Free Jericho by George Fetherling Page A

simple answer.
    Then she said: “You wanna come?”
    I was boycotting eye contact with the patient but noticed that he stayed silent for once.
    “What are the two of you going to do up there? How are you going to make a living? What are you planning to eat?”
    He piped up. “I’ve got a place that’s all fitted out. It has everything we’d ever need.”
    “Like a farm?”
    “No.”
He raised his voice. “It’s more like a seed-place. A seed op.” He laughed at his cleverness, which only he saw. “It’s the seed of something that’s going to grow. I’ve planted an idea in the fertile ground.”
    I couldn’t help myself. “What exactly are you talking about?”
    He was quiet for a few seconds, thinking what to say. You could always tell when he was thinking because the process was so slow and laboured.
    “I can’t give you any details,” he said. “Except that something important is going to rise up.” He used the conspiratorial tone of voice you often find in such individuals.
    I suppose I must have been letting a small trace of impatience show, though I was trying not to do so.
    “You know the Bible, right?” Oh God, he was going to quote the Bible. “‘And there shall be a new heaven and a new earth.’” Beth looked impassive but still interested. “‘And there shall be brought forth something something—and a New Jerusalem.’”
    “Now you’re mixing the New Testament with the Old,” I said. He obviously knew nothing whatever about what he was talking about. A graduate of the Gideon theological seminary, that was my guess.
    “Well, that’s the gist of it. But I say the gist ain’t enough. Mark my words: There shall be made to rise up upon the land a new Fertile Crescent kind of place, a fresh start, a newhope. Screw New Jerusalem! There shall be a New Sodom and a New Gomorrah!” He paused to see our reaction. “That’s all I’m saying.”
    But of course it wasn’t all he was saying. He charged on, going back into his madman routine, as though he thought a person like myself couldn’t tell the difference. Looking at Beth, though, I wasn’t sure that she knew where the disturbed individual left off and the bad actor began. But then I wasn’t certain just what she thought about anything at that moment. Did she have, as they say, real feelings for him? I find that hard to believe. I think perhaps she hadn’t been laid in a long while for whatever reason and was experiencing unsatisfied lustfulness towards him, momentarily—which was no reason for her to give up the life she had now and run off with him to I don’t know where. I could see what he was getting out of it, a warm body and a member of the audience. To find out about her I’d have to get her alone and engage her in a serious conversation.
    I asked them when they were leaving.
    “I’m getting ready to initiate the protocols right now.”
    “What does that mean exactly?”
    He didn’t like it when anyone asked him to translate.
    “My plans are firming up,” he said.
    I thought: What if she is entering erotic fantasies about him in a diary? I couldn’t stand it. I said to myself: When they have sex she probably lights scented candles and he spouts made-up Scripture at all the crucial moments. Good Lord. Maybe if I got to know him I would like him more? That definitely didn’t seem likely or desirable. Maybe if I could get to know her better I would have my lust nullified or diluted by what I learned? I’d probably discover she’s oneof those persons absolutely everybody likes every moment of their existence. (The unremitting tyranny of the cheerful.) Mostly I thought she might be in danger, physical or otherwise, and that I had a responsibility to her and also to my own sexual thoughts to ensure that nothing unpleasantly harmful happened to her. I should have asked myself by what right I had suddenly allowed such sisterly concern to influence my judgment.
    The laying off of bets in Snaketown was like the laying