Being an outcast doesn’t necessarily mean that you will sympathize with another outcast, but it helps. ---- From The Witless Wisdom of Rolland Fletcher.

Lilly and I listened to The Boy Jesus in the Temple at my house after we got back from Ms. Dickinson’s house because Lilly likes our stereo system better. Making Dad miserable made it all the better. Our Orphean guest seemed to like the piece a lot because I’m still pretty sure that the Orphean moved closer to the speaker every time the Orphic Trio and the boy singer did their part.

I didn’t really know any stories about Jesus except for something about his getting born in a stable on Christmas day, so I didn’t know what Rolland’s piece was all about until Lilly told me the story that Rolland used and then told me how Jesus got people mad at him by healing people on the Sabbath and things like that. I didn’t understand what was wrong with healing people on the Sabbath and all Lilly could say was that it was against the rules at the time.

When we finished listening to the CD, Lilly invited me over to her house for dinner. Since Dad is a lousy cook and worse company, I was all for getting out of the house, and I accepted the invitation in half a second. Before I could get away, though, Dad decided to be difficult for the millionth time.

“It just so happens that this is my night to host the meeting of my faculty group.”

“So? What does that have to do with my having dinner at the Nedricks? It gets me out of the way.”

“It’s just that this plant might seem peculiar to a group of college professors, one of whom is Evelyn Funston, our botany professor. Having what you call a house guest in our living room is rather awkward.”

Lilly got all stiff and looked like she was ready to run and get an axe to chop Dad’s face off if he threatened our friend in any way.

“I thought college professors were in favor of people being different,” I said.

“Yes, college professors are in favor of people being different,” said Dad.

“Then you college professors are just as close-minded as everybody else when it comes to figuring out who’s a people and who isn’t.”

“Neither do you,” I talked back. “Would you like it if somebody picked you up and threw you in the garbage?”

“No, but I am not a house plant brought in without permission of the human being who owns the house.”

“I’d tell you this Orphean is not a house plant if I thought you had a big enough brain to understand,” was my parting shot as I slammed the door behind me.

Getting away from Dad was the good part. The bad part was that I kept worrying about what would happen to my Orphean guest when the other professors came over so I didn’t have as good a time as I would have if Dad and his professors weren’t being such snouts.

Mr. Nedrick seemed worried about something, too, but I didn’t find out what it was. Lilly did the cooking and she had things sizzling in at least three frying pans. Mr. Nedrick and I sat in the den and I told him all about Rolland Fletcher and what Maestro and the Ms. Dickinson told us about him. Mr. Nedrick seemed to really like the part about the critic having to go to the zoo to get her interview with Rolland. The Nedricks had their computer in the den and Mr. Nedrick checked out his e-mail while he talked to me. That’s when I got the idea that he was worried about something. At first, he just seemed to be reading e-mails like everybody else, but then he suddenly cried out and got all tense.

He couldn’t fool me but I knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t my business if he didn’t want to tell me, so I didn’t ask any more questions. He still looked pretty upset when Lilly called us to the table and she noticed it right away.

“You’re right, I wouldn’t,” said Mr. Nedrick. “It’s just that there are some things I can’t tell you just now. I’ll just have to be upset about them on my own.”

“Daddy, I can be as upset about what you’re upset about as I want to be,” said Lilly.

“That’s my little desert flower blooming in my life,” said Mr. Nedrick as he gave Lilly a great big kiss.

“Now Daddy, you’d better eat your dinner or I won’t give you any dessert.”

By the time dinner was over, I was so worried about Dad and the faculty group that I decided I’d better run back home and watch over them and make sure they didn’t hurt my friend. It’s a good thing I did. When I walked in the door, Dad was in the middle of the living room making all kinds of contortions. Right away, I could see that Dad was wrestling with the Orphean. Fortunately, the Orphean was winning and Dad was caught in a grip he couldn’t break.

“If you didn’t get on my friend in the first place, this wouldn’t happen,” I told him.

“I’m responsible for your upbringing, so I have to—Oof!—okay I give—no more moralizing.”

With that, I went over to my friend and put a hand on him kind of close to where he had wrapped himself around Dad’s wrist, but not too close. Then I sang to him and asked him to let go of Dad. I promised to keep an eye on Dad and not let him hurt him. After a little while, my friend let go and Dad collapsed on the couch and rubbed his wrist. He looked so beaten, half-sitting and half-lying on the sofa, that I would have felt sorry for him if I wasn’t so mad at him.

“Yea, I guess. Whew! That thing made me feel as if Rolland Fletcher’s music was being pounded on my head.”

At least the Orphean and I had convinced Dad that he was stuck with what he called a conversation piece for his meeting. Mostly it killed conversation by making it hard for the professors to talk about anything when they came. I stayed on hand to offer refreshments, which got the professors thinking I was a nice, well-mannered kid, but I was just checking on them. It’s a good thing I did.

Dr. Funston, the botany professor Dad warned me about gave the Orphean a funny look when she came in. After giving my friend the evil eye for a while, she asked Dad what kind of plant it was in a tone of voice that told me she didn’t like not knowing what a plant was as soon as she saw it.

Dad said he didn’t know what it was. He saw it at Man o’ War’s and thought it looked nice so he brought it home to decorate the house. One of the other professors said it was nice that Dad was caring about the house again. Even I knew that was an insult. It made me wonder why Dad let other professors come to our house. Maybe it’s because they’re as bad as he is.

“Much to my chagrin, I can’t identify this plant either, and it’s my job to do that sort of thing,” said Dr. Funston. “The flower almost looks like a baseball. The petals are quite different from anything I’ve seen before. May I take a sample back with me?”

“You’re welcome to try, but this plant just might take exception to the idea and eat you up like a Venus Fly Trap.”

If Dad thought that was a cute way to save the Orphean, he didn’t know much about people. I knew Dr. Funston took that as an invitation to try and cut the plant even before she took out her pocket knife. I jumped in front of the plant and blocked her way.

“This plant is not available for scientific experiments!” I told her in no uncertain terms.

“You are excused for living, provided you do no harm to my friend,” I replied.

Dr. Funston looked at me like she thought I was crazy. That was okay with me as long as she didn’t try to get on my bad side or throw me into the loony bin.

Dr. Funston put her pocket knife back into her purse. After that, the meeting hit a sandbar and didn’t go anywhere because nobody knew what to say. I passed around some more refreshments, but by this time all the professors knew I was just guarding my friend and they didn’t like being stared at by a crazy child. That was fine with me. I was relieved when they all went home and I think Dad was too, but he wasn’t going to admit it.

“When are you going to learn how to be polite to people?” he asked me as soon as the door closed for the last time.

“What do you mean, be polite?” Kevin asked me. “Do you think it’s polite to cut somebody up with a knife and put the piece of that somebody under a microscope?”

That shut him up. I left Dad to stew in his own juice and went upstairs to check my e-mail.

Good for you for letting the Orphean come to your house! If your Dad doesn’t like him, he’s sure to be good. Parents don’t like anybody who’s any good. The flower you said looks just like a baseball sounds like the flower on the Orphean that grows next to my computer. That file about the boy who hit a baseball that didn’t come down has me thinking that the baseball landed here on Orpheus and then turned into a flower somehow. The diary of that priest talks about baseball flowers growing next to his monastery, so maybe these flowers are all over the place.

Things aren’t going well here. The mine caved in again today. It’s been doing that every day lately but this time it was really serious. Several boys were trapped and some the goons watching over them got trapped, too. As usual, they called me to fix everything. The down side is that when they think I can fix every problem we get, they get mad at me if there’s something I can’t do. I tried pleading and singing and everything with the planet, but nothing worked. The other times when I got results, I felt like I was communicating with live creatures, but this time I felt like I was just singing to a stone planet. Link-uh-Lugs got so desperate he let me play the sound bytes from Rolland’s CD full blast, but that didn’t do any good, either. Then Link-uh-Lugs yelled at me and shook me and slugged me so hard I fell over. That didn’t do me any good and it didn’t help the guys who were trapped, either. It made me wish I didn’t try to help anybody out.

We finally had to give up and leave the trapped guys where they were and go back to the compound. I guess I don’t have to tell you I got sent to my bed without supper. Just as well. I didn’t feel like eating anyway. I sat on my bunk and tried to figure out what was going on. Then I got down to the floor and did some more thinking. Finally, I started to feel like a friend was trying to communicate with me. I asked him why nobody responded to me where our guys were trapped and the answer I got seemed to be that Orpheans who are being cut to pieces by the miners and they don’t like it. The Orphean who was kind of talking to me got across the idea that it was easier for him to want to help because he wasn’t being cut to pieces just then. I could understand that. I negotiated as best I could for a while and bargained for the immediate release of the young pioneers but the goons had to stay stuck overnight. At about that time, the guys came in from the mess hall and made fun of me for singing. The trapped pioneers came limping in pretty soon after that but nobody gave me any credit for it.

Thanks for helping me. I wish you could find Rolland faster, but I know you and Lilly are doing the best you can.

Please do not be discouraged because you haven’t found Rolland Fletcher yet or because Tim Hawkins is desperate. Perhaps you already have the vital clue and we just can’t see it yet. The tip about a certain singer is most significant. Please do not be discouraged that Kaptin Flint’s e-mail to this singer bounced back. That was my work. I took the liberty of intercepting the message to make sure the wrong people don’t see it. I have sent this singer an e-mail program and when it is installed, I will relay Kaptin Flint’s letter to him. Please dream about Rolland, about his music, and his whereabouts. I offer you and Kaptin Flint much sympathy for the visit you are about to make on the morrow. LOUISE

I tried reading the horrible papers my students inflicted on me at the breakfast table, but I couldn’t, thanks to the horrible CD Kevin insisted on playing at breakfast. Just because he wanted to suffer indigestion didn’t mean I should have to suffer the same ailment. Other parents don’t know how lucky they are when they complain about the music their kids listen to. At least rock music, even Grunge Rock, has some semblance of a tune and uses real chords, and doesn’t throw three out-of-tune melodies at you at a time. To make matters worse, Kevin sanctimoniously informed me that this masterpiece by Rolland Fletcher was about the boy Jesus telling off the elders in the temple and then telling off his own parents. Obviously, this piece goaded Kevin on to feeling morally obligated to defy my authority because Jesus defied the authorities in his own day.

The ritual screeching of the truck’s brakes and delivery of the federal inexpressible package occurred right on schedule, although I thought Kevin and the carrier talked at the door for a much longer time than I would consider normal or proper. When he came to the breakfast table, I asked Kevin if he would kindly tell me his plans for the day, if he had any. He informed me that Linda was taking him and Lilly up to Waukegan to talk to Rolland’s boyhood pastor, and then to Racine to visit Rolland Fletcher’s music teacher, who had the reputation of being quite a dragon lady.

“Before you go off,” I said to Kevin, “do you have anything to say to me?”

Kevin gave me an innocent, puzzled look, as if he had forgotten all about last evening.

“Has it occurred to you that apologizing for what happened at my meeting last night just might be a nice thing to do?”

“I don’t owe anybody an apology for making sure no cold-blooded professors cut my friend to pieces,” Kevin replied, his voice turning into ice.

“Kevin, when I have guests over here, I expect you to treat them with respect.”

“Should I infer from what you have said to me that you are totally unrepentant of your actions of last night.”

Kevin shot up out of his seat and stood in front of me, his lip trembling with anger.

“WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO DO ALL THE REPENTING WHILE YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU WANT AND YOU DON’T CARE?”

With that, Kevin stomped out of the house, presumably to find refuge in the indulgent home of Tiger Nedrick. Far too upset to even look at any student papers, I finished my coffee and toast and became preoccupied with thoughts of the school psychiatrist who should be on hand to help me sort out my strange home life and perhaps take on my son who was clearly out of control.

Before going to my office, I walked by the library once again to check on the strange vines that Grant Marlow had talked about, hoping they would be gone. They weren’t. If anything, it was worse. The way the vines climbed from the window down the wall towards the bushes, they could be taken for a wall of ivy which probably accounts for why most people didn’t seem to realize that our campus was being invaded from another planet. I sure wasn’t about to jeopardize my job by being the first professor to report it to our president!

The first thing I had to do that morning was deliver a lecture designed to reactivate student interest in John Keats by giving them the tools for tearing the poetry to shreds and exposing Keats’ complicity in the social power structures of his day. I think that beats encouraging students to daydream about voluptuous love in the middle on the night of St. Agnes’ Eve.

Once that was done, I was free to go straight to the college clinic. The attractive co-ed at the desk looked up at me and asked me, with professional politeness, if she could help me.

"Uh—we have a new therapist. Didn’t you hear about Dr. Murdstone? His tenure was terminated because—well—you know what can happen between a male doctor and a female patient, don't you?"

“Yes, I can imagine. Does that mean that we don’t have anybody to patch up the psyche of professors and their wayward sons?”

"Ah, but we do. Dr. Kip Redford has kindly stepped in to take Dr. Murdstone’s place for the rest of the semester.”

“He has an appointment in a few minutes, but I can ask if he can see you briefly ahead of that, or you can come back later.”

“I’d like to get started now, and we can make an appointment for later if we need to.”

As the girl pressed the intercom, I started to recall an item in a faculty memo that, as usual, I didn’t bother to read very carefully, to the effect that a new psychiatrist had stepped in on an interim basis. As soon as the receptionist told the doctor that there was a professor who would like to see him before the next appointment, the door of the office opened and a man with a gray mustache and graying hair stepped out and extended a hand to me.

He brought me into his office and graciously asked me what the problem was. Already I was beginning to feel better about my situation.

“I’m faced with a most perplexing situation in my home life that I would like to run by you, if you have the time.”

“I have an appointment in a few minutes,” said the doctor, “but if you give me an idea of the territory we have to cover, I’ll have an idea of how to schedule a session for you.”

I blurted out the story about Kevin, starting with his odd behavior in front of the computer and then going on to say that Kevin was receiving outlandish e-mails about children being abducted and taken to another planet that he insisted on taking seriously. Dr. Redford sat bolt upright, obviously giving me his undivided attention, which I found most gratifying after what I had been through.

“A prisoner on another planet is sending these messages?” asked Dr. Redford incredulously.

“He says the prisoner’s name is Tim Hawkins. As you know, Tim Hawkins is a character in Treasure Island, so this whole thing has got to be a hoax.

“A hoax, yes, of course. The trouble is, your son doesn’t know a hoax from reality, does he?”

“That is my concern. One of the complications is that the name of Rolland Fletcher came up.”

“Me neither. According to Kevin, Tim Hawkins said that he was receiving strange messages on his computer from natives on the planet where he is held prisoner, and one of the messages was that a person named Rolland Fletcher could save them in some way if he could be located. I told all this to Linda Hoffman, hoping for some human sympathy from her, and she said she knew who Rolland Fletcher is—or was. She said this guy was some young freakish musician who disappeared mysteriously a few years ago. Thanks to that, Linda started taking this entire hoax seriously.”

“She has been driving Kevin and Lilly all over the metropolitan area to help them search for this Rolland Fletcher.”

“Lilly Nedrick, Tiger Nedrick’s daughter, has been sharing all these delusions with Kevin.”

“That doubles the gravity of this situation,” said the doctor. “Is there any reason to believe that this Rolland Fletcher is real, or is he another fictional character like Tim Hawkins?”

“The funny thing is that everything I have heard about Rolland sounds like a fantasy character you might read about in a trashy novel, but he has left some real traces in the real world. Unfortunately, most of the traces are in the form of horrible CDs that I’ve had to listen to the past few days.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to understand delusions of this sort. That is my job. Fantasies can tell us a few things once we find the right key. You say that Kevin and Lilly are searching for this Rolland Fletcher with the help of Linda Hoffman?”

“Yes, right at this very moment, she is driving them to Racine to meet some music teacher who taught the young genius how to perpetrate the horrid noises he created.”

“Racine? A music teacher. Hmm. So, we are talking about a fictional character, writing out of a fictional situation, i.e. his claim to be a captive of space aliens on a different planet, and we have a real human being, who may be departed this world, who is being re-created as a fictional being, sort of like the old legends of Elvis Presley.”

“That’s a good analogy,” I said. “But believe it or not, I have not exhausted the incredible stories that my son is receiving and is taking seriously as real life stories.”

“Kevin and Lilly both claim that they are receiving information about some green children who have been made prisoners somewhere else on the planet where Tim Hawkins is a captive. These green children have been put into the care of some religious order that has also left a few traces in this world but seems to be nowhere to be seen at this time. Kevin and Lilly have notions that they can somehow get to this planet and save the green children who are being abused by the doctors and monks who are in charge of them."

Dr. Redford seemed to run through several emotions in the space of a few seconds. At the end of some weird face-twitching, he laughed gently.

“I would say that your son is having a reality problem,” said the doctor, his voice as tight as a wire.

“Tell my appointment that I have an emergency and I will be available shortly.”

It made me feel good that Dr. Redford was taking me so seriously that he was willing to defer an appointment for my benefit. He turned his chair to me, his face all sympathy.

“Well, Dr. Sharperson, I sympathize fully with your concern for your son and for Lilly. I think your son will do well to have a talk with me as soon as possible. For that, matter, if Lilly can be persuaded to see me as well, that would be much better. Do you think they are both gone for the day by now?”

“Hmm. That is a great pity.” said Dr. Redford as he flipped open his black appointment book. "I know tomorrow is Saturday, and probably something of a day off for you, but you’re right about this being an emergency. Can you bring in Kevin and, Lilly if possible tomorrow morning?”

“Actually, tomorrow isn’t much of a day off for me. The faculty is putting on a presentation program for high school students.”

“Ah, yes, I remember hearing about it. That has its convenient aspects. You can bring Kevin and, hopefully Lilly, too, when you come for the program and leave them with me. I’ll take care of them.”

“I bet I can get Lilly to come,” I said. “The two have become inseparable since this thing started. I’m sure that if I make Kevin come with me, Lilly will choose to come rather than be separated from her companion.”

“I don’t want to ruin your day, but there is some chance I will,” said the doctor darkly. “However, you can be rest assured that we will be getting those children reoriented to reality as soon as possible by whatever means are necessary. Once on the psych. ward, they won’t be able to receive and send this bizarre e-mail or go looking for insane disappearing musicians.”

“I understand,” I replied, my mouth suddenly going dry. “I must say I’m glad that at long last I have found a fellow human being who still possesses the common sense that should be presupposed in all humans. Up to this point, everybody has conspired against me and against all reason and logic and common sense.”

“Well, Tiger Nedrick may not even know about these stories, but he lets Lilly do anything she wants. And then there’s this lawyer the children talked to.”

“Early on, a computer message ordered Kevin and Lilly to go to this lawyer’s office in the Sears Tower Building. You would think that a professional like that would show the children the door in two seconds. But far from it! She took the whole thing seriously and since then she has been sending my son papers written by some history professor that are also filled with all the same fantasies!”

“Uh-HUH! Well, I don’t have time to treat her psychosis. Anything else you want to tell me now?”

I thought about the vine-like substance that was growing on the library and decided not to press my luck in being considered a nut case myself.

“No, that will do it. Thank you very much. I feel better about the situation already.”

RF: Of course. There’s nothing serious about the town or part of town where I was born. The universe, on the other hand, is serious business. It’s the cosmic dimensions of my birth that matter, not the particular street where I pedaled my tricycle when I was four years old.

CD: Speaking of being four years old, were you interested in music at an early age?

RF: Yes. I would say I was composing music in my head at least two years before I was born.

RF: To say I was composing music in my head is a figure of speech, since I didn’t have a head two years before I was born.

RF: If I was a pre-existent anything, then I wasn’t really existing. I remember the music two years before I was born a lot better than I remember the me two years before I was born. So, maybe there was more music than there was me. Then, the more me there was after I was born, the less music.

CD: If you don’t mind my saying so, your answer sounds a lot more like myth than reality.

RF: I do mind your saying that. You are discriminating against dimensions of reality that you don’t understand and you are discriminating against people who haven't been born yet.

RF: They supported my musical interest insofar as they didn’t shoot the church organist who gave me free piano lessons because she loved music and was a Christian person.

RF: I don't know. I may be famous up to a point, but I’m not so famous that my parents know about it.

CD: Do you mean to say that you haven’t bothered to tell your parents that you are composing symphonic works that are being performed by major symphony orchestras?

RF: I don’t mean to say anything about my relationship with my parents. Next question, please.

CD: Many people consider your music rather eclectic. By that I mean that your music includes various-

RF: I know what "eclectic" means. It means mixing in a lot of ingredients. There’s a lot of music history we’re conscious of right now, so it’s hard to resist the temptation to throw in everything that’s lying about and see what you get.

RF: Josquin Des Pres, and William Byrd, and J.S. Bach, and Mozart, and Franz Schubert, and Gustav Mahler, and Anton Webern, and Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke and Darrell Stewart and Duke Ellington and Scott Joplin and George Harrison and the Trash Cans and the musical systems of the elves and the musical systems of the spheres.

RF: I’d say you have look around at all the pieces of our broken-up world and then figure out how to put the pieces back together without using any glue. The recipes of people like Byrd, Schubert and Schnittke give you some hints.

CD: If you don’t believe in glue, does it follow that you believe in fragments?

RF: I suppose so, as long as the fragments reflect the ordered chaos of the spheres.

RF: Actually, music creates lots of disorder, especially when it tries to be orderly. That’s because people create the most disorder when they’re trying to be orderly.

RF: I mean that if a government, like most dictatorships, constructs a social order by oppressing people, then the oppression is a moral disorder. That means you have to wreck the so-called order before you can get any real order.

CD: Does that mean that you feel that it’s is okay for your music to be disordered?

RF: No, it means that I feel morally and artistically obligated to break down musical order and then find new ways to build it back up again. Some people can’t hear the new order I come up with. I guess they like the old orders so much they don’t want to think of new ones.

CD: Do you think that music serves an important purpose for understanding the world?

CD: That is quite a broad claim. Would you say, then, that music has become your religion?

RF: Jesus is important to me. I’m not sure that means religion is important to me. Since lots of people who say they are religious don’t like me, I’m afraid to say that I am religious. Maybe I’m devout without being religious.

RF: If a course in so-called logical thinking will keep me from contradicting myself, I would rather not take that course. Music proceeds only by way of contradictions. No contradictions, no music.

CD: Music often does include tensions of conflicting emotions. Is that what you mean?

RF: That, and more. Back to what we were talking about a minute ago: music is disordered but the fragments somehow connect and then you get a new sense of order.

CD: Some people seem to think that you believe that anything goes when you write music. That you follow no rules whatever. Is that your attitude?

RF: I follow only one rule when I write music: Get the right sounds in the right places.

CD: One of the critics responding to your concerto grosso speculated on what drugs you take for inspiration. Do you take drugs of any kind?

RF: The only drugs I take for inspiration are licorice, chocolate, pizza, and root beer. I hope that answer doesn’t disappoint you and your readers