by Ed Hurst
Chapter 36
They had come back during Fall Break. That visit from the college students marked the end of Michael’s second year with the mission. In those two years, the church house had been finished, expanded, and several small homes now clustered around it like bodyguards. During the five days with two dozen young adults, they would pour a foundation already dug in preparation, raise a frame, finish the roof, set windows and doors, and start on the exterior siding of yet another house.
This time, Hermanito did all the hustling, and Michael translated and directed work from the ground. The volunteer driver for the student bus was an ancient retired preacher who provided good company for Michael. It was altogether refreshing, for the man was surely one of the great unknown Bible scholars, spending his entire life serving in obscurity in small churches across the South. When he could no longer keep the pace of even those small churches, he retired to his home in West Texas, living in the shadow of the small Bible college where he had received his ministerial training. It was this college which sponsored these mission trips each fall to Ciudad Juarez.
The old preacher was called Bro. Lowe by everyone. This was his first mission trip, he explained. It was a way to stay busy after his wife died that past summer. Warm friends from the first minute, Michael had invited him to stay at his house. His spiritual hunger must have been painfully obvious, because Bro. Lowe kept their conversation mostly on biblical topics. The mission pastor hovered around, too. With his poor English, he didn’t bother to ask many questions, but listened intently to whatever Michael and Bro. Lowe discussed.
The three were sitting in the shade of the church’s east side porch, sipping iced lime tea. As usual this time of year in Juarez, it was still rather warm, and the building was a merciful block between them and the dry desert air blowing across the high ground there on the west side of town.
Bro. Lowe took a sip, held it in his mouth a moment, and then swallowed. Still holding the glass near his lips, with his eyes watching a floating lime seed, he asked, “I keep wondering how you pay your way out here, Michael.” He looked up with a sly smile. “Is that a rude question?”
“Nah.” Michael set his glass on the rickety cafe table in front of them, folded his hands and tilted his head back against the wall. “I brought a laptop with me and have been doing odd webmaster work now and then. There’s a cantina near the bridge with clear line of sight to some commercial building on the US side. It puts out a strong wireless signal. I do most of the work here, then go down there to copy files and such.”
“Could I ask about your customers?”
“I had some clients back in California, who led me to some others, and of course there are odd jobs on the Web from time to time. Once in awhile I do some translation work, and I’ve had one ghost-writing assignment.” Michael picked up his glass, took a sip, then looked directly at the old preacher with a half-smile.
“The other thing puzzles me is how you keep the drug gangs from shooting this place up. With all the violence along the border, even out here there must be some trouble now and then.”
Clasping his hands in his lap again, Michael looked down at them and was quiet for a moment. “One of my clients is connected to a drug gang,” he said slowly, choosing his words carefully.
“Smart move,” the old preacher said quietly.
They were silent for a few minutes. A dust devil spun out from between two of the little houses, and then darted between two more. The old preacher stared after the whirling dust, and asked: “What prevents you turning them all in to various governments at war with them?”
Michael looked down at his feet, crossed at the ankles and stretched out in front of him. “It won’t make any difference, except a change of personnel. Then, either government agents would take me into protective custody, never to be seen again, or the gangs would get me first and kill me.”
He asked mildly, “You afraid to die, Michael?”
Michael looked up, “Of course not. But I’m pretty sure God isn’t finished with me yet, so I can’t do something which interferes with my own mission.”
The old man interlaced his fingers and rested his wrists on the edge of the table. “Exactly. Yet I could take you to a church full of well-off middle class families who would condemn you so loudly you’d go deaf. They couldn’t bear the idea someone claiming Christ would fail to condemn something they find so unspeakably evil, and fail to do all they could to destroy it. They couldn’t imagine you having a mission from God which didn’t include that sort of zealous battle against drug abuse at all costs.”
Michael thought for a moment. “I can’t say who or what they worship, but I know what my God demands of me on that issue, at least, and none of them are Him.” His mouth formed a half-smile.
Pastor Lowe almost mirrored his expression. “So what’s the difference between a criminal gang and a criminal government?”
This is too easy, Michael thought. “Most gangs I know don’t claim legitimate right to rule.”
The old pastor wrapped one hand around his glass. “Tell that to the folks living in Sinaloa, or under any of a dozen revolutionary governments fighting the official governments.” He took a drink from this glass. The Mexican pastor nodded his head sagely, looking down at the ground.
After some silence, Michael said, “One man’s legitimacy is another man’s lie.”
Pastor Lowe went on, “Not a single government on this earth, official or de facto, has God’s approval and support the way He once backed ancient Israel. He got out of that business at the Cross. What was left of Israel no longer had a legitimate government by the time Jesus was born. That’s the point behind His treatment of that woman in John 8, caught in adultery. The Jewish leaders were long past the place where they had standing to expect God to support the death penalty at their hands. That’s why He allowed some pagan empire to take the authority from them. They were so far off track; they couldn’t even identify the path.”
He paused a moment. “It would take weeks to explain it in all the details, but it has to do with the ancient Hebrew mystical outlook long forgotten a couple of centuries before Christ, and how all God’s Laws are based on the utter necessity of living in a tribal social setting, with a tribal government. The only people who can legitimately govern you in this world must be kin by blood or covenant. They are also the only people who can judicially take life under His Laws. So on that day, Jesus alone stood with such authority, not a single one of those Sanhedrin. He alone stood squarely in the authority of the Law, and declared it was not God’s interest any longer to take human life that way. That’s because He came to close up God’s business of backing human governments once and for all.”
It was time to get back to work. They began walking back to the work site.
They finished the day’s labor and the college students were all collapsed into their cots. They were too physically exhausted to sleep right away, and their giddy chatter back and forth echoed quietly in the night, fading slowly with longer and longer pauses.
The wind was still up, though cooler, and the men had gathered with folding chairs behind Michael’s camper. Now having a house, Michael had parked his old pickup and camper beside it, tightly squeezed in the space between his and the next house. He had been storing all the equipment and tools in it, and Hermanito would lock himself inside to guard everything overnight. They had all ended up here and simply sat down before trying to sleep themselves.
Bro. Lowe asked, “Given our discussion this afternoon, what would you make of the popular quotation about being under grace, not under Law?”
Michael offered, “Getting involved in human politics, whether in support or resistance to any agency, interferes with God’s spiritual governing of His Body.”
Pastor Lowe nodded with a grin, “Exactly. You don’t have to obey anyone’s orders to violate your own calling and moral judgment, but for the most part we do what we can to avoid entangling ourselves.”
They all shifted
a bit in their chairs, no one ready to end the discussion yet. Lowe went on, “Once you put your hand to that worldly business, it owns you. The Laws of God are all about the human level of things, while grace is the unspeakable truth about divine things. You violate the provisions of grace – you violate the Cross – when you try to bring His Laws to bear on humans who aren’t family. Your mandate only covers those who place themselves under your authority. Otherwise, you become a debtor to the Laws and you have to first make amends before you can restore grace to your life. But you see, you can’t properly read the Laws of God without a Hebrew mind. Those amends have to be made on the level of Jesus’ teaching, not from any other cultural background of understanding the Bible.”
Michael frowned, “How much education does it take to cultivate an ancient Hebrew mind these days?”
Pastor Lowe smiled knowingly. “That business of the Cross assumes you start where you are, and commit yourself to moving in that direction. Some will obviously pick up on it really well, and others may never get very far during their entire lives. It’s answering the call, doing what you know and can understand. Once you start obeying, God provides a path of improvement. You have to commit to it sight unseen, knowing you’ll make mistakes and not hear correctly the voice of His Spirit. But mistakes or not, if you don’t start down that path, you cannot possibly serve Him much, nor reap the rewards of that service. You’ll never really find peace with Him.”
Michael knew where his own bumbling path to peace went next.
In his dreams that night, he stood in a shower that spewed sewage on him. The curtain became a solid wall, and he couldn’t get out. The faucet knobs came off in his hands.
Chapter 37
For most of the past two years, Burk kept his promise to stay with Mama at the little restaurant. One day she fell in the kitchen. There was nothing to trip over; she just fell. One hip was broken, it appeared. When the ambulance arrived, she was barely conscious. They said something about a stroke and took her away.
When Burk discovered no one would or could tell him what happened to her for the next week, he realized his home was gone. He had packed his stuff and was planning to slip out after closing time, locking everything behind him. The cooks had helped him keep the place going, but folks quit eating there so much. They stopped by only to ask for news about Mama. So he told the women he had no legal right to keep the place open, and they agreed there was nothing they could do.
That evening, some fellow dressed all too nicely came in the door. Burk instinctively stayed out of sight in the kitchen. The man showed the girls a piece of paper, saying something about a court order. They exchanged glances as he spoke to them a bit longer. He walked over to the cash register, opened it, and gave them each what was probably their last pay. After a bit of poking around under the counter, the man headed back into the kitchen. Burk’s instincts had driven him out into the covered walkway out back. Through the cracked open door, he watched the man, surmising he was a lawyer.
The cooks asked the stranger one last question, and Burk listened closely. From the fragments of conversation, he made out this man was closing the place and locking it up. He heard the phrase “terminal care” and his heart fell. Without further ado, he fetched his bag and left, hiking out through the woods. A half-mile up the hill, there was a smokehouse he knew he could enter without arousing anyone’s interest. It would do for the night.
Burk was a hobo once again.
Michael found out when a message on one of the activist bulletin boards caught his eye. He had been checking every few days just for that reason. They had traded a few brief greetings to each other there now and then. This time Burk said simply,
Mama gone. Hobo says “later”.
In due time, they had longer exchanges, though Burk had a slightly tougher time getting Net access at libraries. He was quite content to return to his previous existence. Further, he persisted in showing no remorse about the SWAT team. At the same time, he told Michael to find his own peace. By that, he meant it wouldn’t matter if Michael told anyone, or turned himself in to the authorities. Burk was no worse off either way, as he saw it, since Michael didn’t know where to find him. And Burk wasn’t telling. Aside from comparing notes on the Shadow Government figures and the worsening oppression, they were just friends passing the time.
That’s where things stood when the Fall Break had rolled around and Michael met Bro. Lowe.
Chapter 38
So it came around to the next Christmas, then the New Year, and Michael was still waiting. He knew he could not rest until he at least explored turning himself in for the two attacks. Burk had released him from any obligation to silence, but Terrell was still out in the Pacific somewhere, as far as Michael knew at that point. Thus, the arrival of the package in mid-February was sad, but perfect timing. Michael had not been particularly tormented once he decided he had to come clean. It was just a matter of when.
As he held the two boys before bedtime that night, one on each knee, he wondered how big a load they’d be in his lap the next time he saw them. That was assuming he was not executed, as so many captured resistors were these days. Execution also didn’t take nearly as long as it once did. It crossed his mind if he was quick enough to slip inside the FBI office building, he wouldn’t have to worry about a manufactured gun-fight cum execution, another popular means of handling resistance these days. Still, he had no way of knowing what to expect, and wanted to play it as safely as possible for his family.
He didn’t want Juanita or the boys anywhere near the border when he went back. It was too late to prevent bereaving her yet again, at least in some sense. She could take it, he was sure, but that didn’t prevent him becoming a nervous wreck trying to tell her. Oddly, she was more worried about his emotional state than the content of the long story, the crimes to which he admitted. Noting he had repented, it was clear her faith was stronger than his, in that sense. Her deep eyes said more than words, telling of love, trust, and calm.
She must have a good grasp on what Job felt. She had been raised in a town named Miguel Ahumada, a good ways south. She became a favorite of one of the school teachers. It was to this woman she turned when Juanita’s parents divorced, her father left home, and mother sank into alcoholic despair. She was just 10 then, and the teacher was her lifeline, essentially raising her. No surprise, then, Juanita married the teacher’s son, just a couple of years older. Upon promise of a job with Juanita’s uncle in Juarez, they had moved north to the ratty huts clustered on the east slope of the ridge where the little mission church was being built.
Sure enough, there was work at a warehouse down near the river bank. It meant riding a bus, then walking a few blocks to the warehouse gate. Typically, he would arrive just before dawn, with his co-workers. He usually approached from the south side of the road, where trucks often lined up on the shoulder across from the gate.
That morning, a driver for the local drug cartel was out quite early. His SUV was one of the best kept of the fleet used for running drugs. It had rather wide tires suitable for the sandy soil, 4-wheel drive and a high suspension. From his last delivery payoff, the driver had taken the SUV to the shop for a special bumper, made to order. It had a sloped plate on the bottom, and a brush guard mounted at an angle on top. The idea was to allow him to push vegetation down quickly as he drove over it. He was on his way out west to test drive it in the desert.
Spying the trucks in perfect alignment across from the warehouse, the driver decided to challenge his skills by swerving close to the trucks at high speed. With his lights off, just inches from the trucks, there was no way Juanita’s husband could have known. Apparently the bumper and brush guard were well designed, for they dropped the young man in mid-stride as he emerged from between two trucks. One second he was stepping out through the gap, the next he was flat on the pavement, already dead. The driver of the SUV never noticed, apparently.
Juanita turned again to her mother-in-law, the woman who had practically
raised her. They remained close some five years after they were both bereaved. It was Juanita’s custom to travel for a visit in mid-February every year. Marrying Michael didn’t change this, except now she stood to face being widowed yet again, in effect if not in fact. To play it safe, he told her to hold onto the money from Terrell’s package. If he didn’t come back, she’d need it.
After seeing off his wife and sons, Michael steeled himself. The worst part was the complete lack of information on his case. That is, news reports were naturally bogus. After the first couple of weeks back in Juarez two years ago, he had pretty much quit checking mainstream and underground news sites for updates. The original story was about terrorism, and the professor was listed as an accidental death. The destruction of the listening site was covered by the Green forums, but only what one might observe physically from afar. The bomb scare in Vegas was quickly hushed.
He had already decided the best, most direct path, was through the FBI office in El Paso. Leaving his truck at the mission, he rode the bus downtown. He decided a hike in the cool mid-morning air would help him clarify his thoughts. He carried only his passport and old driver’s license, plus a few pages of notes with the basic facts and dates. Most of it did not appear anywhere in the news reports, as far as he knew. Crossing the bridge was routine, and he caught a bus to within a block of the FBI office. The place was bustling.
Once inside, he announced at the front desk he was turning himself in, but the man seemed unimpressed. “What for?”
“I suppose the charges would be terrorism, vandalism, and several murders,” Michael said with a straight face.
“We’ve got drug gangs doing that every day. Have a seat over there, and I’ll see if we have an agent available.” Just like that. No handcuffs, no whisking away to interrogation, nothing. Just wait your turn.
After quite some time, the man at the desk managed to waylay a passing agent, identified by the badge hooked to his belt. Walking over to Michael, he asked again why Michael was turning himself in, and seemed, if anything, less interested than the first man. Producing the pages of notes, Michael watched the agent flip through them. He told Michael to wait there, then walked away and disappeared around a corner.