60

Death Row

Brady had a strange feeling as he was returned to his cell and uncuffed. He had hoped the chaplain could send the Bible and the other stuff with his escorting officers, but it looked like those would come later. Meanwhile, all he had to look at was the yellow sheet with the list of Bible references.

He should have been happy, he knew. He wanted with all his heart to believe Reverend Carey was right, and who was he to argue with a minister about the Bible? But happiness was no longer part of his vocabulary. Oh, if he could avoid hell and be forgiven and become a friend of God, yes, that would have to make him feel better. But none of this, at least so far, had dented the blackness that had invaded his mind and heart and soul the instant he snuffed out the life of Katie North. And he was sure it shouldn’t. He didn’t deserve to ever smile again after what he had done.

Every minute of every day the wickedness of it all seemed to crouch at the door of Brady’s mind, waiting to pounce and overwhelm him. Regardless what else he thought about, he could hold it at bay for only so long.

This list, already wrinkling and creasing and softening from the oils in his hands, gave him something to look forward to besides counts and meals and TV shows and third-day showers and his hour a day out of his house. None of that really appealed anyway, but even the thought of being able to look up verses and read them and study them and think about them . . . well, if nothing else, maybe that would allow Brady to hold off the evil for a little while.

Adamsville

Though it was clear to Thomas that Grace was at least in the beginning stages of regressing, she was still up and about and seemed to rally with his report of the conversation with Brady Darby. She had always been proud of Thomas’s gift of recall, and she insisted on every detail.

When he finished, her eyes were bright. “Let’s call the church,” she said. “Get people to pray.”

Within an hour, Thomas had gained commitments from the prayer chain, the women’s group, the men’s ministry, and even the youth group to pray for a prisoner. He didn’t dare say which prisoner, because if anyone told the wrong person, the press would have a field day. As it was, if this man became a believer, it was bound to get out, and everyone in the press and the public would weigh in with his or her opinion of Brady Darby’s true motivations.

Death Row

Brady found himself depressed the next morning. The anticipation of real reading material with some substance had faded to frustration. There was no explaining the pace of prison procedures. For all he knew, the chaplain had left on vacation or had forgotten to get the stuff into the mail delivery system, or someone had absconded with everything, knowing it would frustrate him.

The bad thoughts came roaring back, and he was in a foul mood when officers came to lead him to his regular shave and shower. That never got easier—the humiliation of the cuffing and uncuffing, the pat down, showering in front of officers, the cavity search. He just gritted his teeth and tried to zone out, but even that opened him to the memories that had seemed to poison his mind.

It wasn’t until he was back and his cell had been thrice locked, per procedure, that Brady realized the stuff from the chaplain had been delivered and lay on his table. This was better than all that had come to him following his probationary period.

He grabbed his sheet and gave it a look, noticing at the bottom a line that wasn’t a verse reference. The chaplain had written, “The Romans Road.” Was that in the Bible?

He tore open the envelope, only to hear men start to yell at him.

“Package from home, sweet cakes?”

“Get any cookies? Share the wealth!”

“Got a new honey? You gonna blow her away too?”

Brady turned his TV as loud as it would go—not very, as the volume gains on all the sets had been equipped with governors. But at least it kept him from hearing all the shouting.

Brady removed from the envelope a New Testament, which was brand-new and smelled of leather, a book about how to begin the Christian life, and a pamphlet called The Romans Road. Aha. He’d start there.

A brief introduction told Brady that this was a way of explaining salvation using verses from the book of Romans. He wondered why Chaplain Carey had not included the book of Romans with what he sent until the New Testament’s table of contents page told him that Romans was part of the Bible. According to the pamphlet, he had everything he needed to learn about salvation: why he needed it, how God provided it, how to receive it, and what it all meant.

As Brady quickly scanned the pamphlet and started looking up the verses in his New Testament, he realized the chaplain had already hinted at much of this. So this was where he got it.

Brady started by finding the first verse on the Romans Road, Romans 3:23—“For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.”

He didn’t have any quarrel with that. In fact, it was interesting to consider that he wasn’t the only wicked person. And he and other murderers weren’t the only ones either. Brady knew he should look up only the verses cited in the pamphlet so he could follow the flow and get the point, but he was curious. While he was in Romans 3, he kept reading:

“Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed His life, shedding His blood.”

To be made “right with God”—oh, if he could only believe this! Could it be true?

The booklet said that earlier in that same third chapter of Romans there was a description of how sin manifested itself. Brady was sure he had the gist of that, but since he was already there, he looked at verses 10 through 18 and realized that the chaplain had already quoted the first three verses to him about no one being good, not even one.

The passage continued: “Their talk is foul, like the stench from an open grave. Their tongues are filled with lies.”

He could sure identify with that.

“Snake venom drips from their lips.

“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.

“They rush to commit murder.

“Destruction and misery always follow them.

“They don’t know where to find peace.

“They have no fear of God at all.”

This was like reading Brady’s own biography.

The next verse on the road, Romans 6:23, said: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Eternal life. That sounded a lot better than hell.

Then he was led back to Romans 5:8: “But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”

Surprisingly, this was starting to make sense. That chaplain really knew his stuff.

Next came Romans 10:9-11: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved. As the Scriptures tell us, ‘Anyone who trusts in Him will never be disgraced.’”

Was it really possible that salvation and the forgiveness of sins were available to anyone who just believed? It seemed too good to be true.

Romans 5:1-2 read, “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.”

Romans 8:1 said, “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.”

And finally, Romans 8:38-39: “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

For some reason, when Brady came to the end of the pamphlet and saw a challenge in the form of a question, asking if he was ready to pray a simple prayer of salvation, it petrified him. He quickly closed the booklet and lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, fingers interlaced behind his head.

He scolded himself. What was he afraid of? He didn’t have to commit to anything. He was just looking into it, wasn’t he? Words couldn’t hurt him. Brady rolled over and reached for the pamphlet, hands shaking, and turned to the back.

The writer suggested this prayer:

God, I know I am a sinner and deserve punishment. But Jesus took my punishment so that through Him I can be forgiven. I trust You for salvation. Thank You for Your love and forgiveness and for eternal life.

Brady shut the pamphlet again and set it aside, rolling onto his stomach and hiding his face. He got it. He understood the basics. He just didn’t understand why God would do any of this. And in spite of all the time he had spent in church whenever he and Petey visited their aunt Lois and uncle Carl, Brady didn’t feel like he had ever really had a handle on who Jesus was.

As he lay there thinking, wondering, agonizing, the dark thoughts of the murder sneaked up on him only a few times, way fewer than normal. He let the television blare, vaguely aware that the dinner count officers were coming soon, then the meal itself, then the long evening and night.

When Brady heard the banging and announcing of the stand-up count, he rose and nodded at the officers. His dinner did not appeal, but knowing that he had some serious thinking to do, he forced himself to eat a little more than usual.

Finally he settled in to watch a movie, a different one from what the rest of the pod had tacitly agreed upon. He still had not engaged in conversation with any of the other prisoners. They treated him like scum, and while he knew it was just their way of hazing and initiating him, he didn’t want to blend into the nightly banter. The talk always wound up vile and profane, and while Brady had never been prudish, he found it better to just tune it out.

But now even his old movie didn’t grab him. He switched channels for a while and found nothing, so he left the set tuned to a cable news network and grabbed the New Testament.

Brady had never read the Bible before. He’d pretended to follow along as a kid at Aunt Lois’s church now and then, but all the thees and thous and begats lost him along the way.

This New Testament, though, Chaplain Carey had described as easy to read. And the few verses he had looked up while reading the Romans Road pamphlet read simply enough. Brady turned to the very front and found an introductory paragraph that said the first four books were called the Gospels and contained the story of Jesus’ birth, life, death, burial, and resurrection.

Well, if that wouldn’t help him get to know who Jesus was, nothing would.

“Got a visual on Heiress Boy!” someone shouted. “He’s readin’ a Bible! Chaplain musta got to him!”

“Oh, glory! Here we go!”

“Come to Jesus, boy! You once was lost but now you found!”