Disciples

by Austin Wright

  The news appeared in the morning and afternoon papers on the first inside page. The television presentation featured one shot of the mountains, one of a road going up through the woods, which might have been Rib Rock Road, and one of a covered body unloaded at a country hospital. There was a discussion in Time magazine and an editorial here and there. The editorials talked about the breakdown of society.

  The news that Loomer and Miller were dead stirred a strange feeling I didn’t want, like regret. Like my wanting to say to them, I told you so. Nick too, later, when I learned about him. Not them though, it was Harry I wanted to say it to.

  When I learned that Harry had been there at the time, I thought he had gone mad. When he got back I sought him out in hopes that talking to him would restore his sanity for me. I asked why he went.

  I had to take Nick, Harry said. If I hadn’t taken him he would have hitchhiked.

  I said why couldn’t you just send him on the bus?

  Nick wanted to kill Loomer, he told me.

  So you took him to Miller Farm where he could do it?

  I took him to prevent it.

  Why did you think you could do that?

  Because I had influence over him.

  I thought in Greek and Latin. Hubris. Arrogance.

  I was teaching him to think for himself, Harry said. He told me the police had asked the same questions, as if that made my questions superfluous. They cleared him of suspicion.

  Suspicion of what?

  Aiding and abetting. Conspiracy.

  I felt like a fool. The aura of foolishness was a stink in my memory, though it was hard to say exactly which thing I had done was particularly foolish. Or to escape the feeling that the real fool was Harry. I was sick of something, not sure what, sick of his mentorship, of being a protégé, of being a second son or whatever it was the whole Field family seemed to think I was. I avoided him in the lunchroom, surprising myself, not wanting to eat with Harry? We drifted apart.

  I was sick of probation with Judy. It went on and on, and it became a chore. Her mind was elsewhere, it never focused on me. In July Charlene came back to me. Or I went back to Charlene. I missed her. Or she missed me. Missing Judy Field turned into missing Charlene. I thought Charlene wouldn’t treat me like that. I called her one night to ask if she would treat me like that and she said no.

  So Charlene came back and lives with me again. I told Judy I was back with my old girlfriend. It was sad. When I remember that conversation sometimes it seems almost unbearable with sadness. It caught her by surprise, it made her apologize, and I could hear the courage grinding in her voice. That’s all right Davey, I understand, she said, as if she didn’t.

  With regret ever since. Regret and relief, I can’t tell them apart. Lying beside Charlene at night after she has gone to sleep, I think of Judy restored to loveliness and glamor. I remember how much I did for her all for love and the memory of my heroism makes me mourn. I remember the dark New Hampshire roads at night and the mental intimacy we had as we made plans and tried to judge how terrible reality could be. I tell myself it’s better with Charlene, that my time with Judy was a crazy interlude, but then I get lost trying to figure out if I could have done something differently. If I had spoken more forcefully at the Sleepy Wicker motel. If I had refused Veena on the road. If I had not mentioned Veena to Judy. If I had refused to accept probation. If I had put Charlene off a while yet. All these possibilities and others appear as my thought rolls on forgetting itself and everything on the way to sleep.

  Charlene wants to get married. I don’t but I guess I will to calm the seas. She wants me to invite the Fields to the wedding, and I guess I’ll do that too.

  30

  Judy Field

  In a moment of pique, Davey said, You’ve been kidnapped by your baby. I admit it. Preoccupied, I ignore the problems of others. My parents forgive me, they think it natural. I listen and try to sympathize, but my mind is busy and won’t engage.

  My mother is kidnapped by her mother, my ninety-six year old grandmother, recently widowed. Everyone expected her to die first, not Gus, the old pixie man. So my mother went to San Diego to help her adjust to widowhood. The old woman was afflicted with loss, her life was nothing but loss, she wanted only to die. She listened to stories of the living generations without interest, sustained by the habits of old roles, what a mother and a grandmother and now a great-grandmother should care about. She asked about the children and the children’s children, repeated the questions and got the same answers, ate the soup Florence Byrd served her, took her nap, got back into her wheelchair and fell asleep with a book. Sleep gave her no rest, and when she wasn’t asleep she thought about pain and the things that were no more, and each day she asked Florence or her daughter or whoever was there (the good senior people who brought her entertainment, dishes to eat, books to read), Why can’t I die? What point is served by my staying alive? Who benefits?

  Finally my mother came home, with this question which she has not yet answered: should she bring the old woman to live with us, with all the reasons not to, in which it is so hard to distinguish what is selfish from what is kind and what is practical from what is cruel?

  That’s what my mother worries about these days, which I forget while I take care of my baby. My father’s worry is different. It began with a letter he got one day late in the summer.

  Dear Professor, You may have fooled the police with your cockeye story taking the Miller Murderer to Miller Farm but you don’t fool us. Justice waits.

  Why do you get such a letter as this? my mother asked.

  It’s some ignorant echo, Harry explained, of the question the police had for him back in Wicker Falls. The question was, Why did you bring Foster to Wicker Falls? Since you knew his purpose, why didn’t you notify us, why didn’t you warn Loomer and Miller? The police questioned him, and the district attorneys, and he went back to speak to the grand jury. They had to decide whether he was an accessory, but they accepted his explanations because of his professorial authority. They treated him deferentially because of his position in the class structure (though it never felt like Ruling Class to him). They let him off and that was the end of it or should have been. Evidently somebody reading the abbreviated accounts in the paper, someone who didn’t care what class he belonged to, was not satisfied.

  Soon after that came in the mail a pamphlet from North Dakota with a full description called “Cover-Up of the Miller Massacre.” This little-noticed event will get the attention it deserves as patriots around the land are made aware of the resemblances to Waco and Weaver. Once again the government has moved to terrorize independent religious groups while they destroy our rights to bear arms. Proof of the conspiracy to pull the wool over your eyes was the release without a single charge of the so-called professor who transported the hired gun to the Farm. Ask the authorities about that character. Ask, keep asking. This case stinks and must not be forgotten.

  “The so-called professor.” Is that you Harry, my father, because you drove the murderer to Miller Farm? What an outrage, Connie Rice said, speaking for all of us on Harry’s behalf, for Barbara, Joe, David, me.

  Other letters followed, they came every couple of weeks. They came from North Dakota and Idaho and Texas. Someone sent an editorial from a respectable New Hampshire paper. A rumor has been spreading, the editorialist wrote, that the Miller Massacre last June was part of a government conspiracy to suppress dissent. We have been asked to call for an investigation of suspects who were released without charge. We think the request is uncalled for. Such innuendo does not serve the community.

  Someone told us that references to the Miller Massacre were popping up on the Internet. When names of outrages were listed the name of Miller was often added to the list (Waco, Weaver, Oklahoma City, Miller). Someone anonymous wrote an attack on Saint Lena, the moneybags lady who bribed the survivors of Miller Farm into silence. When you realize that she was the longtime mistress of the CIA professor who trained the murderers you don�
�t need other evidence.

  When the ruling class abandons justice people take justice into their hands. Bare that in mind, professor.

  Barbara called the police about it, and a policeman came to the house, just like the one months ago when the baby was kidnapped. His name was Theodore Lord with a white mustache like McKinley. What can we do? he said. If you get more calls maybe we can trace. Notify us more threats. Suspicious package, don’t open, call us.

  Who are they? he said rhetorically. Crackpots. Even a tiny number of people can make a lot of noise and this is probably a tiny number of people. They have their underground communications and their grievances. A rumor starts, someone thinks it useful, and they pass it on. You’ll have to live with it I guess. Hope they get tired, but I don’t foresee that soon.

  Mother was shocked. She’s a good Christian woman who goes to church without Harry and keeps her differences to herself. She believes God is always present in her life, whispering to her and listening to her thoughts and she has always been secretly a little afraid that her husband’s skepticism could provoke divine retaliation. The notion of Miller’s claiming to be God outraged her and she couldn’t help believing his death was God’s punishment. Now it’s hard not to think Harry is being punished too. She never actually said this. I read it in the marks around her eyes.

  Meanwhile, Harry minimized the threat. What could happen? he said. Probably nothing, though anything’s possible. More letters. A slight chance a real fanatic would take stronger action. Like what? Hitchhike from North Dakota to throw a rock in the window? Car bomb? All it needs is one crazy person with energy. You can’t prevent it if it wants to happen.

  It doesn’t seem to bother Harry. What’s the use of worrying if I can’t do anything? he said. His voice was cheerful as if he enjoyed it. It sure would bother me. Glad meanwhile that my apartment with my baby is not in his target range, I hope.

  No, I can’t be intense about anything but my baby. I work in the office, writing and filing, and I go home to her. I have no other life. And now I have lost David Leo. He thought he was in love and he used to visit and I tried to pay attention for I owe him much. But even when I saw he was getting bored I could not exert myself. So I let him go. Now he’ll marry Charlene, and I won’t interfere because I have no right.

  No one criticizes me for my obsession. Everyone says it’s natural, the instinctual thing. The baby needs me at this most important time, especially since there is no father. It’s like everyone is conspiring to clear the way for my monumental selfishness like an ocean liner swamping all the boats. I appreciate the indulgence. I wouldn’t give myself the same indulgence if I were someone else. Maybe when Hazy is older I’ll turn into a normal person again. Then I’ll regret not having helped my mother in her difficult decision, nor having stood by my father in his nightmare. I know I’ll regret letting Davey go. If I know that, why can’t I make myself do something to prevent it?

  31

  Harry Field

  Harry never did find out how he had reconciled himself to death on the kidnap day. The memory of that excitement was gone. He couldn’t even remember why the death of consciousness was bad. He was distressed to forget something so important, but he couldn’t bring it back.

  It took him a while (although not really as long as you might think) to get over the shock of his connection to the Miller Massacre. The worst was that first evening at the Sleepy Wicker when he and Lena gasped together trying to civilize the horror. That was the moment in his life when he felt most inept and stupid, in which his contribution to this tragedy lit a flare that made everything he had ever done look stupid.

  There there, Lena said.

  I brought the murderer, Harry said, expressing remorse like the hero of a romance. I brought him to the site. If it weren’t for me it wouldn’t have happened. I made it possible.

  There there, Lena said.

  She had her eye on the future. She asked him, Will this start a new religion?

  I doubt it, he said.

  A martyr. A charismatic leader shot down. His people outcasts.

  There’s no message, Harry said. Only personality.

  He saved people.

  A few.

  She told him her plan to endow Miller Farm. He congratulated her and said it was a worthy thing to do.

  After the police cleared him of suspicion, he felt better. He went home and got over his gloom. Old habits of cheer restored him. He ate lunch with colleagues. He thought up another book. He played with his granddaughter. By the end of the summer he felt almost normal. Life was exciting again.

  He imagined conversations with Lena, who seemed to have become a voice inside his head saying strange outrageous things.

  So that’s why you went to see Miller, this imaginary Lena said. You wound up with Miller, everything ends with Miller. You went to see Miller like any pilgrim. Me too, you knew I’d be there, you went to see me like a lover. Furthermore, the vigilantes are right to suspect you of Nick. You were attracted by the risk. You wanted to see if it could happen. So said the atrocious imaginary Lena in his head. She told him that he and Miller were just the same. You make the same claims, she said.

  Lena, Lena, he reminded her. Your Miller claimed he was God. Words, meaningless words.

  As he cheered up over the weeks, he found himself once again thinking about the mysteries of death. He couldn’t remember why death was terrible. He found an imaginary Miller in his head and asked him. Ambition, the imaginary Miller said. Once you give up ambition you won’t mind death.

  Now he felt euphoric, exhilarated, some crazy old age thing. The threatening letters stimulated him. As if nothing could happen in the remainder of his life that wasn’t good. That thought was shocking. What a dangerous and foolhardy attitude, he told the imaginary Harry in his head. Illness, suffering, loss, terrible things are about to happen. He thought of his wife’s poor old mother, her fate. You must face the reality, you never did face the reality. The Harry in his head ignored his warnings. Thinking what a wild ride this journey to death. Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know how it will happen? The cause of death? The process, the time? The contingent circumstances? What people will say? The impact?

  Good Harry was horrified by this premature rush to the end. Blasphemy, he said. What an odd word to pick. You’ll be punished, the imaginary old mother said, as soon as the first illness hits and the dreary painful way down from that. But he forgot because he had something else to do. What was it? Don’t ask me, how should I know? And there it was again, that physical knot of excitement, impossible to tell whether it was the excitement of living or the excitement of dying, only that it was physical, that it was a knot, that it accelerated his pulse and his breathing.

  Since Harry Field obviously has only a partial understanding of himself, the last word goes to David Leo. This happened yesterday. As he approached the door of Harry’s classroom he heard Harry’s voice. The sentences gathering speed, the excitement gaining. He couldn’t make out the words. But he remembered from when he was a student how you believe it’s the thought capturing your attention, the connections, the logic, as if the presentational magic were the highest exercise of mind, into which you have been led by this powerful professorial energy.

  He remembered that feeling. He passed the door and glanced into the class. He saw the graduate students, twelve around the table, mature adults, many already teachers, all proven and tested bright, with careers and names destined to appear over articles and on books, sitting around the table leaning forward or sprawling, some shaggy with beards, women with scarves, others in T-shirts and others prim and neat, and all of them, all twelve transfixed with their attention upon Harry (himself intense and passionate leaning forward over the table, with his bloodshot eyes like a hound) attending to the intricate journey of his mind with a shared look of devotion and belief.

  DISCIPLES

  Austin Wright was born in New York in 1922. He was a novelist, an academic and, for many years, Pro
fessor of English at the University of Cincinnati. He lived with his wife and daughters in Cincinnati, and died in 2003 at the age of eighty.

  First published in the United States in 1997 by Baskerville Publishers Ltd.

  Originally published in Great Britain in 1994 by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Ltd.

  Reissued in Great Britain in hardback and export and airside trade paperback in 2010 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

  Copyright © Austin Wright, 1997

  The moral right of Austin Wright to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 978 1 84887 020 8

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978 1 84887 021 5

  E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 216 6

  Printed in Great Britain

  Atlantic Books

  An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd

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