“Where are you calling from?”
“From a safe place in White River. Look, you need to listen to him now. He’s on. I’ll talk to you later.”
Gurney went to the “Live Stream” page of the RAM website, found A Matter of Concern with Carlton Flynn, and selected it.
A moment later the video box on the website page came to life. Flynn, in his signature white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, sat opposite an athletic-looking brown-skinned man with gray eyes wearing a tan crewneck sweater. In contrast with Flynn’s projection of aggressive energy, he radiated stillness.
Flynn was in the middle of a sentence. “. . . feel about the uphill battle you’ll be waging against a man who’s come to symbolize law and order in a time of chaos, a man whose poll numbers have now passed yours and keep going up.”
“I believe that waging this battle, if you wish to call it that, is the right thing to do.” The man’s voice was as calm as his demeanor.
“Right thing to do? To try to defeat one of today’s greatest champions of law and order? A man who puts the law above all other considerations?”
“Lawfulness and orderly public behavior are desirable characteristics of a civilized society. They are natural signs of health. But making orderliness our top priority makes its achievement impossible. Like many good things in life, good order is the byproduct of something else.”
Flynn raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You’re a professor, am I right?” He made the title sound like an indictment.
“That’s correct.”
“Of psychology?”
“Yes.”
“Neuroses. Complexes. Theories. I’m sure there’s a place for all that. But we’re in the middle of a crisis. Let me read you something. This is a statement by Dell Beckert that lays out in simple terms the nature of the crisis we’re in right now.” Flynn took a pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on. He picked up a sheet of paper from the table and read:
“‘Our nation is afflicted with a cancer. This cancer has infiltrated our society in many ways over many years. The burning of a flag. The abandonment of dress codes in our schools. Hollywood’s vilification of our military, our government, our corporations. The popularization of casual obscenity. The demeaning of religious leaders. The glorification of crime in rap music. The war on Christmas. The terrible erosion of authority. The infantile mindset of entitlement. These trends are the termites devouring the foundation of America. Our civilization is at a tipping point. Shall we encourage our society’s fatal descent into the jungle of violence? Or shall we opt for order, sanity, and survival?’”
Flynn waved the paper at Biggs. “That’s what your likely opponent in the race for attorney general has to say about the state of our nation. What’s your response?”
Biggs sighed. “Lack of order isn’t the problem, it’s a symptom. Suppressing a symptom doesn’t cure the disease. You don’t cure an infection by suppressing the fever.”
Flynn responded with a dismissive little snort. “In your public statements, you sound like a messiah. A savior. Is that how you see yourself?”
“I see myself as the most fortunate of men. All my life I have been surrounded by the fires of racism and hatred, crime and addiction, rage and despair. Yet by the grace of God I remain standing. I believe that those of us who know the fire, yet have not been consumed by it, owe a life of service to those the fire has crippled.”
Flynn grinned unpleasantly. “So your real goal as attorney general would be to serve the crippled black ghettos, rather than the broad population of our state and our nation?”
“No. That’s not my goal at all. When I say I owe service to those the fire has crippled, I mean all those crippled by racism. Black and white alike. Racism is a razor with no handle. It cuts the wielder as deeply as the victim. We must heal both or we are doomed to endless violence.”
“You want to talk about violence? Let’s talk about your supporters in the Black Defense Alliance, the violence they’ve stirred up, the fires, the looting—and this Blaze Lovely Jackson person who spews out hatred for the police every time she speaks! How can you justify accepting support from people like that?”
Biggs smiled sadly. “Should we reject someone because of their rage at injustice? Should we reject them for the damage that has been done to their heart, for their feelings of fear, for their marginalization, their frustration? Should we reject them because their rage frightens us? Do you tell your angry white listeners to stop listening to you? Do you tell every white man who condemns black men to go away and never turn on your program again? Of course you don’t.”
“So what’s your answer? To embrace the hate-spewing Blaze Lovely Jacksons of the world? To overlook the fact that she thinks killing police officers is no big deal?”
Biggs turned his sad eyes on Flynn. “Rodney King asked, ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ It sounded like a naïve question. But if you take that question—”
Flynn interrupted, rolling his eyes. “Here we go with the Saint Rodney baloney!”
“If you take King’s question literally, it leads us into a morass of historical reasons why white America and black America do not get along as well as we might like. But I prefer to interpret his question in a different way—as a plaintive cry for a solution. The question I hear is this: What would it take for us to come together? And the answer to that can be summed up in one word. Respect.”
“Fine! No problem!” cried Flynn. “I’ll happily show my respect for anyone who shows their respect for our country, our values, our police!”
Biggs shook his head. “I’m talking about unconditional respect. The gift of respect. To withhold respect until we feel that it has been earned is the formula for an endless downward spiral—the spiral that has brought us to where we are today. Respect is not a bargaining chip. It’s the gift a good man gives to every other man. If it is given only after certain conditions have been met, it will achieve nothing. Respect is not a negotiating tactic. It is a form of goodness. May God grant us the humility to embrace what is good, simply because it is good. May God grant us the sanity to realize that respect is its own reward, that respect—”
Flynn, who’d been nodding condescendingly as Biggs was speaking, cut him off. “That’s a lovely speech, Maynard. A nice sermon. But the reality we’re facing won’t—”
Gurney’s attention was diverted abruptly by a sound he associated with a small-displacement motorcycle. As he listened, it seemed to grow louder. It brought to mind the elusive red motocross bike.
He put his computer down on the hassock in front of his chair and went quickly to the side of the house that provided a view of the high pasture where the sound seemed to be coming from. By the time he got to the den window it had stopped. In the less-than-ideal dusk light he saw nothing unusual. He opened the window quietly and listened.
He heard only the distant cawing of crows. Then nothing at all.
Even though he suspected he was overreacting, he went to the bedroom where he’d left his Beretta in its ankle holster. When he sat on the bed to strap it on, he saw something he’d missed earlier—a note under the alarm clock on the bedside table. It was from Madeleine.
“Hi, sweetheart. I decided to stay over at the hospital inn tonight. So I came home to get a few overnight things and fresh clothes for tomorrow. In the morning I’ll go straight from White River to work. Love you.”
He made a mental note to call her later that evening. Then he left the bedroom and made a circuit of the ground-floor windows, peering out into the adjacent fields and woods. He repeated the circuit. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he returned to his chair by the hearth, and picked up his computer.