“Should Shutt be looked into?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. To eliminate him as a suspect if nothing else.”
“Okay,” he said, and then he looked at Daniels again. “Have you ever heard the old saying, ‘You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar’?”
“Sure, I’ve heard it,” he said.
“Well, the chaplain here is your honey. He is well liked and respected, and he knows at least half of the staff pretty well. So, you are to work with him and not without him or you are not to work in this institution at all. Understand?”
“Yeah, I understand,” Daniels said in a tone that said, I’
“Understand, Chaplain?” Stone said to me.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now both of you get out of here. And go find out what’s going on in my institution.”
Chapter 11
Nights were the worst. The tin man alone in his tin house. Loneliness, fear, isolation, and guilt tormented me mercilessly. I couldn’t sleep. When I first got married, I found it rather difficult to sleep with another person in the bed. Every time she tossed, I turned. Every time she turned, I tossed. And the sounds that she made-the breathing, the little grunts and moans-I would lie awake in the dark listening to them. And then I got used to it- needed it, in fact.
After the divorce, I had many nights in which I would lie awake in the dark listening to the silence, trying to readjust to sleeping alone. I tossed and turned in the huge bed. Susan and I shared a king size, which dwarfed the double bed I did not sleep in now. Every move I made rumbled like a voice in a deep well; my movements were exaggerated and echoed in the absence of someone to absorb them.
At night, too, the demons came. I faced my greatest fears: those of meaninglessness-no hope, no future, no God, no purpose. Self-doubt and accusation rumbled in my head like thunder in a canyon. Also, the desire to drink was overwhelming. Alcohol offered a baptism into its depths that would cause the fears, demons, and, most of all, the loneliness to drown. I wanted to drown beneath the golden ripples of its surface and never come up for air. I didn’t, but I don’t know how I didn’t. This, more than anything else in recent memory, convinced me of the existence of God. Alone, I could not stay clean and sober. And I was completely, utterly alone.
Earlier that night, I had gone to an AA meeting. I drove into the next county to attend it to ensure my anonymity. It helped, but not enough. I returned home and, in the absence of the prospect of sex with anyone other than myself, went jogging. Actually, much of the time I ran. I ran away from the case, the bottle, the loneliness that eventually chased me down and overtook me, no matter how fast or how far I ran. As I did, I thought about Bambi. She wasn’t the answer-I knew that-but it doesn’t mean that she couldn’t be part of the answer. I came home, showered, changed, ate, and watched
After doing all of these things, it was only ten after ten. So I read, prayed, and ironed my clothes for the following day. At midnight, I turned the lights off. That’s when the ugly neon lights inside my head came on. I looked at the clock: it was twenty after twelve. I rolled over and tried to direct my thoughts in a single, more productive direction. The phone rang.
Saved by the bell.
“Hello,” I said, my voice sounding much sleepier than it was, probably because I hadn’t used it for several hours.
“This the chaplain what work at the Potter Prison?” an elderly black woman’s voice asked. I could hear a loud television and a dog barking in the background.
“Yes, ma’am, it is. John Jordan.”
“This is Miss Jenkins. I’m Ike Johnson’s aunt.”
“Yes ma’am. I’m so sorry about Ike.”
“Thank you. We’re planning the funeral and wondered if you would do it.”
I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. I just continued to listen to the background noises. I picked out another one. It sounded like wind blowing into the phone, but it was intermittent. She must have had an oscillating fan.
“We not really church peoples,” she continued. “And Ike’s grandma, Miss Winger, said you was the nicest white man she’d ever spoken to.”
I had spoken to Grandma Winger earlier that morning to tell her that her grandson, the one she had raised like a son, had been killed. At the time, I thought he was killed while trying to escape. She refused to believe it. She said that they were coming to visit him this Saturday, and he knew it. According to her, he liked prison and had no desire to leave. He told her that it was the best he had ever lived. I believed that, and it made me mourn even more.
“When are you planning on having the funeral?” I asked. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Saturday, if you was able to make it.”
I was silent. The light from my clock cast a green glow at a fifteen-degree angle on part of the bed, the back wall, and the ceiling.
“Listen, Preacher, we know Ike was no good. We not asking you to say stuff that ain’t true.”
“Good, because I couldn’t. And about Ike being no good, I’ve never met anybody that had no good in them.”
“Well, he was close,” she said.
“God loved him,” I said.
She was silent. And then she said, “You really believe that? You just saying it?”
“I really do. Sometimes it’s all that I do believe, but I never seem to be able to shake it. Probably because I need to believe it.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. I had said too much again. I often found myself telling strangers what I needed to say, though what I needed to say was often very personal and painful and often made them feel uncomfortable. I went to confession wherever I could- wherever it was safe and anonymous.
“Can you do it Saturday?” she asked, her voice sounding slightly desperate.
“Yes, I can. I will.”
“Thank you, Preacher.”
“You’re welcome. Good night,” I said after she gave me the time and place of the funeral on Saturday in Tallahassee.
I rolled over after hanging the phone on its cradle and stared up at the ceiling. It hadn’t changed. The wind outside caused the aluminum of the trailer to bend in and out, sounding like a whip cracking. I looked at the clock to watch the minute change. It seemed to take far longer than sixty seconds.
I sat up and looked at myself in the mirror on my dresser against the wall across from the foot of my bed. It was dark, but enough light came in the window from the streetlight and in the door from the bathroom down the hall so that I could see myself in shadow. It looked artistic, like a low-lit black-and-white photograph. I lay back down and looked at the clock again. Everything I had just done took less than a minute. I decided to get up and work on my funeral sermon for Saturday. My thinking was that the challenge might exhaust me so I could fall asleep.
Preparing the funeral sermon of a stranger killed under suspicious circumstances was challenging. I grew weary, but I still couldn’t sleep. At one point it got so bad, in fact, that I went into the den and watched nearly an hour of infomercials. I had to do something about this.
On my way back to bed, I stopped by the bathroom-mainly for something to do. Looking in the mirror, I discovered that I looked as tired as I felt, which wasn’t good. As I turned to head back to bed, I noticed a small pile of clothes near the shower. It was about two day’s worth. I smiled as I thought of how Susan hated that. Having
