Looming tall from the pulpit, Lonnie overlooked the congregation as he opened his Bible. “Can there be anything worse than isolation?” Lonnie asked the congregation as he began his sermon. “The feeling of helplessness, of being alone when confronted with crisis. With tragedy. No one that knows how you feel, if you’re sick, if you’ve lost a close friend.” He surveyed the room and parked his eyes on Blake before continuing. “No one you can confess to. Can tell the truth about what you’ve done.”

Shit! A lump formed in Blake’s throat, he was sure it was a massive, visible lump that parched his throat and suffocated his breath. Thoughts raced through Blake’s mind of isolation, the feeling of loneliness he had. It was as if the sheriff...the pastor was speaking directly to him, about him. How could he know anything about what I’ve done? What I’m feeling?

“For each of you,” Lonnie continued, “for all of us, we are not alone. We have the Lord to hear us.” The men of the congregation spoke up. “Amen brother. Amen.”

“We have each other to comfort us, to be there and share in the times of despair, whether they be of a singular and personal nature, as in the case of a grave illness.” Lonnie’s eyes fell to the loving family of an ailing elderly man seated on the front row, clearly attending one of his last sermons.

“Or in the case of a natural calamity that unites us in despair, such as Hurricane Katrina, or the horrible tornadoes that tore through the South in recent years, killing so many innocent children of God.”

Angelica squeezed Blake’s hand in a reassuring way.

“Imagine how much worse those times could be. Would be, if you had to endure them alone.” Lonnie said. Heads nodded throughout the congregation. Blake’s head dropped, his eyes falling from Lonnie. He realized this and popped his head back up, fighting against the burdensome weight he felt levied on his mind and his shoulders.

“Today, we live in a world of greed,” Lonnie said. As he began the main thesis of his sermon, Blake felt connected via a tunnel directly to Lonnie, the people on each side fading as the message was channeled through a conduit directly from God through the pastor to Blake. Or is the message from the sheriff himself, Blake thought?

“Sometimes the greed is far away. On places like Wall Street, where unscrupulous souls worship and pursue material wealth at any and all costs.” All heads nodded knowingly to a chorus of “amens.”

“But the temptation isn’t always far away. It’s sometimes among us, my friends, luring us away from the Lord, away from Jesus,” Lonnie said looking at Blake. “Away from the law.”

“The book of Timothy is very clear about this temptation,” Lonnie continued as he read Timothy 6:10. For the love of money is a root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. “Pierced themselves, my brothers and sisters. Not the way these teenagers pierce their ears and body parts these days.” Lonnie said with a affable smile. Eyes looked around the room as a couple of shaggy-haired teens on the back row hung their heads, waiting for the disproving attention to pass.

“No. Pierced like a lifeless hog on a spit,” Lonnie said, using a visual reference that all could grasp. Blake’s eyes widened in disbelief, unable to comprehend the uncanny irony of the reference.

“Today, I’d like to share with you a story from Kings chapter twenty-one, verses one through twenty-nine.” Lonnie said. “I’ll summarize the story in my own words rather than read it for you.”

Angelica opened her well-worn King James Bible to the book of Kings and turned to chapter twenty-one. She laid it open on her left leg for both her and Blake to read. Blake dropped his head to look at the words on the page, relieved for the moment to have a reason to turn his gaze away from the sheriff.

“You see,” Lonnie began, “Naboth lived on a vineyard in Jezreel next to King Ahab of Samaria. But Ahab wanted that land for himself to create a vegetable garden, so he offered to buy it. Naboth refused to sell the land because it was important to him since it had been in his family for generations. King Ahab sulked in his house and told his wife, Jezebel, the bad news.”

All eyes were open and on Lonnie, nary a one looking at the Bible itself. Lonnie knew that the way to reach people was through stories and by making stories real. Sometimes the word of the Bible, particularly the translation of the King James Version, made that difficult for anyone other than Bible scholars. “But Jezebel came to Ahab with a plan,” Lonnie continued as he furrowed his eyebrows, “pointing out that he, Ahab, governed the kingdom of Israel. I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth, she told Ahab.”

Lonnie unfolded the rest of the story, in which Jezebel used Ahab’s royal authority to arrange for two witnesses to falsely accuse Naboth of cursing God and the king. Naboth was then taken outside the city and stoned to death, thereby allowing Ahab to immediately claim possession of the vineyard. When the prophet Elijah learned of this and confronted Ahab with the truth, he prophesied a terrible fate for him and Jezebel. Once he heard the words of Elijah, Ahab removed his clothes, put a sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted until he wasted away. As for Jezebel, she met the end that Elijah predicted, being eaten by the dogs at the wall of Jezreel.

“This is indeed a dark story of avarice,” Lonnie said as he concluded the story. “As we see, greed isn’t something new. It’s as old and ever-lasting as the sand. As Christians, we must be on guard against it, help one another to resist it and cherish what is important in this physical world. As sheriff, I must help to root it out.”

Lonnie spread his arms as if to reach and hug the congregation as a whole. “We are not alone, my friends, for we have each other. Our love for one another and for Jesus Christ,” he said, “who died on the cross for us. It’s this love that cost nothing and that’s worth everything. Let us take this love for one another, for Jesus, and let it sustain us, fulfill us so that we want for nothing else.”

Closing the Bible, Lonnie signaled for Mrs. Wyatt, the high school music teacher, to begin playing after the pastor offered the closing prayer. Parishioners wiped at their eyes on both sides of the aisle as the members walked toward the door, their steps light with the knowledge that they were walking straight down the center of the aisle, both in the church and in life. Blake, too, felt tears forming in his eyes. But his footsteps and his heart were heavy as he began to slowly slumber toward the exit. He caught himself walking on the edge of the aisle and not in its center. He no longer wanted to walk on the edge of any of life’s paths so he began to move right. In his haste to get to the door to greet everyone, the sheriff hurried past as Blake tried to move right. He lightly bumped Blake as they met, and caused Blake to stray back to the left. The sheriff, the pastor, continued walking right down the middle.

Lonnie nodded at Blake as they passed.

Chapter 23

John sat in the left seat of the Beechjet 400A, feeling like a kid in a candy store as the pilot announced his intentions to the tower at Athens Ben Epps Field. “Athens Tower Beech Charter November niner one five eight Echo holding on runway two-seven, ready for takeoff.” The African Rosewood doors that divided the main cabin’s four leather seats from the cockpit remained open, allowing John to feel like a captain himself. The co-pilot looked back to John and Rose. “Heck of a Sunday morning isn’t it?” she asked. John smiled and nodded. “Well, you two sit back and relax and we’ll have you roaming the beaches of San Salvador in a couple of hours.”