And God Was Nowhere To Be Found

It was noon. A blazing hot July 15 in Pigeon Forge.

The annual plague of summer tourists was in full bloom.

The small mountain town in eastern Tennessee was the home of Dollywood, country singer Dolly Parton’s Appalachian-themed park. The city’s other attraction included country music revues like the Smoky Mountain Opry.

I had never been to either.

I was not standing at the doorstep of the Pigeon Forge Antiquarian to right a simple injustice, but a crime of soul and spirit more fundamentally profound than taking the life of another. Some of you would have been more considerate and chosen a traditional course, and I would have never called you “friend.”

It has taken me well over a year to discover the evil within, not a mile from my home.

At sixty-four, and already of compromised health, I could have walked the distance in less than fifteen minutes. I could have driven my car in less time, but I was afraid I wouldn’t have stopped and crashed through the storefront and run over the fetid, thieving owner inside.

Having finally arrived at this unremarkable shop at the far end of Leyster Street, I am worn from the year-long journey, though remained resolute.

* * * * *

The tattered awning of the shop provided an inkling of welcome shade.

I paused, looking around for the stray tourist, before focusing through the glass window that separated me from Holland Williams inside. Close to a decade older, he was standing in shadows behind a small glass counter. He was holding up a small red book to his face with one hand and gripping the back of his head with the other.

When it’s not about location, location, location, it’s almost always about timing, timing and timing.

And this was location and timing tuned to perfection.

I wiped the sweat from my brow and pushed open the door. I was greeted by a gush of cold air and the tinkle of three bells raging overhead.

And, looking about, God was nowhere to be found.

* * * * *

The old man set the book down and half-covered it with a nondescript folder and drew his other hand down from the back of his head.

“I thought I posted the Closed sign,” he said in an unfriendly manner.

A head of snow-white hair fell over his shoulders. He flashed a mouthful of white teeth. For a moment I was taken aback by what looked like an innocent man caught in an unnatural act.

I knew better because I understood what he was trying to do though never imagined I would find him obviously fevered with frustration.

“Beast of a day,” I said. “I was catching some shade outside and saw you, I don’t know, looking strange?”

“Just stretching. Bad back,” he said.

“How to Fold Yourself?” I said, reading the half-exposed cover of the book. “Origami?”

“Nothing so fancy,” he said, closing the book and setting it facedown on the counter.

“Nice shop. Never get down here. Putting on a few more pounds and needed more exercise, at least that’s what my doctor said. I think he’s looking for an excuse to kill me off because I’m such a nuisance.”

“Don’t much care for doctors myself.”

“So how long have you been at it?” I said. “I mean trying to fold yourself?”

Muscles in the old man’s face went knot stiff.

“Don’t mean to pry, but you have to admit that’s a pretty strange title.”

“Been trying to figure it out for a while.”

“In an earlier life I was an engineer, so if you want, maybe I can help,” I said and slowly examined the undersized, wafer-thin volume. “Anything to stay out of the heat.”

“I keep the air conditioning on full blast. I like it cold.”

Evil always takes to the cold. Everybody knows that.

There were a few pages of amazing anatomical hand drawings you might see in an early medical text or in Gray’s Anatomy. Instructions and diagrams of what steps to take to fold yourself followed by a few pages of the final stages describing what it should look like if done correctly.

“In 1543 Vesalius published his most important work, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, generally known as The Fabrica, the most famous anatomy book ever written, and the first on human anatomy to be reasonably accurate.”

“You know a lot.”

“Only about a few things. Nothing special, though he was twenty-nine when he wrote it.”

“Still,” he said suspiciously.

“This has to be a joke, the published madness of a twisted mind.”

“It gets pretty boring here. I found it in a carton on my doorstep last summer.”

“A carton?”

“People drop off their old books. Donations, and helps to clear space in their homes for other things they will eventually throw out. I clean them up, bring them back to life and make a few pennies in return.”

Evil doesn’t bring anything back to life.

“A very few pennies, I imagine from the looks of your shop.”

“With my pension and small trust my grandparents left me, and my love for books, this is more a passion than a business.”

“Russell Stover,” I said, extending my hand.

“Seriously? Of the famous Russell Stover chocolates?”

“I am a very distant cousin. I have no trust in candy or cash worth mentioning.”

The shop was quiet. Empty. I doubted he saw a handful, if that, of visitors a day and most more curious than interested. The old man turned and shuffled into another room and returned with two other volumes in hand.

“These two were bound to the one you’re holding.”

“How to Defy Gravity and How to Become Invisible for a Day,” I said, examining both texts. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand?”

“Look closer. No author or publisher named, or date published, on any of the three volumes,” he said, now more at ease.

Volumes in hand, I felt an immediate warmth, a kinship expressed in unnatural, welcome ways. They were as I had hoped. And well-kept without rip, tear, or notation. “You want my opinion?”

“Now that we’re such good friends,” he said and reached off to the side and poured a fresh cup of coffee into one of the empty cups standing at the ready.

“A bribe to help you figure out what’s going on here?” I asked, taking a quick sniff to make sure it wasn’t poisoned.

“Bribe, payment, whatever. So far, I’ve gotten nowhere. Holland Williams, proprietor,” he said without offering his hand

“Pleasure is mine,” I responded without extending mine.

* * * * *

Holland Williams was a large fellow who didn’t fit the image of your malnourished, unkempt proprietor of an antique book shop so far off the beaten path you would need a road map or dumb luck to find it.

His arms first caught my attention. We were about the same height, and his arms seemed to go on forever. He had buried his right hand in the pocket of his tattered overalls, leaving his left to dangle at his side. When I let my left arm loose, it was inches shorter.

There was something unnatural about Holland Williams. Sometimes you can just tell. In his eyes, in this place, God was nowhere to be found.

I set all three volumes on the glass counter. All were printed by the same publisher, inside and out. Bindings, paper, color, and design were identical.

“Maybe whoever had them didn’t understand them either?”

Williams nodded. “As good a guess as any.”

We finished off another cup of coffee, exchanged details about our widowhood and families and how we reached a similar station in life. Williams was of Dutch descent, with a mild heart condition. My family was a mix of German, Russian, and God knows what, and my cancer was in remission.

“So, what next?”

“Let’s start with the book you’re reading,” I suggested after he closed the shop and we settled ourselves in the back where there was an ample kitchen.

“Agreed,” he said and opened up the book on How to Fold Yourself. He set it on the kitchen table to the page that was already dog-eared. He held one hand to the back of his head and the other to his right side.

I read the instructions out loud and helped reposition both his hands where I thought were more in keeping with the directions.

“That hurts.”

I aligned both hands on the back on his head, one over the other. Then one on his neck and the other near the top of his head.

“Still hurts,” he said, his chin now bent over his chest until it could go no further.

“I’m reading the instructions just as they’re written. You were using only one hand and reading from the book. There has to be more than that.”

“Why don’t you try it and I’ll read.”

“Good idea,” I said as my pulse quickened. “But let’s give it one last try before we switch. I think we’re making progress.”

“All were making is a pain in my neck.”

“Wait,” I said, “we’re missing something.”

“No. We’re following the instructions exactly.”

“True, but how do we know where to start from?”

“What?”

“You’re sitting in a chair and not standing or bending over or on your knees already nearly folding yourself. Suppose were missing how to start?”

“If that were true, no one would ever crack the code to folding himself. The second page picks up from the position described in the first page, and you can’t go on to the third step unless you’ve mastered the first two. The fourth and final step should leave you completely folded over yourself like the image in the book, a fraction the size of a shoebox if you got it right.”

“So, do you have a better idea?”

“Unless these books are a prank?”

“Seems a long way to go for a prank, when you consider the titles of the other two books.”

He nodded.

* * * * *

Williams’s shirt was soaked in sweat and doubt. Even if he had cracked the code of the first book, what would he do with such knowledge? I sensed an ill-tempered, godless man fueled by greed and a lifetime of doubt.

Success here would bring him recognition on a global scale. There would be no mention or trail leading back to the first book, since he would announce the discovery was his alone, fomented by his latent genius. The world would stand in awe.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Too long,” he said and took his time to clear away the detritus on his kitchen table: unwashed dishes, a loaf of bread, several stained cups, utensils, a clot of used paper towels, and a phone book.

“You collect phone books too?”

“I’m getting two thousand for it. A first edition from the first phone company in California,” he said, got on his knees, and grasped the back of his head with both hands.

“Now, breathe out, until you’ve spent every last gasp of air, take a quick deep breath, and pull down as hard as you can.”

“A deep breath?”

“What the fuck difference does it make? Let’s try something new. I can’t hang around here all day.”

“Fuck it,” he said, exhaled, took a wheezing deep breath, and pulled down, as his face sunk deep into the unexpected hollow of his chest.

“There you go,” I said, relieved.

I heard murmurs of delight and exultation, then he lost his balance and fell over on his side like a broken toy.

Much of his face buried deeply into his chest, unable to speak coherently, he was gesturing with his long, gangly arms. Excitement. Delight. Relief. Something about what he had achieved.

No mention of my suggestion. I might as well not have been there at all.

A few more words were clear, then distant, then urgent. The last complete sentence was about trouble breathing. His body heaved, searching for a way to get air into his lungs which were already severely compressed, as was his airway since his face was covered in chest.

* * * * *

“You have to complete the last three steps in quick order or you will suffocate,” I said, taking a last sip of coffee. I was going to miss that.

His arms flailed about frantically, knocking over the kitchen table.

I knelt down and grabbed a handful of long white hair and yanked it back. William’s howled in pain. Another gave me more satisfaction. The third was magical, revealing a sliver of eye that came out from under his chest.

“There you are, little man, and would-be king of thieves,” I said.

Having long mastered How to Defy Gravity and How to Become Invisible for a Day by the time Holland Williams realized he was fighting for his life, I had completed a few familiar steps and was floating a foot off the kitchen floor. I hung in the air to his astonished gaze.

“That one is my favorite,” I said, closed my eyes, and went through another routine in my mind, as I had for years, and vanished. “There,” I said not ten seconds later, “I’m back, and you know why?”

“Oh my God,” he said in a distant, terrified garble.

I slipped back down to the floor. I snatched up the phone book and brought the face of it down squarely across the old man’s back. He screamed and tried to crawl away. I did it twice more before he was able to wrench his eye back into the safety of his chest.

“There was no generous carton laden with goodies like these, because there are only three in the world. Each one of the books you stole from my uncle’s garage the day after he passed. A gift we are ordained to pass down to our next generation,” I said in a rage of flying spittle.

Another, more distant, whimper.

I grabbed the book with both hands and slammed it down across the back of his head.

His arms fell away by his side. His breathing, impossibly labored and raspy.

“If you don’t know the steps, you don’t know how to piece together the puzzle that is how to unfold yourself. You should have no trouble breathing because, if done properly, the second step eliminates the breathing problem of the first step. And reversing the process after folding yourself down into a configuration that would fit into a shoebox is easier than you might think,” I said, and kicked out with my right heel.

I heard his ribs crack.

He didn’t pull away or scream or whimper.

There was no response. White hair and white teeth. There was no more him.

I waited another few minutes, not out of anger or satisfaction. The exhaustion I felt was overwhelming. Unexpected.

With the three texts clutched to my side, I was no longer invisible. I couldn’t hail a taxi, or stop in a nearby store where I might be identified as a person of interest that was seen about the same time old man Williams died.

But was it a crime? The old man was dead. There was no evidence of foul play.

Maybe old age?

Possibly a robbery, though it would have been impossible to identify what had been taken. And the old man would have to have known his assailant, since the front door was locked.

The three bells were waiting overhead to announce my departure.

How sweet.

I tore them from the doorframe and threw them as far into the back of the store as possible. I kicked over a small table of trinkets in one of the window displays. Let the police put that puzzle together.

I applauded myself.

The thief had been tracked down, caught, and dealt with accordingly.

And future generations of our family would prosper because of my commitment.

And, as I knew in my soul, God was nowhere to be found.

***

Arthur Davis is a management consultant who has been quoted in The New York Times and in Crain’s New York Business, taught at The New School and interviewed on New York TV News Channel 1. He was featured in a collection, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, received the 2018 Write Well Award for excellence in short fiction and, twice nominated, received Honorable Mention in The Best American Mystery Stories 2017. Additional background at https://talesofourtime.com/, Amazon Author Central and the Poets & Writers Organization.