Brother Word (17 page)

“Everett speaking.”

“Travis, what do you think you’re proving by getting a picture of this man in the paper?” He instantly recognized his sister’s voice.

“Andrea, I’m just doing some follow-up reporting. The people of South Carolina need to know—”

“Travis, I’ve heard your ‘the people need to know’ spiel. But what the people
really
need to know is that the Lord Jesus is the one deserving of the glory for all these miraculous healings. Your wild-goose-chase search for a man who’s only
serving
Christ is placing the attention on the wrong person.”

Travis rolled his eyes and had a notion to hang up the phone. But he was already on Andrea’s bad side—why make it worse? And why wouldn’t Andrea just let him have his moment in the sun? Was it so hard for her to be happy about him becoming an important person in the local news scene?

“Travis, did you hear what I said?”

“Yeah, but what difference does it make? My only responsibility is to report the facts. And the
fact
is, this man was spotted several times at Five Points Diner, and I was lucky enough to get a picture of him. Since everyone’s talking about this guy, the editor deemed it important enough to place the picture on the front page.”

“Well, another
fact
is that many area churches are now holding special healing services for the sick, Travis. Since you’re holding so strongly to this ‘reporting the facts’ shtick, you should come to one of these services. As a matter of fact, we’re going to the one at Faith Community Church on Sunday night. Consider yourself invited.”

“Uh . . . I don’t know,” Travis began, racking his brain for an excuse.

“Maynard’s flying in from Boston, too, since he wants to see Eddie walk and talk with his own eyes. And afterwards, we’re all going out to eat at Damon’s Clubhouse.”

Travis bit down on his lower lip. His sister
knew
Damon’s was his weak spot. A stack of all-he-could-eat, honey-glazed ribs? And with big brother Maynard footing the bill, no less? An offer like that was not to be easily turned down.

“I’ll have to . . . um, I’ll have to think about that . . . especially if Maynard’s flying in. But I could just meet y’all afterwards at Damon’s.”

“No. This is important, Travis. Eddie is going to say a short speech at this service, and as his uncle, I think you should be there.”

“So now you’re using both Eddie
and
a plate of ribs against me, huh? You’re killing me, Andrea.”

“I’m doing no such thing. I’m giving you a chance to see your nephew
speak
in front of a crowd for the first time in his life. And I’m giving you a chance to see another side to this healing story.”

“Oh yeah? And what side’s that?”

“The side that . . .
believes
.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

P
ASTOR, DO YOU HAVE A MINUTE?”

Pastor Gentry looked up from his large study Bible and removed his reading glasses. “Sure.”

Lynn walked inside the spacious office, which had been designed in much the same way as a corporate executive’s suite—plush, but understated. She was always amazed at the sheer volume of books, commentaries, and concordances lining the wall-to-wall mahogany bookshelves. She’d once thought Pastor Gentry couldn’t
possibly
have read all these books, and so she used to randomly select books from the shelves and ask what they were about. Without fail, however, her pastor had given an exhaustive description on the subject and content of each book. Lynn was still looking for a Christian book he’d neither read nor knew anything about.

“What’s on your mind, Sister Lynn?”

Lynn took a deep breath. Where to begin? She started by explaining how she had run into the mystery man at the train station, and then subsequently purchased a train ticket to Savannah to follow him. Emphasizing that some parts of her conversation with Chance had been confidential, she retold how situations from his past had contributed to his conflicting psyche.

“That man has gone through a lot,” Pastor Gentry agreed after she was finished. “You know, when I accepted my call to the ministry, I’d heard about the trials and tribulations that ministers of the gospel have to endure, but experiencing them firsthand almost shook my faith completely. There were times I felt like closing up this Bible and forgetting about preaching. But the love of Christ constrained me, and I think Chance is experiencing the same thing. Even though he’s gone through a lot, he’s been blessed with a gift that he can’t ignore. To whom much is given, much is required.”

“But shouldn’t all Christians be walking in the healing power of God to lay hands on the sick and see them recover? There’s a scripture that says as much.”

“Mark 16:18,” Pastor Gentry said, nodding his head. “God has given gifts to the body of Christ, as it’s written in 1 Corinthians 12, and among those are the gift of healing. Some Christians are graced to operate more fully in one gift than another, but that’s what makes us all a body. There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are many members, but one body. Chance is certainly not the only person who can lay hands on a sick person and by faith see God heal that person—throughout the history of the church, there have been some highly anointed faith healers.” He gestured to the bookshelf on his right. “Could you get that book for me? Right there—the blue hardback right there on the edge.”

“
God’s Generals
,” Lynn read from the spine, pulling the book off the shelf. “Written by Roberts Liardon—I think I’ve heard of him.”

“You’ve probably heard about many of those generals, too. Roberts Liardon received a mandate from God to preserve the heritage and history of many of the church’s great leaders.”

Lynn pondered that statement for a moment. “You think Chance could be . . .”

“A modern-day
general
?” Pastor Gentry leaned back in his chair. “With what you’ve described and the gifting he appears to operate in, it’s possible. You see, what you have to realize about truly anointed—and I mean
truly
anointed—people is that, in addition to their gift, they also have incredible flaws. Just take some of the generals in that book, for instance.

“Many people consider William Seymour to be the catalyst of the Pentecostal movement in the twentieth century, based on how God used him in the Azusa Street revival. But though he was highly anointed, he was also blind in his left eye. John Alexander Dowie was a great healing apostle in the early days of his ministry, but he eventually became sidetracked from God’s plan for his life and he started believing he was the prophet Elijah. William Branham possessed an incredible healing gift, but was semiliterate, had very little Bible knowledge, and as such became a walking disaster concerning healing doctrine. At the height of John G. Lake’s ministry in the early 1900s in Spokane, Washington, so many people were healed under his ministry that the government declared Spokane the healthiest city in America. Yet his passion to see people healed was partly born out of seeing eight of his brothers and sisters killed by a strange digestive disease.”

Gentry leaned even farther back in his chair and crossed his legs. “So you see, possessing a healing gift alone does not make a man immune to heartache, adversity, or controversy. In fact, I believe it does exactly the opposite.”

“I agree. Chance seemed so . . . lost, so shaken up by the tragedy of losing his wife. I wish there was something I could do to help him, to minister to him.”

“You know, the more I think about it, the more I wonder about your meeting him at the train station. The Bible says that our steps are ordered by the Lord. God may be up to something.”

“You think so?”

“Oh yes,” Pastor Gentry responded, nodding slowly. “Oh yes.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

R
USTON, LOUISIANA,
situated seventy miles east of Shreveport and thirty-five miles south of the Arkansas border, was the only home Chance had ever known, which explained his mixed memories as he stepped off the Greyhound bus. It had only been two years since his exile, but those two years had felt like twice as long. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he headed south down Trenton Road, a path he’d walked countless times as a child. Nothing about the road—from the towering tree branches blocking highway signs, to the beer bottles and random paper debris littering the grassy shoulder, to the scent of freshly chopped firewood heavy in the air—had changed.

He’d never imagined he would ever leave Ruston—and be
forced
to leave, at that. He knew the flavor and pulse of this town intimately, the way a veteran mechanic knows the varied sputters of a classic automobile. Not that there was a great deal to know—life here was slow and steady, with many of the twenty thousand or so residents well into their golden years. Louisiana Tech, the local college, helped infuse the town with a fresh supply of young people, but Chance always thought of the students as four-year tourists. The people who called Ruston home were the ones who’d always called it home—those whose families had land here, had grown up here, and would eventually depart from here to enter their final resting place.

“Hiya!”

Chance turned at the voice and waved back at the elderly man sitting in a rocking chair on a porch. He recognized him as Ol’ Man Rollie and recalled that Rollie was always out here on his porch, waving at passersby. Rollie hadn’t recognized him (the old man’s eyes, along with his hearing, had been bad for as long as Chance could remember), but Chance knew that if he stayed here long enough,
somebody
would recognize him sooner or later. He hadn’t wanted to return in the first place, but he really didn’t have a choice. He had to come back . . . for Pop.

Bennett Howard had returned from Vietnam disabled and disillusioned by what the remainder of his life held for him. His left leg, decimated by shrapnel, had been amputated at the knee, and he had been shot three times, with two of the bullets still lodged inside him. Though he’d been awarded the Purple Heart for his service, Bennett Howard didn’t care about that. Chance had asked to see his pop’s medals once and had been answered with enough curses to shame a sea-weary sailor. Now the man lived to spend the rest of his days fishing out on the river, especially after Chance’s mother died. Who could blame him? Life had not been easy for Bennett, which only made the scandal surrounding Chance that much harder to deal with.

The screen door was locked but the front door open when Chance finally walked up the steps to the house he’d called home as long as he could remember.

“Pop!” He rapped on the screen. “Pop, you awake?”

He waited for a few minutes, hearing nothing inside.

“Pop!”

After another minute of silence, Chance stepped off the porch and walked around to the back of the house. He had once hidden a spare key behind the old air-conditioning unit in the backyard, and he wasn’t surprised to find it still there. He unlocked the back door and walked into the living room. The air smelled stale and sweaty; neither the air conditioner nor the fan had been used in weeks.

“Pop! You in here?” He walked to the bedroom and opened the door. In addition to the stale, sweaty odor, a strong liquor scent attacked his nose. His pop lay facedown on the bed, his hands splayed out on both sides like a human airplane. Several empty beer and vodka bottles decorated the floor next to the bed.

“Pop!”

Chance rolled the old man over on his back, tilted his head forward and gently pressed on his father’s eyelids.

“Pop!”

“Ungghh . . .” Slowly coming to, Bennett started coughing and wheezing, spittle and foam flying from his mouth and dripping down the front of his T-shirt.

“You messing with this stuff again?” It was more of a statement than a question.

“Ungghh . . .”

“Pop, wake up! You hear me?”

Bennett groaned again. “Dat you, Chance? You back?”

“Yeah, I’m back.”

“For good? ’Cause Jucinda ain’t have no business spreadin’ that bull—”

“Pop, I don’t know how long I’m back,” Chance interrupted, taking a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiping his father’s mouth. “How much have you had to drink, Pop?”

“Who you now, the liquor police? I ain’t had but a couple beers.”

“You’ve had more than a couple of beers. A couple of beers ain’t nothing for you anymore. You’re just killing yourself, you know that?”

Bennett coughed, a wheezing, racking noise that caused Chance to wince.

“Already dead, son. Going to ’Nam killed me long time ago.”

Chance shook his head, not wanting to get into another discussion about Vietnam. “C’mon, Pop. Let’s get you in the bathtub.” Gently, he lifted his father’s frail body from the bed and carried him to the bathroom. He set him down on the toilet stool, reached over, and turned the tub’s faucets on.

“Ungghh . . . don’t make that water too hot, Chance. I . . . can’t . . . don’t like it . . . when the . . . hot.”

“I know, Pop. I know.”

“WHEN WE GOING BACK
out on the river, Chance?”

Chance looked over at his father, washed and dressed and lazily swinging in the hammock. He had sobered up at last and was now finishing off the last of the chicken drumsticks Chance had gotten from KFC.

“I don’t know, Pop.”

“Well, you better figure it out quick. I’m gettin’ too old . . . gettin’ too weak to be handlin’ that boat by myself.”

“You could always get one of those Williams boys to go out on the river with you.”

Pop laughed. “Hell gon’ freeze over ’fore I ask one of them sorry, no-good—”

“Alright, Pop. So you still can’t forgive and forget. I’m just saying, you shouldn’t be going out there on the river by yourself.”

“But now, I ain’t got to. ’Cause
you
back! And I know you back for good. Jucinda can’t do nothing to you no more.”

Chance wasn’t sure of that, because Jucinda Harris had never been one for idle threats. But he would let Pop think what he wanted—as stubborn as the old man could be, it was better to keep things that way.