Grif Stockley - Religious Conviction

After you’ve been on it long enough, you learn how to be comfortable. That’s where I am right now-I’m learning how to be comfortable.”

I take my spoon and press it hard against the table, trying to contain my frustration. I’ve felt Rainey slipping away from me for months. Christian Life sounds like a day-care center for adults. All you have to do is check your brains at the door. Yet she has told me that a number of Blackwell County’s movers and shakers are members now, including a number of attorneys who are partners in the biggest firms in the state. “Tell me about Shane Norman,” I mutter.

“What makes him so great?”

Rainey’s eyes light up at the mention of Christian Life’s principal minister.

“I’ve actually met him only once,” she says, giving me a rueful smile that is becoming familiar, “but as a preacher the man radiates peace.

Even the Sunday after Leigh was charged, you couldn’t tell the turmoil he must have been feeling.”

I lean back in my chair so exasperated with her I can’t eat anymore. I would be glowing a bit myself if five thousand people were showing up every week to hear me beat my gums.

“Maybe he was at peace because his church raised half a million dollars for her bail by the next day.”

Rainey gives me an indulgent smile.

“Think how you would feel if Sarah were charged with murdering her husband. You’d be bananas.”

I am capable of murder, but Sarah is not. She feels guilty if she accidentally steps on an ant. I start to make some asinine crack, but catch myself. Rainey will clam up if I’m not careful.

“You’re right,” I say.

“So have you heard any stories about Leigh’s marriage while you’ve been there?”

“Don’t ask her to snoop on her own church!” Sarah yelps at me.

“It’s not right!” She glares at me as if I had demanded that Rainey stake out the women’s bathroom at Christian Life.

“It’s okay, Sarah,” Rainey says.

“He’s just trying to find out the truth about what happened.”

I nod, ridiculously pleased that Rainey is defending me.

“All I’m trying to do,” I tell my daughter, “is get some information.” At seventeen, Sarah is an idealist. I don’t begrudge her this unrealistic phase in her life. I must have gone through one myself to run off and join the Peace Corps after college. Still, people like my daughter can be a pain in the butt, especially if they are charged with a crime. In my last big case I defended one who almost drove me crazy.

Sarah shakes her head.

“You just want to hear some thing,” she says, “that will make Christian Life look bad. You’re mad Rainey’s never home anymore when you call her.”

A child shall lead us.

“I have to confess,” I say, glancing at Sarah before I turn to my girlfriend, “I’m a little suspicious of anyone who’s made to sound quite so wonderful. He never turns out to be the superstar everybody says he is.”

Sarah’s voice takes on a high-pitched tone that signals she is mad enough to cry.

“You’re just like the media,” she says to me.

“Always criticizing, always looking for the dirt.” She pleads with Rainey, “Don’t tell him anything.”

“Sarah,” Rainey says, coming around the table to stand behind Sarah’s chair and rub her shoulders as if she were a child who needed calming down instead of a spoiled, sulky teenager, “it’s okay. Your dad knows he’s got a standing invitation to get involved with me out there any time he wants.”

Her dark eyes flashing at me, Sarah says, “The only reason you’d go is to get evidence for your case.”

I stand up, wondering what I have done to my child.

In conversations before, Sarah has accused me of using people, but she has never been so angry or so blunt.

“I don’t think,” I say, throwing my napkin on the table, “I’d make it to the inner sanctum in the three weeks left to trial.” I head for the door.

“Let’s go home if all you are going to do is jump down my throat.”

As I knew would happen, tears start down my daughter’s cheeks. I still know what buttons to push. There may come a time when “guilting” her won’t work, but practice makes perfect.

“I’m sorry, Rainey,” she says in a choked voice.

“I am, too!” I call from the door, waiting for Sarah.

Sometimes she acts about three. I’m almost as mad at Rainey as I am at Sarah. I’m willing to bet my fee in the Wallace case that Rainey has been talking to Sarah about her coming to Christian Life. I don’t mind her trying to proselytize me, but Sarah is another matter.

Damn it to hell, who does she think she is? Sarah is my child, and I don’t want anybody trying to feed her a load of crap. There is enough out there anyway without some right-wing nuts brainwashing her. Who the hell is Shane Norman anyway? In an earlier life he probably was some fly-by-night con artist who figured out that peddling salvation was an easier way to make a living.

I may not be a genius or a saint, but I know bullshit when I see it. From the Crusades on down, with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other, Christians who were sure they had a lock on the truth have murdered thousands of people. I’d rather my daughter’s brain not be one of their victims.

“It’s all right. Call me later,” Rainey says, hurrying to the door.

I nod curtly, as Sarah runs ahead of me.

Sarah and I ride in an angry silence until we turn into our driveway.

“You can be so closed-minded,” she says, as she shuts the car door, careful not to slam it, knowing I will explode if she does.

“Just because you don’t believe anything doesn’t mean other people can’t.”

Banging doors, yelling, any behavior except “Yes, sir” or “No, ma’am” uttered with a respectful tone minus a snide expression were forbidden to me and my sister, Marty, when we were growing up in eastern Arkansas. Even when my father was at his craziest, we went around smiling like slaves who were working up their nerve to ask for permission to marry someone off the plantation. Only in the last couple of years have I realized how much I intimidated Sarah when she was growing up. I have begun to lighten up, but I am afraid she will always be a little intimidated by me.

“I believe in something,” I respond weakly. We covered this ground last summer. Since religion has become important to her, it upsets her that I don’t share her preoccupation with it. I unlock the door, and we are greeted by Woogie, a genetic disaster with his long legs and beagle body and head.

“Rainey asked you to visit Christian Life, didn’t she?”

I turn on lights in the den while Sarah reaches down and pats Woogie’s head.

“What’s wrong with that?”

I might as well sell the house and get a motel room.

“You’re supposed to be Catholic. Your mother would be spinning in her grave if she knew you were going to join the Moonies or whatever this group is.”

Sarah’s jaw tightens.

“God, Dad, you’re impossible,” she mutters.

“Rainey wouldn’t join something weird.

Besides, you don’t know anything about Moonies any way, and you know Mom wouldn’t think it was the end of the world like you do.”

I throw myself down on the couch and watch Sarah stroke Woogie’s graying muzzle with her knuckles. I’d even rather she be serious about a boy than get involved with a group like Christian Life. First Rainey, now my daughter. Why isn’t it enough for the women I love to get up and go to school or work and then come home and plop down and watch the brain drain or even read a book? Life is complicated enough without getting heated up about whether some supernatural force is “breaking in” to human history.