Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction

by Grif Stockley

  So if she thought he hung the moon, why would she kill him? At the edge of the woods, I detect some movement. I think I’d be nervous at night out here.

  “Was Wallace a member?”

  An ugly sound comes from Bracken’s throat.

  “Not in good standing,” he says, spitting over the railing into the yard, which is blooming with yellow forsythia and pink redbud trees. A butane tank only a few feet from the deck is mostly hidden by dense shrubbery, out of which arises a birdhouse for martins.

  “Shane Norman wouldn’t have let his daughter marry Wallace if he hadn’t joined his church, but right after they married, he quit coming much.”

  A small gray rabbit hops into the cleared field and cautiously sniffs the shot-up can. I am reminded of the days when my father and I used to hunt rabbits when I was a kid, and I look to see if Bracken will load the rifle.

  He yawns and looks down the barrel.

  “Maybe Wallace was playing around,” I guess, “and she caught him at it.”

  Satisfied with his job. Bracken props the rifle in the corner against the beam supporting the roof. My father never fired a shot without cleaning and oiling his guns afterward. I think those acts of maintenance somehow gave him as much satisfaction as firing the guns. When his schizophrenia and drinking got bad (eventually he hung himself at the state hospital in Benton), my mother took the guns and gave them to her brother, telling my father someone had stolen them. He had to know what she had done (burglary of the home of a white person in a small town thirty-five years ago was as rare as a comet sighting), but, probably as a result of his illness, he preferred the theory that a crime had been committed. Bracken glances in the direction of the rabbit which has tentatively hopped a couple of feet toward the garden.

  “That’s more of a possibility,” he says, standing up and heading down the steps off the porch, “but we haven’t turned up a woman in Wallace’s past.

  By all accounts he was deeply in love with her, too.”

  The creature sees Bracken and scampers back into the woods. Bracken turns and says somewhat sheepishly, “Live and let live.”

  I file away this story. Bracken, who chews up opposing attorneys for breakfast, won’t even fire a warning shot at a rabbit. Perhaps dying is having a mellowing effect on him. It occurs to me that I am going to have the experience of watching a man die. It is a sobering thought. Rosa’s death was not a good experience, but then I was too close. Maybe I can learn something at this distance. I follow him out to his garden where he shows me snow peas, spinach, onions, and broccoli Wynona and Trey have recently planted. He says the spinach especially will be delicious, as if he will be around to eat it. I want to ask him about his cancer but don’t dare. I have been too intimidated by this man to presume familiarity I don’t feel. Curiosity rather than sympathy is my dominant emotion, and though I’m beginning to warm to him, the myths about him shape my feelings to a far greater degree than this homey snap shot. Wearing beltless faded blue jeans that are far too roomy in the back (they are in danger of sliding down his wasted shanks to his knees if he jams his hands in his pockets one more time). Bracken confesses he doesn’t have the energy to do much more until the trial.

  “I had to browbeat Leigh to get her to see you tomorrow,” he says, frustration working into his voice.

  “She’s been about as useless as I am.”

  Embarrassed, I study the ground in the growing dusk.

  Only last year Bracken won outright acquittals in four first-degree murder cases in a row. His ability, the courthouse talk goes, has been exceeded only by his arrogance. Obviously, the specter of his own death has vanquished the Chet Bracken of legend.

  “I’m a little surprised somebody in that church hasn’t tried to cover for her,” I say, voicing a notion that has recently occurred to me.

  “They raised that bond money in a hurry.”

  Bracken bends down to pull up a weed.

  “I know Nor man, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to do that,” he says sharply.

  “If she goes to prison, they’ll have ten members there for her on visiting day the rest of her life, but nobody would be permitted to lie for her no matter how much it would help. We don’t do things that way.”

  We. It is hard to take seriously Bracken’s conversion.

  If he’s so hot for it, how come he isn’t in church to night? Rainey was going. His sanctimonious tone sticks in my craw. Is he suggesting that I would suborn per jury? A decade ago, when Bracken was first making his reputation, the prosecuting attorney of Blackwell County claimed that he had bought a witness in a rape case but couldn’t make the charge against him stick. I can’t keep my irritation pushed down.

  “Joining a church doesn’t make a person a saint.”

  Bracken smiles as if I had said something funny. He pokes at his teeth with the weed he has pulled from the ground.

  “I want you to talk to Leigh’s father, too,” he says mildly.

  “You’re not going to get a feel for what I’m talking about until you do.”

  “I’ll be glad to,” I say, inwardly groaning at the thought. It is not only the Jim Bakkers, Jimmy Swaggarts, and Oral Robertses who have given Protestants a bad name. During John Kennedy’s campaign for the presidency. Catholics were suspect in Bear Creek.

  Home during the summer from Subiaco, I was told more than once everybody knew the Pope would be calling the shots if he got elected.

  “Did Wallace keep a gun in the house?” I ask, wanting Bracken to focus on the murder itself.

  Bracken leads me back to the deck.

  “Leigh claimed he didn’t own one, and the cops can’t prove he did, but that doesn’t mean anything. I’ve got three guns in this house that were given to me.” Apparently exhausted by our excursion to the garden. Bracken sinks gratefully into his chair.

  Seated again, I watch the rabbit bound into the cleared ground and head for the garden. Bracken doesn’t even bother to wave his arms.

  “As circumstantial as the case against her is,” I point out, “maybe we could get a good deal for her.”

  Bracken reaches for another beer.

  “The sticking point is her father—he doesn’t want her to have to spend a day in prison.”

  I finish my beer but decide against another one. How can a father believe his daughter is capable of murder?

  Sarah won’t even kill one of Woogie’s fleas. Bracken’s hand shakes slightly as he brings the can to his mouth.

  “He thinks it’s just a matter of time before some evidence turns up that takes her off the hook.”

  Wishful thinking is the only thing the brain is good for, according to my friend Dan. If not for that ability, there wouldn’t be any reason to get out of bed most mornings. Trey bounds through the door, then, almost standing at attention, says formally, “Mr. Page, would you like to wash up before supper?”

  I can’t resist smiling at this kid and then remember what it is about him that is so unnerving. The child is being raised the way I was thirty-five years ago in the Delta. Form was substance, and substance form, and God pity the white middle-class child who didn’t intuitively understand that.

  “Show me the way. Trey,” I say, but turn to Chet.

  “Where were you raised?” I ask, guessing his answer.

  “Helena,” he says, pushing himself up from the chair.

  “About a mile from the bridge.”

  The bridge that leads to Mississippi, he doesn’t have to say. I nod.

  “I’m from Bear Creek.”

  “I figured you had to be from over there, too, with that accent,” he says, the barest hint of a smile on his face. We’re practically brothers. Trey leads me through the kitchen past his mother setting the table and down a hall whose walls are covered with photographs. I pause and look at what has to be a picture of Chet in a Little League uniform. He is holding a bat in a kind of corkscrew stance that reminds me of Stan Musial.

  “That could be you,” I say.

  �
�Yes, sir,” Trey says, not missing a beat.

  “You want to see the glove my dad played with?”

  “Sure,” I say. We pass the bathroom, which has been temporarily forgotten, and he leads me through a door at the end of the hall on the right. I haven’t been in a boy’s bedroom in years, but they haven’t changed much except for the video equipment. Trey goes to a closet and pulls out a glove whose leather is so dry and cracked it is almost painful to the touch.

  “Dad played third base,” Trey informs me as he hands me the glove to try on.

  “Did you know that Brooks Robinson was from Arkansas? My dad says he was the best ever.”

  I cram my fingers into his glove, remembering my days as a ten-year-old shortstop for Paul Benham Insurance The first ball ever hit to me went between my legs. Every time we lost a game I cried afterward.

  Bracken probably went home and drove his fist through a wall.

  “He was incredible, all right.”

  “Trey!” his mother calls.

  I slip the glove off and hand it back to him. Carefully, he lays it back in the closet. One way or another this kid will remember his dad. And his memories will be a lot different than most of ours.

  Bracken says the blessing before the meal, but his wife and child do the talking. With the stew, Wynona serves biscuits and salad, and I eat until I’m bloated. As usual, I talk about Sarah and the travails of raising a teenage daughter who attracts boys by merely clearing her throat. It hits me that after a decent interval Wynona will be looking for another mate, and I wonder if Bracken feels bad when he thinks about her in the arms of another man. He seems content to listen, allowing his wife and son to carry the conversation. As I talk and am drawn out by Wynona (she titters sympathetically at my tales of paternal incompetence), I notice that Bracken is, in fact, content, period. Without a shred of self-pity, his homely face, reminding me, now I realize, of a young Ross Perot, is hoarding memories of his wife and son for the rough times ahead.

  “I would have had Chet invite Sarah,” Wynona says, “if I had known about her.”

  “That’s okay,” I say, wondering what Sarah would have made of this family, “she’s studying for a math test.”

  Actually, it is only a quiz, but she rarely begins to settle down before ten. She is on the phone, I would be willing to bet. Ever the little gentleman. Trey chews with his mouth closed and does not grab for food not within his reach. His table manners are better than my own. He asks, “Do you like being a lawyer as much as my dad?”

  I chew, and signal with my hand that I will answer after I have swallowed. I have never thought one way or another whether Bracken enjoys his profession. With his success, how could he not? On the surface, he seems too obsessed, too relentless to be having fun. Yet, from experience I know the competition in trying a case acts like adrenaline, producing a high unlike anything else.

  “If I were as good as your father,” I say, finally, “I probably would.”

  “He says he’s going to heaven when he dies,” Trey says, talking about what has to be bothering him.

  “Are you saved, Mr. Page?”

  I look around the table, hoping to be rescued, but see I will get no help from his parents. Judging by their expressions they are as interested in my answer as their son. I guess I don’t believe in a heaven, so the theological implications behind this question hold no meaning.

  I want to claim this is a private matter, but children, like schizophrenics, have little trouble in crossing over boundaries that deter the rest of humanity. The silence is growing awkward, so I fill it by saying, “I’ve been baptized.”

  Like a professor who won’t let a student off the hook with a general answer to a specific question. Trey asks again, “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” His face is as open and friendly as if he had asked about my favorite baseball team. Yet there is a rote sound to the words, as if he has been practicing them.

  Feeling trapped and resentful, I push back from the table, telling myself that it is not this child’s fault. His parents should know better than to let him conduct an inquisition. If I have to endure a religious litmus test given by a child in order to work on a murder case, I’ll pass.

  “When I was about your age. Trey,” I say, trying to sound friendly, “my mother told me it was rude to ask questions about politics or religion.”

  Trey’s face reddens, as if he is stung by my refusal to answer him, and he looks at his father for confirmation.

  “Nobody’s trying to embarrass you. Page,” Bracken says.

  “It’s a sign Trey likes you.”

  This child is worried about my soul and whether his father and I (I must seem about to die to him, too, since I’m older than his father) will be friends in heaven. I have an almost overwhelming desire to lie to please this child, but I am irritated by his parents’ behavior. I look at Wynona’s bland face, hoping for a last-second rescue, but it isn’t coming. Finally, I say, “I don’t know what I accept. Trey.” As brutal as it sounds, even this is a lie.

  I don’t accept anything. And if his father weren’t dying, he wouldn’t be going to church either, I am tempted to tell this kid, but don’t. I feel myself blushing furiously.

  Who am I to question the sincerity of Bracken’s conversion? He obviously is already a changed man. The old Bracken wouldn’t have any more let a rabbit into his garden (planted or not) than he would permit a prosecutor to badger one of his witnesses. Just because I’m in capable of change doesn’t mean the rest of the world has the same problem.

  “It’s okay, Gideon,” Bracken says, calling me by my first name for the first time.

  “That’s what we’re taught to do at Christian Life,” he says, laying a napkin beside his plate.

  “But that question is supposed to come much later. Since my cancer was discovered, Trey understands there isn’t much time.”

  As I sit there trying to sort through my feelings, the phrase “end times” rings in my brain. The world may be ending soon for everybody (it is for his father), and if his kid can’t stop that, at least he can make sure we are ready for it.

  “I know it’s hard to be asked that,” Wynona says, her voice gentle, “but it would be confusing and dishonest to get on to him.”

  I push my knife around on the table.

  “Oh, I’m not upset.” But I am. Nothing is more obnoxious than someone pushing religion on you, especially if it’s an innocent kid. And with Rainey bleating on about it last night, I’ve had enough door-to-door salesmen to last a lifetime. The arrogance of it. Trey is watching me as if an ax murderer had declared himself. Still, I feel a grudging admiration for him. Even with your parents egging you on, it can’t be easy being a little Billy Graham. My own failures with Sarah stand in stark relief.

  This kid is practically an evangelist; Sarah was lucky if I dropped her off at the front door of the church. It wouldn’t have killed me to attend Mass more. It’s not as if I were developing a cure for cancer and was just too busy to tear myself away.

  Bracken begins to clear the table.

  “Would you like some blackberry cobbler,” he asks cheerfully, “and some coffee?”

  “Sure,” I say. How can I be rude to someone who’s dying? Wynona springs up to help him, leaving Trey and me to stare around each other. It is as if I had farted and everyone was determined to ignore it. How odd this all is, I think. After Bracken dies, what a story I will have to tell. Chet Bracken stories are legion, but nobody will be able to top this one.

  Again, blushing furiously. Trey asks, “Maybe you can come to church with us this Sunday.”

  I look at the boy, astounded that a child so young would be this relentless. His eyes are somewhere on the middle button of my shirt. Doubtless, his parents have overheard him, but it is as if we were discussing base ball cards. Opening the refrigerator freezer. Bracken says, “Come on and go with us. It’ll make your investigation go easier.”

  Extremely uncomfortable now, I lift the crys
tal water glass to my lips to give myself time to think. What can it hurt?

  “Actually, I’ve already been invited,” I fudge, adding specificity to Rainey’s open invitation, “by a friend to attend your church this Sunday, so maybe I’ll see you there.”

  “Who?” Trey asks, a little suspiciously. This is too easy. Yet his parents let him continue as if I were a prisoner of war in a country that knew nothing of the Geneva Convention.

  I tell them about Rainey, but, not surprisingly, in a church with a cast of thousands, they have not heard of her. Wynona has a way of listening sympathetically, and I tell more about Rainey than I intended, managing only to leave out my consternation that she has joined Christian Life. No matter. As she fills my coffee cup, she re marks, “You must feel she’s deserting you because she’s gone so much.”

  “Exactly,” I say, glad that someone understands.

  “She might as well put her house up for sale.” Wynona reminds me of someone’s grandmother. I wonder how she and Bracken hooked up. A plain Jane if there ever was one, she wouldn’t have caught Bracken’s eye on a crowded street. Since she is perhaps a decade older than Bracken, she surely thought she had a husband for the rest of her life. As Julia, my secretary, says, “Even if you can find one halfway decent, he’ll wear out so fast and die you won’t even remember what he looks like.”

  Chet, who has said little during the meal, sits back in his chair.

  “There’s only one cure for that. You’ll have to start going, too.”

  Damn. I look at Wynona, who nods.

  “She probably can’t tell you what it means to her. When you first start getting to know your family, there’s a kind of glow.

  That’s how me and Chet met. Trey and I were assigned to be part of his family when he began coming regularly six months ago.”

  My head spins to look at Chet, who gives a confirming nod and a sheepish grin. I guess I should have figured, but I’d never heard about Chet having a wife or family before. With those ears. Trey couldn’t look any more like Chet if he’d had plastic surgery.

  “How long have you been married?” I ask, incredulous.