“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

At mid-afternoon yesterday I lay down for a nap on the waterbed, so I could be close to Jane, who sat at the card table. She’d been having a rough time and I didn’t want to leave her alone. I fell into a deep sleep after setting the alarm for an hour. I woke up hearing her voice as she called out to someone who was evidently at the back screen door, which I’d locked as usual. I thought the visitor would be a neighbor. My eyes barely open, I stumbled out onto the back porch. As soon as I opened the kitchen door I saw I was wrong.

“You walked?” I was incredulous. That would be fifteen miles or so. In this weather, without a coat? I wasn’t thinking too clearly yet, but that would be feat par excellence for anyone—let alone lugging two bags along. From the attaché case Fred took the handwritten manuscript of The Rules of Love. “Please. I am Seth. Show this book to Jane and have her read it while I wait here, then you tell me, Robert, what she thinks of it....” This, after Fred comprehended that I had no intention of letting him in the house. Jane could not deal with him, I thought, although he showed no signs of violence. “Please, Fred is getting cold.... If you won’t take the whole manuscript, take just this one chapter—Fifteen—and show that to her. Let her read it. Then you come out and tell Fred what Jane thinks of it. I can help her. She’s going to die soon.”

“Oh, I mean you no harm,” he said. “Fred doesn’t. But he’s awfully cold....” When I asked him again what he would do if he didn’t get into our place, he said, “Why, I think Fred will die. It doesn’t matter. He’ll just die. I am Seth; I know he’ll be all right.” And with that Fred sat down in the wood chips beside the stump that Frank Longwell had placed for us when he’d built the back porch for us. Fred did this very calmly.

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?

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....