Change of Heart Read online

  I sucked in my breath. "I believe so."

  "I'll be damned," the judge said. He said this in a voice that wasn't wish-I-had-his-autograph, but more he-was-like-a-train-wreck-I-couldn't-turn-away-from.

  The good news was, I was allowed to bring in my expert witness. The bad news was that Judge Haig didn't like him very much--and had in the forefront of his mind my witness's former incarnation as an atheist showboat, when I really wanted him to be seen as a grave and credible historian. Greenleaf was furious that he'd only had days to figure out what tune Fletcher was singing these days; the judge regarded him as a curiosity, and me--well, I was just praying that my whole case didn't self-destruct in the next ten minutes.

  "Before we begin, Ms. Bloom," the judge said, "I have a few questions for Dr. Fletcher."

  He nodded. "Shoot, Judge."

  "How does a man who was an atheist a decade ago convince a court that he's an expert on religion now?"

  "Your Honor," I interjected. "I'm planning on going through Dr. Fletcher's credentials ..."

  "I didn't ask you, Ms. Bloom," he said.

  But Ian Fletcher wasn't rattled. "You know what they say, Your Honor. Sinners make the best reformed saints." He grinned, a slow and lazy smile that reminded me of a cat in the sunlight. "I guess finding God is like seeing a ghost--you can be a skeptic until you come face-to-face with what you said doesn't exist."

  "So you're a religious man now?" the judge asked.

  "I'm a spiritual man," Fletcher corrected. "And I do think there's a difference. But being spiritual doesn't pay the rent, which is why I have degrees from Princeton and Harvard, three New York Times bestselling nonfiction books, forty-two published articles on the origins of world religions, and positions on six interfaith councils, including one that advises the current administration."

  The judge nodded, making notes; and Greenleaf stipulated to the list of Fletcher's credentials. "I might as well start with where Judge Haig left off," I said, beginning the direct examination. "It's pretty rare for an atheist to get interested in religion. Did you just sort of wake up one day and find Jesus?"

  "It's not like you're vacuuming under the sofa cushions and bingo, there he is. My interest grew more from a historical standpoint, because these days, people act like faith grows in a vacuum. When you break down religions and look politically and economically and socially at what was going on during their births, it changes the way you think."

  "Dr. Fletcher, do you have to be part of a group to be part of a religion?"

  "Not only can religion be individualized--it has been, in the past. In 1945, a discovery was made in Egypt: fifty-two texts that were labeled gospels--and that weren't part of the Bible. Some of them were full of sayings that would be familiar to anyone who's gone to Sunday school ... and some of them, to be honest, were really bizarre. They were scientifically dated from the second century, roughly thirty to eighty years younger than the gospels in the New Testament. And they belonged to a group called Gnostic Christians--a splinter group from Orthodox Christianity, who believed that true religious enlightenment meant undertaking a very personal, individual quest to know yourself, not by your socioeconomic status or profession, but at a deeper core."

  "Hang on," I said. "After Jesus's death, there was more than one kind of Christian?"

  "Oh, there were dozens."

  "And they had their own Bibles?"

  "They had their own gospels," Fletcher corrected. "The New Testament--in particular, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--were the ones that the orthodoxy chose to uphold. The Gnostic Christians preferred texts like the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Truth, and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene."

  "Did those gospels talk about Jesus, too?"

  "Yes, except the Jesus they describe isn't the one you'd recognize from the Bible. That Jesus is very different from the humans he's come here to save. But the Gospel of Thomas--my personal favorite from Nag Hammadi--says Jesus is a guide to help you figure out all you have in common with God. So if you were a Gnostic Christian, you would have expected the road to salvation to be different for everyone."

  "Like donating your heart to someone who needs it ... ?"

  "Exactly," Fletcher said.

  "Wow," I said, playing dumb. "How come this stuff isn't taught in Sunday school?"

  "Because the Orthodox Christian Church felt threatened by the Gnostics. They called their gospels heresy, and the Nag Hammadi texts were hidden for two thousand years."

  "Father Wright said that Shay Bourne quoted from the Gospel of Thomas. Do you have any idea where he would have stumbled over that text?"

  "Maybe he read my book," Fletcher said, smiling widely, and the people in the gallery laughed.

  "In your opinion, Doctor, could a religion that only one person believes and follows still be valid?"

  "An individual can have a religion," he said. "He can't have a religious institution. But it seems to me that Shay Bourne is standing in a tradition similar to the ones the Gnostic Christians did nearly two thousand years ago. He's not the first to say that he can't name his faith. He's not the first to find a path to salvation that is different from others you've heard about. And he's certainly not the first to mistrust the body--to literally want to give it away, as a means to finding divinity inside oneself. But just because he doesn't have a church with a white steeple over his head, or a temple with a six-pointed star surrounding him, doesn't mean that his beliefs are any less worthy."

  I beamed at him. Fletcher was easy to listen to, interesting, and he didn't sound like a left-wing nutcase. Or so I thought, until I heard Judge Haig exhale heavily and say court was recessed until the next day.

  Lucius

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  I was painting when Shay returned from his first day of trial, huddled and withdrawn, as going to court made most of us. I'd been working on the portrait all day, and I was quite pleased with the way it was turning out. I glanced up when Shay was escorted past my cell, but didn't speak to him. Better to let him come back to us on his own time.

  Not twenty minutes afterward, a long, low keen filled the tier. At first I thought Shay was crying, letting the stress of the day bleed from him, but then I realized that the sound was coming from Calloway Reece's cell. "Come on," he moaned. He started smacking his fists against the door of his cell. "Bourne," he called out. "Bourne, I need your help."

  "Leave me alone," Shay said.

  "It's the bird, man. I can't get him to wake up."

  The fact that Batman the Robin had survived inside I-tier for several weeks on crusts of toast and bits of oatmeal was a wonder in its own right, not to mention the fact that he'd cheated death once before.

  "Give him CPR," Joey Kunz suggested.

  "You can't do fucking CPR on a bird," Calloway snapped. "They got beaks."

  I put down the makeshift brush I was using to paint--a rolled wad of toilet paper--and angled my mirror-shank out my door so that I could see. In his enormous palm, Calloway cradled the bird, which lay on its side, unmoving.

  "Shay," he begged, "please."

  There was no response from Shay's cell. "Fish him to me," I said, and crouched down with my line. I was worried that the bird had grown too big to make it through the little slit at the bottom, but Calloway wrapped him in a handkerchief, roped the top, and sent the slight weight in a wide arc across the floor of the catwalk. I knotted my string with Calloway's and gently drew the bird toward me.

  I couldn't resist unwrapping the kerchief to peek. Batman's eyelid was purple and creased, his tail feathers spread like a fan. The tiny hooks on the ends of his claws were as sharp as pins. When I touched them, the bird did not even twitch. I placed my forefinger beneath the wing--did birds have hearts where we did?--and felt nothing.

  "Shay," I said quietly. "I know you're tired. And I know you've got your own stuff going on. But please. Just take a look."

  Five whole minutes passed, long enough for me to give up. I wrapped the bird in the cloth again and