Lost in Dreams (15 page)

Graham, on the other hand, announced his plans to give his apartment a second coat of paint that day, starting with the room we’d slept in.

Mister O’Reilly, if you enjoy being a loner, that’s fine with me. But if you don’t want us staying in your apartment and sharing your bathroom, why don’t you just say so? You don’t have to exterminate us with paint fumes as if we were two white rats—because I had only a tinge of Mom’s coloration and no Asian facial features, nobody ever thought of me as half Vietnamese—and a black one
.

Dad was working on a unit by himself, leaving Aleesha and me to work together. We’d picked the unit that most appealed to us—the one in the right-hand corner of the U, adjacent to Graham’s apartment. It seemed like the safest one. We would move our sleeping bags and suitcases in as soon as we de-junked it.

What a difference from the churchyard cleanup in Santa Maria. That rubbish—up to two feet deep in places—had consisted of unknown materials, many of which were awkward, unpleasant, and even potentially dangerous to handle.

But at the hostel, we only needed to remove leftover materials, distinguishing between the “still usable” and the “beyond all hope”; to pick up spilled nails and put them in a bucket for future use; to rescue any hand tools that might still be lying around; and to sweep up. No one would have believed

how deep the sawdust was; walking through it was like toeing my way through sand at the beach.

After doing all of that, we’d brush off the walls—the ceiling, too—with a wide, long-handled broom and sweep the floors again. Only then would the unit be ready to paint.

“You’ll probably want to clean out all the units before doing any painting,” Rob told us; but since his comment had only been a suggestion, Aleesha and I proposed an alternative plan.

“Why not paint as soon as we finish cleaning each unit?” she said.

“That way,” I explained, “the rooms won’t get dirty again before we paint them.”

Rob nodded. We couldn’t fool him, though. “Besides, it’ll give you a welcome break from cleaning up.”

I winked at him.

“Great idea, Kimmy, but you’re missing a step.” I shot him a questioning glance. “I left a step out in describing your job duties, I mean. I need to teach you to look at these units the way the building inspector will. Hopefully, you’ll catch little things that need fixing before he does. Once a unit is inspection-ready, you can paint it. You’ll need your keenest eyes and your most critical, judgmental spirit.”

Good thing we’re not inspecting people. That assignment wouldn’t sound very Christlike
.

He spent a good hour showing us the kinds of things to look for. I would’ve taken notes if I’d had any paper on me. I still had the marker Santa María team members had used on my beloved purple cast, but my bare arms wouldn’t have begun to hold everything he told us. So I’d have to rely on Aleesha’s memory, which was vastly more dependable than mine.

Rob left to find Jo, and we were finally on our own.

“How long do you think this unit will take?” I asked Aleesha.

“Uh …” She appeared to be measuring the dimensions of

the unit with her eyes. “Maybe three or four hours to clean up. I don’t know how long to inspect.”

I’d
hoped
she would say just two or three hours. I
wanted
her to say only one or two, but—even as naive as I was—I knew that was wishful thinking.

“Where do we start?”

“Anywhere.” She looked around. “Everywhere.”

Working our way in from the doorway made the most sense. We weren’t stupid enough to trample over the stuff near the door to reach and remove junk that was farther inside.

“It’s like widening the path to the Passover Church in Santa María, huh, girl?”

I nodded, but then discovered she wasn’t looking.

“I’m going to start with these sheets of plywood.” I tried to find a good place to grasp something that was ten times bigger than me. “They’re in the way.”

When Aleesha saw me struggling, she started to pick up the other end. “One at a time, girl,” she said, chuckling at me and letting the other four sheets fall back to the floor.

I was thankful for her help. I’d forgotten how heavy and awkward even one sheet of plywood was. Once we got the first sheet to the doorway, we maneuvered it onto the wheelbarrow Rob had left outside for us. After watching me nearly dump the load twice, Aleesha pried my hands away from the handles.

She shook her head. “I hope you drive a car better than this, girl.” She wasn’t smiling.

She pushed the wheelbarrow to the area Rob had designated. He’d hand-painted simple signs indicating where each kind of material belonged. We lifted the plywood off the wheelbarrow and leaned it neatly in place.

After working our way almost to the far side of the room, Aleesha and I stopped for a breather. Although I hadn’t been

conscious of exerting much effort, I was perspiring. No, as drenched as I was, I was sweating. And this was early winter in the mountains. The temp might not have been freezing cold, but it wasn’t the least warm, either.

“You didn’t have any nightmares last night?”

I shook my head.

“That’s good. I kept waking up and praying you wouldn’t.”

My parents had probably stayed awake worrying about me a number of times. Like when I was sick with a high fever or out driving by myself after I first got my license. Or out on a date. But Aleesha had gone beyond the call of both duty and friendship. She wasn’t just a best friend who’d gone the second mile. She was my sister in Christ, a sister who’d never thought about counting the miles.

I gave her a hug.

“What’s that for, girl?”

“Just because you’re you, you’re special, and I love you.”

She didn’t just smile. She glowed. “Are you tired today?” She must have wanted to make sure the nightmare on the plane hadn’t caused a relapse.

“Exhausted,” I said, mustering all the seriousness I could. “I can barely wiggle enough to place one foot in front of the other. Can’t you tell?” I gave Aleesha just enough time to frown. “Sleeping so much later than I was supposed to has worn me out completely.”

She stared at me for a moment, and then we both started howling. “Tomorrow … the right time … regardless of … what Mr. Rob says,” she said, her series of unceremonious guffaws chopping her sentence into pieces. While I wouldn’t describe her laughter as totally raucous, I doubted that the hostel had any mice left by the time she calmed down again.

“What do you think about going to the Correctional Center?” I said. I’d put the fears out of my head for a while,

but that was like putting bread in a toaster and pushing the lever. It always popped up again.

“About going
to
prison?” Aleesha said, laughing again. “I’d just as soon stay on the straight and narrow, if you don’t mind. Being on God’s good side is safer than the consequences of straying. Especially
that
far.”

I noticed Graham leaning against the doorway and examining a small piece of paper. He appeared to be reading it over and over, and I couldn’t help wondering how literate he was. If he read like he talked …

Oh, you dodo! What about all of those books he has? He must be a voracious reader
.

What was he doing in the doorway, though—eavesdropping? That thought almost freaked me out. Rob wouldn’t have placed him in such a responsible position if he weren’t trustworthy. That fact should have calmed me down, but it didn’t.

A moment later, Graham looked up and saw me staring at him. He disappeared from sight so quickly I almost thought he’d been an apparition.

I was glad he was gone, though.

“You silly thing!” I said to Aleesha. I’d almost forgotten what we were talking about. “I meant how do you feel about
doing
worship services there.”

“I’ve done prison ministry before,” she said. “You’ll really enjoy it.”

Enjoy? Here I am scared to death of even going, and you’re telling me I’ll enjoy it? Can’t you hear my heart pounding its way out of my body?

“Jo’s the one I’m concerned about,” Aleesha said. “As sheltered as her life has been, she’ll probably be petrified.” She hesitated. “It won’t help that a number of the insiders are minorities—nowhere close to all of them are African-American,

though—and I don’t have to tell you how she feels about us more darkly colored Americans.”

While I kept hoping that Aleesha was wrong about Jo having “the smell,” I couldn’t pretend that Jo had gone out of her way to interact with Aleesha. If anything, their relationship had drifted somewhere in the direction of mutual tolerance.

I used to believe tolerance was a desirable attitude, but now I believed it was neutral—no more positive than a
C
on a report card. Like the New Testament church God accused of being lukewarm—”neither hot nor cold.”

I understood tolerance, though. But what did I know about prejudice?

I’d been in a minority setting only once in my life—one of a handful of white viewers at the well-attended screening of a movie featuring a mostly African-American cast. Although I wasn’t scared, I felt extremely self-conscious about my minority status. But I wasn’t aware of any hostility.

I couldn’t deny that Jo had a problem or that it might have been race related. But I wondered whether it had more to do with Aleesha herself. Could Aleesha’s smell-detector make that kind of distinction?

G
raham cooked spaghetti for supper. Was pasta a particular favorite of his? He’d made a number of pans of the previous night’s lasagna from scratch and frozen them a week earlier. His spaghetti sauce was homemade, too, and it was the best I’d ever eaten.

Superior—I
admit it, Graham—superior
even to Mom’s. Truth be known, though, she’d been better at opening cans and jars than cooking from scratch. But I’d loved her cooking, and I missed it. If I hadn’t … if I hadn’t killed her, I’d still be enjoying it.

When I asked him where he learned to cook like that, he just shrugged. But he actually smiled—just slightly—when I told him he ought to start a cooking school. I told him I wanted to become his first student.

If I was going to take care of Dad when we got home, I needed lessons from somebody.

Although Graham still struck me as a bit strange—and a lot mysterious—he was growing on me. I hefted a quick prayer heavenward asking that I might learn to love and accept him before returning home. I was hesitant to pray that I might also learn to understand him, but God told me—through feelings I couldn’t misinterpret—to add that as a postscript to my prayer.

And so I did.

We were about to push away from the smallish table—fitting the six of us there had been a challenge from the get-go—when Rob clinked his glass with a spoon. We settled back and gave him our overly full attention.

“We’re scheduled to hold our first worship service at Red Cedar Correctional Center at six thirty this evening.”

Aleesha and I had been so busy painting the first unit and cleaning out a second one that afternoon that I’d actually forgotten about the prison ministry. Finally.

My stomach reacted faster than my brain. It jerked, gushing spaghetti sauce upward like oil from a newly drilled well. Fortunately, the journey was both short-lived and incomplete, and everything settled down peacefully again. Unfortunately, it left the most awful taste in my mouth, and I couldn’t very well go gargle until Rob finished. That problem was getting old.

“If you looked for Scott this afternoon and couldn’t find him, that’s because he went with me to make the arrangements. Then I gave him the rest of the afternoon to work on his talk. The warden suggested not calling them sermons here. Sounds too churchy.”

“And too long-winded,” Aleesha said with a mischievous grin.

“Rob,” Dad said, “aren’t you going to tell them?”

Rob looked like Dad might have just yanked the rug he was standing on. Or painted him into a corner he didn’t want to be in.

What the …?

“Only some of it, of course,” Dad said, apparently realizing he’d said something he probably wasn’t supposed to mention. “Just enough … in case they, uh, notice anything.”

Rob’s single sigh could have blown out every candle on a hundred centenarians’ birthday cakes. Simultaneously.

“I guess you’re wondering what we’re talking about … uh, not talking about,” Rob said, examining each of our faces in turn. Although he didn’t even glance at Graham, the old man was staring at him. Hard enough to drive nails.

Although Jo, Aleesha, and I nodded, Rob’s initial reaction

to Dad’s slip kept us from revealing the extent of our curiosity.

“We spent some time talking with Warden Jenkins,” Rob said. “He’s a Christian brother and a fine fellow. He referred us to Chaplain Thomas, who’s been working with prisoners for probably as many years as some of the long-termers have been incarcerated. He’s worked at Red Cedar the twenty years it’s been in existence.”

I scrunched one eye.
What does all this have to do with the price of tea in China, as Mom likes … liked to say?

Rob must have noticed the expression on my face. “Hang in there. You’ll see the relevance of this shortly.” He reminded me of a movie defense lawyer asking the judge to overrule the prosecution’s objection to a seemingly irrelevant question. “When Scott and I went to see Chaplain Thomas, we expected him to be warm and friendly, welcoming of fellow Christians, and grateful for our interest in ministering to these insiders.”

Of course. A Christian chaplain would be an idiot not to respond that way
.

“Seems we were wrong. Our plans obviously displeased him, and he immediately started spouting off a number of rules and regulations that might have fooled uneducated visitors into thinking they couldn’t hold a worship service there. But we knew he was talking baloney. Those regulations had nothing to do with us.”

I couldn’t have taken my eyes off Rob if someone had yelled,
“Fire!”

“The long and the short of it is he told us to stay away from Red Cedar. He doesn’t want us to meet any of ‘his men.’ He says some of them are unstable, and he’s the only one who can handle them. Outsiders would be certain to disturb them.”