Pain's Joke
Chapter 10
It had rained overnight, which left the air thick and sticky. Jonas was riding his bike down Cambden Street and was thinking about Rev. Chambers. He wondered why everyone seemed to either hate or ignore the old man even though to Jonas, he had been nothing but kind and generous. He made up his mind that he would disobey his mother's command and find the old man to ask him about it. He figured he had to go straight to the source to get any real answers.
He took off toward the school, leaning his bike alternately left and right with each heavy downward stroke of the pedals. Like every boy with a little bit of freedom and a set of wheels, he thought he was cool. He remembered the detective on TV with the fast muscle car and the dark sunglasses. He leaned into each corner and came out of the turns pedaling hard and fast. He was on a case, chasing clues, searching for the truth.
Jonas rounded the last corner by the ice cream stand where he first spoke with Rev. Chambers. He pulled hard on the brakes, lowered his body, leaned left and let the back tire come out from under him in a wide, screeching arc to the left. Dolores would often yell at him for skidding his tires that way. “Jonas, do you have money to buy new tires?” she would ask him. But this time she wasn't around, and neither was Rev. Chambers. He continued down the street and turned right, cutting through the park. There was no sign of the reverend there either. Feeling his search was becoming fruitless, Jonas decided to do a little detective work the old-fashioned way: research. He took off toward the convenience store where a payphone (the only one that hadn't been gotten rid of) was affixed to a pole between the parking lot and the sidewalk. It was old, and the paint had long been chipped from the shroud which barely protected it from the elements. All over the shroud, in predominately black permanent marker, teenagers had tagged their names and aliases. Some phone numbers were scribbled on it, some with just a first name, others had “For a good time call...” written above it. Someone with exquisite penmanship had written a poem about loneliness and alienation with a red paint marker on the small, flat surface which sat above the nook where the phone book was stored on a thick metal cable. Jonas hated poems, but he hated even more the fact that someone had ripped out the phone book entirely. He kicked the pole upon which the phone was mounted, turned his bike around, and headed home to look up the old man's address.
He rode back through the park, down the street toward the ice cream stand, around the corner by the video store, cut through the parking lot of the gas station, and turned left on Cambden Street toward home. He left his bike to fall to the ground while he ran inside to find the phone book. Dolores had a habit of not returning the phone book to the drawer next to the phone in the kitchen, so Jonas had to search for it. It wasn't on top of the fridge or the microwave. Nothing on the end tables in the living room, so he sifted through old issues of women's magazines under the coffee table. The covers were all torn off because it was Dolores' job to do so to all the expired magazines at the grocery store and dispose of them in the trash. Occasionally she would find an article or a recipe she wanted to keep so she would tuck the magazine into her purse and bring it home. Under the coffee table was the repository for almost two year's worth of coverless magazines.
Jonas finally found the phone book in the bathroom, which he thought was odd since they didn't have a cordless phone. “1020 Carlisle” he repeated to himself over and over so he wouldn't forget, and he went back outside to get his bike.
Once Jonas found Rev. Chambers' house, he stopped his bike on the sidewalk near the walkway to the door. He got off the bike and walked it toward the wide, neglected porch. The reverend happened to catch a glimpse of Jonas coming toward the porch and opened the front door.
“Jonas,” he said cheerfully, “what brings you here?”
“I've got questions. Hard questions.”
The reverend chuckled at such a forward response from such a young boy. “Well, if it's alright with your mom, you can have a seat here on the porch. I'll go get something to drink, you look thirsty.”
Jonas climbed the stairs to the porch and took a seat on the wicker love seat. In a moment, the reverend came back with a glass of sweet tea. He handed Jonas the glass and sat down across from him on a wicker chair.
“Does your mom know you're here?”
“No, she told me to stay away from you. She said you're no good but I don't believe her. She'd be mad if she knew I was here.”
“So what is important enough to disobey your mother and ride your bike all the way over here to talk to me? Bullies? Girls?”
“No,” Jonas blushed, “it's about you. How come Momma hates you?”
Rev. Chambers was taken aback. He let out a big sigh and replied, “Well, geez, I told you about the con artist, right? Well, a lot of folks lost a lot of money and they blame me for it. Rightly so, I guess.”
“But it wasn't your fault. You were trying to do something good for everyone.”
“Yeah, that's true, but in the process I hurt a lot of people. Things don't always turn out according to your intentions, Jonas. Sometimes you try to do something good, but it ends up being awful.”
“But it was their decision to give that guy all that money. You didn't make em do it, did you?”
“No, no, I didn't force anybody to do anything. But I did persuade people, people who I was supposed to be taking care of, and looking out for. I was their pastor, you see.
I was their sheppard and they were my flock. A sheppard is supposed to look after the flock, to keep them from danger, physical and spiritual danger. I suppose my greatest fault is in betraying their trust. Causing them to lose their faith.”
“How can they lose their faith? It's something you believe in, not something like your car keys.”
“Yeah, but by betraying them about something so important as their finances, they lost their trust in me, and subsequently their trust in God. Myself included.”
“But you're a pastor.”
“Used to be.”
“Okay, used to be a pastor. Still it's your job to have faith, right?”
“Yeah, but when I needed my faith the most, it seemed like it wasn't there for me. Like someone just came and took it from me. I honestly believed that God would bless us for our faithfulness and reward our good works, but it turned out to be a scam. That got me thinking, what else have I always held onto as a sure thing that might not be so? And then the Mrs went and did what she did, and that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, see? I had enough. I turned to God in my hour of need and it seemed like he ignored me. So I retired from the ministry and I've spent the rest of my time here trying to figure it all out.”
“Hmm,” said Jonas contemplatively, “well you're wrong Reverend Chambers.”
The reverend choked on his tea. “Well then...”
“You're wrong. God didn't fail you. You had faith and He's gonna help you. You can't just give up.”
“That's easy for you to say.”
“If you give up, you've definitely lost your faith and that means you have no hope. If you have no hope, you might as well go jump in the lake. You have to believe, Reverend. You have to.”
“And how do you suppose I go about doing that?”
Jonas thought for a bit. “I don't know exactly. But I'll think of something. I'll go home and think about it, and I'll meet you at the park tomorrow around noon.”
Reverend Chambers humored him. “Alright, then. Tomorrow at noon.”