The Secondhand Disciple

By Palmer Fitzgerald

The Secondhand Disciple is a literary novel in strains of soft sci-fi. It also ties in with the main character's theory of existence. The novel also has no agenda except to show how an aged individual can think while his shared theory is not one found elsewhere. Its eclipsing notoriety cannot be stressed enough. In the process, it depicts one who isn't anti-Semitic but treats it in bad taste and is homophobic and racist by twenty-first-century standards.

Zane is a glossophobe, fearing public speaking and developing an unorthodox, if original, view of the world, who tries to espouse it in spite of an introverted personality. As the son of a Mississippi clergyman, his persuasion is endorsed by two pastors--a Black Arizona Unitarian and a North Carolina Fundamentalist Baptist. These latter and a Virginia preacher attempt to bring this philosophy before the public. In the interim, there occurs a killing in self-defense, a presidential assassination, several murders, and a bank robbery.

Secondary to the thrust of the work but not in coverage is an exhaustive look at Carolina church services, outlining the druthers and interactions of these congregations. While there are diatribes aplenty, no doctrine is touted; the gist is that Copernicus was wrong in his heliocentrically if regarded in a multidimensional scope. The novel will not be fact-checked as it engages in these otherworldly anomalies. Churchy as it might seem, it is totally lacking in evangelism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638609179

Book preview

1

Zane Is Set Up

Ian Dix entered JR’s Bar in lower Huachuca City, nothing on the order of the City Hall Grill or the Ideal Tavern of Hampton, Virginia, in 1964. Neither of them would know, for they were babes then and West Coasters for all that. Those twentieth-century places were also not apparent to them since as Arizona locals, theirs was a cast of jaundice nailing them to another time. To say they, it is implied that sitting at the bar nursing a draft beer was Dr. Peter Silverstein.

Give me a Coors, said the newcomer, dropping down beside his old pal. Slumming, are we, Peter? said he with a swag.

Speak of the devil, said Dr. Silverstein. I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age. It’s been, what, fifteen years? What are you up to these days, Ian?

I’m principal over at Tombstone.

You’ve come up in the world. Last I recall, you taught psychology at Hermosa Forma.

Yeah, what about yourself? Scientologists ran you out of town, didn’t they?

Not for long, I have a practice over on Fry.

I remember you on post. You were in army intelligence, trying to confuse bats in Bisbee.

Yes, it was there I got in tight with the MPs. They brought me all the nutjobs to Yucca Ravine. You might say I’m respectable now.

And I might not. Dix laughed devilishly, a swashbuckler in the British Merchant Navy, resigned to talking up his larks on migrating to the States. Getting any interesting clients?

"Every day. I had this one woman, belonged to this goofy family. Her son was a challenged rooster of a boy, killed himself. The husband, demonized, I mean actually was committed to Tucson. She lived on in the house, secretive, missing a peg or two, you understand, lost the house but wouldn’t move out. The police came, it was a mobile home, and they moved it, but she slipped into a small travel trailer on the premises and rigged a hose into the septic tank. Oddly, she had a late model car and only came out to shop groceries. Cops finally took her to social services, and they sent her over to me. Her car just sat there, and kids vandalized it.

But she’s no fun. Sits there. I do all the talking. I have another one that’s notable, a walk-in off the street. I mean a real walker. He walks Whetstone daily, and you’ll see him up Fry when his van’s being worked on. He wanted a cure for glossophobia. I could have gotten him into situations. Got him over it in time, but the guy is almost eighty, and I was going to put him on drugs, singly or in cocktails, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

Bet you hated that. Those cozy pharmaceuticals keep you going, right?

Are you kidding? That industry carried me when I lost the hospital. Besides, antidepressants and antipsychotics are unbeatable for the problems of living. I can offer case studies to illustrate. Didn’t matter, though, he just wanted to talk. So talk therapy it is.

Ironically, I knew someone like that. I was teaching a concealed carry class right up the hill there, at Tyler Key’s, when his shop was in the old location. There were only six students, including him, and when he went to speak, his face reddened. I’m afraid I smiled and he saw it. Talk of the inward grudge. I’ll never forget it, the expression of pure hatred. Name was Zock, Zachary Zane Zock.

It’s one and the same. I managed to hide it during sessions. His wife was instrumental in closing me down back then. With the Scientologists. Mary Zock. She died back in Virginia, I’m happy to report. He was no activist, did drive them onto my campus the day Channel 9 was filming, though. Actually, I dislike him more for his bio. He’s an anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic, a Southerner, a short shit who aspires to professionalism but doesn’t make the cut. He’s one of these writer aspirants, talks like a book. It rubs off on you. Anyone telling his story would get caught up in the style. So I had him write me a paper. I’m trudging through it now. But what about you? Another round here, barkeep.

Well, I went back to school, stood for a PhD in education.

Welcome to the club.

It was a snap. I found the old boys help you right along. There’s not a trace of the undergraduate or graduate’s anxiety.

Yes, it’s an insider’s secret. Zock picked up on it, though he stepped on his crank. I don’t like that, getting into the logo, I mean.

Yeah, I saw how petty academia is. I suspected it before, but now it stares me in the face. You know, NPR, that’s National Public Radio, would have their listeners think pettifoggery is rampant, but they are all about narrative. It’s mostly in the schools, though.

It’s the nature of the beast.

Dix chuckled. Tyler used to say that. You mention a gun to that guy, he’d try so hard to sell it to you.

Silverstein was not a gun enthusiast. When a subject is mastered, he went on, there’s competency, but the psyching it out is lateral. Hit us again, barkeep. And this guy was a pissant undergraduate. He thinks he’s so smart. To hear him tell it there was Newton, Einstein, and Zock. Listen to this. You know how chemicals coalesced eons ago and produced us? He thinks we create our own environment. Mars was not there until man so-called discovered it.

You’re kidding.

I’m not. Oh, it was there but in a shell sense, needing animals to invest in it and make it real.

I hate these people, these smartass know-it-alls. You know what? He’s writing you a paper, right?

His bio, I’m almost through it.

Bet he’d like to get it published, right?

Exactly, the old bastard’s been trying all his life to get in print. Understand, it’s not simply the issue of him giving academia a bad name. That hospital was my life and blood. We had mercy fucks. We had the grandest time there, and for that Mary Zock to come along, actually with that chaplain couple, and close us down, I’ll not live it down.

Not an activist, right?

Hey, whose side are you on? Keep those beers coming, barkeep. The guy’s deaf.

I’m just saying, Pete. I’d have more respect for him if he had played an active role.

Yes, well, he never amounted to anything his whole life. He was a common thief and a peevish clerk in the navy, then he got out and existed off his skimpy enlisted retirement pay. He thought he was an artist, for Christ’s sake, and a wannabe monk. He was a pervert, chasing women in the streets, and he married this fuckin’ barmaid, had children by her, dated her daughter. Next, he went after this minor socialite, trying to get her house. That failing, he locked onto Mary Smith, thinking she owned a house. Then he was putty in her hands…

A real scum ball. Look, Pete, tell him his paper is a smashing success. Have him write another, citing his dummy philosophy. I can pull a few strings, get it into a respectable journal. Sure, I know his craft won’t pass muster, but I’ll dress it up and get it in under his byline. He’ll be a figure for fun.

Serve us up, barkeep, hear? No beer was finished, and the bartender was amused. I don’t like it, said Silverstein. You’re good. You may get him the publicity he wants.

That’s just it. I’ll ruin it literarily as well as substantively, these guys know me. Don’t you see, Pete? He continues as he is, he’ll get away with being a commonplace. We’ll jack him up so he shines as the spastic asshole he is.

You wouldn’t have to do that much. His gift of the pen is third rate at best.

You’re seeing it my way. Say…truly speaking of the devil, how ya doin’, Bart?

A well-dressed individual had walked in, out of place for his attire and carriage. I’m good, Ian. We have to stop meeting this way.

Dix chuckled shrilly. I know. I asked you to come down here. I had some material for you, that’s just gotten better, in fact.

You high school principals. I like your lanyard, but aren’t you supposed to have a school emblem?

I’m living dangerously.

Tell me about it. You still got that story going about how you beat up those limey sailors on the Redoubt?

Shrill laughter again. I was merchant. He took my gun course at Tyler’s, Pete. Lucky I didn’t flunk him. No, I was going to give you an article, Rube. But now, guess what? I’m a ghostwriter now. I have a genius in the shadows, but he’s grammar-challenged. Wanna beer?

Just one, Ian. We are looking for material. Keep in mind, though, we have international circulation and the piece must be qualitative.

You got it, Rube. I will have just the paper.

I’m eager to read it.

2

Psychological Session

Good job, Zane. Anyone with a bio like that must have a viable philosophy.

You’re putting me on.

Yes, I am. But I’m thinking it must be the hull for a richer theory. I’m going to let you go today. If it clicks, I may even get it into a journal for you.

No one ever said that to me before. How many words?

Merely write it. Of course, it will have a certain length to get it across.

Tim Ohms said that.

Eh?

One of my professors. He always sat.

Same time next month. Same fee. See you.

*****

Zane put it this way: I covered my doctrine before verbally for Dr. Silverstein, but here is the way it began: yesterday. That is what we don’t have. If I asked anyone to believe that, I would get absolutely no takers. But when we think back in time, never mind how long ago it was, something has to be there, perforce. Logic has progressed and put it there. That is what we remember. Now this is not to say there was no yesterday. And this is not a contradiction. Logic has presented for us, for all life, a reality. Not the reality we think, but a thrust of invisible whirlwinds we can sink our teeth into.

I think back at the seeming idiocy of it all. I look out and see traffic passing, and in these mechanical contraptions, there are apes driving them. Whoever looks at them that way? Yet it is crazy, these animals in vehicles. No, they are not classified apes, but they are the descendants of apes, and regardless of how technical they are, what degrees they hold, what music they make, what paintings they paint, what bridges and skyscrapers they build, or what pipes they plumb, they are animals doing these sorties across the earth and seas.

We are not looking at each other, not seeing one another naked. Oh, we do in the sexual fantasy, in the lewd objectification of the toilet, but the need of dignity is so overwhelming that we successfully compartmentalize it away. Effectively, we don’t see it.

Identically, we lose sight of the fact that organisms must behave in a particular way. To paraphrase Popeye, we are what we are. Tautology is what it’s all about…

*****

We are not to be sidetracked by this entanglement. Neither Ian Dix, Peter Silverstein, nor Bart James were regulars at JR’s. Ian had seen the bar on the way to Tyler Key’s gun shop and thought it a handy place to meet Bart, who motored down from Tucson. The latter taught philosophy at the University of Arizona, doing a small publishing business on the side. Peter scanned Zane’s paper, passing it to Ian, who read it, and, thinking he was a tad hasty at JR’s, drinking a few too many brews, made no changes and threw it in the mail to Bart. In his work as a high school principal, he did weekly mailings, and the paper required no extra effort.

Bart opened the brown envelope and read the paper cursorily, shaking his head. The humanities were the gist of his journal, and this was farfetched and highly unsatisfactory, sufficient perhaps for a psychiatrist to go over with his patient. But Dr. Peter Silverstein had bled Zane for what he could and dismissed him. Glossophobia, his complaint, was not even taken up; besides, he was prejudiced against him for merely being the husband of Mary Zock, who had ended the hospital fracas. Bart in his office was leaving for the next class when colleague Dr. Ralph Gover entered.

Ralph, you want something’ll wake up your class? said Bart, brushing by.

I was going to ask you. My lesson plan is the pits these days.

Feel free. Bart reached back, handed the envelope off to him, and was gone.

Gover taught religious studies in the Department of Philosophy. New to university life, he was fresh from Virginia where he was a Baptist minister before attending divinity school. A large man, his forehead was of a caved-in aspect. If Plato of the classical brow was the visage of high intelligence, Ralph was more the caveman. If he had brains, one would have to ask where he kept them. Ants in their colony skillfully came together to, for example, remove foreign objects from their anthill. Often it was difficult to dislodge them, and they toiled for days at it. Their techniques were quick-witted, while each specific ant was a robot, like their colony was cognitive, but no ant was. Then where exactly was the intelligence? Each of the cells of our brains are alone impotent. The brain must come together that it may think. Here was Ralph, however, who apparently had no room for many cells. It is told how those who diversify their cerebral talents may soon falter in their chosen field; there is space for just so much. Learn a bunch of foreign languages, just one if you are a purist, and where precisely does your native tongue stand? As Ed Bundy said in Married…With Children of his daughter Kelly, she will run out of room in her head.

And indeed, peers wondered where Ralph got his marbles from. Standing in the pulpit by the grace of God, he was no great pastor, for he wore his charisma in the hip pocket. Dr. Gover, and surely the good ole boys also got him his doctorate, was instead like the consummate comedian who became one with a crowd of a thousand in the act of thrilling it. No, he would stick to Saint Augustine in class for yet another day, for this murky paper would get him fired.

Gover came West, seeking the tweed suit and a pipe, not because he didn’t excel at preaching. He had in common with Reverend Zock, Zane’s father, his rostrum references to old-time greats like Dwight L. Moody and Norman Vincent Peale, and while Lottie Moon and anything missionary was repugnant to him, what thoroughly drove him from the ministry was an absence of faith. Bible stories, parables, the Gospels—he breathed them to a fault, exhilarating in their poetry and zeal. He could bring his zest to a heightened tempo on the order of fiery fundamentalist revivalists, but he fathomed in his heart as how there was truthfully no reason to believe in Jesus of Nazareth. The facts just didn’t stand up. Fantastically, on reading Zane’s paper, he understood through its fog that faith is not handed to you. You constructed it.

It was a Friday and Gover had the one class. Fumbling through it, he later called Peter Silverstein whose number was scrawled on the paper.

Silverstein here.

Hi, I’m Dr. Ralph Gover.

Are you now.

Gover never meshed with people except when preaching. That Zane Zock, patient of yours, you got any dope on him?

There’s another, longer paper. His bio.

But there’s patient confidentiality, huh?

Ordinarily, but this guy I don’t give a damn. You’re welcome to it. The doctrine thesis came your way, did it? You a publisher?

Nah, but I can get it the light of day.

Terrific. I want it out there too. His bio paper kicks in after his first navy hitch, I think. Silverstein then related Zane’s Southern upbringing, his parents influence on him, and time in the service up to that point, reading from his notes. If he could get this ass the publicity he deserved, he would be elated, he reasoned. Gover was provided the former patient’s address in Whetstone.

He drove down to I-10 and cut off on US 90. Unmarried, there was no one to keep him in town. Sisters Pamela and Candice were closest to him, who sang at his services, and remained in Virginia. Lucking out, he turned onto Camino de Desierto and into Zane’s drive. The mesquite trees were there and the block walls built by him in 1995. Beside a shed Mary and he built stood the venerable apricot minus its lower limb, which had broken off on its own weight. Jimson weed still sprouted at the rural mailbox, its flowers curling up near the red flag. To the front was a chain-link fence replacing a garden one of yore. Gover walked past the brown white-striped van and mounted the diminutive porch.

Mr. Zane Zock? he said to a figure inside through the storm door. I’m Ralph Gover.

Zane gazed out at his visitor piercingly, feeling a surge of self-confidence, for Dr. Gover was an image of behemoth proportions, not for his enormity, and he was six-three, but for the concave forehead setting off a grotesque incongruity. Ralph stood there gawking, asking himself why he had come this far, how could this person have authored so brilliant a paper? Understand, Ralph’s point of view was misshapen.

Then Zane said, You’re familiar.

You think?

I wouldn’t forget you, trust me. Ridgecrest Baptist Church. Virginia. You were the visiting preacher. You referenced D. L. Moody and the fire in Chicago. Two women sang…

My god! Those were my sisters, Pam and Candy.

My niece Dorothy was on the outs with psycho. Her label, and she was checking out other churches. We lived in Canaan, and I went across the state line with her and her daughter Miriam. The people were a cut above those at the NC churches. By cut above I mean dressier and the polished look. The pastor passing up the pews and shaking hands inspected me condescendingly.

Ralph could see condescending.

At the time, I thought he was a song director. But he was the main one. Another, big in the teeth and singing, and there was lots of it and very loud, was an assistant pastor. His smile was wide and constant. Then you preached, and I knew here was the old-time article, like radio types out of Del Rio. At home, I emailed the church asking who you were. There was no reply.

Ralph, standing and listening, knew that yes, this was the writer of the paper. Not that he was demonstrating any smarts, but his speech, average as it was, was out of kilter with the pronouncedly less-than-mediocre speaker. The contrast suggested not a depth of intellect, but rather it was an acumen more intuitive in nature.

Well, come on in, he said, holding wide the door. Ralph obviously wouldn’t know, but the interior was much as Mary, and he had left it when they moved east, from her bright yellow office to his clumsy attempt at floor repair as dictated by her. Here she had brainstormed with the Scientologists when they closed down Peter Silverstein.

He got them chairs on the back porch, again built by the two, for it was spring and the morning was heating up under a tent-like canopy. Dr. Silverstein let me read your thesis, the one on determinism, said Ralph. There were some memoir ones?

A couple, well, actually two-part.

I’d like to read them, if I may.

Sure, I have copies. He rustled about and presented carbon copies, for he had given up on computer printers and used an IBM Selectric typewriter. Actually, this had given him difficulties, too, for its ink smell. You can take them back with you. Are you local now?

Ralph told him his status at the University in Tucson and that yes, he would return and read them. Glossophobia, hey? he said, putting them in his satchel. Is that something like agoraphobia?

I used to think that. No, agoraphobia is where you’re afraid to go shopping and so forth. I have this severe fear of public speaking. I’ve heard it affects others to a degree, but that doesn’t help me. Like if I have to give a talk. Minutes before, the anxiety mounts, my heart beats fast, and by the time I get up there, I am aquiver, my voice is trembly, and I am incapacitated and mortified.

Ralph looked at him introspectively. Of course. Gloss is for tongue. Dr. Silverstein didn’t make any progress?

He didn’t try. You read the papers, you’ll see why.

Ralph didn’t like what he saw, but a germ of