Forever never ends

CHAPTER SIX

Tamara looked out over the auditorium at the sea of young faces and the tops of a few heads that had drooped over their desks. She despised these meat market classes. But what did she expect?

After all, this was Psychology 101. It was designed so that even an athlete could make a solid “C” while saving the sweat for scholarship payback. All you had to know was that Jung wasn't spelled with a “Y” and you had it made.

Sure, there would be maybe five students out of the eighty who would put forth an effort, who would actually read the material and turn in four-page papers when she asked for a minimum of three.

Of those five, maybe two would go to graduate school and become psychologists.

But she knew that the line between an amateur and a professional psychologist was thin. That line was as wavy and elusive as the difference between sanity and madness. To teach or to be officially insane, all you had to do was get certified.

But that was part of the challenge, wasn't it? Being the one without becoming the other.

She flipped back her hair with one hand and gripped the lectern as if it were a dance partner. She drew in enough air to send her voice across the room.

"How does the mind work? Why does it work one way and not another?" she said firmly without shouting. "Is it really only billions of nerve cells reacting chemically and electrically with each other? Are our thoughts and reactions only scientific processes over which we have no control?

"If so, what differentiates one person's emotions from another’s? Social influence and outside stimuli? At what point does spirituality and ego step over into rational, measurable brain activity?"

She could tell she was losing them. She was even losing herself. Time for an icebreaker. "And what does it have to do with us, and why should we care?"

A few snickers rippled across the room. From somewhere in the back, a voice shouted, "Who says we care?"

The class erupted in laughter. That was good. At least they were momentarily awake. She fixed on the area from which the remark had come and saw a crew-cut teenager with one thick eyebrow across his forehead, smiling smugly.

"So, Mister-" Tamara said, meeting his small eyes.

"Watkins."

"Mister Watkins, since you know all about yourself already, why don't you tell us? Why are you the way you are? Why are you self-confident enough to blurt out in class what half a dozen others were thinking but didn't say?"

The lone eyebrow made a perplexed vee.

Tamara continued. "What makes you different from the young lady beside you, who keeps checking her wristwatch as if she's planted a time bomb somewhere?"

The lady in question blushed slightly.

"And why is Mister Watkins’s mouth at a no-doubt temporary loss for words when his mind is spilling them out by the hundreds?"

Whew. That was a lot of questions to start off a lecture. But she was supposed to be teaching psychology, wasn't she? The field had no answers, only more and crazier questions. And that was just the middle ground. When you branched out into clairvoyance and precognition and telepathic signals that said shu-shaaa -

Lone Eyebrow recovered his wits. "Because I'm the way I am, that's all.”

"You are the way you are. But what makes you that way?"

"Good drugs," somebody yelled, and the class laughed again.

Tamara laughed with them. The morning’s Gloomies were gone, maybe swept off on the magic carpet of dreams, maybe flushed down some subconscious toilet, or maybe just stuck in a mental desk drawer under the pages of her unwritten worries.

Or maybe just hanging around Windshake waiting for her return.

She glanced at the front row and noticed a male student ogling her figure. If she couldn’t keep their minds interested, at least she still managed to keep a few males awake. Robert didn't even seem to notice she was female anymore. Robert barely seemed to remember he had a wife.

She turned her attention back to the lecture and kept the discussion rolling. It was a good session, lots of class participation and fun besides. Not really anything she could test them on, but maybe it would get them thinking, and that was half the battle.

She was gathering her notes after class when a redheaded woman approached the lectern. Tamara flashed a smile, and the woman smiled back, clutching her books to her chest.

"Dr. Leon, I just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying your class," she said

"Well, thank you," Tamara said, cramming her papers into her scuffed portfolio. She wondered if this was a brown-noser or the real deal, someone who took learning beyond the classroom.

"I'm thinking of going into psychology, and I wondered if you could recommend some outside reading."

Tamara looked into the woman's clear blue eyes. She saw no hidden motives in them. She considered herself a good judge of character. That was one of the few fringe benefits of her profession.

“More psych books?” Tamara said. "That way lies madness.”

"Didn’t you say madness is a matter of opinion?" the woman asked, uncowed.

Now I'm turning into a cynic. This woman reminded her of herself a decade ago. Inquisitive and ambitious. Both handy qualities for a psychologist. She was pretty, though, which might be an academic liability.

Tamara said, "I tell you what, Ms. — "

"Blevins. Sarah Blevins."

"That name sounds familiar."

"My daddy's the preacher up at the Windshake Baptist church."

"And a preacher's daughter wants to be a psychologist?"

"I have to be something."

Tamara smiled. Psychology was just another belief system, and so was the Baptist faith. Neither was better nor worse, just different. And more truth was found in asking questions than in swallowing the company line, in either case.

"Tell you what," Tamara said. "I'll make a list of good books that you should be able to find in the university library. If you can't, maybe we can work it out so you can borrow some of mine."

Sarah's freckled cheeks dimpled as she showed her straight teeth. "Thank you, ma’am."

"Ms. Blevins, you can thank me by actually reading them and maybe someday writing better ones."

Sarah nodded seriously. "See you on Monday," she said brightly, then went out the door, her coppery hair swinging from side to side.

Tamara stopped by the office she shared with two other associates. She wedged herself into her cubbyhole and worked on her research project. When she looked up, hours later, she noticed through the tiny window that the sun was sinking low in the sky. She hurried out to her car and drove home, dreading the Gloomies that might be drawing ever closer to the windows of her soul. And the secret lights of Bear Claw that might pierce the darkness of her troubled heart.

Of course they weren’t real, but she was afraid she might see them again anyway.

Virginia Speerhorn looked across her cluttered desk at Chief Crosley. What a fat stereotype, a Buford Pusser Keystone Kop lardass. Just look at him, sitting there munching on a doughnut while the buttons are already straining to pop off his shirt. He's ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag.

And that pathetic comb-over, it looks like a half-dozen greasy threads stretched across a red billiard ball. He may as well have a sign on his head that reads, "I'm just a heart attack waiting to happen, but I still think I'm a love machine." Doesn't he believe in bringing dignity to public office?

Still, he was an adequate law enforcement agent, and that was all she needed. Crime wasn't a problem in Windshake, and had never been a campaign issue. And a more ambitious person might have proved dangerous.

Virginia cleared her throat. Crosley's eyelids rolled sleepily open.

"What security measures are you taking for Blossomfest, Chief?"

Crosley parted his lips, allowing Virginia a glimpse of saliva-packed bread and raspberry filling. Then he swallowed, his knob of an Adam's apple pogoing dryly.

"Got five men-er, five officers — assigned for weekend duty, meaning two will be drawing overtime."

Virginia pursed her lips. "And you?"

Crosley became intensely interested in a flap of frayed rayon on the arm of his chair. "I'll be there, too."

"And not billing the city for overtime?"

Crosley looked up. Virginia noticed with pleasure that he cringed from the heat of what she thought of as her "withering glare."

"Now, Mayor, that was years ago. You still don't hold that against me, do you?"

"Chief, I'm not surprised when some of the sanitation workers fudge on their time sheets, putting down an extra half hour when they only worked a quarter. But I do expect my more visible officials to follow the letter of the law. Especially those who are commissioned to uphold it."

Crosley slouched even deeper into his seat. "I made good on that."

"I have a budget to maintain, Chief, and in my budget, every dollar has a place and must be answered for. You have a decent salary and your standard of living is above the city average. You get a measure of respect from your peers, and from me. I should think that would be satisfaction enough for anyone."

"Yes, ma'am," said Crosley, duly defeated.

Virginia leaned back in her splintery oak swivel chair, its old springs creaking like a vault door. She had rescued this chair from the dumpster behind city hall and exiled her predecessor's leather chair to storage. This uncomfortable, battered relic was perfect for the image she wanted to cultivate.

She looked out the window at the busy street. Nearly twice as much traffic now as when she had first taken up her post behind this desk twelve years ago. And this little town-no, city, it was a city in her mind, no matter what the charter said-had bloomed under her careful tending. Tax revenue was up, the budget surplus was expanding, and her margin of victory in each successive election had grown accordingly.

She turned back to Crosley. "I want a good time for the whole family this weekend, just like the Chamber of Commerce ads have promised. That means no open consumption of alcohol, no littering, all vendors following the traffic and fire lane restrictions, and-my god, I better check something."

She stabbed her speakerphone. "Martha?"

"Ma'am?" came a tinny voice from the speaker.

"The live music for Blossomfest, do you know what the Chamber has scheduled?"

Virginia heard a shuffling of papers.

"Mayor, it looks like a solo acoustic guitarist at ten, then a student string quartet from Westridge after that. The headline act is that country singer, Sammy Ray Hawkins."

Virginia smiled in relief, her facial muscles twitching from the unaccustomed workout. "Thank you, Martha," she said, cutting the connection before Martha could say "You're welcome."

Virginia said to Crosley, "I was afraid the Chamber might have been dumb enough to line up one of those rock‘n’roll bands. That wouldn't square with the Windshake image, now, would it?"

Crosley grunted, a pastry crumb falling from his lips. "I'll keep things under control, Mayor."

Virginia nodded, only half listening. There would be at least a couple of thousand visitors this weekend, drawn up the mountain by the lure of Appalachian crafts, folk art, old-timey storytelling, and a chance to spend big-city money. They weren't voters, but the income greased the wheels of Windshake commerce and thus the wheels of local politics. What was good for Windshake was good for Virginia.

She planned on being highly visible. She mentally rummaged through her closet, selecting an outfit that would be regal without being ostentatious. She had forgotten Crosley.

"Is that all, Mayor?"

She waved him away and heard him groan in a duet with his chair as he stood, his rump wobbling like a sack of wet pastries as he left. Then she was back in her closet, trying on clothes.

The thing that had been Sylvester Mull shambled through the trees. It still had shards of Sylvester's memories and personality, but added to that, like a cancer that mimicked a healthy cell, was the consciousness of the space spore that had sparked this rebirth. Energy coursed through his flesh, pulsing in rhythm to the distant parent’s metabolism. Sylvester wondered why he didn't care that he had left his beloved gun behind. Perhaps because now he wanted to merge with the wildlife instead of shoot it.

He dimly remembered his encounter with Ralph, only he recalled his conversion with pleasure, not pain. He wished he could have thanked Ralph, because Sylvester saw that his whole life had been spent wandering in the wilderness. Now he had purpose. Now he served.

But Ralph had stumbled away in the opposite direction, on a separate mission and beyond the intimacies of gratitude. He was following the call of his own inner voice.

Sylvester leaned against a wild cherry tree, his hands pressing into the coarse strips of split bark. He felt the tree's cells in their photosynthesis, converting light to energy, and that energy now flowing back through him and feeding the parent-creature. He felt the white roots plumbing the ground, tapping into the water table and drawing nitrates from the dark loam. The tips of the branches were his fingers, ready to explode into glorious bud. He was joined, no more tree or man, only dust and energy bound in bizarre and wondrous form.

Sylvester fell back, his head swirling with the tree's memories, memories of a bursting seed-germ, its agonizing fight through the soil, its climb into the light. He writhed in the damp dead leaves, absorbing the thick rot and bacteria, drunk on the teeming microscopic life, stoned on the richness of cellular activity. He rolled onto his hands and knees, his face erupting into a tortured beatific smile. The joy of realization drummed in his dead heart. His mind was singing green.

Sylvester rose under the crazy tilted sky, the great blue ceiling with its clouds like distant kin, all part of one big, loving biosystem. He walked on the earth that was only a garden, grown to feed the planet-eating parent. Sylvester shared the parent’s hunger, was the hunger; the conversion had not snuffed his hunter's instinct.

Their united drive was to consume and move onward, to reap nature's bounty, to excrete dark matter. He flowed like water, swept along on currents that carried all things toward one destination.

Home.

Paul Crosley looked out the window of his Silverstream. Jimmy Morris’s pickup was in the Mull driveway. That could only mean one thing.

Hell, you could practically see the back end of the trailer bucking up and down like an old seesaw. Jimmy must be doing the boot-scootin’ boogie like there’s no tomorrow.

Not that Paul blamed him. That was some right good stuff, as he remembered it. And he planned on heading over after Jimmy left and refreshing his memory.

Paul adjusted the patch over his right eye. The damned thing was itching like hell today. Maybe he should have gotten a glass eyeball like those VA doctors had recommended. But it was enough trouble just putting in his teeth every morning. He didn't want to mess around with a bucketful of other body parts.

One of the Mull kids walked around the corner of their trailer. It was the oldest one, the one in the army jacket that Paul had seen smoking dope out in the tool shed this morning. Little bastard ought to be in school, doing his book-learning. No wonder society was going to hell the way it was.

Why, back in Paul's day, his daddy would have blistered his ass with a hickory switch if he'd have skipped school. And that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was having to go out and cut your own switch. And you'd better not bring back some slender little twig that was limper than a strip of licorice, either. You'd better get a good healthy sapling, or by God, Daddy would get his own, and then the skin and blood would really fly.

Now they couldn't even raise a hand against them at school. Damned liberals were coddling these snot-nosed delinquents like the brats were the victims. Paul had seen the cops bring the boy home once. Peggy had stood in the doorway in her crusty flower-patterned nightgown and nodded her tired bleached head and said Yeah, Officer, I'll keep an eye on him from now on and I know he really ain't a bad boy at heart and I don't know why he'd ever do such a thing.

And the cops had just shrugged and nodded back and driven away.

And the brat had the balls to wear the uniform of the United States military, when that boy had 4-F written all over him. Ought to be a law against that.

Paul watched as the boy put his ear to the trailer door and turned, rage reddening his sharp young face. The boy kicked the gravel and spat in disgust. Then his eyes narrowed to slits, viper's eyes, as he looked around the trailer park. Paul ducked back into the shadows, knowing he'd be invisible because of the bright sunshine outside.

The boy quietly opened the door of Jimmy's pickup and rummaged around. Paul heard the faint clatter of tools and saw an oily rag fall to the gravel driveway. The boy lifted a bottle from under the seat, and Paul saw its brown liquid contents glinting in the light. The boy tucked the bottle into his army jacket with a secretive smirk and jogged toward the stand of scrub pine at the back end of the trailer park.

And he's a little thief to boot. What that boy needs is a good ass-whooping. I've been whooped by hickory switches and thumped with the Bible and ground under the boot of the military and it ain't hurt me not one little bit.

He strained his ears toward the Mull trailer. A window was open, and he could hear bedsprings groaning in rhythm. And Peggy was panting in that way that half the town knew. The wrinkled fingers of Paul's left hand cupped the jar of moonshine while his right hand went down to salute the old soldier.

Preacher Blevins looked up from his lunch. He wished he hadn't.

His wife, Amanda, was looking at him through the greasy black slits of her eye-liner. He choked down the throatful of bland tuna salad and reached for his coffee cup.

Was she trying to become the next Tammy Faye Bakker? One was enough. He didn't need a caricature trophy, a tin-voiced verse-spouter sitting on his shoulder.

"Do you like your sandwich, Armfield?" she asked in her whiny Georgia twang. She stretched his name into three syllables: Ahmm-fee-yuld.

"It's just fine, dear."

"I'm going down to Belk's today to buy me a new dress for Blossomfest. What color do you think I should choose?"

Armfield thought she'd look good in funeral black, with her dewy eyes sewn shut and the Alamo Rose troweled off her lips. Those big puffy lips that he'd once made her use in the way that had gotten the Sodomites burned. The image of him slipping on top of her while she was in her coffin popped into his head. Not that she could perform much worse dead than she did while living.

The devil was at him again. He took a gulp of coffee and said, "Get whatever kind of dress you want, dear."

"Maybe I'll get something that will work for Easter, too. Maybe something robin's-egg blue with a touch of pink lace and a yellow chiffon scarf."

He took another bite of his sandwich. Damn that Sarah and her whole-wheat bread. Now she had taken to keeping tofu in the refrigerator. It looked like an albino cow patty to him.

He thought of Nettie, who was coming in to work at the church that afternoon. The image of the church secretary made his pulse beat faster. He drank the grainy dregs of his coffee and looked at Amanda, wondering if he might spend his sudden passion in her well-preserved lap.

No, never after she'd already put on her makeup. And never in daylight. And never on Sunday. And never when Sarah might hear. And never when her favorite shows were on television. And never when "Armfield, how do you think I would look with a perm?" She touched her burnt red hair with a wispy hand.

"I think you look fine the way you are. But whatever makes you happy makes me happy.” He tried on a smile that stretched his top lip over his twin beaver teeth. "And you know you're shining in the eyes of the Lord, and that's all that matters."

"Oh, Armfield." She tittered, and she may have blushed under her sheet of foundation, but Armfield couldn't be sure. Her clotted smile was enough to shrivel away the last of his excitement.

"Got to go to the church, honey.” He walked over and kissed the top of her head. The kiss tasted of chemicals and her hair didn't move.

"I think I'll buy me a hat, too," Amanda said. "Then I'm going to ride out to see Genevieve Moody about this year's blood drive. See if she wants to spend some of her husband's money. Maybe get her to go with me to the mall down in Barkersville."

"The Lord wants us to enjoy the fruits of our labors," Armfield said, heading out the door.

Just don't max out the credit card. I can only steal so fast. Even the Lord's bank accounts aren't bottomless.

"Have a good day, dear," he called cheerfully before crossing the yard to the church. "Say hello to the Moodys for me.”