False Gods

by W. Glenn Duncan Jr.

  The only change I noticed was Dad’s mouthing off about the liberals died down. Sure, when his friends were at the house, grilling and drinking beer in the back yard, it was still clear which side of the political fence he stood on, but everything he said, had said with so much fervor pre-11.22.63, now sounded forced.

  Like his heart wasn’t in his words anymore.

  Dad stayed on the force for another ten years, but when Mom and Kate went within eighteen months of each other it became too much, and he retired.

  I looked up at that ordinary window and tried to imagine being here, in this spot, on that November day with everything unfolding right in front of me. Did it happen like they said? I’d seen the footage and heard the theories. Who hadn’t? Castro. The Mob. The Russians. Hell, lotsa people say LBJ was behind the whole thing.

  In the end, the simplest answer is most often the right one.

  A discontented loner, for reasons only he knew, fired three shots and took the life of a sitting President. It wasn’t the first time for the country, and it wouldn’t be the last attempt, though Reagan would fare better. Two days later, in the parking garage of the DPD, that same discontented loner would be gunned down, taking his reasons with him.

  Would the country, or the world, have been any different? Or was this the way that everything was meant to work out, as I’d heard others say?

  I stood in the sunlight a couple of minutes longer.

  It didn’t make a goddamned difference either way.

  As my high school football coach said, what did or didn’t happen on the previous play is irrelevant, the only thing we can control is what we do on the next one. Let’s focus on that.

  Good advice.

  I turned my back on the railway overpass, walked up the hill and went to get that beer.

  Chapter 11

  Saturday morning we rumbled through the outskirts of Dallas in Hilda’s BMW.

  The day was still cool. We had the top up and The Everly Brothers strummed away on the stereo as we tooled down I-35 to Austin. I wasn’t about to admit it out loud, but not having to peel my skin from the duct tape patches on the Mustang’s upholstery had a lot going for it.

  A couple of hours, a few hundred miles of dirt and mesquite and one stop in Waco for fuel and coffee later, Austin welcomed us with open arms.

  We followed Don’s directions and parked in front of a Spanish-Revival house in the suburbs east of the city. The grass lawn needed watering and cutting and a few unloved succulents dotted the gravel planter beds. We walked up the flagstone path to an undercover porch where a heavy knocker rapped on the arched, dark timber door.

  “Are you sure you want me to come in, Rafferty?” Hilda said.

  “I’m sure Don won’t mind, and I’d like to get your thoughts. God knows, there’s a lot of things the ol’ Hammer and Anvil misses when he runs around smashing things.”

  She squeezed her arm around my waist.

  “You’re sweet. I’m not sure how that is, but it is.”

  The door opened. Don was recognizable, still bald and proud, though his beard had grown impressively and he was heavier than I remembered. I’m not pointing fingers; we all were. That he was wearing jeans, a loose chambray shirt and desert boots seemed to be just right and not the jolting contrast that I was expecting.

  “Rafferty,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “Don. It’s been a long time,” I said, both because it had been and I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Despite my lack of social niceties, we shook hands warmly and I introduced Hilda, who received a peck on the cheek and a double hand clasp.

  “Please, come in,” he said and led the way down a hallway laid with salmon-colored tiles. The walls were more cream than off-white and dotted with big canvases of bright abstract artwork. The hallway opened into a large family room, low ceilinged with wide windows and doors out to a terrace dotted with more succulents in mismatched pots. A fabric couch settled in one corner of the room, while the rest of the floor was covered in cardboard boxes and piles of loose paper.

  Files and documents, it looked like.

  A stone counter separated the room and the mess from the timber kitchen, where Don now fussed with a coffee machine and boiling kettle.

  “Don’t stand around here, grab a seat outside. Coffee alright for everyone or did you want tea?” Coffee would be fine we assured him, stepped outside, and pulled up two scattered iron chairs to the dusty glass-topped outdoor table.

  I’d finished packing a pipe when Don came out and plonked a tray of cups and pastries on the table. He creamed and sugared while I got the pipe blazing away and blew a stream of smoke over the backyard.

  “I’m lost here, Don,” I said. “When I called the other day, I was hoping you could help me track down this missing girl. I didn’t have much else to go on which was the reason for pulling on such a thin thread. You indicated on the phone that there’s a bunch more to this story.”

  I sipped my coffee. Great coffee.

  “Tell me how you can help.”

  Hilda shot me a glare which I resisted. Don smiled.

  “First,” he said, “I need to cover a little ancient history.”

  “I’m all for woolgathering Don, but we don’t need to relive that week at your Dallas church following the introduction of the Civil Rights Act.”

  The glare turned to an arched eyebrow.

  “Nah, it’s not that. You need to know what happened, otherwise none of this is going to make any sense. You need to know why I no longer wear the ‘dog collar’, as you put it.”

  I lifted my cup to him.

  “Anyone who can make coffee this good wins an extra ten minutes of storytelling. Rafferty’s Rule Twenty-Five: Coffee is the elixir of life. And beer. Depending on the time of day.”

  Don jumped onboard the SS Raised Eyebrow.

  “Don’t ask,” said Hilda.

  He shook his head and looked like he was going to say something. He stopped and shook his head again. I grabbed a muffin.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “Back then, when I was Father McIlhenny everyone knew me as a bit of a firebrand, I guess.”

  “Uh huh,” I mouthed around the muffin.

  It looked like we were back to glares from Hilda.

  “Right from the beginning, when I started thinking about becoming a priest, I’d always thought that the church should be for everyone. I found the church to be a welcoming place; I’d felt at home there and I wanted everyone else to have the same feeling. I mean, Jesus himself supposedly said we were all created equal, right?”

  “Be careful where you’re going with this, Don. It’s starting to sound like a backyard revival,” I said.

  “Notice I said supposedly. Anyway, you saw what happened when I invited the …” He made quotation marks in the air. “The colored folk to worship with us. You’d’ve thought I was promoting virgin sacrifice.”

  “But that’s changed a lot now, hasn’t it?” Hilda said, but she didn’t sound sure.

  “There’s still a lot of racism around, Hil,” I said, reaching for another muffin. “It’s just more hidden than it was. These are great muffins, Don.”

  “What? Oh, thanks. I’ll let Lucy know. You’re dead right. About the racism, I mean. It still exists everywhere. The church is mostly mute about it, though you do still have the odd fundamentalist who’ll get up on their soapbox and talk about the ‘less than human’ population. Thankfully, they’re in the minority.”

  Don took a breath and continued.

  “Anyway, after we’d succeeded in opening the church doors to all people, regardless of color, I wanted to do more. I saw an opportunity for the church to become a place open to everyone, no matter who you were.”

  Hilda and I nodded. No way known to argue with that, no matter what your spiritual leanings.

  “Isn’t that a church’s main business?” Hilda asked. “Feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, that kind of thing.”

  “Sure it
is. Everyone deserves to be treated as human beings, regardless of their circumstances. We made a real difference in people’s lives.”

  “I’m sensing a ‘but’ here,” I said.

  “You’re right,” Don said. “Our little church became known for accepting anyone. It wasn’t uncommon to see old ladies and punk rockers standing side by side, singing together and sharing hair colors. Homeless drug addicts helping the elderly down the stairs after mass, that kind of thing.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “It pissed the hell out of the hierarchy.”

  Don laughed.

  “Did it ever,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many communications I got telling me that the church’s higher levels were concerned we had become a ‘freak show’ and a ‘laughing stock’. But, I hadn’t got to where I was by listening much to other people, so I put my head down and kept going.”

  “What happened?” Hilda asked.

  “One August a beautiful couple, Sandra and Regina, came to me. Six months earlier, Sandra’s only sister and her husband had been killed in a car accident and left behind an infant daughter.”

  Hilda sucked in a breath.

  “Sandra and Regina cared for her like their own daughter. By a quirk of fate, the baby girl had not been baptized, and Sandra wanted her to be; it was what her sister would have wanted. I was delighted to be able to help and I told them so.”

  “Uh oh,” I said.

  “What?” Hilda asked.

  “If the powers-that-be were annoyed about punk rockers hanging around, they would have been ready for spontaneous combustion over the idea of baptizing the child of a lesbian couple.”

  “You have no idea,” Don said. “The deluge of communications from church high command quadrupled and I was threatened with all sorts of horrific things, in this world and the next, if I proceeded with the ceremony. But this was a fight worth having. Either we lived our beliefs and treated our neighbor as ourself, or not. And if not, then what the hell were we doing?

  “The baptism was lovely. A beautiful spring day. Picture-book. And the feeling of unconditional love in the church that day was unbelievable. It was the closest I’ve ever felt, before or since, to any sort of higher presence.”

  Don’s eyes misted for a minute and he drained his cup.

  “And?” I asked.

  “Three days later they came to Dallas and shut down the church.”

  “Two senior ministers and four obsequious little pen pushers came down from St Louis. Sat me down in my own office like a naughty schoolboy and read me chapter and verse about how I strayed outside the church’s teachings, and that I had no right, as a representative of the church, to take matters into my own hands. I kept asking them to tell me why it was that an innocent baby girl didn’t deserve to be brought into the arms of the Lord because of who her adoptive parents loved.”

  I laughed. “I bet they didn’t have an answer for that.”

  “Nope,” he said. “Back to the standard bullshit they’d already told me.” His shoulders sank. “By the end of that day, they’d run me out of the church I built, canceled all service and outreach programs, chained the doors of the church shut and turned everyone away. In two hours they undid everything. All fourteen years of it.” He wiped his eyes. “It still hurts.”

  “No wonder no-one at the church wanted to hear your name,” I said.

  Hilda collected the cups and plates and bussed them to the kitchen. Don pulled out a red and white handkerchief and blew his nose.

  “Sorry,” he said, waving his hands.

  “Don’t be silly,” Hilda said as she sat down. “Anyone would be upset being treated like that.”

  “It’s not that. It was the people I cared for, my congregation. I’d been saying for years that we were creating a safe place for them. Where they could be themselves and would always be loved. They believed me. And then, without warning, it was all gone. They had no place to go.

  “I know of two people who were this close,” he held up a finger and thumb, “to being clean for twelve months. And within a week of the church closing, they were both back on the streets and using.” His voice dropped. “Both dead before the end of the year.”

  “That wasn’t your fault, you know,” Hilda said.

  He gave a wan smile. “It doesn’t make it hurt less.” He sucked in a big breath. “I was also out of a job. Not only was it going to be difficult to make my way into another church, the administration had made that clear enough, but the whole episode had made me question a few things. My religion, first, and then my faith.”

  “What’d you do?” she asked.

  “I found a few odd jobs working construction to pay the bills, and spent a lot of time thinking.” He smiled. “For the next year and a half I spent more time reflecting, researching, questioning and thinking than I had for the entire twenty plus years I was in the church.”

  That seemed plausible and also a good idea. I kept this thought to myself.

  Don continued.

  “I won’t bore you with my internal process and the epiphanies along the way. Suffice to say, I came out the other side of that period understanding two things. One, organized religion is about controlling money, and in that vein it is a business and deserves to be considered as such. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “And the other?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

  Don grinned like the Cheshire cat and it stripped several years off his age.

  “I’m an atheist.”

  “Best remember you’re in the south, boy, and be careful with talk like that,” I said.

  The grin kept coming.

  I pointed a finger at him.

  “Tell you what, though. Make another round of that kick-ass coffee and all is forgiven.”

  He blinked and shook his head.

  “Oh shit. I didn’t notice.”

  We reconvened in the kitchen and Don quickly had the coffee machine bubbling and hissing away.

  “You want to know the secret to the coffee and the muffins?” he said.

  I nodded from my spot leaning against the stone bench.

  “No preservatives. They’re all organic. That’s what makes them taste so good.” He saw my eyebrows. “No, it’s true.” He laughed.

  I liked Don. More than that, I admired him for what he’d done when his revered religious world had shat all over him. He’d been trying to do the right thing to look after his fellow man. How anyone could take a negative view of that, no matter your personal beliefs, was, and still is, incomprehensible to me.

  “Let me ask you something, Don,” I said. He nodded while he ground more coffee.

  “When you started doing your navel gazing—”

  Hilda dug me in the ribs. I ignored it. Don did too.

  “You must have been pissed off and looking to come up with reasons to bad mouth the church.”

  He grabbed the handle of a gizmo now filled with ground coffee and twisted it into another part of the shiny, gurgling machine. I’ll be honest, I had no idea what he was doing, but I didn’t care as long as that cup was headed my way. He put cups down and flipped a switch, then turned to me. Placing his hands palms down on the other side of the counter, he looked quizzical.

  “You know, that’s the funny part,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking at all about walking away from religion. I rationalized the actions of the church as that of a few individuals, rather than the organization. I took time away because I wanted to know my own thoughts on the situation. I wanted to get back to basics, find a way to strengthen my faith.”

  “That didn’t happen?” Hilda said from my side.

  The machine finished burbling and oozing coffee. Don grabbed the cups and led the way back outside. When we were seated and sipping, he continued.

  “No, it didn’t. I was shocked to find my beliefs and faith crumbling. It’s a bit like that scene at the end of the Wizard of Oz. Once you’ve seen behind the curtain, you can’t go back.”

  “A reverse c
onversion,” I said.

  “Exactly.” He laughed. “And the irony wasn’t lost on me.”

  “I’m glad you’re back in the land of the right thinking people, Don. The story is a good one and, if you ever decide to open a coffee shop, let me know, but I’m still in the dark as to why I’m here.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” he said. “I needed you to hear how I went from devout priest to affirmed atheist. To know that my reason for asking you down here is to help and not a church vendetta.”

  “And?”

  “It’ll make more sense to you why I do what I do, and why I’m in a position to help you.”

  “Why is that?” I was starting to tire of the dancing by this point. The coffee was keeping me engaged but the second half of the cup was looking thin.

  “I now run the USA. The United States of Athiesm.”

  I took a breath and he sped up.

  “I’m committed to helping people understand what churches are, how they operate. To encourage people to think for themselves and make up their own mind about the existence of a God rather than just accepting what anyone in a fancy robe says.”

  Great. A zealot in atheist clothing. Just what I needed.

  I checked my watch. Still a good chunk of time left to explore Austin with Hilda. The day wouldn’t be a total waste. I downed the last of my coffee and stood up.

  “Don. I enjoyed talking. Thanks for the great coffee and best of luck with the new club—”

  “No. That’s not all. Part of doing what I do is keeping tabs on churches in the US, especially the fringe ones. Too many of these are no more than thinly-disguised cults and there’s some scary shit going on.”

  I stayed standing.

  “That makes my heart bleed, Don, but I can’t save the entire goddamned world. I don’t have the time or the energy. All I can do right now is find one missing girl, and if I can do that, it’ll be enough for me. I had hoped you could help me with that. You’ve got ten seconds until I’m out the door.”

  He stood and looked up at me.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to get to. One of these cults—”