The Brothers K (88 page)

“In God’s House!” growled old Sister Harg.

At last, he managed to smile. “Thank you, Sister.”

She gave him a grim nod.

“My problem,” he began, “when I attended God’s House here, was
that I never really believed the Owner was at home. I guess it’s no big secret that Peter, Kade and Freddy never felt it either, though they all loved, and still love, God. But I drove a long way last night and today just to remind you that one of my brothers, no matter what I tried to tell him, never in his life doubted that God could be found in this very place. I’m talking about Irwin. Who most of you know. And if you really know him, I’ll bet you miss him too.”

He glanced at the congregation, hoping to see a nod or two. But apart from the fact that Bet remained standing, there was not a sign among the three or four hundred faces present that Irwin was remembered at all. It rattled him. It stripped him of his momentum. Desperate for corroboration, he turned to Beal. “Who has the consecutive Memory Verse record here these days, Brother?”

Beal was not pleased to play Ed McMahon to this maniac’s Johnny Carson, but he was too decent a man to lie. “Your brother,” he mumbled.

“How ’bout the consecutive attendance record?”

“Irwin’s still got that one too.”

Given his own beliefs, it seemed more than a little inconsistent that Everett would beam with big-brotherly pride. But that’s what he did. “That’s our Winnie,” he said. “Not being the pious type myself, I admit it drove me nuts growing up with the guy. Watching him miss, by choice, every single ballgame my father ever pitched on Sabbath. Watching him give his hard-earned berry-picking money to the polio and Jerry Lewis jars at the grocery store. Watching him refuse to play varsity football due to the Friday-night games—and he was the star of his team—till Elder Kent there, who loves football, convinced him that Jesus would allow an athlete’s Sabbath to begin at midnight Friday if that athlete read his Bible till midnight the following day. Think about that. All through high school, with half the girls in his class dying to date him, Irwin spent his Saturday nights with Amos, Nehemiah and Job instead! You’ve
got
to remember a guy like that!”

For the second time he scanned the audience. For the second time, it was a mistake. Except for Elder Kent (who looked embarrassed and angry) and old Sister Harg (who looked unusually grim) he saw no signs of stirred memories, no warmth, nothing but incomprehension, offended piety, growing impatience, even hate. He’d expected a tough audience, he’d expected some antipathy. But his complete failure to touch anyone derailed him. He looked at the silly gold-glassed windows in the back of the balcony. He looked at the silly gold-carpeted floor.
God’s House. What the hell was I thinking?
“I drove here,” he said, drifting now, “because
I thought I could—I thought you should know, mostly, how Irwin hasn’t changed. But he’s in a … we’ve got troubles, Irwin does. And I, uh. We …”

He lost his thought completely.

But back in her pew, Mama saw him lose it. Having just collided with the same invisible wall, she’d even expected it. And knowing what his effort was going to cost him, knowing he’d chosen prison whether he managed to help Irwin or not, she was amazed and moved by his courage, amazed that he’d come even this close to punching a hole in the immaculate wall. So. Though she heard no voice, saw no light, felt none of the things that a life of biblical fantasies had led her to hope she might feel, Mama suddenly knew in her bones what the situation demanded. Grabbing her purse (she didn’t intend this detail, just added it without thinking), she stood up next to Bet. But then she turned her back to the pulpit, lifted her skirt a little, and stepped clear up onto the bench of her pew. As she turned round to face the pulpit, the wave of terror swashed through her and she began to sway. But Bet grabbed her knees, steadied her, held on with both hands. Then Mama looked—eye to eye across the top of the congregation—at Everett. And in a voice that quavered with conviction as well as fear, she said, “That’s my oldest. That’s Everett. And he’s not an Adventist anymore, or even a Christian maybe. But he came here to tell you something I tried to tell but couldn’t. So he’s brave, I know that much. And he loves his brother. I know that now too. My family is a good family. We’re not a bunch of crazies. But Irwin, what’s happening to Irwin, it’s making us all—Well,
look
at us …”

The congregation looked. They saw one of the most steadfast, innocuous members of their church wobbling, white-faced, on a pew; saw her rubber-booted, clown-suited son standing at Babcock’s pulpit with a smile on his face and grateful tears running down his cheeks; saw her beautiful teenaged daughter, also in tears, holding her mother in place on a pew by gripping her stockinged knees. It grew apparent, even from the far side of the immaculate wall, that for the Chance family this was not your run-of-the-mill Sabbath. “All I ask,” Mama said, “is for you to listen. And, Everett. Just do your best. Speak your heart. And know that I’m very, very happy that you’re here.”

Bet took Mama’s hand then, helped her down off the pew, and the two of them stood there, arms linked, waiting. “I’m happy too!” Everett croaked. “But ’scuse me.” He wiped his wet face on Papa’s good suit sleeve, taking out a few more Japanese flags. Then he straightened up, cleared his throat, and started over:

“The reason my heart, all our hearts, are hurtin’ so bad,” he began, “is that the numbskulled heart of our family, the one who always managed to love
all
of us, no matter what we thought or said or believed, is in terrible trouble. And the reason I came here, to Irwin’s God’s House, is that his trouble started here. I’m not trying to place blame by saying that. This whole situation is a compliment to the staying power of what gets taught here, really. Irwin, after he left here, kept on keeping your faith right up till the day he was unfairly drafted. And every letter we got from him, even from ’Nam, was a Christian letter—the letter of a man who couldn’t begin to reconcile
Thou shalt not kill
or
Love thy neighbor
with the duties of a soldier. He’s still yours, Winnie is. That’s the crux of all I’m saying. He still loves this place, still believes every blame thing he ever learned here, and still tells me I’m nuts when I try to tamper with those beliefs.”

“Amen!” said an old voice—not Sister Harg’s this time. And there was a little quiet laughter.

“I deserve that,” Everett admitted. “And Irwin deserves a better person than me to tell you what’s happened to him. But Mama and Bet aren’t standing over there for nothing. So trust
them
, not me, when I say that it’s the faith you all cherish that has trapped Irwin in his trouble. It’s complicated, his situation, but the gist of it is this: When an Army captain in ’Nam ordered a young Vietnamese boy shot, Irwin attacked him, the officer, afterward. It’s a messy story. I won’t hide that. For instance, the boy may have, probably did, kill a GI with a booby trap. But he was also, clearly, just a boy. And his death caused a transformation in Irwin, or a reversion, really: U.S. soldier to Christian soldier. Irwin chose his captain for an enemy target. He chose a tube of toothpaste as his only weapon. And I guess his mission was successful enough to do some damage to his captain’s teeth. In return Irwin received two concussions and a skull fracture from a rifle butt. Which seems like punishment enough, to me. But when he kept singing and praying in the brig afterward, the Army decided they wanted more than punishment. They wanted him silenced. They felt his faith,
your
faith, was recriminatory. Which of course it is.
Do good to those who hate you
. So they decided to erase it.”

Everett paused to collect his thoughts, but he was no longer troubled by the blank stares of the congregation. Mama and Bet were all the audience he needed. He said, “When you hold all the cards, erasing faith is easier than you might think. All you have to do is erase the mind it inhabits. It was child’s play for the Army to line up a few of their own psychiatric experts and have Irwin declared insane. Which brings us to
the part that’s making my family frantic. Irwin was sent, more than two weeks ago, to a military asylum in Southern California, where, as I speak, he is being erased. The Army calls the massive doses of sedatives and repeated electroshock treatments ‘therapy.’ But it is the songs you sing here, the scriptures you read here, it’s his belief in
this
House and its God that they are out to destroy.”

Feeling his voice rising and his tongue loosening, Everett stopped, drew a breath, and reminded himself:
no profanity
. “It may be hard for you to believe,” he said, “that red-blooded U.S. Army doctors consider your faith a form of madness. But I tell you, Winnie—he’s trying to hold himself together by singing little Sabbath School ditties down there, and saying Memory Verses and prayers, right through these terrible sedatives. And they answer those songs and verses by drugging him senseless if he’s lucky. Or if he’s not, by strapping him down, taping electrodes to his temples, and knocking the living—Well … electroshock, what it does to a mind that doesn’t need it, would not make for good church talk. But Mama’s son. Bet’s brother. They’re blasting him to pieces down there.”

There were some stirrings in the pews now, there was a little emotion brewing. “What the Army wants is simple,” Everett said, and his voice had a touch of the old street-corner soap-box power now. “All Irwin has to do to be considered ‘cured’ is agree that to practice, in the Army or in an asylum, what Seventh Day Adventists preach, is mental illness. But those of you who know Irwin know he’ll
never
do this. The therapy is not going to stop until your consecutive Memory Verse and attendance champ can’t even remember Christ’s name. That’s why I’m standing here. That’s why Mama and Bet are standing there. That’s why we’re beside ourselves. And we’re not just asking for your kind thoughts and prayers today either. Some of you are probably doing what you can in that way already. But I’m here to tell you that Irwin needs God’s
answer
, that he is
dying
down there, that if he’s ever going to make it back to those two ladies, or to his wife, or his little baby, he needs the help of his people now.”

Everett saw the faces stiffen, saw that by making a demand he was losing them. It panicked and angered him. He tried to ram his notion through. “You know, you folks have your
own
doctors and shrinks. There’s a med school in Loma Linda, very close to where Irwin’s staying. And if some of you contacted those people by phone, or better, drove down and did it in person, I’ll bet you could arrange for a
Christian
examination, by doctors who could see Irwin’s faith for what it is. Doctors who could see about having him trans—”

He stopped himself abruptly, not because of the congregation’s continued stiffness, but because something inside him suddenly demanded a complete change of course. “No,” he murmured. “No, I’m sorry. I have no right to give orders, or to ask you to give up your time. I have no right to ask anyone but me to sacrifice anything. And this time tomorrow I’ll be in jail. So I can’t even sacrifice me. You’ve been kind to bear with me. I’m truly grateful. And I have just one brief thing to add. Then I’ll be gone.”

He drew a breath. “Unlike Irwin, or Bet, or Mama, I don’t even believe in God. It’s a little odd, for that reason, that I’d have strong feelings about His House. But I do. I feel—because I love Irwin very much—that it’s crucial for me to at least try to address the One whose House Irwin believes this to be. Since I don’t believe in Him, I’m not sure my words qualify as prayer. But I feel I must say directly to You—Irwin’s dear God—that if somebody in this House doesn’t hear our family’s cry, if somebody isn’t moved, not by me, but by You, to sacrifice some time and thought and energy for Irwin’s sake, then his mind, his love for You, his belief in this House, are going to be destroyed. It’s that simple, I think. Which puts the ball in Your court. Not a hopeful place to leave it, to my mind. But it’s right where Irwin would want it. And for the first time in my life, I hope it’s Irwin, not me, who’s right about this place.”

With an inaudible thank-you, and a nod to Bet and Mama, Everett walked out the same way he’d come in. The ushers didn’t move. No one tried to stop him.

But in the silence after he’d left, Mama spoke up a second time. Emotion made her voice and face unrecognizable—she couldn’t help that. But she met any eye that dared look at hers as she said, “I don’t understand every crazy idea that passes through my kids’ heads. And that boy, Everett, has got crazier ideas than all the rest put together. But he—” Her voice broke, and she gasped for breath. “I’m telling you. Every word!” She was trembling so hard now that Bet took hold of her arm. “Every word he—I never heard a truer sermon in my
life
. God help Irwin! And God help us, this church, figure out the way to help. But I’ve got—I’m going now. Because my other boy. My crazy. To thank him, before he’s gone.”

With that, Mama and Bet stepped arm in arm into the aisle, and marched straight out the back of the church. And as they moved past the pews the most evident emotion their passage inspired was relief. Thank God
that’s
over, most of the faces plainly said, and the temporarily displaced piety and propriety rushed in behind them in a viscous tide. But
before the congregation was quite submerged in that tide, Sister Harg, way up in the front pew, suddenly let loose with a great rumbling nineteenth-century
“Amen!”
And when no one moved, no one spoke, no one responded to it, she pulled herself up on her walker, turned round to the congregation, and defiantly growled
“Amen!”
again.

Mama and Bet were long gone now. It was time to get back to the program. But then Elder Kim Joon—the program itself—nodded thoughtfully in his big borrowed chair, and repeated the same word: “Amen.”

Then Nancy Beal said it, with real gusto. And then the Brother, ol’ Randy, sort of squeaked it. And after that a bunch of kids—mostly just teenagers whose hormones had been spiked by the unexpected show—but a few adults too, chimed in. It wasn’t what you’d call a mass revival. It was a pretty anemic little outburst, to tell the truth. But a grain of mustard seed is an anemic-looking little specimen too.