under 100 degrees-by Finnish standards during the bath. James had only been in the sauna for five minutes barely able to get acclimated for the normal one-hour bath. His father sat next to him. Neither man talked. They let the dry heat soak into their bodies.
Used to the heat, James poured some water on the top bench to cool it and climbed up to the hotter ceiling temperatures. As the heat penetrated his body, he considered what had happened to him that week. By the time he reviewed in his mind the phone call he placed on Friday to the union lawyer, he had relaxed enough to calmly analyze everything she had said. She had told him that over the last three years, seventeen teachers in the state had formal sexual complaints filed against them. Only two had been proven. Out of the remaining fifteen, five teachers had kept their jobs. Those five districts had not made any public announcements and had let the professionals investigate their cases. Six of the others had won their cases and had received back pay but had not been given their jobs back. The remaining four had won every case in court, but instead of paying any money, the districts had kept appealing the awards. She felt that the remaining four teachers would never receive any back pay. The districts had already paid more in lawyers' fees than the court awards.
The more James thought about the conversation, the more he became convinced he would not take it anymore. He heard his father fill the dipper at the faucet near the cement floor. He handed his wash cloth to his dad to wet.
James covered his face with the cold wet cloth. He heard his father throw the water on the rocks covering the stove. He listened to the rocks sizzle, then felt the hot steam roll down off the ceiling. Needles of heat penetrated his body as the steam transferred its heat. Finally, James had to go to the lower bench. Careful to sit where his feet had been resting so his bottom wouldn't be burnt, he let the heat slowly soak through his body, dropping the blood pressure and relaxing the muscles. In the calm of the heat-induced lethargy, he let his mind plan his moves for the coming week.
He heard his father wet some cedar boughs and briefly heat them on the rocks. He took one and gently slapped his body. The heat had relaxed his muscles and dropped his blood pressure to close to dangerous levels. The gentle slaps would tighten the muscles and bring the pressure back up.
James and his father cycled the heat up once more, then doused themselves with cold water and went into the cool dressing room. There they stayed until the steam stopped rising from their bodies. They repeated the process.
The only conversation between the two men occurred when they were cooling in the dressing room. The heat from the sauna seemed to let each know everything they needed to know from the other. The only two unusual items talked about were Jim's request to borrow a 200-pound nail magnet from his father and his father's request that Jim join them on Sunday morning at their church. His father sensed that his son was in trouble.
A 200-pound nail magnet didn't weigh 200 pounds but it was capable of lifting a 200-pound weight. They were used for collecting small metal objects such as roofing nails from the ground after re-shingling a roof. His father wondered what Jim would be using it for.
* * * *
Tom Peterson was a young pastor. He had been minister of the Chapel of God Church for only a year. He still felt the passion and enthusiasm of life in the Bible College when they talked about The Church fighting the things of the world. What he didn't know and what most people attending the politically active Protestant denominations don't know, is that the fight against the 'world' now being waged by the churches is mostly a creation of their own making. Peterson's bible college teachers knew that competition brought the best out of a group. In sports, the competition is easy to define. But bible colleges taught theology, and for theological competition, you needed an opponent. Any education the religious couldn't control has always been a safe target for a church to compete against. The college instructors taught that the public education system was a religion called secular humanism with the school's educators as the religion's priests and the school buildings as its churches.
One of Peterson's first memories of his college days was a group of classmates driving to a public school passing out Christian flyers. In that group was a pretty young girl who would soon become his wife. It was in his second year at college during another evangelistic push that he decided that he would become a pastor of a church. He never knew that his church's fight against humanism, Darwinism, secularism and any other newism was just made up so they could have an opponent to compete against in every town and village in this country.
Tom Peterson, still fresh from the indoctrination of the Bible College, hadn't as yet tempered his thoughts of the schools as churches of secular humanism and of teachers as their priests. When he heard the rumors of a teacher having sexual relations with a high school girl, his anger flared. He pulled his class notes from college. He called the _good_ Christians and asked them to find out who the teacher was. He prayed and prepared for the calling down of hell and damnation.
Tom stood in front of his congregation. He had heard that the name of the teacher was James Makinen just before the service. He recognized the name. When he asked his deacon, Mr. Shermon, about the name, he was told that he was the son of the older couple who always sat in back. He decided to ask them to
come up to the front of the church after the service to pray for their son.
The congregation was waiting.
'The text today will be coming from Second Peter PAGEBREAK
CHAPTER two.' Tom waited as the people turned to the pages of their bibles. He loved to hear the rustle of the pages. While he waited, he noticed a few new faces in the congregation, a lone man in back, a young woman in front, and a family in the third row.
'I will read verses one, fourteen, and fifteen.
''But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
'Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:
'Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bo'-sor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness;' Amen!'
'False teachers!' Peterson yelled. 'Bringing damnable heresies!'
'Teachers! Heretics! Teaching lies to your children. How we came from monkeys. The false prophecies of humanism...' Peterson stamped and yelled and pranced about the altar. He told of teachers denying the Lord. He told of humanism permitting drugs and sex. He told of one teacher in their own school! He had gotten to the section in his sermon where the adulterous teacher had just beguiled the unstable soul of an innocent student when the young woman in front got up and left. Everyone watched her. The man in back and the Makinen couple left next. The young family followed. Unknown to Peterson was that half of his congregation either were teachers or had sons and daughters or mothers and fathers that were. Before he could start his sermon again, the auditorium had emptied. The only ones left were two deacons and their families and an old man in a walker who had to wait for a ride to pick him up.
In the silence of the nearly empty church, the old man spoke up. 'Son, you sure acted dumber than Balaam and not as smart as his ass today. You need to know what you're talking about and who you are talking to before you open your mouth. I guess you now know how many teachers you had in your flock.'
* * * *
James Makinen woke in the pre-dawn light. He had slept badly. He kept seeing, in his mind, the soft curve of Lori Waithe's back as she stood in the front pews of the church. He watched over and over again the swaying of her body as she strode out of the church. He had enjoyed watching her before. But after seeing her stride out of the church, it had changed from pleasure to desire. In his dreams, he kept reaching for her body. All he found was the shabby blanket he had on his bed.
Unable to go back to sleep and prevented from going to work, he decided to clear some of the brush from the swampy lowland in back of the trailer. He got an axe, a bow saw and a machete from the small shed he had built in back. He cut, chopped, and dragged brush into piles all day only stopping for a sandwich at noon.
It was late afternoon when he heard the honking and cars. A caravan pulled up along the road. Out of the cars and pickups poured high school boys and some of the wilder girls. A few threw empty beer cans at the trailer. A knot of rowdy kids got tangled on the steep sides of the highway ditch and tumbled into a pile of arms and legs and squeals. A girl at the bottom of the knot took the opportunity to grope her boyfriend's crotch. The resulting squeals occupied three carloads of students and kept them out of the upcoming fight.
