Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  Any depression I had been feeling was gone.

  Suddenly, the Gulf was a garden again, a place where God could come down in the cool of the evening and walk along the sandy shore with us. The setting sun emanated warmth that was far more than merely physical, the green waters were a mysterious domain again, the womb of life on earth, God’s womb, my home.

  “I can see,” I said. “I can ... Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” she said. “Thank God.”

  “I am.”

  Though still not sure what to do with Jakira, I returned to the retreat, her hand still in mine, much better equipped to figure it out.

  “My appetite’s back,” I said. “You hungry?”

  She nodded.

  “There’s not much left,” I said. “If I can find some bread and fish, can you do something with them?”

  She laughed.

  It was a spectacular laugh, one that infused her entire face with joy, lighting up her dark eyes and causing the large white teeth she had yet to grow into to sparkle.

  As we neared the dining hall, I heard someone calling me. I turned to see Charles running up behind us.

  “Children and Families is here,” he said. “She’s in the front office. Whatta I do?”

  I looked over his shoulder to see an overworked social worker standing in his office talking on a cell phone.

  “Tell her it was all a misunderstanding,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That she had just gotten separated from her parents, but they were here after all and found each other.”

  “You want me to lie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Charles, you’re being ridiculous,” I said. “Just—”

  “Why don’t you want them to have her?” he asked. “Do you believe she’s—”

  “They won’t know what to do with her,” I said.

  “And you do?”

  “No, but they work with dull, blunt instruments,” I said. “They’ll stick her in some foster home or psychiatric unit somewhere and—”

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  I turned to see that her face was set toward the front office and the fate that awaited her there.

  “I’ll go with her,” she said.

  “Just come with me,” I said. “We’ll go somewhere else and—”

  “No need to run, John,” she said. “Don’t you realize I could call a legion of angels down right now if I wanted to? I must do this. My powerlessness is the point.”

  “Is this her?” the social worker asked as she walked up to us. “Honey, do you have any idea where your parents might be?”

  “My mother’s in heaven,” she said.

  “Your mom died? When?”

  “No, she’s very much alive,” she said. “In all things. Can’t you feel her? She’s the dancing strings of the cosmos. She’s the wind and she blows where she will.”

  “Oh dear,” she said.

  “I’d like her to stay here with us,” I said.

  “Who are you?”

  “John Jordan,” I said. “I’m a chaplain and I’ve been spending some time with her today. We’re really making some headway. I think to snatch her out of here now would be traumatic. She’s feeling better. She’s talked to a counselor. She’s making friends. She’s loved and cared for here.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Just for a little while longer,” I said. “We’re searching for her parents. They could turn up at any moment.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just can’t.”

  “Please,” I said. “Please. It’s what’s best for her.”

  She studied me for a moment. “It might actually be,” she said, “but I don’t have the authority. You’ll have to petition the judge. Sometimes in cases like these, if there’s no family around, a judge will grant temporary custody to someone who is already helping the child. That’s the best I can offer you. She’ll have a shelter hearing before a judge in dependency court in the morning. That’s just a few hours. Overnight. It’ll be okay.”

  When I walked into the courtroom, I knew something was wrong. It was something I felt more than observed, and I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I knew it. Jakira, wearing new clothes, was seated at a table between the social worker and her guardian ad litem. Her back was to me, so I couldn’t see her face or read her expressions, but I could tell even in the slumped manner in which she was sitting that something wasn’t quite right.

  There were very few people in the courtroom. Because this was a closed, confidential hearing, Charles, Merrill, Lisa, and Anna weren’t allowed to attend, and I was only permitted because of my petition. Everyone in the room was there for a reason, including the bailiff and court reporter, and all of them were dressed professionally. I was wearing my best navy blue suit and a sky blue clerical collar.

  A tall young man in a blue suit of his own was sitting at a table across from Jakira’s, a leather satchel on the table in front of him. Based on what Anna had told me, I guessed he was Children and Families’ attorney.

  Much of the previous night, as Children and Families conducted an intake investigation on Jakira, Anna had educated me on dependency court and the process, helped me secure an attorney and file a petition.

  At a shelter hearing like this one, the judge typically determines if a child is a dependent of the state or can continue to live with his or her parents or guardian. However, in this situation, with no family present, Jakira is already, at least temporarily, a dependent of the state. The question was what would the judge do with her? He wasn’t deciding between a parental or non-parental home, but which non-parental home. I had petitioned the court for it to be mine.

  Depending on what happened here today, and if the judge would even hear my petition at this time, there could be another hearing in about a month or a fact-finding trial within three months—neither of which seemed likely, since this didn’t appear to be a case of neglect or abandonment but the result of a natural disaster.

  My attorney, David Clyde Rish, was seated on the front row. He was a well-respected, semi-retired local man who had served in the Florida legislature for several terms. He had a farm in Potter County, where my dad was sheriff, and was doing a family favor. I couldn’t have afforded him otherwise. I sat down beside him.

  As Judge Jerry Atkins went through the preliminaries, I began to relax a little. He was a kind, soft-spoken man in his sixties, who ran a very informal courtroom.

  As he listened to the facts and circumstances surrounding Jakira, he seemed genuinely concerned for her and saddened by her situation.

  During the entire hearing, Jakira never looked in my direction. In fact, she never looked any direction but forward, and before the preliminaries were concluded, I knew why.

  As part of the intake investigation, she had undergone a psych evaluation and was deemed to be in need of treatment. Though it wasn’t mentioned in the proceedings, it was obvious that she was on medication.

  “Mr. Rish,” the judge said, “I understand your client wishes to be granted temporary custody?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Rish said, standing, adjusting his suit, and stepping between the two counsel tables.

  “What’s his connection to the child?”

  “He’s been providing care for her since she arrived at the retreat center,” he said, which he knew wasn’t exactly true. “He has developed a rapport with the child and feels it would be in the child’s best interest to have continuity of care.”

  “Your Honor,” the young attorney said, rising to his feet. “Not only is Mr. Jordan a single man who lives alone, but he’s had no foster care training and—”

  “He’s a highly educated minister who’s conducted endless hours of pastoral counseling,” Rish said, “and he’s—”

  “Your Honor,” the young man said again. “With all due respect, I don’t know anyone who would put a child in the home of a priest these days, and it’s n
ot pastoral counseling, but professional treatment the child needs—the court’s own psychologist has said so.”

  “He’s right,” the judge said. “While I wouldn’t wish to be as indelicate as Mr. Peavy, I would find it difficult to place a young female dependent in the home of a single man with no foster care training even under the best of circumstances, but when the dependent is in need of psychiatric treatment, it’d be negligent to do so.”

  Before I realized what I was doing, I was on my feet. “Your Honor, please,” I said. “Please reconsider. She needs—”

  “Mr. Jordan,” the judge said, “I run an informal courtroom, but not that informal. I’m not even going to ask you why you want custody of a child you met just days ago, but—”

  “Actually, Your Honor,” Peavy said, “it was just yesterday.”

  “I’ll tell you why,” I said. “There’s something very special about her. She’s—”

  “Still—” the judge began.

  “You’ve heard of child prodigies,” I said. “She’s like a spiritual child prodigy, and my concern is that she’s being treated by people who are at best insensitive to that and who may even see it as something that needs to be medicated.”

  “Your Honor—” Peavy began.

  “Look at her,” I said to the judge. “This isn’t her. They’ve already got her so drugged, she can hardly hold her head up.”

  The judge looked at Jakira. “Young lady,” he said.

  She lifted her head slightly and gazed at him.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Fine,” she said. “How are you?”

  “I’m just fine, too,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s best for you. Do you know where your parents are?”

  The court-appointed psychiatrist, who was seated in the front row opposite us, stood up.

  “Your Honor,” she said, “she doesn’t even know her own name. She’s been through an undoubtedly horrific experience and is now experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome.”

  “Do you know who you are?” the judge asked Jakira.

  “I am ...” she said, but trailed off.

  “You are ...” the judge said.

  “I am,” she said, but didn’t say anything else.

  “How do you feel?” I asked

  She slowly turned from the TV mounted high in the corner to cast her unfocused gaze in my general direction.

  It was the next day, and we were in the TV room of Riverdale Charter, the inpatient treatment center that was now Jakira’s home.

  The judge, more as a personal favor to David Clyde Rish than anything else, had graciously granted me visitation privileges, though stressed how easily they could be revoked if I abused them in any way.

  I waited, but she didn’t say anything.

  “It’s so hard to see you this way,” I said.

  I had failed. I had not solved the mystery. I had not saved the day. I had not been able to keep her out of this place.

  She didn’t say anything, but continued to look in my general direction.

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

  “Do you?” she managed.

  An involuntary burst of something resembling laughter shot out of my mouth.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you,” I said. “But I haven’t stopped trying. We’re going to try other legal measures and we’re trying to get you assigned to a different doctor.”

  She slowly reached over and patted my hand with the tips of her small, cold fingers.

  “Does that mean not to do anything?” I asked.

  She didn’t respond.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out what all this means,” I said.

  I had had all the obvious thoughts—that the Second Coming, whatever it was, was a personal appearance of Christ to each of us at some point in our lives, maybe many. It was one of the first things she had said to me—“I come back all the time. In the sick, the hungry, the imprisoned.” Or maybe it was meant to remind us that the Christ nature, the potential to be our best selves, to be like him, like God, is in all of us, in all things. Maybe enlightenment or the Buddha nature or myriad other named and unnamed things in hundreds of traditions the world over were ways of expressing the same thing.

  “But I can’t,” I added. “I can’t come up with anything that satisfies. I just don’t understand.”

  Perhaps this was just one of those true mysteries of life, not a vague unknown, but a specific unknowable, insoluble, unsolvable. No amount of investigating or deducting could help. It was beyond the limits of logic, beyond reason, beyond my understanding.

  We were silent a few moments, continuing to look at each other. Eventually, the black orderly in white appeared at the door to let me know it was the end of our time together.

  I stood and hugged her.

  “I’ll keep coming to see you as often as they’ll let me,” I whispered in her ear. “And it’s not because I’m expecting anything or wanting you to be anything. I just want to be with you.”

  “When you’ve done it for the least of these ...” she said, then trailed off.

  I pulled back from her, searching her eyes for some of the earlier light and life, but it wasn’t there.

  “What’d you say?”

  She didn’t respond, and eventually I started walking across the room toward the waiting orderly.

  “I said ...”

  I turned.

  “... you’re not depressed anymore, are you?”

  I smiled. “No, I’m not,” I said. “Confused, shaken, humbled, questioning my sanity, but not depressed.”

  “That’s something,” she said. “And sometimes, something is all there is.”

  I nodded and continued walking.

  When I reached the door, I turned again and waved.

  She lifted her small hand, but didn’t really wave. “Keep your eyes open, John,” she said. “You’ll be seeing me again.”

  Blood Bought

  “Something’s wrong with Keli,” I said.

  “How can you tell?” Merrill asked. “She look just the same to me.”

  He was right. It wasn’t obvious, but I could tell something was wrong from the moment I saw her across the large parking lot. There was nothing overt, but it was there. It was as if she were walking around with the knowledge that the red dot of a high-powered scope was on the back of her head.

  “I’m observant,” I said.

  We were in the staff parking lot of Potter Correctional Institution. Merrill had given me a ride to work this morning when my truck wouldn’t start. It was early, the February air still damp, the ground still wet with dew.

  “You something,” he said with a smile. “And it may even start with an O.”

  “Optimistic?”

  He laughed, his bright white teeth contrasting his dark skin. “Obsessive,” he said. “Try that on, see how it fit. How long it been since you had a puzzle to worry your mind with?”

  I smiled. “A little while.”

  “Aha,” he said, as if a detective hearing an important admission.

  I laughed.

  Situated on a cleared plot of nearly a hundred acres and surrounded on all sides by planted pine forests, PCI included a main unit, an annex, training facilities, an obstacle course, a firing range, a warehouse, gardens, and an on-site staff housing trailer park—nearly all of which were visible from where we stood.

  Merrill wasn’t the only one who didn’t seem to notice Keli’s odd behavior, but in addition to being an amateur noticer, I knew Keli well enough to know when something was wrong.

  Keli Linton and I had gone to high school together. A kind, quiet girl with the insecurities that come with having an abusive alcoholic father, a larger than culturally approved body, and the embarrassment of living in poverty. We had been friends. Many mornings in the school cafeteria, at a table that smelled of a dirty dish rag, I copied her homework while she told me the details of her life.

  After graduation, we lost touch
. She went into the military, got married, had a baby girl, got divorced, got out of the military, and eventually moved back to Pottersville.

  In a small panhandle town like Pottersville, there’s not a lot of jobs that enable a single mom who doesn’t receive regular child support to provide for her family—especially if she only has a high school diploma. The obvious choice, particularly for a woman who’s done time in the armed forces, is the growing field of corrections.

  When Keli became a correctional officer at PCI, where I served as chaplain, she came into my life again. Working days put her at the prison during the administrative shift when I was there, which meant we saw a good bit of each other.

  Getting out of her car, Anna joined us as we all headed in the general direction of the front gate.

  “What O word he remind you of?” Merrill asked her.

  Anna looked at me, her brilliant brown eyes big and playful. “Orgasmic?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m an orgasmic optimist.”

  “I’ve got to hear the part of this conversation that took place before I walked up,” she said.

  Merrill told her. As he talked, she looked across the parking lot at Keli.

  I followed her gaze.

  Keli’s posture and movements were that of another person. It was as if she were wearing clothes that were too small, so stilted and strained were her movements.

  She had parked on the far side of the lot, in the front row of the section reserved for employees who were having their cars washed. There wasn’t anything very odd in that (though I had never seen her get her old banged up Honda washed before), except that she parked in the very last space on the end, passing several open spaces and nearly guaranteeing hers would be the last car washed.

  “I’m with Merrill,” she said. “I don’t see it.”

  “He obsessing ’cause he ain’t had a case lately,” Merrill said.

  “Obsessing’s better than a seven-percent solution,” she said.

  I smiled.

  “I thought it was a fifth of something that was eighty proof,” Merrill said with a smile.

  I laughed. “Too true, that,” I said.