Disciples

by Austin Wright

  Then I saw the police car flashing its lights in the sunny grove. People stood around and a policeman talked to them. In the barn tables were set for breakfast but there was confusion. A young woman directed me to a seat near Miller’s. No one else was there. Go ahead, start, she said. I’ll serve you.

  I asked what’s wrong. Somebody got in trouble with the law, she said.

  They came then into the dining room, animated, exchanging opinions at their assigned places. The women around Miller’s seat took their places, but Miller was not there. The woman next to me told me. She was in her forties with fair hair and a strong boned face. Someone’s killed, she said. Miller went to Wicker Falls to identify him.

  Who’s killed? another asked.

  That’s what Miller went to find out.

  What’s the police car doing here?

  That’s a different police car. One car came for Miller. This came later. Katie, what’s with the police car?

  Katie at the other end of the table. They thought the killer was here. Somebody thought he escaped in a Miller pickup. But all the pickups are here. Now the cop don’t know what to do.

  Has anybody offered the policeman a bite to eat?

  Ask him in.

  The policeman came in the far door. He was young and shy.

  Sit down, officer. What you like? Ham and eggs?

  Just a single poached egg on toast would be nice if you have such a thing.

  A man came in with a rifle. He had white fuzz around his chin and his eyes were hot. He leaned the rifle against the wall and sat down. There was a row of rifles next to it. Others brought more rifles to stack next to those already there.

  It was quieter in the dining room after the policeman came in. I saw his golden head down the row, leaning forward as he forked his poached egg and toast into his mouth. The people around me were worrying who was killed, eliminating those who were here, leaving others.

  Miller’s back, someone said. A word flashed down the table and across the room like electricity: Loomer. Loomer? Loomer. I saw shock but I didn’t see anyone break down in grief.

  Miller came in the door with another policeman. Set the room up for a meeting, he said.

  Hey Miller, was it Loomer? The word Loomer bounced through the room like a tennis ball.

  The boys and girls with aprons picked up the tables, which were boards on saw horses, stacked them on the side, took the chairs and converted the dining room into a meeting room. Table in front with a microphone. The golden poached egg policeman left. The other policeman, a football player with a bulldog jaw, watched from the side. He noticed the stacked rifles. What are these? he said.

  What do they look like?

  Whose are they? the policeman said.

  Our God given right. You don’t like it, ask God.

  The policeman placed himself near the wall where the rifles leaned. He folded his arms.

  We hunt with them. We protect ourselves. They guard us from the government.

  Make sure you know how to handle them, the policeman said.

  We can handle them, don’t you worry.

  People filled the room, all kinds, work clothes, country dresses, jeans, sweat shirts. I sat near the back. As the people returned Miller scrutinized them, grave and wrathful. His false eye grew like the cyclops. Facing that wrath I thought deliberately of last night’s penis, the whiskers that scratched my neck, the loving sensitivity which was my secret.

  All were seated except Miller in front and the puzzled bulldog policeman among the rifles. A long silence. I thought oddly of Harry whose scorn was responsible for my being here. Myself in combat with Harry, refuting him with my presence. My superiority in being able to see not only what he saw, namely, the fraudulence of Miller, but also what he could not see, the divinity of Miller. I saw the little arguments by which Harry cut Miller down, scoffing at his small backwater camp, quibbling questions such as where was God before Miller and where will God be after he dies. The limits of Harry’s number-based faith that could not conceive of the multiplicity of God and Miller everywhere. How that language of numbers blindered him with simple-minded propositions, like that if there was one God there could be no others. Or if Miller was single and God was single then every other manifestation of God was a refutation, whereas I knew from my eyes that God and Miller were not only one but everywhere. It made no difference how many Gods there were because the idea of number has no meaning.

  At last Miller spoke, his voice loud through the speaker. I went with the police this morning, he said, to identify Jake Loomer, who was shot to death in Wicker Falls in front of the hardware store.

  I expected an exhalation, a gasp or moan, but the room was quiet. Jake Loomer, he repeated. One shot from a pistol, close range. No one saw the killer.

  He looked around the room as if the killer were among us, or some one would know who he was.

  The police would like to know if Loomer drove his own truck to Wicker Falls this morning, Miller said.

  Loomer’s truck is right here where it belongs.

  That’s why the police would like to know if he drove it. Someone was seen in one of our pickups after Loomer was shot.

  I heard people looking at each other, realizing things.

  He went to get eggs, a man in the back said.

  Loomer? With his truck? Did anybody go with him?

  Not as I know.

  It was silent while Miller’s glass eye searched the crowd.

  What are you suggesting, Miller?

  It grieves me, Miller said. The history of God is a history of followers who have fought each other for proximity. A history of warfare. We came here to escape the rivalry of churches. We came to unite the follower and the source. To make God and disciple one. I have seen the rivalry even among my own believers. Jealousy and envy. I didn’t realize it had gone so far and I’m at fault. Now we have a tragedy and I must do. There will be a meeting of my elders directly following. Sit down please.

  Sit down, Miller repeated.

  He was looking at the back of the room. Take a seat, he said. We’re having a meeting.

  I saw a young man with yellow hair. He walked up past the bulldog policeman and the rifles.

  You’ve come back to us? Miller said. What do you want?

  The young man, scarcely more than a boy, was working his mouth. He looked like trying to speak but unable. Finally it came out. Are you Miller? he said.

  You know who I am, Nick.

  Are you God?

  If you say so.

  The boy began to moan. His voice reminded me of a wary cat warning off another and it turned suddenly into a screech with words. I didn’t hear the first words and then I did hear. Why did you do this to me? he cried.

  I don’t know exactly what I saw. The young man showed something in his palm to Miller. Miller leaned forward to see. From the side someone shouted, Drop that, and the bulldog policeman drew his gun. I heard a bang or pop like a cap pistol. Miller ducked behind the table, I thought he was looking for something he had dropped. The bulldog policeman ran to the door behind the table. I don’t know what became of the boy, he disappeared. There was a roar of outraged voices. There were men scrambling over the chairs knocking over women to get their rifles against the wall. Several raised their guns, with two or three shots that went off like bombs in the room full of smoke, and I saw they had shot the bulldog policeman in the back as he ran out the door. The men with their rifles ran past the fallen policeman, I don’t know where they were going. I heard shots receding. I didn’t know what they were chasing or running from.

  People crowded around the table where Miller had ducked, and someone screamed, then a lot of screaming and shouts of No. Other policemen ran in and out with radio voices and static.

  I was in the crowd around the table. My lover—I thought of him as my lover—lay on the ground where the people stooped over. He had blood on his face and his mouth was open the way he had slept in my bed last night. I recognized something lying beside
him and picked it up. A woman put her head with her long black hair on his chest and another held him by the hand. His mouth was moving slowly, he was trying to speak, but there was no sound, and he had no eyes.

  Next, though I don’t remember a transition, we were standing back and Miller was stretched out flat on a table and someone had closed his eye, and I handed the other eye to someone who tried without success to put it back in, and his face was ashy and someone folded his hands. They slipped down by his sides, and whoever folded them tried to fold them again but they kept slipping down.

  Who are you? a woman said to me.

  A visitor, I said. I came to see Miller.

  Well there he is. Take a look.

  What’s going to happen?

  They’ll kill that boy.

  I remember him, one said. He was simple and sweet but not no more he ain’t.

  How can we live without Miller?

  We won’t have to. The police will come and massacre us.

  A man came in where the others had left. What’s happening? they asked him. They’re chasing the boy and the police are chasing them, he said.

  The woman said to me, You better leave.

  I forced myself to think that until yesterday this man was nothing to me. Now he was the world and it had come to an end. I got ready to die. I went back to the room, got my bag, packed and went to my car. I sat in it. I couldn’t move.

  I heard fireworks in the woods and guessed it was gunfire. I sat in my car a long time not knowing what to do. Waiting for something like an astronomer looking through a hole in the universe. I heard the sirens and saw another police car coming down the hill into the compound. Two policemen jumped out with drawn guns and two more came running down the hill behind them. They ran by me and toward the woods and then there was another eruption of fireworks that I knew to be gunfire. I saw the smoke coming out of the woods. I heard shouts and a woman screaming. The scream unhooked me from where I hung, and I started the car. I drove up the hill leaving the compound behind. I didn’t know what had happened, nor what I had seen, nor what was yet to come, except that I had been granted a view of the world. If I had arrived a day earlier or later, I would have missed it. That narrow time window proved that it was designed for me. World, seething volcanically just for me. The devil had escaped from Miller’s body and spread in sulphur and gunpowder into the earth’s atmosphere. I thought I had mistaken the meaning of his eye and the lure and sweetness of my love was devil-born. Later I recovered my vision and understood the three persons of his divinity, Miller the God, Miller the Devil, Miller the fraud, my three lovers in one, while numerical Harry knew nothing.

  I told Harry most of this in some sort of order while he drove me to the Sleepy Wicker Motel. I thought he would try to go to bed with me there but he didn’t. He kept shaking his head and clucking as if it were his fault. His fault? The trouble with Harry is the enormity of his desire to think he’s important. I brought the murderer, he said. I brought him in my car. If I hadn’t brought him it wouldn’t have happened. I thought I could prevent it.

  His morbid guilt irritated me. Well you couldn’t, I said, so you’d better stop moaning about it.

  PART FIVE

  25

  Jake Loomer

  What is this place? I must have slipped and fallen, it’s too damn cold. I’m talking, can you hear? I tell you half the people at Miller Farm are simple stupid folk who just want God a little closer than church. They’re disaffected and easy to recruit. Tell them, if God came to earth in Christ why can’t he come to earth in Miller? If Miller treats them well like love, they’ll join, some will. It’s the other half, or maybe a third or so. Some, anyway. I’ve forgotten why I came, do you recognize where we are?

  Okay. As I was saying, these people are sore, angry, mad. They want to hate something and don’t know what. Some hate government, some the TV, some hate teachers and well dressed people in the parking malls. That’s hate growing all over the world, popping up where the old restraints are cut away, like the molten earth when you cut the crust open. This looks like a mountain, higher and colder every step. Are you getting tired? Me too. I told them it’s me against you or them, especially them. Most people are afraid to hate God. But if you tell them God’s not out there but here, living as Miller, that makes the rebellion colorful. Miller the new God against the God of the world. Let me explain. They believe or don’t believe in Miller, they don’t have to if they don’t want to. What they do believe in is the enemy, out there in the world. Hate is war, fight, guns. For them Miller is gathering place to revolution, the fight coming. Different kinds, we take them all.

  This damn shivering cold. I ask you, Will we take over the world? The only way to take over the world is to organize all us little groups into a bigger group with a leader. Listen to me. In the long run Miller’s an impediment. He’s stuck on saving people out of the world, hide away happy by ourself. Bullshit. He lacks the long view to take back the world. He stands in the way when we join others so at some point he’ll be a martyr. Listen to me I’m talking to you. We need to decide what cause to martyr him to. Not sure I’ll stay around that long, because delayed gratification is not my strongest. Where was I?

  I’ll tell him if he asks, I get my gratification from the remote of a gun. Like when I saw what Oliver wanted to do and did it to him instead. Better than my cop days when I always needed a legality excuse. Which took some of the pleasure away when it got me trouble. The pure gratification is how the squeeze and focus produce bang by remote control. Remote is the finger and hand squeezing gradually enough you don’t know the exact moment when it will bang, and when it does the further remote is the jolt of the target which was as good as you until now caught, dropped, made dead. That’s the top in my experience.

  Never mind. As for us I said the true outcome of all things is anarchy. Entropy you said, not me, what I said was anarchy. I said the advance of destructive technology which gives any small group the power to hold the rest of the world hostage by blowing up people in stores or subways or city squares producing a condition of universal terror until every small community is an armed fortress. Tell Miller this. He talked about this sovereign community independent of the world, tell him it’s the shrinking of defended communities to tiny groups where every man for himself is every man a God.

  If I could remember how I got here. It’s hard clinging to this cliff, it scrapes my face. Do you remember Oliver? Oliver no mistake. When I met him and told him about the murdering God and he talked about Raskolnikov I thought what an ass. Invented the Raskolnikov Society to draw him on, see what he would do. He came through past all expectations, bringing a child to Miller Farm without forethought of consequences, dumber than even I could have guessed. Physical disgust. Oliver who thought he knew me, his fat face, eyes like uncooked eggs. Bringing the attention of the police and world. The FBI don’t know we’re a sovereign community, Oliver forgot to tell them. The disgust of being stupid. His cohort Nicky is considered stupid, but at least he doesn’t think he’s smart. Oliver’s dumb because he thinks he’s smart which revolts me.

  I talk all the time. Keep talking while the river runs downhill, draining out. Where was I? Oliver, not only is he dumb, he’s a homicidal maniac. This I saw when he arrived with that baby, thinking Raskolnikov with no sense of Raskolnikov maybe because he only read him in Cliff’s Notes. So when the guardian angels come roaring after the baby and he’s wondering why I’m disgusted, he gets this dazzling genius idea of murder by waterfall, using his sidekick for executioner, which is when I decided enough is enough and gave him tit for his tat.

  The river draining out of my side like Christ bouncing down the rocks in the waterfall. Which killed two birds with one rifle shot. Down comes Oliver in a smart way. Smarter than getting rid of Davey Leo, using his own waterfall as comeuppance, a word I learned in college when tit goes for tat. I told him getting rid of Davey would bring the whole university and police force of Cincinnati looking to see where he went,
precipitating Armageddon before we’ve had a chance to name our cause. But getting rid of Oliver was no sweat because nobody was around with enough shit to ask what became of him. Only his pal Nicky. If he got a parent or a sis or bro I don’t know and gals are most likely glad to be rid of him sooner the better like Judy the mother. He came to live among us, which is already disappearing from the world, so you could say he’s already disappeared before he disappeared down the waterfall, already dead so nobody’ll notice when he’s really dead.

  Do you remember where we are? If I keep talking I’ll live. As long as I talk I’m alive. The other bird was the glorification when I held the rifle against my shoulder and sighted the cross hairs in the mist free at last to squeeze that trigger and watch him fall without a twang of conscience to maim the joy. When he got to that elephant pecker and I said Go! down he came, just like he said he would, his own idea, boomboom and splash. Because the only real thing in this world I discovered long ago when I wondered why I wasn’t getting gratification from being a cop is the feeling when you find in your hands the removal of the world from the life sights of some other human being, which I could write a book about. It’s what I expected when I was a kid from sticking my pecker inside some gal, but it wasn’t the same. I never had much go with gals and women, always disappointed, them and me, never quite compatible with my methodical ways, I preferring the quick bang and long consequences which a gun gives.

  This looks like a cliff I’m clinging like ice scratching my cheek like a pillow of rock. I’m getting thin and still nobody hears me to help even if it looks like a mortal wound which I have been looking forward to all my life. As I was saying, it’s like how this joy of killing I mentioned a moment ago came out of looking forward to being killed. Like what right has God to kill me? And what will happen when I die? Like I discovered long ago the world isn’t just me dreaming about God, it’s filled up with people crowding me, dreaming too, and none giving me credence, me just another stranger down the street. So I figure introduce myself. What better than knock them out of their dreams. If God or somebody knocks me out of my dreams and nothing follows and I am all by myself in the black without even myself to keep me company and if that’s my eventual state and condition, nada null and void my life, what’s worth living except make myself known to some other people going to be dead like me soon anyhow? So I figure they’re all thinking about going into the black like me, or maybe not as smart as me (this more likely) it never occurs to them they’re going into the black all by themselves with no self for company or even thinking dumb like heaven next to Daddy old God, which nobody with brains believes, I say what’s the best way to make myself known to people about to die but be the one to make them die. That’s the pleasure which I never knew enough to connect to being off dead by myself myself until here where I’m beginning to get cold.