The Second Coming

the village of Megiddo in the narrow waist of Israel (the site, as you may know, of ancient Armageddon), where a foe from the east would logically attempt to cut Israel in two. From this point you can monitor any unusual events in the Arab countries to the east, particularly the emergence of a leader of extraordinary abilities—another putative sign of the last days.
    I can’t see any reason why you can’t just as easily live in the Israeli desert as the New Mexican.
    Instead of watching TV docudramas, why not a ringside seat for the real thing?
    I shall leave it to your best judgment how to evaluate such events and what action, if any, to take, e.g., whether to inform the media what is afoot. Though I am no great lover of mankind, I believe that people have the right to whatever information may help them to reach the right decision. If you had proof that Southern California would slide into the ocean next Tuesday, would you not at least put a notice in the L.A. Times ?
    Finally, I trust that none of these unusual requests will be necessary, not the delivery of the letter to North Carolina, not your removal to Megiddo, that instead you will receive a telephone call from me. A few days will tell the story.
    Again: please destroy this letter after reading and digesting it.
    Sincerely yours,
Will B. Barrett
    Having finished this outlandish document, Will Barrett rose from his desk and paced up and down, hands deep in pockets, frowning, lips pursed, for all the world as if he were back in his Wall Street office rehearsing an argument before a probate judge. But what a difference! What would Dr. Sutter Vaught make of this letter? Imagine Sutter in Albuquerque, picking up his mail, turning on Cronkite, flopping down in his recliner after a day’s work with paraplegics in the V.A. hospital, opening his beer, then opening a letter which proposed first a trip by plane and bus to North Carolina (he had not owned a car since his Edsel gave out), then a permanent removal to a flea-bitten village in Israel—to say nothing of the references to God’s existence or nonexistence, Armageddon, and the appearance of the Antichrist during the Last Days!
    Leaving aside what any psychiatrist—or any sensible person—would think of Barrett’s preoccupation with God, Jews, Armageddon, and suchlike, one might nevertheless wonder how in fact Sutter would respond to this strange request: to journey to North Carolina and mail a soiled letter in the Linwood post office. The fact is that Will Barrett, crazy or not, might well have made a shrewd choice of a confidant. Even if Dr. Sutter Vaught thought he was as mad as a hatter, he would nevertheless very likely carry out the assignment, whether as a matter of curiosity and the simple oddness of it, or from a kind of quirky sense of obligation, or as an investment in the interesting role of beneficiary of a million-dollar life-insurance policy. Can a madman change his beneficiary? Who can say?
    At any rate, Will Barrett suddenly bethought himself and, seating himself again at the desk, took up pen and added a postscript.
    P.S. I wish there was a way to tell my daughter Leslie goodbye but there is not. Perhaps you will do it for me if it is necessary. If the result of the experiment is positive, then she and I will have found common ground. I will acknowledge her Lord. If not, and you do not hear from me, I ask you to choose a time at your convenience and convey this message to her: that even though she never seemed to need me, I am sorry I was such a rotten father. No doubt the fact that she never needed me sprang from her perception of my unavailability, coldness, shutoffness. These awful distances within a family—was it always so? But I’ve always been suspicious of the word “love,” what with its gross abuse and overuse. There is no cheaper word. I can’t say tell her I “love” her, because I don’t really know what “love” means except as it applies to one’s feeling for children—and then it may only mean one’s sense of responsibility for their terrible vulnerability, which they never asked for. One loves children, especially one’s own, because there they are, through no doing of their own, born into the same low farce you and I are living but not knowing it yet, being in fact as happy as doodlebugs and you and I would do anything to keep them so. Wouldn’t we? Is that love? Perhaps my