JOHNNY (PART SIX)
Johnny told Aimee everything. He was surprised how little time it took, even with his constant pauses where he would either search for the right word or pretend that's what he was doing when he was really trying to keep from crying again. It was hard to believe that it was only one day after he had climbed these steps to see his family. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours that it felt more like twenty-four days. But it took him less than two minutes to tell her everything, starting with his suspicions about Joshua, to finding the Bible in his shuttlecar, to Nanny's note.
When he had finished his story he looked into her face for some sort of reaction. Even though her father wasn't a police officer, he half expected her to pull out her cell phone and call Peter Neason on the spot. She would tell him everything, he would contact his police connections, and Joshua would be in jail that night. Johnny might even be in a bit of trouble for not reporting the Bible at once, but his career was the last thing on his mind.
"So," Aimee said after a long while, "what are you going to do?"
"I don't know," he said. "I have no idea what to do. I took an oath to uphold the laws and principles of the Enlightened Society and the ideals of Joshua Lewis, but this isn't just any religious fanatic we're talking about. It's my brother!"
"Yeah," she said. She looked like she wanted to say more, but couldn't find the words.
"It might have been easier if Nanny hadn't just died," Johnny went on. "My family's been through enough without having to deal with losing Josh too. I've been through enough."
"Are you absolutely sure about this?" she asked him. "I mean, couldn't you have made some sort of mistake? Maybe you're just overreacting."
"No," he said. "I'm sure. The Bible might have belonged to someone else, but Nanny's note confirmed it. Then there's the change in him."
"You said he seems happier?"
"Yeah," Johnny said. "But that's one of the tricky things about Christianity. The victims actually think that they have found something good and they seem happier and more fulfilled. At first. But soon they end up so caught up in the deviant beliefs that they lose touch with reality and forsake their families, and would rather go to prison or die than renounce the destructive behaviors. Some Christians are so conditioned and brainwashed that their leaders convince them to commit terrorist acts or kill themselves. To think that my brother..."
And then Johnny did start to cry. Aimee wrapped her arms around him and held him while he wept. She was crying too and Johnny realized that growing up almost like a sister to Kelly, Aimee had become like a member of the Cramblit family. It was as if her brother was lost too.
"What should I do, Aimee?" he asked. "I can't let him destroy his life. But I can't turn in my own brother, can I?"
Aimee offered no advice. She couldn't. The only thing that she could do was to promise not to tell her father about Joshua until Johnny could figure out what to do. Then she left him on the porch, feeling more alone than he had ever felt in his life.
The next morning he was determined to confront his brother no matter what, and no matter how hard the confrontation would be. He had spent the night tossing and turning, unable to get much sleep, and when he did sleep he dreamed of Joshua. In his dreams, he saw his brother in a prison jumpsuit or getting off a prison transport on Planet X. Finally, after three or four such nightmares woke him up almost screaming, he decided to forget about sleep.
He looked at his night table and saw that he still had Nanny's note to Joshua. Surely his father would call Josh to come by in the morning and pick it up. Johnny thought that he should probably just put it back on the nightstand in Nanny's bedroom and then intercept his brother on the way back out of the house. Then he had a better idea. He knew from his training that the best way to get a suspect to confess was to catch him off guard. He would hold onto the note a little bit longer.
Mr. Cramblit did call Joshua in the morning and he said he would come by after work that afternoon to get Nanny's letter. That meant that he would be there around five thirty and the family made plans to have dinner together. Johnny was pretty sure that after he talked to Josh, neither of them would feel much like eating. He spent the day just walking around town, checking in on old friends and old hang outs, and checking his watch about ten times an hour to see how close it was to five thirty.
At five he went home and straight up to Nanny's room. He had her note in his hands and he read it over and over to himself while waiting for his brother to come in. Twice he almost just put the note on the table and left the room thinking that he would rather spend the rest of his life pretending he didn't know about his brother's problems than confront him. But he loved Josh too much and knew that the only way he would be able to help free him from the trap of religious deviancy was to let him know that he knew and to force him to face the truth.
At five twenty-five by the antique digital clock on Nanny's dresser Johnny heard the door chime ring. There was some muffled conversation downstairs and he distinctly heard his brother's voice. Then one person came slowly up the stairs towards Nanny's room and soon, Joshua was standing in the doorway looking in surprise at his little brother who sat on his grandmother's bed holding a folded piece of paper and gaping at him with an awful look of betrayal and unbelief.
"Johnny?" he said. "What are you doing in here?"
"Waiting for you."
"Dad said that Nanny left a note for me," Joshua said. Johnny held up the note and nodded.
"It's right here, Josh," Johnny said. "She left one for everybody. Sit down. Read it."
Joshua looked scared as he sat next to his brother on the bed. Johnny had seen that look before. It was the look of a criminal who knew he had been found out. If Joshua was like any of the other lawbreakers that Johnny had dealt with, either through his training or just everyday life, his mind was probably trying to think up a hundred different explanations, excuses, rationalizations, or alibis. While most of them would have probably worked on Johnny the brother, none would work on Johnny the cop.
Johnny handed his brother the incriminating note and watched as Josh slowly unfolded it. Josh read the note silently and was in tears when he finally laid the paper in his lap and looked back at his little brother. They just stared at each other for a long moment and Johnny saw conflicting emotions in his brother's tears. Part of it was his sorrow over Nanny's death, part of it was the message that his grandmother had left behind (which even Johnny could recognize as emotional and powerful, even if it was evidence of illegal religious activities) and part of it was the knowledge that his secret had finally come out. This was a secret that would destroy not only Joshua's life, but have devastating effects on everyone around him.
Finally, Johnny broke the silence. "I read it."
"I thought you had," Joshua said.
"Well?" Johnny said. "Is there anything you want to tell me?"
Joshua took a deep breath and wrinkled the note in his hands as he spoke, "I suppose you want me to tell you that Nanny was a crazy old woman and that she was just ranting from her senile old mind. Or maybe you want me to say that I was only humoring her in her dying days but I never really converted to Christianity. Or maybe you want me to make some lame excuse or claim not to know what she was talking about."
"Yeah," Johnny said angrily. "Any of those would suffice."
"I'm not going to lie to you, Johnny."
"Then tell me what's going on!" Johnny almost yelled. He would have yelled had they been alone in the house, but his entire family was downstairs getting ready for dinner and Johnny wasn't quite ready to make this public yet.
"It's a long story," Joshua said.
"Yeah," Johnny said, "I bet. And that Bible in your car, what are you, holding it for a friend?"
"You know about that?" Joshua asked.
"Yeah, I know about that! Now, tell me the truth! Are you a Christian?"
"Yes."
Johnny was hoping, practically praying (although not to the God to whom his brainwashed brother prayed) that even after all that had happened, Joshua would have said that he wasn't a Christian. Legally, denying that one belonged to an illegal religious sect was enough, in most cases, to end the investigation. To many Christian, Jews, and Muslims, it was an affront to the faith to deny being a member. In the practice of law enforcement, it made arrests and convictions quite easy, but in this case, that little word was the hardest thing that Johnny had ever heard.
"How could you?" Johnny asked. "How could you throw your life away like this. You're a smart guy. You're a doctor, for God's sake! How can you believe in that outdated crap about sin and hell and..."
"...and repentance, and forgiveness, and redemption, and a loving God who gave up his own life for my sake?" Joshua finished for him.
"You know, I don't want to hear it," Johnny barked. He stood up and walked towards Nanny's window. After an agonizingly long five seconds, he said, "I can get you help, you know. You don't have to go to prison. If you just renounce the faith and agree to counseling, I can make it like this whole thing never happened."
"I'm not going to do that, Johnny," Josh said. "This is for real."
"Listen to yourself!" Johnny said, spinning around to face his brother. "Can't you see what those people have done to you? They've brainwashed you! They've taken your life away! They have ruined you!"
"No," Josh said. "They saved me. Jesus Christ saved me."
"He died twenty-two hundred years ago," Johnny said. "He can do no more to save you than Alexander the Great or George Washington. Great men, great leaders, but dead and buried and powerless! Our Cosmic Parent..."
"Has a name and a purpose and knows each and every one of us!" Joshua said.
"Shut up!" Johnny hissed. "Just shut up before I have you arrested!"
"Do what you have to do," Joshua said. "I won't change my mind."
"You could go to Planet X for this," Johnny said. "If you even survive that long. You know what they do to Christians in prison?"
"The same thing they do to us everywhere else."
Johnny lost it then. It was the way Joshua had said "us" instead of "them." He had identified himself with one of the most hated groups on the planet and had admitted his guilt to one of the most heinous criminal acts covered by the Enlightened Society's law. Johnny then did something that he had never really done in his entire life. He walked over to his brother and hit him squarely in the jaw. Joshua fell backwards onto the bed, holding his wounded jaw and looking up at his brother. Johnny expected to see anger and hatred there but he only saw love. Love and pity.
"So," Joshua said after another pause. "What are you going to do?"
"What I have to," Johnny said. "I'm a police officer, and you are an admitted criminal."
"If I could just explain to you what Christians really believe," Joshua began.
"Shut up before I hit you again!" Johnny snapped. "Or would you like that? I heard that Christian's thrive on that sort of abuse. Turn the other cheek or some sh__ like that. Some actually look forward to torture and imprisonment as if it's their goal in life."
"So," Joshua said, "are you going to arrest me?"
Johnny didn't say anything. He went back to Nanny's window and watched the snow falling onto the calm street below.
"Are you?"
"The only reason I haven't arrested you already is because of Nanny," Johnny said at last. "If she hadn't just died, believe me, you'd be sitting in a cell tonight. But I won't do that to Mom and Dad. I won't compound one tragedy with another so soon. But," he turned back to his brother, "I will arrest you. Nanny's funeral is in two days. You have that long to change your mind about this Christianity bullsh__, and if after that you still want to throw your life away, I'll slap the cuffs on you myself. Do you understand me?"
"Yes," Joshua said. "And let me tell you now that I won't change my mind. I would die before denying my faith, Johnny. And while you spend the next two days preparing to arrest you own brother, I will spend them praying for you."
"Every prayer to anyone other than the Cosmic Parent or Joshua Lewis is a fourth degree felony," Johnny replied evenly. "Get cleaned up, Joshua. Dinner's almost ready."
Both brothers were quiet and subdued during dinner, barely speaking to anyone and completely ignoring each other. The others assumed that it was grief and left them alone.
Johnny didn't see his brother for two days. The morning after confronting Joshua, he and Aimee went for coffee and he told her about their conversation. She agreed that he had handled it well and that it would be wise to wait until after the funeral to make the arrest. She told him that she hadn't told anybody (meaning, of course, her father) about Joshua.
Under different circumstances Johnny probably would have tried to get a little physical with her, but he was in no mood for anything of the sort. He didn't see her again until the funeral.
He spent the next two days in a sort of daze, hoping that he would wake up to find that this whole fiasco had been just a horrible dream. He waited for Joshua to come by or to call him and tell him that he had renounced his faith and was ready to move away from the deviant religion. He began to think seriously about just getting aboard a transport and starting his assignment early, leaving the whole situation to resolve itself. But on the day of Nanny's burial, he found himself dressed in his finest clothes and sitting in the State Church downtown where dozens of the Cramblits' family and friends had gathered to say their farewell.
Joshua sat with the family and was visibly distracted. He kept glancing over at Johnny and fidgeting in his seat like a little kid who knew he was about to be punished. Johnny tried to focus on the service. The clergyman was giving a moving eulogy and calling on the Cosmic Parent to take Nanny into his or her arms for her much deserved rest. Even though Nanny herself didn't believe in any of that stuff, it seemed inappropriate for Johnny not to pay attention to his words. He would deal with his brother later.
Nanny was buried in the Joshua Lewis memorial cemetery at two in the afternoon. The casket was lowered into the earth as the many mourners stood and cried together. Johnny stood a few feet from the rest of the group and cried his own tears, as much for Joshua as for his grandmother. He felt someone take his hand and looked over to see Aimee.
"You okay?" she asked.
He didn't respond. He just gripped her hand tightly and looked over at Joshua.
"You gonna go through with it?" she asked.
"I have no choice," he said.
"When?"
"Tonight," he said. "I hate to do it so close to the funeral, and I know that my family probably won't speak to me for the rest of my stay, but if I wait any longer, I won't be able to do it."
"Even if your family turns their backs on you," Aimee said, "I won't. I know this is hard for you, but you're doing the right thing."
"Am I?"
"He needs help, Johnny," she said. "And he won't get it unless he faces these demons. The best thing you can do for your brother and for your whole family is arrest Joshua and let him see the consequences of his choice. You know that over fifty percent of arrested Christians renounce the faith in less than a year. You could come back from your assignment on the ship and find him waiting at home for you completely recovered."
"Or I could come back to pick him up and take him to X," Johnny said.
Aimee kissed his cheek and went to join her family.
After Nanny was in the ground, people began to leave. About five minutes later, the only ones left were the Cramblits. Uncle Howard, Aunt Anne and Harold stood in one little group, Johnny's parents, Steve, and Kelly stood in another, and the two eldest Cramblit brothers stood about five feet apart on the other side of the hole. Eventually, without a word, everyone but Johnny and Joshua had left the scene, leaving the two standing there alone.
"Well," Joshua began. "What's the plan?"
"Have you changed your mind?" Johnny asked.
"No," Joshua said. "Have you?"
"No."
There was silence for about a minute. The Cramblits were loading into the shuttlecars and flying away. Johnny and Joshua had said that they planned on going to the house together in Joshua's car.
Finally, Johnny spoke again. "We're going to have dinner with the family. We're going to reminisce about Nanny and be there for Dad and Uncle Howard. Then, we're going to leave the house together. If you renounce Christianity, then we'll just go for coffee and talk about what to do next. If not, I'm taking you in."
"I understand."
"And if you try and run," Johnny began.
"If I was planning on running," Joshua said, "I wouldn't be standing here. Would I?"
"I guess not."
"Let's go," Joshua said, starting to walk to the parked shuttlecar. "We have a dinner to attend."
Johnny stood there for a long moment watching his brother walk away. Then, with tears in his eyes that had nothing to do with his dead grandmother, he followed behind him. Tomorrow at this time, Joshua would be in jail, his family would be devastated, and Johnny would be well on his way to the police facility on the moon waiting to depart to Planet X. Waiting a week in that cold building on that cold rock would be much more bearable than waiting a week with his family.
But for now, he had a dinner to attend.
The End
When he had finished his story he looked into her face for some sort of reaction. Even though her father wasn't a police officer, he half expected her to pull out her cell phone and call Peter Neason on the spot. She would tell him everything, he would contact his police connections, and Joshua would be in jail that night. Johnny might even be in a bit of trouble for not reporting the Bible at once, but his career was the last thing on his mind.
"So," Aimee said after a long while, "what are you going to do?"
"I don't know," he said. "I have no idea what to do. I took an oath to uphold the laws and principles of the Enlightened Society and the ideals of Joshua Lewis, but this isn't just any religious fanatic we're talking about. It's my brother!"
"Yeah," she said. She looked like she wanted to say more, but couldn't find the words.
"It might have been easier if Nanny hadn't just died," Johnny went on. "My family's been through enough without having to deal with losing Josh too. I've been through enough."
"Are you absolutely sure about this?" she asked him. "I mean, couldn't you have made some sort of mistake? Maybe you're just overreacting."
"No," he said. "I'm sure. The Bible might have belonged to someone else, but Nanny's note confirmed it. Then there's the change in him."
"You said he seems happier?"
"Yeah," Johnny said. "But that's one of the tricky things about Christianity. The victims actually think that they have found something good and they seem happier and more fulfilled. At first. But soon they end up so caught up in the deviant beliefs that they lose touch with reality and forsake their families, and would rather go to prison or die than renounce the destructive behaviors. Some Christians are so conditioned and brainwashed that their leaders convince them to commit terrorist acts or kill themselves. To think that my brother..."
And then Johnny did start to cry. Aimee wrapped her arms around him and held him while he wept. She was crying too and Johnny realized that growing up almost like a sister to Kelly, Aimee had become like a member of the Cramblit family. It was as if her brother was lost too.
"What should I do, Aimee?" he asked. "I can't let him destroy his life. But I can't turn in my own brother, can I?"
Aimee offered no advice. She couldn't. The only thing that she could do was to promise not to tell her father about Joshua until Johnny could figure out what to do. Then she left him on the porch, feeling more alone than he had ever felt in his life.
The next morning he was determined to confront his brother no matter what, and no matter how hard the confrontation would be. He had spent the night tossing and turning, unable to get much sleep, and when he did sleep he dreamed of Joshua. In his dreams, he saw his brother in a prison jumpsuit or getting off a prison transport on Planet X. Finally, after three or four such nightmares woke him up almost screaming, he decided to forget about sleep.
He looked at his night table and saw that he still had Nanny's note to Joshua. Surely his father would call Josh to come by in the morning and pick it up. Johnny thought that he should probably just put it back on the nightstand in Nanny's bedroom and then intercept his brother on the way back out of the house. Then he had a better idea. He knew from his training that the best way to get a suspect to confess was to catch him off guard. He would hold onto the note a little bit longer.
Mr. Cramblit did call Joshua in the morning and he said he would come by after work that afternoon to get Nanny's letter. That meant that he would be there around five thirty and the family made plans to have dinner together. Johnny was pretty sure that after he talked to Josh, neither of them would feel much like eating. He spent the day just walking around town, checking in on old friends and old hang outs, and checking his watch about ten times an hour to see how close it was to five thirty.
At five he went home and straight up to Nanny's room. He had her note in his hands and he read it over and over to himself while waiting for his brother to come in. Twice he almost just put the note on the table and left the room thinking that he would rather spend the rest of his life pretending he didn't know about his brother's problems than confront him. But he loved Josh too much and knew that the only way he would be able to help free him from the trap of religious deviancy was to let him know that he knew and to force him to face the truth.
At five twenty-five by the antique digital clock on Nanny's dresser Johnny heard the door chime ring. There was some muffled conversation downstairs and he distinctly heard his brother's voice. Then one person came slowly up the stairs towards Nanny's room and soon, Joshua was standing in the doorway looking in surprise at his little brother who sat on his grandmother's bed holding a folded piece of paper and gaping at him with an awful look of betrayal and unbelief.
"Johnny?" he said. "What are you doing in here?"
"Waiting for you."
"Dad said that Nanny left a note for me," Joshua said. Johnny held up the note and nodded.
"It's right here, Josh," Johnny said. "She left one for everybody. Sit down. Read it."
Joshua looked scared as he sat next to his brother on the bed. Johnny had seen that look before. It was the look of a criminal who knew he had been found out. If Joshua was like any of the other lawbreakers that Johnny had dealt with, either through his training or just everyday life, his mind was probably trying to think up a hundred different explanations, excuses, rationalizations, or alibis. While most of them would have probably worked on Johnny the brother, none would work on Johnny the cop.
Johnny handed his brother the incriminating note and watched as Josh slowly unfolded it. Josh read the note silently and was in tears when he finally laid the paper in his lap and looked back at his little brother. They just stared at each other for a long moment and Johnny saw conflicting emotions in his brother's tears. Part of it was his sorrow over Nanny's death, part of it was the message that his grandmother had left behind (which even Johnny could recognize as emotional and powerful, even if it was evidence of illegal religious activities) and part of it was the knowledge that his secret had finally come out. This was a secret that would destroy not only Joshua's life, but have devastating effects on everyone around him.
Finally, Johnny broke the silence. "I read it."
"I thought you had," Joshua said.
"Well?" Johnny said. "Is there anything you want to tell me?"
Joshua took a deep breath and wrinkled the note in his hands as he spoke, "I suppose you want me to tell you that Nanny was a crazy old woman and that she was just ranting from her senile old mind. Or maybe you want me to say that I was only humoring her in her dying days but I never really converted to Christianity. Or maybe you want me to make some lame excuse or claim not to know what she was talking about."
"Yeah," Johnny said angrily. "Any of those would suffice."
"I'm not going to lie to you, Johnny."
"Then tell me what's going on!" Johnny almost yelled. He would have yelled had they been alone in the house, but his entire family was downstairs getting ready for dinner and Johnny wasn't quite ready to make this public yet.
"It's a long story," Joshua said.
"Yeah," Johnny said, "I bet. And that Bible in your car, what are you, holding it for a friend?"
"You know about that?" Joshua asked.
"Yeah, I know about that! Now, tell me the truth! Are you a Christian?"
"Yes."
Johnny was hoping, practically praying (although not to the God to whom his brainwashed brother prayed) that even after all that had happened, Joshua would have said that he wasn't a Christian. Legally, denying that one belonged to an illegal religious sect was enough, in most cases, to end the investigation. To many Christian, Jews, and Muslims, it was an affront to the faith to deny being a member. In the practice of law enforcement, it made arrests and convictions quite easy, but in this case, that little word was the hardest thing that Johnny had ever heard.
"How could you?" Johnny asked. "How could you throw your life away like this. You're a smart guy. You're a doctor, for God's sake! How can you believe in that outdated crap about sin and hell and..."
"...and repentance, and forgiveness, and redemption, and a loving God who gave up his own life for my sake?" Joshua finished for him.
"You know, I don't want to hear it," Johnny barked. He stood up and walked towards Nanny's window. After an agonizingly long five seconds, he said, "I can get you help, you know. You don't have to go to prison. If you just renounce the faith and agree to counseling, I can make it like this whole thing never happened."
"I'm not going to do that, Johnny," Josh said. "This is for real."
"Listen to yourself!" Johnny said, spinning around to face his brother. "Can't you see what those people have done to you? They've brainwashed you! They've taken your life away! They have ruined you!"
"No," Josh said. "They saved me. Jesus Christ saved me."
"He died twenty-two hundred years ago," Johnny said. "He can do no more to save you than Alexander the Great or George Washington. Great men, great leaders, but dead and buried and powerless! Our Cosmic Parent..."
"Has a name and a purpose and knows each and every one of us!" Joshua said.
"Shut up!" Johnny hissed. "Just shut up before I have you arrested!"
"Do what you have to do," Joshua said. "I won't change my mind."
"You could go to Planet X for this," Johnny said. "If you even survive that long. You know what they do to Christians in prison?"
"The same thing they do to us everywhere else."
Johnny lost it then. It was the way Joshua had said "us" instead of "them." He had identified himself with one of the most hated groups on the planet and had admitted his guilt to one of the most heinous criminal acts covered by the Enlightened Society's law. Johnny then did something that he had never really done in his entire life. He walked over to his brother and hit him squarely in the jaw. Joshua fell backwards onto the bed, holding his wounded jaw and looking up at his brother. Johnny expected to see anger and hatred there but he only saw love. Love and pity.
"So," Joshua said after another pause. "What are you going to do?"
"What I have to," Johnny said. "I'm a police officer, and you are an admitted criminal."
"If I could just explain to you what Christians really believe," Joshua began.
"Shut up before I hit you again!" Johnny snapped. "Or would you like that? I heard that Christian's thrive on that sort of abuse. Turn the other cheek or some sh__ like that. Some actually look forward to torture and imprisonment as if it's their goal in life."
"So," Joshua said, "are you going to arrest me?"
Johnny didn't say anything. He went back to Nanny's window and watched the snow falling onto the calm street below.
"Are you?"
"The only reason I haven't arrested you already is because of Nanny," Johnny said at last. "If she hadn't just died, believe me, you'd be sitting in a cell tonight. But I won't do that to Mom and Dad. I won't compound one tragedy with another so soon. But," he turned back to his brother, "I will arrest you. Nanny's funeral is in two days. You have that long to change your mind about this Christianity bullsh__, and if after that you still want to throw your life away, I'll slap the cuffs on you myself. Do you understand me?"
"Yes," Joshua said. "And let me tell you now that I won't change my mind. I would die before denying my faith, Johnny. And while you spend the next two days preparing to arrest you own brother, I will spend them praying for you."
"Every prayer to anyone other than the Cosmic Parent or Joshua Lewis is a fourth degree felony," Johnny replied evenly. "Get cleaned up, Joshua. Dinner's almost ready."
Both brothers were quiet and subdued during dinner, barely speaking to anyone and completely ignoring each other. The others assumed that it was grief and left them alone.
Johnny didn't see his brother for two days. The morning after confronting Joshua, he and Aimee went for coffee and he told her about their conversation. She agreed that he had handled it well and that it would be wise to wait until after the funeral to make the arrest. She told him that she hadn't told anybody (meaning, of course, her father) about Joshua.
Under different circumstances Johnny probably would have tried to get a little physical with her, but he was in no mood for anything of the sort. He didn't see her again until the funeral.
He spent the next two days in a sort of daze, hoping that he would wake up to find that this whole fiasco had been just a horrible dream. He waited for Joshua to come by or to call him and tell him that he had renounced his faith and was ready to move away from the deviant religion. He began to think seriously about just getting aboard a transport and starting his assignment early, leaving the whole situation to resolve itself. But on the day of Nanny's burial, he found himself dressed in his finest clothes and sitting in the State Church downtown where dozens of the Cramblits' family and friends had gathered to say their farewell.
Joshua sat with the family and was visibly distracted. He kept glancing over at Johnny and fidgeting in his seat like a little kid who knew he was about to be punished. Johnny tried to focus on the service. The clergyman was giving a moving eulogy and calling on the Cosmic Parent to take Nanny into his or her arms for her much deserved rest. Even though Nanny herself didn't believe in any of that stuff, it seemed inappropriate for Johnny not to pay attention to his words. He would deal with his brother later.
Nanny was buried in the Joshua Lewis memorial cemetery at two in the afternoon. The casket was lowered into the earth as the many mourners stood and cried together. Johnny stood a few feet from the rest of the group and cried his own tears, as much for Joshua as for his grandmother. He felt someone take his hand and looked over to see Aimee.
"You okay?" she asked.
He didn't respond. He just gripped her hand tightly and looked over at Joshua.
"You gonna go through with it?" she asked.
"I have no choice," he said.
"When?"
"Tonight," he said. "I hate to do it so close to the funeral, and I know that my family probably won't speak to me for the rest of my stay, but if I wait any longer, I won't be able to do it."
"Even if your family turns their backs on you," Aimee said, "I won't. I know this is hard for you, but you're doing the right thing."
"Am I?"
"He needs help, Johnny," she said. "And he won't get it unless he faces these demons. The best thing you can do for your brother and for your whole family is arrest Joshua and let him see the consequences of his choice. You know that over fifty percent of arrested Christians renounce the faith in less than a year. You could come back from your assignment on the ship and find him waiting at home for you completely recovered."
"Or I could come back to pick him up and take him to X," Johnny said.
Aimee kissed his cheek and went to join her family.
After Nanny was in the ground, people began to leave. About five minutes later, the only ones left were the Cramblits. Uncle Howard, Aunt Anne and Harold stood in one little group, Johnny's parents, Steve, and Kelly stood in another, and the two eldest Cramblit brothers stood about five feet apart on the other side of the hole. Eventually, without a word, everyone but Johnny and Joshua had left the scene, leaving the two standing there alone.
"Well," Joshua began. "What's the plan?"
"Have you changed your mind?" Johnny asked.
"No," Joshua said. "Have you?"
"No."
There was silence for about a minute. The Cramblits were loading into the shuttlecars and flying away. Johnny and Joshua had said that they planned on going to the house together in Joshua's car.
Finally, Johnny spoke again. "We're going to have dinner with the family. We're going to reminisce about Nanny and be there for Dad and Uncle Howard. Then, we're going to leave the house together. If you renounce Christianity, then we'll just go for coffee and talk about what to do next. If not, I'm taking you in."
"I understand."
"And if you try and run," Johnny began.
"If I was planning on running," Joshua said, "I wouldn't be standing here. Would I?"
"I guess not."
"Let's go," Joshua said, starting to walk to the parked shuttlecar. "We have a dinner to attend."
Johnny stood there for a long moment watching his brother walk away. Then, with tears in his eyes that had nothing to do with his dead grandmother, he followed behind him. Tomorrow at this time, Joshua would be in jail, his family would be devastated, and Johnny would be well on his way to the police facility on the moon waiting to depart to Planet X. Waiting a week in that cold building on that cold rock would be much more bearable than waiting a week with his family.
But for now, he had a dinner to attend.
The End
posted by Arthur Brokop II at 12:21 PM
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