The Prodigal: A Ragamuffin Story

“You’re a good girl, Shayla,” he said. “Say. Say. Tell me something. You’re like the woman at the well, right? How many people have you served with dissolution of marriage papers? How many times has your marriage been irreparably—irreparably? Irretrievably. Irretrievably broken?”

  She blinked at him, fast.

  “Okay, then. How many times have you fallen in love with a married man? Maybe the man’s marriage was—was irretrievably broken. But all the same, you fell in love with a married man?”

  Shayla’s eyes showed distress. “Jack,” she said. “Please don’t.”

  “I have him,” Father Frank said, stepping up to the bar. “We wondered where you were. Now we know.” He sat next to Jack, put a hand on Jack’s forearm to steady him, nodded to Shayla for a ginger ale. “What’s all this about married men and irrevocable somethings?”

  Jack reached into his interior jacket pocket, pulled out the envelope, slid it across the bar to Father Frank. Frank opened it, and immediately he closed his eyes, hung his head.

  “Ain’t that a kick in the head?” he said. Frank took a deep breath, let it out, looked over at Jack. “I’m sorry, boyo,” he said. “That’s got the stench of both unfairness and bad timing just emanating from it.” He folded the letter gently back, put it in the envelope, placed it back in Jack’s hands. “But I am here to tell you there are better ways to handle it.”

  “You are,” Jack said. “You are here to tell me that crawling into a bottle is not the be-all and end-all solution?” It was not a question. His voice was rising, and people were beginning to watch them.

  “This isn’t how to handle it, Jack,” Frank said. “People will always fail you. Your father has failed you, your mother failed you, and I will fail you, if I haven’t already. Everyone at some time or other will be irrevocably human and they will hurt you. But God will never fail you.”

  “He has failed me,” Jack said. He leaned his head into his hand. “He’s abandoned me. You said I was called to something. Something new. And this? This is my reward? Jail? My father dying? My family broken? God has failed me.” He dropped his head heavily onto both hands, too angry even to weep.

  “Has he?” Father Frank said. “Has he, boyo?”

  “Say something wise,” Jack snapped, turning to Frank. “Go ahead. Make it all better. Tell me how I should go on a journey of love and forgiveness or something.” He dropped his head onto the bar with a painful clunk. “It’s over.”

  “You’re still thinking of him as the God of Justice,” Frank said. “The judge who is handing out your punishment for what you did wrong.”

  “He is,” Jack said. “I know he is. Or else maybe it isn’t God. It’s just random bad juju. And that’s even worse.”

  “Justice says, ‘I don’t owe you anything because you broke the terms of our contract.’ But where justice ends, love begins.”

  Jack groaned. “Here it comes.”

  Frank smiled and went on after a sip of his ginger ale. “God is not some customs officer rifling through our moral suitcases to sort out our deeds. He sees through the smoke screen, through the deeds good and bad, to our deepest selves.”

  “But I deserve this,” Jack said. It sounded familiar. “That is my deepest self. I brought shame on my family. I hurt my wife, my church. Myself. I deserve—”

  “Thank God that God doesn’t deal with us as we deserve,” Frank said. “On the final day, when Jesus calls me by my name—‘Come, Francis, blessed of my Father’—it will not be because the Father is just, but because God is merciful.”

  Jack was resting his head on the bar now—if the word “resting” had any meaning anymore. His head hurt. His entire life hurt. “Stop it,” he whispered. “Stop talking.”

  Frank put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not me talking,” he said.

  Jack felt them come then—the big, racking sobs. They shook his body—and, drunk as he was—threatened his equilibrium.

  Tracy was going to divorce him. He would never live with Alison again. They would never be a family again. He had failed them—and she was leaving him because of what he had done in a moment of weakness.

  It was all his fault.

  Frank’s hand had moved square to the middle of his back, holding him in place, an anchor. “There there,” he kept saying. “There there.” It was like being comforted by a wise and gentle leprechaun.

  “What am I going to do?” Jack whispered. “What am I going to do?” He had tears running down his face, he could use a tissue, and he needed to keep his head down so nobody from CNN saw his breakdown.

  Frank’s hand was still steady on his back, but he heard Frank take a deep breath, let it out. “I think,” he said, “that you are going to have a cup of strong black coffee. Then quite possibly another one. After that, I am going to take you to see your father. And after that—”

  Jack could hear him laugh then, more sniff than guffaw. It wasn’t really funny. “Then after that is after that.”

  “One day at a time, Father?” Jack asked. He raised his head. It weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of tons.

  “That’s about the way of it,” Frank said. “For all of us ragamuffins.”

  Shayla poured Jack some coffee while Frank called Mary at the hospital to tell her that Jack would be coming soon to spell her. Although first he might need to throw up once or twice.

  “I’ll explain,” Frank said. “Or he will. But he’s coming.”

  “There,” he told Jack upon hanging up. “I give you now slightly better than even odds that she won’t kill you upon your arrival.”

  Shayla’s coffee was hot and black—bitter as sin, strong as death.

  “Are you trying to help me?” Jack asked. “Or kill me?”

  She smiled sweetly as she poured him a little more. “I’m trying to bring you back to life,” she said. She had poured a lot of coffee for a lot of sad drunks, Jack realized.

  He didn’t want to be a sad drunk.

  “That’ll roll the stone away, sure enough,” Father Frank said. “I hope you’re planning to be up for a while. The rest of the week, say.”

  “My father,” Jack said. “How—”

  “Very sick,” Frank said. “But his fever is down, and they’re keeping him hydrated. I believe he’ll win this bout.”

  Jack looked down at the coffee, knew he needed to drink more, raised it to his lips. “And here I am. I can’t believe I’m sitting here—”

  Frank shook his head, and when he took Jack’s arm to silence him, it was not a gentle squeeze. “We’ll not speak of that again,” he said. And they didn’t.

  19.

  Jack hung his head out the window most of the way to the hospital. He directed Frank to pull over twice so he could throw up on the side of the road. Frank stood beside him, that hand square in the middle of his back, as Jack retched up all the brokenness and bile inside him.

  “I think I threw up on your shoes,” Jack admitted the second time, as they climbed back in the car.

  “It doesn’t matter. These aren’t exactly the pope’s red Italian shoes,” Frank said.

  “I didn’t think they were,” Jack said. Frank was wearing beat-up cordovan loafers. “I think I got vomit on your tassels, though.”

  Dennis and Mary were in the waiting room when Jack and Frank arrived. Jack had brushed his teeth, gargled, washed his face. He looked pale but presentable.

  Frank had wiped off his shoe.

  Mary, for once, did not demand details. She took one look at Jack, her face fell, and she got up to take him in her arms. “Oh, Jackie,” she said. “What has happened to you?”

  “It’s been a bad day,” Jack said. “Please don’t take a picture.” That was a song by R.E.M., which Dennis recognized.

  “Hey,” he said, pointing his finger. “I got that.”

  Mary pulled back, and Jack could see she had been crying. “For Dad?” he asked.

  “You can be such an idiot,” she said.

  He laughed. “So I hear.”

/>   “What’s wrong?”

  He passed over the envelope wordlessly. She and Dennis opened it as though they were Oscar presenters. And the loser is …

  Her face flushed with anger. “She is making a huge mistake,” Mary said. If Tracy had walked into the room at that moment, Jack would not have liked her chances.

  “Bless you,” Jack said. “But I think she knows what she’s doing.”

  “You are a find,” Mary said. “A catch. A wonderful man.” She elbowed Dennis in the general locality of his ribs. “Isn’t he, Dennis?”

  “Yeah, Twelve,” he said. “I’m, um, sure you are.”

  Jack nodded. “Thanks, Seventy-eight, for that unvarnished show of support.”

  Mary handed the envelope back to him between finger and thumb, as though it might be coated with anthrax. “Maybe she’ll change her mind. If she doesn’t, she’s the one giving up. Not you.”

  They sat down, and everyone was quiet for a moment. They were all looking at him as though he were going to throw up again.

  “What are you going to do?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t know. I was—I was thinking that maybe I should go back to Seattle,” Jack said, looking at Frank to see if it would set off an explosion. “That maybe she would come back to me if she saw things were the way they used to be.”

  Mary shook her head. “You were an English major, weren’t you? Even us accounting majors read that Frost poem about the road less taken. ‘But knowing how way goes on from way, I doubted that I would ever be back.’ Something like that.”

  “Something like that,” Jack acknowledged.

  Jack had introduced something into the room that nobody wanted to look at but you couldn’t ignore. A big black farting dog.

  They shared furtive glances. Jack saw Mary and Dennis share a look. She nodded at him. He nodded back, leaned toward Jack, cleared his throat.

  “I, uh, I hope you don’t go,” Dennis said.

  Jack looked at him. Dennis was fidgeting. “Why is that, Seventy-eight?”

  He shrugged, those huge shoulders rolling. “I used to be really proud of you,” he said. “When you were in Seattle. All those people. All that attention. But—” He dropped his massive head, and Jack noted with affection that he was blushing. Dennis focused on something across the room, instead of Jack. “I’ve been prouder of you these last three weeks than any of that time.” He looked back at Jack. “Than since you took us to State.”

  “Dennis,” Jack began.

  “No,” he said. “What you’ve been doing—what you did Sunday—yesterday—” He was struggling for the words.

  “It’s not a big deal,” Jack said.

  “I never heard anybody from a church say anything that sounded like they were telling the truth,” Dennis said. “Not before yesterday.”

  Jack couldn’t resist peeking at Frank, who was looking at the ceiling and trying not to gloat.

  “Tell the truth,” Jack muttered. “Preach the good news.”

  “I just think I could actually get that God,” Dennis said. He shrugged again. “That’s all.”

  “That God is still here,” Jack said. “Whether I am or not.”

  The charge nurse opened the door. It was unexpected—visiting hours had ended, and their special privileges had evaporated somehow after the first night.

  “He’s awake,” she said. “He’s asking for Jack.” Her gaze fell on him. She recognized him and blushed. “I guess that would be you.”

  Jack nodded. “Tell him I’ll be right back.” He looked at Mary, at Dennis, at Father Frank, and he found that despite his core-deep sadness, his heart was also filled with something that warmed it like Shayla’s hot coffee.

  Love.

  “I’ve got this tonight,” he said. “You should all go home.” He smiled, despite himself. “Thank you.”

  “Twelve,” Dennis said, holding out his hand.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” Mary said, hugging him. “We’ve got to make plans for Alison. She’s still coming, right?”

  Jack nodded. “I don’t think that’s changed. I’ll make sure. But—yeah. Thanks.”

  “I hate to leave you stranded, boyo,” Frank said, after they’d stepped back.

  Jack extended his hand. “You’re not leaving me stranded,” he said. “Actually, I think you rescued me.”

  Frank shook his head, but he took Jack’s hand. “It’s what God put us here to do,” he said. “Rescue each other.” He inclined his head toward the ICU. “Go rescue him.”

  “Done,” Jack said.

  The nurse led him back to Tom’s room. Tom was elevated so he could breathe better, but at least he was breathing on his own. They had taken the tube out. That was a positive sign.

  “Dad,” Jack said. He stepped across the room and took Tom’s free hand.

  “Where you been?” Tom asked. He was a little groggy, but his eyes were alert.

  Jack squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got some bad news, and I—” He blinked back tears, rubbed the corners of his eyes angrily with his fingers. He needed to be strong now. “It kind of threw me,” he said. “I–It threw me.”

  “Tracy,” Tom said with a raspy voice. “It was Tracy.”

  Jack nodded. “How did you know?”

  Tom smacked his lips once or twice—they were dry. Jack found his water, put the straw up to his mouth. Tom sipped, nodded his thanks.

  “I think I knew,” he said. “Knew it in Boston. She wouldn’t look at you.” He moved his lips soundlessly for a moment, continued. “Knew she’d decided.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me then?” Jack said. It was a flash of anger, and then it was gone. “It staggered me. It was like lightning out of a clear sky. I thought—” He stopped, realized. “I thought.”

  “Maybe I should have told you,” Tom said. “But you were so excited. So hopeful.”

  “I was the only one who thought this could be fixed,” Jack said. “Wasn’t I?”

  Tom looked at him with sad eyes. Jack sat down next to the bed.

  “People will either forgive you, Jack,” Tom said. “Or they won’t.” He squeezed Jack’s hand, closed his eyes.

  Tom was slumbering when the nurse came back. “I’m sorry—” she began.

  “I know,” Jack said. “Visiting hours.” He waved off her regret. “Thanks for letting me see him. I’ll catch a nap in the waiting room. You call if he needs me for anything.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I will absolutely do that.”

  Jack went back out to the ICU waiting room. Another family slept at the far end, draped like cats over their chairs, but they were far enough away to not intrude on his thoughts.

  He slumped down in a chair, rested his feet on a coffee table, closed his eyes.

  He imagined meeting Alison at the plane in Austin, watching her come up the gangway, run into his arms.

  He imagined their drive home, swooping up and down the hills of the Hill Country back to Mayfield, back to the big old house where he grew up.

  He imagined them visiting Tom—in his mind’s eye, Tom was sitting up and laughing. In his hospital room were balloons. Like a party.

  He saw her at the zoo with Mary and Dennis, laughing at monkeys. Orangutans? Sure. Why not.

  He was falling asleep.

  He saw them all at church together on Sunday—Alison in the pew with Mary and Dennis, maybe Father Frank, why not put him in there. Big happy family. What was he preaching?

  He was preaching on how God is always faithful. And God always forgives. He thought maybe he was using a PowerPoint presentation.

  That’s when he knew he was dreaming.

  Tom remained in the ICU Tuesday and Wednesday. He was still very sick, the rounds doctor told them Wednesday morning, although they hoped to move him to a regular chronic-care room by the end of the week.

  A steady flow of visitors came from Mayfield even though they knew they wouldn’t be able to see Tom himself. It was as though they wanted to
be there—just be there—for the family. Brother Raymond came with his wife, Sarah, and their grown daughters, Evangeline and GennyBell. “Genevieve” is what the teachers used to call her when they took roll.

  Bill Hall came without his daughters, since they were back in school, and he and Jack sat quietly but not uncomfortably for an hour on Tuesday afternoon. Jack asked a few questions about the girls and the shop; Bill answered in a few words. But then, he had always answered in few words.

  Darla Taylor came up Wednesday morning with a bouquet from the gift shop. “Can he have flowers?” she asked, a pained expression on her face as she handed them to Mary. “I didn’t think.”

  “No worries,” Mary said. She had never liked Darla—or at least not since she left Jack back in high school. So, just the majority of their lives. But you wouldn’t have known it from their hug. Maybe things could change, Jack thought.

  “How’s Cameron?” Jack asked, after they had updated Darla on Tom’s condition, after they’d settled in their little corner of the waiting room.

  “He’s working off your notes. From last week. He said to tell you he was throwing off his back foot. Or something like that.” She glanced away. “Listen—I’m sorry about Sunday. About”—she laughed nervously—“about your going to jail.”

  Jack laughed. “Hey,” he said. “It happens. And I’m sorry Jamie dragged you off. It looked like you were having a good time.” He looked closely at her. “He didn’t—hurt you, did he?”

  Darla cast her eyes on something across the room, then back at Mary and Jack. “We’re, umm, actually, we’re taking a little break.” She shook her head. “Okay, maybe a long break.”

  “Did you move out?” Mary asked, eyes wide.

  “Are you kidding?” she said. “Girl, I kicked him out!”

  “Kicked him out,” Mary said, breathless.

  “Of his family’s house,” Darla said. She actually giggled. But then she got serious. “Which means he’s going to be a terror at your hearing, Jack,” she said. “I’m sorry for that.”

  Jack’s hearing was still Thursday at municipal court, and although Randy had suggested he get legal representation, they had no money for something like that. Their Seattle lawyers didn’t seem likely to fly in to defend him. They were snippy enough when Jack had called just to confirm that Alison was still coming for her visit.