Religious Conviction g-3

by Grif Stockley

  Having heard this passage repeatedly trotted out at funerals to comfort grieving family members, I concede that it is a nice touch. Norman uses it to build enthusiasm for a committed and shared lifestyle. Christian Lifers practice on earth what will be made perfect in heaven. Family transcends biology. The Apostles were Jesus’ real family…. I turn to Rainey, who is seated on my left, and whisper, “Does he split families up?”

  “Sometimes for a while,” she says, her warm breath against my ear.

  “If it’s one that’s really dysfunctional, they can learn from others who are in sync.”

  Norman concludes by thanking the congregation for its massive and continuing support for Leigh. He reminds them of the trial date and asks for everyone’s prayers. Leigh probably sits down front with her mother to keep an eye on her. I wonder if Pearl lays off the sauce on Sundays in deference to her husband. I have no hope of speaking to Leigh even if she is at this service.

  Surely Chet has told Norman how uncooperative she is being. If I had to place a bet right now, Leigh shot her husband in a fight over the church, and the guilt is eating her up. She doesn’t want to hurt her father’s ministry, so she is claiming innocence. Unless somebody (and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be one of her lawyers) wakes her up, she may be facing a long stretch in Pine Bluff. If she would come clean, I have no doubt that considering how much Jill Marymount, the prosecutor, fears Chet, we could whittle this down to manslaughter in a plea bargain and get her back on the street in less than three years. As it stands right now, Leigh’s clinging to an obviously false story is ridiculous.

  I can’t imagine that Chet hasn’t had a come-to Jesus meeting with her, and she is too smart not to get the point. Something weird is going on, but I’ll be damned if I can figure it out.

  After a few announcements, the collection plates appear.

  (Dan Bailey said that the only good thing about weddings and funerals is that they don’t put the bite on you.) This church doesn’t need my money, but with Rainey and Sarah flanking each side, I feel pressure to give something, and drop in a five-dollar bill. Rainey tears off a check, but I can’t see the amount. Looking around the vast structure I marvel at the number crammed in here and don’t see an empty seat. I wonder where Chet and his family are sitting. Probably in the front row. There had been a service at eight-thirty as well, which Rainey said was also full. They are considering adding a third Sunday service. Rainey whispers, “You didn’t have to give anything.”

  “It won’t break me,” I mumble against her ear. The music alone was worth five bucks. While ushers move the plates from row to row, a woman with hair down to her butt sings a couple of solos. She is accompanied by a guy on acoustic guitar and is dynamite.

  Sarah, who has been motionless throughout, punches me with her elbow and says softly, “Isn’t she incredible?” I nod, as usual amazed at the level of talent in Blackwell County. We’ve got musicians who could make it anywhere.

  After another prayer, Norman asks that anyone who feels moved to profess that Jesus Christ is his or her personal Lord and Savior should come forward at this time. As the band plays “Amazing Grace,” I feel myself tensing up. If Sarah wants to go, I can’t very well drag her out of the place kicking and screaming. She watches closely as a couple of women in their twenties walk quickly down the aisle. The song played on guitar is electrifying. Maybe it is the atmosphere, but this version is even more moving than the one sung years ago by Judy Collins. The emotion in the place is over whelming as she warbles, ” ‘… that saved a wretch,” ” and then when notes go up high during ” ‘like me,” ” a chill runs down my spine. With tears streaming down her cheeks, Sarah turns and says, “I have to go. Daddy.”

  For an undeniable instant I am tempted to get up with her, but I know I won’t.

  “Don’t you want to think about it?” I say more loudly than I intend, but she shakes her head and pushes up from her seat.

  Rainey grabs my hand and squeezes it.

  “She’ll be okay” I watch forlornly as Sarah walks quickly down to the front. I don’t doubt the sincerity of her feelings, but this is so obviously simply naked emotion. Damn these people! They’re slick as politicians. If you’re psychologically vulnerable at all, they suck you right in. This is like some boy trying to get in her pants. Come on, baby, I love you, and it’ll feel so good if you’ll just come on down. Hell, I know she’s searching for something.

  You’re supposed to be, if you’re her age and not brain dead. But this is the kind of act she’ll regret sooner or later when she wakes up and realizes what happened.

  Yet who am I to say? My life, since Rosa died hasn’t been such a success. What answers have I given her?

  She doesn’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to figure out that this country’s culture is long on form and short on substance. An attention span of thirty minutes is more than enough to get you by. If you’re lucky, you can make a nice living and worship the free enterprise system but Sarah better not get too excited about it because it’ll make her sick at her stomach when she really sees how much humanity has fallen between the cracks.

  The truth is, I haven’t got anything to offer her but my own anxieties. Death and taxes, you can count on them, Sarah. Wow, Dad, did you make that up? My love for Sarah will be worth at least a couple of lines on a Hall mark card at Christmas when she’s grown up and got a family of her own but is pretty cold comfort right now to a seventeen-year-old girl who admits to lying awake at three o’clock in the morning wondering why she’s alive and her mother is dead. Down front there must be twenty-five men, women, and children. Norman says a prayer, and asks them to remain after the service for a while.

  “If you want to go on home,” Rainey says kindly, “I’ll wait for her and get us a ride.”

  “What is he going to do?” I ask, feeling more morose by the moment. We are on our feet for the last song.

  “She’ll probably come home with a cross branded on her forehead,” I say pathetically.

  Rainey giggles at such nonsense.

  “He’ll ask if they want to begin participating in a family that meets here a couple of times a week. If she does, one of his assistants will take some information from her, and they’ll match her up by Monday and give her a call.”

  I strain to catch a glimpse of Sarah, who has been moved off to the side with the rest of the group. They’ll probably want her to turn over her paycheck from her part-time job.

  “Maybe I should wait, too. I need to introduce myself to Norman, anyway.”

  As Norman gives the benediction, Rainey shakes her head.

  “I wouldn’t try to approach him now. Call him to morrow.”

  Why? I wonder. It seems to me he would be more accessible in the afterglow of bagging converts, especially the child of one of his daughter’s lawyers. Still, Rainey has a better feel than I do for the way business is done around here, so I nod, glumly resigned to seeing Sarah only a couple of more times the rest of her life. I stare down the aisle again trying to find her, but with the service over, my view is blocked by the hundreds of people heading for the exits.

  “Gideon!”

  In the parking lot I look up and squint in the direction of the bright noon sun. I can’t believe it.

  “What are you doing here, Amy?” I ask, dumbfounded.

  “What are you doing here?” Amy Gilchrist asks, a smirk on her elfin face. Amy is an old friend from law school who made it into the prosecutor’s office and was on her way to trying major cases when she became pregnant and had an abortion, incurring the disfavor of her boss. She is now in private practice with a group of lawyers almost as motley as our crew in the Layman Building. Lively, sarcastic, and humorous, Amy is scrapping for clients as hard as I am.

  “God only knows,” I say, surveying Amy’s figure.

  “I’m really just visiting because a friend invited me.” I am embarrassed to admit I came with Rainey and that my daughter is still inside getting hot boxed by the head cheese. Amy
seems always on the verge of carrying too much weight for her compact frame. Still, perhaps because she is so likable, the total effect is pleasing to the eyes. Dressed in a knee-length black-and-white-checked skirt and a long-sleeved white blouse, she seems more chaste and modest than usual.

  “Being seen at Christian Life isn’t an indictable offense,” she says, giving me a frank once-over, too.

  “As you can see, some of the best people in town are members.”

  From time to time, I had thought about violating my self-imposed pledge not to date women so much younger than myself and asking Amy out. I can’t imagine it now. Why is she coming out here? Yet why shouldn’t she be? It hasn’t been that long since she admitted to me she’d had an abortion in the last year. As traumatic as that must be, that would definitely get you to wondering if your compass was pointed toward north.

  “That’s true,” I admit.

  “Don’t be a stranger,” she says, as I get into the Blazer. I wave as I drive off, wondering if when I get home there will be a note from Woogie to the effect that he has run off to join a Christian dog sect.

  “Sarah’s an impressive young woman,” Shane Norman tells me the next morning in my office.

  “Since so many other kids her age are concerned only with themselves and their friends, which is natural from a developmental point of view, she’s quite extraordinary.”

  I unwrap a lemon drop and slip it into my mouth. Un like his daughter, Norman is sparing no effort to cooperate in Leigh’s defense. Having called Chet at home last night, who told him to talk with me as soon as possible, he was waiting for me when I got to work. His wife is a no-show. Still on the booze, I guess.

  “She’s been searching pretty hard for most of the last year,” I say cautiously, not wanting to offend Norman. I was relieved to find out when Sarah came home yesterday that Norman had not put the hard sell on her. After learning she was Catholic, he responded by telling her that as much as Christian Life would be delighted to have her, she needed to think a little bit more about whether she was truly ready to leave her Roman Catholic faith.

  “Most kids, not all, don’t feel a spiritual need at that age,” Norman says, as if he were talking to a colleague.

  “When you find one like Sarah, every word becomes important. They take you so seriously that you feel under the gun to find just the right tone with them.”

  Disarmed by his apparent genuine humility, I say, “You should try being her father. She’s pretty sensitive these days. Everything I say or do goes under a micro scope.”

  Norman, now that I see him at a distance of less than fifty yards, is attractive in a craggy sort of way. His jaw juts out sharply, and his cheekbones are prominent under a high forehead that is crowned by a widow’s peak of brown hair. He doesn’t look a thing like Leigh except in his dark eyes.

  “We forget sometimes,” he gently reminds me, “that kids that age are just as hard on themselves.”

  I wait for the inevitable “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” but decide I won’t get it from this guy. Dressed in a blue business suit and fancy silk tie, he could pass for a bond lawyer. I have to give the man credit. He seems genuinely interested in Sarah’s welfare at a difficult time in his own life. I realize I have been feeling like an errant member of his congregation, when, in fact, he needs much more help with his own daughter than I do with mine. I say, “I’m sure Chet and Leigh both told you I visited with her last week.

  Frankly, I haven’t learned a whole lot, since Leigh didn’t have much to say.”

  Norman rubs his mouth with his right hand as if his lips are burning. Shaking his head, he says, “Surely, if Leigh is involved, it had to be self-defense. Her husband wasn’t at all what he seemed.”

  The lemony taste of the candy is irresistible, and I crunch into it. My teeth are congenitally bad, so I might as well finish them off. It dawns on me that Norman is assuming that Leigh is lying. He thinks she did it. I am amazed that he could think his own daughter capable of murder, but why not? He raised her.

  “Leigh admitted the only reason Art joined Christian Life was so he could marry her.”

  Norman, who only moments before seemed so benevolent, says angrily, “Leigh hardly participated in anything at church after they married. He couldn’t have been any more effective in separating her from Christian Life if he had been the Devil himself.”

  I take another lemon drop from my drawer and begin to unwrap it. The little pleasures are as addictive as the large ones. From the frown on Norman’s face, I have no doubt that he believes in a literal Devil and an all consuming hell.

  “But she says she was at Christian Life at the time of the murder.”

  Norman shakes his head.

  “Nobody yet can back up her story.”

  I watch Norman’s face as he fights for control of his emotions. I wish Leigh had showed herself capable of having them. I say what I’m thinking.

  “You’re convinced Leigh shot him, aren’t you?”

  Norman stands up from his chair and goes over to the window.

  “I know she’s lying because I called her at her house that morning about ten. Art answered the phone and said she was at the church, but I heard her voice in the background.”

  I suck on the lemon drop in my mouth while Norman gazes out the window. I wonder if he, like Dan, is mentally undressing the women in the Adcock Building.

  Surely not. Chet hadn’t told me Norman called Leigh. I wonder if he even knew. “Tell me what you know about Wallace,” I encourage him.

  “He sounds like he got his hooks pretty good into Leigh.”

  Norman turns from the window and comes back to his seat.

  “If you had known my daughter before she met Art, you would understand how different she is.”

  For the next fifteen minutes he paints a picture of Leigh that is very sympathetic to somebody who thinks his own daughter is wonderful. From almost the moment Leigh was born, she was a “daddy’s girl.” After two girls (Alicia and Mary Patricia, now married and living out of state). Pearl was hoping for a boy, and, in truth, so was he; but when Leigh was born, he somehow bonded with her in a way he hadn’t with his two older daughters. Maybe it was because Pearl paid her less attention, or that Leigh was more an extrovert like him, but whatever the reason, his youngest daughter took to Christian Life like nobody else.

  “Preachers’ kids can be a pain in the ass….” (the word “ass” sounds queer coming from Norman), and Alicia and Mary Patricia rebelled in many little ways, but Leigh never did. As far as he knew, Alicia doesn’t attend any church, and Mary Patricia, he says, his face clouded with disapproval, has become a Unitarian or something absurd like that. Until she married Wallace, Leigh was a delight. Every spare minute was spent at Christian Life. She had been to Thailand, Mexico, Haiti, Taiwan, and El Salvador with him and loved every minute of it.

  “I tried to make her feel guilty about how she separated herself from us,” he says without apology, “but nothing worked. She was obsessed with him.”

  It occurs to me that Norman’s parenting techniques are more sophisticated than my own. The difference is that he thinks he is entirely correct. Sarah accuses me of manipulating her if I even look at her hard.

  “How did she meet Wallace?” I ask, watching the time. Knowing how much I like to talk about Sarah, I try to move him along. We could be here all morning and never get her out of college. It is easy for me to identify with Norman.

  He worries as much as I do. I probably bore people talking about Sarah. Strip away the religious gloss, and he and I have a lot in common.

  At the mention of his dead son-in-law’s name, Norman frowns.

  “I sent Leigh to Harding to keep her away from men like Art, and he found her anyway.”

  I nod, resisting my desire for a third lemon drop.

  “How?” I ask, curious. Located in a small town north of Blackwell County, Harding is a strict Church of Christ school with as many rules as the game of
bridge.

  Norman sighs and crosses his legs.

  “Art was originally from Crossett. He had been invited by a friend who taught in the business school to deliver a couple of lectures on opportunities in international business and saw Leigh in the student center. He didn’t stop pursuing her until they were married a year after she graduated, and, believe me, that took some doing. The man quit a successful career with Chase Manhattan Bank in New York and started his own business down here.”

  I lean back in my chair, intrigued by this story. Crossett, a mill town in southern Arkansas that owes its soul to the Georgia Pacific company, is a long way from the Big Cave.

  “I take it Art began coming to Christian Life.”

  “Religiously,” Norman says, without a trace of irony.

  “I had gotten Leigh a job with the church after her graduation, and he joined as soon as he moved back to Arkansas. What a con artist! Within a month after the wedding, he had stopped all but minimal Sunday attendance and within three months so had Leigh.”

  There is a mixture of anger and sadness in Norman’s voice as it trails off.

  “Art fooled me as badly as he did Leigh. The only problem I had with him was the age difference, and it didn’t bother me the way it bothered her mother. The man could charm the pants off a snake though, and I was convinced he was sincere. If he hadn’t been killed, I mink he would have had Leigh moved to New York inside another six months.”

  I rub my tongue over my sugar-coated teeth, marveling at Wallace’s persistence. When he was killed, they hadn’t been married quite a year.

  “Do you know of any enemies,” I ask, realizing for the first time I’m talking to one, “that Wallace could have had?”

  Norman gives me a bleak smile.

  “Other than myself, you mean?” He laughs, but the sound coming from his throat is not a merry one.