By two that afternoon, network news was reporting my father’s kidnaping. The Cheeks canceled their dinner party. We all waited for the police to contact Bobby John Ringer, to get more details of what happened after the memorial service.
All we knew was that my father’s kidnaper would announce his demands sometime that evening, returning my father safely when they were met.
We had extra police added to our security force, and Donald was busy on one of our phones seeing what assets he could transfer to cash.
There was nothing to do but wait, and my mother and I sat together in my father’s study.
We prayed, we tried to play a game of backgammon, we listened to the radio announcements.
Finally my mother just broke down and cried, and talked about the old days, not just our days under the tent, but when she was a child, out on the evangelical trail with my grandfather, Reverend Jesse Cannon.
“I wasn’t very different from that poor little girl you were taking to the dance tonight.”
“Opal.”
“Only my daddy wouldn’t have let me go.”
“I don’t think her daddy was too thrilled about her going.”
“Mine wouldn’t have let me. Did you call her, honey?”
“She said she’d been praying for Daddy. Her and her mother.”
“Did she know any more about what took place down there?”
“I told you, Mom. She doesn’t know any more than we do.”
“They’re so emotional sometimes, those people. Emotional, resentful deep down, oh, I don’t blame them.”
“It might not have even been one of them.”
“I used to hate it when anyone from a better class came to our services.”
“I know. Me too.”
“Like they were sightseeing. … I couldn’t even go to dances at school—my daddy would hit the ceiling if you said ‘dance’ to him. … The first time I ever danced was on my wedding night. I stepped all over your father’s shiny new shoes. … Maybe this is a sign, Jesse.”
“It’s a sign of the times.”
“I don’t mean a sign of the times. I mean a sign from the Lord.”
“I know what you mean.”
“You don’t believe He sends signs.” It wasn’t a question.
“I don’t know what I believe anymore,” I said.
“Anymore? You never did know, darling. That’s why it never tugged at you the way it did at Bud. Even when you were little boys, you were as different as day and night. Bud was a terror. I never knew what he’d do next—even when his little legs first started walking, they walked toward trouble. … You were my good boy.”
“Little Goody Two-shoes,” I said.
“You weren’t a Goody Two-shoes, but you weren’t the little devil Bud was. Bud was always hiding from your father over something he did. He always dreaded your father coming home, finding out. Remember how he used to just skip out before dinner because he knew he was in for it?”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“Your father’d say let him go hungry. Later on I’d sneak some dinner up to him, unbeknownst to your father.”
“I don’t know how unbeknownst it was to him.”
My mother gave a sad little chuckle. “Maybe it wasn’t so unbeknownst. Your father saw himself in Bud.”
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
“Oh, I know you think he loves Bud more, it isn’t that. He just knows Bud better. Bud’s familiar. He’s going through what your father went through, what his father went through, what my father went through. The anger, the doubting, everything you go through when the Lord is testing you.”
“I guess I never felt He was testing me.”
“You never really let Him into your life to find out.”
“Oh, Mom.”
“Well? You don’t seem to require very much help. You seem to have your passions under control. You don’t feel the temptations, the pull between good and bad. You don’t think the Lord sends signs. You don’t think what’s happening right now to your father could be a sign to us.”
“I think we’ve been talking so much about money every single Sunday, we’ve put ideas into someone’s head.”
“And I think,” my mother said, “the Lord is telling us to pull back!”
Donald Divine walked into my father’s study then.
“Well, we know who our kidnaper is now,” he said. “He’s Bobby John Ringer.”
That night on CBS, NBC, and ABC, a photograph was shown of Bobby John.
For some reason he was holding up a small, three-legged footstool, probably something he’d made himself, because he had this proud grin on his face, and he was holding it with one hand, pointing at it with the other.
It was one of those blurred, candid shots that didn’t blow up well, and didn’t tell you anything but what you saw: this very tall, lean fellow in dark pants, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the wind blowing his black hair up from the top of his head.
The newsmen were doing their usual bit, playing it up big, taking every little thread of information concerning Bobby John and trying to spin it into something. They were waiting for a tape to come of Bobby John’s telephone conversation with the Seaville police.
They were describing Bobby John as “a loner,” “not very prepossessing,” one newsman said he was reported to have “a curious shuffling walk, and an odd vacuous smile.” Another newsman described him as “nondescript” and “separated from the mainstream by his religious fanaticism.”
“It’s easy to see,” one commentator said, “why a socially isolated young man with almost archaic religious beliefs—a loser, in other words—might resent the powerful, successful, magnetic TV evangelist, Dr. Guy Pegler—champion of winners!”
Just before the seven-o’clock newscasts were ending, Bobby John’s voice came crackling across the airwaves:
“Dr. Pegler is safe. All I’m asking for is equal time to correct a situation. D. Y., I’d like you to be with me. She knows who she is. D. Y., we’re both in this thing together. … We both want to get something off
