Piercing the Darkness (14 page)

“That’s why they’re going federal with this, citing federal law. Look here: ‘You are commanded to appear at nine in the morning, two weeks hence, at the department of the Honorable Emily R. Fletcher of the
Federal
District Court, Western District, Room 412,
Federal
Courthouse, blah blah, blah.’ This is a federal case, guys.”

“So what do we do?” asked Tom.

Corrigan became quiet and then fumbled through an answer. “Well . . . I would say you need a lawyer, all right, but . . . um . . . I’m not sure whom you should consult on something like this . . .”

“You mean, you won’t take this case?” Mark asked.

Corrigan gave a nervous chuckle and shook his head. “Well . . . no. No, I can’t.” He quickly blurted, “Now before you say anything or ask
me why not . . .”

Then he stopped.
Oh brother, here I go again, having to explain this to another bunch of naive martyrs.

“Listen, no offense intended, please understand. I mean, I can appreciate your position . . .” Corrigan pushed his chair back from his desk, waved his hands around a little, and looked at his bookcase as he tried to find the words. “But I’ve just about established a new policy in this office not to defend Christians anymore who can’t pay for my services.”

Mark thought the statement a little strange. “But . . . we didn’t think you’d do this for free.”

It wasn’t a good enough escape for Corrigan to look down at his desk—now he looked down at the rug. “Pastor Howard, you’re the last guy on earth I’d ever want to turn down, but . . . Well, let me just share some depressing information with you.

“Okay, I’m a Christian and everybody knows it; the police know it, the local judges know it, the county prosecutor knows it . . . Worst of all, all the Christians around this county know it. That means, when the Christians get into a legal predicament, they call me, because I’m a ‘brother in the Lord.’

“But then, because they’re . . . Christians . . . they come into it having some convictions about how my services are going to be paid for, if paid for at all; they sit in my office and tell me about faith and God’s provision and usually throw something in about God rewarding me for all my time and sacrifice; but in the meantime, my practice goes down the tubes from bad debts.

“But please don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming them. It’s just the way the system works: The little people—the Christians—get into legal tangles because the state, or the ACFA, or some other rabid, Christian-eating secularist organization decides to pick on them, and those people always have all the power, connections, and finances they need to win any battle they want in a court of law. Not so with the Christians. They have to put on spaghetti dinners and car washes and jogathons just to hire some poor, minor-league attorney like me who supposedly has such a love for righteous causes that he doesn’t care about the money.”

Corrigan saw that Mark and Tom were listening without any signs
of malice—at least not yet; so he proceeded. “Now that’s half of the problem. The other half is that all too often Christians just aren’t credible. You know, I’ve actually instructed some clients not to testify in court that they are Christians because in too many cases that information would damage their credibility! The world out there . . . the system . . . thinks it understands us. It has us pegged, categorized, defined. We believe in God; we believe in absolutes. Therefore, we can’t possibly be credible!” He chuckled wryly. “When I was in law school it was the other way around. The perception was that people lacked credibility if they didn’t believe in God. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?

“So anyway, I’m faced with two options: I can be retained by Christians and find out later they can’t afford my services, or I can take their case for free or on a reduced basis—usually a drastically reduced basis. In this case right here, there would be about a zero chance of any contingency recovery. I could only hope to receive part of the settlement, but even then the system is already so stacked against me that I have no fair chance of winning, and therefore no chance of being paid that way either.

“Am I making this clear for you? To put it simply, I can’t afford it, monetarily or reputationally. I’ve been too close to bankruptcy too many times to take another case like this. I think what you need is a fresh visionary, a brand-new horse who still has some miles left on him, somebody you can run ragged for next to nothing.”

Corrigan stopped. He felt released now, but also a little ashamed. He looked at the wall where his eyes fell on his license to practice law, and concluded with, “Sometimes I almost admit to myself that I hate this job. Look what it does to me . . . makes me dump all my feelings on good people like you.”

Mark looked at the legal torpedo on Corrigan’s desk and sighed. “So where can we go from here? Tom’s children are taken from him, and he still doesn’t know where. Now the school is slapped with a lawsuit that . . . Well, it seems to me that our very freedoms are being threatened. There aren’t any attorneys in Bacon’s Corner; we could have gone elsewhere, but we came to Claytonville to see you because—and I’m not ashamed to say it—we knew you were a Christian. We knew you’d have the right perspective.”

Corrigan looked at the minister just a little sheepishly. “Well, I
guess I’ve blown that notion out of the water.”

“But what about Tom? He could be bitter right now. He lost his wife in a car wreck just three years ago, his salary is pitiful, but he’s stayed right here with his two children and served as the headmaster at our Christian school for four years now, doing an excellent job. And what thanks does he get? His children taken away and a lawsuit against the school that could jeopardize everything he and the rest of us hold dear. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. Even so, he’s remained true to his calling. He’s a righteous man, a man of principle and conviction . . .”

“Hence the pitiful salary. Excuse me. Go on.”

Mark was getting disgusted. “I’m through.”

Corrigan sat quietly, rested his chin on his knuckles, thought for a moment, then nodded in agreement to his own thoughts.

“And to think it all started in Bacon’s Corner. I guess it had to happen somewhere.” He sat up straight and folded his hands on the desk. For the first time in several minutes, he looked directly at Tom and Mark. “Pastor, the ACFA isn’t after your little school; Tom, they’re not really interested in you either; as for this allegedly traumatized child, they couldn’t care less about her. No, what they’re really after is a legal precedent, something that’s going to affect not just you, but everyone. They have all the money and skill they need to pull this thing off, and they know that you don’t, and that’s what they’re counting on. That’s why they chose a little place like Bacon’s Corner and a little dirt-poor church like yours.

“And I guess they have me where they want me. I can just see those ACFA lawyers sitting in their office over at Ames, Jefferson, and Morris saying, ‘Yeah, hit Bacon’s Corner. That Wayne Corrigan is a burned-out tube, he’ll never take the case.’ Now wouldn’t that be just peachy for them?”

He looked at the papers on his desk again.

“All right, I’ll tell you what: I’ll repent . . . sort of. I’ll take this case, but I’ll take as little of it as possible. That means you do the work, you do the hoofing, you do the research, you build the case. I’ll tell you what to do, I’ll write up the affidavits, I’ll take the depositions, I’ll plead the case and present the arguments, I’ll advise you; but any information relating to this case is your responsibility. I suggest you get yourselves a private investigator to help you out. As far as my involvement, you’ll
get what you pay for, and . . .” He swallowed hard, came to a reluctant decision, and added, “. . . I’ll reduce my fee by half, but you must agree to raise the other half.”

Tom and Mark exchanged a quick glance and quickly agreed. “Okay.”

“So what comes first?” Mark asked.

Corrigan leafed through the papers. “Number One, you’ve got a temporary injunction here that restrains you from just about everything named in the complaint. Uh . . . I think what it’s going to boil down to is that you’ll have to cease and desist from spanking and from any further ‘outrageous religious behavior.’ Guess that means you can’t cast out any more demons until the court hearing in two weeks.”

“What happens in two weeks?” asked Tom.

“We have to appear in court . . . ‘to show cause, if any you have, why you and all persons acting on your behalf or on behalf of the school should not be immediately restrained from spanking, hitting, or otherwise having physical contact with children at the school for any reason whatsoever, and why you and all persons acting on your behalf in concert with you, should not be immediately restrained from any further religious behavior which could prove harmful to the mental, emotional, or social welfare of the child, or any excessive religious instruction, direct or indirect, of any kind, at the school or day-care facility, that could prove harmful . . .’ And it goes on and talks about all this other stuff.”

“Just what do they mean, ‘excessive religious instruction’?” asked Tom.

“That has yet to be defined.”

“What should we do?” asked Mark.

“Try to behave yourselves for the two weeks. Don’t be outrageous, whatever that means. In the meantime, you need to give me some good arguments why you should be allowed to continue the above-mentioned activities. Then I’ll file the briefs and affidavits with the court, and then we’ll go in and see if we can turn you guys loose from this restraining order. That’s the first thing.”

“And then?” asked Mark.

Corrigan suddenly looked worried and careworn. “One bite at a time, pastor. You’re going to be busy for a long, long time.”

“What about Ruth and Josiah?” asked Tom.

“No easy answers there. It’s going to be a tangled mess, and could be even worse, depending on whom you’re dealing with in the system. I think you’re entitled to a hearing within seventy-two hours to determine if the removal of your children has merit, but that’s usually a rubber-stamp session where the judge approves the removal of the children based on the testimony of the social worker. You might be called to appear, you might be barred from the hearing altogether. It just depends on who’s running the case. I’ll look into it.”

“But . . . won’t I get my kids back?”

Corrigan hesitated to answer the question. “You’ll probably have to go through a trial first, and that could mean a wait of six months or more.”

Neither Tom or Mark were ready for an answer like that.

“That can’t be all there is to it!” said Mark. “There have to be other options, something we can do!”

“You can pray,” Corrigan answered. “Specifically, pray for some friends in the right places. You’ve got a fight ahead of you.”

CHAPTER 10

SALLY WOULD BE
staying at the Rest Easy another night. She had the whole ten thousand dollars to spend on this one room if she wanted to, if no better ideas came to her. Right now she had no better ideas.

She’d used up the afternoon and all the stationery in the room just scribbling thoughts down as they came to her. Now, as the day outside the windows gave way to evening, she sat at the table and leafed through page after page, her day’s work.

The first page was no masterpiece: “Crazy my name is Sally Roe,” followed by a full page of aimless lines and squiggles. Apparently she’d failed to capture her thoughts. But that was depressing. Maybe this
was
an accurate record of her thoughts. She didn’t even remember doing it.

The next page had some scribbled words that looked like they might be “Death” and “Madness,” but she couldn’t be sure. After that, her writing broke down into chaotic scribbles again, and then at the bottom of the page she’d written her name several times, encircled by some strange, dark doodles. She remembered making those in a pit of depression when she didn’t feel like thinking or writing anything. It just felt good to doodle, to pour her feelings onto the page without using any language.

The third page sounded so great when she’d first written it: “I am I: I think, I exist, but know nothing of the grasping of the essence of all that is under or over the abysmal attitudes that so wrack our awareness
in the last autumns of mayhem upon the earth . . .” Now not even she could decode all that. Apparently her brain had been working while her mind was disconnected.

But she felt encouraged, not because her afternoon’s project had produced such drivel, but because she could sit quietly now with her mind clear and
realize
it was drivel. She’d just come through some kind of spiritual storm, some raging, agonizing battle.
Just like the old days
, she thought. So many of the impressions, the hallucinations, the mindless wanderings were so familiar. Her mind had not slipped over the edge like that in almost ten years.

No doubt it was this new, mysterious terror that had brought it all back. She had stepped in the way of an old Evil, and she recognized it all too well. It must have recognized her too, and that was why it was chasing her now. With only a little imagination she could sense it still lurking outside the walls of the motel room, ready to pounce on her again should she ever rest.

But . . . what to do, what to do. What was the next step? How could she free herself?

She picked up that day’s
Hampton County Star.
There was nothing new about her own death, and she figured there never would be. That story, her life, her name, were now buried, tucked neatly away in the archives to be forgotten.

She flipped to the front page and studied a large photo. Some blonde lady was handing a guy what looked like a summons. Well, this was more news from Bacon’s Corner, a Christian school scandal. Tom Harris, headmaster at the Good Shepherd Christian School . . . accused of child abuse . . . accusations brought by local postmaster—