by Rich Foster
She kissed his cheek and said, “Nothing that a little love and adoption shouldn’t fix.”
The next day, Max Teech looked across his desk and grinned while Lucas looked over the monthly report.
“Adoption, eh?” Teech tried to needle him, “I told you no one gives up a free handout. You had to marry your wife to get her off the books. Now you’ve got yourself a kid.”
“Four kids,” Lucas laughed holding up four fingers. “And I got the best of the bargain. Your problem is you are an old cynic.”
“I’ve got to admit, two other people wrote to say, thank you but they have jobs again and no longer needed help. I never thought that would happen.”
“You need to get out more, Max. You spend too much time with lawyers, that could turn anyone sour.”
While in town, Lucas went to see an architect about designing an addition. Calley and he had ideas but they needed professional help. He had a brief conversation. They made plans for him to come visit the house site on Thursday afternoon.
Lucas then ran a few errands, including stopping at the bank to transfer money. Afterward, he stepped into a nearby coffee shop. Taking a short break, he skimmed the Clarion and sipped his coffee.
A young man came in and posted a flier on the notice board. He seemed familiar; Lucas placed him when he read the notice.
“GO RALLY! Meet this Friday to protest religion in the schools. Stop the after-school prayer group! Support GO! And get god out of our schools NOW!”
Lucas said to him, “As long as there are exams, there will be prayer in schools.”
Kevin Daniels turned around. “Very, very, funny, I’ve never heard that one before.”
“So what’s your problem with students praying at school? Is it mandatory?”
“No, but it is public property. We at GO don’t think public facilities should be used for promoting religion.”
“Hmm. Are you ecumenical?”
Kevin was puzzled.
“Do you want everyone out, the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, the Buddhists, all of them?”
“Yea.”
“What about the atheists. When you talk about there not being a God you’re sort of doing the same as everyone else, promoting your beliefs.”
“It’s not the same.”
Lucas gestured to the empty chair at his table.
“Take a seat. I’d like to buy you a cup of coffee.”
Kevin was always open to talking about his cause. He ordered a double latte on Lucas’s tab and sat down.
“You’re the minister at the Forks, right?”
“Yes.”
“Complete waste of time.”
“I might say the same about your cause.” Lucas jabbed a thumb toward the flier.
“God’s a bunch of superstitious drivel. As Marx said, religion is the opiate of the people.”
“What would you offer the people in its stead?”
“Reality. The fact that there is nothing but what we bring to life.”
“The problem is that your position requires faith. You can no more disprove the existence of God than I can prove that he does. So, religion is just as good an answer as non-belief.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“What would you do if you could prove God did not exist?”
“I’d let everyone know.”
“But after that, once your message was out, then what would you do?”
Kevin was put out by the question.
“I don’t know.”
“It seems to me that spending your time preaching there is no God is like standing in a theater yelling there is no fire. Soon everyone has to ask, so what is your point? What do you offer to replace Marx’s opiate?”
Kevin was at a loss for an immediate answer. The preacher’s postulate was a new idea. Turning the question back on Lucas, Kevin asked, “What would you do if there was no God?”
“I would either kill myself and be done with it or I would continue as I do now. Trying to make the world a better place. Fighting against the fates, while knowing it will come to naught. It would be a legacy”
“For a time. But so what? If not tomorrow, next year, or a thousand years it will all end. In 115 trillion years the universe goes dark. It’s important that we live for truth now.”
“What you say is a belief, Kevin. For what is truth? The reality is, we all live by faith, each one of us. Take away every form of faith, religious and scientific, and mankind would rush like lemmings into the abyss. It’s the belief that a little more money will make his life better that drives one man. Another belief drives another man. You seem to think that if you could just get God out, the world would be better. When a man loses his beliefs, he loses his will to live.”
“I hate foolish superstition.”
“I hate meaningless existence. For me God gives me meaning. If Jenny, Desmond, my uncle Elijah, or Ruthie were wrong, at least they died with a purpose. I wouldn’t take that away from them, even if I could.”
“So, you’re saying ignorance is bliss?”
“No. I’m saying if there is no God then man’s self-awareness is one of evolution’s cruelest tricks. We should envy the dumb animals of the fields.”
For lack of an adequate response, Kevin picked up his fliers. “Interesting talking with you, but I have to put these up.” And so the would-be missionary left to work his new mission field.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Throughout April Calley kept up a correspondence with Robert. There are those who would think she wrote because she suffered from a form of Stockholm syndrome, trying to identify with the man who tormented her but in fact she had come to pity Robert Goodman.
She explained to Lucas how the change occurred after they began to exchange letters. One of her letters poured out the grief she felt and the pain that was brought about by his hand. She desperately wanted him to see how she felt.
When a few days later she opened his reply, it simply said, “I am sorry. I was wrong.”
In those few word Calley found tremendous release. Her faith found renewed strength. It was still tested in the dark, early hours of her soul, but in those words she saw the possibility of redemption. People could change.
As for Robert, he saw himself in her letter and in her cry of outrage and pain. He sensed her need to be understood and in that found understanding himself. Not once had he said those words to his own wife. In penning them he found personal liberation.
From that point, their letters evolved away from grief and toward life. Calley told him about his daughter, June. She shared small events of the day. She described the coming of spring. She shared her faith in God.
Robert wrote of the books he read, as his incarceration opened him up to the world of ideas. As the days on the calendar passed toward his execution, his one regret was he did not have more time to read new authors.
At Calley’s urging he read the New Testament but stopped after the second Gospel. To him it seemed nonsense. There was nothing after death.
*
Lucas and Calley forged a family together. By the first of May, construction began upon the addition to the house. A new wing would be added with a family room downstairs and three bedrooms above. Backhoes dug up the earth, forms were set, and soon concrete appeared where lawn once was.
However, lingering in the background was Robert’s impending execution. On the playground, children who heard their parents talking at home taunted June at school. They shouted that her daddy was a killer. Boys held a fist over their heads and jerked an invisible rope, while making their eyes bulge and their tongues stick out. Others, hearing grown-ups say, “Bad seed, begets bad seed,” started to call her a killer too. One day, a circle of classmates danced around her singing,“Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her father forty whacks, when she saw what she had done, she gave her mother forty-one.”
June went home crying.
Lucas and Calley each received official notification of Robert Goodman’s execution. A
s family members of the victims they would be permitted to act as witnesses. The letter requested they RSVP, to receive instructions for their presence, and to receive the necessary pass into the State Prison at Harmon.
At one time, Calley wanted to be present to see Goodman suffer. Now she would be going, if not as a friend, at least, as someone who understood in part. If it were not for Lucas’s intervention, she would have gladly put a bullet into an unarmed man’s head. It might well have been her execution instead.
Lucas went primarily to support his wife and as June’s legal guardian he felt an obligation to be present. He carried sorrow for what happened at the church, but not bitterness. He knew that his Uncle Elijah would have gone and shouted forgiveness before his killer died.
They drove upstate the day before the execution. By midday they checked into a motel not far from the prison. When they went out for lunch they passed the news vans parked along the road, their satellite booms at the ready.
To pass the time, Calley lay down for a nap. Lucas walked to the prison. Already small crowds of people were gathered on the sidewalk. A police line separated the two parties. One side looked eagerly to the night’s execution. The other meant to hold a candlelight vigil to decry the death penalty. As he strolled past, the two factions shouted abuse at one another. Animosity and hate filled the air. Lucas thought there was little surprise that a man might kill, if this was the normal human condition.
At four o’clock he roused Calley from a troubled dream. She showered, as if to wash away the past and also her part in the execution process. An hour later, they drove to the employee entrance of the prison. Robert had requested they visit.
Bars slid open, then clanged shut behind them. Their footsteps echoed down the tiled corridor. From elsewhere in the building came the clamor of humanity.
They were searched twice before being shown to the holding cell, a short walk away from the execution chamber. Robert sat on the bunk it seemed unlikely he would need that night. If he did, he would receive an eleven o’clock wake up call. Rising he said, “Thank you for coming.”
They stood in an awkward circle until he gestured them toward the metal cot and he sat down on the stainless toilet attached to the wall.
“How’s June?”
“Fairly well, but kids can be cruel.”
Robert picked up an envelope. “Give this note to her, if you don’t mind. I guess you’re her father now. Maybe you won’t want to her to have it.”
“No, you’re her father, I wouldn’t interfere.”
“Go ahead and read it, so you will know when to give it to her.”
Lucas pulled the single sheet out.
“I wasn’t much of a father, but there’s not much I can do about that now. Just remember, it’s not blood that determines who you are, but the choices you make. I hope you do more with your life than I did. R. Goodman”
Robert’s last meal came up from the kitchen. He left it sitting covered on the tray. “I’m not hungry,” he said. Lighting a cigarette he chuckled, “It’s nice to know I don’t have to worry about these killing me.” Lucas picked up the pack and lit one, too. They sat in silence for a time, smoking.
“I forgot how much I once liked these.”
Robert lit another from the butt he was finishing. He looked down as he spoke.
“I am sorry. I know that probably means nothing, but I am.”
Calley simply said, “It does. Thank you.”
They chatted aimlessly for an hour. Finally Lucas looked at Robert and asked, “Are you ready for this? Are you ready to meet your maker?”
Robert chuckled. “Still pitching, huh preacher man? I should convert just to make you feel better, but I can’t do it.”
He took a long drag on his cigarette before adding ruefully, “If there is life after death I would like to say I’m sorry to your uncle and your girl, even to the other ones, but if there really is a heaven and hell, I probably won’t be seeing them.”
A short while latter, a guard said it was time for his visitors to leave. Lucas shook Robert’s hand, it was awkward but it also seemed right. Calley gave her daughter’s killer a slight hug, “I’m sorry too. I’m sorry for what Jason and the church did to you.”
Three hours later they were sitting in a darkened room. Two rows of chairs faced a glass window behind which drapes were drawn. Earl Langston came in and without speaking took a chair. He was nervous and restlessly shifted in his seat. The warden arrived, followed by Sheriff Gaines who as a witness for Canaan County. A few reporters were let in, though they were told to ask the families no questions unless spoken to first. Lastly, Kevin Daniels came in. His eyes were glassy. Lucas was certain he’d been drinking.
Outside the prison walls, dozens held candles in silent vigil. Signs read, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you.” “Suicide by State.” And “Killing never stopped killings.”
Across the drive advocates of the death penalty and those who were drawn to the macabre, partied. A parked car with portable speakers on the roof blared “Hang Them High” into the night.
At five minutes to midnight the curtains were drawn on the final act of the play. Robert Goodman lay strapped to a gurney; arms spread out like a parody of a crucifix. An intravenous line was already lodged in his vain, running a mild tranquilizer into him. The warden waited by the telephone lest the Governor phoned in clemency. Nobody expected that would happen.
The clock’s hands moved inexorably toward midnight. Langston and Daniels both seemed to move to the edge of their seats, on their face, a hunger for what was to happen. As the minute hand clicked to one minute after, Robert looked toward the witnesses and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry!”
An unseen hand turned a toggle. A massive dose of barbiturates flowed into Robert’s vein. Shortly, a drug was added to stop his heart. A few snorts came from him, like a man restless in his sleep, and then his body tensed up seeking the air that would no longer come. At five minutes after the hour he was declared dead.
“That’s it?” Earl Langston gasped, “That’s all the bastard gets?” He stood up as if ready to attack Goodman and make him suffer as he and his wife suffered. He wanted a more visceral image to recall whenever he thought of Goodman’s death. Guards escorted him from the room, shouting.
Kevin Daniels was the first to leave the prison. A reporter asked him, “Is it over?”
Kevin mumbled bitterly, “It’s never over.”
He ignored the other reporters, almost running one cameraman down, who truculently stayed in the way of his car. Kevin drove to his hotel. Over the next hour he drank a bottle of bourbon alone, before passing out.
When Earl Langston was asked for a comment outside of the prison, he could not hide his anger and pique. “The son-of-a-bitch said he was sorry. I didn’t want him to be sorry, I wanted him to suffer!”
Calley and Lucas drove past the media vans without stopping, greatly frustrating the waiting press corps. After all, they were the couple that adopted the killer’s daughter.
*
Lying in bed, Lucas held Calley in his arms. She cried softly. She shed tears for her lost child and a few for the man who was equally lost. She wept for herself and for everyone who suffered from life’s injustices.
In the dark, Lucas thought of his uncle and the tragedy of Mason Forks. He thought about Desmond, Ruthie, and Jenny, people he only met in death, people who died for the sins of others.
Calley’s muffled cries, softened to regular breathing. He felt the warmth of her body against his. Lucas thought about Robert Goodman, Elizabeth Mannering, and Calley, totally different people who had each burned with the will to kill, an urge he knew lurked below the surface in everyone. Yet they each ended so differently.
He thought of Jason whose actions brought misery to so many lives, yet inadvertently brought joy into his own life.
Some would call it fate. Others believed it to be God’s will. Drifting on the edge of sleep he knew he had no answers to sufferi
ng. Nor could he explain life’s tragedies. Lucas simply chose to believe.