Michael Lister: Blood of the Lamb

His face lit up, his eyes brightening. “Religion as poetry,” he said. “I like that.”

“Why do you think sacred texts are filled with so much figurative language?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding his head and smiling. He got it. Then, suddenly, he began to frown. “But so many people just take it literally. They’re missing so much.”

“It’s how they can believe they have truth and everybody else has superstition.”

He looked down and shook his head.

At the end of the food service building, a rust-and-grime-covered green dumpster sat reeking of sour milk and rotting vegetables. It reminded me of grammar school. That same pungent smell had floated around the rear of the lunchroom like a tormented apparition-presumably one that died of food poisoning. From somewhere beneath the violated metal mass bled a thin milky substance, as if from an open wound.

Dexter and I both carefully stepped over the sludge that seeped across the width of the asphalt street. It puddled like some primordial pool that would soon spawn a horrific new species.

He started to say something, but hesitated, and I could tell he wanted to say more.

“What is it?” I asked.

He smiled. “Is it wrong? I mean does…,” he began, then trailed off.

“Just spit it out,” I said, “I can guarantee I’ve heard it before.”

“Does the Bible say masturbation’s a sin?” he asked quickly without looking at me. “All the brothers on the compound say it does. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not a member of the gun club.”

I smiled at Dexter’s reference to the PCI Gun Club. Gunners were inmates, usually sex offenders, who masturbated while looking at female officers in the dorms. They’d simply whip it out and get busy regardless of who was around. Each day the gun club received new members. It was getting out of hand (so to speak) and I felt sorry for the female officers who had to endure such violations.

“Actually, the Bible doesn’t say anything about masturbation,” I said, adding, “unless you count, ‘Whatever you find to do with your hand, verily I say, do it with all your might.’”

He looked perplexed.

I smiled. “It’s a joke. The Bible doesn’t say anything about it.”

“What about the dude in Genesis they keep talking about? What’s his name?”

I smiled. “Onan?”

“Yeah?”

“Not the same thing,” I said.

The sounds of young men playing drifted over from the rec yard, mixing with gunshots from the firing range, creating an auditory paradox that otherwise only existed in war and inner-city housing projects.

“So it’s not a sin?”

I shrugged. “I guess it can be.”

“They act like it’s really against God-sexual impurity and all.”

I nodded as he spoke, thinking about the hypocrisy of rapists and child-molesters feeling righteous about themselves for abstaining while they were in prison, but didn’t respond when he finished.

“Well, is it?”

“What? Against God? I sure hope not.”

His face filled with relief.

“I think you’ll find that most of the ones saying how evil and sinful sex is are the very ones with the greatest sexual dysfunctions and addictions.”

He was about to respond when we reached the gate. “Well, this is my stop. They won’t let me go any further.”

I smiled. “Come up to my office when you can and we’ll talk about it some more.”

“Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

When Dexter was gone, I proceeded through the south gate. Emerging on the other side, I noticed a large panel van with Bobby Earl Caldwell Ministries painted on it parked near the warehouse.

I soon discovered that the truck was filled with an unsolicited shipment of Bobby Earl Caldwell preaching tapes and books for our chapel library. The tapes-both audio and video-were unedited recordings of his television program and crusades, the books, self-published transcripts of his sermons. The materials were in cardboard boxes stacked on pallets that had to be unloaded with our forklift.

As the truck was being unloaded and each box being carefully searched for contraband, Chuck, the warehouse manager, read what was printed below Bobby Earl’s logo on each of the boxes. “Man incarcerates. God liberates.”

“As Bobby Earl’s ego in flates,” I said, and we both laughed.

After working through lunch, I had caught up enough to take a break and finish my conversation with Anna. Walking down toward the classification department, the heat of the afternoon sun bearing down on my back, I spotted Warden Stone, his nephew, and the Caldwells near the center gate. I was shocked to see that Nicole was with them.

The center gate separated the upper compound of service buildings-the library, chow hall, medical, the chapel, and classification-from the lower compound of inmate dorms and the rec yard. The majority of inmates were on the lower compound, but there were enough on the upper to be a serious threat to Nicole.

What was wrong with Stone? Had he been behind a desk outside the institution too long? Was he that out of touch? Or was it just that, unlike me, he had never heard the detailed confessions of the predators we held captive, never looked into the abyss of their dark hearts?

“Chaplain,” the warden said by way of greeting as I walked up. “We got back earlier than we expected and I was just giving the Caldwells a tour of the institution. They’re very impressed. Would you like to join us? It’d give you and Bobby Earl a chance to talk,” meaning a chance for Bobby Earl to talk and me to listen.

“What is Nicole doing on the compound? Shouldn’t she be-”

“If anyone even looks at Nicole the wrong way,” Stone said, “my nephew will put him in the hospital.”

I glanced around the compound at all the inmates who were gawking in our direction and knew that, even as appealing as many of them would find Bunny, they weren’t all looking at her.

When Paul Register, a sex offender I had been counseling, saw me, he quickly looked away.

“She’s safe, Chaplain Jordan,” Bunny said. “Mr. Stone wouldn’t let anything happen to her in his institution.”

“That’s right,” Stone said.

“You worry too much, John,” Bobby Earl said with the smarmy smile of a door-to-door Bible salesman. “You’ve got to learn to trust God more.”

“It isn’t God I don’t trust,” I said. “Why don’t I take Nicole up to the admin conference room and let her color while you finish the tour?”

“Chaplain, you’re being silly,” Stone said. “I assure you she’s-”

“Mama, I’m hot,” Nicole said. “I want to go with Chaplain JJ inside to color.”

I smiled. Not very many people called me JJ anymore, and I wondered who she had heard refer to me by my initials. Adding chaplain to them was purely her own invention. No one had ever called me Chaplain JJ before, but coming from her it sounded cute, and hinted at what I suspected was a delightful personality.

Bunny looked at me. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“Not at all.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Have her quote Scripture for you,” Bobby Earl said. “I guarantee she knows it better than you. I’ll put hard-earned money on it.”

Not pointing out that quoting and knowing aren’t the same things or the fact that, though he had plenty of money, none of it was hard-earned-not by him anyway-I took Nicole’s hand and we walked as quickly as we could off the compound, through the front gate, and into the admin building.

“You’re a preacher like my daddy?” she asked.

I smiled. “Not exactly like him.”

“Are you on TV?” she asked.

“That would be one of the ways I’m not like him.”