Godless (18 page)

“The incident?” asked Alex.

“That's what we called it. A member of our downtown congregation who got connected to the church through the homeless shelter approached Frederick after he finished his message one Wednesday evening.” She paused. “The church hosted a midweek Bible study. My husband tried to rotate into the teaching lineup at least once per month.

“Anyway,” she continued. “This homeless man approached my husband as if he wanted to shake his hand or ask for prayer or something. But he instead walked right up to Frederick and spat in his face before calling him a pretty filthy name.”

“Was the man drunk?” Alex asked, familiar with the rough realities of inner-city ministry.

“He might have been. But he was definitely angry.”

“At something Uncle Fred said?” Brandon asked.

“At something he had done,” she went on. “You see, it was the middle of a big brouhaha over whether the state should redefine marriage.”

“Religious or civil?” Alex asked.

“That's just the thing,” she explained. “We didn't distinguish the two back then. This was during a time when a religious marriage was the norm, or at least treated as every bit as legitimate as civil marriage.”

Alex smiled at the thought of how much more satisfying it would have been to sign a license that described a couple as “husband and wife” rather than “legal domestic partners” or to live in a society that considered such unions a “covenant with God and each other” rather than a “nonbinding agreement of cooperation” on record with the state.

“What made that man so angry was that my husband signed a public affirmation. A network of pastors sent it to the governor asking him to defend their right to describe marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”

Alex said nothing while considering the scene. How would he have reacted if asked to sign such a document? He agreed, certainly, that marriage was an institution ordained by God. But suggesting they restrict it to heterosexuals, while ideal, seemed almost naïve. Or worse, hateful.

“You can imagine what happened when the press got ahold of that story,” Ellie continued. “‘Homeless AIDS Patient Endures Hate Speech from Popular Pastor.' You wouldn't believe the vitriolic attacks that came against my Frederick after that incident.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Alex said, still trying to reconcile a man who would launch a medical clinic for AIDS patients while signing a public statement against gay marriage.

Ellie looked intently into Alex's eyes. “I think the Lord wanted me to tell you that story,” she said as if suddenly remembering her point, “because you face a very similar danger.”

“Danger?” he said. “What kind of danger?”

“My husband lost his ministry because he tried to affirm the sanctity of marriage.” She paused as if trying to ignore a still-open, painful wound. “Offerings dipped after someone floated a ridiculous rumor that some of the money given for the AIDS clinic had found its way into Frederick's Christmas bonus. Young people stopped inviting people to our church, afraid their pastor might embarrass them by saying something homophobic.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Frederick never said or did anything to hurt anyone in his life. But that didn't matter. He had the label.”

“What label?”

“Hateful,” she answered. “That's all it took for the board to disregard a decade of impact and quietly suggest he take a generous severance package. How did they put it? Oh, yes, ‘So that both Frederick and the church can make a fresh start.'”

The trend lines returned to Alex's mind. Attendance and income had plummeted like a rock after Pastor Baxter's tenure. He wondered if Ellie and Frederick had endured a similar dip.

“How did you make out after that?” he asked.

“Frederick decided to leave the ministry to start a small business.”

“Small?” Brandon interjected. “I'd hardly call FB Enterprises a small business!”

“I didn't say it stayed small.”

“What's FB Enterprises?” Alex asked.

“A distributor of gluten-free snacks,” she said modestly.

“The second largest distributor of gluten-free snacks west of the Mississippi!” Brandon added before turning to Alex. “He sold it for a boatload of cash about ten years back.”

“Hush,” Ellie said with a blush before feeling compelled to explain. “He got into the business just when it started to boom. We did quite well.”

Brandon appeared suddenly angry. “That's why Freddy called to thank her.”

“Now Brandon,” Ellie said in gentle rebuke. “You don't know that.”

“I do know it!”

“Freddy?” Alex asked when the conversation left him behind.

“Frederick Junior,” Ellie explained. “Brandon thinks he arranged to have someone suggest I volunteer after learning my treatment had been denied.”

“How else do you explain his sudden contact after…what…four months?”

The comment appeared to sting Ellie's maternal feelings. “Six,” she said with embarrassment. “It had been six months since he last called.”

“I'm telling you, Aunt Ellie, Freddy is up to something.”

“You don't know that,” she repeated.

The argument continued for a few minutes. It became clear that Brandon did not trust or like his cousin, who apparently lived on the West Coast with a partner who felt uncomfortable around the kind of religion embodied in the gentle, feminine soul sitting across from Alex now.

“May I pray for you?” the pastor felt compelled to ask, both to defuse Brandon's rising irritation and to bless a woman who had given him more than she knew.

“No,” she said to Alex's surprise. No one had ever rejected the offer before.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, yes, of course. But first I want to pray for you, if you don't mind.” She reached over her partially eaten plate of food and touched Alex's hand. She began praying aloud before he could respond.

She thanked God for the young pastor's passion and asked him to protect Alex's beautiful wife and children.

She prayed that God would use her story to encourage Alex and to grant him the wisdom he would need to say what would need to be said in a manner that people could hear.

And she asked the Lord to open the eyes of the people of Christ Community Church to the reality of an enemy who wanted to disfigure and destroy God's image on earth.

Alex looked up from the prayer before Ellie had finished. He sensed this moment carried some mysterious importance, as if a mantle of divine grace was being passed and received. But what kind of grace?

The kind that enters the fray of a losing cause?

The kind that risks a family's livelihood to speak out against a system that, until this moment, Alex had considered well outside a simple pastor's scope?

Or, he hoped, the kind that shines a bright light in a darkening world?

“Amen,” Ellie said with a slight squeeze of her pastor's hand.

“My turn,” Alex said with a grateful wink in Ellie's direction. They bowed once again. “Father in heaven,” he began, “thank you for sending Mrs. Baxter to me today. You know that I needed to hear what she has said. Thank you for her sensitivity to your leading, both now and during the years she and her husband gave of themselves to launch Christ Community Church. Please help me to not mess up the work you used them to begin…”

He stopped, suddenly aware that Ellie, too, needed a message from the Lord. He looked up and spoke her name.

She returned his gaze.

“Father, I know Ellie said the news of denied treatment didn't bother her. And I know that she wants to give her son the benefit of the doubt regarding his phone call.”

She appeared both alarmed and touched by Alex's words.

“But I also know that she's feeling some anxiety and hurt.”

Brandon looked up after realizing the prayer had become a conversation.

“Please give her your comfort and a peace that passes all understanding,” he prayed.

The woman swallowed hard, then asked, “What should I say to my son?”

“Tell your son that your pastor told you all human life is sacred. And that yours, in particular, is precious.”

A tear began forming in her eye as he continued.

“Tell him that volunteering isn't the act of a hero. It's the act of the deceived. Our enemy hates the image of God, which is exactly what you are.”

“So I was right to refuse?” she asked, a single tear falling to the table.

“You were right to refuse,” Alex said. “God is perfectly capable of taking you home when he's finished with you here.”

He squeezed her hand gratefully.

“And I have a pretty good idea he's not done with you yet.”

Matthew continued
staring at the back of his hand. It still ached. He didn't remember hitting it hard enough to bruise. The force of impact must have been buried in a pile of split-second clumsy decisions he had made during the brief moments afforded by the inhaler's magic mist. A burst of panicky strength helped him drag the deadweight woman from her bedroom to the tub. But it must also have drowned out whatever painful bumps and slams his body had endured.

“Another refill?”

Matthew looked toward the question to find a waitress dressed like a pro football cheerleader. He scanned her up and down. “What's your name?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Sir,” she said in a voice that sounded more like a chirpy girl's than a curvy woman's. “Can I get you another?”

Matthew must have seemed, to her eyes, a dirty old man hitting on a girl half his age. He blushed at the mistaken impression. He handed her his empty glass. “Yes, please,” he said without thinking. He had planned to order something stronger. Perhaps a double scotch could calm his anxiety better than a second beer. But it was too late. The waitress had already scurried away, navigating her hips around a dozen half-empty tables back toward the bar.

He glanced up at the sea of flat-screen televisions to take his mind off the visual hiccups he hoped a few drinks might shake from his mind. But the images continued to flash in the same persistent sequence, as did the questions.

What if Brianna Jackson hadn't forgotten about her transition appointment?

What if she'd never made it?

Get a grip
! He told himself again.

But no matter how much he argued with himself he couldn't shake the feeling he had done something wrong. Possibly even illegal. Why else would Serena Winthrop insist he use a fake name and a password-protected message box? Weren't transition requests part of the public record to protect volunteers from fraud?

“I've done nothing wrong!” he heard himself whisper. Even if he
had
bent a few laws, they were in the same category as those about double-parking or jaywalking. Certainly nothing that could get him into real trouble. After all, he had only done what thousands of transition specialists across the nation do every day. Just because he didn't have a sterilized room or slick brochure like the clinic his mother had used didn't make his actions any less respectable.

He had provided an essential service to the public good. And, he nearly believed, to Brianna Jackson. She was obviously too disoriented to think clearly. It had been Matthew's job, his moral obligation, to think for her. Just as it had been his job to think for his mother.

Brianna Jackson had been every bit as heroic as any other volunteer. So had his mother. Reluctance is not cowardice. Fear of dying and the will to live are deeply rooted impulses that were no longer useful to those in such a dilapidated condition. Perhaps Brianna had agreed to the procedure in a moment of weakness, caving to the subtle pressures to choose a nobler path. All the more reason Matthew needed to lend her his own courage, his own clarity of mind.

We decay
. He still believed it. Rejecting the reality of God didn't require abandoning his mentor's entire point of view. Manichean philosophy had brought Matthew to the dance. And he would continue relying on its central tenet to combat irrational fear and unhelpful remorse.

Matthew had helped free his mother and his client from the prisons of deteriorating bodies. That had to be a good thing. A gift.

The jolt of recollection interrupted Matthew's train of thought as he remembered an unfinished item from the day's assignment. He tapped the screen sitting on the table. Up popped his private account, displaying two new messages. He read the first.

The time marker told him the body had been removed five hours after Matthew had sent the request. A sigh of relief came. Not just because Serena Winthrop had released payment for his first successfully completed assignment. But also at the reminder that his had been just one step in an overall process. The irrational fear subsided. Of course Ms. Jackson had scheduled the appointment. Why would Serena Winthrop, or anyone else for that matter, make up such a thing? He had done his job. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The cheerleader reappeared to place his refill on the table. She said nothing, probably eager to slip away before Matthew could badger her further for her name.

“Thank you, miss,” he said to her fleeing back.

He glanced into the glass mug, suddenly less thirsty.

Another mug settled onto the table. “Mind if I join you?”

He looked up. It was the man he had met a few days before in the same sports bar.

“Matthew Adams, right?”

“Good memory,” Matthew replied. “Um, Morris?”

He gave Matthew a manly slap on the back. “Pretty close!” he said. “Mori.”

“That's right, Mori. Short for…don't tell me…something Quincy.”

“I'm impressed,” the man said. “Bryan. Bryan Quincy. Not as easy to recall as Matthew Adams.”

“Why is my name so easy to recall?” Matthew asked nervously while rubbing his bruised hand.

“Two firsts.”

Matthew didn't follow.

“The first Gospel and the first man.”

“First Gospel?”

“I forgot,” Mori said with a laugh, “you don't read much.”

“I read all the time.”

“Not enough to recognize the first book of the New Testament.”

The reference finally connected for Matthew. “Of course,” he said with some embarrassment, “the first Gospel in the Bible.”

“There you go,” Mori said like a proud teacher.

Both strangers lifted a glass to seal the reunion.

“So,” Mori said after swallowing, “did you complete your first assignment?”

Matthew's head darted anxiously toward the inquest. “What did you say?”

“Dostoyevsky. How's it coming?”

Matthew laughed nervously. “Oh, yeah.” He tried to recall details. So much had happened since he had taste-tested the massive volume.

“What'd you think?” Mori pressed, as if trying to expose a lazy student's bluff.

“Like you said, it made me cringe.”

Mori nodded knowingly. “But it made you want to read the rest, didn't it?”

Matthew said nothing while the man nodded in agreement with himself.

“I don't think you ever told me,” Mori re-launched after swallowing a sip from his mug, “what is it you do for a living?”

He thought for a moment. “Sales.”

“Sales? No kidding?”

“Why would I kid about working in sales?”

“You wouldn't, I suppose. I just never would have pegged you as a salesman. But then, I guess there's a bit of selling in every job.”

“Even teaching?”

“Especially teaching! Every lecture I give is a sales pitch for something.”

“Like what?” Matthew asked as if taking offense on the man's behalf.

“In a perfect world I'd be selling them on noble ideas.”

“Of course,” Matthew said.

“But in the real world I have less lofty ambitions.”

“Such as?”

“Such as getting them to pause their gaming and social networking addictions long enough to read an actual book.”

They both smiled at the truth of it.

“How about you?” Mori asked. “What does a former philosophy major end up selling?”

“I work with the transition industry,” Matthew said with a hint of self-importance that was quickly dashed by Mori's burst of laughter.

“What's so funny?” he demanded.

“Forgive me,” the man said while suppressing a few more chuckles. “I guess it was the timing.”

“Timing of what?”

“I asked you what a philosophy student ends up selling.” He paused to snigger. “And you say transitions.”

Another burst of laughter.

Matthew clearly didn't get the joke.

“Don't you see?” Mori asked after taking a recovering breath. “Nietzsche taught the futility of life. Now Adams sells the merits of suicide.”

Matthew winced at the jest. “Most people understand the difference between suicide and volunteering,” he said crossly.

“Whoa,” Mori said while lifting his hands in surrender. “Don't shoot. I didn't mean any offense. I just got tickled, that's all. Trust me, I'm a big fan.”

“A fan of what?”

“The Youth Initiative. Thomas Malthus. Paul Ehrlich. Decrease the surplus population and all that.” Mori lifted his glass as if offering a toast. “More power to them, and to you. It's guys like you who will dig us out of this economic ditch.”

Matthew calmed himself, then offered a flimsy smile. “Well,” he said, “I guess I'm a bit sensitive. I take my job pretty seriously.”

“As well you should,” Mori said. “And I'd be sensitive, too, if I had a bunch of religious nuts calling me a murderer.” He thought for a moment. “But the way I see it, you're like a Boy Scout helping little old ladies. Only instead of escorting them across the street, you help them cross the threshold.”

Matthew tried to discern whether the comparison was a compliment or another joke.

“In fact,” Mori continued, “you would have loved the discussion I had with my students a few weeks back.” He paused to wake his tablet. “I assigned them to read part one of
Crime and Punishment
.”

“By Dostoyevsky?”

Mori appeared surprised. “You've read it?”

“No. But you mentioned it when you suggested I read
The Brothers Karamazov
.”

“Oh, right, I forgot.” He continued flipping pages in search of something. “Anyway, we were discussing one of the scenes when a student pointed out something I hadn't noticed before. Ah, here it is,” he said while glancing toward Matthew as if confirming his student's attention. “This part happens just before Raskolnikov kills the old lady.”

Matthew's eyes widened. He knew the novel had something to do with a crime. The title had told him as much. He now realized it involved killing an old woman. Just a coincidence, he wondered, or a sign? And if a sign, of what? And from whom?

“Oh, sorry,” Mori said. “I've spoiled the plot for you.”

Matthew shrugged.

“No matter,” the teacher shouted while slapping his new protégé on the arm. “You probably weren't gonna read it anyway, just like my students.”

He ignored Matthew's sheepish grin while transforming himself from lonely barfly to community college professor eager to enlighten anyone who would listen on the brilliance of the Russian master.

“Dostoyevsky gives the perfect rationale for the Youth Initiative.”

“Really?” Matthew said curiously.

“You bet. In this scene a philosophy student argues why it would be more noble to kill the old woman than to let her live. Here,” he said while handing the tablet to Matthew. “Read for yourself.”

Matthew flashed a puzzled expression. “What, you mean here? Now?”

“Of course,” Mori said, pointing to the location on the screen.

Matthew started reading aloud.

Matthew looked up anxiously from the page toward his tutor. Why would he have chosen
this
paragraph from all the possible passages in all the possible scenes in all the possible novels ever written?

“Uncanny, isn't it? Mori said with a wink. “Almost like Dostoyevsky is speaking to us from the grave.”

Matthew nodded quietly.

“Go on,” the teacher urged. “It gets even better.”

Matthew's reading stumbled. He didn't follow. It must have showed.

“The old woman was going to leave her money to the church,” Mori explained. “Keep reading. Now it gets really good.”

He stopped. The words dripped with callous cruelty, the heartless philosophy of an envious man. But strangely, they also brought a mysterious sense of relief, as if the writer had anticipated Matthew's eyes reading them on this of all days.

“See what I mean?” Mori prodded, eager for his student to connect the dots. “It's like a more honest and direct version of one of President Lowman's flowery speeches. Only instead of all the fluff about heroic self-sacrifice and economic incentives he goes right to the heart of the matter.”

“Which is?” Matthew asked hesitantly.

“Which is that we've got a bunch of selfish debits hoarding too many of the assets in this nation that could go to younger, worthwhile chaps like you!”

Matthew said nothing, at once buoyed and ashamed.

“So anyway,” Mori added, “the protagonist, Raskolnikov, goes ahead and does the deed. He kills the old woman to get her money. But then there's a twist.”