A Pagan's Nightmare (16 page)

I opened the front door and stood on the porch in my khaki pants and orange Nike golf shirt. After two seconds of gazing across
my lawn at the circus, I shouted, “Angie, are you out of your mind?”

I shouted this as loud as possible, hoping to alert neighbors to my plight. I wanted a bit of sympathy. I wanted the protestors
to leave quietly and allow me to enjoy the day with Larry. And I wanted to keep Larry from being upset by my wife’s orchestrated
hysteria. At that moment Larry was the only sane person I knew besides my barber and my son, Zach, who never called home from
Auburn. Especially during summer semester. But last I checked, Zach was still sane.

Angie did not even acknowledge my question. Instead, she continued marching with the others, shouting a rhyming slogan—“We
will not be denied; the pagan story must die!”—and pumping her cardboard sign up and down like some manic drum majorette.

I stood with crossed arms and observed them for another minute. Trying to appear unaffected, I went inside, found an orange
cap to match my shirt, and came back out on the porch to observe them further. I even practiced a few golf swings. This must
have made them mad, because they began shouting louder and louder. It wasn’t
long before their protest slogan grew monotonous: “We will not be denied; the pagan story must die! We will not be denied;
the pagan story must die!”

Up., down, up, down went the signs, imperfectly timed to their shouting.

It wasn’t even a very good slogan, what with that extra beat in the second clause. But what could you expect from a hastily
assembled group of Southern Baptists?

I pulled out my cell phone and called Larry, hoping first to warn him and then to ask would he please park one street behind
my house.

He answered on the second ring. “Almost there, Ned. Just waiting for the light to turn green.”

“No, don’t drive down my street!”

“Why not? You don’t wanna play golf with me?”

“Of course I wanna play. But they’re protesting.”

“Who’s protesting?”

Instinctively I pointed at my wife. “Angie and her minions. They’re marching in front of my house because of your story,
because of ‘Dunkers versus Sprinklers’ or ‘Believers kidnapping pagans’ or… who knows why.”

A long pause. “I didn’t mean to offend anyone, Ned.”

I shifted into mediator mode. “They’re just hypersensitive. Park one street behind mine and I’ll escape through my backyard.”

“But isn’t there a fence back there?”

“I’ll scale it. The street is called Nottingham. Wait for me, and I’ll meet ya in five minutes.”

“Whatever you say.”

I went inside and pulled my golf bag from a closet. I slung the strap over my shoulder and hauled the bag to my living-room
window. One last peek between the curtains.

The protest showed no sign of slowing—another car full of women pulled up. A Volvo. From its trunk they unloaded bar-b-que,
potato salad, buns, and two-liter bottles of lemonade. At the edge of my driveway they set it all out on a card table draped
with a red-and-
white checkered tablecloth. All of the protesting women then locked arms and marched in circles around the table, still shouting
their slogan, occasionally stepping out of line to grab a bite of sandwich, a spoonful of salad, or a sip of lemonade. Only
in the South.

I knew I had to flee quickly. I flew through the kitchen, accidentally knocking a phone book off the counter with the golf
bag. I grabbed my briefcase, pulled open the sliding glass door to the patio, and angled between daylilies and sandstone rocks.
In a hurry to get away, I jogged the last twenty yards to our white picket fence. Golf bag over fence. Then briefcase. No
way was I leaving any work papers in the house for Angie’s army to pilfer and burn.

My breathing quickened and my head spun from the thrill of escape. I ran across a neighbor’s back lawn—fortunately no one
was home—and heard a horn honk. I stepped out onto Nottingham Street, looked to my right, and saw Larry two houses down, parallel
parked under an oak. He waved out the window of his Bronco and pulled up to meet me.

After slinging my bag and briefcase in the back, I climbed in the passenger side. For a moment we just looked at each other
and grinned stupidly.

“Alcatraz in Buckhead, eh?” Larry said as he pulled away.

“Just get me to the course.”

I supposed that to Larry—to any casual observer really—Angie and I did look a tad dysfunctional. I even enjoyed a private
moment of glee imagining her tromping inside the house with her sign and her cohorts and finding no one home.

Larry sped through a yellow light and laughed out loud. “Escaping over your backyard fence to avoid your wife’s protest march.
You’re a very funny guy, Ned.”

I didn’t feel very funny. I didn’t even feel like much of aguy.Like many men, I had bought into the theory that acceptance
into the brotherhood of maleness is tied largely to financial and business success. Even if other men are unaware of our difficulties,
we tend to feel shame when things go badly. We sulk. We avoid group settings. We bow out early from conversations.
Refills, anyone?

In Larry I had a comrade in struggle—a somewhat warped comrade, true, but a sojourner just the same. He was living off credit
cards and hope. I was living off an IRA and fear. Fear that if I didn’t sell his story, I would soon become a sulking, shamed,
business failure.

Two stoplights from the course, I posed the question. “Tell the truth, Larry. Do you fear failure?”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“All the time. I just hide it by being… well, you know how I am.”

I nodded. Then he nodded back and said, “What about you?”

“I’ve got a son in college, a crazy wife, a mortgage, and no other good manuscripts. Of course I fear failure.” That was about
as deep as Larry and I had ever talked. And in an effort to not mess it up, I changed the subject. “You haven’t updated me
on the girl, the one from the swing dance.”

He floored it as the light turned green. “And you haven’t updated me on your efforts to make me financially fulfilled.”

“First you update me on the girl.”

He turned into the course’s parking lot and parked facing the driving range. Before he even cut the engine a golf ball hit
the pavement three feet from his door and bounced into the side of a Chevy.
Clunk

Larry backed up and parked on the far side. “The girl is like that golf ball, Ned. She’s off course and not understanding
her true direction.”

That was way too philosophical for Larry. Something was up. “You okay?”

He pulled his keys from the ignition and stuffed them into his pocket. “I didn’t think Miranda was like most women…. But she
hasn’t even returned the e-mail I sent yesterday. Probably because I couldn’t swing dance.” His mood had taken a swift turn
downward.

This prompted an important question. “Larry, that prompts a question. Are you keeping her as the love interest in your story?”

“Of course.”

“But still no appearance by Dillen?”

Larry frowned and reached for his door handle. “I told you, Labradors don’t like being in stories.”

“Have you even called Miranda again?”

“Nah, but I will.” He opened his door and took a whiff of hot Georgia summer. “Let’s play golf, pahdner.”

Our standing rule was to not talk about business on the course—and on this day we did not. For over four hours we managed
to honor our rule. We observed nature, told corny jokes, and searched the woods for each other’s golf ball. At least until
the last hole.

When we arrived at the par-five eighteenth hole, I admitted to him that decision-makers in L.A. were dragging their collective
feet, and thus I did not have an update, and would not have an update until I flew out to L.A. for face-to-face discussions.

Larry became strangely quiet. He walked to the back of the cart and pulled a club from his bag. “Ned, another agent called
me. Said he could have a deal done by tomorrow evening.”

My heart sank. My knees shook. I dropped my golf ball on the cart path and watched it bounce three times and roll under a
bush.

Larry gripped his club and took a practice swing, nonchalant as always.

I retrieved my ball and turned to face him from the far side of the cart. “But we had a deal.”

“It was only a handshake.” He let his words linger in the humidity. Then he broke into a wide grin and teed his ball. “Just
kidding, pahdner,” he said. “But another agent did call.”

He smashed his ball deep down the fairway and picked up his tee.

I tried to act like he hadn’t scared me. But I couldn’t get my ball to balance on the tee. All day I’d been relaxed, and now
this. I knew that in some L.A. circles, an acquiring producer might tip off an agent buddy in order to return a favor—or to
simply gyp a no-name agent like me out of a commission.

My hand trembled as I teed my ball and watched it fall to the ground.

“Need some help, Ned?” Larry was leaning against the cart with his feet crossed and his club propped against his hip, mimicking
the pose of a tour pro.

“You got me good.”

“I told the other agent that I was loyal to you.”

I stood over the ball and managed a weak practice swing. “Appreciate that. . . pahdner.”

I swung wildly. My ball hit the cart path for a fourth time and bounced into a pond.

Larry was quick with the platitude. “Take a mulligan, Ned. After what you’ve been through today, you deserve a second chance.”

After finishing the last hole—Larry won the match by seven strokes—I felt the need to play mediator, to explain the protest
march to Larry. I truly suspected he did not grasp the reasoning behind it. I drove our cart around the practice putting green,
stopped at the rear of his Bronco, and settled on a proper way to begin. “Larry, there’s content in your story that turns
normal churchgoers into raging protestors.”

Larry was adding up his score and paying me only minimal attention. “I understand that.” He wrote a figure on the scorecard.
“Hey, did you know you shot a 92 today?”

“Sure, but do you understand
why
those women are enraged?”

“Not enough romance in the story? You know how women love lots of romance….”

For ten minutes I sat in the golf cart with Larry and explained to him that some in the church community might think portions
of his work a wee bit irreverent. He repeated that he understood. Thing is, I didn’t think he understood at all. To Larry,
the words
I understand
were much the same as my barber muttering “You don’t say,” as he trimmed my hair. They were meant to be dismissive, to avoid
further conversation.

He handed me the scorecard, and I tucked it into my shirt pocket and considered my situation—a twenty-handicap golfer with
a thirty-handicap job. The ramifications of this were too much to process, so I shifted back into mediator mode, hoping to
glean some
insight from Larry that would help me ease tensions with Angie when I arrived home. If she even
came
home; she’d stayed at her mother’s the previous night.

“Ya know, Larry, I’ve been wondering what sparked your imagination.”

“For the Abaco scene?” he asked, changing out his golf shoes for his loafers.

“No, the whole thing.” I pulled my golf bag from the cart and shoved it inside the Bronco’s hatch. “You say you never go to
church or even have religious friends, and yet you’ve obviously been observing the evangelical world. At least the commercial
aspects of it.”

Larry brushed grass from his golf shoes and tossed them inside his vehicle. He seemed hesitant to answer. Finally he set his
bag next to mine and shut the hatch. “You don’t wanna know.”

Thing is, I
did
want to know. Lots of agents don’t ask, but I was truly curious. “You’re not going to tell me?”

“Might hurt our relationship.”

What could possibly do that?

A cart boy came up and drove away with the cart. I climbed into the passenger side of Larry’s Bronco and acted as casual as
possible. “Surely you can tell me what sparked your creation.”

He sat behind the wheel and, as if this was going to be painful for him, spoke without looking at me. “The spooky pursuit
aspects I got from my childhood, but the legalistic parts came just last year, Ned, from observing your wife. How she interacts
with you… and with the world.”

“Angie?” I asked, stunned at his directness.

“Today’s protest thing didn’t even surprise me. It was just—” and here he pointed to the eighteenth hole—“par for the course.”

I sat bewildered, wanting to nod my agreement.

But I could not. Angie was, after all, my wife.

We hardly spoke on the drive back. I felt pulled in opposite directions. No, in three directions. Call it an obtuse triangle
of pullerization. Larry tugging me toward relativism; Angie tugging me toward legalism; and then there was money—
success!
—tugging me
toward manhoodism. Maybe I needed a fourth direction, but that was too much to consider. My brain was scrambled.

Larry turned onto Nottingham Street. I almost got out and snuck in through the backyard again but reconsidered and asked him
to pull around the corner. We both leaned into the windshield to peek down my street. No one in sight.

Larry drove slowly to the front of my house.

The protestors were gone, as was Angie’s Subaru. I unloaded
my
golf bag and golf shoes from the back and lugged them around to Larry’s window. “Looks safe here for now. I’ll call ya from
L.A.”

He pulled a golf tee from behind his ear and pointed it at me. “I’m countin’ on you, Ned.”

“Just make sure you call the girl again. Write her a love note. You’re a writer…. Play to your strengths.”

His eyes widened and he drove away smiling. It was only then that I noticed the note taped to my front door.

Ned,

All I cavi figure is that you snuck. out the back door, probably to meet Larry for golf. Just know that any birdies yon two
made will not make up for the double bogeys in his story. I’ll be home, late, after my womevis group finishes oar study
on submission,. You’ll probably be hungry, so I put some barbeque and potato salad in the fridge.