Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

‘Indeed it is. But no one wants the law enforced, so people flout it without fear,’ the preacher said. ‘So we protest. But unlike you, Paul, none of us need fear anything from anyone. Even if protest is all we have. With our protest, we have God’s backing. Nothing can stand against that.’

‘I have done that. I have protested,’ said the woman in the dark suit, louder than everyone else among the shouted responses. ‘Every day I know the Minister for Health is going to be out in public somewhere, I’m waiting for her. Wherever she goes, I’m behind her. As long as she allows the unborn children of this state to be murdered, I’ll be there. I’ve told her what she is.’

‘I write to the politicians,’ the man with creamy skin said. ‘I tell them that what’s happening in Australia is a sin against God. I say to them, there’s no such thing as a gay lifestyle, it’s a deathstyle, it corrupts everything it touches. But what do they do about it? Nothing.

They don’t even write back to me.’

Harrigan considered it was just as well that he hadn’t sent Trevor down here.

‘None of that is enough,’ said the woman who had sung, Bronwyn.

She had been standing at the back of the hall throughout proceedings, not far from where Harrigan sat, next to a small table on which stood a projector. ‘We have to give everything we have.’

‘What does that mean — giving everything you have?’ Harrigan asked. ‘How far do you have to go?’

She looked at him a little startled, a plumpish figure with long slightly curling hair and wearing a silver medal of a baby’s tiny feet around her neck.

‘We must go as far as it’s possible to go,’ she replied quietly. ‘Here, we have nothing to lose. Those who stand against us only make us stronger. Because we have no ties, no obligations other than to God, there is nothing anyone can take from us. The only obligation you can ever have is the one you have to Him and you have to do anything that is necessary to fulfil that.’

‘I’ll tell you what it means,’ the pale man said. ‘The way things are today, you have to make a choice. You have to fight back. And if people get jack of it so much that they start to use force, then the only people who’ll be surprised are the ones who never listened in the first place.’

‘But you have to understand, we wouldn’t do that because we wanted to. We accept the role given to us by God. We’re not about death. We’re about life. We’re not the killers,’ Bronwyn said. ‘But the doctors in the family planning clinics are. And that’s what being homosexual means. They infect everything, they’re diseased, they’re destroyers. We offer life. But we keep being attacked because we’re the only ones brave enough to stand up and say so.’

There was a waiting silence as she spoke. She moved forward into the circle, her voice carrying throughout the auditorium in the colourless light. ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Everyone here believes that. The only law we are obliged to obey is God’s. And we must obey that law, no matter what we face. Graeme taught us that.’

‘Bronwyn,’ the preacher said, ‘it’s time to move on. If you could change the slide?’

The figure with seven stars above his outstretched hand disappeared; the image of a simple white-robed figure, which Harrigan assumed to be a depiction of Christ, took its place. It bore no relationship to the complex images he had studied and lived with throughout his boyhood.

‘Perhaps we should return to ourselves and to the present now, and speak of the peace that can be found from faith in God. You, Martin,’

the preacher spoke to the divorced man, ‘remember that while you are here, you are among your family. Speak to us now about what is in your heart.’

Harrigan sat for another hour while those around him detailed and wept over their personal heartbreaks, until the preacher said at last,

‘Bronwyn, would you open the doors, please.’

The main lights flickered on, the doors were opened. Glancing out onto the inner city street, Harrigan’s first sight of the outside light gave him a sense of disorientation, it appeared as something momentarily less real than the shadows in the dark room. The congregation filed out, the preacher said goodbye to each one and shook their hands as they went. Fredericksen, Harrigan noted with some surprise, did not ask his congregation for any money. He watched as the preacher shook the divorced man’s hand and said he looked forward to seeing him again.

‘You’ve given me heart,’ the man replied.

Harrigan was the last one out of the hall. The preacher offered him his hand and he shook it against his wishes, feeling that same weak, sliding grip.

‘Paul,’ the preacher said, ‘thank you for joining in the way you did today. I hope you didn’t find our approach to things here too confronting. But there is so much in the world these days against which we need to speak out. I speak from the heart, I’m afraid; it’s got me into trouble before today. I do hope we’ll see you here again.’

Harrigan wondered if he should question whether there was a point to the invitation, if the world was likely to end in the very near future.

‘It was no problem, me being here, Graeme. Thank you for the insight. I notice you didn’t take up a collection.’

‘No. No one who comes here has any money. I don’t take what little my people have. Why? Would you like to make a contribution? We’d certainly be most grateful.’

‘I wanted to thank you for your generosity. It’s unusual these days.

Just as a matter of interest — are these people your people? Is that how they see themselves?’

‘Yes, they are. They come to me because I am the only one who takes the trouble to care about them. I show them the way to peace of heart. The way Christ did. He went out to the lepers, the sick, the outcast and he offered them life. You must try and understand me, Paul. I have said to you that I love people and that is true. I am someone who is very sensitive to the needs of others. I can see into the heart. These people — they’re ordinary people, lost people, looking for hope. Like you. You’re not a happy man, Paul. I can see that. If you came here to me and genuinely opened your heart, I would find you happiness. I would give you hope.’

‘You know, Graeme, even if that was true, I’d have to say that was my problem, not yours, and I don’t think I’d care to share it with you.

I’ll see you again. When I find Greg. Because I do intend to find him.

That’s a promise.’

‘I don’t doubt that. I hope indeed you find him very soon,’ the preacher replied, smiling.

Sydney air had never smelled quite so sweet to Harrigan as when he stepped out onto the street. As he drove away, he turned off his recording device and called Trevor.

‘How’d it go?’ Trevor asked.

‘They owe me more money after that, Trev,’ Harrigan replied. ‘I’m on my way back in now.’

‘See you when you get here. We’ll be ready to go for this afternoon.

We’re just waiting for the film.’

‘All right. I’ll be there shortly.’

Harrigan drove through the slow traffic considering what he had just seen. He could call it cheap theatrics, ask whether — for the preacher — it was a case of stamina or addiction, and question who fed off who, but it would make no difference. The preacher’s congregation believed in the man; the man believed in himself. Some of those people were capable of being dangerous, but how dangerous? Nuisances and harassers rather than arsonists and murderers. How much was just talk? The preacher had let his congregation put themselves on display and they had willingly done so. He had not displayed himself, he had made no threats, barely offered an opinion that you could not hear any day from the shock jocks on the radio.