Charlotte Rogan - Now and Again

“Well, it sure doesn’t look good if we’re backing legislation that would incentivize incarceration,” said Lex. “It doesn’t look good if the munitions are harming soldiers and you’re covering it up.”

“Optics,” said Winslow. “I have to admit the optics are bad.”

That had been the day before. Now Price kept one eye on the clock. He liked to start his meetings promptly at seven, but Winslow and Lexington were late to arrive. When they did, they huddled in a darkened corner of the room, talking in whispers and trying to catch the pastor’s eye. It irritated him that they weren’t able to conceal their distress. Even when he signaled “later” to them and made calming motions the way he did when Tiffany was driving too fast, they scowled and twitched and grumbled to each other behind a leafless ficus tree. He had only persuaded them to keep quiet at the general meeting by saying it was better to figure things out privately, after everyone else had gone, but when he made his eyes bug out and drew his forefinger sharply across his neck, they merely scowled at him and made spastic movements with their hands.

Between his vow to listen more and his awareness that the sooner the meeting was over, the sooner he could address Winslow and Lexington’s concerns, the pastor was unusually quiet at the general meeting, unusually agreeable, unusually willing to delegate to his advisors. “Good stuff,” he said as the group broke up and reached for their coats.

The three men made a show of leaving the parish hall along with the others. They waved good-bye in the parking lot and got into their cars, where they fumbled with their keys and checked their cell phones as the parking lot emptied. While the pastor was engaged in this charade, his phone rang. It was Lex. “You’re not actually leaving, are you?”

“Of course not,” said Price. “We’re just waiting for the others to go. Wasn’t that the plan? I thought that was clear.”

“That’s what I thought, but then I worried I’d misunderstood.”

“I think we’re all on the same page,” said the pastor. “Let’s wait five more minutes before we go back in.”

The parking lot was dotted with beautiful hand-forged lamps designed to resemble palm fronds, but now the pastor regretted them. For one thing, they looked out of place in the wheat field where the church was set, and for another, he longed for real darkness, for a time when people could disappear into the night and when a man’s business was his own and couldn’t be blasted out over the Internet for all the world to see. But then he realized that he was nostalgic for an era of hardship and privation, one without satellite television or even indoor plumbing. He thought of all the people who needed him — people in the here and now, lost people, people with struggles and torments. People like Winslow and Lexington. People like Senator Ewing, who had called that very afternoon to express concern about the missing documents because his signature was on one of them and it would upset his constituents if they saw it. People, frankly, like the president. The president needed him too, or at least he needed people like him, but since there were very few people really like him, the president needed him, Houston Price, to be just where he was and doing just what he was doing, right there in the here and now.

Price had seen the president once, at a meeting of religious leaders. It was disgraceful how those Code Pink people had crashed the gates and shouted things. And the Bare Witness people, without a stitch of clothing on. Right in the middle of the incident with the Secret Service, the president had caught Price’s eye, and a look had passed between them. “I need ya,” said the look, and Houston Price had promised then and there to do whatever he could to capture hearts and minds right there in Red Bud, right there where the president needed him most.

When the three men were back inside the building, they gathered in a windowless coatroom so the light wouldn’t attract the attention of anyone passing by — not that the church was on the way to anywhere. It was surrounded by fields owned by the large industrial farm run by Tiffany’s father and the nearest dwelling was a mile away. “So what do we do?” asked Winslow. “I’ll not only be in trouble because those emails attribute some very forward-thinking ideas to me, but I’ll also be in trouble because the document went missing over a year ago and I didn’t report it.”

“And I run a high-security prison,” said Lex. “How secure does it look now?”

“Losing sensitive documents is pretty darn bad in and of itself,” agreed Winslow, “but making the information they contain public is even worse.”

Lexington said “losing” was the wrong word to use. “They were stolen, and it was Maggie Rayburn who stole them, one hundred percent. The mystery is how they got up on that blasted website. I’d ask the little bitch myself, but no one has heard from her in months.”

Winslow glared at the pastor. “I thought you said the story about innocent prisoners would create a distraction. You said it would scare that Rayburn woman off if people knew she had pilfered records from the prison.”

The pastor’s wheels were turning — there was always a solution, even if it took some time to find it. “I think you should both report all of the thefts to law enforcement,” he said slowly. “Even if it makes you look bad, you want to go on record that you weren’t the ones who leaked them to the press.”

“I don’t mind getting the law going on it,” said Lex. “But meanwhile, we’ve got to shut that website down.”

“How in tarnation are we going to do that?” asked Winslow. “We don’t even know who runs it.”

“Can your army contacts help somehow?” asked Price. “There has to be a way to track that sort of thing.”

“We don’t have to know who it is,” said Winslow. “We just have to reach them through the site. Doesn’t it have a contact page?”

Lex paced to the end of the coatroom, where a schedule of filming dates was posted next to the altar-flower sign-up sheet. “We’ve got all that TV money, don’t we?” he said. “Why can’t we just up and buy the blasted thing?”

“All church money is reserved for God’s work,” said the pastor, and then he quickly added, “Don’t get me wrong.”

“If this doesn’t qualify as God’s work, then what the hell does?” bellowed Lex.

“Don’t forget that you’re only here because of us,” said Winslow. “You might be the face, but we’re the heart of this operation. We’re the reason this church exists.”

“August just wants you to remember who provided the seed money for this thing,” said Lex. “We’re the major stakeholders — along with a few others, of course — and now we’re looking for a return on our investment.”

“We’ll buy it,” said Winslow. “We’ll buy the sucker and then we’ll shut it down. I’ll make some discreet inquiries about the website through military channels — just in case. Meanwhile, let’s talk to Sheriff Conway. I’m sure multiple laws have been broken. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.”

“This isn’t a democracy, Houston,” added Lex. “It’s not as if we have to take a vote.”

Deep in Pastor Price’s brain, there was a whole secret sector reserved for undemocratic principles. It was like looking at pornography — even if you knew everybody did it, it wasn’t seemly to admit it. Then 9/11 happened, and people started making up new phrases that stripped old concepts of their negative connotations. The pastor found himself nodding or murmuring, “Just so” when some public figure or other used the term “enhanced interrogation” in the place of “torture” or equated freedom with domestic spying or morality with war. But much as he wanted to see God’s Kingdom taking root right there in Red Bud, some of the measures people were talking about didn’t sit well with him, and he didn’t like being pressured to throw the resources of his church behind private agendas. Now more than ever, the pastor needed guidance from God, but even when he closed his eyes and said a little prayer, the part of his brain he counted on to light up with inspiration stayed dark and stupefied.