Speaking In Tongues

Matthews appeared in the doorway.

They turned to look at the gaunt man standing before them, his muscular hand pressed to his bloody belly.

“Okay, get going,” Tate said to her. “Run like hell.”

“Go on,” Matthews said, and reached forward to take her arm.

She spun away from him and hugged Tate hard. He felt her arms around his back. Felt her face against her ear, heard her speaking to him, a torrent of fervid words flowing out, coming from a source other than the heart and mind of a seventeen-year-old high school junior.

“Megan he began.

But she took his face in both her hands and said, “Shhh, Daddy. Remember, bears can’t talk.”

Matthews grabbed her again and pulled her away. Took her to the door.

He unlocked it and shoved her outside. The door closed with a snap behind her. Through a dirty, barred window Tate saw her sprint down the driveway and disappear through the gate.

“So,” Collier said, glancing up at Matthews.

“So,” he echoed.

“Outside?” the lawyer asked, looking around at the gloomy place. “Would that be all right? I’d rather.”

Matthews hesitated for a moment. But then decided, why not? “Yes. That’s all right.”

He unlocked the door again and they stepped into the parking area and walked around into the grounds behind the asylum, past the wild rottweilers in their runs.

Matthews was thinking back to the times he’d been committed here. He recalled how beautiful these lawns and gardens had been then. Well, why wouldn’t they be? Give five hundred crazy people grounds to tend and, brother, you’ve got a showplace. He’d sat for hours and hours and hours talking to other patients and-in his imagination-to his dead Peter. Sometimes the boy responded, sometimes not.

The dawn sun was still below the horizon but the sky was bright as they walked side by side through the tall grass and goldenrod and milkweed while dragonflies zipped from their path. Grasshoppers bounced against their legs, leaving dots of brown spit on their clothing. The dogs were in a frenzy behind them, sniffing the ground and bounding at the wire fence of their run, trying to escape and go after the intruder who walked beside their master.

“Look at this place,” Matthews said conversationally. He waved his arm. “I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember the strange things people would say. The delusional ones, the paranoid ones, the depressed ones. The ones who were simply nuts-you know, Collier, the mind isn’t an exact science, whatever the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual says. Some people are just plain crazy and that’s all you can ever say about them. But I always listened to them. Why, people give themselves away like free samples at a grocery store. Hand themselves to you on platters. And what do they use? Words. Aren’t words the most astonishing thing?”

Collier said, “You bet they are.”

There wasn’t much time, Matthews reflected. He supposed he had an hour or two until the police arrived. At best it would take Megan two hours to get to the nearest phone. Enough time to finish here, bury Peter, and get to Dulles for a flight to Los Angeles. Or maybe he should just drive west. Hide in the hills of West Virginia. He took a deep breath. “Stop here.”

They were beside a shallow ditch. It would make a fine grave for Collier. And he’d decided that he’d kill the lawyer with a single shot to his head. No pain, no torment. And he wouldn’t let the dogs have the body Out of respect for a worthy adversary.

Then the lawyer stu

Matthews laughed then asked, “You believe in God?”

Collier nodded. “Why does that surprise you?”

“When I’d see you in court it seemed that only the judge and jury were your gods.”

“No, no, I believe He exists. That He’s merciful and He’s just.”

“Just?” Matthews asked skeptically.

“Well, He’s the reason I don’t send people to death row anymore… Do you? Believe in God?”

“I’m not sure,” Matthews said.

“You know I always wanted the chance to prove the existence of God in a debate.”

“How would you do that?” Matthews asked, truly curious. “Resolved: God exists. Isn’t that how debates start?”

Collier looked up at the purple sky “You know Voltaire?”

“Not really No.”

“I’d make his argument. He said there had to be a God because he couldn’t imagine a watch without a watchmaker.”

Matthews nodded. “Yes, I can see that. That’s good. That’s compelling.”

“But, of course, then you run into all of the counterarguments. The con side.”

“Such as?”

“Incompatible religious sects, interpretations of holy scriptures proven wrong later, no empirical proof of miracles, the Crusades, ethical and secular self-interest, terrorism… That’s an uphill battle, all right.”

‘No answer for that?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve got an answer.”

Matthews was suddenly fascinated. After Peter’s death he’d prayed every night for six months. He believed that the boy bad answered some of those communiqués. It gave him clues, but not proof, that Peter’s soul floated nearby. “What is it, what’s the answer?” he asked hungrily.

“That a watch,” Collier answered slowly, “no matter how well made, can never comprehend its watchmaker. When we claim to understand God, everything breaks down. If God exists then by definition He’s knowable and souls-yours, mine, Megan’s, Peter’s-are beyond our understanding. When we create human institutions to represent God they’re inherently wrong so He has to exist apart from our flawed visions of Him.”

“Yes, it makes sense. How simple, how perfect.”

“You’ve thought about questions like this, haven’t you? Because of Peter?”

“Yes.”

Eyes on Matthews’s, Collier said, “You miss him so much, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.” Matthews stared down at the ground. For all he knew he’d stood on this very spot two or three years ago, studying slugs or dung beetles or ants, hour upon hour, wondering how, in their wordless world, they communicated their passions and fears.

“You can get help, Aaron. It’s not too late. You’ll be in jail but you can still be content. You can find a doctor to help you, somebody who’s as good as you were.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. It’s too late for that. One thing I learned-you can’t talk somebody out of his nature.”

“Your character is your fate,” Collier said.

Matthews laughed. “Heraclitus.”

He’d learned the aphorism from one of Collier’s closing statements. He lifted the gun toward the lawyer.

Then Collier’s eyes flickered slightly. “You won’t turn yourself in?” Collier asked.

“No.”

“I’m sorry,” the lawyer said.

Matthews frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I’m so sorry.”

A snap of brush behind him.

Matthews spun around. There stood Megan, holding the gun Collier had brought with him. Matthews had left it in the lobby of the hospital and had forgotten about it. The girl was ten feet away and was pointing the black muzzle at Matthews’s chest.

Matthews laughed to himself. Oh, yes… He understood. Remembered her whispering to Tate before she’d walked out of the asylum. They’d pla

Maybe she wasn’t his blood kin but at the moment she was her father’s daughter.

He glanced at her eyes.

“Drop the gun,” she ordered.

But he didn’t. He wondered, would she go through with it? She was only seventeen and, yes, she had anger in her heart-enough to attack him with a knife-but not enough to kill, he believed.

Character is fate…

He saw compassion, fear and weakness in her eyes. He could stop her, he decided. He could get her to lower the gun long enough to shoot her.