Free Ancient of Days by Michael Bishop Page B

regarded it as an affront to all the values he had been taught as a child. That was scary. I was frightened for RuthClaire, and I was frightened for myself for having rebuffed the High Zygote’s offer to help.
    What kind of “help” did he and Craig have in mind? Some sort of house-cleaning operation? A petition campaign? A nightriding incident? An appeal to other Klan organizations for reinforcements?
    In all my forty-six years, I’d never come face to face with a danger of this precise human sort, and I found it hard to believe that it had descended upon me—upon RuthClaire, Adam, and Beulah Fork—in the form of two acne-scarred bucks whom, only a season or two ago, I had seen playing (poor) high school football. It was like finding a scorpion in a familiar potted geranium. It was worse than the pious verbal assaults of a dozen different fundamentalist ministers and far, far worse than the frustrated carping of Brian Nollinger in Atlanta. As for those anonymous souls who had actually leaped the barricades at Paradise Farm, they were mere sportive shadows, easily routed by light and the echoing reports of my old .22.
    That’s the problem, I thought. How do you immunize yourself against the evil in the unprepossessing face of a neighbor?
    Despite the hour—lately, it was always “despite the hour”—I telephoned RuthClaire. She was slow picking up, but she did not rebuke me for calling. I told her about the teen Ku Klutz Klanners who’d pickpocketed my peace of mind.
    “Elvis Teavers?” RuthClaire asked. “Craig Puddicombe?”
    “Maybe I should report this to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, huh? Sometimes I get GBI agents in the West Bank. Usually they’re dressed like hippies pretending to be potheads. I could put those guys on to the Zealous High Zygote and his string-along lieutenant gamete—just for safety’s sake.”
    “Klanners?”
    “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
    “Were they wearing sheets?” Hearing my put-upon sigh, RuthClaire withdrew the question. “No, Paul, don’t sic anybody on them. Let’s not provoke them any further than they’ve already been provoked. Besides, I’m safe enough out here. Or so I like to think. Do you know what’s funny?”
    “Not at this hour, no.”
    “The day before yesterday I got a call from a representative of a group called RAJA—Racial Amity and Justice in America. It’s a black organization headquartered in Baltimore. The caller wouldn’t tell me how he’d managed to get my unlisted number, just that he’d managed. He hoped I’d answer a few questions.”
    “Did you?”
    “What else could an art-school liberal from Charlotte do?”
    “Nothing,” I said.
    “He had a copy of Nollinger’s article in Atlanta Fortnightly . He wanted to know if I had enslaved Adam, if I had Adam doing menial tasks against his inclination or will. It sounded as if he had the questions written down on a notepad and was ticking them off each time he asked one and got an answer. I kept saying ‘No.’ They were that sort of question. The last one asked if I would allow an on-sight inspection to verify my denials and to ascertain the mental and emotional health of my guest. I said ‘No’ to that one, too. ‘In that case,’ the RAJA man said, ‘get set for more phone calls and a racial solidarity march right in front of your sacred Paradise Farm.’ And then he hung up. When the phone rang just now, Paul, I was a little afraid it was him again.”
    “Nope,” I said glumly, “just me.”
    “I’m catching it from all sides.” The receiver clunked as RuthClaire apparently shifted hands. “You see, Paul, I’ve offended the scientific establishment by refusing to let their high priests examine Adam, and I’ve offended organized religion by trying to make a comfortable home for him. Now, I’ve got Klansmen coming at me from another direction and civil rights advocates from yet another. I’m at the center of a collapsing compass rose waiting