The Good Atheist

by Michael Manto

  “Paige is a good mother. It would break her heart,” I said.

  “It’s for their own good. I’m not trying to be cruel.”

  “I can’t do that to her.”

  “I’m starting to really worry about you,” Selene said. “I’ve been worried since this business about your father came up. But now you’re risking too much for this runaway waif.”

  “What am I risking?”

  “Oh, come on. Not only are you starting to sympathize with religious fanatics, now you’re cooperating with the criminal underground and hiding fugitives.”

  “First, they’re not fanatics. And second, there is very little chance I’m going to get caught. I don’t think the Tolerance people know about this place. If they did, they would have been here by now.”

  “If you get caught, you’re going to jail. It’s against the law to provide aid or refuge to religious fugitives.”

  “Does Paige strike you as a dangerous fanatic? She’s just a frightened girl wanting to keep her kids, persecuted by the law for nothing more than the opinions she keeps between her ears. I’m beginning to wonder who the dangerous fanatics really are. Why does the government feel so threatened by what’s inside this young girl’s head?”

  “Oh, Jack, I was afraid of this.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “You’re falling under the spell. The spell of religious delusion that weak-minded people succumb to.”

  “I’m not weak-minded. Neither was my father or grandfather. Neither is Paige, by the way. You’ll see that once you get to know her.”

  Selene shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  “Selene, I’m still a good atheist, but I don’t have to believe nonsense about religious people in order to be an atheist. I don’t have to think that people who believe differently than I do are stupid and delusional and evil. That’s just bigotry, plain and simple.”

  “Why is this so important to you, Jack?” Selene hissed. “I don’t care what happens to these people. They are nothing to me. I don’t know them, and I’m not going to risk losing everything just to help them.”

  A clock on the wall reminded me how late the hour was, and I suddenly felt tired. “I’m too tired to argue about it any more, but I’m not turning her in, Selene. She doesn’t deserve that. Someone is coming tomorrow to get Paige, and this won’t be an issue anymore. I’m going to bed.”

  She didn’t move or say anything, just looked at me. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but I could see she was still angry. There was nothing more I had to say. I left her in the living room and got ready for bed. I called to her once, asking her to come to bed, but she didn’t answer.

  Later, as I lay awake in the dark, I heard Selene come into the bedroom. I felt her climb into the bed next to me and I rolled over to hug her, but she kept her back turned to me.

  14

  I’ve never slept well in strange beds. Hotels, friends’ places, relatives’ – I don’t sleep well, and the cottage bed still felt strange to me. Stranger still is the almost total quiet and complete darkness of the country at night. Growing up in the big city I had never realized just how – well – dark the night can be. In the city you have the ubiquitous background glow of a million lights. It never gets really dark. Not the kind of total darkness you find on a moonless night a million miles from civilization, where the darkness is so perfect you can feel it. You can’t see your hand in front of your face.

  And the background hum and growl of the big city, like a huge living, breathing beast, is a familiar lullaby at night. The comforting background noise of the city is wholly absent out in the country. At night the loudest noise you hear is the blood in your ears. The strange bed, the near-perfect darkness, the disconcerting quiet – these all conspired to rob me of sleep. It made me yearn at times for the city. I normally slept like a log at home, but out here I slept lightly.

  And so a soft click from the living room woke me up. It was a mechanical noise, out of place in the dark country night. I sat up and felt that the bed next to me was empty.

  I swung my legs out of bed and stood up. A clock with glowing hands on the bedside table said it was four-thirty in the morning.

  I went into the dark living room and flipped on a light. Selene stood in front of the door, her hand still on the latch, her coat still on. She turned around suddenly. “What are you doing up?” she asked.

  “I could ask you the same.”

  She just looked at me, but her eyes spoke volumes.

  “What were you doing outside this early in the morning?” I asked.

  She took off her coat and kicked her shoes off. “It’s for the best, Jack.”

  I kept my voice low. “What have you done?”

  “You were getting too carried away with this. Too involved. I had to do something.”

  “Do what? What have you done?”

  She left me standing in the living room and went silently into the kitchen. I pulled my shoes on and grabbed a flashlight that I kept on the table by the front door. I went outside to the cars. The rental car was cold, but the hood of our car was warm to the touch. I went back inside and found her sitting at the kitchen table, purse and keys on the table next to her. “Where were you going at four in the morning?”

  She stirred her tea without looking at me.

  Selene was never far from her cellphone. I grabbed her purse off the table and rummaged through it until I found it. I touched the phone icon, navigated to the call log, and found what I had feared. She’d placed a call twenty minutes ago. I couldn’t call the number to find out who it was, but I didn’t need to. The call display gave me the name: the Tolerance Bureau field office in Burlington.

  I threw her phone down, ran into the bedroom, and pulled my clothes on, thinking furiously. It wouldn’t take them long to get here, but if I was fast enough I had a chance of getting Paige and the kids away from the cottage before the Inquisitors arrived. I hadn’t told Selene about Jorge, so the plan forming in my head was to simply get Paige to Jorge’s place as fast as I could. He would know what to do after that and could get them into hiding somewhere.

  I didn’t have time to think things through any more than that, or to reflect on my own complicity. If I was going to save her, it had to be now, and every second counted. I ran into the other bedroom where Paige and the kids slept.

  I flipped on the lights. “Get up!”

  She was in bed, with Micah and Amanda on either side.

  “Paige, wake up.”

  They say that becoming a parent makes you a light sleeper. Not ever having children, I wouldn’t know, but apparently it was true. Paige sat up in bed almost immediately. She was wearing a baggy white tee shirt. When she saw me standing over the bed, she pulled the blankets up around her shoulders. “What are you doing?”

  “Get the kids dressed as fast as you can. I have to get you out of here.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “The police are coming for you. It won’t take them long to get here. You’d better hurry.”

  Paige jumped out of the bed. The large tee shirt hung down to her knees. She grabbed her jeans off the floor, pulled them on, and tucked in her shirt.

  “Get the kids dressed and meet me out front in two minutes. Leave your stuff. There’s no time.”

  I left her to get the car. As I crossed the living room Selene came out of the kitchen and followed me to the front door. “Jack, what are you doing?”

  I put my hand on the door latch and turned around. “Getting Paige away from here before your Tolerance friends show up.”

  She grabbed my arm to stop me from opening the door. “Don’t do it, Jack. You could go to jail for aiding and abetting.”

  “I’m already guilty of that. She’s been here for days.” I pulled my arm away and opened the door.

  “Don’t be stupid!” she screamed. “You’re throwing everything away for what? A Christian!” She spat the word out. Jews! Christians! Moslems! Dirt u
nder your feet. In another century her hatred might have been directed against Africans or Monarchists or Republicans. But she was a child of her times.

  “What did you expect me to do? Did you really think I’d just stand by and watch while the Inquisitors dragged her out of the house?” I could see by the look that passed through her eyes that she had counted on just that. She’d counted on me standing by and doing nothing.

  “How little you know me,” I said.

  “Jack.” Her voice turned low and cool. “If you leave with her now, I won’t be here when you come back.”

  I paused in the doorway and looked at her. “After what you’ve done, you’d better not be,” I said. Then I turned away and walked out the door.

  The car came to life as I ran towards it. Lights came on and the gull-wing door swished open. I jumped in and started driving before the door closed, and pulled the car around to the bottom of the porch steps. Each second felt like eternity as I waited for Paige, willing her to hurry and come through that door. I couldn’t see Selene, and that was just as well.

  Sometimes there is no time to think, no time to reflect, only to act, and the real stuff of your character is made apparent in that moment. Moments when a man discovers what he is really made of. What this meant for me I wasn’t sure, but I knew I didn’t want to be the kind of man who stood by and did nothing.

  I’d hardly had time to think through the implications of what I was doing. Probably jail. A half-formed thought passed through my mind that maybe I should go into hiding too and try to get across the border. Jorge could arrange that. He said he could get Paige to the underground. Maybe there was room for me on that trip as well.

  Paige appeared in the door with Micah and Amanda. In one hand she carried her small suitcase and with the other she carried Amanda, with Micah right behind. I swore under my breath at the sight of the suitcase. She’d wasted precious minutes packing.

  She saw me and started walking across the porch towards the stairs. She was halfway to the stairs when searing bright lights stabbed down from the night sky. Paige stopped in the middle of a pool of harsh white light and looked up. The children covered their eyes and cried out.

  Without thinking I got out of the car. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Paige and her children stood in a frozen tableau on the porch. Behind her Selene stood in the open door, looking at me, expressionless. All illuminated in bright white light.

  I looked up but couldn’t see anything behind the light shining down from dark sky. It was utterly silent. A second light, coming down from another point in the sky on the other side of the cottage, traced its way up the driveway until it found me and stopped. A loud voice boomed down from black sky. “Citizen, remain where you are. Do not attempt to interfere.”

  I was pretty sure there were some serious weapons on the other side of those lights, and there was little I could do to help Paige now. I’d seen enough news videos to know it wouldn’t end well for me if I tried something stupid. Selene disappeared inside and shut the door. I heard the latch click.

  The voice again: “Paige Amanda Austen, this is the Federal Tolerance Bureau. You are under arrest. Remain where you are. Do not attempt to resist.”

  Paige looked at me, pleading with her eyes, and my heart felt it would break. But I shook my head. “Just stay there, Paige. There’s nothing we can do.”

  A black-and-silver Police Interceptor silently lowered itself down from the darkness and settled to the ground not far from me. The back door slid open and four Inquisitors in riot gear, electro stun-guns drawn, jumped out and swarmed up the porch steps.

  Paige slumped to the floor and gathered her children into her arms as the Inquisitors surrounded her.

  “Paige Amanda Austen?” asked one of the Inquisitors.

  Tears streamed down Paige’s face. She nodded silently without looking at her.

  “I am arresting you for Intellectual Anarchy and subversive religious beliefs, according to the federal anti-hate laws. Do you understand?” Paige didn’t respond. She pulled her children closer and stared into the darkness behind the Inquisitor.

  “According to the laws prohibiting religious abuse and the indoctrination of minors, I am authorized to remove your children and place them into protective custody until such time as you are deemed fit to properly care for them.”

  Paige shook her head frantically from side to side and hugged her children tightly. “No, you can’t do that!” Amanda and Micah stared transfixed at the officers standing over them. One of the Inquisitors clipped her stun-gun onto her belt and leaned over to grab Micah. Paige kicked at her and tried to move away. Another Inquisitor grabbed Paige and pulled her arms back while the first one grabbed Micah.

  Paige howled, a cry of agony arising from her inner-most depths. I’ve never had children and so could not know from direct personal experience what it must feel like, but it think that I’m human enough to imagine what it must be like for a parent to have their children torn from them. The gut-wrenching wail that arouse from Paige was like nothing I had ever heard or hoped to ever hear again.

  Another officer snatched Amanda, and Paige lashed out, scratching her face with her long nails. The officer yelled and dropped Amanda, and Paige quickly grabbed her again. In the end it took all four officers to get Amanda and Micah away from Paige, a frail spit of a girl who could not have weighed more than one hundred and ten pounds.

  I had no illusions about rescuing Paige. Anything I tried would be futile, little more than an empty gesture. But sometimes that’s all you’ve got. Sometimes the only difference between a man and a craven, supine excuse for a stuffed shirt is nothing more than a desperate act doomed to failure.

  So I charged up the stairs.

  I knew even as I ran towards the Inquisitors I didn’t stand a chance. That it was stupid and doomed to failure. But at least it would mean that I had not stood passively by in the face of tyranny, and with that knowledge I would be able to live with myself. In one of those defining moments that changes you forever, I decided that was good enough for me.

  The Inquisitors were too preoccupied with Paige to notice me rushing towards them. When I got to the top of the stairs I lowered my right shoulder and took a run at the nearest Inquisitor, hitting her square in the back. She went down, and I went down on top of her. I rolled over and ended up on my back, just in time to see another Inquisitor point her stun-gun at me. Searing pain ripped through me, and the last thing I remembered before succumbing to the darkness was the smirking face of the Inquisitor looking down at me.

  15

  I woke sometime later, flat on my back, face towards the sky. Consciousness came slowly, unwillingly. I dimly perceived something soft under my throbbing head, but I couldn’t recall where I was or what had happened. My back hurt, and my head felt like a solid block of concrete undergoing the tender mercies of a maniac turned loose upon me with a pneumatic jack-hammer. For several long minutes I remained very still. It hurt too much to risk moving.

  I tried to think, but my mind was uncooperative. I stared up at the blue sky, trying to remember how I’d come here and what had happened. After a few more minutes it started to come back.

  Paige.

  And my ill-conceived wrestling match with an Inquisitor, which I had clearly lost.

  I propped myself up on my elbows and looked around. I was still on my porch, where I had fallen on top of the Inquisitor. Someone had thoughtfully thrown a blanket over me, probably the same person who had put the pillow under my head. The sun was up and bright and looked to be somewhere around noon.

  There was no sign of the Inquisitors or members of the Tolerance Bureau. The only cars I could see in the driveway were mine and Selene’s rental.

  Selene.

  I lowered my head slowly back onto the pillow as I remembered her betrayal the night before. Paige would be gone, and there was nothing I could do about it. I wondered why I was waking up on my own porch, and not in jail. Why had they left me here?

  I tr
ied to roll over onto my side, in an attempt to get up, but my head started throbbing too much with the movement. I rolled onto my back and stared at the sky some more. Getting up would have to wait a while longer.

  Some time later I heard the door swing open and footsteps on the porch. Selene’s face came into view and she smiled down at me. “You’re awake. How do you feel?”

  “Like I got run over by a truck.” While that was seldom fatal since most vehicles used hover technology, the air pressure could still leave a lot of bruises.

  “Would you like a coffee?”

  I’d like an explanation, was the first thing that came to mind, but I hurt too much to get into that argument. “Sure,” I said. And how lame is that, I thought, after what happened.

  Selene went back into the cottage. My head stopped throbbing sufficiently that I felt I could risk getting up from the floor. I slowly fought my way into a standing position, where I wobbled uncertainly for a moment before steading myself. Standing was not such a very good idea after all, I decided. There were several Adirondack chairs on the porch, and I staggered towards the nearest one and slowly lowered myself into it.

  Selene came back a minute later, handed me a mug of steaming black coffee, and sat down in a chair next to me.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  Selene was still in her pajamas and bathrobe, but that didn’t tell me much about the time of day since she seldom got dressed before noon unless there was a national emergency. But it probably wasn’t dinner time.

  “Eleven-thirty.”

  I finished the coffee and held it out towards her. “That tasted like mud and motor oil.”

  “Would you like another?”

  “Yes, please.”

  An hour later I still hadn’t moved from the chair when a large black unmarked car hovered down the driveway and stopped at the bottom of the porch steps. Two large Inquisitors got out dressed in black riot gear, TOLERANCE stenciled in gold across the back of their bulletproof vests. They took positions at the base of the porch steps and glared up at me.