Absolute Brightness (31 page)

“Phoebe, do you think Travis is evil?”

“I don't know. Maybe. But does it matter? He still doesn't deserve to die for killing Leonard. Does he? Isn't killing supposed to be a mortal sin?”

“It is. I do believe it is, and so does the Catholic Church, by the way. But some people, like your uncle, some people say that because Travis committed this evil, he himself must be evil; by doing away with the source of that evil, they might rid the world of more evil. They rest easier, sleep at night. For them it makes sense.”

“But it's not right,” I said, exasperated with Father Jimbo for taking Uncle Mike's side in the argument, even for the sake of argument. I had had enough of that for one evening.

“No. No, it is not right. Not for us. For you and for me, this is not a solution. But for others it is something definite they can do about the evil when it feels like evil is closing in around them.”

“So what're you and I supposed to do? Just stand by and let them get away with it?”

“Exactly the right question, Phoebe. What can we
do
? And in my mind, that is the only question. What can we do?”

“Yeah, but that's my point, Father Jimbo. I can't exactly do anything here. I told you. Uncle Mike is dead set on doing the talking when the trial resumes.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling and showing me as many of his teeth as he could. “But there are days and days before that happens.”

For the next half hour or so, Father Jimbo and I sat at his desk talking about good and evil. And though I'd been thinking about this stuff ever since Leonard disappeared, this was really the first time in my life that I was being asked to articulate what I thought about human beings and their enormous propensity for evil in this world. Were we truly good-natured creatures with occasional bouts of really bad behavior? Or were we all intrinsically evil with a desire to be better? I suppose it should have been some comfort when Father Jimbo told me that this was a question that had troubled some of the greatest thinkers and theologians throughout human history, and we couldn't hope to come up with an answer in one night. But really I was pissed when I noticed the time. It was after nine o'clock. More than an hour had gone by, and the only thing Father Jimbo had been able to offer me was cocoa. He still hadn't given me a game plan. I began to gather up my hat and scarf.

He grabbed his coat and walked out into the night with me. He said he had to do something inside the church and then added, “There is always something.”

We paused on the sidewalk before saying good night.

“So what'll I do?” I asked him. “Will you at least talk to Uncle Mike?”

He gave a quick shrug and then, as if he had a sudden inspiration, asked me if I wanted to come inside the building with him. I looked up and saw that the church front was dark and foreboding. This wasn't one of those big swanky churches that had been built in the seventies to look like an airport terminal and to give everyone a feeling of hope about the future. This wasn't a place to which a movie star returned to get married and photographed amid the goodwill and cheers of hometown fans. St. Stephen's Church was more of a throwback to another time. Modeled on someone's idea of a quaint village church somewhere in England before World War II, it had a tall, pointy spire, pews of dark wood, kneelers with real leather pads, and a series of little arched niches where sad saints huddled in dusty shadows. With its dark-colored brick, wrought-iron railings, and saturated stained-glass windows, this church always seemed to me like a hangover from an era when Catholics really ruled, like during the Crusades.

Father Jimbo was already up the front steps and unlocking the heavy front doors. He stood in the vestibule with one arm holding open the door. I could see into the darkness, but darkness was all I saw.

“Come on,” he said, jerking his head toward the building. “I want to show you something.”

“I really ought to get home. My mom'll be calling the police after me.” But even as I said it, I was moving up the steps toward him.

“It will only take a minute.”

Once we were inside, with the door shut behind us, I could feel rather than see the spaciousness of the church in front of me. A tiny lit candle flickered in the distance, but it was so small and so far off that it hardly illuminated the place; it was just a point of light. I could hear the two of us breathing, but once Father Jimbo spoke, I could also hear how big the place was. The sound of his voice carried to the far wall and then bounced back at us.

“Don't be afraid,” he said. “This is what I want to show you.”

“What?”

“This.”

“It's dark. I don't see anything.”

“Yes,” he said. “Exactly. But what is darkness?”

“Huh?”

He was beginning to freak me out with this business about the darkness, his questions, his breathing. I could smell his aftershave and hear the chafing of his neck against his clerical collar as he turned to look at me in the dark. We were too close, and everything suddenly felt wrong—and scary.

“Can we say what darkness is?”

Just as I was about to turn and run, Father Jimbo flipped a switch on the wall beside him, and the chandelier lights at the back of the church went on. Instantly I could see the church, and though it seemed unfamiliar to me in this eerie half-light, it was without a doubt the place I had always come to on Christmas and Easter and on those Sundays when Mom insisted that we get dressed, go to Mass, and pray for God-knows-what.

“Darkness is where light is not,” Father Jimbo said, answering his own question. “Darkness is the absence of light, Phoebe. The more light there is, the less dark. It works the same with good and evil. Think about it. The more good there is, the less evil.”

“So what're you saying…,” I asked him without exactly looking at him. “Are you saying I have to talk to Uncle Mike myself?”

*   *   *

On my way home, I thought about Father Jimbo's demonstration of light and dark, good and evil. I kept replaying the scene over and over in my mind, trying to figure out if it had been fair of him to lure me into the dark and use the church as a backdrop for his party trick. I wondered if he had perfected this stunt back in Africa. I pictured him as a young man traveling from village to village, astonishing whole tribes of natives. Perhaps he went around with a generator packed in the back of an open van. Maybe he had a string of lights and a big switch, so that even in a village beyond the reach of an electrical hookup, he could do his thing and mystify the crowd.
The more light there is, the less dark! It works the same with good and evil! Think about it.
I even imagined a scenario where Father Jimbo had tried his trick in a church somewhere in the United States back when he was a novitiate. I could easily picture the kind of panic it would have caused among the parishioners and the many complaints lodged with the bishop, until finally Father Jimbo was summoned to headquarters and given a stern warning not to try it again.

But how could he keep himself from indulging in such a dramatic demonstration of a question that is fundamental to our understanding of human nature, a question that has, as he put it, troubled some of the greatest thinkers and theologians throughout human history? With evil still rampant in the world and showing no signs of lessening its influence, wouldn't he feel that it was his moral responsibility to flip the switch again and again, as many times as necessary, whenever he saw the opportunity, every time someone came to him with a question?
So what'll I do?

In my case, I was able to answer my own question. I walked over to Electra's house and knocked on the back door. Mrs. Wheeler peeked through the yellow frilled curtains, the ones that I myself had once helped to hang about a million years ago. She opened the door and grabbed me by my shoulders.

“Where you been, girl? I could just about whup you for not coming 'round our house. Told Electra, told that child to get herself over your house and drag your
ass
back here if she had to, but … What you do with your hair, girl? That's a color? Get in here this minute and let me see you in the light.”

 

twenty-one

AFTER A YEAR
of not being friends, there I was, once again, sitting at Electra's kitchen table on a Friday night waiting for her to come down the stairs so she could join me and we could get into some trouble. Just like always, I could hear her mother arguing with her, telling her what to do. But this time I was the task at hand.

“She came all the way over here to see you. Least you can do is go downstairs.”

“And do what?”

“Say hi. Be civil. Talk to the girl. Work it out.”

“And what if I don't want to?”

“Then, girl, you're a bigger fool than folks take you for. Now get.”

Electra appeared in the kitchen looking not that happy to see me. Her dreads were tied up in a purple scarf, and just the ends were sticking out of the top like a wrapped-up bunch of flowers. She was wearing a worn-out pink T-shirt, and her jeans were the ones that we'd stolen from the Gap almost two years ago. The moment I saw her, I realized how much I liked her, and I had to admit to myself that despite all my halfhearted efforts, no one had come close to replacing her as my best friend. I shrugged and said, “It's been like a bad year or something. For both of us. I don't even know what either of us did that was so wrong. But I'm telling you, it's not right for us to not be friends. I came to say I'm sorry. Forgive me?”

Electra shifted her weight to one hip and tilted her head way to one side. She just looked at me as if she were weighing her options or assessing my outfit. Finally, she offered me the flesh of her small round arm and said: “Lick it, bitch.”

We laughed so loud, it sent Mrs. Wheeler running down the stairs and into the kitchen. When she saw us with our arms around each other, she just shook her head and glanced upward as if some explanation could be found written in the ceiling plaster. She pretended that she had been scared out of her wits by our yelping, but really I think she knew what was up and just wanted to see us happy together again.

I gave Electra a quick rundown of the situation, describing Uncle Mike's behavior and his insistence on the death penalty as a form of justice. She gasped with horror at all the right moments and reacted as a best friend should, responding to every prompt with exaggerated facial gestures and knowing nods. She understood what I was trying to say before I'd even finished saying it. Finally, she grabbed me by the hand and led me up the stairs into her bedroom. I sat on the edge of her bed as she plopped herself into a knockoff Aeron chair and began clicking away on her keyboard.

“And you're getting a computer,” she informed me, without taking her eyes away from the screen. “It's ridiculous, you livin' in the dark ages. I love reading books as much as you do, but you know, even
Jane Austen
's got a website now.”

“I know. I know.”

“No. For real. You're getting one. 'Cause if we're going to be friends again you gotta get connected. I'll teach you.”

Within minutes she had located a website devoted to the subject of capital punishment. She scooted over so that I could squeeze in beside her on the chair, and together we read what appeared on the screen. She scrolled and clicked like a master. I was amazed at her dexterity, her know-how. Obviously she'd been keeping herself busy during the past year.

“Here it is,” she said.

We were shocked to learn that before the end of the month, seven human beings would be put to death somewhere in the United States either by electrocution or lethal injection. Electra read aloud the names of the condemned, along with the intended dates of their deaths and also the states where the executions were to take place.

“Stephen Hopper—March second—Texas.

George Mobley—March seventh—Ohio.

William Ray Smith—March eighth—Ohio.

Henry Wallace Jr.—March tenth—North Carolina.

William Dillard Doyle—March twelfth—Indiana.

Jimmy Ray Pollard—March fifteenth—Texas.

Julio Melendez—March sixteenth—Oklahoma.”

Because neither of us could think of anything else to say, we found ourselves observing a moment of silence.

“And look,” Electra said when the moment had passed. She clicked ahead to the following month. “More names in April. Same thing.”

“Whoa,” was all I could offer.

“Yeah. And no one notices,” she remarked as she took her hand off the mouse and reached across to push the hair out of my eyes. “No one does the math. It just goes on.”

“And tell me again,” I said, feeling more dense than usual. “How does this help my case with Uncle Mike?”

Electra threw herself onto her bed and looked over at me like I was lame for not seeing things as clearly as she did.

“What?” I asked her.

“Nothing. It's just that up until this thing with Travis, you didn't care a hoot 'bout capital punishment. Now all of a sudden you're an activist? How'd that happen, you think?”

“I
know
Travis,” I offered, though I could tell from Electra's all-knowing expression that I'd answered exactly as she expected me to. “But it's not like I don't care about all those other guys. I do. I just don't know them. Not personally.”

“Ex-aaaactly!” she said as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up so she could look me straight in the eye. “You got to get your uncle to
know
Travis. Somehow you got to make Travis a real, living, breathing person to him. More real than even Leonard was. Then your uncle can't possibly consider offing him.”

“Right. And how am I supposed to do that?”