Desperation Road(25)

Back in McComb he drove along Delaware Avenue, serene and illuminated by streetlights. Two police cars sat parked next to one another in a pawn shop parking lot with the windows down, the cops talking to one another. He drove on past grocery stores and gas stations and he moved closer to downtown where the streets were lined with churches and he slowed when he came to the First Methodist Church with its high arches and brick steps and wooden steeple that made a wonderful shadow into the street in the afternoons. He hadn’t been a stranger to church or to God as he and his mother and father had gone every Sunday morning. His dad would drop him off at Sunday school and then he and Mom would sit on the seventh pew on the right side when his father joined them in the sanctuary for the service. Mom with her legs crossed and her Bible with LIZA GAINES inscribed on the bottom right of the front cover on her lap. Dad next to her in a black suit that matched all his ties and when Russell would get restless Mitchell would reach around his wife and pinch his ear and look down at him with serious eyes. Russell would then move and sit between his mother and father. His mom would pull a pen out of her purse and let him draw on the bulletin. That would keep him through the message and then they’d stand up and sing and the preacher would stand in front of the pulpit and ask for souls and sometimes one would come but most of the time not and then they’d walk out the front and Dad would shake hands with the preacher and the old men and then they’d go home and eat something with gravy.

He slowed to a stop and parked on the street in front of those brick steps. Then he got out and walked around and leaned on the passenger-side door. He stared up at the steeple which lost its clarity against the backdrop of the night sky.

He had tried again in the pen. The prison chapel was filled with rows of metal folding chairs and the pulpit held a podium and more chairs for the brighteyed young man from a local church who led the singing and the preacher and two guards. The preacher changed by the month, visiting speakers from area churches, sometimes a traveling evangelist, sometimes a budding theologian fresh out of the New Orleans seminary. But he could never get used to sitting next to men who sang the hymns of love and forgiveness knowing what they’d done and knowing they were getting their redemption. Taking advantage of grace while those they had done it to were probably up at night walking back and forth across worn carpet or fumbling in the medicine cabinet searching for the pills to help them sleep. He didn’t like the part of the service when these same men left their seats and stood at the pulpit and gave testimony. It was the same story over and over. Yes, I raped. Yes, I took another life. Yes, I stole. Yes, I raised a fist to my fellow man. But now I have found the love of God. Now I can see the light. Now I am found and on and on to a smattering of amens and hallelujahs and praise the Lords until Russell couldn’t take it anymore and so he gave up. He didn’t believe it worked that way and if it did then something didn’t seem right.

Once he asked the preacher if he thought it was really possible that these men could inherit the kingdom if their repentance was legitimate.

“If I didn’t think it was possible I wouldn’t be here,” the preacher had said. He was a retired Baptist minister. He walked with a limp and he wore a white beard and blackrimmed glasses and something in the gravelly tone of his voice had told Russell that he had heard it all from the mouths of sinners.

“Do you think it’s fair?” Russell demanded. He had been ready with the second question because he already knew what the preacher’s answer would be to the first.

The preacher took off his glasses and wiped them with his tie. Then he held them to the light and put them back on.

“What do you mean by fair, son? What I think is fair or what you think is fair or what that prison guard over there thinks is fair?”

“You know what I mean,” Russell said.

“Yeah,” the preacher answered. “I know what you mean.” And then he folded his arms and stared at Russell. Russell waited. The preacher took a deep breath.

“I don’t think it’s fair, either,” Russell said.

“But it doesn’t matter what I think is fair or what you think is fair,” the preacher answered. “The only thing that matters is what God thinks is fair. He leaves the door open. For everybody.”

Russell pointed to an inmate who was leaving the chapel. “See that guy?” he said. The preacher turned and looked. “That guy beat his grandma to death because she wouldn’t tell him where the keys were to the car.”

“I know,” the preacher said.

Then Russell pointed at another guy. “That one molested his little brother for about five years.”

The preacher nodded again.

“His little brother,” Russell repeated.

“I heard you.”

Russell pointed at another but before he could begin the preacher held up his hand and stopped him.

“And what did you do?”

“I made a big fucking mistake,” he answered. “I didn’t mean to. They meant to.”

“I’m not doubting you.”

“There’s more gray than the way you make it sound.”

“There’s gray to us. But only black and white where He’s concerned. Says it in Matthew. You follow or you don’t. I’ll know you or I won’t. It’s a pretty straight line.”

“The way you put it there’s ladders over the line. Or tunnels under it.”