The Reluctant Prophet

by Nancy Rue

  Chief did come by briefly, and except for his required head-butting with Desmond, he was uber-professional. I took my cue from that. If I blurted out, “I’m sorry I was an idiot, and I only kept it from you because I didn’t want you to know I went out with another guy even though I despise him and even though you only think of me as a daughter or a sister or a buddy, and I think of you—” anyway, I was afraid he’d freeze-dry me.

  “There’s not much I can do until Monday when Liz Doyle’s back in her office,” he said as he was putting on his helmet. “In the meantime I suggest you cancel any appointments you have set up with Troy Irwin.” He snapped the catch on the strap. “Personal or professional.”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Good. See you tomorrow.”

  “Oh?”

  “I told Desmond I’d take him for a ride.”

  “Oh. Right. Yeah.”

  I watched through the kitchen window as he pulled out of Palm Row a little faster than he had to on the Road King. Longing. That was what I felt. For what—that I didn’t know. And it was probably pointless anyway, because spiritually Chief and I weren’t even in the same realm. It felt like we were at times—but that brought me right back to where I started. Since when could I count on my feelings?

  “Trouble with your man, Big Al?” Desmond said behind me.

  “He’s not my—”

  I stopped and turned to him. His eyes were big and almost sad. “Yeah, I’ve got trouble with my man, Desmond,” I said.

  “You gon’ fix it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I could talk to him if you want. I know all about this stuff.”

  I tried to smile and tapped my palm. “You gonna show me how to get him ‘right there’?”

  Desmond shook his head. “He already there. Just don’t nobody know it.’”

  I pulled his ball cap over his eyes so he wouldn’t see mine.

  “You are a nut bar,” I said. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  Sunday was the longest day on record. When Chief came by to take Desmond on a HOG ride, he politely asked me if I wanted to come with, but I begged off, saying I was wiped out. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed, and I was afraid to find out.

  My house was like a cave when they left, so I took some Christmas decorations to the women. Nobody had heard from Sherry, but it seemed their relief over their house was enough to carry them through for the time being. Geneveve was wistful, though she smiled gamely when I said we’d go get a tree this next week.

  “I know you’re worried about Sherry,” I said. “But what if we focus on giving Desmond a nice Christmas?”

  She just nodded and stretched the corners of her eyes with her fingers. I realized as I left that it was a lot easier on her back when she didn’t care if he loved her. I knew the feeling.

  With no place else to go, I went home and put a grocery-store log in the fireplace. The sky was threatening one of those dismal early December rains that belies everything you believe about winter in Florida. Between that and my mood, Desmond was going to need something cheerful when he got back. I was considering opening a roll of cookie dough and baking what I didn’t eat when someone knocked on the front door. I wiped my sooty hands on the seat of my jeans as I hurried to answer it, but when I spotted the car through the window, I slowed to a crawl. It was the Reverend Garry Howard’s gray Buick.

  God? What are you doing to me?

  Unfortunately no adamant Nudge told me to duck into the coat closet, so I opened the door. He stood, hands folded against his thighs, face drawn and older than I remembered. Funny. Even after not seeing him for two and a half months, I expected him to look just as he had then—smile in place, wings extended for the ministerial hug.

  “I apologize for not calling first,” he said. “I was afraid you’d keep avoiding me.”

  What was I supposed to say to that?

  “Do you have a few minutes to talk?” he said.

  I knew even less what to say to that, but it was starting to drizzle, and I couldn’t leave him standing in it while I made up my mind. “Sure,” I said.

  It wasn’t until I was taking his jacket that I saw he was shivering slightly. It was enough to make me offer him some tea.

  “That would be nice,” he said.

  “You sit, and I’ll go fix us some,” I said.

  I planned to use the time it took for water to boil to figure out a way to tell him why I wasn’t coming back to his church. But he followed me into the kitchen and sat at the bistro table. The chair didn’t fit him at all.

  “I hear you’ve been doing some very good things,” he said. “Bonner has told me about your Sacrament House.”

  “Really?” I said. I took my time filling the kettle and getting it on the stove.

  “It’s a fine thing you’re doing, Allison. A godly thing.”

  Hitching myself up onto the other bistro chair, I looked at him warily.

  “I like to think it’s godly,” I said. “It’s what I’m hearing from God to do, anyway.”

  He nodded. If he’d just come to tell me I was wonderful, the lines on his face wouldn’t be etching a scolding into my near future.

  “Bonner also tells me you’re seeing to their Christian education.”

  “Whose?” I said.

  “The, uh, the women you’re taking care of.”

  “The former prostitutes and recovering drug addicts, you mean.”

  “Well, yes.” I’d never seen a grown man squirm before. “You’ve led them to the Lord—is that what I’m to understand?”

  “Led them to the Lord,” I said. “You know—I’ve come to wonder exactly what that means.”

  The Reverend Howard’s head tilted back, and he looked at me through the bottoms of his bifocals. “You know what it means. You introduce them to a life with Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.”

  “And what does that look like, exactly?” I pulled my feet up onto the seat. I knew my voice was teetering on the edge of sarcasm, and I tried to pull it back. “See, that’s where I was getting confused. I’m sure Bonner told you that, too.”

  His eyebrows came together in a tangle of white over his nose. “Bonner had nothing but praise for you. The others in your small group were a little more concerned.”

  “I bet they were. But I’m fine.”

  “And these—women?”

  “What about them?”

  “Are they—”

  “They’re turning their lives around, step by step.”

  “Following the plan for salvation, then.”

  “The plan for salvation.” I ran my hand down the back of my neck to make sure the hair wasn’t literally standing up like hackles. “That’s another catchy little phrase I’m not sure I know the meaning of. Our plan is to take it day by day, praying our way through, going with what God tells us.”

  Garry put his hands on the table as if he were about to slice bread and fixed his gaze between them. “It is one thing to feed and clothe and shelter in the name of the Lord,” he said. “But not everything that is warm and fuzzy is Jesus.” He looked at me, eyes bordering on stern. “I just want to encourage you to make sure that what you’re teaching is solid Christianity. You may not be attending my church right now, Allison, but you are still my daughter in Christ.”

  “So let me get this straight.”

  “Of course.” He nodded and encouraged me with his hands to go on.

  “No one at Flagler Community Church is willing to help me with Sacrament House, with the exception of Bonner. But you’re all willing to tell me how to run it—ready to jump on what I might be doing wrong ‘in the name of Jesus.’”

  “I just don’t want to see you water down the gospel. We can’t call someone a Christian just because she’s s
topped using drugs.”

  “O-oh,” I said. “See, there’s our communication problem, Reverend—the one you told me we had that day you did my friend’s father’s funeral.”

  He looked puzzled, but he nodded again.

  “Our trouble is that we’re not talking about the same gospel. The gospel I know is the one where Jesus preached and lived the unconditional love of salvation. You know—the one where he ate at the same table with the hookers and the drug addicts and the victims of injustice and poverty—that one. The one you’re talking about is the one I haven’t read—where only the right kind of people get into the closed club and get saved.” I shook my head. “It is such a relief to finally have that cleared up.”

  The Reverend Howard drew himself up in the bistro chair, hands on the table like he was gripping the pulpit. “I don’t appreciate your sarcasm, Allison.”

  I didn’t either, but it was the only way I could keep myself from snatching out a handful of his wavy white pastoral hair.

  “We can’t communicate at all if you’re going to be that way.” He looked at me through the bifocals again until he seemed satisfied that I was in my place, even though I hadn’t moved so much as an eyebrow. “I have a responsibility to make sure this is a truly Christian endeavor before I offer our help.”

  It was my turn to tilt my head back—so he wouldn’t see my eyes narrowing. “What kind of help?” I said.

  “Since you haven’t been with us for several weeks, you don’t know that the church has received a generous donation, most of which will be used to build a Christian school here in the city proper. I would like to propose to the elders that we use some of the money to support your ministry of turning these misguided people into upstanding members of the church, provided it operates under the same belief statement. You can certainly understand why that would be necessary.”

  The Nudge was uneasy. I unfolded my legs and tilted toward him.

  “Where are you building the school?” I said. “I don’t know of any vacant property in the city proper.”

  “Again, you’re a bit out of the loop. We’ve been told that most of what is currently the West King Street neighborhood is going to be torn down. We’re being given a prime piece of real estate just off the main road.”

  “By whom?” I said.

  But I could have mouthed it with him when he answered, “By the Chamberlain Foundation.”

  “Then thanks but no thanks.” I leaned back. “I won’t touch a dime of Troy Irwin’s money.”

  “He’s not a member of our church, but he has always been there for all the churches in the city when they’ve been in need.”

  “Oh yeah—we’ve all got beautiful buildings. I’m sure your school will be state of the art. But every kid that goes there is going to come out believing what you’re sitting here telling me.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “You want them to find it easier to say no to the real Jesus than to say no to the Jesus they’ve made up?”

  He shook his head, but I went on.

  “This money you’re offering isn’t about compassion for my women. It’s about shaping them up so they’re fit for a club that I personally no longer want to belong to.”

  “What are you saying, Allison?”

  “I’m saying yes to Jesus, and no to you.”

  The kettle whistled as he let himself out the door. We never did have tea.

  According to our agreement about all things Troy Irwin, I repeated my conversation with Garry Howard verbatim to Chief when he brought Desmond home. He remained stoic, even through the Jesus parts.

  “Irwin’s not breaking a law by making a donation to the church,” he said.

  “I know, but it still makes me want to vomit.”

  “Just don’t go vomit on him. I’ll call you tomorrow when I’ve talked to Liz Doyle.”

  He left with a still somewhat businesslike good-bye. Desmond hung in the doorway to the den, looking from me to the door and back again, and then seemed to decide I wouldn’t benefit from his advice this time and headed for the pantry. If he’d opened up the conversation, I might have said, “I don’t want him to just be my lawyer, Desmond. I at least want him for my friend.”

  But Chief’s voice on the phone the next day didn’t sound like a lawyer. I pressed the phone to my ear to make sure the softened tone was coming from the Chief I’d been hearing for the past two days.

  “You free this morning, Classic?” he said.

  “After I take Desmond to school.”

  “Mind if I swing by?”

  “I’ll have the coffee on.”

  I didn’t know whether to be relieved or scared, so I settled for cautiously optimistic. When I missed the school driveway and had to make a U-turn, Desmond saw it as Big Al freaking out.

  “You got to get yourself together,” he told me when he got out of the van.

  He had no idea.

  I made coffee and the cookies I’d planned to bake the day before, and then stuck the latter in the cabinet because I didn’t want to look too eager. I would have told myself I was behaving like a silly teenager, except that I’d never been one until now.

  Chief’s sober face in my back-door window erased any possibility that the conversation was going to be about us. When I motioned him in, he went straight to the coffee pot.

  “I hope you made this strong,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re going to need it.”

  I sagged against the sink. “This can’t be good.”

  “The first part is. I talked to Liz Doyle.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She confirmed what you said about the West King development plans—and she showed me all the emails that are going through the city channels. Irwin hasn’t made a public statement yet—I’m sure he’ll make some big deal out of that—but he’s pulling out all the stops to get approval.”

  “And in the meantime he’s got his investors lined up,” I said. “I took them all on a carriage tour one day.”

  Chief’s face darkened. “When was that?”

  “Relax. It was months ago, before I even rented Sacrament House.” I folded my arms. “I made my opinions about Chamberlain and Troy Irwin known on that tour. I just found out the other day that was why I was ‘terminated.’”

  He scrubbed his face with his hand. “Do you see why I don’t want you within a hundred yards of the guy?”

  “Trust me. I don’t want to be within a hundred yards of him. Make that five hundred.”

  In the moment he paused I was afraid he was going to take me further in that direction, but he carried his coffee to the bistro table and eased into a chair. He looked so natural in it, I had to look away. Wiping out the sink made a good excuse.

  “While I was talking to Liz, she brought up the guardianship papers.”

  “Good,” I said. “Geneveve wants to be able to take care of Desmond again, but they still have a long way to go before that happens. I want to be legal in the meantime. Do I need to go sign them?”

  “They’re not ready.” I turned in time to see him grimace at the mug. “She hit a couple of snags.”

  I tossed the sponge aside. “Define ‘snags.’”

  “You’re not gainfully employed—although you do have enough in the bank for them to overlook that.”

  “They’ve looked at my bank account?”

  “You also have a court case pending against you.”

  “What—oh, you mean the noise thing?”

  “I’m working on the Vernell woman’s lawyer to get her to drop that. Once I do, Liz says they won’t hold that against you.”

  “So what’s the real snag?”

  He held up two fingers.

  “There’s more than one? For Pete’s sake, it
’s not like I have a rap sheet!”

  “Your arrest in the park is one. We go to court next week. Again, depending on the judge, I think we’ll get that dismissed.”

  I scratched at my scalp with both hands and realized too late that they were still wet. “I don’t get what else there could possibly be.”

  “Vehicular assault doesn’t ring a bell?”

  “Vehicular …” My voice trailed off into a vision of an arm hitting the windshield of my motorcycle in a West King alley. But nobody knew about that except Jasmine. Even the creep who jumped in front of me didn’t know who I was.

  “Back in 1986?” Chief said.

  Everything in me went heavy. I grabbed the counter so I wouldn’t thud to the floor.

  “Hey—you okay?”

  “No. I don’t believe this.” I turned to the sink and held on, head toward the drain I wished I could put myself into.

  “Classic.”

  Only because he called me that did I answer with a feeble, “What?”

  “Liz wouldn’t give me details because there’s still some question about whether you were considered an adult at the time of the—”

  “I was just before turning eighteen. And it wasn’t vehicular assault. It was an accident.”

  “Were you formally charged?”

  I shook my head at the sink. “There were no lawyers—nothing like that. I was told it was settled.”

  “And no one’s brought it up in all this time.”

  “No.” There was no need to. I’d done what I was asked to do and I thought it went away. I stood up, my back still to Chief. “I suppose you have to know what happened.”

  “Not unless you want to tell me.”

  I did turn around then. He wasn’t using the eagle eyes to watch me.

  “Why aren’t you reaming me for not telling you everything you could possibly need to know as my lawyer?”

  “Because in the first place, everybody’s youth has a dark spot in it. As your lawyer it doesn’t matter until something like this comes up—and the way it sounds—” he shrugged his big shoulders—“it won’t matter now.”

  “And in the second place?”