Project Purple

41 - The Preacher

"With God's light withdrawn we walk in darkness, in the thick darkness of this dread."

Robert's voice had lost the vibrant accusation it had held in the previous Sabbaths. But his eyes were firm, holding his listeners in an unyielding heed-They had also changed much; so addled, and tattered, and feaful of what may lay in store for all of them.

"Being a Christian means putting your faith in Christ. No one who trusts God with heart and soul will ever regret it. No matter what a person's religious background, no matter what a person's sexuality, the same God helps whomever calls out for help."

Five casualties now-three dead, two missing and presumed dead.

They said he had jumped from the ledge, and what position was he in to question their accounting of his 'suicide'? The body, wrapped in white cloth, lay at his feet, but Robert couldn't look into those lifeless eyes without choking on his lost breath.

They were fighting with one another; the colony was broken. But it was that old maelstrom of emotions he'd harbored since childhood that clenched him and ravaged him.

"The word sodomy," he began, "derived from the city, Sodom, recorded in Matthew 10:14-15 and Luke 10:7-16 ... Jesus said that the sin of the people of Sodom was pride, failure of love."

He looked again at their beaten, slaughtered faces, "Sexual activity is not even mentioned. Perverted sensuality, fornication, unnatural lust, maybe... But nowhere do the condemned activities in Sodom have anything to do with sodomy."

The Badger, lifeless a full day now, emitted the reek of decay-the rotting meat, the odor of death. But Robert looked at the exposed, broken face of his lover with devotedness. "God loves his children, no matter their sexuality."

There was a broken wave across the Badger's face, but Robert didn't notice. "I will not explain our love. I only know that I had found someone to bring me the happiness I was seeking... It is not sinful. It is not disgraceful. And I know that in God's eyes, our love is blessed..."

The Matron sat stiffly with her veiled thoughts, but then reared like some fire-breathing beast, "Leviticus 20:13; 'If a man lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both have committed an abomination-They shall be put to death; their blood shall be upon them!'"

With a pasted grin, she steamed out of the chapel with the bearing of a proud animal stricken by a bludgeon, yet refusing surrender.

The chapel had never known such a compromising quiet, yet Robert gazed back at the body... It was a long and torturous path, but the unmasking freed him and bestowed upon him that elusive rhetoric of the plain style-'The swelling words of humane wisedome'.

The Preacher had finally found it.

***

His diary camera was the only one in the colony that still functioned; they had destroyed the others in their upheaval. And he stared down at the floor of the hut, as if peering way down into a dark, deep chasm.

"The law I broke. I have committed a heinous sin. I am not a man of God. I have not the right."

He wanted them all to understand, and he picked up the knife blade he had sharpened with a stone, examining it, questioning its righteousness, as one would an executioner.

"No more angels watching over me. No more demons to be held at bay."

Robert's childhood bedtime song would be his cenotaph.

"I woke to an empty room: Just a room. Four walls, ceiling, floor. Just a room. Nothing more."

That was when he remembered, and he mumbled the name, "Tommy."

Like a dusty old book from one's youth that hasn't been opened for many decades, he now understood why he was there ... The young man who kissed him in grade school, and showed him how to stroke himself-Tommy Irvine! When guilt pangs came, the jumpy Robert had consulted with his teacher about Tommy's awkward attentions.

And now the sin of betrayal made so much sense to him, as he caressed his bare thigh with the steel blade, raising it higher...

The note said: 'I love you, Robert': Tommy had pinned it to his shirt before swinging gently from a large beam above the church altar.

"I woke up to an empty room and embraced the solid air," He slid the sharpened blade along his loins, "I woke up to an empty room and knew myself."

He felt like a butterfly; nothing would ever force him back into that cocoon.