It was at that moment that a voice inside my head said that God would never put more on us than we can bear.
And then I fell asleep and had more bloody nightmares.
I awoke to the sound of the phone ringing. Since it was probably a reporter, I decided to let the machine catch it. I nearly broke my neck and reopened all of my wounds trying to get to the phone when I heard Sandy Strickland’s voice.
“Wait, I’m here,” I said, snatching up the receiver.
“I don’t blame you for monitoring your calls today. You’re really in a bad way, aren’t you?”
“Pretty bad.”
“I’ve heard some very disturbing reports about some things you’ve been doing-crimes, I mean, and against women. I was shocked. I was also confused. I thought you were different.”
“Me, too. They’re not true,” I said, but it didn’t sound very convincing.
“Well, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And there’s a lot of damn smoke around here.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. All I ask is that you withhold judgment until all this is cleared up. It won’t be long. Are you back at the prison?” I asked.
“Not officially, and I’m glad. It’s a zoo out here. You’ve made it difficult for all of us.”
Her words and anger stung like slaps.
“Sandy, please listen to me. I didn’t do those things-any of them.”
“You’re lying, you son of a bitch. I hate men like you. I’m glad you have HIV.”
“What?” I whispered as the breath suddenly rushed out of me.
“That’s right,” she said and began to laugh. “What does the Bible say? You reap what you sow.”
“I can’t. I-”
“You do. And it’s called poetic justice,” she said.
And then there was a click. And in a few seconds, a dial tone.
I sat there with the phone still at my ear. I couldn’t move. I was seized by fear. It wasn’t shock. I wasn’t in shock, because she gave me the news I had expected. I knew that I had HIV the moment I had discovered the cut on my leg.
“Well, that’s that,” I said as I hung up the phone.
I now knew that I was going to die-sooner rather than later. Death had come into the room with me and said, “You’re mine.” And he was right. I was his, but not by the cursed blood in my veins, but by a bullet in my head that would let all that bad blood drain out. Or, maybe, the killer would do me the service of cutting me open.
That was it. That killer had done this to me. I was another of his victims. He had killed me, too, probably didn’t even know it. I made a vow, then and there, to find him and make sure he knew that I was one of his victims-find him, so we could die together. I was dying, but before I did, I was going to find the man responsible and woe be to that man.
I was climbing on a pale horse to go and track him down, and the name of that horse was death, and hell followed after him. In that moment, I pushed the knowledge of the disease so far down inside me that it became nearly unconscious. I was going to die, but there was no reason to let that rob me of the little life I had left.
And then I broke. I cried for hours. I also searched my house for liquor, but found none. I buried my face into my pillow, baptized by my tears, and fell asleep and dreamed of death. I did, however, wake up. I woke up a new man-a man on a mission.
Chapter 39
There are a few places in Florida that have within them all that Florida has to offer-fields, forests, rivers, lakes, and beaches. Potter County is just such a place. You can stand in the middle of the huge trees of the Apalachicola National Forest and feel as landlocked as if you were in Montana, but a twenty-minute drive brings you to the Gulf of Mexico. Pottersville is home to farmers and fishermen, and I love its duality. Of all of Pottersville’s natural resources, one of the most beautiful and most powerful is the Apalachicola River.
On Sunday afternoon, in record-setting heat, I was lying under a tall bald cypress tree near the bank of the river, my head on Laura’s lap. Her lap was not as comfortable as the soft stack of pillows in the hospital and in my trailer; there were, however, other consolations.
The base of the bald cypress swelled to four times the circumference of the rest of the trunk, and there were cypress knees shooting up all around it. The grayish brown, spiraling base of the tree was normally covered in water, but the summer was dry and the river low.
She sat there gazing down at me, as if I were the man of her dreams, rubbing her fingers through my hair- the only part of my body that didn’t hurt. Occasionally, she would run her fingers delicately along the edge of my cheek, tracing the beard line. Although she barely touched it, it still hurt. It was, however, worth it.
“I was so scared in the hospital,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I thought I might lose you, and I had just found you. I prayed like I never have before. I remembered some of the things you said at that funeral . . . Anyway, I want you to hang around a while and teach me more, okay?”
“I plan to.”
“You know how you said that stuff about grace, about things being a grace, like dancing with me that night or a good night’s sleep?”
I nodded.
“You’re a grace for me,” Tears formed in her eyes. She smiled.
“There’s nothing I want more.”
A small breeze rippled the top of the muddy, coffee-colored water, and the moss hanging from the cypress limbs above us swayed slightly. Upstream, a fish jumped and made a loud splash.
We were silent, both fully in the moment. A single small tear fell from her left eye into my right.
“Tears form in my heart, but they fall from Laura’s eyes,” I said.
“That’s beautiful,” she said, and then more tears came.
“It’s from one of Dan Fogelberg’s songs-‘Anastasia’s Eyes’.”
It was a very romantic moment, considering that I looked like a raccoon that had barely survived being hit by a car . . . and was going to die anyway.
The branches of the bald cypress were too high and too small to provide any real shade, but a large live oak about ten feet away shaded the entire area of the bank and part of the muddy river. The water looked like just- stirred coffee as it swirled around the cypress trunks and the edge of the bank. The lapping of the water on the trunk of the trees reminded me of the bow of a boat breaking waves in the Gulf.
“I was a pretty successful pastor in Atlanta,” I said. “When I finished seminary, I served for a short time as an associate of one of the larger churches in the area, and then two years later I was the senior pastor of the second largest Methodist church in Atlanta. I drank like a fish when I was in high school, college, and shortly after that when I was working with the Stone Mountain Police Department, but I stopped when I received my calling. I didn’t seek help or look at why I drank so much. I just stopped.”
“And, stopping like that is always temporary,” she said.
“Yes, it is, especially because I had an extremely horrific case with a very traumatic ending just before I quit the department. I didn’t drink while I was the associate and for two years after I became a senior pastor. I threw myself into my vocation.”
“You exchanged one addiction for another,” she said.
“Yep, I was a classic workaholic. Now, this whole time I’d been living as a dry drunk, and that was okay with Susan, because that’s what she was used to. We had a nice, comfortable, unhealthy relationship. We didn’t see
