Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

by Ray Garton

  Leroy certainly did not look happy in any of the photographs Lauren had seen so far, but photographs could be deceptive in that way. The camera captured a split-second expression that might have passed over one's face in the blink of an eye; it did not necessarily represent the emotional state of the photograph's subject. But so far, Leroy had the same expression in every picture.

  "How did your husband feel about it?" Lauren said.

  "Wyatt was often frustrated. He worked very hard. He was at the paper mill for many years until he hurt his back and had to have surgery. Then he had to go on disability. While he was working, when he came home from a long day at work, he didn't need more frustration from Leroy. Then, after the surgery, he was home all the time. That alone frustrated him even more and made him more impatient with Leroy. I tried to intervene and take care of Leroy myself so Wyatt wouldn't have to deal with him. He just..." A look of sadness passed over her face. "Wyatt just seemed so...disappointed in him. We named him after our fathers—Leroy was Wyatt's father's name and Arthur was my father's name. Wyatt's dad was such a big bear of a man, so...masculine. He was physically active his whole life, a carpenter, he could build or fix anything. I think Wyatt was hoping that Leroy would be more like his own father. But...he wasn't. Leroy was very quiet and bookish. He kept to himself. Too much, I think. He seemed happiest when left alone with a book or watching TV. I wish we'd never gotten a TV. I think it had far too much influence on Leroy and I think it was the source of all our problems."

  "He liked to watch TV?"

  "Oh, yes. Much too much. He liked cartoons and anything with puppets, and that wasn't so bad. But he also liked horror movies and science fiction shows. I knew nothing good could come of that, and so did Wyatt. We prohibited it at first." She frowned slightly. "But it seemed to make him so happy. Finally, we gave in. We let him watch the shows he wanted to watch, but we always pointed out the dangers in that kind of entertainment. We never failed to remind him that it was not what Christ wanted us to dwell on. I would often ask him, 'Would you be watching that if Jesus were standing here in this room?'"

  "What did he say?"

  She shrugged. "He just ignored me."

  "Did Leroy do well in school?"

  Madge nodded. "His grades were very good. We sent him to a Christian school, of course. The new one that started just two years before Leroy was old enough to go to school. We wanted him to be around other Christians and to get a Christian education. We were afraid public school would only confuse him. You know, the drugs, the sex, the secular teachings."

  Lauren consulted her notes. "That would be...Lawncrest Christian Academy?"

  "Yes."

  Frowning down at the pages before her, Lauren said, "There was a scandal at that school, wasn't there? It was years ago, but apparently a teacher had been molesting students."

  Madge bowed her head a moment, cleared her throat and sighed. "Yes. All of that came to a head when Leroy was in, um...let's see, I think he was in the third grade. It was...very sad. It's always been such good school, but that hurt its reputation."

  "Was Leroy affected by that in any way?"

  "He certainly didn't seem to be. They kept it as quiet as possible. We all figured the less the students knew about it, the better. But the local press got hold of the story, and then there was a brief period when it was reported nationally. Fortunately, it all blew over very quickly. Uh, you asked if Leroy did well in school. Leroy's grades were always excellent, but he had trouble making friends. He was so terribly shy. I think that was the problem. I tried to encourage him to break out of his shell, but..." She frowned and gazed at the plate of cookies for a while.

  "What's wrong?" Lauren said.

  "Well, I wish Wyatt had been more supportive. He was often quite...critical of Leroy. I think that hurt the boy. But...oh, I shouldn't say anything." She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head abruptly. "It's wrong of me to speak negatively of Wyatt."

  "I don't want you to discuss anything that makes you uncomfortable, but at the same time, Madge, I want you to speak your mind."

  Madge sighed. "Wyatt was a bit hard on Leroy at times, that's all. His method of discipline could be a bit...harsh." She winced, as if simply saying the words caused her pain. "There were so many times I wanted to say something, but it just wasn't my place. The bible is very clear on the family order. In the book of Titus, women are told 'to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their husbands'—and it would have been wrong of me to step in."

  "Was Wyatt...physical with Leroy?"

  "At times, yes. Leroy would push him. Intentionally, I think. Sometimes Leroy would become silent and wouldn't say a word, no matter what we said to him. Wyatt would ask him something but he wouldn't respond. Wyatt would repeat his question again and again and he'd get angrier each time Leroy didn't answer."

  "Was it a regular thing?"

  "Leroy's obstinance? Yes, I'm afraid so."

  "No, I mean Wyatt's physical discipline. Was that a regular thing?"

  "Oh. Well...he was only doing what the bible instructed. 'He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.' That's what Proverbs tells us. He didn't want Leroy to become spoiled, that's all. He wanted him to be tough, prepared for the troubles of life. And if he went a little too far sometimes...well, we're all human. We all fall short of the glory of God."

  "In what way did he go too far?"

  "Oh..." She shrugged one shoulder as she fidgeted slightly in her chair. "Sometimes he would spank him a little too hard, a little too long. Sometimes he used the belt, and he'd get a little carried away. But like I said, Leroy often pushed him. He sometimes brought it on himself. Leroy could be so rebellious and obstinate."

  "What would he do that set off your husband?"

  "All kinds of things. He was always asking questions, especially when he was younger. We had a family worship every night. We'd read from the Bible and discuss it, and then have prayer. Sometimes, Leroy would keep interrupting with questions."

  "What kind of questions?"

  "About whatever Bible story we were studying. He was never satisfied with the story as it was told in the Bible. He wanted all the details filled in and all his questions answered or he just wasn't satisfied. It was very frustrating. I remember one time we were going over the story of Lot and his family. You know, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. When the angry mob of men gathers outside Lot's house and demands that he turn the visiting angels over to them, Lot offers them his daughters instead. That bothered Leroy. He kept insisting that Lot couldn't be a very righteous man if he was willing to hand his daughters over to those bad, angry men. But of course, the Bible says that God found Lot to be a righteous man. Leroy wouldn't stop. He just kept interrupting to say that it didn't make any sense. Wyatt told him that this wasn't just any old book off the shelf we were dealing with, it was the Bible, the word of God, and he told Leroy he was in no position to argue with it. But Leroy wouldn't stop. And after a while, Wyatt got angry. He'd had enough. He punished Leroy."

  "Was Leroy always that way when it came to religion?" Lauren asked.

  Madge frowned. "He ran hot and cold with religion. He was very active in church. In fact—" She reached over and began turning pages in the open photo album. "—he used to give special music performances for church. He had a beautiful voice when he was a boy. Sang like an angel. In church, at weddings. He was the youngest member of the church choir. Here." She pointed to a picture and said, "There he is singing in church."

  Leroy stood on the church dais before a microphone, his mouth open, head tilted back slightly. There was that sad look again—the eyebrows bunched together above the bridge of his nose and tilting downward at the outer ends. He was quite plump in his blue suit, hair neatly combed with a straight part on the left.

  "How old was he here?" Lauren asked.

  "Oh, probably about nine or ten. He was very active in Sunday school and church
and sometimes, he seemed to enjoy it very much. But other times...I don't know, it almost seemed to make him...sad. As if it upset him. And he had all those questions, so many questions. When he was small, sometimes it even scared him. But then, nearly everything scared him. For some reason—and I've never quite understood why—he was a frightened child. I think those horror movies he watched on TV caused it."

  "Frightened? Of what?"

  Madge leaned forward and put her elbows on the table. Her hands fidgeted with each other for a moment, then she took a cookie from the plate and bit into it, then placed it on a napkin. She raised her eyebrows high as she chewed, shrugged her shoulders and said, "Of almost everything, it seemed."

  "I don't understand."

  "Neither did I," she said. "I remember one of our Bible studies here at home. He was pretty little, maybe in the first grade, something like that. We were on the story of Abraham and Isaac. I've always thought it was a beautiful story, a precursor to God sacrificing his own son to save us all from our sins. But Leroy didn't like that story, not at all. God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac and naturally, Abraham obeys God without question. He takes the boy to the altar, binds him and raises the knife to kill him—and Leroy screamed. Nearly scared both of us to death. He wouldn't stop. Wyatt had to shout at him and shake him a little before he finally quieted down, but he was still crying. He was terribly upset. We asked him why, and he said that Abraham was a bad man for trying to kill his son. Wyatt explained that God had told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac but had stopped him at the last moment, that God was just testing his faith and obedience. Leroy shouted, 'Then God is mean!' Oh, that made Wyatt so angry. He did not like any disrespectful use of God's name, but to say that God was mean...oh, no, he did not like that one bit. He warned Leroy never to say such a thing. And Leroy said, 'But he is! Only a mean person would want that to happen to a little boy!'"

  Frowning slightly, Lauren said, "Do you think Leroy identified with Isaac?"

  Madge frowned and cocked her head to one side. She thought about that a moment. "Hmm. Maybe he did. That hadn't occurred to me. Whatever the reason, it upset Wyatt a great deal and he punished Leroy."

  Lauren wanted to ask how Wyatt punished the boy, but Madge kept talking and she did not want to interrupt.

  "Leroy was always doing things like that. He always seemed to be testing Wyatt. Daring him to do something. It was very sad to me, the way Leroy just refused to straighten up. We had a long talk with our pastor about it, but he just told us to pray on it and put it in God's hands. That was Pastor Wheland's response to everything. He was near retirement and I think he'd gotten tired of his work. He just didn't seem to have his heart in it."

  "Do you think church or church school had any positive effect on Leroy at all?"

  Madge took another bite of her cookie and washed it down with some tea. "There were times when I think it did. He might have been much worse if church and school hadn't kept Jesus in his life. But ultimately...the dark side won."

  "Do you mind if I just keep paging through this album?" Lauren said.

  "Oh, please do. That's why I brought them out. You're welcome to look through all of them."

  Lauren's eyes scanned the photos on page after page. Some families took a lot of pictures while others seldom used a camera. Lauren's family had not done a lot of picture-taking when she was growing up. The Steensma's were the opposite. She came to a picture that made her gasp.

  "What's wrong?" Madge said.

  "Was Leroy ill?" Lauren asked.

  "Ill? Not especially. The usual cold and flu, a broken arm, but—" She rose from her chair and leaned forward. "What are you looking at?"

  Lauren placed her finger on a photograph of a bald Leroy.

  "Oh, my," Madge said, lowering herself back into the chair. "I'd forgotten that was in there."

  "Why is he bald?"

  "Oh, well, that's...a strange story." She reached over and slid the plate of cookies toward Lauren. "You haven't had a cookie yet. Try one. I think they turned out well."

  Lauren picked up a cookie and a napkin, took a bite and smiled. "These are delicious," she said. She took a sip of tea, then asked again, "Why is Leroy bald in this picture, Madge?"

  The old woman sighed and rolled her eyes. "It was...well, a stupid thing. He did it himself. I tried to stop him, but he locked himself in the bathroom with the electric clippers I used to groom our poodle Collette with. By the time he let me in, all his hair was on the floor around his feet.

  "But why did he do it?"

  Another sigh, heavier this time, and another bite of the cookie. Finally, she said, "One of the things that Wyatt used to do when he got angry was grab Leroy by the hair. It was just a tug or two most of the time, but then there were times when Leroy's behavior was so...well, infuriating that Wyatt got...a little carried away sometimes. Leroy thought if he had no hair, Wyatt wouldn't be able to drag him around by—well, you know, pull his hair. So he shaved his head."

  "How did Wyatt react to that?"

  Madge closed her eyes and tucked her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. "Not...well. It made him very angry. He was...well, he made a point of showing Leroy that he didn't need hair to punish him."

  Lauren frowned down at the picture—that same tense, anxious expression with the same sad eyes. "What did Wyatt do?" she said.

  Madge closed her eyes again for a moment, fidgeted in her chair, looked all around the kitchen. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," she said, just above a whisper. She seemed to be talking to herself.

  Lauren looked at her and said, "What do you mean?"

  "I...I just don't want to give the wrong impression about Wyatt. He wasn't perfect, of course. Who of us is? But he was a very godly man. He loved Jesus more than any person I've known in my life, he really did. He was a deacon in our church for many years, he regularly led prayer meetings. His faith was the most important thing in the world to him, and he wanted it to be important to us, too. To Leroy. That's all he wanted. Leroy made that very difficult and it...it frustrated Wyatt. Satan worked so hard on that boy. I could see it in his behavior, the way he dressed, the posters he put on his bedroom wall later, when he was a teenager." Her eyes drifted toward the window behind Lauren as she chuckled. "Those posters. Movie monsters and...terrible things, so dark and disturbing. I don't know where he got them or how he paid for them. I always suspected he stole the money, but he never got caught. He didn't get it from us." She looked at Lauren again, this time almost pleadingly. "If Leroy had just been more understanding, more cooperative...well, he wouldn't have had so much...difficulty. He wouldn't have had so many problems with his father. Wyatt wouldn't have gotten so angry and hit him and pulled his hair, he wouldn't have had to spend so much time locked up, and our pastor never would've had to—"

  "Locked up?"

  "Oh, er, um...yes. Well, not really locked up in the sense that you're probably thinking. There's a rather large walk-in closet in the hallway. When it became apparent that Leroy's interest in such dark movies and TV shows and books was not just a passing phase, Wyatt put a chair and a light in there. When he reached the end of his rope with Leroy, he'd give him a Bible and lock him in that closet. He told him to read and pray and ask the Holy Spirit to enter him and guide him away from the Devil. Sometimes while Leroy was in his closet, Wyatt and I would get on our knees and pray for him."

  "How long was Leroy usually locked in the closet?" Lauren asked as she chewed another bite of her cookie.

  Madge shrugged and looked past Lauren at the window again. "Oh, well, now, it was...I don't know, really, it was...never that long. Not really. It was Wyatt's idea, but I supported it. I thought it might help Leroy to, you know, focus. To quiet his mind down enough so the Holy Spirit could speak to him, show him the error of his ways. But...well, it didn't seem to work. But we did it because we loved Leroy. We loved him with all our hearts. We thought it was the best thing for him."

  "I'm sorry
I interrupted you earlier. You were about to say something about your pastor. Were you referring to Pastor Whelan?"

  "Oh, no. He retired when Leroy was quite young and we got a new pastor, a younger man, Pastor Crane. He was a fiery preacher. Oh, boy, his sermons were exciting. He had a burden on his heart for the young people in the church. They were leaving the church in large numbers all over the country. We were very impressed with Pastor Crane's efforts to reach them, to make the Bible more accessible to them. He was also concerned about the widespread interest in the occult that he was afraid was leading young people away from Jesus. So he focused on that a lot. Leroy had changed so much, we decided to talk to Pastor Crane."

  "Leroy had changed?"

  "Oh, yes. Very much. He became...angry. When Wyatt first started putting him in his study closet—that's what Wyatt called the walk-in closet where he'd send Leroy to study when he misbehaved—Leroy would sit in there quietly, he wouldn't make a sound. But later, he would go into a rage in that little room. He'd pound and kick the walls and door and shout and even scream. It was terrifying. He would disappear at night. Not when he was a teenager, when that kind of behavior wouldn't be surprising, but before his teen years. He had no friends, so we didn't know where he was going or who he was with, if anyone. That would make Wyatt so angry. And when we tried to talk to Leroy about it, he wouldn't say anything, which just made Wyatt angrier, so he'd...well, punish Leroy. We thought perhaps he could help us with all that, and with Leroy's interest in horror films and scary comic books. We talked to him and he asked to meet with Leroy alone."

  "Did they talk here or—"

  "No, he met with Leroy in his study at the church. I remember it was a summer afternoon and I had some shopping to do, so I dropped Leroy at the church and did what I had to do, then came back and got him in two or three hours. I took Leroy home, and then that evening, Pastor Crane came to the house and talked with Wyatt and me while Leroy was in his room. Pastor Crane had a lot to say that evening."

  Madge drank some of her tea, then released a long, heavy sigh.