“Does anyone call a neurosurgeon Josef Mengele just because he loses some of his patients?”
“They’re not coming to you with brain tumors.”
“Some have, and many of those are living and enjoying their lives today instead of lying in the ground. Did I sometimes display fake tumors when I was on the circuit? Yes, and I’m not proud of it, but it was necessary. Because you can’t display something that’s just gone.” He considered. “It’s true that most of the people who came to my revivals weren’t suffering terminal illnesses, but in a way such nonfatal physical failings are worse. Those are the ones that allow folks to live long lives filled with pain. Agony, in some cases. And you sit there in judgment.” He shook his head sorrowfully, but his eyes weren’t sorrowful. They were furious.
“Cathy Morse wasn’t in pain, and she didn’t volunteer. You picked her out of the crowd because she was foxy. Eye candy for the rubes.”
As Bree had, Jacobs pointed out that there might have been some other reason for Morse’s suicide. Sixteen years was a long time. A lot could happen.
“You know better,” I said.
He drank from his glass and set it down with a hand that was now visibly shaking. “This conversation is pointless.”
“Because you won’t stop?”
“Because I have. C. Danny Jacobs will never spread another revival tent. Right now there’s a certain amount of discussion and speculation about that fellow on the Internet, but attention spans are short. Soon enough he’ll fade from the public mind.”
If that were so, I’d come to batter down a door only to discover it was unlocked. Instead of soothing me, the idea increased my unease.
“In six months, perhaps a year, the website will announce that Pastor Jacobs has retired due to ill health. After that it will go dark.”
“Why? Because your research is finished?” Only, I didn’t believe Charlie Jacobs’s researches would ever be finished.
He turned to contemplate the view again. At last he uncrossed his legs and stood, pushing on the arms of his chair to accomplish it. “Come out back with me, Jamie. I want to show you something.”
Al Stamper was at the kitchen table, a mountain of fat in ’70s disco pants. He was sorting mail. In front of him was a stack of toaster waffles dripping with butter and syrup. Beside him was a liquor carton. On the floor next to his chair were three plastic USPS bins piled high with more letters and packages. As I watched, Stamper tore open a manila envelope. He shook out a scrawled letter, a photo of a boy in a wheelchair, and a ten-dollar bill. He put the ten-spot in the gin carton and scanned the letter, chomping a waffle as he did so. Standing beside him made Jacobs look thinner than ever. This time it wasn’t Adam and Eve I thought of, but Jack Sprat and his wife.
“The tent may be folded,” I said, “but I see the love offerings are still coming in.”
Stamper gave me a look of malevolent indifference—if there is such a thing—then turned back to his opening and sorting. Not to mention his waffles.
“We read every letter,” Jacobs said. “Don’t we, Al?”
“Yes.”
“Do you reply to every letter?” I asked.
“We ought to,” Stamper said. “I think so, anyway. And we could, if I had help. One person would be enough, along with a computer to replace the one Pastor Danny carted out to his workshop.”
“We’ve discussed that, Al,” Jacobs said. “Once we started corresponding with supplicants…”
“We’d never finish, I know. I just wonder what happened to the Lord’s work.”
“You’re doing it,” Jacobs said. His voice was gentle. His eyes, however, were amused: the eyes of a man watching a dog do a trick.
Stamper made no reply, just opened the next envelope. No picture in this one, just a letter and a five-spot.
“Come on, Jamie,” Jacobs said. “Let’s leave him to it.”
From the driveway, the outbuildings had looked trim and spruce, but closer up I could see that the boards were splintering in places and the trim needed a touch-up. The Bermuda grass we walked through, undoubtedly a hefty expense when the estate was last landscaped, needed to be cut. If it didn’t happen soon, the two-acre expanse of back lawn would revert to meadow.
Jacobs stopped. “Which building do you think is my lab?”
I pointed to the barn. It was the largest, about the size of the rented auto body shop in Tulsa.
He smiled. “Did you know that the staff involved in the Manhattan Project shrank steadily before the first A-bomb test at White Sands?”
I shook my head.
“By the time the bomb went off, several of the prefab dormitories built to house the workers were empty. Here’s a little-known rule about scientific research: as one progresses toward one’s ultimate goal, support requirements tend to shrink.”
He led me toward what looked like a humble toolshed, produced a key ring, and opened the door. I expected it to be hot inside, but it was as cool as the big house. There was a worktable running down the lefthand side with nothing on it but a few notebooks and a Macintosh computer, currently showing a screen saver of endlessly galloping horses. In front of the Mac was a chair that looked ergonomic and expensive.
On the right side of the shed were shelves stacked with boxes that looked like silver-plated cigarette cartons… only cigarette cartons don’t hum like amplifiers on standby. On the floor was another box, this one painted green and about the size of a hotel mini-fridge. On top of it was a TV monitor. Jacobs clapped his hands softly and the monitor’s screen lit up, showing a series of columns—red, blue, and green—that rose and fell in a way that suggested respiration. In terms of entertainment value I didn’t think it would ever replace Big Brother.
“This is where you work?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the equipment? The instruments?”
He pointed to the Mac, then to the monitor. “There and there. But the most important part…” He pointed to his own temple, like a man miming suicide. “Up here. You happen to be standing in the world’s most advanced electronics research facility. The things I have discovered in this room make Edison’s Menlo Park discoveries pale into insignificance. They are things that could change the world.”
But would the change be for the better, I wondered. I didn’t like the dreamy, proprietary expression on his face as he gazed around at what looked to me like almost nothing. Yet I couldn’t dismiss his claim as delusion. There was a sense of sleeping power in the silver cartons and the green fridge-size box. Being in that shed was like standing too close to a power plant working at full bore, close enough to feel the stray volts zinging the metal fillings in your mouth.
“I’m currently generating electricity by geothermal means.” He patted the green box. “This is a geosynchronous generator. Below it is a well pipe no bigger than the kind that might serve a medium-size country dairy farm. Yet at half power, this gennie could create enough superheated steam to power not just The Latches, but the entire Hudson Valley. At full power it could boil the entire aquifer like water in a teapot. Which might defeat the purpose.” He laughed heartily.
“Not possible,” I said. But of course, neither was curing brain tumors and severed spinal cords with holy rings.
“I assure you it is, Jamie. With a slightly bigger generator, which I could build with parts easily available by mail order, I could light up the whole East Coast.” He said this calmly, not boasting but only stating a fact. “I’m not doing it because energy creation doesn’t interest me. Let the world strangle in its own effluent; as far as I’m concerned, it deserves no better. And for my purposes, I’m afraid geothermal energy is a dead end. It’s not enough.” He looked broodingly at the horses galloping across the face of his computer. “I expected better from this place, especially in summer, when… but never mind.”