59

Ad Seg

Terrific, Brady thought. Just when he had cleared his mind and was determined to keep the horrific thoughts at bay, at least until he got back to his cell, now this.

God loved him. Uh-huh. That’s why he was born in a trailer park, had an alcoholic mother, lost his only brother, and screwed up beyond repair every last thing in his life. Sure, made sense. That was how God showed His love.

Better yet, it wasn’t just the chaplain, whom Brady had found kindly and seemingly genuine, who was telling him this. God told the man to tell Brady. Great. Now we’ve got a God who ignores a guy for thirty years and now wants him to know He loves him. Well, so much for the murder scenes playing and replaying every waking and sleeping moment. Brady had something new to stew about now.

By the time he was ushered back to his cell—again with the humiliation of making the entire trek shackled and in his underpants, then being unhooked and showering and shaving and being searched before dressing, then being hooked up again for the short walk back to his house—Brady realized he felt a normal emotion for the first time since the murder. Yes, there was some sense of satisfaction that he was dressed and back in his own place, privileges returned.

“Hey, Heiress Boy!” someone shouted. “You’re on channel 5! Check it out!”

Brady was curious but wouldn’t bite. He didn’t need to. As soon as the others heard that, every set within earshot was tuned to the station where an anchorwoman on one of the celebrity roundup shows was telling the story.

“Authorities report that Darby put up no resistance when sent to and brought back from solitary, and while he was confined there for three days, there is no move afoot to have this incident affect his sentence. Of course, he has been condemned to death, though the mandatory appeal process is under way.

“An unnamed source says that while it was clear Darby was trying to flood the entire death row unit, he succeeded in making a mess only of his own cell.”

Over the next few days the story was played out on all the newscasts and tabloid shows. Brady couldn’t avoid it, though he tried to switch channels every time it came on. One station allowed viewers to call in and give their opinions, which ranged from “Why on earth should anyone care about such a waste of space?” to “He’s getting what he deserves and shouldn’t be appealing his sentence.”

Appealing my sentence?

Brady answered every communiqué from Jackie Kent the same way, in pencil—a short, stubby one because a prisoner had killed himself with a long one. “I will never challenge my sentence and will not help anybody else try to.”

As Brady began changing channels more than he used to, just to stay away from inaccurate stories about himself, he landed on a religious station just long enough to hear a preacher close his program with, “And remember, God loves you.”

Couldn’t prove it by me.

Anyway, God couldn’t love everybody, could He? Brady had to be one of many exceptions. Why did God send some people to hell if He loved them? Brady dredged up a vague memory from his childhood when he had asked Aunt Lois the same thing.

“God doesn’t send people to hell,” she had told him. “The Bible says He’s not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. If people don’t want to repent and turn from their sin and trust Jesus, they send themselves to hell. God made hell for the devil and his angels, not for us. He wants us in heaven with Him.”

Brady turned on a classic movie channel and tried to interest himself in an old black-and-white. He always imagined himself as one of the actors and how he would have studied the script and done his research and performed the lines. But he couldn’t concentrate. How could he?

Was it possible for a person to repent of murder? Brady figured he could repent of all the lying he had done to everybody he knew, repent of vandalism, theft, pushing dope, assault, sleeping around, all that. But no way God was going to hear him or believe him if he said he was sorry about killing someone. That seemed so cheap. Like, Yeah, my bad, sorry about that. Brady wasn’t even sure he wanted to be forgiven.

But he sure didn’t want to go to hell.

He asked for a chaplain’s visit request form.

Administrative Wing

Ten days later, Gladys buzzed Thomas on the intercom. “Warden would like to see you, sir.”

As he walked past her to knock at Frank LeRoy’s door, Thomas mouthed, “What’s up?”

“Darby.”

“No need to even sit, Rev,” Yanno said as he entered. The warden was peering at a single sheet of paper. “Review board’s been sitting on this and wanted your input. This Darby guy’s requested a private meeting with you. After you saw him last, he pulled that toilet stunt and got himself Ad Seg-ed.”

“How long ago was this request?”

“Just after he got back to his cell.”

“What, they’re punishing him more than the seventy-two hours he spent in intake? Why wasn’t this green-lighted?”

“Letting him cool his heels. These aren’t automatic, you know.”

“If it’s up to me, I’d meet with him immediately. This is a man in crisis, sir. It’s what I’m here for.”

“All right, no need to overreact.”

“Well, how long do I have to wait now?”

“I said all right, didn’t I? How many times I gotta tell ya, I’m captain of this ship. When do you want to see him?”

“As soon as possible.”

Yanno pressed his intercom. “Gladys, get word to somebody to have Darby delivered to an isolation room immediately.” He looked up at Thomas. “All right, Mr. All-Business? See if you can beat him there.”

Thomas rushed back to his office and grabbed his Bible, a book on basic Christianity, a booklet on personal salvation, an easy-reading New Testament, and a legal pad. As he hurried through all the prison checkpoints, he scribbled Bible references on the pad.

He should have remembered that no prisoner had ever beaten him to the isolation rooms. When Thomas arrived, the coordinating officer already knew whom he was there to see and in which room. “You know you can’t give him anything but a single sheet that passes through the—”

“How long have you worked here, officer?”

“Coming up on six years.”

“More than fourteen for me. I know the drill.”

“Well, I have to see what you’re planning on sliding through the slot.”

Thomas showed him the list.

“What’s this, some kind of a code?”

“Yeah. Tells him how to break out of this place in less than a minute.”

“No, seriously, I can’t let you give him this unless I know what it is.”

“These are references to Bible verses. I have my Bible here. You want to look them all up, be sure I’m not trying to give him secret information?”

“Just doing my job, Reverend.”

“So am I.”

When Darby finally showed up and noisily sat on the other side of the window, chains rattling, Thomas was stunned at how a man could age in so little time. Every time he saw this guy, he looked worse. It was plain he was not exercising, not eating much, and likely not getting more than a few hours’ sleep each night.

“You don’t look so good, son.”

“Yeah, fine, okay, listen, can we cut right to it? You know all about me and I think I know what you’re about. I don’t mind dying, I really don’t. I know I deserve it and everybody else knows it too, you included. I heard what you said about God loving me, which is a laugh because He’s had a strange way of showing it all my life, but here’s the thing: I don’t want to go to hell. Call me selfish, say I’m only thinking of myself, and you don’t have to remind me that I’m never going to be forgiven by Katie’s family or anyone else who cares. But I don’t think I could feel worse about what I did, and if I could, I’d do anything to make it so it never happened. But it did and here I am. Does God still love me, and if He does, can He keep me out of hell?”

Thomas sat back and studied the man. “My, you do get right after it, don’t you?”

“Just don’t waste my time, Chaplain.”

“You in a hurry?”

“I’m done fooling around. I can’t change what I did, and I’m not trying to get out of what’s coming to me, except burning forever.”

“I have good news for you, Mr. Darby, but I don’t want to sound glib about it. You bring up some interesting things, particularly about how God has never shown that He loves you.”

“Would you do me a favor and call me Brady?”

“Honored. And you may call me—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t feel comfortable calling you anything but Reverend Carey, if that’s all right.”

“Whatever you wish, Brady. You sound like you don’t want to argue or get into a long discussion. You just want it to make sense that God is supposed to love you and yet you never saw evidence of that, right up until the time you were sent here.”

“Exactly.”

“Let me just ask you, Brady, what did you ever do to deserve God’s love?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

“Then why should He love you?”

“He shouldn’t.”

“Whom should He love?”

“People like you. People like my aunt and uncle. People who love Him.”

“But the Bible says we love Him because He first loved us. What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know what to make of any of this.”

“You want to know what I believe?”

“That’s why I’m here, Reverend.”

“I believe only what is in the Bible. Everything else is just someone’s opinion.”

“But isn’t the Bible just someone’s opinion too?”

“I hope not, Brady. I believe it is God’s Word, His love letter to mankind.”

“There you go with the love again.”

“God loves us because He made us, and He proved it too, whether or not you felt it or were aware of it. Here’s what the Bible says about that. Ready? I want you to imagine yourself as the object, the target of this. You with me?”

“I’m listening.”

“And I’m quoting: ‘When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.’”

Brady shook his head as if it was too much to grasp. “I’d like to read that for myself a few times, you know, to try to follow it.”

“I’ve got a Bible for you and a list of verses you can look up.”

“I’m not promising I’m going to buy into any of this stuff, but I heard all about Jesus dying on the cross for us when I was a kid. But now haven’t I screwed all that up? He can’t accept murderers into heaven. Who’s going to hell if I’m not?”

“I would have, and I never murdered anyone.”

“You?”

“Everyone, Brady. Like I told you. We’re all sinners, only some of us are believers who have been forgiven.”

“God can’t forgive me.”

“Like I told you, I believe the Bible. You want to know what He says in there about that? ‘I will never again remember their sins and lawless deeds.’”

“Yeah, but—”

“‘I will never again remember their sins and lawless deeds.’”

“But I—”

“‘I will never again remember their sins and lawless deeds.’”

“But—”

“There are no buts, Brady. Here’s more: ‘Since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, He will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of His Son while we were still His enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of His Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.’

“Catch that? Isn’t that what you’ve been saying is scaring you? Eternal punishment? Listen: ‘So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God—all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in making us friends of God.’”

Brady looked away. “You telling me this even goes for people like me?”

“If not for you, who? Ever hear about the thief dying on the cross next to Jesus—the one Jesus said would join Him that very day in paradise?”

“Yeah.”

“If him, why not you?”

“It just seems like—”

“‘I will never again remember their sins and lawless deeds.’”

Thomas sat watching as it appeared Brady was thinking deeply. Finally the young man said, “I don’t get it. It’s like this was what I wanted to hear, hoped to hear, but didn’t really expect. And now you say it, and I can hardly believe it.”

“And that’s the key. You have to believe it and put your faith in Jesus and what He did for you. That’s how people become friends of God.”

“I’ve got to think about this.”

“Of course you do. And as I said, I’ve got some things for you to read, including several verses.” Thomas tore the sheet off his yellow pad and jockeyed it through the slot.

Brady sat studying it. “Bible verses, huh? So I look these up, and—”

“Yes, this is on you. I’m not going to do your homework for you. You have a lot of good and legitimate questions about what it all means, but if I was the best evangelist or salesman in the world, it wouldn’t matter. No one can talk you into this. Just ask God to reveal Himself to you. If He’s for real, and I know He is, how could He not answer a prayer like that?”

Brady narrowed his eyes at Thomas. “Did He really tell you to tell me He loved me?”

Thomas held up a hand. “He did. And let me be clear. He’s never spoken to me like that before, and frankly, I don’t expect Him to again. But I believe He compelled me to pray for you from the first day I saw you here. I was frustrated because I didn’t know what He wanted me to do about you and I didn’t know if I’d ever get the chance to talk to you. What was I supposed to do? Actually, I think He took pity on me and let me have that morsel of what is in His heart. It may have been as much for me as for you.”

“But He really told you that and to tell me about it?” Brady held the scribbled sheet in his cuffed hands. “I’m gonna check all this out. And I hope to talk with you again.”

“I hope so too, Brady.”