Godless (13 page)

“So they want to turn up the heat?” asked the elder. “They plan to smoke out the stubborn debits who've managed to resist the pressure to slit their own throats?”

“Exactly!” Angie interjected. “It makes me furious. There's no way Kevin can support that plan.”

Kevin sensed his father inspecting the hard place. “So,” his dad finally said, “what's the rock?”

Kevin's eyes met Angie's, then his mother's, then his father's.

“Well,” he said hesitantly, “Franklin's right-hand man, Anderson, has hinted at a cabinet post.”

Stunned silence.

“Labor?” his father prodded.

“Commerce.”

More silence.

“Of course,” the elder whispered. “You'd be perfect.”

The comment surprised Kevin. Not that his father had said it, but that he also seemed to believe it.

“We're talking about the White House, Dad. Not a congressional committee chair. The big table. The center of national power.”

“I understand,” his father replied. “And you'd be perfect for the job.”

Angie grinned. “I told you,” she said.

“Told him what?” Kevin's mother asked from behind, still absorbing the shock of the news.

“I told him he's just what the nation needs. What better way to advance the Bright Spots agenda than as the secretary of commerce?”

“Come on, babe,” Kevin said in self-deprecation. “You know as well as I do that will never happen.”

“Why not?” his father asked. “You have the business skills and track record. You've made your mark in Congress. And you're nearly as smart as your old man!”

“And almost as handsome,” Gayle chimed in while sliding the final pancake from her spatula onto her husband's plate. She winked after receiving his pat on her bottom.

“Anyway,” Kevin continued after rolling his eyes in their direction as he had when he was a kid, “I think they're floating the cabinet post as a carrot, hoping I'll rally the breeders around Franklin's cause.”

“Kevin!” his mother said, obviously embarrassed that her son would voice a slur in front of the children. “Watch your language.”

“Sorry, Mom,” he said. “But that's the commonly used term for folks like us now.”

“It's not!”

“It is,” Angie confirmed regretfully. “But we don't mind anymore. It's become a badge of honor. Especially now that other breeders consider Kevin their voice in Washington.”

Jim Tolbert looked inquisitively at his son, prompting a full explanation.

Two years earlier Julia Davidson had published a scathing feature titled
Breeders
with the widely read RAP Syndicate. She had intended the story to disparage those of Kevin's ilk. But instead it had rallied a growing constituency to his cause. It made perfect sense in retrospect. For five decades a subculture of the nation had been bearing and raising what she once called “irresponsible broods of children.” Kevin labeled them “bright spots” because they provided pockets of vitality and growth amid dark economic clouds. Clouds that had been created, they now realized, by a fertility rate far below the replacement level: too few children to create a thriving culture of long-term investment historically motivated by one generation's dreams for the next. Hidden well beneath the stratosphere of a world inhabited by the sophisticated class, breeders quietly earned a living, wiped runny noses, and created a bloc of voters that came of age just when Joshua Franklin needed their support. Support, many assumed, that would take its cues from the young congressman from Colorado who embodied their quirky subculture and religious sensibilities.

Kevin parroted the familiar chatter of aghast elites.

“More than one or two children? Are they out of their minds?”

“Opposed to the transition industry? You must be kidding!”

“Conceiving children in the bedroom instead of the clinic? No wonder they end up with so many debit kids!”

“Debit kids?” Kevin's mom said. “Do they say such things?”

“Not to our faces,” Angie said. “At least not in words.”

“Just with their eyes,” Kevin added, holding Baby Leah closer as he spoke. “Bottom line,” he continued, “Franklin wants me to nudge the breeders in his direction by going on the record in support of his economic plan.”

“The rock,” his father concluded.

“Exactly.”

The sounds of boyish exasperation prompted Grandma to take the bowl and spoon Grandpa had abandoned so that little Ricky could finish his breakfast.

“Can we look for bugs now?” Tommy asked his mother, prompting an eager nod from Joy.

“Go ahead,” Angie said. “But stay where we can see you.”

The sliding door slammed seconds after her final word.

“Read him the letter, babe,” Angie said to Kevin while removing Leah from his arms.

“What letter?” both parents asked in unison.

Kevin appeared reluctant to share evidence of what Angie considered his greatest triumph.

“He's been receiving letters from other parents with disabled children,” Angie explained.

“Huh,” Kevin's father said as if puzzled by the idea. “What do they want?”

“Nothing. They don't write me to ask for something. They write to say thanks.”

“Read the one you got last Tuesday!” Angie prodded eagerly. “It's in your tablet.”

A few moments later Kevin returned from the bedroom. “Here it is,” he said after a few taps on the screen.

“Let me read it,” Angie said hastily, trading Leah for a different treasure, the letter displayed on Kevin's device.

“‘Dear Congressman Tolbert,'” she began. “‘My name is Angelina Sanders. My husband and I have three children: a boy named Marcos and two daughters, Nicky and Bella.'”

Angie seemed to sing the second girl's name.

“‘You probably know that Bella means beautiful. And that's what she is. Beautiful. I don't care who calls her a debit or how much time and money it takes to meet her special needs. She is every bit as precious and beautiful as our healthy daughter. As any daughter.'”

The letter went on to tell the family's story.

An excited couple shocked to learn their third child would be born with a rare disorder called Down syndrome. A genetic defect, the doctor had explained, that had been largely eradicated as more and more parents opted for genetic prescreening, something the couple believed was wrong.

Angie paused in her reading. She looked at Kevin in a moment of shared remembrance. They had known a similar moment. Had this family second-guessed themselves at the news? Had they fumbled to answer why they had opted for “blind conception” instead of screening out potential defects? Had they sensed the silent ridicule from those wondering what right they had to burden society with the long-term expense of a debit child?

They had, the letter went on to explain.

“‘I want to thank you, Mr. Tolbert, for what you are doing to uphold the dignity and worth of my precious little girl,'” Angie continued through watering eyes and a wobbling voice. “‘I can't tell you how much it means to know someone with your level of influence considers our child as beautiful as we know her to be.'”

Angie turned the tablet toward her audience of two. “They sent this picture.”

Jim, Gayle, and Kevin admired the image on the screen. Then they looked at the child in Kevin's arms.

Kevin's father stood slowly and approached his boy to lay a hand of paternal approval on his shoulder. “Like I said, Son”—he paused to swallow back the lump rising in this throat—“you'd be perfect for the job.”

Alex Ware
stared intently at his schedule for any hint of a sign of a reminder of the appointment that Mrs. Mayhew had scheduled.

“I don't know why it isn't on my calendar, Mrs. Mayhew,” he said into the phone, despite having a pretty good idea his volunteer assistant had something to do with it. “I just know that I see no appointment with Julia Simmons.”

“Well she spoke to me about it yesterday and I told her you would meet with her today.” Mrs. Mayhew sounded perturbed by her pastor's unwillingness to own the blame.

“I'm in the middle of having lunch with my son,” he explained. “What time is the appointment?”

“She arrived a few minutes ago. I assumed you had slipped out to use the restroom or something and told her to wait in your office.”

Alex groaned.

“Is everything OK, Dad?” Chris asked out of one side of his mouth over a partially chewed bite of sandwich.

Alex lifted a “just a second” finger toward his son across the table. “What about Tamara?” he asked into the phone.

“What about her?” Mrs. Mayhew asked in puzzled irritation.

He repeated a rule he had explained a dozen times before. “I only counsel women if Tamara joins me.”

He knew Mrs. Mayhew considered it a silly policy. That might have had something to do with how often she “forgot” to honor it.

“Like I've told you before, Pastor, I'm perfectly willing to work quietly at your desk when you counsel women. No need to interrupt Tamara's day.”

Just what he needed, the chief source of church gossip listening to parishioners sharing details of urgent pain or secret struggles. But he was not about to ask Tamara to drop everything, again, in order to rush over to his office.

“OK,” he said reluctantly. “Offer her a soda and my apologies. I'll be there in a few minutes.”

He ended the call to face his son's furrowed brow. It was the second time in a month Dad would need to bail on their guy-time outing. The prior week they had been lacing up bowling shoes when Mrs. Mayhew called to scold Alex for forgetting about his meeting with the flower committee chair who, she had reminded him, was one of the wealthiest women in the church. The woman had threatened to make a large donation toward the capital campaign, but Alex wasn't holding his breath, since she had barely given enough to cover the massive floral arrangements cluttering the front of the auditorium. But he'd gone anyway, giving his son a rain check he had yet to honor.

Chris wrapped his lips tightly around the straw protruding from a half-consumed milk shake.

“Sorry, buddy,” Alex said sheepishly. “There's someone waiting in my office.”

“But I'm not done with my fries,” Chris protested over a mouthful of strawberry coldness.

“Tell you what,” Alex offered. “I'll buy you an apple pie to go with your shake. You can eat it in the car.”

A prolonged pause. “Two.”

Alex's eyes widened. “Two apple pies?” He still remembered the days when his son could barely finish half of a kid's meal. At eight, he now routinely downed an adult-size burger, regular fries, and a large shake. “You think you can handle that much food?”

Chris nodded proudly while wiping a tiny stream of chilly pinkness from his chin.

“All right, then,” Alex said. “Two pies it is.”

After he had dropped his son at home and accepted Tamara's understanding peck on the cheek, Alex arrived twenty minutes after his “scheduled” appointment with Julia Simmons.

“Don't mention it,” Julia said while standing to accept her pastor's unnecessary apology. “I'm just grateful you could see me on such short notice.”

In Alex's experience, short notices usually accompanied bad news like a diagnosis or suspected infidelity.

“Would it be all right with you if Mrs. Mayhew uses my desk to work while we chat?” he asked with some hesitation.

The question seemed to unsettle Julia. Her eyes darted toward the door, where the woman who had been talking her ear off for the prior twenty minutes stood holding a small stack of unsealed envelopes.

“You won't even know I'm here,” she insisted. “Just a busy bee. A busy, deaf, and mute bee.”

“I suppose that would be all right,” Julia said warily.

“I usually have my wife, Tamara, sit in on counseling sessions with women. But—”

“No need to explain,” Julia interrupted, her smile suggesting admiration for the policy. “I would want Troy to do the same if he were a pastor.”

Mrs. Mayhew scurried toward Alex's desk like a preteen girl sneaking into an R-rated movie. The pastor extended his hand in a gesture that invited Julia to return to the seat she had been occupying while awaiting his arrival. That's when he noticed which book she had removed from his shelf to kill time: a collection of quotations from a seventeenth-century philosopher named Blaise Pascal.

“Ah,” he said with delight, “that's one of my favorites. The last edition ever printed in English. Fairly rare.”

“How do you pronounce the title?” She pointed to a single word on the cover a few inches above the author's name.

“I'm pretty sure it sounds like connecting
pen
and
seas
with the roll of a tongue,” he explained before demonstrating his pathetic French accent. “
Pensées
.”

“I always sensed from your sermons that you were well-read,” Julia said while Alex took the seat opposite her. “But I didn't know you collected print editions.”

He glanced toward his bookshelves with something resembling loving affection. “A bit of a weakness,” he confessed.

“Tell her about the Lewis collection,” Mrs. Mayhew said in violation of her promised silence.

Alex cringed at the interruption, then glowered in his assistant's direction.

“Sorry,” she said. “I just thought—”

She stopped short when the pastor lifted his hand in silent rebuke.

“Tell you what,” she continued. “I'll just listen to my music.” She lifted two earbuds toward her ears before tapping a digital device sitting beside her pile of envelopes.

“Good idea,” said Alex with relief as he turned back toward his guest. “She's never read anything by C. S. Lewis, but brags on my find anyway.”

“Your find?”

“I found a collection of early-edition books by C. S. Lewis at a seminary liquidation sale.”

“Isn't he the author you suggested Troy and I read last year?”

Alex tried to recall a context, then remembered the Simmonses attending his Exploring Christianity sessions. “That's right,” he said. “I consider a bit of Lewis an essential part of every sampler plate.”

“Sampler plate?” she said inquisitively.

“Sure. Anyone considering the Christian faith would do well to taste the Gospel of John, a bit of Paul's letter to the Romans, and a few gems from C. S. Lewis.”

They shared a brief, polite chuckle.

“How's that coming for you?” he asked. “You were baptized, what, a year ago?”

“Nine months,” she corrected.

“That's right. I baptized you and Amanda the same day, didn't I?”

A nod of happy recall. “Good memory,” she said. “And it's going well. Although I think Amanda has had an easier time with the mind-set thing than me.”

“Mind-set thing?”

“That's the wrong phrase, isn't it?”

“Mind shift?” he asked after recalling the title of a message series.

“That's it. The one about renewing your mind.”

“Epistle to the Romans, chapter twelve,” he said with a smile, pleased to realize someone was actually trying to put his sermons into practice.

Alex glanced quickly back toward Mrs. Mayhew to confirm her “deaf and mute” status before asking Julia what was on her mind.

“To be honest,” she began, “I'm not sure where to start.”

In Alex's experience, when they didn't know where to start it meant there was much to be said. His mind raced through a mental checklist of typical possibilities.

Parenting struggles? He wouldn't be surprised. Adopting a preteen girl comes with a truckload of challenges.

Questions about the faith? Perhaps. Julia had already confessed the daughter was outpacing the mom.

But more often than not, short-notice appointments meant marriage problems.

“Why don't you begin by telling me what prompted your request for an appointment?”

She nodded. “Something happened the night before last.”

She paused as if trying to muster the courage to continue. Her eyes seemed to be scanning a fear-filled memory. Julia looked toward the pastor's busy-bee assistant, then back at Alex. She seemed worried that describing the experience might expand its danger.

She finally spoke. “I had a dream.”

In the years since his graduation from seminary Alex couldn't recall anyone ever coming to him to talk about a dream. But this week, out of the blue, there had been two.

“It's probably nothing,” she continued. “I went back and forth on whether I should take up your valuable time talking about it.”

“And yet here you are. So it must be more than nothing. Please, go on.”

She had been looking at the floor, as if embarrassed by whatever confusion or insecurity had compelled her visit. But now, emboldened by the absence of condescension in her pastor's voice, she looked up. Her gaze seemed to possess a timid hope.

“Pastor Alex,” she began, “do you think dreams carry meaning? Not repressed memories or anything like that. Actual meaning?”

He considered the question before responding. “Not most dreams, but certainly some.”

The comment served as kindling to some flicker of possibility Julia had carried into the room. “Spiritual meaning?”

“Possibly. Or more.”

Julia appeared puzzled. “More?”

“The Scriptures describe several occasions in which God used dreams to reveal a prophecy or give instructions.”

“Prophecy? Is that like predicting the future?”

“I guess you could say that. Although from God's point of view they were more like movie trailers.”

Another puzzled expression.

“Just a second,” Alex said while standing. He walked to his bookshelf, where he found his stack of leather-bound Bibles, the kind used back in the days when people tracked the pastor's sermon text by looking down at an open copy of the Scriptures. He inspected the bindings before selecting the oldest of the pile and finding the table of contents. A quick scan carried his mind through a retrospective of God's blockbuster stories.

Jacob dreamed about a ladder to heaven shortly before a wrestling match with God that dislocated his hip.

Joseph dreamed he would be promoted above his older brothers right before they sold him into slavery.

Pharaoh dreamed about seven years of famine that would follow a period of plenty.

That's when it dawned on him. Dreams with meaning tend to hang out with trouble.

King Nebuchadnezzar's nightmare got a young Daniel promoted right before his friends got thrown into a fiery furnace.

Joseph dreamed he needed to flee to Egypt right before Herod killed every baby in Bethlehem.

Pilate's wife dreamed about Jesus right before her husband sent him to the cross.

“What's that?” Julia asked, interrupting Alex's attempt to put his thoughts into the right words.

He carried the treasure with him to his seat. “My grandfather's old Bible,” he said. “Published way back in the seventies. King James.”

“King who?”

“Sorry. It's an authorized King James Bible.”

No reaction.

“Sort of like Shakespeare, old English words and phrases.”

“I see,” she said curiously, leaning forward to view the cherished artifact.

“I love the poetic language. It makes what we believe feel more…” He paused to let what he was trying to say catch up to what he felt. “It makes what we believe seem less clinical. More full of mystery, if you know what I mean.”

The look on her face told him she didn't.

“Anyway,” he said to get back to Julia's question, “I was just refreshing my memory about dreams in the Bible. They don't happen often, but when they do they typically occur just before something…significant.”

“Significant to the person?”

“More like significant to God's redemptive purposes.”

She waited for more.

“It's the main plot of the Bible: God restoring a fallen world to himself.”

She released a sigh of relief. “So the dreams come from God?”

“You sound surprised.”

“Were these dreams that came from God ever…” She paused. “Were they ever nightmares?”

“Is that what you had? A nightmare?”

She nodded slowly.

“Tell me what you remember about the dream.”

She did.

A mysterious, shadowy man reaching toward her in the distance.

The descent into ever-darkening water toward a sadistic, ravenous laughter.

The face and fist vanishing below.

The ascent toward life and rescue.

And the second face, only vaguely familiar, trying to haul her down again.

Julia sat in silence as if awaiting her pastor's verdict. Evil or good? Warning or prophecy? Satan or God?

“Is that it?” Alex heard from behind. His face pinched in embarrassed anger as he turned back toward Mrs. Mayhew. She was sitting on the edge of her chair with one earbud removed. “What happened next? Did your fingers slip loose? Were you pulled back under?”

She noticed the daggers coming from Alex's eyes. “Oh, sorry.” She placed the tiny speaker back in her ear canal. “Must have fallen out. Don't mind me. Buzz, buzz, buzz,” she sang while grabbing another envelope from the pile.

“Forgive me,” Alex said. A slight smile told him Julia found the moment more humorous than mortifying. “Please, continue.”