“These groups can suck you in,” I warn, “and before you know it you’ve become psychologically dependent on them.”
Great, I think. I’ll have to pay somebody to kidnap her and then deprogram her.
“It’s a church,” she laughs, “not a concentration camp where they brainwash you. Rainey wouldn’t be involved in anything like that.”
“I should tell you that Chet Bracken’s dying of cancer I say, abruptly changing the subject.
“That’s why he’s asked me to help him. It’s a secret though.”
Sarah’s face softens, as I knew it would.
“How much longer does he have?” she asks, her voice immediately anxious. Her mother’s death was sheer agony.
He’s going down fast,” I say, milking this moment for as long as I can.
“He’s afraid he won’t be able to do the trial.”
“Has he got a family?” Sarah asks, biting her lip.
“I don’t know a thing about him,” I say, regretting I have told her. Why did I? Leverage, obviously. I know where my daughter is vulnerable. She was only thirteen when her mother died, and she still hasn’t gotten over it. I’m pathetic, I realize. I didn’t take this case because I’m sensitive to cancer victims. And yet, Chet’s revelation has touched something in me. He has absolutely nothing in common with Rosa except that he’s a fighter, too. Maybe there are more connections here than I am permitting myself to realize.
“That’s so sad!” Sarah says, staring past me.
“Isn’t he young?”
You asshole, I think miserably.
“Yeah, he’s young.”
With a somber expression now on her beautiful face, she goes to her room to do her homework, leaving me to sit in the den wondering why I’m so afraid of change. If I come down on Sarah too hard, she will resent me even more than she already does. Did Rosa go through some kind of religious rebellion when she was a teenager? She never mentioned it, or I wasn’t paying attention. Regularly as clockwork, she went to Mass in Colombia and then here, so it never was an issue. Until her mother died, Sarah never missed, either. It’s easy to have a perfect attendance record if you have no choice.
After Rosa’s death there was nobody to go with her, because I sure wasn’t about to go thank God for taking Rosa away from my daughter at the beginning of adolescence
I stare blankly at Leigh Wallace’s file and think I should have faked it and taken Sarah to Mass these last few years. If I had, she wouldn’t be so vulnerable now to the garbage that comes out of these fundamentalist churches. Who am I kidding? What could be more fundamentalist than the Catholic church? Abortion?
Women in the church? The difference is these people at Christian Life take themselves so seriously. I never cared what Rosa believed as long as she agreed to use birth control. How she rationalized her faith didn’t concern me so long as she did what I wanted. Guilt settles down around me like an occupying army as I remember how much pressure I applied to my wife not to have more children after Sarah.
I had just gone to work for Social Services as a case worker and was making next to nothing, but Rosa wanted to stay home and raise our child. I knew that would lead to more kids and told her that she had to face the fact that I was never going to be rich. How could that be? Wasn’t this the United States, where everybody who wanted to work hard became a millionaire Reality set in after a year, and she went back to work as a nurse. After ten years of marriage on a state salary, I told her I wanted to go to law school at night.
Thrilled by my display of ambition, she began to talk about the two more children we would have after I passed the bar exam. Weren’t all lawyers rich in the United States? Poor Rosa. She’d still be working the night shift. For the hundredth time, I wish she were here to deal with her daughter. Our relationship has been on a roller coaster lately. Woogie, who never changes, nuzzles in against my thigh. I rub his left ear gently. At moments like this, I think dogs are at the top of the evolutionary chain.
Chet bracken’s “farm” is really no more than a few acres in the western part of the county. Though trees abound in central Arkansas, there are none around the structure that must be chet’s residence, unless I am badly lost. As I come upon an honest-to-goodness log cabin, my mind serves up pictures shown to grade school kids of the pioneer experience at its hardiest: isolated huts hunkered down in the sod against the prairie wind. I have unlocked and relocked a second cattle gate and traveled, as directed, seven-tenths of a mile, so either I am about to surprise some unsuspecting family or I have for once followed directions to the letter. I pull up in the gravel driveway and think that I would plant some shade trees. Yet, perhaps Chet doesn’t see the point. As exposed as this house is (despite the gates), I doubt that a young widow would want to stay out here by herself. I check to make certain I have Leigh Wallace’s file and walk up the steps to the front porch, realizing that I am making all kinds of assumptions about Bracken’s family. For all I know about him, he lives with his mother.
A boy of about seven comes to the door to answer my knock.
“I’m Trey,” he announces solemnly.
“Are you Mr. Page?”
“That’s me,” I allow, smiling at this boy whose jug ears seem to confirm his lineage more persuasively than any birth certificate.
“Is your dad home?”
“Yes, sir, he’s out back,” Trey says seriously, offering me his tiny hand to shake. Trey’s jeans are not totally clean, but his right hand is neither sticky nor grimy to the touch. For a child his age he has a surprisingly strong grip. I can imagine his father lecturing him to look the other person in the eye and, if he’s a man, to squeeze his hand as hard as he can. The business of becoming a little Chet is about learning to deal from strength. The intimidation can be learned later. Yet, perhaps this isn’t fair. This child has learned his manners, no more, no less. Still, it is unnerving to be greeted so firmly by a kid who barely comes to my waist. He leads me through the house, and though it is clean and picked up, it is difficult to imagine that a woman lives here.
The living room is square like the main area of a lodge, lacking only deer antlers over the enormous fireplace to convince me that Chet uses this structure as a clubhouse for hunting and not as his principal residence. On the walls are pictures of ducks, geese, and other wildlife.
The furniture is functional and sturdy. As much money as he has surely made from criminals, he could have three or four places like this scattered around the state.
“Mom,” Trey solemnly introduces me as he leads the way into the kitchen, “this is Mr. Page.”
Turning from the stove is a rangy, plain woman with short, graying hair, who is wearing an apron over bib overalls and a red long-sleeved jersey. She is stirring something on the stove that gives off a gamy scent.
Given this rustic setting, I wouldn’t be surprised if she announced we were eating bear meat. Anything smaller than an elk wouldn’t seem fair competition for Bracken.
She smiles pleasantly at me and says, her voice country but pleasant, “I’m Wynona Cody, Mr. Page.”
Bracken’s marital status, unclear before I came, still appears muddled. Is this his mistress or just a liberated woman?
“How are you?” I ask, wanting to dig, but realizing the ground probably won’t be hard at all in a few weeks. High-visibility lawyers like Bracken, who are always in the news with their clients, only seem to be all work and no play. Despite all the gossip about him. Bracken has kept his private life well hidden. I wonder what his “family” at Christian Life knows about him.