The Brothers K

by David James Duncan

  and out of the darkness to the left of the altar a clown or crazy man, some disturbed-looking young man in a laughably huge suit, rushed straight to the pulpit, and every kid in the place started giggling. It seemed like a skit, some harebrained college kid out to lampoon a preacher. But when Elder Joon saw him he plopped back in his chair and began to pray in audible Korean. And Mama and Bet turned white.

  The man was trembling violently. He had a choppy, do-it-yourself-looking haircut, and his jaws and throat were covered with shaving nicks, with bits of blood-spotted Kleenex making tiny Japanese flags of each cut. What looked like a pair of black rubber boots poked out from beneath the cuffs of his huge trousers. When he grabbed the microphone in both shaking hands it let out a feedback squawk, causing a woman in the front pew to do the same. The kids all roared again. But the ushers and several other men were on their feet. Then a deep voice murmured, “Could be on drugs.”

  “Could be armed,” said another.

  And hearing this, even the children fell silent.

  But then Brother Beal stood, held a palm up to the ushers, and said, “Wait! I think I—Yes, I know this man.” And with that he turned and said, “Brother Chance! Everett! What on earth … Listen! You just can’t do this!”

  “I’m very sorry to alarm you,” Everett said, not to Beal, but into the microphone. “Sorry about the suit too. Couldn’t find my old one, so I had to borrow my dad’s.” He picked one of the flags off his cheek. “Sorry about these too. I was trying to get spruced up, but it sorta backfired. The razor was Papa’s too. I know what to get him next Christmas.”

  There was a single hesitant chuckle somewhere, and Everett tried to smile toward it. But the ushers had formed a huddle to decide how to handle him, and Elder Groth, back in one of the throne-chairs, had snuck out an exit, probably to call the police, and Elder Joon was still babbling in Korean. The smile just couldn’t make it. “I’m sorry if I scared you,” he repeated, shaking with terror himself. “But I’m not on drugs, or armed, or anything else. I was baptized here, actually. And the reason I came back today is that this good man”—he nodded sideways at Beal—“and Sister Harg there, and many others among you, used to tell my family and me that this place—this very building—was God’s House.”

  Just this opening seemed to exhaust him. His shivering had become almost convulsive. But his first burst of courage had trapped him: no choice now but to speak. He tried to swallow, made an odd, squeaking sound, got another giggle from a few kids. “’Scuse me,” he said. “But if it’s true, about God’s House I mean, then I’ve … Surprising as it sounds, I’ve … I came here to talk about—”

  He stopped cold. The ushers had broken their huddle and begun walking slowly toward him, and when Beal caught their eyes he nodded, and eased over behind Everett’s back. Predictable as their plan was, it was a contingency he hadn’t considered. And he had no answer to it. He hadn’t even begun to speak his piece, and he was going to be dragged off like a fool. He was going to prison for nothing …

  But when the ushers reached the steps below the podium and Beal seemed about to lunge, somebody stood up back in the pews and shouted, “Leave him alone, Randy!”

  Beal froze, and began to literally sway with indecision.

  Bet was near tears, and trembling like a Pentecostal. But in a broken voice she managed to say, “It’s just my stupid brother. It’s just Everett. And he’s not gonna hurt anybody. Something terrible’s happening to our family. Okay? And he prob’ly just wants to tell you about it. Okay? So let him.”

  Everett turned to Beal and tried, but again failed, to smile. “It’s just Bet’s stupid brother,” he said.

  “Make it quick,” Beal said. Then he returned to his seat.

  The ushers remained where they were. But Bet did too. And Elder Joon had stopped praying and started to listen.

  Everett couldn’t look at Bet. He knew his gratitude would unravel him completely. “Where was I?” he muttered.

  “In God’s House!” growled old Sister Harg.

  At last, he managed to smile. “Thank you, Sister.”

  She gave him a grim nod.

  “My problem,” he began, “when I attended God’s House here, was that I never really believed the Owner was at home. I guess it’s no big secret that Peter, Kade and Freddy never felt it either, though they all loved, and still love, God. But I drove a long way last night and today just to remind you that one of my brothers, no matter what I tried to tell him, never in his life doubted that God could be found in this very place. I’m talking about Irwin. Who most of you know. And if you really know him, I’ll bet you miss him too.”

  He glanced at the congregation, hoping to see a nod or two. But apart from the fact that Bet remained standing, there was not a sign among the three or four hundred faces present that Irwin was remembered at all. It rattled him. It stripped him of his momentum. Desperate for corroboration, he turned to Beal. “Who has the consecutive Memory Verse record here these days, Brother?”

  Beal was not pleased to play Ed McMahon to this maniac’s Johnny Carson, but he was too decent a man to lie. “Your brother,” he mumbled.

  “How ’bout the consecutive attendance record?”

  “Irwin’s still got that one too.”

  Given his own beliefs, it seemed more than a little inconsistent that Everett would beam with big-brotherly pride. But that’s what he did. “That’s our Winnie,” he said. “Not being the pious type myself, I admit it drove me nuts growing up with the guy. Watching him miss, by choice, every single ballgame my father ever pitched on Sabbath. Watching him give his hard-earned berry-picking money to the polio and Jerry Lewis jars at the grocery store. Watching him refuse to play varsity football due to the Friday-night games—and he was the star of his team—till Elder Kent there, who loves football, convinced him that Jesus would allow an athlete’s Sabbath to begin at midnight Friday if that athlete read his Bible till midnight the following day. Think about that. All through high school, with half the girls in his class dying to date him, Irwin spent his Saturday nights with Amos, Nehemiah and Job instead! You’ve got to remember a guy like that!”

  For the second time he scanned the audience. For the second time, it was a mistake. Except for Elder Kent (who looked embarrassed and angry) and old Sister Harg (who looked unusually grim) he saw no signs of stirred memories, no warmth, nothing but incomprehension, offended piety, growing impatience, even hate. He’d expected a tough audience, he’d expected some antipathy. But his complete failure to touch anyone derailed him. He looked at the silly gold-glassed windows in the back of the balcony. He looked at the silly gold-carpeted floor. God’s House. What the hell was I thinking? “I drove here,” he said, drifting now, “because I thought I could—I thought you should know, mostly, how Irwin hasn’t changed. But he’s in a … we’ve got troubles, Irwin does. And I, uh. We …”

  He lost his thought completely.

  But back in her pew, Mama saw him lose it. Having just collided with the same invisible wall, she’d even expected it. And knowing what his effort was going to cost him, knowing he’d chosen prison whether he managed to help Irwin or not, she was amazed and moved by his courage, amazed that he’d come even this close to punching a hole in the immaculate wall. So. Though she heard no voice, saw no light, felt none of the things that a life of biblical fantasies had led her to hope she might feel, Mama suddenly knew in her bones what the situation demanded. Grabbing her purse (she didn’t intend this detail, just added it without thinking), she stood up next to Bet. But then she turned her back to the pulpit, lifted her skirt a little, and stepped clear up onto the bench of her pew. As she turned round to face the pulpit, the wave of terror swashed through her and she began to sway. But Bet grabbed her knees, steadied her, held on with both hands. Then Mama looked—eye to eye across the top of the congregation—at Everett. And in a voice that quavered with conviction as well as fear, she said, “That’s my oldest. That’s Everett. And he’s not an Adventist anym
ore, or even a Christian maybe. But he came here to tell you something I tried to tell but couldn’t. So he’s brave, I know that much. And he loves his brother. I know that now too. My family is a good family. We’re not a bunch of crazies. But Irwin, what’s happening to Irwin, it’s making us all—Well, look at us …”

  The congregation looked. They saw one of the most steadfast, innocuous members of their church wobbling, white-faced, on a pew; saw her rubber-booted, clown-suited son standing at Babcock’s pulpit with a smile on his face and grateful tears running down his cheeks; saw her beautiful teenaged daughter, also in tears, holding her mother in place on a pew by gripping her stockinged knees. It grew apparent, even from the far side of the immaculate wall, that for the Chance family this was not your run-of-the-mill Sabbath. “All I ask,” Mama said, “is for you to listen. And, Everett. Just do your best. Speak your heart. And know that I’m very, very happy that you’re here.”

  Bet took Mama’s hand then, helped her down off the pew, and the two of them stood there, arms linked, waiting. “I’m happy too!” Everett croaked. “But ’scuse me.” He wiped his wet face on Papa’s good suit sleeve, taking out a few more Japanese flags. Then he straightened up, cleared his throat, and started over:

  “The reason my heart, all our hearts, are hurtin’ so bad,” he began, “is that the numbskulled heart of our family, the one who always managed to love all of us, no matter what we thought or said or believed, is in terrible trouble. And the reason I came here, to Irwin’s God’s House, is that his trouble started here. I’m not trying to place blame by saying that. This whole situation is a compliment to the staying power of what gets taught here, really. Irwin, after he left here, kept on keeping your faith right up till the day he was unfairly drafted. And every letter we got from him, even from ’Nam, was a Christian letter—the letter of a man who couldn’t begin to reconcile Thou shalt not kill or Love thy neighbor with the duties of a soldier. He’s still yours, Winnie is. That’s the crux of all I’m saying. He still loves this place, still believes every blame thing he ever learned here, and still tells me I’m nuts when I try to tamper with those beliefs.”

  “Amen!” said an old voice—not Sister Harg’s this time. And there was a little quiet laughter.

  “I deserve that,” Everett admitted. “And Irwin deserves a better person than me to tell you what’s happened to him. But Mama and Bet aren’t standing over there for nothing. So trust them, not me, when I say that it’s the faith you all cherish that has trapped Irwin in his trouble. It’s complicated, his situation, but the gist of it is this: When an Army captain in ’Nam ordered a young Vietnamese boy shot, Irwin attacked him, the officer, afterward. It’s a messy story. I won’t hide that. For instance, the boy may have, probably did, kill a GI with a booby trap. But he was also, clearly, just a boy. And his death caused a transformation in Irwin, or a reversion, really: U.S. soldier to Christian soldier. Irwin chose his captain for an enemy target. He chose a tube of toothpaste as his only weapon. And I guess his mission was successful enough to do some damage to his captain’s teeth. In return Irwin received two concussions and a skull fracture from a rifle butt. Which seems like punishment enough, to me. But when he kept singing and praying in the brig afterward, the Army decided they wanted more than punishment. They wanted him silenced. They felt his faith, your faith, was recriminatory. Which of course it is. Do good to those who hate you. So they decided to erase it.”

  Everett paused to collect his thoughts, but he was no longer troubled by the blank stares of the congregation. Mama and Bet were all the audience he needed. He said, “When you hold all the cards, erasing faith is easier than you might think. All you have to do is erase the mind it inhabits. It was child’s play for the Army to line up a few of their own psychiatric experts and have Irwin declared insane. Which brings us to the part that’s making my family frantic. Irwin was sent, more than two weeks ago, to a military asylum in Southern California, where, as I speak, he is being erased. The Army calls the massive doses of sedatives and repeated electroshock treatments ‘therapy.’ But it is the songs you sing here, the scriptures you read here, it’s his belief in this House and its God that they are out to destroy.”

  Feeling his voice rising and his tongue loosening, Everett stopped, drew a breath, and reminded himself: no profanity. “It may be hard for you to believe,” he said, “that red-blooded U.S. Army doctors consider your faith a form of madness. But I tell you, Winnie—he’s trying to hold himself together by singing little Sabbath School ditties down there, and saying Memory Verses and prayers, right through these terrible sedatives. And they answer those songs and verses by drugging him senseless if he’s lucky. Or if he’s not, by strapping him down, taping electrodes to his temples, and knocking the living—Well … electroshock, what it does to a mind that doesn’t need it, would not make for good church talk. But Mama’s son. Bet’s brother. They’re blasting him to pieces down there.”

  There were some stirrings in the pews now, there was a little emotion brewing. “What the Army wants is simple,” Everett said, and his voice had a touch of the old street-corner soap-box power now. “All Irwin has to do to be considered ‘cured’ is agree that to practice, in the Army or in an asylum, what Seventh Day Adventists preach, is mental illness. But those of you who know Irwin know he’ll never do this. The therapy is not going to stop until your consecutive Memory Verse and attendance champ can’t even remember Christ’s name. That’s why I’m standing here. That’s why Mama and Bet are standing there. That’s why we’re beside ourselves. And we’re not just asking for your kind thoughts and prayers today either. Some of you are probably doing what you can in that way already. But I’m here to tell you that Irwin needs God’s answer, that he is dying down there, that if he’s ever going to make it back to those two ladies, or to his wife, or his little baby, he needs the help of his people now.”

  Everett saw the faces stiffen, saw that by making a demand he was losing them. It panicked and angered him. He tried to ram his notion through. “You know, you folks have your own doctors and shrinks. There’s a med school in Loma Linda, very close to where Irwin’s staying. And if some of you contacted those people by phone, or better, drove down and did it in person, I’ll bet you could arrange for a Christian examination, by doctors who could see Irwin’s faith for what it is. Doctors who could see about having him trans—”

  He stopped himself abruptly, not because of the congregation’s continued stiffness, but because something inside him suddenly demanded a complete change of course. “No,” he murmured. “No, I’m sorry. I have no right to give orders, or to ask you to give up your time. I have no right to ask anyone but me to sacrifice anything. And this time tomorrow I’ll be in jail. So I can’t even sacrifice me. You’ve been kind to bear with me. I’m truly grateful. And I have just one brief thing to add. Then I’ll be gone.”

  He drew a breath. “Unlike Irwin, or Bet, or Mama, I don’t even believe in God. It’s a little odd, for that reason, that I’d have strong feelings about His House. But I do. I feel—because I love Irwin very much—that it’s crucial for me to at least try to address the One whose House Irwin believes this to be. Since I don’t believe in Him, I’m not sure my words qualify as prayer. But I feel I must say directly to You—Irwin’s dear God—that if somebody in this House doesn’t hear our family’s cry, if somebody isn’t moved, not by me, but by You, to sacrifice some time and thought and energy for Irwin’s sake, then his mind, his love for You, his belief in this House, are going to be destroyed. It’s that simple, I think. Which puts the ball in Your court. Not a hopeful place to leave it, to my mind. But it’s right where Irwin would want it. And for the first time in my life, I hope it’s Irwin, not me, who’s right about this place.”

  With an inaudible thank-you, and a nod to Bet and Mama, Everett walked out the same way he’d come in. The ushers didn’t move. No one tried to stop him.

  But in the silence after he’d left, Mama spoke up a second time. Emotion made h
er voice and face unrecognizable—she couldn’t help that. But she met any eye that dared look at hers as she said, “I don’t understand every crazy idea that passes through my kids’ heads. And that boy, Everett, has got crazier ideas than all the rest put together. But he—” Her voice broke, and she gasped for breath. “I’m telling you. Every word!” She was trembling so hard now that Bet took hold of her arm. “Every word he—I never heard a truer sermon in my life. God help Irwin! And God help us, this church, figure out the way to help. But I’ve got—I’m going now. Because my other boy. My crazy. To thank him, before he’s gone.”

  With that, Mama and Bet stepped arm in arm into the aisle, and marched straight out the back of the church. And as they moved past the pews the most evident emotion their passage inspired was relief. Thank God that’s over, most of the faces plainly said, and the temporarily displaced piety and propriety rushed in behind them in a viscous tide. But before the congregation was quite submerged in that tide, Sister Harg, way up in the front pew, suddenly let loose with a great rumbling nineteenth-century “Amen!” And when no one moved, no one spoke, no one responded to it, she pulled herself up on her walker, turned round to the congregation, and defiantly growled “Amen!” again.

  Mama and Bet were long gone now. It was time to get back to the program. But then Elder Kim Joon—the program itself—nodded thoughtfully in his big borrowed chair, and repeated the same word: “Amen.”

  Then Nancy Beal said it, with real gusto. And then the Brother, ol’ Randy, sort of squeaked it. And after that a bunch of kids—mostly just teenagers whose hormones had been spiked by the unexpected show—but a few adults too, chimed in. It wasn’t what you’d call a mass revival. It was a pretty anemic little outburst, to tell the truth. But a grain of mustard seed is an anemic-looking little specimen too.

  “Today’s other sermon,” said Elder Joon when it was over, “is from the Book of Isaiah.”