Two bullets, plus a slight concussion . . . what’d you expect?
He took another drink of water, and as he set the water glass down he noticed an envelope bearing his name lying on the dresser. He hadn’t seen it before, although the previous evening another one of Dr. Peterson’s pills had put him right to bed after Lynn had gone to the airport. It was a get-well Hallmark card Lynn had apparently left for him.
To Chance:
It’s my prayer that God grant you not only a speedy recovery, but also the desires of your heart. I know it’s difficult for you to think that way now, but remember that weeping only endures for the night. Joy comes in the morning. You’ve been a blessing to my life, and you’ve opened my eyes in more ways than just the obvious. Know that you’ll always have a friend in South Carolina not only praying for you, but also thinking about you.
Many blessings, Lynn
“She left that card for you yesterday,” Pop said. Chance turned and saw his father leaning against his doorjamb. “Must’ve had it for a while, ’cause I didn’t see her go to no store.”
“The hospital had a gift shop,” Chance said. “She probably got it there.”
Pop hobbled into the room. “I ain’t never been one to tell you how to live your life, and I know how hard it’s been for you to get over Nina, but it’s been two years. And I guarantee you ain’t never gon’ meet someone like this Lynn gal for the rest of your lifetime.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Is you blind or something? Boy, that girl dived in the water twice, tryin’ to save your life! I saw the whole thing. And she wasn’t playing when she said she was afraid to put her head underwater—her face was white as a ghost when she first got up on the rail of the boat. But she jumped in anyway. It don’t take a rocket scientist to see that Lynn cares a whole lot about you. And you can’t tell me she ain’t pretty—she’s a spittin’ image of Nina.”
“It’s not about her being pretty . . . or even looking like Nina.”
“What’s it about, then?”
Among other things, it was the uncertainty of moving beyond the familiar and the fear of giving his heart away again to a woman, only to have it broken again. But Chance wasn’t about to tell Pop that.
He finally shrugged. “I don’t know, Pop.”
“Well, you better figure it out soon. If you don’t, you gon’ live to regret it.”
“Live to regret it? Who are you to tell me about regrets?” The words erupted from Chance’s mouth before he had a moment to really think about what he was saying. Maybe it was a side effect from the medication he was taking, or the fact that Nina was gone forever and Lynn Harper might possibly take her place in his heart. More likely, it was all the years of watching Pop drink himself into an early grave.
“Now . . . you watch what you saying, Chance,” Pop responded, steadying himself on his cane. “You probably ain’t thinking straight and all . . . them painkillers done gone straight to your head. I’m gon’ act like I didn’t hear that.”
“Then maybe I should say it again—who are you to talk to me about regret? If anyone’s living in regret, it’s you. You’ve been drinking your life away ever since Mom passed. Seems like you can’t move past Mom’s death any more than I could move past losing Nina.”
“Chance, now that’s enough outta you.” Pop pointed a trembling finger at his son. “You talkin’ about things you don’t know nothing about. I ain’t drinking ’cause Jacqueline died. Dying’s a part of life—I’ve been over that for years.”
“Yeah? Then why are you drinking, Pop? Why are you killing yourself?”
Bennett Howard fell back against the doorway. He looked away from his son as tears began welling up in the corners of his eyes.
“Killing myself?” He shook his head now as the tears began rolling down his face. “I ain’t killing myself—I’ve been dead since ’69, Chance.”
“ ’69?”
“The year they shipped me to ’Nam.” Pop buried his face in his hands as he began weeping loudly. His shoulders shook so violently that Chance feared he was in danger of hurting himself.
“I was jus’ a kid, Chance. Didn’t know nothin’ about no Vietcong or what the government was tryin’ to do over there. I had never been outside Louisiana, and here they were sending me to Fort Bragg and then over the ocean in the biggest airplane I’d ever seen.”
“Pop, I—”
“No—this is your time for listenin’ to what I got to say. You wanted to know why I drown my sorrows in the bottle, then you gon’ know. I was eighteen, Chance. Eighteen. And I saw things . . . I did things . . .” His voice trailed off, creating a silence that lasted several moments.
“. . . And then I came back home from that never-endin’ nightmare, and I’m disrespected by everyone for going over there in the first place. It ain’t like I had a choice—I was drafted.
“So, you happy now, Chance? You satisfied? You understand why I drink? I drink to forget the worst time of my life.”
Chance wiped the tears that were now streaming down his face. Pop had never before spoken of Vietnam, never before spoken of the horrors he’d faced over there. And how was Chance supposed to respond to that? Closing his eyes to stem the flow of tears, he silently began praying. He prayed for the words that would reach that eighteen-year-old kid who’d been dropped off in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam and somehow reassure him that hope still remained for his life.
“Pop, I just want to say . . .” Chance began, opening his eyes. But Pop had left the room.
Chapter Fifty-two
THE NEXT DAY, THE HOUSE was quiet when Chance finally rolled out of bed and slowly made his way down the hallway. He assumed Pop had gone to the lake, or at least he hoped so. Pop’s disability check had come in the mail yesterday, and his old man was good for spending most of it down at the liquor store.
With his injuries, it took Chance almost an hour to wash and dress. After dumping some cereal into a bowl and pouring a tall glass of orange juice, he walked outside onto the front porch. The ten acres of land his house sat on, passed down from Jacqueline, was privately nestled not far from the Arkansas state line. Chance had always relished the stillness and quiet of the land; the closest neighbors lived two miles away. It was a throwback to the post-Louisiana Purchase days, when folks settled on large property tracts and lived off the fruit of their land.
That’s all I wanted to do, God . . . raise my family here and live out the rest of my days in peace and quiet . . .
A spiraling plume of dust caught his attention then, rising skyward just beyond a cluster of trees to his right. The dust meant a vehicle had turned off the road and was now headed his way. Chance hoped it might be Pop, and when the car came into the clearing and he saw the rooftop police lights, he was almost sure it was a police officer escorting his drunken father home.
But when the police car came closer, Chance recognized the driver to be Sergeant Boudreaux, one of the officers who’d been assigned the Jucinda Harris case. Boudreaux had twice visited Chance in the hospital, updating him on how the case was progressing.
“G’morning, Chance,” Boudreaux said, stepping out of the car. He stretched his lanky, six-foot-four frame briefly, then made his way up the porch’s steps.
“Good morning, Sergeant. Drove all the way from Shreveport, huh? If I’d known you were coming, I’d have fixed you one of my famous omelets.”
Boudreaux shook his head and sat down in the chair beside Chance. “No need for all that trouble. I was just in the area, doing some more work on the case, and I’d thought I’d drop by. How ya feeling?”
“A little better. More good days than bad. Dr. Peterson says I’ll be back to my old self in no time at all.”
“Glad to hear that. Most cases like yours—taking two 9 mm shots to the body, then nearly splitting your head open on a rock—don’t wind up with happy endings. Speakin’ of happy endings, I got some good news on the case.”
“Yeah?”
B
oudreaux nodded. “Looks like Ms. Harris’s lawyer is going to take the DA’s plea bargain. Really didn’t have a choice. The evidence against her is too strong—they’ve recovered the gun with her fingerprints all over it, plus the gun residue on her hands and the five eyewitnesses that saw her pull the trigger. It’s pretty much open-and-shut.”
“What’s the DA’s plea bargain look like?”
“I don’t know all the particulars; they’ll be contacting you soon, no doubt. But from what I gather, unless you want to pursue aggressive retribution, Ms. Harris will plead guilty to attempted murder and get anywhere from three to five, seeing as she’s a first-time offender.”
Chance nodded, drinking the last of his orange juice. “I don’t really care about aggressive retribution; I’ve already told the DA that. I just want Jucinda to get some help.” He set his glass down firmly. “And stay out of my life.”
“I hear you loud and clear, Chance. I’ve talked to Chief Dobbs in Ruston. Seems Ms. Harris is well connected in that town, but Dobbs and I go way back. Even when she finally gets out of prison, she won’t be causing any more problems for you down there.”
TRAVIS FELT THE EYES of his coworkers locked onto him as he made his way to his cubicle. These were different stares than the ones he’d been receiving when he wrote the first mystery-man article. He’d rather liked that initial attention—the world of newspaper reporting was rife with jealousy and envy, and it had felt good to be the top dog for a while.
But Thursday’s article, where he’d included Chance Howard’s unedited statement at the conclusion of an unarguably pro-Christian article, had shifted those envious stares to looks of curiosity and concern, even pity. Ryman Wells had questioned the writing of such a radically Christian article, but Travis had debated (to his own surprise) the need to include the Christian slant as a precursor to his next story, which centered on the dramatic increase in the area’s church attendance over the last month.
Travis, of course, wanted nothing to do with churches or articles covering church attendance, but what choice did he have? Even though Chance Howard had not openly threatened to expose his plagiarism on previous articles, the warning clearly had been implicit. And such an exposure would have ruined Travis’s career, right as it was taking off. So if one or two pro-Christian articles were necessary to make Chance Howard go away, then so be it. But the stares from his coworkers . . . Writing such an article was almost as if Travis had declared that he, too, was a born-again Christian.
Objectivity in news reporting had subtly shifted to a liberal slant. While the industry outwardly applauded the idea of family values and Judeo-Christian ethics, such feel-good stories did not sell newspapers or garner high television ratings. The search for the next gripping national scandal like the O. J. Simpson trial or the Clinton-Lewinsky affair constantly lurked in the minds of everyone in the industry. While media figureheads outwardly deemed such scandals deplorable and shameful, inwardly they relished boosting their ratings with saturated coverage.
Travis’s story about a delusional, mysterious man popping up in various small southern towns, “pretending” to heal people, had initially captured the interest of this news feeding frenzy, at least in South Carolina. But if in fact the story turned out to be nothing more than an honest Christian man believing God to heal diseases and periodically seeing miraculous results, where was the scandal in that?
As it was, Travis needed to write his story on the rising church attendance for Tuesday’s paper, and he’d barely begun. His weekend had been spent, as usual, lounging on his couch with a remote control in one hand and a Doritos bag in the other. His intentions of attending a church service on Sunday morning to obtain a firsthand account of the increase in attendance were just that—intentions. More specifically, his body had screamed bloody murder at the thought of getting out of bed before noon on a weekend. So it was on to plan number two.
His fingers now danced atop the keyboard as he scoured the Internet search engines for anything on church attendance. There was usable data, of course, but nothing specifically highlighting Richland County. He needed a firsthand account, someone who went to church every Sunday in the area and could give him what he needed.
With a sigh, he reached for his telephone and dialed his sister Andrea’s number. As the saying went, desperate people will do . . . desperate things.
ANDREA WAS HELPING Eddie read aloud from a primer when the phone rang.
“Keep on, Eddie—you’re doing a great job,” she said, patting him on the back as she reached for the phone.
“Andrea?”
“Travis?” She was surprised to hear her brother’s voice on the other end. “Is everything alright?”
“Yeah. Why you ask?”
“How often do you call here, Travis? Usually, I’m the one having to call you. Anyway, I thought it was wonderful what you wrote in your last article. Bravo for Brother Word!”
“Yeah. Speaking of that story—I’ve got to do a follow-up on a related topic. People are saying there’s been an increase in church attendance around Richland County over the past month, particularly at services where people are prayed over to receive healings.”
“There has been an increase! Oh, it’s been the most wonderful thing—James, Eddie, and I have started attending Faith Community Church, and every week the sanctuary is just overflowing with people. There’s talk that the church might have to schedule another service in the afternoons just to accommodate the crowds. Plus, we’ve personally been invited to share in several healing crusades in the last three weeks. Churches and stadiums have been packed out, and Eddie’s testimony has been—”
“Slow down, Andrea. You’re talking faster than I can write.”
“Faster than you can write? Are you taking notes, Travis?”
“Well, you’re giving me some good information here, and I figure I’d use it as deep background to my story.”
“Oh, I get it now. So that’s why you called. I knew there had to be some ulterior motive. Well, I won’t let you use my quotes as your ‘deep background,’ baby brother. What’s happening here in South Carolina is bigger than some newspaper story, and you of all people should know that.”
“Andrea, it’s not like I’m using you or anything. Didn’t you once tell me I should also report this story from the side that believes? That’s all I’m doing now—getting a firsthand account on church attendance from someone who should know.”
“You want a firsthand account? Okay, you’ll get one. James, Eddie, and I are going to Bible study tonight at Faith Community, and you’re coming with us.”
“What? I don’t have time for—”
“Then I suggest you make time, Travis. You want to report on church attendance? Try reporting on one thousand people showing up on a Monday night for a Bible study on divine healing. I doubt that’s ever happened around these parts, and if you’re writing a story on it, I’d say you have an obligation to be there.”
She heard Travis sigh audibly on the other end of the line. “We’ll pick you up at five-thirty. Don’t keep us waiting.” She hung up the phone before Travis could protest.
Chapter Fifty-three
SO THEN FAITH COMES by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God,” Pastor Alonzo Gentry began, opening his Bible and looking out among the congregants. “Sister Dana, thank you for that wonderful solo. How many in here have tried Him and know Him?”
Bible study at Faith Community was held on Wednesday nights, but Gentry had started conducting special Bible study services to specifically address the growing questions people were raising concerning divine healing. It had come to Gentry’s attention that all over the city people with infirmities, or in wheelchairs or otherwise handicapped, were being stopped on the street and prayed over. While he was encouraged by the believers’ zeal, he wanted to ensure such fervor was balanced with a proper understanding of the scriptures concerning healing.
“I know that we’ve all been using Mark 16:18 as a foundational basis f
or laying hands on the sick and healing through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And, glory to God, we are seeing people healed, but I want to remind us to stay focused to the heartbeat of God, which has always been . . . souls. Soul-winning. Healing the sick is a sign that follows them that believe to draw unbelievers into the Kingdom of heaven. But in that same chapter of Mark’s gospel, verse 15, Jesus opens His teaching with, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every man.’
“Healing the sick merely for healing’s sake is not God’s intention. However, healing the human heart and drawing unbelievers to His love is.” He glanced down at his Bible. “Now, the fourth chapter of Ephesians tells us that God has endowed believers with gifts of the Spirit to equip us for the work of ministry and for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
“The work of ministry,” he repeated for emphasis, “means that we must be mindful to spread the gospel whenever we’re in public, praying for people. Throughout my experience in ministry, I’ve seen revivals come and go, with great signs and wonders drawing thousands to crusades. All too often in these revivals, too great an emphasis is placed on giftings and outward demonstrations of the Holy Spirit. However, when the signs and wonders start appearing less frequently, the attendance usually drops off and the enthusiasm wanes for the things of God. We’re not going to let that happen with this revival.
“I’m excited to see front-page newspaper articles glorifying God for healing people through Chance Howard’s hands, but I’d like us all to remain focused on spreading the gospel, not just performing healings. You see, with healings, there is no cut-and-dried method—it’s a matter of faith between you, the person you’re praying for, and God’s will for that particular situation. But we will always know the will of God as it relates to the church, and that is to go throughout all the world, making disciples and baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is the Great Commission Jesus empowered us to do. I am thankful that we currently have twenty-one churches throughout Richland, Sumter, Lee, Clarendon, and Florence counties that have already enlisted in our outreach effort. While the highlight of our crusades is when we pray for the sick to receive God’s healing, we should strive to see more people receive Christ as Lord. People will come to these crusades as a result of the media attention, and when they come, let’s shower them with the true love of the Lord, alright? Whether they’re coming to see a show or strictly out of curiosity, let’s become living, breathing examples of the wonderful love of Jesus Christ. Amen?”
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