Trial by Fire (19 page)

N
o one expected to see Ray drive up that afternoon and go into his office without saying a word to anyone. They hadn't expected him back for at least another week.

Nick stood at the edge of the truck bay, looking out at the trailer parked between the fire department and police station, and wondered if he should go talk to Ray. Dan came up behind him and set his hand on Nick's shoulder. “He needs to talk, man.”

Nick nodded. “I'm not sure he needs to talk to me. I never can think what to say when I'm around him. It's like all my experience goes out the window, all the Scripture, all the wisdom God's ever given me, and I just stand there, speechless and angry that Ben is dead.”

“Man, I do even worse than that,” Dan said. “You're his preacher, his chaplain, and his friend.”

“I'm also the one who found Ben's body.”

“He knows you tried to save him.”

Nick nodded, hoping that was true. He slid his hands into his pockets and walked slowly across the freshly cut lawn to the door of Ray's office. He knocked, but there was no answer, so Nick turned the knob and pushed the door open.

Ray sat in the dark at his desk. “I didn't say come in.”

Nick came in anyway. “I just wanted to tell you it's good to see you back.”

Ray rubbed his face and nodded wearily. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I ain't seen a medical release.”

“Well, I'm not officially back,” Nick said. “Just office duty. I figured with you out, I could take up some of the slack. I didn't have anything to do what with the church gone and all. Plus, I figured with the two murders, somebody in protective services might be needing a chaplain.”

“Well, I better not catch you fightin' a fire. With those injuries you're liable to get in somebody's way and cost 'em their life. We've had enough death.” He dropped his hands to the desk. “How are you feelin', anyway?”

“I'm okay. Getting better all the time.”

“I've had burns like that before, Nick. You ain't kiddin' nobody. They don't heal up in four days.”

“Well, I appreciate your concern.” He looked down at his feet and sought to change the subject. “Have you heard about the church service we're having Sunday out on Aunt Aggie's lawn?”

Ray nodded. “Heard somethin' about it. I don't know if we'll be there.”

Nick felt that personal stab of failure again. “Ray, don't turn your back on God. You need him now. Susan and Vanessa need him. Come back and let us help you heal.”

“I don't
want
to heal.” His voice broke, and he covered his face.

Nick didn't know whether to get up and go to him, or let him suffer alone. He cleared his throat. “I know,” Nick told him. “That's a common feeling. You just want to grieve, you want to feel the pain, you want to hang on to it because it's kind of like hanging on to the person.”

“Don't tell me what I feel,” Ray said. “You don't know what I feel. I don't know
anybody
who knows how I feel.”

Nick's mouth trembled as he tried to say the right thing. “You're right. I don't. There's no way I could.”

“He had his whole life ahead of him, Nick!” Ray bellowed. “His whole life. He was gon'
be
somebody.”

“Ray, he
is
somebody. In case there's ever been a moment's doubt in your mind about Ben's salvation, I mean…I want you to know that I've prayed with him, talked with him myself. He cared about the Lord. I know he's in heaven.”

Ray broke down again, and finally Nick got up and came around his desk. He leaned over his friend and put his arms around him. Ray fell into him and cried the tears of a broken man. “You can do this, Ray,” Nick said. “We don't grieve as those who have no hope. This is not the end for you and Ben.”

“Feels like the end,” Ray said.

Nick just held his friend and let him grieve as he hadn't been able to do before.

N
ick was emotionally spent by the time he left Ray's office just after three, so he decided to go home. He got out of his car and looked across the street to the church that had been such a fixture in his life for so long now. It was odd to see the rubble piled on the property that had once been donated by someone who loved the Lord. He couldn't believe it was all wasted now.

He crossed the street and went to stand in the center of his scorched foundation, around the place where he estimated the pulpit had been. Had he taken his pulpit for granted? he wondered. He'd always thought it would be there, as if it had some hedge of protection around it and the Lord would never let harm come to it. He supposed it took losing it to realize how significant it was.

He sifted through the rubble and came to a pew that was still intact, though it was black from the fire. He sat down on it, testing it with his weight. It held him up, so he relaxed and looked around at the things that were scarred and soiled from the fire.

Some of the elders had met with the insurance agent, and he'd already been out to look at the damage. He hoped the church would get enough to rebuild. He hoped they had the energy to start again.

He covered his face with his hands as the despair of the last few days rose up inside him, and as he began to weep, he began to pray, asking God to show him what his purpose was in this, what it could possibly mean, and what he was to do with it.

A rattling, rusty old pickup truck pulled up to the curb, and he wiped his face quickly. It wasn't until the truck door closed that he saw that it was Issie.

She stood there in uniform, just off work, but she looked weak, pale, still ailing from the night before. He couldn't believe she had come here instead of going back to Aunt Aggie's to rest after a hard day on the job. She came to the scorched pew and sat down next to him. “Hey,” she said softly.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

She sighed. “I don't know. I saw you coming out of Ray's office awhile ago, and you looked kind of upset. I thought I'd come by and just see if you were okay.”

He couldn't think of a response to that so he just sat there.

“What are
you
doing here?” she asked.

“I don't know,” he said. “I thought I'd come over and just look at the place. Every time I look this direction I'm shocked. I can't believe the building's not still here, that my pulpit's not standing, that there aren't pews everywhere, that people can't come and go.”

“But you know insurance will take care of it and you can rebuild.”

“We can't rebuild Ben,” he said. “We can't rebuild the sense of security and peace that we had in this building.”

“You sure don't put much confidence in your congregation,” she said. “I mean, it seems to me if this was such a great church, that a few problems like this wouldn't ruin everything.”

She was right. He didn't have much confidence in the church. Most of the time he felt he was pushing an eighteen-wheeler uphill, heavy with the cargo they needed to bear fruit in God's kingdom, but they just never felt like turning the ignition on. Now he feared what energy they did have would die out completely, and he didn't know if he had the strength to keep pushing.

He didn't want to talk about it anymore, so he looked at her, assessed her face and her eyes. “How's the hangover?”

“Better,” she said. “Thankfully, we didn't have any major trauma today.”

“So have you had your fill of Joe's Place yet?”

She looked across the street at the trailer Nick lived in. “It's not Joe's fault. It's mine. Next time I won't drink so much.”

He shook his head. “Issie, what's it going to take?”

“For what?” she asked.

“For you to wake up and realize that that's no kind of life.”

“Hey, good people get hurt and killed too. Ben was at your church every time the doors opened and he's dead now. So living a high-and-mighty life doesn't guarantee safety.”

“No, but the risk is higher when you pass out in bars and thumb your nose at the people trying to kill you.”

“I didn't thumb my nose,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“You shouldn't have gone anywhere alone last night,” he said. “You should have kept as low a profile as possible. Why would you go about your normal routine when Cruz is looking for you?”

“I don't know. I was depressed. My brother had all but thrown me out of his house because I turned Jake and his friends in. I guess I wasn't thinking clearly. I was upset and worried, and I needed a drink.”

“You never
need
a drink.”

“I
needed
to relax, get my mind off things.” She looked frustrated as she groped for words. “You could never understand. You live some kind of unreal life, and I don't know how you do it, but I'm not like you. You've probably never had a vice in your life.”

“Hey, I had plenty of vices before I became a Christian,” he said. “I gave in plenty. I know what I'm missing, Issie. I'm missing a lot of heartache, a lot of turmoil, a lot of anxiety, a lot of remorse, a lot of self-indictment, a lot of guilt. I'm missing those feelings of waking up in the morning and running the night back through my mind, trying to figure out if I did or said anything that I was going to regret today.”

“You?”

“Oh, yeah, me. The miracle is that God could take somebody like me and use me. I mean, he didn't just transform me into a new creature. He literally made me into something he could use.”

“Well, that's you, Nick. You're a useful kind of person. He could never use me.”

“Of course he could.”

“Not with my past,” she said. “You don't know all the stuff I've done.”

She looked sadly off in the distance, and he reached for her chin and turned her face back to his. “Issie, look at me.”

Those dark eyes came up to meet his.

“You have no idea how useful you could be. God has a plan for you. He's had a plan for you all along. You just wouldn't follow it. But if you started following it, you could do amazing things.”

Her expression seemed soft, vulnerable, and for a moment he thought he might be getting through. Her eyes were stricken as they locked into his, and he thought he saw a fine mist painting the inside edge of her lids, but then that hard look came back and she was skeptical again.

“When I think of God's plan for my life, I picture me in a black church suit with ugly pumps and my hair pulled back in a bun. I picture me going around with a fifty-pound Bible, waving it in people's faces and quoting Scripture every time I open my mouth. It doesn't sound like much fun to me.”

“Issie, you know a lot of Christians. Do they act like that? Do they look like shells that are going around repeating robotic phrases?”

“No,” she said, “some of them don't. But some do. They talk about Christ and righteousness, and in the next breath they're declaring themselves superior to Jews and blacks and gays…and anybody who's not like them. Even Cruz and his group are Christians. They don't drink or smoke or do dope, but they kill people. And they think it's okay because they figure if they hate somebody, then God must hate them too.”

“Issie, they're not us.”

“They say they are.”

“They're liars. They're using the banner of Christianity to camouflage their hate. They're defining who we are, Issie, but they're defining us wrong. Don't buy into their lies. Go to the Bible and see what God says. And look at the ones who follow that Bible, the ones who love and pray and cope and help people in need. The ones who think not only of themselves, but of others, no matter how different they are. The ones who hate sin but love sinners enough to rescue them, just as surely as you rescue people every day.”

She looked down at her hands, turning his words over in her mind.

“Issie, Christians are not a bunch of clones without personalities. God doesn't want that. He needs all kinds.”

She swallowed. “Well, I could be wrong. I have been before.”

“Well, if you're wrong about this,” Nick said, “then your eternity will be affected by it. I don't want that for you, Issie. I don't want you to miss this.”

She breathed a laugh. “I don't particularly want that, either.”

“Then come out of the cell.”

Her smile faded. “What cell?”

“The one on death row. There's someone waiting to take your place. Your pardon is waiting. Until you take it, you're in bondage, Issie. You're trapped. You think you're free but you're not. You've just constructed your own prison.”

“Oh, yeah?” She was starting to get angry. “And what exactly am I trapped by?”

“Sin,” he said. “You hate it and you don't want it, but then every night you go back to Joe's Place and you drink and you pick up a man.”

“Okay.” She got up from the scorched pew and held up her hands to halt his direction. “I do
not
pick up men,” she said. “But even if I did, it is not a sin to attract a man.”

“No, but it's a sin to lust after them, make them lust after you, and take them home with you.” He hated saying it. He didn't want her to turn on him, but if he let it end like this, he might never have another chance to be this honest with her.

“How dare you?” she asked. “Just because things aren't going great for me does not mean that I'm some kind of hell-bound sinner.”

“You said there were things in your life that God wouldn't be able to accept,” he said. “What do you call those?”

“Well, so what? Maybe they are sins. But you don't have to paint me to be some kind of harlot who prowls into the bar every night looking for her latest victim. I'm not like that. I go there to unwind, to talk to my friends.”

“Oh, I know you're not like that,” he said. “You're not a hunter. I think you're the hunted.”

Her mouth fell open. “And who is hunting me?”

“Lots of people,” he said. “They're all looking for a pretty girl with a big heart who just wants to be loved.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head and looked into the wind. It whipped her hair around her face, and she shoved it behind her ear. “I know what I'm doing, Nick. I'm in perfect control. I'm the driver in my life.”

“You're contradicting yourself all over the place, Issie.”

Again she shook her head with disbelief. “Okay, so I am, but you're confusing me.”

“I'm confusing you because you're not making any sense.”

“So the only sense to be made is that God has a plan for me and I'm supposed to follow it, and all his rules, and live like you live, constantly depriving myself of everything in the world that I want?”

“Well, see, that's the thing that's different,” he said. “If you gave your life to Christ, you'd want different things.”

“The other night you admitted that you don't,” she said, lifting her chin defiantly. “You admitted that you're tempted just like I am.”

“I'm tempted,” he said, “but in my heart I want what God wants for me, and that's why I take that escape when he provides it.”

“Well, maybe I don't
want
that escape,” she said. “Maybe I
like
the so-called prison you say I'm in. Maybe I don't want to walk through the door that he's opening for me to get out. Maybe that's because I don't see it as a prison.”

“No one ever does,” Nick said. “That's what's so sad.”

She groaned and combed her hands through the roots of her hair. “You make me crazy, you know that? You drive me right up the wall.”

“Yeah, I've been known to do that.”

She looked suddenly very weary, and he remembered her crouched like a little girl next to the toilet last night.

“I'm tired, Nick. I'm going to Aunt Aggie's. I just came by to check on you, see how you were doing. I guess you're getting back to normal, throwing your punches.” She got up to leave.

“I'm not throwing punches, Issie. I'm trying to throw a life raft.” Nick followed her, stepping over some of the rubble on the way to the pickup.

She reached the truck door but didn't get in right away. Instead she stood there and looked up at him.

He wondered if Mark was right, if she knew exactly the power she had over men. He didn't want her to have that power over him. Still, he stood there looking down at her, stricken with how his heart rate escalated when she looked up at him. Even when she wasn't at her best, there was something about her eyes that drew him in, something that had always made his heart jolt.

“I worry about you,” he said. “Last night, I sat by your bed and prayed for hours.”

He couldn't define the poignant expression that passed over her face. It was something between shock and sorrow, and for a moment, he thought she was going to cry. “No one's ever prayed for me before,” she whispered.

“I have,” he said. “I've been praying for you for years.”

She looked down at the key in her hand, her eyes stricken. “My advocate,” she whispered.

He frowned. “Your what?”

She swept her hair behind her ear. “Nothing. I was just thinking.” Those tears filled her eyes now as she looked up at him. “Thank you for worrying about me.”

He smiled. “You act like I'm doing it on purpose when, in fact, I just can't help myself. I guess it's this built-in protective mechanism that I get whenever I see a lady in trouble.”

Her smile faded. “A damsel in distress, you mean?”

“It's not a sign of weakness, you know. Vulnerability and weakness are not the same things.”

She tried to smile again, but quickly that smile faded and tears seemed to rim her eyes as she looked up at him. “You make me feel safe, Nick. I like to be around you. That's the real reason I came looking for you today.”