The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(100)

Did he say anything?

No. He didnt say anything.

Did you ever see him again?

No.

But you never lost faith in him.

No. The Israelite heals. That’s all you need to know. Let me quote Thomas Barefoot to you. His truth is not going to come back to him void. It’s going to do what he wants it to do. You might want to think about that.

Who is Thomas Barefoot?

A convicted murderer. Waiting to be executed by the State of Texas. Anyway, when you have seen Jesus once you have seen him forever. Case closed.

Forever.

Yeah. He’s a forever kind of guy.

You dont see any disjunct between what you know about the world and what you believe about God?

I dont believe anything about God. I just believe in God. Kant had it right about the stars above and the truth within. The last light the nonbeliever will see will not be the dimming of the sun. It will be the dimming of God. Everyone is born with the faculty to see the miraculous. You have to choose not to. You think his patience is infinite? I think we’re probably almost there. I think the odds are on that we’ll still be here to see him wet his thumb and lean over and unscrew the sun.

How long have you been here?

Eighteen years.

He turned and looked at Western and then turned back and studied the grounds again. Yeah, I think the same thing myself. What if they throw my ass out of here? Standing at a bus stop with a suitcase and twenty dollars in your pocket. So you dont want to attract too much attention. But still you got to pass for crazy. You cant malinger.

Do you feel that your medications are helping you?

Hell, Bobby. Helping me with what? You walk a fine line. You know they want to get rid of your ass. You’re making the place look bad. New clients show up with their kith and they sequester you away. Plus you got no money. Have you got anything to smoke?

I didnt know you could smoke in here.

You cant. Not in the building. That wasnt the question.

I dont. Have anything. Sorry.

Okay.

He pulled his robe about him and watched out the window.

I’m starting to get on your nerves.

Not yet. I’ll let you know, dont worry.

All right.

You could check yourself in here too you know. I could use the company. I think. You dont have anything else to do.

Friends have suggested it. I’ll think about it.

You’re not going to think about it. Even if you did it wouldnt help. Here’s a little tale from the wards. There was a woman here named Mary Spurgeon. Twenty-eight years old. On her birthday. Her last, as it would eventuate. So they had this little party with a cake and everything and somebody had a Polaroid camera and they took some pictures and they took a picture of Mary and Alicia. And when Alicia saw the picture there was this white spot in Mary’s eye and she looked at it closely and then she turned and left.

She went to the clinic and told the doctor that Mary had a retinal blastoma and needed to have her eye removed and she showed him the picture. The doctor looked at the picture and they went back to the ward and he looked at Mary’s eye and called an ambulance and they took Mary away and she came back a week later with one eye gone and this big bandage.

She’d have died.

Yes. But of course the loonies didnt see it that way. They sent a deputation to ask why she did that to Mary Spurgeon. They wanted to know why she’d turned her in. Their words. Look what you’ve done, they said.

What did Mary herself have to say about it?

Mary herself was mute on the subject. But now Mary had cut her wrists and died in the hall bathroom in the wee hours after writing an obscure poem on the wall in her own blood.

This must have been very hard for her. She never told me.

Alicia.

Yes.

Yeah, well. There’s a lot of stuff goes on in the ward that doesnt make the papers.

I suppose that’s why she killed herself.

Mary.

Yes.

Who knows? She’d been on the edge for years. She should have been on suicide watch but she wasnt. Your sister left a week later.

Why do you think she didnt tell me?

Some part of her may have thought the loonies were right.

He lowered the glasses and studied the kept grounds. Do you think most people want to die?

No. Most is a lot. Do you?

I dont know. I think there are times when you’d just like to get it over with. I think a lot of people would elect to be dead if they didnt have to die.

Would you?

In a heartbeat.

I’m not sure I understand the difference.

Yeah you do.

What else?

Why? Is there something else?

There’s always something else.

All right.

All right?

Sure.

He scanned the landscape. Here’s a dream. This man was a forger of antiquities. He traveled in documentation. In the instruments for their preparation. An old world figure. A dark suit, somewhat traveled in. A down at the heels formality to which yet clung an odor of the exotic. His portfolio it was rumored had been fashioned from the hide of a heathen and in it he carried the makings of every kind of document. Parchment and French vellum and period paper with the apposite watermarks. Vintage seals and ribbons and signatures of State and pen nibs of every provenance together with inks organic in nature which hung in thin bottles from his belt by thongs. Perhaps you can imagine him.