After a year at Sunderland Associates with nothing decided, Raff began to suffer a growing anxiety over Nokobee. He realized that many would judge his obsession unhealthy. But he had committed too much time and energy, and invested too much of his own self-regard, to let it go. He wanted the Jepsons to move Nokobee into the market. He would put his plan into action and help to settle the issue one way or the other. He felt, he said to Robbins, like a soldier waiting for the whistle ordering him to go over the top of the trench, or, perhaps more appropriately, a prisoner in a courtroom waiting for the verdict. He wanted to be fatalistic, to know what the gods had decided, to have made the issue final, live or die, with maybe some kind of peace at the end.
"There are times," he said one day to Bill Robbins at the Rebel over boiled crayfish, gumbo, and cheese grits, "when I'm almost ready to settle for a flip of the coin. Just to stop worrying about it."
"Listen, my friend, I know how it's been eating you, believe me, but look at it this way. The longer the Jepsons hold off, the more public opinion on the Gulf Coast will turn in favor of preserving the last pieces of the longleaf ecosystem. If the Jepsons wait long enough, it might be difficult for Sunderland or any other developer to tear up Nokobee, and the more so because Nokobee is fast becoming the last really good piece surviving in South Alabama. People in Mobile and the southern tier of counties, and the next counties over in the Panhandle, might be thinking of it as their longleaf reserve."
Raff said, "You're thinking the developers might just hold off buying Nokobee and instead put their money somewhere else. In other words, save themselves a lot of trouble."
"That's right," Robbins answered. "If major players like Sunderland pull out, the asking price, or more accurately the preset baseline bid, will probably drop. And, who knows, Nokobee then might get picked up by the State of Alabama or a conservation organization like The Nature Conservancy."
"Oh, yeah. Actually, I've thought about that a lot. It could happen." Raff broke a crayfish in two and sucked out the meat, then followed it with a slug of beer. "But that could also allow some pirate group to grab it and do God knows what to it. Maybe turn it into a pig farm."
"I think that's way too pessimistic," Robbins returned. "Too much money involved. Anyway, I do think that we might have more time. I've been wanting to tell you, it looks like the Jepsons are set to keep arguing over what to do for a while yet."
"That's news to me. How do you know that?"
"I've got a couple of friends at the Atlanta Constitution with an ear on the door whenever the Jepson Trust members meet. The trust has a lot more property tied up, around here and over in Georgia. They've been arguing a lot lately over sales and development, and one of the properties they're seriously hung up over is Nokobee."
Raff asked, "Why is that, do you suppose? Some of the Jepsons want to develop it themselves? Or they want to raise the opening bid?"
"No, no. Not either. Nothing like that. It's simply that a couple of the Jepsons want to cash out now, while the others want to milk the best deal out of the tract by picking the optimum time and payout schedule. Fussing around like that could tie up the whole thing for a long time, maybe a couple more years."
"Well, damn it and be gone!" Raff reached over to another plate, lifted out a hushpuppy, chopped at it with a spoon, and mixed the pieces with cheese grits. "I ask you, why didn't God," he said, chewing, "make me the son of a billionaire so I could just buy the whole thing with pocket change and be done with it?"
"Bottom line," Bill Robbins said, brushing oyster cracker crumbs off his lap, "we just wait."
34
WAIT WAS ALL they could do. Finally, two years, four months, and a day after that conversation at the Rebel Cafe and Deli, the news finally came from Atlanta. The Nokobee tract, all of it except for the land around Dead Owl Cove already owned by Sunderland Associates, had been put on the market.
The time leading up to this moment had not been wasted for Raff. In balance, the years spent at Sunderland had been good ones for him. He had expanded his circle of friends dramatically. The grind of Harvard Law School was well behind him, and the more painful part of it mercifully forgotten. He sometimes thought about JoLane Simpson and wondered where she was--but not keenly enough to call the Harvard Alumni Office to find out. His work continued to prove mostly routine, and he began to squeeze out longer stretches of leisure time.
At twenty-eight years, Raphael Semmes Cody had adapted to a very different world from that of his boyhood. Clayville was culturally farther from Mobile than Mobile was from Cleveland or Albany. And unlike his existence at Harvard, Raff now ate regularly at the best restaurants and attended first-run movies and both classical and rock concerts. To these he added Gulf and river fishing. He joined other naturalists in the area on field trips. He dated regularly, but never with serious intent. He dodged relationships with younger women that might, he feared, lead to marriage before he wished. He never dated Sarah Beth, despite the lilt he perceived in her laugh whenever he said anything even remotely funny, or anyone else in the Sunderland offices. Within a year, in any case, his secretary married a divorced bank manager in nearby Lucedale, Mississippi, and the giggles became slightly less pronounced. She still commuted in to Sunderland, however, and continued to fill Raff's office with nonstop sunshine chatter.
Within a year of his arrival at Mobile, Raff had become a respected figure in the local conservation community. He attended meetings of several organizations regularly and continued to give pro bono legal advice in those large majority of cases that had no possible connection with his obligation to Sunderland Associates. A few of his environmentalist associates wondered if his employment at Sunderland represented a conflict of interest, but his advice was consistently good and true, and no public mention was ever made of a possible inconsistency.
Raff no longer attended church, but as a secular substitute he accepted a leadership position in the Boy Scouts of America. He remained faithful to the organization to which he owed so much in his own education and character development. He became scoutmaster of Mobile's Troop 43, holding meetings every two weeks in an annex of the First Methodist Church at Broad and Dauphin Streets. He counseled boys when they needed it. He approved merit badge awards, and individual advancements in rank. Not least, he took groups with him on occasional field trips to the Nokobee tract, and held the boys spellbound with accounts of its natural history.
Raff stayed fit by working out two or three times a week at the Mobile Executive Center Gym. Occasionally, at noon on long days in his office, he went over to Henry's Guns and Shooting Gallery on Oak Street for target practice. His favorite weapon was a .22 single-shot rifle.
It puzzled some of his friends in the environmental movement that a rising star among them enjoyed gun practice. The explanation he gave Bill Robbins was simple and he hoped convincing.
"Look, I sure wish people would understand that I grew up in a gun culture. I've been a pretty good marksman since I was a kid. Trust me, slaughtering helpless birds and animals makes no sense to me. On the other hand, let's be frank about it. Once in a while you've got to kill wild deer, for example. We've wiped out all their natural predators, and so now we have deer populations exploding. People in the suburbs will put up with hunters, but they're not going to tolerate wolves and cougars. Not yet anyway."
"Okay, but what about quail and ducks and turkeys?" Robbins said.
"That's just rhetoric, Bill. You and I wouldn't go out and use quail for target practice, but you know as well as I do that legitimate hunters are the best friends we've got outside the conservation movement. They want habitats preserved as much as we do. So face it, they're conservationists of another kind, with a mission just like ours. I don't think there's a lot of difference between, say, a Cooper's hawk taking a quail out or a hunter shooting it out, so long as we save the woods the hawk and quail live in."
But there was another reason Raff went to Henry's Guns and Shooting Gallery that he never tried to explain to
Robbins or anyone else. For him target practice, and especially with a rifle, the most physically compatible and precise weapon ever invented since the bow and arrow, was a form of Zen. He relaxed completely when he put on ear guards and began to fire at a fixed target. It brought him into a little world consisting solely of gun and target, with a meaning all unto itself and private to Raff. The line of sight, the black dead center of the bull's-eye, the stopping of one's breath, the gentle pull of the trigger, these became the whole world and the only reality when he lay prone to shoot. Every other thought was banished, and every other movement ceased except the microscopic involuntary tremble of arm and hand and the trigger pull. The only variable was the distance, twenty yards or fifty yards. The discharge of the .22 was barely detectable. The mental purpose was to travel with the projectile to the dead center of the bull's-eye and touch it, perfectly. Although that happened rarely, the cognitive purpose was different and the more important. It was to bring all the senses together to focus on an object of extreme simplicity, and to shut out the chaotic remainder of ordinary existence.
From that out-of-mind experience and to show his appreciation of the environmental role of hunters, Raff joined the National Rifle Association.
Bill Robbins was alarmed. "You're sending the wrong signal, Raff. Would you please at least take that NRA sticker off your rear bumper?"
"You don't understand, Bill. It's a matter of honesty and keeping a clear conscience. The only things I know that come anywhere close to target practice with a .22 rifle are a deep massage and sex."
One day, as he stood up, lay the rifle down, and took off his ear guards, a voice behind him said, "That's pretty good shooting. Were you in the army?"
Raff turned to find a man standing there, arms akimbo. He was about forty years old, thin, dressed in an ill-fitting dark blue business suit with an American-flag-design tie that forced his collar flaps slightly up and out. He wore a plain gold cross on his left lapel. He was well groomed and clean-shaven. His smile was broad and welcoming, yet was contradicted by the narrowing of his eyes and incongruous tilt of his head to one side, as though he were sizing Raff up.
Just to his rear stood a second man, about Raff's age, wearing blue jeans and a white sports shirt with three broad red vertical stripes running down the front. He had a three-day-old stubble and a bandito mustache. His long hair was combed straight back over his head and dangled loosely to touch his shirt collar behind. There was a teardrop tattoo below his right eye. He wore blue flame tattoos running up each side of his neck, looking as though they might be ready to grow out further and consume his face. He was chewing something continuously and slowly like a cow's cud--maybe tobacco, but more likely, Raff figured because he couldn't see any stain around the mouth, a large wad of gum.
"No, no, I've never been in the service," Raff said. "I've just enjoyed shooting since I was a kid."
"My name is Wayne LeBow," the first man said, "and this here's Bo Rainey."
Raff shook hands with both.
"He's Reverend Wayne LeBow," Rainey said.
"Yes, Reverend LeBow," the first man said. "But that's no big deal. I have a little congregation up near Monroeville, the Church of the Eternal Redeemer. Most likely you never heard of it." He chuckled and pulled down his coat to straighten it a bit, then added, "Only about fifty members or so. My day job is working at the Monroeville Correctional Facility."
He paused, and Raff said, "Well, Reverend LeBow, my name is Raphael Cody and I'm very pleased to meet you. What can I do for you?"
LeBow smiled and tilted his head again. "We're wondering if you might have a beer with us. There's something we were hoping to get your opinion on."
Raff smiled back. "Sure. I've only got a few minutes, though. I have an appointment back in my office in half an hour."
LeBow led the way to the bar, located in the rear of Henry's Guns and Shooting Gallery. Budweiser, Coors, Miller, and a few other real American, ordinary people's choices were available. No boutique or foreign brews were offered at Henry's patriotic establishment. Inside, a large, slow-turning ceiling fan stirred the thick warm air. An odor of turpentine and cigarette smoke enveloped them.
They sat on benches across from each other at a table beneath the flags of the United States and the State of Alabama hung side by side on the wall. A postcard photograph of the Confederate battle flag was stuck on the side of the cash register. It had been there a long time, and its edges had begun to peel.
LeBow said, "You learn a lot at Harvard?"
Raff hesitated, then replied, "You obviously know more about me than I do about you, Reverend. Sure, I learned some things at Harvard. It's no big deal. We have good universities down here too. I wouldn't want to make any invidious comparisons with Harvard. But--why do you ask?"
"You're getting to be an important figure around Mobile, is the reason, and some of our religious folk just wanted to know more about you."
Raff thought, All the way up in Monroeville?
Before he could respond, Bo Rainey cleared his throat and asked, "They teach evolution at Harvard?"
Raff thought, okay, I see where this is going. "Sure," he said, "they teach about evolution at Harvard. It's solid science. It's got a lot of evidence to support it. Of course, I know that a lot of good people around here and the rest of America don't believe in it." Principle Number One in Raff's Conflict Resolution Rule Book: Don't antagonize your opponent unnecessarily.
Reverend LeBow ignored the answer and asked, "They teach the Bible too?"
"Of course," Raff replied, relaxing a bit, beginning to get the drift. Do we have here a couple of the hard-right people Bill Robbins said stay away from? "They have a whole School of Divinity, Harvard's been turning out preachers for three hundred and seventy years."
He instantly regretted patronizing LeBow with this little expression of Harvard venerableness. Principle Number Two: Don't brag, don't in any way seem to look down on your adversary. Stay humble. And if that's not possible, at least stay noncommittal.
Before the interrogation could continue, they were interrupted by loud gunfire that reverberated all the way to the bar. Someone was touching off bursts from an automatic rifle. Raff flinched at the sound. He hated the weapon. It had the same function as the sawed-off shotguns infantry sometimes used in close combat. There wasn't a lot of finesse in either weapon. Or accuracy either. You just sprayed a lot of rounds with the hope that one or more would take the target down. As he waited, Raff thought, No time to aim, so shoot first, kill fast. Are these things legal? I thought not. Must be, though, or else Henry wouldn't allow them on the premises. If I'd been in the army, I'd prefer to be a sniper--use a telescopic sight and silencer, shoot, and slip away. The firing ceased after a minute or so, and LeBow picked up again. "Do you believe what you read in the Bible?"
Raff was beginning to get annoyed, and he thought about excusing himself and leaving. But that would certainly offend his hosts, and anyway it would be better to find out what LeBow wanted.
"Well, some things in the Bible are surely true," Raff said. "And some are just ways of saying things that might be true. It's certainly worth knowing about what's in the Bible."
"Let's talk about this in another way," LeBow continued, "and don't worry, I've got a point I'm going to come to. I think it's important for you personally, and that's why Bo and I are paying you this visit. Just be patient."
"Okay, go ahead."
"Thank you. First of all, let's you and me stop calling it the Bible. Let's call it what it is, the Word of our Lord God, and through him His Son Jesus Christ."
"Well, I don't object if you want to put it that way. How to interpret the Bible differs a lot among Jews and different Christian denominations. That's why we have freedom of religion, isn't it? Why should it matter a lot in a democracy?"
LeBow bore in: "I'll tell you why it matters a lot. Either you believe the Word of God is truth, or you think you can interpret it any old way you choose, any way that makes you feel
better."
Raff didn't like theology and he didn't like LeBow's tone, but he stayed with it. "Okay, that's putting it in a pretty extreme form, but I suppose what you say is basically right. But, again, so what? Where does that get us?"
"Raphael--may I call you that?--may I ask you a personal question?"
"Well--" Raff started to say yes, he indeed minded, but LeBow went on too quickly.
"Raphael, have you been saved by Jesus Christ?"
"Well, I'm an Episcopalian, part-time anyway. Does that count?" Raff looked at his watch and frowned.
LeBow paid no attention to the gesture. "You may belong to that church, Raphael, but that does not mean that you have committed your soul to Jesus Christ, and it does not mean you will enter the Kingdom of Heaven when you die. Is that important to you?"
"I don't agree with you," Raff responded. "Or rather, I don't know what you're talking about. And I'm frankly not sure I care. With all due respect, are you going to tell me why we are having this conversation?"
"What I mean is you belong to a nice club, and you believe in God and maybe His Son Jesus, and you go to church, and pray, and all that, but you haven't been saved, my friend, you haven't given yourself to Jesus Christ."
Raff looked at his watch again, pointedly. "So what's that supposed to mean? And why are you telling me this? Why are we sitting here?"
"I'll explain this to you," LeBow said. "The world is divided into two kinds of people. There are those who believe the Word of God as it was given to us, and they have given their bodies and souls to Jesus Christ, His Son. And on the other side there are those who don't believe the Word, not entirely anyway. They haven't been saved, no matter what else they think or do. Do you want to appear before God on Judgment Day and say, Well, I only believed half of what you said? Real Christians are waiting for the Second Coming, and they believe every paragraph, every sentence, every word God has given us. They make it their business to get others to commit. They want as many people as possible to go with them and enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
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