Brother Word (12 page)

“God, what have we done? This reporter misquoted all of us and twisted this story around to make us look absolutely foolish.”

Instantly, however, the Spirit began speaking to her and a certain scripture came to her mind, 1 Corinthians 1:27.

“But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty . . .”

Falling to her knees, Lynn began praying aloud in the Spirit, finding comfort that the Lord would speak to her at this moment.

THE LEADERSHIP
at Faith Community had been likewise praying throughout the day, and when Lynn arrived at the church for her weekly meeting, she was met with words of encouragement.

Arlene met her in the hallway with a hug. “Listen, you don’t let that newspaper article bother you, Lynn. Alright? Look at it this way—an amazing miracle happened to you. The doctors said you would be blind for the rest of your life, but look at God!
Nobody
can take that away from you.”

Lynn nodded. “Thanks for always reminding me of that. And you’re so right—every day when I wake up and I can see my alarm clock and the sun peeking through my curtains, all I can do is give God a praise!”

Lynn walked farther down the hallway, which led to the administrative wing of the complex. As she passed the sanctuary, she could hear one of the musicians playing “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” on the organ, and she paused to whisper another prayer of thanksgiving. Experiencing total blindness for seven weeks had radically altered her sense of the
proper
time and manner to praise her God. And during that dark time, she had vowed to the Lord that if He restored her sight, she would never cease to praise Him. Some meaningless article in the state’s largest newspaper that had distorted her words could do nothing to dampen her spirits.

“Good evening,” Pastor Gentry greeted her as she walked into the conference room. Not once, in all her time attending these weekly meetings, had she ever arrived before Pastor Gentry. She knew he prided himself on punctuality, but just
once
she wanted to arrive first.

“Are you holding up well?” he asked.

Lynn nodded, managing a small smile. “After what I’ve been through the last two months, everything else is small potatoes.”

Pastor Gentry matched her smile. “I know what you mean. The trials we face in life make us either better or bitter. Your particular trial has strengthened you in ways you don’t even know yet.

“I’ve talked to several area church leaders today,” he continued, “and there is some concern about any . . . well, any
fallout
from this article. Personally, I don’t think anything will come of it. As the saying goes, today’s news is tomorrow’s trash.”

“Except this wasn’t news,” Lynn commented, settling down into a chair. “It was wrong how that reporter twisted our words to make us sound . . . to make us sound . . .”

“Sound like what, Lynn? Crazy?” He smiled again. “Anytime . . . every time a great move of God happens, there is resistance from the enemy. It’s spiritual warfare 101. When I first heard of my friend T. R. Smallwood’s miraculous healing and then the other healings, I immediately began warfare praying—praying not just for revival but praying against every demonic attack and hindrance.”

“This newspaper article is part of a demonic attack?”

“I don’t know if it’s that, but it is definitely a hindrance. What’s most important for us now is not to magnify the problem, but magnify God in the midst of this. Our God is so much greater than anything the devil can do, plus we know that He is sovereign. If He has ordained something to happen, then it
will
happen. You can count on that.”

“TRAVIS, I CANNOT BELIEVE
you would write something like that!” Andrea practically yelled to her brother over the phone. “And I can’t believe the newspaper would print it!”

“What’re you talking about?” Travis calmly answered, pausing to sip his diet Pepsi through a straw. He was no longer gulping his precious drink. On the contrary, after writing an article worthy of the front page, he was feeling extremely relaxed.

“I thought the story was pretty good,” he continued. “And Ryman did, too—he gave me the front page. The front
page
, Andrea!”

“Travis, you saw with your own eyes the miracle of Eddie’s healing—it was the hand of God! Yet you all but discredited it with this story of some delusional mystery man.”

“Look, I admit that what happened to Eddie is beyond my understanding, but my reporting was solid on this. The fact is,
nobody
knows who this man is.”

“But why did you have to make him out to be crazy? Do you want your own nephew to read about this years from now and wonder if some crazy man had something to do with his miracle?”

I really don’t care . . .
“Like I said, I don’t know what happened to Eddie. Apparently, the doctors don’t either. But I was facing a written ultimatum from my editor. He wanted a good story, and he likes articles that spice things up a bit.”

“Spice things up a bit? Travis, I’ve been praying for you the past twelve years that you would come to know the Lord. And even though you haven’t yet, I still thought your morals were in the right place. Obviously, I was wrong.”

“My
morals
? What’s that supposed to mean? Just because I don’t accept this neatly packaged notion of God you’re always cramming down my throat? I didn’t do anything wrong in writing my article, and in the process I probably saved my job. People will draw their own conclusions—they always do, no matter what we write in the papers. But the facts are the facts. There have been some unexplainable medical healings with this mystery man involved in a good number of them. Yet nobody knows who he is.”

“But you wrote that this man claimed to be Jesus Christ. That’s not true!”

Travis shrugged and sipped some more of his diet Pepsi, refusing to let Andrea dampen his joy. “Depends on who you ask.”

Chapter Twenty

A
WAKENING WITH A JOLT,
the man groggily turned over in the bed. The Motel 6 bed’s comforter and sheets were scattered haphazardly on the floor and the pillow behind his head was damp. It was the evidence of yet another restless, fitful night, something that was becoming all too common for him.

The dream remained vividly etched in his mind as he yawned and pulled the pillow over his head. But it was so much more than a dream—it was the vivid recollection of the last time he and Nina had been together. The last time he’d seen her alive.

“Are you doing anything special today?” she had asked, a question she posed to him every day. She had always been interested in his activities.

“I’m going fishing with Pop,” he’d answered, just before kissing her on the forehead. Her skin was soft and warm; he’d always loved the flushed way she looked first thing in the morning.

“Your pop will like that. You two don’t spend enough time together anymore.”

He nodded, but he didn’t want to talk about Pop—a man who had far too many issues for him to deal with. But the activity of fishing had always been their great equalizer. It was just two men out on a boat, surrounded by nature’s splendor.

“I’d rather spend the day with you,” he said. And he certainly
would
have, if he’d only known . . .

“No, you go fishing with Pop. I’ll be at the firm most of the day, finishing some last-minute things for the case. The trial starts Monday.”

He groaned, pulling her closer to him. “Don’t remind me. I know how you get during court cases. Once that trial begins, I’m not going to see you for two months.”

She laughed. “That’s not true! We may not have as
much
time together, but I’ll plan to make the time we do have as meaningful as possible.”

“Let’s start right now,” he’d said, his passions stirring.

“Start what?”

“Making time as meaningful as possible.”

THE RAMIFICATIONS OF
the newspaper article didn’t impact him until later that morning, after he’d walked into Five Points Diner for breakfast and had taken his usual booth next to the window. The buttermilk pancakes were especially fluffy this morning, and he enjoyed a quiet twenty minutes alone with his thoughts, gazing out the window.

That all changed, however, when Florence burst through the diner’s doors, pointed in his direction, and exclaimed, “There he is!”

Startled, he looked up. The ten or so patrons also looked up from their meals, though most of them were regulars and accustomed to hearing Florence’s loud voice.

“You’re the . . . Ohmigod, you’re the man from that article!” Florence hurriedly made her way to his table.

“I’m sorry,” he replied, confused. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“There was an article in yesterday’s paper about a man claiming to be Jesus walking around healing people in Sumter. It mentioned an incident here in Columbia, though. A little deaf boy with deformed ankles who can now walk and hear—it was you! I remember you praying for that boy in here last week.”

He coughed nervously and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Yesterday’s paper?”

“Uh-huh. Here, I kept a copy.” Florence walked to the bar counter. He was conscious now of several pairs of eyes peering at him from over coffee mug rims.

This isn’t good . . .

Florence returned, waving the paper above her head like a bingo game winner’s card. “Here it is, right on the Metro section’s front page.”

He took the newspaper and quickly scanned through the article. Everything he read was precisely the kind of attention he sought to avoid.

“They’re talking about you, right?” Florence pressed, reaching out slowly and touching his arm the way a devout Catholic might touch the arm of the pope. “You’re really not . . .
Jesus
, are you?”

He jerked his arm away and picked up his glass. “Uh . . . listen, Florence, can I get a refill of iced tea? It tastes really good this morning.”

Florence nodded and walked to the counter.

Still aware of several stares fixed in his direction, he stuck his hand into his pocket, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, and left it on the table. Then he stood to leave.

“Hey!” spoke up one of the regulars seated two tables over. “Where you going, mister? I wanna hear about how you healed them people.”

“Maybe another time,” came his hurried reply as he beelined toward the door.

“Hey!”

“Hey, mister!” someone else shouted.

Outside now on Harden Street, he strode quickly north, keeping his head down and staying in the shadows of building overhangs. Anger, like a slow-rolling fog, began creeping into his thoughts.

They wrote an article! They wrote an article about me!

And if writing an article alone wasn’t bad enough, that reporter had written a ridiculously false account of what had happened. He had
never
claimed to be Jesus—he had just invoked the Lord’s name each time he’d laid hands on someone. To claim to be Jesus Christ was . . . crazy!

He stopped walking and leaned against a bus-stop sign. Looking down at his hands, he felt the palpable urge to spit on them, curse them for having been unable to help the one person who needed the healing most. At any rate, he knew he had to get out of Columbia. Too many people at that diner had gotten a good look at his face, though no one knew his name. Running away like a fugitive on the lam wasn’t a move he wanted to make, but it was the only thing to do. The fewer people who knew who he was, the better.

TRAVIS RECEIVED A CALL
later that morning from Florence, claiming the mysterious man had shown up at the diner.

“Whoa, whoa,” Travis replied, nearly choking on his diet Pepsi. He was already on his third can, at a quarter to noon. “You’re saying the mystery man—the man I wrote about in my article—stopped by Five Points Diner?”

“That’s what I just said, Mr. Everett. You hard of hearin’?”

“Uh . . . no. It’s just that—”

“And not only did he come by here,” Florence continued, “but several of us got a good look at him!”

In his haste to grab a pen and his reporter’s notebook from the corner of his desk, Travis knocked his Clemson Tigers cap and several knickknacks over. The noise caused Benny Dodson to peer over the top of his cubicle suspiciously, but Travis didn’t care. Now that he had gotten the front page for the first time in his career at the
State
, perfect little Benny Dodson no longer intimidated him.

“Y’all got a good look at him?” Travis asked, managing to simultaneously glare at Benny. “What’d he look like?”

“Are you going to put my name in the paper, too?”

The not-so-subtle way Florence asked the question made it clear she wanted to be quoted. Travis suppressed a chuckle—seemed like everybody wanted their fifteen minutes of fame, no matter where or how that fifteen minutes came.

“Sure, Florence. I’ll quote you.”

“Hot dog! Well now, let me remember. I’d say he was around six foot two, medium build. A black man, but handsome, like he could be a model for one of Belk’s department store catalogs.”

“What was he wearing?” Travis asked.

“A navy polo shirt and some Levi’s.”

Travis scribbled furiously on his notepad. “Did you see where he was going when he left?”

“No, not really. Mystery man got outta here pretty quick after I showed him yesterday’s newspaper.”

Travis nearly choked again. “You w-what?”

“Well, sure! I wanted him to know he was famous round these parts, so I showed him your article.”

“And the man read the whole thing?” Travis was starting to get a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, a feeling that had nothing to do with the hearty stack of pancakes he’d polished off two hours earlier.

“He sure did. But it was the strangest thing—he acted all spooked afterwards. He got outta here like he was in trouble with the law or something. Left me a twenty-dollar tip, though.”

Travis cursed. Florence had just run his front-page story right out of town. “Thanks, Florence,” he finally managed through clenched teeth as the gears in his brain began churning. What would Detective Columbo do in a situation like this?