Godless by James Dobson Page B

you left,” the trainee explained. “She asked me questions about how volunteering worked, where they carried out the procedures, stuff like that. I sensed she might be open to another try. I couldn’t find a ‘Maybe’ option so I selected ‘Follow-up advised.’”
    Matthew groaned again. “‘Follow-up advised’ means they’re ready for a pre-transition consultation.”
    â€œWhat?”
    Matthew reviewed the process Mandy should have known. The system automatically alerted immediate family members whenever a prospective client agreed to move ahead. It even recommended language they might want to use to affirm the loved one’s decision.
    â€œI’m such a mess-up!” Mandy said.
    â€œWell,” Matthew replied, “I can assure you you’ll never make this mistake again.”
    â€œWhy’s that?”
    â€œBecause I won’t be calling Freddy Baxter to apologize.” He smiled in her direction. “You will.”
    *  *  *
    The day turned out to be more productive than Matthew had expected. They had managed to sign up four of five prospective clients, exactly the number needed to complete his commitment. Each trainee was required to observe ten successful closings before he or she could move up the food chain. Matthew could now go back to flying solo, at least until his boss hired another batch of rookies.
    Opening a well-deserved can of beer, Matthew grabbed his tablet before plopping himself onto the only chair occupying his apartment’s ten-by-twelve-foot living room, a leather-like recliner that still released the slight smell of cigarettes six months after he’d paid thirty dollars to haul it away from a garage sale.
    He scanned a list of possible television programs. Then he remembered the assignment he had accepted from the teacher he had met at Peak and Brew. Matthew tapped the book icon to find The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. “Read book five, chapters three through five. That should give you a taste,” Mori had urged. “Ruthless arguments against the goodness of God.”
    Matthew found the recommended section. He immediately recognized the names of the two characters speaking. Mori had called Ivan the skeptic and Alyosha, his brother, the believer.
    At first Matthew felt as if he had stumbled into the second act of a longer drama; which, of course, he had. But he stuck with it, eventually grasping the thread of Ivan Karamazov’s attacks that must have been the source of Alyosha’s squirming.
    â€œPeople speak sometimes about the ‘animal’ cruelty of man,” Ivan was saying, “but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. A tiger simply gnaws and tears, that is all he can do. It would never occur to him to nail people by their ears overnight, even if he were able to do it.”
    It was an idea that had never occurred to Matthew. Man more vicious than beasts? Ivan expanded the claim with a series of stories, each more troubling than the last.
    A soldier taking delight in torturing children, tossing them in the air and catching them on a bayonet before their mothers’ eyes.
    A trembling mother watching a man use the end of his gun to amuse her nursing infant.
    â€œThe baby laughs gleefully,” Ivan explains, “reaches out its little hands to grab the pistol, and suddenly the artist pulls the trigger right in its face and shatters its little head…Artistic, isn’t it?”
    A five-year-old little girl tortured by parents who hate her for reasons unknown to themselves. They beat her, flog her, and kick her into a lump of bruised suffering. And then, angered by the child’s mishap, they lock her all night in the freezing-cold outhouse after smearing her face and making her eat her own excrement. The mother goes back to sleep “while her poor little