by Roger Bruner
Good thing we’re not inspecting people. That assignment wouldn’t sound very Christlike.
He spent a good hour showing us the kinds of things to look for. I would’ve taken notes if I’d had any paper on me. I still had the marker Santa María team members had used on my beloved purple cast, but my bare arms wouldn’t have begun to hold everything he told us. So I’d have to rely on Aleesha’s memory, which was vastly more dependable than mine.
Rob left to find Jo, and we were finally on our own.
“How long do you think this unit will take?” I asked Aleesha.
“Uh …” She appeared to be measuring the dimensions of
the unit with her eyes. “Maybe three or four hours to clean up. I don’t know how long to inspect.”
I’d hoped she would say just two or three hours. I wanted her to say only one or two, but—even as naive as I was—I knew that was wishful thinking.
“Where do we start?”
“Anywhere.” She looked around. “Everywhere.”
Working our way in from the doorway made the most sense. We weren’t stupid enough to trample over the stuff near the door to reach and remove junk that was farther inside.
“It’s like widening the path to the Passover Church in Santa María, huh, girl?”
I nodded, but then discovered she wasn’t looking.
“I’m going to start with these sheets of plywood.” I tried to find a good place to grasp something that was ten times bigger than me. “They’re in the way.”
When Aleesha saw me struggling, she started to pick up the other end. “One at a time, girl,” she said, chuckling at me and letting the other four sheets fall back to the floor.
I was thankful for her help. I’d forgotten how heavy and awkward even one sheet of plywood was. Once we got the first sheet to the doorway, we maneuvered it onto the wheelbarrow Rob had left outside for us. After watching me nearly dump the load twice, Aleesha pried my hands away from the handles.
She shook her head. “I hope you drive a car better than this, girl.” She wasn’t smiling.
She pushed the wheelbarrow to the area Rob had designated. He’d hand-painted simple signs indicating where each kind of material belonged. We lifted the plywood off the wheelbarrow and leaned it neatly in place.
After working our way almost to the far side of the room, Aleesha and I stopped for a breather. Although I hadn’t been
conscious of exerting much effort, I was perspiring. No, as drenched as I was, I was sweating. And this was early winter in the mountains. The temp might not have been freezing cold, but it wasn’t the least warm, either.
“You didn’t have any nightmares last night?”
I shook my head.
“That’s good. I kept waking up and praying you wouldn’t.”
My parents had probably stayed awake worrying about me a number of times. Like when I was sick with a high fever or out driving by myself after I first got my license. Or out on a date. But Aleesha had gone beyond the call of both duty and friendship. She wasn’t just a best friend who’d gone the second mile. She was my sister in Christ, a sister who’d never thought about counting the miles.
I gave her a hug.
“What’s that for, girl?”
“Just because you’re you, you’re special, and I love you.”
She didn’t just smile. She glowed. “Are you tired today?” She must have wanted to make sure the nightmare on the plane hadn’t caused a relapse.
“Exhausted,” I said, mustering all the seriousness I could. “I can barely wiggle enough to place one foot in front of the other. Can’t you tell?” I gave Aleesha just enough time to frown. “Sleeping so much later than I was supposed to has worn me out completely.”
She stared at me for a moment, and then we both started howling. “Tomorrow … the right time … regardless of … what Mr. Rob says,” she said, her series of unceremonious guffaws chopping her sentence into pieces. While I wouldn’t describe her laughter as totally raucous, I doubted that the hostel had any mice left by the time she calmed down again.
“What do you think about going to the Correctional Center?” I said. I’d put the fears out of my head for a while,
but that was like putting bread in a toaster and pushing the lever. It always popped up again.
“About going to prison?” Aleesha said, laughing again. “I’d just as soon stay on the straight and narrow, if you don’t mind. Being on God’s good side is safer than the consequences of straying. Especially that far.”
I noticed Graham leaning against the doorway and examining a small piece of paper. He appeared to be reading it over and over, and I couldn’t help wondering how literate he was. If he read like he talked …
Oh, you dodo! What about all of those books he has? He must be a voracious reader.
What was he doing in the doorway, though—eavesdropping? That thought almost freaked me out. Rob wouldn’t have placed him in such a responsible position if he weren’t trustworthy. That fact should have calmed me down, but it didn’t.
A moment later, Graham looked up and saw me staring at him. He disappeared from sight so quickly I almost thought he’d been an apparition.
I was glad he was gone, though.
“You silly thing!” I said to Aleesha. I’d almost forgotten what we were talking about. “I meant how do you feel about doing worship services there.”
“I’ve done prison ministry before,” she said. “You’ll really enjoy it.”
Enjoy? Here I am scared to death of even going, and you’re telling me I’ll enjoy it? Can’t you hear my heart pounding its way out of my body?
“Jo’s the one I’m concerned about,” Aleesha said. “As sheltered as her life has been, she’ll probably be petrified.” She hesitated. “It won’t help that a number of the insiders are minorities—nowhere close to all of them are African-American,
though—and I don’t have to tell you how she feels about us more darkly colored Americans.”
While I kept hoping that Aleesha was wrong about Jo having “the smell,” I couldn’t pretend that Jo had gone out of her way to interact with Aleesha. If anything, their relationship had drifted somewhere in the direction of mutual tolerance.
I used to believe tolerance was a desirable attitude, but now I believed it was neutral—no more positive than a Con a report card. Like the New Testament church God accused of being lukewarm—”neither hot nor cold.”
I understood tolerance, though. But what did I know about prejudice?
I’d been in a minority setting only once in my life—one of a handful of white viewers at the well-attended screening of a movie featuring a mostly African-American cast. Although I wasn’t scared, I felt extremely self-conscious about my minority status. But I wasn’t aware of any hostility.
I couldn’t deny that Jo had a problem or that it might have been race related. But I wondered whether it had more to do with Aleesha herself. Could Aleesha’s smell-detector make that kind of distinction?
chapter twenty-seven
Graham cooked spaghetti for supper. Was pasta a particular favorite of his? He’d made a number of pans of the previous night’s lasagna from scratch and frozen them a week earlier. His spaghetti sauce was homemade, too, and it was the best I’d ever eaten.
Superior—I admit it, Graham—superior even to Mom’s. Truth be known, though, she’d been better at opening cans and jars than cooking from scratch. But I’d loved her cooking, and I missed it. If I hadn’t … if I hadn’t killed her, I’d still be enjoying it.
When I asked him where he learned to cook like that, he just shrugged. But he actually smiled—just slightly—when I told him he ought to start a cooking school. I told him I wanted to become his first student.
If I was going to take care of Dad when we got home, I needed lessons from somebody.
Although Graham still struck me as a bit strange—and a lot mysterious—he was growing on me. I hefted a quick prayer heavenward asking that I might learn to love
and accept him before returning home. I was hesitant to pray that I might also learn to understand him, but God told me—through feelings I couldn’t misinterpret—to add that as a postscript to my prayer.
And so I did.
We were about to push away from the smallish table—fitting the six of us there had been a challenge from the get-go—when Rob clinked his glass with a spoon. We settled back and gave him our overly full attention.
“We’re scheduled to hold our first worship service at Red Cedar Correctional Center at six thirty this evening.”
Aleesha and I had been so busy painting the first unit and cleaning out a second one that afternoon that I’d actually forgotten about the prison ministry. Finally.
My stomach reacted faster than my brain. It jerked, gushing spaghetti sauce upward like oil from a newly drilled well. Fortunately, the journey was both short-lived and incomplete, and everything settled down peacefully again. Unfortunately, it left the most awful taste in my mouth, and I couldn’t very well go gargle until Rob finished. That problem was getting old.
“If you looked for Scott this afternoon and couldn’t find him, that’s because he went with me to make the arrangements. Then I gave him the rest of the afternoon to work on his talk. The warden suggested not calling them sermons here. Sounds too churchy.”
“And too long-winded,” Aleesha said with a mischievous grin.
“Rob,” Dad said, “aren’t you going to tell them?”
Rob looked like Dad might have just yanked the rug he was standing on. Or painted him into a corner he didn’t want to be in.
What the …?
“Only some of it, of course,” Dad said, apparently realizing he’d said something he probably wasn’t supposed to mention. “Just enough … in case they, uh, notice anything.”
Rob’s single sigh could have blown out every candle on a hundred centenarians’ birthday cakes. Simultaneously.
“I guess you’re wondering what we’re talking about … uh, not talking about,” Rob said, examining each of our faces in turn. Although he didn’t even glance at Graham, the old man was staring at him. Hard enough to drive nails.
Although Jo, Aleesha, and I nodded, Rob’s initial reaction
to Dad’s slip kept us from revealing the extent of our curiosity.
“We spent some time talking with Warden Jenkins,” Rob said. “He’s a Christian brother and a fine fellow. He referred us to Chaplain Thomas, who’s been working with prisoners for probably as many years as some of the long-termers have been incarcerated. He’s worked at Red Cedar the twenty years it’s been in existence.”
I scrunched one eye. What does all this have to do with the price of tea in China, as Mom likes … liked to say?
Rob must have noticed the expression on my face. “Hang in there. You’ll see the relevance of this shortly.” He reminded me of a movie defense lawyer asking the judge to overrule the prosecution’s objection to a seemingly irrelevant question. “When Scott and I went to see Chaplain Thomas, we expected him to be warm and friendly, welcoming of fellow Christians, and grateful for our interest in ministering to these insiders.”
Of course. A Christian chaplain would be an idiot not to respond that way.
“Seems we were wrong. Our plans obviously displeased him, and he immediately started spouting off a number of rules and regulations that might have fooled uneducated visitors into thinking they couldn’t hold a worship service there. But we knew he was talking baloney. Those regulations had nothing to do with us.”
I couldn’t have taken my eyes off Rob if someone had yelled, “Fire!”
“The long and the short of it is he told us to stay away from Red Cedar. He doesn’t want us to meet any of ‘his men.’ He says some of them are unstable, and he’s the only one who can handle them. Outsiders would be certain to disturb them.”
I didn’t realize how tense Rob’s news had made me until I noticed a spot of blood on my hand. I’d hugged myself so tight I jabbed a hole in my arm with a fingernail.
“‘So you’re not going to be able to come,’ Thomas told us. ‘Not tonight. Not anytime.’”
Graham didn’t seem so strange anymore. Not compared to this Thomas guy. If I’d thought Thomas would be an idiot not to welcome fellow Christian brothers and sisters, I had to wonder now if the man was even a Christian. Wasn’t that a job requirement for a chaplain? A Christian one, anyhow. Maybe I should have slapped myself for being so judgmental, but what was I supposed to think about a man who didn’t even talk the talk, much less walk the walk? Was he part of the local mission field, too?
“So what did you do?” Aleesha asked.
“We went back to Warden Jenkins. Our report didn’t surprise him. He told us he didn’t forewarn us because he wanted us to form our own opinions. Objective ones.”
“And your objective opinions are this chaplain guy is a creep?” Aleesha said. Her normal smile had morphed into a vicious frown. She wasn’t shy about expressing her opinions, and they were usually spot-on.
Rob smiled. “I wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but yes.” He rubbed his forehead as if trying to massage the next few words out of his brain. “There’s more to the story than this, but I’ve told you all I can. The warden has sworn us to secrecy.”
Aleesha, Jo, and I looked at one another before looking at Rob again.
“One more thing, though. The warden wants us to keep an eye on the interactions between Chaplain Thomas and the insiders.”
“What …?” Whoever said that spoke for all of us. “Don’t ask. We can’t tell you more than that.” I rolled my eyes. Fine. If you can’t trust us to keep a secret, so be it.
Aleesha caught my eye. I couldn’t tell what she was mouthing, but I couldn’t have missed her meaning: Quit fretting. The warden trusts Mr. Rob and Mr. Scott to keep his secret.
I sighed. She was right. She was almost always right, and it got so frustrating sometimes.
“Bottom line time,” Aleesha said. “We are going to the prison tonight?”
“I’m not,” Jo said in a flippant, almost boastful tone. “Graham asked me to help him with something.”
Rob narrowed his eyes and looked at her, but he didn’t say anything. Not to her specifically, that was.
“The Warden says we’re in. As long as he’s in charge and Chaplain Thomas works for him, all Christian groups are welcome. Our coming wouldn’t be so important, but not even the hostel’s sponsoring churches are geographically close enough to do a regular prison ministry at Red Cedar. We’ll be in the area for two weeks, and he plans to work us hard.”
“If you’ve had teams doing construction for several weeks,” Aleesha said, “why didn’t they have run-ins with the chaplain?”
“They were doing hard labor compared to you. Because their daily work wore them out so much, I didn’t feel I should ask them to do anything extra. I didn’t even bring up the idea of prison ministry.”
Hmm. Sounds like you want to make sure our trip here is worthwhile.
“Besides that, they didn’t have the variety of abilities you four have.”
As scared as I’d been of visiting the prison, I couldn’t help cheering because God was more powerful than the chaplain’s best efforts to keep us away. That, plus we’d get to use our evangelistic skills.
Aleesha applauded, too. She and I were on the same page. As usual.
Rob started passing out papers. “The warden says you need to complete these visitor questionnaire forms before we get there tonight. It normally takes thirty days to get them approved, but he jumped through a number of hoops—I think he had to go through the big boss of the California prison system or maybe the governor himself—to get permission for us to come on such short notice. Without official preapproval.”
I gave him a questioning look when I noticed he didn’t start completing one of the forms. “Scott and I have already turned ours in.”
Oh.
“I don’t need—”
“You do need, Jo,�
�� Rob broke in. “Before you work on your form, you and I are going to have a private conversation about your proposed plans. If I let you help Graham—don’t get your hopes up about that—tonight’s the only night you’ll do it. You’ll be with us every time we go to the prison, and you’ll ask me before attempting to schedule any change of activity.”
My word! I hadn’t heard Rob talk so tough since he threatened to send his own nephew Geoff home from Santa María for destroying the rock garden Anjelita and I had worked so hard on.
“Yes, sir.” Although Jo’s response sounded humble and contrite, I caught a hint of resentment Rob might have missed hearing. He didn’t know Jo the way I did.
I asked Dad for a pen and started filling in my form while Rob and Jo went into the living room to talk. Her face was scarlet when they came back in the kitchen, but she sat down without saying a word and reached for the pen I’d just finished using. As hard as she was bearing down with it, I was afraid she might dig a hole in Graham’s new wooden table.
Flashback time again. This time of an unharmonious mission team. I hoped Jo wouldn’t do more harm than good by participating in the service.
chapter twenty-eight
It was only 5:40 p.m., and we weren’t going to the prison for at least another thirty-five minutes. “Where are you going, sweetie?” Dad asked as I pulled on my down-filled jacket. I’d never needed anything that warm at home. I probably looked like a mouse wrapped in a king-sized quilt, but I’d bought a larger size than I normally wore so I’d have plenty of room to dress in layers.
I hugged him. I ate up his expressions of affection now, although I still couldn’t understand the timing of his transformation from a near-neutral dad to a terrific one. Surely Mom’s death hadn’t made him happy.
Especially considering what Aleesha had told me about his feelings of guilt. But I assumed he was over that. I had more of a reason to feel guilty than he did. I had no doubt that I’d caused the accident, but he couldn’t be equally positive about his ability to prevent it.