False Idols - Published Version

Chapter 19

                  

Reverend Tracy Cruz tried not to cry in front of the solemn men and women who'd called her on the holophone. "I don't think I can bear this burden alone."

"You have already inspired the nation, and raised a call for justice that no one else dared voice. You must lead the people," protested Reverend Steven Bacon, minister of the large Southwestern Protestant Alliance and unofficial spokesman for the group of preachers that had appealed to Cruz to allow them to merge their churches into hers.

"Yes, when I burned that check from Sparkwise Energy, it may have earned me millions of admirers. But it also led to bloody riots in which hundreds of innocents died." Her eyes glided from Ricardo's face to her office window, which overlooked a small, decrepit playground where several children from her congregation were kicking a soccer ball. "Almost two dozen children."

"Innocents who will be welcomed into God's embrace. We cannot fight injustice without shedding blood," admonished Bacon.

"What injustice have I fought? Did those riots harm the Aeons? Did they right any wrongs?" retorted Cruz in exasperation. "I have blood on my hands and I don't know what it's accomplished."

Bacon held up a hand apologetically. "Forgive me if my words sounded unduly callous. I sought only to comfort you. Each child's death is a tragedy. There is no way I can make them otherwise. God's will is beyond our ability to understand."

Platitudes and metaphors. Cruz shook her head and Ricardo squeezed her hand.

Cruz struggled to voice her feelings to the other ministers. "I am not a reverend by training. I began preaching at the National Unity Church to serve God and to help my small community. I never thought He would ask as great a task of me as you say He has. I still don't. I'm not prepared to lead millions of followers. Not to see people die in my name."

Bacon was silent. But now Ricardo leaned his head around so that he was in Cruz's field of vision. "Have you studied the Book of Exodus, hon?"

"Of course, Ricardo," she responded sternly.

"As Moses led the Israelites to the Promised Land, they were confronted by the vast army of the Amalekites at Rephidim," recited Ricardo.

Cruz remained silent. She knew the story, but was unsure where Ricardo was going with it.

Ricardo continued, "The Lord only supported the Israelite army when Moses held his hands aloft as a sign of faith. Yet even the prophet Moses could not bear the weight of the task the Lord had given him. Not alone. His strength faltered and he could no longer hold his hands aloft, and many Isrealites fell to the Amalekites because of his frailty."

Cruz nodded as she recalled the verses. "Moses' companions, Aaron and Hur, supported his hands for him, so that the Israelites would finally prevail."

Ricardo returned her nod, and then turned to look at the preachers in the holovision before turning back and placing his hands firmly on her shoulders. "Yes. Let us be your Aaron and your Hur, Reverend."

***

"Nick," his mother cooed, "Try the feijoada. I made it myself. It's delicious, almost as good as something you could dream up in that imaginary world of yours." She sat diagonally to Nick's left, at the head of the family's rectangular cherry wood table, which could have comfortably seated eight guests. Nick's father sat directly across from his mother. A piece by Beethoven played softly in the background.

Nick, sitting in his parents' penthouse duplex on Manhattan's 5th Avenue, picked up his fork and tried to hide his lack of appetite as he shared his farewell dinner. He was moving back into his refurbished flat again the next morning.