Providence (30 page)

The phone rang sometime midmorning while I sat at my desk paying bills. I glanced at the caller ID window and saw the number for the Providence Police Department. It seemed like an odd time for their annual benevolence request.

“Hello.”

“Is this Jack Clayton?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Mr. Clayton, this is detective Sandra Carter of the Providence Police Department. We arrested a suspect earlier this morning in Providence on an aggravated assault charge. When we picked him up, we ran his name and found he has a long history of priors and an outstanding arrest warrant for drug smuggling.”

“Sounds like outstanding police work, detective, but what’s all this have to do with me?”

“Mr. Clayton, the suspect’s name is Carlos Garcia. Does that name mean anything to you?”

“No, should it?”

“Well, he’s been asking for you. He probably just got your name from the newspaper or somewhere, but he insists he’s in town to see you.”

“To see me? Why would he say he wants to see me?”

“Who knows. We didn’t suspect that he knew you personally, but he’s waived his right to make a phone call and keeps saying he’s here in town to see you. So you don’t know him?”

“His name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Well, he’s probably figured out by now just how much trouble he’s in, and he thinks using your name will help him in some way.”

I racked my brain trying to remember if I’d ever met someone named Carlos Garcia. Could he be someone from Norwood? Someone we’d helped? Or was he some kid like Justin Duroth who’d worked with us in the ministry like hundreds of other student volunteers.

“Is he being held in city jail?”

Any crime perpetrated ten feet outside city limits was county jurisdiction, and Carlos would have been sent to the Jefferson lockup.

“Yeah, he’ll be here awhile. He’s being arraigned before the judge later today.

“Would I be allowed to come and see him? It’s possible he’s one of the students we’ve worked with over the years. Maybe I’ll recognize him.” I’d been down to the city jail a few times before as part of a local ministry run by Paul Allen from Christ United Methodist.

“Garcia will be allowed visitors at some point, but I wouldn’t advise it. He’s not exactly what you’d call the student type.” The detective paused. “But if you wanted to make a pastoral visit, I can arrange something. If it turns out you do know him, we’ll expect you to share that information with us. It might help with our investigation.”

“
If
I know anything about him.”

“Can you come by the jail after four o’clock?”

At four-thirty I entered the PCPD on Fifth Avenue. The exterior is like any public building in Providence from the courthouse to city hall, but not the inside. Nothing else is as wretched as what you experience stepping foot inside the doors of a jail. Visitors must walk through a metal detector. A corrections officer—that night it was a no-nonsense woman with a well-matched last name, Debra Payne—slides a plastic basket across the table and asks you to empty the contents of your pockets into the basket, where they’re kept during your visit. Under bright fluorescent lights and surrounded by surveillance cameras, I removed my watch and waist belt and dumped all the change from my right front pocket.

Officer Payne took the basket and stowed it behind her work desk. Then she walked up to me with a metal-detection wand, and I was scanned and cleared to continue on to checkpoint two. Here rules govern every aspect of your personal identity. You’re told where you can and cannot be, when you can come and go, and what you can and cannot possess. Here you move slowly and quietly, ever aware the officers and guards are watching you. The guards feed, supervise, and transport prisoners, a job that can be as simple as closing a patrol-car door behind an inmate or as dangerous as what happened in this entrance hall three years ago.

A handcuffed inmate named James Frank Norman bucked like a mule, somehow ripped a gun from a state officer’s holster, and got off four rounds in under two seconds, hitting one guard in the shoulder and another in the leg before being “taken out” in a shower of return fire. Norman’s other two bullets ricocheted off the brick walls. The marks are still there; Paul Allen pointed them out to me once.

I signed in, stated the purpose for my visit, and told the supervising officer, Red Forrester, the inmate I was here to see—Carlos Garcia. Red wasn’t in a talking mood, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen him in one. Behind bulletproof glass, he pushed the red security button on the wall, and the two-inch-thick doors slid open. As they did, sounds of hollering inmates poured out, the bouncing echoes of a pickup basketball game in the gym, and the smell of mop bleach.

I thanked Red, and he responded with a token nod. On the other side of the door, I met Sergeant Bill Baines, who escorted me through the long labyrinth of cold institutional hallways. One more sliding door, and finally I was led into a room with a square folding table and two black plastic chairs. Above us in the ceiling, the obligatory bright fluorescent lights.

I hadn’t been in this part of the jail before. When I’d been here with Paul, we’d always set up chairs in the gym for an evening service. This wasn’t like what you see in the movies, a row of cubicles split down the middle by a wall of bulletproof glass, where you pick up a phone to speak to a prisoner. Carlos and I would sit face-to-face.

I stood in the empty room listening to an annoying hum in the lights. A key rattled in a second door, the door opened, and in waddled a handcuffed and leg-shackled Carlos Garcia.

His head was bowed, and his eyes remained fixed on the floor. And even though his black hair was shorter and speckled with silver, I knew him instantly. It was
him
. The man I’d last seen standing over me with a gun. He sat down across from me on the other side of the metal table.

“Who are you?” he asked in a voice as dry as sand. His eyes cracked open slightly. “Who sent you to see me—
the devil?
” He laughed like his lungs were filled with smoke.

I took in the sight of a shackled Carlos Garcia looking subdued and controlled in his orange jump suit.

“Don’t you recognize me, Carlos? You said you wanted to see me.”

“I’m here on business, preacher, but I won’t be here too long, so take a good look. The sun comes up tomorrow, and the bird flies away back home.”

He laughed again. A sickening mixture of emotions flooded my consciousness. At my core was molten anger—a raw fever that makes you afraid because you aren’t sure what you’re really capable of—and obscene pity at the loathsome and wretched reptile Carlos was. I felt my pulse drumming inside my cheek. My mind flashed scenes from an arid morning in a New Mexico desert.

“What business is that, Carlos?”

“I’m here returning a motorcycle.” I felt the quick piercing of silver rage penetrate my anger. Here was the man who’d swaggered through my camp, brandishing the power that came from his firearm. Another face from my past, another reminder of something I once was.

He’d gotten what he wanted, Mitchell’s bike. Now what was he here to take?

A silent prayer rose from my soul for spiritual direction. If this was a divine appointment, then why were we here? I was a follower of the Prince of Peace, so how could I be filled with so much hatred that I wanted to take Carlos by the throat and beat him to a bloody pulp? I prayed again, wanting to hear the clear voice of God granting me direction. And then there it was. Clarity. No audible voice, but a clearness of vision. I saw Carlos Garcia as he really was, a dying degenerating wretch.

His shriveled and powerless act masqueraded as control, but all his conceited crowing was empty. His strength was his weakness. Age, time, and the law had caught up with him. The power he’d held over me that day years before was gone, and then it dawned on me: so was the power of the past that tried to haunt me. It too was nothing more than a toothless phantom, just like Carlos Garcia.

“You know who I am, Carlos. You remember me.” I said.

“I remember I killed you. Now what are you doing in my face, dead man?”

“The Lord spared me that day. He turned your bullets into handcuffs. I’m alive, and you’re in chains.”

He laughed, trying to sound fearless. “Don’t preach at me with your religion! You’re the one who’s wasted. I will kill you again and finish the job this time!”

“No, you won’t,” I said. “Your time, your chances, and your freedom are all gone. You traded your soul, Carlos, for nothing. And my God isn’t a religion; He’s a Redeemer. He saved me from your bullets, then He saved me from myself.”

“Guard!” he shouted.

In an instant the guard’s keys turned in the lock.

“Good-bye, Carlos.”

“Yeah, good-bye to you, too. I will see you again to kill you.”

“No, you won’t. I suspect you’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison. My anger for you is gone, and all that’s left is pity.”

The guard pulled the door closed behind Carlos, and I was alone again in the sterile, windowless box. I took a deep breath and sat at the table closing my eyes to pray.

“Lord, forgive Carlos Garcia. He’s lost; for now he’s lost. I was once lost too, and yet You saved me. I forgive him just as You’ve forgiven me.”

I left through the door I’d come in and walked back down the long corridor. Officer Payne was holding my wallet and car keys. As I drove away, I knew God had brought Carlos and me together so I could forgive him, so I could be free. Yet there was something more I needed to do. But what?

~
T
HIRTY-FIVE
~

Whatever road you choose
I’m right behind you, win or lose.

—Rod Stewart

“Forever Young”

After my mind-blowing encounter with Carlos Garcia, I drove along the winding Redstone River Drive to Aaron’s place. It was more than half past nine. The bright three-quarter moon lit the sky enough to highlight the smoke lifting off the chimney and the twinkling snow on the rooftop. From the lights inside his house emanated the kind glow of Christmas.

“We don’t see much of you these days, Jack. How are you?”

Aaron and I sat in front of red glowing embers in the fireplace. Aaron threw two splits of wood onto the fire. Soon they sputtered, and the glow in the room deepened. He rocked back and forth in his chair, looking like a fat Saint Nick with his trimmed white beard.

“The book’s coming along. You were right about this time of reflection. It has been good—not easy but fruitful.”

I sat across from him on a comfy red-plaid sofa, enjoying the first real rest I’d had in weeks. I drank in the warmth of the room, the crackling fire, the American Indian rug beneath our feet, the framed paintings of Cheyenne on horseback. The frenetic heartbeat of life was finally winding down.

“I’m proud of you, Jack.”

“For what?”

“I dunno … lots of things. Taking on the project, for one. I know it was the last thing you wanted to do.” He doubled his newspaper and tossed it on the fire.

“It’s been uncanny the people who’ve dropped into my life since I started writing.”

Aaron brought our conversation to a point. “So what’s on your mind tonight, Jack? You didn’t come up here to give me a writing report.”

“No, I didn’t. I came to tell you I’m resigning from CMO,” I said.

He offered no reaction.

“Do you know when you’d like to do this?”

“Effective immediately, if possible.”

Aaron closed his eyes and continued rocking in tempo with the slow crackling fire. He’d seen this coming, probably before I did.

“God brought you to CMO for a purpose, Jack, but I think you’re right. That time is probably over. He has something else for you to do now.”

Light and shadows danced across the walls, flickered on the bookshelves lined with photos and mementos. I came to CMO a dozen odd years ago. I remembered sitting across from Aaron in his cramped office at the Urban Missions Board for my interview. He’d told me his dreams for Norwood.

Not old soldiers yet, still we were aware of being further along in the journey. The days ahead of us shorter than those behind.

“Jack, do you remember Conolly Airsdale?”

“He wanted so badly to be on the team,” the memory bringing a smile to my face.

The two of us began to chuckle, then the chuckles became laughter until the bursts came out with tears. “Bought all that nice blue paint for Mrs. Waters’ house and went up to Norwood to get the job done.”

We both knew the story all too well. It had been told a dozen times. Only the barest details were needed to spill our laughter.

“Took his own car.” I said.

“Took his own car and beat the crowd up there by a good two hours.”

I doubled over on the red-plaid sofa, unable to even pause the laughter. It was another minute before Aaron could finish what we both knew was coming.

“Shame he got the wrong house.”

I let out the raucous holler of a man who needed a good laugh. A laugh that could only be shared by old soldiers who’d fought the battle side by side in the sunny days of May, when the women of Norwood planted marigolds in their flower boxes, and through the frozen pipes of January, when the hearts of our fellow men sometimes seemed just as frozen.