Rituals

A.J. Craver
Houston, TX
blcraver@sbcglobal.net
(806) 702‑2629
Word Count: ~28,000

RITUALS

A Novel by A.J. Craver

CHAPTER ONE – OLD HABITS

I’m a hypocrite. Let’s just get that out of the way from the start. I’m sitting at a table in a run‑down neighborhood icehouse, drinking a beer. When I finish this beer, I’m going to step outside and smoke a cigarette, then I’ll return to my table and repeat the process two more times. Three beers and three cigarettes every Thursday evening. When I’ve completed the ritual, I will walk back home, sit at my kitchen table, and continue to work on Sunday’s sermon.

I entered the ministry a little later than most, I suppose. I spent the majority of my teens and twenties raising hell, smoking weed, and drinking. I was arrested three times—once for disorderly conduct and twice for battery. I’m not even including my juvenile record. I split my time pretty evenly from the age of fourteen to seventeen in and out of juvenile detention centers. My parents threw me out, and I went to live with my grandmother. I still managed to complete high school a little early and spent a semester in college before I dropped out. I joined the Air Force for two years, until I failed a piss test twice. By some miracle, I was able to receive a general discharge instead of an “Other Than Honorable.” I’ve worked a variety of jobs, mostly manual labor. I know how to swing a hammer. I even drove a truck for a year.

I got married when I was twenty‑one to a pretty, smart, and somewhat sensible young woman I met while in college. For the most part, we didn’t have any huge problems in our marriage until I returned to college in my late twenties. By all measures, you would not have been mistaken if you had met her and found her to be responsible and mature. She was. But she also had a side to her that was copacetic with my lifestyle at the time. She was of that rare breed of people who can stay up all night drinking and still turn up to work or school the next morning and operate with machine‑like precision. She was a challenge to me in that way, and I liked it, even if I was incapable of the same. I was drawn to her energy and the enthusiasm she exhibited for life. To her, it would’ve been a sin to waste her youth focused on a career and a stable, mature home life. We stayed busy, stayed high or drunk, and stayed in motion. I made a respectable living, mostly working as a subcontractor, occasionally selling weed and coke to supplement my income, and she made decent money doing whatever the hell she did at the energy company. She started with them as an accountant, but at some point, they felt she was better suited to another position, and I either never understood what that position was or never paid attention to the explanation.

We were childless and flush enough to indulge ourselves. The sex was good, the fights short, and she posted my bail without complaint. We didn’t fall apart until I decided to go back to school. Sobriety didn’t suit our marriage. It might have been that the chaos had been the glue. When it was gone, so was she. I bored her, plain and simple. And, if I’m being honest, I wasn’t as bothered by it as I thought I should have been at the time.  These days, I think about it from time to time.  It is a very real possibility that it was just me pushing her out.  I don’t think I’m the hero of that story. 

I had originally intended to get a degree in business, but it didn’t take me long to realize that business was not in my wheelhouse. Some men just understand money the way others understand tools. I thought, as a subcontractor‑slash‑low‑level drug dealer managing to make a living, that I might be one of them. I wasn’t.

I made a decent living because I was willing to swing a hammer. I was willing to sweat and bleed and be covered in dirt and sawdust. That’s where the value was. I had no marketing skills, no real ability to budget, and no concrete ideas on how to convert that dirt, sawdust, sweat, and blood into a sustainable business with the potential for growth.

But I could comprehend the abstract. I could grasp an idea, dissect it, examine it from every side, and either accept or reject it based on its application to me introspectively. Introduction to Ethics showed me that. The curse of that is that I was now drawn to philosophical thought and totally immersed—and I knew that it was going to be an uphill climb to build anything resembling a stable career with a degree like that. There was nothing else that held my attention or that I thought I might have the aptitude for. I’ve always been enamored with useless things.

Then came the acceptance of faith. As if I needed one more nail in the coffin of my job prospects.  It didn’t happen all at once. There wasn’t a vision or a great stirring of the heart. It started in a philosophy class sometime around my third semester back in school. The professor was half‑drained and unshaven, reading a line about how a man can lose himself so quietly the world doesn’t notice. I remember that moment like I remember the taste of stale coffee and pencil shavings.

I read Camus—his bit about everything beginning with consciousness. I didn’t find that enlightening so much as damning. If awareness was the start of meaning, then I was already waist‑deep in futility. And Augustine gave it a name: restlessness. That word fit, and I resented it.

I read that God was dead, but what I heard was that the responsibility’s on us now—no one left to blame when things fall apart.

I don’t think anyone who knew me took me seriously at first. I mentioned that I was a little bit of a hell‑raiser and did some illicit things, which kept me in the company of some pretty rough people. The thing about rough people is they eye the sober and regretful with a certain amount of skepticism and suspicion. Repentance is one step away from becoming an informant. I wasn’t totally ostracized by the company I kept, but I would never again be fully accepted. They would often speak in low tones in my presence from that point forward lest I overhear a confession of their crimes and report it immediately to the police. My former friendships began to slowly fade away. It became a void that would never be filled after that.  At least that’s the way I saw it.

So now I was in possession of a useless degree, cast out of my social circles and in need not just of a job but a calling. I didn’t plan on preaching. That was never the dream. It started with a couple of night classes at the seminary because I needed structure—some way to keep myself from drifting back into old habits. I figured if I was going to wrestle with belief, I might as well do it among the people who took it seriously. Somewhere in those years, I ran out of arguments against it. The same restlessness that used to drive me to bars and bad decisions drove me to the pulpit one Sunday morning. It wasn’t a calling so much as momentum—one small yes after another until I was standing there with a Bible in my hand, trying to sound like I belonged. Twenty years later, I still don’t know if I do. But I’ve learned that doubt keeps me honest, and maybe that’s close enough to faith for a man like me—which, by the way, is touched on in my current draft of Sunday’s sermon. It needs some work.

But first, I’m going to finish this last beer and smoke that last cigarette.

CHAPTER TWO – INTRUSION

Chapter Two: Intrusion

It’s a short two‑block walk from the bar to the steps of my two‑bedroom home, a Sears craftsman style house built in the early 1920s like most of the homes that used to populate this neighborhood. Now it sits sandwiched between two‑story shotgun‑style homes.  The kind a builder throws up when he’s guessing what a Queen Anne might look like after they bulldoze the original cottages on those lots. To me, it looked like Disneyworld’s Main Street.  A fabrication of someone else’s nostalgia hiding the swampland it was built on.

When I was growing up, this was a tough neighborhood in decline. We even had bragging rights to three serial killers in the seventies. Now it’s just another overpriced, gentrified inner‑city real‑estate development. I probably wouldn’t care if it weren’t for the property taxes I was now responsible for.

I didn’t see her at first. An overgrown oleander obscured her from the porch light and my view. But now she had stepped from the shadows and foliage and stood just to the side of my door.

“Are you Barrett? Barrett Stevens?”

I fished for my keys in my jeans pocket while I eyed her over. She was probably ten years my junior, attractive enough—dark hair with loose curls that gathered at her shoulders. She struck me as Hispanic, but with what looked like blue eyes in the porch light. Her clothing was modest.  Jeans and a sweatshirt. A little bit curvy but fit. I might be a pastor, but I’m not blind.

“Yes, I am,” I said with caution. “How can I help you?”

I unlocked the door and pushed it open just enough to remind her it was mine. I smiled—polite and distant. I didn’t need her close enough to smell the beer and cigarettes.

“You knew Eddie Morales?” That was a name I hadn’t heard in years.

“Sure. Grew up together.”

He was part of old group of rowdy drinkers, stoners and would be criminals. We hadn’t been best friends, but I always considered him a solid one. We just stopped running in the same circles and, like all the others from that time, he gradually faded from my life.

She just stared, her eyes never breaking contact with mine. For some reason, I felt she looked puzzled. “Did he get in touch with you?”

“No. I haven’t spoken to Eddie in—” I paused. “Fifteen, maybe twenty years.”

“Are you sure? He told me he was going to call you.” Her voice was pleading for affirmation. I had nothing to give her.

“I’m one hundred percent positive.”

Her eyes began to well up with tears. She looked past me, like she was searching for something I didn’t have. I didn’t know who she was, but I now knew what she was: Eddie’s wife, or his girlfriend. And Eddie was either in trouble or already gone. I just didn’t know why she was standing on my porch in mid-February.

“I’m sorry.” She raised her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. The tears flowed easily now, without hesitation. “It’s just that…”

“Why don’t we go inside so we can talk? I hate when bugs get in the house.”

She nodded, her eyes gazing downward. She awkwardly turned and walked in. I hit the light switch near the interior front door and followed behind her, navigating past her to the center of the living room. “Please, have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”

She surveyed her immediate area and sat down in the small recliner near the front porch window. “No, thank you. I’m good.”

I leaned my body toward the kitchen door and pointed toward it. “Do you mind if I just make myself a quick cup of coffee?”

She shook her head no. “Please, take your time.”

I entered the kitchen and pulled a coffee cup from the cabinet. I filled it with tap water and set it in the microwave to heat for one minute. I walked back to the kitchen door. I studied her for a moment as she sat in the recliner with her head bowed down, wiping the tears from her cheeks and eyes.

“Eddie’s in trouble, isn’t he?”

“Eddie’s dead.”

I dropped my gaze to the floor. The microwave beeped, signaling its completion. “That was going to be my second guess.”

I returned to the microwave and pulled out the steaming cup. I emptied a spoonful of instant coffee into the cup and quickly stirred. I returned to the living room and took a seat on the couch across from the woman, placing my cup on the coffee table that separated us. I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees.

My job—my mandate—is to offer comfort to people. Clergy are the “earthly stewards of divine compassion,” meant to bridge the gap between spiritual promises and human suffering. Instinctively, I knew that’s not what she was here for. My gut told me that she would have been offended if I offered it, so I didn’t.

“Tell me about it. What happened?”

She gathered herself and drew a breath. “Workplace accident about four weeks ago.” Her voice was still shaky. “The scaffolding collapsed.”

“I’m sorry.  Honestly. What kind of work did he do?”

“He was a safety foreman for Drayton Industries. Refinery maintenance.”

“Eddie was a good guy. I remember him fondly. I’m sorry I didn’t keep in touch with him.”

“He remembered you. He told me he was going to reach out to you.”

“Oh?” I picked up my cup and sipped gently.

“I never heard your name before this mess came up. But he told me that you were someone he looked up to and could be trusted.”

“I don’t understand. Trusted for what? What ‘mess’?”

She looked directly at me now. She was trying to decipher me somehow. “To help him do the right thing. He had involved himself in something at work. I don’t know all the details, but two men were killed and he told me he was partly responsible.”

“I see. Do you know what the ‘right thing’ was that he wanted to do?”

“No. But he said he admired what you did with your life. He wished he had done the same. I don’t understand that part. He was a good husband, and he made a good living.” Her look was one of puzzlement. “Who are you? What’s so special about you that he told me I needed to contact you if something happened?

“I’m not sure. I’m a minister, that’s all. You said ‘if something happened.’ Eddie was expecting something to happen?”

“He must have.”

“That doesn’t make sense, does it?  He didn’t give you any reason he wanted you to reach out to me?”

“What he told me was that he thought you could give him courage and help him do the right thing.  That you would always face the truth.” She began to well up again. “I don’t know what the hell he expected from you or what he meant, but this is what he asked me to do and I’m doing it, because I don’t know what else to do.”

I cradled the coffee between my hands. “I’m at a loss myself. If he didn’t give you something concrete, I don’t know why he would want you to reach out to me.”

“I picked up his belongings from the office yesterday. Maybe you can come by and look at them.” It was less a question and more of a declaration. “If he thought he was partly responsible for two men dying, then maybe there is something in his stuff.”

“Okay, let’s say I do that. And what if I find something that says he held some responsibility in those deaths?” I let that sit between us. “What am I supposed to do with it? Report it? That might be the right thing, but it doesn’t feel like it ends well for Eddie. Do you have kids?”

“Two boys.”

“Would you want that for them?”

“No, but I think Eddie would’ve. He carried so much guilt that he had trouble sleeping. I don’t think he could live with it. And if that’s true, then my boys should know he wanted to do the right thing. If that makes any sense.”

“I suppose it does.” I sipped from my cup again, casting my eyes to the floor. “What area of town do you live?”

“Deer Park.”

“I can swing by either tomorrow evening or Saturday morning. Whichever is better for you.”

“I’ll be home tomorrow. If you’ve got a sheet of paper and a pen, I’ll leave my address and phone number for you.”

I got up and went to my kitchen table. My sermon outline, only partially written, lay next to a legal pad and a pen. I grabbed the pad and pen and returned to the living room.

Deer Park is yesterday’s American dream. Two‑ and three‑bedroom brick homes with two‑car garages and short driveways. Most of the neighborhoods look exactly like the others—San Jacinto Estates, Deer Park Gardens, and College Park. Every main road is filled with the same gas stations, fast food restaurants, and tax offices. There must be a Dollar General every other block. I’m not criticizing it, really. It’s exactly the same type of place I would probably be living in if I hadn’t kept my grandmother’s house. At least it was a coherent dream for its time. I couldn’t tell you what the American dream looks like today—or if one still exists. It’s no longer my world.

Some days, depending on the direction of the wind, the area smelled of rotten eggs. Hydrogen sulfide. That usually meant a plant was venting. In extreme cases, it might signal a leak nearby. Like everything else tied to this blue‑collar landscape, in too high of a concentration, it could be deadly.

On this particular day, I was blessed with the bonus odor of burnt rubber drifting in from the ship channel. It made me recall a time I visited my great‑uncle with my grandmother in West Texas. One morning we walked outside of his house to the odor—no, not odor—the climatological event that wafted from the feedlot somewhere to the east. My uncle said it smelled like money to him. My grandmother said it just smelled like a lot of shit.

She had written her name above her address. Laura Morales. Around here, names usually tell you which side of the family had won. Laura felt like a compromise. Not unheard of—just uncommon enough to stand out. I’d grown up in a city where last names stayed Spanish and first names didn’t, where mothers and fathers pulled in opposite directions and the paperwork showed the result. Laura Morales looked like one of those results.

These are the things I think of in rush‑hour traffic.

I found the address and pulled my truck adjacent to a later‑model Honda Civic in the driveway. A sprinkler and garden hose had been dragged to the center of the yard. I had to time my sprint from the driveway to the door to avoid the spray. I rang the bell. The muffled sound of a large dog barking could be heard, followed by sharp commands. A voice yelled out for someone to put the dog outside; a few beats of silence, and then the sound of a lock being turned.

When she opened the door, I half‑expected her to be wearing the same sweatshirt and jeans she was wearing the night before, but instead, I was greeted by a woman dressed professionally—and appropriately for an office. I couldn’t tell you if she wore designer clothing or not, but I was suddenly reminded of my ex‑wife.

“Come in. Excuse the mess.”

The interior was mostly tidy and organized, but there were some dishes in the sink, kids’ toys on the floor, and a basket of laundry near what I presumed to be the door that led out to the garage. All of this was the hallmark of a busy and hurried life of work and commitments. The home was showing its age. Small portions of paint had chipped on the corners of the walls, some floor tiles had cracked. The sliding patio door had a busted screen in the tracks. The countertops were laminate. Some of the kitchen‑cabinet doors hung slightly crooked. Beyond the sliding patio door was a non‑landscaped backyard—half dirt, half grass—and a swing set.  A golden retriever walked the perimeter of the fenced yard before laying down near the porch.   A modest‑sized grill was pushed as close to the brick veneer as possible, under the roof’s overhang. It wasn’t an impressive home, but it served its purpose, I suppose. And whether Eddie had intended it or not, it provided me a glimpse of who he became and what he valued: stability. That wasn’t something we had a lot of when we were kids.

Laura opened the door to the garage and beckoned me to follow. It was full of boxes, a beat‑to‑hell rolling tool chest, lawnmower, rakes, and brooms. A washer and dryer sat near the corner of the far side. In a small clearing in the center of the oil‑stained floor was an open box of knickknacks like you might have at your office desk, a white kitchen trash bag filled about a quarter of the way, and a tool bag.

“Is this everything?”

“Yes. The box is the stuff from his office. The trash bag is what we pulled from his work truck.”

I opened the garbage bag first. A high‑vis vest—new in packaging—and a well‑worn one rumpled up. A few bottles of water. Various receipts, loose pens, a pair of gloves, and safety glasses. I closed the bag and set it off to the side. I began to pull the contents from the box: a calendar, framed photos of the family. One of them was taken at a beach next to turquoise‑colored water. Probably Florida. A box of golf balls and a calculator completed the inventory. I got down on my haunches and pulled over the tool bag.

A handheld ultrasonic thickness gauge—at least that’s what the printing on the unit read—a yellow gas monitor, some type of pointed‑end wrench, a belt with holders. I fished around the bottom and felt some loose nuts. I reached into the side pocket of the tool bag and felt a card. I pulled it out. It was a laminated green tag that read: Attention – This scaffold was built to meet safety regulations – It is safe to use. It was signed and dated.

I stood and turned. Laura was carrying the laundry basket into the garage and over to the washer. She opened the lid and began to pull clothes into it.

“What was the date of Eddie’s accident?”

She looked at me and then upward. “The eight… nineth? It was a Thursday.” She continued to throw the laundry in.

I hooked my fingers into the ring at the end of the card and walked back into her kitchen, studying it, flipping it over in my hands. I suddenly became aware of perspiration on my forehead. I heard the washer lid slam and the hum of its motor start up. I leaned on the counter.

Laura Morales entered the kitchen and closed the door behind her. She approached me from behind, stopping a few feet short of me. I could feel her looking over my shoulder.

“You found something?”

“The date is wrong.”

“The date?”

I turned and faced her, patting the card against the palm of my hand. “He signed it, but it’s dated the 27th.”

“I—I don’t know. Does that mean something?” There was that puzzled look from last night.

“How does he sign off on an inspection on the 27th when he was killed on the 8th?”

She was silent, and so was I. I don’t know the first thing about safety inspections, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that what I had in my hand was at the very least a major infraction to— I don’t know—OSHA? Some governing body that oversees regulations?

Here is the problem in a nutshell: I’m just a minister. My expertise lies in commanding a pulpit, giving comfort, giving aid. I’m holding something that may or may not damn a man’s name, and I’ve never felt so disqualified for something in my life. I had no reason to be here other than a connection with a former friend I haven’t spoken to in decades, who may have intended to reach out to me for—what? Guidance? Spiritual advice? And yet this green card, this little piece of lamination, began to feel heavy in my hands. I recognized the weight immediately. This small card was now my burden, and I knew that, and it bothered me.

CHAPTER THREE – CALLING

Chapter Three: Calling

Sisyphus, in the Greek myth, is punished for refusing his place in the order of things. He must push a massive stone up a steep hill, only for it to slip from his grasp and roll back down to the bottom for all eternity.

The story is at least twenty‑five hundred years old. In my mind, I keep seeing this stone being rolled up the hill in perpetuity, and I can’t help but believe that what was once a massive boulder has been reduced or eroded by time and friction to something the size of a small rock—perfectly rounded and polished and small enough to be kept in a pocket. The hill, once rocky and difficult, has a deep rut now that is smooth and carved into its side. I imagine that Sisyphus merely strolls to the top of the hill and sits in contemplation for a while before reaching into his pocket and casting the stone back to the bottom in some perverse habit of fetch. He has the means of escape before him. Neither rock nor hill stands in his way. But this is his purpose—the meaning he has given himself. The loss of that would be the loss of everything.

And so, I gave my sermon this Sunday morning.

My congregation is an aged one. They come to church dutifully. It holds great importance in their lives. I rarely see anyone under the age of fifty enter the sanctuary. When they do, they sit quietly in the pews. I sense they wander in expecting to see people their age, and when they don’t, they never return.

I’ve known almost every member of my church family for twenty years. I have overseen the weddings of their children and the funerals of their spouses. I have witnessed failing health, the onset of dementia, and the final breaths of many parishioners. When I was much younger, I’m sure I took on the task with a hefty degree of uncertainty. I was clumsy in the offering of comfort and prayer, pretending to have wisdom when none had yet taken root. But as the church fellowship has aged, so, too, have I developed—not a skill, exactly, but a practiced yet sincere ability to help bring solace and dignity to them in their hours of need. I have witnessed the reality of human suffering for those who are passing and for those left behind. I suffer with them. I’m glad that I do. It proves to me that what I do has not become mechanical or routine.

There are two times on Sundays when I stand at the sanctuary doors: when the parishioners arrive and when the parishioners depart. It might seem to be only a friendly, if slightly formal, way to greet or wish them a good week, but in reality, it is triage. How does their health look? How is this parishioner walking? Who is missing from the pews? An empty spot in the pew might require me to make a phone call later to check up on them. These are also the moments that I absorb their troubles and worries—the requests for prayers for their children or grandchildren, the talk of upcoming medical procedures. My job requires me to be observant and to listen. These are the skills that I have developed most in my career.

When the building empties, I turn off the lights, reset the thermostat, and lock the doors—but not today. Today I returned to my office and sat at my desk. The green inspection tag I had taken from Eddie Morales’s things lay there. I had spent Saturday going about my home and church duties, but mentally I was still clapping the tag onto the palm of my hand. I knew it had significance, but of what, I had no clear idea. The signature and date were indicators of misdeeds that I could sense but didn’t understand well enough to bring into the light.

The collection of friends and acquaintances I once associated with were not exactly young men eyeing higher education. Like me, most of them were willing to swing a hammer or pick up a shovel to make rent and beer money. When one found solid employment that paid well enough, it was not unusual for them to attempt to bring one or more of us onboard as well. I had a hunch that this might be true of Eddie’s career. He’d found an opportunity in the oil and gas industry, and I suspected he might’ve helped a friend or two get on there as well—men I might have known at one time. If that were indeed the case, then I might have someone I could reach out to. Someone who could give me the rundown on what that laminated inspection tag really meant.

I pulled out my phone and called Laura.

CHAPTER FOUR – TURNAROUNDS

Chapter Four: Turnarounds

I grew up in the neighborhood where I still live. I have no shame in telling you that I got a lucky break.

Two years before my grandmother died, she sold me her house. I was newly divorced, finishing my degree, and swinging a hammer as usual. We had discussed her leaving it to me outright, but instead, we agreed she would sell it to me for just under a hundred thousand dollars. This was in the late nineties, and the arrangement helped us both. The price met tax appraisal value, so everything was clean. She gained the money and avoided capital gains. I gained a home I could just afford but was determined to keep.

Today, the home is appraised at three‑quarters of a million dollars.

The neighborhood had become fashionable. It’s near downtown and inside the “loop”—the 610 freeway that circles Houston proper. New restaurants began appearing, hip bars and a few chic boutiques soon followed. The so‑called “white flight” that occurred in the sixties and seventies had reversed course.

The old residents—lower‑income white and Hispanic families who had lived here for a generation or two—realized they could sell their modest pier‑and‑beam houses, twelve hundred square feet if they were fortunate, and move north to Spring, east to Deer Park, or west to Katy if the profit allowed. Brick homes on concrete slabs. Twice the space. Maybe a community pool and clubhouse if they had done well.

It isn’t at all surprising, then, that virtually no one I grew up with—none of that old crowd—remains in this neighborhood. Their families scattered to all parts of the larger Houston metroplex. I remain, not because I value what is fashionable and hip, but because I am content with what I have.

Laura had given me names of three men she knew her husband had helped land work in the refinery industry. She knew the men only because they had attended a few cookouts and beer‑drinking sessions at her home. I was unfamiliar with all three, but one had a surname I recognized as belonging to someone I had attended school with.

Wozniak.

Eddie had worked alongside him for several years before leaving for Drayton. If Eddie had kept their numbers, they were gone now. His phone had been destroyed in the scaffolding collapse.

While the last name was familiar, I couldn’t recall the first name of the former classmate. I owned a single yearbook from high school. It took longer than it should have to find it. When I did, I sat at the kitchen table and flipped slowly through the alphabetical listings.

Ronnie Wozniak.

We had attended the same elementary, middle, and high school together, but I can’t recall having more than maybe a half‑dozen exchanges with him. His youngest brother, four years younger than me, was David. I picked up my phone and began to search social media. Out of the dozens of “Ronnie Wozniak” listings, I narrowed it down to four and sent each the same message:

“Searching for Ronnie Wozniak from Houston Heights. Has a brother named David.”

By Sunday evening I received a response.

Surprisingly, Ronnie recognized my name and gave me his number to call. The conversation was pleasant. He spoke as though he had rediscovered an old friend, recalling places and stories I was never part of, but the recognition of other names allowed me to share in his nostalgia. It was a better alternative than correcting him. I told him about Eddie, and he acted as if he recalled him. I don’t know—maybe he did. I informed him of the scaffolding accident but left out the previous fatalities. No sense in muddying the water when I didn’t know how deep it ran yet. I did reveal the information about the inspection tag, at least in part—that was the purpose of the call.

I wanted him to put me in touch with his brother so I could speak to someone with industry knowledge—for the sake of Eddie’s widow, of course.

By Monday morning, the past had given me a name and number. Now I needed a face. I sat in my truck in the visitors’ parking lot and waited. It was approaching 11:30 when I saw a gaunt‑looking man in a flannel shirt walking toward me. I killed the motor and stepped out. He gave me a half‑hearted smile, and I extended my hand to shake his.

“You’re Stevens, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He studied me a moment or two and turned his head to spit on the ground before leaning against the bed of my truck, his arms extending into the bed. “You look kinda familiar. I might have seen you before. Back in the day.”

I didn’t take his spitting as an insult. His bottom lip protruded heavily. The back of his jeans pocket was well worn and had the distinct wear pattern of a “Skoal ring.” He looked like a man a decade or two older than me. He was thin, but his cheeks had that flush look to them. His face had the wear of a man who drank heavily and often.

I mimicked his posture and positioned myself against the bed of the truck as well. “Possible,” I said. “Very possible.” I paused for a moment, turned my head, and looked directly at him. “You and Eddie were close, right?”

“You could say that. We was pretty tight.”

“What did you think of the accident?”

“Shit. It was a fuckin’ tragedy, man. But it can happen, you know? Goes with the territory. Good man. A damn good man gone. Fuckin’ waste.” His voice just drifted away as if he were talking to himself.

“So, you think it was just an accident?”

“Well, yeah. What do you think it was?” He turned his whole body to face me.

“I don’t know anything about this stuff. That’s why I’m talking with you. I found something that was in Eddie’s things and wanted you to look at it and tell me if it’s normal or not. If it’s normal, then I’m fine. But if it isn’t, then I need to get answers.”

I pulled the green tag from my shirt pocket and handed it to David to inspect. He took it and flipped it over a few times.

“It’s an inspection tag for scaffolding. What’s your question?” He was almost dismissive.

“Did you read the date?”

He studied the tag for a few seconds. I watched as the realization came over his face. “Fuck me,” was all he said.

“So I’m right? This means something?”

“It means he was pencil‑whipping. Mother fucker! That ain’t Ed at all, man. It ain’t.”

“How?”

“It’s, whadya call it? It’s negligence, man. Ed didn’t do that kind of shit! He took his job seriously. He trained me, for Christ’s sake.”

David leaned back on the truck. His right foot kicked at the gravel as we stood there in silence. When he turned to spit, he hit the bottom of my driver‑side door. I pretended not to notice.

“I guess the question I have is why would Ed…” I collected my thoughts for a brief moment. It occurred to me that I had adopted the name Ed instead of Eddie—that I was leaning against my truck in the same fashion as David. I stepped back and stood straight. “What reason would Eddie have to ‘pencil whip’ an inspection tag?”

I could tell that David was giving it some serious thought. “You know, if you’re lazy and just don’t want to do your job you might pull some shit like that, but you’d get found out pretty fast and fuckin’ fired. Ed wasn’t lazy. He was kind of a hard ass in the way he did his job.”

I waited for another reason, but David wasn’t ready to offer one just yet. He continued to kick at the gravel and spit. Eventually he spoke. “All of this,” he said as he gestured to the refinery, “all of this costs a lot of money. Pipefitters, welders… they can’t do their job if the scaffolding isn’t green‑tagged. You know what I’m saying?”

I nodded.

“I don’t know how much money is lost. A shit ton, I imagine. The company Ed worked for does turnarounds.”

“What’s a turnaround?”

“You know, you gotta shut down for maintenance. You know what I mean? Like I said, I don’t know the numbers, but it’s gotta be a shit ton of money, right?”

David handed the inspection tag back to me. It was twice as heavy as before.

“Who do you know that might be able to give me an idea about how much a ‘shit ton of money’ would be?”

David looked at me. I recognized that look—it was the same look of suspicion I used to get in my previous life.

“Are you serious? You think people are gonna risk their fuckin’ jobs over this?”

“I don’t know. I hope someone is willing to do the right thing.”

“You’re a trip, man. Ain’t no one gonna talk to you. Why the fuck would they? Who are you?” He had a smirk on his face. It was a look of disdain.

I resented that look. It pissed me off the same way it used to, and I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

“If ‘Ed’ was such a ‘good man’ and a good friend, then you should know that two men died recently and he blamed himself. Did you know that?”

“No. I mean, I heard about them two guys, but I didn’t know that Ed had anything to do with it.”

“He did. And it bothered him enough to tell his wife about it. It bothered him enough to try to get in touch with me.”

“Okay.”

“No. Not ‘Okay.’ I haven’t seen or spoken to Eddie in twenty years or so, but he was a good friend at one time. He and I and a bunch of others used to get mixed up in some pretty stupid shit in our younger days, but I can tell you that he wasn’t a bad guy. He didn’t victimize people. He didn’t rob, didn’t steal. He sure as hell wouldn’t purposely allow anyone to get hurt or die. Not the guy I knew.”

I walked around David and looked at the spit on my car door. I wanted him to see me looking. He needed to know who I was.

“But let’s say maybe he changed. Maybe the ‘Ed’ you knew was just another asshole who didn’t give two shits if someone lived or died.  That doesn’t make sense, does it?  You said he was ‘hard ass’ about his job.”

I turned my gaze from the spit and looked directly into this drunkard’s eyes. “So, I’ll ask again: why would Eddie Morales have done anything that risked the life of others? He wasn’t lazy, right? So what, then? What reason would he have to—what did you call it?—‘pencil whip’?”

“Yeah.”

I stepped closer. I wanted him to see how large I actually was when I wasn’t being polite.

“I’ll tell you what I think. I think he had some kind of incentive to do it. I don’t know what…,maybe money, maybe the threat of losing his job. I don’t know, but I intend to find out. Not because I was once friends with Eddie or because his wife asked me to, but because he regretted it. He was ‘repentant’. Do you know what that means?”

“Kinda.”

“It means that it’s in my job description now.”

CHAPTER FIVE – THE ORDER OF SERVICE

Chapter Five: The Order of Service

I agreed to stick around the area until David got off work.  He said he’d do his best to introduce me to a co-worker of his that had some knowledge of Drayton Industries.  No guarantees. 

I pulled my truck into a nearby grocery store parking lot and steered into a space  under the shade of a small oak.  I didn’t bother turning on the radio.  I needed the silence.  The clatter of grocery cart wheels in the distance was going to do the work of a lullaby. 

Mondays are a minister’s Saturdays.  At least in theory, but I knew better.  I decided to go ahead and call my church.  Beth picked up the line “Good afternoon, Brother Stevens.”  Her voice was cheerful.  It was always cheerful.  If you didn’t know this woman you would think she never experienced a bad day in her life.  But I knew her very well and that cheerfulness masked a sharpness of wit and intelligence gained from a life of hard experiences.  She could entertain insincerity and foolishness to some degree, but to tell her a lie was akin to pointing a loaded pistol at her.  An unforgivable transgression that would never be forgotten.  I had seen it in her relationship with her long-departed husband and with some of the church staff we used to have when we hosted a much larger congregation some years ago.  I made sure I never crossed that line. 

“Afternoon, Beth.  I’m just checking in. “

“Well, good thing you did.  I’ve updated your calendar.  Check your phone.  And..”

“Yes?”

“Jim is going to want to talk to you.  You changed the order of the service yesterday.  You know how he is.  He hates it when you do that.” 

“I’ll call him this evening.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“No?”

“I think he’s planning on coming over to your house.”

“I probably won’t be home till late.  If you speak to him let him know that and that I’ll call him on my way home this evening.”

“On your way home?  Are you out of town?”

“No, just tied up.”

“Tied up with what?”  I knew she wasn’t going to let this go.

“I’m helping out an old friend of mine.” 

“Helping them how?”

“Goodbye, Beth.  Don’t forget that if you see Jim to…”

“I’ll tell him you are going to call him and you won’t be home.”

“Perfect.”  I hung up the phone and leaned the seat of my truck back as far as it would go and closed my eyes.

I was aware that I was trying to nap.  Every distant voice, each honk jarred me back to remembering I was trying to nap.  And then I sat up and saw the time.  I had been sleeping for nearly two hours.  I checked my phone.  No text from David.  I stepped outside of my truck to stretch my legs.  A westerly front was beginning to come in and it pushed the rotten egg smell out with it .  The rain would follow soon and that meant a tortuous commute back to my house. 

I glanced at my calendar to see what had changed.  Beyond a budgeting meeting being shifted to Wednesday she had only added a home visit to a sick parishioner.  I was glad.  It would be a light week.  The notification of a text chimed.  I clicked it and copied the address to my maps.  A little over two miles away.  I climbed back in the truck and started the engine.

CHAPTER SIX – MARGINS OF PROFIT

Chapter Six: Margins of Profit

Hank’s was a B.Y.O.B. kind of place.  I wasn’t expecting that when I pulled in.  I saw David get out of the passenger side of an older Ford F-150 that had already been parked there.  The driver, a burly, bearded older man in a trucker’s cap stepped out of the driver’s seat.  I unhooked my seat belt and opened my door.  I felt the first drops of rain on my face.  Both men walked to the front door and entered and I followed.

This type of bar felt like a throwback to a different time.  Sort of similar to my own neighborhood icehouse, but not quite.  Two pool tables took up the space in the rear of the place.  The wall opposite of the bar itself was cluttered with standard bar signage and neon with three slot machines and two old video games.  One had a “Out of Order” sign taped to it.  A fifty inch television hung from the ceiling near the front corner.  In the area near the front end of the bar a massive confederate flag hung.  The waitress/bartender was heavy set and wore a black tank top.  She waved to David and his friend.  They waved back.

We took a seat at a small table near the entrance.  It was the spot furthest from a jukebox next to the pool tables.  I was grateful.

“Stevens, this is Bill.”  David pointed to the burly man next to him. 

I studied the man for a moment, trying to capture whatever clues about him I could find, but, aside from his imposing size, he just smiled a friendly, almost shy smile.  Something about that made me instantly like him. 

“Nice to meet you, Bill” I extended my hand to him and he took and firmly shook it.

“Likewise,”

A small pause and then I spoke up. “Did David tell you about what I found?”

“Oh, sure.  Sure.  It’s no bueno, you know what I mean?”

“Right.  I agree.”

“That kind of thing is under the table.  I’m not saying it happens every day, but I’ve seen it happen.”

“A lot?”

“Depends on the company.”

“Alright.”

“Downtime can mean as much as $300 to $500 thousand dollars an hour.  You delay an inspection by a couple of days it’s in the tens of millions of dollars.  You follow?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there you go.”  The waitress/bartender brought over three Miller Lite’s.  I picked mine up and handed it back to her.

Bill thanked her by name.  Gina.

“I’m sorry.  I really don’t drink.”  I wasn’t lying.  I don’t drink on Monday.

David looked at me in disbelief. “You don’t drink?”

“I’m a minister.”  I could feel every eye upon me.  David finally let out a snort and a laugh.

“No shit?” He asked.

“No shit.”  Another pause and then laughter from all three of them. 

“Hell, give me that beer.  I’ll drink it.”  David took the bottle from my hand and sat it next to his.

Gina looked at me with some concern and, if I wasn’t imagining it, some pity. “Can I get you a Coke?”

“That sounds good.  I’ll take that.”  And with that she walked away.  I returned my attention to Bill, but David wasn’t finished with the whole ‘minister’ thing yet.

“Well, now it makes sense.  How did you come to know Ed?”

“We grew up together.  Got in fights together.  Got arrested together.”  I wanted to put this dog to bed and get back to business. I looked back at Bill. “You said ‘there you go’.  What does that mean?”

“It means ‘There you go’.  You’ve got hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars riding on a turnaround .  If your company can’t perform the task efficiently then you can kiss renewables and bonuses goodbye.”

“You’re talking about contracts?”

“Yes.”

“So, and I’m just going to be blunt here, what might…”  I had to search for the right words.  “What would draw Eddie into this?  David says he took his job very seriously.”

Bill took a large swig of his beer.  Finished nearly half of it with one swallow.  He looked at me with the same friendly face as when we sat down.  “Quick money.”

“How much money?”

“That’s the thing.  Nobody is making big bucks on this but the company.  It might be a few hundred dollars to the guy who just looks away, to a few thousand bucks to the one who puts down his ‘John Hancock’.” 

“Do you think Eddie would do this for a few thousand dollars?”

David spoke up.  “I don’t know about you, but a few thousand dollars is a lot of money to me.  I’m not saying I’d do it, but I’d probably think about it real hard.”  Gina returned with my Coke and two more beers. 

“You boys want something to eat?”

Bill spoke up.  “No, we’re good, girl.”  He gave her a moment to walk out of earshot and turned back to me. “I didn’t know this guy.  He was a friend of David’s.  But based on what Davids told me I think he was a lot like me.  He took his job seriously.  He took pride in what he did.”  He leaned back in his chair. “But maybe he wasn’t like me.  You know, if you do this sort of thing and nothing happens then it’s easy money.  Job was finished ahead of schedule, everybody gets a little bonus.  No one got hurt.  But I’ve been doing this for over thirty-five years.  Longer than I’ve been married.  Carelessness gets people killed.  I’ve got a lot of friends that I work with.  I don’t want their deaths on my conscious.  I’ve gone to enough funerals for friends who made mistakes, but not because they were corrupt.  You couldn’t pay me enough to pencil whip an inspection or paperwork.  No.  I don’t understand that.  But you know what I do understand?  Pressure.  Time is money and I’ve got enough people that breathe down my neck every day to get things done on time when it’s just business as usual.  No bonuses or contract renewals involved at all.”

“Do you think he feared for his job?”

“I think you’ve got a lot people in this industry who don’t hold degrees and still make six figure incomes and they’re grateful for that and willing to protect that at all costs.”

I chewed on this for a moment before I took a sip of my drink.  “I think Eddie was killed.  Purposely.    Scaffolding, the very thing he knew the most about, I suppose, collapsed on him.”

Bill nodded.  “I’ll tell you why I agree with you – Drayton Industries.”

“What’s that mean?  They have a reputation?”

“Among the trade workers, at least.  They underbid a lot of competition for the work they do.  I’ve got a few friends that have worked for them.  Probably one or two that still do.  I don’t see how they could get as many contracts that they do if they weren’t cutting corners somewhere.”

I looked at David.  He looked back at me and shrugged.

“So what do I do now?”

Bill laughed. “Do?  What do you think you could do?”

“Isn’t there a government body I could report them to?  OSHA?  Texas Workforce Commission?”

“Yeah, you got those, but you what you don’t have is time.” 

“Why not?” 

“I’ll bet that the turnaround is nearly complete and scaffolding is already coming down.  How do you prove it then?” 

Outside of the bars front door the rain began to fall more steadily.  The westerly winds were picking up.  I could see the trash and debris being blown across the parking lot.

CHAPTER SEVEN – OUT OF SQUARE

Chapter Seven: Out of Square

I made a last-minute decision and took a chance after I left Hank’s B.Y.O.B to drive to Laura’s house unannounced.  It was only a few miles from the bar, and I was in no hurry to take I-45 back home in a storm.  The heaviest part of this front would push through in an hour or so.  I might be able to delay my involvement in it and discuss what I’ve learned with her in the comfort of her living room.

She was surprised to see me when she opened the front door.  I apologized as best I could, but I was firm that she needed to hear what I had to say.  She was gracious and warm and I didn’t expect that.  She welcomed me into her home and pointed me to the sofa.  Two boys, around four and six years of age were playing with toy cars on the floor while the news was on the television behind them.  They looked at me with mild curiosity and then turned their attention back to their play.  There were no dishes in the sink and no laundry baskets next to the garage door.  The only thing that sat on her counter tops were the ingredients for mac and cheese and a package of still wrapped chicken.  I saw the Golden Retriever looking at me from the concrete patio pad.   A small 6’x6’ roof that extended from the top of the door kept the animal out of the downpour. 

She was once again dressed professionally, but attractively and I noticed something I hadn’t noticed on my two previous encounters with her: Her perfume hung in the air as she passed, a sweetness I hadn’t noticed before.   It occurred to me that she was wearing this same perfume both previous times and I never noticed. 

“I’ve come at a bad time.  I’m very sorry.  I’ll call you when I get home.”  I started to turn back towards the entrance of the house.

“No, you haven’t.  I want you to stay.  I need to hear what you have to say.”  She walked to her kitchen, turned on her sink tap and began tearing open the package of chicken. “Have you eaten yet?”. 

“No.”  I confessed. “But please don’t go through the trouble.”

“I’m cooking dinner, whether you eat it or not, so you might as well just say yes.”

“I guess I’m having chicken.”  I tried to smile, but I just felt uncomfortable.  I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t leave me alone.  This was Eddie’s home.  What was I doing here?

“Why don’t you grab the remote on the couch next to you and find something you want to watch and relax for a while.  We can talk after dinner.”   

I sat on the couch and watched the young boys play on the floor while I listened to her make her dinner preparations.  For the last few days, I’ve felt like I was in motion, even when I was only sitting and thinking the situation over.  Now I felt a stall.  No sense of movement at all.  I needed to occupy myself with something.  I looked at the broken screen on the patio door track.  The dog was still eyeing me; its tail waving behind it. 

“You know, I can fix the screen to your door.  Do you mind if I do that?”

“Are you just trying to keep busy?”

“Yes.  Absolutely.  I need to do something to earn my meal.”

“Then go for it. “

I stood up from the couch and walked to the door and slid it open.  The dog did not try to rush past me, it merely backed up and allowed me the necessary room to step outside, which I did.  I slid the operating panel closed again and turned my attention to the screen.  The frame wasn’t in bad condition, but it was obviously forced into the track causing the door to be out of square.  I lifted the screen up, allowing its bottom wheels to clear the track.  I pulled the bottom towards me and removed the door fully.  I could feel some of the rain hitting my back as I did.  I turned the door frame on its side and fished in my pocket for my pocketknife.  I flipped open the flat head on it. I grabbed the corner of the screen that hung loose and lifted it back into place, taut and without wrinkles. I pressed the spline back into the groove and worked it around the frame.  A mere five minutes to accomplish.  I turned the door upright and positioned the top to slide into the upper cavity, pushed the bottom of the door with my foot back onto the track and allowed it to rest on its wheels.  I slid it back and forth a few times.  It operated perfectly.  I turned to the dog.  It merely looked up at me and wagged its tail.  I gave it a pat or two and pulled open the glass panel and stepped inside.  Not even ten minutes had passed.

Laura looked at the door and smiled.  She turned her eyes to me, never breaking that smile.  I asked myself again what I was doing here? 

“So, now you’ve been at my house twice and it occurred to me that I don’t know anything about you, other than my husband wanted me to contact you.”

I pulled out a bar stool next to the kitchen island and sat down.  “I hadn’t thought about that.  I just assumed he must have given you some background.”

She began placing coated chicken pieces into a heated skillet.  It crackled, popped and sizzled with the introduction of each piece.  I felt much the same.

“No.  Hardly anything at all.  Are you married?”

“Divorced.”

“Oh?  Kids?”

“No.  We never got that far.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, why did you get divorced?”

“I sobered up.”  She let out a small laugh.

“You said you were a minister?”

“That’s right.”  She turned her head to look at me, but she wasn’t scoffing.  She looked curious.

“A minister?  That’s surprising.  You don’t look like one.”

“I’m not wearing my blue suit, that’s why.” 

“So, you’re not a Catholic, like Eddie.  Are you a, what do you call them, a ‘Holy Roller’ type?”  She was only half joking.

“I’m more a “spiritual guidance” type for those that want or need it.”

“Were you always religious?” Her tone seemed earnest.

“No.  My father was Catholic, but we didn’t attend mass.” 

“You chose not to follow?”

“Being Catholic and not going to mass?  No.  The only church I attended in my childhood was my grandmother’s Baptist church.  She made sure I attended.  It’s the same church I’m at now.”  The sizzle would grow louder momentarily each time she lifted the lid of the skillet to turn the chicken. 

“So, you weren’t religious as a kid.  When did it kick in for you?”  A pot filled with tap water began to come to a boil next to the skillet.  She emptied the box of macaroni into it.

“Much later.  After my divorce.  Around the period that I stopped hanging around my old friends, including Eddie.”

“So…, why did you stop hanging around your old friends?  You thought they were a bad influence on you?”

“Just the opposite.  Some of us were better than others.”

“But not you?”

I turned my head and looked at the boys in the living room.  They had introduced action figures to their play.  “I’ve been a liar and a thief.  I drank a lot, got high a lot and I had a chip on my shoulder.  Eddie drank and got high, but he wasn’t a liar and thief like me.”

Laura pulled a plate covered in paper towels close to the oven.  She turned off the burner under the skillet and put the lid in her sink.  She began transferring chicken pieces from the skillet to the plate.  “He told me he spent a lot of time in Gatesville Juvenile detention.” 

“He did.  With me and my best friend Thibodeaux.  Did he ever tell you why?”

“He said he got into a lot of fights.”

“He did.  But it wasn’t because he was a bad kid.  He wasn’t a punk like me.  And Thibodeaux, that guy was just mean, period.  And crazy.  Eddie’s problem, his biggest weakness, was that he was loyal.”

“How is that a problem?”

“Because he always had our backs, no matter who was at fault.  We were a group of about five guys that just hung out together.  We would start trouble or get drunk and start a fight and Eddie…, I don’t know…he felt it was his duty to join in.  He was loyal that way.  We would get kicked out of school, suspended.  Eventually we ended up in court and sent to Gatesville.  I went twice.  I never knew him to start a fight.  It was always one of us, but not him.  But he would be there, doing his part.”

She turned to me as she sat the plate down on the island.  “How do you go from a thief and a liar to minister?”

“I didn’t see a future for myself.  I was repeating the same mistakes over and over.  I was trying to understand what made me act the way I acted.  Find the thing that motivated me so I could resist it.”

She looked back up at me. “And?  What was it?”

The rain was heavier now.  “Opportunity.  Whenever the opportunity to make the wrong decision was presented to me, I always took it.”

CHAPTER EIGHT – THE COST OF LOYALTY

We ate dinner with minimal small talk at her kitchen table.  The boys were only slightly raucous.  When they got a little too loud or preoccupied with something else Laura would raise her eyebrows and simply tap on their plates with her fork and they would resume eating, their heads slightly bowed, their eyes watching their mother.  She had asked if I wanted to say grace, so I did, but I kept it brief.  Had she not asked I would not have forced it on her.  I was in her home.

After dinner she asked her children to go and occupy themselves quietly in the living room.  She didn’t speak; she waited.

“I’ve been talking to Eddie’s friend, David Wozniak and another man in the same industry.”  I pulled the napkin from my lap and set it on the table.  I started to pick up the glass of iced tea in front of me but continued.  “They both agree that Eddie was probably signing off on scaffolding inspections without doing the actual inspection.”

She looked offended.  It was stern and unblinking, but she said nothing.

“I don’t know for a fact why he would do it, but I have my suspicions, if you would like to hear them.”

“I would.” 

“For two reasons.  The first I’m pretty positive about.  He was under pressure to do it from his superiors.  The company was at risk of losing a great deal of money if the inspections caused delays.  Does that make sense?”

She simply shrugged, still not blinking.  I could feel heat coming off her.  She was choking down anger and I knew it.  “Let me ask you a question before I bring up the second reason:  Did Eddie bring home or deposit any extra cash?”

“No.”  Her answer was sharp and immediate.  “My husband wasn’t crooked.”

“I agree.  I don’t think he did it for money.”

“Then why would you think he did it at all?”

I let the silence stretch before I spoke.  “For the same reason that he got into trouble when we were kids.  He was loyal.”

“To who?”

“I don’t know.  To the company he worked for?  Maybe for the sake of a co-worker or friend.  Listen, before you get angry, just hear me out on this.  He told you he felt responsible for those two men who died, right?”

“Yes”

“Okay, well what that tells me is that nothing about your husband had changed since I knew him.  He wasn’t a liar and he wasn’t a thief.  He felt responsible because he felt he had a hand in it and if that was true, he was going to do the right thing, even if it meant jail time for him.  He was going to have their backs.  And I think he told somebody what he planned to do, beside you.”

She was contemplating my point of view.  It wasn’t accusatory or dismissive.  I could see her features physically soften.  The glare was gone from her blue eyes because she understood.  “So, what are you really saying?  Are you implying, and maybe I’m misunderstanding this, that maybe he was murdered?”

“I don’t have proof.  It’s just my theory, but it makes more sense than coincidence, doesn’t it?”

She paused a few beats before she replied.  “How do you prove it, then?”

“I can’t.  I wouldn’t be allowed to set foot in the refinery.  And the clock is ticking.  If those tags get replaced or logged correctly, it’ll disappear into paperwork.”  I lifted the glass of iced tea and took a breath and then a drink. 

She shifted in her chair with her body now pointed more directly at me.  “So, there’s nothing that can be done.”  It wasn’t a question; it wasn’t a definitive statement.  I think she sensed that I had other thoughts and she was giving me the opening to state them.

“Has the insurance company contacted you?”

“No, but I was contacted by a representative from Drayton about worker’s compensation.  I still have the paperwork.  I haven’t signed it yet.”

“Have you read over the paperwork?”

“No.  I haven’t been in the right frame of mind to do it yet.”

“My suggestion is that you don’t sign anything.  If they call you about it just tell them to give you enough time to review it.  Don’t mention anything else.  If the insurance adjuster contacts you, and hopefully soon, then I would tell them something different.”

“Which is?”

“That you’re talking with an attorney about the possibility of negligence.  You might even bring up the idea that the inspections were not being properly handled.”

“What will that do?”

“I think it’s your only chance of putting boots on the ground at the facility they were working at.  It might trigger them enough to sniff around.  They might not wait for permission from the company because they want to protect their money, not Drayton’s.  If any of those inspection tags are post dated and still hanging on the equipment or a third-party audit is performed this might be the only shot of proving it.  It may not prove murder, but this may be the only justice you’re able to get.”

CHAPTER NINE – LAST RITES

I turned onto my street just before nine that evening and I could see Jim’s car parked in front of my house.  I took the Lord’s name in vain and asked forgiveness before I’d even killed the engine.  Jim got out of his car and waited for me on my front porch.  I couldn’t believe that a minor change in yesterday’s service could upset him so much that he would camp out in front of my home and wait for me.  Jim could be a handful at times, but I never knew him to be petty. 

He was a tall man.  I was six feet, but he stood a good six inches taller than me in his stocking feet.  With his boots and Stetson hat he was an imposing figure despite being elderly.  He had always reminded me of John Wayne, but tougher.  I unlocked the door and pushed it open.  That was the only invitation he needed. 

“You didn’t call me.  Beth said you was gonna call.”

“Sorry about that.  Had a long day.”

He hit the light switch on the wall and nodded.  He sat down in the recliner and, with two hands, removed his Stetson and placed it on the coffee table.  I didn’t say a word.  I closed the front door behind me, walked straight into the kitchen and pulled my coffee mug from the cabinet. I heard Jim cough a few times.  It was getting worse. 

“Can I get you some coffee, Jim?”

“I don’t drink that mud you serve.” He replied.  “You need to getcha one of those machines that use those pods.  You’ll live longer.  It’ll taste better anyway.”  There was brief silence but then movement.  I could hear him walking towards the kitchen.  The combination of his weight, the boots and the wood floors eliminated any possibility of him sneaking up on me.  I pulled my mug from the microwave and began to spoon in the instant coffee.  “You still drink beer on Thursdays?”

I learned as a teenager to never act surprised when I’d been caught in the act of something.  I didn’t care what I was doing or who caught me, I ignored them and continued with whatever I was engaged in as if it were the most normal thing in the world.  Just ignore the deed and stir the coffee. 

I was surprised, though.  I never suspected that I had been seen at my neighborhood icehouse.  Ever.  I simply answered “Yep.”

“Well, why don’t you switch it up this week and let’s go have a drink tonight.  It’ll be better for you than that swill you’re stirring.”

I debated putting the mug back into the microwave to wait for my return home, then just dumped it in the sink.

The two of us drove the two blocks to the bar in silence.  When we walked in Nick was behind the bar with the television remote in his hands talking with woman in a ribbed tank top.  When he saw me, it was as if he just witnessed a miracle. 

I let Jim pick the table and we sat down.  Nick rushed over.  “I don’t believe it.  Guess I’ll have to buy a lotto ticket tonight.  Special occasion?”

“No, we’re just here to talk.”

“I won’t get in your way, then.  But, hey, considering the importance of this event, to me at least, first drinks are on me.  What can I get you?”

Jim spoke up first. “Jack and coke, if you don’t mind.”

Nick turned to me. “Miller lite?”

“No.  I’m just going to have a coke.”

“You don’t want to have a drink with me?”

“I restrict myself to Thursdays.”

“Well, hell, I’m not going to let you insult me like that.”  He turned to Nick. “Get him a bourbon.  He probably hasn’t had one of those in a few decades.  It’ll be good for him.”

I didn’t protest.

The Cheyenne Icehouse was a holdover from this neighborhood’s older days.  No attempt has ever been made, in my estimation, to dress this place up to compete with the slick new bars that attract the young and good‑looking.  If I had to guess, the last attempt to make this place swanky was 1973. 

We sat in continued silence for a while until Nick brought our drinks and hurried back behind the bar to continue his conversation with the woman.  Jim looked at me before taking a hard swig of his drink. “I’m a little concerned about you, Stevens.”

“Oh?  Why’s that?”

“Because I know you and I know your habits.  And you are a man of habits.  I could set my watch by you.”

“Is this about Sunday’s service?  I know you hate it when I…”

“No, this ain’t about yesterday’s service.  You’ve never listened to me before and I’m tired of flogging that dead horse.”  He tapped his finger on the rim of his glass.  “You’re a smart man.  You’ve got an eye for detail, but I betcha never realized that I got eyes and a brain too.  Friday and Saturday, you looked like a man who just watched his dog get run over by a truck.  All day.  And yesterday…, yesterday I drove by the church around three in the afternoon and your truck was still there.”  He paused to cough. “I’ll lay odds that you weren’t at the nursing home visiting with your mother today.”

I smiled, but it was more out of frustration. “Do you watch my every move, Jim?  When did that start?”

“I don’t give a damn watcha do, Barrett.  That ain’t the point I’m making.  You and I have worked and prayed and ate together for a long time.  You may not realize it, but I know you pretty well.  I can tell when you’re troubled by something.”

I relaxed my posture.  Jim wasn’t being confrontational.  He came at everything in the way a small town Oklahoma man would.  Blunt and to the point.  I took a sip of the bourbon.  That long ago forgotten taste unleashed memories in the same way as reconnecting with Eddie’s life had.  Maybe some things are better left buried, but this wasn’t one of them. 

I unfolded the story to Jim as best I could.  I wanted to hear his opinion.  He was a pragmatist.  If I had been filling in too many details with wild theories, then I was certain he would point them out to me.  He listened, he drank, he never looked at me.  He nodded in all the right places.  Finally, he leaned back and peered at me from under the brim of his hat.  A neon “Bud Lite” sign reflected in his glasses in the shadow of his hat.  “Seems to me that someone needs to answer for your friend.  You’ve steered her right, she might get a hefty settlement, but that ain’t total justice.  I don’t know what that looks like, though.”

I agreed and finished my drink.  So did Jim.

“Let’s have one more before we call it a night.  It’s been a long time since I was in a bar.”  He looked about the place.  “I miss it.  Can’t say much for your taste in establishments though.”  Nick was within earshot.  Jim must’ve caught him in the corner of his eye and turned to him. “No offense.”

Nick smiled.  “None taken.  Two more?”  Jim nodded his approval and turned back to me.  Jim began coughing again.  It was long and severe.  I thought I would have to start slamming him on the back.  He took out his handkerchief and wiped his mouth.  When he was done he stared into it.  His eyes were moist.  I chalked it up to the coughing fit.

“Do you remember Jimmy Swaggart?”

“Of course.”

“I never liked the pious son of a bitch.”

I was slightly taken aback, but I laughed.  He continued.

“Do you remember when he was caught with the prostitute?”

“Twice, wasn’t it?”

“I think you’re right.  Yeah.  Well, anyway, everybody was in an uproar.  Everyone was shocked.  If I’m recalling it correctly, he was removed from the Assembly of God.”

“It was a big scandal.”

“Yeah.  But I just felt bad for the man.  I didn’t condemn him.”

“That’s good, it’s not our job to condemn, but I have to ask why you didn’t when you hated him so much?”  I looked at his face.  He appeared lost in thought.

“Because he’s just human.  Just like me.  Just like you.  There are things in my life that I’ve never shared with another person, but I know I’m going to have to answer to God for it.  I’m not looking forward to that conversation.  I’ve prayed every night for forgiveness.  I don’t know if it’s taken.”

I felt regret for my exasperation earlier in the evening when I came home.  I felt stupid for not realizing what this was all about.   

CHAPTER TEN – WITNESSING

Pascal’s wager said it’s safer to live as if God exists.  You have everything to gain, nothing to lose.

I don’t believe that. Not really. Sincerity means something.  Yet there are many days I act as if I do. Going through the motions.

I think of Sisyphus, the stone small enough to fit in his pocket now. Camus said he was free because he made meaning from futility. But maybe that was the gods’ final joke.  To make him believe the burden was his choice.

If that’s true, it’s time to stop carrying the stone.

I rolled those thoughts around in my head as Jim and I drove to Nancy Williams’s home on Tuesday morning, turning them over much like I had with the green inspection tag. 

Her husband answered the door and made us comfortable in the living room before going to get his wife. After several minutes she emerged from her hallway dressed in a robe and carefully navigated her steps with a walker.  Her husband walked slowly behind her, his hands lightly perched on her hips to steady her as she entered the living room.  She smiled, but it wasn’t a smile of recognition.  I looked briefly at Jim.  I knew this was difficult for him.  It was nearly seven years ago that his wife, eight years his junior, slipped rapidly into Alzheimer’s shortly after retiring from her role as Branch Manager of a local bank.  It progressed so rapidly that she had to be placed in a nursing home two years into retirement.  Jim long suspected that the disease had remained undetected for at least a decade before it became obvious to everyone around her.  In retrospect, she had exhibited a loss of memory and confusion that might have indicated its presence, but he chalked those things up to job stress at the time.  He looked forward to their retirement together.  She passed four years ago.  It was blamed on Covid.  Her suffering was mercifully short.   Jim’s wasn’t.

Jim spent the majority of the visit in the kitchen with Nancy’s husband, speaking quietly amongst themselves.  I sat with Nancy and held her hand.  She held on to bits and pieces of her life and spoke about them with great fondness.  Before we departed we all gathered in the living room and bowed our heads and prayed. 

Job asked God why the wicked were allowed to prosper while he suffered.  Why did God treat him as an enemy?  God reminded him that his understanding of justice was limited and finite.  God’s was not.  Prayer, I think, acknowledges this.  We don’t treat God as a thing that grants wishes.  Our prayers are our acceptance of the limitations of our understanding and the placement of our burdens into the Lord’s hands.  It’s what allows us to continue in the face of tragedy and suffering. 

This visit had taken a visible toll on Jim emotionally and physically.  For a man who always looked larger than life to me, he looked frail.  Thankfully his cough was more subdued this morning.

“I’ve been thinking about your friend.”

“What about him?”

“Somebody needs to right that wrong.”

“If you’ve got ideas, I’d like to hear them.”

“You don’t want my ideas.  They all end with me going out in a blaze of glory.”  He let out a small laugh.

“Well, there you go.  Nothing that can be done.  I have nothing to go to the police with.  Just a layman’s theory of what might have happened.”

“You need a witness.”

“How do I find one?”

“I don’t have a clue.”  He wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.  “Didn’t that good ol’ boy say he might know a few people that work for that company?”

“’might’”

“Won’t hurt to try.  I don’t have anything better to do today.  Whaddya say we go hang out in a bar in Pasadena for a while.  I could use another drink.”

“Are you trying to send me straight to hell?”

“I’m gonna need the company.”

We came to a light and I stopped.  I lowered the visor on his side of the truck and flipped open the mirror. “Have you seen yourself today?  You’re not looking too good, my friend.”

Jim slapped the mirror shut and hit the visor upward with his hand angrily.  He still had some fight in him.  I let out a sigh as the light changed.  “We’ll get some lunch first.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN – THE WEIGHT OF DOUBT

I watched as Jim pushed his plate away and leaned back in the booth.  He removed his silver wire rimmed glasses and used his napkin to clean them.

“You hardly touched your sandwich.”

“Ahh.  It tastes like medicine.  Everything tastes like medicine.  I can’t get the taste out of my mouth.”

I continued to cut into my country fried steak.  “I appreciate that you’re taking an interest in this thing.  I really do, but to be clear…, I’m not sure what is expected of me by his wife.  Hell, by you, now.  I don’t work in this industry, I don’t know anything about OSHA and the procedures.  I’m sure that they were already involved in investigating the…what do you call it..” I spun my fork in the air. “…scaffolding collapse.”  I bit into another piece and chewed a few times.  “The only reason why I have any lingering doubt and suspicion on this matter is because he admitted to his wife that he was partly responsible for those other two guys dying.”

“That’s right.  And I agree with you.”

“That doesn’t make it murder. It might just be bad luck that the scaffolding collapsed.  If she can get the insurer to investigate then anything done purposely might be uncovered.”

“Sounds like you’re talking yourself out of this.”

“I’m just trying to keep a perspective on things.  The false inspections are already enough.  I don’t need to pour fuel on the fire with something I’ve conjured up in my imagination.”

Jim put his glasses back on. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his chin and then patted his forehead before slipping it back into his back pocket again.  “Barrett, I didn’t know this friend of yours, but I’ve known you since you were a long-haired, dope smoking teenager.  It would’ve been easy to have dismissed you as a punk back then.  I figure most of the people at the church did.  But I saw how you treated your grandmother.  You were obedient to her.  Respectful.  You did things for her.  She helped you out and you helped her out.  You didn’t strike me as a kid that was trying to take advantage of her, you know…, leech off her social security.  You didn’t give a damn about church, but your grandmother wanted you there, so you went.”  He pointed at me. “See?  I told you.  I see things too.  That’s why I wasn’t surprised when you went to seminary.  I know you for what you are and you’re a lot of things, but you’re also, sometimes, a pretty decent man who does the right thing when he thinks no one else is looking.  You might be right.  Your boy mighta just caught an unlucky break. But you need to go at least one step further and prove it to yourself.  If you don’t you know it’s gonna gnaw at you.  Anyway, won’t harm nothing to try.”

I knew this was Jim’s sentimentality talking, considering what he was going through, so I didn’t put too much stock in it, but I also agreed that taking this one step further wasn’t going to hurt one way or another.  “Maybe I can get Bill to just meet us here.”

“Fine.  That’ll be fine.  Have the waitress bring me a Jack and Coke.”

“We’re in a Denny’s.”

“Exactly.  We passed a bar a few blocks past.  Looked passable.  Let’s go pay it a visit.”

The bar had a smell to it.  Like a mechanic’s garage, grease and sweat.  Not a window in the joint and the walls were painted black.  It was too early in the day for that many men to be inside, but this was an area of town I’ve never spent much time in, so it might be business as usual.  They weren’t making much noise.  They all looked tired.  Beat down. 

It didn’t take Bill too long to find the place.  I suppose he knows his way around this area well enough.  What did he say?  Thirty-five years or thereabouts?  We grabbed a table as far away from the other patrons as we could. 

“Thanks for showing up, Bill.”

“Never too busy when free beer is involved.”   He wore the same trucker’s cap and possibly the same clothes he had on yesterday. Something was missing, though.  “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Jim.  Close friend of mine.  He and I got to talking about some of what you said yesterday.”

“Yeah.” He held up one finger. “Before we talk let’s order our beers.  Gotta get them at the bar.”  He stood and waited.  I told Jim to stay seated, I’d get our drinks.  Bill and I walked up to the bar.  I stuck around until the drinks came and then returned to our table.  I gave Bill his beer, Jim got his Jack and Coke and I just got a bottle of water.  Jim looked annoyed by that.  Bill spoke up.  “You were saying.”

“You said you might know some men who work for Drayton?”

“Yeah, I thought about it after we talked.  I definitely know a few of them boys.”

I think we both had the same thought, but Jim spoke first. “Any chance one of them boys witnessed the accident?”

“The one that killed your friend?”

“Yes.” I said, beating Jim to the punch.

Bill took a drink of his beer, his eyes looked elsewhere. “Oh, I’m pretty sure at least one of them did.  Maybe all of them.” He shrugged.  The shrug triggered the recognition of what was missing.  It was yesterday’s good natured smile that was missing.

“Do you think they would speak to us?”

“Well, that’s the real question, isn’t it?  Depends on what they have to lose.  From the sound of things, it might be a lot.”

“All I can hope for is that their conscience steers them in the right direction.”

Bill looked at me.  A man who yesterday I perceived as jovial and friendly now had the look of grimness on his face. “Our boy, David…, he likes to drink.  And when he drinks he likes to talk.  Yesterday, after you left, he kept drinking.  The bar was filled with people to talk to.”

A sudden wave of guilt washed over me.  Have I started something that I have no business being in?  “So ‘word travelled’ is what you’re saying?”

“Yes, it did.”

I leaned back in my chair, my eyes downcast.  By asking just a few questions yesterday I was now in over my head.  These are real people with real jobs and a real company that may or may not have played around with the rules.  I had no way of knowing for sure.  Now I was at risk of destroying reputations with innuendo.  “I’m a god damned fool.”

I heard Jim clear his throat and shift his chair closer to the table. “Oh? Because you stepped up to the plate when it was asked of you?”  I looked at Jim and he turned to Bill. “Three dead.  In a matter of weeks.  Do you buy that?  Do you think it’s a coincidence?  Tell me that you believe that the last one was just another accident.  He admitted to his wife he was going to talk.  He probably told some of his co-workers as well.  You tell me that it was just bad luck that, after he had made up his mind to go to OSHA or whoever, he dies like the other two.  If you can tell me that and I believe you then I’ll call ol’ Barret here a ‘god damned fool’ too and we’ll leave.  But if you don’t believe it then I want to know.  I want to know that you’re the man of integrity that Barrett says you is.”   

Bill looked hard at Jim, but it wasn’t a look of malice, it was a look of respect.  Jim, in his talk of integrity hit a nerve with Bill.  He saw himself as a man with integrity.  I realized how clever Jim really was.  “He’s no fool.  That turnaround should have been shut down immediately, but it wasn’t after the third guy died.  It wasn’t.  Some of these guys out here, that do this kind of work…, it’s hard work, it’s dangerous work.  Some of these men don’t care.  They’re dangerous men themselves.  We’ve got all types out here.  College educated family men and high school dropouts.  Upstanding citizens and ex-felons.  Drayton employed ex-cons.  They didn’t have to pay them as much.  ‘Take it or leave it’ is their philosophy.  Drayton Industries is strictly in the business of making a profit any way it can.  The way I see it now, is that word has spread that some asshole minister is asking questions and if he finds something provable, maybe someone to back up his theory, then some of these dangerous men are going to employ some dangerous tactics. Right?”

Jim nodded in agreement.  “Yeah, that’s sound ‘bout right”. 

Bill continued. “You see, problem for me is that now I’m in the thick of it.  I was seen with you yesterday and I’m with you now.  Being watched.  By one of those men who may have witnessed your friend’s accident.”

“He’s in this bar?”

“Right over there in the corner, eyeballing us.” 

CHAPTER TWELVE – BLOOD ON THE COLLAR

He was of average build.  Mustached and unshaven for the last few days.  Tattoos covering his forearms.  The rest of him hidden beneath a camo hunting vest and black t-shirt.  He noticed that we noticed him.  Picking up his beer he stood and walked towards us, grabbing a chair from the table in front of us, scrapping it along the floor behind him before swinging it into place directly next to my right.  He sat down looking the three of us over with an expression of disdain. 

Bill smiled at him.  “How’re you doin’ Jesse?”

“Shut the fuck up, Bill.” He looked at Jim and I.  “Which one of you assholes is the one that wants to get the shit beat out of him?”

“I’m not looking for a fight.  I’m only here to talk.”

“That’s your problem, right there.  You talking.  About shit you don’t know anything about.  And worse than that, you’re talking to a dirtbag idiot who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground and this loser here.”  He pointed to Bill with his thumb.  “You’re going to listen to this guy?  This fucker is a nut.  All into conspiracy theory shit.  Moon landing, pizza gate, shit about the Pope.  This fucker still lives with his momma and she’s as whacked out as he is.  Have you seen their house?  Hoarding trash and shit.  Can’t even get through the front door.”

Bill leaned in. “Why’re you gonna make this personal?”

“Fuck you, Bill.”  He never once took his eyes off of me. “There’s a reason this mother fucker has to work by himself.  Nobody else can stand listening to his stupid shit.” 

“This ain’t about me, Jesse.  This man just wanted to speak to friends of mine about what they mighta known or seen.”

“You ain’t my friend, Bill.  You’re just some asshole too stupid to realize people don’t want to be around you.  Telling everyone how to do their jobs.  The hell it ain’t about ‘you’.  You’re putting ideas in this mother fuckers head about shit he has no business in.”

 The table was silent for a moment.  Jim was looking at his lap, his hands clasped below his stomach.  Bill was wounded.  I guess he didn’t expect this man’s wrath to be turned in his direction.  I just looked at Jesse and remained expressionless. “I’m only asking questions because I was asked to.  I’m not looking to cause problems for anyone.”

“Wozniak says your supposed to be a preacher.  He says you’re saying this might be ‘murder’?  Are you a preacher pretending to be a cop?  Who the fuck are you to say some shit like that?”  Jessee grinned. “ I’ll tell you what, why don’t you go back to your church and do your little preaching crap and let the men do the real work.  You want to talk about murder?  Alright you mother fucker, I’ll tell you about murder.  If you cause any problems that interferes with my work or my company’s work there will be a murder.  I will fuckin’ hunt you down and kill you myself.”

This threat, no matter how empty, felt like it required a response.  I searched quickly to find one that man, in the service of God, might say but all I came up with was “You have to do what you have to do.”  It came off as defiance and juvenile.

The grin was gone and was replaced with sharp anger.  Jesse stood up.  “’I gotta do what I gotta do’?  Fuck you!”

I wasn’t expecting the punch.  His fist connected with my temple and knocked me off balance, my chair and myself falling backwards and my head striking the chair behind me.  The punch landed no harder than a slap, but hitting my head on the chair caused me real pain.  I lay there for a moment, unsure of how to feel.  As I picked myself up I decided on embarrassment.  I may have been angry, too, but I wasn’t going to act on it.  It had been a few decades since I’ve been sucker punched and I doubted I was up for the task of challenging it.  I lifted my chair and sat back down and looked to Jim. “Where did he go?”

“He left.  No point sticking around, I guess.  You’re heads bleeding.  Better get that looked at.”

I felt the back of my head.  A lump was already rising.  I felt the sting and soreness of a small cut where it had made contact with the chair.  “No.  I’m fine.  It’s nothing.”

“Well, you should at least change your shirt.  You got blood on your collar.”

“Good.”  I said.  “Maybe the next man we talk to won’t feel the need to pile on.”

I sat rubbing the back of my head.  I wondered if my lack of pursuit of the man who had just hit me was restraint or cowardice.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart.

Maybe God knew the difference.  I didn’t.

Bill was silent.  Publicly shamed by someone that, up to this point, he maybe felt he was on friendly terms with.  I patted and gripped his arm. “We still have to try to talk with your other friends.”

“I don’t know if anyone will talk.  Honestly, I don’t know if any of them are friends, now.”

“If it’s important, if it’s true and some of these men are truly good men, then someone will talk.  I’m willing to take the lumps if you’re willing to risk their anger at you.”

“If I can get them to meet you away from here, maybe your home or something.  Where they won’t be seen.”

“Uh-uh.  I’m not handing out my address to men that may want to kill me.  And I’m not going to meet anyone in a bar again.  I’ll buy them lunch or dinner or we can just meet in a grocery store parking lot.  I don’t care.  I’m not convinced that your boy Jesse wasn’t serious.”

Jim pulled the handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the corners of his mouth. “Meet them on the church grounds.  Let that play on their conscience.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Jim.”

“Even a heathen would think twice about pulling a stunt like today if it was at a church.”

“I don’t think that’s true anymore.”

Bill curled his hand around his beer and took a swallow. “For some people it’s even more of a reason.”

I picked up my bottled water that I hadn’t even opened yet. “Regardless of where it I meet them, I’m not coming back here.  I’m outnumbered and out of my element.  I need to get back to the office, Jim.”

I stood. “We had our fun.”

   CHAPTER THIRTEEN – FERRYMEN

Mid-century modern in a neighborhood of Victorian and early twentieth century craftsman cottages.  That was my church.    Always out of place and now nearly out of time. 

I remember this place as it was when I first saw it.  A large congregation, a youth ministry, even a popular basketball court that lured in the neighborhood kids.  I recall that I hated it.  I hated being here and I hated the people that attended.  If not for my grandmother I would have never set foot in it.  The minister’s son used to buy weed from me.  I was convinced that the entire congregation was made up of hypocrites and liars and they all placed judgement on everyone else. 

I remember Jim from those days too.  Truly an imposing figure.  He may not have been the minister, but everyone treated him as if he were the man they had to answer to. That’s how I saw it.   Only later did I learn that the role he played in the church was one of a mediator.   He was a fairly successful real estate developer that had some relationships with some of the city’s governing bodies and the Hofheinz family.  He never rose to the level of success in the seventies that other developers in the city did, but knowing Jim the way I know him now, I don’t think he ever aspired to.  He and his wife were financially comfortable and always in love.  That was enough for him.  His gift was navigating the political minefield of city business and inner church rivalries, making sure that everyone got along.    

And the congregation?  The children who once made up a vibrant youth ministry all grew up and moved on.  Some of their parents remained, the ones I once accused of hypocrisy and piousness out of youthful ignorance, I now see the frailty that was always there and I feel ashamed. 

If not for the generosity of Baptist Union Association one of two things would have occurred by now:  1:  The property would have been sold, possibly to another church body or to a developer and torn down.  2: The church would have continued to service its surviving congregation, but would have lost its autonomy, replaced by a different administration and a shared pastoral care program.  The union decided that, since I had a background as a subcontractor, as long as I could do the maintenance they would leave us to continue as we always had.  I won’t lie, though, it gave the church an air of a hospice instead of House of Worship.  I often felt like Charon.

It was just after four when I pulled into the parking lot.  Beth’s car was still there.  So was Dwayne Williams’s car, the church’s other Deacon.  I entered the building, intending on visiting the men’s room to attend to the cut and lump on my head, but Dwayne and Beth were standing in the lobby as I entered.  They both shared a look of disbelief as I approached them.  “He fell off the back of my truck helping me unload mulch.”  Jim had entered the lobby behind me.

Beth tugged at my collar and examined my wound.  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.  Well, C’mon.  We’ve got to get that cleaned up. It looks nasty.  I don’t think you’ll need stitches, though.”

I followed Beth into the kitchen and took a seat at the table.  She was running a towel under the faucet.  I watched her wring it out and then step towards me.  She physically placed both hands on my cheeks and forced me to face forward.  I felt the cool tap water run down the back of my neck as she began wiping the dried blood from my hair and scalp.  “You’ve got a real bump back here, Brother Stevens.  Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.  Stings a little, but that’s all.”

“Can I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“How sick do you think he is?”

I gave this a moment of thought before I spoke.  “He knows he’s dying.  He’s prepared for it.  He’s making his peace with God and trying to make the best of the time he has left.”

“And how much time is that?”

“I suspect he and his doctors have had that conversation, but he’s not sharing it with me, and I don’t blame him.”

“Why’s that?”  She stopped dabbing the back of my head with the towel.  I cringed as she poured rubbing alcohol on it.  I anticipated the sting.  It came quickly.  The wound on the back of my head was on fire and I needed aspirin. 

“Because his identity is all he has left.  He’s holding on to it like a man with a bad hand in poker.  He’s going to bluff until it’s over.  That’s just who he is.”

“You two come out the same mold.  You both hold your cards close to the vest.”  I felt her patting the back of my head with a dry towel before she flicked it onto my shoulders to signal she was done. “And gambling is a sin, Brother Stevens.  You know that better than anyone.” 

“Covetousness is a sin, Beth.  And I doubt any of us covet what Jim is dealing with.”

I stood and went to a drawer near the coffee pot on the counter.  I began rifling through its contents.  Beth stood next to me and placed her hands on mine. “What are you looking for?”

“Aspirin.”

“Does it look like I keep aspirin in a coffee drawer?  My desk, top drawer on right.”

I entered the main office and found the aspirin where she said they would be.  I poured four into my hand and returned the bottle to her desk.  The bottled water from the bar was still in my jacket pocket.  I pulled it out and opened it as I sat down at my desk.  I quickly swallowed the four tablets and took a long drink from the bottle.  I was in mid-swallow when Dwayne entered my office and took a seat.

“Pastor, I think we need to look at bringing in some additional leadership into the church.”

“I don’t disagree.  I think we’ve been spread pretty thin between the four of us.  Do you have any feelings about who the congregation is going to push?” 

“Well, Beltran has made it clear that he would like to serve, but he’s 82 years old.  I think it would be fine, but I’m hoping to get someone a little younger in here.  Lucas Devalla would be a great choice.  He’s been a standing volunteer for the last two years.”

“Yeah, but his wife is in frail health after surgery.  We need to see how that recovery goes before we ask him to serve.  Tom Unger has done a lot of volunteer work for us in the past.  I’m sure he would be proud to come aboard.”

“Possibly.”  Dwayne sounded absent as he said it.  “I heard you talking with Beth.  I’ve been concerned for a while now.”

“We all are.  But this isn’t something we haven’t had to face before.”

“Jim and Ellie never had children.  Has he approached you to act as executor?”

“No.  We haven’t discussed it.  I know he has a niece in Dallas he’s close to.”

“Well, just a heads up.  I think he wants you to handle it.  We were just talking about our schedules, and he mentioned that he needed his ‘boy’ to take care of some of his stuff.  You’re the only person he calls his ‘boy’.”

“I’ve never heard him call me his ‘boy’.”

“Are you surprised?”

“Yeah.  I am.”

“You guys are pretty close.  I’m surprised.”

“Jim’s my friend and the biggest pain in my…, let’s just say our relationship has been equally adversarial as it has been close.”

“Well, there you go.  If that doesn’t say ‘father and son’, then I don’t know what does.”  Dwayne stood up and tucked his hands into his pockets.  “I’ll speak with Tom tomorrow.  Maybe Jimmy as well.  I’ll come by your office on Friday and give you their thoughts on the matter.”

“Alright.  Thanks, Dwayne.  I appreciate it.”  I toyed with the water bottle on my desk and took another swallow.  I didn’t like to admit it, but my thoughts had drifted, not to Jim or his circumstances, not to filling church roles or church business, but to Laura. 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN – UNTITLED

My wife had possessed an amazing constitution.  She had the ability to enjoy herself to the fullest, over indulge and still get up the next morning after two hours of sleep and handle her responsibilities.  If that description frames her as some kind of drunk, then forgive me.  She wasn’t.  I was.  A lot of years have passed and given me time to reflect on the two of us, but for the life of me I cannot explain why our relationship is the one part of my life I had blinders on and have not been honest with myself about.  I think the truth of the matter is that she liked me.  The ‘me’ that I deeply resented.  The ‘me’ that brought irreparable harm between my parents and myself.  Got me into trouble with my schools and truancy officers.  Ultimately it caused me to be a participant in a vile assault case that nearly cost a man his life, changed it forever and landed me in a detention center for nearly two years. 

My best friend during that period of youth was Gary Francois Thibodeaux. As I reflect on him now I can see the true psychopath that he was and probably still is, but to the adolescent me he was someone I admired.  He approached all things with a casual coolness that I saw as a character trait worthy of emulation.  He was my best friend simply because he saw in me someone he could lead and I, so deeply in need of validation, understood that to be a bond of some kind.  Eddie Morales, one year younger than I was, possibly saw the same thing in me.  God, I hope not. 

The three of us were walking the streets of Rice Military for reasons I still don’t know.  Killing a summer day in the company of bikers that Thibodeaux knew in Memorial Park, buying weed, getting stoned and then just aimlessly wandering the neighboring streets.  That’s when I spotted the white Camero parallel parking on Durham Drive.  When the driver stepped out I could see he was roughly the same age as me and I felt the intense jealousy and resentment begin to effervescently rise from within me. I saw privilege and told myself I was justified in that resentment.  Two other young men his age got out of the vehicle as well.  The driver had a Walkman tape deck on his belt and headphones around his neck.  In a rare moment of bold leadership, I told Thibodeaux and Eddie that I was going to take that Walkman and neither of them protested.  I say that, but even though I didn’t look at Eddie’s face in that moment, I can promise you that he had an expression of worry on it.

 It was quick.  So quick that I still can’t make out all the details.  I know I attempted to rob this kid, but in a flurry of events that unraveled so rapidly that hardly a moment had passed by before I saw the young driver laying on the ground with two gunshot wounds, one to the face and the other to stomach, Eddie with a bloody nose and Thibodeaux already in a headstart as he yelled for us to run.  I never even took the Walkman. 

All three of us were picked up the next day.  Eddie had lost his wallet in the scuffle that ensued with the two other passengers of the vehicle.  It didn’t take HPD much effort to get the details of mine or Thibodeaux’s involvement.  I hadn’t known that Thibodeaux was even in possession of a gun and the Judge must have believed that because, despite a previous four month incarceration at Gatesville for burglary, I felt that the two year sentence I received was light.  Eddie received six months.  Thibodeaux was going to Huntsville after his stint in Gatesville.  The young man who was shot?  Whatever privilege he may or may not have possessed, it was gone now.  He is confined to a wheelchair.  For a Walkman. 

During those two years I finally saw my best friend for who he really was.  He was in his element.  He was learning to be the best criminal he could be and perfected his ability to manipulate those unlucky enough to admire him.  I don’t blame him for what happened.  That’s on me.  I just recognized that he didn’t mind his part in it and I would never see him the same again.   The last thing I heard about him was that he was part of that biker gang we were hanging with that day.

I just focused on school during my stay.  I was clever enough to pass the subjects and earned my diploma a year early. 

When I was released most of my friends were just beginning their senior year.  I enrolled at University of Houston.  Perhaps the desire to be a thief had been reformed, but the craving for reckless behavior had not.  My first attempt at a collegiate career did not last long but I did meet someone in that short period of time that caught my attention.  It took effort to get hers and part of that effort was seducing her with fun. 

Her name was Madeline and she was as lovely to look at as she was to be around.  She was young and on her own for the first time, but not innocent.  Not by a longshot.  She came with the intention of receiving an education, but also a good time and she found my get togethers to be the most lively, the most entertaining and the most well stocked of liquor and drugs to be found.  It was for only a brief few months before I dropped out and joined the Air Force, but I must’ve made a hell of an impression because she declared herself to be my girlfriend and held to it.  Upon my discharge I married her.