Forty Years of Hesitation

Brother Jones droned on endlessly. I didn't like this evening's guest speaker; he'd broken the one rule that really mattered to twelve-year-old me, that church should last no more than an hour, tops. There was a schedule, darn it, and we were supposed to follow it: singing, prayer, singing, Lord's Supper, donations, singing, preaching, invitational, singing, prayer, done.

Yeah, there was bible school before and the grownups milling about talking afterwards, but the boring part--the really, really, boring part--the preaching, shouldn't take more than half an hour, and we were well into double that by that point. Brother Smith wouldn't do this; he'd always kept his sermons to the time limit. This friend of his that he'd invited apparently didn't get the memo.

Looking back, I wouldn't remember it at all, even as an inconvenience, if not for something that happened at the end of the sermon. My folks were of the opinion that we should go to all three that their church offered, so absent an illness on my part--real or occasionally faked--I was there Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. Before I went to college, I attended literally thousands of worship services, and, of those thousands of worship services, I remember exactly one sermon clearly.

This one.

I may sound like a bit of a hellion, but I really wasn't. I still mostly believed back then, and I certainly feared the consequences if I didn't follow the Bible as my folks understood it. Outside of church, I did my best to obey my parents, I never cursed, and I followed the rules at school. Mostly.

In church, I sang my heart out during the hymns, and I was quiet during the prayers. I even tried to listen to the sermons, but my ADHD, undiagnosed until decades later, made that difficult. They all end up as one big jumble of "sin bad, Jesus good" when I try to look back on them now.

Even with this one, singular sermon, I can only remember the last part of it, the portion we called the invitational. I don't know how other churches did it, but in ours, there would always be a bit at the end of the sermon where the preacher's tone would shift. He'd perhaps stitch together a few sentences relevant to the sermon he'd preached, or maybe simply invite those who had not yet been baptized to come up.

Then, he'd hand off the podium to the song leader as the congregation rose to their feet, and we'd all join in, each in our own key, to try to cajole the recalcitrant unbaptized (including me until a couple years later) to come get dunked. It rarely worked.

The invitational was my favorite part of the service for two reasons. First, I'd get to sing, which I always enjoyed. Second, and more importantly, it meant I only had maybe ten more minutes of sitting in an uncomfortable, barely padded pew.

This invitational, though, was different. Like I said, the first part of it was the preacher's show, and usually a pretty perfunctory thing. This one wasn't. That didn't surprise me; Brother Jones couldn't stick to the script elsewhere, so why would he here? But what did surprise me was... well, pretty much everything that came after.

When I said that Brother Jones droned on, I meant it. At his best, he spoke like he'd taken a lot of courses on effective public speaking, but didn't really understand them. At his worst, he sounded like he was reading the phone book. Even my parents, who sat in rapt attention at every sermon, had started to drift off by the end of his.

Like Pavlov's dog hearing a bell, though, the congregants perked up when he became more animated, because we knew it was just about over. Our hymnals came out of their holders on the pew in front of us, and we opened them to the song we expected to sing in about thirty seconds. The song leader stood, champing at the bit to perform his role, and parked himself at the steps leading up the dais to the podium. It was go time.

Except it wasn't. Brother Jones didn't just become more animated; he came alive. Gone was the monotonous pastor, and in his place stood a man who needed you to hear what he had to say, who had to make you listen at the cost of his very soul and yours if you didn't.

"I want to tell you a story," he began.

I'll be honest: I don't remember the story word for word, but I remember its highs and lows. I remember the structure and certain turns of phrase. I remember the people in the audience, hanging on his every word. And I remember the way it made me feel, how its essence has stuck with me to this day, almost forty years later.

So.

I want to tell you a story.

--

It wasn't quite suppertime, but Abner Watkins had finished his rounds early today. The harvest was over, and while it had been meager that year, Abner counted his family lucky. Deep in the midst of what economists were just starting to call the Great Depression, they weren't starving, and his family's farm hadn't fallen prey to the wind erosion of the Dust Bowl. They had to tighten their belts, and they may have missed a meal here or there, but every night he prayed thanks to God above for his blessings.

When the knock came, Abner hobbled to the door. The shrapnel he'd taken in Belleau Wood, the one that sent him to a field hospital and then back to his family's farm, made his leg ache worse with each passing year. However, here, too, he counted his blessings. Many of the young men he'd grown up with never came home at all.

He could have let his eldest, Jeb, get the door, and in other circumstances he might have. At eleven, the boy was Abner's pride and joy, a responsible, kind, strong child just on the edge of adolescence. Faithful to the Lord, too, as his father and mother taught him.

Circumstances weren't different, though, and some things only a man could handle. Some things only a man should be expected to handle. Things like quiet conversations with desperate neighbors, ones whose harvest couldn't even kindly be called "meager," shamefaced men who came with hat in hand to Abner's door. He helped where he could, as the Good Book instructed. It pained him that he could help less this year than last.

Abner opened the door, steeling himself for the difficult conversation he expected to follow. It wasn't the conversation he got, though.

"Paul Watkins?" This wasn't the first time Abner had a gun pointed at him, but it was the first time he'd seen such hatred in a man's eyes as he held one. Even back in Europe, he remembered mostly their fear: fear of killing and of dying, fear of their officers and of dishonoring themselves. This man, though, hated. The twelve-gauge shotgun in his shaking hands scared Abner less than the man himself.

"No! No, Abner! Abner Watkins!"

"Pa?" Jeb peered out of the family room where he'd been playing with his youngest sister before dinner. "Pa!"

"Stay back, boy! This is between me and your daddy. Where the hell is my wife, Watkins?"

Abner kept his voice steady. "Mister, you've got the wrong man. I am a Watkins, but not Paul Watkins. He lives down the road a piece. But, Mister, whatever he's done--"

"He stole my wife! She left me a damned note, said she'd been sleeping with him for months and they're gonna run away together!"

The farmer tried once more to stop the distraught man from the course of action he so clearly planned on. "Mister, that's awful, and I feel for you, but killin' him ain't gonna fix it. It's about supper time. Why don't you come in, and we can talk about--"

The gun jabbing into his ribs silenced the elder Watkins. "You said he lived down the road. Where?" Abner stayed silent, so the man turned his weapon towards Jeb, frozen in the hallway behind. "Where, goddamn you?"

"I'll tell you!" Abner cried out. "Just don't hurt my boy. Go back out to the road. Take a left after about a mile, then go past the next three farms. Take another left, go two more farms, and that'll put you at Paul Watkins' place."

The man growled, "It better. If you're trickin' me, I'll be back, and you'll be sorry." He held the shotgun on Abner as he backed down the steps of the house and walked to his car, a Model T that had seen better days. The man opened the door with one hand, got in, and started the engine before finally pulling the double-barrel inside. "You'll be sorry," he threatened again before starting on his way.

"Jeb!" The boy stayed frozen. "Jeb!" Abner limped to his son and painfully got down on one knee before him. "Son, listen." Shaking the boy until he came to his senses, he hissed, "Listen!"

"Pa, that man--"

"Listen! What I told him will get him to Paul Watkins' place, but it'll take him a while. I need you to run across the field, quick as you can, and warn him. Son, his life depends on it. Don't you try to stop the man and don't put yourself in danger, but go. Go!" He shoved Jeb towards the door, praying as the boy stumbled down the front steps that he'd get there in time. Paul Watkins was a cad, but he didn't deserve to die for that, nor did the stranger deserve to have such a stain on his conscience.

Abner had been an athlete in his youth, as quick as any boy he'd raced in their little town. Jeb was faster. He lit out across the field like the Devil himself followed behind. In a way, it did; unlike his father, he'd never had a gun pointed his way before, never felt the cold rush of fear and the sudden focus it brought. Those new, fearful memories quickened his pace away from the home where a man with hate in his eyes had threatened him with death.

Adrenaline carried him through the first stretch. He stopped thinking and let his feet carry him through the fields he and his father had harvested weeks before, then across the ones that had lain fallow that year, and then onto their neighbor's property. His lungs burned already; the fear and his father's inducements had set him off at a sprint, not a run. He kept that pace for as long as he could. Children don't know, sometimes, that slower can be faster, that pacing oneself can mean the difference in a footrace.

As he passed the halfway mark, nearly three quarters of a mile later, Jeb's body forced the point. A stitch in his side ached like one of the other boys at school had punched him, and he slowed to a run, then to a jog, before stopping for lungfuls of air. He would get back to it soon, he promised himself. There was plenty of time; he could already see the lamplight in Paul Watkins' window.

Movement off to one side startled him. A rabbit had frozen maybe twenty yards off, staring at Jeb. It was huge, a big fat buck that had to weigh an easy eight pounds. Jeb's mouth watered. He'd missed lunch--the whole family had--and he couldn't remember the last time he'd had more than a few bites of meat. A month? Maybe more?

Jeb glanced at his neighbor's house, then back at the rabbit. He had time. He was sure of it. Slowly moving one hand to his back pocket so as not to spook the animal, the boy eased out his slingshot.

At a measured pace, Jeb knelt and felt around for a stone, never taking his eyes off the buck. The animal stayed frozen, even as Jeb loaded the rock, a nice smooth one he hoped would fly true. Only then, as Jeb pulled back on the leather pad and aimed, did the animal start to move, but too late. A whoosh of air, a thump of stone on flesh, an almost inaudible crack of bone, and the animal fell dead.

Jeb whooped with glee, racing over to snatch up the rabbit by the ears, his fatigue almost forgotten. Newly energized, he took off for Paul Watkins' house again.

Too late.

Less than a hundred yards from Paul Watkins' kitchen door, he heard the first shot. Jeb knew that sound well; his father might not use his own Remington every day, but he fired it often enough for the boy to recognize the report. Jeb slowed his pace for a second, then ran harder than ever, faster than ever.

The second shot rang out, and Jeb slowed, then stopped, tears filling his eyes. Men didn't cry, he'd been told, but he wasn't a man. The boy, shoulders heaving with silent grief, looked at the lifeless animal in his hand. A long pause followed as the boy berated himself, then a third shot followed the first two.

Jeb, sobbing, turned away and began the long walk home.

--

"Three souls gone in an instant. Don't be like Jeb," Brother Jones exhorted as he mopped his brow, "hesitating in the field to garner earthly pleasures. Instead, if you haven't been baptized, I beg you..."

I looked around the congregation as he finished his invitation. Everyone seemed affected, but not all in the same way. Our guest speaker's story shook me to my core; that boy could have been me. My friends felt the same way, and not a few adults as well. A handful of congregants looked almost angry, although I couldn't understand why. It wasn't until years later I learned that at least one of them was in the midst of his own affair.

When people milled around after the service, I heard many of them talking about the story. Most agreed it was a powerful tale and an effective invitational. Some found it too upsetting, to place all that on the back of a young boy. Others seemed more scandalized than anything else; this was not how a church service should be conducted. A handful, especially the older men or the ones who'd gone through a divorce of their own, quietly said the adulterous couple got what they'd deserved.

I didn't go up to be baptized that night. Almost no one did. The invitationals rarely garnered baptisms immediately. At the next Sunday morning service, though, I do remember Brother Smith announcing a fair few new members the following week.

The story has stayed with me for a long time; almost forty years now. I've tumbled it around in my head for the last year, especially. I was too young and too sheltered at the time to understand exactly what "cheating" meant except in the broad strokes; the Texas educational system didn't exactly go all out on sex education in the mid-80s. I did know, though, that it broke up families, as had happened to one that had attended our church.

I wondered for a long time why it stayed with me. Part of it, I think, was that I was the right age, at that point in our lives where we're old enough to finally comprehend a lot of the media that we take in and therefore internalize it. I remember ad jingles, quotes from dumb action movies, the plots of trashy fantasy novels, and all sorts of other detritus from that time, too.

That's not the main reason, though, and I didn't figure it out until I started writing again. The story stayed with me, yes, but also Brother Jones' telling of it, and how he changed in the telling, going from speechifying pastor to dynamic proselytizer. The story mattered to him in a way the rest of the lesson didn't.

At first, I thought that perhaps he actually was one of the characters in the story, or that it happened to someone he knew. The latter might be possible, but the former seemed unlikely. The ages didn't match up.

It's also possible he had practiced it so much that he simply told that portion of his sermon excellently, and I think that goes some way towards explaining it. However, I've done this enough now that I recognize when a story really means something to me versus when it's something I'm telling just because I think it would make for an interesting yarn. I know the zeal that comes from needing to tell others a tale that really matters. He spoke with that kind of fervor. It's the same energy I'm writing this with now, all in a single morning.

It finally struck me earlier this week, while I was working on another story, why it mattered so much to him. It's because each character plays a different role than they seem to at first blush. None of them are who they first appear to be.

In a parable, each character plays a role. The surface reading of Brother Jones' story is obvious: Jeb is the attendee who has not yet been baptized, and his hesitation equals damnation; Abner is the preacher, trying to keep him focused on what truly matters.

If you step back and look at it, though, that doesn't work. Jeb's punishment isn't damnation; he'll remember this failure for the rest of his life, and his father will likely be disappointed in him and may even punish him, but it's the two adulterers and the husband who are damned because of his hesitation.

No, Jeb was Brother Jones, I think, just not in a literal sense.

Jeb failed to obey his father's words as assiduously as he should have, and three souls were damned. The passion Brother Jones spoke with might have been what he hoped would motivate us, but the anxiety that created that passion stemmed from his understanding that he was Jeb. That no matter what he did, he'd always be Jeb, because he couldn't save everyone, regardless of what his Father asked of him.

And that's why it upset a sizable minority of the people in the congregation, too, even if they didn't understand the roots of their indignation. Because they had been baptized, and they did believe, but that belief didn't translate into action. Jeb was each of them, too.

"It's too much of a burden."

"Church services should not be like this."

"They got what they deserved."

When we tell stories, they take on a life of their own. People find what they want in them, and we don't get to decide what that is. Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 as a warning, but not about censorship; he worried that television would cause illiteracy. Brother Jones might have intended his story as an invitational, but whether he consciously recognized it or not, he'd instead written a broadside about faith without works.

I've long since fallen away from my parents' faith, for reasons too numerous to mention. Nearly four decades after hearing it, though, the story and Brother Jones' telling of it holds meaning to me, especially in the last year. Honestly, the story and its permanent place in my memories probably has a lot to do with why I enjoy writing Loving Wives stories as much as I do.

I know I'm not the best writer in the world, nor even on this site; I can think of dozens of active authors on Literotica I'd easily put ahead of myself in that regard. But I also think of the people who've written to me, thanking me for helping them get through a tough time or just putting a smile on their faces. I think of all the time that I spent not writing, not getting better at writing, because of the other things that distracted me, because I couldn't see a way to make money from it or a way to be published or any number of other excuses. I mourn that loss. In my own way, I'm Jeb, too.

That was the last time I saw Brother Jones, but he left a lifelong impact on me. I know that I didn't tell the story the way he would have, but I hope I got it right enough. I also imagine that he would hate that I've put it on an erotica site, but perhaps he might find it comforting that it made its way here, that perhaps it will have a chance to persuade a few sinners.

That's not my intent, though; mine is much simpler. It's this: some stories are too good to die. I think his is one.

Find in it what you will.

--

This is my first time writing something purely autobiographical, but most writers, I think, put some of themselves into their work; "write what you know," after all. I know I do.

Today, I want to draw your attention to another writer's recollection of a memory. MelissaBaby is a flat-out great writer, and her works as a whole deserve to be widely read. The Clamdigger is no exception, an absolutely stunning entry in this year's 750 Word Challenge, and I wanted to make sure more people saw it. Seriously, go read it, then dig into her other works, and follow her profile. You won't be disappointed.