by Wid Bastian
Peter rose, joined hands with Malik and Saul and began to pray. Little Carrie Lynn Johnson was lifted up to the Most High God in a short, but eloquent, plea.
This time Panos Kallistos was praying with total faith. The Holy Spirit had told him what to say to Gail McCorkle. Peter had complete trust that He would now finish the job.
“Call your sister, Gail,” Peter instructed, as the three men returned to their seats.
“What do I say? I mean really, Mr. Carson, I can’t just … ”
“Call you sister, Gail. Use the speaker phone, please.”
Warden McCorkle dialed her sister’s number, not sure if she had completely lost her mind or finally found it.
When the call was answered all they could hear at first were outbursts of emotion, but not the type made from panic or fear.
Gail had dialed into a celebration.
“Bernice! Bernice! It’s Gail. Is that you, girl? What’s going on down there?”
“Gail? Is that you? My God, honey! I can’t believe you called. Do you know what’s happened? Lord in heaven, sister!” In her excitement Bernice dropped the phone.
Gail listened to the voices and tried to make out what was going on. She heard her sister saying, “It’s Gail! Can you believe it?” Larry, Bernice’s husband, was having an excited, but undistinguishable, conversation on a cell phone or on another land line. Charlene and Diane, Larry’s sisters, were carrying on as if they’d just won the lottery.
There was another voice, mild, soft, and sweet, that Gail could not place, but was nonetheless very familiar. It was speaking to her sister and she could tell by its increasing volume that whoever it belonged to was about to pick up the phone.
“Auntie Gail, it’s Care Bear.”
Gail McCorkle let out a scream that could literally be heard a hundred yards away through concrete walls.
Carrie Johnson had never spoken, never walked, never so much as fed herself. Care Bear understood some words, recognized a few faces, but those minutes without oxygen had decimated her mind and body. The doctors said she was strong enough physically to survive for many years, but that she would never develop much beyond her “current capabilities.”
Gail McCorkle was the only person who, from Carrie’s birth, had somehow seen beyond the damage and into the child’s soul. Care Bear would smile when Gail entered the room, even though the doctors said she probably didn’t know how to “deliberately” smile. More than once Gail would notice little Carrie looking at her and swore there was more going on behind those beautiful brown eyes than anyone imagined.
What Gail McCorkle didn’t know until today was that God works with what we’ve got, and Gail certainly had a special love for her broken and helpless niece who couldn’t walk or talk, but had somehow just said hello to her beloved aunt.
“Carrie?”
“Hi auntie. I love you.”
“My God.” Gail could hear her sister crying in the background.
“It’s okay, auntie Gail. I woke up now. It’s okay.”
“You woke up?”
“I woke up now. I saw you when I was asleep, auntie. I heard you talking to God for me. I love you, auntie Gail.”
“You know about God, Carrie?”
“Sure, auntie, just like you do. God’s friend Gabriel told me not to be scared. Told me when I woke up to tell you I love you. Oh, yea, and he told me to say, ‘I love you, Peter.’ Peter is my friend too.”
Gail McCorkle looked over at Peter and totally lost it. She began to blubber, then to wail. In all her forty-eight years, Gail had only cried twice that she could remember, once as a child when she broke her arm, and then again at her mother’s funeral. Now the tears were coming in rushes as the evil-created dam that had blocked her from loving God, and indeed everyone else in the world except little Carrie, finally burst.
Peter picked up the phone, prayed with Carrie, and told her that her auntie would call her back in a little while.
Forgetting their roles as jailer and convict, Gail fell into Peter’s arms. He calmed her, reassured her that what was happening was very real. Neither of them cared what it would look like if someone came into Gail’s office and saw an inmate holding the warden as she wept. Appearances and man-made rules are trivial when compared to God’s awesome power and grace.
Half an hour passed before Gail was composed enough to begin facing the wonderful and dramatic changes God had made in her life.
“You know I can’t force the BOP to release you three, but I’ll do anything you ask, delay my escape notice and feed them false information, whatever. I have twenty thousand saved, it’s all yours. I can have it here in cash tomorrow, maybe get you a car, fake id’s perhaps … ”
“Gail, Gail, slow down. We’re not going anywhere,” Peter said. “Remember what you promised God?”
“Yes, okay, I know. I’m not to hinder your work at this camp. Sorry, I should have known you weren’t leaving.”
“More than that Warden, you are our protector here. Powerful forces, both of man and of evil, are going to try and stop us, hurt us. You must do your best not to let them succeed. God will help you, Gail.”
“What does that mean exactly, Peter? Who is coming after you? How can I protect you properly?”
“Your questions will be answered in due time. Watch and pray, Gail McCorkle.”
“I need to know now, Peter. What should I do? I mean I could … ”
“Gail.”
“What! I’m trying to think here!”
“What you need to do is call your niece. We can talk later.”
Gail let that thought register for a moment. I can call my niece and talk to her. It was so overwhelming, yet utterly simple, God had acted.
“Peter, I don’t quite know how to say this. I’ve never said it to a man other than my father. I love you.”
“God loves you too, Gail, and so do we. Now call Carrie. We are leaving.”
As he closed the door behind them, Peter saw his warden, the once bitter, isolated and arrogant Miss Mac, humbly on her knees in front of her desk giving thanks to the Lord for His mercy and His messengers.
Between late October and Christmas, the environment mellowed at Parkersboro. Petty fighting ended and tempers cooled. The farther away in time “Alan’s miracle” became, the less prominent it was on the minds of the men. Camp gossip moved on to other topics. The press lost what little interest they had in the story.
For some reason, Gail McCorkle made an effort to meet with every inmate one-on-one, she granted requests for furloughs and other privileges, asked about families, checked on medical problems, made sure the food was top notch for the holidays, and generally behaved more like a mother hen than a prison warden.
Rumor had it Miss Mac snagged herself a boyfriend and that his tender mercies were the source of her newfound qualities of kindness and concern. Peter, Malik, and Saul knew better, but they weren’t talking. Neither was Gail, but she was participating in a private prayer service and Bible study every other night in her office with her newfound spiritual advisors.
Attendance at the “Service on the Porch” was increasing every Sunday morning. By mid-December most of the camp was showing up, although many were more motivated by curiosity than by a genuine hunger for the Word. Peter preached, everyone listened, a few souls were awakened. Those in the camp who considered all this “fuss over a con man” nothing but manure simply stayed away, but were no longer openly hostile.
Over the course of the fall, Peter continued to work on his relationship with his son. As an obedient servant of the Lord, he rejoiced and gave thanks for the miracles he had been privileged to be a part of, but God’s benevolence also served to increase his desire to have Christ so bless his own family.
By December, Peter’s twice weekly phone calls to Kev were going unanswered more than half the time, no doubt thanks to the technology of caller i.d. He wrote letters almost every other day to try and compensate, but when he finally did get the chance to speak to Kevin
he found out that most of them had not reached his boy.
Peter knew all too well what the problem was. Actually there were two problems, interrelated yet distinct.
Julie Morgan had a legitimate right not to trust her ex-husband. The Peter Carson she knew would say anything to anyone, however untrue, to further his own selfish aims. Why should Julie believe he’d changed now? Jesus? Because he’d found Jesus?
Julie believed in God, but there was no substance to her faith. She knew that religion was often a convenient refuge for scoundrels. As a Southern woman, Julie had plenty of bad examples to choose from when it came to false teachers. A few years back a prominent televangelist conned her mother out of thirty grand before she and Peter caught on and put a stop to it. “Bible thumpers,” a label she pinned on any outspoken Christian, were all phonies as far as she was concerned.
In Julie’s mind, Peter’s “jailhouse religion” was almost certainly part of some new scheme. To what exact end she wasn’t sure, and didn’t feel she had to be. As she told Walter, “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it has to be a duck.”
While understandable, Julie’s skepticism was also self-serving, which led, Peter knew, to the second problem.
Through the process of his spiritual growth, God confirmed a truth Peter felt like, on some level, he had always known; no one succeeds alone, and no one fails alone. God sews all of us together in a great fabric of life. While ultimately we are judged by what we do (by our own works), we are also held accountable to be our brother’s keeper. In addition to showing kindness and love to his fellow man, a Christian must also never actively participate in another’s sin.
Peter Carson had a wife who pressured him into feeling inadequate if he didn’t have a “million in the bank by forty,” made him feel small when he didn’t measure up to her standards of what a “man” should be, and in very subtle, effective, and ingenious ways constantly sent and reinforced the message, “If you want to be worthy of me, you’ve got to be the best.”
Peter bought into this trap, one of the devil’s biggest lies. The evil one wants us to measure ourselves by our worldly status, or by what others think of us, rather than by our good works, love, and obedience to God. This is idolatry and it is a mortal sin.
The second problem was that Julie Morgan still worshipped this evil, hollow idol.
Walter Morgan was the oldest son of Lewis Morgan. Back in the mid-1800’s Walter’s great-great-great granddaddy started making high quality bourbon in Kentucky. By the end of the twentieth century P.R. Morgan Distillers had a net worth of over $400 million dollars. When Lewis died, Walter was in line to inherit half the company.
Julie stepped right into Walter’s world, beyond grateful for the second chance at marrying the “right man.” That Walter was a boring, spoiled, childish trust-fund kid who at forty-five still acted fifteen mattered not. She didn’t give a damn that Walter couldn’t turn on a light bulb in the bedroom, or that he looked like a toad sucking on a lemon.
That Walter ignored Kevin and resented him was a problem, but she did the best she could with the situation. Kevin would be given the pick of everything, from clothes and cars, to friends and schools. In her mind, this more than compensated him for having a distant and uncaring step-father.
None of this was Julie’s first choice.
What Julie really wanted was to live the life Peter Carson had promised her. Together they were going to set the world on fire. Their strong sexual attraction and intimate friendship only intensified all their other desires. She loved Peter, always would, but he was a failure. Worse, he was a criminal and a disgrace. Her god made no allowances for such foolishness and neither did she.
In order for her to overcome, to not be denied at least part of the dream that was rightfully hers, to atone to her gods of materialism and pride, Julie “captured” Walter Morgan.
The ugly spectacle of Peter’s arrest and conviction drug Julie through the sewage along with her ex-husband. While the affair was by no means a sensation by Atlanta standards, it got more than a little public attention. All of Julie’s family and friends were caught up in the soap opera of it all; some had even lost money at the brokerage.
Although she never bluntly declared it to herself, or to the world, Julie knew she had to make a choice. She could either be a victim or an accomplice. She had to tread that fine line between abandoning her husband at his most critical hour, which no “proper” wife could do, and being dragged down with him.
Julie played the game superbly. From the time of the initial exposure of Peter’s embezzlement, she knew that they were through as husband and wife, but she didn’t tell him that. Keeping her distance from both him and the situation from that moment on, she kept up appearances until Peter was convicted and sentenced. A week before he self-surrendered at Parkersboro, their divorce was made final.
Julie was devastated, but by no means destroyed. An old college friend introduced her to Walter Morgan a couple of months after Peter began doing his time.
Theirs was not a romance. They didn’t fall in love. Walter loved only his money, but he was enchanted beyond measure by his future bride. Julie became adept at the art of having sex with a man she found physically repulsive, while at the same time making him feel like he was the most exciting and accomplished lover on the planet. She fed Walter’s ego, played the Madonna and the whore to perfection, and charmed his friends. Julie knew she would never be heir to Walter’s fortune, because he had two ex-wives and a grown daughter. She would have to “make do” with a cash settlement of five million dollars upon any divorce.
This was a downside Julie could live with.
In little over a year, Julie went from being a broken, divorced ex-wife of a criminal to a player in the Atlanta area upper crust social milieu. She was proud of herself, for what she had accomplished required planning, hard work, and sacrifice.
Now Peter was trying to get back in her life through Kevin, to set her up for God knows what, to bring more embarrassment upon her, just as she had finally risen above his last disaster. This, Julie could not tolerate. She wanted Peter Carson to completely disappear, to never again be around to remind her of their failure.
So, on Christmas Eve morning, Mrs. Walter Morgan hopped in her Benz and made the five hour drive from Atlanta to Parkersboro to see her ex and rid herself of a problem once and for all.
Seven
Peter’s heart leapt when he got the call that he had a visit. His first thought was that God was answering his prayers and had brought Kevin to see him. God always responds, but sometimes the answer even to the most righteous of men is “no.”
Julie wore a dated outfit she knew Peter liked, a somewhat conservative white dress that fit snugly, highlighting her voluptuous curves. If everything went according to plan, her attitude would be friendly, consoling, even loving in the manner of a dear old friend. All of her conflicting emotions about her ex-husband, the love she still felt for him and yet resented, the anger over the shame he had brought upon her, and, most of all, the sense of betrayal she felt at not being given the life she deserved because Peter Carson wasn’t “man enough” to make it happen were all put away, not to be displayed. Today was strictly business.
Peter’s heart sank from the moment he opened up the visiting room door. There stood Julie, but not Kevin. Then his spirit quickened. He sensed danger, an evil presence. Even without his demonic blood hound Saul around to confirm it, Peter knew he was about to be tested. As they walked outside, he bolstered himself with a silent prayer of protection, knowing that he needed all the strength God could give him to repulse whatever assault Julie had come to deliver.
Peter hadn’t seen Julie in almost two years, but none of her powers had diminished over time. Despite his closeness with God and knowledge of the truth, he sensed his “old self” rising to the surface, just at the sight of her. He felt that all too familiar ache, that longing to be with her physically, and to share emotionally. Her proximity began to unra
vel him. By the time they reached the south lawn, a place where they could speak in private, Peter was fighting an almost irresistible urge to run, to get anywhere but where Julie was, as quickly as possible.
Just before he was about to give into his fear and flee, into his mind flashed a Scripture, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” A smile came across Peter’s face as he sat down on the grass. God had not forsaken him; He was with him all the time. He reminded himself that the Lord was in control, not Julie. His anxiety began to fade.
“Peter? Hello, Peter. Did you hear me?”
“Sorry, yes. I, uh, mean no. Sorry Jules, I was distracted for a moment. Forgive me.”
There was definitely something different about Peter. Julie picked up on it the minute she laid eyes on him. She wondered if maybe Peter’s “God garbage” (as she called his faith) and this new calmness she was perceiving were the result of some psychotropic medication.
Putting on her best phony front of concern, Julie jumped right in.
“I said, how are you? Are you doing okay here? It doesn’t seem so bad, Peter. No guns or fences, it’s not like any prison I’ve ever heard of.”
“Trust me, Jules, it’s still very much a prison. Where’s Kevin? Why didn’t you bring him with you?”
“Can we just talk, you and I, for a minute before we bring Kevin into this? Please, Peter, I’m here to help you.”
“Lord have mercy,” Peter mumbled under his breath. He knew the devil never came to help, but only to steal, kill, or destroy.
“Sure, Jules. Say what you need to say, please.”
Julie had rehearsed and perfected her game plan in detail over the past two weeks. She had no doubt that she could execute it flawlessly and was quite certain it would be successful. After all, when had Peter Carson ever denied her anything? Despite his many faults, Julie was sure that the man sitting across from her now was the same one who had always been willing to walk through hell barefooted in order to please her.