The Prodigal: A Ragamuffin Story

  It was as if he were already gone.

  And that was that. Before the day was out, Grace Cathedral had fired its founding pastor, contacted his wife with the news, offered her a substantial financial package predicated on her staying out of the public spotlight that was becoming very hot indeed and would only get brighter.

  They offered Sally a large but undisclosed settlement to likewise disappear quietly and not make things any worse with disclosures or, God forbid, sexual harassment suits.

  They offered Jack exactly nothing.

  When Jack came home to the pastorage, the house was dark, his family gone. He made some phone calls to people who he knew would still answer, but they got him nowhere. No one knew where Tracy and Alison had gone—at least, no one would tell him—and no one offered him anything but bad news.

  His agent, Sheila, said his publisher was invoking the moral turpitude clause standard in most Christian publishing contracts and would not be paying him any more royalties. “They sounded almost gleeful,” she said.

  “They owe us a lot of money,” Jack said. “Of course they’re gleeful.”

  Tracy wouldn’t answer his calls, nor would anyone in her family.

  Sally apparently didn’t want to rescue him after all. She had yet to call him back.

  While only hours earlier he had thousands, maybe tens of thousands of admirers, Jack had never had many close friends.

  And every time Jack tried to pray, it felt as if he were holding one end of a conversation.

  He was on his own.

  Which was how he came to be in Isla Mujeres on Christmas morning, homeless, penniless, alone, drinking one last bottle of tequila before the hotel maintenance man pulled his door off the hinges and tossed him out into the empty future.

  No one was going to save him from this.

  “Merry Christmas,” Jack said again, and at those words, something in him broke. He knew it was self-pity, sorrow not for what he had done, but for what was being done to him. But it felt like real heartbreak all the same. Tears flooded his eyes, and he clutched the bottle as though it were his only friend. He sobbed, great, racking sobs that shook his whole body.

  And then someone knocked on the door.

  Jack bit his lip to silence himself.

  He listened.

  The knock came again, soft. The past few days the knocking had been staccato, accompanied by angry calls of “Señor Chisholm?”

  This was different.

  He got unsteadily to his feet, crossed the hotel room, and prepared to throw himself into the arms of whatever God thought he deserved.

  “Okay, then,” he said, opening the door. “I’ll go quietly—”

  He stopped in his tracks, swaying slightly.

  Standing on the other side of the door was his father, Tom Chisholm, older and thinner and, yes, sadder than he had been when Jack had walked away from him a decade earlier.

  They stood looking at each other. Jack noted with an air of detachment that his father was holding a cell phone in one hand. The other hand was still raised to knock again on his door.

  At last, he found his voice, used the word he had not uttered for years. “Dad?”

  His father nodded.

  “How—” No words could register his disbelief. He could only ask the obvious. “What are you doing here?”

  His father dropped his arm, put his phone in his pocket.

  There were tears in his eyes.

  Jack had never seen his father cry, not at the funerals of his sister or his mother. He was too strong for that, too distant. He was a rock. An island.

  And yet a tear was tracing its way down his cheek.

  Jack blinked. Was it the tequila? Was this just another chapter of his dream?

  But he could feel the weight of the bottle in his hand, the weight of the despair in his heart.

  This was real, and it was happening now.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Tom Chisholm looked away for a moment. He raised one forefinger to wipe the tear from his cheek. “I guess—”

  He cleared his throat, paused for a moment.

  Then he simply extended his hands to Jack and said, “I’ve come to take you home.”

  Home.

  Jack looked down at the bottle in his hand, almost empty. He spared a glance at the room behind him, unkempt as if animals had been nesting here. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment to see if that would stop the world from spinning so fast.

  At last, he opened his eyes.

  His father stood there, arms open, still waiting—as perhaps he had been waiting all this time, all these years.

  I’ve come to take you home.

  He decided.

  “Okay, then,” Jack said.

  He put an unsteady foot forward, then another.

  Then he stepped across the threshold and into the arms that had once rescued him from the angry waves.

  3.

  When he woke early the next morning, it was to the familiar childhood smells of coffee and bacon frying. Jack thought for a moment he might be dreaming again. He sat up and looked around. Yes, he was lying in his old room in the queen-sized bed his mother had bought for when he and Tracy came to visit, lying under the flowered Laura Ashley comforter she had picked out. Jack had swept the color-coordinated blue-and-silver satin pillows onto the floor when he fell into bed the night before. They littered the ground now like satin toadstools.

  He saw his bookcase, filled with the C. S. Lewis and Tolkien books he’d consumed as a kid, plus what looked like overflow from some of the other bookcases in the house. Was that an old tax guide?

  Some of his high-school football trophies and a game ball, dusty now, still adorned the top of his dresser. He could read “Mayfield Wildcats MVP 1990” on the largest trophy and couldn’t help smiling. Those had been good times.

  Mayfield football—not to mention Mayfield itself—had gone downhill since then.

  Next to his dresser was the rocking chair his grandfather had given him when he turned thirteen. “A man’s got to have a rocking chair,” Grampa Joe had said. He’d been unable to hide his disappointment. Surely Grampa Joe made it mostly because he loved making things with his hands. But Jack spent countless hours in that chair reading, and years later, working on a sermon for his mother’s funeral while Tracy snoozed in this very bed. It had been a perfect gift after all. He had learned carpentry in the hopes of making something for his son someday.

  That is just one of the many dreams that didn’t come true.

  Over the chair was the corkboard, plastered with pictures of quarterbacks Joe Montana and Peter Gardere. “Peter the Great,” the University of Texas QB who had beaten the University of Oklahoma four times. He looked over the pictures of high-school friends, of him with his high-school girlfriend, Darla Scroggins, now Darla Taylor, long married to his former fullback, the hateful Jamie Taylor. His dad had taken this hunting picture with Jack’s best friend, Bill Hall. Jack had shot a twelve-point whitetail buck and with Bill’s help was holding the rack steady for the picture.

  He hadn’t seen Bill Hall, or Darla Scroggins, or James Taylor, may he rest in pieces, in a decade. The room was like a museum of his life, cut off years ago. There were no pictures of Grace Cathedral, no evidence of his life as “the people’s pastor,” only one small picture on the bedside table of him and Tracy, taken one Sunday after church on what was their last visit before his mother’s funeral.

  The room reminded him of an episode of The Twilight Zone. Or maybe that Kurt Vonnegut novel he’d read in college where aliens kept human beings in zoos for observation.

  He could hear his father listening to the morning news on KLBJ-AM as he got ready to go open up the hardware store and lumberyard that had been in their family for three generations.

  Jack threw off the covers, got to his feet, and went to the front window to look out at the world.

  It was the day after Christmas in Mayfield, Texas. Snow lay drifted inches deep in the f
ront yard. Jack guessed that in back of the house, Live Oak Creek was frozen over, something that had happened only a few times in his memory.

  He stood at the window listening to his father move around downstairs and wondered what he must be thinking about. Although it had been a positive beginning, they had made the long trip home mostly in silence. By the time Jack sobered up enough to absorb the explanation of how Tom found him, he was also sober enough to wonder if he’d made a good choice returning.

  It was his only choice. That was true enough.

  But what was he going to do next?

  Tom told him that he had been asking the church for weeks about Jack’s whereabouts. At last, Danny Pierce called him. He had tracked Jack back to Isla Mujeres by the trail of credit card charges.

  “Of course,” Jack had said, nodding. “They will know you by your trail of credit charged.”

  In the end, nothing was magical about Tom arriving on his doorstep, although the thought of his father, who was neither young nor wealthy, traveling to another country to bring him home was humbling.

  So humbling that they had danced around the hard truth throughout the trip and he hadn’t known what to say late last night when they arrived home. The closest they’d come to acknowledging it was when his father saw him up to his old room.

  “It’s not much, I know,” Tom said. “But maybe the familiar is good just now.”

  “It’s fine,” Jack said. He set his suitcase down on the bed and unzipped it. It was, he realized now, filled mostly with shorts and T-shirts. “Too bad I wasn’t on the lam in an arctic climate.”

  “Some of your old jackets are still in the closet downstairs,” his father said. “And I’ll bet you have some sweaters up in your closet.”

  “I’m sure they are both warm and stylish,” Jack said.

  Appropriate clothing was the least of his problems, and both of them knew that.

  They stood for a while saying nothing.

  “Well,” Jack said, turning to see his father with his hand on the doorknob. “It was really good of you to come and get me. Thank you.”

  His father raised a hand, waved off the thanks. They looked at each other.

  Whatever needed to be said was not forthcoming. Not at that moment, anyway.

  “Good night, son,” Tom said, turning to go. “Tomorrow maybe things will look better.”

  “I doubt it.”

  That caused Tom to pause for a moment at the bedroom door. “You know, Jack,” his father said, “whatever you’ve done, it can be forgiven.”

  “No,” Jack said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well,” his father said with that old gruffness in his voice again, “you’re the pastor. But I hope to God you’re wrong.” And he closed the door and left Jack with his own thoughts.

  Jack tossed for hours before finally falling asleep.

  This morning would be just as awkward, he was sure. What could they possibly talk about? His childhood? The sermon he’d preached at his mother’s funeral? Before yesterday, he hadn’t spoken to his father in years, and they shared so few good memories to fall back on.

  Sometime today or tomorrow, he imagined he would have to see his sister Mary. They’d exchanged nothing but innocuous Christmas cards since he left home. He also imagined that sooner or later he would start encountering people who knew his past and recent history. He couldn’t remain in this place forever.

  When he agreed to come home with his father, he stepped across that threshold of deciding whether or not to live, but living wasn’t going to be easy. He needed money, first of all, and he needed to get his family and church back. He needed to show the world he was still good, that this mistake wasn’t the measure of who he was, and the sooner he got started, the better.

  “Jack,” his father called from the bottom of the stairs. “Breakfast.”

  “I’m up,” he called back—feeling fifteen again. “I’ll be right there.”

  He threw on his lone pair of jeans and a ripped University of Texas sweatshirt he found in the closet, padded downstairs, and found his father seated at the kitchen table. Beside him waited a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast.

  “Hot breakfast,” Jack said, and against his will he smiled. His mom had always insisted they eat a hot breakfast when it was cold outside.

  “Yeah,” his father said. He looked down at his plate, then across at Jack. “Will you say grace?”

  Jack hesitated, then shook his head. “Why don’t you,” he said.

  Tom nodded slightly. “For this food we are about to consume and for all your good gifts, we are truly thankful, oh Lord. Amen.”

  The clinking and clanking of utensils against plates was the loudest noise for the next few minutes. Jack looked up now and then to see his father chewing slowly, thoughtfully.

  Bacon was crunched, coffee slurped.

  “How are things at the store?” Jack managed when it became clear he would have to be the one to start.

  “Oh,” Tom said, swallowing, “we get by. Things are tough for everyone.”

  “Is Mary still working for you?”

  Tom shook his head. “Not for years.”

  “Really?” Jack shoveled some eggs onto his fork. “I thought—” He shook his head. Well. “What does she do, then?”

  “She went to work for herself,” Tom said. “She’s got her own accounting office now. Busy during tax time.”

  “Wow,” Jack said. “I guess I thought she’d die at the cash register.”

  Tom actually chuckled a bit at that. “She and her MBA got too expensive to keep,” he said. “I’m sure she’ll tell you about it.”

  Jack’s half smile vanished. “I doubt that,” he said. “Is she still with Dennis?”

  Tom nodded as he buttered a slice of toast. “That’s the cash register she’ll die at,” he said softly.

  Jack seized this topic gratefully. “They’ve been engaged since I left for college. Are they ever getting married?”

  His father glanced up, then back down at his toast. “Ask me something I know the answer to.”

  Jack hesitated. “Did you tell her you were bringing me home? What did she say?”

  “About what you’d expect.” Tom shrugged. He looked across the table at Jack. “You know her. She’s a hard one. Told me I ought to leave you where you lay.” He shook his head. “Her exact words. Just didn’t see how I could do that.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. He sighed. “I guess I would have advised you the same.” He had a thought—salvation!—about something else they could discuss. “How are things at Saint Paul’s sort-of-Lutheran Church? How’s Pastor John, the modern-day Martin Luther?”

  Pastor John Heinrich had led his church out of the national denomination some fifteen years ago over some theological issue or other. As a result, the sign out front said “Lutheran” in big letters, and below it, in much smaller letters, “Independent.”

  Jack had been away at school. When he returned, it was a fait accompli.

  His father smiled for a moment, then looked out past Jack and then down at the table again before he spoke. “Not so good, I guess. Pastor John died three years back, and we can’t afford a full-time pastor anymore. We’ve had guest preachers, but it’s not the same.” He shrugged. “And most of us are old and getting older. I guess it’s time to admit defeat.”

  “It sounds like times are hard all over.” Jack knew from his reading, and from years of talking to other pastors, that small-town churches were drying up.

  “That they are,” his father said. “All the churches are down. Except First Baptist. They’re circling the wagons against the liberals.” Tom shrugged his shoulders slowly. “In scary times, people like to have their fears confirmed, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “Maybe.”

  Was that what his father thought he’d been doing?

  Was it what he was doing?

  He cast his mind about for a way to put that back in the box. “Can’t—can’t you get
some seminary kid who needs some on-the-job training?”

  His father looked at him. “What does a young person today know about my life? The life of Sister Clanton? She’s ninety-four, buried two husbands and seven kids.” He sighed again. “No. We tried that. We had some Lutherans from the program in Austin. Two boys and a girl. She was the best, actually. At least she could feel for you.”

  “Wow,” Jack said. “I’m—sorry.” Truth be told, he had always hated that little church. Pastor John had beaten him down throughout his childhood with talk about his unworthiness until finally he’d accepted it as a theological truth. But he also knew that little church had been a rock in the lives of his parents, and he remembered the joy on his mother’s face when she had sung the old hymns. “There is wonder-working power in the precious blood of the Lamb.”

  The clock chimed eight times, and both of them looked up with something like relief at the interruption.

  “Your sister is coming for dinner tonight,” Tom said, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin and rising from his chair. “I expect I’ll stop and get some chicken on the way home.”

  “Okay,” Jack said. “Is Dennis coming too?”

  Tom shrugged. “Do you want him to?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. Whatever you think.” Dennis Mays had been two years ahead of Jack in school. They had played football together, but as with many of the people in his life, he was coming to realize, they had been friendly but never friends.

  His father was putting his dishes in the sink. He wiped his hands on a dish towel, then spoke without turning. “I figure you’ll need a few days to sort this out. Figure out what’s next. Take whatever time you need. But I wanted you to know—you’re welcome here, Jack.”

  Jack thought he should say something, make an appropriate noise, but he couldn’t think of the right guttural response, so he sat in silence.

  “I know I’m not much good at saying things,” his father went on. “I just wanted you to know. You can stay as long as you need. As long as you want.”

  “Thank you,” Jack said. “Really.”

  Tom nodded, turned from the sink, and went to the hall closet. Jack could hear the rustle of clothing as his dad pulled on his winter coat, gloves, and Grampa Joe’s old gray felt Stetson fedora.