Chapter Five
FIVE
A PIANO AT THE FRONT of the church is midway through “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” as I make my way up to the open double doors of Mount Zion Church of the Healing Redeemer amid a mostly silent and somber crowd.
I turn, pausing halfway up the steps, when I feel sure there are eyes upon me.
But, when I look around, I only see the expected curious glances from regular parishioners.
I take a program, printed on regular copy paper, and shuffle to the end of one of the back pews.
After leaving the Dairy, I’d checked into room number nine at the Mount Zion Motel, taken a quick shower, brushed my teeth, and then pulled my black leather jacket over my best black V-neck T-shirt. I’m about as dressed up as I ever get by choice.
The pianist lets the last note fade before turning the page in her music book and starting up “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” A pair of elderly women scoot into the pew beside me, sniffling and dabbing at their eyes with tissues.
“What will we do?” I hear someone in front of me say. “What will we do without him?”
The interior of the church is mostly made up of one large rectangular room with tall clear windows to either side and two rows of bare wooden pews with an aisle down the middle.
There’s no air-conditioning in here and a few ceiling fans stir the heat from twenty feet above.
The women to my left have pulled folding fans from their bags and go about the business of cooling themselves down while simultaneously helping to waft the various smells around.
Perfume, body odor, sun-dried laundry, the synthetic imitation of sun-dried laundry and—underneath it all—the pervasive odor of grief and anxiety.
The last strains of the hymn fade away and we all wait, in silence, to see what’s going to happen next.
“Where is he?” I hear someone whisper closer to the front.
Finally, a door in the far corner behind the stage opens and a young man slowly steps up behind the pulpit.
He’s a small-built guy, maybe five and a half feet, with narrow shoulders and long limbs.
Carrying a well-worn Bible the way a child would, held against his chest, he gives the impression of a boy playing at being a preacher.
He wears a blue button-up with black trousers and his face, while tanned, has the pallid, sweaty look of a man about to step onto the battlefield.
“Good—” he starts, his voice scratchy and high. Though likely in his early or mid-twenties, his face has a childlike quality, round and soft, with dark eyes framed by looping tawny curls. He clears his throat, and then pulls a glass of ice water from within the pulpit and takes a long drink.
“Good evening,” he begins again. “And … welcome. I see we have a few new faces in the crowd.”
His voice is clearer now but still wavers.
“My name is Will Carpenter. Most of y’all know me and are used to me up here preaching on the nights when Brother Ezra takes his message out into the world with his revival offering. I’ve always said, at the beginning of every service, that I will do my best in his absence.”
He pauses and clears his throat again and then asks us to open our hymnals.
I take an old flocked-edge hymnal from the rack on the pew in front of me, open it, and follow along as the pianist plays each piece and a man with an acoustic guitar joins her.
The congregation sings “The Old Rugged Cross,” followed by “Amazing Grace,” followed by “In the Sweet By and By.”
The last songs strum a chord in my memory.
Old pews, old churches. Just like this one. Not so very far away in space or time.
I remember that long, long summer. The hunger in my belly that drove me to seek solace of the soul.
I remember coming home and seeing my dad on the porch, strumming his guitar.
I remember wanting to stay where I was, watch him all night.
Watch as he sat there and sang “In the Sweet By and By,” with a smile on his face, his eyes closed.
The phone inside the house began to ring as he was finishing the song.
He opened his eyes and saw me and let out a surprised laugh.
“Hey there, Annie-Girl,” he’d said. “You’d better go inside and get a jacket. It’s chilly out here tonight.”
“Okay,” I’d said, moving past him.
“And answer that phone while you’re in there—” he’d hollered after me.
I jogged into the kitchen and picked up the phone.
“Annie?” Her voice threaded through me like cracks in an icy lake. Beautiful and dangerous; I found myself taking a step backward at the sound of it.
“Annie, you there?” she said.
I took a deep breath, my heart thundering, and finally said, “Yeah. Hey, Mom.”
There’s a shift in the room around me as the singing stops. The wood creaks as all the hymnals go back into all the racks and all the bodies ease back to sitting.
Will says, “The book of Mark says, ‘These signs shall follow them that believe; in my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’”
A few uneasy whispers travel through the church. Wood creaks again as bottoms shift in the pews. This part of Will’s message is surely what some people came to hear. How did a man protected by his belief succumb to a bite from the snakes he wielded as the very proof of his faith?
“I have heard it said”—Will pauses, takes another breath, and continues—“that if Brother Ezra’s faith had been stronger, he would not have fallen sick and died from the bite of the serpent.
Yes, even in the very hours after Brother Ezra was called home to sit at the feet of our Lord.
Yes, already the seeds of doubt have begun to spread.
But did not the Lord call his very own son home to him? ”
“Yes, Lord, He did,” someone says, softly.
“And so our Father must have had a greater purpose for Brother Ezra. For I cannot name a man of—” He pauses, his voice cracking with tears. “I cannot name a man of greater faith, of more powerful belief.”
“Amen,” an elderly woman says, lifting her hand to the sky.
Several amens follow.
Will continues his sermon with verses from the book of John and much talk of grief and letting go. Then, toward the end, his hands grip the pulpit and tears fall down his cheeks and drop onto the pages of his open Bible.
“In losing Brother Ezra, many of us feel as though we have lost … lost a father. But we will see Brother Ezra again, someday, when we go to meet our true Father in heaven.”
There’s another pause while he takes a big breath and then he says, “Let us pray.”
I watch as the rest of the congregation bow their heads.
I give a perfunctory bow but then watch as Will prays, eyes closed and head tilted back, face toward the heavens, thanking God for sending his only son to die on the cross, and then thanking him for sending Ezra, and then begging him to watch over the congregation.
The rest of the crowd keeps their faces angled down, some of them leaning so far forward their brows touch the wood of the pews in front of them, some down on their knees, many still shivering or bouncing with their sobs.
Next, Will calls on the congregation to come up and testify about how Ezra changed their lives and I listen as one parishioner after another approaches the stage and, with the piano softly playing behind them, tells the rest of the crowd what Brother Ezra did for them.
Healing, prayer, visitation, counsel, turning them away from drugs, alcohol, violence, bringing peace and the Lord’s word into their lives.
I listen, stifling a sleepy yawn, as the last person finishes up and Will says again, “Let us pray.”
I look at my watch. It’s been almost three hours since this began.
After this final prayer, Will moves to the big double doors at the front and, as the piano plays, he shakes hands, one by one, as people file out.
Eventually, the pianist collects her things and joins the line, leaving the sanctuary silent except for the muttered exchanges at the door.
I get in the back of the line and shuffle slowly forward.
“Mr. Carpenter?” I say, when it’s my turn at last.
He blinks at me. “Yes?”
I tell him who I am, what I’m doing there.
“A private investigator?” he says, his eyes opening wider.
“Yes, I was hired by Ezra King’s daughter, Katie.”
“His … his daughter?” Will says.
“Yes. Were you not aware that he had a daughter?”
Will blinks again and leans against one of the pews. He looks like he’s about to fall over.
“Yes,” he says. “But … well, it’s not something we really spoke of. I think it pained him a great deal to have lost her.”
“Excuse my ignorance, but I’d heard this was a snake-handling church. There were no snakes.”
Will bows his head so he’s speaking to the floor when he says, “It was only Brother Ezra who handled them in services. He is—he was—the only one with a faith powerful enough, he said.”
“Had he ever been bit before?”
Will looks up and meets my gaze now.
“Yes,” he says softly. “But he recovered without treatment. A miracle.”
“You believe he was bitten and chose not to seek treatment again?” I ask.
He nods gravely. Tears well up in his eyes and he scrapes at them with the heel of his hand.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m … Brother Ezra meant a great deal to me. He guided my path to the ministry. It’s only because of him that I’m standing here now.”
Outside, I hear the last bit of chatter drain away, the last car door shut. I look toward the still-open doors as the flare of headlights sweeps past and the last car pulls out of the parking lot.
“There was no autopsy,” I say, as gently as possible. “And the funeral happened very quickly. I was hoping you could explain that for me.”