“Is that right, Preacher?” the old man asked in a dry voice brittle with age. “All it takes is one step to get back close to God?”
Walter Purcell had already stood and made his way back the side aisle to intercept the old man.
Delroy knew the old man in an instant. He tried not to let his hurt, anger, and confusion spill over. “That’s right,” Delroy answered.
The old man rubbed his face. “Do you know who I am?”
Delroy nodded. “I know you.”
“Name me,” the old man challenged.
“Clarence Floyd,” Delroy said in a hoarse whisper.
Whispers rose in the congregation. Evidently several people knew who Clarence Floyd was.
The old man nodded. “A lot of people say I killed your daddy all them years ago.”
“What do you say?” Delroy asked.
Floyd hesitated. “He was sassin’ me. Talkin’ down to me like I didn’t know nothin’. Makin’ me out like I was stupid. Some kind of moron. Him black as the ace of spades talkin’ like that to a white man in front of other white men.”
Indignation ran through the church. Several men stood up, ready to fight.
Delroy raised his hands and froze them in their places. “I don’t want any slurs in this church.”
“Weren’t no slur,” Floyd said. “Didn’t intend no slur. Just tellin’ you how it was. It was awful hard comin’ here today, Preacher.” He looked around. “I heard about the church, though, an’ somethin’ told me I just had to come. I wasn’t hearin’ voices. Been through some of that in my life too, but this weren’t nothin’ like that.” He worked his jaw. “Just knew I had to be here.”
“Why?” Delroy asked.
Floyd sucked air through his teeth. “Because I hear the world’s comin’ to an end. An’ I believe it.” He took a deep breath. “When I was a child, I used to believe in Jesus an’ God. But I got away from it. Fell in with some bad men an’ some evil women, an’ got me a taste for whiskey.” He shrugged. “Women are harder to come by these days, but I can still afford the whiskey. Doc said it’s gonna kill me one day, but it ain’t yet.”
“Why did you come here today?” Delroy asked.
“Couldn’t stay away,” Floyd said. “Been thinkin’ about what’s goin’ on in the world. To me, even the first day, it was plain as the nose on your face. Had to be the hand of God what took them people up.” He grinned, but there was no mirth there, only anger and sadness. “An’ in all that gatherin’, He done up an’ missed me. Can you believe it?”
“You’re interrupting my service,” Delroy said.
“I reckon I am.” Floyd made no move to walk away, just stood there looking like death in a Renaissance painting.
Delroy walked back toward him, watching Walter tense up. “Why are you here?”
“I had to come see you,” Floyd said. “Heard it was you. Heard you were Pastor Harte’s get.”
“I am.”
Floyd wiped his face with a hand. Tears watered in his pale blue eyes. “I killed your daddy, Preacher. Shot him stone-cold dead all them years ago. Watched him die right out there on the porch of this church.”
Startled exclamations ran through the congregation.
Anger burned through Delroy, violent and hot.
“I had to come here an’ tell you that,” Floyd said.
“Why?” Delroy’s voice was so tight it turned the word into a dry whisper.
“Because you’re the onliest man I can meet face-to-face that could possibly hate me as much as God must after ever’thin’ I done,” Floyd announced. “So I figured I’d come to you, tell you what I done, an’ let you tell me to go straight to hell or kill me where I stand because I just don’t care no more.” He wiped at his face and tears ran into the scars and wrinkles. “I know God hates me. But He don’t answer an’ I knew you would. An’ if you, a man of God, cain’t forgive me, I know God ain’t goin’ to.”
Delroy stared at the man who had taken his father away, who had brought so much pain into his life. He didn’t know what to say.
After a long, tense moment, Clarence Floyd turned, clapped his hat back on his head, and walked out the door.
“Clarence Floyd,” Delroy called, stepping out onto the porch where his father had been shot down.
Floyd froze, then slowly turned around.
“I can’t promise that I’ll ever forgive you,” Delroy said. “I’m just a man. A struggling man. But I’ll tell you one thing I know for sure.”
Tears continued to run down Floyd’s seamed face. He looked so out of place, a withered scarecrow cowboy at a nearly all-black church.
“If you believe Jesus Christ died for your sins,” Delroy said, “and you ask God to forgive you of your sins, you will be saved.”
Floyd nodded. Then he licked his lips. When he spoke, his voice was dry and hoarse, but it was with the pain of a child. “I cain’t pray. I’ve tried. I’ve tried for years. I don’t remember how.”
Delroy hesitated. Then he left the porch, approached the old man, and held out his hands.
Floyd didn’t know what to do for a moment; then he offered his hands to Delroy.
“Kneel with me,” Delroy said. “I’ll pray with you. Just repeat after me.”
They knelt there in the churchyard, where faith had started to grow again, a murderer and a broken chaplain who’d lost his faith and found it in a church that had once come to the end of its days. Delroy Harte, despite holding on to his own prejudice and hate and hurt, delivered one more soul to God.
United States of America
Fort Benning, Georgia
Local Time 1439 Hours
As they waited on the verdict, Megan stood behind the defendant’s table and stretched, aware that everyone in the courtroom was still watching her.
After the videotape presentation, Colonel Erickson had ordered a fifteen-minute recess. Penny Gillespie had disappeared, presumably to tape a live segment
