The Scream

"If you don't know, you better ask Deputy Muller." McGraw stuck out his hand as though expecting David to shake it. He withdrew it before David had a chance to take or refuse it. "Unless you'd like me to represent you? I'm well thought of in the County Building. It's never a mistake to have legal counsel, David, always a mistake to go it on your own. You told me you went home on the interstate. Why did you tell that little he? Addy's going to want to know."

David turned the key in the ignition. He wasn't sure what to do- one security guard for the whole campus. He had to get rid of this guy. He was a crook, an ambulance chaser. But he knew something.

"No hard feelings," McGraw said. He opened the car door and slipped out, pulling his coat after him. It clung to the seat and he had to yank it free David wanted to laugh. And cry. McGraw stood wriggling, trying to straigten himself inside the oversize garment. David revved the motor and circled fast. There was a terrible familiarity to the whirr of the tires. He did not look back.

The whole class jumped on him when he said he thought Judas Iscariot wasn't as bad as the Christians made him out to be. Maybe he thought of himself as a whistle-blower, that Jesus wasn't good for the Jewish people-"Too much forgiveness-you know, like the woman who committed adultery."

"Money, money, money," students in the back of the room chanted. "He did it for money." It was their way of breaking into David's tirade.

"But he didn't want the money. Look what he did with it!" David didn't know what was happening to him to be shooting off like this. He didn't even know how long he'd been on his feet. Father Moran had settled his backside on the edge of the desk and folded his arms like a fat Buddha. He was enjoying himself. He loved it when his boys got their adrenaline flowing. Always his boys-he hadn't yet got used to the presence of girls in the class. "I don't think Jesus himself was fair to him," David went on. "He knew Judas was in trouble. He was the one who said the disciples should pray 'Lead us not into temptation.' Man, did Judas ever get led into temptation. What I'm saying is, Jesus knew. He knew what was going to happen to Judas. Look what he said to Saint Peter: 'Before the cock crows, you'll deny me three times.' And Peter did. And he cried. So did Judas. He went out and wept bitterly." David lost his train of thought. Actually, it was Peter who went out and wept bitterly.

Father Moran took over. "Well, Crowley. You certainly got our adrenaline flowing. Watch out the devil doesn't catch up with you. He's always on the lookout for a good advocate." The priest shifted his weight, from one buttock to the other. "Tell me, what do you understand to be Iscariot's greater sin-that he betrayed the Lord or that he despaired of being forgiven?"

"Despair is the greatest sin." It was an answer out of his childhood catechism. "Why?"

"I don't know, Father." He did not want to be quizzed like a ten-year-old. His moment of self-assurance was going down the drain.

The back row all had their hands up. The priest nodded to one of the volunteers.

Then David caught hold of another idea. "But despair is a sin against yourself, isn't it? Being your own judge. Betraying somebody is worse, it seems to me. You're hurting somebody else."

"Mitchell, you're on," the priest said to the volunteer, ignoring David's attempted postscript, except to say, "Thank you, Crowley."

David tried to listen to Mitchell's definition of despair as a sin against hope, and his denunciation of Judas because he had given up hope. It went on and on. David could have put it in one sentence. Somebody had done that, he realized, which was how it came into his mind: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Meaning hell.

It looked like the class wasn't going to get back on track until everybody had their say on why Judas was so despicable-the kiss, the pieces of silver; somebody said he was jealous of John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. "I know! He was gay!" one of the girls put in. She covered her mouth and giggled. The giggle was infectious and those around her laughed. David pretended to be amused, but he wasn't. He felt he'd been onto something important and had been cut off before he got to the heart of it. He'd had a question he wanted to ask that he felt would shake up even Father Moran. Now he couldn't remember it.

Between Christian Ethics and his last class, he copied a. friend's notes for Twentieth Century French Literature, the class he had missed that morning, but his mind kept going back to De

He tried to focus on the Valéry poem in which he was supposed to trace the Symbolist influence, but he couldn't concentrate. It was hopeless, and he was supposed to be good in French. David felt as though something inside him was writhing, a. stomachful of snakes. The day was almost over, but terrible as it had been, he dreaded for it to end. He didn't want to go home. He had to talk to someone. For just a minute he wondered if he should have been such a smart-ass with De

On his way home he thought about his father and what his mother had said at breakfast, how he could tell his father things he couldn't tell her. He was pretty sure she was talking about sex, but if his father was around would he be able to tell him what he'd done, how he'd run away when he might have hurt somebody? He could see his father going out to the car and saying, "Get in, David." He'd order David's mother back into the house and he'd drive straight to the sheriffs office and say, "My son has a statement to make." Even so, David thought, he could tell him sooner than he could tell his mother. What he wanted most was not to have to tell anybody, to wake up and find out it was a dream.

He drove around the block twice before turning into the driveway, in case McGraw or someone from the sheriffs office was waiting for him. He saw no one, and when he parked in front of the garage door, the nearest neighbor was coming out of her house. She waved to him, got into her car, and drove off. Perfectly normal. In the house he got the same feeling of normalcy. It made him uneasy, as if he might step where there was nothing for his foot to land on. There were no messages for him on the answering machine. Even the cat ignored him. He looked up De