“Do you feel up to par?”
“Feel like an eagle on every hole, Fred.”
Al choked, recovered, continued eating.
The news anchor on CNN was talking about the abortion clinic bombing in Del Moray. Carver and Beth watched as a tape of the boarded-up clinic was shown. Mug shots, front and profile, of Adam Norton came on the screen. Norton didn’t look contrite and was in fact smiling with an infuriating smugness. The scene cut to a local newsman interviewing Reverend Freel in front of the Clear Connection. “. . . of course Operation Alive doesn’t endorse violence,” Freel was saying into the microphone thrust toward him. “It’s the violence happening inside those clinics that we object to and cannot-will not-accept. Violence is precisely what we abhor and are demonstrating against.”
“But don’t you think the inflammatory rhetoric of you and your group might lead to more violence?” the newsman asked. He was young, had a mass of wavy hair, and kept a neutral tone and a strict poker face, as if his cheeks had been shot full of Novocain.
“What’s being done to our unborn citizens is what’s creating an atmosphere of violence,” Freel said. “If the government continues to try to justify this kind of mass murder, I’d say it’s almost inevitable that violence will occur.”
“You deny any responsibility for the bombing, but Adam Norton is a member of your congregation as well as Operation Alive.”
“So is Betty Charles.”
“Who?”
“Betty Charles. I use her as an example of someone the media and the public have never heard of because she would never plant a bomb or harm any human being and is a member of both my congregation here at the Clear Connection and of Operation Alive. We simply can’t be responsible for the actions of all our members. If indeed Adam Norton committed this crime, the truth will certainly emerge and society will deal with it.”
“Then you don’t think your previous incendiary remarks-”
“The fire of the Lord ignites weak tissue even as it comforts and heals. If his message is misinterpreted by some, that is as it has always been. In Deuteronomy, God requires burnt sacrifices. We are locked in a battle for the way of the Lord here. Much of what occurs is tragic, of course, but misguided and innocent people have always suffered in the struggle for truth. That is the human tragedy and the human glory and the shining path to redemption.”
“He reminds me of the preacher man who seduced and abandoned my aunt,” Beth said.
“Is Operation Alive going to continue demonstrating and picketing outside abortion clinics?” the newsman asked Freel.
“Certainly. We’ll go wherever the butchers are and make sure they are aware of their sins. And that the way to their salvation and our sick and festering society’s is for them to stop killing our unborn children.”
“Are you afraid of more violence, sir?”
“Yes, I am. If you’re trying to get me to denounce violence, I’m doing so now. I don’t want violence. Operation Alive doesn’t want violence. We abhor violence both inside and outside abortion mills.”
Freel’s image faded from the screen, as did the newsman’s. But the newsman instantly reappeared, standing in front of a low stone wall with a view of palm trees and the ocean beyond it. A split second in time but miles in distance away from the Clear Connection in landlocked Orlando. Technology making the world smaller but more deceptive. No wonder people like Freel could seize and mold confused minds and emotions.
“We attempted to interview Dr. Louis Benedict,” the newsman said. “Dr. Benedict is the other physician who performed abortions at the Women’s Light Clinic. But he refused to be interviewed, for obvious reasons of safety. However, he did tell us he’s continuing to perform abortions and that he’s received numerous death threats since the Women’s Light bombing. Back to you, Julie.”
Julie, the newscaster Carver didn’t recognize, was on screen again seated at the CNN anchor desk. “Thanks, Earl,” she said. “When we come back, we’ll show you how a squirrel can delay a major-league ball game for almost an hour while players and unhappy fans-”
Beth used the remote to switch off the set. “Hypocritical bastard.”
“Reverend Freel or Julie?” Carver asked.
“Why are you playing it so light and loose, Fred? Are you getting afraid of what’s happening and where it might lead?”
“That’s close,” Carver said. He couldn’t hide from her even in the farthest corners of his mind.
She came over and kissed his bald pate. “You’re no hypocrite, anyway. Want some lunch?”
“Had some.”
“I’m going to eat a sandwich, then drive in to the hospital to keep my appointment. Want to come along?”
“I’ll drive you.”
She smiled and opened the refrigerator. “Okay, but that will be the end of it.”
“It?”
“You treating me like a delicate invalid.”
He knew she was anything but delicate. Actually, he’d already decided to go with her to the hospital because Dr. Benedict was probably there, and he wanted to talk to him about the threats the doctor had continued to receive. But he didn’t tell Beth that. He let her think his motive for accompanying her was solely concern for her condition.
Hypocritical of him, maybe, but probably somewhere in the Old Testament he was covered, at least in the Reverend Martin Freel’s interpretation.
27
Dr. Galt wasn’t immediately available but had left instructions for Beth. Carver went with her to the hospital’s third floor, followed a nurse’s directions, and they were met by a ponytailed male intern wearing a medical-emblem earring, whose name tag read HALEY, outside an unmarked door. Haley asked Carver if he wanted to have a seat in a small waiting area off the hall, but Carver opted to be in the room with Beth.
He watched while carefully, deftly, Haley removed the stitches from Beth’s healing cuts. While the stitches were plucked from the cut on the right side of her neck, her expression remained stony.
Haley had to smile. “I know I’m good at my work, Miss Jackson, but you seem impervious to pain.”
“Nobody’s that,” Beth said as he dabbed antiseptic on her face.
“We need to examine your right hip,” Haley said, glancing at Carver, who was familiar with Beth’s right hip and saw no reason to take the hint and leave.
There was a knock on the door and it opened slightly. Dr. Galt stuck his head in, smiled, then opened the door all the way. “How we doing, Beth?”
“Fine.” She nodded as if in affirmation of what she’d just heard herself say. “Doing fine.”
“Let’s take a look at you,” he said, and came all the way into the room. Dr. Galt glanced meaningfully at Carver. “Mind waiting outside?”
Carver couldn’t remember being so disinvited. He moved around Dr. Galt and out into the hall, closing the door.
Leaning with his back against the opposite wall, he watched the cross-traffic at the end of the halclass="underline" a stern, bustling nurse rolling a gurney; a shuffling woman in a white robe; a man with a dark beard being pushed in his wheelchair by an attendant, an IV tube coiling down to his arm from a packet hung on a metal rod that jutted from the chair like a thick, inflexible antenna; Wicker pushing Delores Bravo in a wheelchair.
Huh?
Carver clutched his cane and made his way down to the end of the hall as fast as he could, but Wicker and Bravo were already almost out of sight. He thought about calling to them; he wouldn’t have minded talking to Wicker. There was no mistaking the way Wicker was leaning forward and seeming to whisper in Bravo’s ear as he pushed, a stupid grin on his face even from this distance.
Well, why not? Love could strike unexpectedly anywhere and smite the most unlikely people.
Moving slower, a little winded, Carver returned to where he’d been standing outside the door of the room where Dr. Galt was in talking with Beth. He took up position against the wall again, glancing down the hall to see if maybe Wicker and Bravo would pass going the opposite direction. But they didn’t. A man in a robe, using an aluminum walker, went by. Then a shapely, long-legged blond nurse with a clipboard under her arm strode past at about sixty miles an hour.