~ The Storm ~
Darkness lay over the surface of the desert, and the wind and the rain were rushing over the mountains. Two hundred and ten prisoners marched down the dirt road, four miles from the worksite to the Detention Center. The splashing of their boots was punctuated by the sucking sound of suctioned mud.
On the edge of the column, in the third row, Thomas Bailey sloshed through a pothole in the road. Rain dripped down his forehead and beard and fell from his fingertips like blood. Several paces away, a guard’s rifle glistened red in the taillights of the patrol truck leading the column. Lightning forked over the mountains, and in its light, Thomas recognized the guard. This one had arrived at the Detention Center almost exactly a year ago, fresh and zealous. Thomas had watched his face harden, like so many others, into thin lines, neither cruel nor angry but simply indifferent.
“Priest,” someone murmured behind Thomas. Without turning, he knew that it was Steven Lancaster, the former political science student who occupied the bunk below him in Barrack 7. Something slid into Thomas’s left pants pocket. It felt like a tiny book.
The sky flashed white, like a sheet shaken out over the Nevada desert. In the deafening darkness that followed, Thomas stroked the book in his pocket, its thin pages and cover a soggy pulp. His heart thundered.
As his eyes adjusted again to the dimness of headlights and flashlights, he looked to his left and realized Steven was beside him now, marching calmly, narrow shoulders hunched as if holding up a column of rain.
“Thought you might want it, Priest,” Steven said, voice muffled in the downpour. “It’s your department.”
Thomas turned his head away from the guard to hide the movement of his lips. “Is it…a Gospel?”
“Yes, indeed; it’s Mr. Luke.” Lightning flashed on Steven’s teeth, showing themselves in a brief smile.
“How?” Thomas asked.
“Compliments of yours truly.”
“From a civilian? Or the Easton brothers?”
“Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies.”
“You should stay away from the Eastons. What do I owe you?”
“Your everlasting gratitude, of course.”
Steven had the air of one tremendously pleased with himself. Thomas knew his friend didn’t care about sneaking in Bibles, but he did care about hoodwinking guards. Since transferring to the Carlin Detention Center nine months ago, Steven had committed small covert acts of rebellion on a regular basis. He was not like the Easton brothers, who ran a contraband business for profit. Steven did it out of principle.
“Fine,” Thomas said. “But be careful. Think about Georgia.”
Steven’s smile wavered at the mention of his wife, and he said nothing.
Thomas considered where he could conceal the book, somewhere the guards didn’t normally check when they frisked the prisoners at the gate. It was dangerous enough already, the papers he had stuffed into his mattress: five pages of psalms he had found one day, crumpled and filthy, wedged into a crack in the wall behind the toilet in the Detention Center’s main office. Now, an entire Gospel. It was worth the risk of solitary, wasn’t it? He’d been there before; he could handle it better this time.
He put his hand into his pocket and stroked the wet book. There had been a time when he owned twelve different Bibles in seven translations, along with a bookshelf of commentaries. He had taken it for granted back then, the way he had taken everything for granted—things like regular showers, sufficient food, lice-free beds, common decency, and justice. Now, the only alternative to sneaking the Gospel into the Center was tossing it into the mud, and he couldn’t do that.
Thunder crashed overhead. In the three years he had been at the Detention Center, Thomas had seen a desert storm like this just once—the day he had arrived and had thought he was standing at the gates of hell.
~ Barrack 15 ~
The night he came it was storming as if the world were ending. Thomas arrived by bus, on May 25, 2053, along with twelve other prisoners. They were herded from the bus into the driving rain and stood in a dirt courtyard which had become one enormous puddle. The courtyard was surrounded on all sides by squat cinderblock buildings. Beyond these, the barbwire fence reared four stories high, and the searchlights of the watchtowers were smeared with rain. He was thinking even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…
A confusion of orders followed, and they were pushed toward a building. Once inside, the thirteen prisoners stood dripping water onto the floor. Then they were processed like excess meat. Their names and crimes were chopped up and filed. Their personal belongings were sorted, classified, and occasionally returned. Their wrists were unshackled because now there was no possibility of escape. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…
They went outside. It had stopped raining, and the thunder had receded into the distance. Water dripped from the eaves of the buildings, splashing in an eerie silence. The prisoners were divided up and each was escorted toward one of the 16 barracks. Thomas found himself passing under the number 15. Surely goodness and mercy…
In the doorway of Barrack 15, he stopped. Rows of bunks three tiers high stretched across the long room. Men sat on the bunks and on the floor and at a table made of plywood and cinderblocks. At the end of the room closest to the door, a foul reek came from a row of toilets. The guard handed Thomas his government-issued work clothes, a pair of boots, and his own wallet—empty now of everything except a tiny picture of his fiancé, Evangeline. The guard left, and dozens of eyes turned on Thomas.
He knew he had to do something decisive, to look sure of himself. He walked briskly up to the makeshift table where four men were playing poker.
“Are there bunk assignments?” he asked, “or is it every man for himself?”
Without looking up from his cards, a man with a black, unkempt beard said, “Find a spot and hold it.”
Thomas surveyed the rows of bunks. If he tried to find a place now, he would end up wandering up and down the aisles, becoming an object of ridicule for every man he passed. It would be better to wait until they all got into bed. He wished he could change out of his wet clothes, but that would also be better left until later. He sat down on a plastic crate beside the table and said, “Deal me in.”
They all looked at him.
“With what?” asked the bearded man.
Thomas took the photo of Evangeline from his wallet and tossed the wallet onto the table.
“What would we want with a wallet?” the bearded man asked.
One of the others picked up the wallet and sniffed it. “It’s leather,” he said.
“Oh, deal him in next hand,” said a third.
At the other end of the barrack two voices rose in a heated argument, which everyone else in the room ignored. The card players finished their hand. The arguing crescendoed and then stopped abruptly as something thudded on the floor, something that sounded like a body. Thomas half rose from his crate, but the black-bearded man glanced up at him sharply. Thomas settled back onto his seat.
They dealt the cards.
Thomas was pretty sure he could have won the game that night if he had wanted to. He had a lot of practice from his six years as a prison chaplain, playing for pennies with groups of inmates. But winning wasn’t the goal that night. If he won, they would resent him from the start. If he lost respectably, maybe they would leave him alone.
When the guards came in and announced lights out, Thomas watched where the other men went and found an empty third-tier bunk nearest the toilets. Once the lights were out, he changed out of his wet prison-issued clothes and into the new Center-issued ones, draping the wet clothes at the foot of his bunk. The mattress was hard, but the five months he had just spent in a jail cell had prepared him for that. It was stuffy and hot in the room. An insect crawled across his neck, and he swatted at it. Below him, the man on tier two was thrashing around, making the metal frame of the bunk squeak. A search light pierced one of the barrack windows and shone brightly into Thomas’s face.
Suddenly, three gunshots popped outside. The room became watchfully silent. No one stirred. There was a sound of distant shouts, and a man in a bunk somewhere below and across from Thomas said, “I told him not to try it.”
“Try what?” Thomas said.
“Escaping, of course,” said the disembodied voice of his neighbor.
No one else spoke, and soon the barrack settled into the quiet noise of sleep. Thomas lay still, wide awake. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me…
The searchlight shone through the window again like an eye peering in.
Over the next few weeks, Thomas felt like an impostor. Outwardly, he played the role of the seasoned inmate. Inwardly, he recoiled at everything. As summer came and the temperature rose, so did the stench in the barrack and the tempers of the men. There were regular brawls in Barrack 15. The toilets clogged and overflowed. The tables in the mess hall were filmed in grime and greased by the elbows of the men. Bits of mystery meat from the soup caught in his throat. He was continually hungry and continually filthy. Inmates showered every other week. They could buy soap at the Detention Center store, but for that, they needed money; and to get money, they needed relatives to send money—or have something to sell other inmates who had money.
Every day, they marched to one of the work sites. Sometimes they were sent to the rock quarry nearby, or they were bussed to the gold mine several miles away. Other times, they were sent to a site where they were erecting stone towers for who-knew-what-purpose. The rocks were blistering hot, and there were snakes to watch for. Thomas doubted a guard would waste his anti-venom kit on a prisoner, and he himself was no Apostle Paul to simply shake it off.
The black-bearded poker player, named Moreau, turned out to be Thomas’s crew leader, who ruled the crew by mien force. The authorities didn’t care how the crew leaders kept order so long as they did it, and the other crew leaders from Barrack 15 ignored Moreau’s tactics. Thomas suspected they were all a little afraid of him.
It was around week four that Thomas started thinking in practical terms about why God had sent him there. Barrack 15 was clearly a godless place; therefore, Thomas must be there to bring the knowledge of God. Hadn’t he been a chaplain in the Georgia state prison system for six years? Hadn’t he served in his parish for years before that? Hadn’t all of this prepared him?
He put a plan of action into place at once.
He began by trying to befriend the men on his work crew and those who occupied the bunks nearby. They were willing to joke with him, to accept his help with oversized boulders, to tolerate the occasional reference to Jesus; but when it came to real friendship or discussions of any substance, they threw up a wall of indifference, sometimes accompanied by annoyance or snide remarks. There was one notable exception: the occupant of the bunk below Thomas, a man named Richards, who was an avid card player and who somehow managed to get ahold of whisky from time to time. Between card games, Richards was willing to discuss anything with Thomas, from original sin to the final judgment. He even joined Thomas for evening prayers, though he never prayed anything aloud himself except to say in a tone bordering on irreverence: “God almighty, get us out of this hole.” One couldn’t exactly call Richards a disciple, but it seemed like a start.
In July, a letter arrived from Thomas’s fiancé Evangeline. Thomas borrowed paper and a stamp from Richards and wrote her back, asking her to send some soap and work gloves, or else a little money to buy them. In August, she sent all three. It felt strange, and a little dangerous, holding money in his hand. He went to the Detention Center store and bought some paper and stamps, a pen, and two beef sticks, which he ate immediately. That night, he hid the rest of the money in his mattress, except for the amount he owed Richards for the letter.
Trouble came on a day in late August when Moreau’s crew was detailed to stay at the Detention Center and make repairs to some of the buildings. Thomas and Richards were re-shingling the roof of the Discipline Office. It felt as if the sun were igniting the back of Thomas’s neck. He was grateful for the work gloves Evangeline had sent that kept his fingers from blistering with the heat of the shingles.
“Bailey,” Richards said suddenly. In Barrack 15, everyone was known by his last name. Some men wouldn’t even give their first name when asked. Thomas paused in nailing down a shingle and looked up at Richards.
“Bailey,” Richards said again slowly. “I’m in a bit of a situation. I owe Moreau money.”
Thomas grunted. He could see where this was going, and he didn’t like it.
“He’s threatened me,” Richards said.
“Have you gone to the Warden?”
“Ha! You know gambling is against the rules. Besides, Moreau would find out.”
When Thomas didn’t answer, Richards said, “I know you have some money set aside.”
Thomas started to shake his head, and Richards said, “I’ll pay interest. Friend to friend, you know I’m good for it.”
“If it’s something else you need, I’ll buy it for you,” Thomas said. “But I won’t give you cash so you can go on gambling.”
“You gambled your first day here.”
“Have you seen me do it since?”
Richards pulled a shingle into place and hammered down the nail viciously.
“All your talk about religion,” he said. “All that talk about love.”
“God is not a weapon. It won’t work to use Him that way on me.”
They finished the roof in silence, and Richards still would not speak to Thomas after evening roll call. Instead, he went straight to the card table with Moreau and four others. Thomas climbed up to his bunk and lay spread-eagle in the suffocating heat. His skin felt like it was on fire, and he wondered if he had a touch of heat stroke. He dozed off, but was abruptly awakened by shouting from the card table. He rolled onto his side and saw Moreau towering over an indignant Richards. Thomas gathered that Moreau had accused Richards of cheating. One of the other crew leaders pulled Richards away and shoved him toward his bunk. Richards climbed up onto his tier beneath Thomas.
“Maybe he can’t win without cheating, but I can,” Richards mumbled.
Thomas’s limbs felt heavy with fatigue. He thought there was something he ought to be saying, but he didn’t know what. He was just too tired.
Thomas woke suddenly in the middle of the night. Through the window across the room, he could see the search light winking like a sinister lighthouse. He could hear the breathing of 200 men around him asleep—but there was something else, the soft noise of bare feet on the floor. Probably someone headed for the toilets, Thomas thought, but as he listened, it sounded like someone was tiptoeing down the aisle of bunks toward him, not toward the toilets.
He tensed, a surge of adrenaline rushing through his muscles. Had Richards told someone about the money hidden in his mattress?
A quiet presence stopped by the bunk. In a flash of illumination from the searchlight, Thomas saw a silhouette reaching, not toward him, but toward Richards on the second tier. A glint of metal caught the light. Thomas leapt from the bunk onto the other man, and they both fell on the floor in a tangle of arms and legs.
“Richards,” Thomas shouted. He felt something sharp graze his leg. He found an arm, grabbed it, and threw all his weight downward on the arm until he heard a grunt and something metal hitting the floor. The lights overhead flickered on, and Thomas found that he was grappling with Moreau. For a split second he lost concentration, and Moreau heaved him backward. Thomas’s head slammed into the metal frame of a bunk, but he didn’t loosen his hold until two crew leaders pulled them apart.
“What’s going on?” one of the crew leaders demanded.
“Ask him,” Thomas said, rubbing his throbbing head. “He was standing over Richards with a knife.”
Richards, who stood a few feet away, backed up a step, eyes wide.
“Did no such thing,” Moreau said. “I was going to the bathroom when this one jumped me.”
“Then why’d I have to knock a knife out of your hand?”
“What knife?” one of the crew leaders said, and while the floor was being searched, four guards burst through the door and elbowed their way into the confusion, shouting for order. By the time the guards understood the situation, the two crew leaders had made a search for the knife and found nothing.
“There was a knife,” Thomas said. He gestured toward his leg, which was bleeding through a thin cut in his jeans. “He was trying to knife Richards.”
The guards turned on Richards, who shrank back against the bunk.
“That true?” one of the guards demanded.
Richards swallowed. “No. No. I’m sure it must be a mistake.”
Thomas shoved down a boiling rage at Richards’s cowardice. Of course he was too afraid to accuse Moreau.
The guards took Moreau, Richards, and Thomas to the Discipline Office and locked them in separate cells until morning. Thomas should have known then that he was in serious trouble, but at that point, he had not entirely abandoned his belief in earthly justice. In the morning, it became clear: Barrack 15 needed a scape goat for the disturbance of the previous night, and Thomas had been chosen.
Moreau accused him of assault.
Several men from the barrack accused him of aggressive proselytization.
Richards claimed that he and Moreau were on excellent terms and that Thomas had a serious savior complex. It was evident what had happened: Richards had gambled on an alliance with Thomas, but seeing the risk, had changed strategies. That was all there was to it.
In the end, Thomas was put into solitary confinement for 90 days on half rations. The solitary cells beneath the Discipline Office were gray, windowless spaces, lit perpetually by a bare fluorescent tube. Thomas entered solitary determined to pray his way through it. He prayed for himself, for Evangeline, for his church back home. He even tried to pray for Moreau and Richards and the other men of Barrack 15. But gradually, something fierce woke up in him, a streak of temper he thought he had killed a decade ago.
Time was endless, and he forgot to pray. The walls seemed to grow colder. Maybe the seasons were changing outside, the heat leaching out of the soil above his head. Maybe it was his own body, slowly adapting to the disposition of the walls. He felt light and heavy, like a balloon on a chain. The fluorescent tube made a faint humming noise.
He started hallucinating ants on the floor and walls. He knew they were not there, but he couldn’t stop seeing them. Sometimes he kicked the wall, just to make the ants disappear for a moment. Sometimes he kicked the wall because he was angry.
~ Evangeline ~
She had walked into his life one windy January evening in 2052. She opened the door of his apartment, poked her head in, and said, “Is this the Bible study?” Thomas had just sat down with the eight other members of the group, but he stood quickly to welcome the newcomer inside.
“Yes, join us,” he said and held out his hand. “Thomas Bailey.”
She shook his hand and looked at him searchingly, the suggestion of a smile at the corners of her mouth. He was struck by the intelligent brightness of her eyes. She almost reached his own height of 6’ 1’’, and she had a full mane of wind-blown curls flying above her shoulders. Her hair, mostly brown, was sprinkled with gray, but her face looked youthful.
“I guess you already know someone in our little group,” Thomas said. It was an informal study that brought in new members by word of mouth.
“Ah—no.” She held out a slip of paper with Thomas’s name and address written on it and the words “Exploring the book of Luke.”
“Someone handed it to me in a coffee shop the other day,” she said.
One of the group members called out, “Must have been you, Thomas. You’re the one always striking up a conversation with somebody.
“No,” Thomas said. “I would have remembered.” You just didn’t forget eyes like that.
“So would I,” the woman said and looked at him with her head slightly cocked to one side. Then she said, “You’re the Thomas Bailey from Appling, aren’t you?”
“You mean Appling, Georgia?” Thomas asked, astonished. No one had ever heard of Appling, population 700, where he had spent part of his childhood. He looked at her anew, trying to match her face to someone from his past.
“Yes, Appling, Georgia,” she said. “When I got this note, I just had to know if you were the same Thomas Bailey.”
Thomas glanced at the Bible study members, seated in a circle around his living room. One and all, they were staring with amused and curious expressions. He looked back at the woman. There was something about her hair and the teasing smile at the edges of her mouth…that hair, once long and wild, blowing in a hot summer breeze. And there it was.
“Evangeline McLane,” he said.
She grinned broadly. “The same.”
And she was the same, though 25 years older. For two long childhood summers they had roamed the pine forest behind their neighboring houses, pretending to be outlaws, soldiers, freedom fighters, hunters, any number of things. Sometimes they just tramped along in silence through the dead needles of the last autumn and the treacherous briars of summer. They dared each other to eat unripe persimmons. They tried to identify birds and to sneak up on squirrels. They fished in a nearby pond. Then Evangeline’s family moved away, and Thomas had not seen her since. He wondered if he looked much like the Thomas Bailey she remembered.
“What do you do here in Savannah?” he asked.
“I’m a school social worker. You?”
“I’m a prison chaplain.”
Thomas became aware again of the group looking on. He turned to them. “She, ah, Evangeline and I were friends when we were kids.”
Evangeline faced the group. “I had the worst crush on him,” she said, eliciting chuckles from the others.
“I never knew that,” Thomas said.
“Of course not.” Evangeline grinned at the Bible study members. “I was eleven. I wouldn’t have told him.”
“Now we know why poor Thomas is still single,” one of the women said, and the group erupted in laughter.
“Well, before I lose all my dignity,” Thomas said. “Shall we get to the Bible study? Evangeline, care to join?”
Thomas gave Evangeline his own chair and seated himself on the floor. He arranged his Bible and his notes in front of him, trying to regroup his thoughts. He cleared his throat. “Luke 23. Would someone read verses 39-43, please?”
He didn’t hear a word of what the reader said, but of course he already knew the text. The thief on the cross repents and Jesus promises him paradise. The reader finished, and Thomas consulted his notes.
“Look with me at the phrase, ‘remember me’ found in verse 42,” he said. “In the Greek, it can also mean ‘call to mind, recall, mention.’ Now, what precisely does this man mean when he asks Jesus to ‘remember’ or ‘recall’ him?”
There was a short silence, and then Evangeline said, “It’s like in Hamlet.”
“Pardon?”
“Hamlet. By Shakespeare. You know, the ghost of Hamlet’s father shows up, says he was murdered, and asks Hamlet to remember him. But he doesn’t mean he just wants Hamlet to sit around thinking about him. He wants Hamlet to do something—to avenge his murder.”
“Ah, exactly,” Thomas said. “To ‘remember’ here implies not only thought, but also action based upon that thought. And what action is the thief on the cross requesting?”
“Salvation,” one of the group members said.
“Forgiveness.”
“Mercy.”
“Yes,” Thomas said. “This man is literally dying for his sins. All he can do is ask for mercy. In one act of faith, he says, ‘remember me.’ In the end, we all rest on this same mercy.”
Thomas glanced across the circle at Evangeline, who looked at him steadily and gave a smile and a small nod. Later, Thomas would remember that night vividly—Hamlet, the thief, the smile. Within it, there were sudden possibilities he had long given up. It was like a locked gate opening.
What he did not foresee was the swift devastation to come: before the next new year, he would be in jail. He did not know this; if he had, he might have stopped the discussion there, forgotten to showcase his Greek, and spoken simply and without pretense: Remember me.
~ Barrack 7 ~
When Thomas emerged from solitary, the sun was shattering on the horizon in a cold orange haze. it was the end of November, and a dusting of snow covered the dirt courtyard. He shivered in his T-shirt and silently followed the guard to the shower room where he took his first shower in 90 days. The water was icy cold, his skin red, his body thin; he gritted his teeth. Non-existent ants crawled up the shower walls, igniting fury in his chest. The guard tossed him a frayed jacket on his way out.
They sent him to a new dormitory, Barrack 7, away from the prisoners he had supposedly harassed. The guard left him at the door, and Thomas surveyed the rows of empty bunks. The work crews were obviously not back yet. When they did come, what then? It would all start again—the monotonous dog-eat-dog uproar—except now, he wasn’t sure he had the energy to play his role.
He walked farther into the room, toward the first row of bunks. In his peripheral vision, ants crawled up the wall. No more. He kicked the wall so hard he was jolted backward into the metal frame of a bunk. His head rang at the impact, and his toes felt numb.
“Not very priest-like,” said a voice behind him.
Thomas turned quickly. The man who stood before him wore an amused half-smile. He was stocky and broad-shouldered with a thin layer of gray hair covering his scalp and lining his dark cheeks. Evening light filtered into the barrack through a dirty window and glinted on his glasses. The man took the glasses off and began to clean them carefully on a stained work shirt.
The anger rushed out of Thomas, replaced by shame. He didn’t know what to say. “I—Well, I—”
“You’re new to this dormitory, but your reputation precedes you,” the man said, replacing his glasses. “The priest who tells us we’re all sinners.”
Thomas gawked.
“Not to worry, I agree—from a purely sociological point of view. Anyone who believes in the innate goodness of humanity is pathologically myopic or simply naïve.”
Thomas tried to form a question but failed. Maybe it had something to do with not speaking to another human for 90 days.
The man continued, “I’m your new crew leader. People used to call me Dr. Franklin and Professor Franklin. Now they just call me Franklin—which is what you may also call me. And you’re Thomas Bailey, so don’t worry about ungluing your tongue. The others will be here in a few minutes. Follow me.”
Franklin led Thomas down aisles of three-tiered bunks. Six rows in, about halfway down the length of the room, Franklin indicated a third-tier bunk as Thomas’s. Across the aisle, he sat down on a first-level bunk and gestured for Thomas to sit on an overturned bucket. A line of ants marched up the post of the bunk. Thomas reached out and touched the post. No ants.
“Sorry about kicking the wall,” he said. “I lost my head for a second. You must think I’m a raging lunatic.”
Franklin smiled ruefully. “Hardly. It takes a lot to shock me. I was a genocide scholar before they arrested me.”
“A genocide scholar? There are scholars for that?”
“Of course. Aren’t there scholars for everything? I studied the sociological factors behind genocides, and my specialty was the Rwandan genocide of ’94. My maternal grandmother was a Tutsi.”
“Let me guess,” Thomas said. “You said something in your scholarship that got you arrested.”
“Our government is predictable, isn’t it?” Franklin said. “And you, a Catholic priest—”
“Anglican, actually.”
“Pardon. An Anglican priest. You must have said something disagreeable.”
Thomas felt himself redden. “Not exactly. I was leaking information to the dissident press. I was—well, I was a prison chaplain.”
Franklin’s eyebrows went up.
“I know,” Thomas said. “A prison chaplain who can’t handle prison. Who starts kicking walls.”
“Theory is one thing,” Franklin said, “practice another. But you’ll manage, I’ve no doubt.”
“Maybe, if I live through it.”
“I’ve heard a lot about Barrack 15,” Franklin said. “They seem determined to make their stay here more unpleasant than it already is.”
The barrack door opened, and the members of Barrack 7 swarmed inside. Several cast curious glances in Thomas’s direction, and one called out, “New guy. Priest. Was told to give you this.” He tossed a plastic bag. Thomas caught it and saw that it contained his work gloves, pen, soap, and the two letters from Evangeline. No sign of his money, of course.
“You’ll do all right,” Franklin said. “If you get that evangelistic itch again, just get it out of your system and try to convert me. It won’t work, but you’re welcome to try.”
Thomas held the letters and touched his bottom lip with their folded points. He took a breath and called up an image of Evangeline in his mind: tall and slender; intense gray eyes; a forthright smile that had caught him from the start. What did it matter? He was never getting out of here, would never see her again.
* * * * *
If the Detention Center were hell, Barrack 7 was like a small army trying to fend off hell. Not that anyone in the barrack but Thomas would have framed it in such religious terms. To a man, they were all one of three things: deists, atheists, or agnostics. Yet they were all, without exception, unified by a sense of calm defiance. They were not overt trouble-makers, though a few of them had a knack for sabotage and a few had a penchant for theft; but what constituted their defiance was their unusual loyalty toward one another. It didn’t take Thomas long to realize that Franklin was at the back of this. There was a disproportionate number of intellectuals, dissident politicians, and journalists in Barrack 7, and Thomas wondered if Franklin had somehow worked the system to get them into his domain. He even wondered if Franklin had deliberately chosen to bring him, a renegade Anglican priest, into the fold of Barrack 7. If anyone could manage such a thing, it would be Franklin. Everyone respected him, including the guards and the other crew leaders in the barrack.
No one in Barrack 7 called Thomas by his last name, and only Franklin called him by his first name. Everyone else called him simply “the Priest.” Most were willing to discuss religion with him on a purely intellectual plane. When he brought up Jesus or sin or the resurrection, most assumed a politely interested expression. Some would debate the historicity of Christ or the value of His teachings, and some would try to steer the conversation back into an intellectual or metaphysical sphere.
At the beginning, Thomas was weak from his stay in solitary. After his first day back on the work detail, he barely made it up to his third-tier bunk. His whole body was shaking with exhaustion. He collapsed facedown and lay motionless. He heard someone say, “The Priest looks dead,” but he didn’t care what they thought of him.
Something small and hard hit him in the head. He opened his eyes and saw a plastic object lying on the mattress just inches from his face. For a moment, he didn’t even care what it was and considered just letting in lie there. But he was curious. With a grunt, he raised himself on one elbow and saw that it was a small chocolate bar. A chocolate bar? He scanned the room, but couldn’t tell who the thrower had been. Several men lay or sat on bunks nearby. It could have been any of them.
“Um, thanks?” he said into the air, waving the chocolate bar.
Everyone in sight looked at him innocently.
It was the best thing he had eaten since coming to the Detention Center. It was smooth on his tongue and richly sweet. It had tiny flakes of hazelnut in it.
Thomas rolled onto his back as the last of the chocolate melted in his mouth. He looked up at the ceiling a foot and a half above his head and murmured, “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”
If anyone heard him, they gave no sign of it.
News of a failed military coup reached the Detention Center inmates two weeks after it was already over. They had known something was wrong for months. The guards were on edge. All letters stopped, even for prisoners who had always been allowed mail privileges. No civilians were allowed into the camp or the work sites. There were extra searches for contraband in the barracks. There were more frequent roll calls. Finally, the inmates heard the news when the Warden made a Center-wide announcement about the president’s victory over the dissidents.
“I wonder,” Franklin murmured, standing beside Thomas in the pre-dawn roll call as the Warden lobbed the news into their ranks. “I wonder who’s still out there, and if they’ve really all given up.”
“I don’t know,” Thomas said, thinking of Evangeline. She could be dead for all he knew.
“What is in the heart of man that we do this again and again?” Franklin said.
“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “Well, actually, I do know, but you won’t believe me.”
A guard looked their way, finger on the trigger of his rifle, and they were silent.
Thomas wondered if any of the information he had sent the dissident press might have been fuel for the coup. He had never even considered starting a war. Back then, he had only wanted people to know about the deteriorating conditions in the prisons and about the new influx of politically motivated imprisonments. The irony, of course, was that he had become one of those.
The coup made a difference for the worse at the Center. The government, pressed for funding, cut expenses at the detention centers across Nevada. Food rations were reduced, civilian employees were laid off, lights out came earlier. Punishments also became harsher, especially in the tense months immediately following the coup. A man was beaten nearly to death for being caught with a cell phone. Two men disappeared into the Discipline Office for unknown reasons and came out in the infirmary. Both of them later died. Franklin ordered the men of Barrack 7 to desist from all illegal activities for the time being. Most of them obeyed.
Then came an influx of new prisoners. These men whispered stories of flattened neighborhoods and a massacred army and widespread food shortages. Letters finally resumed, and Evangeline wrote. She was safe but unemployed, laid off for lack of funding.
Life kept going for the men of Barrack 7. The desert sun hammered them at the work site that summer, dazzled their eyes on the snow that winter. The men began to call Thomas “our priest”—or “our resident priest.”
The year 2055 came, and that spring Thomas had been at the Center two years. He and Evangeline still exchanged letters. But now, even if he ever did get out, all of their plans were shattered. When he had been arrested, he had been 38 years old, she 37. They had planned to marry just after the new year in ’53 and start a family while there was still time. Now that chance was all but gone.
It was in the fall of ’55 that Steven Lancaster arrived at the Detention Center, transferred from another center farther west. He was assigned to the bunk below Thomas, which had been empty for several weeks after its occupant was released.
Some of the more recent arrivals to Barrack 7 knew of Steven Lancaster and considered him something of a celebrity. Apparently, he had been a leader in the student protests that immediately preceded the coup. On Steven’s first night in the barrack, a knot of men formed around him. Thomas listened as the men peppered Steven with questions about the protests and the likelihood of a second revolution. Steven answered their questions good-naturedly and displayed an infectious grin.
“So why were you transferred?” Thomas asked.
Steven ran his hands through his wild crop of fair hair. “There were several of us they suspected of plotting an escape. Their solution was to split us up.”
“Were you plotting an escape?”
“The world will never know now, will it?” Steven grinned roguishly.
One evening, a few days after Steven’s arrival, Thomas was lying on his bunk re-reading letters from Evangeline. The one in his hand was from two years before, after he had suggested that she break their engagement while she still had time to have a family with someone else.
Concerning your advice that I “go ahead and marry someone else”: well, I guess that’s considerate of you, Evangeline wrote. But it took me twenty-five years to find you, so I don’t suppose you’re easy to replace. Pull yourself together, love. Life may not be what we hoped, but we’re still in the arms of God.
“Well, Priest?” Steven said from below. He was leaning against the frame of the bunk and staring up at Thomas. “Who is she?”
Thomas looked up from Evangeline’s letter. “What?”
“No one looks at a letter that way if their mother wrote it.”
“My fiancé,” Thomas said.
“Priest!” Steven said and looked around the dormitory. Men were lying down, talking quietly, playing cards. Franklin lay on his first-tier bunk across the aisle reading a brick-laying manual since their crew had been ordered, for no apparent reason, to build a brick wall on the north end of the worksite.
“Thomas Bailey,” Steven said accusingly. “They told me you were a priest.”
“He’s Anglican,” Franklin said without looking up from his book.
Seeing the incomprehension on Steven’s face, Thomas explained. “Anglican priests can marry.”
“Good for you!” Steven said. “Best of both worlds.”
The guards shouted for lights out, and Franklin slammed his book with a heavy sigh. Men scrambled toward their beds, and the room filled with the creaks of the bunks. From the bunk below, Steven said, “Best of both worlds? No pun intended.”
“Leave the priest alone,” Franklin said, sounding tired but amused.
The paint on the ceiling was peeling above Thomas’s head, and he scratched at it absently in the dark, thinking about Evangeline. Sometimes he imagined they were walking together down a red scorching road. Evangeline’s tight curls blew in a hot wind, tiny silver strands in the pale brown of her hair. What were they doing on that road together? He didn’t want her to leave him, but he ought to wish that she would go for her own good.
Through the window, the searchlight stabbed the darkness. It was a light that held them in, caught them each separately in its harsh, white circuit and pinned them down. He used to like using light imagery in his sermons. He remembered the last sermon he had preached in a prison chapel the Sunday before Christmas in ’52. If we heed the light, he had said, we will be kept from sin. Christ is the light of the world, and His light exposes the darkness of our souls and the darkness of the world around us. In His light, we see it all for what it truly is.
“Priest?” Steven’s voice drifted very quietly from below.
Thomas sighed and looked over the edge of his bunk toward the younger man. “What is it?”
“Do Anglican priests hear confession?”
“Yes. Sometimes.”
“Then I want to confess.”
“Are you a Christian?”
“No.”
“Then I think you skipped a step.”
“I know. Will you listen anyway?”
“I will.”
Thomas eased himself off the third-tier bunk and onto the second beside Steven. They sat side by side in the darkness, hunched into the narrow space.
“Here it is,” Steven whispered. “I keep forgetting I’m married.”
“Keep forgetting you’re married?” Thomas echoed. It was too dark to see Steven’s face, but Thomas heard the embarrassment in his voice and prepared to hear a confession of lust.
“Yes. I have a wife—or at least I had a wife—back home in South Carolina. Haven’t seen her in almost two years. Haven’t heard from her either. They don’t let me get mail, you know. Everything from before feels so far away, almost like it wasn’t real. I just think about staying one step ahead of the guards, what I can do to feel alive. So I forget for a while about her.”
“And you think that’s a sin?”
“I don’t know. When I remember, I just feel rattled because maybe I won’t ever make it back anyway, or maybe she’s already dead, and here I would not even know it for years and years.”
“What’s her name?”
“Georgia.”
“Georgia,” Thomas repeated.
“Will you remind me sometimes that she’s out there?”
“I will.”
“Thanks.” They were silent for a moment and then Steven said, “By the way, I know about the Bible verses in your mattress.”
Thomas became very still. “And?” he asked.
“And I don’t understand why you’d take a risk on that. I don’t understand it, but I respect it.”
“I see.”
“And I heard what happened with your bunkmate in Barrack 15.”
“Oh?” Thomas wondered which version Steven had heard.
“Yeah, I heard. He was a scoundrel—your bunkmate, I mean. He should have stood up for you.”
“Well, he was afraid.”
“He was a scoundrel. If someone saved my life, I wouldn’t throw him under the bus. So feel free to attack anyone who tries to murder me in my sleep.”
Thomas grinned. “I’ll bear that in mind.” There was a pause and then he asked, “Is that the end of your confession?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Aren’t you going to say something?” Steven asked. “Like ‘You are forgiven, my son,’ or something?”
“How can I?” Thomas asked. “You don’t even believe in God.”
“Not really. But I kind of wish I did.”
“Well, you could.”
“No, I couldn’t. It doesn’t seem real.”
“Does anything seem real to you?”
“Yes. Everyone in this room seems real.” Steven paused. “Priest, I’m tired. I don’t have anything else to say. Sorry to disappoint you.”
“You haven’t disappointed me,” Thomas said.
“Well, I won’t let you down,” Steven said, “not when it really counts.”
Thomas thought about saying that faith certainly counted, but he decided not to push it any more that night. He wished one of them—just one—would listen when it came to their eternal souls. He swung up onto his own bunk and lay staring at the darkened ceiling. He couldn’t see in that darkness the days that were coming.
Thomas Bailey was a priest, not a prophet.
~ The Storm ~
A bullhorn blared, calling the column of prisoners to a stop. Thomas squinted through the rain. They were still three quarters of a mile from the Center, on the lip of a shallow gully. The road cut down across the gully, an indistinct, barren line amidst tough scrub brush. In the distance, he could see the Center’s lights streaked in rain. He thought he heard a roar far away like waves on a beach. A guard ran up the column and conferred with the one nearby.
“Sorry it’s wet,” Steven said, glancing at Thomas’s pocket where the Gospel of Luke lay hidden.
“I’ll hang it to dry after lights out,” Thomas said.
But first he had to get it through the gate, and now would be a good time to hide it while the guards were busy talking. Thomas took his work gloves from their place tucked into the waist band of his jeans. The book was just small enough to fit into a glove. He was about to slip the book from his pocket when a shout startled him. He pulled his hand from his pocket.
The roar Thomas had heard in the distance grew louder, and one of the guards snatched a bullhorn and shouted, “Back, back!” The patrol truck in front started to reverse, and the column of prisoners scrambled back in the glare of its taillights. Thomas stumbled over someone behind him as the two rows in front of him pressed in. Steven disappeared in the lines for a moment and then popped up beside him again, like a cork bobbing to the surface.
In the glare of flashlights, Thomas saw something moving down the gully, churning, boiling; a pile of water and a tangle of debris thundered across the road in front of them. The guards shouted at one another between thunder claps and shone their lights on the roiling flash flood. Lightning split across the sky directly overhead. Thunder cracked almost simultaneously. The air felt alive.
“We’re going to get fried,” Steven shouted.
The patrol truck began to crawl forward, inching its way into the flood. Guards stood just above the torrent. They shone their flashlights on the water and shouted encouragement to the truck driver. In the center of the flood, the truck’s wheels entirely disappeared, and the wheel wells vanished from sight. The truck gained purchase on the road and climbed slowly out of the gully.
Thomas and Steven exchanged a glance. Even if the truck could make it, that didn’t mean they could. But the guards were waving them on, shouting commands that were lost in the roar of water and thunder. The first two rows of prisoners took a tentative step into the gully.
“Sir!” A shout from farther back in the column.
Thomas looked back and saw Franklin elbowing his way out of formation. He approached a pair of guards near Steven and Thomas. His voice was mostly drowned in the storm, but it looked like he was trying to convince the guards not to send the prisoners across. Maybe he was telling them to wait for help from the Center—as if the Center cared about the prisoners. The guards waved Franklin away, and he rejoined the column beside Thomas and Steven.
“Someone’s going to get killed,” Franklin said as they shuffled forward.
Ahead of them, the first line entered the flood, up to their ankles, their shins, their knees, their thighs, their waists. They swayed like young trees while the second line followed. A man in the first line went under, bobbed up. An uprooted bush rushed down the gully and tangled with a man in the second line. He thrashed in the water until the bush loosened its hold and rushed out of sight. Thomas stepped into the water.
“Link arms,” Franklin shouted. He hooked his elbow around Thomas’s. “So help me, no one in this line is going under.” Franklin’s face was shining with water, and he wore the expression of a general commanding a last stand. Thomas linked his arm with Steven’s and Steven with the next man’s, and so on down the line as they waded into the flood. The water surged around Thomas’s ankles, threatening to steal the ground from under his feet. Soon, they were up to their waists in a swirling current riddled with debris: bits of wood, plastic bottles, small uprooted plants.
“This is insanity!” Steven shouted, jolting Thomas’s arm as the torrent smashed into them.
Thomas tightened his grip.
Farther down the line, someone slipped. Thomas felt dead weight tug from the end of their human chain. Two more went down, and the man beside Steven was wrenched away in the current. Steven was thrown off balance by the sudden release. For a moment, Thomas thought he could hold Steven up, but his own footing gave way suddenly beneath him, and he plunged under the water. Their human chain dissolved. Thomas lost his hold first on Steven, then on Franklin. He scrambled for footing and managed to surface for a moment. He had a brief glimpse of Franklin struggling to relink the chain, and he caught sight of Steven’s face bobbing above the surface of the water. A sudden eddy sucked Thomas under, and he saw nothing but a swirling mass of brown water.
He felt himself spinning in the torrent. He held his breath and tried to find his way to the surface or to the bottom, either one, but the water seemed to rush from all sides and pin him there in the middle of the flood.
All he could think was, If I die now, what a waste it’s all been: the priest limping into heaven with empty hands.
Lord, remember me.
~ Evangeline ~
Thomas’s fingers had trembled as he held the engagement ring up to the sunlight and asked her to marry him. It was odd: he could walk into a prison full of convicted felons without a tremor, but when he took this woman’s hand and prepared to circle her finger with gold, he shook, from his lips to his toes. He looked up at her, and she was grinning. She did not cover her face or cry like some girls might have. She said, “Of course” and laughed a clear laugh like wind in the trees. “It’s only taken you 25 years.” Her hair was a wild halo of brown and silver in the afternoon sunlight of October.
He slipped the engagement ring onto her finger.
They walked down to the river hand in hand and watched a container ship lumber down the Savannah River toward the ocean. They sat at a sidewalk table outside a coffee shop.
He said, “Now that we’re engaged, I’ll stop…you know…if you want.” She knew about the information he was leaking to the press.
“No,” she said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“So? It’s the right thing to do.”
They sat quietly, and he put his hand on top of hers on the table. She looked over at him with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you, Thomas. This is the coffee shop where I got the note about your Bible study.”
Thomas twisted around to look at the shop behind them as if that would give him clearer insight into the genesis of their relationship.
“I still don’t get it,” he said. “Who handed you that note?”
“The ghost of Hamlet’s father.”
“No, seriously.”
“Don’t know, darling-dearest. I’ve told you that at least twice a week for the last eight months. I didn’t know him, and I don’t really remember what he looked like. It was an older man, I think.”
“All right, then. The ghost of Hamlet’s father.”
They looked out at the street and enjoyed the strange mystery of it, how they could be brought together without knowing how. Later, when he was in the Detention Center, he wondered what the point of it all had been. Why had they found each other in such an unlikely way, only to be separated before they could even marry?
In her letters to Thomas at the Center, Evangeline was rarely sentimental. In return, he tried not to let her see what a failure he felt himself to be, or how the anger and outrage were so often pressing at the edge of his mind, stamped down by self-control. He told her he was well. He told her that he liked the men in Barrack 7. Sometimes, he told her a little about the work he did. But there never was much he could say about anything.
Maybe she read between the lines and saw some of what he did not say.
Thomas, I love you, she wrote once during the winter of ’56 when the cold rushed down from the mountains. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. Neither could the winter freeze it.
~ The Storm ~
Thomas’s lungs were starting to burn. He tried to swim toward the surface, but the current spun him like a piece of driftwood. He knew the flood was not so deep—his toes even scraped the bottom twice—but he couldn’t push back against the water long enough to gain his footing.
Something sharp—a piece of wood?—scraped his arm, and Thomas made a grab for the object. His fingers closed around the rough surface of a branch. He held on, and the branch stayed in place, attached to something solid. The water rushed by. Thomas scrambled with his feet and found the shifting bottom. His head broke the surface.
He sucked in air. He couldn’t see at first for the dirty water dripping into his eyes and the rain pounding down, but when his vision cleared, he saw that he was much farther down the gully than he had expected. He could see the distant hazy lights of the column, but he was too far away to distinguish any more. The branch he clung to seemed to be part of a scrubby bush that gripped the rocky edge of the gully.
Thomas caught his breath and was preparing to haul himself out of the flood when something rammed into him with the force of the water behind it. He reached out with one hand to fend it off, and his fingers brushed something that felt like a shirt. He grabbed a fistful of the material and peered into the darkness of rain and swirling water. It bumped against him—the smooth, fleshy solidness of skin, and he knew—it was a body.
The water caught up the body and started to pull it back into the current. He held on to a handful of the shirt and felt himself stretched in both arms, pulled one way by the weight of the body and the other by his own hold on the branch. He considered letting go of the body, but he didn’t know whether this body was living or dead. He tightened his grip on the branch and tried to drag the body back toward him.
The branch snapped. Thomas stumbled and lost his footing, dragged back into the current and holding onto the body. His head was still above water, and he grappled for a better hold on the body: an arm, a torso. He felt its head slump against his shoulder. He scrambled for footing as the torrent pushed him farther from the bank.
The ground fell away entirely. He was pushed under water by the weight of the body. He felt its head pressing down on his chest like a stone. He kicked, and its legs tangled with his legs. Then he was rammed head foremost into something hard. It felt metallic and unyielding, and the water pressed him against it. His feet touched the bottom and he heaved himself up, shoulders braced against the metal object behind him.
He broke the surface just as a flash of lightning lit up the gully. In its brief light, he could see that he was in the center of the flood pushed against what appeared to be a truck door that had wedged itself into the mud. The body slumped limply against him.
Then everything was dark again, the flood roaring in his ears. He felt for a pulse in the body’s neck; it was there, very faint. He would have to get out of the gully somehow with the body in tow. If he could just keep from being swept off his feet, maybe he could make it to the bank.
He pulled himself free of the door, and braced himself for the onslaught of the flood. Slowly, inch by inch, feeling the shifting bottom with his toes, he staggered through the flood, struggling to keep the body from being pulled from his arms and washed down the gully.
The water grew shallower. It was up to his thighs, then his knees, his ankles. He was past the danger of the current. With a grunt, he heaved the body out of the shallow water and dragged it up the incline of the gully to level ground.
The rain had slowed to a faint drizzle. Lightning strobed across the sky a few miles away. Its blue-white light flickered on the face of the body stretched out on the ground, and Thomas’s stomach jolted. It was Steven, his face colorless and his bush of hair tangled above his eyes.
Thomas felt for a pulse again, but this time he failed to find it. He couldn’t say whether it was gone or whether his fingers were trembling too much to feel it. He steeled himself and summoned the training he had received years ago as a chaplain. He locked his hands into position for CPR, and started chest compressions, trying desperately to force himself into a rhythm.
Suddenly, he thought he heard his name called somewhere in the darkness, almost buried beneath the roar of the flood. He paused the compressions long enough to shout “Here!” and then continued on, forming a rhythm from the words: Don’t. You. Die. The words reformulated into a prayer: God. Don’t. Let. Him. Die.
“Thomas! Steven!” the voice was much closer now, and Thomas recognized it as Franklin’s.
“Franklin!” he shouted, hoping he would be heard above the sound of water.
A sudden choking sound came from Steven’s throat. Thomas quickly turned Steven onto his side as a rush of water and vomit flowed from his mouth. Thomas pounded his friend’s back, and Steven gagged, coughing up a second torrent, followed by a gasping breath.
“You’re all right,” Thomas said, gripping Steven’s shoulder. “You’ll be all right.”
“Thomas?” Franklin’s voice said out of the darkness. Against the charcoal sky and distant lightning, he was a dim but solid shape.
“Steven’s hurt,” Thomas said.
Franklin knelt, running his hands along Steven’s scalp under his mop of wet curls. He pulled his hand away.
“Blood,” Franklin said. “Must have hit his head on something in the water.”
“I’m—I’m,” Steven said. His voice was raspy.
“You’ll be all right,” Thomas said.
There was a shout nearby, and a light bobbed toward them with two guards behind it. One of them was shouting Franklin’s prison number, but he ignored them and pulled off his soaked shirt and tied it awkwardly around Steven’s head.
The light shone on them, and the guards looked down at Franklin.
“Making a run for it?” one of them asked.
“What does it look like?” Franklin said wearily.
“You left the column without permission.”
“What next? Are you going to yell at the men who were washed away?”
“Stand up,” the guard said. “All of you.”
Thomas looked up, anger simmering in his stomach, anger such as he had not felt since his three months in solitary.
“I doubt he can,” Thomas said through clenched teeth. “He has a head injury, and he almost drowned.”
“Then help him up.”
There was a tense silence while Thomas glared at the impassive guards.
“We’ll make it, Thomas,” Franklin said quietly. “All three of us.”
Thomas turned back to Steven, who was struggling to push himself up on his elbows. No way he could stand.
“Steven,” Thomas said. “If we can get you onto my back, do you think you can hold on?”
“Maybe. Yes.”
The guards watched unmoving as Franklin helped to awkwardly hoist Steven onto Thomas’s back. Steven wrapped his arms loosely around Thomas, and Thomas stood, hands under Steven’s knees and bracing himself under the weight. Franklin hovered behind, trying to keep Steven from slipping off his back.
One guard led the way while the other brought up the rear, as if they feared some sudden escape attempt.
Steven’s chin dug into Thomas’s shoulder. “Priest,” Steven gasped. “I didn’t mean—to let go of you. Back in the water.”
“You didn’t let go,” Thomas said. “The water was too strong.”
“I said I wouldn’t—” Steven said. “—wouldn’t let you down.”
“You haven’t.”
Thomas fixed his eyes on guard ahead of them, who led them on into the night.
~ Evangeline ~
It was on Christmas morning that they came and arrested Thomas. Evangeline had come to his apartment that morning, cheeks bright with the cool air. They had exchanged gifts and were sitting on the couch drinking hot apple cider and reading a Christmas devotional.
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness,” Evangeline read. “‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
“Hang on,” Thomas whispered. A sudden noise of feet pattering on the metal stairs outside had caught his attention. He could not say how he knew it was trouble, but he did know. He hurried to the door, looked out the peep hole, and caught a glimpse of men in uniform. He grabbed Evangeline’s hand and pulled her off the couch.
“It’s the police,” he said, and before she could answer, he flung open the coat closet and started to push her inside.
“Stop it,” she hissed and pushed back against him in the closet doorway. “Stop it. I’m not a coward.”
A loud thud sounded on the front door.
“Please,” he said, “Evangeline. Please.”
She said nothing, but the look of fierce defiance melted from her face. He had never seen her so sad, her forehead creased into fine lines, her eyes dry and full of some immeasurable distance. She let him push her into the closet and close the door.
He stepped into the middle of the living room and held up his hands as the door swung in and the men swarmed like ants into the apartment. What did they gain from this show of force, the strength of a lion deployed against a mouse?
“I would have opened the door,” he murmured into the carpet as they shoved him onto the floor. “I would have opened the door.”
~ The Blood ~
It was two days before Thomas was allowed in to see Steven in the infirmary. By that time, it had been determined that two men had drowned in the flood and several others were injured, though none as badly as Steven.
It was the first time Thomas had been in the infirmary, a long narrow room behind the Discipline Office. Fluorescent bulbs reflected dimly on scuffed linoleum, and the room smelled of alcohol, though nothing looked particularly clean. Two men were lying on the far side of the room, apparently asleep. Steven lay on a cot near the door, head wrapped in gauze, face pale.
“Well, Priest,” Steven said. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not dead.”
“Keep it that way,” Thomas said.
“I’ll try. I’ve been thinking about Georgia.”
“Does she seem real?”
Steven frowned. “I don’t know. I thought I heard her voice when I was in the water.”
“While you were unconscious?”
“I guess. It didn’t feel like I was unconscious.” They were quiet for a moment, and then Steven said, “I’ll be discharged from the infirmary tomorrow.”
“Will they make you go back to work right away?”
Steven grimaced. “Probably. Could be interesting. I’ve got three cracked ribs and some beautiful bruises thanks to your CPR.”
“Hey, this is the thanks I get for saving your life?”
“Don’t rub it in,” Steven said, smiling ruefully. “Oh, I have something for you, Priest.” He rolled slowly onto his side with a grimace and reached under the cot. He rolled back over holding a small book, which he handed to Thomas. The book was stiff and wrinkled from water damage. He opened it and saw that some of the words were smudged, but most were still legible.
“The Gospel of Luke?” Thomas murmured incredulously. He had assumed the book had washed away in the flood. He glanced across the room at the other two sick men, but neither had stirred.
Steven grinned. “It was still in your pocket when you carried me back to the Center. I figured they wouldn’t bother searching me since I was half dead, so I nabbed it.”
“For someone half dead, you were pretty active.”
“I try not to let death get to me.”
Thomas flipped quietly through the book. He hadn’t seen these words in front of him for more than three years. He drank them in quick mouthfuls. Prepare the way of the Lord…blessed are you who weep now…whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
“Priest?”
Thomas looked up. Steven’s face had grown serious.
“I read it,” Steven said, “the whole thing. I’d never read it all before.”
Thomas balanced himself on the edge of the cot and lowered the book to his lap. “And what did you think?”
“It wasn’t exactly what I expected. And when I got to the crucifixion part…I don’t know why, but I couldn’t stop picturing what it must have been like. All that blood.”
Thomas looked at his friend. He supposed they both knew more about life and death than they wanted to know. He turned to chapter 23 and started reading in a whisper that he hoped would not reach the men across the room. “‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’”
There it was in the deep water of Thomas’s memory, those words read in the comfort of a living room four years ago, though it seemed like decades. There was Evangeline interjecting her Hamlet analogy, and there was Thomas with the original Greek.
Thomas glanced at Steven, whose eyes looked far away. Was Steven, in his own mind, back home with his wife in some unattainable past? Was he reliving his own moment of sacrifice, dragged away from a student protest into a waiting police car? Was he standing on a hill outside Jerusalem hearing a man gasp out, Remember me?
Brianne Holmes lives in Upstate South Carolina where she works in marketing and communications. In 2016, she earned a Master of Arts in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from East Carolina University.
