The Sun Collective: A Novel

by Charles Baxter

  “It’s good to see you!” the doctor shouted over the background noise as he patted Brettigan affectionately on the shoulder. “Sorry I’m a little late! I had to run an errand for my wife! Susan needed some aspirin! And we didn’t have any! She gets these headaches!”

  “Oh, that’s all right!” Brettigan shouted back, before realizing that his words of comfort might be misconstrued. “Elijah, I was just sitting here drinking and watching our current president!” He pointed at the television screen. “He’s always entertaining!”

  “That’s not a word I’d use!” the doctor said, just before ordering a draft beer. “He’s a criminal! That’s not entertainment! It’s indoctrination!”

  “Yes, of course! But you shouldn’t say so in public!”

  “Why not? We don’t have a police state, not yet! Let them arrest me if they want to! What are they going to do, torture me? What do I care! I’m untorturable!”

  “It’s your family!” Brettigan said. “They’ll go after your family!”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘They’ll go after your family!’ ” Brettigan shouted. He took a sip of his scotch. “That’s what they do! They have ways to harm people!”

  “Oh!”

  The background noise, which previously had been at din level, had risen louder, to an unwholesome pandemonium. One woman near the front plate-glass window seemed actually to be screaming at the man she was with, in conversation. It was a conversational scream. She was wearing designer jeans and a T-shirt with the words TOO GLAM TO CARE in stencil lettering across her breasts, and she had two fingers on the man’s coat lapel, while the man, for his part, smiled indulgently at her and was nodding as he touched her face tenderly.

  “We can’t talk like this!” Brettigan said. “It’s too loud!”

  “They have a back room!” the doctor said. “I know the owner of this place! It’s okay! We can go back there and talk!”

  “Good!” Brettigan nodded. “Let’s go!”

  After paying, they took their drinks and made their way through the clusters of young people to a hallway at the back. On the hallway’s left-hand side were the restrooms, and on the right-hand side, behind a heavy door painted black but with a red line running down the center, was a darkened meeting room. Brettigan flipped a switch, and several fluorescent lights flickered on as if reluctantly awakened. The room had scattered tables and a central circular table for banquets on which rested a dead African violet in a circular green metal pot. The room gave off a distant smell of spilled food and Lysol, and an even more distant smell of mold. Brettigan found a place to sit under an electric clock on the wall; the clock was running but showed the time to be three-fifteen. Brettigan checked his watch: the time, the actual time, was twenty-three minutes past eight.

  After closing the door, the doctor dropped himself down on the other side of Brettigan and sighed. “Well, that’s a relief,” he said. “What is it with young people and noise?”

  “Makes them feel less alone, I guess,” Brettigan said. “The more raucous the party, the happier they are.”

  “Yes.”

  The two men sat quietly for a moment, staring off into space. There is a kind of friendship that thrives on conversation but does not require it; Brettigan had discovered several years ago that he and Elijah had an elective affinity that permitted them to be in proximity to each other in a condition of peacefulness unsullied by anxious chitchat. If they wanted to talk, they could talk, but they didn’t have to—their friendship didn’t depend on it.

  After what seemed like an extended period of meditation, the doctor asked, “How’s Alma? How’s her recovery? That stroke, or whatever it was?”

  “They say it wasn’t a stroke. Your colleagues in the practice of medicine have done all the tests. There aren’t any signs of it. But the trouble is that she’s not herself, and I’m not sure exactly who she is. Ever since her episode in the park, she’s been different.” Brettigan was careful not to detail his participation in that episode, with the mirror in the water; there was no point in confusing matters.

  “How come?”

  “Well, she’s been talking to the dog and the cat. I mean, people do that, they talk to their pets, but these encounters she’s been having are conversations. It’s not a one-way deal. She thinks they’re answering her. I asked her what they were saying, and at first, she wouldn’t tell me, you know, privileged conversations, and then finally she said that they’re very thoughtful creatures who consider what their place in the world is and the point of life, what that is—well, okay, but what’s the meaning of life if you’re a dog? I’m not a dog, but I’d say it’s food and alerting the household if there’s a stranger at the door, and, yes, according to Alma they say all that, but it’s more than just food and strangers and other dogs. I mean, the cat doesn’t say anything about strangers because she doesn’t like them, and that’s her sole opinion about them. But Alma keeps telling me that the dog has other opinions. The dog has views. The dog makes judgments. For example, get this, the dog thinks I should worry less. In the dog’s opinion, I should be more amiable, more easygoing. The dog thinks that all the worrying I do week after week is bad for my health. It puts, the dog thinks, bad vibrations into the air.”

  “The dog is correct,” the doctor said. In the background, from behind the closed door, Brettigan heard more yelling and screaming from the main room. Those young people were staging a riot in there.

  “I don’t know,” Brettigan said. “It’s creepy, these conversations Alma has. The cat is more philosophical, but she is in general agreement with the dog. The cat’s contribution to this general conversation is as follows: it is a mistake, she believes, to care about much of anything. In the cat’s considered opinion, you should just let things happen, because they will just happen no matter what you do or say. The cat is a determinist. Of course, there are mice and birds to torture and kill, but that’s just in the cat realm, not the human realm. According to the cat, God is in charge.”

  “The cat thinks about God?”

  “That’s what Alma tells me.”

  “And what does God say to the cat?”

  “ ‘You are in my hands.’ Those are God’s very words, according to her.”

  “I’ll be damned,” the doctor said.

  “Could be,” his friend replied.

  “So the cat is a theist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Monotheism or polytheism?”

  “One god, the cat claims,” Brettigan answered. “And Alma reported. Oh, as I said: the cat also has observed that everything is predetermined, predestined. That’s why cats act the way they do. For them, free will is a myth. Forget about decisions. Just act. They all believe that.”

  After another long moment, during which Brettigan heard the humming of the inaccurate electric clock over the ruckus in the next room over, the doctor spoke up. “This is all very interesting, but you’ve got to remember I’m retired. I don’t like these large generalizations about life, to be honest, from human beings or from the animal perspective. They hit too close to home. Don’t forget I was once a scientist—medicine is approximate, but it’s still a science—and I don’t like to philosophize. I’d rather not worry about the meaning of things.”

  “These animals do.”

  “I wonder why,” the doctor said.

  “Because they sit around all day. Pets have a lot of leisure time. There’s nothing else to do but think.”

  After a long pause for meditation, the doctor said, “You know, you could do worse than to talk to animals. That’s not so bad an activity, when you consider it. You worry too much about Alma. If she wants to carry on a dialogue with the dog and the cat, why not let her?”

  “She goes to churches, too, you know,” Brettigan said. “Churches, synagogues, assembly halls, neighborhood meetings, political groups, affinity groups
, you name it.”

  “What for?”

  “She thinks Timothy will be there.” Brettigan did not like to talk about their misplaced son and rarely raised the topic when he was in the doctor’s company. He felt that the entire subject highlighted his failures as a parent and could leave the impression that he should have done more than he had been doing to find Timothy “He’s been seen around here, and he’s living here in the city somewhere, but he won’t tell us where.” Brettigan took another slug of his scotch in an effort to intensify and reverse the now-diminishing effect of warmth and well-being. “She’s been visiting activist groups. Ecological and environmental groups. Sun worshippers. Did I tell you about the Sun Collective?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But I’ve heard about them.”

  “They meet in an ex-church. A local neighborhood action outfit. They have strong beliefs in…something. I don’t know how Alma found them, but she really likes them and has sort of joined up. She tells me that they have a manifesto, but I haven’t seen it yet.”

  “I’d love to see it.”

  “Me too. She’s hidden it, just as if it were spiritual pornography that I shouldn’t see, toxic materials. They have an interesting way of propagating the faith: they drop pamphlets around town. I actually saw a couple of those collectivists going out to the Utopia Mall to leaflet, and I brought one of their pamphlets back home. It was about surviving and not being greedy. They’re against greed.”

  “No kidding. Good for them. But it’s a tragic position to take.”

  “And they’re anticonsumerists, and they hate computers and social media and the internet. They call it the New Enemy. They’re against racism, of course. Two Sun Collectivists were in the park when Alma had her episode, her nonstroke. Funny coincidence, that they were there. You ask me, they’re bad pennies; they keep turning up. She wants to bring them home with her. She thinks I should listen to them.”

  “Alma wants to bring them to your house?”

  “Yup. For dinner or whatever. Maybe we’ll have pizza night with these clowns, right in front of the TV. We’ll talk about the evil of commercials. We’ll make New Year’s resolutions not to buy anything.”

  “That reminds me,” the doctor said. “Speaking of leaflets and pamphlets. Have you been reading about the murders?”

  “What murders?” Brettigan asked. “The usual murders?”

  “No. These are not usual murders.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, it’s all just urban legends. Folklore. It’s not true, exactly. From the internet rumor mill. Twitter stuff and like that.” The doctor sat up to emphasize the seriousness of what he was about to say. “Funny that you haven’t read about it. It’s also in the local free community newspapers, You can go to the web, HeardThisOne.com, et cetera, and look at the posts people are putting there. You didn’t read about this?” Brettigan shook his head. “It’s all about this group called the Sandmen. Rich young men in their Mercedes and their Audis. The story is, they come in from the suburbs to one of those overpasses where those ragtags hang out and sleep. They beat up the poor. Sort of an upscale gang. Like fraternity guys.” He waited. The doctor had been looking down at his drink, but now he turned his gaze upon his friend. “I mean, it’s just a story. Just a rumor.”

  “Yes?”

  “And the Sandmen leave notes, according to the urban legends. These notes are pinned to the clothes of the injured and deceased.”

  “What do they say?”

  “ ‘Worthless,’ ” the doctor said. “ ‘You were a zero,’ ” the doctor quoted in a monotone. “ ‘You will not be missed. A parasite has been removed from the body of society. This is a War on Poverty. You are nothing. You have been erased.’ ”

  “Interesting rumors. No one’s more anonymous than a homeless guy.”

  “Right.” The doctor took a sip of his beer. “According to these internet sites, the Sandmen beat up and assault the homeless. Just for fun. That’s all they do.”

  “And they leave notes?”

  “Always.”

  “Are the notes signed?”

  “According to these stories, they are. Signed by the ‘Sandmen.’ ”

  “What? Are you kidding? Who do they say they are again?”

  “The Sandmen.”

  “Like, ‘Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream’?”

  “Yup.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. Maybe it’s an acronym.”

  The doctor shrugged. “I didn’t make it up, and I didn’t write it, so I can’t help it if it doesn’t make sense. But it’s all over the internet. Just go look.”

  - 15 -

  That night, Brettigan lay awake once more, broken open by the same antique visions in which he stood accused of murder, his soul drenched with the blood of his victims. Maybe his unconscious needed some R & R. In the dreams, he felt pride for the slaughter he had committed, standard dream-slaughter, but as soon as he awakened, he came homeward to his habitual self and tried not to be undone by what he had cooked up while asleep. He thought of his daughter, his son-in-law, and his two grandchildren and of how he loved them, believing himself to be, outside of the kingdom of nightmare, an ordinary decent guy. He tried not to think of his family; he didn’t want to contaminate them. Still trying to calm himself, he observed the shadows on the ceiling cast by the streetlight outside the bedroom window. The shadows, like Brettigan himself, were, for the moment, harmless. Down the block, a dog barked. Brettigan did his best not to move so that he wouldn’t disturb his wife. The scotch ebbed in his bloodstream; he could still feel its effects.

  With great stealth, he rose from the bed, checking the bedside clock: 2:04. In the dark, he put on yesterday’s clothes hanging on a chair, and he descended the stairs, avoiding the squeaky step five steps from the bottom. In the kitchen, after drinking a glass of water to fortify himself, he still wasn’t sure where he was about to go. But he had a feeling that the dying were instructing him to take a walk of some kind, an excursion: outside, tonight, he was meant to be a witness. The dying wanted him to be awake.

  The dog padded into the kitchen to observe him. The animal seemed noncommittal about the nocturnal walk Brettigan was planning to take, though he did lick Brettigan’s hand in greeting before returning to the living room, where the dog’s bed was located; the cat typically slept curled up next to the dog. For the most part, the cat was indifferent to Brettigan’s daytime or nighttime projects and rarely got up to greet him; Alma had reported that the cat believed Brettigan was not long for this world anyway and therefore did not want to be emotionally attached to him, or, for that matter, to anybody, people usually being more troublesome to the cat than they were worth.

  Outside, the late summer air was still warm, and the night winds blew almost soundlessly through the maple trees lining the block. Here and there, lights were still on in the upstairs windows of the neighboring houses, probably for the sake of the insomnia-ridden homeowners who were reading long novels or watching late movies or hatching plans for tomorrow’s business day. The crickets were making a racket from the bushes, almost as if they were on fire.

  Brettigan glanced up as he walked. Through one upstairs window two blocks from his own house, he saw a woman in a dressing gown standing between side curtains as she gazed toward the sidewalk in an attitude of watchful attention. Standing there, she was the very picture of loneliness. He didn’t recognize the woman—she presented only a dark outline, like someone’s mother standing in a nursery doorway—and he didn’t know who lived in that particular house, which, like most of them in this Minneapolis neighborhood, had been constructed around the turn of the century and would be drafty in winter and difficult to heat, with large screened front porches. Seeing Brettigan passing by on the sidewalk, the woman raised her hand to wave but then seemed to think better of the gesture and lowered her arm to he
r side.

  Brettigan waved at her, a gesture the woman did not acknowledge, though she did lower the window shade, and then he continued on.

  The street curved slightly to the left as it descended into a flat area with few trees and no wind, before the street and the sidewalks rose in the distance to a hill, and as Brettigan made his way toward it, he thought of the street fondly: on this very incline, he had watched Timothy accelerate and jump over curbs on his skateboard. How long ago was that? Another era. In this same street, where it flattened out, he had taught both his children how to ride their bicycles. Before that, his daughter had made her unsteady way down these sidewalks on her pink-laced roller skates. Decades ago after a snowstorm, his son had pulled his sled up this hill on his way to Kenwood Park, all the streets blocked with snow, the city having gone silent except for the distant occasional noise of trucks plowing the freeways. Both the street and the hill had a comforting domesticity for Brettigan. Although they were public spaces, he felt that they belonged to his family and to the neighbors and to no one else. He owned part of this street; he was a shareholder. No, more than a shareholder: the sole proprietor, the lamplighter, the night watchman, the one who calls out to anyone who will listen that it’s two a.m. and all’s well.

  At that moment Brettigan felt so weighed down with the past and its memories that the present had almost dried up and disappeared on him. Everywhere he looked, he saw spectral remnants, his own and his family’s. He brought so much of the past to what he saw, he could hardly see what was actually there.

  He heard footsteps behind him. When he turned around, he saw a mangy dog following him with some sort of intention, but when the dog saw Brettigan observing him, it stopped and peed nonchalantly on a fire hydrant.