“This thing on?” he wags a calloused finger ambivalently at the camera lens.
    “Yes, it is.  You can start any time.  Say anything you like and just speak in your normal voice — be natural.”
    “All right then,” he says, lips parting slowly into a knowing smile.  Then he clears his throat, shifts a bit in his seat, nods his head and begins:

I have come to prison to find Jesus Christ.  I have looked everywhere else I could think He should be but I have found nothing, not one thing but my thoughts.  Those, in turn, I have inspected, torn through, overturned, shaken, and sifted into their most elemental parts, and still I have been alone.  Now, here, I have nothing but four walls to take the place of my world, of my own body.  Sin is my salvation.  If I cannot find Him here I do believe I never will.
    You see, I am wrong.  I have known it my whole life, and it has been a belligerent and relentless cancer of an ache in my mind.  It bewildered me as a boy, and after a time it's worn away the man.  Worn until there is nothing left of him to fight it.  No matter how he might attempt to deceive himself into believing the wrong is not there it will not go away, just as the boy playing Hide 'n Seek could not make the whole world disappear by sealing his eyes shut.
    Is there a living soul who does not feel in the wrong?  And though they do, they pretend worse than the boy, make themselves live as if nothing has gone horribly, fiercely wrong.  They seal their own eyes against their guilt, afraid to admit them, all those small mistakes; all the base pettiness of their existence would be too much to bear if they were known, really and truly known.  They fear the humiliation most of all, and this fear is nothing more than the sin of pride.  But for myself there is both the humiliation into which I have fallen that will bring my Lord to me, and the realization that the goal toward which I feel inevitably compelled humbles me as I begin to move.  What an arrogant creature am I.
    It is common, is it not, for a man to turn to God only in moments of irreconcilable moral dilemmas or transgressions.  A man turns to God for assistance in these moments in much the same way a child appeals to the mother when his sibling unrepentantly commits an unjust act against him, or when the child desires some toy with great intensity and barters his goodness with God to get it.  I, on the other hand, had always sought His presence with a purity of heart; I had no reason to turn, for I was already facing the direction I hoped He'd be.  So why had He not cast his light to me, who had never abused my freedom to love Him?  My life has been an act of faith.  Where is my grace?
    The only constant in a contingent world is faith.  In our rationality we generally disdain what cannot, by definition, be certain.  Faith is, however, more certain than any objective knowledge, anything gained by reason, because it precludes the possibility of doubt.  Unlike knowledge, which is doubtful in its contingent aspect, faith does not yield to the temptation of the tangible.  Still, I yearn for the touch of my God.
    There is but one place left me to attain true recognition.  Right here, right where I sit.  I have seen those television shows, the ones like you're doing now, where they interview incarcerated men who, until they were sent away, could not or would not find Jesus Christ.  Then in this mysterious place God visited these hateful creatures and suddenly they believed: 'I have found the Lord Jesus Christ, and I accept Him into my heart as my Lord and Savior.'
Which room was He in?  How did He come to them, or is it merely lonely behind the bars and barbed wire fences?  Is Jesus but a mere comfort or a fiction for their time?  I wonder which pain is worse: sin or faith?
Through all of it there is time.  Time.  Can you quantify faith by assigning years, or sometimes a whole life, of nothing to do but count off minutes, one at a time?  Minutes until the lights go out; minutes until the dawn; minutes until the doors open to let you into the yard, until they close you back in again, even though you are always already locked in anyway.  Vous êtes embarqué.  Yes, I speak some French, speak some about how we're embarked within that from which you cannot escape.  Faith, it seems to me, is inevitable, and is, as such, a paradox.
    Was father Abraham's faith less than mine?  Is this why God's angel spoke to him?  Is this why, at the last moment God stayed Abraham's hand and provided for him a ram instead of the beloved and only son, Isaac?  'Take your son, your only son whom you love.'  Abraham and his loving, patient wife Sarah, had waited all those years.  Waited far beyond Sarah's time.  Then, just as Isaac began to come fully formed, almost a man, he was to be sacrificed.  What god demands such love from the father of faith?  Everything in Abraham's world was against this sacrifice, everything but the command itself.  I had no such authority.  Was this the symbol of my devotion — was it greater than Abraham's?  Look upon me, look upon me!
    In my own defense — and in the eyes of the world indeed I do require one — I must say that God is responsible, after all,  for the necessity of my particularly egregious sin.  Now, one could argue that the Lord takes strict account of every last one of the multitude whose lives are, to greater and lesser degrees, useless and uninterrupted by greatness.  But I would ask them, when?  When does this Accounting take place and for how long must I wait?  Until my death?  No!  What of all the others, the faithful who rest alive, in the here and now, in God's Grace?  He has taken them into His account already, so what of me?  I myself am incessantly perplexed over the Lord's plan, which I believe has been made unnecessarily difficult.
    I no longer trouble myself about what could have been, for it never came, and I had no other choice.  When one is left alone, entirely alone, one can start to ponder if being alone is all there is.
    It is not that I refused to try.  As I said before now, I have lived a lifetime of this singular endeavor: I was taken to the Lord and later I chased after Him.  I have been on the trail for many years, have been to more services than I can recollect, first pulled along by the hand in a scratchy blue wool suit Mother would have me wear all year 'round, her leaning forward toward the spire to bring me to Jesus.  Then, as I grew older and my wrongs began to sit heavier in the pit of my stomach I would travel on my own to be washed in the blood, but I never felt clean.
    When I went off to the war I did my best to bring Him there and back again, and when I returned there was not one church that did not see the suffering in my travails.  I took my government money and moved to the city where I was swallowed whole.  I called above the din after God in all His houses, but I could not worship my way into Grace, if such a thing were possible in the first place.  I praised Jesus, held my hands aloft, shouted the Hallelujah until my voice was hoarse, let hands lay upon me, plunged myself again and again into the murky depths, clutching the sludge below — where is my grace?
    After my daddy died I came home to help Mother.  The country's silence sharpened my hearing once again.  You are in the wrong, whispered through the pines, though to everyone else the wind sounded like, shhhh.
    So it was when I was driving Daddy's old pick-up on one particularly oppressive summer afternoon.

He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, placing his hands on his knees as if he was about to stand up.  But instead, he looked intently into the camera lens and continued, sounding less intense and more folksy, as if spinning a harmless country yarn.

I was returning from a long day fishing on the Edisto.  It was coming on around that time of the day when the air becomes so heavy with wet that it just hangs low and hazy, a torrent of rain getting ready to set loose all that moisture it spent the day greedily sucking up.  In only a few hours the light bugs would appear, meandering in the steady dusk, and steam would rise slowly from the asphalt as the katydids commenced their long, slow sounds, like scratching.  You have to admire the way the air gets so thick you feel like you're moving in slow motion, like you're under water, stifled by the density.
Then I caught sight of her strolling up ahead.  She was distracting me even before I reached her, legs sprouting endlessly from a pair of beat up cut-off jeans, and languorous, long hands slipping up behind a long neck to pile errant red curls on top of her head.  That last nice sight took a moment because first she had to free some of that hair from underneath a weighty looking backpack slung over her shoulder.
    A stare I presume was already fixed straight ahead, continued into the distance and did not turn toward my approach.  Her profile was glossy with sweat and there were tresses of hair sticking to her skin.  Patches of her white blouse were soaked through, and I could see the straps of her brassiere.  I slowed to keep pace with her and when she continued to command her eyes forward I leaned on the steering wheel to see around to her full face.  It turned out to be one of those girl-woman faces, bones beginning to show under freckled skin and made-up brown eyes smudged with melting mascara.  She licked lips that were full with promise and ignored me.
    'Hey now.  What you doin' out here all 'lone, Miss?' I asked smiling, wiping the back of my neck with a kerchief I'd pulled out of my jeans' back pocket.
    She looked over at me, sidelong, and stopped, folding her arms under a newly ample bosom.  I eased the truck to a stop.  'Maybe,' I stared smiled, 'I might could you a ride.' 
    The bland expression of her girl-woman face broke into a slow, knowing smile and the girl faded away.  'Hey,' slithered out of her mouth.  She knew boys liked her.  I could tell that right off by the way she wore her make-up and clothes.  She didn't know just yet, though, what it meant, and that made me want even more to get her in my car.
    I kept smiling and leaned back against the seat, letting my wrist dangle over the top of the wheel.  I wasn't in any hurry, none at all.  Hadn't I learned to be patient?  'Where you from, Miss, I never seen you before.'
    I gazed out through the windshield at the darkening sky.  'Looks like rain's comin' shortly, and we could surely use some, but you oughtn't to be out here by yourself like this.  You in need of a lift somewhere?  It's doggone hot, too hot to walk.  Why not let me give you a ride?' I said, leaning toward the passenger door, ready to open it for her.  'Come on.  Say.'
    She stood, eyeing me.  'I live in town,' she gestured vaguely with a tip of her head.  'I was just visitin' with a friend and I'm heading on home now.'
    'That far, hmm?  Quite a ways,' I said knowingly.  'Take you days.'
She just looked at the dirt, drawing a crescent line with her toe.  'Well, like I said, I never seen you and I know it's the truth 'cause I'd surely remember that,' and I laughed to show her my good will, and she laughed, too, a little.  'So why don't you climb on in here where you won't get all wet when it starts rainin'.  I can take you on home, it's no trouble,' I kept smiling, 'Ain't nothing but a thing.'
    'Hmmm,' she murmured, still looking down at the ground between her shoes. '  She and blew out a sigh and said to her feet, 'You right about it's bein' so hot out here.'  I waited.
    'Sides,' She squinted toward the sky, as if measuring the impending waterfall, 'It does look like it's fixin' to rain.  'You know,' she spoke softly, looking at me almost apologetically,  'I'm not going home, really.  I just said that.'
    'I know,' I said, feeling queasy in my gut as she lifted her eyes back up to me, one brow arched, a slow smile moving across her lips.
    'Well, now,' she began again, 'I couldn't rightly take a ride with a strange man now, could I?  Wouldn't look right.'  She licked her lips again, seeking permission to get into a strange man's car, and I could almost taste the salty sweat gathering at the top of her upper lip.
    'Honey,' I spread my hands wide, 'Ain't no one here but us.'
    She knew.  'Well, okay,' she reached for the handle, dropped her pack on the floor, and slid in next to me all in one sleek move.  Then, with a somewhat exaggerated primness, she wiped her palms on her shorts and demurely held out her right hand to me.  'I am Dolores.  My friends call me Do.  What's yours?'
    I took her hand in mine but didn't shake it.  I just held the bone and blood and flesh in mine.  'Well, Do, it's good to see you,' I said inclining my head as if tipping an imaginary hat.  'How do you do.'  Light of my life, fire of my loins.  My sin, my soul.  I slid my hand off hers, put the truck in gear, and we moved on ahead.
    The atmosphere pushed down on us, making movement and speech languid, like wading through deep, abiding waters, and I could feel the back of my shirt all soaked through with sweat.  I dropped my left arm out the window but with the wind being so wet and hot, it seemed there was no relief, not from the weather or my thoughts.  'Miss Do, why you ain't out playing with your friends? I looked over at her with a coolly paternal smile, but felt fire in my eyes.
    She said nothing.  Silent, we rode on for a while.  It seemed like hours, and finally I couldn't take it anymore.  'If you really was from town I'd have seen you, we both know that.  So why not tell me what you doing way out here all by yourself.  I know all these folks around here, and I don't know you.  C'mon,' my voice broke,  'You can tell me.'
    'Well, I suppose it can't do no real harm telling you,' she smiled, looking to me to be her co-conspirator.  Suddenly, she seemed more girl than woman, her fingers fidgeting slightly before taking one hand in the other to hold.  She began to speak in those tones that young, uncertain girls speak, sounding more like she's asking questions than making statements.  'I been walking and catching rides for a while now.  My people's all in the Upstate.'
    The real reason she left, she says, is simple.  One of her siblings was dying.  'I didn't want to be around death, waiting for death.  It made me sick.  Have you imagined that moment yet?  A bunch of these little moments, one right after another, before you die — that's all this is now, isn't it?  Something happens and then something else happens, they're just little pieces apart from each other, but still they're connected because you remember things — Oh, I don't know,' she took a deep breath to organize fleeing thoughts, then tried again. 'Finally there's the last moment of life and then...
    'But there is nothing I can think of after the 'and then' because you just don't know, and not knowing is so awful, all that stuff that leads up to the moment — that moment.  What is that?' 
These words spilled out of her mouth like she was afraid even to think them, let alone say, because they might somehow tell on her. She pleaded, 'And even in it, are you supposed to know that's what it is, that it's the last?  Do you know and do you think good-bye to yourself and everyone else?  What is that last moment?'  Then, softly, 'The thing is, you can't go back.  You just can't go back.'
    I knew, already, that she would be my introduction to God.  But if I did not, I most certainly knew it at that moment.  It was torturous attempting to conceal my excitement.  Still I persevered.
    'Heck, Do, that's a heap for a girl your age.  So, just like that you left?  You didn't tell your folks or nothing?'  I looked at her.  'Nobody knows?'
    She shook her head, oblivious, and I merely said, 'Your folks must be worried out their minds looking for you.'
    'Well, it may be, but there's nothing they can do now, can they?  She looks to be dead, if she isn't already, and I expect they'll not leave her to look for me.  So, here I am,' she shrugged, and put her elbow up on the door, looking far out the window.
    I noticed again how hot it was all over, and even my jeans were feeling like wet cardboard.  'You don't figure it'll make things harder on them, worrying over where you went off to and having to look after your sister?  You don't think maybe you've gone and been a bit selfish?'
Dolores didn't look disturbed as she turned back toward me blankly, glazed over with sweat.  Even her eyeballs looked wet, but then I realized tears were streaming down her cheeks.
    I went on.  'You know what else been bothering me?  Why, of all the times of my life, you have to be out here, now, on this road.  Why this road, huh Do?  You my lamb or my Isaac?'
She paid no attention to my comment, and so once again we drove on in silence.  The steady stream of pinewood and Kudzu that devours everything in its path were broken apart only by the old road that tapered off into sand.  This land was under water back in the day, and now it's a desert, though it's always puzzled me that it's such a damp one.
    Then she said, 'I don't want to talk about this anymore.'  She sounded again more like she was asking my permission, like already I could tell her something, than she was demanding I stop.
    I thought to change the subject, but knew I could press her more.  'What's she sick from, your sister?  Just tell me that and we'll talk about something else, I promise,'  I smiled my best promise-keeping smile and she seemed slightly reassured.  How malleable these young ones can be.
    'Not sure, really.  Momma and them never did go to the hospital, though Doc said once when he came 'round visiting that it's some poison must be in her blood from the way she looks.  He couldn't get them to go on to the hospital.  No sir, they've been relying on the Lord,' She said, with a dismissive wave of her hand.  'That's another good reason for me to go.  I never could reckon that.'
    'Well the Police will catch them.  That's not allowed, just praying and waiting.  You got to do something at a time like that.  What about your sister, did she want to wait like that?'
    'Hey, you said, you promised one question, one.  Not two,' Do complained.
    I smiled again and said, 'I'm just making sure you're keeping track.'
    'Just 'cause my folks is simple don't mean I am.'
    'Come on now, Do, we're just talking here.  No harm.'  I looked at her expectantly.
    For a while she just stared back at me, sizing me up, trying to figure out whether or not to continue.  Maybe she cared, or maybe she was just trying to placate me, but in any case, she said, 'I don't know what my sister wants.  But wanting doesn't matter anyway.'
Dolores took a deep breath in and sighed heavily.  'I can't quite understand them just watching their baby go on like that.  But I'm sure they are, I am sure of it. 'That won't be for me, I'll tell you.'
    'But your Momma don't think she's just setting there, watching.  She's got the Lord there with her.  Whatever He wills is what is best, that's what they think, right?'
    Dolores frowned.  'Are you really going to say that?  Do you really believe that?  If that's true than anything, any old thing that happens is the best thing.  Anything.  And I don't even get to hear Him telling me.  Not to my face, not in words I understand.  No, you can't tell me you believe that.  You can't just sit there and wait for a big hand to come out the sky,' she said, flopping a limp left hand around in mockery, 'and make a body well.'
    Her dangling wrist reminded me of pictures I've seen of the Michelangelo painting, the one where Adam's hand barely stretches out to reach God's purposeful finger.  Dolores' God — and mine too, it seemed — was more Adam than divine.
    'Dolores, suppose you could make God talk to you.  Suppose you could make God take notice.  How would you do that, do you think?'  Could she have even a glimmer of what I would do?
    But she only laughed, turned to me as I gripped the wheel, laughed a deep, throaty, mean laugh.  'Make him talk to me,' she sneered.  'And make him talk to you, too, I suppose.  You are a fool!'
    Suddenly, and for the first time in those sweltering months, I felt the air cool upon contact with my skin, and I yanked the wheel hard to the right, pulling off onto an ill-used dirt road grown over with weeds and roots and such.  The sharp turn tipped Do off balance and she fell into my shoulder with a quick yelp, and as the truck bounced to a jolting stop and I put my arm around her to fix her in place.
    Do snapped as she dipped her head and wrenched away from my embrace, 'My word, what in the hell did you do that for?  You nearly rolled this damn thing!  This is not the sort of ride I need, thank you very much,' she hissed, leaning over to find her bag, like she was going to open the door and step right out.
    I reached out and my hand slipped it around the back of her neck, tightening my grip as I pulled her toward me. 'No, no, sweet, you going to get to know this fool.'
    She narrowed her eyes, eyes brimming with hate and repugnance, but she did not pull away.  'I already know you,' her words came our hoarse, throaty, 'I know all you.'
    I pushed her away, and as she fell back against the car door I slammed the truck into gear, skidding off down the road once again.  I was driving dangerously fast, and I needed to.  Do sat there, not knowing exactly when things had turned.
    I have my sin.  I have my sin.  I gassed the truck.
    Quickly righting herself face front, Do braced against the dashboard with both hands, but just then the truck hit a pothole and took a jump.  She shrieked and I grabbed her hair at the back of her head, letting gravity help me ram her forehead on the dash.  Then she just crumpled down onto the floor, her skirt hiked up at her waist exposing cotton panties with little colorful flowers.
    Next thing I knew, the truck had stopped, straddling the road, engulfed in a cloud of dust.  There, to my right, lay Dolores, unmoving and crumpled up like a used piece of paper.
    I did this thing.  I could dump her out and drive off, I thought.  When she came to, she wouldn't say anything to anyone, being too scared they'd send her home, wherever that is.  I reached over to smooth out her hair.  A useless gesture, truth be told, because temptation or not, I could not let myself stop then.  She had fallen right into my lap just about, out there on the road waiting for me.  So as the dust settled I took a few breaths and got out.
    I walked around to the other side of the truck and opened the door, catching her as she toppled out into my arms.  The rain was closing in.  I could feel it, and the echoes of thunder came with increasing frequency.  Carrying her like I was some hero saving the damsel in a picture show, I made my way into the thickness of the forest.  Pine needles still moist from yesterday's shower cushioned my feet.  It seemed I walked for a long while; my arms were aching and I was getting out of breath.
    By the time I found the right location, it must have begun raining, because scattered drops fell through the branches. I set her down amidst old growth and rotting leaves and began to revive her.  I wanted her to watch me; I wanted her to be innocent of this one thing so I could take it from her.  She took a long time to come around.  By then it was coming down hard and steady, the rain, and we were both soaked through.
    The thin drops patting her eyelids made her stir.  I leaned over and watched, waiting for the moment when she understood it was I.  Her mouth opened first and then her eyes, and she brought a hand up to her forehead, the place where she hit the dash, and she moaned.
    'Hi Miss Do,' I said in a singsong yet unsmiling tone, and reached next to my foot where I had placed a fair-sized rock.  Turning back, I held the rock over her, ready.  'See this, Do?  This is for you.  You going to help me.  You going to do a great thing for me, isn't that lucky?'
    She did not respond, but her eyes grew real wide, and moan turned to a whimper.
    I cleared my throat, tossing the rock like a ball from hand to hand just above her face.  'Now Miss Dolores,' I told her, 'I am committing a sin.  I need to do it.  It's going to hurt, but you're doing a good thing, Do.'
Then I hurled the rock at her.  The first hit clocked her on her hand, which was still covering her forehead, and she cried out, and said 'no, no, no' — it was a little annoying, really.  I had to pull her hand away — step on it, you know — to hold it still.  And I put one knee on her stomach, too, to still the rest of her.  The other hand just flailed around uselessly, like this.
I hit her again.  Then again, and again, until she stopped jerking and the only sound she made was a wheezing deep in her chest.  Bloody saliva bubbles came out of the place where her mouth was.  I had committed a sin and then some.
    The key to my salvation was dead.  I leaned back on my haunches, noticed I was breathing hard.  There must have been a mess on me, too, that's what they said later.  The police showed me my clothes, sweat stained and crusted with dried blood.
    For a long time I stared down at her, holding the rock stained with blood and scraps of skin and whatnot, waiting on her to move.  As I looked her over I began to think how unfair it was that someone must come between God and me.  If it is not the Church that mediates my faith, then it is another person.  At that moment, I hated that child.  I was glad she lay dead before me, and at that moment I despised Jesus, too — so tired, His eyes, receded within blackened sockets as He called to Himself in the last of human suffering.  I loathed Him because He looked upon men benevolently, because He loved them, anyway.  Even Jesus needed Judas, and I need Him for my excuses.
    My legs began to cramp, so I rose up and looked around the woods, feeling momentarily isolated and foreign to those parts.  After a while, I left the spot and drove back to the main road toward town.
    I am reminded again of the father of faith, Abraham.  He proved to us that God commands faith to stand above and beyond morality.  But Abraham did not forget the Lord's authorship of our actions because he and his son, his only son whom he loved, were spared the most heinous act of all.  Will the Lord deny me my sin by imprisoning my freedom in morality?  Soon, I will know. What would you be willing to do until what that willingness reaps finally destroys you, until you get what you always wanted but it means nothing — not because you are different now, but because this thing you desired so passionately took away every ounce of dignity you had in order to achieve it?  Is this how it will be for me?
    'All in the fullness of time, Son,' Mother would often say with a slow shake of her head, 'All in the fullness of time.'  Now, here I am.  Here I am.

***