“And there is always a price to pay for our sins,” Wilkens went on. “A stab of pain in our conscience for the small indiscretion, a jab of ice to our heart for the large ones.”
“And I know it to be true,” came the woman’s voice again.
“We are here,” Wilkens said, and looked around the gathering in the seats before him. “We are here to bid farewell to the soul of Joseph Lawrence Hopkins. His body we will bury, but his soul has or soon will be taken by the hand of an angel, and may that angel lead him to the land of eternal glory. And to that we say amen.”
The congregation, including Ames and me, said, “Amen.”
Wilkens eyes met mine now and held fast. A few heads turned to see what or who the reverend was looking at.
“Grief is the price we pay for loving and losing,” he said. “Grief is a holy gift which we hold tenderly and then let free. Grief must find its way into our very souls and let us go on living, performing God’s will, making us better human beings for its sake.”
His eyes left mine and turned down to the casket.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” he said. “Have you ever known me to lie to you?”
“No,” came the chorus of answers.
“I would be a liar and a hypocrite if I were to tell you Joseph Lawrence Hopkins was a good man. He was, at the age of sixteen, not even a man at all. His was and is a troubled soul, one that made his good mother Marie weep. But he was also a troubled soul who clearly cared for his two sisters and regretted the pain he caused his mother.”
Wilkens lifted both hands, palms up.
“The Lord will weigh the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the body and soul.”
The right hand moved down slowly and then the left and then both hands came up with the palms of the Reverend Fernando Wilkens facing the congregation.
“And the Lord will do what is best. Let us all rise and sing ‘Faith of Our Fathers,’ and as those chosen carefully carry the casket to the waiting hearse, follow them, continuing our song. We will meet at the graveside for internment. Let us rise.”
Everyone rose with a minimum of shuffling as six men, four young and two past the age of fifty, all but one black, came forward and lifted the casket.
Ames and I moved out of the way. The bearers bore their burden through the door, with people following them and singing.
We stood waiting for the crowd to clear the church. Wilkens remained at the pulpit.
“Life is filled with contradictions and enigmas,” Wilkens said, his voice now echoing in the empty hall. “That boy died of a heart attack during a basketball game. The temperature in that gym was almost one hundred degrees. There wasn’t enough money to fix the air-conditioning and he quite literally played his heart out to avoid the temptation of drugs. You have something to tell me about William Trasker?”
“I’m not sure this is the right place to tell it,” I said, looking around.
Wilkens followed my eyes to a stained-glass image of Christ on his knees with the cross on his shoulder.
“There is nothing that cannot be said here,” Wilkens said. “He would hear us even in a steel tomb. In spite of what you may think or the newspapers may suggest, I am not a hypocrite. I believe in my God and I will do what I feel I must to carry out His wishes.”
I told him about the incidents at Midnight Pass and the Laundromat. I told him about Obermeyer, Stanley, and Hoffmann. I told him Hoffmann was Roberta Trasker’s brother. I told him that I was going to try to get William Trasker to that commission meeting tonight if he were alive, willing, and able.
Wilkens nodded and got out from behind the pulpit. He stood before us now and looked at Ames, me, and at a stained-glass Christ on a stained-glass cross.
“I’ve got a small, well-educated, and sometimes angry group of parishioners who want to change these windows,” he said. “They don’t want a white savior. They claim that Christ was not white but a Jew, a dark Semite, a very dark Semite, certainly not the golden-tressed young man with the well-trimmed beard and sad eyes whose image surrounds us.”
He had a point to make. I had time to listen.
“And they are probably right and I probably agree, but to change the probably fictional image of the Savior would be seen as an alienating challenge to other Christians, both white and black.”
“So you can live with it,” I said.
“Are you a Christian, Mr. Fonesca? I believe you told me you were raised as an Episcopalian.”
“I was. I’m not anything now.”
I was going to add that I wasn’t planning on changing until God appeared before me or sent an emissary with a convincing explanation for what had happened to my wife and my life.
“You’re a man in torment,” Wilkens said. “Bringing William Trasker to the commission table to do something decent will ease your torment, if only a little.”
I said nothing.
“And you?” he asked Ames.
“Methodist till I die,” said Ames. “And I don’t care what color you make the good Lord out of pieces of glass. He is what he is.”
“I’ve got to get to the cemetery,” Wilkens said.
Wilkens touched my shoulder and Ames’s as he passed us and left the church, closing the doors behind him. I hadn’t told him that what I planned to do was illegal. I didn’t think he’d want to know. I wondered what he thought someone should do when the law and God didn’t agree.
Ames and I stood alone in the church.
“Methodist pie,” he said, looking around the room. “Think I’ll go to church Sunday.”
I drove Ames back to the Texas Bar and Grill and told him what I wanted him to do.
“What I need is someone who knows how to get into a house, a big house with walls and a couple of men inside who have guns.”
I didn’t have to tell Ames which house.
He said he would see what he could do, told me to take care of myself, and got out of the car. When he opened the door, I smelled grilling beef and onions. I was hungry.
I went into the Texas, had the grande bowl of Ed’s Authentic Juarez Chili with crackers and a beer, felt a little better, and went back into the daylight after Ames, who had joined me for both the chili and beer, said, “Sure you don’t want me to stay with you?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said.
“Watch your track and your back and don’t go back home till we get this taken care of.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Mickey’s Collectibles was about half a mile south of Clark on Macintosh in a mall of five stores. One of the stores sold plumbing supplies “wholesale to the public.” A second store dealt in Sperdoni Herbal Products, which, according to the signs in the window, “strengthened the immune system” and provided good carbohydrates instead of evil ones.
Mickey’s was in the middle. On the other side of him was a store for rent and the last store was the Welcome Auto Insurance Agency.
There were five cars parked in front of the shops. One was directly in front of Mickey’s. I pulled in, got out, and paused to look at Mickey’s window.
It was cluttered but neat. Star Wars figures, cups and glasses with pictures of Tweety, Minnie Mouse, the Cisco Kid and Pancho, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and John Wayne were lined up neatly next to each other. Comic books were neatly overlapped like an open hand of cards, just enough so you could make out enough of the covers to know what they were: Famous Funnies, Daredevil, Submariner, Sad Sack, Justice League of America.
I went in. Shelves on both sides filled with cereal boxes, X-Men figures, tin lunch boxes, and a whole shelf of Betty Boop items-Betty Boop at a piano with her dog on top, Betty Boop sitting on a Coke machine, a fully gowned Betty Boop in a black-and-white dress with a white corsage inside a box marked “Collectable Fashion Doll.”
A chunky man in his late twenties or early thirties sat on a stool behind the glass counter. His hair needed
