Now and Again (43 page)

“What do prisons have to do with war?” the pastor had asked.

“Apparently there's a war on poor people,” said Lexington. “Hell, how would I know what a bunch of crazy people are thinking?”

“The prison provides labor to the plant,” said Winslow when they conferenced him in. “It's perfectly legal, though.”

“Well, it sure doesn't look good if we're backing legislation that would incentivize incarceration,” said Lex. “It doesn't look good if the munitions are harming soldiers and you're covering it up.”

“Optics,” said Winslow. “I have to admit the optics are bad.”

That had been the day before. Now Price kept one eye on the clock. He liked to start his meetings promptly at seven, but Winslow and Lexington were late to arrive. When they did, they huddled in a darkened corner of the room, talking in whispers and trying to catch the pastor's eye. It irritated him that they weren't able to conceal their distress. Even when he signaled “later” to them and made calming motions the way he did when Tiffany was driving too fast, they scowled and twitched and grumbled to each other behind a leafless ficus tree. He had only persuaded them to keep quiet at the general meeting by saying it was better to figure things out privately, after everyone else had gone, but when he made his eyes bug out and drew his forefinger sharply across his neck, they merely scowled at him and made spastic movements with their hands.

Between his vow to listen more and his awareness that the sooner the meeting was over, the sooner he could address Winslow and Lexington's concerns, the pastor was unusually quiet at the general meeting, unusually agreeable, unusually willing to delegate to his advisors. “Good stuff,” he said as the group broke up and reached for their coats.

The three men made a show of leaving the parish hall along with the others. They waved good-bye in the parking lot and got into their cars, where they fumbled with their keys and checked their cell phones as the parking lot emptied. While the pastor was engaged in this charade, his phone rang. It was Lex. “You're not actually leaving, are you?”

“Of course not,” said Price. “We're just waiting for the others to go. Wasn't that the plan? I thought that was clear.”

“That's what I thought, but then I worried I'd misunderstood.”

“I think we're all on the same page,” said the pastor. “Let's wait five more minutes before we go back in.”

The parking lot was dotted with beautiful hand-forged lamps designed to resemble palm fronds, but now the pastor regretted them. For one thing, they looked out of place in the wheat field where the church was set, and for another, he longed for real darkness, for a time when people could disappear into the night and when a man's business was his own and couldn't be blasted out over the Internet for all the world to see. But then he realized that he was nostalgic for an era of hardship and privation, one without satellite television or even indoor plumbing. He thought of all the people who needed him—people in the here and now, lost people, people with struggles and torments. People like Winslow and Lexington. People like Senator Ewing, who had called that very afternoon to express concern about the missing documents because his signature was on one of them and it would upset his constituents if they saw it. People, frankly, like the president. The president needed him too, or at least he needed people like him, but since there were very few people really like him, the president needed him, Houston Price, to be just where he was and doing just what he was doing, right there in the here and now.

Price had seen the president once, at a meeting of religious leaders. It was disgraceful how those Code Pink people had crashed the gates and shouted things. And the Bare Witness people, without a stitch of clothing on. Right in the middle of the incident with the Secret Service, the president had caught Price's eye, and a look had passed between them. “I need ya,” said the look, and Houston Price had promised then and there to do whatever he could to capture hearts and minds right there in Red Bud, right there where the president needed him most.

When the three men were back inside the building, they gathered in a windowless coatroom so the light wouldn't attract the attention of anyone passing by—not that the church was on the way to anywhere. It was surrounded by fields owned by the large industrial farm run by Tiffany's father and the nearest dwelling was a mile away. “So what do we do?” asked Winslow. “I'll not only be in trouble because those emails attribute some very forward-thinking ideas to me, but I'll also be in trouble because the document went missing over a year ago and I didn't report it.”

“And I run a high-security prison,” said Lex. “How secure does it look now?”

“Losing sensitive documents is pretty darn bad in and of itself,” agreed Winslow, “but making the information they contain public is even worse.”

Lexington said “losing” was the wrong word to use. “They were stolen, and it was Maggie Rayburn who stole them, one hundred percent. The mystery is how they got up on that blasted website. I'd ask the little bitch myself, but no one has heard from her in months.”

Winslow glared at the pastor. “I thought you said the story about innocent prisoners would create a distraction. You said it would scare that Rayburn woman off if people knew she had pilfered records from the prison.”

The pastor's wheels were turning—there was always a solution, even if it took some time to find it. “I think you should both report all of the thefts to law enforcement,” he said slowly. “Even if it makes you look bad, you want to go on record that you weren't the ones who leaked them to the press.”

“I don't mind getting the law going on it,” said Lex. “But meanwhile, we've got to shut that website down.”

“How in tarnation are we going to do that?” asked Winslow. “We don't even know who runs it.”

“Can your army contacts help somehow?” asked Price. “There has to be a way to track that sort of thing.”

“We don't have to know who it is,” said Winslow. “We just have to reach them through the site. Doesn't it have a contact page?”

Lex paced to the end of the coatroom, where a schedule of filming dates was posted next to the altar-flower sign-up sheet. “We've got all that TV money, don't we?” he said. “Why can't we just up and buy the blasted thing?”

“All church money is reserved for God's work,” said the pastor, and then he quickly added, “Don't get me wrong.”

“If this doesn't qualify as God's work, then what the hell does?” bellowed Lex.

“Don't forget that you're only here because of us,” said Winslow. “You might be the face, but we're the heart of this operation. We're the reason this church exists.”

“August just wants you to remember who provided the seed money for this thing,” said Lex. “We're the major stakeholders—along with a few others, of course—and now we're looking for a return on our investment.”

“We'll buy it,” said Winslow. “We'll buy the sucker and then we'll shut it down. I'll make some discreet inquiries about the website through military channels—just in case. Meanwhile, let's talk to Sheriff Conway. I'm sure multiple laws have been broken. There's no doubt in my mind about that.”

“This isn't a democracy, Houston,” added Lex. “It's not as if we have to take a vote.”

Deep in Pastor Price's brain, there was a whole secret sector reserved for undemocratic principles. It was like looking at pornography—even if you knew everybody did it, it wasn't seemly to admit it. Then 9/11 happened, and people started making up new phrases that stripped old concepts of their negative connotations. The pastor found himself nodding or murmuring, “Just so” when some public figure or other used the term “enhanced interrogation” in the place of “torture” or equated freedom with domestic spying or morality with war. But much as he wanted to see God's Kingdom taking root right there in Red Bud, some of the measures people were talking about didn't sit well with him, and he didn't like being pressured to throw the resources of his church behind private agendas. Now more than ever, the pastor needed guidance from God, but even when he closed his eyes and said a little prayer, the part of his brain he counted on to light up with inspiration stayed dark and stupefied.

“Can I have a couple of days to think about it?” he asked.

“Two days,” said Winslow. “We meet back here in two days to make a plan, and the sooner we execute it, the better. It would be a lot easier to do this with your help, Houston, but we're prepared to do it without you.”

That evening, God finally broke His silence. The pastor was watching the news and trying to figure out how he was going to sneak a million dollars past the church finance committee while Tiffany paraded around in her apron and lace panties as she put the finishing touches on a new recipe. On the screen, a panel of experts was opining on the war and whether or not it was right to show photographs of coffins to the American people. A high-level memo on torture had been leaked, and new information about the man who had written it was coming out. Price had skipped both breakfast and lunch and he was only half paying attention because his stomach was growling and his head felt a little feverish and light.

“Guess what's for dinner,” Tiffany called out.

It was Italian night, and she wanted him to guess from the smells emanating from the kitchen what she was making. It obviously contained tomatoes and basil and garlic. And the lid was rattling on the big pot, so he guessed she was boiling water for spaghetti or the colorful rotini she liked. “Rotini with marinara sauce,” he called out, and the thought of the tough little spirals becoming pale and flaccid in the seething water made him dizzy and a little desperate, as if a similar fate lay in store for him.

Just then, the television showed a general—or perhaps it was a retired general. He'd missed that part when he was talking to Tiffany. Whoever it was, he was saying,
And when I stand up before Christ, I want there to be blood on my knees and my elbows. I want to be covered with mud. And I want to be standing there with a ragged breastplate of righteousness. And a spear in my hand. And I want to say, “Look at me, Jesus. I've been in the battle. I've been fighting for you.”

Startled, the pastor turned up the volume. He wished he had one of those newfangled systems that allowed a viewer to replay the segment. Would a general really say those things? And then he knew it hadn't been the general talking at all. It had been God talking to him through the general. And now God was talking through a woman donating a sack of clothing to the local homeless shelter (
Clean house and do good at the same time!
) and through a life insurance team with its performance trophy (
Join the winning team!
) and through a man showing off his compact car (
So roomy, you could hide a million dollars in the trunk!
). It seemed God's message was that he could avoid being a loser by joining the winning side, and he could avoid unnecessary questions by routing the money for the website through a charity such as Tiffany's Mothers of Mercy group. He'd have to figure out how to tell Tiffany so she wouldn't become suspicious, but it was a good solution to the problem. Thank you, Lord
,
he thought just as Tiffany called him in to eat.

“Just in time,” said the pastor. “I was feeling a bit woozy just now.”

“You're half starved, not to mention overworked. A little food is bound to make you right as rain.”

Tiffany had made a vegetarian dish, and the pastor ate it with relish.

“No meat?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I've been rethinking my policy on that.”

Two weeks later, a small cadre of council members met and made an anonymous offer to buy the website.

A
t the spring assembly, Mrs. Winslow stood backstage holding a clipboard and checking names off of a list as the girls arrived. “It's hard to believe you're almost a senior,” she said to Tula. “Do you have exciting plans for the summer?”

“I'll probably get a job,” said Tula without conviction. “And I'll work at the clinic, but of course that doesn't pay.”

Tula had worked as hard as anyone on Sammi's great men of Red Bud project, but where she once had felt like a central spoke in the functioning of the assembly, she now felt herself spinning helplessly at its rim.

“I guess you'll start looking at colleges too,” said Mrs. Winslow, as if she didn't know that without a scholarship, Tula had no way to pay for books, much less living expenses and tuition. “You need to get in line,” she added with an uncharacteristic wink. “The procession is about to begin.”

The music started up, and the girls moved forward using a mincing step that made their gowns appear to be gliding of their own accord. After the procession, Mrs. Winslow stood at the podium and gave a speech about unity and transitions. “This is a happy occasion. A time to be happy about the office you receive and also about the office your friends receive. You are all sisters and you are all equal. Success for one is the same as success for all.”

“
That's
not true,” Tula whispered to the girl standing next to her. The speech had tapped an evolving vein of cynicism, and even though it shamed her to acknowledge it, she persisted. “Who believes that? Only people who are rich and successful, that's who.”

“Shush,” said the girl, adjusting her bouquet of sunflowers, which was identical to the bouquet carried by all of the rising seniors. When it was time to light the candles, the girl rushed energetically forward, as if to make up for Tula's rudeness.

Tula performed her small role in the festivities with a sinking heart. She had imagined the graduating girls dressed in long white dresses and the younger girls arrayed around them in a rainbow of colors as they walked in formation around the room before singing the song they had practiced and learning the results of the vote that would determine which of her classmates would step into prominent positions for their last year as Rainbow Girls. She hadn't dared to imagine herself as the new Worthy Advisor, but she saw herself in the lesser role of jewel officer, standing at the Worthy Advisor's side and filled with gracious benevolence for the girls who hadn't been elected to any position whatsoever. Most of all, she had imagined that white would have a new meaning not only for her, but for the entire assembly. That dream had shriveled and died, but as the lower positions were announced and hers wasn't among the names called, she started to wonder if she might be elected Worthy Advisor after all. She had worked diligently. Everyone liked her. And hadn't Mrs. Winslow just winked at her? Mrs. Winslow never winked! Tula quickly calculated that if Sammi and another popular girl split the vote, she had an outside chance at winning. She hardly dared to think of it, but it wasn't inconceivable that the cards would fall in her favor after all.