God Says No

by James Hannaham

  I lost my cool. “Keith! How can you call yourself a Christian if you don’t believe we should care most for the least of our group members? Isn’t that how we are to be judged? What is wrong with you? Nicky’s weak, but he’s as human as any of us. Why can’t anybody else seem to understand that around here?” My voice took on a deep, urgent tone and I wagged my finger at them.

  “Dag, Reverend Gray. You don’t have to get all black on me.” I was flattered that anyone would think of my behavior that way. Nobody had ever accused me of getting black before, or being a reverend, like I had once wanted to.

  “Besides, we need a third for accountability,” Jake chimed in, though we all knew.

  “Is there a game in Memphis tonight?” Keith asked. None of us knew for sure.

  “If not, we’ll say we went to the movies,” Jake said.

  None of us had access to a car. I probably could have borrowed Gay’s, but our mission had a hushed-up quality that I didn’t want to mess with. Gay would probably not have minded, but I didn’t want Bill to hear about what we were planning. During Group Share we passed nervous glances around and tried to hurry the proceedings without giving ourselves away.

  Shortly after Group Share, we signed out and left the Resurrection grounds, careful not to walk too fast. As we walked, the sun dipped down behind the sycamore trees and hid in the Mississippi River for the night. By the time we reached the bus stop we had broken into a full run, and Keith raced Jake to the end. I fell behind, of course, and huffed my way up to them a few minutes later.

  At the nearest main road, we waited forty minutes for a bus at a stop with no sitting place. Jake flopped down on the grass and Keith rested his hands on his knees. All three of us were exhausted and panting. For a split second, the noise of our breathing together put me in mind of what a three-way sexual encounter might sound like. So I started to sing “Your Sins Will Find You Out” from an album by Brother Joe May that Aunt Vierra had played over and over one weekend when I visited her. My out-of-breath singing sounded terrible to Keith and especially Jake, who put his hands over his ears and howled like a coyote near a fire engine. I laughed and the bus finally came.

  Jake and Keith shared the seat in front of me. Keith asked where he thought we should look for Nicky. Jake turned sideways in his seat, running his arm along the metal bar to face us both.

  “Well, it’s still early, so I think we ought to check Overton Park first. The sun’s almost down, so there won’t be much action, but if he’s not there he’ll probably hit the Paris Theater looking for the after-work crowd.”

  Keith and I agreed, and Jake swung his arm back over the seat again. Outside, the traffic signals and lighted signs for fast-food restaurants gradually took over from the daylight. Keith, Jake, and I became fascinated by the street scenes in the bus window. They passed by each other carelessly like strangers, one reflection blurring the other. It hit me for the first time that we would now have to enter the gay underworld, a place I’d hoped I had left behind forever. Watching my two friends leaning sideways to see outside in the starched white shirts and gray slacks Resurrection provided for us, I wondered if we hadn’t made a huge mistake.

  We didn’t find Nicky hanging out by the concrete pillar at the entrance to Overton Park, and he wasn’t behind the band shell either. Jake insisted that we try to get closer to the wooded area by the lake-he consiered that our best bet. We reached a grassy clearing nearby and Keith and I stopped walking, like we’d arrived at an invisible wall. Jake walked forward until he saw we’d stopped. He turned to us, unbuttoned the first two buttons of his shirt, and rolled up the sleeves to the middle of his forearm.

  “Getting serious, eh?” Keith mocked. I couldn’t figure out whether I didn’t trust my friends’ motives, or if my own fear was keeping me from moving forward. Probably all three of us dreaded the same thingourselves, and whether we could withstand the intense feelings of repulsion and attraction racing through us at the thought of maybe seeing a penis in a man’s mouth, or, God forbid, thrusting into a male anus. Jake and I both had histories of public-sex addiction. Even the possibility of catching a sidelong glimpse of gay sex in the dark woods frightened me. If I saw Nicky soliciting in there, I’d be a goner.

  “Do you want to find Nicky or not?” Jake challenged. I took a couple of steps forward and joined him beside a crooked oak.

  “If you stay behind, Keith, we’ll be out of phase,” I said. Jake put his hands on his hips.

  Keith stood his ground and made a series of pained faces as he kicked a small hole into the grass. “Maybe we shouldn’t look there,” he whined. “I mean, do we have to? If anyone finds out ... Can we just run through?”

  Without answering, Jake turned and hopped onto the dirt trail that led into the wooded area. I waited a moment until I became concerned that Jake would outrun me, and with a deep breath, I leapt after him. “Keith,” I yelled back, “c’rnon! We’ve got to stay accountable!”

  Breathlessly I skidded through the woods, trying not to look to either side. I called out for Nicky, hoping I wouldn’t have to see any perversions taking place. Or hoping that I would, depending on which second it was. With jackrabbit leaps, Jake bounded far ahead of me until I couldn’t see him anymore. Behind me I could hear Keith’s footsteps crunching through the dead leaves.

  By this time the sun had gone completely, and the only light entering the grove of trees came from lamps along the edges of distant walkways, and an orange sliver of moon I could sometimes glimpse through the tree branches. As I turned around to see if I could figure out where Keith was, somebody in a suit stepped out from behind a tree, like darkness dripping out of the air. Shot through with fear, I planted my feet to keep from stumbling into the person’s chest. Keith’s footsteps grew louder.

  The guy turned out to be short and stocky. The closer I got, the more his forehead shone in the moonlight, until I understood that his whole wrinkled head was a forehead. From what I could see of the crags across his face and blobby nose, I guessed that he was in his sixties. He had a dark red silk scarf tied around his neck. He looked like Alfred Hitchcock coming from a fancy Hollywood to-do.

  “Hi,” he said, in a short tone almost like a blast from a party horn. “Looking for trouble?”

  Careful not to make eye contact, I started to step around Alfred to let him know I wasn’t interested. This usually worked in public-sex situations without too much fuss. The fellow got part of the message and moved to the other side of the dirt path. Right then, Keith caught up to me.

  “Ugh,” the man sighed to Keith, in a voice whose femininity instantly embarrassed me, “is there no action anywhere in this damned town? Wait. Are y’all Witnesses? Hot. What about it?” Alfred unbuttoned his jacket, then started unbuttoning a vest with about twelve more buttons.

  “Don’t touch me, faggot!” Keith yelled. Shocked by his language, I turned to see his elbow connect with the man’s jaw. Alfred hadn’t even looked up from his unbuttoning yet. He staggered backward, falling against a sapling. The tiny tree couldn’t support his weight, and in a matter of seconds he crumpled down. I tried to rush forward and help him up, but Keith stayed me with the same elbow that had done the violence. U sing me to support his weight as he moved forward, he approached the man, swung his shoe backward, and dealt him a hard blow in the privates. I reached out too late to stop him and yelled out his name. This couldn’t be happening. Sure, we didn’t agree with the pro-gay people, but we had less reason to beat them up than anybody. If they came over to the Jesus side, they could sign up tomorrow and they’d be us. I wailed at Keith to leave the guy alone.

  The man let out a high-pitched yell, hollering “Help! Assault!” His girlish voice echoed through the trees, and before I knew what had happened, Keith pushed me forward and we ran, faster than we had all day, to the other side of the wooded area. I ran so fast I felt like I might leave my fat behind me. How could a fellow that weak send us rushing away in terror?

  We found Jake waiting outsi
de by a park bench across a meadow next to the path. He was sharing a cigarette with a slim, heavily tattooed guy in a tank top. Keith saw him and stumbled desperately across the grass. Yelling, he shoved Jake’s shoulder the way he had done to me, and then continued running. I tried to explain what had happened to Jake but I was too out of breath, so instead I gestured for him to follow. He said a quick, confused good-bye to his friend and took off after Keith. Behind them, I thought I could still hear the faint wail of a scared, womanly voice.

  The second I got to the stone wall by the main road, Jake shoved me back a few feet away from Keith, squeezed my upper arms, and looked directly into my eyes, hungry for truth. “What happened in there, Gary?”

  He and Keith had already had some kind of discussion-I didn’t know what about. In the corner of my eye, I could see Keith’s face, lit by a white streetlight. I had never seen so angry a scowl cross it before. I couldn’t turn away from the rage I saw there, naked for the first time. I shared his rage, and I suddenly resented Jake for trying to get me to rat on another black man. This probably wouldn’t have occurred to me if Keith hadn’t called me a reverend earlier and told me not to get black on him. Even so, it made me feel like I would rather let Jake rip out my liver before I betrayed Keith, the same way I had carried my brother’s rage against my parents for so many years. The effeminate man wouldn’t die or anything. He’d be okay in a few hours.

  “Some guy tried to touch Keith. We ran.”

  “Is that all?”

  I hoped he hadn’t heard the wailing. “Pretty much. It was disgusting.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jake raised his eyebrow, but calmed down. Keith’s face also relaxed for a second, first into surprise, then into its normal, slightly befuddled expression. Jake let go of my shoulders and allowed me to rejoin him over where Keith stood by the streetlamp.

  “You were smoking, huh?” I joked.

  He waved his hand in the air. “Yeah, okay, sure. That guy back there was a junkie I knew from way back. He told me he’d seen Nicky.”

  I tried not to let my excitement show, but I let out a sigh of relief.

  “He said it was a 99 percent sure bet that Nicky would be at this dive bar off Beale Street, Thorny’s. That’s where his guy hangs out.”

  “What? He has a boyfriend already?”

  “No, his connection, his dealer. There’s a problem though. The dude usually doesn’t get there until two in the morning.”

  “Oh,” Keith said warily. “I guess that’s it for me.”

  “Sometimes he gets there earlier.”

  “Maybe tonight will be one of those nights,” I said. “It’s only 9:30. If we go there now, maybe we can talk him into coming back before curfew ends.”

  It took us a little while to regroup and make our way downtown. Once we figured out where Thorny’s was, we realized that the best route was to take the trolley through the historic district. The beautifully preserved old-time car, with its wooden seats and yellow lighting, provided a strange contrast to the unpleasant business of earlier that night. For a moment during the shaky ride, we had traveled back in time, and we were three innocents enjoying a rollicking Friday night in Memphis-soldiers on leave, maybe.

  Two arguments and a wrong turn later, we found the place, smashed into a nameless, grimy side street. The entrance was up a brightly lit flight of stairs. Some strains of rock music, but not a scary kind, drifted down to us along with the hum of conversation. My heart leaping like a crazy toad, I led the way up only to find that the corridor suddenly became sooty and dark as soon as we turned the corner on the first landing. The music blared out of a slate-gray door held slightly open by a triangle of wood jammed into the hinge. I touched the doorknob-a metal handle screwed into the gray rectangle-but I was afraid to push it. A deep red glow lay waiting behind it. I could see a sliver of the interior, and I asked Jesus to make sure our mission didn’t take long.

  “All the FedEx guys come here after work, that guy Tommy was telling me,” Jake announced. “Do you think they’re still wearing their jumpsuits?” He took over from me, confidently pushing the door open. The music swelled and Keith and I followed him in.

  Thorny’s was about half-full, and the patrons all stood at the far end of the room by the bar. It had that bar smell, the bittersweet stench of cigarettes and stale beer. We passed a pool table lit by a fluorescent light. Behind it sat a pinball machine that said MONTE CARLO, with a drawing of a woman in a skintight dress, a man with a gun, and big dice behind them. Most of the patrons were thirtyish men, thickset but not fat. Only one of them had on a FedEx polo shirt, but most of them could have been FedEx guys, as far as I could tell. I saw Nicky everywhere in strangers who shared one or two of his features, but the real Nicky wasn’t there.

  We knew we shouldn’t drink-especially Jake. In addition to the reparative therapy, his strict drug rehab didn’t permit him to have even one sip. He couldn’t even take communion. Keith and I stood with our hands in our pockets while Jake bummed another cigarette from one of the tubby men at the bar. Cigarettes weren’t allowed at Resurrection either, but they were less not allowed than alcohol or men. Jake got quarters from the bartender and we practically ran to the pool table, a safe space where we could keep our vices at bay during the stakeout.

  We played sudden-death pool until we ran out of money, and still no Nicky. Idle and nervous, the three of us sat on a banquette by the restrooms and Keith tried to tell a joke about a coyote walking into a bar, but we couldn’t hear him very well. I laughed at the punch line out of courtesy. Jake shoved his hands under his thighs to prevent himself from getting up to buy a drink or smoke another cigarette. He looked at each of us in turn and said, “Accountability, right?” We shook hands on it. Soon it got near midnight-long past curfew. Keith said again that he didn’t really care what happened to Nicky, and we should get back as fast as possible.

  “I’m gonna have one more cigarette and then we’ll go, okay?” Jake pleaded. Even though I wanted to, I didn’t think it would make sense to stop him. Keith shrugged and said something about Christ.

  It was a good thing that Jake had that cigarette, because just as he gave up on it and stubbed it out in an ashtray that looked like a black crown, Nicky shuffled in. My heart bloomed like a time-lapse movie of a rose.

  The other two didn’t notice, but I had not stopped watching the front door during the off moments of our pool games. Nicky had started letting his facial hair grow. Already his stubble exceeded Resurrection’s guidelines. He took short steps, like he’d injured his feet, and I thought shamelessly of massaging them. Automatically I got up from the banquette and made my way toward him in such a hurry that I didn’t explain to Keith or Jake. If I didn’t capture this rare butterfly, I would lose him forever.

  When I got closer, I noticed that he looked like he hadn’t slept or changed clothes for a while. He’d fallen pretty far after only ten days on the lam. The front pockets of his jeans had holes in them where his boxers showed through. His T-shirt had sweat stains in the armpits. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes sunken, but the shabby look somehow increased his beauty. I gave him a bear hug and shouted his name, but he struggled, so I released him. A cloud of cheap bourbon smell blew out of his mouth. The odor triggered a childhood memory of my father, waking me up at 2:30 a.m. the night before a final exam to show me a corner of the yard I had not mowed to his satisfaction, swatting me in the face with a newspaper like you’d do to a dog.

  “Gary, man. The hell you doin’ here?”

  “We came to get you, Nicky.” I indicated Keith and Jake. “We wanted to bring you back into the fold.”

  Nicky stuck his hands into his pockets. “Now, I appreciate that, but it am t necessary, besides which I don’t think I want to. The fold don’t want me. What did Bill say about it?” The doubts of the secular world had fallen on Nicky already, and they had sucked some of the color out of his cheeks.

  “Did you go home at a
ll? Where are you staying?”

  Nicky thought and smiled and said, “Old habits die hard,” which I didn’t quite understand at the time. He scratched the back of his head. “You know, thanks, Gary. Thanks. You were the only one at that thing who ever stood up for me.”

  “I didn’t always do the right thing.”

  “Right, right. But they’re always talking about fellowship up there, and Christ, just give ‘em the opportunity to stigmatize somebody else, you know, and crush them underfoot. I wasn’t never trying to make trouble, Gary. You know that. I just wanted to figure stuff out. Reckon I should’ve known better than to ask.”

  “Will you at least consider coming back?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure. If Bill the Old Testament God will let me. You know what Bill said to me before I left? I told him I had some questions about the whole thing and he said, ‘I’d rather you dropped dead right now than leave. If you go back to the homosexual lifestyle, your soul will die forever. If you die now, at least you’ll have a chance at eternal life.’“

  I sighed. “Bill’s very committed to the program.”

  “Give me a second,” Nicky said, holding up a finger as he stumbled backward. “I have to go to the bathroom. Remember what we was talking about, okay?”

  “Okay.” I watched him go, and it felt good to watch him. The spark of mischief hadn’t left his green eyes. For all his pessimistic talk and his sudden decline, I had a lot of hope for his return. Jesus wouldn’t let him down. I knew from personal experience.

  I went back to the banquette, a little drunk from seeing him again, and told Keith and Jake that I’d found Nicky. Keith told me that they’d noticed, but they thought I’d bring him back near the pool table.

  “Is he ready to come back?” Keith asked.

  “He said he might.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In the bathroom.”

  “There’s no window in there that he could jump out of, right?” Keith asked, half-seriously.