The Prodigal: A Ragamuffin Story

by Manning, Brennan

  Grace Cathedral was also moved by her words. The congregation voted to help fund the widows and orphans of the drug wars, and to study the problem more closely to see if they could do more.

  So, in October, Jack and a group from the church had taken a weeklong junket to Mexico with a film crew. They had visited a drug-war refugee camp and an orphanage in Juárez that Grace was now sponsoring. Jack had attended a conference with regional governors, cabinet members, and Mexican clergy to talk about what Americans could do to help. They had closed their week in Mexico by filming a sequence in a village in the Yucatán where a new well drilled by Cleanwater had replaced a contaminated water source. It was a great photo op—lots of smiling children perched on and around Jack, great footage of sparkling clear water.

  They were slated to fly out that afternoon from Cancún, but the airline canceled their flight and a lot of others—mechanical problems with the fleet.

  “They’ve pulled fifty 757s off the line for emergency repairs,” Sally told Jack after returning from the airline counter in the Cancún airport, “including ours. Apparently seats are coming loose in flight.”

  “Really?” Jack sipped the Starbucks latte he’d just bought. “I can’t see how that’s a good thing.”

  “It’s a pretty major deal,” she said. “Flooded the whole system with canceled flights. They say they can’t get us home through our Dallas connection until Sunday, not even in first class, and there’s nothing but standby on the other airlines until then.”

  “Two days? They can’t route us through someplace else? Isn’t this their fault?”

  “Totally. Well, it’s possible they’ll be able to get us home tonight or tomorrow through Miami or Newark.” Her face did not look hopeful. “What do you want to do?”

  Jack thought about the possibility of being stuck in an airport overnight, about the three connections and eighteen-hour travel time, about flying to the East Coast to get to the West Coast, and he shook his head. When you travel a lot, travel gets harder, not easier.

  “Forget that,” he said. All of a sudden, he wanted something stronger than coffee. He took a deep breath. Then he pulled out his phone, called home, and told Tracy what was happening.

  She had already heard about the failing seats. “I wondered if that was you.”

  “Danny’s preaching Sunday,” Jack said, “and I’m not scheduled for anything until Tuesday, so I’m going to wait for a direct flight. Sally will make it work.”

  “She always does,” Tracy had said.

  He hadn’t thought to ask what she meant by that.

  “So,” he said after she’d hailed a cab back into Cancún, “what’s the safest place for us in Cancún?”

  “We’re not staying in Cancún.” Sally gave him that smile that made him uncomfortable. “I booked us rooms on Isla Mujeres, a ferry ride off the coast. Cancún is pretty safe for American tourists, but there has been some violence. Isla is a lot quieter, safer, and the beaches are beautiful. We’ll go on R and R until I wrangle us a plane home.”

  “I don’t know how to R and R,” he said. “I didn’t pack a bathing suit. And I’m white as—I don’t know.” He considered his Seattle complexion. “Something really, really white.”

  “Then you can sit under a palm tree and order little drinks with umbrellas in them,” she said. “You deserve something nice, Jack.” She fixed him with the usual sad half smile she gave him when she was trying to convince him to take care of himself. “You of all people deserve to have some fun.”

  “Okay,” he said, holding up his hands. “I give. I’ll have a margarita. Maybe a couple of hours on the beach. We’re in Mexico, let’s do Mexico.” He even pulled up a tiny smile from somewhere. “I mean, how much trouble can we possibly get into while we’re on standby?”

  “Not much,” she said, and she went off to arrange their passage.

  Not much.

  Only all the trouble in the world.

  2.

  They took the ferry across the clear blue waters to Isla Mujeres, where Sally rented them a golf cart, the primary means of transport on the island. They checked into their rooms at a resort on the north end of the island, not the most expensive, she told him, but the nicest location. Great views of the rocky seaward side, white sand beaches on the leeward side, and lots of privacy. Each of their rooms had a private balcony looking out over the ocean.

  That night they went into town for dinner, and Jack found himself sitting next to Sally at the bar of an open-air restaurant on Hidalgo Street.

  “We’re going to have that margarita,” she said. “And then some ceviche.”

  She put her hand on his shoulder.

  He looked at it.

  He looked at her.

  And that, he reflected later, was where it happened.

  That was where he could have stopped it, if he’d really wanted to.

  After Jack had that one margarita, Sally talked him into a shot of the clear mezcal from Merida that the persuasive young bartender told them was smooth as glass. The first shot was compliments of the house.

  “It’s the purest product of the agave plant,” she told him. “It’s good for you. In Mexico we have a saying: Para todo mal, mezcal, y para todo bien, también.” She laughed at his raised eyebrow. “‘For everything bad, mezcal, and for everything good as well.’”

  “I guess it would be rude not to,” he said, feeling a little drunk just off that one margarita, just off her smile, and he took the tiny shot glass from her, drank, and felt his face flushing. It was good.

  He accepted a second. And then a third.

  Before the evening was out, they found themselves throwing back shots with a wedding party from Italy. Much of the evening was a blur—or just plain missing—but he remembered them all chewing tequila-flavored scorpions and washing them down with shots of mezcal to the cheers of a gathering throng in the street. He remembered overhearing Javier, their bartender, happily muttering, “Gringos,” as he counted his tips.

  Someone had driven them back to their hotel in the golf cart, and Sally held him upright and kept him on the cart when they hit potholes or speed bumps on the cobbled streets.

  Someone helped him up to his room on the second floor.

  And he had awakened late the next morning to bright daylight and the sound of surf crashing. He sat up, his head pounding, in a bed a little too rumpled to have been occupied by only one person.

  He pulled on his pajamas, padded slowly over to close the window—the sound of the waves was setting his head on fire. Then someone knocked on the door. Sally opened it, a card key in her hand. “You okay, boss?”

  He rubbed his forehead and blinked at her. “What—what happened?”

  “Ah, querido,” she said, and she touched his head gently with her index finger, the gesture of a lover, not an employee. “You had a little more than one margarita.”

  She sighed, dropped her hand to her side, turned a little away from him.

  “So did I.”

  For a moment he thought he might throw up. He hadn’t wanted this. Had he? “Please, God,” he gasped, even though he wasn’t sure exactly what he was asking.

  He started to ask Sally the questions that had to be asked. What had they done? And what were they going to do now? How would they make things right?

  But Sally said suddenly, “The airline just called. I pulled some strings, got us in first class on the next flight out. We need to be packed up for the ferry in an hour.”

  “Okay,” he said. He looked at her. She looked back. “I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  She nodded, crossed the room, closed the door. His head was still pounding and he still felt sick to his stomach, but he walked back to the window and opened it. The salt smell and the noise of the crashing waves washed over him. And not for the last time, he wondered what it would feel like to walk out into that water and never come back, to sink into that place where thought and memory no longer existed.

  They didn’t talk about w
hat happened during the ferry back over to Cancún, nor in the cab to the airport, nor on the flights back to Seattle.

  And so, that Sunday, as he reported on his trip to the people of Grace, since they hadn’t said it, then nothing had happened. And if nothing had happened, then there was no reason anyone else should know about it.

  Or so he thought, until the following day when Martin Fox walked into Jack’s office and shut the door behind him. Martin was a Seattle investment banker and one of Grace Cathedral’s elders, the lay leaders of the congregation.

  Jack himself had laid hands on Martin to ordain him as a church leader. He thought that they were as close as either of them could permit themselves to be with another human being. And yet, here stood Martin looking at him fiercely, as though they hadn’t just enjoyed their best fiscal year ever, as though they didn’t continue to add members and ministries, as though they weren’t one of the best-known churches in the whole God-forgetting Northwest.

  All of a sudden, Jack had a flashback to the pressure of Sally’s hand on his shoulder, to the sight of that rumpled bed, and he felt his stomach contract with something that felt very much like fear.

  Martin seated himself across from Jack without asking leave to do so, and spoke without being invited. “Why didn’t you come to me when there was still time to do some damage control?”

  Jack felt his gut contract again, but he kept his face blank except for the arch of one eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

  “I should have known that nobody could live up to what you preached,” Martin said. “You’ve made us a laughingstock, Jack. A cliché.”

  “Martin,” Jack said evenly, “what are you talking about?”

  “What am I talking about?” Martin reached into the pocket of his thousand-dollar suit, pulled out his phone, and held it up for Jack to see. “This was posted on Twitter. Someone else posted footage to YouTube. One of the staff saw these and sent them to me.”

  “Martin—” Jack began, taking the phone.

  Then he saw the picture.

  It was from the bar in Isla Mujeres. Jack’s face looked sweaty, flushed, as he dangled a scorpion by the tail and prepared to eat it. Behind him, Sally cheered him on, her hand on his back. He was surrounded by a dozen other rowdy revelers.

  Jack looked across at Martin, who shook his head. “Is that you, Jack?”

  “Who took that?” Jack asked, breathing slowly and evenly as he handed the phone back.

  “An American tourist passing by thought you looked familiar. Her friend’s video is worse. You’re kissing Sally. And not like her pastor, believe me.” Martin looked disgusted.

  “That’s not me,” Jack said, and he tried to believe it himself. “Nothing like that happened.”

  “I’ve spoken with the other elders,” Martin said, as though Jack hadn’t spoken. “We’ve made a decision. We want to be forgiving, Jack. Redemptive. To show people that you can sin and still earn forgiveness, just like you’ve taught us. If you go in front of the church Sunday, acknowledge what you’ve done, ask them for forgiveness, we might have a chance to save you.” He shrugged. “It’d mean a leave of absence. Maybe a long one. We’ll plead—I don’t know—sex addiction. Alcohol. Something.”

  “I’m not a sex addict. And I don’t have a drinking problem,” Jack said, stiffening at the very thought of standing in front of his congregation and talking about this. A hard note entered his voice. “I’m not going to confess to something I haven’t done.”

  Martin looked at him. The sadness in his eyes spoke of more than just the situation; he seemed to be disappointed in Jack personally.

  Just like Jack’s father.

  Jack crossed his arms then, looked back across the glassy expanse of his desk. “Forget it. I’m not doing that.”

  “I’m offering you a chance to save your job, Jack,” Martin said. “To do the right thing. Please, Jack, be—”

  “You can’t take this church away from me,” Jack said. “I built it from nothing.”

  “And you can destroy it just as quickly,” Martin said. “We’ve already had a couple hundred emails from members wondering what we’re going to do.”

  Jack stood up slowly, as if to announce the end of the meeting. “You can’t take this church from me,” he said again.

  Martin stood up and measured him with a glance before buttoning his jacket and nodding. “I’m sorry, Jack. Truly I am.” He shook his head, didn’t offer a hand.

  He turned and let himself out.

  Jack sat quietly for a moment, his heart pounding. He reached for the phone and started to call home, then thought better of it. He punched in Sally’s extension, listened as it sent him to voicemail.

  By midafternoon, the footage had gone viral. His Facebook ministry page was filled with rants and I-told-you-so’s, and “#cheatingjack” was trending on Twitter. The church’s website had either been overwhelmed by visitors or hacked—either way it was down, dead as Hitler. Three of the country’s biggest raw news feeds had posted the video from Isla, and Jack’s desk phone and cell were both ringing nonstop. He spoke to the Seattle Times, CNN, Fox News, and a local TV station in the space of twenty minutes.

  “We have no comment at this time,” he said over and over again, until he instructed his secretary, Carly, not to send through any more blasted calls.

  “Yes, sir,” she said crisply, as though he were a total stranger.

  Carly had never called him “sir” in the five years she had worked for him.

  He dialed Sally’s number again. They had to get their story straight; plausible deniability was still possible.

  The truth, in this case, would do anything but set them free.

  She still didn’t pick up.

  Jack walked down the hall to her office. It was dark, the door locked, no evidence that she’d even come in to work that day.

  “Please, God,” he prayed. Again, he wasn’t sure what he was asking, but he needed help, needed something. Things were going south.

  He had to think.

  He forced himself to breathe evenly, exhale the stress.

  Three doors down was Danny’s office. He knocked, then opened the door and walked in.

  Danny’s eyes were red, and for a moment he simply looked up at Jack and didn’t speak. When he did, he sounded exhausted. “Jack, what did you do?”

  Jack sniffed dismissively, a sort of chuckle. He crossed over to the desk.

  Danny looked up at him. “What part of this is funny, man?” He straightened in his seat. “The part where people make fun of Grace Cathedral because our pastor had himself a Girls-Gone-Wild moment on the Island of Women? The part where people call the people’s pastor ‘the people’s hypocrite’? Yeah.” He nodded. “That’s big today.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Or maybe it’s the part where I was God’s prize idiot for believing in you.”

  Jack couldn’t listen. He had to stay calm. To stay in control.

  “This is nothing,” he said. “A mistake. I’ve confessed worse from the pulpit.”

  “It’s not a ‘mistake,’“ Danny said, using air quotes. He shook his head, leaned back for a moment in his chair, then leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “A mistake is when you, I don’t know, accidentally give somebody the wrong directions because you don’t know where you’re going. This is worse. Yeah, I’ve heard you confess from the pulpit. ‘I have sinned,’ you tell us. ‘I’m not perfect.’”

  Danny paused, bit his lip as though it pained him to go on. “You tell us we have to earn God’s love, that we have to do better. But now it looks like you don’t follow your own rules.” His voice quavered as he said, “Only an idiot would follow a leader who doesn’t lead.”

  The words felt like shots to his body from a prizefighter. Jack stood up, reeling, his face flushed as red as in the Isla Mujeres picture. “You punk,” he said. “You snot-nosed teenager. How dare you talk to me like that.”

  “I trusted you!” Danny shouted, pushing back his chair and stepp
ing around the corner of his desk to glare at him. “I loved you like you were my father, Jack. I idolized you. Like you were my own father.”

  Danny’s fists were clenched, raised waist high, as though all he needed was the slightest provocation to throw a punch. Jack thought about provoking him—and then he was flooded by memories of Danny, ever helpful, ever thoughtful, ever supportive.

  The best Number Two he could have asked for.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Jack said at last, and all of a sudden the anger vanished and he felt tired. “Trusted me like that. A father will only ever let you down.”

  He dropped into a chair, his shoulders slumped. Danny sat back down behind his desk.

  They sat in silence.

  Jack remembered hiring Danny as an intern fresh out of college, teaching him to preach and teach, ordaining him as a minister to Grace Cathedral.

  Good memories, never again to be remembered without grief.

  What had he done?

  Please, God.

  At last, Jack broke the silence. “What’s going to happen, Danny?”

  Danny looked down at his desk. “The elders are meeting now. Martin told me you refused to submit yourself to the church for discipline. To ask for forgiveness.”

  Jack took a deep breath, let it out. It was too late. Nothing would change. “That’s right,” he said.

  “Then I’d guess right now they’re looking over the charter and figuring out what happens if the church fires you.”

  “This is my church,” Jack said, his voice surer than he felt. “They can’t fire me.”

  “It’s God’s church, Jack,” Danny said. He got up, stepped around the desk again, and dropped a hand to Jack’s shoulder. He squeezed once, this boy who had trusted him, and this was worse than any blow.

  Jack could not bear it; he must break. He would do anything they asked just to stop things from ending like this.

  Then Danny walked out, leaving Jack alone. At last, when it was clear Danny wasn’t coming back, he walked back to his office. On the way, no one met his eye. Sally’s office was still empty, the lights off. His secretary didn’t look up as he passed.