"Hugh," said Dennis, from the couch, "Where you headed?" He removed his arm from about Rose's shoulders. "I gotta talk to you."

"And there's something I want to talk to you about," said Hugh. "So take Scobie and me to the local grocery, we're shopping for Twinkie." As Dennis kissed Rose, Hugh focused on the television. "What's this? Oh yeah, the Iran Hostage Crisis, now in its nth week. When are we just going to move into downtown Teheran and settle that damn mess? 'You kill one American, we hang a half-dozen ayatollas.'"

"Not gonna happen," said Charles. "Carter goin' for the Diplomatic Solution."

"Just move into downtown Teheran?" said Scobie. "Just start another Viet Nam in the Middle East? We're still licking our wounds from one war, we're not about to start another. Like Charles says, Not gonna happen."

"Okay, okay," said Hugh. "The voice of reason. I still say we send in John Wayne and the Green Berets."

"John Wayne's dead," said Charles.

"Oh, right again," said Hugh. "And his girfriend's writing her memoirs for Reader's Digest. Well so much for that plan."

"How far you gonna back down that hole, crawdad?" said Dennis as he stood up.

"All the way to the bottom," said Hugh. "I am simply repeating what I hear over breakfast at Lucas B & B. The foreign policy experts there favor American diplomacy via F-14s and Huey helicopters."

"What would that solve?" said Rose. "What have guns ever solved?"

"Guns decided we would be an independent nation rather than a British colony," said Hugh. "Guns decided we would not own slaves in this country. Guns decided Hitler would not be king of the world. What's your opinion on the Iran situation, Dennis? Everybody has one."

"I think it's in God's hands," said Dennis.

"Amen," said Rose.

"Well then that settles it," said Hugh.

...

The trio of Dennis, Hugh, and Scobie headed for Dennis' car.

"You first, Dennis," said Hugh. "What's on your mind - besides Rose?"

"What happened," said Dennis. "We went to church and something happened and I want you to tell me if it was crazy."

"Oh well hell yes," said Hugh. "I'm such an authority on sanity. No, I think we'd better submit all questions of sanity to Scobie." He opened the door for Scobie to get into the back seat of the GTO. "You got a Master's degree in psychology, right, Scobie?"

Scobie laughed and shook his head. "Bachelor's."

"Either or both of you, then." Dennis turned the ignition and gunned the engine to life. "I had an experience, okay? Rose invited me to Wednesday night church, and I said Sure, I got nothing against church. So we went, and they're... what my Mom called Holy Rollers." He pulled away from the curb.

"Pentecostals," said Hugh. "How were you raised?"

"Mom was Methodist, Dad wasn't anything. Mom went to church Sunday morning, Dad ran his trot lines."

"And you?"

"I did both. I liked going out in the boat better. - Where is this grocery store?"

"Go left here," said Scobie. "Then down to Rochelle and take a right. You'll see it on the left - an Albertson's."

"Got it," said Dennis. "But as I was saying, Rose and I went to her church. And for a while it was singing and praying - pretty normal, you know. And then it turned into one altar call after another. You were supposed to go forward and get healed. Then it was exorcism - the preacher was yelling the devil out of people - I'm not kidding - grab hold of their head and yell. Then you were supposed to come forward for a blessing. By that time people were standing, sitting, wandering around with their arms in the air. Then some woman spoke to me in a foriegn language, and Rose said, 'She's speaking in tongues.' So I decided, the heck with this, I'm going out for a smoke. So I head for the aisle, and somebody calls my name, 'Dennis.' I look around, nobody's looking at me - must have been my imagination - except this one lady leans forward and says, 'It's all right honey, it's the Lord.'

"The next thing I know - It was like there was someone behind me and someone in front of me, marching me up to the altar - but there was nobody there, you know, that you could see. Next thing, I'm dedicating my life to Jesus Christ - like it was something I'd been meaning to do for a long time and had been putting off, you know, like... like getting the annual parts inventory completed, some kind of business that had to be brought up to date, you know. And all this time there's a part of me somewhere in the background that's saying, What is this, anyway?"

"So you were of two minds about it," said Hugh.

"Not really. No, I was making a choice; I was finishing something that started when I was baptized. Look, for me getting baptized was just a ceremony. You were just saying 'I take it on faith that these statements are true.' That's the way our minister explained it, anyway. Then they put water on your head and pray for you, and you're done - nothing changes. You don't do anything. Last night, that was me doing something. Taking care of unfinished business."

"At the same time..." said Hugh.

"At the same time," Dennis said, bringing the car to a halt in front of the grocery. "Scobie, why don't you get the - whatever it is you're supposed to get."

"Grape juice," said Scobie as Hugh opened the door for him. "You know that grape juice they've got now that's bottled like wine - that stuff."

"We'll be waiting for you here," said Dennis, then continued. "At the same time, it was like somebody at the front desk had ordered up Dennis - 'You got Dennis back there?' 'Sure, we'll bring him up for you.' And then there was this invisible beam through my heart, with one guy on the front end and one on the back end - so here comes Dennis, out of inventory. So there was part of me that was kind of curious as to what was going on, you know."

"Your rational mind, so to speak."

"Not that exactly. The part of me that's not used to being moved around by... angels or supernatural mafia or whatever. Part of me is saying 'this has never happened before, this is interesting, I wonder what this is about.'"

"Oh, yeah, uninvolved and mildly curious. I know that one. Like when you're losing your temper and yelling - and then part of you steps back, kind of amused, and says, 'I wonder, what is this guy so upset about?'"

"Yeah, a little like that."

"Another time I felt that way, I was climbing a cliff and I had just finished scooching my way up about forty feet between basalt columns and had come to a little ledge where I could rest. I was eighteen, I could do anything of course. Climb a mountain? Sure! I saw a kid do that in a movie. So there I was, stuck up there, and I was so tired I was shaking. Between me and the top there's about ten feet of bare rock face, like some bald guy's forehead, and I don't know if I can make it. So I look down, mildy curious about how much skin would be peeled off, how many bones would be broken - like it's an interesting problem in somebody else's life. Like that, right?"

"Right, sort of. So did you make it to the top?"

"Yes. Finally, I stood up on that little ledge, and flattened myself out against the rock, and I don't remember how I climbed the rest of the way exactly. It was like this million-year-old lizard took over. The million-year-old lizard had been shinnying up bare rock forever, and I went on blind automatic until I was looking into dirt and grass. - Hey Scobie, you got it. All right." Hugh let Scobie in, then continued.

"Man, it felt good to stand up! You just stand up there enjoying all the scenery spread out below and enjoying the fact that gravity's your friend again. But, you know the funniest thing about my mountain-climbing story is that the first thing I saw when I got to the top, was tire tracks. There was a road to the top. If I had just walked three hundred yards along the base of the cliff, I could have made it a leisurely stroll."

"We're still talking about mountain-top experiences, then," said Scobie, as Dennis started the car.

"We've branched off into experiences where you feel that you're a detached observer of your own life," said Hugh.

"Self considered as object of consciousness," said Scobie. "That really kicks in between the ages of eight and and puberty. Normal Human Development - Mental and Emotional Development, Psych. 3210. Would you believe that half a century after Freud the cutting edge question in psychology has finally become, 'What is normal human thought and behavior?' At any rate, sooner or later during pre-adolescence kids start asking the big questions."

"Like, 'What am I here for?'" said Dennis.

"Right. And for some people, 'What is this "I" I keep talking about?' You've done that, right, Hugh?"

"Oh, yeah, and you get sucked into an infinite regress - observing yourself observing yourself observing yourself - It's a little like falling, you wake up quick. But this is all academic. Have you ever had something happen to you like Dennis was talking about?"

"It would be a dull life indeed that had no ghost stories in it," said Scobie. "Dennis' experience reminded me of once when I did acid, I got into a feeling of complete newness and innocence. All the things I thought had stained or corroded my life, things that seemed to have done moral harm, had never really touched me. At the core I was new as a fresh-minted coin, I was inviolable, there was no need for regret."

"But I wasn't on an acid trip," said Dennis, putting the car in gear and pulling away from the grocery.

"You didn't drop some speed before going?" said Hugh.

"No, Rose asked me not to do speed while I'm with her. She said she'd rather have honest depressed than phony cheerful. Said it made her jittery. I was straight last night."

"Well, stoned or straight," said Hugh, "the point is, you asked if we thought what happened to you was crazy - and we don't. Like Scobie said, everybody's got a ghost story. You know how, when the party winds down, and all the tourists have left, and the hostess breaks out the leftover fried chicken for the leftover guests - what do people wind up discussing around the midnight kitchen table? Wierd things that have happened to them, experiences of the supernatural."

"Right," said Scobie, "those experiences that affect us most deeply. And we discover that we are not alone, that others, too have looked up into a night-time sky and been awed by the majesty of the stars and the depth of space."

"And felt insignificant," said Dennis.

"I felt like Plato was right, the stars are distant angels, the souls of the just," said Hugh.

"You're an oddball," said Scobie. "Most people feel how small they are in comparison to the vastness of space - and the vastness of the stars, too - all those huge, distant suns."

"But they look like they're alive," said Hugh.

"That's because of the atmosphere," said Dennis. "Dirt in the air, heat evaporating - that stuff."

"No," said Hugh. "I mean something else. I mean light, the kind of light you can feel that it's somehow alive."

"Some people feel like there's something out there," said Scobie, "that they're not alone or less alone in some way. Most, myself included, feel like Dennis said, insignificant. But I only got half of Dennis' story. You dedicated your life to Jesus - What was that all about?"

Dennis took a deep breath. "Like I said, it was all very businesslike. The minister asked if I knew myself to be a sinner in need of repentance, and I said yes. Did I repent, yes. Did I set that way of life behind me now, yes. Did I acknowledge Jesus Christ as my only Lord and Savior, yes. Then he put his hands on my head and started speaking in tongues, and some people were singing 'Faith of Our Fathers' just like in the church I grew up in - only, when I turned around, I couldn't see who it was. A lot of people were smiling at me, but nobody was singing. But I could still hear singing. So I went back to Rose and said, 'I've got to get out of here, I've got to talk to you.'"

"So what did Rose say?" Hugh asked.

"For her it was all normal, it was what was supposed to happen - you go to church, you meet Jesus. Angels are all around us all the time. She thought it was kind of funny I was making such a big deal out of it." They pulled up in front of Twinkie's house and Dennis continued. "So I asked her, you know: 'What does all this mean? Does this mean we can't have sex any more?' She said not as far as she was concerned it didn't mean that, but that was between me and the Lord. - Either of you guys prayed recently? All my experience has been that it's pretty much a one-sided conversation."

"Mm, oh yes," said Hugh. "It's mighty quiet out there. And the quieter you get, the quieter it gets - You notice that? - until you realize you're hungry, or there's a book you'd rather be reading, or what a better place you could make the world if you had a million bucks."

"The Monkey Mind," said Scobie. "That's what Buddhists call it. One of the major aims of Zen - if Zen can be said to have aims - is simply to do what you are doing, no more and no less. For the mindful there is no mindless task. And you enter that silence you were talking about, and yeah sure enough, here comes the monkey mind offering you alternatives. My favorite is 'How am I doing? Am I doing this Zen stuff right?"

Dennis opened the car door. "Well, that's me," he said. "What about you Hugh? Didn't you say you had something on your mind, too?"

"Yeah, but no big deal compared to your story."

"Theresa, right? You think that's going to work?"

"I don't know. Maybe... She's so in-tense."

"Yeah, she's wrapped pretty tight; you knew that going in."

"Well yeah, but I still feel like I grabbed what I thought was the 110-volt wire, and got the 220."

"Is it something you can talk to her about? You know, like 'Hey, relax, Honey, the world isn't going to explode.'"

"No, it would be more like, 'Could you please be less spontaneous?'" Hugh opened the door, and the men got out of the car. The three men began walking toward the house and Hugh continued. "Okay, it would really be like this - 'Could you please make talking to you less like decanting nitrolycerine?' It's a matter of who she is, not what she does."

"Then you're just going to have to effing cope with it if you want to date her, right? Has it occurred to you that you're both thin-skinned, overly-complicated people? It's not just her, right? A lot of it has to do with the way you react to her."

"Yeah, okay. I knew you would give me something to think about. How about you Scobie? You got any input?"

"Yes. I'm looking forward to lifting a glass of port to your and Theresa's future success as a thin-skinned, overly-complicated couple."

"Scobie," said Hugh, "You are totally Other." They entered the house laughing.

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