A Conversation with J. Hugo Oltman
“I adore your wife, you know,” Hugo said. “More bourbon?”
Kurt had accepted Hugo’s offer of a nightcap while Coco and Harry had gone to bed. They were still in Hugo’s office, the model of his planned museum of photography, including the tiny versions of themselves, between them.
“I shouldn’t,” Kurt said. “That’s a yes, Hugo.”
“And another cigar, too?” Hugo said, his tiny teeth still clenching one of the specimens they had devoted the last half hour or so to. Clearly, the little man didn’t mind a cigar the length of his upper arm emphasizing his size.
“Thanks, but I really-really shouldn’t. I’ve only just discovered the hard way that I’m no longer part of the age group where adding a sin to the one already committed undoes both of them.”
“You must be a Catholic, then.”
“Old-continent-style, I’m afraid. The worst: lapsed.”
“We need more of those here. America, being a young country, takes religion much too literally. In that case, let me share in your suffering and refrain from having seconds too.” Oltman laid his cigar at the edge of the table where it was meant to gently breathe out its life and poured two generous helpings of vintage Kentucky bourbon.
Kurt, holding his glass up, looked through the dark golden liquid. After a sip, he said, “I feel I can trust you, Hugo.”
His host nodded. “I wouldn’t have your wife, or you, here, if mistrust were an issue. What is it, Kurt? Allow me to say that you yourself are of interest to me. Not just your adorable wife.”
“The disability? Coco mentioned something.”
“Not just that. What connects us are the stories, Kurt. You’re a professor of anthropology, a dedicated—and practical—lover of myths. I read your stuff. Devoured Everything Beneath, Before and Beyond. I can’t wait for your next book. I do agree with you that the Americas weren’t settled by way of old Beringia. Why settle with one source of humanity if you can have several? Many of us are a different species, so different … I may even be willing to open up my modest coffers to fund a project of yours to prove it.”
“You would? That’s an unexpected offer—if it is one.”
“You bet. I mean,” Hugo pointed at his remote control, “I could see to it that you’ll get your much-deserved distinguished professorship, but where’s the fun in that? Look at our tiny rich mayor in his—what is it?—sixth term? Bought himself everything and got even tinier. No,” Hugo waved the specter of the mayor with a lazy gesture out of the room. “I was always interested in shaking up those ideologically convenient old wives’ tales. The wrong kind of myth. Maybe one of these days we’ll embark on a slightly illegal adventure to recuperate poor Kennewick Man from his academic Fort Knox.” He gave Kurt a pleasant grin. “Isn’t that how you described it, Kurt?”
“It is,” Kurt said, “and it didn’t gain me any brownie points in the community.”
“I certainly hope not. Or we would be on the wrong track with our theory. You can always tell how right you are by how pissed certain people get at you.” Hugo took a sip of whiskey. “Speaking of myths, the right kind now, I can pride myself in at least being a lifelong amateur student of myths.”
“And you do have the means to recreate one.” Kurt pointed to the window behind which, bathed in darkness, lay the surreal valley of Sleepy Hollow, polka-dotted with pumpkin heads. Through which, who knew, galloped the Hessian as they spoke, chopping off heads in search of his soul. “And maybe the American-American one. The image of an entire country searching for its purpose.”
“And still searching,” Hugo nodded. “What’s your myth, Kurt?”
“I think that’s what I’m in the process of finding out. More urgently than ever. I have the feeling I’m living one,” he continued, hesitatingly. “That is, I have the feeling I’m living a myth that is in the process of unfolding, as we speak.”
“As we live. The Coyote Killer. Despite the unfortunate nickname. And not just that, Hugo. But Coyote is part of it. There’s the subway incident. The superhero and his nemesis.”
“Only there hasn’t been a confrontation yet. Shouldn’t there be one? Superhero faces down Supervillain?”
“Right,” Kurt said. “In real life there’s no law that says there will be one. But that’s still not what I mean, or, that’s still not all. The subway incident is where I come in.”
“How so?” Kurt had Hugo’s undivided attention.
“I know the victim.”
“I thought it was an accident?”
“I’m not so sure about that anymore. But that’s just—”
“Another theory.”
“Right.”
“Interesting. Go on.”
And Kurt did. And told Oltman everything, from his connection to Tara Smallwood, known to the public as the Subway Princess, whose tragic death had been overshadowed by Coyote’s atrocities—and maybe that was the connection between them? Kurt mused as he told Hugo what he knew, or believed he knew. Maybe that was where the Supervillain was gearing up for his inevitable fight with the Superhero—in a fight for attention? Wouldn’t that be the most appropriate metaphor for our era? Attention vs. Distraction, the ultimate fight?
“Metaphor,” Hugo repeated thoughtfully. “You do see life through the prism of story, and yet you refuse to believe that our stories are true. Plato said that life’s truth could only be found out through storytelling—mythmaking. The ancient Greek conceived philosophy as the language of the mind. Myths made the human soul talk, evoking the meaning of existence. You know that. Why don’t you try to believe it? You know what you are, Kurt? You are scared. Scared to see the truth.” As though he had only offered Kurt another cigar, and not an insight that was capable of shaking the foundations of Kurt’s world, he simply added, “But go on, my friend.”
Kurt even told Hugo about the dream he shared with Tara, and how they both got as far as the cave, but not inside the cave. How there was a humming, which he didn’t so much hear as experience with his body, and how this humming guided him somehow, announced, sometimes followed, by a headache, a twitching in his eye. How he believed that singing had brought death upon Tara—didn’t that mean that he believed, or at least started to believe, in myths as more than mere stories? How there was Sam’s legend of Minetta Creek, Kurt’s own attempt at writing a novel based on it. How it all made sense. How it made no sense at all.
“Well, that we call life. And Minetta would explain everything quite neatly, bundling everything into a neat little story. And yes, it seems, that’s what you’re trying to do. Trying to believe, Kurt. Really, how about that! An evil force that would explain everything from a brick falling on your head to the latest war! I like that!”
“That’s what makes me so suspicious. It’s too simple. It’s what Sam believes.” Kurt knew all too well where Oltman was going with his argument.
“And about eighty percent of the rest of humanity, Kurt. Including our beloved President Llewellyn. Hey, weren’t we supposed to separate State and Church? And who has a bible and a preacher at each and every fucking inauguration? The U.S. of A., this godless, god-fucking empire! Sam’s evil force explaining everything we can’t is called ‘god’. And a scholar of mythology, of all people, should know that god comes in many manifestations. Dog spelled backwards!”
“Dog?”
Hugo shrugged. “Whatever mysticism gets you closer. Why not spelling things backwards?”
“I can see Coyote as a manifestation of Minetta, but not as Minetta. The devil, if you will, although the Lenape didn’t have the concept of a ‘devil’—that was shipped to these shores on the Mayflower,” Kurt said. “The way a believer sees Jesus Christ as a manifestation of God.”
“Jesus walked the earth,” Hugo said, challengingly.
“So did the Lenape hero Nanapush, in all likelihood.”
“Jesus performed miracles,” Hugo said. “He turned water into wine.”
“So did Nanapush. He turned a monster into a river.”
Hugo laughed. “I’m confused now, Kurt. I get the impression that you’re trying to talk yourself into believing that Minetta is more than a manifestation. That the monster is at least—”
“A possibility!” Kurt cried, shaken, mainly by what came out of his own mouth. Really, where did all that come from all of a sudden? “I agree with you, Hugo. I am conflicted. I am torn. Actually, I am shattered.”
“The painful road to knowledge. Let’s drink to that!”
They did. Kurt continued, “Do you believe in God, Hugo? It really sounds like it, although the way you make your argument is—I don’t know how to put it? Also a way to pull the rug out from under God’s feet. Am I wrong?”
“You’re not. God is for the masses. To shut them up. Not for those who rule the masses, be it with the means I have, or as a more visible ruler. I don’t think any American president actually really believes in God, only in polls and focus groups. They have to. No one gets elected if she or he doesn’t repeat all those fairy tales. But believe me, the minute you sit at that desk in the Oval Office, you stop believing in anything. You’re too close to the real shit. This includes the sitting one. That doesn’t make Llewellyn a bad person. It certainly makes her a good politician. Integrate everybody. Win them, then teach them. I do love the way she’s trying to restore honesty in this country. But being honest about religion is just not in the cards here. Religion, and all those foolish wars that come with it, is part of our growing pains. Once America’s gone through its infancy—and lapses, maybe. I actually even believe that not a single pope ever believed in God. Not literally, anyway,” he added with a big grin.
“What do you believe in, Hugo?”
“In nature. And in calm. That’s what I want. Restore calm. Find natural calm. Sounds modest, but there’s nothing harder to find, my friend.” Hugo smiled. “I believe nature is divine. Just look around. Life is divine, isn’t it? There’s no need for gods to make us see that. Simply turn off your TV and look out your window. Nature is divinity without gods. Unless you see the woodpeckers as gods. Or the deer. Or the trout. Or squirrels. Or us, for that matter. We’re the gods, you know. We just can’t take it. Because we know we are. Thus we’re up to our hips in gods. Who said that again? Somebody’s gotta take responsibility for the messes we keep getting ourselves in.”
Kurt nodded. “Well, back to our dilemma.”
“That is our dilemma, Kurt. And we’re back. Because that’s why we need our myths. Our stories. To teach us how to live with each other. We don’t know how to do that anymore. That’s why hell broke lose. Or, as your friend Sam would say, this is what woke up Minetta.”
“It doesn’t solve my problem.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that the solution to a problem is to leave it alone? There has never really been a solution to a dilemma, has there? Well, those are your choices, and—and that’s why your so shaken—you can’t possibly like either. Either your friend Sam went crazy and believes that Minetta actually is the Coyote Killer—and much more than that—or Sam, well, went crazy and became Coyote in order to make the legend come true.”
“Exactly,” Kurt said. “Either way it sucks.”
“The very definition of a dilemma. Both alternatives speak of a highly principled man though,” Oltman added cheerfully.
“You don’t know Sam.”
“I know the type,” Hugo said. “Either way your friend is a firm believer, something I can only salute. In theory only, of course. Or things get bloody. And then they get completely out of hand. And then, well, you have a problem you better not leave alone.”
“So, just in theory, what’s your guess?”
“Here it is,” Hugo said after another sip of bourbon. “Although it touches the subject of Sam only in the second degree, if that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, from what you told me about Tara’s visits what you’re suffering from, Kurt, is a special gift. ‘Mindeying,’ huh? That’s what you said she called it, right?”
Kurt wondered how it actually felt being mindeyed. It could not have felt good for Tobe LaMata but maybe it had a purifying effect. When Tara mindeyed him, he had only felt a tickle. Maybe because he was a better person than LaMata? Was that how it worked? Well, congrats then, Kurt. You just made your mother proud: better than LaMata … Now he wondered whether he had also fallen in that state of confessional logorrhea, like LaMata, and blushed.
“What is it, Kurt?” Hugo inquired.
“Nothing, just a thought.”
Less than that. Not a tickle, not the tiniest glimpse into Hugo’s mind. It felt like Oltman was speaking his own mind, and no one else’s. It felt like everything Hugo said was true. But did he say everything? “Not telling me stuff I should know is lying, Kurt.” That was what Coco had said to him on the way to Pica Pica. It was what had hurt her most. But what would be J. Hugo Oltman’s obligation to tell him everything?
“It only happened once,” Kurt finally said, with relief.
“Can you read my thoughts now?”
Kurt shook his head. “But I’m afraid I have the feeling I know where this is going.”
“And you don’t like it.”
“Not one bit.”
“But you still want to hear it.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I think, at least on a mythic level, you’re the reluctant hero. You’re still refusing the call. I, if you will, am the mentor setting you straight and sending you on your journey. You see, I’ve read my Joseph Campbell. So that’s what you’ll have to do.”
“What?”
“Hunt down Coyote.”
“Oh,” Kurt said. Now he was surprised all the same. “You really think so, Hugo?”
“On a mythic level, yes.”
“And in real life?”
“Trust the police to do their work,” Hugo said. „Another whiskey?“
“No,” Kurt said. “Meaning: Absolutely!”
They exchanged another bonding grin. Hugo poured some more Kentucky, and, for a while, the two men sat in silence. Finally Kurt said, “Do I have to do anything with it? It feels very much like it’s a moody talent, less bestowed on me than thrown at me.”
“I think you just gave yourself the answer. You have no choice. Either you use it, or it uses you. That, indeed, can’t feel good.”
“I guess it’s time to sort it out.”
“Look, it often happens to people like us. People out of the ordinary. People who are different are chosen. Because we’re forced to confront our difference while everybody else can simply soldier on, without thinking. We’re chosen and then segregated and ignored or, if you happen to be born in the wrong era, burned at the stake. They don’t want our message. They don’t want to wake up and see what we see. That’s why they invented God. For better sleep. So they don’t have to see. Look at poor Ichabod Crane with his misshapen body. Look how Irving described him: ‚Hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together’.”
“And his talent was—” Kurt stopped himself.
“Exactly,” Hugo said. “He was the only one who was actually able to see the Headless Horseman.”
“And what is your talent—your gift, Hugo? If you’ll forgive my asking?”
Oltman smiled. “I do forgive you for asking. And you will know. But it’s too early to reveal it, Kurt. By the way, it also works the other way around. Look closely at seemingly normal people with special talents—not that I, just like you, believe in the concept of normalcy—and you’ll see a tormented, hurt soul. You see the hidden soul of the other. Look at gorgeous Tara Smallwood. Didn’t she have it all—seemingly? Her affliction, it seemed, was her beauty. Her special talent is to sense that we’re all connected.” He took a sip from his glass. “Take Henry Stanton.”
“Stanton?”
“Sure. Look at what he did. Yes, a hero. But try to look through his healthy, athletic body. Well, I guess, we can’t because we only see mediated glimpses of him. Quite the opposite of an X-Ray look. But my hunch is that I’d rather not see what’s hidden there. Here’s a guy who commits almost certain suicide to save the life of a stranger. That’s only heroic because he got lucky. Otherwise it’s suicidal. If you ask me, Henry Stanton grabbed a noble opportunity to commit suicide. And it went wrong. Be that as it may. Back to our monster. Minetta. The creek. What do you think, Professor Adler? Shall we?”
“Shall we—what?”
Oltman teasingly rolled his eyes. “Go there. And now don’t ask, go--where!”
“Wow,” Kurt said. “Okay. Let’s. Sure. Of course. Over the rainbow! Through the wardrobe! Down the rabbit hole! Into the volcano! Down the manhole! When?”
“Time must not be wasted, Kurt!” Oltman took a sip of his whiskey, then produced his remote control and pushed a button. “Tomorrow’s perfect! It’s Saturday, Labor Day weekend, no construction going on. Would the witching hour be convenient for you, my dear friend Kurt?”
“And where do you come in, Hugo? In all this?”
He didn’t hesitate with his answer. “Let’s put it this way: I still haven’t found my head yet.”
It took Kurt a while to realize that the reason his mind was spinning wasn’t the alcohol alone. Or his talk with Hugo Oltman. It was the house, which was smoothly descending into Mother Earth, waking up who knows whose rage.
from River-Madness or The Miracle of Tara. An American Dreaming
“I adore your wife, you know,” Hugo said. “More bourbon?”
Kurt had accepted Hugo’s offer of a nightcap while Coco and Harry had gone to bed. They were still in Hugo’s office, the model of his planned museum of photography, including the tiny versions of themselves, between them.
“I shouldn’t,” Kurt said. “That’s a yes, Hugo.”
“And another cigar, too?” Hugo said, his tiny teeth still clenching one of the specimens they had devoted the last half hour or so to. Clearly, the little man didn’t mind a cigar the length of his upper arm emphasizing his size.
“Thanks, but I really-really shouldn’t. I’ve only just discovered the hard way that I’m no longer part of the age group where adding a sin to the one already committed undoes both of them.”
“You must be a Catholic, then.”
“Old-continent-style, I’m afraid. The worst: lapsed.”
“We need more of those here. America, being a young country, takes religion much too literally. In that case, let me share in your suffering and refrain from having seconds too.” Oltman laid his cigar at the edge of the table where it was meant to gently breathe out its life and poured two generous helpings of vintage Kentucky bourbon.
Kurt, holding his glass up, looked through the dark golden liquid. After a sip, he said, “I feel I can trust you, Hugo.”
His host nodded. “I wouldn’t have your wife, or you, here, if mistrust were an issue. What is it, Kurt? Allow me to say that you yourself are of interest to me. Not just your adorable wife.”
“The disability? Coco mentioned something.”
“Not just that. What connects us are the stories, Kurt. You’re a professor of anthropology, a dedicated—and practical—lover of myths. I read your stuff. Devoured Everything Beneath, Before and Beyond. I can’t wait for your next book. I do agree with you that the Americas weren’t settled by way of old Beringia. Why settle with one source of humanity if you can have several? Many of us are a different species, so different … I may even be willing to open up my modest coffers to fund a project of yours to prove it.”
“You would? That’s an unexpected offer—if it is one.”
“You bet. I mean,” Hugo pointed at his remote control, “I could see to it that you’ll get your much-deserved distinguished professorship, but where’s the fun in that? Look at our tiny rich mayor in his—what is it?—sixth term? Bought himself everything and got even tinier. No,” Hugo waved the specter of the mayor with a lazy gesture out of the room. “I was always interested in shaking up those ideologically convenient old wives’ tales. The wrong kind of myth. Maybe one of these days we’ll embark on a slightly illegal adventure to recuperate poor Kennewick Man from his academic Fort Knox.” He gave Kurt a pleasant grin. “Isn’t that how you described it, Kurt?”
“It is,” Kurt said, “and it didn’t gain me any brownie points in the community.”
“I certainly hope not. Or we would be on the wrong track with our theory. You can always tell how right you are by how pissed certain people get at you.” Hugo took a sip of whiskey. “Speaking of myths, the right kind now, I can pride myself in at least being a lifelong amateur student of myths.”
“And you do have the means to recreate one.” Kurt pointed to the window behind which, bathed in darkness, lay the surreal valley of Sleepy Hollow, polka-dotted with pumpkin heads. Through which, who knew, galloped the Hessian as they spoke, chopping off heads in search of his soul. “And maybe the American-American one. The image of an entire country searching for its purpose.”
“And still searching,” Hugo nodded. “What’s your myth, Kurt?”
“I think that’s what I’m in the process of finding out. More urgently than ever. I have the feeling I’m living one,” he continued, hesitatingly. “That is, I have the feeling I’m living a myth that is in the process of unfolding, as we speak.”
“As we live. The Coyote Killer. Despite the unfortunate nickname. And not just that, Hugo. But Coyote is part of it. There’s the subway incident. The superhero and his nemesis.”
“Only there hasn’t been a confrontation yet. Shouldn’t there be one? Superhero faces down Supervillain?”
“Right,” Kurt said. “In real life there’s no law that says there will be one. But that’s still not what I mean, or, that’s still not all. The subway incident is where I come in.”
“How so?” Kurt had Hugo’s undivided attention.
“I know the victim.”
“I thought it was an accident?”
“I’m not so sure about that anymore. But that’s just—”
“Another theory.”
“Right.”
“Interesting. Go on.”
And Kurt did. And told Oltman everything, from his connection to Tara Smallwood, known to the public as the Subway Princess, whose tragic death had been overshadowed by Coyote’s atrocities—and maybe that was the connection between them? Kurt mused as he told Hugo what he knew, or believed he knew. Maybe that was where the Supervillain was gearing up for his inevitable fight with the Superhero—in a fight for attention? Wouldn’t that be the most appropriate metaphor for our era? Attention vs. Distraction, the ultimate fight?
“Metaphor,” Hugo repeated thoughtfully. “You do see life through the prism of story, and yet you refuse to believe that our stories are true. Plato said that life’s truth could only be found out through storytelling—mythmaking. The ancient Greek conceived philosophy as the language of the mind. Myths made the human soul talk, evoking the meaning of existence. You know that. Why don’t you try to believe it? You know what you are, Kurt? You are scared. Scared to see the truth.” As though he had only offered Kurt another cigar, and not an insight that was capable of shaking the foundations of Kurt’s world, he simply added, “But go on, my friend.”
Kurt even told Hugo about the dream he shared with Tara, and how they both got as far as the cave, but not inside the cave. How there was a humming, which he didn’t so much hear as experience with his body, and how this humming guided him somehow, announced, sometimes followed, by a headache, a twitching in his eye. How he believed that singing had brought death upon Tara—didn’t that mean that he believed, or at least started to believe, in myths as more than mere stories? How there was Sam’s legend of Minetta Creek, Kurt’s own attempt at writing a novel based on it. How it all made sense. How it made no sense at all.
“Well, that we call life. And Minetta would explain everything quite neatly, bundling everything into a neat little story. And yes, it seems, that’s what you’re trying to do. Trying to believe, Kurt. Really, how about that! An evil force that would explain everything from a brick falling on your head to the latest war! I like that!”
“That’s what makes me so suspicious. It’s too simple. It’s what Sam believes.” Kurt knew all too well where Oltman was going with his argument.
“And about eighty percent of the rest of humanity, Kurt. Including our beloved President Llewellyn. Hey, weren’t we supposed to separate State and Church? And who has a bible and a preacher at each and every fucking inauguration? The U.S. of A., this godless, god-fucking empire! Sam’s evil force explaining everything we can’t is called ‘god’. And a scholar of mythology, of all people, should know that god comes in many manifestations. Dog spelled backwards!”
“Dog?”
Hugo shrugged. “Whatever mysticism gets you closer. Why not spelling things backwards?”
“I can see Coyote as a manifestation of Minetta, but not as Minetta. The devil, if you will, although the Lenape didn’t have the concept of a ‘devil’—that was shipped to these shores on the Mayflower,” Kurt said. “The way a believer sees Jesus Christ as a manifestation of God.”
“Jesus walked the earth,” Hugo said, challengingly.
“So did the Lenape hero Nanapush, in all likelihood.”
“Jesus performed miracles,” Hugo said. “He turned water into wine.”
“So did Nanapush. He turned a monster into a river.”
Hugo laughed. “I’m confused now, Kurt. I get the impression that you’re trying to talk yourself into believing that Minetta is more than a manifestation. That the monster is at least—”
“A possibility!” Kurt cried, shaken, mainly by what came out of his own mouth. Really, where did all that come from all of a sudden? “I agree with you, Hugo. I am conflicted. I am torn. Actually, I am shattered.”
“The painful road to knowledge. Let’s drink to that!”
They did. Kurt continued, “Do you believe in God, Hugo? It really sounds like it, although the way you make your argument is—I don’t know how to put it? Also a way to pull the rug out from under God’s feet. Am I wrong?”
“You’re not. God is for the masses. To shut them up. Not for those who rule the masses, be it with the means I have, or as a more visible ruler. I don’t think any American president actually really believes in God, only in polls and focus groups. They have to. No one gets elected if she or he doesn’t repeat all those fairy tales. But believe me, the minute you sit at that desk in the Oval Office, you stop believing in anything. You’re too close to the real shit. This includes the sitting one. That doesn’t make Llewellyn a bad person. It certainly makes her a good politician. Integrate everybody. Win them, then teach them. I do love the way she’s trying to restore honesty in this country. But being honest about religion is just not in the cards here. Religion, and all those foolish wars that come with it, is part of our growing pains. Once America’s gone through its infancy—and lapses, maybe. I actually even believe that not a single pope ever believed in God. Not literally, anyway,” he added with a big grin.
“What do you believe in, Hugo?”
“In nature. And in calm. That’s what I want. Restore calm. Find natural calm. Sounds modest, but there’s nothing harder to find, my friend.” Hugo smiled. “I believe nature is divine. Just look around. Life is divine, isn’t it? There’s no need for gods to make us see that. Simply turn off your TV and look out your window. Nature is divinity without gods. Unless you see the woodpeckers as gods. Or the deer. Or the trout. Or squirrels. Or us, for that matter. We’re the gods, you know. We just can’t take it. Because we know we are. Thus we’re up to our hips in gods. Who said that again? Somebody’s gotta take responsibility for the messes we keep getting ourselves in.”
Kurt nodded. “Well, back to our dilemma.”
“That is our dilemma, Kurt. And we’re back. Because that’s why we need our myths. Our stories. To teach us how to live with each other. We don’t know how to do that anymore. That’s why hell broke lose. Or, as your friend Sam would say, this is what woke up Minetta.”
“It doesn’t solve my problem.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that the solution to a problem is to leave it alone? There has never really been a solution to a dilemma, has there? Well, those are your choices, and—and that’s why your so shaken—you can’t possibly like either. Either your friend Sam went crazy and believes that Minetta actually is the Coyote Killer—and much more than that—or Sam, well, went crazy and became Coyote in order to make the legend come true.”
“Exactly,” Kurt said. “Either way it sucks.”
“The very definition of a dilemma. Both alternatives speak of a highly principled man though,” Oltman added cheerfully.
“You don’t know Sam.”
“I know the type,” Hugo said. “Either way your friend is a firm believer, something I can only salute. In theory only, of course. Or things get bloody. And then they get completely out of hand. And then, well, you have a problem you better not leave alone.”
“So, just in theory, what’s your guess?”
“Here it is,” Hugo said after another sip of bourbon. “Although it touches the subject of Sam only in the second degree, if that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, from what you told me about Tara’s visits what you’re suffering from, Kurt, is a special gift. ‘Mindeying,’ huh? That’s what you said she called it, right?”
Kurt wondered how it actually felt being mindeyed. It could not have felt good for Tobe LaMata but maybe it had a purifying effect. When Tara mindeyed him, he had only felt a tickle. Maybe because he was a better person than LaMata? Was that how it worked? Well, congrats then, Kurt. You just made your mother proud: better than LaMata … Now he wondered whether he had also fallen in that state of confessional logorrhea, like LaMata, and blushed.
“What is it, Kurt?” Hugo inquired.
“Nothing, just a thought.”
Less than that. Not a tickle, not the tiniest glimpse into Hugo’s mind. It felt like Oltman was speaking his own mind, and no one else’s. It felt like everything Hugo said was true. But did he say everything? “Not telling me stuff I should know is lying, Kurt.” That was what Coco had said to him on the way to Pica Pica. It was what had hurt her most. But what would be J. Hugo Oltman’s obligation to tell him everything?
“It only happened once,” Kurt finally said, with relief.
“Can you read my thoughts now?”
Kurt shook his head. “But I’m afraid I have the feeling I know where this is going.”
“And you don’t like it.”
“Not one bit.”
“But you still want to hear it.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I think, at least on a mythic level, you’re the reluctant hero. You’re still refusing the call. I, if you will, am the mentor setting you straight and sending you on your journey. You see, I’ve read my Joseph Campbell. So that’s what you’ll have to do.”
“What?”
“Hunt down Coyote.”
“Oh,” Kurt said. Now he was surprised all the same. “You really think so, Hugo?”
“On a mythic level, yes.”
“And in real life?”
“Trust the police to do their work,” Hugo said. „Another whiskey?“
“No,” Kurt said. “Meaning: Absolutely!”
They exchanged another bonding grin. Hugo poured some more Kentucky, and, for a while, the two men sat in silence. Finally Kurt said, “Do I have to do anything with it? It feels very much like it’s a moody talent, less bestowed on me than thrown at me.”
“I think you just gave yourself the answer. You have no choice. Either you use it, or it uses you. That, indeed, can’t feel good.”
“I guess it’s time to sort it out.”
“Look, it often happens to people like us. People out of the ordinary. People who are different are chosen. Because we’re forced to confront our difference while everybody else can simply soldier on, without thinking. We’re chosen and then segregated and ignored or, if you happen to be born in the wrong era, burned at the stake. They don’t want our message. They don’t want to wake up and see what we see. That’s why they invented God. For better sleep. So they don’t have to see. Look at poor Ichabod Crane with his misshapen body. Look how Irving described him: ‚Hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together’.”
“And his talent was—” Kurt stopped himself.
“Exactly,” Hugo said. “He was the only one who was actually able to see the Headless Horseman.”
“And what is your talent—your gift, Hugo? If you’ll forgive my asking?”
Oltman smiled. “I do forgive you for asking. And you will know. But it’s too early to reveal it, Kurt. By the way, it also works the other way around. Look closely at seemingly normal people with special talents—not that I, just like you, believe in the concept of normalcy—and you’ll see a tormented, hurt soul. You see the hidden soul of the other. Look at gorgeous Tara Smallwood. Didn’t she have it all—seemingly? Her affliction, it seemed, was her beauty. Her special talent is to sense that we’re all connected.” He took a sip from his glass. “Take Henry Stanton.”
“Stanton?”
“Sure. Look at what he did. Yes, a hero. But try to look through his healthy, athletic body. Well, I guess, we can’t because we only see mediated glimpses of him. Quite the opposite of an X-Ray look. But my hunch is that I’d rather not see what’s hidden there. Here’s a guy who commits almost certain suicide to save the life of a stranger. That’s only heroic because he got lucky. Otherwise it’s suicidal. If you ask me, Henry Stanton grabbed a noble opportunity to commit suicide. And it went wrong. Be that as it may. Back to our monster. Minetta. The creek. What do you think, Professor Adler? Shall we?”
“Shall we—what?”
Oltman teasingly rolled his eyes. “Go there. And now don’t ask, go--where!”
“Wow,” Kurt said. “Okay. Let’s. Sure. Of course. Over the rainbow! Through the wardrobe! Down the rabbit hole! Into the volcano! Down the manhole! When?”
“Time must not be wasted, Kurt!” Oltman took a sip of his whiskey, then produced his remote control and pushed a button. “Tomorrow’s perfect! It’s Saturday, Labor Day weekend, no construction going on. Would the witching hour be convenient for you, my dear friend Kurt?”
“And where do you come in, Hugo? In all this?”
He didn’t hesitate with his answer. “Let’s put it this way: I still haven’t found my head yet.”
It took Kurt a while to realize that the reason his mind was spinning wasn’t the alcohol alone. Or his talk with Hugo Oltman. It was the house, which was smoothly descending into Mother Earth, waking up who knows whose rage.
from River-Madness or The Miracle of Tara. An American Dreaming