If You Really Knew Me (Anyone Who Believes Book 1)

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “Well, I’m doing this piece on Beau Dupere, as you know. I’ve interviewed him and Justine and a few others. He suggested I talk to you, as well, although I already had that in mind after seeing the video the pastors showed at the big rally in Parkerville, the video which looked like they ambushed you really.” Anna rattled all of this quickly and smoothly, nerves speeding her delivery but not hindering her tongue.

  “Hmmm,” Jack said, trying to remember the video.

  “It’s the one where somebody with a handheld camera caught you at the door of the church and asked you whether Beau had more than one wife or multiple sex partners, and things like that.”

  Jack nodded. “Oh, I’d forgotten about that. So it got on the Internet?”

  As with Beau, Anna struggled to believe that Jack was entirely unaware of the movement started by Dixon Claiborne and friends. “It is on the Internet now, but initially it was shown at a big town-wide rally with national media present.”

  “And the point was to make Beau look bad?”

  “To put it mildly,” Anna said. “Some in the movement are calling him the Devil or the Antichrist.”

  “Really? That’s a lot. And their reason is . . . his relationship with the rich and famous, or his healing ministry?”

  Anna tried to decide how best to answer that, tipping her head and looking at her recorder for a second. “Personally, I think their motive is jealousy at his success. But they did a pretty convincing job of making him look very bad, in fact. For example, they showed a photo of him with three of his . . . wives, at a Hollywood party.”

  Jack nodded, but didn’t immediately comment. He seemed to be listening to a voice that Anna didn’t hear, looking just over her head. “And you want my comment on all this?” His low voice was edged slightly with the sort of squeak that comes from rubbing Styrofoam together.

  “Of course. As his mentor and long-time pastor, I wonder if you endorse his lifestyle choices.”

  Jack leaned forward and set his elbows on the arms of the chair, his chin resting on the knuckles of both hands. “Well, I should start by saying that I don’t know all the details of Beau’s personal life these days. Our consultations recently have all been about ministry direction. Many years ago, I did premarital counselling for him and Justine, and I knew a lot about their relationship back then. I consider them a great team, a very good complement to each other. But I can’t endorse or criticize his personal life now, because I don’t know the details, and because I’m not in the habit of addressing the personal lives of my brothers and sisters in front of the press.”

  Anna grinned halfway, trying to look sympathetic. “I understand. But, just for the record, would you say you would allow a church member to have more than one woman living with him, with whom he has a conjugal relationship, even if they don’t legally call it a marriage?”

  “Ha.” Jack let out a laugh and straightened up in his chair. “A hypothetical question?” Now he smiled sympathetically. “So this is the type of story you do about the stars and billionaires?” he said, returning to that grandfatherly tone.

  Anna sighed. “Yes, I write articles about the lives of rock stars and lottery winners. I’m not particularly known for digging up the best dirt. But my readers do want to understand the personal lives of celebrities.”

  “And Beau is one of those celebrities?” This wasn’t so much a question as a passive confrontation with reality.

  “He is both rich and famous, and pretty good looking besides,” Anna said playfully.

  Jack laughed with full voice. “All right. I’ll grant you all of that. But I should also say that Beau no longer works for this church nor any of its affiliated churches. He’s still a member of the church down in Malibu, but not in leadership.”

  “And that means you have different standards for his behavior?”

  “Well, biblically there are a lot more explicit rules set out for church leaders than for the members at large.”

  “But he’s a public figure with a world-wide ministry.”

  “Sure. He has one of the most remarkable healing gifts in modern history. And I don’t see any sign of that diminishing. In fact, with his children around him, I’ve seen more healing power lately.”

  “Doesn’t that gift obligate him to some kind of higher moral standard?”

  Jack shook his head slightly and made the face that goes with the word “naw.” What he actually said, however, was, “You don’t have to be a church leader to have a powerful gift. In fact, I respect the way Beau has stayed realistic about his gifts, not trying to be a pastor, or other church leader, where that’s not really his calling.”

  “So, church members can have multiple wives in your church, or maybe multiple husbands?” Anna said.

  Chuckling, Jack teased her. “You thinking of joining up?”

  Anna snickered. Clearly, Jack was avoiding answering her questions transparently, but she felt as if this was more for the reasons he explained than to protect himself or Beau. If he didn’t know the details, he couldn’t comment on them, and it seemed wise to her to keep such things out of the public media, even if she represented one of those media.

  She knew she had to be more serious, so she tried another tack. “He admitted to having children with three of the women he lives with, including Justine.” Are you aware of those children?”

  Jack looked at her over his glasses, his head tipped forward as if in contemplation. “Oh, I know about his affair. He confessed that to the whole church and then reconciled with Justine over it. I also know that Olivia has joined their household. But I haven’t spent time with the whole family for several years. I don’t know all of the kids.”

  “But you’re not upset at the idea of him having children with multiple women?”

  “Upset? No. As I said, I don’t know the details. I haven’t been in that kind of accountability with Beau for a good many years. I guess you could ask his current pastor, down there in Malibu, but I don’t expect he would comment on the personal life of one of his members either.”

  Anna felt like she had missed an opportunity. She wasn’t sure, however, that she really wanted to go back and catch it. She was curious, on the other hand, about something.

  “Isn’t it against the Bible for a man to have more than one wife?”

  Jack grinned and raised his eyebrows, savoring the surprise he held for the young reporter. “Actually, the only thing the New Testament says about it is that pastors, or bishops—some would say—should only have one wife. And there’s more evidence in the New Testament that you should stay unmarried, than about how many wives a man can have. And then there’s the Old Testament. Solomon had thousands of wives and God let him build the Temple instead of his father David, because David was a warrior. And, in fact, David also had several wives, ‘a man after God’s own heart.’” He finished with a grin worthy of the class clown.

  Staring at him for a moment, Anna had to adjust her expectations. “So why then are all these pastors accusing Beau of having multiple wives, as if it’s the worst kind of sin?”

  “It is illegal,” Jack said, with a small shrug. “It also associates the accused with Mormonism, which is generally seen as outside of the mainstream among pastors like that. If I were to speculate, I’d say they were trying to appeal to popular cultural standards with that accusation.” He raised his hands from the arms of his chair. “But then, this is the first I’ve heard of these attacks on Beau. I make it a point to ignore the critics.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much what Beau said too.” Anna looked tired, this article was cooking more calories than any she had written before. Jack sensed this.

  “You seem pretty sympathetic,” he said. “Are you a believer?”

  Anna looked slightly startled. “In God? No, not really. But maybe I believe in Beau Dupere.”

  Now Jack was the one looking a bit startled, but he followed that look with a full belly laugh.

  Apparently, he knew just what Anna meant.

>   No Place Like Home

  Sara had texted both Jenny and Kim before she fell asleep that night of the confrontation with her father. Both of them said they would be glad to have her stay with them for a while, neither of them sure about a long-term arrangement, however. Uncertain about what to do, Sara stayed for two nights at each friend’s house. It felt like a pair of extended sleepovers. She snuck home when she knew her parents would be at church meetings and gathered the clothes she needed, or picked up forgotten personal necessities. She didn’t see either of her parents for nearly a week. Brett did catch her slinking out of her room the following Wednesday evening, however.

  “Man you really did it now,” he said, around a mouthful of ice cream. He stood at the top of the stairs when Sara stepped out into the hallway. She screamed from the shock of his voice smashing her guilty silence, and she dropped her purple gym bag on the floor.

  “Brett! You nearly scared me to death!”

  He grinned, a drip of chocolate stretching from his lower lip toward his little pointy chin. “Yeah, that’s ‘cause yer afraid to get caught, sneakin’ in here.” His grin only rested for another bite of ice cream.

  “Well, things are complicated,” Sara said, picking up her bag and squeezing past Brett with one hand on the railing. She descended the stairs like an athlete in training, feet fast and precise on each stair.

  Brett just turned around where he was and shouted after her. “Thanks for making my life easier.”

  Sara hesitated before making the turn into the kitchen. “How’s that?”

  Brett laughed. “They’ve been really nice to me since you screwed up. I can hardly do anything wrong. You just made life way easier for me.” He waved his spoon at her, as if conducting his point for an invisible orchestra.

  Sara just rolled her eyes, not surprised that Brett couldn’t sympathize with either her or their parents. She also knew that his playful comment carried a detectable measure of truth. Perhaps she had made his life a little easier, stretching their parents’ tolerance like a new pair of socks that has to loosen up a bit to be comfortable.

  Somehow, word about her sudden exit from her family home seemed to follow her wherever she went. People at work, whom she hardly knew, had opinions for her. Many of these comments focused on how she was going to pay for college now that she had chopped down the old money tree. Most people didn’t seem to realize that being both a pastor and a money tree was pretty much impossible. Sara’s expenses for college would be covered by a combination of scholarships and loans, just like they would have if she had stayed in serene unity with her parents.

  Sara had started to question whether college was, in fact, the next chapter for her to write. The spiritual revelations that had propped open her eyelids generated more passion than pursuing a degree in communications, even if from a prestigious private university.

  In fact, girlish dreams percolated just beneath her consciousness. The adulthood which she had glimpsed on the horizon as a young teenager had finally arrived, only to point her back to childlike faith in unseen supernatural forces and a rescue by a heroic prince.

  As the model Sunday school student, Sara had taken her Bible stories like so many vitamins and vegetables. So often repeated in her hearing, and even out of her own mouth, the stories had lost their fascination. But now, the stories of the early disciples sparked and flamed on the page. Their good news was now her good news. Their inexplicable words and actions now fit and flowed into her waking and sleeping life.

  She dreamed of Jesus riding to her like a conquering champion on a white horse, or strolling with her in a brilliant garden. At the same time, she lost her connection with the faith of her parents. The need for young adults to settle things into basic categories had not bypassed Sara. Her parents’ faith landed now in the category of useless things, even harmful and ridiculous things. And her new discovery of unction beyond peer and family pressure lacked any continuity with her childhood faith, as far as she could tell, at least in those early weeks and months.

  College seemed like part of that old life, lacking meaning in the context of dreams renewed and new dreams hatching every day. She would wait until she knew which of those dreams she would follow before she headed off to university. In the mean time, she needed to find a home.

  An Article of Faith

  Anna had published dozens of celebrity profile stories, though few of them started as controversially. That unusual genesis explained the article’s treatment by the religion editor and the editor-in-chief, as well as her own section editor. They voiced numerous opinions and insisted on an array of corrections, especially of omissions of personal details about Beau’s family.

  Of course, a paper wants to sell copies. They want to satisfy subscribers that they provide real news; and they even want to make a little news themselves, breaking stories and revealing hidden truth. Anna knew all that. What she didn’t know was the extent to which those ambitions would bend her story about Beau Dupere. If she had known, she would have concealed more of her recordings and notes from her senior colleagues.

  “You can decide, Anna, whether you enjoy this job and want to keep it, or you can have your name removed from the story and we will publish it anyway.” Dale Mattingly, the Editor-in-Chief, spoke to Anna as if she were a misbehaving teen. Marla Kato watched sympathetically, embracing the tension of Anna’s situation, but doing nothing to relieve it. Anna’s direct boss, Sandra Hollis, looked stern, her pale cheeks shaded with tensed muscles, her eyes unmoving. Sandra seemed to feel no shame about ganging up on Anna. It was just business.

  The young rebel that ducked and dodged in and out of Anna’s consciousness, beneath her new shorter haircut, wanted to give them all the finger and storm out of the office, in full possession of her scruples and integrity. But she did like this job. It was this job that allowed her to meet fascinating people like Beau Dupere.

  Finally, she decided that the implacable billionaire (or multi-millionaire) would survive even the harshest telling of the true details of his life. They were not asking her to fabricate, only to reveal all that she had learned, or at least all of the parts that would get people talking. That talk, of course, would include more accusations, and maybe even threats, from the religious people. But Anna told herself that she could ignore them just as Beau and Jack Williams ignored them. That’s what she told herself.

  The exposé that appeared in that weekly regional newspaper received more attention than any story they had ever published. Anna’s fellow writers congratulated her jealously. But Anna had to resisted an occasional urge to plant her face on desk or floor in abject repentance for participating in the heartless persecution.

  Readers, however, generally viewed Anna’s story as sympathetic, even if it was salaciously revealing. Neutral eyes saw her admiration and acceptance of all that Beau Dupere had become. They could see that she indeed believed in Beau Dupere. But they could also see those nasty bits of laundry that stuck out of the sleeves and pockets of the lengthy story, including impossible claims to supernatural insight and freedom from the pain of public pressure. Readers could see that Anna believed in Beau Dupere. They believed Anna’s story was sincere. But very few of them converted to Anna’s faith.

  In fact, the readership of that issue of the paper skewed to the political right of their regular audience. Opponents to the wealthy healer acquired bundles of copies of the issue, the story becoming their most effective pamphlet against the most famous charlatan of Los Angeles County. They had their evidence, even the secular press corroborated their accusations.

  Though Anna didn’t see the article through the jaundiced eyes of the haters of Beau Dupere, she knew that many who might have remained neutral would now turn against him, once they knew about the children by multiple women, once they knew how truly strange was this man who spoke in unknown tongues, believed he could read your very soul, and laughed at anyone who criticized him. He may have not turned out to be the creepy guru that Anna had feared, but he had sh
own signs of being just the kind of convinced religious person that nonbelievers can’t tolerate. At the same time, he had shown himself truly vulnerable to the accusations of conservative leaders across the country, who now lined up in greater numbers to denounce him as an antichrist, if not The Antichrist.

  Anna slept less than two hours a night for four days following the article’s publication. She started an email resigning from the paper three times. She started an email apologizing to Beau and Justine twice. She sent none of those correspondence, choosing instead to continuing wallowing in self-loathing and eating far too much chocolate.

  The Blood of the Martyrs

  Dianna waved goodbye to Justine in the kitchen and walked out the front door, where her small SUV waited her commute to work. As soon as she stepped into the open air in front of the house, she heard the shouting, mixed with satirical chanting. With her daily work at the hospital, Dianna traversed that angry battlefield more often than the other residents of the house. She had even accidentally seen a TV news report in one of the patient rooms, a handheld camera following the Seattle police, who were dragging away a man found with a gun, trying to enter one of Beau’s meetings in the northwest.

  After that shocking story, Dianna had pleaded with Beau to hire security to travel with him, instead of just protecting the house. His cavalier response ignited a feeling of futility that she had known in trying to persuade him in the past. “Well, if someone does get to me with a gun, you just remember our deal on resurrections. I’m willing to come back.” His careless grin ground her nerves like sand on sun-burned skin.

  The gate opened as Dianna pulled down the drive. The police motorcycles stood ready for her. The first time they accompanied her through the vicious throng, she had wondered whether the motorcycle cops were just there to witness the crime, providing no protection from a stone or bullet if someone really wanted to hit her. But she shed those thoughts now and just focused on praying for the persecutors and driving carefully down the narrow path they allowed out of the house and down the block. The court order won by the neighbor across the street had stretched the crowd down the road farther, but had not reduced their numbers at all. In fact, it seemed to Dianna that the numbers had increased significantly over the last few days. She just shook her head at that observation and intensified her prayers.