His error, when deconstructed, amounted to this: Sherri did not merely plan to get sick again; she like Gloria planned to take as many people with her as possible -- in direct proportion to their love toward her. Fat loved her and, worse, felt gratitude toward her. Out of this clay, Sherri could throw a pot with the warped kickwheel she used as a brain that would smash what Leon Stone had done, smash what Stephanie had done, smash what God had done. Sherri had more power in her weakened body than all these other entities combined, including the living God.
Fat had decided to bind himself to the Antichrist. And out of the highest possible motives: out of love, gratitude and the desire to help her.
Exactly what the powers of hell feed on: the best instincts in man.
Sherri Solvig, being poor, lived in a tiny rundown room with no kitchen; she had to wash her dishes in the bathroom sink. The ceiling showed a vast water stain, from a toilet upstairs which had overflowed. Having visited her there a couple of times Fat knew the place and considered it depressing. He had the impression that if Sherri moved out and into a nice apartment, a modern one, and with a kitchen, her spirits would pick up.
Needless to say, the realization had never penetrated to Fat's mind that Sherri sought out this kind of abode. Her dingy surroundings came as a result of her affliction, not as a cause; she could recreate these conditions wherever she went -- which Fat eventually discovered.
At this point in time, however, Fat had geared up his mental and physical assembly line to turn out an endless series of good acts toward the person who, before all other persons, had visited him in the cardiac intensive care ward and later at North Ward. Sherri had official documents declaring her a Christian. Twice a week she took communion and one day she would enter a religious order. Also, she called her priest by his first name. You cannot get any closer to piety than that.
A couple of times Fat had told Sherri about his encounter with God. This hadn't impressed her, since Sherri Solvig believed that one encounters God only through channels. She herself had access to these channels, which is to say her priest Larry.
Once Fat had read to Sherri from the Britannica about the "secrecy theme" in Mark and Matthew, the idea that Christ veiled his teachings in parable form so that the multitude -- that is, the many outsiders -- would not understand him and so would not be saved. Christ, according to this view or theme, intended salvation only for his little flock. The Britannica discussed this up front.
"That's bullshit," Sherri said.
Fat said, "You mean this Britannica is wrong or the Bible is wrong? The Britannica is just -- "
"The Bible doesn't say that," Sherri said, who read the Bible all the time, or at least had a copy of it always with her.
It took Fat hours to find the citation in Luke; finally he had it, to set before Sherri:
"His disciples asked him what this parable might mean, and he said, 'The mysteries of the kingdom of God are revealed to you; for the rest there are only parables, so that they might see but not perceive, listen but not understand.'" (Luke 8:9/10).
"I'll ask Larry if that's one of the corrupt parts of the Bible," Sherri said.
Pissed off, Fat said irritably, "Sherri, why don't you cut out all the sections of the Bible you agree with and paste them together? And not have to deal with the rest."
"Don't be snippy," Sherri said, who was hanging up clothes in her tiny closet.
Nonetheless, Fat imagined that basically he and Sherri shared a commond [sic] bond. They both agreed that God existed; Christ had died to save man; people who didn't believe this didn't know what was going on. He had confided to her that he had seen God, news which Sherri received placidly (at that moment she had been ironing).
"It's called a theophany," Fat said. "Or an epiphany."
"An epiphany," Sherri said, pacing her voice to the rate of her slow ironing, "is a feast celebrated on January sixth, marking the baptism of Christ. I always go. Why don't you go? It's a lovely service. You know, I heard this joke -- " She droned on. Hearing this, Fat was mystified. He decided to change the subject; now Sherri had switched to an account of an instance when Larry -- who was Father Minter to Fat -- had poured the sacramental wine down the front of a kneeling female communicant's low-cut dress.
"Do you think John the Baptist was an Essene?" he asked Sherri.
Never at any time did Sherri Solvig admit she didn't know the answer to a theological question; the closest she came surfaced in the form of responding, "I'll ask Larry." To Fat she now said calmly, "John the Baptist was Elijah who returns before Christ comes. They asked Christ about that and he said John the Baptist was Elijah who had been promised."
"But was he an Essene."
Pausing momentarily in her ironing, Sherri said, "Didn't the Essenes live in the Dead Sea?"
"Well, at the Qumran Wadi."
"Didn't your friend Bishop Pike die in the Dead Sea?" Fat had known Jim Pike, a fact he always proudly narrated to people given a pretext. "Yes," he said. "Jim and his wife had driven out onto the Dead Sea Desert in a Ford Cortina. They had two bottles of Coca-Cola with them; that's all."
"You told me," Sherri said, resuming her ironing.
"What I could never figure out," Fat said, "is why they didn't drink the water in the car radiator. That's what you do when your car breaks down in the desert and you're stranded." For years Fat had brooded about Jim Pike's death. He imagined that it was somehow tied in with the murders of the Kennedys and Dr. King, but he had no evidence whatsoever for it.
"Maybe they had anti-freeeze in their radiator," Sherri said.
"In the Dead Sea Desert?"
Sherri said, "My car has been giving me trouble. The man at the Exxon station on Seventeenth says that the motor mounts are loose. Is that serious?"
Not wanting to talk about Sherri's beat-up old car but wanting instead to rattle on about Jim Pike, Fat said, "I don't know." He tried to think how to get the topic back to his friend's perplexing death but could not.
"That damn car," Sherri said.
"You didn't pay anything for it; that guy gave it to you."
"'Didn't pay anything'? He made me feel like he owned me for giving me that damn car."
"Remind me never to give you a car," Fat said.
All the clues lay before him that day. If you did something for Sherri she felt she should feel gratitude -- which she did not -- and this she interpreted as a burden, a despised obligation. However, Fat had a ready rationalization for this, which he had already begun to employ. He did not do things for Sherri to get anything back; ergo, he did not expect gratitude. Ergo, if he did not get it that was okay.
What he failed to notice that not only was there no gratitude (which he could psychologically handle) but downright malice showed itself instead. Fat had noted this but had written it off as nothing more than irritability, a form of impatience. He could not believe that someone would return malice for assistance. Therefore he discounted the testimony of his senses.
Once, when I lectured at the University of California at Fullerton, a student asked me for a short, simple definition of reality. I thought it over and answered, "Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away."