by Ted Peters
“Again, Pastor Lee, why’d Marshal Kane go back?” pressed Hillar.
“That’s the very question I asked my mother the night I first saw this movie. I demanded that my mother explain to me why Marshal Kane went back to face possible death. Do you know what my mother said?”
“No, what did she say?”
“She told me that I was just a little girl; and that I couldn’t understand until I would grow up. Then, my mother told me a story. This is a story within a story, now, Quaz.”
Hillar broke into a smile. Graham continued to watch and listen understandingly.
“My mother told me that when ‘High Noon’ first appeared in the movie theaters in 1952, she went to the theater with her mother and father. That would be my grandmother and grandfather. After she saw the movie, my mother asked her parents: why did Marshal Kane go back? They told her that she would have to wait until she grew up before she could understand. Going back to face danger is kind of a grown-up thing, I guessed.”
“When your mother grew up, did she get the point?” asked Hillar.
“Yes, she eventually got the point.”
“When you grew up, Pastor Lee, did you get the point?”
“Yes, I got the point. I now understand why Marshal Kane went back to Hadleyville.”
“So, what you’re trying to say is that Marshal Kane and my brother Jerry are the same, right?”
“No, not at all. I’m trying to say they were opposites. Marshal Kane had a strong sense of self. He believed in justice. He believed he had a duty to enforce justice and to protect Hadleyville in the name of justice. He had integrity. By ‘integrity’ I mean he was integrated. Who Marshal Kane was was integrated around justice. He was so committed to justice that the townspeople could not persuade him to shirk his duty. His Quaker wife could not persuade him to forsake his duty. Even the threat of death itself could not disintegrate him.”
“So, Jerry didn’t have integrity. Is that what yer saying?”
“I don’t mean it in the way you think. I’m not saying Jerry was dishonest. In fact, he was more honest than most of us. Rather, I’m saying that his struggle was that he couldn’t integrate his self around justice. This is because justice evaporated and disappeared. At least, this is what Jerry thought. Once justice disappeared, his sense of self disintegrated. He fell apart, so to speak.”
“So, if my brother Jerry were in that buckboard, he would not have decided to go back to Hadleyville, right?”
“If Jerry were in that buckboard, he could not have decided to do anything. Going back to Hadleyville to do his duty to justice would not have made any sense to him. Driving on to a new life with Amy would not have made any sense either. After losing justice, your brother Jerry lost himself. He was dead long before he committed suicide.”
Graham looked at his watch. “Leona, it’s getting to be that time.”
“Graham, would you mind doing the service alone?” asked Leona. “I think I’d like to sit in the pew with the Talin family. Would that be okay with you, Quaz?”
“Oh, yes, Thank you, Pastor Lee.”
“Cupid, would you help Hillar go find his mommie? Hillar, find your mother and get the family to sit in the front pew on the pulpit side. I’ll join you shortly.” Hillar stood up. As Cupid stood up, she began to point up at Leona.
“What is it, Cupid?” asked Leona.
The little girl continued pointing upward. Leona bent down. Cupid began to finger her hair. Momentarily a bare clearing on Leona’s scalp became visible in the forest of her auburn hair.
“I saw the doctor, Cupid,” said Leona. “The doctor fixed my owie.”
Satisfied, Cupid reached for Hillar’s hand. The two exited the parsonage hand in hand.
Leona went to the rest room. Graham went to the sacristy to robe.
During the memorial service, Graham stepped into the pulpit to deliver a brief homily. After reading his scriptural text, he opened his sermon. “If I recall correctly, the last words I heard Jaroslav Talin say were these: ‘If there is no God, then there is no me.’”
Chapter 32
Chicago
Leona finished packing her Briggs and Riley Spinner and closed it up. “I’m ready if you are!” she shouted to Graham. She pulled the spinner down the hall, then picked it up for the carry down the stairs to the front door.
Once Graham had loaded the bag into the CR-V, they set out for O’Hare airport. “Thanks for taking over the funeral for Jerry, Graham,” whispered Leona in a mournful tone. “And, I’m especially grateful for the pastoral care you showed to Hillar and the Talin family during this crisis. You’ve got a pastor’s heart, Graham.”
Graham drove without saying anything. Leona softly removed Graham’s hand from the steering wheel, drew it to her mouth, and gently kissed it. She then replaced Graham’s hand on the wheel somewhat ceremoniously.
“Now, why again are you going to San Francisco?” he asked impetuously.
“I’m going to NASA Ames in Mountain View, California. I’m going to become bait in a honey trap. It’s my high noon, and I gotta git the bad guys.”
“Honey sticks two ways, you know,” muttered the driver.
“Grammy, darling, are you worried about my safety or about something else?”
Graham continued driving in silence. After a period, Leona picked up the conversation. “As I told you, my assignment is to meet the Taiwan cabal and their Transhumanist friends in the Bay Area. I need to get to know them. I need them to get to know me. Washington—that’s Uncle Sam, not you—wants to monitor these brain bruisers. While I’m serving our country, you can stay here in Chicago and serve our Lord. See what good partners we make?”
“Somehow things have gotten turned around, damit. I’m the guy who works full time for the CIA, not you. You’re only a....what are you...an asset? a consultant? a honey comb? I’m the one who should be doing the spying. You, my dear Leona, are the pastor of Trinity Church. Why don’t you stay in town to do your job?”
An empathic smile broke out on Leona’s face. With patient cadence she continued. “We together are doing our job, Mr. Washington. We’re being good stewards of our talents. While I’m called away for this short time, you can keep the sheep in the fold. When I return, then you can go after the wolves and I’ll tend the sheep. How’s that?”
A smile emerged on Graham’s lips as well. He reached over to grasp Leona’s left hand. He gave it a tender squeeze. Small talk and practicalities occupied the conversation for the remainder of the drive to O’Hare.
After a warm good-bye hug at the United departures terminal, Graham put the CR-V into gear and headed back to Chicago’s south side. About ten minutes en route, his mobile phone sounded. He glanced at the screen. It was a strange number. No, he’d seen this number before. I wonder if that’s the number for...what’s her name...ah, Trudy Lincoln?
Chapter 33
Chicago
Although nicknamed the Windy City, without the wind on a hot day Chicago should be named Convection Oven City. The sun burns you from the top. The sun’s heat is then reflected by street asphalt upward, cooking you from the bottom as well. And unlike other parts of the country, the heat does not dissipate during the night. Like rocks in a campfire, the pavement keeps the city roasting all night long. Graham fought back by donning his sandals, cargo shorts, and Tommy Bahama shirt.
Trudy Lincoln had said she’d return home from work about six, and that Graham should arrive about seven. Questions about faith were bothering her. And Graham saw it as his duty to pay a pastoral call. Had he been a member of the German clergy, he would have referred to his work as Seelsorge, care of souls. Yes, care for Trudy’s soul was his motive for paying this call. Yes, it’s my only motive for making this pastoral call, he tried to persuade himself.
Graham walked five blocks south and walked up the five porch steps of a bungalow on South Burnham near 85th Street. He rang the bell. He could hear high heels approaching on a hardwood floor. Then, the front door o
pened. A smiling Trudy stood there, shimmering in a full length white silk robe.
“It’s a scorcher today, Pastor Washington. I mean, Pastor Gee. Come in to my air conditioned home and cool off!”
Graham entered, closing the door behind him. It indeed felt better inside where the temperature was only seventy or so. Trudy swished and swirled as she bid Graham to sit on the divan while she sashayed to the kitchen for two glasses of iced tea. Graham could hear every step as her high heels tapped the oak floor. Upon returning and placing the condensate drinking glasses on the coffee table, Trudy prepared for her three point landing in the arm chair directly across from Graham. This included the lifting of her left leg over her right, causing the silk robe to flap open. This revealed that she was wearing only a bra and panties, both hot pink. The near iridescent glow of Trudy’s brassiere and scanty panty intensified the color contrast with her delectable chocolate skin. With false modesty she quickly covered herself up again. Then, she stared into Graham’s eyes.
Graham could feel concupiscent impulses warring with his spiritual self-discipline. He covered his internal conflict by saying nothing.
Placing her chin in her left hand with the elbow on her left knee, she continued to stare into Graham’s eyes. “Thank you for coming to call on me, Pastor Gee. I’ve been looking forward to your visit ever since I attended worship at Trinity Church.” Trudy seemed not to blink as her eyes bored into Graham like an electric drill. All Graham could muster was a nod and a grunt while feigning the compulsive need for a sip of tea.
Keeping complete control of the situation, Trudy continued. “I did appreciate the way you conducted worship, Pastor. You speak so boldly, yet so kindly. I think I can hear a strong relationship with God along with a genuine caring in your voice. And the way you introduced our soldiers the Sunday prior to Memorial Day! Such a nice gesture, Pastor. We need to honor our men and women in uniform, don’t you think?”
Graham nodded affirmatively at this trivial truism. Still, he refrained from speaking.
“I’m new in the neighborhood,” Trudy continued. “I just moved here from the Loop. How long have you been pastor at Trinity?”
“Actually, I’m not the pastor at Trinity,” he confessed. “The senior Pastor is Lee Foxx. I simply play the role of assistant pastor; and I take leadership when circumstances require it. Pastor Foxx was out of town the first Sunday you visited. I’m a pinch pastor. I come to bat when the real pastor isn’t hitting.”
“You certainly know how to hit, Pastor Gee. You hit a home run, as far as I’m concerned.” Trudy laughed at her own joke. “But, are you trained’n everything? Did you go to seminary or something?”
“Oh, yes. I have a M.Div. degree from Princeton.”
“Are you Presbyterian then?”
“I’m kind of a hybrid, Reformed and Lutheran. If I lived in Germany, I’d be a unionist.”
“I don’t know what they do in Germany,” said Trudy. “I was raised in a National Baptist church. Sang in the choir’n everything. I gave my life to Jesus when I was sixteen. That’s a year after I gave my virginity to Albert. Albert directed our choir.” Trudy laughed.
Graham laughed with her. Trudy shuffled in her chair, unobtrusively opening and then re-closing her silk robe. Revelation followed by concealment is what Heidegger would call this, Graham conjectured to himself. Truth is found in the unveiling, the disrobing. Then, Graham silently scolded himself and thought, I gotta concentrate here. He spoke. “So, you’ve got some questions.”
Chapter 34
Chicago
“Yes, that’s what I told you after church. I’m so glad you were willing to come to my home to talk. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently. Actually, thoughts come into my mind uninvited. They’re alarming thoughts. They terrify me; and they kind of rule my mind for long periods of time.” Trudy’s countenance had become earnest, sober. This placed Graham at ease, oddly enough; because now he could respond pastorally to an authentic question rather than to his own secret desire to get seduced. “Tell me about these thoughts.”
“Well.” Trudy looked right past Graham and out the front window. “Well, I just wonder if what we say about God is right. What if we’re wrong?” She paused. Graham waited without speaking. She continued as if not noticing the time gap. “What if we’re wrong? What if there is no God? Or, what if God is really different from what the Bible says?”
Graham focused his attention on her eyes. Eventually, she turned her head slightly and was once again looking directly at him. A blushing smile recognized the eye contact. She looked downward.
“I bet something is prompting you to entertain these unwelcome thoughts,” commented Graham.
Trudy looked back up. “It’s my boss. I recently took a job in the Loop with a startup company. I’m a computer engineer. I specialize in monitoring and tracking and such. My new boss is a Muslim. Well, actually, he’s an ex-Black Muslim. He says he doesn’t believe in God anymore. But he keeps pestering me about my Christian beliefs. He says I’m just a fool for believing what Christian churches teach.”
“So, he’s an unbeliever who can’t leave your beliefs intact, eth?”
“Yeh, that’s right. He says I will go to hell because I don’t believe what is right about God. He calls God Allah. Even though he doesn’t believe in Allah any more, he tells me Allah will send me to everlasting hell. Pastor Washington, I don’t want to go to hell.”
“Can you be more specific? Just what is it about your Christian belief that allegedly warrants eternal damnation?”
“He keeps saying Allah is one. Allah is one! Because we believe in the Trinity—that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—I am stubbornly refusing to believe that Allah is one. That’s what he tells me. Now, Pastor, we believe the Trinity is only one, right? Three-in-one, or something like that. Right? Well, I get kind of confused here.”
“You’re not the first in the history of Christianity to get confused about the Trinity. Christians believe that God is one, almost like the Muslims do. Don’t get up tight. Relax. We’ll sort this out. Yes, indeed, Muslims do not like what we Christians teach about God as Trinity. But, curiously, Muslims are utterly confused about what it is they are rejecting. Take the Qur’an, for example.”
“Did you say the Qur’an?”
“Yes, of course.”
“My boss actually gave me a copy of the Qur’an to bring home and read. But, I can’t read it. I open it up and, well, I can’t find my way around.”
Graham began laughing. “That’s because the Qur’an is written backwards. Like the Hebrew language, Arabic is written from right to left. So, well, just bring me your copy of the Qur’an.”
Trudy stood up and left the room. In a jiffy she was back and handed the book to Graham. Graham did not watch for the now habitual flash of the white robe revealing the hot pink scanty panty. Rather, he immediately placed the Qur’an in his left hand and opened to the first pages with his right. The Holy Qur’an in both Arabic and English was published in Tehran, Iran. He then began to thumb his way through the text. Turning to Sura 4:171, Graham read out loud: “‘Say not Trinity; desist. It will be better for you, for God is one God’. Perhaps this is what your boss was referring to: God is one, and the idea of the Trinity violates this. If you violate the thought about God’s oneness, then you commit shirk. Shirk is a grievous form of sin.”
Graham flipped some more pages. “Now, I want to show you something else, something really odd,” he said, turning to Sura 5:116: “Here, Allah mimics Christians who ‘worship me [Jesus] and my mother, as gods in derogation of God.’ Look at this carefully. The Qur’an assumes that the Trinity is made up of Jesus, God the Father, and Mary the Mother. Now, you know that this is a gross misinterpretation of what we Christians actually teach. We never place the human mother of Jesus, Mary, in the Trinity. No wonder the Muslims object to the idea of the Trinity! We Christians would reject this as well.”
Trudy studied the text one more time. “That’s r
ight, Pastor Washington. The Trinity rejected here is not the Father, Son, and Spirit.” She turned to look again at Graham. She smiled as if she was experiencing an insight. “If a Muslim understood what we Christians truly think, then this difference about God would just go away. Right? Maybe these two religions could get together. Right?”
“Not so fast. Islamic theologians in the centuries after the Qur’an was written listened to Christians who tried to correct their mistake. Once the Islamic scholars gained an accurate understanding of what Christians think, they still rejected the Trinity as polytheism. They still think we commit shirk. So, I have little hope that we Christians and our Muslim brothers and sisters will become a single happy family very soon.”
The conversation turned to small talk. Eventually, Graham rose, excused himself, and headed for the front door. As he reached for the door knob, Trudy ran her right index finger down his left arm. “Certainly I wouldn’t be committing shirk if I kissed my favorite pastor good-bye, would I?”
Graham stood motionless. Trudy arched up on her toes to reach his lips. The two embraced. Graham thought this kiss could be interpreted as a “hello” rather than a “good-bye.” He elected the latter interpretation and swiftly walked five blocks north to the Trinity parsonage.
Chapter 35
NASA
“Leona!” Kelly hollered exuberantly, waving with arms outstretched high over her head. “Lee, Lee. Over here!”
“Kelly!” Leona spotted Kelly Latham Compton, the younger sister of her best friend, Angelina Latham, on the steps of the visitors center at historic Moffat Field, crowded this night with finely dressed couples and abuzz with unaccustomed social activity. Leona gave an acknowledging nod and hurried her pace towards the young woman whom she hadn’t seen for close to a decade. The two women hugged in the kind of warm embrace that only those who know each other well can share.
