Mockingbird

bowed his head, thrust his arms forward and upward, and said, “Let us pray.”

The group bowed their heads, except for the woman I had been watching. She inclined her head only very slightly. I bowed mine, wanting to take no risks. I had seen meetings like this one in films and I knew that the idea was to bow and be silent.

Baleen began to recite what seemed to.be a memorized, ritual prayer: “God grant us safety from the fallout past and the fallout to come. Preserve us from all Detectors. Grant us thy love and keep us from the sin of Privacy. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”

I could not help being startled by the words “the sin of Privacy.” It was completely contrary to my teaching, and yet something in me responded favorably to the phrase.

There were a few coughs and squirmings from the group when Baleen finished, and everyone looked up again.

“The Lord has provided for the Baleens,” he said, in a more ordinary tone of voice now, “and for all of the Seven Families in the Cities of the Plain.” Then he leaned forward at his lectern, grasping its sides with what I suddenly noticed were small, white, womanish hands—hands with well-manicured nails—and spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper. “And it may be that now the Lord has sent us an interpreter of his word or a prophet. A stranger has come into our midst, has passed an ordeal of fire before my own eyes, and has shown a knowledge of the Lord.”

I saw that everyone was looking at me. Despite the new calmness I had seemed to find in myself, it was very disconcerting. I had never been an object of attention like that before. I felt myself blushing and had a sudden wish for the old rales of Privacy that forbade people to stare at one another. There must have been thirty of them—all of them looking at me with open curiosity or suspicion. I put my hands in my pockets to keep them from trembling. Biff was at my feet, rubbing herself between my ankles. For a moment I even wanted her to go away, to stop paying attention to me.

“The stranger has told me,” Baleen was saying, “that he is a carrier of the old knowledge. He says he is a Reader.”

Several of them looked surprised. Their stares at me became even more intense. The woman I had been watching leaned slightly forward, as if to get a closer look.

Then, with a dramatic wave of his arm in my direction, Baleen said, “Step forward to the Book of Life and read from it. If you can read.”

I looked at him, trying to appear calm; but my heart was beating powerfully and my knees trembled. All those people assembled in that one place! I had expected something like this to happen, but now that it had come I seemed to have reverted to the person I once had been—before Roberto and Consuela, before Mary Lou, before prison and my escape and my new, rebellious self-sufficiency. Even as a shy professor, lecturing on mind control by repeating words I had memorized and said many times before, I would be nervous in the presence of my largest classes—of ten or twelve students at one time. And students were all properly trained to avoid my eyes while listening to me.

Somehow I managed to walk the few feet to the lectern where the book sat. I almost tripped over Biff. Baleen stepped aside for me and said, “Read from the beginning.”

I opened the cover of the book with a trembling hand and was grateful to be able to look down, avoiding the eyes of the congregation. I stared at the page for a long time, in silence. There was print on it; but somehow the letters did not make any sense. Some were very big and some were small. I knew that I was looking at a title page, but I could not make my mind work. I kept staring at it. It was not a foreign language, I knew that somehow; but I could not make my brain assemble the letters into coherence; they were just inked marks on a yellowed page. I had stopped shaking and was frozen. This lasted an intolerably long time. Into my mind had come a frightening image blanking out the page on the oak lectern in front of me: the yellow-orange fire at the bottom of the pit in the mall; the nuclear core that could vaporize my body. Read, I told myself. But nothing came.

I could feel Baleen moving closer to me. I felt that my heart would stop.

And then, suddenly, a clear, strong female voice from in front of me spoke out: “Read the book,” it said. “Read for us, brother,” and I looked up, startled, and saw that it was the beautiful tall woman who was sitting by herself and was now staring at me pleadingly. “You can do it!” she said. “Read to us.”

I looked back to the book. And suddenly it was simple. The big, black letters that filled most of the page said, “Holy Bible,” in capital letters.

I read it:

HOLY BIBLE

And then, under that, the letters were small:

“Abridged and updated for modern readers”

And at the bottom of the page:

“Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. Omaha. 2123”

That was all that page said. I turned to the next, which was filled with print, and began, more calmly now, to read:

“Genesis, by Moses. At first God made the world and the sky, but the world had no shape and there was nobody living on it. And it was dark, too, until God said, ‘Give us some light!’ and the light came on…”

I went on, more and more easily, and calmly. It was not at all like the Bible I had read from back at the prison, but that one had been much older.

When I finished the page I looked up.

The beautiful woman was staring at me with her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open. On her face was a look of wonder or of adoration.

And I was peaceful again, inside. And suddenly so tired, so worn and used and overcome, that I dropped my head there at the podium and closed my eyes, letting my mind become blank, empty of everything except the words:

My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.

I heard chairs scraping the floor as men and women stood, and I heard the footsteps of people leaving the big room, not speaking; but I did not look up.

Finally I felt a hand, strong but gentle, on my shoulder and I opened my eyes. It was the old man, Edgar Baleen.

“Reader,” he said. “Come with me.”

I stared at him.

“Reader. You passed the ordeal. You’re baptized. You’re safe from the fire. You need some rest.”

I sighed then and said, “Yes. Yes. I need some rest.”

And so I had come from prison to this—to being “Reader” for a group of Christians, to being some kind of priest. From that time on for months I have read to them from the Bible in the mornings and the evenings while they listen in silence. I read and they listen and nothing is said.

Writing it now, here in my house at Maugre, alone and safe, and now well-fed, I can hardly remember that