Heroes (10 page)

“Okay.”

“But thanks anyway.”

“Sure.”

.... safeguard that Dream, folks, fight for it with your every drop of energy.

“I'm usually at Larry's by about ten if you feel like grabbing a drink later tonight.”

“Thanks,” Bayle said, “but I really think I better try to take it easy from here on in. I mean, I've got a lot of work to do if I'm ever going to write this article.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks anyway.”

Until tomorrow then, folks, I.M. Wright.

“Sure.”

Bayle wasn't the only passenger this time; Jefferson, the janitor he'd spoken to for his article, managed to get the driver's and Bayle's attention (arms waving and lunch box flaying) an instant before the bus pulled away from its highway stop. On board, “Thanks a bunch for stopping,” he said, “the old Chevy decided she wasn't going to go with me to work this morning.” He dropped his coins into the steel slot next to the driver and took a seat across the aisle from Bayle in the middle of the bus. Bayle returned Jefferson's smile and cheerful good afternoon but gave his attention over to Davidson in the parking lot climbing into his truck, slamming the door shut, and speeding away. Couldn't have talked to anybody that quickly, Bayle thought. Must have changed his mind about the quotes.

The hours he'd spent as Davidson's late-night guest a little more than twelve hours before played themselves out before Bayle's still alcohol-fogged mind: the house-subdivided onebedroom apartment (hardwood-floored, military sparse, hospital clean); the several drinks he and Davidson had kitchen-table shared (Gloria — identified by now by Bayle as the helmethidden, smooth-skating silver Warrior mascot of that night's game — sharing the table but not the bourbon, mostly silently keeping pace with cup after cup of hot lemon tea); the continuous Glen-Goulded Bach playing on the boombox sitting on the kitchen countertop; the twenty years of newspaperman anecdotes Davidson had perfected through what were probably just as many years of barroom rehearsal (Bayle laughing heartily throughout, Gloria still essentially silent but grinning deep at all the right places); Davidson's sudden announcement that it was time to call it a night and dutiful putting away of the bottle in the cupboard; the ride back to Bayle's hotel through the deserted back streets of the unfamiliar town.

And later, back in his room at The Ranch on his back, blood sugar level falling, surety of spirit shrinking, energy of
all sorts of just half an hour before ebbing: Bayle fitful for a place to go, a job to do, a thing to Be. None of these apparently in the offing, however: seven quarters in the pay phone at the end of the hall. Five rings later:

“Hi,
this is Jane. I cant come to the phone right
now,
but I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible if you leave your name and message after the beep.”

The beep.

“Therefore he who suspends judgement about everything —”

“Peter?”

“Therefore, he who suspends judgement about everything which is subject to opinion reaps a harvest of the most complete happiness.”

“Goddammit, Peter, you're drunk.”

“Complete happiness.”

“Goddamn you and your Goddamn Greeks anyway, Peter. I can see you've really made a lot of progress —”

“Complete happiness.”

Click. Uhmmmmmmmmmmm ....

Immutable Empiricus ring-ring remedy done, Bayle walked back to his room, brushed his teeth (twice), pissed (prolonged), and went to sleep.

“He sure got a lot of nerve showing his face around these parts,” Jefferson said. Nodding for Bayle's puzzled benefit in the direction of Davidson's truck stopped at a red light in front of the bus, “Don't matter to him none if we all lose our jobs if the Warriors got to leave town,” he said. “He gets his name in the newspaper all the same anyway. He gets his check every week.”

“Roy, what the hell are you talking about?” Bayle's adopted journalistic civility had dissipated in the wake of his hangover and the inevitable post-purpose psychical flatness that necessarily accompanied his every morning after. Bayle the next morning was no longer ennui impermeable or even ass-kicking Tony the Tiger; was, in fact, simply Bayle again. And all that that implied. And, worse, didn't.

“I'm talking about what you call a liberal rabble rouser,
sir, that's what I'm talking about. One of them big government lovers.”

Making the radio connection, “Don't tell me you listen to that crank,” Bayle said.

“What you talking about, 'crank'?”

“What's-his-name, I don't know, the radio guy, Wright.”

“Mr. I.M. Wright?”

“Yeah, right.”

Jefferson put his lunch box on top of his lap, sat up straight, and looked across the aisle and over Bayle's head at the flying-by farmland. “I think it be a good idea if you be careful about who you be calling a crank,” he said. “Lots of people round here appreciate the job Mr. Wright does looking out for the interests of everyday folk like myself.”

“C'mon, Roy, you don't really believe that crap that he —”

“Scuse me,” Jefferson said, picking up his lunch box. He walked to the very back of the bus before finally sitting down, as far away from Bayle as he could get.

The bus moved towards town. As the simple shock of Jefferson's Wrightian defence began to somewhat diminish, Bayle more than once tried to make conciliatory eye contact with the janitor, but with little success. Each time Bayle would catch him looking in the direction of the front of the bus Jefferson would quickly turn his head to look out the window beside him, a hard expression of obvious distaste on his face.

Finally Bayle gave up, settled on watching the bland prairie farmland repeat itself past his own window. His mind, however, stayed stuck on the infuriating contradiction of a working-class guy like Jefferson playing dupe to, and even defending, such an obvious big business mouthpiece as Wright. Empiricus knows, Bayle wasn't even remotely political — what kind of card-carrying sceptic was? — but it just didn't make sense. And it bothered Bayle like hell that it didn't. Worse, it bothered him like hell that it bothered him so much that it didn't.

Eventually, and meant to be fortifyingly said only in his
head: “He who suspends judgement about everything ...” Bayle said, attempting to calm himself, voice trailing off. “He who suspends judgement about everything ...” he said again, getting no further the second time than he did the first.

“What's that again?” the bus driver asked, seeing Bayle sitting alone now, assuming his moving lips were meant for him at the head of the bus to hear.

“Nothing. Just talking to myself,” Bayle said.

I mean, of course, if you don't mind me asking.”

The impact of being addressed in Classical Greek here at Larry's — women's tag-team wrestling live from Rochester, New York, on each of the room's four big-screen televisions — was nearly that of the effect of the three rapidly administered shots of Wild Turkey. Bayle was back, but by himself this time, and only on the condition of just one quick one, and only then because he thought the change of scenery from his small room at The Range might alleviate his soul-searching procrastinating. He turned around from the bar to find a black-suited minister grinning good-naturedly and offering Bayle a duplicate of what he was drinking, vodka on the rocks.

Seeing that both of Bayle's hands were full with a glass of bourbon and a bottle of Budweiser — Bayle's condition of coming already broken almost as soon as he had come — “Oh, dear, I see that you're already fully occupied,” the minister frowned. “Not to worry,” he said, broad smile of before promptly reappearing. He emptied the contents of one drink into that of the other and placed the empty glass on the bar top. “A double play!” he said, clinking Bayle's glass, expertly sipping down a good third of the three fingers of alcohol in his own. Bayle cautiously sipped his own Wild Turkey without saying a word and seriously considered whether he had only imagined the Greek.

“So what's it going to be then?” the minister said, his face now suddenly serious, even stern. “Knowledge or belief? Which one is it that rules your tender soul? And don't try to sell me any of that Hegelian dialectism nonsense. As they say in my business” — he tugged at his white clerical collar — “you can't serve two masters. Which is it?” He drank again, eyes slightly narrowed and never leaving Bayle's. Bayle, more than a little baffled, could only sip.

“Oh, what a bloody ass I am,” the minister said, all affability again. He wiped his free hand on his black trousers before presenting it to be shaken. “Charles Warren. Actually, the Reverend Charles Warren, but I'd be very happy if you would just call me Chuck.”

Still a little overwhelmed, Bayle, by instinct, offered over his beer-holding hand.

“Ah ha, putting your best hand forward!” Warren said. He took the bottle of Budweiser from Bayle and put it on the bar beside his empty vodka glass.

“Bayle,” Bayle said, shaking-hand free now and meeting Warren's. “Peter Bayle.”

“Oh, I know who you are, Peter. You don't mind if I call you Peter, do you?”

“No, no, not at all ....” Bayle said, shaking his head no, as puzzled-looking as before.

“Oh, I get it,” Warren said. “I know you but you don't know me. Gotcha. Just like poor old Job down there on the farm. Let's grab a seat, shall we? It's really not as mysterious as it all might at first appear. Which, incidentally, is just what Job found out in the end, isn't it?”

“Yes, but what
did
Tillich mean, exactly, by Ultimate Concern? Collecting baseball cards? Sniffing women's used underthings? Belief in an omniscient, all-powerful Being? I mean, really, Peter, let's narrow down our terminology here a little bit, what?”

The Reverend Warren, in his part-time capacity as the Warriors' team minister, had heard through Samson about Bayle's philosophical background almost as soon as Bayle arrived in town and hoped that he and Bayle could, “You know, banter on a bit about the Ontological Argument and what not” because “one does get a bit starved out here in the territories for really meaty conversation.”

St. Louis-born one year after Bayle, Warren had attended Christ's College, Oxford, on a full scholarship and almost completed his doctoral thesis on Aquinas after an outstanding undergraduate career at Washington University when he was called back home to Missouri during his father's fatal battle with leukemia. His mother falling infirm shortly after her husband's death, Warren, an only child and his mother's sole
benefactor, entered the local Baptist ministry because, as he explained it to Bayle, “First, I thought I could get paid to talk about Aquinas and Anselm all day long — Wrong! — and second, the Catholics, my first choice, though impressed by my academic background, wanted me to go to school for another five years. No could do. Health insurance for a sixtythree-year-old woman with a history of heart problems does not come cheap, let me tell you.”

After an unprecedented five-month accelerated stint at a local seminary (“I could have done the whole thing in two weeks, tops, no exaggeration”) he was ordained by G.A.R.B. — the General Association of Regular Baptists — a rigidly fundamentalist sect, and sent off to tend to his present flock, a medium-sized church in a medium-sized conservative town in the Midwest that in its beer-with-a-shot-on-the-side, workingclass heart, appeared willing to close its eyes to Warren's public disregard of his G.A.R.B.-ordained order of abstinence.

His mother, now an invalid in a nursing home in the suburbs of St. Louis, although well-served by the monthly cheques Warren made sure paid for the best health care she could receive, no longer seemed to recognize him when he visited, and for some reason would only talk about a torrid love affair she claimed to have had with Don Ho when she was a WAC serving in Hawaii during World War II. Warren confessed that he could not watch “Hawaii Five-O” re-runs on television without being overcome by waves of overpowering sadness of “nearly Kierkegaardin proportions.”

When not at the church, he read like a demon at the local library most evenings (“demon” being his choice of expression), usually stopped in at Larry's afterward in order to “wind down a little bit,” and eventually hoped to get a congregation with “a little less ... literal interpretation of the Bible,” preferably on the east coast. He also, Bayle observed, chain-smoked unfiltered Kents, lapped up his drinks with an intensity not even matched by Bayle at his own swinish worst, and, after a certain intoxicated point, would occasionally affect the English
what?
at the end of his sentences. Within
an hour Bayle couldn't be sure if Warren was a liberal Protestant in a conservative church, a closet atheist, or something in between. Warren was, most certainly, an alcoholic mess of a mass of contradictions. He was a man after Bayle's heart.