Chapter 3

I'd met Alison Hitt when I was 10. I was a couple of years older than she was, and was inclined to think that girls had cooties – but this girl had an overbite. Even that young I loved a girl with an overbite. For whatever reason her parents never fixed the overbite, and that was just fine with me, because it attracted me right off. Of course at 10 I was attracted in a very different way than I would have been had I met her 10 years later. It was innocent, just a boy who knew a girl was pretty, at least to him. And we became friends.

We moved from Seattle to Albuquerque when I was 16, my dad having gotten a job at Sandia National Laboratories. I cried when I left Alison, and so did she. We'd been friends for six years, and I was just beginning to think that it might someday be more than friendship. What she thought I didn't know. At 16 I was too shy to say anything, and she was just 14.

And of course I didn't know a thing about what her father was doing. I didn't doubt her story. There was no reason for her to make it up, at least not that I could see. And it explained why she'd become a prostitute. By now I'd learned that prostitutes aren't in it because they enjoy sex, but because something in their lives has given them a warped view of sex. Women who simply like sex have better ways of satisfying the urge. It's when sex isn't enjoyable, when something has made it into a mere physical coupling, in which the woman very likely feels nothing pleasurable at all, that she can be a prostitute.

So I took her story as fact. And no, I hadn't known. She'd never told me, and I suppose had never told anyone. I'm not a woman, but I don't think that if I were I could tell anyone that my father had been creeping into my bed. It wasn't Al's fault, of course – what was a 13-year-old girl going to do to prevent her father from raping her? And surely no one would believe that a girl that young actually sought her father's body? Someone who'd think that would be as warped as the man who'd done the filthy deed.

When I got back to my apartment that night I wept. I had failed my friend, or at least that's how it felt. If I'd only seen something, heard something, discerned something, I could have ... But what could I have done? I couldn't have beaten up her father. I couldn't have forced Al to tell me – in those days I couldn't have forced her to blow her nose if she didn't want to, I so worshipped the ground she walked on. I couldn't have gone to someone in authority – who would I have gone to? who would have believed me? And no matter what I thought of, I knew that if I'd done it, and someone had believed me, it would have shamed Al, which was the reason she hadn't let even a hint escape.

I knew then that I needed to talk to Tyrone.

Tyrone Jackman had founded MJT Christian Fellowship in 1985. He was a good pastor, and he had supported our witnessing initiative from the beginning. He'd preached a sermon, when we were still in training, which included some words on how we ought to treat a prostitute if she showed up some Sunday in her working clothes. He'd made it clear that anyone who tried to turn her away would have to answer to him – for the person who most needed to hear the Word was that woman, and the place she most needed to be was where she could hear the Word. I knew Tyrone would listen to me.

I made an appointment to see him Wednesday morning, and told my boss – the owner of the company – that I needed to take that day off. I was in Tyrone's office at the appointed time.

Tyrone was a large black man, with a waist that was growing bigger. His hair was just starting to go a little gray, and he spoke slowly, with the accent of his Alabama roots. "What can I help you with, Alan?"

I could either beat around the bush and never get there, or I could go straight to the point. I plunged in. "This past Friday, one of the women I talked to was someone I knew when I was a kid." I told him a little about our friendship of those days. "She told me Friday that she'd gotten into prostitution because her father raped her for two years, from 13 till she ran away from home. And I keep thinking that if I'd just been smart enough I could have done something about it."

"But you know that's not the case, or else you wouldn't be here now."

"Right, right. My mind is on this side, and my emotions are on that side, and it's tearing me apart." I rubbed my forehead. "And on top of that is another point of stress – if I'd known, and tried to help, it would have exposed Al. Now I know that it wasn't her fault, but still the thought of exposing her ... that tears me apart too."

Tyrone was leaning back in his chair, his eyes almost closed. I'd learned that like Nero Wolfe, he was paying the closest attention when it looked like he was half asleep. I looked around the office, seeing the books on the shelves, the ordination certificate on the wall, the portrait of Tyrone's wife Patricia on the wall. His voice brought me back. "It would have shamed your friend if you'd said or done something effective. The fact that she had no cause for shame wouldn't have changed it. The shame was her father's—" I realized that Tyrone had accepted Al's story because I had "—and not hers. Yet she would have felt it.

"But what, Alan, was more important? Exposing her to shame, or leaving her in the hands of a beast?"

The answer was easy and difficult both. "Obviously, Tyrone, it would have been worse to leave her there. But to say that outright, to admit that the best thing for her, if I could have done it, would have been to put that spotlight on her..."

"It's hard."

"It's very hard."

"We don't always walk an easy road, following Jesus. 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.' Do you know what that means, Alan?"

"I think so – but probably your point is something I haven't thought of."