The Abstinence Teacher (16 page)

“You’re pathetic,” he said.

“I know,” said Tim. “But what am I supposed to do?”

“Fix yourself,” the Pastor told him. “Ask God to help.”

“I’ve tried that.”

Pastor Dennis looked up at the sky, as if seeking advice. The moon was bright, three-quarters full, its bottom edge obscured by a raggedy cloud.

“Try a little harder,” he said, bringing his gaze back to earth. “In the meantime, keep your unclean hands off your wife. She deserves better.”

Tim hung his head. The Pastor sighed. He sounded beleaguered, like a guy who could use a stiff drink.

“You made promises, Tim. It’s time to start keeping them.”

TIM KNEW
exactly what he was supposed to do that Sunday morning as he and Carrie knelt together on the living room rug. According to Pastor Dennis, there was an accepted procedure—it was drawn from I Corinthians 7—by which a husband notified his wife that he would
be abstaining from sexual relations with her for a defined period until he purged himself of the lust that was preventing him from being the kind of husband God wanted him to be. Luckily, the husband was under no obligation to inform his wife about the specifics of his sinful desire; all he had to do was reassure her that he was working on the problem and that things would soon return to normal.

Tim smiled at Carrie and took her hands in his. She smiled back, her face sweet and trusting, as always, but shadowed by a watchful anxiety that hadn’t been there on the day Pastor Dennis had brought them together at the church picnic. She still looked terribly young, but there was no denying that marriage had changed her.

“Lord Jesus,” he said, “sometimes we’re not as strong as You want us to be.”

Carrie nodded in agreement, but Tim could see the way her body tensed, as if she were bracing herself for bad news. He wondered sometimes if she wished they’d never met, wished that God had saved her for a younger, kinder, less demanding man, a husband who didn’t come burdened with a snotty daughter, an ex-wife he couldn’t seem to get out of his head, and such puzzling sexual needs.

“That’s why we need Your help,” he said.

“We all do,” Carrie said in a soft voice, and Tim couldn’t tell if this was part of the prayer, or if she was speaking directly to him. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Tim turned his gaze to the ceiling. He understood perfectly well that the throat-clearing was over, and that the moment had come to level with his wife. He even had his lines memorized. He was supposed to look her in the eyes and say,
Carrie, I’ve made a decision
.

She wouldn’t cry, he thought. She’d bear the news like a trouper. But she’d worry, he thought, and probably blame herself for having done something wrong, even though she’d never done anything wrong. Not to him, and probably not to anyone. The whole mess was his fault, and
it seemed heartless to make her suffer for it. It took an effort of will for him to restore eye contact with his wife.

“Oh, Lord,” he said. “I am so grateful to you for bringing this wonderful woman into my life. You know I’m not worthy.”

Carrie shook her head no, but he could see how pleased she was. Tim leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.

“Do me a favor,” he prayed. “Help me to love her the way she deserves.”

Praise Team

TIM AND CARRIE ARRIVED FORTY-FIVE MINUTES EARLY FOR SUNDAY
meeting. The lot was nearly empty, but they parked several rows back from the main entrance, leaving the closer-in spaces for old people, families with small kids, and anyone else who had a hard time getting around.

Despite its impressive-sounding name, the Tabernacle wasn’t a grand religious edifice, a marble-and-stained-glass monument to the glory of God. It was, in fact, a bland commercial building, a two-thousand-square-foot storefront—it had been a Fashion Bug in its previous incarnation—in Griswold Commons, a once-thriving outdoor mall that had fallen on hard times since the glittering Stonewood Arcadia Retail & Entertainment Center had opened less than a mile away, on a stretch of land along the railroad tracks that had formerly been home to a chemical plant, a cardboard box factory, and a manufacturer of inflatable pool toys.

Considering that the Tabernacle’s attendance and revenue had more than doubled over the past year, Pastor Dennis could probably have afforded a move to classier digs—the local archdiocese was actively seeking evangelical tenants for some of its recently mothballed facilities—but he showed no interest in relocating. Aside from the thrill of preaching to a packed house every week, the Pastor appreciated the
ample parking—only a couple of the neighboring stores were open on Sunday morning—and the fact that curious passersby and nervous first-timers could watch the service through the plate-glass window before making the momentous decision to step inside. He also liked the symbolism of a church in the mall—one more Temple of Greed reclaimed for the Lord—and did his best to exploit the possibilities it offered for creative proselytizing. This morning, for example, there was a bright orange banner taped across the front window.

“PUT SATAN OUT OF BUSINESS!” it said. “DON’T MISS OUR BIG SAVINGS!”

BEYOND ALL
the practical advantages of the current location, though, Tim and the rest of the congregation knew that Pastor Dennis had a more personal reason for staying put: he believed Griswold Commons was sacred ground. It was here, just a few short years ago, that he’d first heard the call of the Lord and begun his career as a preacher.

He’d told the story in a sermon delivered during one of Tim’s first visits to the Tabernacle, and referred to it frequently in the months that followed, always striking the same note of quiet wonderment at the fact of having been struck down on the Road to Damascus.

The way he described it, he was a lost soul at the time, a man in his late twenties with a low-paying job, living in the basement of his mother’s house. It was especially embarrassing because he’d been a boy of great promise, the salutatorian of his high-school class, winner of a partial scholarship to the prestigious Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

But something had gone wrong when he got to college. Almost immediately, a darkness settled over him. He felt foggy and tired all the time; he slept badly and couldn’t concentrate on his schoolwork. The doctors called it depression, but that didn’t seem right. Depression comes from inside you; this had come from outside, like someone had dropped a heavy blanket over his head.

He lived beneath this blanket for ten long years, working part-time
when he could, taking a class here and there. He had few friends and suffered from a debilitating loneliness that could only be soothed, temporarily, by pornography or violent video games.

Not long after his twenty-eighth birthday, for reasons no one could explain, he began to feel a little better. He took a full-time job in the computer department of the old Best Buy in Griswold Commons (the store had since relocated to the Arcadia Center), where he impressed his supervisors with his positive attitude, technical know-how, and strong communications skills. There was talk about management opportunities, a long-term future with the company.

And the cool thing was, he liked Best Buy; he felt at home there. It was a privilege to be surrounded by all these amazing products—big-screen TVs, audio components galore, wafer-thin laptops with ultrafast processors, pocket-sized digital cameras, rack upon rack of movies, music, and video games—the accumulated bounty of the world’s hightech wizardry. It was, he often thought, like working in a Museum of Wonders.

At least that was how he felt for about six months, until the old man showed up late one Saturday afternoon, a burly white-haired guy in a shabby suit, gimping around on a bum leg. He came hobbling up to Dennis with a sly smile on his face, as if they were pals from way back when.

“There he is,” the old man said. “Just the kid I’ve been looking for.”

“Can I help you?” Dennis asked.

The old man held out a fat paperback.

“The boss told me to give this to you.”

Dennis accepted the book, surprised to see that it was a Bible.

“This is from Kenny?”

Kenny was the Assistant Manager on duty, a middle-aged frat boy who always headed straight to a bar when he was finished with work. Dennis had tagged along a couple of times, but once he had a few drinks in him, all Kenny wanted to talk about was how he loved women with
huge bottoms, the bigger the better. He could hold forth on the subject for hours.

“I told you,” the old man said. “It’s from the boss.”

“You mean Phil?” Phil was the weekday manager, Kenny’s direct superior.

“It’s not from Phil,” the old man scoffed. “Phil’s not the boss.”

By this point, Dennis was losing his patience.

“I’m a little busy right now. Is this some kind of joke?”

The old man looked offended.

“I traveled a long way to bring this to you. Believe me, I would’ve been happy to stay home.”

“I think you got the wrong guy,” Dennis told him.

“That’s not possible,” the old man replied.

“But I don’t want a Bible.”

“That’s not my problem. I just said I’d deliver it. What happens after that is your business.”

The old man gave him a searching look, then turned and walked away, moving at a pretty good clip for a guy whose right foot never quite made it off the floor. Dennis would have followed him—he still wanted to clarify this issue about the boss—but he was waylaid by an imperious young woman carrying a handwritten list of questions entitled, “Wireless Networking Problems/Solutions.”

Dennis wasn’t sure what to do about the Bible. He didn’t want to take it home, but he didn’t feel right throwing it away. In the end, he just stuck it on a cluttered shelf beneath the Computer Information desk and forgot all about it.

But the Bible didn’t forget him, though it took him a while to realize it. All he really knew at the time was that the store suddenly began to feel strange. He’d always thought of it as a humming hive of useful machines and ingenious works of art, but now it struck him as soulless, vaguely malignant. The customers didn’t seem excited so much as dazed, pod people hypnotized by flickering images, stupefied by all
that shiny metal and molded plastic. Sometimes, walking down the DVD aisle, he was almost certain he could smell something putrid, as if rotting flesh were hidden inside those elegant little boxes with pictures of handsome men and beautiful women on the front. He’d watch kids trying out video games on the in-store consoles and have to suppress an urge to rip the controllers out of their hands and scream for them to run for their lives. On more than one occasion, he found himself on his knees in the employee restroom, puking up his guts, although he didn’t feel the least bit sick.

He wondered if he was losing his mind, if he was going to have another episode like the one that had knocked him for a loop in college, but this seemed different. Back then he’d felt thickheaded, two beats behind the rest of the world, but this time around he was lucid, hyper-aware. It was the store that was messed up, not him; he was sure of it.

He thought seriously about quitting to preserve his sanity, but he didn’t want to alarm his mother. She was so thrilled to have him working, to be able to believe that her son had recovered, that everything would be all right. He didn’t want to take that away from her, to do something that would make her frightened again.

One busy Thursday night, he crouched down below the Computer Information desk to get a manual for a Handheld Organizer when his eyes landed on the Bible the old man had given him. What he saw struck him with amazement. The book was glowing like a beacon, pulsing with energy, calling out to him. All at once, as if the knowledge had been poured into him like a fiery liquid, he understood who the Boss was, and what he was required to do.

“Oh Lord,” he said, placing his hand on the book. “You found me.”

His own memory of what happened after that was dim and fragmentary—all he really knew was that the Spirit had entered his heart and irrevocably transformed him—but he’d been able to reconstruct much of it from the police report, conversations with sympathetic eyewitnesses, and the amateur video taken near the end of the incident.

By all accounts, he had emerged wild-eyed from below the counter, holding the Bible aloft with both hands, and babbling in a language that had never before been heard in Best Buy. He stepped out from behind the desk, knocked a flat-screen monitor to the floor, and proceeded to kick over a display of knockoff MP3 players.

The Spirit was still overflowing from his mouth, though a few people claimed that there was intelligible speech mixed in with the divine gibberish, warnings to specific customers to turn a blind eye to the sinful works of man and fix their gazes on the Lord.

Dennis was not a big man, and he had never done much exercise, but the Spirit made him strong. He tossed all-in-one printers through the air like they were empty boxes, toppled a shelf of home-theater components, scattered CDs like playing cards. A couple of his fellow employees tried to stop him, but they were too weak. A gaggle of customers—some moved by his passion, others excited by the possibility of violence—began to follow him as he made his way, inevitably, it seemed, to the back of the store, where he planted himself in front of a three-thousand-dollar, sixty-one-inch, wide-screen flat-panel plasma TV that was playing
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
.

“Whore!” he shouted. “Abomination!”

There was some uncertainty about where the boombox came from, whether he’d picked it up on the way or someone had handed it to him just then, but there was no dispute about the fact that he raised the sleek black tube overhead—it was a JVC with built-in subwoofers—and hurled it at the screen, causing Angelina Jolie to disintegrate in a rain of shattered glass. Screams of protest and cheers of approval mingled as Dennis fell to his knees and called out to God.

Some witnesses believed he was about to demolish a second TV, but he never got the chance; two security guards jumped him from behind and began attacking him with fists and billy clubs, delivering a savage and prolonged beating that was captured by a customer on a display model camcorder. Tim remembered seeing the grainy video on
the TV news—he was going through his divorce at the time and was a long way from God—and thinking, “Big deal, the jerk had it coming to him,” which he later realized, with a feeling of deep shame, was exactly what lots of “good” people must have thought two thousand years ago, watching a half-dead man getting whipped by soldiers as he dragged a wooden cross up a hill in the desert.