Love Her Madly (6 page)

“Where would I find the chaplain?”

“He livin' in town now. In a rented room.”

“Why is that?”

“You might ask the man, ma'am.”

She gave me an address on a slip of paper. Reverend Lacker lived on Main Street. Before I'd left for Texas, I learned that Rona Leigh's chaplain was her husband, had married her some time ago. I drove back into town, retracing my route up State School Road.

*   *   *

A large and battered Bible was situated front and center on the coffee table next to a bowl of Wheat Thins and a pitcher of lemonade. He poured two glasses.

He said, “Though I like to think my guidance has prevailed, Rona Leigh's acceptance of Jesus Christ as her savior is the thing that showed her what makes up a human being. Showed her what a human being
is.
How a human being
acts.
How a human being should
be.
This is something she had to learn, since she'd never been taught what the rest of us are taught before we go on to take such things for granted. She has worked long and prayed hard to become a human being.

“Previous to her spiritual rebirth, she was not a human being but, instead, an empty vessel inhabited by Satan. The devil made her his den. His cave. When Rona Leigh put herself into the hands of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, she threw off Satan and was born again, praise God.”

Of course. He smiled. Benevolently, I'd have to say. Made me think of the Beatles, Paul McCartney, cherubic but smooth. Full of smiles. Beaming relentlessly. How everyone had loved the precious mopheads. The Christian right had noted the phenomenon.

I said to the radiant chaplain, “Reverend Lacker—”

He interrupted me. “Excuse me, ma'am, but I have been temporarily relieved of my duty as the unit chaplain while I guide my wife. Until my ministry is returned to me I prefer your calling me by my first name, Vernon. Not Reverend Lacker, thank you.”

He smiled a new smile, contrite.

Now I knew of three Vernons—Elvis's father, Vernon Jordan, and this one, Rona Leigh Glueck's husband.

I said, “Well, then, Vernon, you can call me Poppy.”

I could tell by his face that he wouldn't. He didn't.

This third Vernon said, “To put things more simply where it concerns my wife, Miz Rice, let me use the purest words of Jesus Christ through the witness of John, chapter three, verses five through seven:
“I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not wonder that I said to thee, ‘You must be born again.'”

I listened politely. It is so absolutely amazing that men have gotten away with disregarding women's sole role in childbirth in order to bestow the real credit upon the baptizers—themselves.

Vernon reached into the bowl of Wheat Thins. He grabbed up a handful and started munching. I was relieved that the bowl hadn't been filled with pork rinds. I can only handle so many clichés. But I needed to ingratiate myself with him. I needed trusted access to his wife.

“Vernon, why should it be as simple as that? How could anyone accused of such a bloody and brutal crime find redemption with such ease?”

He took my words in. Something registered in his eyes. Surprise. His gaze took me in. Me the human being, not me the nonentity he intended to blow off with scripture. The smile plastered on his face eased up. He said, “Could it be you came here meaning to take me seriously?”

“Why wouldn't I?”

He studied my eyes. He said, “I fear people like you … women like you … Excuse me.” He breathed in deeply, gave a long look skyward through the ceiling, and then his eyes met mine again.

“I pray to the Lord God to help me keep from sliding into the sin of the naysayer. For making judgments I must leave to Him.
Judge not lest ye be judged.
I neglect to heed His words, may He forgive me my limitations. But … well, you see, ma'am, women who are as worldly as yourself treat me with derision.”

I had to make this guy my friend. “Their loss, reverend.”

He didn't correct me this time. “Let me be candid, ma'am. Those very women happen to frighten me. As do you, though you resist making judgments, a Christian virtue I surely need to pray for more deliberately, as I just said.”

“My job is to resist making judgments till all the facts are in. Making sure
all
the facts are in and that the facts are true.”

“And that is my job as well. But I didn't mean to say—”

“Reverend Lacker, tell me please, what specifically do you fear? I don't understand.”

“Literally?”

I wondered what that was supposed to mean. I didn't ask. “Yes.”

“I fear that you will freeze my sperm and render me obsolete.”

Now I couldn't help but smile, just as he couldn't help the serious look that accompanied his solemn words. I said, “How is that literal? Frankly, it's about as metaphoric as I can imagine.”

The smile came back, smaller, though. “An evangelical preacher does not speak metaphorically. There is not one thing Jesus said, nothing in the New Testament, that is metaphoric. It is fundamental. There is no need to interpret. It is all there for us to see, plain as day.”

He picked up the Bible next to the Wheat Thins.

I said, “I cannot believe that women taking over the world and annihilating the male gender is a real possibility to you. How can you trust Jesus to the exclusion of human dignity?”

His eyes were very dark brown, almost black. Up until this moment, soft. But now he wanted me to see him. “Miz Rice, you are not just an FBI agent, you are a theologian. I would like to talk to you about human dignity, the lack of which is what happens when Satan infiltrates a person. I would like to do that because I forget that sometimes the drama of the pulpit is out of place in a conversation. But there is no time for the two of us to try to understand each other. I feel, though, that you and I want the same thing: that which is right and just.”

I'd give him that. I joined him in a few Wheat Thins.

“For ten years I have been chaplain to women condemned to die and to women serving hard time for felonies. And here is what I have witnessed. At some point during their incarceration, the gravity of what they've done just hits them like a bolt of lightning. In almost all cases the women are convinced the bolt was sent by Jesus. And when they experience that encounter with the Holy Spirit, they feel terrible … terrible. Mortified.

“They feel huge and grievous guilt. They experience remorse. And, finally, they repent. Although I give credit to the Lord, I know that He didn't send any lightning bolts. I am not blind to the benefits these women receive from a life of order when previous to their time in prison they didn't know order. I do not deny the humanizing effects of education on them, the learning available to them here, minimal though it may be.

“The point is, they come to accept their punishment fully. They learn to live with it, they
welcome
it as their due. When the bolt of lightning strikes, they suffer severe depression, and what takes them out of that depression is their need to give back. It drives them. It replaces their previous driving force—rage.”

He'd finally put the Bible back down. His cheeks were pink, and now his hands clenched together.

I said, “So what do they do about it?”

“There are women here making afghans for the poor and knitting booties for foster babies during every spare moment they can find. But they need better means of giving back, of physically demonstrating remorse.

“There are none. Rona Leigh is one of those women. She tried to organize a cooperative, to unify a group to create beautiful objects. Those same afghans but ones they designed themselves. And quilts. Dolls. All to be sold at a profit so that the money could go to shelters for battered women. To help take care of crack babies. Whatever. But she was stymied at every turn and was in fact forced to dissolve the network she'd formed with other prisons all over the state.” He smiled. “Many addictions here have been replaced with another: e-mail.

“Miz Rice, I fell in love with the human being Rona Leigh has become. She is no longer evil. I want her life spared not because women shouldn't be executed while men should, not because I'm against the death penalty, not because her victims were scum to begin with and were no loss to society whatsoever, not because of any of that. Though I see it is God's will that this particular woman should be spared, the larger reason for me is this—and may God forgive me that I do not have the meekness he commands—I don't want to lose her. I love her.”

Ah, love.

I said, “Let me tell you what I think about love. I think people fall in love not because of the individual who has come along and made their hearts go pitter-pat but because of the timing. When you're ready for love … looking for love … you zero in on the very first person who comes along. Unless, of course, that person looks like Quasimodo. Then it's the second person to come along.”

This was true of myself but not anyone else I've ever met. Somewhere along the line, I realized I didn't want to be married to the guy who happened to beat out Quasimodo due to fortuitous timing.

Vernon gathered up some more Wheat Thins and started popping them into his mouth whole. He said, “I pray you are not correct about that.”

C'mon, Vernon, old boy, stand up for your love for Rona Leigh. “Vernon, I wish I weren't. But it explains why so many people find love in the wrong places. Because we go to the wrong place when we're feeling the need for love.”

“When we feel the need for love, we should go to church.”

“That's not where you went. You went to death row in a women's prison. Perhaps Jesus led you there.”

He could keep his voice steady, but he kept shoving fistfuls of Wheat Thins down his throat. He said, “I am almost afraid to ask. I worry that I am sinning if I ask. But I will. Do you see the Lord, then, as a manipulator?”

“I don't believe in the Lord.”

He choked a little. He cleared his throat. He said, “You blaspheme.”

I didn't respond, but I held his gaze. Then he looked away, wounded, down at his Wheat Thins. Finally, he came back. “The Lord God is real. But it's not a matter of belief. It's faith. You haven't faith. I will pray for you.”

“Vernon, you claim to appreciate my honesty. Faith, as far as I'm concerned, is the need to believe what those in authority tell you is true. Once I had faith in the Tooth Fairy. I had faith because when I was five years old I lost a tooth and I found a quarter under my pillow the next morning. The preposterous tale my parents told me was true. But the next year, when I was six, I made believe I was asleep so I could peek at the Tooth Fairy as she exchanged my molar for a quarter. She turned out to be my dad.” Who was not a light-footed fellow. “At six I learned there wasn't a Tooth Fairy or, for that matter, a Santa Claus, and probably not a God either. Faith to me is buying into bullshit—excuse me—when you're a child and then, as an adult, refusing to accept that you were hoodwinked. By your parents, no less.”

Now I waited. I expected self-righteousness and, I hoped, anger. Then I could get him to speak about Rona Leigh from the point of view of reality. Reality was the only thing that might possibly mean a new trial for the woman. But I didn't get either. I got compassion. I got a benevolent smile.

“Excuse me, ma'am, but you are wrong. There is faith and there is trust. They are not the same. But now I know something I didn't know before. I can trust you, Miz Rice. You are honest and direct. To admit to atheism requires grand courage. But Lucifer lurks within you, and I will beg God with my very being to protect me from him as he is crouching so close by. And I will pray for your conversion more fervently than I have ever prayed for anything in my life. I believe it could well be harder to save your soul than to save the life of my wife. Not her soul … it's already been saved. Her life is my more pressing need. So tell me exactly what you must know. Ask me and I will be direct with you. What can we do?”

“We can go to the governor with something more than redemption.”

“But what else is there?”

“Two things. There is the strong possibility that she didn't receive a fair trial. I'm gathering up several pieces that I intend to put together for the governor. And another thing is the truth about the crime itself. The truth of the actual crime that might never have been considered to begin with. Vernon, has Rona Leigh ever told you that she didn't kill Melody Scott?”

His eyes grew wide. Such a question amazed him. “No. Of course not. She has maintained her guilt from the start. And then—through the grand gift of the Lord Jesus—she came to take responsibility.”

“Has she ever said she didn't remember what happened that night?”

“No. She remembers each directive Satan ordered.”

“Has she ever revealed a motivation for killing beyond the drugged and drunken state she was in?”

“No. When Satan controls you, there is no other explanation for your actions.”

“Have
you
ever thought she didn't commit the crime?”

“I never knew the vessel she was when she was inhabited by the devil. I only know the woman she became, the woman she is today, a woman who sees a spider and won't kill it. Who asks a corrections officer to take it outside. The saintly woman my wife became once released from Satan's iron grip. Now she can't kill anything. Not even a spider, let alone a human being.”

I leaned forward. I put my hand out to him, placed it over his. I said, “I'll ask you again. Have you ever thought that she didn't kill Melody Scott and James Munter?”

I could tell by the expression that came over him that he hadn't. Ever. Or maybe he never wanted to. If such was the case, I would confirm his fear that his sin lay in the absence of any meekness. I waited. I wouldn't prod any further.