Page 151 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Operation Belshazzar

theory so outside the mainstream of what was already a Wild West of
cranks and fanatics that he would be bound to get attention. But he
languished, ignored or derided—a prime candidate for the patron
saint of psychoceramics, Al Magnus.
His new prophecy followed the apotelesmatic principle of multiple
fulfillments. He discarded the preterits’ notion that there would be no
Second Coming; again, not a unique interpretation, but it was only
the first of a series of cases. Just as it had taken two invasions of Iraq
by the United States to bring down Saddam Hussein and lay waste to
the countryside and its population, and two world wars to convince
the Huns to beat their V-2 rockets into Volkswagens, so it would
require two events to destroy the new Babylon: America itself. The
first—the Civil War—had already taken place. And now the flaming
finger figuratively emblazoned its warning everywhere for those with
true vision to see. This was a tricky position to stake out in the
climate of fear and loathing abroad in the country; but, by the same
token, it might have more traction and resonance than in calmer
times. Unfortunately Cyrus Lee could not get out the news—he was
broke and discredited. Help was on the way, however, although he
didn’t know it: his phone had been disconnected and he didn’t seem
like the type to open his door to anyone smelling like a bill collector.
I had applied a different perfume and was ready for anything short of
an armed response. Nothing in his background indicated gun
ownership or training in hand-to-hand combat with bladed weapons,
an irrelevance I soon confronted.
What used to be called a trailer park abutted an automobile
junkyard outside a city formerly distinguishable from its outlying
slum suburbs and decaying commercial zones. Lee’s once-mobile
home perched on concrete blocks, a beacon of belief at least to
himself. I brought my own faith to the encounter: that I would
habituate to the ambient odors rapidly, that Cyrus Lee would talk to
me, and that I would leave the place under my own power.
I ascended two rickety steps to the door and knocked—not
insistently, not forcefully, but just right, as Goldilocks might have
done. It was early Sunday afternoon, when the pious could be
expected to radiate peace and beneficence to all mankind. My smile, I
hoped, was artificial enough to look sincere in Lee’s world of Good
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