The Masters of Atlantis (21 page)

The third project was the new autobiography. After the long midday rest, Babcock took notes for the new version of Mr. Jimmerson's memoirs, for he, the Master, was still not satisfied with
Hoosier Wizard
. There were good things in it, the book had grown on him, as Austin had predicted, and yet at the same time there was something—
wrong
with it. W.W. Polton had gone wrong somewhere. The book had made little impact on the world. There had been only one review and that a very brief one by some ignorant woman on the local newspaper. “Of limited interest,” she had written, and “Pays no compliment to the reader's intelligence.” These phrases had stuck in Mr. Jimmerson's head, as two of the more favorable ones, such as might have been extracted for use in promotion of the book. But it was not the words themselves that stung—how could a woman, and a journalist at that, ever hope to understand Gnomonism? No, the insult lay in the notion that the life and work of Lamar Jimmerson could be dismissed in a single paragraph no longer than a weather bulletin. But the way in was the way out. This new, genuine memoir would put things right. It would be a true autobiography, every word his own, as taken down by the scrupulous Maurice, and this time the world would be forced to take notice. Sydney Hen would have to take notice. A treat for Gnomons and the lay public alike.

Babcock, unlike Polton, did not try to impose his own ideas on the work. He said nothing but he did think the Master dwelled too much on this man Popper, last seen years ago, in flight at Rainbow Falls State Park. It was Austin this and Austin that and please don't sit in Austin's chair. Popper was none too honest, from what Babcock could piece together, a shady customer who had taken to his heels at least twice, just a step or two ahead of the police. Hardly the stuff of high Gnomonism. But the Master would hear nothing against him. He said that Austin was currently moving in some orbit known only to himself, and that he would return to the Temple in his own good Gnomonic time, to take his place in his chair again, to make known the true reasons for his disappearance, together with all the facts about the woman Meg.

Babcock resented Popper, or his shadow, and he was uneasy around Ed, who was all too palpable. He took Ed for a Southerner and tried to stay clear of him. He seldom spoke to him and then only in the imperative mood, master to servant. Babcock knew no Southerners personally but he had seen them in court often enough—Boyce and Broadus and Buford and Othal, and queried the spelling of their names—and Ed's manner and appearance said Dixie to him. He imagined Ed at home with his family, a big one, from old geezers through toddlers. He saw them eating their yams and pralines and playing their fiddles and dancing their jigs and guffawing over coarse jokes and beating one another to death with agricultural implements. Later, through a quiet investigation, using his court connections, Babcock found that Ed was actually from Nebraska, so it wasn't as bad as it might have been, though Nebraska was bad enough.

The confidential records showed that Ed had been discharged from the army for attempting to chloroform women on a government reservation. The police in several cities suspected him of stealing car batteries and of vinyl slitting. His mother kept a costume jewelry stall at a flea market in Omaha and Ed had once tried to run her down with her own car, while she was in the stall. He had destroyed the fixtures in a North Platte bus station after losing some money in a vending machine, and had twice set fire to his hospital ward. The medical report stated that the mahogany tint of Ed's skin was the result of excessive use of coffee and tobacco, and that while working as a hospital orderly he had a recurring daydream in which he was a green-smocked physician with flashing scalpel. It went on to speak of his “rabbit dentition,” to describe him simply as “odd,” and to say that he was “disgusted by people crazier than he is.” Ed's trade was vinyl repair, learned in a government hospital, though it was indicated in the records that Ed had opened many more breaches with his razor blade than he had ever closed with his invisible patches, so called, which leaped to the eye and never held for long anyway.

Babcock went to Mr. Jimmerson with the reports. He said he didn't mind so much an occasional outbreak of upholstery slitting, but were they wise to sleep in the same room with a pyromaniac who had surgical fantasies? Would they not be wiser to ease Ed out of the Temple, to find him a room and a job in Chicago or, better yet, Omaha? It was either that or chain him to a bed in the attic.

But Mr. Jimmerson wouldn't hear of it. “No no,” he said, “Ed's a good boy. You'll see. He gives no trouble and he's a big help to Maceo in opening jar lids and keeping the tramps shooed away. Have you ever looked closely into Ed's eyes, Maurice?”

“No, sir, I have not.”

“The whites have a yellowish cast. But it's more than just his eyes. There are certain other things too that I can't discuss. You don't think Ed came here and took a room by chance, do you?”

“I'm not sure I see what you're getting at, sir.”

“It's an idea of mine. You see, I believe that Ed may be Nandor.”

“Ed? One of the Three Secret Teachers?” He smiled at Mr. Jimmerson with his Latin gigolo smile.

Mr. Jimmerson turned away from it. “I can't say for sure but there are many little things that point that way. There's something in the wind. I can sense it. Something coming to fruition. It may or may not have anything to do with Ed. Time will tell. Besides, we need Ed. Ed's a good soldier. I'm an old soldier myself, you know.”

He grinned. Babcock turned away. So that was that. The Master had spoken.

Nor did Babcock have much success in persuading Dolores that this great change in his life was for the best. He went over it again and again, telling her what he could, trying to make her understand the significance of the move.

Dolores was a little younger than Babcock. She was a druggist who lived over a drugstore in the Edison Park section of Chicago with her elderly father, who was also a druggist. She was devoted to her father and to the red-brick drugstore building, valuable corner property, to which one day she would fall heir. Her father's name and the date of construction were spelled out in little hexagonal tiles in the foyer. Dolores was no longer devoted to pharmacy; it was no longer a calling. The great days of pharmacy were over and she had seen the tail end of them, when one weighed powders on delicate balance scales, pounded crystalline substances in a mortar, bound wounds, gave injections and freely prescribed for the neighborhood. Now it was only a matter of counting out pills and typing up labels for the little bottles. Babcock, whom she kept well supplied with samples of all the latest potions from the drug companies, came a distant third in her affections, but still she liked to have him around. She too was reluctant to marry, lest she jeopardize her clear claim to the drugstore, and put her married brothers back in the running for it, but there would come a time, she thought, when she and Maurice would make their home together over that same drugstore.

She said, “You know what I'd like to do, Maurice? I'd like to go over there and look at their towels. Check out the bathroom and the refrigerator. I'd like to size these people up.”

“Not today, Dolores. Don't start in again.”

“But a tower in Burnette, Indiana. At your age. A professional man like you. I just don't get it, Maurice. I just can't believe there's much to it. You tell me you're sleeping in a chair. You admit you can't get your apricots stewed the way you like them and you say you can't get your brown eggs or your three-bean salad at all. Can't you see you're living in a house of—cards? I almost said a house of pancakes.”

“You keep calling it a tower, as though that made it ridiculous. You know very well that it's a Temple and I don't know why you pretend to misunderstand these things. It's not very becoming to you.”

“But I never see you anymore, honey. Who's cutting your hair, by the way? It's so short and ragged.”

“A man named Maceo. He works at the Temple.”

“Your Temple has a barbershop?”

“No, of course not.”

“Is that part of it? Short hair?”

“Part of what?”

“Your ritual.”

“No, it's just that I'm very busy these days and Maceo is something of an amateur barber. He has these squeeze clippers. He cuts the Master's hair too.”

“It makes your head look so small.”

Babcock had not thought of his haircut in that way but now he wondered. This pinhead effect—would it slow his advancement? Ruffled, but feigning an icy calm, he said, “My hairstyle and my apricots are not of the slightest importance. What is important is my work. All I ask, Dolores, is that you make an honest effort to understand this decision I have made. So far you have made no effort at all.”

Dolores said she would try. But what she continued to see in her head was an old man cackling in a tower.

FAR FROM keeping the tramps shooed away, Ed visited with them every afternoon at the dry fountain. There they napped against the retaining wall and there they perched on the rim of the dry basin, undisturbed, except now and then when the street boys, a shrieking mouse pack, attacked and scattered them with volleys of rocks and chicken bones. Ed went out daily to chat with the tramps and to collect his cigarettes, two or three from each man, filtered or unfiltered, ready-rolls only, no butts or “snipes” accepted, and no menthols. The tramps came to understand that this was the price of resting at the Gnomon fountain, and of Ed's company.

Ed was there on that afternoon in early winter when the blue van pulled up before the Temple. It was a camper van with a roof extension, a white plastic carapace. A constellation of seven white stars was painted on the side of the van and under the stars there were white words.

BIGG DIPPER ENERGY SYSTEMS CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS

This was an event, a vehicle stopping at the Temple, and Ed watched closely. The tramps were burning a sofa in the fountain. Ed was standing there with them in their hand-warming circle. A passenger got down from the van, an older man, and Ed broke for the front steps to intercept him.

“Hold it! You can't go in there!”

“Oh no?”

Two cowboys in a standoff. The older man was wearing a cowboy hat and eyeglasses—not a good combination—and a pale blue suit of western cut with bolo tie. His cowboy boots were made of the pebbly hide of some caramel-colored reptile. He carried a briefcase. On a little finger, deeply embedded in the flesh, there was the plain gold ring of a nightclub singer.

“Who says?”

“No visitors without an appointment. Mr. Babcock's orders.”

“Look at this place. It's the House of Usher. Is the Master in?”

“He's always in.”

“Who are you?”

“Ed. I'm security.”

“Head? Your name is Head?”

“Ed!”

“Well, speak up, Ed. Speak from the chest. Say it with confidence. ‘My name is Ed, sir, and how may I be of service to you?' You'll never get anywhere in life mumbling your name like that. Here's a dollar for you and a little perpetual calendar. That's the last calendar you'll ever need. I want you to help Esteban with my bags and then you can get back to your campfire and keep an eye on my motor home.”

Ed was dazzled by the stranger's boots. He took the dollar and the little plastic calendar and gave way.

It was an older and thicker Austin Popper, never doubtful of his welcome, come home again to the Gnomon Temple. He started for the door, then had a further thought. “No, the bags can wait.” He called out to Esteban, his driver, and told him to collect the tramps at the fountain and take them downtown to Shinn's cafeteria and stand them to a good meal, then to a matinee if there was a picture playing that he and all the tramps could agree on. “But no beer and no cash handouts. You too, Ed. Go on, round up your pals. It's a treat on Esteban and me.”

Popper seemed to be puzzled by the objection. He said, “Hot? Brownsville?”

Mr. Jimmerson said, “Well, as you know, Austin, I've never been there. I've just always thought of Texas as a burning land. With scorpions and those desert frogs that spit blood from their eyes. I associate that country with citrus fruit. Don't they call that part of Texas the Panhandle?”

“No, sir, they call it the Valley, but you're right about the fruit. Everywhere you turn in Brownsville and La Coma there are Ruby Reds for the plucking. The sweetest grapefruit in the world. Did I not mention Mr. Morehead Moaler's grove? As for the heat, well, yes, there are some sultry days in July and August, but nothing we can't handle with loose clothing and plenty of liquids. Mr. Moaler's place is, of course, fully air-conditioned. On those hot days we can estivate.”