The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

'And to you, Mongo. Thank you for all the years. . Thank you for truly being Garth's brother, in spirit as well as in flesh.'

'Good-bye, Garth.'

'Good-bye, Mongo.'

My eyes were still wet when I walked out of the office-into a hall filled with a couple of hundred people, all staring at me. I pushed and shouldered my way toward the main entrance, tensed when I felt somebody's hand grip my shoulder.

'What will you do, Mongo?' Tommy Carling asked in an anxious voice.

'About this? Nothing. I'm gone. Thanks again, Tommy, for what you did for Garth. Good-bye, and good luck to you.'

When I emerged on the street, the strange odor I'd noticed inside the bathhouse was gone. And I still didn't know what it had been. I remembered words from Ulysses, something about the 'cold smell of sacred stone,' and I wondered if what I'd smelled inside had been what Joyce was referring to.

16

It was at the beginning of the second week in December when my parents unexpectedly appeared at the door of the apartment I had once shared with Garth. Their visit surprised me, since we'd already made plans for me to visit them in Nebraska at Christmas; it also embarrassed me, since-although it was only four o'clock in the afternoon-I was half lit. I'd been very much out of sorts for the past two months-drinking too much, not eating right, and generally not taking care of business. I'd been turning down P.I. work, and a book on urban patterns of juvenile crime I'd been planning to finish in my newly acquired spare time still sat on my desk in piles of uncollated sheets, pages of statistics, and notes on half-formed ideas. I found it impossible to concentrate for extended periods of time. I felt defeated, frustrated; I also thought I knew how Dr. Frankenstein must have felt after his creation had gone lumbering out the door to terrorize the villagers. Garth wasn't terrorizing anyone; quite the contrary. Still, I desperately wished I had never brought Der Ring des Nibelungen to the clinic to play for my brother, and couldn't help but wonder how things might have worked out if I hadn't 'imprinted' him with the music of Richard Wagner. Whatever might have happened, at least I wouldn't be sitting around feeling guilty and responsible for creating an entirely new personality for Garth.

'You don't look well, Robby,' my mother said as she shifted slightly on the living room sofa, where she sat next to my father. I sat across from them in an overstuffed easy chair.

My mother, dressed in her Sunday best for her visit to the big city, still looked the embodiment of what I thought of as country simplicity and virtue. Her white hair had been neatly coiffed, and she looked beautiful to me in her simple print dress. She sat somewhat tensely, with her hands folded in her lap; her blue eyes were fixed on me with a gaze that was both loving and anxious. My father's gaze was a bit more stern; he knew Scotch when he smelled it.

'I'm all right, Mom-just a bit tired. I assume the two of you came to New York to see Garth. Have you been to his place downtown?'

'We've been down there,' my father said in a slightly curt tone, 'but we didn't see Garth.'

'Yeah, well, I guess it's hard to know when he's going to be around. Maybe later the three of us can go-'

'We went to the place where we were told your brother lives and works now,' my mother interrupted in a soft but strong voice. She clasped, then unclasped, her hands. 'We spoke with a man who looks and sounds like your brother, but it wasn't him. That was definitely not my son.'

'That's him, Mom. Like I've told you over the telephone, he takes some getting used to.'

My father, who was the embodiment of what Garth would look like in twenty years, with twenty less pounds, cleared his throat; it seemed an ominous sound. 'Robby, what are you doing about it?'

'Doing about what, Dad?'

'Your mother and I assumed you were still watching over your brother, doing all you could to help him get well. This man who looks like Garth says that he hasn't seen you in over seven weeks.'

'Garth and I don't have much to talk about anymore, Dad.'

'In the beginning, after his collapse, you were by his side constantly. In fact, you told us you thought he was getting better-until all of these very strange events began to occur.'

'I told you what happened.'

'You told us about the traitor, and about the killings at the clinic; you told how Garth was taken away by this Tommy Carling, who's with him now and who seems to think that Garth is some kind of god. All of this you explained to us. What your mother and I are asking is why you've left him alone in that situation.'

I choked off a bitter, slightly drunken laugh which my parents would never have understood. 'I wouldn't exactly describe Garth as 'alone' down there, Dad. Right now, I'd say he's the most famous Frederickson there ever was, or ever will be. He's supported by a cast of tens of thousands of people all over the country, and more believers are coming out of the woodwork every day.'

'Don't joke about this, Robby, please,' my mother said, her voice quavering slightly. 'You know exactly what your father means. Garth is alone, because none of the people who surround him really know him, or love him the way we do. Garth is in terrible trouble, and we don't understand why you're not doing anything about it.'

'There's nothing I can do about it, Mom,' I said, swallowing the sour taste of afternoon Scotch which lingered at the back of my throat. 'There's nothing anybody can do. Even if we tried to have him committed, which I think would be virtually impossible at this point, I don't think it would be right. If you've talked to him, then you know he's perfectly rational. He's doing exactly what he wants to do, and he's doing an enormous amount of good. Anyone who watches television or reads the newspapers knows that.'

'People are saying he's the Messiah,' my father said, scorn and disbelief in his voice. 'They say he performs miracles.'

'Where's the harm?' I asked, a shrug in my voice. 'Besides, in a way he is performing miracles-just like all those TV preachers do, except with more grace, style, and wit, and denying all the time that he's doing anything. The blind man Garth supposedly cured has to be a phony, but I'd say that most of the others aren't. There are people who claim to have been cured of everything from warts to paralysis just by seeing his picture, or watching him speak on television. And they probably have been cured- because whatever they were suffering from was psychosomatic to begin with. All miracle cures are psychosomatic, but that doesn't mean they're not cures; just because pain is in the mind doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt. People have faith in Garth; they believe he can make them well, and so a lot of them get well. Flip the TV dial any Sunday morning, and you'll see a host of guys with toupees and capped teeth doing the same thing-and then asking for money. I prefer Garth's style.'

'There are groups of these so-called Garth's People springing up around the world,' my father said in a flat voice.

'Dad, a lot of people respond to the things he says, because what he says usually makes a lot of sense.'

'But he speaks against religion.'

'All religions are intrinsically against religion-other people's. Garth's People listen to what he says, interpret it the way they want, and then put their own spin on things.'

'It's blasphemous for people to compare Garth with our Lord.'

'But it's not Garth committing the blasphemy, Dad. What's happened is ironic, I grant you, but it's not exactly unprecedented. People hear what they want to hear, believe what they want to believe-a lot of people, at any rate. Some of the things Garth says are very powerful; what he does is very powerful. Even though Garth speaks against religion, a lot of people can only absorb his message in a religious sense.'

'President Shannon even called to congratulate us on our son's 'divine mission'-his words. You've met him. Is the man a fool?'

Now I permitted myself a small laugh. 'Kevin Shannon is a lot of things, Dad, but he's no fool. He's nothing if not a very canny politician-and not the first who's going to be pestering you. They've been waiting in the wings, seeing which way this thing with Garth was going to go, and now a lot of them are going to be jumping on what