Brother Word (16 page)

“You just knocked around in those places? I mean, you didn’t get a job?”

Chance shook his head. “The same inheritance fund that had given me the house allowed me to kick back for a while. My family tree on my mother’s side dates back to a wealthy slave owner years ago. For whatever reason, this man willed his land and most of his assets to my great-great-grandmother, and it’s been passed down the family line ever since. What I was doing in those small towns was continuing my ongoing argument with God—I couldn’t deal with how He just allowed her . . . just allowed her to die.”

“Chance, you can’t just—”

“I know. I know, but that season of my life was hell to get through. And sometimes all you want is someone to blame, even if it
is
God. One day I came across one of Nina’s diaries, though. She had been so deep into this divine healing stuff during the time she was diagnosed with cancer, and she’d written about how she had visions of me laying hands on people in wheelchairs and seeing them walk, stuff like that. And I couldn’t shake what Floyd Waters had prophesied to me either.”

Or what my mother had been telling me all my life, that God was going to whisper such special things to my life . . .

“So for six months, I focused on praying and studying what the Bible said about healing. Then I started attending some tent revivals and small church services, looking to put into action the things I’d learned.”

“You just went up to people and started randomly praying for them?”

“No. It was . . . Well, let me explain it this way. I just felt led by the Holy Spirit to ask certain people—whether they were walking with a crutch, or in a wheelchair—if I could pray for them. And I didn’t meet anyone who refused prayer, especially after the prayers I was praying . . . began to work.”

“What happened?”

“Well, the first time, I was at a small church in Vicksburg, Mississippi. There was an old man whose back was so bent over he was constantly looking at the ground. He’d been in that condition for years, but he still prayed daily for God to heal him. Other than Nina, I had never seen someone with faith as strong as his. I prayed the Word of God over him, laying hands on his back and commanding his spinal cord to come in line with how God created it, in Jesus’s name. As soon as I lifted my hands, he starts shouting and jumps in the air three times. When he landed that third time . . . his back had completely straightened out.”

“My God . . .” Lynn whispered.

“Yeah. To actually see that with my own eyes . . .” Chance just shook his head. “I felt a little like what Peter must have felt like, walking on the water. I stayed in Vicksburg for a while, but the word of mouth and attention got too much for me. I didn’t want to be some kind of sideshow attraction. And when some people I prayed for didn’t get immediately healed like that old man, they got upset and started calling me
everything
but a child of God. I got out of Vicksburg quick, taking the train east and just stopping in various small towns.”

“What God is doing through you is awesome, Chance. But you just can’t keep avoiding whatever it is in your past that you’re running away from.”

Chance shook his head. “Every time I think about that night in Lake Charles, when I laid hands on Nina . . . and
nothing
happened, I start going through that hell all over again. Why wasn’t she healed? How come I can lay hands on perfect strangers—people I will only meet once in my lifetime—and
they
get healed? How am I supposed to live with that irony?”

“Chance . . . I know that has to be hard for you, and I don’t have an answer as to why Nina wasn’t healed. All I know is that God is using you right now to do things that make an unbelievable difference in people’s lives. My doctor told me I might never see again, and to have that fear weighing on your heart every single night . . .
that’s
going through hell, too. And what about that little boy who can now hear and walk? Or Pastor Smallwood? Or God knows how many others who have healing testimonies because you prayed for them?”

“I’m real happy for you, Lynn . . . and for those others, too. But I don’t know that it takes the place of the joy I felt being married to Nina.”

“Chance, you said you weren’t raised in a Pentecostal church. When you were married to Nina, did you have any thoughts of having such a healing ministry?”

He shook his head. “Furthest thing from my mind.”

“Okay . . . and this is just a small place to start, but if that night in Lake Charles never happened, I may have still been blind today. And Pastor Smallwood may have been dead of a heart attack. And little Eddie Everett is still deaf and handicapped. All throughout the Bible, God used men who had not only incredible faith but incredible frailties, too. Moses stuttered and struggled with self-esteem issues, yet God chose him to be Israel’s deliverer. King David was described as a man after God’s own heart but he was also an adulterer, murderer, and a man who struggled with sexual lust his whole life. Elijah called down fire from heaven, but he also hid in a cave and wanted to die over a single threat from Jezebel. Jonah was disobedient and stubborn. Abraham and Isaac both lied about their marital status out of fear. Jacob was a—”

“I get the point,” Chance cut in. “And I know what you’re trying to say. But that doesn’t mean
my
pain isn’t less real. I didn’t ask for this gift.”

“I know you didn’t. You know, Billy Graham once asked a question of the Lord. ‘Why me?’ he asked. ‘Why did You choose a little boy from a farm in North Carolina to spread the gospel across the world?’ Chance, we don’t always know why God does what He does. But the fact remains—in spite of your questions and ponderings, He still chose . . .
you
.”

THE SILVER STAR
pulled into Savannah at just past seven in the evening. Lynn stood and stretched her legs before looking at Chance, who was still gazing out his window. It seemed he had been looking out his window the whole trip.

“Are you getting off?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah. But I’m catching a connecting train to Jackson, Mississippi, and then on to Ruston. You’re not going to follow me all the way
there
, are you?”

Lynn sensed that she was blushing, as she was still somewhat embarrassed at having purchased a ticket on a whim. But at least she’d met the mystery man, right? And at least she was in a better position to help him, if that was what God wanted her to do.

“No. I should be getting back home. We’re organizing an important outreach effort this weekend, and I should be there. Chance, is there any way I can get in contact with you? I know you’ve told me you don’t want any media attention, and it wouldn’t be for anything like that. I just . . . well, I’d like to help you.”

“Help me with what?”

“It’s not good to carry that burden around without anyone to talk to, or pray with. You’ve been talking with me for the past two hours, and—”

“It’s not like I had a choice,” he interrupted with a faint smile.

“But you were willing to open up and share. And that’s important.”

“What’s
important
is my privacy. How do I know you won’t give out my name to that newspaper reporter you’ve already talked to? Or that you won’t tell him what I’ve just been telling you?”

“Chance, what you’ve told me today was said in confidence—you have my word on that. The reporter called me late Monday night and asked some basic, general questions. Then he twisted my words around to make it sound like I said something I didn’t.”

They walked off the train and into the station, finding seats in the waiting area. While Chance excused himself to the restroom, Lynn went to the counter and checked on the departing time for return trips to Columbia. The next train was scheduled to leave in one hour. She returned to find Chance not sitting down, but standing by a window.

“You have a fascination with the outdoors, huh?”

He shrugged. “Me and my pop . . . we used to go fishing every Saturday when I was younger. Never caught much of anything, but sometimes we’d take our boat out for miles on the river, surrounded by water and trees . . . just the two of us. I stopped doing that after Nina and I started hanging out. Pop asked me once to go out with him again on the river, but I told him I was too busy.” He turned around from the window and Lynn was horrified to see he was on the verge of tears. How often did she see men cry?

“But you’re going to see your father now, right?” she asked, wondering what she would do if he did start crying.

Chance shook his head. “It’s not the same. Even though I was the one Nina’s mother made to be the outcast, people think of Pop as the outcast’s
father
. He ran a bait and tackle shop for years, but the business stopped when people stopped coming by. Now he barely even gets out of the house. And when he does, it’s only to hobble on down to the liquor store.”

Now Lynn felt like the one about to cry. “Chance, you shouldn’t be going through this by yourself. Let me help you.”

“Help me do what? What are
you
going to do? You know what it’s like to be me? You know what it’s like to go places and see sick people, have a burden to lay hands on them and see them healed? All the while you’re dying to have someone lay hands on you? How do you heal a broken heart? Can you answer that since you want to help so much? Maybe women know the answer better than men, because we’re taught to be tough and don’t show emotion, right? We’re supposed to let problems bounce off us like rubber. But all that macho talk is a lie—all I know is, I had a great life. Love, happiness . . .” He turned away from Lynn, back to facing the window.

“But Chance, you can have a great life . . .
again
. I don’t know why you had to go through what you did, but neither did Job. You know the story—Job kept his faith and in the end God blessed him double for his trouble.”

“Losing Nina was more than just
trouble
.”

“But will you let me . . . uh, talk to you sometime? Or listen? I can just listen if you need an ear.”

“You’re asking for my phone number?”

“If you put it that way, yes. Yes, I suppose I am.”

He shook his head as he looked around him, finally picking up a piece of scrap paper lying on the windowsill. He quickly scribbled ten digits on it and handed it over.

THE SILVER STAR’S RETURN TRIP
to Columbia was taking forever, at least in Lynn’s mind. She’d finally gotten her wish about knowing the mystery man’s identity, but it was like that proverb her mom had always told her as a child: “Be careful what you wish for.”

“God, I don’t know what You had in mind here,” Lynn said, gazing out the same window Chance had been staring out a few hours earlier. With darkness settling over the landscape and her compartment’s reading light on, the window doubled as a reflecting glass.

“I just wanted to know who this man was,” Lynn continued, praying to God in the best way she knew how—simply talking as if she were having a conversation with her best friend. For in many ways, that’s exactly what she was doing.

“I prayed for someone with the faith to believe for my healing, and You answered my prayer with Chance. And I know it didn’t make sense for me to get a ticket and follow him onto the train, but what else was I supposed to do? And after he confided in me the incredible things he’s gone through, what am I supposed to do with that information?”

Even as she asked the question, she heard the quiet answer from the Lord resonating in her spirit.

Minister to him . . .

“But God, how am I supposed to minister to him?” It was a strange question coming from the outreach director of one of the largest churches in the Carolinas. As a full-time minister, her community involvement included daily counseling of pregnant teenage girls, praying with gang members, ministering to people in halfway-house transitions, and helping unemployed people finding work. And that was merely community ministry, which came
in addition
to her administrative duties at Faith Community. She’d been faced with a number of hopeless situations, yet seen the Lord work miracles time after time.

But through all the experiences in her ministry, she’d never encountered someone like Chance—a man possessing such a great gift and yet in such great need of help.

“How am I supposed to minister to him, God?” she asked again, staring out the window but really staring at herself. She made a mental note to meet with Pastor Gentry—maybe as another man, he would know what to do.

Chapter Twenty-six

T
HE PHOTOGRAPH WAS SPLASHED
on the
State
’s front page, on the left column below the fold. The tagline underneath read, “Mystery Healing Man Captured on Videotape.” Travis had also wanted to be able to disclose the man’s name, but he hadn’t yet been able to uncover that information.

The mystery man had paid cash during all the times he’d stopped by the diner (which meant no credit card trail), and his picture hadn’t turned up any matches at nearby motels or hotels. Travis theorized the man was from out of town; if he’d been a local, surely someone would have recognized his picture. But Travis wasn’t worried about discovering the man’s identity, since it was bound to come out sooner or later. The interest in the story was growing daily as several area churches announced they would be teaching on the subject of divine healing or holding special services for the sick.

Travis’s stature was rising in the eyes of his fellow journalists as well. He was no longer thought of as a lazy reporter, since he had done all the legwork on a story now dominating the local news. He’d been approached by two colleagues, inquiring if they could do anything to help on the story, but had turned them away with a big smile. This was
his
byline. And Benny Dodson had been purposely avoiding him, not having anything to brag about. Benny had never had
his
name mentioned on the front page of the entire newspaper.

The red light on his phone began blinking, something it had never done before at eight o’clock in the morning, and he picked it up on the second ring.