Beyond the Farthest Star

by Bodie Thoene

  Harrison’s eyes brimmed as he spoke. “All I had when I came to Him that night, Pastor, was ashes.” Harrison lifted the folder and extended it toward Adam, who hesitated, then accepted it.

  “It always fills my heart to hear of a lost lamb returning to the fold,” Adam said glibly.

  The pat, insincere “preacher speak” struck Harrison like a slap to the face. He reared back abruptly and shook his head, then retrieved his briefcase and stood.

  At the doorway he paused with his right hand on the knob. “Was one thing in the senator’s file I just can’t get out of my head, though.”

  Adam breathed through pinched nostrils, anxious for this painful interview to end. “And that was?”

  “Police report filed that day—the day you found Anne—said your secretary told the investigating officer you just walked out in the middle of the staff meeting. No explanation … just walked out.”

  “What’s your question, Mister Harrison?”

  Harrison wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Medical examiner said if you had been just five minutes later, Anne would have succeeded in takin’ her own life.”

  Adam’s head bowed at the recollection, but Harrison forced his way onward.

  “How’d you know, Pastor? How’d you come to rush home like that? How?”

  Adam swayed briefly, then a stiffening spasm grasped him from his neck down his shoulders and the length of his body. Without acknowledging the query, he shuffled the sheaf of his speech and grabbed his briefcase from under the desk.

  “If I see you at the rally tonight, Mister Harrison, I’ll assume the information in this file—” Adam waved the folder dismissively. “—is what the Heritage Foundation would consider ‘an acceptable public relations risk,’ and we’ll not need to discuss this matter again. I’m ready to take on Cutter. That’s all you need to know.”

  Harrison spread his arms wide to gesture with open palms. “Not my question to answer, Pastor. Not my place to make the call: what is and isn’t ‘acceptable risk.’ Only you can make that call.” Then he departed.

  Adam stared after Harrison for three long heartbeats, then stuffed Cutter’s folder into his briefcase along with the speech and slid the satchel along his desktop. The movement revealed anew the family portrait of Maurene, Anne as a child, and himself.

  Without thinking, Adam stuffed the painting into his case, flipped off the lights, and left.

  Chapter Eighteen

  SHERIFF BURNS SWIVELED his creaking desk chair from side to side and narrowed his eyes. Anyone who had known him for more than a month recognized all the signs of severe irritation and avoided antagonizing him. The dispatcher, Joyce, and Deputy Harliss Williams had certainly been acquainted with the sheriff long enough to heed the warnings, but tonight was not business as usual.

  On top of a file cabinet in the corner of the outer office was a television set. Though it was tuned to a national all-news station, the events being reported were happening on the streets of Leonard, right outside the office door.

  At the moment the screen displayed a composite computer graphic made up of a church steeple and a dome like the Capitol building. As the intro music built to a climax and a crash of drums, an electronically generated earthquake split church and state symbols so that both buildings fell away from each other toward the outside of the image.

  A blonde-haired, twenty-something anchorperson picked up the tale after the drum roll faded: “Tonight, what some are calling the Roe v. Wade of the Church-State boundary dispute has erupted in a little Texas town. We go now to our own Rebecca Quinn, live from the Leonard, Texas, city hall … Rebecca?”

  The sheriff stared moodily out the front window of the station. A thicket of television news vans, sprouting a forest of satellite antennas, clustered around the town square. Camera lights blazed down, illuminating a scene in which protestors and newshounds vied for attention with curious onlookers from as far away as Dallas, to judge by the license plates.

  A gust of wind set the masts to swaying and caused the sheriff to turn slightly toward the remains of the burnt-out crèche, still surrounded by yellow crime-scene tape.

  On screen the local reporter picked up the tale: “That’s right, Jill. We’re just minutes away from a Leonard town hall meeting that will determine if this tiny Texas community will take on the outspoken Senator Cutter.”

  The sheriff sniffed and his lip twitched. Outside his very office, in his town, was the live version of what was being broadcast. A full-size version of red-haired Rebecca competed with a miniature of herself on the television.

  When, encouraged by Joyce, Deputy Williams reached out to turn up the volume on the set, the sheriff reacted. “Aren’t you s’posed to be findin’ me that Wells girl?”

  Harliss ducked his head toward the door. “En route to the Greyhound in Maypearl right now, Chief.”

  “And Joy-cee,” the sheriff continued barking orders, “call overt’ the Starlight in Wilma. Tell whoever’s workin’ tonight t’ keep an eye out for the preacher’s girl.”

  “Will do, Gene,” replied Joyce with an excess of energy in picking up the telephone.

  Levering himself upright, the sheriff retrieved his gun belt, hanging from a coat rack behind his desk, and buckled it around his ample middle. As he cinched it tight, he grunted at Kyle, who had just arrived. “You’re late.”

  “Won’t happen again,” Kyle replied without meeting the lawman’s gaze.

  Sheriff Burns jerked his thumb toward Kyle’s swollen face. “Mind tellin’ me how you got that fat lip, Tucker?”

  His back to the sheriff, Kyle opened a janitor’s closet and seized a broom. “Tripped, is all,” he mumbled.

  “Now listen, son,” Burns scolded gently. “I can’t help you if you don’t level—”

  “Said I tripped, is all. Nothin’ fer you to worry about.”

  The sheriff examined Kyle as if suspecting something didn’t add up, then shrugged. “Have it your own way. Get to it, then.”

  Kyle peeled three black plastic trash bags from a mammoth-sized roll. He expanded one with a violent, angry flip of his hands and a whoosh of air.

  As Sheriff Burns exited the office just behind Deputy Williams, he heard Joyce on the call to the Starlight Motel. “Sí, Luis! A vampire. That’s right, vampira, comprende? You call us if a young woman lookin’ like a vampira shows up tonight. You got that?”

  The public hearing room in the Leonard City Hall was long on space and short on comfort. Designed to be a multipurpose space, permitting everything from civil wedding ceremonies to displays of school science projects, it offered folding chairs and a single, low platform at the front as a stage.

  On this occasion the hall was jammed. Citizens had filled all the available seats two hours before the start of the meeting, and standees occupied the remaining slots on the side walls.

  The back of the chamber was lined with television news crews and their equipment.

  Adam occupied the center seat in a row of chairs on the platform, next to a handful of city officials, but it was Sheriff Burns who held center stage. Gavel in hand, he banged on the portable lectern used as a podium and called for quiet.

  “I say we all do a little pride swallowin,’ chip in for a new nativity, and next year we set it up on First Church property not more’n two miles from where it is now. Nobody’s constitutional rights get violated. The sign wavers and the TV cameras go somewhere’s else to picnic, and, most important, Leonard won’t wind up a ghost town like Blessin’, sittin’ there just thirteen miles away.”

  The sheriff glanced over his shoulder at the mayor sitting with his arms folded over his chest and continued, “What was it, Mayor? Four years …”

  The mayor fluttered his fingers.

  “Three years, thank you, Mayor. So whadda y’all say?”

  Adam scanned the faces of the crowd and did not like what he saw. Aside from a handful of First Church of Leonard supporters (of whom Margaret was the most vocal) most of those
present agreed with the sheriff. Economic development was the lifeblood of a little town like Leonard. If Cutter pulled his investment commitments, Leonard would shrivel up and blow away like a patch of prairie wildflowers come drought and hot wind.

  “So we’re agreed, then?” the sheriff queried. Then he added, “‘Less Pastor Wells’d like to have his say.”

  “Get on with it,” someone shouted.

  “Give Pastor a chance, you buncha heathens,” Margaret called out.

  Adam saw angry looks directed his way as he stood and approached the microphone. They think I’m the enemy, he thought. Don’t they understand what they’re bartering away here?

  The hostile murmurs grew in number and volume until the sheriff banged his gavel again and demanded silence. “Pastor’s gonna exercise his constitutional right to speak if he wants, and y’all are gonna keep quiet while he does.” Then he added, “Or I’m gonna throw a buncha you in jail.”

  Setting his briefcase down beside the podium, Adam extracted his speech, cleared his throat, then bent once more toward the satchel. When he stood again, he raised the charred remains of the baby doll’s head and displayed it to the crowd.

  All the red lights of the row of cameras were on.

  The jostling stilled.

  This was his moment: the occasion Adam had been called to meet … the crisis he had been preparing for all those years ago. Gesturing with the hand holding the skull-like remains of the doll, he said, “Take a good look at the new face of God in America if you and I are foolish enough to think all this is just about the torching of a few wooden statues … that it’s unimportant … that it means nothing.”

  With each dramatic pause, Adam stared a different camera directly in its blinking, scarlet eye as he set the doll’s head to rest atop the lectern.

  He glanced down at his other hand, resting atop his speech, and saw a tremor there. Quickly he clenched it into a fist. “Tonight I hope to convince you, as I am absolutely convinced, that it means … everything.”

  Against the back wall, standing amid the row of video machinery, was the dignified, somber face of Mister Harrison of the Heritage Foundation.

  Directly in Adam’s line of sight, just over Harrison’s head, a new, startlingly bright bank of lights was switched on.

  Harrison’s features disappeared in the glare and so did Adam’s train of thought. Trying to regain his composure, he gestured toward the doll’s head, misjudged the distance, and knocked the plastic relic to the floor.

  This isn’t going the way I planned, he thought. But I can still get it back. I can make them listen.

  That hopeful image came right before Adam knocked over his briefcase and, bumping the podium, scattered the pages of his speech across the green linoleum floor.

  When the contents of the attaché case spilled, the contents of Cutter’s file and Adam’s notes for his address became hopelessly enmeshed.

  The muttering from the audience was rising again, their impatience increasing. There was barely a minute left to recapture their attention. Grasping a double handful of pages from the floor, Adam tried to separate them while ad-libbing.

  “Like anything worthwhile, there will be a struggle. There will be battles. There will be sacrifices.”

  His left hand was trembling again. Smile for the cameras, he told himself. Show them that you haven’t lost your composure. It was a minor interruption, nothing more.

  Where was the missing first page of his script?

  Adam’s fingers closed around the news magazine with his picture on the cover and the banner AMERICA’S NEXT BILLY GRAHAM. Were the television cameras zooming in on the cover?

  “I tell you,” he fumbled for the next line. “I tell you,” he said, parroting Harrison, “it’s a struggle we can’t afford to lose.”

  “Can’t afford is right,” someone shouted.

  Perhaps the next paper Adam seized would be the correct sheet. Instead, it was Calvin’s sworn affidavit.

  “Must not lose … no matter what the cost,” Adam said, staring down blankly. “My wife. My daughter. My family.”

  “The heart and soul …” Another paper surfaced amid the clutter. Colors and squiggles and love and caring. Anne’s finger painting: baby girl and mommy, and a daddy who hung the stars.

  “Heart and soul … of America.”

  Adam’s throat constricted. His vision blurred. Both hands were trembling now.

  “I suggest … let me suggest we … but can’t.”

  “What, Pastor Wells?” questioned the sheriff.

  The audience had grown strangely silent. What are they thinking? Adam wondered. What do they see when they look at me? Does it matter?

  “What do you suggest, Pastor?” asked the sheriff, not unkindly. “I suggest we put up a Frosty … or a Santa … and call it even.”

  Maurene stared, transfixed, at the motel room’s television screen. Displayed there, frozen like a deer in headlights, her husband was caught at the moment of capitulating to the forces of Senator Cutter. Underneath Adam’s stunned expression the caption read: LOCAL PASTOR PROPOSES INCLUSIVE X-MAS.

  The blonde-haired anchorperson reported: “That was Pastor Adam Wells of the First Church of Leonard, Texas, just moments ago, conceding to ACLU demands that …”

  From the bathroom came the bantering tones of Calvin Clay-man: “And Reney? Remember old Manzie? You know, All-State fullback Bobby Manzinski? Know what he’s doing now? Changing ones and fives in Toll Booth 11 on I – 5 outside …”

  Maurene muted the sound just as Calvin emerged from the bathroom, two glasses of airline bottle rum and Coke in hand. He offered one to her, but she waved it away.

  What happened to him? she wondered about her husband. Adam was so fierce about this moment of his return to the spotlight. Now he looks like he’s ill. Her heart began to beat faster. Her thoughts whirled in confusion.

  Calvin lifted his glass in mocking salute to Adam’s image. “What’d he do? Choke?”

  Maurene stiffened. What was she doing here? Why had she come? Without speaking, she strode toward the door, but Calvin’s next words caught her with one hand on the knob.

  “Remember how you said you chose the Ad-man instead of me? Fact is I chose Harvard instead of you.”

  Maurene faced him then, temper flaring. “Is that why you came to Leonard, Calvin? To gloat about making a better choice? What is it you want, really?”

  Calvin shrugged. “A picture to put in my photo-cube on my desk. And … I want you to call me Callie, like you used to.”

  Maurene clenched and opened her fists in unconscious imitation of what she had watched her husband do on the screen. Opening her purse, she rooted around inside, then produced a picture and extended it to Calvin. “Here’s Anne. Her sixth birthday.”

  Calvin glanced at it, but when his gaze returned to Maurene’s face, it displayed a sneer. “I don’t want a picture of the Ad-man holding my daughter.”

  “This is all I have with me. Go away, Calvin. I’ll … I’ll send school pictures later. Just go.”

  The photograph fluttered to the floor.

  Calvin’s expression softened. His voice replaced its scornful edge with something more wistful. “You ever think of me, Reney?”

  Maurene, sensing danger, stepped back a pace. Her words were clipped. “Give me your address. I’ll send whatever I have that’s just Anne.”

  Setting aside his glass, Calvin advanced one step toward her, continuing his plea. “Well, I think of you, Reney … often. How choosing Harvard instead of you and Anne was this amazingly regrettable choice. I never …” He sighed. “On some weird, cosmic level, I believe it knocked the stars out of alignment for me … for us, Reney.”

  Maurene caught her breath but forced her next comment past it. “The universe is intact, Calvin.”

  Calvin persisted, “But what about the Ad-man’s universe, Reney? How could his universe be intact when he’s genuinely a freakin’ psycho? He’s so into his Bible but doesn’t know his wi
fe doesn’t believe a word of it … and never did! How can that be right?”

  Maurene’s knees weakened. Her voice cracked when she replied, “That’s not true. I … believe.”

  Stepping around her, Calvin planted himself between Maurene and the door. Taking both her hands in his, he said, “Only when she’s pretending to be a pastor’s wife.”

  Maurene groaned. She wanted to move, to run, to flee, but couldn’t move.

  Calvin squeezed her fingers. “Just like you’re pretending that you didn’t come to my motel room tonight ‘cause fifteen years ago you called my house nineteen times the week you were deciding to choose the Ad-man instead of me.”

  Kissing her fingertips, Calvin moved his grip up on her arms and pulled her toward him.

  Maurene tried to resist. Must not do this.

  He kissed her once, slowly. Then, to her surprise, he backed away. What was he doing?

  Seizing his cell phone from atop the television, Calvin studied the motel room phone, then punched a string of numbers into his cell. “Direct dial,” he said. “Calling my room.” He passed her the cell. “Make it twenty times, Reney. Call me once more.”

  Maurene looked at the device in her hand as if it were a poisonous snake. Here it is, she thought. The moment I knew was going to come. I came here. I can still leave. But if I call his room now … I won’t go.

  “Go on,” Calvin urged. “Hit SEND.”

  Maurene’s eyes flitted about the room, seeking rescue. Her view lit on the vase of tulips. “My mother. She called yellow tulips ‘God’s teacups of sunshine.’ ”

  Turning his head slightly, Calvin also took in the flowers. “Your mother was terrific. Madeline was awesome.”

  “It was how God made her hope again, after my father left.” Maurene stared at the brilliant yellow flowers. I remember, she thought. There was still hope in the blackest moment in her life.

  “Back when we were kids,” Calvin remarked. “Hit SEND, Reney.”

  “She planted two hundred bulbs. From Holland. Veldheers. Every year.”