The Father
“Please!” she begged, on her knees with her hands clasped in front of her as if in prayer. “Please let me out of here! I promise I’ll obey from now on.”
The Father felt a smug satisfaction slither inside him. “Why should I believe you, you Whore of Babylon? You vowed to remained chaste until marriage. You made a promise to God. You didn’t keep that promise, did you?”
Maybe he was being overly harsh, but he wasn’t in a good mood and it was likely her fault. Police officers had come to the property yesterday, and he couldn’t be sure whether the story they’d given him was true. A lookout in the new tower he’d had erected had radioed earlier to tell him a cruiser had gone by. It wasn’t necessarily unusual for the police to patrol out here given that people sometimes got a little rowdy when camping or fishing in the adjacent park. Still, it made him edgy to have law enforcement about.
“No.” She gulped as tears poured down her cheeks. “I didn’t keep my promise to God to remain chaste. But I’m sorry! I’ve repented! God has already punished me by taking my baby from me. Why must you do more?”
She was wearing down, but the fact that she’d dared to question him said she wasn’t completely broken yet. She wasn’t as stupid as the rest of his flock, as willing to swallow whatever warped, self-serving logic he decided to feed them. When her parents had joined the People of Peace years ago, she’d been a mere ten years old. But even then she’d looked at him not with adoration and awe, but with skepticism and distrust.
He should have banished Juliette and Luke from the compound the moment he’d caught the two in the chicken coop seven months ago. Eggs weren’t the only thing getting laid in the structure that night. He’d already refused them permission to marry, told them he would reconsider if and when he sensed they’d grown enough spiritually. Yet they’d blatantly defied him, gone behind his back and snuck around to be together in the most biblical of ways. He’d never felt such fury! If the other members of the People of Peace found out he’d allowed Juliette and Luke to disobey him, to sin right there within the sacred walls of the compound, his hold on the others could begin to loosen.
“Out, you sinners!” he’d hissed like a serpent when he’d found them, inadvertently scaring the hens, who’d clucked and fluttered their wings where they sat on their nests. As Juliette yanked the hem of her dress down and Luke pulled up his pants, Father Emmanuel pointed across the wide compound in the direction of the gate. “You two are banished! You don’t deserve to remain inside these walls!”
Juliette had burst into tears. “May I speak with my parents before I go? Tell them good-bye?”
He’d taken a deep breath to regain his composure. “No. I will talk to your parents and Luke’s mother in the morning and tell them what you’ve done. They will understand why you could not be allowed to remain.”
It gave Father Emmanuel no small sense of pleasure to see the look of helplessness on Luke’s face. The young man might be strong and smart and handsome, but he was powerless to help the woman he loved.
Luke had fallen to his knees in front of Father Emmanuel, his hands clasped in desperation. “Please don’t do this! We don’t want to lose our families!”
Juliette fell to her knees, too. “Please, Father! We’re sorry! Please allow us to redeem ourselves! We’ll serve any penance!”
He’d mulled things over. Though he’d banished the occasional member from the compound as a reminder to the others that they lived there at his pleasure, he always chose members whose absence would not be deeply felt. But if he banished Juliette and Luke, he ran the risk that Juliette’s parents and Luke’s mother would want to leave as well. Though he’d found their parents quite easy to convince and control in many aspects, despite his best efforts he hadn’t been able to successfully sever the strong family bonds they’d arrived with. If the three of them left in search of their banished children, if they rejected the earthly paradise he had provided them, Emmanuel would appear weak and not in control of his flock. Moreover, Juliette and Luke were well liked by the other members of the church, and had many friends within these walls. Their banishment would cut deep across the compound, raise questions and, quite possibly, resentments. The life Father Emmanuel built here could begin to erode, disintegrate.
“I’ll let you stay on one condition,” he’d told Juliette and Luke.
“Anything, Father!” Luke had cried.
Tears wetting her cheeks, Juliette had nodded her head frantically. “Yes, anything!”
He looked from one of them to the other. “You two must stay away from each other. No sitting together in the manna hall or at services. No joining hands in the prayer circle. And certainly no lying with each other!” Of course he knew that he also had to dangle a carrot in front of them to encourage them to keep their mouths shut. “You have soiled yourselves for anyone but each other. If you obey me for a year, stay clear of each other for four seasons, I will reconsider your request to marry. But you must not tell anyone of this bargain I have made with you. If you tell a soul, I will put you outside the walls in an instant.”
“Thank you, Father Emmanuel!” Luke cried up at him. “Thank you for showing us God’s mercy!”
Juliette had bowed her head. Father Emmanuel had thought it a sign of submission at first, but when she upchucked the vegetable stew they’d had for dinner, he realized he might have another problem on his hands. A little problem with hands of its own.
“Juliette,” he’d asked, “are you with child?”
She’d pulled a lace-edged handkerchief from her pocket to wipe her mouth and nodded, a fresh round of tears welling up in her eyes. “I believe I am, Father.”
It took all his strength to fight the urge to slap the disobedient little slut across the face.
That Jezebel could ruin everything!
“You must go, after all, then,” he’d told them. “A child will be proof that you two have sinned here, that you have willingly defied the word of God.” Worse yet, they’d defied Father Emmanuel, which chapped his ass far worse than any biblical breach. “Were it a small transgression, it could be forgiven. But lust is one of the seven deadly sins. I would be no man of God were I to allow you to disrespect the Lord here on His hallowed ground.”
“Please, no!” Still on her knees, Juliette looked up at him. “Please!”
“I see no other solution,” he said, though he was racking his mind for one. Sending the two of them away could lead to a dangerous domino effect. An idea crept into his mind then, and he worked through it, thinking out loud, making them believe the idea was theirs. “Of course, you could tell the others that you made a mistake, Juliette. You could say that you met a boy somewhere…” He trailed off, leaving her to fill in the blanks.
She promptly did. No one could ever accuse Juliette of being stupid. “I could say I met a young man when I was selling eggs at the farmer’s market.”
Given that the only time she left the compound was to sell the eggs, it was the only place she could have met someone who wasn’t a member of the People of Peace.
She continued. “I’ll say that the devil got into me and I sinned with the man.”
Luke looked pained at the mere thought of the woman he loved being with another man, but he didn’t stop her.
Though it might be bearing false witness against the fictitious father of the child, it wasn’t an unfathomable story. Father Emmanuel had attended the farmer’s market on various occasions. He knew that a young man who sold honey in the adjacent booth often traded a jar of his sweet honey for a dozen of Juliette’s farm-fresh eggs. She’d brought the honey back to the compound and shared it with the others, even mentioned the yellow-and-black-striped shirts and funny, fuzzy antennae the boy wore to get the attention of potential customers.
Juliette reached up and grabbed Father Emmanuel’s hands, holding them in tight desperation. “I will let the others know that I begged you for forgiveness and permission to raise my child among the People of Peace. That you, in your mercy, allowed me and my child to stay.”
It was less than an ideal solution, but there was no ideal solution to be had. Either he banished the young couple and risked their parents’ departure, allowed them to remain while openly acknowledging their mutual sin committed within the compound walls and in direct defiance of his leadership, or he used Juliette as a precautionary tale for others about the risks and dangers of the sinful and scary outside world. He’d decided to go with the latter.
In retrospect, maybe he should have banished Juliette and Luke, after all, allowed their parents to leave as well. Juliette posed a challenge, that was for sure. Regardless, he’d break her … even if it was the last thing he did.