Maybe that’s why Bob is standing in the man’s office now. Do you know me? Who the hell are you that you know me? Bob will turn the tables on him. Figure him out. I bet I know you.
The wall beyond the desk, between two windows looking into a tree line, holds a bronze cross up near the ceiling, and beneath are frames and frames.
Bob circles the desk and approaches.
A cluster of color photos. Dwayne and wife. Bob does not look at her face. Dwayne and his sons: young Dwayne and child boys; older Dwayne and teenagers; old Dwayne now and men. Arms around one another’s shoulders.
Bob moves his eyes sharply away from the family photos, all featuring that Jesus-aping loving father, Pastor Dwayne Kilmer. Bob’s gaze lands on another arrangement.
A diploma for a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Bob Jones University.
A photo of Pastor Dwayne shaking hands with the governor of Florida, the two men grasping hands but looking at the camera, the governor a bald man with a lunging, sappy smile like the smiles of the Hardluckers you need to watch out for in the shelters at night.
A typed letter, framed in gold plate. At the top is an eagle sitting on crossed rifles, the NRA logo. Dear Pastor Kilmer. I am grateful to you for your support in our efforts to protect our Second Amendment rights. What our opponents do not understand is that we have a First Amendment only because we have a Second. Men of God such as yourself …
Bob skips to the signature. He cannot read it. The first name appears to begin with a great, curvy P and the rest is a tight march of undifferentiated letters that could be all u’s or m’s or n’s or l’s. Then Bob’s eyes slide to the right, to what he realizes is a companion frame, and he thinks he recognizes the square-jawed man speaking behind a lectern. Back to the letter. The logo. And yes. The man’s name is printed in small type beneath it. Not a P, in the signature. A fancy C. Charlton Heston. Bob’s old man loved this guy. Moses the gunslinger.
Bob looks abruptly away from this wall, turns around.
He starts, as if someone has snuck in behind him.
But it’s the high back of Dwayne’s desk chair.
Bob circles it.
Sits in it.
He puts his arms along the arms of the chair.
He settles himself. As best he can, for his head is quick-thumping in pain.
There’s nothing to do for that. Just push through it.
He begins to open drawers.
Center drawer. Ballpoint pens. Paper clips. Cluttery little crap.
He’s having trouble concentrating, trouble seeing things clearly. But the thumping slows a bit. Bob knows it’s his heart beating in his head. It’s his heart driving the pain.
He opens the top drawer in the desk’s right-hand pedestal. More clutter. Brochures for the church, a bottle of aspirin, a granola bar, a phone-charging cord. In the second drawer are pristine envelopes, stamps, a stapler.
Bob hates this guy. As if he were lying to Bob’s face. This bland daily shit. It’s all lies.
He slams the second drawer and pulls at the bottom one. It won’t yield.
Bob pushes back in his chair and looks at the drawer. It’s the deepest one. Files probably. Who gives a damn?
But Bob doesn’t like Dwayne keeping his secrets. The drawer has a simple pin tumbler lock. And Bob still has a small skill from his teenage thieving days.
He opens the central drawer and removes two paper clips. He bends one to work as a torque wrench, the other as a rake.
He has to leave the chair. His head and his knees begin to scream at him in pain but he makes himself crouch down. He is determined now.
He draws near to the lock. He inserts the first paper clip, turns it, holds the tension, inserts the second, and he begins to rake the pins inside the lock. His fingers fumble a bit for a moment, but long ago he had a good feel for this, and his muscles quickly remember and he rakes again and once again and the last pin slips into place and the lock yields.
He opens the drawer.
Vertical files, but they’re pushed to the back. Forward, lying at the bottom of the drawer, is a Glock 21 pistol, and a box of.45 auto cartridges.
And Bob thinks: Dwayne, Dwayne, Dwayne. Pastor Dwayne. Dreaming of ISIS sending a few boys over here to Tallahassee to bust in and rape Loretta and grab you and cut off your head, but you’re ready to defend your First Amendment church with your Second Amendment Glock, you’re ready to protect your flock like a good father should, like a good shepherd, like a Heavenly Father.
Heavenly Father my ass.
Bob’s own voice in his own private head has clambered heavenward to the oldest old man of them all.
Sneering all the way, of course.
And another sea surge of pain swells in him and crashes behind his eyes and tumbles down his face and into his throat and into his chest.
Punishment for the sneer, no doubt.
And he hears a voice.
Not his own.
A loud voice.
A big fucking loud voice.
I’VE BROUGHT YOU HERE FOR A PURPOSE.
Bob’s not crazy. Bob knows he’s hearing this voice in his head. But just because it’s inside his own private head doesn’t mean it’s not a voice. A real voice. Talking to him. Every voice you ever hear when you’re right there in the room with it still has to pass through your head. Even if you close your eyes and make the face and the mouth saying the words vanish, the voice remains, talking away. So where is it then? In your head. Your own private head. Just because it’s in your head doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
I BROUGHT YOU HERE.
The voice pauses.
A beating pulse of pain in Bob’s head.
An invitation to litany.
I BROUGHT YOU HERE.
And Bob responds: To make me okay.
YOU HAVE A PURPOSE.
To be okay.
I BROUGHT YOU HERE.
To you. To you.
YOU HAVE A PURPOSE.
To arm myself.
And Bob takes up the Glock 21 and its box of cartridges. He closes the drawer, and he uses his boyhood skill to reengage the lock. And he thinks: Dwayne’ll never know. He won’t even miss his weapon till the Viet Cong bust in and then he’ll know and he’ll go Oh shit and they’ll cut off his head.
Earlier this morning, as Pastor Dwayne negotiates Bob’s release into his care, Robert reassures Darla that she needn’t go to the hospital today — his father would surely be embarrassed to be seen in an invalided state — and she goes off on her run. Robert is drinking his coffee at the kitchen island, aware still of the spot on his cheek where Darla kissed him good-bye. A utilitarian kiss, surely, conveying gratitude for a courtesy rendered, but it landed wetly there, as if her lips were parted. Perhaps not so surprising; she is, after all, ardently grateful. He can well understand her gratitude. He doesn’t want to go either, for a low-grade dread won’t stop niggling at him over this visit.
He takes the last sip of his coffee and carries his cup to the sink. The dread is not just about his father, but about his mother as well. And thinking of her, he thinks of the index card.
He turns from the sink and realizes where the card is. He puts his hand in his pocket and draws it out. She has written James. What was in her head? Is her use of his never-used formal name a rebuke of her other son? An attempt to distance herself, shield herself? But the card was intended for Robert’s eyes. It’s just another dramatic pose. Beneath is a phone number with a 705 area code.