Soon after taking the SAT, Will had fractured his wrist sliding home. He had gone for x-rays and a cast, which is what he was thinking about as he filled out a questionnaire aimed at getting the juniors to consider college and the future. For many of them, that meant following their parents into local jobs, with the more adventurous signing on to an oil rig or enlisting for the war if it wasn’t over by graduation, which was still a year away. Will was picturing the curvy nurse in the tight white uniform who had pressed up against him as she set his arm and remembering how the word “x-ray” sounded like “sex-ray” when the nurse mentioned retakes to the technician. The long, thin bones of Will’s arm stood out in sharp relief, edged by shadowy soft tissue, and nestled into the radius just above his wrist was the BB that had been there since the day he’d gone rabbit hunting with Tyler Hicks and Tyler had gotten angry about something and banged his air gun against the ground, causing it to catch on a root and go off as it fell.
“Is that an old war wound?” asked the nurse in a gravelly voice.
“Yeah,” said Will. “I guess it is.”
“Tough guy, huh?” said the nurse, and the way she said it still set Will’s heart racing whenever he thought about it.
Will’s test scores surprised everyone. Because he was quiet in class and so was a relative unknown, the doctor idea caught hold among the teachers, who were eager to have a story of unexpected success to put in their end-of-year report. Even Will was not immune to the fiction, and the day the report came out, he sat for a while in an echoing stairwell as students flowed past him like a river around a sturdy rock. He started to see paths and possibilities. He started to wonder if he actually was becoming the person profiled in the report, if a shifting idea of who a person was could change things about the person himself. Just that morning, the principal had stopped him in the hallway and put a hand on his shoulder. All he had said was, “Well done, Will,” but the words carried a freight train of meaning, as if Will and the principal had many such conversations behind them and many more ahead. He felt like Bon Jovi for a moment, or Spider-Man, or Barry Bonds. He wasn’t arrogant, just newly aware that packed within his body and brain was something unusual, something most people only recognized in others and wished they had.
But then Tyler Hicks thumped into him and said, “Jeezus, Rayburn. What’s up with that report?”
“Anybody can fool some of the people some of the time,” said the boy who was with Tyler. “Even Rayburn.”
“I guess they can,” said Will amiably. But then he muttered to Tyler’s retreating back, “Why the hell not!” He could do anything if he put his mind to it. He took a sharpened pencil out of his backpack and pressed the point against the skin of his arm until it went in a little way. He had a high pain threshold, and now that he had proved he was smart, he wanted to prove the nurse had been right when she had called him tough. Tough enough to kick Tyler’s ass if he wanted to, but smart enough to leave it alone.
That’s what he was doing when Tula Santos appeared in the stairwell and said, “Hello.”
“Why hello, Tula,” he said, without hesitating and without putting his hands in his pockets the way he would have done only the day before.
To his surprise, Tula paused with her hand on the railing even though they were blocking the way for the other students. When one of them muttered, “Move over. Can’t you see you’re in the way?” Will glared at him in a way that made Tula laugh.
“I’ve got to get going anyway,” she said. “I don’t want to be late for class.”
“Can you meet me later?” asked Will. “I could use a little advice.”
“I guess so,” said Tula. “Is tomorrow okay?”
Will sat for a little while longer contemplating how one thing led to another in the chain reaction of cause and effect. When he finally got up to change into his practice uniform and make his way down the hill to the ball field, he could feel his aura moving with him, perfectly in sync with the movements of his muscles. The cast on his arm was due to come off in another week, but now it seemed like an enhancement rather than a deficit. It felt sturdy, like the arm of a cyborg, and the scrawled signatures of his friends seemed confirmation of his new status despite the fact that most of them had been written before any mention of doctoring or college had been made: WAY TO GO, GENIUS and SEE YOU AT STATE.
“When’s that cast coming off, Rayburn?” asked the coach. “We need you back at third.”
“Next week,” said Will. “I’ll only miss one more game.” He had missed four games already, and he was worried about losing his position to a skinny freshman.
The next day Tula was waiting for him after practice in a grove of apple trees that had been an orchard way back before the school was built. Will settled himself beside her and pulled the most recent letter from the state university out of his pocket. It was crumpled, but the words hadn’t changed even though he’d practically worn them out by running his index finger over the lines of text, something he did again as he read the letter aloud. All the while his aura stretched and flexed, and occasionally it intersected with Tula’s aura, which retreated slightly in deference to their comparative forces, but advanced too, in response to the magnetism that had an attractive as well as a repelling force. The letter talked about his accomplishments and test scores and indicated that the college gave generous scholarships to promising student-athletes like Will.
“Why, Will! That’s wonderful news!” exclaimed Tula. Her eyes shone, and when she looked at Will, he saw himself reflected in her expression of surprise.
Will rested the dirty cast on his knee and said that college was only the first step, that after that came medical school. The notion that the idea had been planted there by the headmaster’s report landed briefly in his consciousness before taking off again.
Tula didn’t blink as she asked him what kind of doctor he was going to be.
“An orthopedic surgeon,” replied Will.
“I volunteer at a health-care clinic!” exclaimed Tula. “I’ve already gotten all seven Rainbow merit bars, so I’m working on getting my service jewel. You could come along with me some time if you want.”
This was an unexpected invitation, and Will readily accepted. It wasn’t a date, exactly, but it was the next best thing.
One morning, apropos of nothing, Valerie stopped what she was doing and said, “Of course people make mistakes. We’re only human, after all.”
Since there was no one else in the room, Maggie assumed Valerie was talking to her. “Excuse me?” she said, but Valerie just snapped her gum and made little huffing sounds as if what she was doing was physically exhausting.
Maggie spent the rest of the morning pondering Valerie’s strange outburst. Had she been talking about the justice system or about something else? Did she know more than she was letting on about prisoners who had been wrongly convicted? If so, why was she so glib in denying it whenever Maggie brought the subject up? And what had made her mention it on a quiet day when the director was out of the office?
When Valerie went on her break, Maggie sat in her co-worker’s chair and flipped through the neat stacks of papers on her desk, but she found nothing out of the ordinary. Then she prodded Valerie’s computer to life, but she didn’t have the password and wasn’t able to get past the log-in screen. By the time Valerie returned, Maggie’s curiosity had gotten the better of her. “What mistakes?” she asked. “A few minutes ago you said something about mistakes.”
“Oh,” said Valerie. “DC’s in a twitter because he can’t find a top-secret report some muckety-muck sent him. I’m sure I don’t know where it is, but you know DC. It’s always someone else’s fault.”
Ever since taking the document from the munitions plant, the word “top-secret” had held a special meaning for Maggie, and she hoped she didn’t look as eager and unsettled as she felt. Now she wondered if she was being accused of something. She had copied Tomás’s file, but she hadn’t really taken it, and as far as she knew, it wasn’t secret. “What’s so top-secret?” she asked as casually as she could.
“Lord if I know,” said Valerie. “I just push the papers, I don’t read the damn things.”
Maggie had begun to notice how importantly Valerie presided over the office and how quick she was to pass the boring or unpleasant tasks on to Maggie. “You don’t mind if I delegate, do you?” Valerie would call to DC through the glass partition of his office, and mostly he would wave his hand dismissively. “Just so the job gets done, I don’t care who does it,” he would tell her, although now and then he would shake his head and say, “I want you to handle this personally. Give it that special Vines touch.” Then Valerie would laugh knowingly and pass something more menial on to Maggie. It wasn’t as if Valerie was shirking, for even though she left every day at exactly five o’clock, she worked hard and often arrived half an hour early. Lately, though, she seemed to be going out of her way to make it clear to everyone what the pecking order was.
A few days after telling Maggie about the missing report, Valerie wore a blouse that was so sheer in the back that the black hooks on her bra were entirely visible and anyone standing behind her could read the writing on the label that said 36 D. The front panel of the blouse was made from a respectable navy fabric and from that angle, Valerie looked proper and businesslike, but from behind, she looked like a slut. The blouse bothered Maggie out of all proportion to what it was, for it seemed to say something not only about how Valerie had hidden sides to her, but also about how everyone did.
All morning, Maggie kept sending irritated glances in her co-worker’s direction, but mostly Valerie ignored her, answering the phone and making neat stacks of documents for DC to review or for Maggie to cart down to the file room. It was almost as if someone had snuck up behind her and altered her blouse without her knowledge. At one point, the lanyard that held her ID badge looped over one of her breasts in a way that would have embarrassed Maggie, but Valerie did nothing to fix it. She only stretched her arms above her head when DC walked by, further emphasizing her anatomy before getting up and walking to the hallway alcove where the copy machine was kept. The director had his head down, but if he had looked up just then, he would have been treated to a view of the see-through part of the blouse and the thick elastic of the bra. Maggie could stand it no longer, and when DC went off to an afternoon meeting, she cried, “Valerie! Your blouse is completely inappropriate!”
“And what are you, the clothing police?” Valerie smiled and coughed out a hoarse little laugh.
Maggie immediately regretted her outburst. In an attempt to cover up her disapproval, she said, “It looks great on you, don’t get me wrong. I just wouldn’t have worn it to the office.”
“You wouldn’t have worn it at all,” said Valerie. “Frankly, you don’t have the body for it—but no offense.” She didn’t sound at all like Misty when she said it. Misty would have added, If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Or she would have said, Hell yeah, it’s inappropriate. I’m trying to shake things up a bit. It’s high time we had a little fun around here.
But Valerie wasn’t Misty. For the first time since quitting her job at the munitions plant, Maggie thought about her old life and wondered if she had made a mistake. Of course people make mistakes, she thought, and when she realized those were the very words Valerie had used that morning, she wondered if someone was using Valerie to send her a message the way Pastor Price said Jesus sometimes did.
Just before she left for the day, Maggie tried to patch things up with Valerie. “I’ll walk out with you,” she said. “Will has a game this evening, so I can’t stay late.”
The two women gathered up their things, but just as they were going out the door, Valerie said she had forgotten something. “You go on. I’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on.”
“Okay, see you tomorrow,” said Maggie, but a niggling suspicion made her loiter in a dark elbow of the hallway to see what Valerie would do. Instead of retrieving some forgotten item, Valerie took a piece of paper from her purse and tucked it into DC’s locked bank of files before closing everything up again, hiding the key in her desk drawer, and breezing down the corridor in a whirl of efficiency and Shalimar perfume. Maggie followed quietly behind. It was only when she got to the parking lot that she discovered the reason for the charade. Valerie didn’t head toward her own parking space at all, but walked the entire length of the asphalt lot and got into a car that was waiting at the far end. Even though the car was too far away for Maggie to identify, she knew it belonged to DC. She should have known it all along.
Everybody has secrets, she thought. She found the idea both comforting and disturbing. It made her own transgressions less unusual, but it also suggested that if the law took an interest in a person—Tomás, for instance, but also Valerie or DC or even Maggie herself—it could probably find evidence that that person had done something wrong.
Valerie’s attitude toward Maggie changed after the blouse incident. She still snapped her gum and made jokes, but she no longer went out of her way to include Maggie in the gossip sessions she presided over during breaks. She no longer showed Maggie a new eye shadow color and said, “This would be perfect for you.” Being ostracized emphasized to Maggie that she wasn’t and couldn’t be on the side of things where Valerie and the others were, where gossiping and comparing notes on clothing and men provided satisfaction and where morality was elastic, if it came into things at all. She pretended not to notice when Valerie stood sternly under the fluorescent strip lights and watched Maggie walk past as if Maggie were the one with the see-through blouse, but it always made her feel self-conscious, just as she knew Valerie knew it would.
Maggie sat at her desk and tried to appear busy, intermittently craning her neck to get a glimpse of a visiting group of representatives from the ACLU. When they filed into the conference room to get the badges she and Valerie had prepared, she asked, “Should we find out if there’s anything else they need?”
“We don’t want to make them too comfortable,” said Valerie, who seemed to view the visit as an unwelcome intrusion. “You don’t see DC this nervous very often.”
“Why is he nervous?” asked Maggie.
“It’s the ACLU! They only come sniffing around if they think there’s something to find.”
“Like innocent prisoners?” asked Maggie.
“Like overcrowding. Like lack of medical and dental care. Like exposure to hazardous substances.”
“What hazardous substances?”
“Lord if I know. I doubt there are any, but it’s the kind of thing they look for. I guess we should set out more cookies for them after all. Along with some of those yummy tarts.”
Maggie was grateful when a woman with disordered clothing and a large brooch pinned awkwardly to her breast stuck her head through the door and asked where the restroom was, giving Maggie an excuse to walk past the conference room, where the director was holding forth on the subject of “humane rehabilitation” and “market solutions to the overcrowding problem.”
“The visitor’s lounge is in another wing of the building, but you’re welcome to use the employees’,” she said. “I’ll warn you, though, it gets a bit stuffy in there.”
“Thank you, thank you,” said the woman, hoisting a large bag onto her shoulder and rubbing a fat pink cheek with a sweaty hand.
Maggie hurried before her down the corridor and said she didn’t mind waiting outside to lead her back again, but the woman took longer than expected, and by the time they returned to the conference room, the rest of the group had already gone off on their tour.
“Come with me,” said Maggie. “I’m sure we can catch up.”
The woman nodded and cast her eyes fearfully behind her. “This is a maximum security facility, is it?” she asked as they waited for a guard to open a locked gate for them.
Maggie told her it was.
“I thought so. The ACLU is on a tear about solitary confinement, so they’re visiting prisons where they suspect it’s in use. My specialty is federal. Nonviolent. Although solitary confinement is used there too—oh, I don’t like to think about it. Imagine being shut away by yourself for years. Decades, in some cases. It’s really too, too much to bear.”
“I don’t think they do that here,” said Maggie, not because she knew anything about it, but because the woman seemed as if she was about to cry. On an impulse, Maggie grabbed her arm, which caused the woman to fall against her, almost knocking her over.
“Don’t be so sure,” she said, recovering her balance. “It’s a shockingly common practice.”
“I’d have heard about it,” said Maggie.
“Don’t be so sure about that either. They count on people closing their eyes to things.”
The woman glanced up the hall and then down it as if she were checking for eavesdroppers before she took a tiny copy of the Constitution out of her pocket and said, “Take a look at this.” She pointed to a chunk of text and said, “See? Right there. It’s perfectly legal for people who have been convicted of a crime to be enslaved.”
“That can’t be right,” said Maggie.
“As I said, they count on people closing their eyes to things.”
Maggie doubted it was true that slavery was legal. If it was, wouldn’t there have been an outcry on Geraldo and Oprah, and wouldn’t people be marching in the street singing “Let My People Go”? She found the woman’s air of superiority irritating, but as soon as she thought the word “smug,” the woman’s face collapsed in doughy misery and tears welled in the corners of her eyes.
“What do you do for the ACLU?” asked Maggie in an attempt to change the subject.
“I’m not part of the ACLU—not really. A colleague invited me, so I came along. Oh, I give them a little money now and then, but I’m a prisoner advocate for a different group, a group called PATH, which stands for Patrick Henry. You studied him in school, I imagine: Give me liberty or give me death! Why doesn’t anyone believe that anymore? In any case, that’s what we’re committed to. Our mission is to free the wrongly incarcerated case by case, although sometimes I think we’re going about it the wrong way. And now I might have crossed the line, and I’m trying to figure out how to uncross it. It’s all terribly upsetting.”
“What line?” Maggie pictured the yellow lines that striped the floor of the prison, marking the various places where the prisoners had to stand for services or inspections.
“The moral line,” said the woman coyly, as if she knew exactly which word would staple Maggie’s wandering attention to her face.
“I don’t understand. What did you do?” Maggie tried not to sound too eager, but a fragile hope expanded in her chest that there were other people like her out there, people who cared about something other than sex and makeup and what to cook for dinner, people who were used to righting wrongs and could tell her how it was done. People she could turn to for help with Tomás. “Freeing people is something I’m interested in too,” she whispered, just in case the prison was riddled with listening devices. Even though Maggie was watching carefully to gauge the woman’s reaction, she wasn’t prepared for the joy that spread across her face.
“Then you know.” The woman was beaming quietly now, and Maggie could see that she had once been beautiful. “Then you know what it’s like.”
“I’m not sure,” said Maggie. “At first I couldn’t understand why the people here weren’t rushing about trying to fix all the things that are wrong, and then I thought, How can I expect other people to do something I’m not willing to do myself?”
“Be the change,” said the woman.
“I’m not very experienced, so maybe you could give me some advice.”
“I…Well…First, I should probably fill you in on exactly what my group does.”
A metallic sound rang from somewhere ahead of them. They had reached an anteroom past which Maggie had no access, so she turned to the woman and said they would have to wait for the guard to call ahead.
“It’s just as well, just as well,” she said. “I couldn’t bear to see anyone in solitary confinement.”
“I don’t think they do that here,” Maggie said again, and again the woman responded, “Don’t be too sure.” This time, though, there was nothing smug about the expression on her face, which was filled instead with hope and yearning. She reached out and grasped Maggie’s sleeves, pulling her a little closer as if she too was worried that the walls had ears. “My George was in solitary confinement for four years,” she said. “It’s why I took him on.”
While they waited for the guard, the woman told Maggie that the members of her group adopted specific nonviolent prisoners and tried to help them. “We publicize their cases and bring injustices to light. We find attorneys who will donate their services, and then we run various errands in order to keep the cases from falling through the cracks.”
“How noble!” said Maggie. It was the kind of thing she was hoping to do, and she could see she had gotten off track by merely befriending Tomás and teaching him math.
“Noble? More like exhausting! But you start off filled with idealism, anyway. Then, at some point, you become aware of the line. Oh, you pretend not to see it. You act all prim and dance around it like a schoolgirl, stepping very carefully whenever it’s in sight. But after a while, you want to be close to it.”
The woman opened the swimming pools of her eyes wide, as though she were noticing something unexpected or trying not to cry.
“And eventually you just step over it. But you don’t cross it in a blaze of righteous glory, which is how you thought it would be. You cross it, really, on a dare. Or you cross it because you want a bigger and bigger dose of whatever it was that made you step up to it in the first place. You cross it because you are now an addict. Because, frankly, it is exhilarating and because it’s a lot more fun than housework or your day job.”
The moment ended, and the woman’s eyes snapped shut. When she opened them again, the hope had vanished, and everything about her sagged with defeat.
“I don’t understand,” said Maggie.
“Of course you don’t. How could you?”
“But what did you do when you crossed the line?”
The woman’s face softened, and her lips quivered into a smile. “I fell in love with George,” she said. “But now I’m about worn out, which is why I came here today. The ACLU people—they’re very structured and focused. And disciplined! They all respect the line. That’s what I came for—to get advice on that.” The woman’s mouth settled into a tight barrier between her running nose and quivering chin, and she seemed to be waiting, as Maggie was, to hear what words would come out of it next. “No, that’s not entirely true,” she said. “I came to pass George on to someone else.”
She held up a quilted bag with the name GEORGE appliquéd onto the side in contrasting fabric. “Of course the work can be very rewarding if you get your prisoner out of jail, which is why it’s so frustrating to be representing George. There seems to be a vendetta against him. If you read the file, you’d see for yourself. Not to mention that George is very…well, dashing. It’s been an honor to advocate for him, but nothing I did made one bit of difference. So I came here to find a replacement, and then I’m going home—if I still have a home to go to.”
At first Maggie felt cheated—why couldn’t Tomás be dashing? Why couldn’t she be passionate and strong? But then a rush of excitement and possibility surged through her. If befriending Tomás was murky and ambiguous, representing George would be a completely good and noble thing. There was a vendetta against him! He was handsome and nonviolent! He had been kept in solitary confinement for four long years! “I’ll represent George,” she blurted out.
Relief flooded the woman’s eyes. “I want to assure you that the advocacy program is completely rewarding,” she said.
While they were talking, they had circled back toward the director’s office. When they reached the conference room, the woman thrust the quilted bag into Maggie’s hands and said, “The appellate attorney’s name and contact information is in the first folder. He’s part of a network of attorneys who take these cases on.”
Maggie asked if he might represent Tomás too.
“That depends on where Tomás’s case was adjudicated. Anyway, you’ll find a lot of information here—telephone numbers and email addresses and official documentation, as well as copious handwritten notes—everything indexed and color-coded.”
When they reached the conference room, the woman snatched up her jacket and hurried back along the corridor and down the stairs, not even bothering to call the elevator. Maggie was left with the quilted bag sitting in her lap like a bloated and limbless child and the sinking feeling that even if she took on George’s case, she couldn’t abandon Tomás. And then, from the heaviness of the burden emerged a sense of sureness and direction. If she really wanted to help Tomás, she would stop buying him little presents. She would stop trying to make prison tolerable. Instead, she would start trying to free him.
When Valerie and DC left for the day, Maggie picked up the telephone and dialed the number for George’s lawyer. “Send me the fellow’s paperwork,” said the lawyer. “I can’t promise anything, but I’d be happy to take a look.”
Maggie said she would, but first she had to get the file out of the prison, which, given the tight security, might prove problematic. If she couldn’t handle Hugo, she told herself, she didn’t deserve to be George’s advocate. She didn’t deserve to be anyone’s. Besides, the blouse incident had given her an idea, and one soft summer evening, she was able to smuggle the file out of the prison by unbuttoning an extra button on her blouse. She laughed at the way Hugo, with his handsome face and muscle-bound physique, had fallen so easily into her trap.
The health-care clinic where Tula worked was twenty miles away. To get there, she either had to borrow her mother’s car or ride the bus, which took a lot longer. Because Will had baseball practice every afternoon, it wasn’t until school was out for the summer that she was able to arrange a day that was convenient for both of them. Tula was so preoccupied with the logistics of the trip that it was only when they were in the car that she thought about what the clinic was set up to do. How was she going to explain to Will that most of the clinic’s patients came in for gynecological services and prenatal care?
The car rattled whenever it reached cruising speed, making it noisy and hard to talk. After a few attempts at conversation, Tula pushed the button to turn on the radio, but the sound was mostly static, with only a few bars of music coming through. Will opened the window and let his hand lift off like the wing of an airplane. When a pebble flew up from the wheels of the truck they were following and made a tiny star pattern in the corner of the windshield glass, Will said, “Now they’re attacking,” as if Tula would know what he meant by it. And she did know. At least she almost did, for it seemed as if the car was traveling right along the frontier that divided the land of safety from the land of peril.
“They,” she said.
“You know, aliens, or terrorists. What would you do if they did attack us?”
“We couldn’t outrun them in this old rattletrap, so I guess we’d have to fight them off.”
“Never fear,” said Will. He pulled a scouting knife from the pocket of his jacket and waved it around like a sword.
They laughed, and then they didn’t talk again until they were pulling into the unpaved lot of the clinic. Before getting out of the car, Tula said with more confidence than she felt, “This is a women’s clinic, Will. I forgot to tell you that. So they’ll probably have you manning the phone.”
“What’s a women’s clinic?” asked Will.
“It’s a clinic dedicated to women’s health.”
“Okay,” said Will. “They don’t treat men?”
“No, they don’t. But sometimes husbands or boyfriends come with the women. And the doctor is usually a man.”
“What do they treat the women for?”
“You know,” said Tula. “It’s women having babies and stuff.”
Will rolled the window closed and unbuckled his seat belt while Tula gathered up her purse. “The doctor can be a little gruff, but you’ll like the midwife. Her name is Dolly.”
“What’s a midwife?” asked Will.
Dolly told Will he could straighten the magazines in the waiting room and then the contents of the supply cupboard. “I’d let you answer the phone, but some of our patients hang up if they get a man.” Then she passed out smocks and took Tula with her into the back. “I wish I could give your boyfriend something more interesting to do,” said Dolly while they waited for the doctor to arrive.
“He’s not my boyfriend. He wants to be a doctor, so I invited him to come along, but it wasn’t until we were on our way that I realized this probably isn’t the best place to bring him.” Tula laughed, releasing the tension that had built up during the drive. The two women were giggling over the awkwardness of the situation when the doctor walked in.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Will wants to be a doctor, so Tula brought him along. We were just hoping that the sight of all the pregnant ladies doesn’t scare him away.”
“You just leave your boyfriend to me,” said the doctor. “I’ll let him autoclave the instruments and show him how a fetal heart monitor works.”
“He’s not her boyfriend,” said Dolly with a wink, and Tula said, “Will’s in for a big surprise.”
When they unlocked the door at nine o’clock, two patients were waiting on the steps accompanied by their husbands, but a third said her boyfriend was a little freaked out and wanted to wait in the car. “He was in Iraq,” explained the woman. “He’s on crutches, so it’s a little hard for him to get around.”
“That sounds like a job for me,” said Will. “I’ll take him a cup of coffee and see what I can do.”
“Men,” said Dolly as the door rattled shut. “Always racing off to fix things. I guess you’re stuck with cleaning out the cupboard as well as answering the phones.”
Will was gone a long time and didn’t come back into the clinic with the empty coffee cup until the third patient was leaving. “What were you up to out there?” Tula wanted to know.
“Guy stuff,” said Will. “Nothing much.”
Toward the end of the day a new mother came in for a checkup. Her hair was unwashed and her husband had to help her fill out the form Tula gave her. “Get away from me!” the woman shouted when Dolly tried to take her blood pressure, so Dolly called in the doctor, who showed Will how to put on the cuff while Dolly and Tula backed out of the room. “It’s okay,” said Will. “I’m here now.”
“Well,” said Dolly. “Will you look at that?”
“What happened to her?” asked Tula.
“Her baby was born with severe deformities. It was horrible. Of course they blame me.”
“How could it be your fault?”
“It wasn’t! But I was there, so they link me to the experience.”
Tula told Dolly about Will’s mother and how she had quit her job at the munitions factory because of something about deformed frogs.
“Interesting,” said Dolly, but then she changed the subject to the coming-home party she was arranging for her boyfriend. “His name is Danny. Do you think I should go with a patriotic theme or just keep it simple? A barbecue would be fun, or what about a friendly baseball game?”
“I like the baseball idea,” said Tula. “Will’s a baseball player.”
“I’ll send you an invitation once I know when it’s going to be.” A few minutes passed, and then Dolly asked, “What’s her name?”
“Who?” asked Tula.
“Will’s mother. What’s Will’s mother’s name?”
“Maggie Rayburn. There was a lot of talk about her at one point—don’t tell me you heard about it all the way out here!”
“Interesting,” Dolly said again, and then she talked some more about the coming-home party until it was time for Tula to leave.
On the drive back to Red Bud, Will was even quieter than he had been that morning. “Thanks for coming,” said Tula.
“I should be thanking you,” said Will. “I learned a few things.”
“You were really good with those soldiers. What did you talk about with the guy in the truck?”
“Oh, you know. We listened to music and talked about baseball.”
“I’m glad they were there, since there wasn’t much else for you to do. I guess I didn’t think things through when I invited you.”
“I never really thought about where babies come from before, about how one minute there’s nothing and the next there’s a new life. And then when you die, it all happens in reverse. Nothing to nothing.”
“They’re just talking about the body when they say that. The soul is something else.”
“I used to believe in the soul,” said Will, “but I don’t anymore.”
“I think that right at the last second our souls will fly up to heaven and wait for a new body to inhabit. It will be like being born all over again.”
“Huh,” said Will. “That’s just a fairy tale.”
No sooner had they turned onto the highway than the clouds turned livid. Lightning forked in the distance, and then, closer in, the sky seemed to ignite. Pretty soon it was raining so hard that Tula had to pull beneath an overpass to wait for the storm to blow over. “We’re lucky it’s not a tornado,” she said.
“Why?” asked Will. “That’s something I’ve always wanted to see.”
They sat for a while peering out at the rain, which seemed to be moving in a line across the fields, battering one strip of wheat before moving on to the next. When the windshield fogged up, Will swiped at it with his sleeve. “Did I ever tell you I was shot?” he asked.
“No!” exclaimed Tula. “You didn’t.”
“It was just a BB, but still. That soldier today had a big ol’ hole in his leg.” Will’s eyes were gleaming as he rattled on about the soldier, about how he knew everything there was to know about radar and military electronics.
Fifteen minutes later, the spongy sky squeezed out the last drops of rain and the sun came out. When they were back on the road, Tula put her right hand on the seat beside her, but then thought better of it and returned it to the steering wheel. In any case, Will was staring out the window and didn’t seem to notice. Just before they turned off at the Red Bud exit, Will told Tula he was ready for something. “I just don’t know what it is,” he said.
“I’m ready for something too,” said Tula. She thought Will was talking about kissing her or asking her on a real date. Maybe he was even talking about sex. Dolly had told her that even the nicest boys were always thinking about it, but when she dropped him off at his house, he waved good-bye quickly and didn’t ask her to come in as she had expected him to.
“Thanks,” said Will. “That was really interesting.”
“Men,” said Tula out loud, trying to sound both dismissive and admiring the way Dolly had sounded, trying to roll her eyes and smile at the same time. But Will was already running up the muddy driveway to the house.
Stop buying me presents,” said Tomás a few days after Maggie had come to the same conclusion herself, but it was an example of his devious nature that he added, “I don’t want to make your husband jealous.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Maggie. “Lyle isn’t jealous.”
“Or your son.”
“My son isn’t jealous either.” She regretted telling Tomás about Lyle and Will, but there was nothing she could do about it now.
The schoolroom was sunny in the afternoons, and a tree outside the window was filled with chattering birds. “What kind of birds are they?” asked Tomás.
Maggie didn’t know, but instead of saying she would find out and tell him later, she said, “They’re starlings,” even though she wasn’t sure they were.
“I wonder what starlings do with the members of the flock they don’t like. To the outcasts. I bet they chase them out of the tree. I bet they peck them to death.”
“You’re not here because people don’t like you, Tomás.”
Tomás looked at her in surprise, and then he smiled sadly. “Sure I am. That’s exactly why I’m here.”
Another time Tomás said, “The biggest thing I can give you is my trust. What more do you want from me?”
Maggie didn’t want anything, but she suspected Tomás did. He was staring at her in a way that reminded her of a dog that knew she carried a biscuit hidden in her pocket. It was getting harder and harder to think of him as fully human, which was what Valerie had been telling her all along. She knew it wasn’t Tomás’s fault. She knew the prison system cast them in roles and the roles came with feelings already attached to them, feelings that allowed people to believe that prisoners were getting what they deserved, but she couldn’t help experiencing a tiny bit of revulsion, a tiny sense that Tomás could be more respectable if he wanted to be, a little less fawning and servile. A little bit more like George, she couldn’t help thinking—if only Tomás were dashing!
“Stand up straight!” she commanded the next time he came slinking into the schoolroom with that expectant hangdog look. It crossed her mind not to give him the slice of cake she carried in her purse. She would hand it over to the old man weeping and wringing his hands at the next table just to teach Tomás a lesson.
But what would she be teaching him? That he had no power in his relationship with her? That anyone who wanted to could give him a command and he would have to follow it? It was something he knew all too well. It was the reason for his servile demeanor in the first place. She took out the cake wrapped in the crumpled wedge of foil and said as cheerfully as she could, “Look what I brought you, Tomás. A nice piece of cake for your dessert.”
Dolly had spent the past two years avoiding news about the war, but now that Danny was coming home, people she knew kept calling her up with the latest reports: They were winning the war, they were losing it, they were winning, but at a terrible cost. They were fighting for freedom, or maybe they were fighting for oil—in either case, they were touching hearts and minds. They were winning the peace unless they were losing it. No one was really sure.
She decided the coming-home party would include both the baseball game and the patriotic theme. After all, the Fourth of July was coming up—what had made her think she had to choose one over the other? Once that was settled, everything started to fall into place. She had met Danny at a Fourth of July celebration four years before, and the patriotic theme not only honored his service to his country, but was also a reminder of their history as a couple. She bought a tablecloth patterned like an American flag and tied red and blue ribbons around white candles for the tables and bought boxes of sparklers for the guests and researched brisket recipes and stockpiled cases of beer.
Danny’s arrival had been delayed by several weeks so the returning troops could get medical care and finish up their discharge paperwork.
“What medical care?” Dolly asked when Danny told her about it. “I thought you were okay. You’re okay, aren’t you?”
“It’s nothing, baby. Just protocol. Mostly we sit around and wait.”
“It’ll all be over soon,” said Dolly, and Danny replied, “I know it, babe. I know it will.”
But it wasn’t over, or if it was, something else was beginning. Danny didn’t notice the pretty apartment Dolly had worked so hard on; he noticed the smudges on the windows. He noticed a chip in the new floor tile.
“You should get that tile guy back and make him fix it,” said Danny, who was speaking in a loud voice and clenching his fists. “Get him back here, and I’ll talk to him myself.”
Dolly had no one to confide in, no one to tell her, You’re worried about nothing! No one to say, They all come home a little agitated and they all get better—all it takes is a little time. No one, that is, except for her sister, who was burdened with troubles of her own, and her friends, who, if she said anything negative, would look at Danny skeptically from then on. And she couldn’t call her mother. Her mother would say, You didn’t take my advice about your career, and you didn’t take my advice about that peach prom dress, so why would I give you any advice now? And then she would give it anyway, and it would entirely miss the point. The person Dolly wanted to confide in was Danny, but Danny was creeping around at night with a cleaning bucket when he thought she was asleep. Or he was chipping out the broken tile and ruining the floor, or he was lying awake and twitching, or he was dozing restlessly and calling out unintelligible things in his sleep.
Danny almost didn’t come to the party, which Dolly had scheduled for the second Saturday he was home. “I don’t really want to see anybody,” he said. “I won’t know what to say to them.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” said Dolly.
“Then they’ll just talk about me behind my back.”
They argued because Dolly thought he should wear his uniform to the party and Danny thought he shouldn’t. “It’s just what people will expect,” she said.
“How am I gonna play baseball in a uniform?”
“Okay, baby. Okay.”
Throughout the party, Dolly felt like she was trying too hard. She ran from the picnic area to the car and back again. She found stones to weight the tablecloths against the wind, and when people didn’t seem to be mingling, she passed out some of the sparklers. Then she turned on the CD player she had brought with her and danced frantically around. She got one of Danny’s friends to make a toast, enlisted Tula and Will to drum up support for the baseball game, and then she pretended to drop the ball when Danny hit a fly right to her. “Home run!” she cried, forgetting for a minute that she shouldn’t be rooting for Danny’s team.
Danny trotted around the bases and put his arms up in the air, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it, and he immediately put them down again. Danny’s brother passed out a round of beers between each of the innings, and as the game wore on, it began to seem as if something more than bragging rights was at stake. One by one, the women dropped out until it was only the men winging balls back and forth and stumbling around the bases and whacking aluminum bats at each other in the fading light.
When it was too dark to continue, someone made a bonfire in a garbage can to burn all of the party debris, and then they had a contest involving the rest of the beer until the police came and told them to shut it down. “Park closes at dusk,” said the officer. “Can’t you read the sign?”
“He’s a war hero,” said Will, pointing to Danny. Flames were shooting out of the garbage can and turning the assembled faces orange. Now and then someone would throw in a box of sparklers, and bouquets of silver sparks would blossom and hiss. Danny stared into the fire as if he was hypnotized, and later on Dolly saw a girl grab him and kiss him, but she forgave him. She forgave him right away.
“I shouldn’t have bought so much beer,” she said as the women tried to corral the men and drag them off.
A woman named Kathy, who had come with one of Danny’s military friends, said she’d be happy to meet for coffee if Dolly ever wanted to talk.
“About what?” asked Dolly, but in her heart she knew what Kathy meant.
“About what to expect. About making sure you and Danny are on the same page.”
Over coffee, Kathy suggested that Danny and Dolly make lists of things like core beliefs and life goals. Then they could use the lists as planning tools for the future. “We also have a house rule that says we have to give two compliments before we say anything critical, so Mike has to tell me the dinner was good and my hair looks nice before he can tell me to shut the fuck up.”
“Danny doesn’t talk like that,” said Dolly, which was one of the things that made her think things were going to be okay, even if one of the things that made her think they weren’t was that Danny could go for a long time without talking at all.
That evening Dolly told Danny that even though they had both changed, they still had a lot of things in common.
“Like what?” asked Danny.
“Life goals,” said Dolly. “Not to mention core beliefs.”
She got two sheets of paper and two felt-tip pens and said they were going to write down ten things that were essential to a strong relationship.
“Nouns or adjectives?” asked Danny.
“We’ll start with core beliefs,” said Dolly, “so I guess that’s nouns.” She felt vindicated when many of the words on the two lists matched. “You see?” she said. “We both believe in honesty and love and brotherhood and respect.”
“You wrote down brotherhood?” asked Danny.
“I did,” said Dolly. Kathy had told her how important brotherhood was to soldiers, which is why she had included it on her list. Besides, anything important to Danny was important to her, so it wasn’t a completely dishonest thing to do. But the other words came from her heart. One of the most important words on Dolly’s list was “family,” and she was disappointed and a little shocked that the word was missing from Danny’s list. But perhaps to Danny, family was a life goal, and she had been clear that they were going to concentrate on beliefs first. Still, there was enough agreement that she could use the lists to prove her point.
“What was your point again?” asked Danny, so she repeated her speech about building a future together based on common values. “Our core beliefs are the foundation. Our goals are the engine.”
“Are you building something we can live in or something we can drive?” asked Danny, laughing.
“You know what I mean,” said Dolly. Then she laughed a little too. “Keep your sense of humor,” Kathy had said. “As long as you can laugh together, you have a fighting chance.”
“See, honey? Sixty percent of our core beliefs are identical.”
“I only put ‘God’ on my list because I knew he would be on yours,” Danny told her the next day. “And ‘peace.’ I put that down because you look like a jerk if you don’t believe in peace. I mean, what am I going to write—that I believe in war?”
But love was first on both their lists, and that had to count for something. Danny hadn’t mentioned marriage since he got home, and Dolly was eager to see what his goals list looked like, but she didn’t want to rush it. Both Kathy and the counselor at the VA hospital said the most important thing was for her to be understanding and the second most important thing was patience. “We’ll work on goals next,” she said, “but we have plenty of time for that.”
That summer the big news in Red Bud was that McKnight’s was switching to organic, free-range chicken. “There’s money in doing the right thing,” said Bill McKnight when Will showed up for the first day of his summer job. “So anything you can do to make people feel sorry for the non-organic chickens will be really good for us.”
“Okay,” said Will. “Sure thing.”
“If this doesn’t work out, I’ll have to contract with a big conglomerate, and half the independents who do that go out of business within three years.”
“You can count on me,” said Will.
A man with a blowtorch came to cut little holes in the sides of the aluminum chicken barns that ran like barracks over a forty-acre patch of ground on the west side of town. Inside, the doors to the chicken cages were wired open, and if a chicken got up the gumption to exit the nesting box that was all it had known since being moved from the hatchery, it could theoretically hop down to a sawdust walkway and make its way, right or left, to one of the newly cut openings. And, if it found the nerve to step through the opening, it might enjoy a little morning or afternoon sunshine, depending on which side of the barn the chicken found itself and at what time of the day it had chosen to venture out. It might even peck at a piece of honest-to-goodness ground if it didn’t first die of fright at its encounter with the unknown, for chickens were not known to be courageous.
In all of June and July, Will never saw a chicken take advantage of this opportunity, but he liked it that the doors were there. It was a poultry version of the American dream, for all that was promised to Americans was the freedom to pursue happiness, not happiness itself, and it gave him a little frisson of excitement to think ahead to graduation, when he and his classmates would file up to the opening in their own lives and some of them would step right through it and a few of them would fly away.
Because he didn’t have a car, Will rode a bicycle to McKnight’s in the morning, and after work he rode it to practice for his summer baseball league. His afternoon route took him near the Ash Creek part of town, where Tula lived. If he had time, he liked to circle past her little ranch house so she could sit with him while he ate the extra sandwich his mother had packed because it was too far to go all the way home to eat.
Will also liked to visit the stores near the train tracks where the shelves were arrayed with the cheap, exotic things women needed for their lives. He liked the familiar way the shopgirls bantered and the sense of being perched on a hill overlooking a wide valley of choices. He always had the feeling he was invisible to the girls as he sauntered up and down past the tables of jewelry and undergarments, listening to their conversations, until one day a tall, attractive girl called out, “Wachulookinat?” He stayed away for a week, but eventually he crept back, armed with the camouflage of a shopping list and a small wad of cash, and told the girl he was there to buy a present for his mother.
“Your mother! Ainchu the ladies’ man.” She laughed before leading him to a display case full of cheap jewelry that looked like gold until the coloring rubbed off a week later against his mother’s skin.
After the trip to the women’s clinic, Will decided he should buy something for Tula too. He was writing his scholarship essay on his experience at the clinic, and he wanted to give Tula something to show his appreciation.
“Another present for your momma?” asked the girl.
Will had inherited from Lyle the ability to make his face blank, a trick that resulted in other people’s reading into his expression whatever they hoped to find in it, and now the girl said, “Or are you jes comintasee me.”
“It’s for my girlfriend,” said Will.
“Who’s your girlfriend?” asked a second girl, who was sitting at the cash register reading a magazine. “See if I know her.”
“Tula Santos,” said Will.
This revelation sent the girl with the magazine into peals of laughter. “The Virgin Mary herself!” she cried. “I thought she was into all of that purity ’n’ shit. I thought she was saving herself for Jesus.”
“Here,” said the tall girl. “How about getting her this little cross? This is just the kind of thing she’d like.”
Will knew he had made a mistake mentioning Tula’s name, but he squinted coolly at the girl and bought the cross. “I’ll see you next time,” he said, tucking his purchase into his pocket.
“Next time you need a gift, or next time you wantasee me?” she asked, following him to the door. Now she was smiling coyly, and the girl at the cash register gave him a friendly wave.
Will smiled back at them, feeling like he had cracked the code of how to deal with women. At least he felt that way until people at work started coming up to him and saying, “I hear you’re dating Tula Santos.” A few days after that Tula herself said, “I guess the girlfriend’s always the last to know.”
“It just kind of slipped out,” said Will, trying to make his face a blank. “If you want, you can come by for dinner on Sunday. You can help me with my essay after.”
“If I want?”
“I mean, I’d really like it if you came.”
On Sunday, Will told his parents to stay in the kitchen while he greeted Tula at the door. The plan was to get a few minutes alone before taking her into the kitchen to introduce her.
“This is a nice surprise,” said Lyle, who seemed to think Will wanted him to act as if they hadn’t been expecting anyone.
“I’m sorry to barge in on your dinner,” said Tula.
“You’re not barging in,” Will said to Tula, and to his father he said, “You knew Tula was coming, Dad. So it’s not really a surprise.” He expected his mother to smooth over the awkwardness, but she was bent over a sheaf of papers and he had to tug on her sleeve to get her attention.
Maggie had set the table with candles in special-occasion holders, but it was Tula who lit up the room, sparking off the faded china and transforming the old stories of Will’s childhood his parents insisted on telling into fresh and hilarious gems just by listening. “Headfirst into the diaper pail!” cried Maggie, tears streaming from her eyes.
“How do you like working at the prison, Mrs. Rayburn?” asked Tula when the platters of food were empty and the laughter had died down.
“It’s interesting,” said Maggie. “And I’m working in the prison school, which is rewarding too.”
“I’m glad it’s working out,” said Tula.
“It is for me,” said Maggie. “But not so much for the prisoners.” She tapped a quilted bag that slouched next to her on an empty chair.
“Okay!” said Will. “Who wants dessert?” But his mother was already opening the bag and spreading some papers across the surface of the table.
“I have evidence that some of the prisoners are innocent,” said Maggie. “Others are serving life sentences for petty crimes, and many were forced to plead guilty even if they’re not.” She took a tiny booklet out of the bag and handed it across to Tula. “And did you know,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “that slavery is still absolutely legal?”
“At least you’re making their lives a little better,” said Tula.
“Am I?” asked Maggie. “That’s like saying that the slaves are lucky to have roofs over their heads. If we’re the ones who create the conditions, isn’t it dishonest to feel virtuous for making them better?”
“You didn’t create the conditions,” said Lyle.
“No,” said Maggie. “We all did.”
“You’re not the one who took their freedom away,” said Will. “They lost it by committing a crime.”
“That’s only true for the ones who are guilty,” said Maggie.
“But how do you know which is which?” asked Will. “I thought that’s what the judge and jury were for.”
“I’ve done a lot of research. I have some of the prison files right here, and the evidence is pretty overwhelming.”
“Files?” asked Will. “Do you mean you stole something from the prison?”
“Heavens no,” said Maggie. “These are only copies. Anyway, which is worse—taking the files or burying the evidence?”
Lyle jumped up from the table and began taking away the plates. “Stealing runs in the family,” he said, giving Will a desperate wink. “Does anyone want to hear about the time Will stole third base?”
“I do, Dad!” cried Will. Anything was better than the embarrassing path they were on. But Maggie was already forging ahead with other facts and statistics: the increasingly burdensome laws and enforcement efforts that unfairly targeted minorities, the 33 percent of male African American babies who would grow up to spend some time in prison, the legions who would lose their voting rights for life and be ineligible for housing assistance or college loans, the confiscation of property based not on conviction but on arrest. “And get a load of this!” she cried, holding up a piece of paper with Witness recants scrawled across the top.
Will snatched up the ketchup bottle and then the hen saltshaker, silently mourning the rooster pepper, which had broken long ago. The table rocked on the warped floor, its matchbook shim knocked out of place. The stubby candles slumped into their tarnished holders. In their frail light, everything seemed chipped and frayed, broken or about to break, including, he couldn’t stop himself from noticing, his mother.
“Add to that the fact that people are practically forced to plead guilty,” said Maggie, “and you can see how the system creates a permanent underclass.”
“I don’t see what you’re going to do about it!” Will blurted out just as Tula said warmly, “There must be something you can do.”
“I can see the headline now,” said Will. “Red Bud mother orchestrates prison break to free innocent man.”
“I’m not going to break anybody out of prison,” said Maggie.
“That’s what I mean,” said Will. “There’s probably nothing you can do.”
“But what if we all felt that way?” asked Tula. “We’re certainly not going to change things if we don’t even try.” Now she was moving around the table to sit with Maggie so that the women were allied against the men. It was Will who cleared the last of the dishes and Lyle who served up the yellow cake while the women exchanged Rainbow mottos and advice—because they believed in Justice and because Maggie had been a Rainbow Girl too, once upon a time. Dream rainbow dreams! Your smile is your rainbow, and you are the pot of gold!
“Does anyone want ice cream?” asked Lyle. But no ice cream was to be found, so Will poured glasses of milk to go with the cake while Tula told them that the Rainbow Inspiration that year was Sandra Day O’Connor, the former Supreme Court Justice. “Despite graduating third in her law school class, the only job offer she could get was as a legal secretary. But she didn’t give up, and look what she accomplished.”
“A Rainbow Girl never gives up!” cried Maggie.
“Why don’t you contact her?” suggested Tula. “Some of the girls wrote to her a few years back and received a very nice letter in reply.”
Will wanted to shout that these two adults had nothing to do with him, that they had only been thrown together by chance—but it wasn’t only his parents. He too shared in the blame because he had lured Tula there under false pretenses: Future doctor! Normal family! Raised with love and optimism to believe that good would triumph in the end!
“Why don’t you write to her too—one Rainbow Girl to another,” Tula was suggesting. “It’s a long shot, but maybe she would give you some advice.”
“I couldn’t,” said Maggie. “Why would she care about me?”
“Once a Rainbow Girl, always a Rainbow Girl,” said Tula.
“If it’s advice you want, there’s no one better than Pastor Price,” interrupted Lyle. “He’s sure to have some thoughts about what to do. What do you say, Maggie? How about we go talk to him and leave these young people alone?”
“Good idea,” said Will, trading another despairing look with his dad. “You two go find the pastor, and Tula and I will finish cleaning up.” He had expected his mother to protest, but she didn’t. He had expected her to issue a set of instructions, but it was Lyle who said, “Don’t forget the dishwasher’s broken, so you have to wash and dry by hand.” Of course it was! “And don’t forget you have a game tomorrow evening.” He never forgot a game!
“Don’t forget that your mother and I both have to work, so you’ll probably need to get a ride.”
“I won’t forget,” said Will.
And then the candles were extinguished, replaced by the cheerful brightness of the overhead fluorescents, and Lyle and Maggie were out the door, after which Will crowded in at the sink next to Tula, getting in her way and letting his hands bump up against hers under the soapy water as they both tried to find the sponge. And suddenly he had to admit that in spite of his mother or even because of her, his first dinner with Tula was going pretty well.
When the doorbell rang, Pastor Price flipped the television to a religious station before opening the door to find Lyle Rayburn clutching his wife by the elbow. Lyle was saying something about how Maggie wanted to quit her job again, and Maggie was saying no, she didn’t. “Slow down, slow down!” cried the pastor, ushering them into the living room, where they settled into the chairs he liked to use for visitors.
“Ask her about the stolen prison files,” said Lyle, which launched Maggie into a speech about the Constitution and prisoners’ rights.
“What is the point of a document that no one ever reads?” she asked.
At first the pastor thought she was talking about the Constitution, so he said, “I imagine the lawyers and judges read it.”
“Or ones that people aren’t even allowed to see,” said Maggie. “Ones meant only for a small, secret audience, even though they affect everyone else. Shouldn’t there be an open debate about that sort of thing?”
“I’d imagine that’s what the man’s trial was about,” said the pastor, trying to follow the thread.
“If that’s what you’d imagine, then you’d be wrong,” said Maggie. “These documents are from after the trial. They were hidden away in the prison basement until I found them.”
“Let’s all take a deep breath,” said the pastor. In order to illustrate, he took one himself. His lungs expanded against his rib cage, which swelled pleasantly against the soft brushed cotton of his shirt. Then he closed his eyes and slowly opened them again, as if he were emerging from a deep and peaceful trance. “I have my ear to the ground, and do you know what I hear?” he asked.
Maggie and Lyle didn’t know.
“I hear that Maggie has gotten in over her head and is looking for a graceful way out. If there’s anything I know about, it’s grace.”
Price was pleased with this formulation, but Maggie only stared grimly across the glass and mahogany coffee table while Lyle looked on, bewildered. Tiffany had cautioned him more than once not to start off with abstractions, so the pastor tried a more personal approach and told the couple that in order to become a preacher, he had had to constantly battle his anarchist tendencies, not to mention his libidinous ones. “What I lacked in inner self-control was thankfully imposed from without by the church. I shudder to think what might have happened if I had been allowed to run wild.”
“What would have happened?” asked Maggie.
“Praise the Lord we’ll never know! But my point is that total freedom is a very frightening concept.” Obedience was an underrated virtue, and the pastor had been looking for an opportunity to work it in when Tiffany stuck her blond head through the kitchen door and asked if anyone wanted a glass of sweet tea.
“Do you have fresh mint?” asked the pastor.
“I do.”
“And maybe some of those famous cookies?”
“Coming right up,” said Tiffany, retreating back into the kitchen.
The pastor tried to remember where he had left off, but it didn’t really matter since all roads led to the same place. “My point is that man-made structures—institutions like the church and the prisons, for instance—exist for a reason.”
“I’m sure they exist for a reason,” said Maggie. “But it’s not always the reason everyone thinks. That’s the thing that keeps me up at night.” Then she poured out a confusing story about profit motives and someone named Tomás and the ACLU and a woman who was in love with another someone named George.
The television screen filled with a close-up of a preacher, his face uplifted and shining with sweat. A choir began to sing, and the camera panned out to take in their satin robes, their sparkling eyes, their white teeth and open mouths. “Look at that! Will you just look at that?” said the pastor, unable to take his eyes off the screen. His own services were being broadcast on the radio, but he had recently been approached by a TV producer, and he was cautiously optimistic.
“We like what we see,” the producer had said when they met. “We also like what we hear about the Red Bud community. We’re envisioning a weekly reality feature where you counsel members of your flock.”
The counseling feature was in the pastor’s mind as he switched off the television set and turned to look at Maggie: she was attractive, articulate, and more than a little misguided. Hells bells—she’d be perfect for the show! He almost said it out loud—praise the Lord he didn’t—but this was just the sort of thing audiences would want to see.
A crash emanated from the kitchen. Hells bells! he thought again as Tiffany came scurrying into the room with a tray of drinks. “The cookies—” she said, but the pastor waved his hand and said to forget the cookies. He made a rectangle of his fingers as if he were setting up the frame: Maggie’s white face, Lyle’s frightened eyes. They’d be filming in the parish hall, so Tiffany’s stack of romance novels and the photographs of her in her high school cheerleading uniform wouldn’t be in the shot.
When Maggie stopped talking, the pastor said, “All I can tell you is that this might be God’s way of winning George and Tomás and their fellow inmates over. Prison can be a powerful force in getting us to reassess our lives. Has George accepted the Word of God? Has Tomás acknowledged the Living Christ? That is where your efforts should be concentrated. What is freedom of the body without the surpassing freedom of the soul? What an opportunity for you to do some good!”
“But how would we feel if we were in their position?” asked Maggie. “How would we feel if we were wrongly convicted and no one would listen to us?”
“That would feel terrible,” said the pastor. He liked to agree with his opponent whenever possible. They expected him to argue, so he peppered his speech with phrases like, “you’re right there!” or “one hundred percent correctamente!” Then he’d pause for a moment to reinforce the bond of agreement before executing a quick pivot. He reached out to touch Maggie’s arm as he said, “Modern Americans worry far too much about feelings. Besides, what would feel worse, a few years in prison or an eternity in hell?”
“I don’t think that’s the choice,” said Maggie.
Lyle had been sitting quietly, but now he said, “I’m sorry, Pastor, but you can see she’s not herself.”
“This is who I am, Lyle. For years we’ve only seen one side of each other, but there’s more to both of us—at least I hope there is.”
When Price pointed out the opportunity for showing compassion and brotherly love, Maggie cried out, “But I don’t love them! To tell you the truth, most of them give me the creeps. But that’s not their fault. It’s the prison. It puts people in a position where all they can do is take, so why should I feel good about giving? I shouldn’t. I should feel terrible about it, and I do.”
“Then perhaps you are not ready for this particular challenge, my child.” The pastor was remembering his own sense of superiority, his own feelings of—well, “repugnance” was a strong word—but he was quietly glad that he was not alone in his humanity. He was quietly glad of this reminder that he too needed to be vigilant about humility and service. Perhaps God had sent Maggie precisely to remind him of that very thing. “Perhaps you have taken on too big a task,” he said. “There are many other charitable venues. Tiffany is a dynamo when it comes to organizing the efforts of the parish. Ask her about her Mothers of Mercy initiatives—MoMs for short. Perhaps you’d be better off choosing one of those.”
“It’s not about me being better off, and why should I get to pick and choose?” cried Maggie. “This thing chose me, and I should at least see it through.”
Tiffany came into the room with a plate of broken cookies. Even though he knew they had been on the floor, Price took one and complimented his wife on the delicate flavor. “Do I detect a hint of cinnamon?” he asked.
Now that the niceties were over, the pastor let his eyes burn into Maggie’s until she looked away. They had come to the point of the encounter, and he wanted her to know it. The husband wasn’t capable of understanding, but when Maggie looked back at him, Price could see she was. “I’m sure there’s an easy solution,” he said. One of his techniques was to lull the parishioner with calming adjectives before delivering his toughest judgment. He said “easy” a second time, and then he said “comfortable” and “humble” before telling her, “You’ll find that the right thing is usually the one you want to do anyway.” Pastoral counseling was like the martial arts, where a combatant used his opponent’s own weight and momentum to defeat him or her. “It is my experience that a person’s biggest enemy is herself and that seemingly insurmountable obstacles and complications are often self-imposed.”
Price could see he was making progress. Lyle’s mouth had gone from a thin, grim line to slack-lipped admiration, and Maggie’s eyes had gone from glassy and wild to flat and blank. He would eventually get them both to smile, but he wasn’t ready for that yet. He had to finish applying the lesson first. “We are the ones who clamp the manacles around our own wrists,” he said, letting a note of hollow warning into his voice. “And we are the only ones who can take them off.” Now his voice became lighter, optimistic. “That is true of George and Tomás, and it is true of you as well. George and Tomás got entangled with the law because of their own actions. And they are only wrongly convicted (here, the pastor made a set of air quotes) because you have decided that is the case. It is completely within your power to decide otherwise.”
“Maggie doesn’t want to be unfair,” Lyle began, but the pastor interrupted him.
“How is she being unfair? Is she the one who put those men in prison? Is she now the judge and jury too? It is my view that the problem is not with the American system of jurisprudence; the problem is with Maggie herself. And that is actually very good news, because it is a much easier problem to solve.”
Lyle shuffled his feet and brushed the cookie crumbs from his trousers. Then he gave a slight nod.
“The problem,” said the pastor, “is one of grandiosity. Maggie thinks she can know more about these things than highly qualified professionals. That’s just wrongheaded, and nothing good will come of it.”
Now it was time to get Maggie to admit her role in things. Now it was time to draw closer to her and to use what he thought of as his boudoir voice, but the version with an implied threat. Finally, a tear rolled down Maggie’s cheek and she admitted, “Maybe you’re right.”
“It’s my business to be right,” said the pastor, slipping into the mode he called release-and-resolution. “But I’ve been at this a long time. I want you to feel the rightness too. Most of all, I want you to be right with God.”
Now the pastor turned to Lyle. “I have a little advice for you too, Lyle. It’s what I tell my midlife crisis couples. We talk a lot about negotiation. We talk about giving your loved one permission to do something a little crazy. Maggie agrees in advance that it will be just one slightly crazy thing, then back to business. And you agree that there will be no questions asked. Do you think you two could come to an arrangement like that?” Price wondered if he and Tiffany would ever come to the point where they needed to allow each other extra leeway. He hoped not, but he had seen enough couples to know that life was predictably unpredictable.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when he told the joke he liked to close that sort of session with. He had a little store of them that proved he didn’t take himself too seriously. “How many New Incarnation pastors does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” he asked.
Maggie stared at him, but Lyle was smiling already, even before the punch line.
“Three!” declared the pastor in a hearty voice. “One to hold the ladder, one to screw in the bulb, and one to ask you if you’ve seen the light.”