by Ray Garton
Suddenly, one of the men was bending over him, over Cole, lifting him up.
“I’ll hold him,” he said, “you cut the ropes.”
Another of the men, some distance away, suddenly bellowed, “You know, I never thought about it before, but at least this way we’ll make the liberals happy ’cause we ain’t killin’ dolphins, right?”
All the other men, including the one holding Cole, roared with laughter.
Someone cut the ropes and his limbs were free.
Big hands with fat fingers ripped his shirt off and peeled his pants from his legs like the thin seal from a sausage. They pulled his shoes and socks off and tore his underwear away until he was naked and shivering.
“Okay, you take him,” the man holding him said. “Tell you what. Give him to Cormy — he knows just how to hook the bigger ones.”
Moments later, Cole was looking at a big man with huge moles on his face. He smiled at Cole. “Tell ya what, kid, I ain’t gonna hit any of your organs or arteries, or anything. It’ll hurt, but you’ll be okay, I promise.”
The man put a very large hook through Cole’s right shoulder. The excruciating pain made him pass out for a little while.
Then he awoke to big hands slapping his face.
“Kid! Hey, kid!” one of the men shouted at him. “You gotta be awake for this, okay? You gotta be awake and kickin’!”
Once Cole was alert and crying out for help — while the other men laughed and mocked him — one of the big men wrapped his thick arms around Cole — sending unbelievable tendrils of pain from his shoulder through his entire body — lifted him, and threw him over the side of the boat and into the water.
Beneath the water, he held his breath, with his cheeks puffed out like little balloons on each side. The pain was still unbearable, but he was more interested in breathing.
Then he began to thrash and kick.
He found the surface, got his head above it and cried, “Help me! Please help me help me help me — ”
Through bleary, watery eyes, he saw the men looking over the edge of the boat, grinning and laughing at him.
“Go get ’em, boy!” one of the men shouted with a laugh in his voice.
He went under again, quite unexpectedly, still kicking and flailing, with his mouth closed and his eyes open. And he saw it
The shark.
Coming up from the darkness below, aimed directly at him, its predatory, dead-black eyes staring, its teeth showing in its half-open mouth, all of them, rows and rows of sharp, crooked razors.
His own blood clouded the water around him until the silent predator looked like some nightmarish ghost coming closer.
Cole let out his breath, screaming under water as the shark came closer and closer . . .
. . . closer and closer . . .
GOD’S WORK
For Donald Wildmon,
who likes to call himself “Reverend”
Pastor Gil Freeman stood near the back of his church’s multi-purpose room, watching as only a handful of people gathered for the after-services potluck. The room was usually filled by now, humming with voices and redolent with the smells of casseroles and lasagnas, pies and cobblers. But now, it looked bare and the few dishes that had been brought were not enough to fill the room with their warm aromas.
There were well over a dozen long rectangular tables set up with metal folding chairs lined along the sides, but they were empty today. Those who had shown up would barely fill two of them.
Most of the people there were the older members of the congregation, the stooped and wrinkled, with cloudy, but still-sparkling eyes above smiles that had weathered years of heartache and yet did not fade. They were the only ones who had tried to make Pastor Freeman feel welcome when he’d first come to this church nearly two months ago and now they were the only ones keeping him from feeling completely rejected by his congregation. He was very grateful to have them there.
The others — the middle-aged and even younger — had been suspicious of him. They seemed to think he was too . . . soft, too gentle. He was young — he’d be thirty-two in a month — and soft-spoken and his sermons were quiet and calm rather than loud and charismatic. But he’d learned not long after his arrival that this congregation was an angry one, angry at the world for its sins and offenses — which they seemed to take personally — and they wanted someone in the pulpit who would share their anger and give it a booming voice.
But Pastor Freeman did not, and today they were displaying their disappointment in him more openly than they had before. They had shown him first during that morning’s sermon, and now they were driving the point home by not coming to the potluck.
Even worse than their absence was the fact that Pastor Freeman knew where they were . . . and why. He knew what they were doing, and it was tying his gut into knots.
He did not see his wife Deborah approaching from his right and was startled when she took his hand, but he quickly smiled.
“Nope, that smile doesn’t fool me,” she whispered.
“What?”
“You look like you’re developing an ulcer over here.” She squeezed his hand. “You shouldn’t let it bother you so much. You’re going to wrinkle early if you keep frowning like that.”
“I know,” he sighed, “but . . . I keep thinking I should’ve said something else, that I could’ve kept it from happening! If I’d just said the right thing this morning.”
“Honey, your sermon was fine. It was powerful. In fact, it was the best sermon I’ve ever heard you deliver. But their minds were set on this. They were determined. There was nothing you could do, no matter what you said to them.”
He shook his head. “What if these are the only people who show up for church next week?” he asked, nodding his head at the small but cheerful group beginning to fill their plates at the other end of the room.
“So? Remember what He said? About wherever two or more are gathered?”
He nodded slowly.
“Are you going to come join us, Gil?”
“In a minute, sweetheart.”
“Well, don’t be long. The kids are worried about you. They wanted to know what was wrong with Daddy, why he looked so ‘weird’”
Pastor Freeman smiled. “Tell them I’m fine, and I’ll be there in a minute.”
He was a tall man, so she had to stand on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek as she rubbed a hand over his back, then she joined the others across the room.
Pastor Freeman paced a bit, then leaned his back against the wall near the window that looked out on the parking lot. The nearly empty parking lot.
Yes, he knew where they were. He could imagine what they were doing at that very moment. He looked at his watch. They had no doubt gathered and were waiting.
That poor man, he thought. That poor, poor man.
He closed his eyes, rubbed them with thumb and forefinger and thought about that morning’s sermon, wondering if there was something he could have done differently . . . something that would have prevented what had happened . . . and what was no doubt going to happen . . .
The faces that looked up at Pastor Freeman as he stood at the pulpit were not pleasant ones. Their jaws were set, their lips were firm; there were no smiles — except, of course, from the older members of the congregation, who had lived long enough to know that their God and their happiness were all they had to cling to — only stern faces that seemed to want all of this over with so they could get on with their plans for the day.
He knew what those plans were. That was why he had decided this morning’s sermon would be unlike all the others, all those quiet, gentle sermons he’d given over the previous weeks of which these people seemed to disapprove so much.
He put his Bible on the pulpit, placed a hand on each of the cold, wooden edges, locked his elbows and leaned forward, smiling.
“I decided to scrap the sermon I’d planned for this week,” he said as quietly as usual. “I began working on it early in the week, but then I said to
myself, ‘Gil, this isn’t the sermon you need to give. The one you need to give is . . . a bit harder. It has more of an edge.’ And that was very true. But I want you to know that I am saying what I’m about to say this morning out of concern, and nothing more. Not out of anger, not with condemnation, but with deep, sincere concern for my church family.
“I know that you have not been completely . . . satisfied with me as your pastor. For that I am truly sorry. Honestly, I have done my best, and will continue to do so. I hope that you will give me a chance. And I hope that you will keep in mind that I am having to give you a chance as well. Because I know about something you are planning to do. Today, in fact. And it’s something of which I do not approve. But my approval means nothing. The important thing is God’s approval, and, to tell you the truth . . . I think God is hanging His head over what you plan to do today.”
His mouth was cotton-dry, but he’d anticipated that; he reached down to the glass of water he’d put beneath the top of the pulpit, took a sip, then a deep breath, and continued.
“I’ve heard the whispers,” he said, his voice a little louder now, a little more authoritative. “I’ve heard the talk about what’s to happen today. It’s been difficult not to. I’ve been saddened by the eagerness in your voices, by the joy in your eyes as you talk about what you plan to do.
“I know about the writer. I know about James K. Denmore. I know about his books. In fact, when I heard all the talk going on among you, I went out and bought one of them. I read it. And I wonder . . . how many of you have read his work? I wonder only because you are apparently so angry about what he writes. If you have not read his work, then your anger is not righteous indignation. It is the ugliest kind of hypocrisy. But I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and will assume that you have read it and, having read it myself, I understand your anger.
“The publishing industry calls it ‘erotic horror’, and that’s fine. They need labels to separate their books in the bookstores. But I was, I must admit, offended. I found the book distasteful in the extreme. Although it was obvious to me that Mr. Denmore is a terribly talented and gifted man, I felt, after reading that book, that he was selling himself short by using his talent to write such a book.
“But . . . I don’t know Mr. Denmore. I’ve never met him. I’ve never sat down with Mr. Denmore and had a long heart-to-heart conversation. I don’t know what he believes. I don’t know what experiences his life has given him, I don’t know why he writes what he writes. I don’t know where it comes from or what has brought him to the point where he puts such things on paper. So. To me . . . Mr. Denmore is just another person. I feel no differently about Mr. Denmore — even after reading his book — than I feel about any of you. He is a human being. He is still — no matter what any of us feels about him — a child of God . . . Just like the rest of us.”
He shifted his weight from foot to foot, put the side of a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat, then went on.
“As I said, the man is talented. The Bible tells us that talents are given to us by God. Therefore, Mr. Denmore’s considerable writing talent was given to him by God. But . . . God left it up to him as to how he would use it. Because God, from the beginning of time, from the Garden of Eden onward, has given us the freedom of choice. He values our free will just as much as we should because He knows that without that free will, we are nothing more than slaves. And the Bible is filled with examples of that, filled with events in which God stood back and left the choices open to humankind. More often than not, they made the wrong choice, but it was their choice because He left it up to them.
“Sometimes, however, we forget that. We take it upon ourselves to impose on others what we feel is God’s will. And that, my friends . . . that is terribly, terribly wrong.”
Pastor Freeman’s heart was pounding nervously against his ribs and he was finding it difficult to control his breath, because the faces looking up at him were growing darker; they were becoming angrier and more upset with each word he spoke. He swallowed hard and, after a long moment of nervous silence, he finally continued . . .
Pastor Freeman blinked his eyes several times, bringing himself out of his thoughts, and headed across the multi-purpose room. He’d decided what he had to do.
He went to his wife’s side and said, “Deb, honey, I’m going to take off for a little while.”
Her smile fell away and she looked suddenly worried. “Why? Where are you going?”
“Down to the bookstore. I just . . . I want to do what I can.”
She sighed and shook her head. “Do you really feel like you have to do this?”
He nodded. “Please tell everyone that I’ll be back soon.”
“Okay.”
He leaned down and gave her a kiss, then started out toward the parking lot. Voices called out. “You leaving us, Pastor?” “Where’re you off to?” “Aren’t you hungry?”
As he slipped on his coat and put a small Bible in his coat pocket, he smiled, waved and called, “I’ll be back in just a little while. Enjoy yourselves.”
Outside, he got into his car, started it up and headed across town toward the bookstore, praying silently that he was doing the right thing . . . and that he had done the right thing at the pulpit that morning . . .
“When God put that tree in the Garden of Eden — the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil — he didn’t put it there for aesthetics. It was there for a very good reason. It was there to give His two creations, His two children, Adam and Eve, a choice. He told them not to eat of that tree because, if they did, death would come to them as surely as they breathed. Not right away, necessarily . . . but it would come eventually. But He left that door open to them, He gave them that choice. He did not have to let them choose. He could have made them devoted to Him if He’d wanted. Like robots. But would that have been the right thing? No. That would have made them nothing more than automatons, forced to love and worship Him. Their actions would have held no sincerity, no heartfelt love. And if you’ve been in love, then you know that true love comes only out of free will. It cannot be forced. So He put that tree right there in the garden with them. And, unfortunately . . . they made the wrong choice.
“But it was their choice!” Pastor Freeman shouted, startling many of the people seated in the pews. “God left it up to them! He made them believe nothing, He made them do nothing! And,” he said, his voice quieter now, “when they made that wrong choice, as disappointed as He was, He loved them no less. Their exile from the garden was a result of their own actions, but God stayed with them and watched over them. They were still, after all, His children.
“He does the same with us as He’s done throughout history. He wants us to choose the direction our lives take. Those who are saved have chosen their salvation of their own free will. They have chosen how to live their lives.
Those who are lost have chosen to turn their backs on God . . . for whatever reason. He doesn’t make us accept and love Him . . . He leaves it up to us and hopes that we will.”
He took another sip of water. Beads of sweat were beginning to gather just above his upper lip and he removed a handkerchief from his pocket to dab them away.
“Are we wiser than God?” he asked then, his voice firm, his eyes stern as they swept over the congregation. “Do we know better than He? Were you and I put here on this earth by our Heavenly Father to decide what others should and shouldn’t do? What they should and shouldn’t read or look at or listen to?
“I’ve learned about the other protests this church was involved in before I came. I know that you went to an art gallery showing an exhibit of photographs by a very controversial artist. I’m familiar with that artist’s work and, once again, I understand your disapproval. But I do not understand your anger!” he shouted, pounding a fist on the pulpit and making some of them jerk in their pews. “That kind of disapproval should be accompanied by sadness and — just as God does with us when we make the wrong choice — with continuing love and forgiveness. But w
indows were broken! A door was destroyed! Arrests were made! Dear God, what kind of behavior is that? Not Christian behavior. Not loving behavior! Certainly not the kind of behavior God has shown His stubborn and frustrating children throughout the centuries . . . or the kind of behavior He expects His children to show each other.”
He used the handkerchief to dab his forehead this time.
“I know about your visit to the Civic Auditorium on the night of a concert given by a particularly offensive rap group about which I’m sure I feel the same as you. But was that behavior necessary? Was that the right thing to do? In front of all those TV cameras? In front of all those young people who, now more than ever, need examples of true Christian love?”
There was a rather loud mumble in the congregation, a voice of dissent that apparently decided, after a moment, to remain silent.
“I know about your occasional gatherings at one of the local clinics that performs abortions where, I understand, the women going into the clinic had garbage thrown at them and were called murderers. Murderers! Maybe you remember an incident in the Bible in which a group of righteously indignant people caught a woman in the act of committing adultery. They went to Jesus to ask what He thought should be done with her, reminding Him that the law instructed them to stone her to death for her crime. Is that what He thought they should do, they wondered? And He told them, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ Well, they thought about that a second, then they did exactly what they should have done: they high-tailed it out of there! Why? Because there wasn’t a man standing there who was without sin.”
He leaned far over the pulpit. “So. What about you? Are you without sin? Do you have the right to stand in judgment of an artist or his admirers? Is your slate clean enough to allow you to angrily stand between a rap group and their fans? Are you sinless enough to accuse a young woman on her way to have an abortion — and going through what is probably the toughest, most painful time of her life — of murder? Are you?” He shouted his next words as he pounded a fist atop the pulpit again. “No, you are not! And to behave as if you are is a misrepresentation of Christianity and a slap in the face of God! If Jesus Christ were present at that clinic, He would stand between you and those women and shout, ‘Let those of you without sin first cast a piece of trash at her! Let those of you who’ve never done anything wrong call her a murderer! Let those of you who are perfect pass judgment on her!’“