City of Peace Read online

  City of Peace

  by Henry G. Brinton

  © Copyright 2018 Henry G. Brinton

  ISBN 978-1-63393-762-8

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters are both actual and fictitious. With the exception of verified historical events and persons, all incidents, descriptions, dialogue and opinions expressed are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  All biblical quotations are from the

  New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (NRSV).

  Review copy: this is an advanced printing, subject to corrections and revisions.

  Published by

  210 60th Street

  Virginia Beach, VA 23451

  800-435-4811

  www.koehlerbooks.com

  To Sadie, Sam, and Nancy Freeborne Brinton

  Lovers of Occoquan

  And to Eric and Carol Meyers

  Diggers of Sepphoris

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Acknowlegements

  CHAPTER 1

  Harley Camden was cleaning the deck of his powerboat when a Pakistani family appeared on the dock. His head was down as he scrubbed a number of mysterious black marks stubbornly adhering to the white fiberglass. The air was hot and heavy on the Fourth of July, and Harley grew frustrated by his lack of progress. Sweat flowed from beneath his red Washington Nationals baseball cap and dripped inside his sunglasses. He would need a second shower.

  He had already cleaned up and dressed for the day, with no intention of working in the sun until he visited the boat and noticed the marks on the deck. He loved his boat—a twenty-three-footer with seating for thirteen and a powerful inboard-outboard engine—but hated the way that little maintenance projects called out to him like sirens.

  “How much for a ride?” asked a voice from the dock. Harley looked up and saw a man with jet-black hair and a shirt with a computer company logo, standing in the middle of his family. A young girl with big brown eyes held tightly to his hand, looking expectantly at the boat bobbing by the dock. The man’s wife gazed over his shoulder, smiling. An older man and woman dressed in colorful Pakistani shalwar kameez, probably the girl’s grandparents, stood silently to the side, gazing stoically at the water. To Harley, they looked out of place beside the river. The flood of immigrants doing high-tech and service work was rapidly changing the Washington, DC, suburbs. More Muslims, he thought. Restaurants and shops in his little Northern Virginia town, which had once had a largely white clientele, now drew a mix of Africans, Latinos, Asians and Middle Easterners—including Muslim women in headscarves.

  Harley was a fifty-seven-year-old Methodist minister with a round face, thinning gray hair and a goatee, in decent shape from running but carrying about ten extra pounds. To the Pakistani family, he must have looked like a commoner who quit high school—most certainly not a graduate of the vaunted Duke University Divinity School. No, this sweaty fellow scrubbing stains on his boat must be a renegade, taking people on fishing trips and pleasure cruises on the Potomac River, enjoying a life of freedom in the outdoors while struggling with alcoholism and chronic basal cell carcinomas.

  “Sorry, but this is not a charter boat,” said Harley, wiping his hands on a dirty towel. The man smiled politely, but Harley could tell he was disappointed. “You might be able to arrange something down at Maxine’s.” Harley pointed down the town dock toward a large restaurant with kayaks and paddleboards for rent. The man nodded, picked up his daughter, and guided his wife and the grandparents toward Maxine’s.

  The sparkle on the river, herons swooping out of the sky, the lush green of the trees on the opposite bank, fishermen casting their lines under the Route 123 bridge—the entire scene was sleepy Virginia river town, duplicated in numerous places throughout the state. Harley had fallen in love with it, and suddenly realized that being a charter boat captain was not a bad idea—if the ministry business didn’t work out. Still, the thought of taking a group of Muslims made him feel queasy.

  Tossing his towel on the floating dock, Harley pulled the key out of the boat’s ignition and checked all of the dock lines. He walked up a metal dock ramp and looked down the dock toward Maxine’s and saw a large pontoon boat pulling in. No Pakistanis.

  Harley walked between the rows of townhouses facing the water to his own place, which was on a street running parallel to the river. He lived in a community of twenty Victorian townhouses, patterned after the “Painted Ladies” of San Francisco, constructed with porches and bedecked with whimsical ornamentations. Ten of the townhouses faced the river and ten faced the street; each had a private dock. The rich folks lived on the river side and the poor folks lived on the street side, or so Harley liked to think. But the reality was that they were all pretty wealthy and were fortunate to have water access in a quaint historic town within a half hour of Washington.

  As he walked up the wrought-iron steps to his house, 233 Mill Street, Harley reflected on the journey that had brought him to town. It was not a happy story. He had been the pastor of a growing Methodist church in Sterling, Virginia, a booming suburban city two counties north of his new home. As senior pastor of that congregation, he supervised two associate pastors, a youth director, a director of Christian education, a variety of musicians, and a number of office administrators—a large staff of church workers responsible for worship services and programs that ran seven days a week. At age fifty-six, Harley was at the peak of his career and proud of steering his church through the narrow passage between the Religious Right and the Secular Left, avoiding politics and preaching sermons that helped people to follow the path of Jesus. He led traditional services with organ music and hymns, as well as contemporary services with electric guitars and praise music, trying his best to offer a smorgasbord of spiritual nourishment. His efforts had seemed to be paying off, as church members heard his sermons and responded by doing what Jesus would do—feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, visiting prisoners, and welcoming strangers.

  Then terrorists attacked the airport in Brussels. Harley’s wife, Karen, and his college-age daughter, Jessica, were on a long-awaited spring break trip, which Harley couldn’t join because he was swamped with preparations for Easter. He walked into a church staff meeting that Tuesday morning, hearing a news report about a bombing but not worrying about his family because he thought they were in London. When he finished the meeting, he happened to check their itinerary and saw that they were in Brussels. He called his wife’s cell phone in a panic and got nothing but voicemail. Again and again he dialed the number, hoping that her battery had died or she had lost the phone. But soon Holy Week became the most unholy, revolving around a series of conversations with authorities and the growing realization that his wife and daughter had been killed. Harley ended up flying to Belgium and spending Good Friday in a morgue, identifying bodies.
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  The terrorists had carried nail bombs in large suitcases. The explosives sent shrapnel in high speeds in every direction. The officer who pulled back the white sheets and showed Harley the bodies tried to comfort him in broken English, telling him that Karen and Jessica had died instantly. A kind thought, but small comfort.

  Harley had seen many dead bodies as a pastor, spending time with parishioners in hospital rooms and nursing homes as they took their last breaths. But nothing could prepare him for the sight of his wife and only child on stainless-steel tables in a foreign morgue. Although their cold skin had been scrubbed free of blood, he saw numerous punctures from nails all over their bodies. Jessica’s hands were pierced in both palms, just like Jesus. He kissed them both, thankful that their faces were unscathed. Perhaps the bombs had detonated behind them. Or they had turned away to look at something in the airport. It didn’t matter, and yet it did. He spent Saturday arranging for the return of their bodies to the United States and then caught an early flight home on Easter morning. The theme of the day was resurrection, which was what one of his associate pastors was proclaiming that morning in Sterling. It remained a distant and fuzzy concept as he stared out the window of the plane at a sea of clouds that contained no evidence of heaven. In a single act of brutal violence, Harley’s family had been turned to dust and ashes.

  The church staff and congregation were good to him, of course. They were kind and caring people. His colleagues covered his duties during bereavement leave and did a beautiful job with the funerals for Karen and Jessica. The congregation put on a lavish funeral reception and organized home-cooked meals for Harley every night for three months. People prayed, wrote cards, visited and ran errands. They were doing everything that they had been taught to do, showing the compassion of Jesus in their words and actions. But even though Harley appreciated this support and was comforted by it, his grief left him without energy or motivation. He had trouble getting out of bed in the morning and struggled to stay focused on his work in the church office. He seemed distracted in his meetings and counseling sessions with church members. When he finally returned to the pulpit, his sermons were listless. A once-inspirational lead pastor had become a drag on the church community.

  What his parishioners could not see, and what he didn’t dare to admit, was the rage eating him up. After the shock of the killings wore off, Harley’s anger enveloped not just the murderous terrorists but all Muslims. Such racial and religious hatred were antithetical to what Jesus taught and his training at divinity school. His contempt distracted him when he tried to write sermons at church, made him short-tempered in lines at the grocery store, and took him to some very dark places when he was home alone at night. He started drinking alone in a recliner at the end of the day, quickly progressing from one drink a night to four. He would nod off in the recliner and be awakened by nightmares. His dreams became more real to him, the place where he could express his rage.

  One dream mashed up the Brussels bombing and his seminary study of Dante’s Inferno. It started with him spiraling down into darkness, flailing his arms and legs in a futile attempt to grab hold of something and stop his fall. He sensed that he was tumbling into hell, but for some reason the temperature became colder as he fell, not hotter. Finally, he plunged feetfirst into freezing water, and ice quickly closed around him so that he was trapped up to his waist. His legs were numb, he could move only his arms and head, and in the world of the dream he was convinced that he would be stuck in that dark ice pack forever. But Harley was not alone. His chest was pressed against the back of a man in front of him—one of the terrorists who had killed Harley’s wife and daughter. Harley could not see the face of the man, but he began to gnaw on the terrorist’s head, chewing through his scalp and skull and beginning to consume his brain. The terrorist and the pastor were stuck in a frozen hell, locked together eternally by their hatred for one another. When Harley woke, he felt immediate relief that he was not trapped in eternal ice. But he felt no less angry.

  After a year, the bishop had to step in. She was a tall woman in her early sixties, with short gray hair and an attractive face. She visited Harley in his office and talked with him about how he was feeling and whether he was benefiting from grief counseling. He shrugged and looked out the window, pausing for a few moments before saying that grieving was a long process and he didn’t know when he’d be back to full strength. He did notice one positive change—he had much less patience with the petty parish issues that used to consume so much of his time.

  “Yes, I’ve heard about that,” said the bishop.

  “Yeah,” said Harley. “I used to spend a lot of time and energy mediating church fights.” He smiled for the first time in their meeting. “Now, I’m quick to call people on their crap.” He became animated as he began to tell his story. “Disagreements about the color of paint in the church parlor, whether a service begins with a praise song or a hymn, whole wheat or white bread for Communion—I got no time for it. Last week, the mother of a teenager came into my office, angry that our youth director had been talking with middle school students, including her precious daughter, about sexting. She was horrified that a youth director would talk with thirteen-year-olds about such a topic. I said, ‘Look, I know for a fact that kids in middle school are using their cell phones to send naked pictures of themselves to each other. This kind of behavior is not going to stop if we ignore it. I am giving our youth director my full support, and I expect you to do the same.’”

  The bishop took a deep breath. “Harley, I appreciate your candor, but that kind of honesty doesn’t always work. That woman called me right after she spoke to you, and she is still upset.”

  “That’s her problem, not mine.”

  “No, it’s still your problem,” insisted the bishop. “People deserve respect, even when you disagree with them.”

  “I’m just being honest,” said Harley. “People need to hear the truth. You know, ‘The truth will set you free.’”

  That scripture had become one of Harley’s favorites in recent months, along with Psalm 145, “The Lord watches over all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy,” and Revelation 16, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”

  The bishop struggled to find the right words. “I think I’m going to have to set you free, in a manner of speaking.”

  The blood drained from Harley’s face as he began to think of what her next sentence might be. He had lifetime job security as a Methodist minister, but there were some pretty lousy places he could be sent for the last years of his career. His salary in Sterling was at the top of the pay scale, and he loved the large five-bedroom colonial that the church provided for him and his family. Sure, the house was too big now that Karen and Jessica were gone, but it was filled with their things and it helped him to feel close to them. He wanted to stay there if he possibly could and realized that this was probably his last chance to change the bishop’s mind. He bit his lip and told himself to control the anger.

  “Is this because of my sermon about the Islamic State?” he asked, point-blank. The bishop just sat there, absorbing the question. “How could I not address the barbarity of those cold-blooded killers, cutting off the heads of Coptic Christians in Libya? Yes, I know that we Christians have to work for peace. We’re peacemakers, I get it. But the path to peace in the Middle East has got to include defeating the Islamic State. Anything else is just feel-good fantasy. I felt called by God to preach that sermon—the Sunday was, after all, close to the anniversary of those murders.”

  Everyone who heard the sermon knew how personal the issue was for him, and no one criticized his passion—especially since his preaching had become so listless after the deaths of his wife and daughter. But his graphic descriptions of the beheadings and calls for increased use of drone strikes against Islamic State commanders was a bit much for families with young children. One little girl had started crying in the middle of the sermon. A few mothers in the congregation questioned
his judgment after the service, asking him to dismiss the children before talking about such topics. Harley showed little empathy. “That’s the world we live in,” he huffed.

  The bishop had received a few complaints about that sermon. “I’m not here to talk about freedom of the pulpit, but instead to talk about your ability to serve a church as large as Sterling. You know, Harley, that you’ve got to be at your best to manage a congregation that large. Stuff is coming at you all the time, and you’ve got to be nimble and flexible—and respectful.”

  “How about truthful?” Harley asked, bitterly. “Is there any room for truth?”

  “Sure there is,” replied the bishop. “But truth has to be spoken in ways that people can hear. If you push people to get with your program, they are going to push back. If you talk about beheadings in a church service that is full of families with children, they are going to walk out and head down the street to a church with a more positive message. You know all this, Harley. You never would have made it to Sterling if you weren’t diplomatic and thoughtful.”

  Harley looked out the window, gazing at the delicate cherry blossoms in the churchyard. He looked without seeing, feeling nothing but a slow-boiling rage. Yes, he was once an expert at diplomacy, but that was before the deaths of Karen and Jessica. Massaging the feelings of parishioners and carefully choosing his words now seemed like completely trivial pursuits. Dishonest, even. In a world in which terrorists slaughtered innocent air travelers and cut off the heads of Coptic Christians, what was the point of working hard to keep everyone happy? Speaking the truth about Islamic extremism was going to make people uncomfortable, but it was certainly more important than creating a bubble of happiness in an affluent Northern Virginia congregation. Of course, he knew that anger was not the most constructive of emotions—it could be so corrosive. But at times it was the only thing he could feel. Tender emotions such as joy and compassion were crushed by the weight of his grief, becoming flat as flowers pressed in the pages of a book. Only anger could stand up and assert itself, so Harley welcomed it. It was better than feeling nothing.