God's Not Dead 2

by Travis Thrasher

  “I know,” I interrupt. “What I’m saying is this: In a normal world, if I was here dropping you off, I’d ask you out to dinner. Really. Whether someone considered it a date or not—I don’t know. I don’t care. I enjoy your company. You laugh—at least some of the time—at my jokes. And it’s not like I’m going back home to someone or even heading out to see someone. And I know . . .”

  “I live with my grandfather,” she says. “Enough said.”

  I laugh. “See what I mean? And it’s obvious, you know. I like you and it’s normal to want to spend more time with people you like.”

  “I was just wondering if you were hungry,” Grace says in her very matter-of-fact way.

  “I know, I know. I don’t take it as anything more. It’s just—maybe I’ve avoided relationships for a while. Any attempts I’ve had at them have just gone wrong. And I’m not saying—I’m not talking for you. I’m just saying—”

  “What are you saying?”

  I look at the grin on her lips. She’s enjoying this. “I don’t know, to be honest.”

  “I hope your closing argument is a lot better than that.”

  I laugh and shake my head. She does have a good point even if she’s teasing me.

  “Well, listen, Tom. It’s my grandfather’s birthday tomorrow. Would you like to come to the party?”

  “A birthday party?”

  She nods. “Yes. So far there are two people attending. You’d be the third.”

  “It’s a deal. As for tonight, I’m going to eat something really unhealthy and then stay up trying to find the silver bullet.”

  “Well, if you need any ideas or information or anything, you know how to contact me.”

  With that, she says good-bye and gets out of the car and heads into the house. Very classy. Very adult. Very mature. She never really responded to any of the blabber/blather I was doing. Instead, she sidestepped the whole conversation and moved along.

  Maybe I’m just imagining this connection between us.

  I drive off wondering whether I’ve been so far removed from having relationships, especially with women, that I don’t even know how to objectively look at them anymore. She’s probably inside going, What was he talking about? It’s not like we fit together anyway. We don’t even share the same beliefs. Even though I’m defending her faith, at the end of the day I still don’t share it.

  I don’t buy it. I get it but don’t subscribe to it.

  It turns out I skip the dinner that’s bad for me. I skip dinner altogether. I decide to head to my office, where I can go over previous case files and pull out some of those dusty law books to try to find some kind of inspiration or idea. Thankfully Roger’s car isn’t in the parking lot. The afternoon turns to evening, and by the time I start thinking about leaving, the sunlight outside has mostly disappeared.

  I’m shelving a few of the books I’ve been going through when I hear the door to the building open. Then I hear approaching steps.

  I’m tired and am not in the mood to see Roger.

  The figure at the open doorway isn’t my partner. He’s much too tall and lean and leering. There are far too many wrinkles around the eyes, and they’re finding far too many faults in mine.

  “You actually reading those ancient books that belong to your delinquent partner?” my father asks me.

  “I spend about half the time on the computer.”

  Dad studies my office. He’s been here before, but not recently. Not that it’s changed even slightly since I first moved in. “I like what you’ve done to the place.”

  I didn’t pick up many traits from Daddy Dearest, but sarcasm is one of the few.

  He walks in and picks up the People magazine that’s on a stack of folders on a filing cabinet. “Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie,” Dad says, looking at the cover. “I’m sure this comes in handy for educational law.”

  I’m really in no mood to talk to Dad. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I just wanted to check and see if you got the same bug juror number twelve had.”

  “You were there?” I ask, looking up from the reports I was collecting before leaving.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m not in the mood for a critique.”

  Dad is still studying my office. Or more like snooping around. “You know, I remember Kane from the days I worked. I hated that man. Makes lawyers look bad.”

  Ah, the irony.

  I decide to keep my mouth shut.

  “Of course, he definitely has control of that courtroom. He does have a presence.”

  I stuff the files on my desk into my leather briefcase. It’s been getting a workout lately.

  “Find any solution this afternoon?” he asks like a normal partner might ask me.

  I rub my temples and close my eyes for a moment.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask him again.

  “Just a father visiting his son.”

  I look over and study him and cannot for the life of me figure out what he wants. “So—do you have some bright idea you want to offer me?”

  Dad finds one of the books I was just leafing through on my desk. He picks it up and gives it a sad sort of smile.

  “This is the Bible I gave you when you graduated from Stanford. I’m surprised you still have it.”

  I actually am not sure whether to believe him. “Are you sure?”

  He opens it up and looks at the first page. “Yes. Dedication page is still just like it was after I filled it out.”

  “Mom gave me cash. That came in pretty handy.”

  Those eyes—cruel machines that used to wreak havoc on others in a courtroom—settle on mine and simmer. He places the thick leather Bible back on my desk. “This might have come in handy when you were working for your judge.”

  I have to keep myself from picking up the book and hurling it at Dad’s head. Or at least expressing exactly what I think he can do and where he can go.

  “I have to leave,” I tell him, closing the flap of my briefcase.

  “Do you think it was accidental that you got this case?”

  Huh? “Sure—there were a handful of lawyers Len could have called. He knows Mom taught and that I’d probably have a soft spot for this teacher. He also knows I could use the work.”

  “Certainly looks like that,” he says.

  I know my father wanted to be a judge. And because he never had the talent and the temerity to actually pull it off, he decided he could at least be Judge Endler in the court of his family. Turns out in Mom’s case she got thrown out of court. As for me and my sister—my self-serving younger sister who was still trying to find herself as a young thirtysomething—we simply got held in contempt.

  “Did you just come here to gloat? Because I know you sure didn’t come to offer any sort of professional advice.”

  “Would you take it? Have you ever taken it?”

  I just want to get out of here. To run before this starts going south.

  It’s already heading down.

  I put both my palms on the top of my desk and lean over as if I’ve just finished running sprints and I’m out of breath.

  “God’s working on you, Tom.”

  My hands curl up in balls now. “Does this have to be about God?”

  “Well, the case does happen to be about—”

  “You know what I mean. Stop being so—just . . . Why? What do you want?”

  The lack of emotion and empathy and anything that a normal father might convey to his son is all there on display like it’s been my entire life. Dad doesn’t like to be cut off.

  “I’m saying that maybe you need to reconsider the one you’ve spent your whole life running away from.”

  I’m taller than this man, but I swear he’s looking down at me. It’s as if he’s growing or I’m disintegrating somehow right before him.

  “Look—just because this case has to do with God and the woman I’m defending happens to believe in him doesn’t give you any right to come preaching at me.
You got that?”

  “Do not be disrespectful,” he says. It sounds like a threat.

  “I don’t want to hear any more from you.”

  “You never have. And that’s exactly why you were fired and why you got into those troubles—because you never want to hear anything.”

  I just shake my head and close my eyes. When I reopen them he’s still there. The boogeyman hasn’t left.

  “I just don’t get it,” I say. “What makes you so afraid?”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “No? Because this is what I think. What I believe. Things like judging and cynicism and hate and jealousy all come from fears of a certain kind. So what’s yours? The fear of being judged in the afterlife? The fear of not looking like the right father or husband? Or the fear of me not converting to your religion?”

  He’s silent because I’ve wrapped my hands around a nerve. Now I’m going to shake it.

  “So many of the fears I have come from growing up afraid of you. Afraid. I mean—what’s that? A child is supposed to feel safe around their parents. I’ve never felt that. Ever.”

  “Are you done?” he says.

  “No.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “You’ve used your faith like a lawyer objecting to every single thing I’ve said and done my whole life.”

  “Look at you,” he says, then holds out a hand toward my office. “Look at this place. Can you blame me?”

  I shake my head. “I honestly believe that I’ve lost both parents. And that Grandma makes far more sense than you do.”

  “At least I believe in something, Tom.”

  “Well, gee, that really makes me want to rush to a church. Sign me up for that kind of love.”

  He walks away and I almost follow him out because I want to keep this going. Instead I just crumple in my chair, still numb from his words, still in disbelief.

  I’d rather love and not believe than believe with so much hate.

  My teeth tighten and clench. A bad habit I have. But it’s better than other bad habits. I look at the Bible on the desk, then pull it to me and open it to the dedication.

  To Thomas William Endler

  The laws in this book will govern your life and guard your heart.

  “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” —‍Matthew 6:33

  My father’s signature is below this inscription.

  This is just like him. I work my tail off and achieve something he never managed by graduating third from Stanford University, and he gives me a Bible with these words in it.

  Believe in God and live a perfect life and everything will be wonderful.

  But if you don’t do that, Tommy my boy, all hell’s gonna break loose.

  Inhale through nose. Teeth still clamped down. Then exhale slowly.

  I pull over two fingers’ worth of pages in the Bible. It’s like I’m playing Russian roulette here.

  I’ll probably get the verse about the wise man building his house upon the rock. Or wait—is that a song?

  I read the first verse my eyes go to in the middle of the page.

  But you, O Lord, are a God of compassion and mercy, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.

  The passage is a psalm. I don’t keep reading but rather read it again.

  A God of compassion and mercy.

  Slow to get angry.

  Filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.

  My eyes reach the wall where my law degree is hanging. There’s a framed painting of the Pacific on one wall. Then I see the picture of myself with Mom and my sister on the other wall.

  I don’t want to believe in someone like this. I just can’t. Not after all this time.

  All I’ve ever known is no mercy, quick anger, and absent love.

  God the Father?

  Now there’s an absolutely terrifying thought.

  I latch my briefcase and head out of the office with the Bible still open on my desk. I turn off the light and leave it in darkness.

  43

  The Dry, Unsteady Ground

  A POST FOR WAITING FOR GODOT

  by Amy Ryan

  Standing in between the two groups, I felt like one of the Israelites following Moses, suddenly finding myself stuck in the middle of the Red Sea. Any second I knew I could be swept away and drowned. And all along I had this thought:

  How’d I end up here?

  God is dead or God is alive. Black or white. Heads or tails.

  I feel like I’m suffocating because I’m in the middle, and the middle is no place to be.

  A part of me says God knows me and loves me and pulled me out for some reason.

  You are meant for more, Amy.

  I can sometimes feel this voice nudging up against my cheek and whispering in my ear.

  You are made to matter, Amy.

  Yet I wake up alone and I feel anxious and I get angry and I look out at the world with this raw and ragged sense of despair. I don’t feel like I matter to anybody. I don’t feel like I’m meant for anything. And the voices—are they just the voices of some crazy writer who’s kidding herself?

  But the voice of a reverend gets reviewed in my mind.

  “The thing God loves is us, Amy. He loves us.”

  So I’m no longer swimming in the deep. I’m on dry ground. I no longer have to cry out for help.

  But I still need it.

  It’s not a life-or-death sort of thing. And maybe that’s why—why the doubts have come; why I’m wondering and struggling.

  Does God hear prayers that aren’t so major?

  When he allows you to live after cancer, will he expect more of you?

  Will he move on when you stop on the road and take a break and then decide to maybe put up your tent and stay awhile?

  There’s nothing comforting about this tent. It feels like one pitched at camp four on Mount Everest, at the edge of the death zone.

  Do you keep climbing up or do you head down?

  Or do I just simply need a better metaphor?

  I feel like I’m—like all of us are—insulated by the words we create to comfort and protect and keep out anything that God might be trying to say to us. We stand on one side or the other and yell into a loudspeaker and remain bullheaded and shortsighted.

  I wonder how I can show love to others I don’t agree with. But first, I need to show God I have faith in him. And I haven’t managed that yet on those courthouse steps.

  Things like holding a sign and shouting for rights and taking a stand still don’t always signify rightness in one’s heart. Nobody can see what’s in the heart. Nobody except God himself.

  Search me and know me; then tell me what you see, Lord. Show me the ripples over the water when all I feel is the drained lake deep inside.

  44

  THE DAY STARTS off with a nice splash.

  I’m attempting to be generous and buy Grace coffee even without her asking. I know what she likes from the last two times I’ve been with her at the courthouse when she ordered coffee. What I didn’t realize is that carrying two cups would be so difficult. Law school, no problem. Not spilling coffee, impossible.

  I manage to get about 60 percent of the stain off my pants. But in the world war of coffee versus khaki, we know who wins.

  When I arrive to pick Grace up, she can’t help but see the massive spot right away. “Did you save any for yourself?” she jokes.

  “Actually, it was your cup I spilled.”

  Grace, being her natural tell-it-like-it-is self, can’t help but make a statement on my appearance as if she’s a judge on Project Runway. “Is this whole messy-look thing you have going on part of the strategy?”

  I try not to take offense at her comment. “Do I look that bad?”

  “It’s not that—I’m not trying to be rude—it’s just . . .” She laughs.

  “What?”

  “Did you get ready last night and sleep in your clothes
?”

  I glance down and realize that I don’t think I even looked at myself once in the mirror.

  Did I brush my teeth?

  “Yes, it’s part of my attempt to be a working-class lawyer. Not slick. I’m just part of the gang. I’m one of the people.”

  Grace chuckles at my exaggeration. “Well, you certainly aren’t slick.”

  “Slick does not win court cases,” I say. At least not around here. Hopefully.

  I’m not a fan of the phrase game changer because it’s overused. It makes me cringe just like when I hear someone use ergo or type LOL. But an hour after picking up Grace to head to court, we discover we have a true game changer happening in our trial.

  There’s a new jury member taking Pastor Dave’s spot. Ms. Green is really a lot like the pastor, except she’s younger, wears lots of makeup and black eyeliner, sports an Evanescence shirt, and seems to—oh, okay, she’s absolutely nothing like Pastor Dave, and the sorta-trouble I thought we might be in has blossomed into an absolute mess.

  “Ms. Green, are you prepared to fulfill your duties as an alternate?” Judge Stennis asks.

  “Yes, Your Honor, sir.”

  I just look down at my paper.

  I remember when Kane and his team got her as an alternate. I couldn’t object. She didn’t look so goth the first time we saw her.

  I glance over and see Grace’s worried face. I jot down a note on my legal pad.

  Don’t worry. It’s all good.

  Of course, I’m worried, and nothing is good. I haven’t attempted to write fiction since college, so this is new for me.

  “Mr. Endler, your next witness?” the judge asks.

  I stand. “We’d like to call James Warner Wallace.”

  Wallace walks through the courtroom and toward the stand with full confidence, as if he’s very comfortable in front of people. He’s wearing jeans, a white button-down shirt, and a blazer and still looks better-dressed than I am. Wallace is slim for a fiftysomething man. In shape and well groomed with close-cropped gray hair and stylish glasses, he’s as polished as they come.

  And right away, Kane goes for the jugular.

  “Your Honor, plaintiff moves for the court to exclude this witness.”