understand what pleasure God could take in the whole thing. Didn’t He hear the same boring hymns coming up from churches all
over the world? English, Spanish, Swahili, Portuguese—they all must sound the same to Him. And what difference would my absence
make? I could hardly carry a tune anyway.
Lindsey, who seemed perfect in every way, somehow understood that even she was a sinner. She liked to go confess her sins
and take communion. I stopped taking communion when I was fourteen. The pastor read from the Bible where it says: “Whosoever
shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”I didn’t
need that. At the time I didn’t know what made one person worthy and another unworthy, but it was safe to say I was in category
two. My guilt was sufficient without adding to it the crucifixion of God’s son.
After church, our parents mingled with the other locals, mostly farmers and blue-collar workers. Some of them still called
my father
sir
or
Your Honor
, though we had been living in the valley for years. Lindsey would lean against the Judge and wrap her little arm around his
leg while he rested one hand on her shoulder, the other on mine. But grown-up conversations bored me. I tended to ease away
as quickly as possible until a rock-throwing incident in the parking lot one Sunday. His grip on my shoulder grew firmer after
that. Then, for a time, I succumbed to fidgeting by his side where his deep, liquid voice filled my ears and eddied safely
at my feet.
Like the river, he was a boundary around my small world. The problems came when I grew older and realized that there was more
to know than what my father taught me; there was a realm to be explored beyond his rigid control. But the raging current of
his will was a dangerous thing to cross.
Maybe that was why I did the things I did. Any prisoner longs for freedom. I found mine by crawling out my bedroom window
for clandestine meetings with stupid boys, boys whose names I could barely remember now. I took up drinking. I was the life
of every party, the one who could be counted on to do the unexpected or downright crazy thing that we could all laugh about
back at school. Wayne Bly hung me by my feet from a three-story window so I could spy on the tenant below who played concert-style
piano but never came out of his apartment. Trudy and I
borrowed
my parents’ car one night when I was fifteen and without a driver’s license, planning to return it before they awoke. That
was a plot gone bad. We made it as far as Dixon, where I nearly crashed into a truck when I made an illegal left turn. We
were helping the old driver gather the box-load of potatoes that had spilled onto the road when a green patrol car pulled
up. The Judge actually called the sheriff on me—his own daughter! After that I was sentenced to cleaning out the garage and
doing yard work for an eternity of Saturdays, and when I was finally allowed to go out into the real world again, my curfew
was ten p.m.—not a minute later.
But these were not the things that caused the Judge to send me packing when I was only seventeen. I finally committed that
unforgivable sin—the one that still lurked behind me like a menacing shadow. I resented him for that. It was his standard—not
mine—that sent me away. But he was the Judge. Guilty! The angry smack of his gavel still echoed in my mind. Worst of all,
his verdict clung to my back like a clawed thing that I had not been able to shake even after all those years.
TJ straddled the Judge’s lap, facing him and patting his hands on his grandpa’s cheeks as if he had known him from birth instead
of for just a few days. “Do you wanna go feed the worms when we wake up, Grandpa?”
“Tell you what, son. Let’s do it when I get home tomorrow night. You’ll probably still be asleep when I go to work. I have
to drive a long way.” He tousled TJ’s
over the world? English, Spanish, Swahili, Portuguese—they all must sound the same to Him. And what difference would my absence
make? I could hardly carry a tune anyway.
Lindsey, who seemed perfect in every way, somehow understood that even she was a sinner. She liked to go confess her sins
and take communion. I stopped taking communion when I was fourteen. The pastor read from the Bible where it says: “Whosoever
shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”I didn’t
need that. At the time I didn’t know what made one person worthy and another unworthy, but it was safe to say I was in category
two. My guilt was sufficient without adding to it the crucifixion of God’s son.
After church, our parents mingled with the other locals, mostly farmers and blue-collar workers. Some of them still called
my father
sir
or
Your Honor
, though we had been living in the valley for years. Lindsey would lean against the Judge and wrap her little arm around his
leg while he rested one hand on her shoulder, the other on mine. But grown-up conversations bored me. I tended to ease away
as quickly as possible until a rock-throwing incident in the parking lot one Sunday. His grip on my shoulder grew firmer after
that. Then, for a time, I succumbed to fidgeting by his side where his deep, liquid voice filled my ears and eddied safely
at my feet.
Like the river, he was a boundary around my small world. The problems came when I grew older and realized that there was more
to know than what my father taught me; there was a realm to be explored beyond his rigid control. But the raging current of
his will was a dangerous thing to cross.
Maybe that was why I did the things I did. Any prisoner longs for freedom. I found mine by crawling out my bedroom window
for clandestine meetings with stupid boys, boys whose names I could barely remember now. I took up drinking. I was the life
of every party, the one who could be counted on to do the unexpected or downright crazy thing that we could all laugh about
back at school. Wayne Bly hung me by my feet from a three-story window so I could spy on the tenant below who played concert-style
piano but never came out of his apartment. Trudy and I
borrowed
my parents’ car one night when I was fifteen and without a driver’s license, planning to return it before they awoke. That
was a plot gone bad. We made it as far as Dixon, where I nearly crashed into a truck when I made an illegal left turn. We
were helping the old driver gather the box-load of potatoes that had spilled onto the road when a green patrol car pulled
up. The Judge actually called the sheriff on me—his own daughter! After that I was sentenced to cleaning out the garage and
doing yard work for an eternity of Saturdays, and when I was finally allowed to go out into the real world again, my curfew
was ten p.m.—not a minute later.
But these were not the things that caused the Judge to send me packing when I was only seventeen. I finally committed that
unforgivable sin—the one that still lurked behind me like a menacing shadow. I resented him for that. It was his standard—not
mine—that sent me away. But he was the Judge. Guilty! The angry smack of his gavel still echoed in my mind. Worst of all,
his verdict clung to my back like a clawed thing that I had not been able to shake even after all those years.
TJ straddled the Judge’s lap, facing him and patting his hands on his grandpa’s cheeks as if he had known him from birth instead
of for just a few days. “Do you wanna go feed the worms when we wake up, Grandpa?”
“Tell you what, son. Let’s do it when I get home tomorrow night. You’ll probably still be asleep when I go to work. I have
to drive a long way.” He tousled TJ’s
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