The Chaplain's Daughter (2 page)

He looked up to see John looking at him with curiosity, but without judgment or rancor.  The white haired visitor asked, softly this time, “What are you charged with?”

Toby took in a deep breath.  “I was in a stolen car,” he said breathing out the sentence on the exhale.

John nodded.  “When do you go to court?”

Toby noticed that John didn’t ask if he had stolen the car, or driven the car, or if the stolen car was his idea.  The chaplain just wanted to know what the next step was for the troubled young man whose acquaintance he had just made.

“Next Friday.”

John nodded and tried to open up his briefcase.  As he was struggling a bit with the latch on the old case, he glanced at Toby.  He saw a guarded young man, but one that was more defeated than angry.  John sensed that Toby was expecting that this may well be the first of several trips into adult detention.  Toby was an example of the reason why John had gotten into jail work in the first place.

John Boylan hadn’t always been a chaplain.  His career arc was far from the chaplaincy, in fact.  He had held a position of some prestige in a pharmaceutical company for over a decade.  One night, in a faceless Marriott in San Diego he had an epiphany.  He was in a strange city alone on another business trip.  He was in a hotel suite that contained a panoramic view of San Diego Harbor, and a baby grand piano.  The harbor was of limited interest to him, and he didn’t play the piano.  What a waste?

John had always been a man of spirituality, but even that had taken a back seat to his climb up the corporate ladder.  Now he was in a job that entailed shilling drugs to people who probably needed to take fewer drugs, rather than having more pushed down their throats.  His marriage had begun to experience more downs than ups, he didn’t remember his daughter Alyssa’s birthday without turning on his Palm Pilot, and he couldn’t remember her middle name without prompting from his disgusted wife.

That night, in the reflected light through the window from San Diego’s Gas Lamp District, John made a decision.  He didn’t want to push pills.  He wanted to do something that would make lives better, not just more anesthetized.  He called his supervisor and told him that John Boylan wasn’t going to be in his employ any longer, effective in two weeks.

John’s supervisor was stunned. Not because John had decided to quit.  People did that all the time for one reason or another.  He was stunned because no one had ever called him at 2:24 a.m. and quit unless they were drunk.  John’s supervisor could tell that John was stone sober.  John had an almost evangelistic fervor in his voice when he made that call.  The supervisor accepted John’s resignation with little comment other than, “Good luck.”  He figured that anyone who would do such a damn fool thing at such a damn fool time must be headed around the bend anyway.

John took an Alaska Airlines flight to his Olympia, Washington home, but he almost could have made the trip by flapping his arms.  He was a little nervous about what his wife DeeDee would say.  She had gotten used to John being gone frequently, as well as to being able to shop at Nordstrom whenever she needed new clothes.  John knew that any job that involved helping people in trouble was going to pay about 10% of what he was making with Big Pharma.  That’s if he was lucky enough to find one in the Olympia area.  He hoped that DeeDee would be open to the new plan, new lifestyle, and fewer new clothes.

John got off the plane at Sea-Tac International and drove the hour plus home.  He walked into his house, shouted “Dee, I’m home!” and went into the living room.  His wife was asleep on the couch.  John went over to her, got down on one knee, and kissed her cheek.  Her eyes flickered open, “Oh, you’re home.”

John looked at DeeDee as if he had never seen her before.  He gently brushed her hair out of her sleepy eyes, and said simply, “Yes, I am.”

DeeDee looked at him suspiciously.  “Why are you looking at me like that?  What’s wrong?  Have you been drinking?”

John smiled and said, “Not a drop.  I do want to talk to you, though.  Sit up.”

DeeDee shook her head and looked at John.  She saw something in his eyes that she didn’t understand.  It wasn’t something bad, but it was something different.  She was sure about that.  She sat up on the couch and pulled her nightgown around her shoulders against the cool of the living room.

“Okay, John.  What’s on your mind?”

John proceeded to tell his wife all that had happened in San Diego.  He told her about his epiphany in the hotel suite and about how he wanted things to change, for himself, for her, and for Alyssa.  He told her that he couldn’t imagine dying alone in a faceless hotel room, states removed from her.  He told her that he wanted to do something constructive in a career sense and that making a pile of money was going to be well down on his list of priorities.  He told her that he was through with Big Pharma.  Finally he told her what he had told her too infrequently in the previous 20 years.  He told her that he loved her with all of his heart.

DeeDee Boylan was a remarkable woman.  She heard John out and accepted every word at face value.  She could have raked him over the coals about the years that he had spent ignoring his family.  She could have told him that she was used to their current lifestyle and that he should think again if he was going to mess with the numbers in the checking account.  She could have told him that they could talk about it later after he had slept it off.  She didn’t say any of those things.  She said, “Let’s do this.”

Life changed for the Boylans.  They sold their 2700 square foot house in the hills, moved into a more modest home in the suburban city of Lacey, and lived on the proceeds from the sale of the house while John was in training.  John went to school to study pastoral counseling at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Seminary in Seattle.

Their daughter Alyssa, though supportive of the idea in theory, swallowed hard when she saw that their new home came sans swimming pool.  Even she recognized, though, that the family was happier than it had ever been before.  Her parents hugged one another and even kissed in the kitchen (“Yuck, you GUYS!”) sometimes.

John finished training in nine months.  He held part time jobs working in Seattle area school districts shortly after getting out of school.  While John enjoyed these jobs, school districts in Washington State, especially in urban settings, are strapped for cash.  The funding for a sub-counselor position was always just a board meeting away from being cut.  John worked at Washington Jr. High in Ballard, and Issaquah Senior High before the money dried up.  Then he was out of work.

John wrote a letter to the Seattle archdiocese inquiring about work that he might find in one of the private schools in the area.  After not hearing back for a couple of weeks, John called to follow up.  He was told that, while there was no availability in any of the schools overseen by the archdiocese, something might be available in prison and jail work if John was interested.  John was so interested that he made it from Lacey to the Seattle offices of the archdiocese (a distance of 75 miles) in just under an hour.  After a two hour application and interview process, John began an internship under a retiring jail chaplain.  Sixteen years, two months, 21 days later, John told the story of the earth and the world to Toby Jacks in Pierce County Jail.

John’s first one on one with Toby lasted about 20 minutes.  He gave the young man some papers that he could look at during the seemingly endless hours of boredom that Toby would experience in jail.  There were some scripture passages and some philosophy.  John included some humor from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, as well as a maze out of a puzzle book.  Toby thanked John for the materials and his time.

“Would you like to get together again?” John asked.  “I can see you weekly if you would like.”

Toby answered, “I don’t think so.  My court date is next week.”

John knew that a first court date rarely happens on time and, when it does, rarely results in release.  He was going to say as much to Toby, but they had shared a pleasant enough time and he didn’t want to end on a sour note.

“Well good luck to you then Toby.”

Toby shook John’s hand.  “Thanks.”

Toby went back to his bunk and looked over what John had left with him.  The philosophy was from the author Richard Rohr.  It was about hope.

“Not for me,” Toby thought.

He liked the cartoon, though, and borrowed a pencil to complete the maze.  The rest he tossed in the blue box that the jail provided for his personal belongings.  It was almost time for dinner.

“God,” Toby groaned.  “I wonder how they’re going to try to poison me tonight.”

Dinner came and went.  Toby couldn’t have told you later what he had, and not because he had a bad memory.  It was some kind of gelatinous mess on top of noodles, served with cold rubber broccoli and a carton of warm milk.  The most disgusting part to Toby was that it was the best meal that he had eaten since he’d gotten to jail.

Two days later Toby was summoned to the visitor’s room again.  This time it was Max Lundquist.  He shook hands with Toby and told him what was likely to happen once they got to court.  He said that the fact that Toby had been inebriated at the time of his arrest (Toby had blown a 1.4 on the breathalyzer.  0.8 is drunk in Washington State) could actually work in his favor.  He told Toby that the court was interested in getting another “win” in the column of the prosecutor more than they were interested in putting Toby away for an extended period of time.  Max asked Toby if he understood that, if he was willing to plead guilty to being an accessory in the theft of the car, he would avoid prison altogether and serve a sentence in county that would cover months rather than years.

Toby asked just one question, “How long?”

Max answered, “You can’t predict exactly what a judge will say, but the prosecutor will ask for six months and the judges usually follow that recommendation pretty close.  We’ll argue that you don’t have an adult record, or even any contact with law enforcement since you turned 18.  You’ll probably get six months or so, maybe a little less.”

The meeting with Max took a total of less than 15 minutes.  It was to be the last that Toby heard from his attorney until court on Friday.

Toby went to John’s church service again on Thursday night.  He was curious what story John might tell this time.  John didn’t disappoint.  He told a story of two men stranded at sea.  One is trying to get someone to see them so they could be rescued.  The other man is sawing a hole in the bottom of the boat.  John said that this story was where the expression “We’re all in the same boat” had originated.  He said that all of God’s children are in the same boat.

The inmates at the service groaned a little about John’s story.  Toby noticed something else, though.  He noticed John’s hearty laugh over a story that he had probably told a thousand times.  Toby found himself looking forward to seeing John sometime after his court appearance the next day.

Toby was scheduled to be in court at 1:30 on Friday afternoon.  He was shackled in a line with all of the other inmates that had court appearances that day, and marched down the cold dank corridors to the courtrooms.  Once there Toby was placed in a holding room until his time before the judge was called.

Toby and Max stood at the dock in Courtroom 533, 15 feet removed from where the prosecutor stood.  After the bailiff read the charges, the prosecutor read from his notes without as much as a glance in Toby’s direction.  Toby knew that he wasn’t real to the prosecutor, nor really to Max Lundquist.  At that moment he wondered if he was real to anyone.

When it came time for Judge Thomas Nestle to rule on Toby’s case and pronounce the sentence, he made it clear that Toby was real to him.  Judge Nestle took his glasses off and placed them carefully on his podium before speaking to Toby.