This Side of Salvation

CHAPTER 4

FOUR YEARS TO THREE YEARS BEFORE THE RUSH

A week after John’s death, Mara and I started taking turns sleeping in his bed. Sometimes I’d wake at night to see my father dozing in the papasan chair across the room, his feet hanging off the edge, John’s blue-and-white Villanova Wildcats throw pulled to his chin.

My brother’s absence itself wasn’t a shock; it was the fact that that absence would now never end. Since the day he left for the Air Force Academy, he’d lived at home for only a few weeks at a time. John wasn’t ripped out of our everyday lives: He was here, and then he was gone, and then he was Gone.

That first year, while my family wandered around in the fog of grief, was the best of any year since. We were all lost together in the same way. During the Fog Year, nothing made sense to anybody.

Then Dad found Jesus, and suddenly, John’s death made sense. But only to one of us:

Dad: God took John away to teach us the miracle of life.

Me: I can learn that from the Discovery Channel.

Dad: God is testing our strength.

Me: I didn’t study for this test. By the way, I’m flunking.

Dad: John’s death was part of God’s plan, which we’re too small to comprehend.

Me: I’m big enough to comprehend that this plan sucks.

By that point we were “finished” with the military’s grief-counseling services. I guess mourning for more than a year was unseemly for respectable families like ours, or it would have insulted God and His fantabulous grand plan for the universe.

The door to John’s room was shut forever. Mom and Dad told us not to go in there anymore, to sleep or reminisce or wish things could be different. It was time to buck up and move on and be grateful for the good in our lives.

But late at night, I heard Mara through the wall, crying. I heard John in my head, screaming.

So I did what any self-respecting thirteen-year-old brimming with rage and brand-new testosterone would do: I hit people. Mostly bullies who deserved it, like eighth graders who tripped sixth graders in the hallway, or that guy at the bus stop who grabbed Mara’s ass when she bent over to pick up her book bag.

The principal said I was “acting out,” but I preferred the term “taking action.” Whatever the label, I never felt happier than when I was standing over the prone, writhing—preferably bleeding—figure of some jerk who had it coming but didn’t see it coming. I could pretend for one brief, beautiful moment that he was the man who killed my brother.

Then I broke my pitching hand on someone’s face. For the sake of baseball, my one connection to John, I stopped fighting. When my hand healed, I funneled my frustration into a more elegant, eloquent channel: graffiti. I wrote what was in my heart, big and loud, on any surface I could find, in whatever tone felt right that week.

Snark at the skate park: When God closes a door, He opens a can of tear gas.

Bitterness on a train bridge: life’s a bitch and then i kill you. love, god.

These were the ones clean enough to print in the local papers.

I was more of a spray-paint scribbler than a real graffiti artist. But for my masterpiece, a three-word indictment that would say it all, I aimed higher. I spent weeks learning how to letter in the proper graffiti style, practicing in a sketchbook (which I burned, to avoid implicating myself), and scoping out the perfect location.

Stony Hill Community Worship Center was one of those megachurches large enough to have their own zip codes. Dad complained about the traffic jams they caused on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. Mom sniffed at their pun-ridden, inflammatory messages on their marquee sign in the parking lot.

The side wall was whitewashed brick, upon which Stony Hill would flash messages in colored lights during holidays, like christ . . . is . . . christmas. It was the perfect blank canvas, like God had delivered it to me Himself.

I gathered the troops. They called themselves the “Blasphemy Boy Gang,” three fellow eighth graders who eased their suburban tedium by finding me transportation, acting as lookout, and procuring my supplies.

For the Stony Hill job, Patrick Heil blackmailed his older brother Cullen into being our getaway driver, threatening to rat him out for dealing weed to middle schoolers. Stephen Rice snuck a ladder out of his dad’s tool shed. And Rajiv Ramsey bought the spray paint and dust masks—to keep telltale paint from getting on my nose hairs— with cash from a Home Depot way up in Valley Forge, so it wouldn’t be traced back to this crime.

At 2 a.m. on what turned out to be the hottest night of the summer, we struck. Cullen parked the car around the corner while the rest of us went to work.

A major crossroad was a thousand feet away, in plain sight of the church, so we had to be fast, alert, and lucky. With Rajiv handing me paint cans like a nurse assisting a surgeon, Stephen steadying and moving the ladder, and Patrick acting as lookout, I was finished in five minutes.

I descended the ladder and helped Stephen collapse it, sliding it down slow and steady to keep it quiet. Then Rajiv gave me the bag of cans while he helped Patrick and Stephen carry the ladder back to the car. They trotted in perfect synch, like horses drawing a carriage.

I paused for a second alone beside the church. why god why? loomed over me, stark, simple, and savage. Sweat chilled on my skin at the thought of strangers seeing my rage and pain poured out with such purity. The mural was a mug shot of my insides.

But a mug shot never tells a criminal’s whole story, only the unhappy ending. It doesn’t reveal that the girl arrested for prostitution needed money to support her dying sister, or that the guy busted for smoking weed had brain-crushing pain from bone cancer.

I reached into the bag and pulled out the can of black paint.

If I’m never caught, I realized, those three words will mean nothing. The world will never know who asked why? Or why why? needed to be asked in the first place.

I clutched the paint, filled with the desire to sign my name. My hand shook so hard, the ball inside the can began to rattle.

Then Rajiv barked my name from across the field, followed by a string of impatient profanities.

Self-preservation won. I ran for the car and made my escape.

“Get up,” Dad said. “We’re worshipping somewhere new this week.” He rapped his knuckles on my open door until I grunted in acknowledgment. Then his footsteps retreated down the hall.

I rolled out of bed without opening my eyes. The inside of my skull felt coated with peanut butter. It had been only a few days since the why god why? graffiti night, when the adrenaline rush had kept me awake until it was time to go to school. I’d hoped to catch up on missed sleep that Sunday morning, but a peek at the clock revealed that Dad had woken me an hour earlier than usual.

I wondered why we were going to a new church all of a sudden. I wondered if St. Mark’s Episcopal had tired of Dad’s Bible-study rants, or if he’d tired of them explaining every verse’s historical context and “intellectualizing the truth out of Scripture,” as he put it. Most important, I wondered if I could wear jeans.

I barely had time to grab a bagel on the way out the door. In the car, Mom kept glancing back at me from the passenger seat. I thought maybe it was because I was scattering sesame seeds all over the place, but she wasn’t usually a neat freak. Something was up.

We turned off Lancaster Avenue and immediately slowed, a traffic jam forming a block south of the busy boulevard. For once, my father didn’t complain about the weekly mass pilgrimage to Stony Hill church. He just sat there, humming.

We reached a side street, where I assumed he’d turn off to get around the traffic.

He didn’t turn off. We were part of the traffic.

I stopped chewing, my throat tight and stomach churning. Do Mom and Dad know what I painted on this church? Did they bring me here to see if I’d confess? Will I get in more trouble if I don’t?

The child locks on the rear doors were engaged. No escape.

On Stony Hill’s outside wall, my why god why? was already painted over in stark white, like it had never existed. This hasty erasure pissed me off. How could they obliterate humanity’s most basic question and anguished howl?

I finished my bagel with hostile bites. No way I’d confess. No way I’d stop. Next time it won’t be paint. Next time I’ll make it permanent.

Stony Hill was no less intimidating on the inside. Its sanctuary was three times the size of my middle school auditorium. The pulpit had a giant screen to its right and a five-piece band warming up to its left. And that squat black contraption upstage—was that a fog machine?

We sat in the center-left section, in cushy movie-theater-style seats instead of pews. Everyone in the row in front of us turned and smiled, clasping our hands like we were old friends. I wondered how, in a congregation this size, they could tell we were newcomers.

Dad introduced me as “My son, David. My only son,” as he had since about two months after John died, sometimes running it all together in “MysonDavidmyonlyson.” I’d trained myself not to wince at the sound.

By the time we’d met everyone within reach, my cheeks hurt from fake smiling. To avoid small talk, I pretended to examine the prayer list on the back of the bulletin, as if memorizing the names of those sick or troubled enough to warrant divine intervention.

Finally the music began. I stood on the aisle, next to Mara, who always sang loudly enough for both of us.

Maybe Mom and Dad heard me sneak out my window Thursday night. Maybe I left footprints on the sunroom roof or a dust mask in the maple tree next to the house. Maybe Mom smelled paint fumes on my clothes. But I’d always been so careful.

Stony Hill’s flashy onstage show dragged my attention from my panic. The fog machine, sent mist floasting across the stage to curl around the musicians’ swaying forms. Lights strobed in red, blue, green, and yellow, color coordinated with lyrics flashing on the screen.

At the music’s crescendo, the pastor swept onstage like a rock star. But his arms unfolded out toward us, as if we were the stars. Midthirties and wearing a blue polo shirt and khaki pants, he looked nothing like St. Mark’s black-robed old priest.

Mom and Dad clapped and sang along with the congregation. If they were mentally trying me for vandalism, they were hiding it well. Maybe this is a test. Mom and Dad only suspect I’m the vandal and want to see if I act suspicious. Maybe if I stay quiet, it’ll all blow over.

I focused on Pastor Ed’s sermon to calm my agitation. He paced and gestured, the mic clipped to his collar picking up every whisper. Instead of the Bible banging or fire and brimstone I’d always imagined this church would put forth, he spoke of God’s unconditional love for anyone who would receive it. It was like he was having a oneon-one conversation with all three thousand of us, promising an end to the pain of wandering in the wilderness of sin. I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but it felt true.

As Pastor Ed’s sermon ended, he hopped down off the stage and strode to the front of the sanctuary.

“None among us is perfect. No one is without sin.” He clasped his hands and spoke softer. “If you find it in your heart to repent today and commit yourself to loving the Lord, he will accept you without question.” He spread his arms. “Are you ready to change? Are you ready to accept His grace and forgiveness?”

I thought it was a rhetorical question, but as another song began, people started coming forward. A man here, a woman there, a kid my age here and there. They strolled with purpose down the aisles to where the preacher stood beckoning. Those who stayed behind raised their hands, palms to the ceiling, swaying, singing, smiling in support.

Within a minute, more than a dozen congregation members had lined up along the front of the sanctuary, hands folded in front of them, faces lifted to the lights above.

I wanted what they had, that surety and serenity and love. I wanted it so bad I couldn’t stop my feet from carrying me down the aisle, or my face from pointing straight ahead despite Mara gasping my name behind me. I had no clue what I’d receive from Pastor Ed, only that I was starving for it.

He moved down the line, laying his hands on each person’s bowed head, uttering words I couldn’t hear over the music. Those waiting to be blessed or healed or whatever raised both hands, fingers relaxed and palms up. I copied their posture, feeling a calm sweep through me, like I was buoyed by light and air.

When Pastor Ed reached me, he met my eyes and beamed as if I’d given him a Christmas present. “I’m glad you’ve joined us, son. What’s your name?”

“Cooper. David Cooper.” Why I said it James Bond–style, I had no idea. Maybe I was nervous again, standing in front of the guy whose church I’d desecrated. But as he laid a gentle hand on my head, I felt . . . accepted, even for my mistakes. Especially for my mistakes.

“David, welcome into the loving grace of the Lord. However often you stray, He will forever yearn for your return. May you always crave his love and ask forgiveness with humility.”

I nodded, unsure of what to say. Then he had me repeat a short prayer after him, acknowledging I was a sinner and that I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Pretty straightforward stuff, nothing wild or radical that would’ve sent my fellow Episcopalians running for the vestibule.

“Amen,” I whispered when we were finished. He started to move on, but I grabbed his arm before I could stop myself. “Wait.”

Pastor Ed raised his eyebrows in a kindly expression. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry. I was the one—I painted—” I cleared my throat so he could hear me over the swelling music. “I’m the ‘Why God Why?’ guy.”

I expected him to turn away, or tell me to get out of his church, or trumpet my guilt to the crowd. Instead his face softened, then he pulled me into a back-thumping embrace. Over his shoulder I looked up at the cross shining on the giant screen.

“Thank you,” Pastor Ed whispered. “Come see me afterward. We’ll talk.”

As the pastor moved on, the kid next to me, maybe a year younger than I, nudged my elbow. “What was that all about?”

“Nothing. Hey, what just happened?”

The boy squinted up at me through thick glasses. “What do you mean?”

“I’m new here.” I nodded at the line we were standing in. “What exactly did we just do?”

The kid laughed and shook his head. “Dude, we just got saved.”

Pastor Ed and I did talk, after church that day, and the next week, and the next month. In Stony Hill’s huge congregation there were, sadly, enough teens in Mara’s and my situation to warrant our own grief-counseling group. Pastor Ed and the youth minister, Mrs. Caruso, didn’t preach to us mourners the standard garbage about why bad things happen to good people. They said it was okay to be angry, that God was big enough to handle it. And because God had become small and human Himself, He could weep with us. We never had to be alone.

Since I’d owned up to my crimes, and because John’s death and my unique experience of it were “mitigating circumstances,” I got off with financial restitution (which Mom took out of my allowance), along with community service at Stony Hill’s soup kitchen. I could’ve done my time at another charity, but I wanted to show the congregation that I was truly sorry and had renounced my wicked ways forever.

I never found out if my parents already knew or suspected I was the why god why? guy before they brought us to Stony Hill. Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe they’d read in the paper about the vandalism and thought, Let’s try that church.In any case, I took it as a sign that for the first time years, I was where I belonged.