One

    Tyrone tried to teach his son that being a pastor's son, people would watch how he lived; that being black, people would watch him even more. Tyrone watched him, too, this pre-teen boy with his mother's chiseled features, on the waxing tide of adolescence, and what he saw frightened him, sent him to his knees in prayer.

    Once, their home had backed to wooded hills that in the autumn turned with all the glory of the rising and setting sun. The property stretched back into the Tennessee woods, and they would walk through leaf-strewn paths dappled with sun to find the trickle of a stream threading the gullies cut deep by rain.

    On their trips there, Aaron would chase frogs and catch turtles. On occasion they spotted deer, and Aaron learned not to startle them. The deer would watch them, ears out, eyes wild, legs stiff and ready to spring. Then, once, the deer ignored them altogether, dropping their heads to forage among the leaves.

    Aaron wanted to build a fort. At first it would be a place to watch the deer in secret, but the idea grew even after his interest in the deer passed. Neighborhood children rallied around him in his cause, and Tyrone found himself hesitant to stop the building project. Making friends had always been hard for Aaron.

    The difficulty, Tyrone knew, was with Aaron. Tyrone loved their walks in the woods, but he dreaded Aaron's scurries along the stream, fearing he might catch one of the frogs. Aaron had been sent home from school twice already for catching frogs in the schoolyard and whipping them headfirst into the building's brick wall.

    Since Tyrone kept their homes as continuous worksites, lumber and tools were easy to find. Scorning help and permission, Aaron and his new friends scampered into the woods with their pilfered goods and nosily began construction. Planks were nailed into trees with cruelty. Boards angled wildly, one above the other. Twisted nails pointed like teeth from nightmarish walls.

    In the morning, the boys returned to find their fort rebuilt, strong and safe, but the boys seemed to resent the midnight help. Each day they tore down Tyrone's work and started again, finishing in the evening with a creation too deadly to let stand.

    Eventually, the boys lost interest in their fort and moved on to other pursuits. Aaron went with them, now an accepted part of the group. Tyrone was just finishing remodeling the house. Usually, they would have sold it then and moved into another rundown house they could buy cheap and fix up. At a late evening dinner on the porch, with Aaron sleeping at a friend's house and his sister, Angie, already tucked in for bed, Tyrone and his wife, Angela, made up their minds to stay. It would be a harder life, getting by on Tyrone's pastoral salary alone, but for Aaron it was worth it. The house at the edge of the woods remained their home for three years.

    Toward the end of that time, Aaron attended a swimming party and, thinking it funny, rolled his best friend in a nest of fire ants. It nearly killed the boy. Tyrone responded by transferring to a new church, selling the house, and moving the family. The new church accepted them with transparent trepidation. People were talking, and their reputation spread. Reputations, they found, were unforgiving things—a warped glass through which their lives were viewed.

    Somehow, Angela alone escaped the family stain. Or maybe it had only seemed that way after her death, that time when all saints are best remembered. The hospital sent her home to die, and she lingered there for months, wasting away. First she lost bowel control and then coherent thought. In the minds of those outside the house, however, she died on a bed strewn with flower petals, her face plump and radiant with approaching death.

Two

    Jessica had neither family nor friends. She immersed herself in the life of her patient, becoming the petite, black goddaughter to a Jewish godmother in Germantown . The woman, Nadja Bladeck, had settled into a nice apartment, cared for her ailing husband, and then developed Alzheimer's. The family arranged for Jessica to help care for the husband, and when he passed on she stayed to care for Nadja.

    In the beginning, Jessica alone had shouldered the job, and lived more with Nadja than she did in her own home; not a bad situation, had she been able to banish the smell. Nadja's apartment sparkled with fresh paint and carpet, flowing rooms, and an oversized fireplace that was never used. Still the familiar smell remained. Part organic, part chemical, the smell of decay and antiseptics; it followed Jessica from job to job and clung to her clothes. She kept a small set of clothes especially for work, and they never shared the same drawer or closet with anything else she wore. She washed them separately and hung them in a locker she kept in her carport, where their smell could not contaminate the rest of her life.

    As Nadja deteriorated, Jessica knew she needed help. The family obliged and soon Jessica settled into a more regular routine, working forty hours a week and able to attend church again. It had been several months since she had last attended; she knew few of the people and had since forgotten that the church had changed pastors. Still, when she could go, this was where she went; whether or not they deemed her one of theirs, she considered the church her own.

    The new pastor was a handsome, young man. Young! He must have been over forty. The realization made her sad, as it often did when she realized her life had slipped away. Now she was old enough to see that forty was young. So was fifty. She no longer knew when young stopped. Maybe she would know when she got there. Maybe it would come when she stopped caring for others, and others started caring for her.

    The pastor had a prophet's name: Zechariah, Tyrone Zachariah. After that first Sunday, she returned home to research the prophet. The Jews had been exiled to Babylon , but in B.C. 538 a decree from Cyrus allowed them to return home and rebuild the temple. There were others in Israel , however, who did not want to see the temple rebuilt. Under pressure, the project faltered and stopped until God raised two prophets to urge the people to finish the job. These two prophets had been Haggai and Zechariah.

    Jessica liked that. Zechariah had been written in the context of coming home and rebuilding the things of God—a need she saw in her own life.

    In a sermon, the pastor told her about his wife's illness. By then the rest of the church knew and had stopped talking about it openly, unless provoked. Jessica alone was struck by the words, and she alone cried. She began asking then, and the women would tell her of Angela's strength and beauty. They had visited early in the disease, before Angela had grown too weak for social calls. They had played cards and laughed, and they missed her awfully.

    Jessica brought dinners to the pastor's house. Three times she left the food and hurried away, excusing her need to run. On the fourth visit she lingered long enough to be invited inside. She entered the kitchen only to set out the food, but refused to leave again until she had emptied the sink and scrubbed clean the stove.

    The pastor argued with her, telling her to stop, but she saw things plainly, did what she thought needed doing, and said what she thought needed saying. Her attitude both annoyed and consoled him. Eventually he offered to pay her for working a few extra hours around the house. She took the job, and then refused the money. She worked nights for the money but days for the Lord.

    She cared for Angela, who was no longer strong and pretty. Sometimes they still played cards. On occasion Jessica stayed late, telling stories about her kinfolk. Jessica had never shared these stories before, but had kept them as her private treasure. She had dreamed them up on lonely nights when she wondered where she came from and who her people had been. These were the fictions of her dreams, too precious to risk ruin in the sharing. Angela, however, was safe. She had lost the capacity to doubt. She would help keep the stories real.

    Then one night the pastor had stood in doorway, listening. Jessica hesitated, not wanting to go on, but Angela cocked her head like a beagle pup. All the strength she had left to muster was focused on listening to that story. Continuing on felt like killing the lamb on the altar, but even so, she told the story.

    “My people come from Mississippi ,” she began. “Momma picked cotton till she was fired for trying to register to vote…”

    The pastor said nothing about the story, but when it came time to leave, Jessica found herself compelled to stop at the door and turn back. “The stories I tell her about my people, they're not true,” she told him. “That is, they're not about my relations. My uncle raised me until I was six. He's the only family I remember.”

    He started to say something, but she stopped him.

“I just wanted you to know. It was fine until you listened in, but now it feels like I'm lying. I don't want that. You know it's not true, so now it's not a lie, anymore. Goodnight, Pastor.”

    He had stared at her, but she thought he looked pleased. She felt herself frowning and allowed herself to smile.

    Then, one late afternoon, Nadja walked out of the house. They found her three hours later, two blocks away, lost and confused. The day help was fired, and Jessica agreed to pick up the slack until the shift could be filled. She no longer had time to visit Angela, and she stopped going to church. Twice in three months Jessica managed to take dinner to the pastor and his family, but she wanted to do so much more. Instead she did less and less, and then Angela died.

    The pastor called her at work to give her the news. As they talked, she found a seat and stared at the wall, as if looking for traces of guilt. They talked for several minutes before Jessica realized the news had been given; the time for the call was over. The voice on the phone was a man talking to whoever would hear. She understood then that he had no one else he could talk to.

    Jessica managed to attend Angela's funeral, but the family had not filled the vacant day shift. Two months passed: two months without going to church. Once, she took dinner to the Zechariahs, but when she opened the door, she found them at the dining table, eating well from what the church ladies had provided. The pastor thanked her and told her how much they would look forward to eating her good home cooking again. Even so, she knew she was no longer needed. She never even went back for her casserole dish.

    By the end of the second month, Jessica was praying desperately for time off, for a chance to get away from that home where nothing happened. Her entire life had dwindled down to one woman, a woman who asked her the same questions every day, made the same observations, and sat in the same recliner facing the same television, watching the Weather Channel. Why the Weather Channel? She never went outside.

    The son came one day, sat on the edge of Nadja's couch, and explained to Jessica what the family had decided. They were placing Nadja in an assisted living facility. Jessica would no longer be needed.

    She helped the family pack, and then she kissed Nadja goodbye. Nadja looked at her and smiled, trying to fake a face that showed she understood. Jessica reminded the family to have her ears checked. The hearing aids weren't helping. The family nodded and tried to fake the same face. Jessica went home.

    Jessica had a fifties' era house she rented, with green siding and a tin carport on the side. A picture of her uncle hung in the living room, so that it was the first thing she saw as she entered the house. She remembered little about him, but he had been her family. They had lived together in a little apartment in a building that no longer existed. He had been a musician, had played the trumpet and the saxophone, too. He had kept a day job as well, but she couldn't remember what, only that he was always gone and never seemed to sleep.

    She called her service to remind them she was available, hung her work clothes out in the carport, and then settled into her favorite chair to watch television, anything but the Weather Channel.

    On Sunday she went to church and shook the pastor's hand after the sermon. He greeted her by name but said nothing about the casserole dish she had left behind. She wondered if she had left the dish behind as an excuse to visit. She hadn't thought so, but now it seemed obvious, since the unspoken plan had been thwarted. She moped like a child all the way home, thinking she was out both a dish and a reason to visit, until she saw the error in her logic. The dish was not meant to warrant an invitation. Instead, it was an excuse to show up without one. Suddenly, strangely, she found herself whistling.

    She slept poorly that night, and the casserole dish was to blame. She saw printed in the dark a pale diagram linking intent and action, linking the dish with the pastor and the pastor with her loneliness. She trudged out of bedroom and examined her face in the bathroom mirror. She studied her lines, and puffiness, and the wiry gray hairs that stood out in rebellion. Had she grown so pathetic? Would she chase a man she only knew because of his dying wife? The thought made her eyes dot with tears, but she fought them back and refused to cry. Whatever she was, she would never be pathetic. She gave up the casserole dish for lost and went back to bed.

Three

    On the day before Angela's funeral, Tyrone had cleared his son's room and set Angela there, in her coffin. Remembrance wreaths lined the room. Black crepe covered the wall behind the coffin, but he allowed the evening's light to enter unhindered through the window, bathing the blue-on-beige wallpaper in its fading glow.

    After the funeral, Angela's sister and her husband flew home. They had not visited in over four years, but they had come for the funeral, and Tyrone had given them his room. After the funeral, he removed the crepe and the wreaths from Aaron's room and put the furniture back, but Aaron would not sleep there. For a week, Aaron slept in the living room, as he and Tyrone had the night before the funeral.

    On the eighth day, Tyrone moved his things into Aaron's room and offered him his, but Aaron would not take it, for there Angela had died. Angie took the master bedroom, and Aaron moved to Angie's old room.

    Tyrone continued to dream of Angela's death, but those dreams soon came less often, as did his visits to her grave. They had buried her in an old cemetery near Germantown . Her parents had been buried there and had left Angela plots enough for all her family. On one of his visits, three months after the funeral, he found himself trapped by a funeral's pedestrian traffic. The funeral had ended, and the meandering crowds moved by him like cattle. The crowd was white—Jewish, he thought—all except for one.

    Guilt awakened when he saw her, Jessica Jones, a member of his church, at this funeral, alone. He should have been there to comfort her but had failed in his ministry again, and this time it was worse. She had been there for Angela.

    Still, he reminded himself, he had not known of the funeral. Looking again at the other faces, he surmised that Jessica had not lost a member of the family, but, then, she had no family to lose. He saw in Jessica's expressive face, her grief and need for comfort. Though she neither wailed nor sobbed, the blank stare, the deep irises, and the tense muscles around the mouth holding back the emotion all spoke of a woman in pain. Angela had looked much the same on the day they buried her mother. Who, then, was this, who had been so dear to Jessica?

    He remembered the story of Jessica's mother who worked the cotton fields until she was fired for wanting to vote. The fact that she had never known her mother, and had no real stories of her, made this one seem all the more important.

    As he remembered it, seven of the county's cruelest men had been released from jail to guard the town hall, where the people came to register for the vote. They tossed aside most because they had no identification, couldn't read the material, or couldn't sign their names. Jessica's mother passed on all three counts, and still they barred her way. She never registered. She never officially cast her vote, and in the eyes of most, she had been beaten.

    Jessica's mother, however, would not be undone. She snuck back into the cotton fields at night and plucked the balls, prickly barbs and all. In the barn where the registry guards kept their horses, she wove that cotton into the horse blankets. Before she left, not being a cruel woman herself, she had to stop and apologize to the horses for the discomfort they would suffer. “Buck hard,” she advised them, “and it will be over soon enough.”

    As far as anyone could tell, Jessica's mother had been kept from casting her vote, but in her eyes, her voice had gained seven times the strength of a single vote.

    Tyrone thought it important that Jessica had cast her mother in the role of a Malcolm X rather than a Martin Luther King. He wondered if it spoke of a spirit of anger and bitterness, or if it were simply the nature of myth making. The modern era craved heroes of action; and heroic, nonviolent, civil disobedience may have lost is impact in the telling. He hoped not. He knew that he had, again, overanalyzed something simple. Nonviolent heroism had preserved the moral high ground of both a cause and a generation. He hoped never to see the day when the events of that era failed to touch the hearts of the people.

    He rolled down his window and tried to get her attention, but he was lost to her in the crowd, and then she was lost to him. Finally, the mourners moved past him, and he drove on to Angela's grave. He placed flowers at the foot of her humble marker, kneeling as he had in times past, praying and thinking.

    This time, though, horse blankets worked their way back into his thoughts. He imagined their barbed weave beneath the saddle and the great oaf of a man on top. He saw the horse's eyes widen with surprise and pain. He saw it buck like a rodeo stallion and the oaf tumble headlong across the barn. He saw too the sparkle of understanding and joy the story had brought to Angela's eyes.

    Though he had never been one to talk to the dead, he told Angela the story now. He felt that somehow this was what God would have him do. It made no sense to him. Angela was free of the grave and the body it held. Why was he so compelled now to speak these words aloud?

    As he finished, he heard a soft choking, the sound of woman crying. His skin went cold, and he stepped back from the grave. As he did, he heard the sound again, sharper and clearer. He turned to see Jessica standing where the cemetery road met the grass, close enough to have heard everything he said. Tears glistened across her smiling face.

    He went to her and dried her tears. They walked together and talked, and he invited her home for dinner.

    He spent all day trying to prepare a decent meal, but cooking had never been his gift. When the doorbell rang, announcing Jessica's arrival, the house already reeked of burnt chicken flesh. He answered the door, thinking he would have to take her out to a restaurant. But there she stood, dish in hand. She had thought he meant for her to cook.

    On Valentine's Day he took her to Beale Street . They ordered Bar-BQ to go and ate on the grass in Handy Park while a blues band played for tips. For Easter, she helped decorate the church. They spent the Fourth of July at Mud Island Park .

    On the anniversary of Nadja's funeral, he took her to see the grave. When she had placed her flowers and said her prayers, she asked if he wanted to visit Angela's grave. He did not. “I don't mind, really,” she insisted, pulling him in that direction.

    He refused to move or to explain, but that night they dined at the Three Oaks Grill, and there he asked her to marry him.

Four

    Aaron and Angie stayed with one of the church families, the Davises, while Jessica and their father enjoyed a honeymoon. Mr. Davis worked at night and slept most of the day. Mrs. Davis liked to talk. When the phone or a neighbor was not the dumping ground of her attention, Aaron and Angie were. Her mouth moved like a vicious wound.

    Angie took calcium pills at night—small, white, round ones—because they were good for her bones. “Help you sleep at night,” Mrs. Davis pointed out, but it sounded less like information than an accusation.

    Mrs. Davis always woke Mr. Davis while he was still in need of sleep. She tried to wait, she swore she did, but if she had to hold this in another moment she would burst, and he had to be up in an hour anyway. He never listened but had perfected the art of the mindless response. She demanded little else. He also kept a large stock of caffeine pills—small, round, white ones—to keep him awake on the job.

    Over her knitting, she once told Aaron, “They're so adorable together, Jessica and your father.” She talked the sweetest while baiting the trap. “When did they start dating each other? Do you know? She must have been such a comfort to him while your mother lay dying.”

    Aaron thought his father a fool for sending him here, even though Aaron knew that no one else had the room or opportunity to keep them. He wanted to spit in the woman's face for what she was suggesting, but that would have been for his mother's sake, and his mother could not be hurt by Mrs. Davis and her ideas. His father might be, and Jessica. Those possibilities intrigued him.

    “Yes,” he said, “she was a great comfort, especially at the end. She never left my dad's side. She was with him day and night.”

    The woman's eyes grew brilliant, as if set afire by the sparks from Aaron's tongue. He might as well have told her that he had caught them making love while his mother died in the next room, but she had no need to be told such things. The idea had festered in her heart, like an infection feeding on roots of bitterness.

    After the honeymoon, everyone returned home. Angie moved out of the master bedroom and into the room that had once been Aaron's, the room where their mother's body had been placed on display.

    “You'll never sleep in that room,” he said, “your bed resting on the very floor that held mom's coffin.” She laughed at him. She had slept well enough in the room where mother died. Why should this be any different?

    Every night, Angie trudged off to her new room, exhausted. She changed, brushed her teeth, washed her face, and took her calcium pill; and every night she lay staring at the ceiling for hours, listening to the click of clock gears and the thunderous beat of her own heart. Unlike Aaron, she had never noticed how much one pill looks like another, calcium pills and caffeine pills: small, white, and round.

    After the first week, the fun of the prank began to wear thin. Angie looked ill and had been sent to the principal's office for sleeping in class. Aaron thought it might be time to switch the pills back. Before he could manage it, though, his father forced him to take his old room back. Aaron protested, but Angie's insomnia outweighed his complaints. Unhappily bedded again in this room of the dead, he made new plans. Didn't all women need calcium? Soon both Angie and Jessica prowled the halls like the walking dead in modest nightgowns.

Five

    Tyrone had known the honeymoon wouldn't last forever, but he never expected to be sleeping alone so soon. He stared up at the ceiling and waited for the phone to ring. That one sound would tell him that the insomnia continued, that the house was not to blame. He waited as the night dragged on.

    Physically, he was exhausted. It took three trips to the motel before the ladies had everything they needed. The last item, the calcium pills, he never did find and had to buy a new bottle at the drug store.

    He had kissed Jessica and Angie goodbye and told them to call if they couldn't sleep. Now, alone in his bed, he knew he should be happy for them that the phone did not ring. He tried to be, but if the house were to blame, then the house would have to be sold. A depressed Real Estate market meant the house would have to sell cheap, or it might not sell at all.

    The phone refused to ring until morning, and then it rang with news of a wonderful night's sleep. Happiness did not fully evade him. He felt it, and he felt the complications that came with it. Without hesitation (or much hope), Tyrone put the house up for sale.

    The next few days were busy, as he tried to catch up from his time off, wrote his sermon, and visited the church's shut-in members. Back at the office, the phone rang. Jessica needed aspirin. She and Angie both had horrible headaches, and Jessica hurt so much, she doubted she could drive.

    When Tyrone returned from his aspirin run, a note from one of the elders awaited him, asking about the For Sale sign. Another stopped by and asked why Tyrone's new wife had checked into a motel. Tyrone gave the same answer to both questions, but not the answer he wanted to give. He wanted them to mind their own business.

    Later, the second elder called back and asked Tyrone to attend an emergency meeting of the elder board. Tyrone controlled himself and calmly asked the reason for an emergency meeting. His only answer was, “We'll discuss that at the meeting.”

    Insomnia , Tyrone thought. Such fuss over a little insomnia. People need to mind their own business . He planned on putting a few elders in their place. He would listen to them calmly, and let them build their own gallows, as Haman had done, trying to hang Mordecai. “The tongue,” he would remind them, “is set afire by hell for the destruction of a man's life.” He would explain again the selling of the house and the use of the motel. He would suggest that next time they believe him the first time, or, even better, trust him enough to not even ask.

    At the meeting, he waited while they started, biding his time until he could cut into them for grotesque abuse of power. He could hardly control himself when the head elder said, “We've called this meeting out of personal concern for you, Tyrone.” His defiance quickly deflated into stunned disbelief, though, as the elder continued. “People are concerned about the appearance of impropriety between you and your wife. There's talk of voting you down, and we're afraid they've got the votes to do it.”

    Tyrone tried to understand what he was hearing. No matter what people were saying about his wife's stay in the motel, it couldn't be that bad that fast. There had to be some mistake. “What impropriety?” He asked.

    “It's regarding your courtship,” they explained. “Jessica was there with you before Angela died. That and the rush into marriage have been a concern. They raise questions.”

    “That's absurd. Jessica came to comfort my wife when she was ill. We didn't see each other again for months.”

    “Some people claim to know otherwise. They say she was there to comfort you. They say that's why she can't sleep now, why she won't stay in the house. The guilt is driving her out.”

    Tyrone stared at them, his mouth open. Finally, he composed himself enough to say, “We have done nothing wrong, and I will not be pushed out by a horde of rumor-mongers.” When he left the meeting, he had already decided in his heart what had to be done. If he limped away and took a pastorate with another church, the rumors would haunt him the rest of his life. He had to fight. God would be with him; all things would work together for his good. Of that he was sure.

Six

    After Tyrone's meeting with the Elder Board, the elders scheduled a congregational meeting for the next Sunday evening.

    Aaron had been envious of his sister's motel stay, and though Tyrone could not afford it, he paid for Aaron to have his own room for a night. It meant his son had unfettered access to cable television, which Tyrone would not even allow in his house, but it also gave Tyrone what he needed most: time alone to prepare.

    He spent his first hour of solitude in prayer, for he had many questions he needed answered. Should he defend himself at the meeting, or should he say nothing, as Jesus had done before His accusers? Silence did not seem to be a Biblical mandate. In fact, in Matthew, Jesus had prepared His disciples for their defense before judges and kings. In that case, the instruction had been to not prepare, the Spirit would tell them what to say when the time came. Did that apply to him, now, in this situation? No, he was not being persecuted because of his faith. It was right to speak, and it was right to prepare. That left one final question: what should he say?

    He worked late into the night, but his efforts ended up in piles of wadded paper. Each time his defense turned into a sermon. Looking at his latest effort, he was tempted to use it Sunday morning, instead of his current sermon, but the congregation would never stand for it Sunday night. They would demand facts, not another preaching.

    A thought came to him, as if spoken to his heart. Your arguments will not change their hearts. Only the Spirit can do that.

    Tyrone looked again at his new sermon. He could give it Sunday morning. What then? Would the people open their hearts to the Spirit of God? Would they come to Him in repentance? A response like that on any large scale would constitute a revival, a true revival. Tyrone had seen more revival meetings than he could remember, but never in his life had he seen a true revival in which the people's eyes were opened to the Holiness of God.

    When need of sleep forced him to stop, he pushed away from his desk and pulled himself into bed. For half an hour, he tossed and turned in fits of nervous exhaustion. His mind, fixated on the idea of the revival, returned to it again and again. When he slept, the revival played itself out in his dreams. Twenty, thirty, forty people filled the isles, coming forth, kneeling in repentance, and rededicating their lives to the one true Lord, or else coming to Him for salvation for the very first time. He woke in the morning with the certainty that God would use him to bring a revival to His people.

    Now, instead of dreading Sunday's approach, Tyrone could hardly restrain his excitement. He worked and reworked the sermon and dedicated himself to prayer. This was why he had become a pastor, for moments like this. God was good. God was more than good; He was a great and awesome God, full of glory and wonder! Hallowed be the name of the Lord!

    In the approaching days, the house was shown three times, and one actually called back to make an offer—a low offer, consisting of a trade and a few thousand dollars thrown in. From the looks of it, the house they wanted to trade had languished on the market for close to a year and was in bad need of repair. Tyrone struggled with the counter offer, but found it impossible to concentrate on anything but the coming revival. An hour before the offer expired, he called the agent and requested an extension. Monday, he told them, he would be better able to make a decision on Monday.

    Sunday came, and Tyrone gave the greatest, most heart-felt sermon of his life. He felt the Spirit of God. He knew at that moment that he was in the will of God, doing what he was meant to do. He closed the sermon with a passionate altar call, inviting the people to come before God to find forgiveness and peace. He waited and a restless silence filled the room. Nearly a minute passed before someone stirred. An elderly gentleman in the back stood up, lumbered awkwardly down the pew and into the isle, and then turned and walked out the back door. One door stuck open, revealing his hurried waddle to the restroom.

    At last Tyrone realized that no one was coming forward. He stammered through a quick prayer and told the people to go with the grace and peace of God. The congregation, about ninety souls that day, gathered and left in the same awkward silence in which they had sat. Tyrone shook no one's hand.

    At the congregational meeting that night, he tried to defend himself, but the passion had been bled from him. The only passion left came from those who sought to destroy him. Before the vote had been cast, Tyrone knew he had lost the church.

    Then Aaron stood in the back row, squeezed his way down along the pew to the isle, and walked forward. By the time he was halfway to the pulpit, the church went silent. Each mouth snapped shut as heads and eyes turned to face him. He stopped in front of the pulpit, and without ever looking Tyrone in the eye, turned to look out at the congregation.

    “This hasn't been the best day for me,” Aaron began, and by the catch in his voice, Tyrone could tell he was crying. “The truth is I've never much listened to what dad has to say up here. I've never much cared, but this morning I couldn't tune him out. I had to listen.

    “He said that God had put Himself in man's shoes and walked a harder road than we'll ever have to follow. Maybe that didn't touch none of you, but it grabbed hold of me, and it wouldn't let go. This afternoon, I locked my bedroom door, got down on my knees, and asked God to forgive me and be my Savior.”

    A disgruntled mumbling rippled through the room. In the faces of the congregation, Tyrone saw their commitment harden. They saw only these many years where his son had not known God, and it was the more reason to vote him down. Tyrone no longer cared. He son had come face to face with his Savior. Nothing else mattered. They could take the church.

    “The hardest part though was knowing that I needed to stand up here, tonight, and tell you where you're wrong. I don't want to do this, but I know this is what the Lord wants. He wants you to know the truth.” He took a deep trembling breath and then told about Mrs. Davis and the lie. He told them what had really happened between Tyrone and Jessica, and he went on to tell about little, white, round pills.

    For a long time, nobody said anything. Tyrone thought to address the congregation, but he could not. His voice stuck in his throat.

    Then at last, Aaron spoke again, this time quoting, word-for-word, the closing of Tyrone's sermon that morning—including the call to repentance. First one person stood and then another, until they were coming forward by the two's and three's. Tears ran. Voices rang out, begging God for His mercy. They knelt before God, three dozen or more, and Tyrone looked over the heads of the people to his son, who walked alone up the isle.

END

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