Chapter 16

We're not fancy at MJT, which is one reason I've been going there for so long. It must have been a shock to Cecelia when she first visited, since although black Baptist churches – the only kind she'd known till then – are exuberant, they're also formal in many ways, which suits her. But MJT, once I'd accepted the elder position, just went ahead and did things. I said something about the second service, and someone – I didn't catch who – said that those who usually attended that service had already indicated their choice. So I shut up and went along with it. Someone found a bottle of oil somewhere – probably in one of the elders' offices – and someone else brought a chair to the front and set it where the band usually plays, and they put me in it. While I was sitting there I wished that the vote had been as much against as for – but the half dozen hands that went up for the negative vote were, if I knew the church at all, probably by now celebrating as much as the rest. We might vote differently, but when a thing's in place we don't brood over it.

The elders gathered around me, and I realized that Tyrone wasn't among them – his official function had ceased with his sermon. It was the first time since I'd been in the church that he hadn't had an official part to play, and I realized I was going to miss him. I bowed my head while a couple of tears trickled out of my eyes, and I felt a dab of oil land on my head. Then the elders' hands rested on my head, and they prayed in turn – probably without any advance planning at all. More than once I'd seen the elders, acting as a body, seem like they shared a single mind and a single heart, and it happened again just then.

And when their hands lifted, and I stood up, I knew that things were very different. It was no longer "the elders" as a group to which I could go if I needed help. Now I was an elder, and people would be coming to me – and I got very scared. It was one thing to have my family depending on me to make the right decisions and say the right things, and ease the hurts and bring comfort in the midst of distress. But the whole church, God's people looking to me as sheep to a shepherd ... Right then I almost told 'em to take it back.

But I couldn't. And Cecelia, who knows me so well, must have recognized my distress. She came up to me, piercing through the crowd like a needle into butter, and whispered in my ear, "This is the LORD'S doing;/It is marvelous in our eyes./This is the day which the LORD has made;/Let us rejoice and be glad in it."

I turned to her, and in the midst of the hubbub managed to whisper in her ear, "Cecelia, you're not the theologian here. But you've come up with the perfect quote – thank you."

And having made her way to me, she stayed with me, and though all she did was put her arm around my waist, I felt as though she were a wall standing between me and my enemies ... not that I have any enemies, and certainly none in that congregation. But the sense of protection was precious, and it settled me down. Perhaps I didn't need protecting, but knowing that Cecelia would, if necessary, fight to the death for me calmed my turbulent emotions, and for the first time since Earl had said my name I felt something like serene.

And then came Monday. At least for several hours I hadn't thought at all of Vernon Hitt, and Al McGee, and the twists of their lives – not that I gave much of a care about Vern's life. He'd raped his own daughter, and driven her from home into prostitution, and the horrors of her life before she married Alan I laid right on her father's doorstep. And I went to the office that morning ready to tell him exactly what I thought.

At least I wasn't killing mad. I'd walked that out, and then the remnants had vanished in the upheaval of Sunday morning. I still hated child molestation, and I hated rape, and I had no use for anyone who'd put the two together, but I knew I'd at least be able to keep my hands off the man.

I got to the office about eight, and called Vern's hotel room. I'm not an actor, nor do I want to be, but I've learned over the years how to put on some sort of a front – for instance, when someone's got a butterfly knife in hand and thinks he's going to gut me with it, and I make him believe that I'd as soon shoot him as look at him. At least this time I didn't expect I'd be physically sick after the act was over, as I so frequently am. I've had to bully all sorts of people in my work, and it almost always tears me apart – but this time I might even enjoy it.

Vern said he'd be there by nine, and while I waited I caught up on business e-mail, and fiddled around online a bit. When that got old I shut down the connection and fired up the solitaire program, and I was playing that when I heard the outer door close.

Of course I hadn't heard it open – doors are quieter opening than closing. I shut down the card game, and swiveled my chair, and Vern came into my office, obeying the sign Marla puts on her desk when she's not there. He came in, holding out his hand – but I just sat there and looked at him. When he pulled his hand back I said, and heard the coldness in my voice, "Sit down."

He did. I stared at him for a moment. He looked like any ordinary man of his age. I hadn't guessed the first time I saw him that he was a baby raper, that he'd spent two years violating his own daughter. Monsters don't show themselves in their looks, but their actions. Jack the Ripper didn't look any different than any other man walking the streets of London, Ted Bundy was a handsome guy who people liked, John Wayne Gacy was a clown at children's birthday parties. The worst human beings don't look any different from the best, as Hitler and Stalin and Mao prove.