Pastor Rudy

His name is Rudy, at least that’s what he told us when we met him eight months ago. We’re respectable people, or we were when Rudy stormed into our lives, destitute and hungry, but holy, oh so holy. He’d been without a home church for a spell, preaching on the road, converting the wayward, doing as Jesus would have done, he said. Few other preachers were willing to put in the hard work like that; it is 1991 after all. Lucky for him, and lucky for us, our pastor had just walked out on his wife with a perky brunette who’d just graduated from high school and who’d been showing a little too much leg at church. 

But Rudy was there, just when we all needed him at Little River Baptist in southwestern Kentucky. We only had room for about 200 in the fading green pews. Before Rudy, we were only seating about 50 and the stained glass was dulling and the choir was empty and the lawn for parking our cars was rarely mowed. That was all until Rudy. When Rudy preached, boy could you feel the Holy Spirit; his face reddened, his muscular, veiny forearms trembled and he called down the power of the Lord, casting out the demons we hadn’t even realized were there. His eyes told a different story; dark and sad, sunken deep in his face, as if trying to remain closer to his brain; or further away from the rest of us. We saw his brilliance right away, recognizing that this man could take us to the promised land, where we could swim in the milk and bathe in the honey, so, when he asked my wife, Joan, and me if he could live with us for a few months, we said the honor was ours. You wouldn’t say no to your new pastor would you? 

That was seven months ago. Now, Joan and I are wanted. We’ve only been wanted for the last four days, and that’s only because of the second bank we hit with Rudy and the late night security guard who woke from his nap at the wrong time. 

Four months ago, Rudy broached the subject of insurance with us over a glass of red wine at dinner. “Say,” he started, “what kinda insurance you got on this place?” 

A few glasses in, and not a regular drinker, I was more than happy to share all I knew about insurance, which, frankly, wasn’t much. “Real good,” I said, “the best. You seen those new video camcorders they got? The fancy ones? That you put up on your shoulder?”

“Sure,” Rudy answered without looking at me, surveying the room with a squint. 

“Borrowed one from a fella at work and took a video of the place and gave it to the insurance agent. They’ll be able to replace all this if something bad happens.”

“And the house itself?”

“Course we got it insured. Real good on it too,” Joan chimed in, her words lilting to the left and right like a quivering boat. 

A month later, we’d agreed to be gone when Rudy burned down the house. “Raising funds for the Lord’s work, Robin Hood style,” was how he’d pitched it, before telling us to pray about it, and us praying, and then letting him burn it to the ground, leaving even our family heirlooms to turn to ash so as to not raise a fuss from the insurance agents as to why we’d removed important things as if we knew the fire was coming which we couldn’t have ‘cause it was just electrical Rudy said.

We found a small place to rent, creamsicle on the outside, and sunflower yellow on the inside. The colors made Joan happy. The constant smell of burning hair did not make her so happy. One thing led to another. Rudy had lots of ideas about raising funds for the Lord’s work. We always prayed. The Lord always said, “Joan and Jeff, I need you to support my work.” We always said, “yes, Lord.” Who are we to argue with the good Lord?

His marvelous hand of providence was good and present. The church flourished. People came from far and wide, and the pews got reupholstered as people drove their cars up and down the interstate just to see what all the fuss was about at Little River Baptist. They gave money, they filled the new, pretty pews. We raised more money, Rudy poured out the kingdom of heaven for us and everyone else. The world was ours. The world was God’s. He created it all and we just had to bring his dollars to him and the dollars brought the people and the people brought more dollars. 

Joan was hesitant about the first heist. “I don’t know, Jeff, I don’t know ‘bout this,” she whispered, repeating herself as we lay in bed, trying to keep our voices down so Rudy couldn’t hear us. Even though it wasn’t our home and we were just renting, I still sometimes imagined that the second bedroom, where Rudy was on the other side of the wall, was going to be our first child’s room, if we hadn’t found out we were infertile last year. 

“What’d Jesus do in the temple, when the money changers were there?” I responded. 

“I don’t think that applies here. The bank isn’t in the church.”

“Rudy said it’s all the same.”

Joan thought about it for a while. I could tell because she would look past me, her eyes locked on a small painting next to the window when she was thinking and she wouldn’t even blink. “Yeah, he’s probably right.”

“‘Course he is.”

Before the heist, things were small. More of that steal-from-the-rich-give-to-the-poor kind of vibe. Banks were big. We realized pretty quickly Rudy might not know his way around as well. “We’re gonna get the ski masks, we’re gonna get a couple of fake guns. We’ll get bags, and we’ll take the license plate off the car.” Rudy explained it all with an eerie calmness, just two days before the heist. 

“We’re not gonna steal from any brothers and sisters in Christ are we?” I asked. 

“They shouldn’t be hoarding the Lord’s money. The Lord wants what is his. He is a jealous God.” Rudy always knew what the Lord wanted. “Y’all will buy the necessities, and we’ll use Joan’s car, but Jeff, you’ll drive and Joan will come in the bank with me. They won’t be looking for a car registered to a man, so we’ll be all good.”

“And then what?” I could see Joan’s nerves rising, her face flushed, whiter than a lily flower. She was already timid, and prone to fainting, so I worried when she whitened further.

“The Lord will direct me, and I’ll direct you both. We are his instruments.” And then we prayed a real long prayer. Rudy went on for almost thirty minutes. We felt a lot better after that. 

But then Rudy got drunk, right before the heist, downing nearly a half a handle of vodka, shot after shot, in the car on the way to the bank. I couldn’t believe a pastor would drink like that, but he said he needed the courage to do the Lord’s work. I’d called in sick for my job, coughing and sneezing with Rudy looking on from a payphone on the way to the bank. We did what he said, and I sat hunched over in the gray car, waiting, my heart beating somewhere high above, out of my chest, as I prayed and prayed and prayed. 

Just as Rudy instructured, as soon as they were back in the car, I hit the gas, and spun through the Thursday, mid-morning streets of southern Illinois, about four hours from home. Joan was crying in the backseat, murmuring, “why, Rudy, why?” 

I didn’t interject immediately as I didn’t feel it was my duty to do so, but after a while I couldn’t help myself. “What happened?”

“He ripped my mask off, told ‘em, ‘see a woman is gonna steal from you, you heathens’,” she paused to cry some more, “and then they gave the cash to him, but they saw me, they saw me.” She wailed even louder. 

My eyes turned to Rudy in horror. His deep set eyes were bloodshot, and I couldn’t tell if it was from rage or from the vodka. He turned from me and then punched the dashboard suddenly. “Damn it, Saul!” 

“Saul?” Joan and I asked. My eyes were forward, as I’d memorized our escape route, and needed to look for an upcoming turn.

“Saul,” he answered quietly, the rage dissipating, just a wisp of thin smoke. He spoke again, his lower preaching voice coming out. “Children,” he said, addressing us, “the Lord sometimes asks us to be what he needs us to be. I was born Saul, like the great Paul of the New Testament. And like Paul, the Lord bestowed another name on me. He said to me, ‘take this pagan name, Rudy, and make it the Lord’s name’ and I obviously obliged. Sometimes, I forget though. Sometimes, in the heat of the Lord’s work it becomes too much to carry. But I am ever his servant, ever his Pastor Rudy.”

We tried to forget about the whole thing over the next few days, hunkering inside and watching cartoons all weekend. Rudy was mostly gone so it was easier. I kept assuring Joan, “it’s gonna be alright. The Lord sent us, and the Lord got us out.”

But yesterday, Sunday night, Rudy wandered in late. “He’s spoken again. There’s another bank. In Arkansas. They’ve been storing up money from some people who’re enemies of the church. Men who want to see us all join them in hell.” I shuddered at the thought, the flames of hell not enough to warm me. “We’ll hit it tomorrow night. Get ready to drive after you get off work, Jeff. No rest for the weary soldiers of the Lord.”

Joan cried next to me, nearly the entire night. I drank copious amounts of coffee throughout the day, trying to find some strength in me to push through the weariness. Somehow I did, and made the drive to Arkansas; a short jaunt down the highway. Rudy laid out the plan and fed me the names of the streets I needed to know for the escape during the drive down and I repeated them back to him until he was satisfied. 

When I heard a gunshot, I nearly left the car, but Rudy specifically said that if something went wrong, I was to stay put. So, I did, and I waited, and I worried, and I prayed again and then they both emerged, but Joan didn’t have her mask on, and Rudy ran right past our car and got in another car that I hadn’t noticed and was gone before I had time to think. 

Joan still got in the backseat, as if Rudy was going to join us, and I sped off into the night. There were only a few lights in the town, and I was able to get to the country roads before I heard sirens, far in the distance. Finally Joan spoke, “they had our picture on the wall, Jeff, you and me. Bank robbers, it said, wanted.” My grip tightened on the wheel and I thought I saw a person, but it was just a deer, staring at me with a blank expression, as if it thought I were simple. “Rudy switched out my fake gun for a real one. And I shot a man. I think he’s dead, the security guard.” 

I nearly drove off the road. “I think we’ve been set up, Joan,” I finally said. She looked at me, her expression flushed and white and dulled by fear and weariness and anger. “I gotta call my Mom. She’ll take us in.” I hoped to take back control of the situation, hoping my mother, who had no fear of the Lord, could help us in the way that a far-away God who had instructed Rudy to instruct us to do a now terrible thing could not. We didn’t even have the money, Rudy took it to the Lord himself in the other car.

I found a payphone in the next town and called my mother in Indiana, which woke her from bed, which she wasn’t too happy about. I told her everything and asked if Joan and I could stay with her. “Jeff, you moron,” she said, uncompromising as usual. “What’d I tell you about the church? About those thieves? What’d you say his name was?”

“Rudy.” I paused, remembering, “Saul, actually.”

“Saul what?”

“I dunno, Mom.”

“Geez you’re thick. I’m not even gonna ask. Anybody changing their name ain’t doing it for a good reason.” Silence trailed after her. It made me want to scratch all over, like there were ants crawling over my body. 

“Can we come up, Mom?”

“You’re better than this, son. Or maybe you’re not. But, no. I don’t want you bringing the cops down on your father and me. The only thing I wanted you to bring me were grandbabies, and…” she trailed off, palpably angry with me for waiting until I was almost forty to try to have kids. 

“Mom, please.”

“Quit your whining. I didn’t raise an idiot and a child.” She huffed into the receiver, tired and angry, “just an idiot, apparently.”

I heard a click and stood with the receiver in my hand until a heavily tattooed bald man in leather with a thick gray beard tapped on the glass of the phone booth kindly, and motioned me away less kindly. I took the hint. In the dark of night, I didn’t want to find out what he might do to me. 

Nobody is gonna believe me. Maybe my Mom was right.