If You Really Knew Me (Anyone Who Believes Book 1)

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  Looking at her notebook, Anna cleared her throat slightly, then glanced at the map of the U.S. on the wall over Miranda’s shoulder. She groped for a segue to more comfortable territory.

  “Weren’t you kinda put off by the whole family situation, Beau and all the women?” She still hadn’t found her footing for addressing this issue after talking to both Beau and Jack Williams.

  “You mean the extended household?” Miranda said, offering a pert grin and raised eyebrow that said, “I know what you really want to ask about.”

  Anna nodded.

  “Well, I didn’t really understand when I started. They did tell me that things were non-traditional, but I wasn’t really picking up on what they meant by that.” She fanned both hands in front of her. “It was like I had no way of imagining the lifestyle they were leading, so I didn’t hear it when they tried to tell me in polite terms.” She laughed at herself. “You wouldn’t think I would be naïve, coming out of working for Maya.”

  “When did you finally catch on?”

  “Well, actually it took a while, because I mostly deal with their travel schedules and speaking engagements, healing events, things like that. So the dynamics of family life was all a bit beyond my focus. Since I work right here in the house, though, I was getting a bit confused about who all was living here and which ones were Beau’s kids.” Miranda laughed again, but not the uncomfortable laugh of embarrassment. She just appeared to be enjoying remembering her old self.

  “Finally, when I seemed really baffled one day, Justine came in here, sat down and went through the relationships of everyone in the house. And I finally did the math, so to speak.” She raised both eyebrows and grinned. “It turns out, it was a good thing I didn’t understand at the beginning, ‘cause I might have been too weirded out by all of it before I knew them. But, since I learned to trust them before hearing the whole story of all the relationships, I just kept trusting them, even where they were going beyond my comfort zone.”

  For Anna, of course, the path had been different, starting with the doctored video at the town meeting up in Parkerville and the accusations from the pastors there. She had followed Beau to find out for herself, but also to prove the accusers wrong. Proving religious people to be wrong seemed exciting at the time, even if in defense of others who lived a faith that she couldn’t understand. The thing that annoyed her most about church people was how smugly they held onto their rightness. She liked the prospect of breaking that smugness open, even though she expected that Beau Dupere, and his cult, carried a similar self-righteousness. The irony, for her, was that Beau and Justine, and their family, seemed more convinced than their accusers, doubtless even. But they just seemed joyful, and not at all arrogant. The possibility that one could hold strongly to very particular beliefs, without being nasty about it, had not occurred to Anna before. This combination tempted her to actually consider whether this was something she wanted for herself.

  Closing her notebook, and letting her bare legs dangle over the edge of the couch, her toes just grazing the plush carpet, she took a deep breath. “I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started these interviews, but I’m beginning to take this all personally. I was all caught up in feeling bad that I might have contributed to the attack against Dianna. But now I’m thinking that, if faith is like what you describe, and what I see in Beau and his family, then I might be interested.”

  Miranda smiled and nodded, looking a lot like an approving mother, but without the anxiety that turns a mother’s hair gray. “I’d be glad to talk to you about that any time,” she said. “Off the record.”

  They both laughed. Anna liked the fact that Miranda didn’t jump in to close the deal right then and there. She felt like she needed to give herself a bit more time before joining up, whatever that entailed. She was pretty sure now that offering herself as their indentured servant wouldn’t be part of it.

  And that’s when Beau finally called Amanda back.

  In Enemy Territory

  With Brett riding shotgun, Dixon pulled into the parking lot of a big church near Oakland. Brett, the A’s fan, had jumped on the chance to go to Oakland, even if it was to see the supposed healer, and expose him for what he really is. Brett didn’t fill that idea with specific content, but hoped they would expose whatever it was the Beau Dupere had to hide.

  They had to park a hundred yards from the front doors, the parking lot full of all sorts of vehicles, from little electric cars to big diesel busses. The pastor in the Toyota Camry couldn’t help being a little jealous of the turn out on a Thursday night.

  When he stepped out of the car, Dixon hesitated over whether he should wear a baseball cap and sunglasses in the meeting, to avoid being recognized. But that felt too creepy, once he pictured himself in that cam0flage, skulking in and hunkering down. Brett waited like a boy who had to go to the bathroom, excited to get into the action, whether it was to bust this false prophet or to start speaking in tongues. It was really all the same to him, as long as he didn’t have to move out of the house, whichever one happened.

  Opting for going in without a disguise, Dixon put a hand around Brett’s shoulders and they walked through the accumulating dusk, as the sun disappeared behind the church. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, made sure it wasn’t going to play “Bye, Bye Baby,” the Giants’ fight song, if someone called. He also noted the amount of battery power he had, in case he wanted to shoot a video of something incriminating. He supposed that recording was prohibited in the meeting, so he checked to see how he could hold his phone without being detected. That little side project ended when he nearly dropped his phone on the pavement. Brett looked a skeptical question at him as Dixon pocketed his phone.

  “When do I get a smart phone, dad?” Brett said, thinking their little bonding experience might be a good time to seek some kind of reward.

  “Oh, someday,” Dixon said. His distraction about what they were heading toward practically erased Brett’s question as soon as he answered.

  Brett figured that out and decided to save that question for a better opportunity.

  A bald man, with a shiny brown head and glasses, greeted them at the door, a smile filling half of his face. Dixon nodded a reply to the greeting but missed the handshake. His nerves seemed to be flipping circuits in his brain somewhat randomly, making simply walking a chancy endeavor. He couldn’t deal with complications such as shaking hands and pretending to be friendly just then.

  Like water down a drain, people poured into the auditorium, leaving little choice for anyone not willing to fight to break free of the flow in that direction. Dixon and Brett were glad to follow. The experience reminded Brett of being on vacation, when they would visit someone else’s church for a change, where they would be strangers instead of the focal family. His pulse escalated at the knowledge that he wouldn’t have seen and heard it all before, a feeling that recalled low-stress travel with his intact family.

  Dixon troubled over a strange sensation when he looked at the Bay Area crowd. Finally, he identified what was clogging his filter. The racial composition of the crowd was as mixed as he had ever seen anywhere, especially in church. African Americans might have been in a slim majority, but the Hispanic and white communities were also well represented, not to mention Asians of all nations imaginable. He had never particularly wanted an interracial church, but something about that serendipitous mix stirred a hopeful feeling in him that he hadn’t expected.

  A pair of seats ten rows from the back was the best they could do in relationship to the stage, but the auditorium was slanted like a theater and the view would be pretty good. He sat down, remembering a movie about Jim Jones and the way he deceived people into believing that he could heal. Dixon wondered whether he would be able to spot a fake from that distance.

  Both a band and a choir were on the stage now, and an African American man in his sixties headed for the podium, with Beau Dupere and two younger white people tagging behind. Dupere and his two associates sat dow
n on a mini pew behind the podium, as the pastor of that church greeted the crowd. Dixon recognized him from the advertisement Brett had found on the Internet, though he guessed that the picture must have been about ten years old, from what he was seeing live.

  With his head spinning in overdrive, trying to be something he had never trained for, Dixon barely caught a whole sentence of the greeting and invocation. His mind focused enough to stand up when everyone else did, as the racially mixed band, and nearly as diverse choir, started to fill the air with praise. No stiff conservative when it came to music, Dixon felt a lift with the growing momentum of the music. The instruments and voices performed expertly and naturally, but the verve of the music they made nearly overwhelmed him. The little governor in his brain, set there to warn him when he was about to get into trouble, seemed to have gone down, probably needing a reboot. He let the music catch him up and he followed the words on the screen, singing along as well as he could.

  Brett checked his dad’s engagement with the songs and figured that he was just playing along, so he did the same, trying his best to sing, to clap hands and even experimenting with raising one hand a little, until his dad let him know, with a cocked eyebrow, that that was too much blending in.

  They sang and watched, sometimes distracted by the emotional responses of people around them, men and woman who seemed to sing the lyrics from their feet upward, from their hearts outward. Brett stared shamelessly at a woman lying in the aisle crying her eyes out, interspersing her sobs with, “Thank you, Jesus. Oh, thank you, Jesus.”

  Then the music wound down. The main event was not the jet-powered worship or the cathartic tears.

  After forty-five minutes of music, Beau Dupere finally filled the large video screen. But only after the host pastor spent five minutes introducing him, a mini-sermon for a warmup, perhaps. Sweat glistened on the forehead of the white-haired pastor, when Beau approached the podium. He first whispered something into the pastor’s ear and they exchanged a look and a laugh. Then Beau put his hand gently on that sweaty forehead, and the distinguished senior pastor collapsed to the carpet like a blow-up Easter decoration with a sudden air leak.

  Beau turned to the congregation and smiled, perhaps shyly, perhaps apologetically, but he said nothing about what had transpired between him and the host pastor. Instead, he introduced his sermon, directing the gathered hearers to I Corinthians 2:1 – 5. He read the passage aloud, “When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.”

  When he finished with the word, “power,” the crowd burst into cheers and laughter. Some did so because they were watching the senior pastor rolling around on the floor next to the podium. Many cheered because they were there for the power, they were there to receive a healing miracle, as well as to witness the healing of many others.

  The rushing wind of cheers and laughter sent several hundred people into delirious hilarity, way beyond any possible humor in the situation. Beau paused to explain, “That laughter you hear is dozens and dozens of people instantly losing their depression and anxiety disorders, their chemical imbalances, and their glandular conditions, with thyroid and other issues.” Several women screamed and shouted from across the room, as if in confirmation of what he said. The room seemed to rock like a rickety train station gripping its foundation as the express roared through.

  “I’m not a preacher,” Beau said. He looked over the crowd. “I usually agree to speak before the healing begins, just to be polite.” A few “amens” and a shower of natural laughter greeted this confession.

  “God has made me a healer. Though some preachers are healers and some healers try to preach, I’m clear that I have little to say with my mouth, with my mind.”

  A seasoned male voice shouted. “Help him, Lord!”

  “But I do bring the power of God’s Kingdom, alive here on Earth, just as it exists in Heaven.”

  That passing train seemed to be replaced with a much larger model. Whether or not the rocking of that building was scientifically verifiable, most of the people there felt it. Dixon Claiborne felt it, and seriously considered climbing his way to the aisle and running for his car. Bret looked just the same as he did the last time he went to an A’s game and saw them win by four runs in a ninth inning rally. His freckled cheeks bulged with pleasure around a toothy smile.

  Then Beau changed his pace. “There’s a woman here. Your name is Karen. You had a surgery that was supposed to be minor, but there was a problem and you nearly died. Now you have continued pain across your midsection near your belly button.”

  A woman with long red hair jumped to her feet to the right of the stage, twenty rows back. And just as soon as she jumped up, she collapsed into the arms of those seated around her.

  “You’re healed, right now, Karen,” Beau declared.

  Cheers, applause and laughter followed that declaration. At least a half dozen other women leapt to their feet clutching their stomachs. One, near Dixon and Brett, was saying, “I’m healed, my pain is healed!”

  As if from a bomb blast where that woman stood, Dixon rocked and felt an electric shiver over the left side of his body, starting at his head and vibrating down to his waist. “Whoa! What was that?” he said aloud.

  “What?” Brett said.

  And, while they were distracted from the stage for a moment, Beau motioned for his two friends seated behind him to follow, and he stepped down the six stairs onto the floor in front of the stage. Soon after, a series of loud pops sounded and several people screamed.

  To Dixon, this was just too much. The excitement had reached pandemonium, and he had to get out of there while he still had his wits. He grabbed Brett’s t-shirt collar awkwardly in one hand, pulling him to his feet and heading for the exit. Dixon let go of his son’s collar but found a hand and tugged that past a dozen people seated between him and freedom.

  Just as he reached the blue carpet, a man ran past him at a full sprint. Dixon had to repress his old football instinct to run after the man. But he lost that thought when he realized that people at the front of the auditorium were still screaming and someone said clearly, “He’s been shot! Beau’s been shot!”

  Her First Healing Meeting

  A reporter for a state-wide paper for almost five years now, Anna was used to driving long distances to follow a story. And that’s what her editor thought explained her drive up the coast to Oakland that day. Anna knew that Beau would be holding a meeting at that church on the south side of the city and she figured it was her best chance to see him in action during the next month, based on the schedule Miranda had given her.

  Some small part of Anna still wanted to find Beau and apologize for the article. But mostly she drove to that meeting to be close to Beau at his best, in a healing meeting with thousands of people poised to launch into a life transformed by the miraculous power that had made him famous, and infamous.

  An accident on the way into Oakland delayed her enough that she arrived at the meeting ten minutes into the worship music. She had to park at an overflow lot down the street, next to a burned out building. The contrast with Malibu flashed boldly, as she stepped carefully over broken glass in her thin sandals, on the way to the church building.

  She could hear the music by the time she reached the main parking lot. Anna had seen Beau’s meetings on the Internet, but had always skipped through the music when that was included in the recording. To a non-church person, that boisterous and callisthenic music session before Beau took the pulpit added to the mystery of it all. What were these people singing about? And how did they know it was all true, all worth throwing so much energy into it? As that non-church person, Anna assum
ed that all of the people in that building believed it all and knew why they believed it. The forest looks dense from the outside, before you enter it and see the gaps between the trees.

  Joining a few other stragglers, Anna had to satisfy herself with a seat in the balcony, up a winding staircase off the lobby. From there, she could see the churning and bouncing mass of worshippers on the main floor. She even had to step over a young man who lay on the carpet in the balcony, looking as if he might have fallen through the roof. Anna looked around to check how unusual the supine worshipper was. She found no one else looking around with similar questions and continued to assume that she was the only outsider there that night.

  Even though she missed nearly a quarter of the music, Anna tired of the wall of noise that rose up during each song, and sometimes flowed on between songs, with shouts and spontaneous singing. She felt more exhausted from enduring the heavy blanket of sound than the worshippers appeared to be from creating that sound. She was relieved to finally see the pastor step up to the podium and the choir leave the stage. She sunk to her seat in the fourth row of the balcony.

  She could see Beau sitting with two people she didn’t recognize at first. Then she realized that the young woman was Maggie. Anna was struck by how old Maggie looked from that distance. Suddenly she flashed back to the condemning video she had seen at the town meeting in Parkerville. She was almost certain that one of those photos that they claimed showed him with several of his wives, or sex partners, actually included Maggie, or maybe his older daughter Joanne, not a string of babes from his harem.

  Anna mixed these ideas around in her head, instead of listening to the pastor’s lengthy introduction, disguised as a short sermon, or the other way around. That other person, the young man, must be his interpreter. Anna shook her head and silently laughed at herself for having any room for this whole notion of someone translating Beau speaking in tongues while he healed people. Beau Dupere had proved to be as strange as she had expected, but in totally unexpected ways.