Heathern by Jack Womack Read Free Book Online

told me; the roof blew up if anything heavier
than a pigeon landed upon it, destroying as well the floor
immediately below, the observation deck. "Mister
Macaffrey, then. What I've heard about you makes me think
your talents might be going to seed. I'd like to offer you a
bigger field to sow."
    Macaffrey's stare seemed not so withering as it had the
day before; I wondered if his mesmerism's effect could be
likened to that of a drug to which one became addicted
without ever feeling the high. Susie slipped on sunglasses,
looking as a gorgon lifting her own mirrors against those
who came to harm her.
    "Maybe you've heard of Dryco," said Thatcher. "We keep
a low profile, but we're into more things than you could
shake a stick at. What we lack is consistency. Got lots of
material and no grand design. No theory."
    "You need a moral outline," said Macaffrey. "How could
a teacher teach that?"
    "For a teacher your educational record is refreshingly free
of degree," said Bernard, reading his printout. "We have no
evidence that you were even graduated from high school.
How did you come into your present position?"
    "Fell into it," he said. "Neighborhood folks saw me as a
natural, I suppose. I don't think the Board of Regents minds
my taking my students off their hands."
    "Yesterday you said your father was a minister," said
Susie. As she sat there, her eyes unreadable behind those
shades, she seemed only to lack a cup filled with pencils.
"Of what breed? Something respectable? Fundamentalist?
Racialist? Any interest in politics? How much experience
has your family had in this area?"

    "Were the standard old ladies fleeced?" asked Bernard.
"Did he molest innocent minds? Could he convince his
flock that hell was worse than what they had?"
    Macaffrey answered, his face totemic, showing nothing,
holding all. "My father was an Episcopal priest. He found
good in unlikely places. I think he was happy with his life.
In the fall he blessed the foxhounds before the hunts
began."
    Bernard winked. "Who blessed the fox?"
    "Is this a genealogical society?" Macaffrey asked. "I don't
understand what my family has to do with this-"
    "Background checks. Precautions," said Thatcher.
"Looking for the man behind the mask. It's easy to lose the
human element in all this if you're not careful."
    "Heaven forbid," said Bernard. "Much of a churchgoer
yourself, Lester? Not much point these days, is there?"
    "I'm no joiner."
    "In our service economy," said Bernard, "who do you
serve? God?"
    "No less than anyone."
    Bernard loved a challenge-to a point-and responded
at full tilt. "I wish my teachers had been so creative. Such
invention you have. Way above the norm, I assure you. It's
tricky, you know, to describe a creative act without tossing
the Lord in somewhere, I suppose, but I find such vagueness unholy. I'm told these concepts of yours came to you.
How? In dreams? A bottle? Do you file through some
heavenly fax? Do you consider your truth to be true?"
    "I've said it long enough that I should." Bernard's net
was ready but the butterfly wouldn't settle. More familiar
with Thatcher's logic, Bernard reconsidered, and readied
the killing jar.
    "Good man in procurement, we hear," he said. "What's
involved in that? You look up in the sky until you see what's
falling? Some geyser of bounty shoots up between your
feet? Where do you come by your gifts?"

    "Everybody has connections," said Macaffrey. "No mystery in that."
    "Tricks are fine for television but we have no cameras
here." Thatcher once told me that there were twelve in the
room. "Some here in our audience gave boffo reviews for
your act's finale. Can you raise the dead?"
    "To be what?" Bernard pursed his lips and looked down
at his printout.
    "Maybe you're not taking this in the right way," said
Thatcher, leaving it purposefully unclear as to whom he
spoke. "Mister Macaffrey. If Gus was to throw you through
that window, would you fall?"
    "Under the