Deeply Odd(66)
Mrs. Fischer drove, and I rode in the front passenger seat, the face of the rhinestone cowboy in my mind’s eye.
Twenty-three
WE RODE IN SILENCE ALONG THE SHALE—AND SNAKE-LESS—track, the length of the gravel lane, and across the potholed blacktop to the interstate, where Mrs. Fischer turned east once more, continuing our interrupted pursuit of the missing children and the men who had taken them.
A sense of duty was as real to me as the pounding rain, and I felt that I might drown in it as easily as in a flash flood. Duty is a good thing, a calling without which no civilization can survive, but it is also a weight and chain that sometimes seems sure to sink you to the airless bottom of a dark pool. I wasn’t burdened by a fear of death but instead by a fear of failure. If there were seventeen hostages and I rescued even sixteen, the one lost would be too sharp a reminder of another loss, nineteen months earlier, in the mall in Pico Mundo. I wished—and more than wished—that this responsibility might be lifted from me, but I knew that it would not be lifted.
I believe that Mrs. Fischer gave me the gift of silence because she knew that I had left Casa Bolthole in a state of embarrassment, that I felt inadequate to the challenges of my strange life, and that the more anyone told me that I was equal to those challenges, the more I would feel that I was not. The greatest danger, of course, was to believe that I was equal to them, because assurance can morph into arrogance that Death loves to prove unfounded.
The broad highway led east-northeast, and mile by mile, I felt more strongly the black-hole gravity of the cowboy.
Associating with bad men, even for the purpose of defeating them, can make you vulnerable to the allure of evil. A sense of duty can be corrupted into self-righteousness, which can inspire a self-exemption from all laws, an embrace of power and the will to use it ruthlessly. Power is the central promise of evil, the dark light of that lamp, because nothing extinguishes the soul more quickly than pride in power.
Mazie’s approval had seemed close to veneration. To endure such extreme praise was dangerous enough. If I came to believe that I had earned it, I would lose everything that mattered.
I was only a fry-cook with paranormal abilities that were not a blessing but a weight to carry. And considering that I had no job, I couldn’t claim to be even a fry-cook, but simply a man with a burden, which was one of the most common creatures on the earth.
The rain fell in torrents sufficient to float an ark. The world condensed into a highway that, for all I could see beyond it, might have ribboned through a void as deep as interstellar space.
We were racing so fast that the cataracts of rain crashing into the windshield were all but blinding, and yet Mrs. Fischer appeared confident about her ability to control the limo under these or any conditions. Humming one tune or another, each of them cheery, my elderly guide, the spiritual daughter of Hawkeye from The Last of the Mohicans and the bride of Tonto, was clearly unconcerned about the poor visibility, as though she—or the vehicle itself—could see for miles ahead in these or even worse conditions. I decided not to look at the speedometer.
Finally I said, “What amazing thing did Gideon and Chandelle do in Pennsylvania last December?”
After a hesitation, she said, “You’re only just coming into an awareness that you’re not alone, Oddie. It’s best to ease into a full understanding of the resistance.”
“Resistance? Sounds too political for me.”
“It’s not political in the least, child. It’s been going on through all the ages and all the countries of the world, no matter who the ruler is—prime minister, king, emperor, dictator, mullah. Our adversaries exist in every profession, every race, every ethnicity, every class, every political faction—but our friends abide also in all those places.”
She looked away from the interstate and smiled. Her brooch, the jeweled exclamation point, sparkled in the dashboard glow.
I asked, “Why is it best to ease into an understanding?”
Returning her attention to the highway, she said, “It’s best because you need to be able to cope with your fear, which will be perhaps too great to bear if you’re abruptly plunged into the full truth. In the thrall of absolute terror, you’re less likely to survive what’s coming in the hours ahead. Trust me, dear. Take this discovery moment by moment, event by event, allowing fear to increase at the same pace as your understanding. Then you’ll grow into your fear and be able to function with it.”
Earlier, I had thought that she seemed like the mother of Yoda, the pint-size sage from the Star Wars movies. Now she almost sounded like him, except that her syntax was correct.