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Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
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In the end
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I SIT IN THE FRONT row of the church we raised our sons in. It’s been so long since I’ve been here that they’ve replaced the pews and carpets—once a rusted orange, now turned beige. The center aisle I walked down to marry Rancher two decades ago is laced with a thick Berber carpet you’d be more likely to find in the private home of a Yankee than any house of God.
I tell myself this isn’t happening. But with Abraham’s hand over mine and Jacob’s head bowed to my left, there’s no denying it. I wonder if this is my penance. I do not claim to be perfect and don’t believe the deeds I’ve done—before and after people going missing—should go without consequence. If every tribe has codes, I’ve broken all of them. Darn near tore every one of them up. There isn’t a sin I haven’t committed. Max. All the animals. That frozen chicken.
I sit there, watching the priest as he gives a homily I have no interest in, reminding the lord I’m human. I repeat the rules I’ve made for my own type of religion. One thing the man dressed in a white robe on the altar and I have in common is that we believe Rancher is in a better place. I reckon it’s all that matters now. I mean, everything happens for a reason I suppose.
I’ve talked to the boys about this. Abraham believes it too. But Jacob is an atheist who believes we define our own fate and vanish when death comes. He was the one who pragmatically weighed the pros and cons of his father’s decision to end his life through assisted suicide. Thinking about it, there’s something brave about that to me—being in sole control of your eternal fate—and I wish I could believe it too. I don’t think I could get through life, or this, without believing in a higher power. For my youngest son, his father is simply no more. That’s not something I’m brave enough for. I am too human. I am too selfish. I need to hold on to the idea that someday Rancher and I will be reunited and that, when we are, he will forgive me my trespasses.
I rise as the rest of the congregation does, wondering how many people are here more to see the spectacle of it than to pay respects to Rancher. I want to turn around and scream at them and tell them they are the same people who threw eggs at our home, who left threatening messages, killed Henry, and wanted us out of town. I want to run up onto the altar and ask how they can believe that they are any more innocent than me—a cold-blooded killer. Because they aren’t. And I stand by that.
Every time they take a life just because it tastes good, every time they smile and ask “but what about bacon?” they are no different. We are all killers. We are all guilty. There is not a person in this church who doesn’t deserve to answer for their choices of killing the meek. Yet, somehow, we believe we will all have mercy and should. I’m not so sure.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Jacob clench his jaw. His profile is startlingly similar to Rancher’s. Somehow, he has given up meat too. I believe, in all of this, he is the one out of both my sons who will understand what I have done.
I might even tell him someday, how I tried to save his father. I imagine he would say “good.” I imagine he would be glad I tried. The thing I’ve noticed about having no god is you are less inclined to judge, at least that’s true with Jacob. He would be happy I tried to fight for his father’s life. Or, maybe I’m lying to myself again—the same way we all are: the medicine men in South Africa peddling potions made of human sacrifice, the guy working from his garage to sell boxes of herbs to cure ALS, and the cancer-ridden woman eating raw eggs for breakfast in hopes of keeping her strength up. We’re all the same: Liars. Killers. Hypocrites. Sinners.
“Lord have mercy.”
Vegan