“How do you know it’s not from God?” Sara said, her voice ramping at the end.
Dixon saw the ‘X’ formed in the middle of Sara’s face by her eyebrows and her squinting eyes. He glanced at Kristen, catching only the briefest look, but it was enough to know that he was losing this crowd. He scooted back in his chair and reached for a higher gear.
“Ah, well, you saw the video, his ungodly lifestyle, his greed and the way he treats people like they don’t matter. ‘You will know them by their fruit,’ scripture says.”
Something about that didn’t settle right for Sara, but she was not a biblical scholar, or practiced debater.
Dixon could see her unconvinced look and tried another stab. “You know that on Judgment Day the Lord will say to people who claimed to do miracles in His name, ‘Go away from me, I never knew you.’ So the miracles prove nothing.”
This time he turned his head for a fuller look at Kristen. She avoided eye contact, protecting him from a double dose of doubt, there in his own living room. She also avoided looking directly at Sara, unwilling to multiply the dissatisfaction she was already feeling, by seeing it reflected in her daughter’s eyes.
Dixon squirmed and called for backup. “Kristen, you know this is right.”
Hearing a desperate tone in his voice, that reminded her of how vulnerable her man could be in private, Kristen swung back into engagement, with the conflict laid out before her. When she looked at Dixon, however, an acid resentment at his vulnerability tainted the water. Instead of coming to his aid, she just stared back at him. This released Sara to let fly another challenge.
“It’s not that I’m saying we ought to go to this man’s church or something,” Sara said. “It’s not that I necessarily want people I know going to him to get healed. It’s just that I don’t think it’s right for you to make public statements about him that we can’t be really sure are true.”
“Have you looked at the Web site?” Dixon said. He had hit ramming speed now.
Sara’s voice deepened with confidence. “I did. And it’s really one-sided. There are a lot of things that look bad for him, but he never gets a chance to answer any of it. I mean, even if the accusations are true, they’re done in a sort of sneaky and mean way.”
Fortunately, for the future of family unity, the Web site had been constructed by an entirely outside organization and had only been revised and endorsed by Dixon’s group of ministers. Therefore, he didn’t feel the full brunt of Sara’s rejection of its tone and contents. He wondered now, however, whether he should have fact-checked more of what was published there. It was all well-presented, after the refinements his committee had added, but that assumed that everything in it was true. Of course, feeling as if he was already in full retreat, he wasn’t going to give that thought any air time.
The Claiborne household grew cold that night in late May, after a ragged ending to the conversation in the living room. The closest thing to an apology that Dixon would offer was, “Well, let’s all give this some more thought, and talk about it another time.”
Lacking the motivation and the instinct to go for a kill that night, Sara allowed that to be the final word on the subject, for now. Kristen nearly staggered on her way to the bedroom, a bit of vertigo spiraling around a growing feeling gripping her head, an increasing suspicion that her husband and his colleagues had miscalculated. Focusing on not lurching through the house kept her from carefully defining just where they had gone wrong.
Get Up and Walk
Sitting in his Land Rover, the tinted driver’s window rolled down, Beau Dupere joked with one of his guards. “You hear about the shoot to kill order?” he said, straight-faced.
The muscular young man raised his eyebrows and curved his lips into an upside down smile. “You serious? We don’t have guns.”
“Well, then Taser to kill it is,” Beau said, still stone-faced.
“What?”
“I guess you’ll have to just let ‘em roast.”
The more perceptive guard stepped over to his partner. “He’s jerkin’ your chain. Mr. Dupere is always jokin’ around.”
The dumbfounded guard looked at his partner and then back at Beau and said, “Oooohh, I get it. Yeah.”
Beau raised his eyebrows at the second guard who just shook his head.
“Well, you boys keep the zombies back while I go get some supplies.” And he accelerated out of the driveway, past a few dozen protesters who had become more subdued since sunset.
The window still down, his hair fluttered as he zipped around the curves on the way to the grocery store. Against Justine’s judgment, Beau had volunteered to pick up the list of ten things they needed at the house. They usually had groceries delivered, but she was baking after supper and realized she was missing two key ingredients.
“Time to rescue the maiden,” Beau had said, bypassing Justine’s objections.
She smiled at her champion, dressed in t-shirt, long gym shorts and flip-flops. “You think I need rescuing?”
Beau kissed her lifted face and answered. “Well, I gotta take what I can get around all these strong, independent women.” He looked at Emma, the blonde five-year-old, who had just entered the kitchen. She was trying to fit the head back on a little dark-skinned baby doll.
Emma held the decapitated doll up to Beau without a word. He took the two pieces from her little uplifted hands and said. “Be healed,” popping the head back into place.
“I knew you could do it,” Emma said with a satisfied smile.
Beau and Justine both laughed.
“Don’t worry, we still have a few good uses for you around here,” Justine said, raising one eyebrow provocatively.
“Hmmm. Hold that thought,” Beau said, kissing Justine on the lips once more, before kissing Emma on top of the head and heading for the driveway.
On the dark road, lighted by street lamps surrounded by swaying trees, Beau hummed a favorite worship song and listened for the presence that stayed with him wherever he went. He signaled to turn when he reached the first driveway for the small organic foods store Justine favored. He knew it would close soon, but had a few minutes to spare when he pulled into a parking space twenty yards from the front doors.
Still humming as he strode through the aisles and gathered all of the items he could find, Beau began to feel that familiar prod in his spirit, an alert to look out for the next person he was supposed to touch. As he studied the various kinds of dates available, in the dried fruit section, the word “veteran” came to mind. He dropped a carton of pitted dates into his basket and headed for the counter. But, before he reached the end of that aisle, a man in a wheel chair spun into Beau’s path. The sun-seasoned man, wearing army green pants and a dark t-shirt with an American flag on it, was looking at the cereal on the top shelf.
Beau stopped. “Can I reach something for you?”
The older man tipped his head toward Beau, looking at him through gold, wire-rimmed glasses. He looked back at the top shelf and pointed to granola boxes beyond his reach. “Sure, that’d be handy of you. Can you get that vanilla kind there? He pointed with a hand wearing a driver’s glove. Beau followed that hand and located the right box, with the help of a couple of prompting grunts.
“There ya’ go,” Beau said, handing him the box. “You mind if I ask what’s got you confined to that chair?”
The man craned his neck to see Beau’s face again, this time to judge what sort of inquiry he was making. “Took shrapnel in the spine in Nam,” the man said, still studying Beau.
“My name’s Beau,” he said, offering his hand.
The man in the chair said, “Rich. Pleased to meet ya.” He still sounded uncertain, however, about how pleased he really was.
“What would you say, Rich, if I told you God was gonna get you outta that wheelchair tonight?”
Rich maintained his surveillance of that tan smiling face. “How’s . . . he . . . gonna . . . do that?” he said, the words spaced around sluggish pauses, signali
ng his skepticism.
Beau waited for a second, hoping for some help with the answer to that question, but his hesitation tipped Rich from the “undecided” to the “opposed” category.
“Some other time, maybe,” he said, turning his chair away and heading for the checkout, just as the manager announced closing time over the intercom.
Though Beau had become bolder over the years of increasing success, he still harbored the hesitation of the polite Midwestern boy that his parents raised. Bold, usually, but pushy, hardly ever.
Beau followed Rich to the cashiers and went to the other open lane, keeping his internal frequency tuned in for further instructions, even as he greeted the cashier and watched her run his groceries over the scanner. He noticed that the young Hispanic store employee wore a brace on her right hand.
“That from working here?” Beau said, nodding toward the brace.
The young woman, barely twenty, looked up at him and nodded. “Yeah. I get going and don’t even think about whether I’ve been doing the same thing over and over and getting sore and stiff.”
“Let me see it,” he said.
Thinking that he might be a doctor or something, the girl raised her braced hand halfway to where Beau could reach it. But he didn’t touch it, he just spoke to it.
“Tendons, be healed right now,” he said in his regular voice.
The cashier looked up at him abruptly and then used her other hand to pull at the Velcro straps of the brace. An older woman, with an item in each hand, had just arrived behind Beau and stared incredulously at the odd proceedings. Rich had just finished paying for his food and started past where Beau stood. He coasted to a halt, however, when he saw the cashier pulling off her brace.
She stuttered. “It . . . it . . . feels really warm, and all the pain is gone. What did you do?”
“I just healed it by the power of Jesus,” Beau said.
Rich stayed where he was, inadvertently blocking Beau’s exit from the lane, that is if the cashier would stop staring at her wrist and flexing her fingers. She held the brace in her other hand, oblivious to anything else around her.
The woman next in line cleared her throat.
Beau said, “Put her items with mine.”
The cashier and the impatient woman made inquiring noises simultaneously. But the cashier was easily persuaded by Beau just then, so she took the two additional items off of the conveyor and rang them up.
“Hey, I didn’t agree to that,” the woman said, barely acknowledging Beau and directing her protest at the cashier.
“Consider it compensation for holding up the line,” Beau said, his voice consoling, like he was talking to his own dear grandmother. He handed the cashier a hundred dollar bill as the waiting customer tried to recover her ability to speak.
Rich seized the stage at this point. “You healed her arm?” he said, forming a statement with the inflection of a question. Clearly, the implications of his inquiry stretched back to a refusal he had made a few minutes before.
“Yep,” Beau said, nodding once. “I told you I could get you outta that wheelchair right here and now.” Beau grabbed his groceries in one hand and reached a smaller bag to the woman with the shoulder-length gray hair behind him. She seemed in less of a hurry as she gathered the conversation in front of her.
Rich swallowed hard, as if he had gone dry. “I guess you could give it a try,” he said, sounding more like a shy boy on his first day at school than the tough war survivor he had played a moment ago.
“Try?” Beau said. “Jesus didn’t send me to try to heal anyone. He just said to do it.” He shifted his bag to his left hand and reached his right out to Rich, as if for a handshake.
By this time, the store manager had come up front to see what was holding up the lines. Now he joined in the audience, barely a puff of breath to be heard among them. Standing next to the second cashier, the manager leaned toward her and whispered. “That’s Beau Dupere, the healer.” That cashier shook her head, unfamiliar with Beau, or his reputation.
Scooting a bit forward in his chair by placing his elbows on the arms, Rich reached up to take Beau’s hand. At first, it looked like a tug of war. Rich’s right arm went rigid, cocked at the elbow, his fingertips white with the pressure of his grip on Beau’s powerful hand. Beau bent at the knees slightly, his bicep flexed with the effort to lift Rich. But his face showed no strain. Beau looked as if he were arm wrestling one of the little kids at home, a mischievous grin beginning to hatch his straight white teeth.
Rich started to shake, as if every muscle strained and shook with one final effort before collapsing.
“Just let it happen,” Beau said. “Don’t fight it.”
Looking up into Beau’s face, Rich fairly grunted his response. “Help me.” His bulging eyes and clamped jaws suddenly relaxed and his legs straightened. He fell forward into Beau’s arms.
Still holding the paper grocery bag in his left hand, Beau embraced Rich momentarily. Then he stepped back and let go. Rich stood on his own. He looked down, as if afraid to find that his legs had disappeared. Instead, he saw them standing firm, unshaken.
“I can’t . . . I can’t . . .” Rich tried to clarify his own disbelief, but seemed to lose momentum for the effort. He took a baby step toward Beau, then he straightened his back and stood up to full height, nearly as tall as Beau.
“Guess you’ll be gettin’ your own granola off the top shelf from now on,” Beau said. He laughed almost theatrically, literally forming the words “Ha, ha, ha,” with his exclamation of joy.
“This is a dream,” Rich said. “This can’t be real.”
“Well, it’s not much of a dream if you’re gonna just shuffle along like an old man,” Beau said. “Hell, man you can walk! You can run! You can jump!”
Rich stared at him wide eyed and then made a little jump in place. Upon landing the minor maneuver, he looked at Beau and laughed that same, “Ha, ha, ha.”
“Oh, my God,” said the cashier with the healed wrist.
“I don’t believe it,” said the gray haired customer, sounding as if maybe she did believe it, in spite of her words.
By the time Beau walked into the kitchen, where Justine sat now at the table reading a paperback book, he apologized. “Sorry it took so long.”
“How many did you heal?” Justine said, standing to take the grocery bag from him.
“A couple,” Beau said, and he gave her a peck on the cheek, before heading to the fridge for some cold water.
A Wider Reach
When Jonathan Opare listened to his voicemail and learned that Darryl Sampras would not be meeting with him, he lined up an even more interesting meeting. Though Jonathan was not a theologian or church historian, he did know a few things about the state of the Church in America. He arranged a meeting with Ken Bennington, from the local Assemblies of God church. Knowing better than to assume that a minister with a Pentecostal background would totally share his viewpoint, nonetheless, Jonathan needed to hear more of the indictment of Beau Dupere from someone for whom healing was still a current ministry of the church. His political instincts led him to search for the divide between the sides in the conflict that had been presented at the big community meeting, especially since one of the sides was entirely unrepresented there.
Ken Bennington was built like a marathon runner and was as high-strung as a beagle. He swigged his diet cola just as Jonathan stepped through his office door. Nerves over the threat of an impending debate wound Pastor Bennington even tighter. He set down his soda can, stood up and wiped his hand on his khaki pants before offering it to his visitor. They shook hands across the desk, the pastor leaning forward slightly to reach Jonathan’s boney hand.
“Mr. Opare, pleased to meet you,” said the pastor, pronouncing the name “Oh-pear,” having only read it on his email.
“It’s Oh-pah-ray,” Jonathan said, smiling and shaking hands vigorously. Ken Bennington reminded him of athletes he had known back home, tensed and ready for the st
arting gun. “You can call me Jonathan,” he said.
“Great. You can call me Ken.”
Though this latter concession seemed friendly from Ken’s perspective, to Jonathan it was just another awkward cultural fence to climb. He never would have addressed a pastor by his first name in his church back home.
Gesturing to a chair across the desk, Ken squatted back into his tall fake-leather chair. “So you’re in the U.S. to study? What is it you’re studying?”
“Economics,” Jonathan answered, still smiling as he lowered his bag to the floor next to his chair. For the next few minutes, Ken tried to size up his visitor and Jonathan tried to explain exactly what about economics he was studying. This led back to his home country and his family background, including church. Finally, they turned to the actual agenda for the meeting.
“So, you see, I brought this particular perspective to the community-wide meeting this past week,” Jonathan said. He crossed his right leg over his left knee at the ankle, resting his right hand on the cross bar formed by his shinbone.
“You mean a Pentecostal perspective?” Ken said, to be sure he knew what was coming.
“Yes,” Jonathan said. “My wife and I have been attending Pastor Claiborne’s church, because of some friendships there, but I am still a product of my Pentecostal upbringing, and some of what was said the other night concerned me. I want to understand how you see the criticism of Mr. Dupere.”
“Well, of course, I was on the stage because I share some concerns about Mr. Dupere’s lifestyle, the same as the other pastors from other denominations and traditions,” Ken said. “But I can understand where you might have some questions about the way things went at the meeting. I think I would have said some things a bit differently to my own congregation, for example.”
If You Really Knew Me (Anyone Who Believes Book 1) Page 9
