Defenders of the Faith

by Williamson, Chet

  Chapter 13

  Skip died in 1998, a little over a year after he and Olivia were married. One fall morning, he was walking the ten blocks from their apartment to the police station. He was passing near Buchanan General High School when he saw a young black student confronted by four older boys. Skip went over to the group in order to break things up when the student, whose name was Akeem Cundiff and who was fifteen years old, pulled a pistol from beneath his jacket, shot two of the boys, and then shot Skip in the chest. The bullet shattered the breastbone and pierced the heart, and Skip died almost instantly. Akeem fired three more times, wounding another of the boys, who were by then running away. Out of bullets, Akeem threw down the gun and stood enraged until the police came.

  Witnesses, including the boys, all of whom survived, said that Akeem "just went apeshit, firin' at anything that moved," which had, unfortunately, included Skip Feldman. Akeem told police that the boys had been dissing him and taking his money since school began, and that he had to stop them before they carried out their threat to steal his sneakers. Apparently the only way Akeem felt that this could be accomplished was to take his older brother's 9.mm Glock and shoot as many of them as possible. He admitted that he had no plans about what he would do later, and added that he was sorry that he had shot Skip Feldman, saying, "I didn't even know him. But he was just there. And I was mad."

  This anger was not considered sufficient grounds for killing a police officer. Akeem Cundiff was tried as an adult, found guilty, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

  Olivia, left alone, threw herself into her work to such an extent that she scarcely paid any attention to Akeem's trial and sentencing, though her colleagues kept her informed of its progress. From her point of view, it was not her case, and she did not want to get involved. From the first time she had heard what had happened, she had had to disassociate herself from it. As a widow, she grieved, and missed Skip as terribly as Paul Blair missed Evey.

  But she gave evidence of what she thought of as human weakness to no one but herself, knowing that in her work she had to be strong. There was no room for the more womanly emotions in her job, and she resorted to gruffness and humorlessness to conceal her sorrow from the other detectives. The strategy worked, for they began to think of her less as a woman and more as a fellow cop. The teasing and what other women might have referred to as sexual harassment stopped, and she found no barriers to her ambition and accession.

  But she found one barrier that was unsurpassable, and that was the William Davonier case.

  She thought perhaps it meant so much to her because it was the one that she and Skip had begun together. But whatever the reason, the bullet in the small evidence box haunted her. Though she knew that she should be grateful if anything to Davonier's killer for ridding the world of a conscienceless beast, she could not evade the fact that the case was still hers, and would be until it was solved or she retired and passed her unsolved cases on to her successor.

  So she worked on, remained Olivia Feldman, and her singleminded dedication and creative imagination won her the respect of her peers, the attention of her superiors, and regular promotions.

  And the bullet remained in the evidence file, Paul Blair watched over his secretly adopted children, and Peter Hurst grew older.

  Chapter 14

  Peter Hurst locked away the memory of what had happened to him. All he retained of it was the fact that he had been bad, and he had been punished, and now he must be good.

  But it returned to him in dreams, nightmares in which he felt his bowels filled to bursting, but he had to hold it, hold it, because if he didn't he would make his bed dirty, and his mother would be angry with him. Then, after what seemed an endless, gray time, he would awake and the feeling would leave him. Nevertheless, he would go into the bathroom and sit and strain, not content to return to bed until he was sure he was empty.

  Other nights he dreamed about Uncle Mistletoe, and saw his tall figure standing, holding a gun, there to save him. But he could never quite see Uncle Mistletoe's face, always dark, in the shadows.

  Peter's play in the few weeks after the kidnapping was restrained. He ran his Hot Wheels cars down the track and made them loop the loop, and he drew crayon pictures that he hid from his mother and father. They were of a small figure, always at the bottom of the paper, with another figure, larger and fat, just above the first. A third figure, bigger than the other two, was at the right. He was drawn in bright colors, and had a smile on his face. His right hand did not have five fingers, but only one. It was large, thick, and colored black.

  If anyone would have made him tell what it was, he would have told them that it was Uncle Mistletoe with his gun, saving him from the bad man.

  Peter was not allowed to have toy guns, but he quickly learned the improvised symbol of the pointing finger and raised thumb. By thrusting the hand outward and softly saying "Ksh... ksh," he approximated the act of firing a pistol enough to give himself a certain totemic power. He played at killing in this way for several days before his mother, walking into his room unexpectedly, caught him in the act.

  "What are you doing?" she said.

  "Nothing."

  "Don't lie, Petey. Lying is a bad thing. Now what were you doing?"

  "Being, gun being," and he held up his hand guiltily to illustrate.

  "A gun is a bad thing for a little boy, Petey. Bad. You know what bad things are, don't you?"

  The words, bad thing, repeated over and over made him start to shake. He said nothing.

  "We don't want to have anything to do with bad things, do we? Not ever again. Bad things hurt us."

  Peter pulled his hand in against his thin chest as though it were something evil that might break free again. When his mother left him, he felt confused, and looked at his hand, pointing his index finger and curling it, afraid to make it become a thing his mother had not liked.

  But how, he wondered, could a gun be a bad thing when it had saved him from the bad man? And how could Uncle Mistletoe, who was good, have used a bad thing?

  Peter was so confused that he started to cry, but crying made him think more and more of why he had been crying earlier, and he made himself stop, and think about something else.

  ~ * ~

  Pastor Geyer came to visit soon after the incident, and Peter's mother made coffee for him and lemonade for Peter, and they sat and the pastor talked to him for a while. Then Mother told Peter to run along to his room and get ready for bed because his parents and the pastor wanted to talk alone.

  When, a half hour later, his parents came to his bedside to tuck him in, he thought that his mother looked at him again as if he had done something bad, and dirty, and he went to sleep seeing that look in his mother's eyes, and praying to God to let him be good so that his mother would love him again.

  ~ * ~

  It took longer than Glenda Foreman had thought for Peter Hurst to have his speech problem evaluated. He was finally tested the following October, after he entered first grade. It was found that he had a developmental language problem in which word order was often inverted. In a conference, the speech therapist told Clyde and Miriam Hurst that several months of intensive therapy should take care of it. The Hursts agreed to the treatment, but Miriam gave orders that only speech therapy should be done. When the therapist asked what she meant, she told him that she did not want any psychological or psychiatric counseling for her son, and the therapist, though puzzled, agreed.

  Peter Hurst turned out to be a textbook example of the changes that good therapy and the passage of time can bring about. By second grade, his speech was nearly perfect, the reversions coming only under moments of stress. Most of the time he was able to express himself eloquently, and proved to be bright and receptive to his lessons.

  But he was above all a child with goodness, and the appearance of goodness, on his mind. He never played any games at school that made the slightest nod toward violence, and if other children misbehaved when the teacher had her back
turned, Peter would tell precisely who was committing what infraction. When Todd Brewster hit him in the face at recess for telling Mrs. Daugherty that Todd had been the one who made the belching noise, he went directly to Mr. Good, who was on playground duty, and, without crying, showed Mr. Good his bloody nose and told him who had done it and why.

  The violence against Peter escalated, all of it born of vengeance for his tactless exposure of his classmates' transgressions. But when, every time, he reported his persecutors, he was finally left alone, and most of the students looked upon his dark, scowling face the same way they looked upon the teacher's. But while they felt affection for Mrs. Daugherty, they felt none for Peter Hurst, the traitor in their midst.

  Peter was, however, able to make friends with some of the less popular and weaker children, who, since he reported attacks on them as well as himself, looked on him as their champion, willing to take on the contempt of the others for their sakes. No student ever saw him mock or raise his hand to another. And every word was spoken calmly, never in anger.

  He saved anger for his solitude.

  Peter's favorite toys were the Great Heroes of the Bible, six-inch high figures that his mother and father bought at a Christian gift and book shop in the Greater Buchanan Mall. His favorite Bible figure was David, who came with a sling and a shepherd's staff. But instead of the staff and sling, Peter would put the Sword of Righteousness and the Shield of the Holy Word from the Joshua figure into David's plastic hands. Then, alone in his room, David would slay the Goliath figure, who could also be Todd Brewster or Danny Godfrey, but was most often, in Peter's mind, a bad man who wanted to do bad things.

  David would cut and cut at the bad man's legs until he fell. Then he would take the sword and hack away at his neck, and at the sexless junction of legs and torso. Finally he would turn the bad man over on his stomach and stab the thin blade of gray plastic into the undivided rondure of the figure's backside, pretending that there was a deep hole into which the sword could plunge.

  When Peter played these games, he breathed heavily, and his mouth filled with saliva. At the age of thirteen, he began to get his first erections while playing in this way, and started to enlist the figure of Ruth into his scenarios, making David press his hands against Ruth's flat, hard chest. The first time he did this, he rubbed his stiffening penis through his jeans until he had an intense and frightening orgasm, his first, since he had not yet had a wet dream.

  Although he had learned about orgasms in health class, it was still unexpected and terrifying, awakening the memory of the bad man and the things that the bad man did, what the bad man made him put in his mouth, and what happened then.

  Peter sat in his room, cold sweat on his face, his jeans with their betraying stain as dark as sin, knowing that he could not tell his mother or father about this, that he would have to wash his jeans and underwear himself, and thinking that he would never do this again, and wondering when he could.

  Peter's life was more free of sexual stimulation than any of his classmates. While the others saw half-naked women and men on television, on their computers, and in magazines, every piece of paper, website, and TV signal that came into the Hurst home was carefully screened in advance. Peter's upbringing was more closely akin to that of children fifty years earlier, to whom the mechanics behind Lucy Ricardo's pregnancy was a mystery, and two piece bathing suits never revealed a navel.

  The Hursts had no DVD player, subscribed only to basic cable (which was filtered and mostly played Fox News), and their computer had only educational and reference software installed. Peter was permitted Internet access only under supervision, and the family attended only G-rated movies when they went at all.

  In 2004, a week after Peter's first orgasm, Miriam was finally persuaded to allow her son to stay overnight at a friend's house for the first time. The boys were alone together in Joe Potter's room, and Joe was playing The Terminator on his DVD player for Peter. When the bad language started, Peter asked Joe to turn it off, but Joe only shook his head and passed Peter the popcorn.

  "Nah, it’s old, but it gets really good," Joe said. "Just wait, he kills all kindsa people, and this girl gets naked later."

  Peter's mouth went dry. He had never seen a naked girl before, and he desperately wanted to. Still, he knew what his mother always said about temptation -- that it was best to avoid even coming close to the things that tempted you to sin, and that once you thought the thoughts, ninety percent of you was already in hell.

  "We shouldn't watch this..." he said, taking a handful of popcorn and putting it into his already parched mouth. It tasted like sand.

  "Aw, don't be such a pussy, man. It's neat. Just shut up and watch."

  The promise of a naked woman was enough to keep Peter quiet for the rest of the movie. He munched popcorn and told himself that when the naked woman came on he would close his eyes.

  As he watched, his anticipation growing like his hardening penis, he realized that he was enjoying the film, so different from the happy entertainments and earnest morality plays to which his parents took him. There were good guys and bad guys, and the bad guy was scary and neat and talked with an accent that would have been funny if he wasn't so big.

  And the longer he watched the bad guy who bore guns as though they were an extension of his arm, the more the stalking, fearless figure reminded him of mysterious and faceless Uncle Mistletoe. In the context of the movie he was evil, but he fascinated Peter, and he sat, the popcorn forgotten, lost in a vision of violence and retribution.

  The stalker was no longer the tool of a futuristic tyranny, or even Uncle Mistletoe, but Peter himself, striking back at the world that was so cruel to him. The bedroom scene, when it came, when he finally saw the naked breasts, the man and woman together, was an anticlimax.

  It was the killing machine that aroused him, the cool efficiency, the passionless execution of those who must die. The film did not inspire these things in him, but simply awoke what was already there.

  When the movie was over, Joe Potter tried to talk about it, but Peter was buried too deeply in his own thoughts, and Joe, bored and annoyed, turned out the light and went to sleep.

  Peter was not at all tired, and lay with his eyes wide, staring at the darkness of the ceiling. He felt as though he had suddenly been vouchsafed a vision of the future's possibilities, an alternative to Christ's humbly bowed head and naked back offered to the scourge.

  What, he wondered, if Christ had had a gun? And what if he had used it?

  Or what if, when the Roman soldiers had held the first nail over his hand, he had broken away, and rained down fire from heaven on them, killing them all? And what if the people who were there saw and believed, and they had all gone to Pilate's court with spears and swords, and with Christ in the lead, invincible and deathless?

  From there, it was only a step to the fantasy that would grip him always -- Peter Hurst, leading an army of believers, bringing God back to a world of the godless, so that no one could sin anymore, and no bad men could do bad things to anyone ever again.

  Chapter 15

  The following summer Peter's mother, at his father's urging, allowed him to go away for a week to a church camp near Mount Harmony, a small, wooded town thirty miles north of Buchanan. It was the first time Peter had been away from home for more than one night, and the first time he ever committed an act of violence in the name of God.

  He quickly acquired a reputation for piety, and when several of the boys were alone without a counselor, some of them began to tease Peter. "You're a real Jesus-boy, aren't you?" said one black youth from Philadelphia who the others called Airman.

  "That's why I'm here," Peter said. "I've accepted Christ as my personal savior and lord."

  "Holy shit," said Airman, shaking his head.

  "Why are you here then?" Peter asked.

  "Chance to get outta the city for a week, that's all, Jesus-boy."

  "You haven't accepted Christ?"

  "Hey, why don't you accept
a stick up your butt?" The others laughed. "That's all bullshit, man."

  "You have to be saved," said Peter calmly.

  "And what if I'm not?"

  "You'll burn in hell when you die." Airman snorted in derision, but Peter went on. "Your skin will burn, and get even blacker than it is now, and blister and bubble and crack and peel off. Then the muscle catches fire, and all your insides, and your guts get bigger and bigger, swell up with the heat, and finally they burst, and pieces of you splash everywhere, like boiling oil, and then your bones burn, and that's the worst of all.

  "And when you're all burned away, everything grows back again, and it starts all over. And you don't die, and you don't faint, and you never stop feeling the pain. Now, when something hurts, it's okay, you can take it, because you know it'll stop. But this never stops. And you can't even go insane. All you can do is burn and scream, until your throat explodes again."

  Airman looked at Peter as though he were something he had found under a wet rock. "Man, you are one sick motherfucker."

  Peter smiled, just a little. "Your tongue burns too."

  "Bullshit. You die, you're dead."

  "No. You die, you're in hell. And it can happen anytime. God can strike you down this minute if he wants to."

  "God can't strike no one down, preacher. So you can take your fire and shove it up your lily white ass."

  It was the second time that the boy had made the reference that put ice in Peter's bowels. "It can happen when you least expect it," Peter said, and walked back toward the cabin, followed by jeering but uncomfortable laughter.

  He waited until the last day, Saturday, to strike down Airman. It had rained constantly for two days, and the campers scurried from cabins to dining hall to chapel, heads down, wrapped in ponchos. Everyone had their eyes on the dirt paths to avoid the thick puddles that had devoured hundred-dollar sneakers, burying their logos beneath layers of caked mud, and making their brand names invisible.