Blindfaller

Gospel Shoes

Julie studied the stern faces of the bishop and the town elders with a mix of anger and fear. She wondered what they would do to her. She'd broken one of the big rules. She never understood why it was wrong, but the old men with the fancy book made all the rules. She wished they'd let her read the book. Maybe life here on the compound would make more sense to her.

"Miss Johanson, you have been charged with birthing a child out of wedlock. How do you plead?" Bishop Benjamin stared her down with dark, stern eyes centered in a doughy, almost obscene face.

"G..Guilty," she stammered in a voice that could barely be heard even to herself.

"Hold on there, Bishop," her father interrupted, his face red, his eyes watery and scared. "I don't think it's right that my daughter is the only one on trial here. What about the man responsible?"

The bishop smirked. "You know the commandments as well as I do, Brother Johanson. It's a woman's responsibility to control her own body. You're lucky that you're not on trial as well for helping conceal your daughter's sin." The bishop's eyes returned to burn holes through Julie.

"You and your son will be executed tomorrow at noon. We must not be unequally yoked with sinners." The gavel banged down hard and Julie flinched.

"No!" Her mother gasped from the women's box in the balcony above and burst out in loud, wheezing sobs.

Two guards led Julie back to her holding cell. She wondered where they would hold Joseph, her son. Maybe they'd already taken him? She barely knew what day it was and everything seemed confusing. She suspected they were keeping her dosed up. Maybe they'd dissolved something into the foggy cup of apple juice that morning.

Julie worried about her mother. Joseph had been raised as her own son for these four years.

How did they find out? How could anyone possibly know their family's secret?

Her father waited for her in the visitor's area. She was only allowed fifteen minutes of visiting time per day. She sat in a hard metal chair and faced her father, who sat on the opposite end of a rectangular table. The guard left, and Julie was grateful for the privacy of the unusually empty visiting room.

"Jules, I'm so sorry." Her father's voice sounded ragged and rough. His swollen eyes still shone with tears.

"Pop, how did they find out?" She whispered despite having the room to themselves. Maybe the place was bugged.

Her father pounded the table as a fresh batch of sobs wracked his body. "It was my fault. The bishop tricked me. He said he already knew that Joseph wasn't really our son." He dug in his pocket for a tissue and blew his nose. "He tricked me into telling him. That bastard!"

"So what are we going to do? I don't mind dying. But we have to protect Joseph." She reached across the table and took her father's hand in her own.

"I know. There's a small group of us who are ready to leave the compound. We're working on a plan--and Jules?"

"What, Papa?"

"I know who did that to you...the bishop...he told me."

Julie and her father both cried then, and then the guard returned to end their time together. Back in Julie's cold, dimly lit cell, she prayed. Not the same kind of prayer that the elders taught the children, but a real prayer; heartfelt and humble.

She awoke an hour later, having drifted off in mid-prayer. She'd had a dream that she and Joseph were free, happy and together as mother and son, and not brother and sister, how they'd been raised.

Julie thought about the bishop and how she had once looked up to him as a pillar of the community. Someone who seemed so godly and pious. The first time he forced himself on her she'd been twelve years old. She didn't even know what sex was then. Hadn't even had her first period. When she stopped bleeding for two months in a row, she'd asked her mother about it, because she didn't know what was happening. She'd also been sick several times. Was this what puberty was like?

Her mother purchased a pregnancy test and they waited the three minutes in agony until the little plus sign showed up on the test strip.

Then the rumors spread around town that Julie’s mom was pregnant, so the family made a plan. Julie would quit school and help her mother around the house. Everyone knew that Deborah was fragile and had rough pregnancies. No one suspected anything. Julie was relieved that she no longer had to see the bishop regularly, and her child grew inside of her.

She loved Joseph instantly. He wasn't at all like the sour old man with the dour face. Joseph's first giggle sent her over the moon. She vowed before God that she would always protect him and that no matter what the world believed, she would always be his mother.

Now, here she sat, in the town jail, awaiting execution. State laws didn't mean anything within the high walls of the compound. Most of the people didn't even have documentation. No one out there cared if she and her child lived or died.

She wondered what life would be like out there if her family found a means of escape. She tried to focus on the hopeful things because the alternative could cripple her.

The cell grew darker as the evening wore on. She hoped that her family was busy at work on a plan. She didn't have much time. Dinner came and went and she ate the tasteless goop while pretending it was her mother's cooking.

Just after the big clock in the common area struck ten o'clock, a commotion broke out down the hall.

A door slammed shut, footsteps echoed down the hall, and a big boom rattled her bones. A gunshot? She crouched low and scooted underneath the small metal writing desk beside the bunk.

Was this some sort of riot? Was she in danger? Soon, the commotion became louder as several sets of heavy footsteps came her way.

Just as a scream ripped through her she recognized her father, older brother and several of the townsmen burst in, with guns in hand. A guard unlocked her cell, as her brother held a pistol to his temple.

The guard's shaky hand made the process painfully long, but soon enough she was free and trembling beside her father. "Where's Joseph? Is he safe?"

Her father nodded and hurried her along. She was free! Did she dare hope so soon?

The fresh night air froze her lungs and made her light-headed. A dark-colored SUV pulled up in front of them from out of nowhere. The side doors flew open and there Joseph was buckled into a booster seat, a grin on his chubby face.

"Go! Go! Go!" Her brother screamed from just behind her. Then a series of sharp pop, pop, pop, sounds shattered the quiet evening.

Her father jumped into the SUV and reached for her hand, Just as she was about to grab on and let him tug her inside, another round of pops rang out, and this time, Julie was hit.

She fell to the ground, searing pain in her back, near the left shoulder blade. Her brother knelt beside her and took her hand. "Come on, we gotta get you up!" He pulled her toward the SUV, but Julie knew it was too late. She was already fading into oblivion.

"No. Just go. I won't make it."

"I can't leave you!" He tried again to tug her toward the van, but the guards were closing in fast.

"Go..." She breathed her last, happy that at last her son was free from this terrible place, where man's gospel rules over God's people.
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1,327 Words

Some set their heads to swimming, nothing to lose
Drift about their good times, slivers in their boots
Some walk the straight and narrow, only passing through
Trading this world over for a pair of gospel shoes
Gospel shoes are laced with shackles and chains
Fitted for the poor runners of the race
Now every hand is folded shape of a gun
Target's ever-changing but the war it rages on
So the armies march onward for the mother and the son
As this world of screaming color is bleached in the blood
Freedom was a simple word so reverent and true
A long time ago, it meant the right to choose
Who you love and how to live, now it's so misused
Twisted by the politics of men in gospel shoes
So the armies march onward for the mother and the son
As this world of screaming color is bleached in the blood
Our mother she is crying, her broken heart is blue
'Cause we're too busy dying to love this life we lose
She's growing weary of the lying
She's tired of all this fighting in the name of gospel shoes