“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A stranger stood there, a man with thinning hair, deeply set dark eyes, a pudgy face, perhaps in his late 40’s—I’m not sure. His hair was black and straight. He wore a white business-type shirt, a tie, no coat, and gray business-type pants. I could see that his pointed shoes looked rather worn. A fat brown suitcase and an attaché case were on the ramp beside him. As soon as he started talking I knew we were in trouble.

Standing outside the screen door, Fred closed his eyes and dropped his head down to his chest. I heard and felt nothing. “I didn’t get it,” I said. not roughly. “Tell me, how did you get here? Don’t you have any money? Where are you going when you leave here?”

“If you don’t let me in your house I’ll just die,” Fred said. By now he’d taken two hardcover books from a bag, and given them to me. One by Jerszy Kosinski and one by Somerset Maugham. The latter was an expensive anthology. In one he’d written a note on a blank page to Jane, and to me in the other. Check their phrasing for a close approximation of the way he talked. Fred also handed me a thick, neatly tied package of brown paper and yellow string—The Christ Book, he said, which was for Jane and me, and for Prentice-Hall. I didn’t open it, and still haven’t. When I asked him where he was really from, he said Denver, and that his address was inside the package. It wasn’t on the other manuscript. Nor was I quick-witted enough to ask if he had a family, if anyone knew where he was, or what he did for a living—if he worked, or could—or how he found our house in the first place. I wondered if he was schizophrenic. He appeared to be harmless enough.

By now I was shivering also. I think the temperature was around 45 degrees. Fred sat in one of the folding chairs and I hurried inside. I slid the kitchen window shut so he couldn’t call into Jane. She still sat at the card table, of course. “We’ve got a problem,” I said to her on my way to the closet. “I’ll tell you about it....” I grabbed my heavy corduroy coat. “We’ve got to call the police. I’ll be back in a minute.” I helped Fred put on my coat and bundled him up. He readily agreed to my offer of some hot tea or coffee. I went back in to put the water on the stove for heating. In all the visitors we’ve had, this one went the furthest, I thought, to the point I’d often wondered about: actually calling the police for help in handling someone. I didn’t want to call them, but had no choice. I fumbled around looking for their number (we hadn’t written it in the front of the book, as you’re supposed to). When finally I called on the speaker phone, the number rang four times by my count, and I began to wonder what we’d do if for some reason the police simply never answered. Did they work Saturday? Call the State Police, I thought. When someone did answer, I explained the situation. Whoever I talked to had evidently been questioned by someone also looking for us—if not Fred himself —but his description of the person, as being older and with white hair, didn’t match Fred’s appearance at all, so I didn’t press the point. (Later I wished I had.) But I hadn’t explained much of the situation when my caller said, “We’ll have someone up there right away.” I said we’d be waiting.

The water wasn’t hot yet. When I looked out on the back porch Fred was gone. The door was half open. I had instant visions of him wandering away, not really meaning to, but perhaps getting lost—and wearing my best coat. His bags sat there on the ramp Frank Longwell had made for Jane’s chair. A moment later Fred came back into view from in back of the garage. “I had to go to the bathroom,” he said, tightening the coat around him. He didn’t seem to be so cold now. I told him I’d called the police, and he nodded. “Fred means you and your wife no harm at all,” he said, speaking for Seth again. I told him I knew that. I still wanted to know what he was going to do when he’d left here.

I was just going back in after the hot drink when the dark-colored police car pulled up Holley Road and turned into the driveway. I waved to the officer driving. He was a youngish man with a mustache. He came inside the porch and I began to explain the situation to him as briefly as I could. “How did you get here?” he asked Fred. “I walked,” Fred answered. “Fred has read some of our books,” I said. “This is difficult to explain briefly, but he came here from Denver, he said, and he has no money, and nowhere to go when he leaves here. He’s given us those books and manuscripts” —I pointed to them, stacked up on the picnic table—“and he wants my wife to read them. I don’t have his address—”

“It’s inside The Christ Book,” Fred said. By now Fred seemed quite resigned to leave with the policeman. He never did display any anger or outright emotional upset. It was just that no matter what one said to him, he replied in the same reasonable, well-spoken, well-mannered tone of voice, which was quite pleasant. It was only after listening to him for a bit that one came to realize that something was amiss here, that Fred lived in his own world, which was a mixture of fact and fantasy. It seemed to be quite impenetrable. At the same time, he accepted almost without question whatever development or course events took: When he realized he couldn’t see Jane, he accepted it finally, in a very reasonable manner. Beyond expressing disappointment at that fact, he did or said nothing else.

Fred Conyers stayed on my mind through the rest of the day, after I’d waved to him as the policeman backed out of the driveway and headed down the hill. He sat in the back seat very docilely, in his white shirt and dark-colored tie. Was he secretly relieved at the way things had worked out? Even in his drastic situation, I thought at the time, our society in some fashion had a way to take care of him, hopefully. But would society—could it—transport him all the way home to Denver, were he telling the truth about his origins?

How could he manage to arrive here without a penny in his pocket? I kept wondering if he had some money and change (at least) stowed in one of the suitcases, but he swore—Seth swore for him—that he did not, and finally I believed him. I also believed him when he finally sat down in the driveway and said he was prepared to die in the cold. He could have wanted to sit down from sheer physical exhaustion, yet I think more was involved. This noon, as I talked about writing these notes, Jane wanted me to call the police and ask what had happened with Fred. I wanted to also, but hesitated. My stomach felt empty. “Wouldn’t it be hell if Fred shows up at our door again?” I asked. “Maybe he’s from town,” Jane said. “Maybe the police will just let him go and he’ll come back.”

We hope not. We’ll probably call the police to ask for news, eventually. I may ask them not to refer people here, if they’re not legally bound to. Upon scanning the one manuscript, I found several references to Fred writing on it in a series of restaurants in Pennsylvania—which means of course that he didn’t take a direct flight here from Denver. There may be no such connection. Maybe he landed in Pittsburgh. Maybe he’ comes from Pennsylvania. The manuscript of The Rule Book of Love: A Seth Book, is written on the back of heavy white stationery from Howard Johnson’s motor lodge in Coraopolis, PA, which may be near Philadelphia. I’m not sure. That is, Chapter 16 and a few other pages are. The rest is plain white paper, from who knows where? I definitely ended up feeling sorry for Fred, and I think Jane does too. Too bad she missed him, for as I told her, he’d make beautiful subject matter for a chapter, by inference. So would his manuscript (not a bad title, that), although we couldn’t quote it. It’s a very coherent production in its own way. I know it’s easy to feel bad about what appears to be someone else’s dilemma, but at the same time they live in the reality they’ve created and have their own kinds of protection. Their set of rules of the game are just as strict as ours are—at least that’s the way it seems to be in Fred’s case. All of his behavior was consistent with his beliefs, I’d say. At no time did I feel fear, but at the same time I didn’t want him in the house, where problems might develop getting him out....

(P.S. After I finished, found a reference in Fred’s manuscript to being in a restaurant in Pittsburgh and waiting for a flight—evidently to Elmira. Coraopolis must be a part of Pittsburgh, then.... was Fred’s suitcoat stolen—maybe in a restroom or on a plane? When I asked him where his coat was he only said, “I have none.”