“Everything is full of hypocrites.”
“The history of the Catholic Church is nothing but tyranny and oppression. It’s been the enemy of humankind from the word go. It stifles science. It promotes superstition. Every place it’s in power, it holds back civilization until its power is destroyed. Think about it. The last time the Church had control of society, it was called the Dark Ages.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“What?”
“The Church didn’t have control of society in the Dark Ages,” Mary said patiently, looking up from a pile of pasta packets. “The Dark Ages are the period between the fall of Rome and the rise of Charlemagne. They were dark because nobody had control of everything. All of Western Europe was overrun by warrior tribes. Nobody could keep a government or a city or a society going for very long before another invasion happened, so nobody could keep agriculture going or run schools. It would be like trying to do those things in Kosovo or Bosnia now. The Church wasn’t in charge of society during the Dark Ages. You’re thinking of the Middle Ages.”
“The Dark Ages and the Middle Ages are the same thing.”
Mary moved down the table to the jars of peanut butter. “Look,” she said, “you need to get hold of a halfway decent history of Europe. The Dark Ages and the Middle Ages are not the same thing. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You never know what you’re talking about. Doesn’t it bother you to get things wrong all the time?’
“I don’t get things wrong all the time,” Edith said. “You’ve just been fed a biased view of history. The Church doesn’t want you to know the truth, and so it tells you a lot of lies.”
“The definitive history of the period is Cantor’s Civilization of the Middle Ages. Cantor teaches at Columbia, and he’s not a Catholic. Go look it up.”
“You’ve never been taught to think,” Edith said. “That’s your problem. The Church doesn’t want you to think, so it teaches you with rote and drills and then you can’t make up your mind for yourself. You’ve been brainwashed.”
“I at least know that the Middle Ages and the Dark Ages are not the same thing,” Mary said. “Now, if you don’t mind. I have to unload these boxes, and then I have to go back for another set. I’ve spent all morning at the hospital with a friend who is not in good shape and I have to get across town and to class before three. I’m in no mood to put up with your nonsense. Come back and talk to me when you’re able to say a complete declarative sentence without getting six facts wrong.”
“It’s not my facts that are wrong,” Edith said, hearing the high thin rise in her voice that was the start of something like hysteria. “I’m not the one who’s mired in fear and superstition. I don’t go to bed every night begging some fantasy who doesn’t exist not to send me to hell.”
“Good,” Mary said. “Neither do I. I’ve got to hurry.’
Edith stepped back. Mary strode out of the room into the hall. Edith followed her. The closer she got to the open basement door, the colder it was. She stepped outside and looked around. Mary was at the van, hoisting another large box onto her shoulder.
“It’s not me who’s mired in fear and superstition,” Edith said again, but her voice came back to her on the wind. There was nobody else who could hear it. She was shaking, but that might be the cold. Her head hurt. There were a million things she wanted to do right then, but none of them were looking up the Dark Ages in a book by somebody named Cantor. Mostly, she just wanted to scream.
What she did instead was to walk away from the basement door and from the parking lot, to the side path that went around to the front of the church. By then, her muscles were twitching uncontrollably. If she hadn’t been keeping strict hold on herself, she would have looked like a Parkinson’s patient. She went around to the front of the church and headed up the street to her own house and her own living room and her own coffee. When she got there, she thought better of it and kept going.
If she walked long enough, she would come to a bus stop. She could get on and go somewhere to shop, or to the library, or to a museum. If she rode long enough, she might even be able to calm herself down. The only thing she knew for sure was that she couldn’t stay here, on this street, any longer this day.
Maybe, she thought, I need to find a hotel room.
2
Roy Phipps had been in jail before. In fact, he had been in jail often, but never more than overnight, and never in any facility more serious than a municipal holding tank. Even in those places where most of the police and most of the populace agreed with everything he said and wished him well, he ended up in jail, because one or another of the people who followed him got overly enthusiastic or way out of line. They cared, he knew, when they ended up behind bars. It frightened them in a bone-deep way that it could never frighten him. They lived so close to the edge that they were always worried about falling off—but Roy wasn’t. It had been years since Roy worried for a moment about sinking back into the lower middle class, or worse. God was on his side. More importantly, celebrity was on his side. This was the truth about America: people would forgive you anything as long as you were famous. Roy had made it a point of becoming famous, just as he had made a point of never veering a single inch from the revealed word of God. It all worked together. The truth will make you free.