Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction (39 page)

Dan whispers as I sit down, “You blew it.”

I smile as if he is congratulating me on the best opening statement he has ever heard from anyone besides Chet Bracken.

At Chet’s funeral, the huge sanctuary at Christian Life bulges with members, lawyers, the media, and perhaps even a couple of members of the jury. Dan and I squeeze in ten rows from the front on the right side, next to Amy Gilchrist, whom I haven’t seen since my last visit to Christian Life.

“Hi, guys,” she whispers, unable to suppress a grin despite the solemn occasion.

The three of us were pals in night law school, and then, after graduation, we all went to work for the county, Amy on the opposite side. Just the sight of each other stirs a host of memories. I lean across Dan and say, “Remember the day Chet stormed out of Phil’s office when Phil showed him those pictures of his client naked with that woman? He nearly kicked Phil’s desk in.”

Amy wrinkles her slightly pug nose in disgust. Her boss then, the former Prosecuting Attorney of Blackwell County, didn’t have a murder case, and she knew it.

“I

tried to crawl into the wall that day,” she says, her hand on Dan’s knee, as she leans over to talk.

Dan wheezes softly.

“Rub it a little, Amy. It’s getting stiff.”

I grin but catch the disapproving eye of a man on the other side of Amy and put my finger to my lips. I wonder what she’s heard in the last twenty-four hours. Now isn’t quite the time to ask. Fortunately, Chet’s casket, squarely in the middle of the sanctuary at the front, is closed. I don’t want to dwell on what his face must look like and turn my head to view the church. Its stained-glass windows seem conventional enough, though I would be hard pressed to name the Biblical characters represented in them. As Dan observed on the way in, “Once you’ve seen one stained-glass window in a church, you’ve seen them all.” At my level of appreciation, this heresy has the ring of truth.

The immense walls are unpainted concrete blocks.

The effect is one of strength, not ugliness, which is perhaps a reflection of my own lack of architectural taste and inherent miserliness. Yet, although I was raised a Catholic, the wealth of the Vatican has always seemed to me a scandal. As a senior at Subiaco in Christian Doctrine, I dared to offer this criticism to one of the monks, who cracked, “Jesus was poor, and look what happened to him.” Money talks in any age. Poor suckers like me keep forgetting that.

At the front of the church above the pulpit and hanging from the ceiling is the largest cross I’ve ever seen.

Were it to fall during a Sunday service, Shane and half the choir would be killed. As these thoughts flit through my overheated brain, Shane, carrying a white Bible, appears from the left, walks to the middle of the sanctuary in front of Chet’s casket, and signals us to stand. Apparently there will be no choir. I cut my eyes to the left and glimpse the pallbearers marching past me. Curiously, my feelings were a little hurt that Wynona did not ask me to be one. I remind myself that I was not a close friend of Chet’s. Still, he chose to end his life in front of me, and somehow I have the feeling that entitles me to some public acknowledgment. I do not know any of these men. Perhaps they were members of his “family.”

Behind them in a solemn procession follow his relatives.

Trey and Wynona, who is biting her lip and visibly trembling, walk hand in hand to the front row.

There must be twenty other members of Chet’s family, presumably from Helena. After they are seated, Shane, today dressed in a gray suit, briskly climbs three carpeted steps and from behind the pulpit opens his Bible and reads, ” “Whoever hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” ” Shane closes the book, and booms, “Chet Bracken, I tell you, brothers and sisters, heard the voice of God and today is alive in heaven.”

Shane takes the microphone from its stand and moves around to the right side of the pulpit. He stands at parade rest except for his right hand, which is grasping the microphone at the bottom as if it were a stick of peppermint candy. Smiling, and his voice as conversational as that of a talk-show host, he says, “Chet, for those of you who didn’t know him, became a Christian less than a year ago. It seems like just yesterday I had the privilege of baptizing him in the name of Jesus Christ in this very church. Right now I ask the members of his ‘church family’ to stand and be acknowledged.” I crane my neck and watch, as in different sections of the congregation about twenty-five people of all ages, including all of the pallbearers, stand. Ten rows in front, Wynona and Trey, their heads bowed, rise as one. Even as enormous as this church is, it is hard to avoid a feeling of intimacy as Shane takes a moment to explain the significance of church families at Christian Life and then says simply, “You were Chet’s real ministers, and I share your grief.

“Let us pray,” he says, and raises his left hand, which had been behind his back, as a signal to the rest of us to rise.

“Dear God, through your Son Jesus, comfort us in our bewilderment and pain. Like Job, we do not understand human suffering. You send the rain upon the just and unjust. Those you raise up to be your servants, you seem to strike down, even at that time when we need them most. Our human hearts futilely cry again and again for a reason as if it were given to us to comprehend Your divinity and majesty….”

As his prayer continues in the same vein, I try to understand what I am hearing. Is he saying that Chet’s suicide was God’s will? I know nothing of the theology here, but I am reminded of my own religious confusion, which was never cleared up by the monks at Subiaco. If Jesus was God, what is this talk about the Son?

“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Who did Jesus think He was? No wonder they didn’t want us reading the Bible by ourselves.

When he finishes, the girl I recognize as a song leader from my earlier visit enters from a side door onto the platform, and Shane says, “Sheila will lead the Christian Life members present in “A Green Hill.” ” Sheila, whose blond hair comes halfway down her back, receives the microphone from Shane and without benefit of musical accompaniment begins on a note impossibly high for any male over the age of thirteen.

Around me, some people raise their arms and close their eyes as they sing. Without a song sheet to follow, the words are lost to me, but the melody soars, and by the third verse I hear Dan, who had been worried the roof of the church might fall in on him, humming along.

After Sheila departs, Shane follows with more Scripture.

“But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised….” My mind wanders to Sarah, and I wonder how much she really believes. Is it the absolute certainty of a life after death that attracts her to Christian Life? I don’t think so. Shane reads, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”

Sarah, for sure, would reject the notion that Christians, whatever their beliefs about heaven, are to be pitied Christian Life provides meaning for her in the here and now. Children her age do not think about death, anyway. In my work I can’t seem to avoid it.

Shane follows with a eulogy, and I listen closely to see if he will lay down any clues about Chet’s death or his own possible role in Art’s murder. Once again, I realize Chet’s death can be understood as a conscious decision not to betray Shane. Is that why he killed himself? After recounting an anecdote about Chet’s boyhood in Helena, Shane says, “Almost immediately after becoming licensed, Chet established himself as one of the better defense attorneys in the state, and within a decade my lawyer friends tell me he was with out equal in his chosen field. Now, I’m sure, like a lot of you, I have questioned the value of so many lawyers in our society. The very afternoon after I baptized him we were sitting in my” study and I asked him how he could continue to represent people who are considered the lowest form of life in our society drug dealers, pornographers, murderers, child abusers. And you know what he told me? He said, “Pastor Norman’ I couldn’t get him to call me Shane back then ‘what you can’t really know is that these people are not always guilty, as the public thinks they are. Most of them are poor;

some are addicted to drugs or alcohol; many are without education; but all are at the mercy of the system when it cranks itself up and decides to get rid of them.” He said, “Pastor, you know much better than I do that it was the prostitutes, the thieves, the despised, the sick in mind and body that our Lord and Savior cast his lot with during his ministry. I can’t turn my back on these people, especially now that I have such joy and hope in my own life….” ” Dan nudges me sharply in the ribs and whispers, “I give you two to one, now he’s gonna mention Leigh.”

Shane pauses to take a sip of water from the glass on the lectern.

“And, lo and behold, my own daughter, in the eyes of society, not the members of this church, praise God, became one of the despised Chet talked about that day. As everyone here knows, Leigh, my youngest and gentlest child, has been accused of murder.

Unable to find the killer of her husband, the authorities have pointed their fingers at her. So, finally, brothers and sisters, my own arrogance and assumptions about persons accused of crime have dropped away, because I know my daughter is innocent of murder. And, as many of you already know, Chet volunteered to undertake her defense free, out of gratitude, he told me.

So it was an enormous shock to me personally when yesterday, on the morning Leigh’s trial was to begin, he took his own life. So that we can put the gossip mongers to rest, Wynona Cody, Chet’s widow, has authorized me to state that Chet was suffering from terminal cancer and was in great pain that was no longer being completely controlled by medication.”

The overflowing congregation (folding chairs have been placed in the aisles) sits rapt as Shane stops to swallow more water. I wonder if he is more nervous than I realize. This story can’t be easy, even if he has conducted a thousand funerals.

“Even as my heart aches for Wynona, Trey, Chet’s family and friends, and for my own loss because I considered Chet a personal friend,” Shane says, almost shyly, “I have not been able to avoid worrying how his death will affect my daughter’s defense. Again with Wynona’s permission, I am going to ask Mr. Gideon Page, if he is here, to stand.”

When I hear my name, it almost doesn’t register that he has asked me to get to my feet. How can he do this in a funeral? But it is his church. He can do anything he wants. Will he ask me to speak? Agree to refuse to try the case tomorrow? I try to fight down a rising sense of panic that I will be humiliated if I acknowledge my presence. Dan’s elbow stings my ribs again.

“Get up!”

he whispers.

“He obviously knows you’re here.”

I push myself up, sweat pouring down my sides. I feel as though I were in one of those dreams I’ve had where I am naked in front of other people but can’t quite seem to get my clothes on. Shane says, “Mr.

Page’s daughter, Sarah, has begun coming to our services and been assigned a ‘family,” so I feel he is almost a member himself. Please bow your heads.”

What is he doing? I close my eyes, almost expecting to be shot. Instead, Shane offers a simple and eloquent prayer for my efforts on Leigh’s behalf. When he concludes, he nods for me to sit down and when I have done so, his voice slightly apologetic, he says, “I think Chet would have wanted us to pray for Mr. Page.”

While Shane continues in a more traditional manner, mentioning Chet’s family in Helena by name and telling a couple of anecdotes obviously supplied by his family, Dan mutters out the side of his mouth, “Talk about slick! He’s boxed you in tighter than a rubber on a donkey’s dick.”

Hoping no one has overheard this pearl of wisdom, I nod, so he won’t feel compelled to repeat himself. Is this what Shane was after? I concede the possibility.

How could I dare stand up in court tomorrow and accuse him of murder? No wonder Leigh refused to come with me. He would have had her come up and stand beside him. Yet, the sincerity I have heard in Shane’s voice leads me to believe otherwise. When he began to speak, he seemed like a man caught up in events entirely out of his control, admitting he had no more access to the mind of God than his congregation. All he can do is pray. Hardly a diabolical act, since that is what preachers do.

After more prayer and Scripture, the service ends, and I am surrounded by people, wishing me well on Leigh’s behalf. So many people speak (none I know), it takes a full ten minutes to move from the sanctuary to the front steps. I get a glimpse of Jill walking to the parking lot and wonder if it ever crossed her mind to investigate Shane. I tell Dan to wait for me in the car, because I should speak to Wynona and Trey. Chet will be buried in Helena, which is more than two hours to the east, so Dan and I will not be going to the graveside service.

It takes another ten minutes in line to work my way up to the black limousines where mourners are consoling the family. Tongue-tied as usual in these situations, I simply hug Wynona, who squeezes me hard against her. She and I are the last persons who saw Chet alive.

Wynona, surprisingly dressed in gay colors (red and green) rather than the traditional black, whispers, “Call me when the trial is over.” I nod, and she does not say more. I turn to Trey, who is standing beside her. In his little suit with his hair slicked down, he looks like one of those small-town-looking kids Norman Rockwell used to draw for the Saturday Evening Post. If Chet has sinned by taking his life, it is against Trey. By his expression he doesn’t have a clue.

“Hi, Mr. Page,” he says, his face brightening when he sees me, offering his hand to me the way his stepfather would have wanted him to.

“I hope you do good in the trial,” he says.