Sacred Monster

Flashback 16

It’s wild, rough country, Topanga Canyon, tumbled and brown, its high-shouldered hills brushed with lacy pine, deep damp crevasses choked with ferns. The canyon is many canyons, snaking and slicing and filigreeing through the hills. The two-lane twisty road climbs up from the sea at Malibu, north and east into the dusty hills lying just next door to Los Angeles but on the map of time a millennium away.

The people of Topanga Canyon are loners, oddballs, dropouts, believers in alternatives. They are not fierce pioneers, the progenitors of capitalists, but gentle solitaries, aware of the fragility of all things in the fragility of themselves. They do not pound deep foundations into the earth’s skin, do not thrust steel erections at the indifferent sky. Their houses are modest, set apart from one another, colored in earth tones of orange and brown and green. Unpainted rail fences enclose their horses: yes, they have horses. Their driveways are likelier to be of gravel or dirt than glittering blacktop. They grow eggplant and tomatoes and marijuana. Their lives are so in tune with their environment, they blend in so well with their terrain, that they are barely noticeable in their bivouacs up the steep sides of the many canyon walls. Only their television reception dishes stand out, amazingly, looking in this setting like UFOs from outer space. (They believe in UFOs.)

The horse Jack rode up the firm tan trail from his house toward the peak of the hill was a frisky roan, high-stepping, flaring its eyes and chewing its bit as though auditioning for a portrait with Napoleon. The man and horse following just behind him up the trail were both of a very different order, the horse being a placid and thick-bodied speckled gray, its rider a comfortable and stocky and prosperous-looking man of fifty-something in a minister’s black suit and white collar. He was hatless, his thinning gray hair disordered from its usual wavy exactitude.

Jack reined to a stop at the crest of the hill. Broken land stretched out before him, with very few signs of human habitation. Behind them, down the hill, was Jack’s own ranch house, a low structure of dull red brick with wood-shingled roof, blending into its location, watched over by sentinels of tall pine.

When the second man reined in beside him, Jack turned on him a face lit with a beatific smile. Gesturing broadly, he said, “Isn’t this great, Reverend Cornbraker?”

Rev. Elwood Cornbraker nodded slowly in judicious agreement, accepting the compliment to God’s landscaping on God’s behalf. “It is truly magnificent, John,” he said, and gentled his gentle horse with a pat on the side of its neck.

Jack half stood in the saddle, raising his arms upward toward the empyrean, gazing out at the wild and tumbled land. “What a place for a temple!” he cried. “Reverend, we could buy some of that land over there next to mine, that ridge there with the yellow flowers on it—”

Reverend Cornbraker quietly but firmly interrupted, with a friendly and forgiving smile, saying, “God’s true temple is in our hearts, John.”

Humble, dropping back down onto the saddle, folding his hands on the pommel and turning to bow his head toward the reverend, Jack said, “Oh, I know that, Reverend Cornbraker. You’ve made me understand so much that I didn’t understand before.”

The reverend made a small gesture of his right hand, as though he were giving absolution. “I know you mean well, John,” he said, “but we don’t need to erect a temple to our Maker here in Topanga Canyon. The testimony of our lives is the true manner of our attracting His attention. Our little chapel over in Pasadena is, I’m sure, good enough for God. Modest enough for God.”

“Oh, that’s a wonderful chapel, Reverend,” Jack told him, with fervent conviction. “That’s a cathedral.”

Modestly, Reverend Cornbraker permitted a pleased smile to crease his well-fed features. “God and I thank you, John,” he said. “You needn’t spend your life’s earnings on temples. God doesn’t need that from you. All you must do is continue to tithe to the church.”

“Oh, sure, Reverend,” Jack said. “You know I’ll do that. In fact, I’ve got a check for you right now back at the ranch. Ten percent of a salary payment that just came in. I’ve got it all set and waiting for you.”

But the reverend didn’t need such reassurances. He gracefully waved that away, then had to gentle his horse once more as he said, “That’s fine, John. Just fine. God thanks you for your faith and confidence in Him.”

“And the commercial I shot? How’s that doing?”

The reverend smiled in such a way as to show that he disapproved of the terminology but would not make a point of it. Having made that point, he said, “The television message you were so good as to film for us has been very... productive.”

“I’m glad,” Jack said. He sat atop his spirited mount, gazing away at the hills and canyons that were already God’s temple. “It’s good to be alive!” he cried, and the landscape gave the echo back.

“Yes, it is, John,” the Reverend Cornbraker said.

I can see with my forehead.

Is this a new thing? Does this exist in the annals of science? Am I the first of a new breed?

I can see with my forehead. The glare became so bright, the sheen of the sun so fierce, that now I’ve closed my eyes, and still I can see all that light, bright white light, see it beating on my forehead, ramming its way through the skull and into my brain. I am seeing the light. With my forehead.

Which of my doctors could I tell this to? One that won’t steal the credit, of course. I want this phenomenon named for me, doc, not for you.

“Mr. Pine?”

Oh. Him. My forehead sees him, a dark gray lump at two o’clock high; my interviewer. “I’m here,” I promise him.

“You were telling me about the Rev. Elwood Cornbraker.”

“Ah, yes.” My eyes open briefly, but that’s an error; I snap them shut again. I’ll keep watch with my forehead. “Life was good with Reverend Cornbraker, good and full and sweet. All at once there was purpose to my existence. I gave him a tenth of my income; that’s tithing. That wasn’t much, was it? After agents, managers, alimony, child support, attorneys, accountants, taxes, that left me a good three or four percent of my income for myself to spend any way I pleased. That’s not such a bad deal, is it? Is it?”

“I guess not,” the interviewer says, but I can hear in his voice he’s not so sure.

“Well, I didn’t think it was a bad deal,” I say. “I was happy with the reverend. I was at peace with myself. All my nightmares went away, my old guilts—”

“Which old guilts, Mr. Pine?”

“—just seemed to disappear. I was washed clean, in the blood of the Lamb.”

“Which old guilts were those, Mr. Pine?”

Persistent son of a bitch. What kind of fucking deferential interviewer is this anyway? Why don’t I just tell him to go shove his ball-point up his ass and get out of here, the interview’s over? Why don’t I just—

No. Not a good idea to make the press suspicious. You never know what they’ll come up with.

“Which particular old guilts were you talking about, Mr. Pine?”

My forehead gives him a crafty look. “All my old guilts,” I tell him. “They just faded away. For a little while, I was at peace with myself. I was content. It was such a strange feeling, that. But good. I’d been working too hard, piling up the money, the pictures, the credits, working in three bad pictures for every good one, and Reverend Cornbraker was the one who told me I didn’t have to do that. He’s the one who told me working compulsively like that was a way of running away from something that scared me, but that I didn’t have to be scared anymore. I could take my time.”

“And did you?”

“Most of my people didn’t like it.” My forehead smiles, remembering. (My forehead can smile, too, and frown if necessary.) “Agents,” I say. “Managers. Even Buddy. They all liked me working, it meant more money for everybody. Reverend Cornbraker was the one who gave me permission to slow down, and I did, and then it lasted just a little while.”

“And then it came to an end.”

My forehead gives him a rueful look. “Sure did. I know Buddy meant well with what he did, but sometimes, even now, I find myself wishing I’d never learned the truth.”