The Narthex Sinners - Chapter 1

Just as the lion roars loudest when everyone is listening, the apple tastes sweetest when no one is looking.

…

The hot, wet steel of the .45 squirmed through my hand like a slave trying to escape his shackles in the mid-summer heat. Sweat beaded up on my forehead, ran down my nose, and dripped onto my already damp dress shirt below. My trigger finger quivered as I held the weapon against its will, and my stomach moaned with the gravity of the situation.

At that moment, my gaze moved from the floor and climbed up the off-white wall, which was bearing witness to my breakdown. Finally, it reached the ceiling as if it wanted to question someone above. My vision became blurry, and I was taken away from that miserable scene. I was a boat without tether, lost in the ocean of my thoughts. Drifting further from my peril, I arrived at a familiar place, a long-lost memory of times gone by. A voice shouted into the abyss while the memory approached.

“Do you promise to forsake the devil, and to walk in the light of Christ the rest of your days?” bellowed Pastor Humbugen in a booming voice that echoed throughout the chapel. Being as stocky as he was, Pastor Humbugen had to throw his words over his gut to get them to the congregation. Despite the distance the words traversed, the spittle from his righteous tones was still able dampen our trembling foreheads as we stood affront the church and our families. The bitter smell of Pastor’s breath permeated the air and presented us with gossip that only our future selves could fully understand.

The dimly-lit chapel -- curiously shaped like a circus tent – had wooden support beams that ran from the floor, up the walls and along the funnel-like roof until they met at a single point in the center of the ceiling. In this way, he who took up residence at the peak, would see everything and everyone below. The fabric of the tent was composed of cream-colored, plaster walls which were occasionally broken up by elaborate displays of stained glass and also speckled with posters that muttered sayings like, ‘Jesus is Lord.’ At one end of the sanctuary, the walls gave way to the narthex, a sort of greeting area between the church and the rest of the world. On the other end, there were large steps that led to the magnificent altar adorned with flowers of various colors, a couple of candlesticks and a large golden book. The steps to the altar used to be bright white, but after years of abuse they had begun to stain.

“Yes, may God give us strength to live according to his will,” my eighth-grade classmates and I responded slowly in unison, speaking words that we did not truly understand, but nonetheless words that were supposed to guide all of our future endeavors. Our voices trembled, not because we understood the seriousness of our vows, rather because of the nervousness we felt being in front of the congregation. We stood there in pure white robes as if we were a chorus of angels, or simply just innocent children, not yet soiled by the realities of this world.

As I stood there with my confirmation class, I caught the gaze of my father who was sitting in the third row of the chapel. His stern eyes were full of expectation just as many other fathers in the audience. His eyes were speaking to me. You better not mess this up. Do you remember your brother’s baptism? Do you remember how you behaved back then, squirming and fidgeting like I hadn’t taught you anything? It was embarrassing in front of the church.

The ceremony went smoothly, and the ancient rituals performed that day were executed flawlessly. Our parents said that it was a successful celebration, marking the start of the rest of our lives walking with God. They made this statement flippantly as though they expected the rest of our lives to be easy, now that we had this solid foundation in God’s word. Perhaps, if they knew the dire straight I and some of my classmates would be years from now, they would not have been so optimistic.

We were just glad to begin exiting church. We had spent many Sunday church services renewing our faith just waiting to go home and fire up the Xbox, so that we could blast aliens with machine guns or lift cars in the latest shoot-em-up video game. Normally this ritual would continue until our parents nudged us to do homework, but there would be no homework tonight since it was the end our final year of middle school. The start of summer vacation was upon us.

On our way out of the chapel, we passed through the middle school, which was attached to the chapel via the narthex and memories flooded our thoughts as we walked past every classroom door. Just as cocoons change caterpillars into butterflies, these bland rooms were the source of our indoctrination.

One particular memory of room 656 stuck out in nearly all of our minds. Some of us recall laughing, others blushing, and the rest remember being confused when one of our classmates, who we affectionately call Appleseed, asked Pastor Humbugen if masturbation was a sin. Normally, even the mention of this sin would cause most adults in the church to shut down or quickly change the topic, but Pastor Humbugen could no sooner pass up an opportunity to display his theological prowess than he could pass up a donut.

The conversation was awkward, not just because of the sporadic giggles of everyone in class, nor due the fact that most of them had no idea what Appleseed was talking about. It was awkward because Appleseed wrestled with Pastor Humbugen on the topic for quite a while, longer than either of them really thought it would last.

As the conversation went on, Appleseed’s intelligence and wit started to make Pastor Humbugen’s slurred speech stutter. You could almost hear Pastor Humbugen’s thoughts. Listen here you smart mouth kid. I have been a Pastor here for 12 years, and I have spent decades studying God’s word. Why don’t you just trust what I am saying? Don’t touch yourself. Isn’t scripture clear enough? You’re asking me to cite scripture? How about the 6th commandment? I know we are all weak sometimes, but I am a good Christian.

Finally, Pastor Humbugen landed on the idea that if it was a choice between masturbation and pre-marital sex, God would prefer the former. The pastor, not nearly as amused as the rest of class, responded to this dilemma, with slurred speech, informing us that we should always strive to choose the lesser of two evils. Just before Appleseed could chime in with a new retort, the minister changed the subject.

Appleseed had always been mischievously brilliant. He clawed into your mind, asking more and more questions, being the devil’s advocate and creating thought experiments. He grew up on the south-side of town in a relatively rich neighborhood with God-fearing – but completely clueless – parents. His real name was John Apleson, but ever since we heard the story of the pioneer who traversed America planting fruit trees in second grade, we deemed him Johnny Appleseed. Eventually, the name shortened to just Appleseed.

My other best friend, Gabriel Batheson, was a little more pious. Having grown up on the north-side of town in the opposite circumstances as Appleseed, he held his head high for a few reasons today. One, this was the first time that he came to school without bruises in weeks. Searching for reprieve from his father, Gabe and his mother left home and moved in with his grandparents last week. Secondly, he viewed his confirmation as a significant accomplishment. If anyone understood the significance of that day, it was Gabe. I admired Gabe’s persistent optimism and humility. Basically, what I admired in Gabe the exact opposite of what I admired in Appleseed. When faced with his hard life, Appleseed fell closer to God, trusting his plan humbly and quietly. This did not mean he was any less intelligent than Appleseed. He was just more at peace.

As I was thinking about my friends, we entered the locker room. This was our final destination before we each departed for our individual confirmation celebrations at home. While the brick walls may not have seen that welcoming, the faded green lockers meant that we were on the homestretch before this whole day was over.

“Shit!” shouted Appleseed as he began to take off his faded white robe, spilling his older brother’s cigarettes on the floor. Wearing a dark red shirt and a black tie underneath, his parents warned him that you could see his shirt underneath the robe, but his individual style prevailed. Appleseed had dark black, thick hair, a tan complexion, striking eyes and a lanky build that was probably just due to his prepubescent state.

“Those things will kill you,” said Gabe as he scrambled to help Appleseed pick up the cigarettes. After picking them up, Gabe also disrobed, revealing a pure white polo underneath. We were supposed to wear ties, but no one minded Gabe in his polo. Many wondered if he had any ties at all.

Gabe’s curly, long blond hair bounced as he moved. As he bent over his hair nearly obscured his dull eyes.

“Shut up, Gabe. My brother has been smoking them for years, and they haven’t killed him yet,” retorted Appleseed.

“You just got out of church, couldn’t you have some decency?” responded Gabe.

“Come on, Gabe. Don’t you know the golden rule? Don’t sin, but if you do, don’t tell anyone about it. Do you plan on telling anyone?” Appleseed arrogantly responded.

Gabe hung his head and shook it slightly in disappointment. His hair seemed to share in his disappointment.

“God, Appleseed, you are a dick,” I joined in as I took off my white robe and stripped down to my green dress shirt and black tie underneath.

“Who asked you, Jonah? Why do you constantly side with that pussy?” Appleseed snapped back.

While it may not have seemed like it at the time, we actually were friends. Despite our differences, we had been through a lot together. If recess had taught us anything, it was who our real friends were. If I could trust Appleseed to catch the Nerf football in the end zone of the playground, couldn’t I trust him to have my back in more serious situations?

“Speaking of pussies, when are you going to ask out Rachel, you wimp?” Appleseed turned toward me and continued without much hesitation.

I stood there in shock for a moment, and as I started to speak, my words evaporated into a breath. Appleseed seized this silence.

“If you don’t ask her out, I will. How is that for motivation? You have three days.”

Rachel, the completely-unaware center of my world was the most beautiful girl I had seen in all of my years. She had long brown hair, brown eyes and was heading to the same high school as myself, Appleseed, and Gabe in the next couple of months. Even though I barely knew her, I was certain we were going to get married.

Now, I would make up some story of how I had been constantly trying to win her over from the most popular guy in class to make myself seem gallant, but that is neither the truth nor the purpose of this flashback. Honestly, as many kids are in middle school, I was just too afraid to approach her. Rachel’s family moved into the home next to my family’s three years ago, and when I first saw her, I felt my stomach drop. It wasn’t love; it was terror. What if I bumped into her on accident? What If I said the wrong thing? Could I ever recover? Would I be alone forever?

“Appleseed, I swear to God I will kill you someday. If you aren’t careful, it will be three days from now,” I asserted as I closed my locker with force. The whole frame of the locker shook as the sound reverberated through my body.

Except for few more witty comebacks, nothing more of note was said between Appleseed, Gabe, and I that day. After we gathered our belongings, we made our way out into the common area of the church, the narthex.

Whenever families got separated in church for whatever reason, they met in the narthex. While the narthex shared the same architectural features as the sanctuary, it had better lighting. You could see people better in the narthex, and they could see you better too. But the narthex was more than just a place for families to find their lost children, it was a place for parents to socialize, solicit, schmooze, and -- above all -- gossip.

“Hey Evelyn, did you hear that Mrs. Batheson didn’t come home last night?” whispered Mrs. Apleson as I approached.

“I know, right! Jessica Cagley told me that Mrs. Batheson stayed with David last night. Doesn’t she know that is a sin? Pastor Humbugen just talked about adultery last Sunday!” my mother responded as if I was not listening. A look of shock, excitement and disgust emanated from her face. But as she finished that sentence her face changed drastically. She turned to me and displayed the hollow, empty church smile that was commonplace in the narthex of Salvation Christian Church.

“Congratulations!” she shrieked in an excited tone as she spread her arms wide to embrace me. When she hugged me I was not only struck by the excessive heat coming from her, but also from the beating of her heart which would give a hummingbird's heart a run for its money. Apparently, their conversation wasn’t meant for younger ears.

My little brother, Aaron, a fifth grader who was at my mother’s side, looked up from his smart phone and laughed. His dark hair bounced as he laughed.

“Did you realized you had a huge stain on your robe?” he mocked. “Everyone in church was looking at it. Half of them were so distracted that they did not even listen to the sermon.”

“Shhh… Aaron, do you want Pastor Humbugen to hear you?” my mother said in a hushed voice. It felt like almost half of the conversations in the narthex were held in such a voice. “Jonah, he’s lying. I checked make sure that you didn’t have any stains before we left the house.”

Suddenly, my father, standing a few feet behind my mother and busy talking with some of his business associates, pounded his coffee like it was last call, spun around and joined in the same congratulatory remarks as my mother. In his business suit and a sleazy moustache, my father spent a lot of time in the narthex. He was both on the board of elders of Salvation and did business with at least half of the men in the congregation.

“I always knew you could do it, son. Aren’t you glad that I made you memorize all of those passages when you were younger? It would have been a shame for you not to get confirmed,” he said with a small, uncomfortable laugh as he interrupted my mother without much thought.

“Yeah, then they would have excommunicated you,” Appleseed joined in as he too hugged his mother.

“John, don’t talk like that. God loves everyone, especially sinners,” Mrs. Apleson responded in a defiant tone.

“It’s alright, Mrs. Apleson, Appleseed says stuff like that all the time!” I said sarcastically.

A bit taken back and uncomfortable with that response, she made some excuse and quickly retreated to her husband, another business associate of my father who stood on the opposite side of the narthex. On her way out of the conversation, she softly took hold of Appleseed’s hand, dragging him away from the conversation as well. As they left, I did not miss Dad’s glare, disapproving of my comment.

After some more small talk, my parents and I decided to make our way back home. But, it was never that easy to get out of church. On the way out, three people approached my father wanting to discuss business. At times, pushing through the crowd took hours, but today, my father’s consultations were cut short once Jud, a church elder, asked my father for some advice on some sketchy tax shelters. Luckily, Jud was a pious man and the subsequent glare from my father did not immediately damn him to hell. That being said, my father plowed through the crowd and made it to the entrance of Salvation.

The entrance to Salvation is quite confusing. On several occasions, travelers have taken the emergency exits in lieu of the real exit. The doors are positioned in such a way that one must overcome a series of obstacles to prevail. The donation box, the church counselor’s office, and finally Pastor Humbugen himself stood between sinners and the door. The narrow doors are ancient, yet they have taken on some modern accents in the past couple years as the congregation tried to adapt to the outside world. Pastor even tried to freshen up the entrance way by lighting candles near the doors. While Pastor Humbugen claimed that they symbolized the light of Christ going with us as we left, I was pretty sure that the sweet smell of the candles just served to mask the musky, old smell of the entranceway of Salvation.

The bright sunlight burnt our eyes as we left the church. Not only was the heat intense, but the humidity was oppressive. If I would have brought my swimsuit to church that day, I could have swam home from church. In spite of this, we started walking to our house anyway, which was only a few blocks down the road. Our house was situated right at the fork in the road that divided the southbound stretch of the highway from the northbound stretch.

As we were walking and sweating, Appleseed and his family drove past us in their brand new red BMW. Sitting behind his mother, Appleseed waved furiously at us, leaned over his mother who was driving, and honked the horn. Sitting back down, Appleseed displayed his middle finger to me, until his father in the front seat turned around and scolded him softly.

A frown came across my father’s face as he began to speak, “Someone really ought to beat that kid. My children would never act like that.”

My mother looked at him with a cautious smile, but my brother and I completely ignored the comment. While he rarely laid a hand on any of us, I never wanted to test him. Testing my father was like petting a stray dog. Nine times out of ten, the dog will gladly accept, but the tenth time, it will take the tip of your pinky finger off. Since I like my fingers, I tried to walk the straight and narrow while desperately hiding all of my missteps. If he did not know that I did anything wrong, did it really happen?

The Apleson’s kept driving until finally they hit the fork in the road. They turned south and merged onto the recently paved highway that went to the more populous side of town. While they made their way toward the gloomy city skyline in the distance, their car finally vanished from sight.

Three minutes and a couple dozen steps later, a Jeep with Gabe and his mother also drove past with David in the front seat. Their Jeep continued until it reached the fork in the road and took the exit that went toward the north-side of town. Immediately, we saw their Jeep begin to vibrate as the northern road was littered with potholes since few lived on the poor, northern-side of town.

As the drum-like thumping of the Batheson’s car faded into the distance, I looked up at my mother, and I saw a strange grimace come across her otherwise cheerful demeanor. The face was a mix between a painful wince and a covert smile. The face unsettled me somewhat, and I immediately asked my mother if she was alright. Startled, she turned to me and gave out a nervous laugh.

“Of course! Our oldest son got confirmed today. How could I be anything but happy?” she responded.

My father looked at her with concerned eyes, grabbed her hand, and squeezed it tight.

“Jonah, your mom is just tired. We all had a long day, and we still have some time before it is over.”

“No, dad. She just heard that David is fucking Mrs. Batheson, and…”

Aaron’s sentence was cut short by the back of my father’s hand as it snapped across the back of his head. Unfortunately, the stray dog was not so gracious today.

Aaron immediately stopped talking and started rubbing the back of his neck as though the injury had caused him some pain. While Aaron was pretty sharp for a fifth grader, often, he would act without much thought. My father was aware of this, and it seemed to cause him a lot of distress. He hoped that eventually Aaron would grow out of his impulsive stage

“Under my roof, we do not use language like that, nor do we spread unfounded rumors. You should always assume that everyone is living like God would expect them to live,” my father continued as though his words finished the sentence that his hand started.

“Don’t blame me! Appleseed is Jonah’s friend, and he told me what was happening even before Jessica Cagley told Mom,” Aaron defended himself.

“Are we talking about your brother, or are talking about you?” my father questioned in a way that made my brother fearful to respond, “Also, he wasn’t the one to use foul language either.”

Aaron was always the first person to try and throw me under the bus to avoid getting in trouble. He was just as mischievous as Appleseed and even possessed a similar amount of wit. One time, he actually made me think that I was the perpetrator of one of his many crimes. When he was younger, Aaron was a huge fan of soccer, especially of the indoor variety. Even though our parents had repeatedly warned us about playing soccer indoors, this did not stop Aaron.

Channeling his inner Messi, Aaron attempted to score by placing a shot in the upper right corner of the entranceway to our family room. Instead, he drilled the family portrait next to the opening, shattering the frame to pieces. While most would have confessed their sin, he decided to convince me that I broke the frame instead. So, he took what was left of the broken frame and hung it back on the wall.

Next, he put my father’s golf clubs in a convenient location that would allow someone to trip on them and launch into the wall that displayed the portrait. Once they were in place, Aaron screamed help, and I ran through the family room to assist him. I did not see the golf clubs, and I flew through the air and into the wall. The portrait fell, glass flew everywhere, and blood oozed from my arm as one shard pierced my skin.

Since no running was also one of my father’s rules, I was grounded for a week. After which, my brother told me what he had done. Somewhat impressed with my brother’s wit, I decided not to tell my father.

Regardless, my brother ignored my father's last comment, and we continued the trek home. As we approached our house, dark clouds rolled in from the south. It seemed like rain was inevitable, and it would be quite a storm. I could even smell the rain in the distance.

While I always loved the smell of rain, this smell made me apprehensive. As strange as it sounds, this storm smelled worse than any of the others I had smelled in the past. I could even taste the water in the air.

The sky began to darken as we opened the front door, yet the warm church smiles of my family inside, temporarily warded off the darkness of the storm. They were all there to celebrate my confirmation, and they had brought a stack of gifts with them to celebrate this day of Christ’s selflessness.

As I entered the house, many of them came to see me at the door. While some wanted to wish me congratulations on the achievement, others wanted to give me advice, and still others wanted to ask me how I planned to maintain my faith.

Even though their intentions seemed genuine, I only wanted to go to bed. My stomach ached, and I was looking for any excuse to leave the room. Despite my desires, I knew everyone expected me to stay, especially my father. We had been practicing the rhetoric for this party for weeks. It was quite simple. A strong prayer life and diligent, faithful reflection of scriptures would be the key to my salvation, at least the salvation from my father’s disappointment.

As I sat down in the kitchen, I noticed the heat outside give way to a drizzle, and a cool, wet breeze blew through the house.

Thunder rumbled in the distance as the glowing faces of my family began to dim. The fading warmth of their smiles soon went to darkness and with this darkness, I closed my eyes.