Part 8 (2/2)
”Did she agree to see you?”
”No. So I went to her house when I knew she was alone. Or I thought she was alone. She turned out to be with this guy she was dating.” He found the word boyfriend hard to say.
”Ah, but Joshua. Why did you bring your father's gun? It was your father's gun, wasn't it?”
He let the silence go by for a minute. He looked toward the window. Maybe he would never speak again. Then the words came, almost easily, floating on a strange sense of calm.
”I don't know.”
”Oh, come on. You don't answer me like that.”
He was back in the room. He wanted Brother Mike to understand.
”I wanted her to know how bad I felt. The gun was just a message.”
”Communicating what?”
”Talk to me.”
”And if she didn't talk with you. What were your plans for the gun?”
”I thought about using it on myself.”
His throat was dry. Brother Mike seemed unmoved by the confession.
”You're saying you would have demonstrated your undying love by shooting yourself in front of her?”
Josh shrugged. ”I didn't have any plans.”
”Why not kill the other man, then? The male in her company. You must have hated him.”
”I didn't go there to kill anyone.”
One of the fundamental things Josh had no right to anymore was credibility. Why should anyone ever believe his story again? He waited for the exhalation of disappointment, the deep sigh of moral resignation.
But Brother Mike said nothing. The nothing went on until it achieved an uncomfortable tension. Josh moved on the couch to relieve the clench in his belly. There were diplomas on the wall, next to the shelves of pottery. Certificates. He nodded to them and asked Brother Mike what he studied in school. The narrowest line of smile formed on Brother Mike's lips, almost hidden in the beard.
”You want my story? I did a master's in social work and a Ph.D. in psychology before going to Vietnam for a year in the medical corps. After my service, I lived in j.a.pan for a time studying pottery; then I returned to the U.S. and did a second Ph.D. at divinity school. I lived in a monastery in upstate New York for about a decade, then worked here for six years, left for missionary work in Central America and another monastery in California, then came back. My first doctorate was an a.n.a.lysis of cognition levels in criminal offenders. My second was an examination of whether the presence of evil in the world conflicted with the goodness or benevolence of an omnipotent G.o.d. And here I am, sitting with you, mixing it all together.”
”Figure anything out yet?” Josh asked.
”More questions. A few answers. It's easy, in certain settings, to lose faith in the goodness of G.o.d because of all the suffering that occurs in the world. If you believe that every event is part of G.o.d's plan, for example, does that mean G.o.d allows evil to happen? Some believe that evil is in direct conflict with G.o.d's goodness, but that doesn't say much for G.o.d's omnipotence. So the general consensus, among those who care about such matters, is that evil is a consequence of G.o.d permitting us to have free will. We choose evil, or follow evil paths, because G.o.d allows us to be free. In that sense, returning to G.o.d means forgoing evil-in other words, choosing, with your free will, to give yourself to G.o.d. A complicated mystery.”
Josh sat with it. ”The thing I've never understood”-and it was something he'd thought about since coming inside-”is why G.o.d lets one person do what he wants even if it means making someone else suffer.”
”Another mystery for you. A very complicated one. In theory, G.o.d could permit the evil act, done of free will, but prevent the evil consequence.” He waited until Josh nodded. ”But of course the questions come from there. Why then does he let the rapist brutalize the victim or the child molester destroy the child? The violation of innocence is appalling to contemplate. Why doesn't he stop the murderer's bullet?” Brother Mike shrugged. ”What can I tell you, Josh? I'm sure you wish the thing could be undone, but if G.o.d stopped that bullet from firing or diverted it enough to give you a healthy shock and then sent you on your shaken way, what kind of freedom would he be offering you? Eliminating suffering from the consequences of evil choices would dissolve the meaning of free will. We would all be free to rampage in sin.”
”But what about her?” he asked hoa.r.s.ely.
”You cannot begin to understand G.o.d's plan. Submit at least to that. Maybe suffering exists to show us the way to forgiveness and atonement. Judas was an agent of Satan, and he caused great suffering for Jesus crucified on the cross, but his evil act, born of free will, revealed G.o.d's love for us and granted us the possibility of salvation. That's the mystery. And the most beguiling aspect of the plot is that Satan, in thwarting good, remains a servant of G.o.d, doing his ultimate bidding. You are the lamb that was lost, Joshua. G.o.d loves you even though you stray from his flock. He has plans for you, too.”
”I want to get out of here,” Josh said. I don't need to be here to learn to be good, he wanted to say. I need to leave, or I will die or do other horrible things. I won't have a choice. That's what you don't understand.
”You can't get out of here.” A smugness to Brother Mike's smile. An endless benevolent love.
”Roy,” Josh said, and then he remembered that he was not supposed to mention Roy by name. f.u.c.k it, he thought, irritated by his own mistake and desperate. ”Roy told me, based on what happened and the way my trial went, he thinks they put me in the wrong prison. Roy said he would help me try to get transferred. If you gave him access to my complete files and transcripts, he could look at them and see if there's some information we can use.”
The request fell like a stone dropped into water. Brother Mike's smile disappeared. ”Roy,” he said with disappointment in the utterance. ”Roy used to work in here, did he tell you that? My file clerk. He has an unhealthy curiosity for case histories.” Josh wished he could have pulled the words back, but Brother Mike's anger continued to grow. ”I think you should accept the fact that you're here. Using an inmate's legal counsel to get out of prison is pathetic. I've seen men waste their entire lives in that fool's quest. It's an avoidance of the very thing we've been talking about, the moral lessons of consequence.”
”I know,” Josh kept saying. ”I know, I'm sorry. It wasn't my idea.”
”Think of this prison as your own monastery. Free will is a limited and precious resource here. Moral consequence is in abundance. How you barter makes all the difference.”
”You don't understand,” Josh whispered. ”I've got twenty-five years to serve. I don't think I can make it.”
Brother Mike shrugged, his anger and his time depleted. ”Take it from an old man, you'll have years left to live when you get out. Plotinus called time the life of the soul as it pa.s.ses from one experience to another. Be grateful for those experiences. If you look hard enough, maybe you'll find something.”
A long silence. Josh wanted to scream with frustration. He wanted to throw the old man down. Instead, he insisted, and didn't know where the strength came from. ”Roy told me you needed to give me a copy of my file if I asked for it. I'm asking for it now.”
Brother Mike stared at him, then rose and walked to one of the file cabinets along the wall. He pulled out a drawer, the long metal drone of a morgue, and fingered through.
”My catalogue of sin. I use a coded system for each file because I know how powerful this information can be.”
He retrieved a thick manilla envelope from a hanging folder and brought it back to the coffee table, laying it before Josh.
”It's all in there, Josh, everything I have except my notes from our sessions, which you have no right to, but it also includes photocopies of the drawings you made. Be careful with it.”
Josh nodded and stood awkwardly, the blood rus.h.i.+ng to his legs.
”Someday I'm going to write a book,” Brother Mike said. ”A book that will blow the doors off corrections theory, and probably get me kicked out of the American Psychological a.s.socation, and probably rouse the Holy See as well. I'll tell you more about it someday, years from now.”
We'll have plenty of time, he was saying. Josh said goodbye and closed the door. He walked, with that strange solitary freedom, through the education wing and into the main hub and down the tunnel to the infirmary, each gate and door opened for him by a CO as if he were someone important, as if he actually mattered. Every range in gen pop was in lockdown, only the infirmary open for business, so there was a grand emptiness to the prison, a sense of safety. When he got to his own cell at last, he opened the envelope and stared at the papers inside. Then he took the photocopies of his drawings and hid them the way Crowley had showed him.
16.
We kept the lockdown in place that New Year's Eve, another holiday spent in the concrete cave. The keepers decided to amend the annual New Year's Eve hot chocolate and doughnut social and distribute the goodies from cell to cell instead of opening up each block. Keeper Pollock sent me up to get Billy Fenton and bring him to the kitchen to help. Fenton did it every year. Getting out to walk around was a token of respect or an acknowledgment of special sway.
Only the dimmers were on in the main hub. I lifted a hand to the crew in the bubble, not even sure who was manning it tonight, unable to see into the dark s.p.a.ce within. Then I walked the long tunnel to B block and greeted Ferris in the nest, a raised, protected room in the corner of the block where the CO kept watch. Ferris didn't bother to come down but activated the caged door for me to enter. TVs and stereos were on, but the noise within was subdued, the energy of the block powered down by some oppressive glumness. I climbed the metal staircase to the third floor. With each fourteen-foot rise in elevation, I felt an increased sense of solitude, a smallness in the world.
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