Conceit: God’s gift to little men (Bruce Barton)

After the police officers left the Health Temple, Mystic Union spent a long afternoon with the woman in the back room who was in labor, a woman who finally produced a man child sunny side up, despite all attempts to keep it from happening the way it usually happens in nations with indoor plumbing. At the Health Temple, the best efforts were made to recreate conditions for mother and child that approximated the conditions found at higher altitudes in Nepal, and the effect of this was that both of them almost died several times, but since no one actually did, they happily departed the Temple late the next day, with no one the wiser.

But when the delivery itself was accomplished, and the aftermath of the delivery settled down to a semblance of quiet, Mystic Union trudged slowly up the wooden stairs at the back of the Temple. The steps were tucked away behind the painted scenery that made the usher girls feel like they were a couple of the chief feminine ornaments of Solomon’s court, although Solomon would likely have been nonplussed by the Raiders tat. Mystic Union (Robert P. called her Mys) had the self-assured glow of a job well-done, work accomplished, time for some herbal tea, and then a late dinner. She was pleased also by the fact that Mitchell had come that morning. The policemen had been expected, but he was most certainly not expected. What was his game? Another surprise was that Peaborne fellow, with the interesting offer of a working alliance. More than enough to think about. Good things happening here, and the horoscope concurred. The only stress in her life was waiting for her upstairs, good old Robert P. Warner. Mystic Union’s soul did not have teeth, but if it had, they would be gritted, and occasionally grinding. If he doesn’t have that thing written, I’ll just do it.

There was a landing near the top of the stairs which Mystic Union rounded, and then took the remaining three steps at a bound or two. Slouched across the decrepit sofa was her tattered lottery ticket out of there—Robert P. Warner II—poet, prophet, pasty blogger of the early a.m. The sofa was of the old gray mare swayback school of design, and from somewhere within the cushions, de profundis, came a groan from Robert P. He was disconsolate, and had been listening for her steps on the landing for the last half hour or so. He timed his groan according to the short melodrama he had worked out as he laid there.

Pretending that her soul did not have dental issues, Mystic was all solicitude. “Love! What is the matter?”
Robert opened one rheumy eye, again according to drill, and greeted her as one greets the sole remaining person in one’s life who is prepared to act sympathetically, which in fact, Mystic Union probably was.

He stifled another groan, and got unsteadily to his feet. “Oh, not much to speak of. I spent a lot of time on that statement you wanted for the attorney . . .” He trailed off.

Mystic Union glanced over at the notepad that was on the kitchen table right behind the sofa, and saw, even from that distance, that there was but a sentence or two on it. Not only did she see this, but Robert saw that she saw, and moved adroitly to the next barricade. “My carpal tunnel started acting up again . . . and I spent a lot of time hunting for my old brace.” With this he held up his right arm. “I found it in the box with my old journals from high school . . .” And he stopped.

Speaking of high school, Robert P. Warner II had been the kind of boy in that setting who managed his injuries as a mother hen hovers over her chicks. He was a master of communicating physical distress to others, but the nature of the injury and the nature of the distress he would subsequently manifest were not really in accord with the laws of logic first outlined in such a cogent way by Aristotle. For example, one time, when he had been beaned in the forehead by a volleyball in Mr. Walker’s phys ed class, the injury, such as it was, resulted in a mild ringing in the ears. But this had translated, by the end of the period, into a clear limp, by the end of the day into a striking limp, and by the next Monday morning, into a pair of crutches and a leg brace on the outside of his jeans. This was a violation of Aristotle’s law of identity, an injury to the head being an injury to the head, and not, say, an injury to the right knee. The brace on his right hand at this very moment had been acquired under similar circumstances and in a similar way. He was glad he had found it under all those journals, which he had then spent a couple hours going through. Good stuff. It was amazing how insightful he had been in high school.

Mystic Union appeared to be all sympathy, but also managed, somehow, to be all business. “Dear, how you must have suffered . . . I am so sorry about your wrist, but you know, Robbie, that we really, really must have that statement for the attorney by Wednesday.”

Robert actually knew this and he nodded his head as though he knew this. The spirit was willing. It was not that he was incapable of writing—he had churned out millions of words for his blog. The physical activity of writing was nothing to him. When it came to pensive reflections of man and his existential condition (as mirrored in the experiences of Robert P.), foreign film reviews that were allowed to make as little sense as the films themselves, extended discussions of how the pert French breasts in those films could not really be deconstructed, Derrida or no Derrida, and long, protracted discussions of how people—particularly food service personnel—misunderstood him, Robert was a machine. If it was narcissism and self-indulgence you were after, he could write like a bat out of the bad place. The problem with this stupid statement for the attorney was that it had to conform to certain . . . objective realities. Robert was astute enough to know that a statement for his attorney was not to be a creative writing exercise, and so he had to stick to the facts. But he hardly knew any facts, and was thus having trouble sticking to them.

The initial statement for their attorney, the one that had kicked off the suit, had been easy enough. It was only a paragraph long, and about summed the whole thing up. Ten years prior, Robert had gone over to the Camel Creek offices in order to “see the pastor.” He never attended church there, and did not know one office from another, one pastor from another, or, for that matter, one thing from another. He was experimenting with Buddhism at the time, and yet was feeling depressed. He was confused about his sexual identity, and wanted someone to talk to, which is to say, he wanted to find someone who would listen to him talk. He had found himself sitting across the desk from the pastor, who found out about the sexual identity thing almost right away, and who took it from there. All of that was clear as day. It was burned in his memory much as a Circle R brand would have sizzled on the rump of a writhing calf. Out west. A hundred years or so ago. So to speak.

When he told Mystic Union about it, six months ago, she had come alive. Her eyes had sparkled, sparkling just like her crystal earrings that kept her in touch with her two grandmothers, now deceased. “Oh, Robert,” she had said. “We really need to do something about this. We should see an attorney . . . this is not tawdry at all. I see it as part of the healing process . . . that, and the corn flakes poultice.”

So inspired by the moment, Robert had written out the paragraph like nobody’s business, and both Mystic Union and the attorney had assumed (wrongly) that when called upon, he would just open the spigot again, and all the other details would flow out. But when it came time to produce, Robert didn’t. He didn’t remember anything else, was unwilling to make things up in this legal context (having seen more than one daytime tv courtroom drama where bad things happened to people who did make them up), and he had quickly discovered that to research the subject, checking dates, getting corroboration for other details, looked and smelled suspiciously like work. Which is why he got carpal tunnel syndrome today. Yesterday he had twisted his ankle.

Suddenly a happy thought struck him. “When I was finding my brace, I said that I found some journals . . . I thumbed through them for just a minute, and noticed how cheerful I was back then. This was before that pastor at Camel Creek took my childhood away from me. I bet I could get a few quotes from those journals that would make that point in quite an amazing way.” But of course, in this, Robert was quite mistaken. He had not been cheerful back then, but, being young, had been comparatively ignorant of all the different and creative ways of being miserable. Now that Robert P. had been exploring those different ways for some years on his blog, his lack of scope exhibited in his high school years struck him as being full of sunshine. So he would write down some of the quotes tomorrow, and on Wednesday, his attorney would just stare at him.

“That would be just wonderful, Robbie. I think that is a wonderful idea.” Mystic Union just wanted to get him writing, perhaps now, and maybe the journal entries would prime the pump. But Robert wanted to blog instead, he wanted more than a little open field running for his emotions. No fences. No boundaries. No one to say no. If he wrote things down on that notepad, first thing you know bailiffs would be having him raising his right hand, and so help me Goding, and the whole truthing, and nothing but the truthing. And beyond what he had given already, he could find out no more apart from work. And his wrist hurt.

Mystic Union was in the kitchen, bending over the stove, fixing water for her tea, and rummaging through her canister of selections. “You want some tea, Robbie?” She was also rummaging through some ideas for how she could write Robert P’s statement for him. Although Robert’s grasp of the correspondence theory of truth was tenuous, it did exist. Mystic, it must be confessed, was not constrained in any way. And the attorney needed it.

An affirmative grunt came back regarding the tea, and Robert P. schlepped into the kitchen.

“What did you do today?” he asked. “Besides the baby, I mean?”

Mystic Union brightened, and thought this might be an opportunity to stir the embers of Robert’s lethargy with the iron poker of interesting coincidences. Not that she put to herself that way, of course.

“The policemen came,” she said, “as I thought they would. I have a customer who works in the DA’s office, and she told me in strictest confidence that old Radavic was furious about our suit the day after we filed it. So I thought I would see some policemen sometime.”

Robert P. was staring down into his mug of green tea, wondering if he could blog anything about the little reflected shapes he could see floating on the surface. Mystic took this as encouragement, and said, “But the really interesting thing was the two other visitors. One was Charles Peaborne, who used to work at Camel Creek. He appears to be a man who is truly . . . truly centered. He wanted to work together with us on this. He told me that Camel Creek was rotten to the core, which I suppose we already knew. But he spoke quite authoritatively.”

Mystic Union, despite the informative crystals hanging from her ears, was not really in a position to critique the value of Mr. Peaborne’s intelligence. But judging from the intensity of his obvious conviction, and the shaky timbre of his voice when he spoke of “nefarious doings,” she could only assume that he was in possession of the real goods. It would turn out later that his web site would be devoted more to concerns about paper clip and toner cartridge misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance than anything else, but we do best to not blame Mystic for not knowing this. After all, it was not like she was psychic or anything.

Robert looked up from his tea, his first blog post having been formed in his mind, and he pretended to show interest in what Mystic had been talking about. “Well, Mys,” he said. “You said there was one other?”

“Ah, yes,” she said. “Pastor Mitchell. He replaced my ex-husband as the pastor of Grace Reformed back in . . . back in . . . my previous life. I listened to him preach for a few months. He was a nice man, but I had decided long before he got there that I had had quite enough of that, thank you.”

“So why did he come?”

“Well, he said it was about my ex-husband’s books that were still at the church. But then he as much as told me that this was just an excuse for seeing me. He said that if I wanted to visit, he would be happy to. But I have no idea why he might want to do that. He knows I am connected to Lester’s little difficulties, but what could his connection to them be?”

“So why don’t you meet with him and find out?”

Dinner, as Mystic had anticipated, was a little late. It was a slab of white tofu on a crimson plate, with a few cashews sprinkled on the top. Robert looked at his meal, heartsick, aware that this was the price he had to pay for all the other perks attainable nowhere else. But he didn’t mind the tofu so much as he minded having to interrupt his blogging after Mystic was in bed in order to walk down to the corner 7-11 for his 32 oz. pack of Doritos. And he had to eat them all on the way back too, because Mystic had strong opinions on what she found in her trash cans.

The evening dragged out. Conversation lagged, even before it began drooping. Then the evening dragged some more. Then, unbelievably, there was even more boring stretches later. After nine, they both went to bed for some listless and perfunctory sex, after which Robert P. got up again to watch a couple videos he had rented earlier. They were both deep videos, and Robert was so confused by them that when he fired up the computer for some blogging, he was really ready to roll. First, he knocked out the piece on green tea that he had thought through earlier. Then he went on to write about the angst he felt whenever he quoted Sartre, although he was unsure whether the angst caused the quoting, or the quoting caused the angst. Whatever. Ham and eggs. After that was his Dorito break, washed down with a liter of Mountain Dew, with all the evidence tossed in the dumpster behind the Health Temple (that was shared with a neighboring apartment house, so he was okay).

When he came back, he was ready to review the movies, but first thought that he needed to check his blogging stats. In the week before the civil suit, his monthly average was about 30 visitors a month. And, to be fair, about half of those were from his sister in Memphis who was so proud. The day the Camel Creek story broke, there had been 300 visits in one day. And the next day, after the wire services picked it up, there had been 3000 visits, and 25,000 hits as visitors flailed around trying to find something about Camel Creek. But of course, there was nothing there about the scandal. Mystic had been insistent on that point—she was not too bright, but she was shrewd—and so Robert was now back to writing for his usual audience, whoever they were.

The first movie was The Cry of Doucette. The second was like unto the first, only more so. He began typing furiously:

4 shure I thought my head would explode. dont think it wont one day. Twists and turns 2 bend the head, and rock this complacent whirled. papa dont preach. the subtext in the first one that was drilled into my soul was the text of the second one, and the subtext of the second one was the text of the first. these films were made in different decades, people! the french know their business . . .

When he was done, thousands of words later, it was three am. For no particular reason, he got up and looked in the refrigerator. Nothing there. Nothing was ever there. He thought about another 7-11 run, but then stopped. Too much exertion for one night. Robert then went and got out the journals he had found earlier, and took the one from his freshman year, the one he had not gotten to that afternoon. He would spend a few minutes writing down quotes that would establish his sunny disposition for the court, a disposition that he had right up to the point where the Rev. Lester started groping with his lusty paws.

He opened his journal, and stood there blinking a couple times. I thought my head would explode. dont think it wont one day . . . Robert put the journal down, swiveled around, and went off to bed.

He slept till noon, and when he finally came out of the back, trying to scratch his back, he staggered over to the cupboards and got out the cereal he found least intolerable. He thought it was made out of shredded lawn clippings. He carried it and a bowl over to the kitchen table, and scooted the notepad aside. He was halfway through the bowl when he noticed the note from Mys on it.

Love, I thought I would just save you the trouble—we have certainly talked enough about it! So I just wrote up your statement for you and took it by the attorney’s office to drop it off this morning. We can still visit with him tomorrow, but he can use it today.

Robert clattered down the stairs in a panic. He burst out onto the street and stared helpless both ways. He didn’t have a car. He walked back upstairs.