Deadline (53 page)

“I think you’re a brave man. Or maybe a little stupid.” Jake grinned. It was fun to be on the outside looking in.

“Takes one to know one, huh? Here’s where it really gets controversial. People will agree with the need for strong role models. But I’m going to link the absence of fathers to the abortion issue.”

“How? What’s the link?”

“Simple. Men are told when they get a woman pregnant it isn’t their baby, it’s just hers. They’re told they have no say if they want the baby to live. Spousal consent is an offensive concept to abortion rights people. Men have no rights concerning the babies they’ve fathered. But, Jake, we all know rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. You can’t separate them. So, when we tell men they have no rights, we’re really telling them they have no responsibilities.

“How can we say, ’You have no right to stand up for the welfare of this child,’ then expect them to take any responsibility whatsoever for the child if the mother decides to let him live? You can’t have it both ways. Either the father has rights
and
responsibilities for the child, or he has neither rights nor responsibilities for the child.

“So what do we have as a result of believing this abortion propaganda? A bunch of irresponsible men. They’ve been taught they’re not needed in the home, women and children can get along fine without them—
better
because the government gives them a paycheck as long as they don’t marry the father. So the men can go get a woman pregnant, then move on to the next woman and do the same thing, instead of settling down, getting a job, and supporting their family. If they decide they want to take responsibility, which is what they should want, they’re told it’s none of their business, it’s the woman’s baby, not theirs.”

Clarence looked at Jake. “Okay, what do you think?”

“Three months ago I would have said you were off base. I would have thought maybe you’d lost it. Now, I don’t know. No, actually I do know. You’re making perfect sense.”

“Scary, isn’t it?”

“More than you can believe. But are you really going to bootleg all this into a sports column?”

“Why not? Who are the sports figures? Young virile men, lots of them black men, looked on as role models by black boys and young men. As a sports columnist, as a black man myself—and still virile I might add—can’t I challenge these guys to stand up on this issue?”

“Can’t hurt to try. What’s there to lose … other than your reputation and your career?

“You talk like a man speaking from experience.”

Jake studied the onion ring in his hand. “Yeah.”

Jake came in to the
Trib
at 10:00
A.M.
the next day, December 23. Among the responses were a few cheerful “Merry Christmases.” He also caught several strange looks that he interpreted as stemming from personal offense or genuine concern about his mental health. He also saw a few smiles and nods of approval, several from people whose names he couldn’t remember. The looks felt like covert acknowledgments made by one undercover agent to another, signaling a sense of camaraderie they didn’t openly display in the hostile environment they’d managed to infiltrate.

“Messages waiting” greeted him at his desk. The “top priority” memo from Jess was terse.

“Back off on your moralistic columns, Jake. You’re getting too preachy. Winston and I decided to let this column go. Now we’re taking the heat for you. Tone it down. Go back to what made us assign you to columns in the first place. You know we’ve always given you every latitude in the past, but this isn’t a religion column. We already carry Bill Buckley, and you’re not him. I hope I’ve made myself clear.”

Jake was shocked. It was the sternest rebuke from Jess he’d ever received. Jess never pulled a trump card like this. What did he mean he was taking the heat for Jake? Then the light turned on. The publisher. Of course. Raylan Berkely was upset. And why not? His wife was on the Planned Parenthood board, active in NOW. It was one thing to carry a few columnists that challenged political correctness. It was something else to employ one. That was too much like complicity. Berkely hadn’t come to Jake—he prided himself on non-interference with the newsroom. But now he was coming down on Jake’s superiors, twisting their arms to twist his.

Jake thought of showing the note to Clarence, it related so closely to their discussion. He decided against it for the moment. He reread the note. Not a religion column? Of course it wasn’t. Did he say anything about religion in the column? He called it back up and reread it on his screen. No, it was just facts and common sense conclusions. What was religious about that—unless religion was also facts and common sense, a supposition he knew was not widely held at the
Trib.
And Jess was right—they had always given him latitude in the past.

Until now.

Jake had crossed a line. The line was not obscenity or inaccuracy or vengeance or damaging the reputation of an innocent person. The line was certain moral beliefs and their overt or implied criticism of popular institutions. Ironically, Jake pondered, these same moral beliefs were once widely accepted by the culture. Now they were so alien as to constitute a major threat. In the open-minded world of some of his journalistic superiors and peers, they were met with all the fear and distrust and sense of mortal danger as an alien invasion in a sci-fi flick.

Jake pressed the button on his recording machine. Two positive and three negative calls concerning his column. The next message was direct and to the point.

“Jake Woods? Barbara Betcher, NEA. The executive committee met this morning. We’re formally withdrawing our invitation for you to speak at our spring banquet. Your columns have been attacking some of the very things we stand for. There are plenty of speakers sympathetic to education and to our children—we don’t need someone who’s not. I hope this is just a phase you’re going through. For your sake and everybody else’s, we all hope you shake it soon. Real soon.”

“Merry Christmas to you too, Barbara,” Jake said aloud. He shook his head, marveling at the short memories of those who had only a few months ago appeared so loyal to him. Why did they feel so betrayed? Maybe it was his own fault for serving as their mouthpiece, rehashing their propaganda when he’d thought of himself as truly independent. Had he been willing to obscure the truth to serve what he considered a good cause, and unwilling to tell the truth when it served what he considered a bad cause?

It wasn’t the responses of Planned Parenthood and Barbara Betcher that bothered him most. It was the responses of some of his colleagues, including those on the multiculturalism committee. They confirmed all too clearly that the religion of political correctness, of which he had been a dutiful if unthinking priest, had come to truly dominate the mainstream of his profession. Unbelievers, such as syndicated conservatives who had never been part of this religion, were scorned but given a begrudging respect. The greatest scorn was reserved for someone who had been on the inside and now dared to betray the religion, to defect from its sacred creeds and violate its dogmas. Jake had become a heretic. The rising smoke from his terminal, message machine, and mailbox promised he would face the fires all heretics must face.

At 6:06
A.M.
on October 28, Gregory Victor Lowell had exited his temporary residence. He’d been unconscious his last hours, but on leaving his body his faculties immediately sharpened. Time had passed, if time still was. The time or day on earth was unknown and irrelevant here. Wherever here was.

For the first moments Doc thought he was dreaming. This was the only possible explanation for his conscious appraisal of his body lying on a hospital bed. He felt free, liberated, relieved, as one who had escaped from the confinement of the body. But this changed almost instantly as he sized up the situation.

He was out of his body, which meant he was dead. He realized in a flash of insight he had been wrong all those years in thinking that life ended with death. He had said there was no soul, but a soul is exactly what he was and had been all along. He had not ceased to exist. Indeed, the very idea of a person ceasing to exist was ludicrous. People did not die, they merely relocated from one place to another. Such an exit could never be mistaken for a move from existence to nonexistence except by shortsighted, egocentric people in one room who thought that whenever someone went into another they must no longer exist.

This new world, if indeed he had arrived there—and he desperately hoped he had not—did not seem unreal but much more real than the old world. A sickening feeling of foreboding gripped him; he was unprepared for this realm. And it was now too late to prepare.

Doc knew instinctively that whatever lay ahead of him would never end. This truth was self-evident. He felt embarrassed and foolish he had ever thought otherwise.

How could I have been so deceived?

Yet even as he asked the question, he knew he had been willingly deceived because of how he wanted to live and what he wanted to believe—and because of how he did not want to live and what he did not want to believe.

What had Finney told him? “The reason you don’t want to believe in a Creator is because then you’d have to believe in a Judge—and you don’t want to think you’ll be held accountable for how you’ve lived. But there is, and you will be.”

This irritated him before, and it irritated him now. Who was Finney to preach to him?

Doc looked around uneasily, trying to get his bearings. Where were the others? He could see or hear no one. A flood of proud and confident words from the past rushed over him. The party where he said, “I’d rather be in hell with intelligent people than in heaven with a bunch of Christians.” The times he’d quoted Mark Twain—“It’s heaven for atmosphere and hell for company.” His retort to Finney—“I’d rather be anywhere with anyone than to be with a herd of narrow-minded fundamentalists and their narrow-minded God.”

Finney’s life and words haunted Doc now even more than they had on earth. His mind flashed back to a conversation two years earlier. It was more than a memory with the fuzzy edges memories have. It was like a videotape, vivid and complete to the detail. Doc could remember every word, every sound, every feeling. It was relived in his mind, moment by moment, as if it were happening right now. And that made it all the more painful.

While looking for a pen on Finney’s desk at his house, Doc’s eyes fell on a receipt. It showed Finney had recently given a large sum of money to feed the hungry in an African country. Doc was irritated, and he let Finney know it, waving the receipt in front of his face as if it were incriminating evidence.

“Don’t you know that money isn’t going to solve the problem? Those people are going to die anyway. You’re just prolonging their agony. It’s a foolish waste of hard-earned money.”

“Well, Doc,” Finney came back, “I’m sure those people think their lives and the lives of their children are just as important as ours. All that I am and all that I have belongs to someone else. It’s his money, not mine, and I think that’s where he wanted me to put it. You call it foolish. I think it’s wise. I guess some day we’ll both find out who was right.”

“Think about your own family,” Doc responded. “You could have given them a terrific vacation with that money. Or invested in a mutual fund that would help pay their way through college. And what about Little Finn? His condition is permanent—he might have some big expenses down the line. And what about your retirement—are you going to have enough for you and Sue? Look, buddy, I appreciate generosity as much as the next guy, but let’s get real. You can’t save the whole world. Think ahead, for crying out loud.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing, Doc. You’re thinking thirty years ahead. I’m trying to think thirty million years ahead.”

Doc’s familiar
Twilight Zone
whistle had filled the air. He looked at Finney with a combination of pity and scorn.

“I’m serious, Doc.”

“That’s what scares me. There’s a place in our psych ward reserved in your name. They’re all serious, too. Have you considered therapy?”

Finney’s look of concern for him bothered Doc as much as anything. It seemed so arrogant and condescending.

“You talk about foolish,” Finney said. “Foolish is not planning for your eternal future. Jesus told about a rich man who stored up treasures on earth but didn’t prepare for eternity. And God said to him, ’You fool, this night your life is required of you. Now who will get all you’ve laid up for yourself?”’

“Not the church, if I can help it!”

“Come on, Doc. Leave the church out of it. This isn’t about the church, it’s about you and God. I admire your accomplishments. You’ve worked hard, earned a lot of respect, a lot of influence, and a whole lot of money. I’ve been in your cheering section, you know that. But there’s a lot more to life than all that.”

“Like what? Here and now is all there is, old buddy.”

“Do you really believe that, Doc? Come on. You’re more than an animal. You’re an eternal human being. You’re going to live forever. And what you do now has bearing on eternity.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute. I reject it. So what do you say to that?”

“Your rejection doesn’t change reality. You are who you are, and God is who he is. And he did what he did for you on the cross. Nothing you think or say will ever change any of that.”

“I didn’t ask for anyone to go to the cross for me—I pay my own way. I don’t want your religion; it’s a pacifier for fools. And I don’t want any part of your God.”

“I’d rather be judged a fool by you for the moment, than be judged a fool by God for eternity.” Finney
eyes
pleaded with him. “Doc, don’t say you’d rather pay your own way. You may get your wish. It’s called hell. God not being there is what will make it hell.”

Doc shivered as the scenario played itself out in his mind. It was so real, as if he had actually gone back and relived it. “A fool for eternity.” Finney’s words haunted him.

Where was everybody? Doc had never felt so utterly alone. He was waiting for someone to come, a citizen of this realm to orient him, to explain the ground rules, the boundaries and opportunities of this world. There was an invisible fence. He could sense it. A limiting wall that could not be penetrated. An iron curtain locking him in, preventing any escape. This was confinement. Much worse, it was solitary confinement. He kept hoping it was only temporary.