Stillness & Shadows by John Gardner (accelerated reader books TXT) 📕

arm an immense black Bible. He couldn’t say himself what the Bible was for—he hadn’t been to church in forty years, though as a child in the care of his maiden aunt Harriet he’d sung in the Methodist church choir and had been, indeed, more religious than he now remembered—but something would come to him; the Bible would somehow or another prove handy; all master craftsmanship is partly a matter of setting up favorable conditions for fortunate accident. Anyway a ponderous, preacherly Bible suited Craine’s present disposition, his fury at this latest crude injury of a world inexcusably unworthy of man’s noblest efforts, a flatulent wind in the face of a brave boy’s willingness to think hard, take risks. The proverbial camel’s back was broken, and the straw that had broken it was the witless duplicity of E. Glass’s letter, the TV vulgarity of her five-hundred-dollar check, the bottomless injustice of her wish to do him harm, to say nothing of the wanton irreverence of that damned false beard. (“You want an adventure, Ms. Glass?” said Craine. “You’ve come to the right wolf’s door!”) Therefore Craine, dispassionate professional no longer, mere shadow no more, an avenging angel with the fire of Jehovah in his bloodshot, bleary eyes, would step forth with terrible choler onto Main Street, Sodom-gonorrhea—he smiled like a dragon—and Royce would watch as he crossed to the post office, went in, perhaps, came out again, turned right toward the half-abandoned railroad depot with its domes and porches and old-fashioned signs—the only half-dignified signs left in town—CARBONDALE (O dreadsound of doom! thought Craine—dale of carbon, coal valley, hell’s pit!)—Craine would walk along, and as soon as their bearded lady began to follow, Royce would fall in behind, at a distance, and Craine would slink on, singing to himself, muttering to strangers like an old drunken lunatic going on his senseless diurnal rounds—the Ben Franklin Store, the Singer Store, Denham’s Tobacco Shop, wherever whim or heaven’s sweet influence took him to spread the fear of God, so to speak. When they’d played with her a while, given her a taste of the pleasures of the hunt, Royce and Craine would sandwich the lady and be done with it.

The woman at the counter, someone even prissier than the regular people, stood horribly wincing—at the whiskey stink, presumably, or perhaps at the curious stream of Craine’s muttering—but she accepted the money Craine’s jittering hand held out to her; and though her soft red mouth opened, she made no objection as Craine drew the Bible from the counter, one covered in gilt and limp white plastic, with the words Holy Bible squared off, literally, by gilded lilies—the only large Bible the clerk had in stock. The gilt and white cover had a queer effect on him, as if he’d seen it before, perhaps done all of this before. The Muzak was going, toothless and soulless, not religious music—“unless maybe,” Craine muttered, staring gimlet-eyed at the woman behind the counter, “the music fat farting old Satan listens to, sitting buck naked with his feet wide apart on his desk at Hell Incorporated, heh heh.” The woman’s eyebrows lifted. “God bless you,” Craine said, emphatically malicious, profoundly bowing, and with the tip of his pipe he scratched under the beard, revealing that the beard was fake. The woman only stared, horribly wincing, perspiration on her bucked-out upper lip, as Craine backed away, carefully turned left, supporting himself on the flimsy display rack of lumpy religious cards, and made for the door. “Hypocrite! Moron!” Craine snarled past his shoulder. The woman slightly jumped. Craine opened the door—with such difficulty that Royce was on the point of coming forward to assist him with it—and stepped down onto the sidewalk, the whiskey bottle banging against his knee. A cold gust of wind made his face sting.

“Praise the Lord,” Craine said loudly, belligerently, reeling; but somehow—indeed, it was a miracle—he did not fall.

He made his way across to the Post Office, went carefully up the steps and inside. To kill time he went to the window, set the Bible on the counter, and asked for postage stamps.

“Is that you, Craine?” the small, lean black man at the window said. He smiled, clean of eye as a scout master. He was an orderly person. His rubber stamps were ranked like lead soldiers on the ink pad. He was a good man as well, Craine cunningly deduced, and a loyal citizen; at any rate, like Craine, like Socrates, he was not among the Wanted.

Craine glanced mysteriously behind him and raised one finger to the fur near where his mouth was.

The man leaned forward, lips pursed as if to kiss him, eyes rolling. “What’s happening?” he whispered. He had, it seemed, one small imperfection. The thought of murder, arson, regimental rape was exciting to his soul.

Craine lowered his glasses, winked portentously, and again raised the skinny, crooked finger to his mouth. The man looked past him, blinking rapidly. Except for Craine, the man at the window, and someone in back throwing boulders into a truck, there was no one at all in the post office. Craine paid for the stamps, picked up the Bible, turned carefully—the floor was marble—and made his way back to the door, shakily trying to put the stamps in his wallet, the Bible clamped so tightly under his right elbow that his shoulder stood up sharply, like the shoulder of a hawk. When he pulled at the pitted brass handle on the door—relic of a former, nobler age, an age in which letters still had human significance (comfort for the prisoner, relief for the destitute, perhaps some thundering, heartfelt rebuke for the capricious politician)—it seemed to him at first that the door had somehow gotten locked since he’d come in. But then he pushed, and it swung open so easily, for all its imperatorial height, that if he hadn’t been clinging to the handle he would certainly have fallen. He made it down the steps to the sidewalk,