Pastor Nealy asked me to stand up Sunday and forgive the man who killed my boy. Twelve years ago a drunk driver crossed the center line on Route 6 and took my Cole. He was nineteen. The man served four years and paid an eighteen-hundred-dollar fine, which apparently was the state of Iowa’s math for the value of a boy who could fix an old lawnmower engine by ear and still left his sneakers right by the back door where someone was bound to trip over them.
Last spring that same man started coming to our church. He sits three pews up, right under the stained-glass window where the blue glass is cracked and patched with lead. Now Pastor wants a testimony. “It would heal this whole body,” he said over coffee in the fellowship hall. My coffee went cold while he talked. Half the church thinks I owe the man grace because he found the Lord down in Fort Dodge. The other half won’t look at him, for my sake, which honestly makes it worse because every time I walk down the aisle I can feel them watching my shoulders to see if I’m crumbling yet.
I prayed till the words ran out. I prayed on the back porch while the early morning dew was still heavy on the tomato cages. I prayed while I was standing at the sink scrubbing grease off the cast-iron skillet that Cole used to cook his eggs in.
But God didn’t give me any sudden visions or warm feelings. He just gave me the silence of an empty house where the refrigerator hums too loud. My sister Clara called me on Thursday night. She told me I was being stubborn. “Clara,” I said, “the boy never even got to vote in a presidential election.” She told me that bitterness is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the other rat to die. I told her I wasn’t drinking anything, I was just trying to remember what Cole’s voice sounded like when he yelled from the driveway that he forgot his car keys.
This morning I ironed my good navy dress and walked to the church early. The gravel in the parking lot was still damp from the overnight mist, and my heels crunched on the little stones just like they did twelve years ago at the cemetery when the grass was still fresh-cut and raw.
When the heavy oak doors opened, I didn’t go to my usual seat in the eighth row where I can see the minister’s left ear. I walked straight down the middle aisle, my pocketbook clutched in both hands so tight my knuckles turned the color of lard. The choir was finishing up the prelude on the old upright piano that always goes flat in the humidity. Arthur Pendelton was sitting in his usual spot three pews up. He had on a clean white button-down shirt that looked like his wife had ironed it twice, and he was staring straight ahead at the brass cross behind the altar with his hands folded neatly over his knees, looking like a man who had already settled his accounts with everyone except the ghost sitting in the back of his own skull.
Pastor Nealy saw me coming down the center aisle instead of turning toward the pews, and I could tell by the way his eyebrows twitched that he thought he was about to get his public miracle.
He had that little smile ready, the one he practices in the study when he’s writing his notes on the parables. He reached down and picked up his leather-bound Bible, stepping out from behind the pulpit like he was ready to welcome a stray sheep back into the fold. The organ stopped playing with a heavy, wheezing sigh that made the candles on the communion table flicker. Nobody made a sound. Mrs. Gable in the front row dropped a cough drop wrapper, and it sounded like a firecracker in the quiet. I kept walking until I reached the second pew, right behind Arthur. I could smell that cheap aftershave he uses, the kind they sell in the plastic bottles down at the hardware store next to the motor oil.
I didn’t look at Pastor Nealy. I looked at the back of Arthur Pendelton’s neck where his gray hair was trimmed short and neat around his collar. I stopped right beside his pew and laid my pocketbook down on the polished oak wood with a little thud that made him flinch. He didn’t turn around, but I saw his shoulders bunch up like he was bracing for a blow. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the folded piece of yellow legal paper I’d been carrying in my apron pocket since Thursday night. It wasn’t a speech about healing. It was just the copy of the police report from the night of the wreck, the one that showed he blew a point two-four at two in the morning while my boy was driving home from his shift at the grain elevator.
“You wanted a testimony, Pastor,” I said, and my voice didn’t shake nearly as much as I thought it would. It sounded thin and dry, like old corn husks rubbing together in November. “You wanted me to stand up here and tell everyone that the ledger is cleared.” Arthur stared harder at the brass cross, his jaw working so hard I could see the muscle jumping beneath his ear. Pastor Nealy opened his mouth, but nothing came out because he saw the paper in my hand and realized this wasn’t going to fit neatly into the bulletin between the announcements and the final hymn. I didn’t yell. I’ve spent twelve years learning that yelling doesn’t bring back a six-foot-two boy who left his dirty coffee mug on the workbench. I just laid the yellow paper right on top of Arthur’s hymnal, right where his thumb was resting. “He served four years,” I told the room, and my voice carried all the way up to the rafters where the dust motes were floating in the morning light. “And my boy served twelve under six feet of dirt.”
The silence in that church was different from the silence in my kitchen. In my kitchen, the silence is just empty. In here, it felt heavy, like a wet wool blanket that everyone was trying to pull off at the same time without making a sound. Arthur looked down at the yellow paper on his hymnal. His hand started to tremble, just a little twitch in the thumb, the kind of shake you see in old men who spent too many winters working the lathe without gloves. He didn’t touch the paper. He just stared at the ink where the state trooper’s signature was scrawled at the bottom in messy ballpoint. Pastor Nealy took half a step forward, his hand raised like he wanted to bless the air and make it go back to normal, but he didn’t know what prayer to say for a debt that doesn’t fit in the collection plate.
I turned around and walked back up the aisle toward the heavy oak doors, and nobody tried to stop me this time. Mrs. Gable kept her head down staring at her shoes, and Clara wouldn’t meet my eyes from the fourth row, but I could hear the organist tentatively hitting a chord to get the service moving again. When I pushed the heavy doors open and stepped back out onto the porch, the sun was hitting the gravel parking lot and the air smelled like wild onion and dust. I didn’t forgive him. I don’t think God expects me to balance a scale that broke twelve years ago on Route 6. But as I walked down the steps toward my old Buick, my hands felt lighter in my pockets than they had in a very long time.
