Authors: Greg Herren
A Christian church had never given me such an unpleasant feeling before.
I’d gone to Catholic school until college, and had attended enough Masses and prayer services to last a lifetime. I’d been to the Episcopalian services with my Bradley relatives. Every time, the most sense I’d ever gotten was something benign and peaceful.
But this place was setting off alarms in my soul.
Once we went through the glass doors into the crowded foyer, I could hear an organ playing “Nearer My God To Thee.” My stomach was churning, and despite the cold I could feel sweat forming on my forehead and under my arms. I slipped my jacket off and draped it over my arm. An older woman, maybe in her late fifties, gray shot through her black bouffant, pressed a program into my hand. She smelled of roses, and she gave me a very sweet smile. “Bless you and thank you for coming,” she said, patting my arm.
There were several sets of open double doors on the other side of the cavernous foyer. People were streaming through the doors. I bit my lip and followed Colin toward the doors on the far left. Everyone was so polite, and every so often I caught a glimpse of women who were softly crying to themselves.
It was so strange.
Had Tara and Marina really touched the lives of so many?
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I slipped it out and glanced at the screen. Colin’s face grinned up at me, and across the bottom of the picture read the words:
Mass hysteria, you think?
I slipped the phone back in my pocket.
The nausea I felt outside was getting stronger, and a headache was starting to form behind my eyes. I dry-swallowed and took several deep breaths as we entered the sanctuary. A chill ran through my body. There were rows and rows of hardwood pews, with red velvet cushions for the worshippers to sit on and more cushions on the back rests. Pockets on the backs of the pews held worn Bibles and song books. There were five aisles ending in several wide stairs, which led up to a pulpit. On the back wall behind the pulpit was another gigantic iron cross, with spotlights flashing different colors on it—first blue, then red, yellow and green. Massive candelabras stood on either side of the pulpit. Just to the right stood several risers, presumably for the choir. Throughout the sanctuary people milled about, removing coats and placing umbrellas on the floor, hugging and murmuring. The murmuring was low and quiet, almost unearthly. Colin and I slipped into a pew in the back, sliding to the opposite end.
“Are you okay?” he whispered to me as I spread my coat over my legs. “You look pale.”
“Maybe I’m coming down with something,” I whispered back. The headache and nausea were getting worse, and I rubbed my arms to try to warm them. I took a few deep breaths.
“We can leave if you want,” Colin continued, his face worried. “You really don’t look well.”
I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I lied. I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of the Dove Ministry of Truth.
There was something definitely off about the place.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, pressing my forefingers into my temples. That sometimes worked for a headache, and the deep breathing seemed to be helping with the nausea.
I opened my eyes and looked forward. The different-colored lights were still flashing on the cross. It seemed
obscene
in some way to me.
A portly bald man in a black suit stepped out onto the pulpit, holding a microphone. “I’d like to encourage everyone to take their seats, please, so the service can get started.”
The murmuring stopped and within a matter of moments everyone in the place was seated in a pew. I was amazed at how quickly and orderly it was accomplished.
I was about to say so to Colin when I caught sight of a familiar-looking head of thick blond hair in one of the front pews.
Father Dan? What the hell was he doing here?
I strained my eyes, trying to make sure it was him—but I couldn’t be certain. The hair color was right, even the shape of the head, but he was almost fifty yards in front of me and I couldn’t be sure unless I saw his face.
Colin pinched me so hard I almost yelped.
“Why did you do that?” I hissed, and he elbowed me in the side, I looked at him, and he was gesturing with his head. I turned and looked in the direction he was staring, to the front of the sanctuary but the opposite side.
My eyes got wide. “Enid?”
“What the hell is she doing here?” he hissed to me without moving his lips. “That is your aunt, isn’t it?”
I nodded. She was standing at the side of the very front pew on the right side, dressed completely in black—a black turtleneck sweater over a knee-length black skirt and black hose. She was wiping at her nose with a handkerchief. As I watched, she sat down.
Enid was a member of the Dove Ministry?
I couldn’t believe it—even though it explained her defense of Tara to Frank the other night.
How—and when—had this happened?
All the Bradleys were Episcopalians—except for our branch of the family. Storm and Rain had converted to Catholicism as teenagers, but Mom and Dad were Wiccans. Papa Bradley was as fervent an Episcopalian as he was conservative politically—he certainly would not approve of his daughter attending services at a megachurch.
But it also might explain just how Jared and Tara had met in the first place.
A group of men and women in purple and white choir robes with gigantic crosses slowly filed in from behind the pulpit and took their places on the risers. An organ began playing solemnly from somewhere—there wasn’t one in sight.
The entire congregation rose in unison. Colin and I scrambled to our feet as another man walked out onto the pulpit and two enormous television screens lowered from the ceiling on either side. Suddenly the man’s face appeared in extreme close-up on both screens.
The Reverend Dick Werner himself.
Werner was a short man and didn’t miss many meals, from the looks of him. He had reddish-brown hair that was balding, and long frizzy reddish sideburns. He wore wire-framed glasses, and on the JumboTrons his dark eyes burned with a frightening intensity.
The headache, which had been subsiding, came back with a roar as he began speaking. “Brothers and sisters! Thank you for coming out for such a solemn, sad occasion as we pay tribute to two of our own, two who have fallen in the battle to save the world for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!”
“Amen,” the entire congregation said in unison.
“This is spooky,” Colin whispered to me.
He wasn’t kidding. It was spooky. It was like the entire crowd was trained to say “amen” in unison every time Werner paused for breath.
And he began to speak, talking about how his daughter and Tara were soldiers for Christ, trying to shine a bright light in the darkness created by the Homosexual Agenda. On and on, he ranted, with his audience chanting “amen” in unison as though on cue.
I felt sick, and sicker with every sentence he spoke.
Then he yielded the pulpit to Peggy MacGillicudy herself.
“This is a tragic day in the fight for God’s truth, and preserving the United States of America,” she said into the microphone.
I pushed my way past Colin, out of the pew.
My head felt like it was going to explode.
I managed to make it out into the foyer and into a stall in the men’s room before I threw up.
I washed my face in the sink and rinsed out my mouth with cold water before heading back inside.
But they were singing “Amazing Grace,” and the whole thing was over.
I made my way back to Colin as everyone was standing up. “Come on,” I whispered. “I want to talk to Father Dan.”
He looked at me in shock. “Father Dan’s here?”
I nodded and started pushing my way through the crowd. I spotted his blond head moving to the front of the church—where Enid was standing with another woman I didn’t recognize.
Father Dan grasped the arm of the woman.
She turned and looked at him, her face contorting.
She slapped him across the face and ran up the stairs of the pulpit with Enid at her heels.
Father Dan just stood there, looking after her, not moving as the place emptied of people.
“We need to talk,” I said as I caught up to him.
There was a red handprint on his right cheek. He gave me a sad look. “Okay,” he replied. “But not here.”
The Lovers
The choice between vice and virtue
“Thank you.” Father Dan smiled at the waitress as she put a cup of coffee in front of him. He took a sip. “I’m originally from Kenner, you know. I still have a lot of family out there,” he said after she walked away. “I went to high school with Tara’s mother.”
“You mentioned that the other night,” I replied.
We were seated in a booth at the Chili’s Restaurant on Veterans’ Boulevard in Metairie. Father Dan had told us to follow him when we left the church parking lot, and this was where he’d brought us. It wasn’t very crowded—some of the booths were taken and several people were seated at the bar. We were in a corner by big glass windows that faced the parking lot. It was still raining, but the restaurant was overheated. Our jackets were piled in a corner of the booth, and I’d removed my tie. A waitress walked past us carrying a sizzling plate of fajitas. My stomach growled.
My nausea and headache had magically gone away as soon as I walked out of the Dove Ministry building, and I was starving. I hadn’t eaten anything besides a piece of crumb cake at Lurleen Rutledge’s, and that felt like it was a million years ago. I took a sip out of my iced tea. I looked down at my menu. I didn’t care how many grams of fat were in it—I was ordering a bacon cheeseburger and fries.
Maybe even chili cheese fries.
He took another sip of his coffee and gave me a sad look. “Well, there was more to it than that, I’m afraid. I didn’t just go to high school with Marilou—I knew her much better than that.”
“You were friends?” I asked.
He shrugged and smiled. “I married her.”
“You performed her marriage ceremony?” Colin said after a moment. I was too stunned to speak.
I couldn’t have heard that right.
Dan took another drink of his wine. He looked down at the table. “No, I mean I married her. Stood up in front of God and said the vows with her. Man and wife married.” He swallowed. “Obviously, it was a huge mistake.”
“But I thought—” I spluttered out, but stopped myself from adding
you’re gay.
I didn’t know that. Sure, Father Dan ministered to the queer community. Sure, I had seen him in gay bars, not wearing his collar. I’d seen him walking around during Southern Decadence without a shirt, in skimpy costumes on Fat Tuesday. But as far as I knew he’d never broken his vow of celibacy. I’d never seen him with his arm around another man, or kissing one. I’d never seen him leave a bar with a guy.
No—even if he was celibate, he still had to be gay.
Father Dan wouldn’t bring his eyes up from the table.
“Do you guys need another minute?” our waitress said, and I almost jumped out of my skin.
“That would be great,” Colin flashed his million-dollar smile at her. “Thank you.”
Father Dan’s face was a deep shade of red. “It’s a long story—and you boys probably can’t understand, but things were different back then.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Scotty, you grew up in a very loving and supportive environment. Orleans Parish has always been a lot more accepting of gay men than Jefferson Parish, and you couldn’t have asked for better parents. Colin, I don’t know what your family was like, but I can tell you—I grew up in a family where being gay—where being different—just wasn’t possible.”
So he IS gay
,
I thought with an inward sigh of relief. I didn’t want to think my Gaydar was
that
far off.
“I kept praying for God to cure me, ever since I knew I was attracted to boys instead of girls,” he went on. “But he never did—he never took it away from me, no matter how hard I prayed, no matter how many times I begged, no matter how good I was. Our priest—” His voice broke. “Our priest, Father Romano, kept hammering into me that it was a sin, and to read Job—that sometimes God tested us, our faith, and that this was a huge test, and that it was up to
me
to prove
my
faith to God.”
“That’s disgusting,” Colin replied. “You can’t pray away the gay.”
Father Dan smiled weakly. “We know that now, Colin—but back then…” His voice trailed off.
“The Dove Ministry preaches that—they even have ex-gay workshops,” I pointed out. “A lot of Christian denominations believe God and prayer can make you straight.”
“Throughout history the word of God has been perverted by men,” Father Dan replied with a sardonic laugh, “to fit their own agendas. I may be a priest, but even I have to admit the Catholic Church has been one of the worst offenders.” He took a deep breath. “But the world was different then—things have changed so much…” He shook his head. “So, I did everything I possibly could to change. I dated girls, tried to not look at other boys with desire. Marilou…I convinced myself I was in love with her.” His voice broke. “What I did to her was unforgivable. Absolutely unforgivable…I have never expected her to forgive me, how could she? All I can do is ask God to forgive me, and to give her the peace and understanding to do the same.”