Benefit of the Doubt

by Les Cowan

  He felt like the cancer care doctor trying to assure a newly diagnosed patient that recovery was possible when he had just lost a loved one to the same condition. If Jen had really descended into the shadowy world of drugs and dealers, there was no telling what might be going on. He could feel his heart sinking. What was the point? The men with the guns, the muscle, and no conscience always won. No one in Madrid was lying awake at night haunted by his tragedy. After this last two years, he had sworn to have nothing more to do with drugs, addicts, dealers, violence, and drugged-up lives. Instead of being in the life-changing rescue business, he had chosen Southside Fellowship. In place of a bustling, lively, modern church of transforming lives and real issues he had opted for the sleepy, staid and resolutely respectable, the prosperous middle aged, the devout and dutiful elderly, one or two reluctant youngsters, and the usual sprinkling of oddballs, misfits and the simple minded. That’s it, he thought. Let’s stick with disputes about the hymn book, the notice sheet, and redecoration of the vestry. Leave the real problems to those who still have the energy, the compassion, and the hope. Leave it to the true believers.

  Just as he was beginning to feel the icy cold penetrating his shoes and his bones he got to the door and started fumbling for keys. He felt more settled in his mind and was looking forward to a late-night snack, Stan Getz playing “Nature Boy”, and maybe one last look over his notes before a hot water bottle and oblivion. Suddenly a shadowy figure lounging against the bus shelter outside the close stepped forward into the light and startled him.

  “¿Cómo estás Señor David? ¿Qué pasa?” David almost leapt out his skin.

  “Juan! What are you doing here? You frightened the life out of me!”

  “We closed Hacienda a little early. I thought I would stop by and see how things are. Did you find out anything about the girl?”

  “Well, nothing good anyway. She’s been shooting up for at least a year. Hanging about with junkies and dealers. Taken to staying out all night, sometimes a couple of days at a time. This is more serious though. The mother hasn’t seen her for a week. Nobody knows where she is. Irene managed to worm the truth out of Mum this afternoon. Now she’s up to high doh.”

  “High doh? No te entiendo.”

  David laughed with a release of tension.

  “Lo siento. A Scottish expression. She is muy preocupada – very worried.” Juan nodded.

  “Y tú Señor David. How are you?”

  “Well… not great, to tell you the truth. Thanks for looking out for me. Come in before we both freeze to death.”

  Juan started rummaging through drawers and cupboards in the chilly flat as David took off his coat, lit an ancient gas fire, and put the kettle on. He was looking serious and disappointed by the time David came back.

  “Señor David, this is terrible. You are not looking after yourself. Cheap American rice, no fresh vegetables, instant coffee, horrible Scottish sausages. This will give you a heart attack. You cannot feel good eating this… this…basura…” – he searched for the right word in English – “this rubbish!”

  “You’re right. I’ve a lot on my mind. I’ll never equal Rocío’s cooking so maybe I feel there’s not much point in trying.”

  “Now you know you can eat free at Hacienda any time. We’ve told you that a thousand times. Alicia wouldn’t let you eat this stuff if she knew!”

  “I know. It’s very kind but you have a business to run. Gratis for me is not so gratis for you. You don’t have enough customers yet that you can afford a non-paying guest.” David was spooning instant coffee into two cups. Juan pursed his lips then decided to speak up anyway.

  “Señor David – it’s not like that. You are family to us. Closer than family. Rocío was my sister but you’re family in a deeper way. You found me on the streets when I was nothing. What was I? I was running errands for the dealers. I was learning the ways of the gangs. I had nothing. I was taking my first steps to hell. You picked me up. The church became my home – my family. You were my padre. You cared about me when no one else knew who I was. You got me my first job. You introduced me to Alicia. You brought me to know El Señor. How can I repay this? It is our job to keep you strong so you can help people the way you helped us.”

  There was silence in the tiny kitchen except for David stirring the coffee and putting a half-empty carton of milk back in the fridge. He handed Juan a cup and sat down in a threadbare armchair. He took a sip and said nothing. At length he looked up and spoke very slowly.

  “Juan. I love you too and I love Alicia. You are more than family to me also. In fact you’re about the only family I have left. But the David Hidalgo you met in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid ten years ago was a different man. You’ve grown up since then. You’re not the same kid that tried to pick my pocket but you’ve grown in a good way. I thought I could take them on and win. I was wrong. We paid the price. I came here to get away from it all, so I would never be faced with the same dilemmas and make the same mistakes. I’m sorry if that disappoints you but it’s the truth. I haven’t got anything left. It’s all gone and I can’t go back to the battle. I’m sorry.”

  “So what are you going to do to help the girl? Maybe to give her a life the way you did for me?”

  “Nothing, Juan. I’m going to do nothing.” He spoke very slowly, taking time over every word. “I’ll meet the mum if she comes to church. I’ll talk to her and tell her to report her daughter as missing. I’ll encourage her to put up posters, to go on the news, speak to the papers. And I’ll pray for her and sympathize with Granny, Mum, the neighbours, and the dog. Beyond this I will do – nothing. I’m sorry.”

  Somewhere there was the muffled sound of a late-night party. The brakes of a night service bus hissed and squealed outside. Juan swilled his instant coffee round the cup but didn’t drink it.

  “How can you say that? After all the lives you touched in Madrid – not just mine. It was the power of God but it came through you. You did what had to be done. People with no hope found it through you. Warehouse 66 was your invention. Lives were changed but you were the one with the vision that made it happen. How can you say you’re not going to help? That girl could be any one of the hundreds we know in Madrid – in trouble but ready to change. This is a chance to make a difference in her life too. How can you say no?”

  David didn’t drink his coffee either. He got up and poured it down the sink. Instead he took a bottle of Lepanto brandy out of the cupboard. Three times the price in Scotland as in Spain but he felt he needed it. He poured two glasses and handed one to Juan then sat down again.

  “I’ve always believed in the contract,” he said slowly. “I know you don’t make deals with God but I’ve always believed that if you did what God was calling you to do then he would look out for you. The Old Testament is full of it – the children of Israel going into the promised land, David in the psalms. It seems pretty clear. You follow my laws, my teaching, my ways, and I will protect and deliver you. Though a thousand fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. Remember? That’s what I believed. But I found, in the end, it didn’t work. I did everything I thought I was supposed to do. I took risks. With my life. With Rocío’s life too. But it turned out God did not protect us. God did not preserve us. I may be here but she didn’t make it and that means I’ve got nothing to offer to anyone else. None of the certainty I used to have. I didn’t have too little faith; I had too much. I’m not the same man. I’m sorry.”

  The clock on the boarded-up fireplace ticked. Juan stood up and put on his jacket.

  “Do you think you’re the only one who’s lost something? Don’t forget she was my sister. I lost something too you know. What do you think Rocío would be saying to you now if she were here? She’d say we always knew the risks. There are no guarantees. The Bible is full of the blood of the martyrs. Paul was nearly murdered a hundred times. I suppose lots of people he knew neve
r made it either. She’s one of that community. The ones that kept on giving till they gave their lives. She gave one life but she saved many. So did you. And don’t forget the story isn’t finished yet. You don’t know how it’s going to end. How can you say you won’t do anything because God let you down? Jesus was a martyr too. He gave up more than you. You’re right, Señor David; you’re not the same man. Please God you will find that man again. I can see myself out.”

  Chapter 8

  Radio Dynamis

  David Hidalgo parked his old, off-white Peugeot 206 with almost 300,000 kilometres on the clock, locked the door that was still lockable, and checked the time. Just after five. He wasn’t absolutely needed till five thirty but he liked to be prompt. Getafe was out of town – an industrial suburb to the south of Madrid – but parking anywhere even near the city was never straightforward and it was probably still the Scot in him that liked to be early – even after almost thirty years in Spain. Besides, he’d never been to the Radio Dynamis offices before and didn’t want to find it up four flights of stairs and no lift. His recent fiftieth had brought it home he needed to pace himself just a little bit more than he had in his thirties. Rocío kept on at him to join a gym, go swimming, take up Tai chi – anything to slow the inevitable – but he always put it off. There were always other more important things to do. While not entirely going with Warren Zevon’s “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”, he had to admit there was a bit of that in him. That was how God had made him – or circumstances of the last twenty years had determined. So be it. Amen. There was still a bit of life, energy, and thought left. Presumably that was what they were going to ask him about on Ortega’s early evening “Meet the Pastor” show.

  There it was. Ground floor. No sweat. Literally. So, time for a coffee. Arriving too early wasn’t very Spanish but these were Latinos – like the Spanish but more so when it came to timekeeping so best not embarrass anyone by turning up too promptly. Luckily you’re never far from a bar in Spain so he found a couple of chairs on the pavement just round the corner. Café cortado, a rather stale chunk of marguarita, and a seat in the sunshine. A replay of last night’s champion’s league Liverpool versus Real was blaring on the TV above the bar but he didn’t pay attention. Radio Dynamis (Power of God) listeners were going to meet the pastor this evening. He ought to give them their money’s worth. Who exactly were they going to meet?

  Perhaps they should be speaking to Paco Morales, not him at all, if they wanted to find out about David Hidalgo. Paco had been such an influence, guide, mentor – not to mention a drinking buddy and fellow jazz fan. But Paco had been dead for more than ten years now. Heart attack right in the middle of a Bible study on the Song of Songs. All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves. I looked for him but did not find him. Well, he’d found him now. Paco’s challenge had been to read, think, study, talk. So he did. Whatever this was all about it had brought his girlfriend, lover, best friend, and later on wife, back – almost literally from the dead. It deserved fair attention. She deserved it. And she never pushed him. They continued at Paco’s little Baptist church near Congosto. Rocío had gradually got more and more involved. A Saturday morning women’s group. Bible studies. Helping with the food distribution and second-hand clothing. Even stood up the front and told her own story one week. He had made himself sit it out, expecting to be embarrassed, but found himself in tears. The loss of all these little lives that had brought her to the point of almost ending one life more. But now it seemed she was rewriting history. Not to deny it but to reframe it in a new, healthier way. Why had all these lives been lost? There were no easy answers. No hard answers either and Paco had never tried to fob them off with platitudes. But it was like a change in the light. The shadows had softened and no longer did she seem to be carrying round their tiny unformed bodies in her own, day after day. It wasn’t denied; there just wasn’t the anguish there had been. Life did indeed go on even though that was the most anodyne of truisms. Rocío had found something she didn’t have before. That wasn’t bad, it was good. So David took on Paco’s challenge and did read, study, think, and talk.

  “What’s this I hear, David?” his father had asked him over the best Scottish style Sunday roast on one of his rare visits to the casa de los padres in Malaga. “Got religion have we?” Ironically that single phrase galvanized him all the more. Characterizing a serious journey like a three-day cold annoyed him – probably exactly what his father had meant to do – but he kept his cool.

  “Well, not so much as to keep me in bed,” he smiled back over the parsnips. Thanks to the acres of well-oiled English flesh tanned the colour of pigskin lounging around Malaga, like Southend in the sun, the shops stocked everything you could get in Stockbridge or Marks and Spencer’s in the Gyle. “But if I have you’ll be the first to know.” He smiled sweetly. They both understood his father would be the last to know – at least directly. Paco was discrete and David only spoke to Papa when it couldn’t be avoided. Mum was a different matter but she seemed to trust him to make sense of things on his own without the need to be browbeaten and mocked. So they met up sometimes when the old man was out whacking a ball round eighteen holes with a retired Edinburgh lawyer or some broker who had swapped Charlotte Square for the Costa.

  “So long as you’re happy, David,” she said, another from the all-time top ten of family favourites. But Mum meant it and David took it kindly. She stretched up and pecked him on the cheek. “Love you, Davie,” she whispered.

  Under Paco’s watchful eye and Rocío’s rather more nervous observation he tried to make progress, at first treating the whole thing like a bit of perfectly calm research. What do this strange breed of non-Catholic Christians actually believe? Why? What do they do? Why? What was the source of what even David could see was a remarkable degree of commitment and tenacity? Could it all just be cultural group think by the simple minded and trusting poor? Paco himself was the obvious counter to that. But then how could a thoughtful, intelligent humanitarian like him inhabit the same ideological space as the fundamentalists who thought the will of God was taunting gays and fire bombing abortion clinics? Then there were the outright crazies who thought Jesus Christ was coming back next week but needed a bit of party planning from the faithful. So an internet virus to sabotage the banking system, Ricin in the post to the president or fundraising to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple and flatten the Dome of the Rock – that’s what brought a smile to the face of the Almighty. Paco was unperturbed. He just shrugged and asked, “Is that what Jesus taught? Si o no? If not then they’re no affair of mine. Punto.”

  Then somehow it happened when David wasn’t looking. The game he thought was solitaire turned out to be chess. His relaxed investigation was suddenly feeling more like the best of thirteen against Bobby Fischer. Someone rather than something was on the opposite side of the table. He didn’t give up without a fight and there was always a choice – he could just have tipped the pieces on the floor and slammed the door but that would have been equivalent to closing his mind – what he had previously accused Paco’s little band of doing. It somehow seemed no contest – that it was the kind of losing that was better than winning. The defeat that was better than victory. Batter my heart, three person’d God; was the way John Donne had put it for, you as yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new. Well he’d been broken and burned. But the overthrow was the new beginning. He chose to believe.

  Not long after his change of heart he started going to a small group from Paco’s church that met in the fourth floor piso of an unemployed builder and his seamstress wife. Then some evening classes at Sefovan Bible college. Then leading a new group linked to Congosto but independent. Somehow it just kept growing. La Movida continued to exert its open-minded, searching influence. Eventually the big one: he packed in his job to pastor full time. His colleagues mostly thought he was mad
but one or two cornered him over coffee and asked what was really going on. “How long have you got?” he’d usually answer. The new group grew too. Then they got a bigger local that had once been a dance studio, between a tanning lounge and a lottery seller across from what turned out to be a brothel. Drugs trading all round them. Junkies in the underpass or hanging around for a handout after the services.

  That’s when the drugs thing began. A junkie – who was trying to get it together, with nowhere to go, and who needed a street address so as not to be sent down again – pleaded with him. Please. Anywhere so I can say I don’t live on the street. So I can stay out. There’s more drugs in prison than out on the street. I’ll never make it inside again. So Ignatio – Nacho – came to stay for six days and left five months later. He would get so agitated for a fix he’d pace up and down the hall all day so they had to find practical things for him to do. He painted the living room three times and the hall six times because that was (marginally) less disruptive. Then he got sick with some new kind of virus the hospital had never seen before. But before he died he made his own new life commitment and passed away without a molecule of heroin in his body, and a smile on his face. Others heard about Nacho and also came knocking. Again the building wasn’t big enough. Just around then the Americans were scaling down the NATO base at Torrejón and had property to sell. They bought a huge warehouse shed – number 66. So Iglesia Evangelica Warehouse 66 was born, and a cluster of addicts’ halfway houses sprouted up around it. He and Rocío did it together. She didn’t have a title and didn’t want one. She was helping him – or he was helping her. It was never entirely clear and neither of them cared. They just went on getting the job done. Worship, Witness, Works, and Word, they said. And somehow lives did change.