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

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,