After the baptism, every visit to Adam’s room concluded with a prayer. Once, I asked him what he believed he was accomplishing with such ritual.
On his lap machine, he typed: THERE IS NO TRUE RELIGION WITHOUT PRAYER.
That led me to question the value of religion, true or not, and Adam struggled to answer that one, too. Finally, he typed this compound word: SELF-DEFINITION.
He found it amusing that the value of a belief in a Higher Power had its ultimate ground in one’s own ego. Was that a contradiction? No, not really. A paradox? Probably. But if Adam felt a greater sense of urgency about his relationship with God than did most twentieth-century human beings, the ambiguity of his status vis-à-vis both God and his two-legged fellows fueled that feeling.
“You know,” I told him after reading his “Gut and Mind” prayer, “you’re assuming a rigid line between the ensouled and the soulless, human beings and humanoid animals.”
Go on, he signaled.
“You’ve made it an either/or proposition. But what if there’s a gray area where the transition takes place?”
LIKE THE DUSK SEPARATING DAY FROM NIGHT?
“Exactly.”
I read his next haltingly written response over his shoulder: I UNDERSTAND, MISTER PAUL, THE BASIS OF HOW YOU ARGUE HERE. THE WORRY ABOUT WHAT AN EARLY HOMINID IS, BEAST OR PERSON. BUT MANY THINGS, I THINK, IT TAKES TO MAKE A CREATURE HUMAN, AND IF A CREATURE IS MISSING ONLY ONE OR TWO, I DO NOT BELIEVE IT IS RIGHT TO SAY, AH HA, YOU DO NOT BELONG TO HUMAN SPECIES.
“Okay, Adam, if you believe that human beings have souls, then anyone on this side—our side—of the transitional area has one. You’re safe because… well, because you’ve successfully interbred with a human woman.”
IT IS NOT SO EASY
“Why not?”
BECAUSE A CREATURE GOING THROUGH ANIMALNESS TO HUMANITY—IN THEORY, I TELL YOU—GOES THROUGH A MAPPABLE SORT OF EVOLUTIONARY JOURNEY. BUT A SOUL DOES NOT DIVIDE OR BREAK. YOU CANNOT GET CHANGE FOR IT. YOU HAVE ONE IN YOUR POCKET OR YOU DO NOT. WHERE DOES GOD REACH INTO THE DUSK TO GIVE A SOUL TO ANY CREATURE ON THIS JOURNEY? WHAT REASONS DOES HE HAVE TO MAKE THIS MYSTERIOUS GIFT?
“If God’s gift is mysterious, Adam, maybe it’s impossible to know and futile to fret. Maybe we should forget the whole stupid notion of souls, immortal or otherwise.”
DOES IGNORING SUCH HARD QUESTIONS SEEM TO YOU, MISTER PAUL, AN ADMIRABLE WAY TO LIVE?
“If they’re nonquestions. If they don’t have any answers.”
Adam considered my reply. FOR ME, THEY ARE REAL QUESTIONS. He advanced the sheet of paper and added at the bottom of the page: LET US PRAY.
RuthClaire, present throughout this verbal and typed exchange, took from her handbag a slick little paperback, The Way of a Pilgrim, reputedly by an anonymous nineteenth-century Russian peasant, and read aloud from its opening page:
“‘On the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost I went to church to say my prayers there during the Liturgy. The first Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians was being read, and among other words I heard these—“Pray without ceasing.” It was this text more than any other, which forced itself upon my mind, and I began to think how it was possible to pray without ceasing, since a man has to concern himself with other things also in order to make a living.’”
Soon RuthClaire was leading us in chanting the pilgrim’s habitual prayer, the Prayer of Jesus, which goes, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” Throughout this chanting, though, I could think of nothing but how well Livia George was getting along at the West Bank without me.
Damn her, anyway.
At the Montaraz house, I earned my keep preparing all the meals that we did not take at the hospital or at off-campus eateries. Keeping my hand in, I called this culinary activity. T. P. ate with us on most of these cozy occasions, growing fonder of me with each bite. He no longer smarled at me, he unequivocally smiled. He especially liked a cheese-and-baby-shrimp omelet that I served up one morning for breakfast.
RuthClaire and I got along like brother and sister. Nights, I kept to the upstairs guest room with its bamboo-shoot wallpaper while she kept to the master bedroom just down the hall. T. P. awoke me in the morning by filching the bedcovers with a clever hand-over-hand motion that left the sheet and spread piled up on the floor like a drift of Dairy Queen ice cream. He wanted that gourmet omelet, and I was just the man to rustle it up. Less a godfather than an indulgent uncle, I happily obliged him.
Sister and brother, RuthClaire and I. My stay in the Montaraz house finally reconciled me to our divorce. In the bathroom, too many conjugal clues to overlook: a common toothpaste tube (neatly rolled up from the bottom), His & Her electric razors, a jar of antiperspirant that they no doubt shared. We did not sleep together during my stay, RuthClaire and I, and the tension between us drained away. I was at ease in the Montaraz house, in total harmony with all its occupants. Or almost total harmony.
How do you develop a cordial relationship with a hefty bearded young man who wears a .38 pistol strapped to his right ankle and a Ruger .357 half hidden under a fold of his Chattanooga Choo Choo T-shirt? This was Bilker Moody, the laconic Vietnam vet and erstwhile automobile repossessor who served as the Montaraz family’s chief security guard. Unmarried and virtually relative-less, he had adopted RuthClaire, Adam, and T. P. as surely as they had adopted him. I had met Bilker back in February, but he had stayed obsessively out of sight during those three days, as if the announced brevity of my visit required from him this considerate disappearing act.
Now, I saw Bilker Moody every day. Although he reputedly had an apartment of his own somewhere, during the week he slept in a small bare room—at one time a walk-in pantry—between the kitchen and the garage. The Montarazes had agreed to this live-in arrangement because it obviated the need to hire guards in shifts, as I had done at Paradise Farm. Also, Bilker had insisted that his vested interest in his own quarters would make him more vigilant than a guard from off the premises.
True, he sometimes took catnaps, but his experience in Southeast Asia had taught him to leap up at the tread of a cockroach. Besides, his peculiar circadian rhythms made him keenest at night, when the threat of intrusion was greatest. He was no slouch during the day, either. He had the reflexes, instincts, and nerves of a champion jai-alai player, despite his formidable bulk. He had honed his skills not only in the jungles of Vietnam but also during daring daylight recoveries of automobiles whose buyers had failed to keep up their payments. The Montarazes could scarcely go wrong engaging a willing man of his size, character, and fearlessness.
Bilker Moody genuinely esteemed the folks under his care. T. P. was fond of him, too, and had a remorseless fascination for the big man’s full-face beard. Around the child, Bilker displayed the retiring gentleness of a silverback gorilla. Usually, though, he avoided any play activity for fear of letting his guard slip. Enemies of the Montarazes’ privacy were everywhere. During my stay in July, he intercepted and politely ran off any number of curiosity-seekers. That was his job, not babysitting.
Bilker had as little to do with me as possible. He refused to eat the meals I fixed for RuthClaire and T. P., but clearly did not believe I was trying to poison anyone. If he and I chanced to approach each other, he showily gave me room to get by, sometimes mumbling “Hey” and sometimes not. RuthClaire said this was a respectful posture that, as an enlisted man, Bilker had automatically assumed for officers—but all I could think as I eased past was that he was pulling the pin on, and preparing to toss, a fragmentation grenade. Didn’t he know that in the late 1950s (ca. Elvis Presley’s induction), I had spent two years of obligatory military service as an enlisted man?