And through it all, Clay stood with head lowered as though staring into and beyond the bag of weaponry at his feet, thumb and forefinger still habitually rubbing away at his brow, until the dark strands of his eyebrows were teased up into kinked horns.
A gasp sounded from somewhere behind Amanda’s right shoulder. Shortly after, the muffled, wet hitching that told her Barbara was choking back sobs. Amanda felt the tensing of Gibs’s frame at her elbow, and when she looked into his eyes, she saw a storm of murder every bit as black as the insensate menace that hid beyond the irises of Jake’s under sufficient goad. She frowned, not trusting in her ability to conceal a shake of the head, but he made no response. She could not tell if her message had registered.
It was perhaps twenty minutes after the first broken plate that the men responsible for the searches began returning to the gathering. They came on slowly from oblique angles, looking off into the middle distance as they arrived, and Amanda saw how more than one of them appeared nauseous. One of the youngest dabbed at his eyes and she despised him for it.
“That’s it, then?” Clay intoned.
Houdini coughed and said, “Yeah…”
Clay nodded and finally lowered his hand. He toed the edge of the duffel bag with a boot, sniffed loudly, and spat over a shoulder.
“I suppose, as you’re a ‘so-called’ religious people, I’ll frame my fucking rejoinder in kind…”
He looked up to meet their eyes, taking his time switching from person to person, and Amanda practically smelled the exhaustion on him. The revelation made her wary for reasons she could not define, and a fraction of her anger became self-directed; anger for her failure to comprehend the inner workings of her own instincts.
Clay Barton said: “I guess I’ll ask if it seems, to anyone here assembled, a fucking tragedy—if not a simple oversight, at the very least—that among the Cardinal Sins the condition of outright fucking stupidity has not been enumerated? Pride, avarice… lust and such? What are the other ones, Pap? My memory fails. Well, I guess it doesn’t fucking matter—sloth; sloth is surely on that list, huh? A fine assortment of conditions, gathered together under the uncomplicated fucking principle that the pursuit of their expression shall lead to a further assortment of… immoralities.
“And that… That is a key… fucking… point that I want to focus in on now; the birthing of greater transgression down the line. I recall the first time I learned these concepts—perhaps before some of you were born… and then, I see, probably after some of you as well, huh, Martha? You wanna fill in the blanks on the categories you disremember, don’t you? Of course, you do. Some putz in a penguin suit and a stupid fucking collar says to you, ‘List the bastards out, young man,’ and you set to, finding you’ll come derailed halfway down the fucking list as your yet-unformed mind struggles with the definition of unfamiliar words you still have no fucking inkling of. Says they, ‘Remember Lust, my son, just don’t ask me what the hell it means!’ List ’em out, they command and grasping for unfamiliar words, I land on ‘stupidity.’ ‘Stupidity, Father!’ I say, fucking Dennis-the-Menace voice cracking like a virgin’s knuckles fumbling at a training bra. And do you know what Father says back? Do you?
“He says, ‘Well, my son, thankfully for you, not so.’ Moldy fucking pederast…”
He cleared his throat loudly and began to pace, becoming more animated as he spoke as if the flow of words running almost continuously from his mouth was an energizer of some sort. His delivery had a ramping-up feel to it that Amanda thought she understood. He seemed to be working himself up to something; seemed to be talking up his own courage. A thin sheen of sweat oozed forth from the skin of her upper lip like milk expressed from a mother’s nipple, and she began to lean in Gibs’s direction. The movement was unconscious, such that she was surprised when he grasped her carefully at the elbow.
Clay continued as if he’d not paused. “Not that Father Benedict was actually sampling the Boys’ Choir, huh? Bastard never made a move on me, leastwise, that’s for certain; the Old Man would have gutted him… but… you know. All those news articles come croppin’ up, and such, so much so that even his Holiness finds himself compelled to comment on the matter—this and other things ought to give one pause, don’t you think?
“Just as the overlooking of Stupidity as a cardinal fucking vice ought to give one pause. ‘Leading to further immorality’? Well, that’s fucking stupidity in spades, huh? Weighed against intelligence, or if not intelligence lets us at least call it a kind of fucking astuteness. A certain clarity of thought? Jesus Christ, even the lowest fucking garden slug has the least sense necessary to conduct itself away from a goddamned salt pile!
“Stupidity, I hold; more insidious than any of that other shit. Sloth? A guy wants a bit of rest, and we’re gonna call that a fucking sin? Or even lust?”
Here he looked at Rebecca, pinning her in place with a knowing gaze before saying, “Who here’s gonna say they haven’t entertained the odd thought? Go ahead: step on forward and prove yourself a fucking liar.”
He pointed over their heads at the greenhouses and shouted, “How about greed! Shall we hang our hats on that most necessary drive? Would you people have called it greed, your compulsion to root in the ground and grow more than you might require? Would you now call it fucking greed to resist its appropriation at my hand? I’d hazard not, though I think I’m honest in claiming a few in my own damned crew might apply that label.”
He turned the pointed finger on himself and said, “Or envy, huh? What about envy? I envy you these things the way I envy youth’s ability to preserve a fucking hard-on, and I’ll tell you now, pursuant to the need of my own fucking people to cop a goddamned meal I name my sin a virtue!”
Clay let his hand drop and was silent a moment. He rocked gently on his feet and tilted his head back to look up into the sky. Amanda noted his chest heaving and realized he was panting.
“Stupidity, now. Stupidity helps no one. Not ignorance; I’m not saying that. Ignorance isn’t a sin. It’s a natural condition. Ignorance is just the state of not knowing a thing; coming to know it, a state of ignorance is so remedied. But stupidity. You can’t help fucking stupidity. Try as you might, struggle as you may, the stupid shall remain… fucking… stupid. And standing before you now, I represent it my deepest and dearest fucking hope that it is ignorance with which you people are afflicted and not… fucking… stupidity. Otis, get the FUCK up here!”
The shift from pontification to command was so abrupt that everyone present stood around blinking groggily at each other as if they’d come from a collective dream. Clay stood nearly statuesque before them, weight shifted to his leading foot, and his right finger stabbed downward to indicate a patch of ground two feet at his remove. He waited for them all to piece it together, but when they showed no sign of understanding, his blood began to boil. He said, “Don’t make me repeat myself.”
Otis stood at the center of the gathering surrounded by friends and family; Oscar, Patricia, Samantha… his son Ben stood at his side, and when his father’s name was called he wrapped his arms around his father’s waist protectively and scowled. Otis took the boy’s wrists in hand and began to push, gently at first but applying more pressure when he found his efforts resisted.