“The evidence will show there is no record that either Leigh or her husband owned a gun.
If she shot Art,” I slip in, though it is argument, “where did she hide it in the few minutes between the time her father talked to Art and her appearance at Christian Life?” I discuss the lack of physical evidence and then sit down, knowing I have done a less than impressive job. Perhaps I should have gone right after Shane in my opening statement. Dan had me convinced about midnight last night that I had no alternative. Yet, once Shane hears, as he surely will, that I have not argued he killed his son-in-law, his guard will be down during cross-examination.
Dan whispers as I sit down, “You blew it.”
I smile as if he is congratulating me on the best opening statement he has ever heard from anyone besides Chet Bracken.
At Chet’s funeral, the huge sanctuary at Christian Life bulges with members, lawyers, the media, and perhaps even a couple of members of the jury. Dan and I squeeze in ten rows from the front on the right side, next to Amy Gilchrist, whom I haven’t seen since my last visit to Christian Life.
“Hi, guys,” she whispers, unable to suppress a grin despite the solemn occasion.
The three of us were pals in night law school, and then, after graduation, we all went to work for the county, Amy on the opposite side. Just the sight of each other stirs a host of memories. I lean across Dan and say, “Remember the day Chet stormed out of Phil’s office when Phil showed him those pictures of his client naked with that woman? He nearly kicked Phil’s desk in.”
Amy wrinkles her slightly pug nose in disgust. Her boss then, the former Prosecuting Attorney of Blackwell County, didn’t have a murder case, and she knew it.
“I tried to crawl into the wall that day,” she says, her hand on Dan’s knee, as she leans over to talk.
Dan wheezes softly.
“Rub it a little, Amy. It’s getting stiff.”
I grin but catch the disapproving eye of a man on the other side of Amy and put my finger to my lips. I wonder what she’s heard in the last twenty-four hours. Now isn’t quite the time to ask. Fortunately, Chet’s casket, squarely in the middle of the sanctuary at the front, is closed. I don’t want to dwell on what his face must look like and turn my head to view the church. Its stained-glass windows seem conventional enough, though I would be hard pressed to name the Biblical characters represented in them. As Dan observed on the way in, “Once you’ve seen one stained-glass window in a church, you’ve seen them all.” At my level of appreciation, this heresy has the ring of truth.
The immense walls are unpainted concrete blocks.
The effect is one of strength, not ugliness, which is perhaps a reflection of my own lack of architectural taste and inherent miserliness. Yet, although I was raised a Catholic, the wealth of the Vatican has always seemed to me a scandal. As a senior at Subiaco in Christian Doctrine, I dared to offer this criticism to one of the monks, who cracked, “Jesus was poor, and look what happened to him.” Money talks in any age. Poor suckers like me keep forgetting that.
At the front of the church above the pulpit and hanging from the ceiling is the largest cross I’ve ever seen.
Were it to fall during a Sunday service, Shane and half the choir would be killed. As these thoughts flit through my overheated brain, Shane, carrying a white Bible, appears from the left, walks to the middle of the sanctuary in front of Chet’s casket, and signals us to stand. Apparently there will be no choir. I cut my eyes to the left and glimpse the pallbearers marching past me. Curiously, my feelings were a little hurt that Wynona did not ask me to be one. I remind myself that I was not a close friend of Chet’s. Still, he chose to end his life in front of me, and somehow I have the feeling that entitles me to some public acknowledgment. I do not know any of these men. Perhaps they were members of his “family.”
Behind them in a solemn procession follow his relatives.
Trey and Wynona, who is biting her lip and visibly trembling, walk hand in hand to the front row.
There must be twenty other members of Chet’s family, presumably from Helena. After they are seated, Shane, today dressed in a gray suit, briskly climbs three carpeted steps and from behind the pulpit opens his Bible and reads, ” “Whoever hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” ” Shane closes the book, and booms, “Chet Bracken, I tell you, brothers and sisters, heard the voice of God and today is alive in heaven.”
Shane takes the microphone from its stand and moves around to the right side of the pulpit. He stands at parade rest except for his right hand, which is grasping the microphone at the bottom as if it were a stick of peppermint candy. Smiling, and his voice as conversational as that of a talk-show host, he says, “Chet, for those of you who didn’t know him, became a Christian less than a year ago. It seems like just yesterday I had the privilege of baptizing him in the name of Jesus Christ in this very church. Right now I ask the members of his ‘church family’ to stand and be acknowledged.” I crane my neck and watch, as in different sections of the congregation about twenty-five people of all ages, including all of the pallbearers, stand. Ten rows in front, Wynona and Trey, their heads bowed, rise as one. Even as enormous as this church is, it is hard to avoid a feeling of intimacy as Shane takes a moment to explain the significance of church families at Christian Life and then says simply, “You were Chet’s real ministers, and I share your grief.
“Let us pray,” he says, and raises his left hand, which had been behind his back, as a signal to the rest of us to rise.
“Dear God, through your Son Jesus, comfort us in our bewilderment and pain. Like Job, we do not understand human suffering. You send the rain upon the just and unjust. Those you raise up to be your servants, you seem to strike down, even at that time when we need them most. Our human hearts futilely cry again and again for a reason as if it were given to us to comprehend Your divinity and majesty….”
As his prayer continues in the same vein, I try to understand what I am hearing. Is he saying that Chet’s suicide was God’s will? I know nothing of the theology here, but I am reminded of my own religious confusion, which was never cleared up by the monks at Subiaco. If Jesus was God, what is this talk about the Son?
“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Who did Jesus think He was? No wonder they didn’t want us reading the Bible by ourselves.
When he finishes, the girl I recognize as a song leader from my earlier visit enters from a side door onto the platform, and Shane says, “Sheila will lead the Christian Life members present in “A Green Hill.” ” Sheila, whose blond hair comes halfway down her back, receives the microphone from Shane and without benefit of musical accompaniment begins on a note impossibly high for any male over the age of thirteen.
Around me, some people raise their arms and close their eyes as they sing. Without a song sheet to follow, the words are lost to me, but the melody soars, and by the third verse I hear Dan, who had been worried the roof of the church might fall in on him, humming along.
After Sheila departs, Shane follows with more Scripture.
“But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised….” My mind wanders to Sarah, and I wonder how much she really believes. Is it the absolute certainty of a life after death that attracts her to Christian Life? I don’t think so. Shane reads, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”