Mickelsson had by now torn out the plaster and lath around the last of the window casements. He leaned his pick against the wall and looked slowly around the room, then at Lawler. In all the dust, the man’s black form was vague, like some blurred, waiting octopus in its shadow-filled underwater den.
“All right, begin on the walls,” Lawler said. “Then the ceiling.” He glanced at his watch, awkwardly drawing back his cuff with the hand that held the gun and raising his wrist toward his face.
Mickelsson lifted the pick again, held it a moment in his two hands, then swung. More dust poured out into the room, and he coughed, then swung again.
“It’s so stupid,” he said, resting for a moment—his voice, even in his own ears, whiney. “If you really believe in Mormonism, how can you believe we’ll find evidence that the whole thing’s a fraud?” He knew well enough it was an empty argument.
“Keep working,” Lawler said; then, when Mickelsson went back to his increasingly wobbly swinging: “In the first place, assuming it’s not all a fraud, it might nevertheless be the case that something may exist that could throw doubt on perfectly honest claims. We can’t have that, can we?” He puckered his lips, prissily frowning. “And in the second place, if the whole thing is a fraud, well, so what? Show me a religion not grounded in myths of the miraculous! Are we seriously to believe some old-time Jew descended into hell for three days, then rose to sit at the right hand of God? Or that some barren, hook-nosed hag of ninety had a child that fathered a nation?” His eyes flashed anger. “Or that Buddha met a talking tree?” He laughed scornfully, without humor, as if enraged by the whole stream of humanity back to the beginnings. Then, solitary, accepting the burden, he rocked on his buttocks, trying to get comfortable. “All religions are fraudulent at the foundation, my dear Peter, ‘built on sand,’ so to speak.” He coughed, bothered by the dust or by having to shout. “Who wants a God that can’t do magic?” He coughed again, repeatedly and loudly. Glancing at him through the veiling dust, Mickelsson saw that the coughing fit had Lawler shaking, angrily jiggling all over. “What counts,” Lawler said when the jiggling had stopped and he was able to speak again, “is not the foundation but the battlements and towers—you’ll excuse me if I seem to wax poetic; it’s a standard answer.”
“Then why not be honest?” Mickelsson asked, then coughed himself and again rested for a moment. “Admit it’s based on a fiction but argue its present spiritual and moral worth—or whatever the hell it is you argue.”
He could just make out that Lawler was sadly turning his head from side to side, his eyes hidden behind the dust on his glasses. “Can’t do it,” he said. “Too many people are fools; they need inspiring fairytales. If you’re out to convert the whole world, or enough of it to give you significant power vis-à-vis the rest, you must recognize people’s weakness and play to it.” The expression of distaste was back. “For their own good.”
“ ‘Good,’ ” Mickelsson scoffed, and once more raised the pick-axe. It crossed his mind that in all this dust he might easily hurl the pick at Lawler and then jump him, all before Lawler could get a good shot off. But he did not act. The dead cat was still too vivid in his mind. What bothered him now was not just the horror of the image, the blown-away side of the head. Lawler had fired from the waist, with deadly accuracy, and small as the gun was it did such damage as one might have expected from a weapon much larger.
Mickelsson said, “I think you’re wrong—your assertion that all religions start as lies.” He swung the pick and grunted. “I think most of them start with authentic mysteries—maybe the discovery of hypnotism, not fully understood even by the priest who uses it; maybe the discovery of drugs that give visions; maybe even some actual confluence of the natural and the supernatural. I think your people are more unique than you imagine. Your religion’s a lie right from the center.”
Lawler waved it off, unmoved. He’d heard it all before, of course. No such religion could have survived this long without defenses. He did not even bother to mention whatever defenses he had. “Believe me, they were clever, those original Mormons,” he said, pleased that the subject had come up. “The way they wove odds and ends together to make The Book of Mormon was the work of true genius. A little from the Campbellites, a little from the Masons, a little from King James, a little from a stupid, stolen novel”—he laughed dully—“a little from popular occult books of the day … And those visions of Smith’s—let me tell you—masterpieces! Smith had an advantage, you see. Other prophets thought it was required that they actually see visions. Not Smith! It could be shown—has been shown—that he pieced together the finest visions to be found in print at the time.” Lawler pointed around at random with one finger. “A shaft of light from here, a couple of robed, mumbling figures from there, a sensation like drowning from another place. Theater, Professor! Torch the poor follower’s imagination!” He leaned forward, suddenly stern, eager to make a point. “Or take Smith’s doctrine on polygamy. It had real daring—not at all like the usual stuff of the day. It even had a sneaky sort of humor in it. ‘Women,’ said Smith—piously nasal, we may imagine—‘have no soul. The only way they can get into Heaven is by marriage to a Saint.’ Obviously the decent, the Christian, thing to do is to marry every woman one can get one’s hands on!” His left hand slapped his mountain of thigh; then he began to cough, nearly gag. He rose from the bed and moved quickly to the hallway door for air. Mickelsson’s hand tightened on the pick-axe handle, but even now, gagging and hacking from whatever he’d swallowed with the too quick gulp of air, Lawler had the pistol aimed straight at Mickelsson’s chest, and Mickelsson reconsidered. No hope anyway. He stood knee-deep in broken lath and plaster, so that he could run neither toward his enemy nor away from him, and his eyes were burning, blurring with tears, from the dust. When he brushed his hair back from his forehead, he found the hair as stiff as wire. He swung the pick-axe and yanked away the last large swatch of plaster and lath.
“Are you finished? Is that it?” Lawler called through the open doorway.
“That’s it for this room,” Mickelsson said, and threw the pick-axe down hard.
Lawler came in, the white handkerchief tied around his face, and, with one eye on Mickelsson, moved slowly around the room, occasionally bending over to examine something or kicking a large piece of plaster aside. He took his time, making sure he missed nothing, his elevated rear end enormous, his shoes toeing outward. At last he waved his pistol at Mickelsson and said through the handkerchief, “All right, we’ll do the livingroom next.”
“Why not another bedroom?” Mickelsson protested.
“I don’t think so,” Lawler said. He stood musing, only his left-hand fingers moving, fiddling with the lip of a trouser pocket. “No, I think the livingroom.”
Mickelsson could not remember ever in his life, even with Miss Minton, having felt such helpless rage. He picked up his tools and went out, ahead of Lawler, into the hall.
As he began on the moleboard in the livingroom, he asked, “Tell me this, Edward. Who is it you work with? I assume it wasn’t you, or at least not you alone, that came in here and ransacked my house that night.”
“Oh no, I was miles away at the time. The Sons of Dan don’t do ‘light’ work.” He stretched his lips flat, not a smile.
“Underlings, then. I see,” Mickelsson said. “Buck privates in the Army of the Lord.”
“Something like that.”
He dragged the Christmas tree out from the wall, then sucked in breath and swung at another section of moleboard with the wreckingbar. “I assume they drive a plain, dark green car.”
“They may. I suppose they sometimes may.”
“And when they find they can’t handle a thing, they come running to the Sons of Dan?”
“More or less. Not knowingly.” He raised a finger for emphasis. “They know I’m a man of authority, a helpful older advisor, one might say. They provide me with information—much as you do, Professor—but unless they’re a good deal m
ore astute than I think, they have no real idea what my role is.”
“Wait a minute,” Mickelsson said, turning, still bent over. Lawler’s face was—like Mickelsson’s own, no doubt—black with dust except for the eyes and eyelids. The handkerchief over his nose and mouth was now gray. “They don’t know you’re a Danite?”
Lawler said nothing. He seemed to stiffen a little.
“Who does know?” Mickelsson asked. “Do they know in Salt Lake City?”
“Keep working,” Lawler commanded, surprisingly gruff. Then he said, “That would amuse you, wouldn’t it—to think that I’m self-appointed. No such luck, my friend. I’m definitely official.”
“But I’ll bet you can’t prove it.”
“Possibly not.” Lawler gave a weary but elegant little wave.
Mickelsson slowly shook his head. “It figures,” he said at last, pausing to wipe sweat from his eyebrows. He swung the wreckingbar with extra violence. “A lone-wolf fanatic. Jesus fucking Christ.” When he pried, his hands slipped off the handle and he almost fell. Lawler jerked his gun in alarm, and Mickelsson understood that he’d nearly gotten his head blown off.
Soothingly, after he’d recomposed himself, Lawler said, “You must be very tired.”
“Sure,” Mickelsson said, and once again seized the wreckingbar, then stabbed in behind the moleboard.
“Well,” Lawler said, “whether I’m really a Danite or just some Latter-Day maniac, here I am, and there you are. The laws governing our behavior seem clear. Isn’t that a comfort?”
“Laws,” Mickelsson breathed. A long stretch of moleboard broke away as he tugged. Like the piece he’d noticed upstairs, this stretch too had gouge-marks. Insect of some kind? he wondered.
“Yes, yes you’re right to mock,” Lawler was saying softly. With his small, plump left hand he wiped at his eyes, then dropped his hand and blinked for a moment, then briefly wiped them again. “It’s an interesting point, the Mormon view of Law. Quite orthodox, really. The early Christians were lawless in a similar way. Christ, they said, brought an end to outer, that is, positive law—the old Jewish food laws, sabbath laws, and so on. ‘Be Christ-like,’ that was the only law. A very good law, in fact—though devilishly tricky, and now long past its viability. Your friend Nietzsche would doubtless have approved of the old idea, if it had been properly explained to him. You are—I’m not mistaken?—a student of Nietzsche?”
“Not lately.”
“Pity. Well, in any case, I’m by no means the lawless creature you imagine me—quite the obverse! I believe with all my heart and mind in the vision of Joseph Smith Jr., as modified by Young and Pratt and, most important, modern circumstances. A vision, essentially, of man as he is: a small group of brilliant, imaginative thinkers supported in their work by a vast army of obedient, superstitious fools who give us half of all they earn—that’s their tithe—which we ‘invest’ for them.” His eyes crinkled. “The law I follow—”
“You being one of the leaders,” Mickelsson said, and shifted from the wreckingbar to the pick-axe, preparing to smash into the wall beside the ornate walnut and cut-glass front door.
Mickelsson had hit a nerve, it seemed. Lawler said sternly, “Beware of mocking the man with the gun, Professor Mickelsson.” At once Lawler made himself calm again. “There’s something to what you say, of course. In any intelligent organization, one rises by acts worthy of notice. But do not make the mistake of supposing I do what I do for honor or recognition at Salt Lake City. I do not object to honor or recognition. I act, however, for much less selfish reasons—in the name of what is right.”
“Right!” Mickelsson snorted, and again slammed the pick-axe into the wall. “You’re a fool! You know what you are? You’re pitiful.”
“You are mistaken, Professor,” Lawler said quietly. “But there’s no point debating it.”
“That’s crazy,” Mickelsson said, and to his quick indignation heard a whine in his voice; yet he pressed on: “People have been debating right and wrong for thousands of years!”
“Only fools,” Lawler said. He leaned forward as if to spit through the filthy mask.
“Giving up everything—fifty per cent of your income every year—giving up even your brains, your individual will, giving your very life to some tyrannical cult built on violence and fraud—you can sit there and tell me that’s right?”
“Once the machinery’s in place, such questions don’t come up,” Lawler said dully, then waved the pistol, suggesting that Mickelsson get back to work. “Once a man’s in with us—given our various ‘support systems,’ as the mealy-mouths say—there’s not very much he can do, you see. Oh, a few slip through the net, turn against us. We put pressure on, of course. You can see where we’d be if such defections became common. But if the odd fish proves recalcitrant enough, we let him swim away. On the whole, however … On the whole the Saints are pretty much in your situation.” He seemed to smile behind the mask. “Not a prayer except, possibly, prayer.” He closed his eyes, rocking forward and back, then abruptly opened them. “We’ve talked enough,” he said. “Save your strength now, Professor. We have a great deal yet to do.”
“Makes you uneasy, doesn’t it,” Mickelsson said, “the thought that these Mormons you admire may not exist outside your head.”
“They exist,” Lawler snapped. “Now stop talking or I’ll shoot you.”
No prayer but prayer, Mickelsson thought, and almost, in the extremity of his weariness, laughed. The bones of his hands ached; his palms were blistered and bleeding. His eyes stung as if filled with bits of broken glass, and his lungs felt heavy and stiff with dust, as if left too long in the corner of an attic. His legs were unmuscled, and he itched everywhere. God only knew how Sprague—if it was he who’d torn his house apart, under Lawler’s gun—had gotten through it. Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps that was the reason Lawler had burned the house: if the secret was up there, and Sprague too weak to tear it out, let the fire get rid of it. If Mickelsson’s strength were to give out, then, the same would happen here. Lawler would shoot him, or perhaps somehow manage to cut his throat with the knife he must be carrying, or he’d set fire to the house and burn up whatever the presumed evidence was. As Mickelsson considered his weakness and the pain in his hands, the realization was a frightening one. The only hope he had was somehow to keep working, keep Lawler at bay with the faint possibility that they might find something. Not that they would. Mickelsson felt his consciousness settling, more and more intensely, on the box of old keys sitting on the glass-topped table. He must get near it as soon as possible, bury it under, say, fallen plaster from the ceiling. Sooner or later Lawler would wake up to it, and the game would be finished. Sooner or later the game would be finished in any case. It was true; he had no prayer but prayer, a thing he no more believed in than he believed in Freddy Rogers’ stone falls, or blood falls, or the Binghamton paper’s UFOs. He glanced out at the road and saw Lawler’s antique gray car. “Christ,” he whispered to himself, “someone come help me!” Again he felt an impulse toward angry, maybe hysterical laughter. He was praying.
He thought: Suppose it were true, crazy as it sounded, that one could send out a sort of mental cry for help and someone, somewhere, might receive it? There were those who believed in such things, even certain scientists, or so he’d read. There were alleged cases of mothers who, though half a world away, heard the cry of their endangered or dying children. There was the alleged case of the Russian rabbit whose heart whammed at the precise moment each of her babies was slain, though they were thousands of miles from her and caged in a submarine. Mickelsson paused to wipe sweat and dust out of his eyes and wipe his blood-slippery hands on his trousers. The psychic cry for help was a futile and stupid hope, he knew. And shameful. Better the nihilistic courage of Dr. Destouches—though that too was shameful enough, obscene and, for all the hoopla, just one more cunning disguise for sentimentality. Psychic cry for help … Even if such things occasionally did happen, he had no power to make it hap
pen for him. How many thousands of people died every year who would have lived if any such magic were available? Perhaps if one had studied with Tibetan monks … if one had taken care to build strong, deep friendships … It crossed his mind that his helplessness now was a judgment on him. But that thought too seemed too tiresome to trace to its end.
His strokes came more and more slowly, but the room was already well on the way to total ruin, the Christmas tree deep in dust. Once or twice, watching the pick end sink, he felt a flash of rage; but he was no longer even considering an attack on Lawler. He could hardly control the slam of the pick into the plaster, much less throw it hard enough and fast enough to beat Lawler’s gun; and his legs were so weak he could barely stand, much less charge the black-suited fat man on the couch. The thought that the house must be torn apart, then burned, made him wretched. It was only a house; but his heart swore otherwise. Tears ran down his cheeks, making his eyes still more gritty, and his breathing came harder and harder. “Dear God, please,” he whispered, and then at once, for the cowardice of his sudden turn to Jesus, felt revulsion so strong that he again tasted vomit. The ugliness of it! He, Mickelsson, whining his Now-I-lay-me—Mickelsson who himself had shown no mercy—crying out now to a God he’d refused to believe in when he hadn’t been in need. That was how they got you, he knew. Need. Impotence is dangerous for the human character.