houses in the trees. Rocky fields, woods close in, bumpy tree-covered mountains all around, Dave’s interest in description. He went into the post office, which was a small white house with a single room and a counter, a postmaster who looked like an old New England devil. Fatherly, his eyes grinned most when his face was sober. When Davey asked him about the Miller Church he said, Well well well. When Davey asked what do you mean by that, he said why do you want to know? When Davey said because somebody kidnapped a friend of mine’s baby the postmaster said that sounds like a serious interest.
He told Davey they call themselves the Miller Farm and have a place up Rib Rock Road a few miles from Wicker Falls. Rib Rock, is that what you said? Rib Rock Road. As for Miller, do you know who he is? Why, the postmaster said, He’s God on Earth. God Himself, excuse me. When Davey responded with polite surprise, he laughed. The postmaster himself was a leader in the Congregational Church for the last forty years, as well as being a member of the school board, which made him a little skeptical of this Miller’s claims. I’m not making jokes, the postmaster said. But he was struck by this kidnapping news because so far these folks been peaceful in spite of the rumors. What rumors? Rumors are rumors, the postmaster said, not believing in passing them on. He offered his advice. Try diplomacy first.
First before what? Davey said.
Strong arm tactics could be dangerous, the postmaster said. Getting ahead of Davey, who hadn’t yet reached the point of strong arm tactics. Talk to them, the postmaster said. See what they have to say.
So David Leo called the Miller Church Farm from the pay phone outside the post office. The voice that answered, male or female, he couldn’t tell which. Later he decided it was a woman but was never sure.
It was the voice of Miller Church Farm in monosyllables and when Davey asked about Oliver Quinn, is he there? the voice said, What you want with him? That is definitely what she said, Davey said, remembering the words, which gave him alarm at the time as he realized that he hadn’t made any plans for diplomacy. He wasn’t prepared. The androgynous voice came back saying, He ain’t here. So David not giving up asked if she could tell him something about Oliver’s baby, to which she said, What you want with her? Pay attention to those words. I want to know if she’s all right, Davey told her, and she said, Wait a minute. The next thing was a more definitely male voice that said, Oliver Quinn? Never heard of him. You got the wrong number.
But they had already given themselves away, Davey said. She knew what I was talking about. She knew the baby was with Oliver and was a girl. I didn’t get anywhere, but I did learn that.
David asked Harry, Now what do I do? He said the postmaster was afraid of violence. Davey wanted to look around some more. Maybe I should go out to Miller Farm, he said. Hold on, Harry said. Don’t do anything dangerous. You’ve done a good job, he said. I’ll tell the FBI man what you found out.
When Harry told Judy about David’s call, she said, I’m going to Wicker Falls. This clarified everything and Harry said, I’ll go with you.
You can’t, she said. You have to give your speech. We’ll keep you in touch, she said.
She called David Leo back, then the airline. She would fly to Boston around noon, then a long bus ride reaching Endicott around ten tomorrow night. David would meet her bus.
Later that evening Harry called Barbara in California. He told her everything except the letter from Lena. She was shocked enough without that. When he went to bed he heard Judy thumping around getting ready to go. He thought about David Leo in New Hampshire devising strategy. He thought what an adventure it would be if there weren’t so much at stake. He wondered how any man could have the audacity to let people call him God, and wondered how dangerous that made him. He wondered if such a man could be interviewed for his book. Then he wondered how to extract the kidnapped baby from such a man. He imagined things getting out of hand and ending in a massacre. To get that
out of his mind he returned to Lena Fowler and tried to compose a letter. The letter was about frauds and charlatans. He asked Lena if she had reconciled herself to death but he forgot the terms in which such a question should be asked and went to sleep without knowing what he was thinking about.
PART TWO
7
Judy Field
Five and a half hours by bus, afternoon into night. I pack a sandwich, cookies, a carton of milk. The rain turns to snow, the invisible mountains of New Hampshire in the dark. Snow flares in the headlights, park signs loom by suggesting the proximity of a notch or ski run or trail. National Forest. The bus wipers flop, the passengers sleep. The snow thins, I see the trunks of trees. There’s a town called Gorham, its bus stop a gas station. We go on, the dark is absolute.
Here we are folks, the driver says, not too late considering. Another gas station. We step through the wind into the room inside, the floor sloppy with dirty water from boots. There’s Davey to meet me.
Heavily wrapped, he lugs my duffel out to his rented car. The snow has stopped, the sky is black, invisible. It’s a small industrial mountain city. He drives me in his humming new car out of town on a pretty good road up what I take to be a valley, no visible landscape. The road is already free of snow, the yellow stripe on the black pavement. Then another road, we go a distance, I don’t know how far. The motel, the Sleepy Wicker, sits under big trees with nothing behind. I got you a room next to mine, he says, is that all right?
Fine, I say. He’s thinking about questions we haven’t discussed, the aura of illegitimacy in being male and female in a remote motel requiring separate rooms which happen to be adjacent. I know what he wants which he hasn’t mentioned. I haven’t decided what to do when he does mention it. Which he’ll probably do before we leave.
But before we leave implies normal times. It ignores the catastrophe that brought us here. Catastrophe takes my stomach away. Hazel, I think, and my stomach disappears.
It’s almost midnight, we’re forced to wait until tomorrow. The anxiety can’t wait. Talk. What did you do today?
Nothing, he says, I waited for you. Drove out Rib Rock Road for a look. Saw a mailbox at the edge of the road and a driveway across a field. No buildings in sight. Didn’t go in because I thought I should wait for you.
Tomorrow. He thinks of three possibilities. I could make a telephone call if my feminine voice might make them more sympathetic. Or we could call the FBI. Or we could go visit Miller Farm. He favors a visit before calling the FBI as giving us more freedom. It scares me, who they are. Fanatics, believing their man is God, with their hands on my baby.
In the morning we go together to Wicker Falls, eating first at the Bonny Vista Café. Are we ready? The snow has moved on, the ugly cloud blanket is shredding with patches of blue and glimpses of sunshine brightening the new snow on the trees. Soon it will be clear and cold. Rib Rock Road goes up a hill from the so-called village of Wicker Falls. It winds twistily through hilly woods and comes out on back country fields, snow on everything. The mountains beyond the fields are speckly white, the snow showing through the bare trees like the bristly back of a dog. The road is full of snow but Davey is careful. Tire tracks on the road, but we don’t meet anybody.
There’s a white field on our right with a wire fence and a silver mailbox up ahead.
That’s it, Davey says.
The mailbox says MILLER. There’s a gate in the fence, closing off a white driveway that crosses the field to the trees where it descends out of sight. Recent tire tracks on the drive.
Is it locked?
I get out and look. How fresh the air now the snow has stopped, the sun coming out. No padlock on the gate, no sign of burglar protection or alarm, just a simple latch. Insulators on the fence make me wary. I try the latch cautiously, no shock, just cold.
We think it over in the car. What’s to prevent us driving in? Davey is uneasy.
It’s only Oliver, I say. I can talk to him.
I open the gate and he drives through. Across the field to the woods, slow and bumpy. I imagine us being watched from the woods. Just before the road goes down a jeep comes up toward us. Uh-oh, Davey says. The jeep pulls over to its right to make room and the two vehicles pass. In the jeep a man and woman in flannel shirts ignore us. So far so good, Davey says. The road turns at the slope, descends and opens onto a space with a number of structures. A large stone house, another house, a couple of sheds, an altered barn. An open place in the middle with three or four cars and a pickup truck.
Remember what we’re going to say, Dave says. We’re reporters, interested in religious organizations, sympathetic.
I wish I had a gun, he says.
No you don’t, I say.
There are at least three white cottages in the woods around. On top of the altered barn a little pointed steeple is tacked on. A satellite dish next to the big house. A tractor.
A man comes out of the house to meet us. You lost? he says.
We’re looking for the Miller Church.
You found it, what do you want?
We’ve heard about the Miller Church. Can we talk to somebody about it?
The looseness of the plan fills me with despair. The man folds his arms, looks in. He’s elderly, his face has been out in the weather all his life. What for? he says.
Just curious, Dave says.
Curious? What’s the nature of this curiosity?
We’d just like to know more, Davey says, forgetting his lines maybe.
Would you object, I start to say, and then I listen to myself amazed at my lying, would you object to a little article about the Miller Church from a sympathetic point of view to an audience of interested people?
You’re journalists.
Amateurs, I say. Practicing.
You want an interview?
That would be fine. Or you could show us around and tell us about your group and beliefs.
A stocky woman from the house comes over.
Journalists wanting an interview, the man tells her.
She looks in. One’s black, she says.
A sympathetic article, I say. We won’t say anything you don’t like.
Then you won’t have no article because we won’t like anything you say, the woman says. We don’t want publicity.
That’s right, the man says. We’re not here for publicity.
We keep to ourselves, she says. Other people should do the same.
You don’t want to spread your message?
There’s enough of us already, the woman says.
We don’t have to write anything, Dave says. We’re interested for our own sake. We’re looking for religious meaning.
Can’t we look around a little? I say.
Look around, are you crazy? The woman says, You’re standing on private property. We’re not in the missionary business.
The man says to her, You can’t say we’re not in the missionary business.
Do you have a leader, a pastor? Can we talk to him? I say.
No, the woman says.
The man says, If you want to talk to Miller, go home and call for an appointment. He might talk to you.
The woman frowns.
Who’s Miller? I say.
He’s a farmer, the woman says.
I’ll make an appointment, Davey says. He starts the car. The prospect of leaving with so little makes me desperate.
Do you have any children here? I ask. Babies?
The woman squints at me. I match her fierceness and won’t leave without results of some kind.
I have another reason, I say. I need your personal help.
She looks cold, like it better be good.
I have a friend in your group. I need to see him. His name is Oliver Quinn. He has a baby with him. The baby is mine.
The woman’s eyes flare.
I need to know if my baby is here. If my baby is well.
You shoulda thought of that before, the woman says—which means I don’t know what. She looks at Davey.
You called yesterday, she says. We told you there’s no baby here. You should have listened when we told you, you got no right coming back and pestering us. This property’s private and we ask you to get off.
I’d like to speak to Mr. Miller, Davey says.
Go on, the woman says, get yourselves out of here.
We drive out. I blew it, I say. It makes me cry.
We did our best, Davey says. Now for the FBI.
It takes a while out in this remote neck of the woods, and yet they get a man to us by four, a lot sooner than I expected. He’s awfully young, though, like an apprentice learning his job. He wears a suit, and he’s polite, and his face looks like someone who just stopped being a child. His name he tells us is Bern.
He gets the story from me in my motel room with not enough chairs, leaving Davey standing up. Tell you what, Bern says. I’d like to consult my superiors before I do anything. Like we could get a warrant, he says. It would take me a while but we could do it. But you want to know the truth, I’m uneasy getting a warrant to search that place for you. Just yet.
Why’s that?
This is not just another denomination of God-fearing folk. These folks are no saints, if what I hear. They got arms.
You think they’ll resist a warrant?
Lady, I have no idea what they’ll do. If what I hear, they’re waiting for the end of the world. Waiting for the provocation that will bring the end of the world.
Bern notices my expression. I don’t say it’s true, he says. But what do they want with all those munitions?
The careful Agent Bern. He says, I’m thinking for example. What if we go out with our warrant and are refused admission, then what? Do you get my point? What I mean is, do we want to bring on the end of the world to make them accept our warrant?
You’re afraid they’ll shoot it out?
The FBI man is puzzled. You never know what to expect with these doomsday groups, he says. They’re kind of desperate and don’t care what happens.
Disciples Page 6