Butler Wren and the Sign From God
by Anthony Lukas
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
“Now, then, Crystal, you cannot make a bad choice with anything on the menu.”
“These are all hot dogs?”asked Crystal, leafing through several pages. “Wow. What are you having, James?”
“The Sweet Rosie, it’s got sweet red peppers, Bermuda onions and cherry tomatoes.”
“Butler?”
“In honor of the supposed visitation, I shall have the Devil Dog, with the egg, sour cherry relish, spiced mustard.”
“You are so irreverent,” said Crystal and continued reading the menu.
A young woman came up and took their dog orders and also for three of Arlo’s homemade root beers and chips.
Wren was sipping his drink when a gravelly voice next to him said, “Best root beer in town.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Wren, turning to the man on the next stool. He was a man a decade or so older than Wren and he wore a priest’s collar. “Father...”
“Monseigneur Louis Cariou, call me Lou.” He extended a hand.
“Butler. So, Lou, here to see the tableau outside?”
“Here for the best dogs in town,” said the priest, “and I’ll have nothing to do with that nonsense outside.”
“So you’re not thinking it’s a sign from above?”
Lou made a rude sound. “A load of malarkey. If they want to see the Lord, come to a church. All that” — indicating the happenings outside with a wave of his hand — “it’s as bad as these people who see Christ’s face in a toasted cheese sandwich for Pete’s sake.
“Been a priest for near fifty years and have seen a lot of stuff claiming to be religion and having a direct line to God. Some of it’s sincere, but most of it is bull. And don’t get me started on that speaking in tongues crap.”
Butler laughingly agreed. “It’s a diverse group out there,” said Wren, nodding in the direction of the alley. “Including a distinguished-looking gentleman and a few followers—”
“Oh, him,” said Lou, “wearing a suit that probably cost more than my collections for a week or two and a gold cross that would re-roof my church.” He shook his head. “A redemption-by-the-dollar sort. No question where most of his flock’s donations go.”
“Pretty cynical there, Lou,” said Wren.
“Jesuit,” said Lou.
“Ah.”
“I grew up in this town,” said Lou, “and been a priest most of my life. Been at St. Andy’s for most of a decade. Good people, my parish. Hate to see people getting fleeced thinking it gets them closer to God, as if the Lord would care for their money.”
The priest’s hot dog arrived. Wren raised an eyebrow: “Why, Lou, is that the Devil Dog?”
“I like to walk on the wild side.”
* * *
Wren’s group orders appeared quickly and, as Wren lifted his dog to take a bite, he froze.
“Butler, are you all right?” asked Lou.
Wren was staring into the mirror behind the counter and had seen the door open and Fred Timmons walk in. He was carrying his briefcase. Oh dear, thought Wren.
Timmons walked to the front of the counter and looked toward the back, started when he saw Wren and put on an “Oh, no, I can’t believe this” look. He sighed and walked down the counter and sat next to Crystal. “Butler, Crystal,” he said nodding to them both.
“Hey, Fred,” said Crystal. “Here for a dog?” She looked down at his briefcase and said, “Uh-oh,” again succinctly summing up the situation.
Of course, Arlo walked up just then, and Fred pulled out a sheaf of papers and said, “Arlo Roman, you are hereby served a civil complaint and application for injunction. If you do not file a timely Answer, a default may be entered against you.” Arlo looked mad; Fred, embarrassed.
Arlo walked toward the back, reading the papers, muttering, “What the hell...”
To Lou’s inquiring look Wren said, “Fred here is a process server, one I have used quite a few times myself. Fred this is Monseigneur Lou Cariou.”
“Fred,” said Lou, shaking Fred’s hand, “ah, if you don’t mind my asking, what’s with the legal papers?”
Fred opened his mouth, but Arlo came boiling down the counter, looking hotter than one of his Santa Fe dogs.
“Oh, for the love of Mike! Butler, look at this!”
Wren did, skipping the boilerplate and found, “Defendant Roman seeks to infringe Plaintiff’s right to practice religious beliefs and threatens destruction of an image fundamental to plaintiff’s faith. Plaintiff seeks injunction to stop said destruction...” And Wren read on, his temperature rising to match Arlo’s.
“What’s goin’ on?” Arlo asked, “What do they want?”
“They want you not to paint your wall. Ever,” said Wren.
“What the hell?! Sorry, Father.”
“Not at all,” said the priest.
“They are claiming an interest in the image that they claim is on the wall, and your painting over it is an infringement of their constitutional religious rights.”
“What a boatload,” the priest scoffed.
“Well said, Lou,” said Wren. And looking at the front page of the lawsuit for the plaintiff’s name, Wren said, “Fred, who is this Reverend Jeremiah Rave and what is this Crystal Church of the Divine Light?”
“Sounds like a for-profit operation to me,” muttered Lou.
Fred shrugged. “I think Rave is from the Central Valley somewhere.”
“And this attorney Silas Rant?”
“Rant is from some big firm down south in Los Angeles county. He’s used me before for serving lawsuits though, of course, I have never met him.”
“Really,” said Wren ,“some bird from the hinterlands coming to impose themselves upon us. Well, we shall just see about that. Arlo?”
“Get ’em, Butler. I’ll get you a check,” and he went off to do just that.
Lou leaned over to Wren. “What are you going to do?”
“I have no idea,” said Wren.
* * *
On the streetcar ride back to downtown, Wren’s mind was churning with plans of what to do and worrying about going up against some big-shot attorney from the south of the state. If this Rave could afford Rant, then we are talking beaucoup bucks, thought Wren. And then he started wondering what the hell this lawsuit was really about. What was plaintiff Rave getting out of it, and how did he come to know about this apparition?
His thoughts were interrupted when Crystal said, “Why couldn’t Arlo see it, Butler?”
Wren stirred. “See what?”
“The image on the wall. It seemed pretty obvious.”
Wren shrugged. “Maybe he just didn’t want to see it. To him, it’s not a miraculous event, it’s just a big pain in the posterior. Or maybe he just doesn’t believe in such things, so he doesn’t see it. Or he won’t see it because he doesn’t want to believe in it. Who knows?”
“It was pretty clear,” said Crystal.
“Well, of course it is clear, Crystal. That painter is quite talented. It really is fine work.”
“The painter?”
“Of course. I noticed him prepping the front. He’s a deft hand with a sand gun.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding a little disappointed. They rode silently for a while.m“Butler, you don’t believe much in religion do you?”
“Not much.”
“Do you believe in, you know, God and souls and heaven?”
Butler turned and looked at her face and saw deeper concerns there and remembered her father. He realized he should tread very carefully. “Well, I am a lawyer, a finder of facts. There are facts here: either God exists or does not, people have souls or do not. A belief one way or the other cannot change the facts. I do not think it is possible to discover these facts and, therefore, I do not know if a God exists or if people have souls.” He patted her hand, “These can only be matters of opinion and belief for us humble humans.”
They fell silent again.
Well, thought Wren, that was a pretty speech that didn’t help at all. He mentally shook his head.
Wren had been brought up in religion and, as time went on, he had gone through the not unusual doubts about his religion and faith in general. He had engaged in the mental debates about the existence of God, at times believing and, at other times, not.
Finally, as he grew older, he realized there really was no point to debate and had adopted indifference. He was indifferent to the existence of the spiritual; it either existed or it did not, and it just didn’t matter to him anymore. His conduct wouldn’t change if there was or was not a higher being.
As the streetcar rolled through the neighborhoods and descended into the subway, Wren pondered the Reverend Rave and all he seemed to personify. How had he come to be in the city, this big cheese from the Central Valley? And how did he know to come to see Arlo’s wall, far out in one of the city’s many neighborhoods? Wren chewed on those questions.
After a while, as the car entered their station, Butler said, “Dogs.”
“What?”
“Dogs,” he said, “I believe dogs have souls.” He moved to the door. Crystal just rolled her eyes.
* * *
Wren and Crystal ascended from the station, crossed the busy sidewalk and passed through the glass doors of the venerable Flynn Building, and Crystal stepped to the side and waited. Butler noticed and asked, “What?”
“Just waiting for you to finish.”
“Finish?”
“Whenever you walk into this old building you always slow down, take a breath and smile.”
“Really, do I?”
The Flynn was an old office building, more than a century old but still owned by the descendants of the people who had built it. Wren liked that continuity, that commitment. He liked its real marble floors and granite walls, the fact that when he walked through the heavy glass doors, the street noise was hushed, and he could hear himself walk across the floor. The atmosphere was cool but not air-conditioned refrigerated. There was a dignity about the Flynn, absent in modern buildings of steel and glass.
“It feels a bit like a sanctuary somehow,” said Wren. “There is an elegance about the Flynn, not like the utilitarian and the phoney luxury feel of those steel and glass mausoleums in the financial district wherein our brethren in the law reside. Come on.” He led Crystal into one of the ornate elevators. “And I like these elevators.” He touched the brass and wood. “Solid and real, somehow.”
Wren went right to his generally tidy office. He pulled up one of the large windows letting in a cool breeze and the street noises from below. “Can’t do that in one those—”
“Mausoleums,” finished a voice at the door. Wren turned to the diminutive Linda, head of their offices.
“How did you know I was going to say that?”
“You always do.”
“I seem to have become quite predictable. Can you predict what news I have? “
“You mean Arlo and the Miracle of the Wall?”
“How did you know—” He looked down at a tablet Linda placed on his desk, showing a picture. It was Arlo’s wall and a caption: “Miracle Wall”?
“From the Call Bulletin’s website,” said Linda.
“Oh dear,” sighed Wren, “Arlo is going to be steaming hotter than his Orleans dogs when he sees this.”
Linda placed a pink phone message slip on Wren’s desk. “Already has and is. What’s the story, miracle or no?”
“Oh, please, of course there’s no miracle. It was sandblasted onto the wall. There’s a painter working on the building with a sandblaster. He obviously must have done it for a lark or maybe he’s a frustrated Rembrandt or a Christian vandal. I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter. Look at this.” He handed Linda the lawsuit.
She sat and read through the papers with a loud “Tsk” here and “Oh, please” there. “Who is this Reverend Rat?”
“Rave,” said Wren.
“Whatever. This” — holding the lawsuit at arms length between two fingers — “has the odor of rodentia to me.”
“The Reverend Jeremiah Rave,” said Crystal, coming into the room. “Pastor of the Crystal Church of the Divine Light.”
“Say what now?” said Linda.
“The Reverend Jeremiah Rave of the—”
“I got it,” said Linda. “You sharing your name with this church threw me for a second. This Reverend Rat is a local?”
“Rave,” said Crystal, “and no, he’s from Range county, east of LA. He has a large church there and a large online following.” Crystal handed out printouts to Wren and Linda. “Here’s just a sample of the what I’ve found.”
They read for a bit, Crystal coming and going with more printouts and tea and coffee.
“Says here he was one of the most watched telemarketers in the state at one time,” said Linda.
“Teleministers,” corrected Crystal.
“Same thing,” said Linda. “Expanded onto the Internet with podcasts and live streams of sermons and the like. Reaches thousands of quote worshipers unquote.” Linda made air quotes.
“This is interesting,” said Wren. “From a local paper down there about church attendance generally, it mentions that patronage at the Crystal Church has been declining. I wonder about his online following...”
Crystal’s fingers started tapping her phone, muttering “online traffic site monitoring sites” and more tapping. “Huh.”
“What?’ said Wren.
“I’m not sure... but maybe his online viewers have been falling off a bit.”
“Well, people eventually catch on to religious poppycock,” said Linda, “and—”
“Crystal, could you do a deeper dive on your laptop into that, please?”
“Sure, boss.” Crystal left.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Wren said quietly, “but I was afraid your religious cynicism could upset Crystal.”
“Why would... oh, of course, her father,” said Linda, displaying the lightening-quick uptake that made her a formidable opponent in court. “Stupid of me; I should’ve thought.”
“Don’t feel bad. She asked me about the existence of the spiritual and souls and the like, and I muddled some entirely unhelpful dross.” Butler shook his head.
They returned to the printouts. After a while Crystal returned. “Yeah, his online seems to be losing some ground.”
“And therefore his income could be taking a hit,” said Linda.
“Hmm,” said Wren looking at Linda, “he might see this as an opportunity to get back in the limelight.”
“In which case he doesn’t care if he wins the case or not,” said Linda. “The exposure is all that matters.”
“Still,” Wren mused, “that doesn’t explain what he’s doing up here, and how did he discover Arlo’s wall?”
* * *
“Oh, he’s here for the annual evangelical pray-in,” Rose said a bit later that evening at Casa Wren.
Wren had gone home that evening and greeted his wife Rose with a hug and a kiss to which she had said, “Oh, I am married to the sweetest man. Now where’s the Arlo’s?”
Wren had produced the bag with Arlo’s hot dogs — Thank you, Crystal, for reminding me to get two Chicago dogs and sides to go, thought Wren. They settled at the dining room table. Wren showed Rose the lawsuit and puzzled again why Rave was here from the southern part of the state.
“The what?” asked Wren, watching her cutting her dog into pieces and eating it with a fork, which Wren thought was just plain wrong.
“Every year, a bunch of evangelicals come and pray for all us sinners in this sinful city,” she said. “They’re at the convention center.”
Wren marveled not for the first time at his wife’s knowledge of all things City. That at least explains why Rave is in town. “I wonder how he heard about Arlo’s wall?”
Rose shrugged. “Been in the paper and on radio and TV.”
“Oh, dear,” said Butler. “Poor Arlo, he must be—”
“Who’s this Silas Rant?”
“Crystal researched him.” Wren handed a printout to Rose. “Partner in some high-tone law firm down south.” He felt the familiar unease, that feeling of possible inadequacy to the case.
Copyright © 2024 by Anthony Lukas
