Good Men by Nicola Koh

fiction

The aircon is broken, and the rattling fan just swirls the thick, sodden heat. But still, the Reverend Dr. Daniel Cho Ying Yo refuses to shed his tailored suit, though shirt and singlet have long since been glued to skin. Maybe if he were still the pastor of just twenty meetings in a rented room, not of five thousand.

“Wei Xiong was good man, Pastor,” Pui Lan repeats. She is hunched in the chair, puffed eyes cast downwards as if searching the ground. “Good husband, good father. Work hard, no complain.”

He vaguely remembers her face at his last altar call a few weeks ago; she must not have paid much attention to the sermon.

“It doesn’t matter how much good you do in the world,” Daniel had said, pacing in front of the pulpit. He slapped his Bible and shook it above his head. “For allllll have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God!”

 “Without juh-EEE-sus,” he roared, “there is NO salvation!”

A chorus of hallelujahs and amens rang as he wiped his forehead and leaned against the pulpit. “Without Jesus,” he said softly, almost a whisper, “there is no life.”

Pui Lan’s red-rimmed eyes dart up to him. “Pastor, what happen to Wei Xiong now?”

He takes a sip of tea, but the ice has long since melted, and he barely keeps his face from screwing. “I understand how difficult this must be,” he says gently.

Pui Lan eyes clench. With her wide lips turned down, she looks unfortunately froglike.

Once another widow had sat in this same office. Grace, so beautiful even with mascara running, her voice a melody without a hint of broken English. He had put an arm around her, and all the points of contact between them, her body moving into his with each sob, had consumed him. That night he made love to his wife so ferociously it left her panting adoration.

Pui Lan is wringing her hands, so cracked and dry it sounds like scraping leather. “He never stop us to go to church,” she says. “Sometime he also go.”

Daniel clears his throat. “Did he say the sinner’s prayer?”

She hangs her head. “He say: Ya lah this Jesus sound like good man. But Buddha also, Muhammad, all same. So why I believe him only, wan?” She clutches herself, rocking slightly. “I try explain, but Wei Xiong don’t listen. Pastor, I try.”

He shouldn’t have left his planner open. He had another congregant in an hour, then back-to-back meetings for the budgets of the new building project and the yearly prayer rally—and still his sermon on Romans 5. There were seven pastors on his staff, and somehow it seemed he had to make every decision. His head is a sausage splitting on a pan.

Pui Lan leans forward, eyes trembling. “Mana he go, Pastor?”

Some part of Daniel wants to wail, to sob. Where else?

Decades ago in youth group, they watched a video of a man who had died and returned from hell. Others had giggled at his thick American accent, but Daniel could barely breathe as the man described a demon dragging him to the gates of hell. A picture of the demon had flashed on the screen—a ridged, twisted face, jagged teeth bared in a grin—and it seemed to look straight at Daniel.

 That night he dreamt the demon came for him. He had long ago committed his life to the Lord, and he knew it could have no power over him, and yet it came. He tried to run but slipped on gravel. He screamed as it grabbed his ankles and started to drag him. He clawed the ground bloody, begging for mercy, but all the while the demon just cackled.

That Sunday, at the altar, he said the sinner’s prayer again in his heart, just to be safe. But the dream kept returning, and Daniel found himself at the altar again and again, the son of Deacon Chong trudging past the gauntlet of eyes to cower beneath the pulpit.

“How can, Pastor?” Pui Lan says, wiping a stream of snot with the back of her hand.  “How can wan those men do like that?”

Wei Xiong had been found in a parking lot, his head smashed in with a motorcycle helmet. Part of Daniel wants to place a hand on her shoulder, another part is repulsed by the thought of the extra warmth.

Grace never made him feel this way. Talking with her, he could even forget he was the chairman of this council, the recipient of that honour. He would visit with curry puffs, nasi lemak, sometimes just kuih. Her kitchen was always blessedly cool.

“I pray next to him everyday,” Pui Lan murmurs. “Doctor say no chance, but I pray. One day I ask: Wei Xiong, do you accept Jesus Christ to be Lord and savior? Blink three time.” She raises a face twisted gargoylean in anguish. “Pastor, he blink two time, then stop. I say: No, Wei Xiong, three time! Three time, Wei Xiong!”

A groan rips out of her, raw, guttural, as if pulled from the depths.

How could Daniel judge? He had once sat at this very desk, a leatherbound Bible before him, a gift from Grace, opening it again and again at random, hoping to land on one specific verse, that word to him from the Lord: Grace be unto you. He didn’t know how long it was before a finger caught on a page, and now that Bible sat on the furthest corner of the highest shelf behind him, pages still crusted red.

Pui Lan leans forward, eyes shining desperately through red-rimmed slits. “Pastor, you say God is love.”

Daniel takes a deep breath. “You know what happens to those who do not accept Jesus as Lord.”

“But mesti lah God forgive,” Pui Lan pleads, clutching her dress in white fists.

“It is not for us to say, what God must and must not do,” Daniel says, his jaw clenching despite himself.

“How can, Pastor!” she wails. “Wei Xiong was good man!”

 “Only God can save!” He finds himself standing and his voice coming in one of his pulpit booms.

His legs wobble, and he has to lean against the table. “If he didn’t accept Jesus as his Lord…” But he can’t finish the sentence. Each breath feels like drowning

Pui Lan rises to her own feet “What kind God like that wan? What kind God make Wei Xiong go to hell?”

The door opens, and for a moment, as Daniel peers through the veil of sweat, the face there could be Grace’s. Please, let it be Grace.

But it’s just his secretary.

“Everything is fine,” Daniel says, sitting down, exhaustion cascading unto him. “Mrs. Kang was just leaving.”

Grace had gone to be with family Ipoh, and Daniel had never since been able to make love to his wife.

Pui Lan’s eyes widen slightly and her nostrils flare. “You be like that wan, okay lah.”

She gathers her things and shoves them into her purse. But then she pauses, hand on the doorknob, almost as if trying to remember something. Daniel begs silently for her to leave as each tick of the clock raps his blistering skull.

 “The evil men hit him five time,” she says softly.  “Sometime I think about them.”

 “The police never catch,” she says, turning around to face him again. “They hit him five time.”

Her eyes are swollen and red, but her gaze is eerily still, and Daniel can barely hold it.

“I still forgive,” Pui Lan whispers.

She nods at his secretary and walks out.

For a moment his secretary stands there, head cocked slightly, before mercifully closing the door. Daniel stumbles to lock it. He rips off his tie and suit, unbuttons his soaked shirt, and stands in front of the fan, closing his eyes as he tries to suck every hint of coolness onto his burning flesh.

Then something cackles behind him. He whirls around just as the room crashes into darkness. The fan rattles to a halt.

Daniel clutches his head, the words to the sinner’s prayer already starting their thunder. But he won’t say it, can’t say it. So many people need him to be a greater man than this.

He chokes down bile, and in his deepest, surest voice, tells his secretary not to worry. He fumbles the buttons of his shirt into place and replaces his suit. As he opens the door, the glare of a flashlight finds him, and he instinctively holds up his hand to shield himself. When the beam turns away, the darkness around him is absolute. Daniel forces himself to walk slowly. He won’t look back at his office. He won’t flee from those watching eyes, that twisted grin.

About the author: Nicola Koh is a Malaysian Eurasian 16 years in the American Midwest, an atheist who lost their faith while completing their Masters of Theology, and a minor god of Tetris. They got their MFA from Hamline University and was a 2018 VONA/Voices and 2019/20 Loft Mentors Series fellow. Their fiction has appeared in places like the Margins, Brown Orient, and the Account. Amongst other things, they enjoy taking too many pictures of my animal frenemies, crafting puns, and listening to public domain audiobooks after injuring their neck reading (which they find consolation by calling a literary wound of honour). See more at nicolakoh.com.