Grist 01 - The Four Last Things (23 page)

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen any animal headphones. What are they? Little imitation dog ears?”

“You know what I mean. Not even any real rubber, it’s like those little faucets hurt the trees or something. And the way they dress, Simeon. Remember how hard we used to work to look a little sloppy? These kids dress like actuarial tables. Put a bunch of them together and they look like a graph illustrating the contents of the typical middle-class airhead’s closet.” Bernie had somehow managed to convince himself that he wasn’t middle-class.

“Well, so what?” I said more quarrelsomely than I had intended. “We wore blue jeans as a uniform of nonconformity and learned to meditate. I remember saying a one-syllable word over and over until I fell asleep, and when I woke up, trying to convince myself that I’d had a mystical experience. It was the religion of the month, and the smart ones wore it out in three weeks. Now we’ve got channels and fire-walking and Shirley MacLaine. I’m not sure there was a new religion every fifteen minutes in the fifties, but there have been a couple of thousand since.”

“You know the theories,” Bernie said. “New religions tend to arise in times of transition, when old values are being challenged or are wearing out. That leaves out the fifties. Christianity was first a Jewish response to the oppression of Rome, and then, centuries later, a Roman adaptation to the decline of the empire. Luther arose as the political systems of Europe began to fall apart. Et cetera. It’s all too neat for me. I take a messier view of history.”

“And the Burned-Over District?”

“Society in transition with a vengeance. The Revolution only fifty years old, immigrants streaming in from Europe, people still worried about violence in the streets every time a president’s party lost the election, and the country beginning to fall apart at the seams over slavery. People talk about two hundred years of American stability, the peaceful transference of power and all that, as though it actually happened. This country wasn’t even a hundred years old when it self-destructed. It wasn’t until Lincoln appropriated what he called War Powers and turned the presidency into a functioning kingship, and then sent Grant to crush the South, that things settled down.”

“Bernie,” I said, “you can’t sympathize with freedom and the pre-Civil War South at the same time. Don’t get sidetracked. You’re being very helpful.”

He sat back, a little surprised. “I am?”

“So where do all the new religions go? And don’t say heaven.”

It was the kind of question he loved. He drank a full glass of wine for lubrication while he gathered his thoughts. I poured for us both.

“As we said, they tend to arise in times of social change, when people have begun to doubt that the world will automatically continue to obey the million or so rules that keep them safe in their dinky little houses. Cults usually either fervently embrace the values that are being threatened— like, say, the Muslim and Christian fundamentalists do these days—or fervently challenge them, as did the original Christians and the Oneida Colony, to choose a couple of examples.

“Most religions are founded by a single charismatic individual. He or she, as Anthony F. C. Wallace says, has an experience, a hallucination, a moment of divine inspiration, an encounter with a greater force. Moses and the burning bush, Muhammad and the voice, Joseph Smith and the book of gold. The leader is changed by the experience and communicates it. Some of his listeners become converts.” He picked up the book and flipped back a couple of pages to an underlined passage: “Listen, here’s Fitzgerald paraphrasing Wallace: ‘Some of these converts experience an ecstatic vision such as their master had, while others are convinced by rational arguments, and still others by reasons of expediency.’ Boy, I’ll say. The converts organize and then, almost inevitably, encounter some form of opposition.’ In fact, they need the opposition. It solidifies their internal discipline and gives them a them-against-us attitude. We’re so terrific we frighten them and they have to oppress us, but, oh boy, one of these days… . Look at the Old Testament for the best example. It’s one long wail of oppression, the longest protest song on record.” He put Fitzgerald on the shelf, spilling wine as he did it.

“And then what happens?”

“Simeon, you know all this stuff already.”

“What do you want me to do, Bernie, talk to myself? What’s the problem, is it time to rotate the lasagna?”

“Then one of three things can happen. Either the religion adapts to a more mainstream position, or the society changes to embrace the religion’s position, or both. Usually both, actually. Or the religion disappears. It’s not that much different from any social movement. The Mormons moved west and dropped polygamy. The Millerites somehow survived the day in 1841 that Christ was supposed to show up, although their leader got canned and they changed their name to Adventists after they came down from the mountain, which must have been a pretty embarrassing trip. Imagine telling your neighbors that the world was about to end and then having to go home and mow the lawn.”

“So most religions that aren’t fundamentalist start out radical and then move to the right.”

“Sure. They have to be radical at the beginning to attract a core of converts. Then, when they want to attract a much larger number of converts—when they start looking for a real power base—they have to settle down a little bit. It’s like a presidential campaign working its way through the primaries. They start out all sharp edges and ringing challenges and then get worn smooth as they approach the convention. Those that don’t, or can’t because their primary appeal is to a noncentrist minority, drop out.”

“The Burned-Over District produced some social movements too. In addition to the religions, I mean.”

“Practically every important American movement of the nineteenth century. Abolition, temperance, educational reform, feminism—”

“What about feminism?” said a woman’s voice from the kitchen. “Bernie, are you being boring?”

“I don’t know,” Bernie said. “I wasn’t listening. You’d have to ask Simeon.”

I got up and toted the other bottle of wine to the kitchen door. Bernie had finished the first. “On the contrary,” I said to the woman standing at the oven. “He’s been a veritable display of fireworks.”

“He’s all over the sky,” she admitted. “What he needs is some direction.” She closed the oven and held out a hand. I’m Joyce,” she said, “and you’re Simeon.”

“What a domestic entrance,” Bernie said from behind me. “I didn’t even know the back door worked.”

“It’s still raining,” she said. “I parked in the garage and ran for it.” She was about thirty-six, maybe a year older than Bernie, with a pleasant, no-nonsense face, faded blue eyes, and a thin, high-bridged nose. She wore a white coat. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time. You didn’t get him onto agrarianism, did you?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. If I hear one word about the Green Revolution and more productive strains of rice, I’m going out for pizza.”

“It’s important,” Bernie said mildly. “We either increase the productivity of the land or you’ll have to ship them lasagna.”

“I think I’d prefer cooking to listening. What have we here?” She indicated the bottle in my hand.

“Merlot.”

“Ducky. Looks like Bernie’s already gargled with some. There must be another bottle somewhere.”

“Hidden under the couch,” Bernie said.

“Well, Simeon, why don’t you open that one, and Bernie can set the table, such as it is, and I’ll do the salad.”

“Joyce is organized,” Bernie said, sorting silverware. “When we pack for a trip she pins my socks together.”

“Bernie’s idea of packing is to empty his drawers onto the floor and then push the suitcase in front of him, wide open, until it’s full. When we get there he never has any sunglasses or toothpaste, but his books are packed alphabetically by author.”

“Good,” I said, worrying at the cork with the world’s flimsiest corkscrew. “I was afraid he was still trying to figure out the Dewey Decimal System. Bernie and I lived together once. Whole libraries vanished into the void.”

“Gang up on me,” Bernie said from the other room. “I like the attention.”

“He does,” she said. “He’s worse than my patients.”

“You’re a gerontologist.”

“Ask her about the graying of America,” Bernie called. “Then, when she gets going, I can talk about the Green Revolution and she’ll never notice.”

“This is a two-issue relationship,” Joyce said. “Gerontology and whatever Bernie’s talking about at the time.”

I poured her some wine. “Sounds interesting.”

“I love it. I was way too focused before I met him. You have to learn to listen to him, though. It took me about six months before I learned I could change channels just by mentioning some other buzzword. That’s the wonderful thing about Bernie. He’s got more channels than a cable TV box.”

“He’s on twenty-four hours a day, too.”

She grinned at me and gave me the appraising glance a woman saves for her lover’s oldest friends. “And you’ve got as many degrees as Bernie and you’re using them to be a detective,” she said. “Where have we gone wrong, the mothers of America?”

“We’ll talk about that over dinner, okay?”

“Fine,” she said. “Anything but the Green Revolution.”

“So,” I said later as the lasagna steamed on the plates. “How do you track a doctor?”

“Track a doctor?” Joyce said in a suspicious tone, instantly joining the Physicians’ United Front Against Everybody Else. “How do you mean?”

“Let’s just say I wanted to make sure that someone who says he’s a doctor really is one. Can I call the American Medical Association or something?”

“Used to be you could,” she said, ‘‘but it’s unconstitutional now. Has been for some time.”

“The AMA is unconstitutional?” Bernie said with his mouth full, getting up to go to the kitchen.

“No, of course not. The AMA is as constitutional as the Supreme Court, and about half as lively. It’s requiring doctors to join that’s unconstitutional. Used to be every doctor had to be a member. Now it’s only about half.”

“So you mean there’s no central data bank for doctors?”

“Well,” she said, “what’s a doctor?”

“What do you mean, what’s a doctor?” Bernie put a fresh glass of wine down in front of me. We were working through it pretty fast. “A doctor is somebody who wears a white coat and cures people. A doctor is somebody who’s not a nurse and works in a hospital.”

“There are doctors who do nothing but research. There are doctors who go straight into admin and never see a patient. Christ, there are chiropractors, glorified masseuses who call themselves doctors and crack spines for a living. Even worse, there are people who take M.D.’s only to go on and become lawyers so they can specialize in making doctors look bad in court, the scumbags. Is there a central data bank that includes all those people? No.”

“Swell,” I said. “That’s just what I didn’t want to hear.”

I must have looked dejected. “It’s made more difficult,” she added, thawing slightly, “by the fact that doctors are certified to practice on the state level. There’s no comprehensive central registry that contains all the state certifications.”

Bernie bustled nervously, a specialty of his, before sitting in the chair opposite me and lifting his glass. “Suppose you’re working in a hospital,” he said helpfully, “and someone applies to practice there. How do you check him or her out?” He drank.

“You start with the school,” Joyce said. “He or she had to take an M.D. But of course, you have to know what school it was.” She raised her glass to her lips and then sputtered, spraying wine onto the table. “Wait,” she said, wiping her chin. “I tell a lie. There
is
a central data bank for everyone who graduates with an M.D. It’s run by the AMA, and it’s in Chicago. It doesn’t tell you whether people ever practiced or not, just whether they graduated. I mean, they may not ever be certified or hang out shingles, such a quaint term, but they’ve got the right letters after their names.”

“Could you check that for me?”

“I guess so. What name?”

“Richard Merryman. An internist, or supposed to be. Living in California but not licensed here.”

“What’s he do, then?”

“He’s the private physician to a little girl.”

Bernie raised an eyebrow and looked interested. “That little girl?”

“That’s not legal, not if he’s not licensed,” Joyce said in a tone of righteous outrage.

“I don’t think this guy cares very much what’s legal.”

“Does he dispense drugs?”

“I don’t know.”

“If he does, he’s got to be registered with the DEA in Washington. Oops, there’s another list. Harder to check, though.”

“Could you do it through the hospital?” Bernie asked.

“This is a bad guy?” Joyce demanded.

“If I’m right, he’s about as bad a guy as I’ve ever met,” I said.

Joyce toyed with her lasagna. “I’ll give it a shot,” she said. “All they can say is no.”

An hour later, at the door, I kissed Joyce good-bye and gave Bernie a hug. It had turned into that kind of an evening. We’d gone through both the bottles I had brought and one with a screw-top that held some kind of white plonk from Argentina or someplace. Bernie had finally gotten to talk about the Green Revolution.

I talked my way past the cop at the entrance to Topanga Canyon by showing him my driver’s license with the Topanga Skyline address on it. Bad mudslides, he said. No one but residents allowed in. He implied that the roads could be closed completely in the morning if the rain kept up. The rain was supposed to keep up.

The wine and the good fellowship had dissolved the knot of unease in my stomach, and the Russell Arms didn’t exert much appeal. I needed to pack some stuff, and when I got out of the car I was toying with the idea of sleeping at home and finding my way out over the fire roads in the morning, if necessary.

No odor at the bottom of the driveway; I silently thanked Dexter, wherever he might be. Halfway up the drive I saw that the lights were on again and did my best to accelerate, anticipating Roxanne. I tried to remember whether there was any beer in the refrigerator.