Eli (24 page)

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“A home run!”
little Julia shouted
. “He hit a home run!”

Excitement overwhelmed her. She’d heard of home runs all of her life, but now to actually see one! Tears sprang to her eyes as she began to cry
. “A home run! He hit a home run!”

Her father continued to laugh as he reached down to give her a hug
. “Are you okay?”

“Yes!”
she cried, watching the runner in awe. Then turning to her mother she shouted,
“Did you see it? He hit a home
run!”

“Yes.”
Her mother grinned.

“I mean just now . . . a real home run!”

“Yes.”
Her mother laughed as she glanced over to her father.
“I saw it, I saw it.”

Then, suddenly, without a word, Dad turned and started to leave.

“Daddy . . . Daddy, where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back,”
he called as he stepped into the aisle and started up the concrete steps to the exit.

“Daddy!”

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

And he was. Well, actually several minutes. And when he returned it was with a white, shiny baseball.

“What is it?”
she asked.

“It’s the home-run ball. I bought it off the guy who caught
it.”

Her eyes widened in astonishment
.

“Go ahead, take it.”

At first, she was afraid to touch it.

“Go ahead, Jules, it’s yours.”

She looked up nervously to him. He nodded.

Then, ever so slowly, almost reverently, she reached out.

He placed it in her hands and she turned it over and over.

Once again tears leaped to her eyes. It was the home-run ball.

Her daddy had gone out and brought her back the home-run baseball. The tears streamed down her cheeks, she was so overcome with joy, so overwhelmed by his love. She buried hththt 5/14/01 11:35 AM Page 181

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her face into his shirt and felt his big arms wrap around her.

There was nothing this man wouldn’t do for her. Nothing in the world.

Julia stared at the old, dusty ball for a long moment. What on earth was this doing with his awards, with the things that he’d fought and worked for his whole life? She glanced down at the faded teacup—a child’s teacup from her old tea set. The toy tea set she and her father used to drink imaginary tea from—right here, right in the office. She glanced over at the desk—right under that desk.

Still holding the ball, she moved to the desk, pulled back the chair, and gently knelt down. The place underneath was impossibly small. It’s a wonder they’d both been able to fit.

But they had, on several occasions.

“Daddy, will we always be best friends?”

“Yes, Jules.”
He had smiled.
“We’ll always be best
friends.”

“And you’ll never let anything bad happen to me?”

“I’ll never ever let anything bad happen to you.”

She smiled
. “Good. And I’ll never let anything bad happen to you.”

“Good.”
He grinned. Then reaching out his hand the way she had taught him, with his little finger raised, he asked,

“Pinkie swear?”

She giggled, delighted that he remembered, and reached out her own little finger to wrap it around his
. “Pinkie swear.”

Julia took a deep breath and slowly rose from the desk.

“Pinkie swear,” she murmured almost distastefully. Still holding the baseball, she walked round the desk and started for the door. Not once had she looked over at the leather couch.

And not until this moment had she paused to consider the destruction performed on it. Rachel Thomas was her name.

Some student intern. At least that’s the one little Julia had caught him with. The one her mother had shouted and screamed and wept over. The one who had destroyed their—

no, that wasn’t right—the one
he
had destroyed their family hththt 5/14/01 11:35 AM Page 182

182 with. How many more there had been, she didn’t know. Two, three, a dozen, it didn’t matter. Once a liar, always a liar.
A
man is only as good as his word
. How many times had he told her that? Drilled it into her head? Made it her life’s code?

While, all that time, he was carrying out his destructive lies right in their own home. Right in their own room.
Their
room!

A man is only as good as his word
. How right he was.

Arriving at the door, she turned back to the desk and tossed the ball onto it. It rolled across the papers, fell onto the floor, and disappeared into the shadows. It didn’t matter where. She turned her back on the room, snapped off the light, and closed the door. She would not return.

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C H A P T E R

N I N E

THE CELEBRATION OUTSIDE LEWISTON COMMUNITY FELLOWSHIP WAS

in full swing. What was supposed to be an after-service potluck had turned into quite a party. And for good reason. Of the forty or so members of the small, impoverished, black congregation, over half had been cured of some ailment—

everything from diabetes to athlete’s foot, breast cancer to canker sores. Then there was the Emerson boy whose hand had been missing since birth.
Had
been missing. Not anymore.

It had been several weeks since Conrad had seen such a concentration of miracles. Maybe it was because these people really believed. Or maybe it was because so few congregations were inviting Eli to speak that when he did he found it difficult to contain his enthusiasm and his love. Whatever the reason, the morning had been quite an event, and this afternoon was proving to be quite a celebration.

“Come on, brother!” The pastor slapped his big, meaty hand on Conrad’s shoulder. “You ain’t hardly touched that food.” He was a large man, always chuckling and grinning, with a gold tooth that often caught the sunlight. And he was sweating, always sweating. Not that he could be blamed in 183

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184 this Texas heat. They’d been in the state three days now, and every day the temperature had easily hit the nineties.

Conrad glanced down at his paper plate. Most everything was fried. Some of it he recognized, some of it he was afraid to ask.

“An’ if you’re hankerin’ for somethin’ a little more substantial than lemonade . . .” The pastor lowered his voice slightly. “There’s a cooler back of Ronnie Hendrick’s pickup that don’t seem to be runnin’ out of beer.”

Conrad glanced up at the grinning face.

“Tha’s right.” The big man chuckled as he dabbed the sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief. “Ronnie, he claims he only bought a couple six packs, but dang if I ain’t already counted two, maybe three dozen empties. And they say it’s better than anything they ever tasted!”

Conrad stole a look at Eli, who sat on the blistered front steps of the fellowship hall, chatting with several of the congregation. Somehow he suspected healings weren’t the only miracles he’d performed that day.

“You call these clothes?” An old woman’s voice rose from several lawn chairs over. “These ain’t clothes—least not for men.” Conrad turned to see Leon enduring a lecture from some white-haired grandmother. “Makes you look like a pea-cock. Or one of them foo-foo boys.” Leon tried to shrug her off with a smile, but she was relentless. “You don’t want people to be gettin’ the wrong impression ’bout you, do you, son?”

“No, ma’am,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then what you wearin’ girlie things like this for?”

Again he shrugged, and for the first time Conrad could remember, Leon Brewster didn’t use his razor wit to fire off a snappy put-down—not that he could find space between her nonstop stream of words. Still, Conrad suspected that Leon’s restraint had more to do with the day-to-day maturing taking hththt 5/14/01 11:35 AM Page 185

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place in him. Slowly but very surely, he could see Leon growing less concerned about drawing attention to himself and more concerned about others. This was no exception. Instead of shutting down the old woman, he glanced sheepishly about, until he connected with Will Patton, who smiled in both amusement and sympathy.

Will Patton—there was another. Like Leon, he was also changing. In fact, he almost seemed comfortable surrounded by these forty black people. Almost. Conrad was further impressed by Will’s wisdom in trading in his muscle shirt for one whose sleeves were long enough to cover his racist tattoos.

But it wasn’t just Leon and Will who were changing. It was everyone in the group. Each seemed to be undergoing their own maturing process. Jake was getting a handle on his temper and impetuousness; Brent and Scott (along with their mother) were slowly grasping the cost of real leadership; even shy, retiring Trevor seemed to be coming more and more out of his shell.

And then there was Suzanne, dear sweet Suzanne. What an incredible gift it was to have a second chance with her. But even she was being stretched. Just as Eli had said that Keith’s and Conrad’s greatest strength was their weakness, so he had said that Suzanne’s greatest strength, the intense love she had for family, was hers.

On two separate occasions she had approached Eli, asking if he would fly back to Lebanon, Tennessee, at her family’s expense, to heal her brother. And both times she had asked, he had declined. His response frustrated her, even made her angry. After all that she’d sacrificed for him, couldn’t he at least do this for her? Even more frustrating was that, when she pressed him on the issue, his only explanation was, “It is for God’s glory.”
God’s glory?
Her little brother was sick and dying . . . for
God’s glory?
The answer made no sense. And with each e-mail from her sister describing his worsening condition, Suzanne’s faith was being stretched to the limit.

Finally, there was Conrad’s own growth—from curious doubter, to reluctant believer, to . . . well, he wasn’t sure what hththt 5/14/01 11:35 AM Page 186

186 he was now. But, for the first time in his life, that gnawing hunger, that haunting emptiness, was being filled. And it had nothing to do with becoming the best in his field, or owning the most toys, or bedding the most beauties. The last thought caused him to wince. Was that what all those affairs and marriages had been about? Trying to fill the void?

The stretching and growing were painful, there was no doubt about it—particularly the continual battle to give up everything that made sense and do it Eli’s way. It was one thing to hear his profound teachings, but quite another to try and incorporate them in day-to-day living. And when Conrad wasn’t frustrated at Eli’s behavior (this current detour to Texas’s death row being the most recent example), he was discouraged at his own lack of growth.

“Eli?” Suzanne emerged from the fellowship hall with the pastor’s wife, a big-hipped woman who sweated almost as much as her husband. “Your mother’s on the phone. She’s down at the Imperial Motor Lodge.”

Eli turned from the porch steps and looked up to her. “Is everything okay?”

Suzanne nodded. “She and your brothers just want to say hi.”

“Great. Have them come on up.”

“Already tried that,” the pastor’s wife answered. “Told her we had plenty a food and to bring the boys up and make herself at home.”

“And . . .”

“I think . . .” Suzanne cleared her throat. “I think she just wants some time alone with the family. You know, just you and your brothers.”

Eli turned and motioned to the group sitting on the brown lawn before him. “Tell her these here are my mother and brothers.”

Silence stole over the group. The abruptness of the reply made some of the folks uneasy. He turned back to Suzanne, fixing her a look. He spoke clearly and evenly, making sure she understood the depth of his statement. “Tell her that the hththt 5/14/01 11:35 AM Page 187

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ones who hear what I have to say, and do it—tell her they are closer to me than any mother or brother. Tell her
they
are my family.”

Conrad watched as Suzanne hesitated a moment. He knew full well what Eli meant, and he could see her weigh-ing the implications in her own life. Finally she asked, “Is that really what you want me to tell her, Eli? Are you sure?”

Still holding her gaze, he nodded. “Yes, Suzanne. I’m sure.”

“All right, then.” She turned hesitantly, then nodded to the pastor’s wife. The two of them reentered the building.

They’d barely disappeared before the pastor called out,

“Say, Eli—Eli, I want ya ta meet a couple friends a mine.” Eli turned to see him resting his big, meaty hands on two gentlemen’s shoulders—one, an older white man with distinguished gray hair, the other a slender black man with thin, wiry wrists. Both wore suits, and they looked as uncomfortable in the hot sun as they did out of place with the casually dressed group. The pastor nodded to the white gentleman first. “This here is Reverend Caldwell from the First Assem-bly of Lewiston.” He turned to the second. “And this is Brother Hudson from God’s Holy Sanctuary.”

“Hi, fellows.” Eli nodded.

“Both of ’em are on Lewiston’s Board of Clergy. They heard you were in town, and they take, how shall I put it, a rather dim view of your visit to our fine community.” There was no missing the mischief in the pastor’s eyes.

“I see,” Eli said. “Well, please, gentlemen, make your-selves comfortable. I was just about to tell a story, one that you might find interesting.”

“Thank you,” Brother Hudson answered stiffly.

Both men looked for a place to sit. The grass was certainly inappropriate for their dress, and the people lounging in the lawn furniture and folding chairs felt no compulsion to volunteer their seats.

“Actually,” Reverend Caldwell gave an awkward smile,

“it might be better if we just stand.”

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“Suit yourself,” Eli said. “But maybe off to the back so the folks behind you can see?”

“Oh, certainly,” Brother Hudson coughed self-consciously. “Certainly.”

The two slunk toward the back under the amused smiles of the group.