Again the mayor hesitated. “This is very big, Joshua. If it happens, it’ll come down on Monday, and we’ll need your help. In fact, you’ll be the primary counsel.” There was a beat. “Tomorrow at noon, okay? Alvins on Walnut.”
The fog was still clearing from Joshua’s head, but he heard the urgency in Frank’s voice. He and Helen could fish Sunday after church. “I’ll be there.”
He hung up the phone, staring at it, pondering. What could possibly be so urgent? Whatever it was, it involved the city of Bethany, and Frank wanted him as primary counsel. A surge of hope wound its way through Joshua’s being. Was this the answer he’d been praying for? Was God going to let him keep the office after all? He considered the idea when a draft from the air conditioning sifted between his toes.
Frowning, he glanced down. He had only socks on his feet. What’s this about? In the dream there’d been something about taking off his shoes because the place was holy, but that had only been a dream, right? So where were his shoes? He looked around the room and finally spotted them several feet away.
Sitting neatly, side by side, facing Bob’s old bookcase.
2
Jordan Riley paced confidently in front of the judge like a caged and hungry animal, feeding off the fact that every eye in the room was on him. These were his closing arguments, and in the New York courtroom where the drama was taking place he had already claimed victory more times than he could remember.
He was certain this case would end in similar fashion.
“Finally, Your Honor, Mr. Campbell completely disregarded school policy by praying with a child during school hours.” Jordan reached for a document from the plaintiff’s table and found the highlighted section. “Page four, section thirteen, states clearly that if a teacher ignores the existing separation between church and state he or she shall be terminated immediately.”
Jordan set the paper down and stared hard at the simple man across the courtroom. Flanked by frustrated attorneys from the local branch of the teacher’s union, the man looked calm, almost serene. As though he didn’t understand the ramifications of what was about to take place. Or perhaps he believed, thanks to some misguided faith in God Almighty, that the battle might end miraculously in his favor.
A bitter feeling as familiar as his own name oozed from the crevices of Jordan’s heart and seeped into the core of his being. We’ll see where your God gets you this time.
He faced the judge again and motioned toward the defendant. “The religious right threaten to take over this country every day, Your Honor. Their agenda is clear: to evangelize all those around them to their way of thinking.” Jordan took several steps toward the peaceful teacher and gestured in his direction. “Your Honor, the danger here is clear. If we allow people such as Mr. Campbell to control the minds of our youth, we lose the free society our forefathers fought to give us. In its place we will have a culture of robots controlled by some mystical belief in a God that doesn’t exist. Human robots without compassion for people different from themselves. Robots who teach hatred toward people with alternative lifestyles or differing religions. All of this under the guise of public education?” Jordan waited a beat. “It’s a travesty of the most frightening kind, Your Honor.”
Mr. Campbell’s attorneys shifted, glancing furtively at their notes and avoiding eye contact with their client. Jordan resisted a smile. Even Campbell’s counsel could tell which way the case was going. It was all over but the celebrating.
“For that reason, it is my recommendation that Mr. Campbell be fired by the school district for violating this country’s separation of church and state. In doing so, this court will send a message to other teachers, other school districts that prayer of any sort simply will not be tolerated on public school grounds.” He nodded. “Thank you, Your Honor.”
He took his seat and watched one of Campbell’s attorney’s weakly take the floor. The man adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. “Our stance in this matter, Your Honor, is of course the matter of freedom.” He checked his notes. “Freedom of speech and religious freedom.”
Jordan was up immediately. “Objection, Your Honor.” He smiled in a practiced way that fell just short of condescending. “Mr. Campbell’s right to religious freedom has never been the issue. No one told him he couldn’t pray. He just can’t pray with a student in a public school setting.”
The judge—an icy woman in her late forties whose patience for the religious right was limited at best—nodded her chin pointedly. “Sustained.” She tossed a disdainful look at Campbell’s counsel. “You will stick to the issue at hand.”
The man looked lost. “Yes, Your Honor.” His eyes fell again to the file in his hand, and Jordan shifted his gaze back to the teacher, still seated peacefully at the table. Where’s your God now, Campbell? You’re going down in flames. Jordan relished the thought. One less do-gooder trying to change the landscape of American culture on a belief that was no more substantiated than Santa Claus.
Without warning, a picture flashed through Jordan’s mind of himself at age thirteen, kneeling in prayer, tears streaming down his face and—
For a single moment, Jordan’s heart ached for the child he’d been. He blinked and the image disappeared.
Campbell’s attorney finally gathered himself together enough to speak. “Uh … very well, Your Honor, our stance will focus entirely on Mr. Campbell’s freedom of speech.”
The man looked at his partner, and Jordan almost felt sorry for him. None of the attorneys he knew working for a national teacher’s union would want the job of defending an instructor in a religious freedom case. Obviously the legal team was ill-prepared, and the way they glanced at their watches every few minutes confirmed the fact that they were merely marking time until they could get back to the office.
“Your Honor, you’ll remember that the student Mr. Campbell was praying with had lost her best friend in a car accident the day before.”
Jordan refrained from wincing, but he couldn’t stop his heart from remembering a sorrow that could never be resolved. Praying in the wake of a friend’s death did more harm than good. After all, how would the girl in question face life now, knowing that God—assuming there was a God—had chosen not to help her friend?
Campbell’s attorney was droning on, and Jordan glanced again at the teacher. Much as he disliked what the man had done, what he stood for, Jordan had to admit there was something likable about the guy. Besides that, something about Campbell’s eyes looked familiar. Where had he seen eyes like that before?
Another image filled Jordan’s mind, and he flinched as he remembered. Long, long ago … the eyes had belonged to a man he’d trusted … a man he’d loved like a father … a man who’d lied to him.
Jordan brought himself back to the present and made a mental note to stay in tune with the proceedings. This was no time to be drifting back to the hardest days of his life. Back when people’s prayers had been for him … back when his mother—
“And so, Your Honor, we’d like you to consider the spirit of the law in this case.” Campbell’s attorney actually sounded as though he meant it. “The defendant was not leading his class in prayer, nor was he teaching on prayer in the classroom. Rather he was doing what comes naturally for someone of his religion. He was praying with a student who looked as if she needed prayer.” The counsel shuffled his notes into a different order and cast a last glance at the judge. “Thank you, Your Honor.”
Without missing a beat the judge slid back her chair and leaned into the microphone. “There will be a ten-minute break while I evaluate the information. After that time I will return with my decision.” She rapped her gavel on the desk and left through a door behind her chair.
Joshua caught himself watching Campbell’s attorneys, how they whispered to their client and shook their heads, their eyes narrow and dark. Jordan looked back at the file on the table in front of him. Why was he so drawn to Campbell, anyway? The man deserved to lose his job; indeed, whatever punishment
the court might decide would not be enough to undo the damage done to that student. She would have trusted Campbell. He was an adult—a teacher, no less—and clearly the girl was suffering through one of the hardest times of her life. Now she had only two choices: Buy into the faith lie or be scarred for life knowing God had failed to help her friend—and in the process probably doubting whether He even existed. Jordan knew where that went. He never wanted to go there again.
“Great job, Riley.” The hand on his shoulder belonged to Peter T Hawkins, president of Humanity Organized and United in Responsibility, better known as HOUR. The legal group ranked up there with any other civil liberties organization fighting against the religious right. Jordan had been working with HOUR for nearly six years and was considered young and brilliant, talented in a way that made his superiors salivate over the cases they might win at his hand.
“Thanks, sir.” Jordan grinned. “Looks pretty good.”
“Another slam dunk.” Hawkins crossed his arms and smiled hard at Jordan. The senior lawyer had been a brilliant litigator in his day and now made only occasional appearances for closing arguments in the cases of his attorneys. It was considered an honor when he showed up, and he showed up often at Jordan’s cases.
Hawkins shook his head. “Lady Luck was smiling on us the day we hired you, my friend. By the time you’re done with this country’s Jesus freaks, they’ll be meeting in barns at night and prayer will be little more than a state of mind. I’m telling you, Riley, you’ve got the gift. We have big things planned for you, real big.”
The long ago memory of the man’s face—of eyes filled with compassion, a voice lowered in prayer—came to mind again, and Jordan willed it away. This was no time to be sucked into the past, not with his career taking off before his eyes. “Right, thanks.”
The judge entered the courtroom and resumed her place at the bench, rapping her gavel until the crowd quieted. Hawkins smile faded into an appropriately somber expression as he took a seat next to Jordan. “Here we go,” he whispered.
“Order. I have a decision in the case of Humanity Organized and United in Responsibility versus The New York School District.” The judge sifted through several pieces of paper and looked at Campbell. “This case is not about emotions, Mr. Campbell. It is not about car accidents or grieving high school students. It is about following the rules as they are spelled out.” She sighed and Jordan could taste the victory at hand. “You are a state employee, paid by the state to impart education to the children of this state. The rules—as Mr. Riley pointed out—are very clear in this case: A teacher may not pray with a student because to do so would be a violation of the separation of church and state.” She sat back in her chair and angled her head. “The consequences are also clearly spelled out. And since you chose to ignore them, I have no choice but to do as Mr. Riley has recommended and order the New York School District to terminate your contract immediately.”
The thrill of notching another win filled Jordan’s senses, but rather than revel in the victory he glanced over his shoulder at Campbell. The man lowered his head for the briefest moment—and Jordan had the disconcerting feeling that the disappointment was a mere speed bump on whatever private journey Campbell was a part of. Then Campbell looked up and smiled at the judge, his eyes still full of that strangely disquieting peace.
Doesn’t he get it? No one’ll hire him now. Jordan wanted to shake the man, make him renounce the faith that had gotten him into this mess in the first place. Instead Campbell looked surer of himself than ever.
It was often the way his opponents looked in defeat, and that baffled Jordan beyond understanding.
The proceedings were over and Hawkins was pumping his hand, patting him on the arm and telling him he was a god among men. Even as he did so, a handful of local reporters circled around Jordan hungry for quotes and sound bites. He paid no attention to any of it. His eyes were glued on Campbell, watching as the man stood and shook the hands of his two attorneys. That done, he moved toward the spectator section of the courtroom and embraced a pretty woman whose eyes were filled with unshed tears. Campbell placed his hand alongside the woman’s face and stroked her cheek with his thumb, His face lowered close to hers. Whatever he was saying to her, she smiled and nodded in response, circling her arms around his neck and holding him tight.
Seems like a nice couple …
They stayed together longer than any standard hug, and Jordan felt a knot form deep in his gut. They were praying. Anger worked its way into his bloodstream, quickening his heart and turning his stomach. Here, in the aftermath of what had to be the greatest blow of their lives, they were praying. Talking to the same God who had let them down and asking … for what? Another job to replace the one Campbell had just lost? Money to fall from the sky? What possible good could it do to pray now, when praying had already cost him everything?
“Mr. Riley … Mr. Riley … ” Jordan faced the reporters with an easy smile he knew would make the next day’s New York Times. Hawkins had told him from the beginning that image was everything and Jordan prided himself on doing his part to keep the firm in a good light. “Mr. Riley, what message do you think this sends to teachers across the state?”
Jordan opened his mouth to answer and for an instant caught a peripheral view of Campbell and the woman walking out of the courtroom, their arms around each other. I refuse to feel bad. He faced the cameras squarely. “This case sends a message to every instructor in America: We will not allow teachers to use a public classroom to impose religion on innocent children.”
The questions went on for thirty minutes, long after Hawkins winked at him and left through the double doors. When it was over, Jordan loaded a stack of papers into his briefcase and made his way to the parking lot and his shiny, white Lexus. It was quarter after four and he had a date that night with Ashley Janes. Beautiful, plastic-coated Ashley, the well-known model he’d met at a corporate dinner the year before. She was a welcome distraction, but too caught up in the jet-set crowd and her own popularity for anything long-term.
“You’re fun, Jordan,” Ashley had told him after they’d gone out a few times. “Just as good-looking on my arm as I am on yours.”
At the time her words had felt like a slap in the face and he’d regretted his attraction to her. But since then he’d come to understand what she meant. Their looks were just one of the aspects they enjoyed about each other, and since neither of them was looking for a commitment, their relationship was ideal.
Jordan tossed his briefcase in the backseat and headed toward his apartment in the heart of the city, where a forest of dirty buildings made up the landscape and the hum and screech of traffic was constant. Jordan wouldn’t have it any other way. The distractions of city life kept him from thinking about the ghosts of his past—ghosts he’d spent a lifetime outrunning.
He smiled to himself. After Monday he’d have one less memory to run from.
He’d already shared his thoughts with Hawkins, and again more recently at a general meeting with the firm’s three partners and twenty-one attorneys. To a man the group was excited about Jordan’s plan, and why not? Suing a conservative little town such as Bethany, Pennsylvania, over something that should have been taken care of decades ago was right up their alley. Since it was Jordan’s idea, he was given the go-ahead to spend a few days in Bethany, where he would file the suit, then round up the city officials and see if they were interested in complying without going to trial.
If not, the suit would inevitably make headlines across the country. Victorious headlines. And a victory in Bethany would go a long way toward helping him forget the past and the things that had gone wrong in that town so many years ago.
Jordan took the elevator to the twelfth floor and made his way into his apartment. The building was nice, security guards and a workout room that Jordan used every morning at five. He grabbed a glass of ice water, took it into the living room, and kicked back in a white, leather recliner. The view from his front window was st
andard city fare: No sky, only the angular walls and windows of a handful of buildings.
Jordan loosened his tie. No, there was nothing homey about his apartment. Professional decorators had appointed it with leather, chrome, and glass, but there were no personal details, no photographs or sentimental knickknacks. Just a place to unwind at the end of the day and sometimes—when he couldn’t help himself—a place to wonder what if …
What if his mother hadn’t died that awful summer in 1985? What if she’d lived long enough to see him and his sister through school, to be a part of their lives, to make them a family? What if God had seen fit to let her live instead of …
He shook his head. What if the state hadn’t placed him and Heidi in separate foster homes? What if—wherever his little sister was, whoever shed grown up to be—she still remembered him? And what if he hadn’t lost track of his childhood friend, a beautiful girl with blond hair and blue eyes as innocent as a baby’s?
Most of all what if there really was a God who had loved him?
Jordan took a sip of ice water, and the questions ceased. If there was a God then He was unreliable and inept. Or perhaps sinister and judgmental—striking people down at random. Because that summer in Bethany, Pennsylvania, Jordan had prayed his heart out, begging God to spare his mother and believing all the while He would. But Evelyn Riley died anyway. At first Jordan figured there was nothing God could have done to help his mother’s sickness. Later he realized the truth: Either God didn’t exist or He didn’t care about a young boy’s prayers. And so Jordan had turned to the courtroom, determined to push what remained of society’s religious deceptions into hiding or expose them for the lies they were.
That was why he needed to go back to Bethany—to even the score. With God.
He stood up and set the glass in the kitchen. There were places in his heart that he was sure weren’t ready to visit his hometown again, to walk the streets where the old Jordan—the naive, trusting Jordan—had died alongside his mother. Where the person he was today had been birthed in bitterness. The place where he’d lost the three women who had ever really mattered to him.
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