With the check secured in his hands the reverend felt sufficiently rebuked by his own conscience. He did have favor with God. He’d never been in danger of losing his reputation for getting things done in the community, and he held the proof.
He was happy enough to want to plant a kiss on the trustee’s cheek. However, in keeping with his macho man image, he shunned that feeling and hugged the trustee, instead.
“Trustee Noel,” the reverend began, “I am in shock! But I’m certainly not surprised. What a mighty God we serve that He would show out like this.” Reverend Tom’s arms pulled the trustee closer and they shoulder bumped.
Trustee Noel’s physique was not built for chest or shoulder bumping. He could feel the bruise forming on his skin. “Ow. Suh.”
“That’s right, praise Him in tongues!” Reverend Tom encouraged. “Give Him glory in tongues!”
Trustee Noel began to shake. The pain of the shoulder bump set off tremors in his body. He knew one thing. He would use some of those millions and join a gym.
When it appeared the Spirit or whatever had finally subsided, Reverend Tom addressed the trustee again. “I know you’ve got something you’d like to say before I begin to tell you how grateful the entire church and community is because of you.”
Trustee Noel spoke slowly and painfully into the microphone. “Thank you, Pastor. My heart is too full to say a lot more, but this church is my home.”
Reverend Tom accepted the quick words of appreciation, then added a few more of his own. “Crossing Over Sanctuary church cannot thank you enough. I know it must come from somewhere deep in a giving heart for you to give so much.”
The reverend stopped and for reasons only he could explain, he raised the trustee’s hand and added slowly, “You have millions of dollars, more than enough money from your insurance award. You’ve adhered to the principle of sowing and tithing as the nineteenth chapter of Numbers instructs us to do. If this is one-tenth of your insurance award . . .”
Trustee Noel only heard the words insurance and award. Everything beyond those two words sounded like white noise. He had no idea what the pastor meant, especially since he was still waiting to hear from his attorneys about that particular money issue and the appeals.
If the reverend saw the puzzled look upon the trustee’s face, he ignored it. He was overjoyed and continued talking. “I am going to recommend that one of the buildings on the Promised Land be named in your honor.”
“Hallelujah! Amen and glory be to God,” Sasha suddenly screamed out. It made no sense to waste a perfectly good opportunity to plant a seed of appreciation in the situation. It might sprout into something useful when she bragged about how supportive she was of the trustee from the beginning. In her mind, she’d already assigned the coat hanging duty to Elder Batty Brick.
Ignoring Sasha’s over-the-top outburst, Reverend Tom kept on talking and used every word to increase the trustee’s stature within the church. By that time, the reverend realized why he’d delivered the sermon “Time to Make a Change.” Things certainly had changed for the better. He believed God used Trustee Noel as a Bible-based example of obedience and faith. He saw the gift in his hands also proved he was right about having a vision from God. It’d all come right back to him and his stubborn pride.
Reverend Tom stopped and looked toward the ceiling. He smiled, believing he was listening to the Spirit before nodding his head as though he agreed with it. “Thank you, Heavenly Father,” the reverend said loudly. “The Blessed Spirit reminded me that we didn’t have to rely on shortchanging our salvation by begging the bank for more time. We can look the Devil straight in his evil eye and tell him God provides. None of us had to gamble on our faith.”
He turned and winked at the trustee as he continued to speak. “Just look at my God in His awesomeness,” the reverend boasted again. “Holy Ghost, lay witness to the truth!”
The microphone in the reverend’s hand magically appeared in front of the trustee’s lips. Trustee Noel became nervous. His hands started shaking and his lips began to flutter.
Of course, that’s when the church and the reverend thought the trustee was about to speak in tongues, again.
Speaking in tongues twice meant no lie could cross the Trustee’s lips or he’d drop dead just like Ananias and his lying wife did in the Bible when they lied to the disciple Peter.
Trustee Noel went full into panic mode. He began to sweat. All of his good thoughts about how the reverend wouldn’t care where the money truly came from as long as it came, fled. He needed the comfort of twirling that sprig of hair of his, but he couldn’t do that, either.
“I thank you Reverend Tom for yo’ confidence in me.” Trustee Noel’s voice continued to shake as he tried to smile toward the reverend.
It’s that bank check, the reverend thought as he smiled back at the trustee. That’s what has my confidence. “Continue, Trustee Noel, and tell what saith the Lord,” he said aloud.
It was then or never if the trustee was to tell the entire truth. “Well, you see, uh . . . Pastor, I didn’t get my insurance money yet. I’m the one done hit that big Mega Lottery.”
If the reverend wasn’t so caught up in the moment boasting about what God did and the Devil didn’t do, he would’ve stopped the trustee right then. But the reverend’s mind and spirit were elsewhere.
The truth was, while his body stayed at the Crossing Over Sanctuary with the rest of the congregation, the reverend’s spirit hadn’t. It had already hopped in his praise-mobile and stood proudly in line at the bank. In his mind, he saw himself about to hand the teller the check when the trustee’s words jerked him back to reality.
The reverend’s pride collided with the truth, and he wanted to wring the trustee’s neck.
He threw the envelope back in the trustee’s shocked face. “God don’t need nor does He want your tainted and ill-gotten money!” Without giving a benediction or waiting for the organist to play, the reverend fled the sanctuary.
Embarrassment wasn’t new to the trustee. A day didn’t go by that someone didn’t rain down shame on him. But this was his pastor, his leader, his spiritual advisor, and the man who, only moments before, had patted him on the back. Reverend Tom had called down God’s anointing and blessings. And then that same pastor turned around and slapped him with a paper envelope. Trustee Noel couldn’t say a word. He stood with egg on his face and twenty-five million dollars in his pocket.
It wasn’t hard to figure out the church members didn’t agree with their pastor, and they showed it.
The members started bouncing around in their seats. Like popcorn, they jumped off their pews all over the sanctuary. Some beat their chests and even raised fists toward the ceiling. They wailed, “Why, Lord, why?”
Not all the congregation wept. Instead they buzzed their complaints like a hoard of bees.
“Well ain’t this about a doggone mess,” Bea hollered as she leaped from her pew. “That dimwit gambles and wins mo’ money than I’ve ever seen, a drat dang Mega Lottery. He done turned sucker and give it to the church.”
Bea’s voice began to rise as she clawed at her chest in aggravation and agony. “And our uppity pastor done turned it away.”
Without saying another word, Bea let one of her chubby arms drop upon Sasha who’d remained seated. Whether Bea did it accidentally or coincidentally didn’t matter. That fat arm fell upon Sasha’s head and squashed her bun.
Sasha wanted to yell out from the pain, but didn’t. She took her cane and was about to poke Bea in the stomach, but remembered she needed Bea’s help in keeping Sister Betty at bay. It seemed she’d have to take that insult and pain for the team and get back at Bea some other time.
Sasha peered up at Bea, whose attention was on the rest of the congregation. “If I don’t bring down this Sasquatch-looking She-Rilla . . .”
While Bea blasted her discontent and the congregation formed a spiritual lynch party, Sasha began to plan a wedding. Just that quick she determined that she truly lov
ed Trustee Noel. She always had and just didn’t know it.
The congregation flew from the pews and started to surround the trustee. Some congratulated him and others shook his hand like it was a slot machine lever. Then two instant baby mamas appeared from the choir loft. Each woman, one about nineteen and the other well into her eighties, swore the sixty-something-year-old number two pencil, Freddie Noel, had stuck them a time or two.
From his office, as he disrobed and prepared to leave, Reverend Tom heard the clamor. It wasn’t hard to figure out the sanctuary inmates had taken over. It had gone from praise and shout worship to a shout and rebuke match. The refusal of the money had pinned him to the mat. He’d officially lost control of the service and the message.
Chapter 13
Over the next several days, the reverend’s phone rang off the hook morning, noon, and night. He refused to answer, preferring the answering machine take the member’s wrath.
He left instructions for the church secretary to send e-mails apologizing for his upcoming absence due to a personal, five-day emergency prayer and fast watch. “Whatever Websites are involved I want them all updated to reflect the new information,” he’d written, attaching the contact information for various church officials so there’d be no reason at all to reach out to him.
However, folk clamored for the reverend’s neck and not those of any church officials.
“No disrespect, Reverend Tom, this here is Deacon Lomax. We’ve called about a dozen times over the last few days. We figure you ain’t just lying on your face stretched out without using at least a telephone. Anyhow, like I said in the previous messages, on behalf of the men’s choir and the Deacon Board, we’re gonna require a blood and urine sample before we let you back in the pulpit. You done lost your doggone mind! Like I said, no disrespect intended.”
Deacon Lomax’s message was just a sample of the more than twenty-five he received. After about the twentieth phone call, he stopped playing the messages.
The reverend paced, prayed, and anointed just about everything in his home, including the doorknobs. When he returned to his kitchen, he fell onto one of the kitchen chairs and laid his head on the table. Peace wouldn’t come. He lifted his eyes and glanced at his wall calendar.
A bright red circle was drawn around the date, the church’s annual Thanksgiving Day dinner for the homeless. “My Lord.” He’d almost forgotten that he had to cancel that, too. It was the Mothers Board’s turn to host the Thanksgiving Feast. Crossing Over Sanctuary’s open door policy to feed those in need on holidays was a long-time tradition. The church hadn’t missed a Thanksgiving in almost thirty-two years.
An idea came to mind. He admitted in self-reflection that it had as much to do with keeping his reputation as God’s favored son, as it had to do with keeping the church’s promises.
“We may not have the monies to do what we’ve always done,” he’d said at a recent community outreach meeting, “but we will do the best we can with what we have in donations.” He’d authorized the Missionary Board to gather all it had collected from the local businesses and from the church offerings for Thanksgiving. When added up they could afford to give the packages to only the first fifty families that came to the church. Last Wednesday, more than one hundred and fifty families had stood in line.
He’d watched the line from his study and almost wept. “Lord, I don’t want to feed just fifty. I want to feed them all.” The reverend’s prayer was sincere if not a bit misguided. He could’ve canceled the Seniors Prom, instead.
Pushing aside the memory of another failure, he went to the window, looked out, and sighed.
“The Seniors Prom will probably fail, too.” He couldn’t cancel the Seniors Prom. Sasha and Bea promised that if left to their own devices they could triple the amount of money it took to put it on. That was one of the reasons he’d put Sister Betty on watch. It didn’t make sense to make three times the money and spend more than half of it on bail for Bea, Sasha, and anyone unfortunately caught up in one of their crazy schemes. But these were desperate times and in desperation, he’d unleashed the church mothers on the community and prayed they didn’t cause a tsunami.
The news of Reverend Tom’s self-imposed fast-and-prayer-in-the-desert-with-God exile spread all over Pelzer and the surrounding towns. When folks heard about it they shook their heads with combined pity and admiration. The common opinion was that the reverend had tried to reach the status of a Jesus on Earth and lost his mind. What other reason could explain him turning down twenty-five million dollars?
If anyone asked for an explanation from the church officials, they simply replied, “We all fall down, but we get up. He’s lying before the Lord so he can get his mind right.”
Of course, no one really wanted to ask Sister Betty for information. She became all out of sorts from the moment she’d started babysitting Bea and Sasha. There wasn’t a day gone by that she didn’t want to hurt Bea and Sasha. They kept her in constant repent-mode.
Sister Betty’s angst was real. Bea and Sasha wasted no time in taking advantage of their pastor’s absence. BS went into overdrive. They were seasoned troublemakers. Yet those old biddies still needed their precious time to brew a concoction of mayhem. They didn’t have time to fool around with Sister Betty in a Christian manner. Sasha and Bea did everything they could to keep Sister Betty out of the loop. They gave her the wrong time for a meeting, but she showed up on time. They swapped her orange-flavored Tang with a Metamucil laxative and Bea drank it by mistake.
Sister Betty managed to show up at every meeting, except the last one, the day before Thanksgiving. She informed them that an emergency came up and she needed to run over to Belton and take care of some business.
Bea and Sasha finally shared with Elder Batty Brick and Brother Casanova their concerns about the Seniors Prom and its prominence.
“We ain’t got time to be all fancy, but we don’t wanna come across as tacky, either,” Sasha conspired. “That’s why we gonna reassign what you two need to do.”
“I don’t see why we hafta come across as tacky, no how,” Elder Batty Brick replied. “We got one of the wealthiest men around right here on this committee.”
“I already tried calling him, before I called the two of y’all. Do you have cotton for brains?” Sasha hissed. “You think I’d mess with you two amateurs if I didn’t hafta.”
“Go ahead, Sasha,” Bea urged, “tell ’em what that spineless millionaire told ya.” Bea stood and pounded her fist. “I swear if I wasn’t full of the Lord and interested in writing with that pencil on his checks, I’d have punched him in the mouth.”
Of course, it was at yet another meeting that Bea didn’t let Sasha get in another word. Bea became so mad she ranted and showered spit all over them. “And then that fool had the gall to try and man-up and tell this fractured Thumbelina”—Bea stopped and flipped the bird at Sasha—“how if his money wasn’t good enough for the Promised Land, he certainly wasn’t gonna risk more of the pastor’s wrath funding no prom!”
Brother Casanova leaned forward in his seat. He adjusted his hearing aid. He’d turned it down as soon as Bea began to speak in that voice he detested. “So he ain’t willing to pitch in, is that what I’m hearing?”
“He told Sasha that just because the pastor’s a fool, everybody over fifty-five got to suffer, too?” Elder Batty Brick licked his thick lips and started to chew on the bottom one to keep from cussing.
By that time, Sasha’s blood pressure had come to a boil and that tight gray bun flipped for real. “Now do you see what you’ve done, Bea. If I’d wanted so much confusion, I wouldn’t have told you as much as I did.”
Bea’s face almost swelled to the size of a basketball. She pointed at Sasha and yelled, “Then ya should’ve spoken up. We ain’t got no time to waste with ya trying to supervise.”
“Bea,” Sasha hissed, “would you please sit your big butt down so I can tell these fellas what we’re gonna do. Save your opinion for the eleven o’clock news.�
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Bea and Sasha went another couple rounds before Bea got tired of Sasha’s reprimands and tried to tie Sasha to a chair using one of her handwritten T-shirts. Sasha’s cane came down on Bea’s pinky toe and that put a finish to the scuffle.
Of course, none of the group had seen Bea’s handiwork before that moment. No sooner had they seen the first word, than Sasha, Elder Batty Brick, and Brother Casanova almost fainted. They kept looking and pointing at the T-shirt but couldn’t say a word.
Bea might’ve been the only one that graduated high school from their group, but it seemed she’d gotten an F in spelling and there wasn’t a grade low enough for her sense of humor.
She had decided to shake things up a bit for the Seniors Prom. She wasn’t happy with the group’s suggestions, so she created one of her own. In her mind, she knew what old folk really liked and what they’d do often, if they could. So she improvised her slogan with a cute slant on names of a couple well-known sex pills for men. Every spare moment she had, Bea had worked on those T-shirts.
In bold black letters, she’d written NO VIAGRA—SEE ALICE INSTEAD. Bea had the correct spelling for Viagra, but misspelled Cialis.
It was bad enough that the slogan was inappropriate but the only Alice over fifty who would attend the prom was Alice “Grandma Puddin’” Tart. She was the widow of old Pop Tart, as well as the oldest—age ninety—and most respected member on the Mothers Board. Ever since Grandma Puddin’ stopped belly dancing more than forty years ago, she’d been on the grind for the Lord. She’d also been a very active evangelist until she retired and catered dinners every now and again. Bea had resurrected that old woman’s dead reputation and maimed her Christian walk with an indelible ink pen on a cheap T-shirt.
Sasha’s voice finally returned. “Bea, you old heathen. You went from wanting to kiss under the mistletoe to wanting everyone to use Viagra and sleep with Grandma Puddin’!”
Bea’s grin slid slightly. “What y’all know about sex? Y’all ain’t had none since it had y’all.” Bea turned her hump around to the rest of them and tuned out the disapproval of her handiwork, silent or otherwise. If Bea told the truth, she’d never liked Grandma Puddin’ that much no way, so maybe she’d done it on purpose without knowing she had.
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