Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

by Ray Garton

  Without even thinking about it, Hal snatched the gun up from the counter before leaving the bathroom. Even though it was empty and useless, he subconsciously felt more secure holding the gun in his hand.

  He broke into a run and made his way to the front door fast. He stopped, turned, and looked around, passed the light along the floor of the living room one way, then back the other.

  Jesus figure was not there. The ugly wooden cross still hung empty on the wall over the couch.

  A fist pounded on the door again.

  Hal tucked the flashlight under his right arm, reached out and unlocked the door, turned the knob and pulled it open. The two deputies each held up small black flashlights, and shone them directly in Hal's eyes, and he squinted as he pulled the door open all the way with his left hand, the gun held down at his side in his right.

  "Whoa, gun!" a tall, fat, middle-aged deputy shouted as he quickly drew his gun.

  The other deputy was short, younger, much thinner, and fumbled with the his gun, caught off-guard, but finally aimed it at Hal.

  "Drop the gun!" the big deputy shouted.

  "Drop it, now!" the little guy shouted.

  Hal immediately released the gun, let it fall to the floor, and raised his hands as if he were being held up. The flashlight dropped from beneath his right arm and hit the floor, but did not go out. "It's not loaded!" he shouted, his voice hoarse, mouth dry. "The gun's empty, really."

  "Do you have any other weapons on you, sir?" the big cop said.

  The deputies kept their guns trained on Hal.

  "Nuh-no, I was j-just trying to defend myself."

  They slowly lowered their guns.

  "Are you Mr. Dillon?" the little one said. "Harold Dillon?"

  "Yes, that's me."

  "Is that your blood, sir?" the big guy said.

  Hal glanced down at himself and, in the glow of their flashlights, saw the blood on his robe.

  "Yes, I'm bleeding," he said. "I've been injured. It killed my fiancee."

  "It?" the small deputy said. "What killed your fiancee?"

  "The Jesus."

  The deputies glanced at one another.

  "The Jesus," the big one said.

  "Yes, it, it came down off its cross and—look, I-I know how this sounds, I know it sounds crazy, but that's what happened, I'm telling you, please, you've got to believe me, it—"

  "Calm down, sir," the thin deputy said.

  The big one wandered off and looked around a little.

  "You say your fiancee's been killed?" the thin one said.

  "Thuh-that's right," Hal said, his voice suddenly trembling. "Shuh-she...she...that...that thing, it...it killed her. And it's still loose in here, so we've got to—"

  "In here," the large deputy called from the dining room.

  Hal and the small deputy hurried to where he stood shining his light down on the kitchen floor.

  "Cuff him, Jeff," the big one said.

  The deputy named Jeff grabbed Hal's right wrist and twisted his arm behind his back as he reached down to take his handcuffs from his belt.

  "Hey!" Hal shouted.

  "You have the right to remain silent," Deputy Jeff said.

  "No, no, you can't arrest me!" Hal cried. "I-I-I didn't, I didn't do this!"

  "Don't struggle, sir," Deputy Jeff said.

  Hal jerked his wrist from the deputy's grasp and twisted away from him, shouting, "I will not let you cuff me! I can explain everything, the blood, i-it's all mine! It's not Jacquie's, it's mine, I've been badly injured, I'm bleeding!"

  Deputy Jeff lunged toward him and Hal stumbled backward, just out of his reach.

  Hal realized he was shaking all over. It had not occurred to him that this might happen, had not even crossed his mind.

  "Howard," Deputy Jeff said. "Looks like we got a fifty-one fifty."

  Deputy Howard lumbered into the living room. "You resisting arrest, there, fella?"

  Deputy Jeff grabbed Hal's right wrist again, and Deputy Howard grabbed his left.

  "No!" Hal cried in a broken, dry voice. "I couldn't have done that! Didn't you see what it did to her throat, how it tore her throat open? Or the bite on her leg, did you see that? I didn't do those! I couldn't! It won't match my mouth, the teeth marks will be—"

  "That woman was shot in the abdomen," Deputy Howard said as Deputy Jeff tried to hold Hal's wrists together.

  Hal managed to jerk away from both of them and turned around. "No, it wasn't me, it was that...that Jesus. It came down off it's cross and it's running around in here somewhere right now. You have to find it." He turned and pointed through the darkness at the crucifix on the wall over the couch. "It came down off there."

  Deputy Jeff sent his flashlight beam sweeping over the wall until it found the wooden cross.

  Hal gasped.

  "Oh, God," he croaked abruptly.

  The whole world seemed to tilt to one side, as if Hal were on a boat that was slowly capsizing. Tears stung his eyes as he stared at the crucifix.

  Jesus was once again nailed to the cross, gaunt and stringy and covered with painted blood, its head looking upward as if in great agony. The figure was dry, no real blood on it anywhere. It looked exactly as it hand when Hal had bought it.

  "But it came down," Hal said. "It came down!"

  When Deputy Jeff tried to cuff him again, Hal did not struggle. He allowed the deputy to put the cuffs on behind him.

  Mouth hanging open, eyes impossibly wide, Hal looked at the thing on the wall, watched it there on its cross, holding perfectly still, looking like nothing more than a carving in wood, an inanimate object, a strange but perfectly safe piece of art.

  With a deputy on each side of him, Hal was pulled toward the front door.

  "I'll get him into the car," Deputy Howard said, "you get the M. E. out here. Tell 'em we're bringin' in a fifty-one fifty"

  "Nooo!" Hal suddenly screamed. It was a high, shrill scream. He jerked his arms from the deputies' hands and stumbled backward. "No, you can't do this, I didn't do it, I swear to God, it was that Jesus!" He spun out of the way as Deputy Jeff lunged for him but stumbled and fell to the floor with a grunt. He quickly got to his feet as Deputy Howard moved in and grabbed Hal in a headlock.

  "Now, are you gonna calm down, or do I pepper-spray you, huh?" Deputy Howard said. "You wanna get tasered? It'll hurt, I promise. You don't calm down, I'm gonna light you up, you hear me?"

  Hal stopped moving. His breaths were ragged and each exhalation was a miserable groan, but he stopped struggling. In a moment, he was standing between them again, being led out of the house.

  Deputy Howard took him from Deputy Jeff and dragged him to the back door of the cruiser parked on the curb in front of the house.

  Hal began to scream and fight and shake his head back and forth so fast and so hard that he was rapidly making himself sick. He screamed of his innocence, and told them again and again that it was "the Jesus" that had done it.

  The rain was cold on Hal's face.

  Up and down the street, flashlight beams bobbed up and down in the darkness as people stepped outside to see what was happening.

  Deputy Jeff got on the radio as Deputy Howard put his big hand on the top of Hal's head and pushed him down into the backseat of the cruiser.

  He sat there, sobbing, as he stared out the window at his house.

  It stood silent and dark.

  It looks so empty, Hal thought.

  He shook his head back and forth, his jaw jutting. "No," he said. "It's not." Then he screamed, "It's not! It's not empty!" He lifted his legs and leaned back and kicked the seat in front of him. "It's not empty! He did it! You hear me? Heee did it!"

  Deputy Howard opened the door.

  "You don't calm down back here, I'm gonna pepper spray you," Deputy Howard said.

  Hal took in a deep breath and bellowed, "It was the Jesus! It was the Jeeee-suuuus that killed her!"

  H
e screamed on as the deputies waited for more people to come, to investigate, to find him guilty.

  And Hal screamed on.

  GOD'S WORK

  Pastor Gil Freeman stood near the back of his church's multi-purpose room watching as only a handful of people gathered for the after-service potluck. On any other Sunday, the room would be filled by now, humming with voices and redolent with the smells of casseroles and lasagnas and Swedish meatballs, croissants and pies and cobblers. But now, it looked bare and the few dishes that had been brought were not enough to fill the room with their warm aromas.

  There were well over a dozen banquet tables set up with metal folding chairs lined along the sides, but they were empty today. Those who had shown up would barely fill two of them.

  Most of the people there were the older members of his congregation, the stooped and wrinkled, with cloudy but still smiling eyes that had weathered years of heartache and yet never darkened. They were the only ones who had tried to make him feel welcome when he had first come to this church nearly two months ago and now they were the only ones keeping him from feeling completely rejected by the congregation. He was grateful to have them there.

  The others—the middle-aged and younger—had been suspicious of him. They seemed to think he was too soft, too easy on sin. Freeman was young—he would turn thirty-one in a month—and soft-spoken; his sermons were quiet and calm rather than loud and charismatic. This was an angry congregation. They were angry about how corrupt the world had become, angry at its sins and offenses, and they wanted someone in the pulpit who would share their anger and give it booming voice.

  He would expect the older congregants to be the suspicious ones who would want him to be more rigid and serve up hellfire and brimstone in his sermons, the ones to be angry at the world for its wickedness—and plenty of them were. But this smaller group of church members from the ages of sixty and up had seen more of life and knew things moved in cycles, including good times and bad, and many of them had paid much closer attention to the man they all claimed to love and worship and knew what he stood for.

  Freeman was not an angry man and he did not deliver fire-and-brimstone sermons, and today, the church members were showing their disappointment in him more openly than they had before. It had been on vivid display first during that morning's sermon, and now they were driving the point home by not coming to the potluck.

  Even worse than their absence was where they had gone instead and why. Freeman knew what they were doing, and it was tying his gut into knots.

  He did not see his wife Deborah approaching from his right and was startled when she took his hand, but he quickly smiled.

  "Nope, that smile doesn't fool me," she whispered.

  "What?"

  "You look like you're developing an ulcer over here." She squeezed his hand. "You shouldn't let it bother you so much. You're going to wrinkle early if you keep frowning like that."

  He sighed. "I know, but I keep thinking I could've said something more, something that would have changed their minds, made them see the mistake they were making. If only I'd said the right thing this morning."

  "Honey, your sermon was wonderful. Powerful. That may be the best sermon I've heard you deliver. But their minds were set on doing this. They were determined. There was nothing you could do no matter what you said to them."

  He shook his head. "What if these are the only people who show up for church next week?"

  "What if they are? Remember what the Bible says about where two or more are gathered?"

  He nodded slowly.

  "Are you going to come join us, Gil?"

  "In a minute, sweetheart."

  "Well, don't be long. The kids are worried about you. They wanted to know what was wrong with Daddy, why he looked so 'weird.' Their word."

  Freeman smiled. "Tell them I'm fine, and I'll be there in a minute."

  He was a tall man, so she had to stand on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek as she rubbed a hand over his back. Then she joined the others across the room.

  Freeman paced a bit, then leaned his back against the wall and looked out the window that provided a view of the parking lot. The nearly empty parking lot.

  Yes, he knew where they were. He could imagine what they were doing at that very moment. He looked at his watch. They had no doubt gathered and were waiting.

  He closed his eyes, rubbed them with thumb and forefinger, and thought about that morning's sermon, wondering if it could have been better, more effective, if there had been any chance at all of stopping what was no doubt going to happen.

  * * * *

  The faces that looked up at Freeman as he stood at the pulpit were not pleasant ones. Their jaws were set, their lips were firm. He could find only a couple of smiles among all the stern faces that seemed to want all of this over with so they could get on with their plans for the day.

  He knew what those plans were. That was why he had decided this morning's sermon would be unlike all the others, all those quiet, gentle sermons he had given over the previous weeks that this congregation seemed to disapprove of so much.

  Placing his Bible on top of the pulpit and a hand on each of the cold wooden edges, he leaned forward and smiled.

  "I decided to scrap the sermon I'd planned for this week," he said, quietly as usual. "After I began working on it, I said to myself, 'Gil, this isn't the sermon you need to give. The one you need to give is...a bit harder, with more of an edge.' And that was very true. But I want you to know that I am saying what I'm about to say this morning out of concern, and nothing more. Not out of anger, not with condemnation, but with deep, sincere concern for my church family.

  "I know that you have not been too satisfied with me as your pastor. For that I am truly sorry. Honestly, I have done my best and will continue to do so. I hope that you will give me a chance. And I hope that you will keep in mind that I am having to give you a chance as well. Because I know about something you are planning to do. Today, in fact. And it's something of which I do not approve. But my approval means nothing. The important thing is God's approval, and, to tell you the truth, I think God is hanging his head over what you plan to do today."

  His mouth was cotton-dry, but he had anticipated that. He reached down to the glass of water he had placed on the shelf beneath the top of the pulpit, took a sip, then a deep breath, returned the glass, and continued.

  "I've heard the whispers," he said, his voice a little louder now, more authoritative. "I've heard the talk about what's to happen today, and I've been saddened by the eagerness in your voices and the joy in your eyes.

  "I know about the writer, James K. Denmore. I know about his books. In fact, when I heard all the talk going on among you, I went out and bought a few of them. I wonder how many of you have read any of his work. I wonder only because you are apparently so angry about what he writes. If you haven't read his work, then your anger is not righteous indignation, it is the ugliest kind of hypocrisy. But I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and will assume that you have read it and, having read it myself, I understand your disapproval.

  "He writes what is known as 'erotic horror' and he uses religion in his fiction in a deliberately blasphemous and provocative way. I found his work distasteful in the extreme. It's obvious to me that Mr. Denmore is a talented writer, but I feel he's selling himself short by using his talents to write such books. And, worse yet—they sell. I also believe Mr. Denmore to be a marketing genius. He deliberately fills his books with things that he knows will upset you, and then you go to your blogs and YouTube channels to condemn him, you grab your signs to protest him. And you draw much more attention to his work than it would receive without your help. I hate to say it, but he knows how to manipulate you. And it always works. You've helped sell a lot of books for Mr. Denmore.

  "But I don't know Mr. Denmore. I've never met him. I don't know what he believes or what experiences his life has given him or how he treats other people or small animals. I
don't know why he writes what he writes or what he thinks about or what's important to him. All I know for sure about Mr. Denmore is that he is a human being, and I feel no differently about him, even after reading his work, than I do about any of you. He is still, no matter what any of us feels about his work, a child of God. Just like the rest of us. That makes him one of us."

  There was a bitter murmur somewhere in the crowd, but it was not loud enough to be considered a voice of protest.

  Gil shifted his weight from foot to foot as he took another drink of water, put the side of a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat.

  "As I said, the man is talented. The Bible tells us that talents are given to us by God. Therefore, Mr. Denmore's considerable writing talent was given to him by God. But God left it up to him to decide how he would use that talent. Because God, from the beginning in the Garden of Eden and onward, has given us the freedom of choice. He values our free will as much as we should because He knows that without it, we are nothing more than slaves. The Bible is full of examples of God giving choices and letting humankind decide. More often than not, they made the wrong choice. But it was their choice because he left it up to them.

  "Sometimes we forget that. We take it upon ourselves to impose on others what we feel is God's will. And that, my friends...that is terribly wrong."

  Freeman's heart was pounding nervously against his ribs and he was finding it difficult to control his breathing because the faces looking up at him were growing darker and colder. They were becoming angrier with each sentence he spoke. He gulped, and after a moment of nervous silence, he finally continued.

  * * * *

  Freeman blinked his eyes several times, pulling his head out of his thoughts, and crossed the room to his wife's side. He said, "Deb, honey, I'm going to take off for a little while."

  Her smile fell away and she looked suddenly worried. "Why? Where are you going?"

  "Down to the bookstore. I just...I want to do what I can."