His world suddenly made no sense to him. He was standing before the whole room, making a plea for sanity, but in the end it was his own sanity that was at risk.
Danny wanted to continue his plea—the power of argument had always served him well—but his reasoning faded and he couldn’t bring up the right thoughts or words.
He looked down the line of inmates and saw that they were lost. He’d spent ten days inside and hardly knew them—the warden had seen to that. But they all had one thing in common: they were governed by their humanity, and yet they feared the warden’s consequences too much to question the true nature of that humanity. Even Godfrey, who knew better but could not escape the warden’s hold on his mind.
“You see what I mean, Danny?” The warden came closer, speaking gently now, like a father making his final point to win his son’s heart. “She’s right, you’ve done well. You just haven’t done well enough. So today I’m going to let you prove yourself. Your reward will be great, I promise you.”
Renee could not guess how profoundly Danny had failed her. He stood tall and strong here on the floor, heroic, having endured more pain and suffering than all of them, but inside, his collapse was certain.
He couldn’t save her, he knew that now. Not this time. The simplicity of that realization fell into his mind as if the sky itself had shattered. The walls came thundering down and smothered him.
“Now you see, Danny…”
He couldn’t save her because he simply could not become that man who had taken so many lives.
The warden was saying something, but Danny couldn’t hear it. Something was happening behind him, but he couldn’t seem to move.
He had done well. And now Renee would pay for all that he had done so well.
He had to be strong for her. He could not fail her in this way. He would look at her and she would see how great his love for her was. She knew that he would gladly give his life for her. She would understand his heart. She would take strength from his eyes.
But he could not compromise his vow of nonviolence to save her. Doing so would only undo all that he had come to stand for. There could not be violence in the name of love, no matter what the circumstance.
And yet…
“Danny?” Renee’s thin voice cut the silence.
Terror sliced through his heart.
“Are you going to just stand there like a pathetic statue?” the warden demanded.
Struggling to remain composed, legs as heavy as lead, Danny turned around.
Renee stood in the middle of the room fifteen feet away, staring at the door. She swiveled her head and looked at him, frantic eyes brimming with tears of desperation.
He saw her standing there, begging for his help, and he was powerless to give it. Then he saw the reason for her fresh tears. Two guards were setting a table down in the middle of the hard yard. This was for Renee.
The same doctor who’d administered his punishment had entered the room, carrying the same black case he had in the deep meditation room. He was going to subject Renee to the same torture Danny had suffered.
Danny found that he could not breathe. He could not think. His mind was crumbling.
40
I DON’T THINK God himself could have stopped what happened next. Danny certainly couldn’t, and so I forgave him even then, before it all ended.
I’d clung to his naked chest while he trembled, you see, so I knew that he was in anguish. I’d smelled the fear on his skin and tasted the agony in his sweat. So when he stood still with his back to me, facing the other members, I knew he’d come to the end of himself.
I knew that he couldn’t save me. I knew that he was telling himself that he hadn’t done well enough, and I was going to rush over to him and take hold of him again and try to convince him that it was all a lie.
But then it all happened too fast. The warden was speaking and they were bringing in a folding table and setting it down in the middle of the room between Danny and me. A doctor walked in with a black case, which he set down on a bench next to the table.
He pulled out what looked like a dentist’s drills, and I knew then that he was going to do something terrible to me. Wild imaginations screamed through my mind, and in them I saw him grinding down my teeth while they held my jaw open. I saw a bit whining into my skull and into my brain. I saw a saw cutting into my spine as agonizing pain sliced through my nerves.
And I knew that if I could imagine those things, the warden’s punishment would be worse. I began to panic. When I spun back to Danny he had turned around. He was watching me with dread in his eyes, like two pools of night.
“You’re going to watch this, Priest.” Keith was glaring at Danny. “You’re going to feel the pain I felt when you stole my wife from me, and you’re going to wish you were dead. And then, if you’re lucky, you will be.”
Danny saw it all and knew that he was now faced with a moment that would forever alter his carefully constructed understanding of the world. Pushed by rage, he’d become a celebrated soldier, killing the enemy with ruthless precision until the war ended and there was no enemy to kill. To honor his mother, he’d become a priest, and then, confronted by gross injustice, he’d rescued the oppressed by once again killing, this time monsters who preyed on the weak. In both cases, he’d considered himself the arm of God in a holy war, only to learn that he’d become a monster like those he killed. An eye for an eye, a life for a life, a system of justice he could overturn only with love, by turning the other cheek and dying to save, not killing to save.
But now consideration, logic, and reason yielded nothing but a terrible mystery of contradictions for which there seemed to be no answer. If God loved Keith, was Danny not also meant to love Keith? Wasn’t Pape just another confused man twisted by the violence of others? Was it Danny’s to judge?
The doctor was going to drill into Renee’s shin and tickle the nerves deep inside her bones. Danny could not bear the thought.
And yet the only way to stop that pain was to destroy the guards who held the weapons, leaving their children in a nearby town fatherless and bitter.
There was only one option left for him, borne in that moment of intense suffering for which his mind had no answer, much less escape. He’d never surrendered his mind. He’d controlled it with uncanny vigor and suppressed it in search of peace, but he’d never surrendered it entirely, as was the practice of the mystics. This, they said, took the greatest power of all.
“Strap her down,” the warden said.
Danny’s mind began to shut down.
He slowly sank to his knees, steeled his thoughts as best he could, and gave in to raw emotion. The pain of surrender was far greater than the pain he’d suffered in the bowels of Basal. He did not cry out, did not weep, did not tremble. He only submitted his mind and accepted the anguish that squeezed his heart.
But even as he did, he knew that his heart could not contain the pain.
I watched Danny sink to his knees, and I knew that it was over. His eyes were blank and dark, and a terrible sorrow etched deep lines in his face. The sight of it was so horrible that my mind seemed to blink out. I forgot where I was.
“Strap her down,” the warden said.
I was there. I was with Danny, and I was thinking that I had to comfort him.
Danny’s legs suddenly gave way and he dropped, eyes now shut.
Everything in the room seemed to stall. They were all watching him. I could hear his heavy breathing as he sucked air through his nostrils. I watched a slight quiver take to his hands. Tears flooded my eyes—not for me, but for him.
For the man who had given his whole life for me.
We all watched in stunned silence—the members, the guards, the warden, Keith, all of us—staring at the
