The Chaplain's Daughter (3 page)

“Frankly, young man, I think you’re a punk.  I don’t think that you were incapacitated by drink that night at all.  You willingly left your “birthday party” (the judge punctuated those two words with air quotes) and got into a car that you may very well have known was stolen.  You participated as a full accomplice in the theft of the car.  Looking at your juvenile record, I can see that you don’t have a lot of respect for the rule of law.  Therefore I’m going to go beyond the recommendation of the prosecution and sentence you to 11 months in county jail, with credit for time served.  You will be eligible, if you do good time, to be released 277 days from today.”

Judge Nestle banged his gavel and said, “Take him away!  Next case!”

Toby had been hoping for some kind of courtroom speech at that point.  He hoped that maybe Max would deliver a rousing oratory about how Toby deserved leniency.  Instead, Max put his hand on Toby’s arm and said, “There will be things for you to sign.” 

By this time the next defendant was being herded to the front of the courtroom.  Toby’s time was up.  He signed the papers that Max put before him without looking at them, accepted Max’s limp handshake and vague, “Good luck” and allowed himself to be shackled for the walk back to Tank 2D.  Toby’s birthday had been April 10
^th
.  Assuming that he kept his nose clean in jail, his release would be set for December 28
^th
.

2

Alyssa Boylan was fuming!  She had gotten into a heated discussion during her sociology class that afternoon.  The subject had been “nature v. nurture.”  The professor had been droning on about how people are incredibly influenced by their living environment, influencing their actions.  Finally, Alyssa had heard enough.  She raised her hand and, when she wasn’t acknowledged soon enough for her liking, started to wave her hand in the air. 

Finally the professor noticed her urgent waves.  “Yes, Miss Boylan.  Do you have something to offer or are you just drying your nail polish?”

The rest of the class laughed at this rare departure from the planned lecture.  Alyssa flushed red.

“I’m not wearing any nail polish right now, Professor Bakewood, but if I were it would be because I was predisposed to wear it through advertising and peer pressure, and not because my genes forced me to do so.”

Henry Bakewood had been teaching at Lewis and Clark Community College for almost 26 years.  His usual routine consisted of waiting for tenure and delivering the same lectures that he had been offering for years.  That said he appreciated a little give and take with the students now and again.  He nodded appreciatively at Alyssa’s rejoinder.

“Well played, Miss Boylan.  You obviously have something to add to the topic of nature versus nurture.  Go ahead, we’re all ears.”

Alyssa placed her palms on the arm of her chair and leaned forward.  Her clear voice rang out with authority.  “To assign the blame for our actions on nurture is just another way of letting bad behavior off the hook.  What did that comedian say, way back when?  The devil made me do it?  The problem with the world today is that people in our society aren’t held accountable for the choices that they make!  Why do some people make good choices and others don’t?  It’s because some people believe in right and wrong and the rule of law.  Others believe that social mores are just something to be gotten over.  To believe that everything is the result of an unfortunate upbringing is a copout and the result of a permissive culture gone to seed!”

Alyssa sat down to the sound of thunderous…silence.  Professor Bakewood took his glasses off and cleaned them carefully before answering.  His voice was gentle when he at last responded to Alyssa.

“That is a very interesting point of view, and one that is shared by a lot of people.  I would ask, though, that you do some research into the human genome project.  Scientists are discovering that there is very little difference in how we are formed genetically.  It may be inconvenient to realize that the environment in which one is raised has a great deal to do with how someone blends, or doesn’t, into society, but there is fact behind the theory anyway.”

Professor Bakewood stopped Alyssa with the raised palm of his hand when she started to answer again.  “We’re out of time for today.  Drop by my office if you would like to continue this discussion.  For now, though,” he said indicating the class as a whole, “You may go.”

Alyssa held her books against her chest as she made her way out of the lecture hall.  She had wanted to challenge Professor Bakewood further but didn’t have time now.  She only had 15 minutes to make it to her job in the campus bookstore.  Alyssa worked there 15 hours a week as a way to supplement the student loans and scholarships that paid most of her tuition at South Sound Community College in Olympia.

Alyssa had a plan for her future.  This was her second year at SSCC.  All of her credits were going to transfer to a four year college, probably the University of Washington, next year.  She wanted to study criminal law as an avenue to getting a job as a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office.  After that she wanted to be a judge.  Only 8% of the Superior Court judges in Washington State were female.  That, in her opinion, was a crime in and of itself.

Still thinking of what she said, might have said, should have said, and was glad she didn’t say in class, Alyssa arrived at the bookstore.  She told herself that she would look for something on the human genome project when she got off work.  “Might as well put that 25% employee discount to work,” she thought as she stepped behind the register to relieve her predecessor at the post.

Alyssa was a bit of a Daddy’s girl.  She had defended her father to her mother when he was off on business trips, and was usually the first person in the house to run and hug him when he got back.  When he came home from San Diego with his new plan she was for it, almost as much as her mother was.   Sure, she would miss some of the trappings of wealth, but even as a young teen she could tell that her parents weren’t happy when John was on the road so much.  The atmosphere at home was so much better than it had been before.  Her Dad was so much more relaxed now than he had been.  He had told Alyssa, one night just before she went to bed, that he had changed his own thought process with respect to success.

“Come here, Pumpkin,” John said, using his favorite pet name for his daughter.  She went to the recliner in which her father sat in repose, and perched on the arm.  “You can be anything that you want to be.  You’re that smart and that much of a hard worker.  You’ll know you have it made, though, in whatever field you choose, when you can look forward to your days at work just as much as you look forward to your days off.”

Alyssa remembered those words as she checked customers out of the bookstore.  “This isn’t what he was talking about,” she thought to herself as she waited on one gum chewing frat boy after another.  “Someday, though.”

***

The days droned on for Toby.  One day looked just like the one before it.  The only light that was available to him was the fluorescent lights that buzzed overhead 24 hours a day.  There was never enough light to be able to read comfortably, and the tank was never dark enough for Toby to be able to sleep well.  He mentioned this to one of the guards a couple of months after he had come to 2D.  The guard grunted and said, “Don’t come to jail, then.”

The only respites that Toby had for the tedium were John Boylan’s weekly service, and every other week when the chaplain came to 2D for a one on one visit.  After a while John had started to repeat himself at the Thursday night gatherings, but Toby still looked forward to them.  His favorite times, though, were when the guard called Toby to the front door to meet with John in one of the visitor’s rooms.  As the number of visits mounted John and Toby discovered that they had some things in common.  In spite of the Mariners shirt that John had been wearing that first night, his true passion was basketball.  Toby had been a point guard of some renown during his high school years.  There had even been some talk that he could have landed a Division One scholarship if he had been able to keep his grades where they belonged.  He didn’t, though, and the recruiters melted away.

John’s priority when he first met Toby was to meet him where his life was right at the moment.  That’s why, though he had remembered the speedy ball handler as soon as John saw Toby, he hadn’t brought those days to the younger man’s attention at first.  Gradually, though, as the two became better acquainted John and Toby talked hoop. Toby’s face lit up when the topic turned in that direction.  John enjoyed those parts of the visits as well.

One afternoon, though, the conversation between John and Toby became more serious.  John asked Toby if he ever thought about what his relationship with God was, or what he would like it to be.

Toby took a deep breath and sat back in the chair.  “I haven’t ever given it much thought until I got here.  I only went to church for weddings and funerals, so I guess that I don’t really have a relationship with God.”

John leaned forward in the chair.  Though Toby didn’t know it, and John didn’t realize it, the posture that John assumed was the same posture that his daughter had assumed when taking on Professor Bakewood in the sociology class.

“I’m not talking about church!  I’m talking about God!  Churches are all well and good (at least some of them are) but you have a relationship with God whether you ever go into a church or not.  You’re a child of God!  You are who you have been all along!  Have you been plugging your ears every Thursday night, man?”

Toby looked at John with a certain measure of alarm.  This was different than the kindly older gentleman that talked about Kobe Bryant and LeBron James with Toby in the visitor’s room.  John had a flame in his eye when he talked about God.

“I don’t know, John!  God has never talked to me!  My whole life has been one screw up after another.  I know that some of it is my fault, but a lot of it is just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Where has God been when I was hurting, or lonely, or scared?”

John sat back in the chair and looked at Toby with a look that was equal parts compassion and incredulity.  John pursed his lips before answering the lost soul who was seated across the table.

“Don’t you see, Toby?  That’s where you’re mistaken.  Let me see if we can look at what has happened to you through a different lens.  The things that you think have happened to you by accident haven’t been accidents at all.  There is no such thing as a coincidence.  That’s what you have to know if you want to see the little miracles in the world.  That’s what you have to know if you want to hear the voice of God as he speaks to you every nanosecond of every day.  It wasn’t an accident that you were in the car that night.  It came about through the choices that you made with respect to the company that you keep.  It wasn’t an accident that you weren’t driving that night.  It was God protecting you from further trouble.  It wasn’t an accident that when you came to Pierce County Jail you were put in a tank that I come to every week.  That was God making sure that we met, and became friends.  None of it is an accident Toby!  There are no such things as accidents!  It’s all in God’s plan!”

John fell silent, waiting for Toby’s response.  What John had just shared with Toby was the crux of John’s belief system.  Most inmates heard some of it, but he had dropped the whole shootin’ match on Toby at once.  He hadn’t necessarily intended to do it in in one gulp the way that he had, but he had opened his mouth and the words poured out until there were no more to be said.  “Well,” John thought to himself, “That was no accident, was it?”

Toby looked at John without blinking.  John half expected Toby to say he didn’t want to see John anymore.  He thought Toby might laugh about John spouting such utter nonsense.  “No such thing as coincidence!  What a crock of CRAP!”

Instead Toby swallowed, and swallowed again.  As he sat in the chair across from the chaplain who was so compassionate on one hand and so passionate on the other, Toby Allen Jacks began to realize the depth of the loneliness inside him.  Toby was a young man that had a “posse” and “some bitches” on the outside, but didn’t have any friends, inside or out.  He had lived a life, so far, that had yielded him nothing but loneliness.  He knew that society considered him to be trouble, and society was now able to point to a rap sheet that would grow who knew how long?

That day, June 30, 2013, Toby Jacks’ eyes were opened, perhaps for the first time in his troublesome 20 years.  As they opened, they also filled with tears.  At first the tears pooled in his eyes, but the longer that he sat in silence, the more that they rolled out of his eyes and down his cheeks.  He didn’t wipe them away.  They were the liquid reality of the life that he had led to this point.  He let them flow until his face was streaked with so many rivers of shame and grief.

“Oh God,” Toby said at last.  “What should I do now?”

This was the moment in John’s professional life that meant the most to him.  Over the years since he had left the high octane world of pharmaceuticals moments like this had come to pass more times than John could count…and every time felt like the first time to the chaplain.  As he watched the tears pour like an ever-flowing stream down the face of Toby Jacks, John uttered a silent prayer of thanks to God.  Thanks for being given the chance to do God’s work, thanks for being led to lost boys (and girls) like the one before him, and thanks for the Good News of God’s love for all of His creation.

John looked at Toby with the tenderness of a newborn father laying eyes on his own child for the first time.  He spoke softly as he answered Toby’s plaintive question.