The Trinity Game

from the locals, probably for years. And the infrastructure was decimated. How long before he could get his show back on the air to draw money from the rest of the country?
    A long time, if he stayed.
    By the time they reached Baton Rouge, Trinity had made the decision to start over in Atlanta. He had plenty of money in the bank, could be up and running in a month or two. And he’d always flattered himself he could compete with the big boys in the big city. This was his chance to prove it.

    In Atlanta, Trinity bought a large warehouse in the impoverished Vine City neighborhood. Within a month it was decorated with a stage pulpit and audience seating, outfitted with cameras and lighting and a video control room. He was back in business. In the second month, he built his flock, and by the end of the third month, he was back on the air. His new church was an instant hit, and the money poured in like never before.
    But he hadn’t counted on the voices.
    When they started, he put it down to stress, and an Atlanta doctor prescribed Valium. When that didn’t work, the doctor tried him on Ativan, then Xanax, then Serax. When none of the anti-anxiety drugs worked, he moved on to anti-depressants: Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor. They didn’t work either.
    After over a year of pharmaceutical futility, Trinity resigned himself to living with the voices. But then the voices strengthened, and soon they brought the tongues. Tongues that came upon him like epileptic fits, completely beyond his control. The fits often came during his sermons, and they were good theater, but they also came upon him when he wasn’t doing his act. In the shower or driving his car, seemingly at random. They often woke him in the night, and he became exhausted. He knew he couldn’t keep going this way much longer. Something had to give.
    Then one night, Trinity sat in front of the television, flipping channels, afraid to fall asleep. He stopped on a documentary about addiction, and he heard a cocaine addict say that coke silenced the voices in his head.
    Trinity had never wanted anything to do with illegal drugs, had never even smoked grass, but he’d never in his life felt this desperate. He made his first drug buy the very next morning. And that night, when his head started pounding and the voices came upon him, he snorted his first line.
    The voices disappeared.

D aniel stood in the shadows of Tim Trinity’s backyard, snapping photos through the window of his uncle’s den. Snapping photos of his uncle taking cocaine. He lowered the camera slowly, thinking:
What the hell did you expect?
    But whatever he’d expected, he sure as hell hadn’t expected this.
    Daniel had seen enough, and it was getting late. Time to terminate surveillance. He scaled the fence, dropping down into the wooded ravine that backed onto Trinity’s property. He moved quietly through the brush, listening to the singing of frogs and crickets, the chatter of distant coyotes. Moved to the ravine’s public access way, at the end of the street.
    He walked among silent mansions to where he’d parked his rental car, wondering what could’ve gone so wrong in Tim Trinity’s life that he was now snorting coke. He’d always been a drinker, sure, but for Southerners—and especially New Orleanians—alcohol is like mama’s milk.
    In all their years together, Daniel had never seen his uncle do anything as flagrantly self-destructive as what he’d just witnessed.
    What could’ve gone so wrong?

    Back in his hotel room, Daniel sat on the bed, propped up by huge pillows, his Bible open in his lap. An e-mail had come in from Nick. The e-mail read:
    Dan,
    Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I’m worried about you. I know being with your uncle will be difficult, and I feel somewhat responsible, having allowed you to take this case. But I need you to stay focused on your assignment, whatever personal issues arise.
    Read the Book of Job tonight, and meditate on it.
    That’s an order, not a suggestion.
    Hang tough, kiddo. I know you can do this.
    –Fr. Nick
    Daniel had struggled with the Book of Job in his youth and had never really come to terms with it. Reading it again didn’t help any. To Daniel, the God presented in Job was like a little boy pulling the wings off flies, just to watch them flail about. He seemed shallow, cruel, and ego-driven. He caused Job, his most righteous servant, to suffer excruciating pain and unfathomable loss, for no good reason. No, worse. For a juvenile,