Riven

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  “Oh, trust me, I’ll think of something. And if I can’t, my hubby will. If nothing else, we ought to have a barbecue at your place while your darlin’ is up and about.”

  “C’mon, Xavier wouldn’t want to cook on his day off. That’d be like me preaching on my day off.”

  “I didn’t say he was gonna cook. You are!”

  “Then I’ll really owe you.”

  Thomas found investigative files fascinating and had taken to watching real-life mystery shows on television when he had the chance. He might have enjoyed a career as a detective. He certainly couldn’t have done worse than as a clergyman. Thomas had to smile at the memory of Grace’s scolding when he had mentioned that.

  He read through the entire corpus of the Darby case, which included the young man’s whole criminal history. Everything was fairly straightforward. Like many other men at Adamsville State, he had been raised by a single parent, had suffered a loss in his immediate family, had a history of drugs and petty crimes before graduating to bigger ones, and had been in and out of all sorts of penal institutions from juvie to local lockups and even the notorious county jail.

  Again, like many, he’d had the occasional bright spot—sort of like remission, Thomas thought. He had enjoyed stellar marks at his last halfway house and was on the verge of finishing, getting a certificate, and being recommended for job placement. Then came the murder, which had taken everyone by surprise.

  Darby’s lengthy rap sheet showed the telltale signs of almost every other inmate Thomas had ever studied. He had progressed in his career from little stuff to big, eventually pulling armed robberies, grand theft auto, assault with deadly weapons, and finally murder. He’d also had his share of escape attempts and violence against other inmates and staff at previous institutions.

  Lord, Thomas said silently, I still don’t know what to ask You in regard to this man, but You put him on my heart, so I hope his request is an answer to my prayers.

  An officer met Thomas as he emerged from the last security envelope before death row. It still struck him that if one didn’t know, he would not have been able to tell this pod from any of the others. It was different, there was no question. These men were all living by the calendar and the clock. But no sign or look or noise or smell distinguished it from any of the other units.

  Thomas caught sight of Darby from about twenty feet away. Usually the sound of anyone walking nearby captured everyone’s attention. They would at least look up, just for the change of scenery. But Darby was sitting on his cot, fiddling with his TV. He appeared thinner than Thomas remembered. Could he have lost that much weight in three months?

  The officer rapped on Darby’s door and called out, “Your chaplain visit!”

  The young man immediately turned off the TV and stood, but he seemed to carefully approach the front of his cell, as if he had learned not to appear threatening. Thomas kept his distance but tried to welcome the approach with a smile. Brady Darby looked wretched, wasted.

  From all over the pod, other cons began to stand and yell and whistle.

  “Chaplain visit!”

  “Lover boy has a meeting!”

  “Gonna get right with your Maker?”

  Thomas leaned close and spoke directly. “Thomas Carey.”

  “I’m Brady. You didn’t bring your Bible.”

  As soon as they began, someone shushed everyone else. Thomas and Darby whispered, but Thomas was certain some could hear.

  “Happy to bring it, anytime you’d like me to. Lucky for you, I have much of it memorized.”

  “Seriously?”

  Thomas nodded.

  “I memorize too,” Brady said. “You want to hear what it says on the juice boxes and in the induction packet?”

  “You know one of the things I can offer you is reading material. You can borrow anything in my library and keep it for as long as you’re here.”

  “What’ve you got?”

  Thomas pulled a folded list from his suit coat pocket, showed it to the officer—who checked it for staples or paper clips and nodded—then rolled it and passed it through one of the openings.

  Brady tossed it on his cot. “So you believe in Jesus and all that?”

  “I do,” Thomas said. “Helps in this job.”

  Brady nodded, either not catching or not appreciating the humor. “Heaven and hell? The devil? Satan?”

  “Everything in the Bible,” Thomas said. “Yes, I believe it.”

  “Sinners go to hell, good people go to heaven?”

  “No, I don’t believe that.”

  The con looked genuinely surprised, just as Thomas had hoped he would. “What then? Heaven and hell aren’t real? They just stand for something else?”

  “Oh no. Heaven and hell are real. Jesus talked more about hell than He talked about a lot of other things. You believe in Jesus, the afterlife is part of the package.”

  “Then who goes where?”

  “Sinners go both places.”

  “Sinners go to heaven? How does that work?”

  Suddenly the cacophony from men in the nearby cells erupted again.

  “Get him saved, Reverend!”

  “Bring him to Jesus!”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “Amen!”

  Thomas beckoned him forward and the man turned his ear toward one of the openings. “You want to talk about this somewhere else?”

  “Yeah, I guess we’d better.”

  “Because, listen to me, son, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you have serious questions. We both know you’re not talking about sinners, plural. You’re talking about you.”

  Brady hung his head.

  “We’re all sinners,” Thomas said. “The Bible says no one is good enough. ‘No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.’ So, we’re all sinners, but it’s the believing, forgiven ones who get to go to heaven.”

  Brady looked desperate. “What if you believe but aren’t forgiven?”

  “You’re saying, what if you do your part and God doesn’t do His? The Bible says, ‘If we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.’”

  “C’mon, not all wickedness. You know what I did.”

  “So does He.”

  Darby shook his head as if that was not what he wanted to hear. Had Thomas come on too strong too quickly? Had his years of seeing no response in this hellhole made him want to close the deal before the prospect was really sold?

  God, don’t let me mess this up.

  The hollering from all around made it nearly impossible to hear the young man.

  “He’s starting to cloud up!”

  “Here comes the waterworks!”

  “Oh, man, get the boy some cryin’ towels!”

  “Pass the offering plate, Preacher! You got him right where you want him!”

  Thomas put a finger through the opening and said, “Request a meeting in an isolation room.”

  The young man ignored his hand and looked down, nodding. But Thomas got the distinct impression he had not gotten through at all. He was sure Darby would not ask to see him again.

  For the next two weeks, as Thomas enjoyed a season of normalcy with Grace and continued to talk with Dirk and Ravinia separately, plus get time with his granddaughter—whom he had taken to calling the light of his life—he was plagued with despairing thoughts about the man on death row.

  He had heard nothing, not even a request for reading material. And Thomas had already set aside several books he thought would help, including a Bible in modern, easily readable language.

  Finally he spoke with the warden. “Is there no way I can even send this man some books without his requesting them? I know he’s curious and wants to talk with me, and I expected him to ask for a private meeting.”

  “Yeah, no. We can’t start making exceptions. You know this guy’s history. You really think
he’s redeemable?”

  “What kind of a question is that, Frank? Is any one of us redeemable? The day I start deciding who’s worthy of love and forgiveness is the day I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Well, I don’t want you to do that, but this has to be nothing new for you. You’ve been telling me for years that you can’t get these guys to take spiritual matters seriously. Why should this guy?”

  Thomas didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t tell the warden that he had felt more compelled to pray for Brady Darby than for any other con in a long time—in fact since Henry Trenton went to the gallows.

  Oh, please, he thought, don’t let this turn into another of those. He could just picture it. The kid wouldn’t want to read or hear any more Scripture, couldn’t see himself ever worthy of forgiveness, but would appreciate Thomas’s interest just enough to ask him to accompany him to his death.

  If it came to that, Thomas would quit first. He’d do what Russ did, and when he left, he would be done. No way in the world would he pray for this man for two and a half more years, only to see him go to his death as unrepentant and lost as the Deacon.

  And yet, despite himself and his disappointment, Thomas could not shake the compulsion to pray for Brady Wayne Darby. He didn’t even have to be specific. God knew what the man needed.

  And God had to know what Thomas needed too.

  I know You and You alone do the work, but use me. Please.

  58

  Death Row

  The one simple visit from the chaplain alone opened Brady to days of harassment from his pod mates. Did he dare order books or request another meeting? If these guys saw him cuffed up and ushered out for anything but his shower or his exercise hour, he’d never hear the end of it.

  Brady knew he was in trouble, however, when he quit looking forward to anything. Anything.

  He used to enjoy TV, and when he was without it for the first three months, he had craved it. Now he watched because there was nothing else to do. And he was drawn to old movies, but nothing else really interested him.

  Sleep still eluded him, and meals were so bland and same-ish that he blamed his nausea and lack of appetite on that. How was he going to endure this sentence if nothing would help him burn the hours and days?

  Brady wondered if he was going crazy. Not that that would necessarily be bad. Who cared? He sure didn’t. Losing his mind might be interesting; if nothing else, a distraction. The problem was that as fewer and fewer things even attracted his attention, he began to sleepwalk through his days.

  Night was no different. Except that the noises changed because of no TV after midnight, little differentiated night from day. Everyone lived in noisy darkness and stench. Brady wished he could force himself to get interested in the news, comedies, sitcoms, documentaries, sports, anything.

  He would sit staring blankly at the screen, determined to keep the black hole of memory from invading his brain. But it was futile. The scene always began with Katie North speaking to him as if he were an imbecile, amazed that he actually thought there had ever really been something between them.

  Was it possible he had been wrong all along? He couldn’t make it compute, couldn’t convince himself that it was simply because his love for her was so deep that he had only imagined it went both ways. Had he wanted to believe it so badly that he read all of her politeness and friendliness and mischief as true love when she was, as she claimed, just having fun?

  It couldn’t be. And the more her questions from that final conversation echoed in his brain—the ones about what he thought was going to happen in the future—the more he dreaded what was coming next. Where would he work, what would he do, what would she do? He had no answers and she was on her way out of the car.

  But wait!

  Wait!

  And he was reaching into the backseat, and now it all went to slow motion. Something had burned onto his mind every detail, every drop of sweat, the exact hue of her ashen face, the sweep of her hair as she turned to slide out, the sound, the horrid sound of the blast, and then . . . and then . . . everything else.

  No matter how many times the ugly scene played out in Brady’s mind, he couldn’t get it to change, to fade, to adjust. It was as if the explosions from those barrels had torn his lover in two and killed him in the process. And yet he had not died. At least physically. But there was nothing left of him but a body and a mind. Everything else seemed utterly gone.

  Guilty, guilty, guilty.

  There was no excuse. Oh, of course, he’d had his reasons, but he had hit a fly with a sledgehammer. He could have simply told her off, screamed at her, slapped her. He could have cussed her out, pushed her from the car, even pulled her hair.

  Brady would have been charged and prosecuted and punished for most or all of that too, but it might have at least fit the situation in some extreme way. But no. He had acted without thinking. He had let his rage, his shame, his humiliation, his abysmal disappointment over losing her lead him to take matters into his own foolish hands.

  As soon as the detonation assaulted his eardrums, Brady had known. There wasn’t a split second of wondering if this was real or whether there was some way to take it back, to start over. He knew his beautiful Katie was dead before she hit the ground and that his life was over too.

  Guilty, guilty, guilty.

  And he was going to hell.

  This unending replay continued for days, and finally the morning arrived when Brady didn’t even bother to turn on his TV. He didn’t retrieve his meal tray when it was delivered, and thus he didn’t have to return it to the slot.

  But that was duly noted and reported, and he was warned that if he continued to starve himself, he would be moved to a psychiatric facility for diagnosis and therapy. He didn’t care. Some cons looked forward to such diversions and even faked neuroses and psychoses, but this was anything but an act.

  Brady didn’t want any attention. He just wanted to die. And yet he didn’t want to go to hell.

  At the predinner count he took a little too long to rise from his cot and the officer shouted, “You want me to bring the extraction team in here, Darby? Don’t tempt me. Because I’ll do it and you’ll wish I hadn’t. Now get up and show yourself. And you’d better be eating tonight or we’re shipping you out of here.”

  Brady just nodded. And when dinner came, such as it was, he forced himself to eat. Even after having fasted almost twenty-four hours, nothing tasted right, and it was all he could do to eat enough to make them leave him alone.

  He put his tray in the slot and returned to his cot, lay in a fetal position, and closed his eyes. There would be no sleeping, and sure enough, someone from the end cell of another unit saw him and announced, “Check it out! The Heiress Murderer has assumed the position!”

  “Curled up?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Crying?”

  “Probably! Let it out, boy! Let us hear you!”

  Brady did want to cry. He wanted to sob, to wail, to curse himself. He buried his face in his blanket, and from the depths of his soul came raspy, guttural moans. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he screamed, muffling his cries, shoulders heaving.

  He could still hear the others taunting and teasing and berating him. Brady no longer cared. He wanted to bellow and curse them, but that would be playing right into their hands. They already probably thought they had pushed him to this point. But they hadn’t at all. He had done it himself.

  Loser, loser, loser.

  He couldn’t remember having made a right decision for as long as he lived. Even when things temporarily went right—when he landed the musical role, or got a job, or helped the antigang unit, or turned over a new leaf at Serenity, or loved his woman the best he knew how—eventually he messed it all up.

  And now this.

  Who was he that he suddenly belonged in prison, condemned to die? It seemed he had moved overnight from mouthing off in grade school to lying despicable and broken on death row. How had it happened? Ho
w had he let it happen?

  Beyond hope.

  Suddenly Brady sat straight up and let his feet hit the floor. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He was through crying about it. He had brought this on himself. He was responsible, had done it, caused it all.

  There was no one to blame but himself, and what future was there in wallowing in it? He had no future. Brady would cause no more trouble for himself or anyone else. He would park his mind in neutral and consider this a marathon, not a sprint. He would go through the motions one had to go through to do his time, and that was all.

  Maybe he couldn’t sleep or eat like he wanted to, but he would go to bed at midnight every night and lie there until awakened for the first count of the day. He would eat his breakfast, all of it, regardless how long it took to force it down. He would eat all his meals, watch TV all day—just to know what time it was—would shower and shave when it was his turn, stand around in the exercise kennel during his hour, and speak to no one unless it was absolutely necessary.

  If he found himself going stir-crazy again, maybe he would ask for the occasional magazine or newspaper or book.

  And when the terrible images invaded again, as he knew they would, he would simply watch as they flashed past. Brady was as sorry as he knew how to be, but there would be no apologizing to anyone.

  Strangely, Brady found he did believe. He believed in God and even Jesus. And he believed in hell. Something must have stuck in that stupid brain years ago from church and Sunday school and hymn sings at Aunt Lois’s little church, because there was no longer a doubt in his mind that he was going to wind up there, burning for eternity, just as Jordan North said he deserved.

  When he settled into that routine, having essentially surrendered to his fate, Brady found himself flat, sad beyond measure. His only consolation was that he knew justice would be served. How did the cliché go? He had made his bed . . .

  Mail call brought another note from Aunt Lois. She and Carl were still praying and still pleading with him to put them on the visitors list so they could come see him. At least she didn’t mention any more about knowing he hadn’t meant to do what he did.