The Parson's Waiting

suspected there were special places in hell for men who flirted with pastors.
Anna Louise wasn’t helping matters any. She seemed perfectly content with the silence in the car, perfectly engrossed in the passing scenery. That only made him more determined to find some safe way to draw her attention back to him. A discussion of the weather, aside from being boring and predictable, seemed unlikely to elicit the sort of conversation he wanted. Asking how a woman had ended up a preacher struck him as a mite too touchy, given the objections some people apparently had to her choice. Finally conceding he was at a loss, he settled into his own grim silence.
“Tell me what it was like,” she said eventually.
He glanced over at her. She was still staring out the window. “What was what like?”
“Being a correspondent in all those places.”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because...” She turned to face him, a frown puckering her brow. “Because I need to understand.”
“Me or life?” he asked dryly.
“Both, I suppose.”
He still wasn’t sure why this was suddenly so important to her, but he summed it up succinctly with a phrase that applied equally to every single place he’d been assigned. “It was hell.”
“If it was so terrible, why did you do it? Are you one of those people who thrive on danger?”
“I suppose that’s part of it. Being challenged just to stay alive, struggling to get the story and get it right, all of it makes every moment vivid and memorable. You cling to those moments because you never know when the next one might be your last. You know with every fiber that you’re living life, not letting it pass you by.”
“Did you need that kind of intensity after leaving Kiley?”
He grinned. “Let’s face it, staying alive in Kiley is not a problem. The only thing that’ll kill you here is the boredom.”
“I wonder if that’s all there was to it,” she said, regarding him with a doubtful expression.
“Meaning?”
“Sometimes people force themselves into dangerous situations out of some sort of death wish. It’s the kind of thing someone with low self-esteem might do to get attention, either by succeeding dramatically or getting themselves killed.”
Richard might have taken offense, if the suggestion hadn’t been so laughable. “Trust me, my self-esteem is intact. All foreign correspondents have egos the size of Texas. We’re a rare breed, maybe a little like firefighters.”
Anna Louise still didn’t look convinced by his glib answers. “There’s something more, though, something you’re not telling me. Are you sure your motivations were entirely selfish?”
Richard regarded her sharply, startled by her apparent intuitiveness. “What are you suggesting?”
“That maybe you went because you felt someone had to, because you knew the world had to see what was going on if there was going to be any chance at all to make things different.” She leveled a look at him. “Maisey showed me some of your articles.”
“Really?” Given her own reaction to the vivid contents, he was surprised that Maisey had shared them, especially with someone like Anna Louise, who was probably blind to the extremes of human depravity or whose sensibilities might be offended by the grim reality.
“They were very good,” she said quietly. “I felt as if I were right there with you. You made the most complex stories human. I could feel the pain and the anger, the despair, the hunger. You brought all of that alive.”
Not knowing how else to respond, he simply said, “Thank you.”
“There was something else you did, as well.”
“Oh?”
“I wonder if you were even aware of it,” she said, her gaze fixed thoughtfully on him. “Somehow I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?”
“You also captured that fragile sense of hope that flickered to life in even the most horrific tragedies.”
Richard had to admit he was taken aback by the assessment. “Hope?” he said derisively. “There were instances of blind folly, not hope.”
She nodded, her expression suddenly sad. “Somehow I thought you’d see it that way. It says a lot about the way you and I view the world, doesn’t it? You see the cup half empty. I see it half full. You see the evidence of evil. I see the potential for good. I suppose, though, that it’s no wonder you’ve suffered a crisis of faith, given what you’ve been through.”
She said it as if she felt sorry for him, which only served to infuriate him. “One of us is wearing rose-tinted glasses, Pastor Perkins,” he chided.
“And one of us is deserving of pity. I wonder if you even recognize which one that is.”
“How do you explain the atrocities?” he demanded. “Surely you have some easy answer, one that’s compatible with your beliefs?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t, but just because I don’t understand doesn’t mean that I have to give up my faith that God has a plan.”
“I guess that’s where you and I part company,” he said grimly.
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
She settled back into her seat then, her unhappy gaze returning to the passing landscape. The silence this time was all the more oppressive, because Anna Louise’s gentle criticism stung. He tried telling himself that her opinion of his outlook on life didn’t matter. She was the one whose vision was skewed. Unfortunately, the easy dismissal didn’t work as well as it might have only days ago.
Instead he found himself wondering what life would be like if he could view it through her eyes. He found himself hoping against hope that tragedy never caused her to see it as he had. Something told him, though, that in her own quiet way, Anna Louise had the toughness and strength it would take to survive no matter what hand she was dealt.
* * *
Anna Louise couldn’t imagine what had possessed her to taunt Richard as she had on the drive into Charlottesville. He certainly hadn’t given any indication he was looking for an outsider’s impression of the choices he’d made in his life. Nor did he seem to care two hoots