Simon nodded again.
The trooper looked at Henry, and there was no triumph in the look; a kind of helplessness. “How can you know if he’s sane, a man like that?”
George Loomis was leaning against the doorpost. He said heartily, “What the hell! Of course he’s sane. Lots of people see the devil. Happens all the time. You ever see the Watkins Man? I do. I believe in him. The Watkins Man is good.”
“Don’t clown, George,” Henry said.
George came over to the counter, the brace on his boot clumping on the linoleum, the empty sleeve dangling. To Simon Bale he might have been, even then, the devil himself: triangle-faced, maimed, a cynic, waspish in his irony; but Simon was grinning apologetically, his mouth trembling, ducking his head away from George Loomis as if afraid George might strike at him.
George said, “What’s going on around here, Ellie?”
Ellie said, tight-lipped, “They think Simon—” All at once she was in tears, and George looked startled. Henry hurried around to her, furious, and furious at Simon Bale and himself as well. “It’s all right,” he said. “Here now, after all—”
The two troopers sat relaxed and patient, watching, looking vaguely interfered-with but mainly just patient.
“Look, you guys leave Henry alone,” George said.
Henry said, “They’re just doing their job.” He felt furious at the troopers now, too. “I’m sorry I lost my temper,” he said. He went on awkwardly patting Callie’s mother’s shoulder. She cried into her apron as well as she could; it was too short to get up to her eyes. A little peeping noise came out as she cried, and she said, “I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry.”
The troopers looked at each other, and at last the younger one shook his head. “Well, thanks for your time,” he said. He looked over at the older one again, and they both stood up. The older one put two dimes on the counter, and then they walked over to the door. The older one said, nodding toward Simon but looking at Henry, “He’ll be here if we need him?”
After a second, Henry nodded.
Simon said all at once, earnestly, “I’m sorry.”
They looked at him as one might look at a sideshow freak — mildly curious, mildly embarrassed. The younger one smiled at Henry and shook his head; then they went out to their car. Henry and George watched them pull away. When they were out of sight, over the crest of the hill to the south, Henry wiped his forehead on his sleeve. Callie’s mother blew her nose on a paper napkin and went over, sniffing, to refill the matchbook box by the cash register. “I don’t know what came over me,” she said.
“Now, just don’t you think about it,” Henry said.
George Loomis slid onto the stool beside Simon and bent down to look into his eyes. “What does the devil look like, exactly, Simon?” he asked.
“Now that’s enough, George,” Henry said.
8
Henry had not defended Simon Bale in order to win his love or praise; nothing of the kind. But he was shocked to find how little it meant to Simon. When he said, as he was getting George Loomis his coffee, “Don’t you worry, Simon, we won’t let them go after you that way again,” Simon merely waved, his face falling into that idiot’s smile, and said, “Oh, no importance.” His hands were folded and quiet now. Henry said, “No importance if they put you in jail?” “Ah, well,” Simon said. He looked up at the ceiling.
George Loomis said, “If you think it’s God’s will that you’re sitting here, mister, you’re mistaken. God and the devil are out watching the sparrow, and all you got to look to is that man right there.” He pointed at Henry.
Simon studied George exactly as the troopers had looked, a few minutes ago, at Simon.
George ignored him at first. He got out his cigarettes and shook one out on the counter, put the crumpled pack away in his jeans again, and got out his matches. When Simon continued to stare, George turned irritably and said, “Come on off it now, Simon. We’re all friends here. No point you sitting there spreading the crap about God and all his legions.” He lit the cigarette.
“Now I mean it, leave him alone, George,” Henry said.
“Why? Does Simon Bale leave people alone? Simon Bale, I bring you Good News.” He drew on the cigarette and blew a huge cloud of smoke at the ceiling. Simon looked up at it. “Simon—” He leaned toward him. “There is no God. You got that? Absolute truth, and people that say there’s a God only do it for one of two reasons — because they’re fools or because they’re vicious. Clap your hands twice if you understand.”
Callie’s mother was looking outraged again: It was as if she’d explode any minute. It might have seemed funny to Henry another time, but right now he was sorry for her; she was in the right. He said, “George, shut up. Have a little consideration.”
“Why?” He looked up, and he saw Henry nod toward Callie’s mother, and he looked down again in disgust and swung around toward the counter and scowled at his coffee. “Hell,” he said, “Ellie knows I’m kidding.”
“God forgive you for your blaspheming,” Simon said softly, as if absentmindedly, watching the smoke go up from George’s cigarette.
Suddenly, after thinking about it first, George Loomis hit the counter with his fist and said, “Shit! If you don’t have to listen to the truth from me, I don’t have to listen to your crackpot drivel. Now shut your goddamn teeth.”
Henry caught his breath.
Callie’s mother said, “He’s kidding, he says. You’re truly a card, George.”
Two men came in behind George and Simon. They were laughing as they came through the door, and they seemed not to notice that anything was wrong as they glanced at the four of them and walked past them to the booth at the end. Ellie went over to them, her lips drawn taut. “Just like summer out,” one of them said. She smiled grimly.
“What I want to know,” George said quietly, “is how come you put up with all this crap from him.” He looked up at Henry, then down again. “I’ll tell you why you do. It’s because you think he’s a moron. If you thought he had the same brains as anybody else you’d try to talk sense into him, but you don’t. Or her,” he said still more softly, jerking his thumb toward Ellie, over by the customers. He dropped almost to a whisper. “She’s as cracked as Simon, and you know it damn well, with all her hymn singing an’ carrying on. And if she’s better than Simon it’s only because she’s worse. He goes around trying to save people in his crackpot way; she believes they’re all damned, and she figures, ‘Ah, screw ’em.’” She came around to the grill and he shut up.
“What’s the matter with you, George,” Henry said. “I never saw you like this. You must’ve been mad already before you got here. There’s nothing here could get you as worked-up as that.”
“The hell,” he said. “Nobody ever says anything because he believes it, is that it? If I come out against burning Jews it’s because I’ve got gallstones.”
“Simon’s no Nazi,” Henry said.
George thought about it, his shoulders hunched, head slung forward. He said, not turning toward Simon, “You know what the Jews say about Jesus, Simon? They say he was a fraud. There’s a word for him, they say. Megalomaniac. He may have said lots of good things, I don’t know, but when a plain ordinary human being thinks he’s God, the fact is he’s a nut. That’s what the Jews say. Or do you think maybe he was just pretending — for the good of mankind, because philosophy goes over better if you salt it with superstition?”
Simon said nothing, watching the smoke.
“You say he was a human being, George,” Henry said.
“Sure. And Simon would burn me too. But were you there? Do you really know?” He remembered his coffee and drank it down at once, hot as it was.