Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2)

by Miles A. Maxwell

  When it was passed to him, Franklin noticed the plate was new. Of well-polished brass. There was a new arrangement, the plastic cups of grape juice — grown right down the road outside town — surrounding the pile of wafers in the center.

  Franklin took one of the cups. The Communion wafers were different too, something he hadn’t seen before. Unlike the old cubes, these were white and round and flat. Beveled around the outside edge.

  He took one and hesitated.

  Did he really want to be a cannibal? Eating symbolic human flesh? Drinking symbolic human blood?

  He put the cup back into its cutout, still full. Ralph took from the plate and moved it on, not noticing. Not sure what to do with the wafer, Franklin slid it under his robe into his pants pocket.

  Finally the plates were cleared.

  “Reverend,” the organist whispered. “Reverend?”

  Bach’s last few notes had already died away. It was all timed out, the organist staring at him, as if to say: Why don’t you get up there and start your sermon? Two years — fifty-two sermons. Alternating Sundays split with Ralph Maples. Ralph staring at him now too. The organist looked to the choir. They didn’t know why Franklin was waiting either.

  Six hundred persons seated across the cherry wood pews. More standing across the back. Even more in the aisles. Standing room only. Probably breaking some sort of fire code. “Double Reverend Maples’ attendance!” Marj had whispered to him once. The corner of Franklin’s mouth twitched a sad smile. Like Cyn, Marjorie had left him.

  Their eyes filled with hopelessness and sorrow and shock and sadness. Checking out this damn bandage around my neck. Their impotence to change a God-damned thing. All waiting, for me to say the things that have to be said. To console the bereaved. To bless and baptize and empathize and listen and encourage and teach and counsel. New York City’s death and destruction? Hold their hands! It will all be okay! Virginia Beach? Stand behind the pulpit! Give the sermon! Take away their pain! Things will work out!

  How am I supposed to do that . . . if I don’t believe it myself?

  He could feel their hurt. Really feel it inside. But for just this once he really didn’t want to. Just this once he felt an overwhelming urgency to set their emotion aside.

  To search for reason.

  He climbed the two steps. Stood behind the oak lectern. Tried to let the tension run from his body. He knew what he had to say. His eyes felt huge and teary, staring over the crowded pews.

  So many crying. Is this really the time?

  He was the one who would offer a way out of the mess. Tell them what they were supposed to do so they could just go home and go to sleep and wake up and yawn and think, “Oh, it was only a terrible dream!”

  That’s right, he told himself, just go ahead. Give them what they want! It’ll be fine. Unless your hearts aren’t open wide enough, or you haven’t listened carefully enough, or you don’t believe hard enough. Trust me! I have the wisdom of God. I know! I’m your proof! Until my lies become their facts.

  He released a deep sigh of resignation.

  “Five days ago, I experienced some of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t know why they happened. And I don’t want to tell you about them.”

  He looked into Sally Jeffers’ eyes.

  “Sally, Alan was my friend too. My climbing buddy, a guy I could always count on. Personally speaking, I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what you feel, but Alan —” he swallowed, barely able to get the words out. “I’m going to really miss him.”

  He looked to Lyle Spooner. “Lyle, it was only two years ago when I married you and Nevis, here in our church. I could tell right then you two were perfect for each other. Even a year later, the looks you had only for each other were —”

  Franklin lowered his head for a moment to wipe away the tears. Shook his head, not able to quite clear it.

  He turned to the Marshal twins, wet runners trailing down the girls’ faces. “Patty and Robin, your father was one of my very best friends. It was your dad’s idea to bring me here to Erie. He gave my name to the other deacons. To ask me to come here as a minister of your church. I know he loved you so very much. And I know he loved your mom. He told me many times how fortunate he was to have her.

  “My sister Cynthia and her husband Steve died in New York too, on the Upper East Side, four or five miles from the blast.”

  All across the green-cushioned pews, Ralph’s people especially — were really crying. Is this helping? Franklin couldn’t see how. He looked away from the growing crease in Ralph’s forehead.

  “But despite how terrible I feel,” Franklin said gently, “how much pain I feel, there’s something I have to tell you.

  “For too long I’ve been living in fear, a half-life in fear of something I’ve been afraid to admit — at first to myself. And finally to you.

  “I wanted to stand against this fear. My sister’s death, the cold-blooded murder of our friend Marjorie. The deaths of so many others — have crystallized what I’ve been moving toward for a long, long time. To be completely, totally honest with myself. And with you. To throw off my old, old programming.

  “I was brainwashed. Not so strongly as some perhaps, but from the time I was an infant, programmed to do what was expected. In return for love, shelter, warmth and food. Brainwashed by my parents, by peer pressure, to gain acceptance by friends in school, and later in the military . . .”

  He wiped his eyes with the back of a hand.

  “I know it’s expected of me now to stand up here and give prayers for the eternal souls of those we’ve lost. To tell you how I know they are going to Heaven. To be with their maker. To be with God. But — if what you thought for years,” he whispered, “turns out to be false, do you still cling to your belief?”

  He looked at them and took another breath. “I simply can’t do that anymore. I simply don’t believe . . . in God.”

  Maples began to rise. “I think that’s enough, Reverend.”

  Full Exposure

  “It’s not enough!” Franklin felt tears welling. Hand raised, the sudden stony command in his face. Like dark lasers his eyes shot Ralph down.

  Ralph Maples squinted. Hesitated. Reluctantly took his seat.

  A puzzled hollow curiosity had filled the room. Franklin could see it in their faces — Patty and Robin and Sally and the Thomases and Mrs. Astor and Mrs. Tavitt. All the others. All wondering. Where’s he going with this? This has got to be a buildup to something really powerful!

  “I can see you’re expecting me to add, ‘I don’t just believe in God — I KNOW God.’ You’re expecting me to say, ‘He’s taking care of your father, Patty and Robin. God’s looking after Alan, Sally. Lyle, Nevis is in good hands. The best.’ You’re expecting me to tell you that all the people who died in New York and Virginia are at peace, are in a place better than anywhere on this earth.

  “This isn’t easy for me. I love all of you, this community, this church. You are my friends. You and my remaining family are the people who matter most to me in the entire world. I don’t think of myself as a cruel person. But what I’ve got to tell you here today is the truth and only the truth. For me.”

  He could feel unrest growing across the open high-ceiling room, the scuffling feet, the rubbed necks. The frowns as it began to dawn on them what he was actually saying.

  But the tears were drying.

  He glanced up to his left at the beautiful stained-glass window, an image of Jesus speaking to the masses. Go on, he pushed himself.

  Finish this.

  “If there was one single unique thing in all that Jesus was supposed to have said, one thing the world had never heard before, it was compassion for one’s enemy. Give your coat if they take your hat. Turn the other cheek.

  “But I don’t feel that way. For a long, long time, I’ve lied to myself — and learning to lie so well, I’ve lied to you.

  “That stops now.”
/>   His hands, he noticed, held the slanted oak lectern in a death grip, the effort making his fingers white.

  He flexed his fingers and took a deep breath —

  “I wanted whoever did this to us dead! Whoever killed four million New Yorkers and Virginians. Whoever killed my sister Cynthia, Alan Jeffers, Don Marshal, Nevis Spooner, Sarah Astor, Joe and Billy Stobert, Heather and Fern Ingersall, Sally Harris, Joan Rylan, Jane Espy — the man who killed Marjorie —

  “I wanted their killer to cease-to-exist! I wanted — him — DEAD! Well, I know who it was,” he whispered. “And I killed him.”

  Ralph was frozen. But dozens in the pews leaned forward. Listening harder.

  “The second thing I’m going to do today is to tell you . . . I resign.” Whispers sprung up across the room. “As of today, I will no longer be minister of this church because . . . you see . . . I can’t . . . because of this little thing I’ve done here today:

  “I’ve told the truth.”

  “What?” “What did he just say?” “No . . .”

  “Because I don’t believe in a God who would allow the disillusioned man of Ecclesiastes 1:5 to believe the sun orbits around the Earth.

  “I don’t believe in a God who was taken to a mountaintop in Matthew 4 by a devil so he could see both America and China at the same time.

  “And I don’t believe in the God of Matthew, Mark and John who will bring back our dead if we simply ask.

  “I honestly do not believe in any god. This deception is one in which I cannot participate any longer.

  “G-O-D . . . The Greatest Of Deceptions.”

  “Now just a damn minute!” Ralph said rising.

  Patricia Marshal rose to her feet. “Let him speak!”

  Franklin ignored them both.

  “GOD? What exactly are you, GOD?” Franklin’s voice rose. “The Supreme Being? And Heaven? Where is that? What do I do when I get there? Where’s my proof?

  “You see,” he looked at Ralph, “we don’t know. We may pretend, but none of us, not even we ministers, have any idea.

  “In the last few days it came to me. I’m pretty sure I never have believed in God. Not really. I wanted to. I asked to. I begged God to give me faith. On my knees, I really, really tried — to imagine harder, to hallucinate, to fantasize. Maybe I just wasn’t listening hard enough? I prayed for guidance and truth and belief.

  “But really I was simply afraid not to believe.

  “Why now? you might ask.

  “I know my timing is terrible. Why all of a sudden? The day you feel you need me most, I’m leaving.”

  The muttering was growing louder. Ralph Maples put a firm hand on Franklin’s shoulder, trying to pull him back. Franklin shoved Ralph’s hand away.

  “Let me tell you simply that, while yes, it has to do with the death of Marjorie, my sister Cynthia and so many others I care deeply about, it mainly comes down to me. To respect. For myself. My own honesty to myself.

  “I’m not going to speak for the other people up here. For Reverend Maples. For the deacons. They’re free to step in. Do as they see fit. But for me, I was brought here to lead you in a faith I finally realize I just don’t have. A doctrine I don’t believe in.”

  Voices. People rising. There was a shuffling across the pews.

  “You can’t leave!”

  People pushing at each other.

  “Resign?”

  “No!”

  In the corner of his eye he saw Ralph. Now the tables were turned. What was the look on his face? Concern? Worry? Satisfaction?

  Franklin couldn’t read it.

  And he didn’t want to.

  “Our daughter’s gone,” one woman spoke out, standing in the middle pews. “Where was God then? You know, I don’t believe in God either.”

  A guy stood and looked down at his wife. “I never believed in this stuff. I just come for her. ’Cause she wants me to.”

  “I’m only here for the business connections,” another man muttered to his friend.

  Other people trying to force those who stood to sit down. The speakers shoving back. The whole of the body of the church was moments from mass violence.

  Franklin’s voice rose above them, “I can’t help you by acting out a lie. After all that’s happened, I just can’t let myself be afraid anymore.”

  The battle was done.

  Franklin stepped down from the pulpit. They all froze. He pulled the second uniform of his life, the maroon silk robe, over his head and laid it across the polished rail.

  To the stunned looks of the hundreds who filled the First Congregational Church of Erie, Pennsylvania, he walked up the aisle. And out the door into the winter sunshine.

  Shock And Awe

  They watched their friend, their minister, a man they’d depended on for two years go up the middle aisle of the church and walk away.

  Some of them were angry, though quite a few felt sympathy for him. Franklin had lost so much! His sister. The murder of his long-time close friend and secretary. And many of those in the congregation he’d cared for. They’d seen the bandage around his neck. He’d almost been killed himself.

  He’d seen some bizarre things lately too. Rumors that there was something odd going on with the church finances. That crazy Mormon thing too — something about Franklin flying out to Salt Lake to examine some rediscovered Mormon plates.

  None of them understood much of it. None of it could be worse than the deaths and losses many of them had suffered, could it? But to simply turn away? From God and faith and his church. Walk away from them like this?

  Across the pews, the stunned murmurs of six hundred people swelled, grew louder. Ralph Maples rose, moved to the pulpit to take charge.

  A warble cut through.

  From her purse, Ruth Draper retrieved a ringing cellphone. Arnie Hollander pulled another from inside his jacket pocket. They were going off all over the congregation. Not everyone followed the phones-off-in-church rule.

  “What’s happening?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “What is it?”

  People covered mouths, grabbed foreheads. Loud voices jabbering at each other. People with kids, house-ridden relatives, those at home who just never went to church, were calling to tell them something that would change their lives.

  Roger Stemple ran in with a television and set it up on the altar.

  War

  Seldom had the American will been so unified. Christopher Wall could order anything. The people would suck it up. Jack had made it clear. A President had to act. He had to do something.

  From behind the Oval Office desk at NORAD, the President sat on the tail of his suitcoat to pull down the shoulders, patted his sandy hair. He nodded at Marc Praeger then back straight ahead. The grotesquely overweight Chief of Staff signaled the cameraman.

  “Go live in three!” the cameraman spoke into a slender black chin mic, holding up three fingers . . . two . . . one . . . a red light glowed . . .

  “My fellow Americans.

  “While rising death estimates of as many as four million of our fellow citizens in the greater New York and Virginia Beach-Norfolk metropolitan areas may have been cause for general public dissatisfaction with our government, I have been reluctant to move overly fast.

  “Facts and evidence now, however, demand a response.

  “From conversation intercepted from a secret dinner in the Iranian desert — related to the recent nuclear attacks on our country — we have determined the involvement of a conspiracy of fundamentalist Islamic forces allied against us.

  “As further evidence — shortly after their cowardly attacks on New York and Virginia, a body washed up on an east Florida beach. The body carried an identification card in the name of a senior engineer with the Pakistani Nuclear Authority.

  “Third, our labs have determined that what’s called the nuclear waste signature — the chemical composition of the atomic fallout around New York City and Virginia Beach �
�� points to origination of the nuclear weapons material from a nuclear reactor in Pakistan.

  “We believe Pakistan’s nuclear facilities have been compromised. I have offered to send in forces to secure these facilities and materials. These offers have been refused by Prime Minister Khan. We believe those weapons, indeed control of the government of Pakistan, are now in the hands of the resurrected forces of the Taliban.”

  The President paused.

  “At this point in time, all U.S. personnel, including those of our embassy in Islamabad, have vacated the country. On my order today, we will be launching a counterattack against those nuclear laboratories, nuclear storage facilities and their associated production facilities.

  “The attack upon us was nuclear. Our response must be nuclear in kind. The area is heavily populated. We expect substantial numbers of civilian casualties. While we must do all we can to make certain these attacks never happen again, most regretful is the fact that there is no truly safe alternate way to rid the world of this threat. I wish there were. Unfortunately, there is no choice.

  “From this point forward, my fellow Americans, you may expect timely periodic updates from me as events unfold. Thank you. And good morning. May God be with us all.”

  The Ascendancy Of Joy

  The Choir of the Book crescendoed in volume and emotion.

  Lights faded, grew brighter. Voices in perfect male harmony, song and chant, “Yahweh — Allah — Jehovah!”

  Filling Rawalpindi’s Cricket Stadium to its bursting point, forty thousand souls — the curious, the hateful, the hopeful, the frightened, the desperate and the damaged — they had come. Most were Sunni. A fair number, too, were Shi’a. Many had lost family or friends in civil wars across the Muslim world.

  On a raised platform above the field, stage right, a dark-haired man of medium height bounced in the dark on the soles of his desert sandals, literally vibrating with internal energy. The Holy Spirit surged through his nervous system.