The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

they perceive to be the bandwagon of an important international religious leader.'

'But Garth doesn't claim to be a religious leader,' my father said in a distant voice. It was the first time in my life I had seen him apparently bewildered, spiritually bruised by seemingly contradictory situations and events that were beyond his comprehension. 'Quite the contrary.'

'It doesn't make any difference, Dad. I told you; people now insist on believing about Garth what they want to believe. Garth's goodness just brings out the craziness in a lot of people-and they're going to grow in numbers, and get even crazier now, after the deaths of Bartholomew Lash and Timmy Owens. Now the messianic movement around Garth is going to grow even stronger, with people claiming not only that Garth has God on his side, but that God is bumping off the opposition. You might as well prepare yourselves, because that's what you're going to be hearing.'

'Terrible, terrible,' my mother said, dropping her gaze and speaking in a small voice.

I wasn't sure whether she was talking about the deaths, or the fact that thousands-maybe millions-of people believed, or at least strongly suspected, that God might have intervened to strike down Garth's two most vocal opponents, so I said nothing.

Bartholomew Lash and Timmy Owens, two prominent television evangelists who had seen their ratings plummet and their coffers empty in inverse proportion to the growing popularity of Garth and his little homilies, had each had the unbelievably bad taste to die of a stroke within twenty-four hours after a televised vicious verbal attack on Garth and Garth's People. Lash had called Garth the 'spawn of the Devil,' and Owens had actually called for God to strike my brother dead. Tacky. It had been even tackier when each had proceeded to kick off, thus giving Garth and the movement growing around him millions of dollars' worth of free publicity. The word 'messiah' in conjunction with my brother was heard more and more frequently-including on television and radio newscasts. This had served to aggravate what I tended to think of as Millennium Madness, with Garth looked upon as the long- awaited Messiah who would usher in said millennium. Even the chiliasts had adopted Garth; they believed that Garth was going to kill everybody in a very short time-except, of course, for Garth's People, who would begin to glow with golden light once the mass killing had begun. The bathhouse, a massive glass dome now finished and in place, was now used primarily for ceremonial occasions-meaning press conferences, or just when Garth felt like telling one of his little 'parables'; 'caring houses,' various facilities where the homeless and hungry were cared for by Garth's People, had sprung up all over the city, the state, the nation. The world.

And my mother and father wanted to know what Robert Frederickson planned to do about it.

'You and your brother were always so close,' my father said at last, pain and disappointment clearly evident in his voice.

'Dad,' I said wearily, 'you seem to think that there's something I should-could-be doing about what's happened to Garth. There isn't. I'm beginning to think there never was.'

Except not to play Der Ring des Nibelungen into his blank mind. But I hadn't told my parents about what I had done and the implications of that act, and I didn't plan to now; not when I was half- drunk.

'People are using Garth as an excuse to repudiate our Lord, Robby,' my mother said, shaking her head. 'It's blasphemous.'

'Mom, Jesus Christ has been taking care of Himself for two thousand years, and I have to assume He'll survive Garth.'

'Don't you be blasphemous, Robert!'

'I'm sorry, Mom,' I said quietly. 'It's just that Garth isn't claiming to be any messiah, and he's not hurting anyone. On the contrary, he's been directly or indirectly responsible for helping untold numbers of people.'

'He's denied God, Robby,' my father said sternly. 'And he's denied our Lord.'

'What difference does it make?'

'What kind of a question is that?!'

'Dad, he hasn't burned anyone at the stake in the name of God, and he hasn't tortured anyone in the name of our Lord. What people believe about Garth may be patently ridiculous-but then, what a lot of people in other religious movements believe is patently ridiculous. As far as religious leaders-or even messiahs-go, I'll take Garth any time. Everything he says is common sense, and it's not his fault if a lot of people get crazy when they hear his common sense. Don't you understand, Dad? Mom? Gods and messiahs and angels and demons of one kind or another have been with us since we dropped out of the trees and crawled into caves, and they'll probably always be with us-until the end of the world. Nobody-or very few-want to face the fact that these things don't exist, that we have only ourselves to help ourselves. As far as gods and messiahs go, I say Garth is the best of the bunch. So if people want to believe that he's some kind of divine Western Union operator, there's no-'

Abruptly, but much too late, I stopped my whiskey-talk when I noticed the expressions of hurt and astonishment on my parents' faces. I lowered my head, stared at the floor. Filled with too much afternoon booze, my mouth had slipped its moorings and uttered things deeply hurtful to the two lifelong devout Christians who were my parents. My words were beyond apology, and I would have done almost anything to be able to take them back.

My mother said very softly, 'You speak like that, Robby, because, in your own way, you grieve for Garth as much as we do. But this thinking among so many people that he's somehow like our Lord must be stopped.'

'It can't be stopped, Mom,' I said quietly, looking up into this beautiful woman's eyes. 'At this point, you might as well try to stop the tides.' I paused, smiled tentatively. 'Besides, looking at the bright side of things, you could argue that he's the world's ultimate ecumenicist. He's got everybody — Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, what-have-you-together in his camp, because each person sees him through the prism of his or her particular religious bias. Did you see the papers last week? The Israeli Knesset had an emergency session to debate whether or not the Jews of Garth's People in Israel pose a security risk-it seems loads of them have taken to picnicking and talking with loads of Arabs out on the desert. A growing number of Jews think Garth is their promised Savior, and a lot of Arabs are convinced they've got their Hidden Imam back. So everybody's happy- except, of course, for their political leaders. As long as Garth never chooses one over another-which he never will, since he tells them all that everything they believe about him is nonsense-Garth's People is one big happy family. Anyone who can get Jews and Arabs to wallow around together in the sand can't be all bad. I'm terribly sorry for what I said before, but where's the harm in what Garth is doing? I may miss him a lot, but I happen to be darn proud of him.'

'The harm, Robby,' my mother said in a low, ultrapatient tone which I remembered well from my childhood, 'is that all the good he may be doing is nonetheless based on lies-many of them.'

'Garth hasn't lied to anyone, Mom.'

'The foundation of the movement which has grown up around him is a lie. Garth himself has become a lie; that man living in the bathhouse is not my son. In the long run, anything built on lies will bring only evil and destruction-despite what you see, or think you see, in the short run. This business can destroy your brother and untold numbers of the people around him, because what is a lie is evil. You, of all people, should know that after what Siegmund Loge did to you. It's terribly hard for your father and me to understand how you could have abandoned your brother at a time when he may need you more than he ever has in his life. Once, you would have given your life for him; now, with him trapped in a kind of living death which is his madness, you do nothing.'

'Mom,' I said in a quavering voice, my eyes filling with tears, 'what would you have me do?'

'Rescue him, Robby,' my mother replied in a firm, even tone. 'Bring Garth back to himself and his family, where he belongs.'

'Mom, Dad, there's nothing to rescue him from. I tried, and all I can tell you is that playing Devil's advocate, if you will, with Garth and the people around him gets you nowhere. There's nothing wrong with him.'

'He was poisoned, Robby.'

'Yes-and the poisoning changed him. He's different now, yes; radically changed. But he's not psychotic, and probably never was. In fact, there's probably a very good chance that he'd suffer a breakdown if he was somehow forced to stop what he's doing. Helping people has become the way he keeps his sanity now; it keeps him in touch with reality.'

'Garth has always helped people,' my mother said in the same strong voice as she tilted her chin up slightly