Power in the Blood jj-2 Read online

  “So when Jesus said that his shed blood would be the beginning of a brand new Passover, the disciples understood him to say that they would be spared from eternal death because of what he was about to do. Christ, our Passover, shed his blood for us. As we prepare to receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, I want to remind each of you that there is power in the blood. There is power in his blood. We are about to receive Jesus’ own blood, and as we do, we will receive forgiveness for our sins, restoration of our inheritance, and eternal life, the death angel will pass over and not come near us. There is power in the blood.

  “The shedding of blood represents covenant. A covenant is a sacred and binding agreement that demands the death of the one who breaks it. When a man and a woman enter into the covenant of marriage, the consummation of that covenant involves the shedding of the woman’s blood.

  “God’s grace is not cheap. It is costly. When we partake of the cup of Christ, we are accepting the costly gift of forgiveness. Realizing that we could not pay the price ourselves, we accept Christ’s free, but costly, gift. We acknowledge that it is only through the painful shedding of blood that our sins are blotted out. There is power in the blood. Life is in the blood. Death is in the blood, too. Christ exchanges the life in his blood for the death in ours.

  “So come to the altar and receive the body of our Lord and the cup of Christ, and as you do, receive healing, recovery, and redemption. And also, too, remember what it cost Jesus.”

  Serving communion to my congregation, the inmates of Potter Correctional Institution, I dipped the wafer, which was his body, into the cup of juice, which was his blood, saying, “The body that was broken for you. The blood that was shed for you”-all the while wishing, praying that it were true.

  After serving everybody else, I partook of the body and blood of Christ, praying: Let your blood become mine. Life for death. Give me life, for I receive and accept your death. Please don’t let me have HIV, but if I do, please cleanse it now from my blood with yours.

  After church, I decided to look around the medical building again. I knew the body had been hidden in the closet there. I knew that Johnson, Jacobson, and Thomas all spent a great deal of time there and were all involved in this thing. Whatever this thing was.

  “Hey, Chaplain,” Nurse Anderson greeted me loudly as I approached the medical building. She was standing outside smoking. She was a large attractive woman with bleached blond hair, green eyes the color of lime Jell-O, and bright red lips.

  “Good afternoon,” I said. “How are you today?”

  “Just fine, thank you. How are you?” she said. Smoke came out of her mouth as she talked. The moment the last word came out of her mouth, she brought the cigarette back to her mouth. In contrast to the dainty Capris that Sandy Strickland smoked, Anderson smoked full-sized Winstons. She held the pack, along with a lighter and a cup of coffee in a paper cup with large red lipstick stains on it, in her left hand.

  “Fine, thanks. Is there anyone in the infirmary today?”

  “Yes, we have two convicts today,” she said. She waved the Winston with her hand as she talked. Her gray uniform matched the buildings around her, and its wrinkles matched those around her mouth as she sucked on the cigarette.

  Behind us a steady stream of inmates, returning from the chapel, library, or dining hall, made their way back to the dorms. A couple of them remarked on my message as they went by. Many of them spoke or waved to Nurse Anderson. She was warm and friendly, brightening up their day with her sweet smile.

  “Don’t you mean inmates?” I said with a smile.

  “No, these are definitely convicts,” she said. She spoke more loudly than was necessary, and regardless of where I stood, she moved toward me and invaded my space.

  “Good for them,” I said.

  “Good for us,” she said and laughed. When she laughed, her large breasts bounced up and down with the buoyancy of a cork in the Apalachicola River.

  “This is a pretty popular place, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “You have no idea,” she said with a wink. “A lot of these men just need some feminine TLC, if you know what I mean.”

  I hoped I didn’t. “So, you all are consistently busy?”

  “It’s always busy,” she said after a long drag, “but at night, for some reason, things really get crazy.”

  “ATTENTION ON THE COMPOUND,” a loud voice said over the PA system. The words echoed off the buildings. “RECALL. INMATES RETURN TO YOUR DORM. RECALL. INMATES RETURN TO YOUR DORM.” The stream of inmates behind us became a river of blue. Many of the inmates carried paperback books in one hand, a few had their Bibles, nearly all were talking and laughing.

  “Aren’t you usually on the night shift?” I asked.

  “Yes, but we’re all working overtime to prepare for the ACA inspection,” she said. “I work midnights, but Sandy, she runs the show. She’s one of the most competent nurses I’ve ever seen, both medically and administratively. She’s the best. She really does care.”

  “I saw her in action when the inmate was killed in the sally port. She was very impressive. Cool as a cucumber under extreme pressure.”

  “I’ve heard the same about you,” she said with a small nod in my direction and a quick wink.

  “Thank you. That was an awful thing that happened, wasn’t it?”

  She took a big gulp of her coffee. “Wasn’t it though? I just can’t believe it happened. He was here the night before it happened. I talked with him for a pretty good while. We weren’t that busy. I just can’t believe it. It’s really freaked me out,” she said.

  “I can imagine,” I said. “Death is always difficult, but when it’s so brutal and so bizarre, it’s even worse.”

  She took her last puff, a long, slow drag that caused her cheeks to grow hollow-well, hollower. Her face said that it was as satisfying as she thought it would be. She ground the butt down into the sand of the ashtray.

  I always thought that smoking, unlike alcohol, involved much more than just an addiction to a drug. It was oral, busy, and nervous. Smokers enjoyed the lighting, the extinguishing, and especially the fondling of the cigarette.

  “Who was in the infirmary that night?” I asked.

  She thought for a minute. “Let me see,” she said, “seems like it was only Thomas, Jacobson, and Johnson. I think that’s right. We usually have more than that, so it sort of stands out, you know? Especially after what happened.”

  “Anthony Thomas?” I asked.

  “Yes, I believe so. I mean, I know he was in there. He’s always down here.” She leaned in and whispered, “He’s in love with Sandy.” She leaned back and continued in her normal tone, which for her was loud. “I don’t think there was anyone else that night. Come on, let’s go back there and take a look at the log, then I can tell you for sure.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She set her coffee cup down on the counter of the nurses’ station and began flipping through the pages of the log book. Her movements were awkward and overstated like her speech. “Just Johnson and Jacobson according to this,” she said, looking at the log, “but I know Thomas was here. I remember. Oh well, somebody forgot to write it down.”

  “Somebody forgot to write it down?” I asked, my voice revealing my skepticism.

  “I know. That shouldn’t have happened, and it usually doesn’t,” she said, then thought about what she had said and added, “At least I don’t think it does. But, I know he was here. I saw him with my own two baby blues.”

  “Blues?” I asked.

  “Oh,” she said loudly, “I have colored contacts on.” She rolled her eyes.

  “So Johnson, Jacobson, and Thomas were the only ones here last Monday night, right?”

  “Right. I’m sure of it.”

  “Who took the trash out that morning?” I asked.

  She gave me a large shrug. “That’s the sixty-four-thousanddollar question, isn’t it?” She leaned in closer to me and whispered, “I can tell you who it wasn
’t. It wasn’t Jones. He was cleaning up a urine sample for me. I saw the bags when I went and got him, and when we went back, they were gone. Oh, and it wasn’t me. I was with Jones the whole time.”

  “Did you see him go into the caustic storage room at anytime that morning?” I asked.

  “When we saw that the trash had disappeared, he tried to look into the caustic closet, but it was locked. He said it was unlocked just an hour before, but I tried it, too, and it was locked.”

  I went by the infirmary and prayed with the two inmates, who were really not inmates at all, but convicts, before I left medical. When I walked back out into the late afternoon sun, I saw spots. I considered going to confinement, but a voice inside my head said for me to go home instead. It was the voice of God.

  Chapter 27

  Loneliness eats away at you from within and without simultaneously. Within, it’s the dull ache of emptiness and the sharp pains of hunger-hunger for another. Without, it’s the dull hum of silence when noise stops and the sharp pains of a body needing to hold and to be held. The only thing wrong with going home was that I would be alone. Actually, there were other things wrong with going to my current home: like the fact that it was not a home at all, but a trailer. And the fact that it was not just a trailer, but a butt-ugly trailer with several inches of crud on it, alone, like me, in the middle of a prairie of poverty around a lonely, dried-up palm tree. However, the worst thing about going home was being alone.

  When I got home, there was a powder-blue ’66 Ford Mustang parked in my driveway. I was wrong; it was not parked. It was backing out. I pulled up behind and blocked it in. I wanted to know who was at my home when I wasn’t. I honked my horn to keep the car from hitting me. The driver slammed on the brakes, pulled back into the driveway, and got out of the car. It was Laura. I hadn’t recognized her outside of her one-ton FedEx truck.

  I backed up and pulled in beside her. The gravel crunched under my tires.

  “You scared I was going to leave without saying hello?” she asked when I opened the door of my truck. The sound of her voice was barely audible over the creak of my door.

  “Something like that.”

  “Where have you been? I called earlier, and since I was out driving anyway, I decided to stop by.”

  “Unlike most people, my primary workday is Sunday.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”

  “Can you stay for a while, or do I have to block you in again to prevent you from leaving?”

  “I am leaving, and that’s why I stopped by, but I can stay for a little while.”

  “You’re leaving. That’s sort of sudden. Usually women I’m seeing don’t leave me until at least the second or third date.”

  “Relax, you’re not getting rid of me that easily. I’m just going home now.”

  “Words cannot describe my embarrassment at having you see this place,” I said when we were seated in my living room, each of us with a tall glass of iced tea.

  “Don’t be; it’s your place. It’s a part of who you are, or at least who you are becoming,” she said.

  “That is truly a scary thought,” I said.

  “Not at all. It says that you’re a survivor. You’ve gone through the most difficult thing that you are likely ever to go through, and you are surviving. Granted, it’s not in good shape, but it’s neat and as clean as you could make it and, in some unique way, homey. It says that you are independent, strong, and resourceful. You could live with other people in better homes, but you do not. You need space-autonomy.”

  “This trailer says all that to you?”

  “And more.”

  “I agree. It is a part of who I am becoming or have become. I got into the ministry to serve God and to help people. I lost sight of that as my church in Atlanta got bigger and bigger. I had to have increasingly nicer clothes, cars, houses, and stuff to keep up with the Joneses-my congregation. I was never about that. And, now that my world has fallen apart, I am a prison chaplain, which, like you said, is for those who can’t make it on the outside. A tin man living in a tin box. But, I’m happier. And, I’m doing what God created me to do.”

  “You are anything but a tin man.”

  “I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody, too?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am. I’m a thirty-two-year-old virgin who drives a FedEx truck for a living and who has only recently decided what she wants to do when she grows up.”

  “You’re a virgin?” I asked, shocked beyond description.

  “I have intimacy problems, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “No, I hadn’t noticed,” I said, and we both laughed, which is what we needed to do at the moment. “I would like to know more,” I said.

  “Yes, I know you would, and that scares the hell out of me. But I want to tell you more. I want to move forward, but there couldn’t be a more unnatural thing for me to do.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “I think you really do. I think I can trust you, but I want to know.”

  “You want to know you can trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You realize that you can’t.”

  She stood. “I can’t trust you?” she asked, her voice quivering.

  “No. Sit down. That’s not what I meant. What I meant was that you can’t know that you can trust me. You can never know that you can trust someone until they have repeatedly kept your trust, which they cannot do until you first give them your trust.”

  “So I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”

  “You’re damned if you don’t trust somebody, not necessarily me, but someone.”

  “I usually trust the wrong people,” she said with an ironic laugh.

  “Maybe, but I figure you’ve never completely given your trust to anyone, so in that respect, you’ve never truly trusted the right or the wrong people. But to live is to learn to trust-God, others, yourself.”

  “You trust yourself?” she asked with the awe of a child. Gone was her adversarial demeanor and quick-witted verbal cuts.

  “I trust me with everything but liquor, but I trust myself not to trust myself where liquor is concerned.”

  “I am getting to the place where I can truly trust me, but it will be a while for God and people, men especially. With the possible exception of you.”

  “It makes sense to make exceptions for exceptional people,” I said and laughed.

  She smiled, but not much. It was not the time for jokes.

  “I’m sorry. You’re trying to be intimate, and I’m trying to make it easier for you, and that can’t be done,” I said.

  “I appreciate it, but you’re right. It’s hard, and it has to be. It’s no small thing that I’m contemplating. I’ve known you such a short time, but I really do feel like I can trust you. It’s just that my judgment has been so bad before.”

  “I know.”

  “I want to share who I am with you, and I think I can, but …”

  “But, what?” I asked.

  “I need to know if you feel like we might have something here. I think I can trust you, but if this isn’t going anywhere, then I don’t want to do it.”

  We were silent. I tried to take in everything, to be fully present in the moment.

  Finally, she said, “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think,” I began very slowly-I was walking on eggshells with land mines beneath them, “that you would be a lot of work. You are, to use the words of Jesus, ‘a treasure hidden in a field.’ You are going to … We are going to take a lot of work.”

  She looked down. I placed my hand under her chin and lifted her head up. I gazed into her eyes and caught a glimpse of her soul.

  “You would be a lot of work, but in my estimation, very worth it. You should be encouraged that I don’t have unrealistic expectations going in. It means I will be less likely to become disillusioned later.”

  She smiled a wide, full smile. The skin under her chin tightened. I wanted to kiss her, but it was
not the time. She had much more that she needed to say. Kissing, while very nice, would hinder true intimacy. I knew that. I had used it for just such a thing many times before.

  “I’m trusting you,” she said as she pulled my hand from underneath her chin and held it in her lap, “with my secrets. Which means I am choosing to trust you.”

  I nodded my head slowly.

  “I’m the child of an alcoholic. My dad is a recovering alcoholic. For as long as I can remember, Dad was an alcoholic. I have not one memory of my dad ever really being with me, like you are right now. I feel your total attention.”

  “You have it,” I said.

  “I never once felt like my dad was around, even when he was. Most of the time he would get drunk and pass out on the couch, but not always. Sometimes he would get violent, slap Mom around a little, but that didn’t happen very often.”

  “I am so sorry,” I said.

  She stared off into something I could not see.

  “How are you feeling now?” I asked.

  “So far so good, but there’s more.”

  “There always is,” I said.

  “On a few occasions when he was really drunk,” she began, her lower lip quivering as she did, “I’m just no ready. Is that okay?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  She looked deep into my eyes, searching for reassurance. I looked back. When she found what she was looking for, she leaned forward to kiss me. When she was within an inch of kissing me, she stopped, allowing me to kiss her.

  I did.

  The kiss was everything it should have been at that moment. It was gentle and powerful, a touch that offered each of us the reassurance we needed. I felt at home in her arms, and I could tell that she felt the same.

  After we embraced and kissed and cuddled for a while longer, we cooked dinner together. We also ate together, cleaned up the dishes together, and went for a walk together. Eventually, the evening reached its inevitable conclusion.