Other Men Part II

A reverend walks into a party.

The reverend's unkempt hair spiraled out above his head like antennae and out around his face like bent cactus spindles.  His clean-shaven, sunken cheeks hovered, hollow above his clerical collar.  He surveyed the room and saw two men sitting at a distant table overlooking the city.  He quickly made his way over to them but was stopped by a large hand on his chest.

     "Dr. Otieno.  Excuse me, reverend.  I am the Senator's aide.  The Senator would like to speak with you."

     "I'm on my way to him and his lawyer now."  The reverend assured him.

     "Not now sir," the aide said sternly, then caught himself when the reverend gave him a look that showed his intention to disregard the command.  "Please sir, if you wouldn't mind waiting in the club library, the Senator will be in directly."

     "Will his lawyer be with him?"  The reverend asked.

     "I'm not," the aide paused to measure his words. "I'm not sure, sir.  Can I get you something to drink?  A glass of wine, maybe?"  The aide asked.

     "No thank you.  I'll just head to the library."  The reverend started where the aide had directed him and then stopped.  "Actually, I'll take a Yerba Mate' tea if they have it."

As he walked to the library, the reverend recalled how he had developed a taste for mate while on a mission in Gautemala, where he had defied the church to work for justice on behalf of the children of disappeared political dissidents who'd been kidnapped, likely tortured and murdered, during the central American nation's 36 year civil war.  The soldiers and police officers who carried out the bloody work did so under the cover of generals and political strong-men with U.S. military support and with the long arms of sweetheart arms deals from U.S. weapons manufacturers.

The reverend considered himself an enemy to institutional power when wielded against the poor and powerless.  That he was here, in the Commence Club, waiting for a Senator involved in arms dealing, drug dealing, and police violence in America brought back the twitch of angry fear to his left eye.  Mate' seemed to help when he first discovered the twitch after confronting a Guatemalan magistrate.

As he entered the library, he curled a lip in disgust at the men lionized on the walls of the place.  Segregationists and slave owners, cold-blooded meta-capitalists who had drained communities of men to profit off their imprisonment in private work camps.  He knew the men on these walls and hated them all.  He'd studied the depths of their voluminous double-speak, as written in the bills they had proposed and the political pork they had layered like gelatinous algae around prison building expenditures hidden in schools bills, police militarization grants hidden in highway earmarks.  He felt nauseous that he was even here, and broken that he was here to accept a payout.

The Senator and the lawyer walked into the library and did not greet the reverend.  They walked in, directly to chairs at the opposite side of a long table where the reverend sat looking like a child in trouble.  The lawyer spoke first, quick and sharp in tone, as though his voice were powered by a typewriter.

     "Anything you have done up until this point that might negatively affect the Senator, anything you have said or done, must be retracted immediately.  Publicly."  The lawyer spoke with little affectation, almost as though he weren't present to his own voice.

     "Wait.  The man asked for some tea.  Let the man have his tea first."  The Senator spoke with an modicum of respect that surprised the lawyer, who hadn't heard a deferential tone out of his employer since they'd gone to ask a supreme court justice to reconsider a vote.  This reverend, disheveled and with worn, cheap shoes didn't seem to have much to respect, the lawyer thought.

     "You know, I've already set some things in motion Reverend.  I called a few friends at your children's school.  You know when I told them about the wonderful, brilliant woman your wife is," the Senator paused as he turned to the lawyer.  "Did you know the reverend's wife and I went to law school together?  Oh she was a brilliant, beautiful woman then.  Still is.  Just one fatal flaw, though.  A bleeding heart for the, what Malayalam word did she use to describe them?  Povum.  For the poor povum, humble souls of the world.  I guess that's what drew her to you, reverend."  The Senator's words tore, like a vulture, at the frayed sinews of pride the reverend had left.

     "Can we just get to it?" The reverend spoke with pursed lips.

     "What about your tea?" The Senator asked, with a smirk.

      "I don't need the tea."  The reverend spoke, barely parting his teeth.

      "But you need the money." The Senator said, salting the wound.

     "Sir," the lawyer interrupted the Senator and handed the reverend a document at least ten pages long.  "Reverend, this contains a standard non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreement.  You should look it through, but it basically says you will keep this to yourself and not say or write any negative statements about the Senator or any of his work as a Senator.  Obviously, none of this would require that you violate the law should you be compelled to testify."

The reverend looked up from the packet at the Senator, who was staring at him with the cold look of a blackjack dealer waiting for word on whether one requires a hit or not.  Not that the reverend had ever gambled for money in his life.   He'd gambled with his life many times and had seen this look before, behind the wire rimmed eyes of a captain in the Guatemalan Presidential Honor Guard.  It was a look that said, 'Your choice. Testify and you will die.'

The reverend looked back down at the first page of the packet and the words seemed to teeter on the verge of collapse into a pile of splinters, like a scaffold of bamboo outside a jungle church.  He knew that once he signed, that any chance of justice for the millions of migrants who'd crossed the border to escape the violence, the violence this Senator had helped instigate with drug war policies and stoke with arms deals, would evaporate.  He knew that the million or more incarcerated Americans, languishing in prison for selling marijuana, for being addicts, for transporting cocaine to scrape a living from the gutters of society, would stay confined as the last in a chain of fools.  He knew the biggest American scandal since Iran-Contra would fall in to the shadows and dust.  The reverend knew his signature would damn him, and yet he didn't hesitate to sign and all he could think of was how much he really wanted some mate'.

The reverend signed two original copies in six places without so much as a glance at more than the first page of each.  The lawyer looked bewildered and concerned as he took the documents back.  The Senator smiled and, noticing the lawyer's concern, sought to ease his fears.

     "You are looking at a very smart man, Mike.  He's travelled the world to make it better.  Done so much in so many places that his own wife and children barely know him.  How old are you, reverend, 40?  It's time to settle down now and support that family.  You've done the right thing, here.  No one can hold that against you."  The Senator stood up and extended a hand.

The reverend looked at his hand and looked at the lawyer, who continued collecting the documents.  As the lawyer felt his gaze and looked up to meet his eyes, the Reverend spoke with an airy rasp, then cleared his throat.

    "There are few things you will ever see as sad as this.  I hope one day you pay for what you have done, whether I get to see it or not.  Until then, I wish you both all the bad karma the universe can muster and all the pain your bodies can handle before they give your souls to hell."  The reverend grabbed the Senator's hand and held it until the Senator jerked it away.  The Senator wiped the oily sweat the reverend left on his palm with a handkerchief.

The reverend stood and walked around the table toward the door.  "When will I have the money?"

The lawyer replied, "You should have read the document."

The Senator finished the conversation.  "The money was transferred the moment you walked into the club, reverend.  Congratulations, we are officially business partners.  Give my best to the wife and kids." He smiled, turned, and walked out.  The lawyer followed him.

The reverend stood in the library and looked down at his shoes, revealing the thinning dome of hair near the crown of his head to the security camera above the door.  The senator's aide walked in and handed him a cup of Yerba Mate tea.  The reverend waved him off.

     "Never mind.  I need a scotch."