Judgment

En route to my first Burning Man, we drove through the dusty plains of Washington’s wild horse country. Small towns fascinate me and Judgment is about what lurks behind the curtain of country life.

No one believed Petey and if there’s anything that can cause a man to hang his head its friends and family as doubters. Me and Petey went way back, and I should’ve known better than to doubt.  But small town life has a way of creating a chasm and we ended up on opposite sides. This is what happens when a man’s accused of rape.

Radine, Washington is a cowpoke town, fifty miles east of Ellensburg. It’s one of those places most people never see, save for the sign on the Interstate. We were a church going community, strong on values, weak on keeping up with big city ways. None of us minded.  That’s why we lived here. But when ole man Harley’s daughter, Eve, was found raped and bloodied, we were spooked.  It was the kind of crime we watched on Law and Order re-runs and never thought it could happen here.

The cops had trouble finding the culprit, so our minister, Pastor Jake, who was close with ole man Harley, forced every man in his flock to take a DNA swab and even then, nothing.

Harley swore, and will go to his grave believing, it was Petey. Unfortunately for Petey, he lusted after Eve, but so did all the men.  There wasn’t a single male soul who didn’t dream of Eve in his bed. And Eve, well, she was wicked. Ripe and perfect and she knew it. She toyed with Petey.  Rustled his hair in the grocery line. Bit her lips seductively whenever they chatted. Petey didn’t come from money though, so him getting Eve was as likely as the moon rising during the day.

The night of her rape, Eve was a colt playing in the field, all long limbs and throwing her blonde hair around down at Snyder’s Bar. It was Friday night, pay checks cashed and spirits up. Witnesses say she had at least five shots and three margaritas. A couple broody out of towners got caught up in Eve’s magical web and contributed most of the alcohol. We’d never seen those fellows before. Petey watched them get progressively drunker, and didn’t like how their hands crept low on Eve’s body. A little brawl broke out and Eve looked right pleased to be fought over. The out of towners paid their bill in cash and the puzzling thing is, no one could right say if Eve was with them when they left the bar.

The Sunday after the rape, Pastor Jake delivered a sermon so full of fire and brimstone, it’s amazing the little blue and white church didn’t erupt into flames.

After, we all shuffled up to pay our respects to Harley and his wife and already on that morning, Harley was out for blood. He watched us all file past with a stink eye, piercing and mean, looking for guilt. Petey wasn’t at church that morning. His mama suffered from kidney trouble and he was tending to her. Harley didn’t believe his story, didn’t want to, and took Petey’s absence as a sign.

When the cops, showed up at Petey’s door, he obliged. He had nothing to hide he said. The rest of us got away with a swab but Petey got the works. Lie detector, some fancy psychiatrist asking hours of questions. What he didn’t know was Harley had found Eve’s diary. In it, allegedly, were some less than innocent daydreams of a less than innocent girl. Petey wasn’t named (that’s what the final evidence showed in court), but most assumed it was him, on account of the object of Eve’s affection having dark hair, and wearing a gold chain, like Petey did.

Despite Harley’s insistence Petey was to blame, in the end, Eve’s rape was one of those mysteries that would remain unsolved. She was beat so bad, she was permanently brain damaged and never spoke again. Cops said she fought hard but whoever attacked her was strong.

After Petey’s acquittal, the town settled back into its ways But once a man has been accused of rape, his life never settles back. Petey drifted from job to job, mostly outside Radine, where he could work amongst men who didn’t know him.

I stayed away from Petey like we all did. I worked, went to church, did confession once a month.

This afternoon, the little slot opened in the confessional booth, and behind the mesh, Pastor Jake’s head was lowered. I was having trouble with my wife, came awful close to hitting her again the other night.

After hearing me out, Pastor Jake said this: “Sometimes, we can’t control ourselves. We know what we should do and what we shouldn’t do. What’s right, what’s wrong. All we can do is ask for forgiveness.”

Confused, I looked him right in the eye and said, “But it’s still wrong, ain’t it?”

If it wasn’t so hot, Pastor Jake having his collar and robe off, just a t-shirt on, might’ve been odd, but it was the hottest summer ever and who was I to complain. For the first time I noticed how built he was. Thick with muscles. And in the thin strip of light on Pastor Jake’s side of the booth, something else caught my eye.

Hanging around his neck was a gold chain. Jesus on a cross tangled in all that chest hair.

For a nanosecond, Pastor Jake had a strange, far away look in his eyes. Dark hair curled behind his ears, and a flash, a vision of Eve materialized, from months before, in the front pew, eyes dewy, watching him deliver his sermons. I was convinced she was drunk on Jesus.

The silence grew uncomfortable. Pastor Jake pulled on his t-shirt and the necklace disappeared. I swallowed hard, something black opening up in my chest. I stepped out of the booth, shaking, and combed my memory. Pastor Jake rained fire on us, and we all assumed…but did he ever do a DNA test?

***

Tonight, Snyder’s Bar was busy, as were my thoughts.  Petey came in, took up residence at the far end of the bar, where no one would bother him. Nursing his beer, he must’ve felt me looking because he turned around, gave a cautious nod.

Judgments are like those snakes in the Amazon that slowly suffocate you. Before you know it, you’re left wondering why and how it all came to be. What happened in that confession booth today would remain unspoken forever, as it should. The booth is a sacred place where only God can divine and decide. There’s a lot of things I can’t change, but some I can.

All good men must eventually live up to their own sins.

So I asked God to forgive me, walked over and shared a drink with my friend.

***

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this story, check out my award-winning novel, A Rainbow Like You.  A rock and roll odyssey following the intertwined fates of a struggling rock star and a teen runaway, in addition to winning a silver fiction prize in the US,  it was also shortlisted for the WIBA grand fiction prize in conjunction with the Writer’s Guild of Canada.

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