“This was all that was done on the first day.”
The final sentence chilled me. My impulse was to skip over the material completely, but I couldn’t shy away due to my own distaste. Instead, I tried to understand. My father had read dozens of books, copied sections in longhand, then organized his notes into a chronicle of terrible human activity. It was not scholarship on his part; he didn’t seek the information in order to place it in a larger context to further human knowledge. At first I suspected Dad sought inspiration, but none of his own books included the specific techniques he’d compiled. It occurred to me that he was using history to justify his own obsessive interest, seeking precedent to indulge his fantasies. For thousands of years people have treated other people in a horrible manner. Humans systematically tortured one another for political, social, and religious reasons. Someone performed all these acts, and someone else made a record for posterity. My father’s imagined worlds were nothing compared to historic reality.
Later my mother called and invited me to watch her beloved Reds play the Cardinals. I went to her house, grateful for the respite. It was a short drive through the lovely landscape of northern Mississippi, the thick foliage heavy with green. The sky was violet at dusk. The road to Oxford dipped and a church came into view. Briefly I had the sensation I was in Kentucky, driving to Haldeman to visit my mother.
At Mom’s house we spent twenty minutes fiddling with the television remote control and discovered that the Reds game was blacked out locally. Mom found a cop show she liked, then muted the volume and asked how work was going on the book.
I laughed and said, “Porn, porn, porn.”
She told me about taking a box of pornography to science fiction conventions and selling the books to fans.
“They bought them,” she said. “They bought everything. I don’t know why. The books were pretty much all the same. Different settings and people’s names, but the same. People just like them, I guess.”
“It’s like Agatha Christie novels. Or TV shows. A satisfying formula.”
“With sex,” she said, and laughed.
I told her I’d found a notebook with scads of notes about torture. The extensiveness of the material surprised me.
“It shouldn’t,” she said. “Your father was interested in that, you know.”
“What did you think of that?”
“It was historical.” She shrugged slightly. “He had a lot of interests. Like you do. Remember when you did that magic show at the library? You had a lot of hobbies.”
She was right, I had many hobbies as a child, and at one time wanted to be a stage magician. Maybe Dad’s study of torture was similar, a short-term enthusiasm.
“Whenever I talk about Dad’s career,” I said, “people always ask about your sex life.”
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
“Why would they want to know that?”
“I guess because of the porn,” I said.
“What do you tell them?” she said.
“I say it’s not something we discuss.”
She thought for a moment, then spoke. “Tell them it’s none of their damn business.”
“Okay, Mom.”
We turned our attention to the silent flickering on the television. The lead actor presided over a team, and Mom explained each of the specialist roles: fighter, tech, rookie, weaponry. The sound was unnecessary. I could see the characters surrounding a floor plan and planning an assault. They walked through a house with guns and flashlights, then chased a shirtless man in a car. I knew the car would wreck and they’d arrest the driver, and I knew the team would later capture the real bad guy, the boss of the shirtless man. A predictable formula satisfied the viewers, the same as it did for readers of Dad’s porn.
Mom told me she was content, that she liked living alone, and wondered if she should feel guilty about that.
“Do you?” I said.
“No, but I think I should.”
“You’re eighty, Mom. You deserve a break. No need to feel guilty about having a life you like.”
“You know,” she said, “you’re right.”
“Do you ever miss him?”
“Not really. Sometimes watching TV at night. Somebody to talk to.”
“Well, I’m here.” I pointed to the silent television set. “Good show, huh?” I said.
We both laughed. Later I hugged her, setting off the high-pitched keening of her hearing aid, and said goodbye.
I drove home and watched thousands of lightning bugs float in a field against the dark tree line. Cicadas roared steadily. The sound of frogs rose and fell. A whip-poor-will called, then a barred owl. Despite the beauty of the night, I could not rid myself of the tortures my father had compiled.
Chapter Twenty-eight