Living Witness(59)

Gary had ended up staying late one night. He called up Google and typed in “secular humanist.” That was when he’d discovered that his pastor was not entirely correct. For one thing, atheists didn’t always worry that nobody would like them if they were atheists. Some of them came right out and said what they were. They had organizations, like American Atheists and the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and pins and badges, too. He’d even found a Web site where you could order bumper stickers and other stuff for your car, like Darwin fish decals and a little plaque that said GOD IS JUST PRETEND. So there was that. Then there was something called the Council for Secular Humanism, which was mostly just confusing, and the American Humanist Association, which looked like it belonged back in 1968. The American Humanist Association was the one Henry Wackford belonged to, and the one that was the national to Henry’s little local group, so Gary tried to pay attention most closely to that, but he just didn’t get it. Mostly, everything on the site seemed to be very, very angry about something, but he was never entirely sure what. He went through four or five articles without being able to figure out the point. It had made him realize, yet again, that he was not very good at figuring out people.

Now he realized that he was halfway out to the hospital, and that he had intended to go all along. Sometimes, he understood that he was not very good at figuring himself out. He pulled in to the large visitor’s lot across the asphalt drive from the main doors and turned off his engine. He came out here two or three times a week to double-check on Annie-Vic. He thought he could put this visit down to that and nobody would question it. But that wasn’t why he was here. It didn’t even begin to explain why he was here. He wished there was somebody or something that could explain the world to him. It was the kind of thing you could ask God after you were dead, but he wanted an answer a lot sooner than that.

The hospital was not in Snow Hill. There had been a hospital in Snow Hill once, back in the Depression, but there had been more people in town then, and not so much in the way of expensive technology too dear for tiny hospitals to afford. This hospital was big and sprawling and very modern, and Gary was glad it was here. It was a symbol, though, of all these other things—of what had brought this lawsuit, Snow Hill, and Gregor Demarkian, too.

He pocketed his keys and got out of the car. It was his own car, not a town police vehicle, so he didn’t bother to lock it up. Nobody locked up much of anything around here, but you did have to worry if you had a police cruiser, because some people took it as a challenge. Gary thought a good half of the minor-league misdemeanor crime in Snow Hill was motivated by a desire to create personal legends, to be able to say to sons and grandsons, “Well, there was the time Bobby and I stole that police cruiser and parked it in the Dairy Queen.” Somebody had parked a police cruiser in the Dairy Queen once and done a lot of damage, too, but Gary had never been able to pin it on the two idiots he’d known all along had done it. If they didn’t wait long enough to tell their story, he might be able to get them that way.

He walked across the parking lot and then across the drive. There were lots of parked cars, but no people around. The ambulance entrance was around the corner, so he couldn’t see that, but he couldn’t hear any sirens, either. It was remarkable how often he came by here when nothing much was going on. He’d gone by a hospital in Philadelphia when he’d been down talking to people, on the trip that led to his securing Gregor Demarkian’s help. The emergency room he looked into there had been totally crazy and it had been the middle of the morning, too. It hadn’t been a time when you’d have thought there’d be a lot in the way of emergencies.

He went in through the front door and signed the visitor’s book. He told the girl at the desk who he was—she probably already knew—and asked her if she could page Dr. Willard for him. Then he went up in the elevator to the second floor. It was just that he didn’t understand it, he really didn’t. He supposed that some people might not believe in God just because they didn’t, for the same reason some people didn’t like the color red. He could see where there might be people like that. What he didn’t understand were the people who did it deliberately, who decided not to believe in God, and who then always seemed so proud of themselves for doing it. To Gary, a life without God seemed like a lonely thing.

The elevator stopped at the second floor. He got out, made himself known to the nurses at the nursing station, and went on to Annie-Vic’s room. Sometimes when he came to see her, there were people in the room visiting. Her grandnieces and nephews kept cycling through. They had jobs and busy lives, but they came anyway and looked in on her. So did her surviving brothers, most of whom were younger than she was. That didn’t mean much. They were all in their eighties. From what Gary had heard, Annie-Vic’s entire family had been atheists, all the way back to her grandfather. They’d been the Henry Wackfords of their day. Still, you couldn’t say that they didn’t value family, or that they were dishonest or cruel or given to running wild. If you could say that, Gary was sure he’d have heard about it. Annie-Vic herself was one of the most upright, morally straight women he’d ever known. It never made sense, no matter how much he thought of it. And yet there had to be an answer out there that would bring it all together.