ashamed to publicly admit it, worried that people might think he, too, was gay, and hold contempt against him the same way they did Dwight. As silly as it seemed, Ben’s experience with the people in Freeden had warranted his concerns.
Ben was born and raised in the town, and he grew up adoring it. He loved living in a town where you could ride your bike to see your friends, where your parents would let you gallivant around the nearby woods and build forts with your friends and never worry about where you were. As he grew older and moved home after law school, he loved how everyone knew everyone and that they seemed to really appreciate him returning and giving back to the community. He adored the small town feel of walking to your favorite lunch spot and seeing several people you knew along the way. He loved Freeden.
That was, until his experiences forced him to realize it wasn’t full of great people like he thought. Sure, there were some exceptions, but as a whole, Ben came to know Freeden’s populous as a body of people who promised to follow Jesus on Sunday but threw his teachings out the window during the week. If you were different, you weren’t welcome here. Not at the workplace, not at the restaurants, not even at church. Ben believed if you were different and became successful here, it was by your own intuition, or stubbornness – or both.
Ben had made a life in Freeden, but had become the guy Freeden wanted him to be: a good ‘ole boy just like the rest of them that fit in here. Once he came to know his hometown as a place full of hypocritical, backward-thinking people, he still allowed it to direct him and the way he lived. And he was silently ashamed of it.
Ben respected Dwight, though, as a man who had found success in Freeden and had done it his own way, without regard to the person everyone else probably wanted him to be. Ben saw Dwight as his own man, and revered him for being that way.
There Dwight stood, as postured as ever, directing the orchestra, which to many in the audience may have looked like an endless waving of arms that made absolutely no sense. The orchestra though, was very in tune with whatever his flailing arms were trying to convey, and from the feedback the audience had given thus far, the performance glistened. Ben stared at his fearless leader and could tell he was proud. The eyebrows rising and that unforgettable smile where his grin stretched from ear to ear was the memorandum of understanding Dwight’s chorus needed: he was satisfied.
Dwight had the ability to whip practically anybody with a voice into performing shape and get them to do well under his direction, though he did not want you to think he was a proud man for it. He often said, “A man full of pride is a foolish one.” But he, too, was human and struggled not to be overly satisfied with his accomplishments. He knew he was a big fish in a small pond, and he was pleased with what he had been able to achieve over the years.
As Ben saw it, Dwight was disciplined, never too immersed with pride, and he was a beacon of wisdom. He may have been oblivious to the behind-the-back criticism of his sexuality, but he was fully aware that everyone was not his friend. He could quickly point out if people in his life were acquaintances or if they were real friends, and had no problem telling others which of those he thought they were in his life, either. A few months ago, Ben recalled Dwight telling him, “Ben, I don’t tell many people this…but I consider you to be a true friend. One of my best.”
In their short friendship that really took off when Dwight started coaching Ben for the Requiem performance, Ben had already realized that Dwight’s personality was characterized by bold pointedness, and he was quite simply unaffected by anyone else’s thoughts and feelings about his opinions and way of life. He was going to do it his way, period. Even those who criticized and mocked him behind his back respected that.
The music behind Requiem was beautiful, but the Latin words were deathly. It was believed that Mozart wrote the piece for his own funeral, and the work remained unfinished at the time of his death. But the piece the choir was set to perform next, perhaps the most famous of all pieces from Requiem and often played in movies, television, and other media, was titled "Lacrimosa."
Dwight directed the choir to begin singing:
Lacrimosa dies illa,
Qua resurgent ex favilla,
Judicandus homo reus.
Despite Ben’s lack of knowledge on how to properly read music, he had studied Requiem leading up to this performance and knew the English translation of the classic piece:
Full of tears will be that day,
When from the ashes shall arise
The guilty man shall be judged.
How ominous this would turn out to be.
2: The Final Curtain
Just two days prior to the concert, Ben told his wife, Rachel, he planned to get a divorce. He and Rachel had been married for six years, and everyone in town thought she was the epitome of a Southern belle, a darling of a wife. How incredibly wrong they were.
She had cheated on Ben on multiple occasions. And he knew it. But for the sake of his reputation (and hers, which he for some reason insisted on caring about) in this small town that cast judgment so freely, he dealt with it and continued to take her back as she pleaded each time for forgiveness. Ben recalled a monologue that, unfortunately, like a number one hit on the radio, had been heard far too many times.
Please, baby, I have changed! I was going through such a dark time and I was confused. I love you more than life itself and I would never want to hurt you. God put us together for a reason and I know you are the one for me. Please baby, I love you with all that I am, Ben Bailey, and I am so sorry I hurt you! I know God can and will bring us back to restoration!
Ben had grown tired of her saying that God was going to do something to restore the marriage when she herself made little to no effort to save it. Ben had come to believe that the only time she cared about ‘getting right with the Lord’ and ‘being a good wife’ was when the two of them found themselves on the edge of separation, an occurrence that had happened more than once. And just as soon as he forgave her, she resorted back to those same selfish character traits that had habitually led her to another man’s bedroom.
Ben often argued, sarcastically of course, that infidelity seeped into the water around Freeden. It was astounding, how many families broke up due to one or both spouses sleeping around with other people, especially in a community where rumors spread like a highly contagious disease.
Infidelity, which at one point was a part of the underbelly of Freeden, now seemed almost mainstream. This immoral behavior was the subject of gossip all over town, including at 3rd Street Café, the town’s most famous eatery, where little old ladies and stay-at-home wives would gather for lunch each day and discuss who had cheated on whom most recently. Ben knew it because he heard it almost every day.
Despite the damning behavior, husbands and wives, who willingly and discretely cheated on each other on Saturday nights, would all go to church on Sundays and pray and fellowship and raise their hands to God, all the while sitting next to other husbands and wives they had slept with the night before. One time, Ben drove out of his driveway and saw his neighbor walking out of his house with the City Parks and Recreation director’s wife, whose hair looked like it had been pulled at all night long, and two hours later they were all with their own families, reunited for the eleven a.m. service at Freeden Baptist Church where they, along with Ben and the rest of the congregation, partook in holy communion followed by a covered dish potluck with the entire church family.
Deceit, cover up, infidelity, and dishonesty: this small, intimate town was not lacking any of it. And this proved evident in Ben’s own wife. He was thirty-seven going on fifty, and Rachel was thirty-four, yet her behavior could have easily been mistaken for twenty-one. Ben lived a straight edge life. He liked to have fun, but he would often be classified by his friends as a workaholic, and he knew it was true. It had gotten better though. The last time he had discovered that Rachel slept with someone else, he had convinced himself it must be his fault