Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

political ones, the kind that started crusades. And every modern Holy Roller knows it—fundamentalism, what is it but a secure closing of doors, permission not to think?” Lawler’s eyes closed to slits. “Your friends the Lutherans are not so far from that, my dear Professor. And the Presbyterians—notice how they speak more and more of Jesus within! Not ‘the historical Jesus,’ pride of their tradition—oh no! Too much slippage there! ‘Jesus within!’ Saves all kinds of annoyance, you know. Who needs Hebrew or Greek to read Jesus within? I watch these things with interest, as you see. But we Mormons, we were there ahead of them all. Make no mistake, Professor! We don’t make people weaker than they are. We make them profoundly what they are!”

He stood up and came over to stand near Mickelsson, searching fussily for any sign of the manuscript or book or metal tablet, whatever it was they were looking for. “Let me tell you something,” he said. “Nazi Germany encountered one great problem beyond all others; namely, human goodness. Members of the Third Reich’s mass firing squads kept hanging and shooting themselves. It was a devil of a nuisance. For all the propaganda, most Germans—unlike our friends at Mountain Meadows—couldn’t stomach the things the regime required.”

Abruptly he broke off. Mickelsson had torn off the last of the moleboards. There were odd cuts on the inside of the board, as if rats had been chewing it, but chewing very neatly. It did not seem likely that the cuts, or gouges, could be the work of the wreckingbar—but now that he thought of it Mickelsson was uncertain. It was true that he’d been working without thinking, half in a dream. Lawler looked carefully at the space revealed by the tearing away of the moleboard—he dismissed the cuts on the board with just a glance—then pointed, without a word, at the nearest window casement. Mickelsson was sweating rivers. Trembling with weakness, his chest aching, he struck at the wall beside the casement.

Lawler went back, waving away dust with his left hand, and sat down on the bed again. “Shall I continue? Do you like to be entertained while you work?” Mickelsson said nothing. Lawler pondered, sunk in gloom, then at last continued, “German soldiers had trouble killing. What did the authorities do? They took young men, callow youths—the future S.S.—and issued each one a dog, a dog the young man was to train. The young man was to live with the dog, become the dog’s ‘best friend’—and then one day on the field—you guessed it—they commanded the whole company of young men to slaughter their dogs. You see the psychology, the values invoked: discipline, self-sacrifice for the Fatherland, the assuaging power of community and peer-approval; consensualism, lofty-mindedness: ‘Even the death of my beloved dog I will endure in the name of Deutschland!’ Hey? So, little by little, those fiendish masterminds hardened the S.S. to murder—changing human nature. It’s admirable, in a way—the intelligence involved, the singleness of purpose. But listen: the Mormons never did such things—never needed to! Heavens no! The Mormons have worked—have always worked—with human nature as it is. The great mass of humanity wants nothing but security, correct? Safety for themselves, responsibility firmly placed elsewhere. I’m not claiming, of course, that the Mormons are unique in their way of working, though I think you’d have to hunt hard to find anybody better at it. We’ve had since the beginning—since the days of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, that is—our military structure, our tight chain of command, our ‘godfathers, lieutenants, and soldiers,’ if you will. Not everybody knows what the people at the top know, but almost everyone obeys.”

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