Your Hear is Far From Me

“I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered,” Bill said quietly to himself behind the wheel of his black Ford van.

He was taking a long drag off his Marlboro red, squinting from the smoke. One hand on the wheel, he felt like he could take out all the kids crossing the street and the crossing guard, too. I probably should, he thought. He would be sparing them the pain of life, and all the loneliness that comes with it.

“It would have been better for that man if he had not been born, Mark 14:16. You know Jesus said that.” He was speaking louder now to Robert who was paying more attention to the underage girls, adjusting himself in the passenger seat.

“Well, Mary, Mary, quite contrary. How does your garden grow?” As they passed the crossing guard, Robert gave a friendly wave and a pleasant smile.

They drove on to their school supplies store, ‘Back to Basics.’ Everyone knows it now by ‘Pinkies,’ because one neighborhood kid got too overzealous with the eraser section one hot day in June. At the store, Bill’s two informants; Michael, a tall, lanky kid, always got the shakes, and Derek Tucker, the preacher’s boy, clean cut and wholesome, came waltzing into the back room. “Crack cocaine,” Michael yelled. “Crack cocaine,” Derek whispered.

Bill and Robert lounge comfortably on two leather chairs beside each other in the dank cement room, Bill’s seated on a higher level than Robert. Robert never minding, sat crossed legged smoking Sativa.

“Enough shit, do you have them or not?” Bill said.

Derek hesitantly hands the duffle bag over.

Robert stands and checks it. “Feels a little light,” he says.

“I couldn’t get all the ones you wanted,” Derek said, he turns red and looks down at his feet.

Bill pauses for effect. “Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.”

The crowd was silent. “No need. The Lord will provide,” Bill said. “But he may need a little nudge in the right direction.”

Robert gave the boys their supplies for the week, and their designated locations and Bill dismissed them, then he laid out the ones they did get on a wooden table. Bill looks out at the empty room and dreams. Pretty soon he will fill this room with willing bodies.

Michael and Derek take off, walking down the middle of the street. A blue pick-up pulls up beside of them.

“Hey! Ya’ll got any shrooms?” said the slender lady inside.

Annoyed, Michael yelled, “Get the fuck outta here, Sue Bob. Shit, even though she is the sexiest in her family,” flipping her the bird.

“What the hell did you think about what Bill said? ‘The Lord will provide?’ Derek said. They were passing the post office.

“I don’t think I want to know,” Michael said finally.

Bill and Robert flew down the back road in their van. The black and red van, the one they took all the seats out of and now they can see the road through the holes in the floor. Bill had his sunglasses on and a big grin on his face, and Robert, snorting a line of something off an old copy of Highlights.

“Man, can we get some of that stuff you used to get when you were on the Hell’s Creek PD? That shit made me see kaleidoscopes and I was pissed on by a dog. It was awesome,” Robert said.

“It really was,” Bill said more to himself, smiling.

They passed the old creek and turned right down the holler to where the preacher lived. They arrived at the farmhouse, painted white with red shutters and a big front porch. They pulled up just a way down the road from the house.

“You know what to do,” said Bill.

And Robert jumped out, walked to the mailbox and put in a letter.

.....

Tommy Tucker, 15 years old, a straight A student, and Elvis, 16 years old, born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, drove home from school in Elvis’s Subaru talking about the day.

“Hey Tommy, how’s the preacher been since he went to the hospital?” Elvis asked.

“He’s fine. He just had to go back in for a couple of days for some testing,” Tommy said.

“Well, I was thinking we could go get the girls and have us a time at the farmhouse! What do you say?” said Elvis.

Tommy thought about this for a minute. He knew his older brother, Derek, was going to be gone for the rest of the night and he didn’t feel like spending the whole night alone in a big house.

“Why not,” he said.

They made a U-turn into traffic. They pulled up in front of a brown trailer. Elvis honked the horn and out of the trailer poured two girls, Brooke and Sam, best friends since birth. Sam was Elvis’s girl, a valley girl with a tongue piercing, and Brooke was Tommy’s girl, he gave her a promise ring. All four loaded up in the Subaru and headed down the bumpy road toward the farmhouse. They passed the old creek and turned right down towards the holler. As they go down the winding road to the house, Tommy lifted up a silent prayer.

“Please let my dad be okay. Please.” His dad always told him that, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.” “Well, I believe it,” he said out loud.

They arrived at the house, and one by one, stumbled out of the car. Brooke and Sam had been braiding each other’s hair and were already smoking pot. Tommy ran across the road to check the mailbox, as he had religiously ever since his dad had been sick because the church would send him cash through the mail. That’s the only way they had been able to get by. He leafed through the hospital bills until he came to an unmarked letter, he assumed had to be from the church.

“C’mon virgin! We’re gonna sacrifice you tonight!” Elvis screamed.

The girls wooed.

“Yeah, just a minute Presley,” Tommy said.

Elvis hated being called Presley. Elvis stormed inside the house and Sam went after him. Tommy opened the letter and read what was inside. And then he read it again. At first, he thought it was a joke. Brooke came up beside him slowly.

“What happened?”

Tommy burst through the door giving orders. Sam nearly fell off Elvis’s lap.

“Elvis,” Tommy said. “Here.”

He threw them so hard they bounced off Elvis’s face. “We’re leaving in a minute.”

Tommy was running through the house, gathering a bag, then disappeared into his dad’s room.

“Leaving where?” said Brooke.

“Wait, where are we going?” said Sam.

“To save my brother!” Tommy now reappeared in the front room.

“From who? And how are we going to do that?” Elvis said, still struggling with the keys. “We…are..going..to..do..that..with…these.” Tommy said, excited as he pulled four objects from the bag.

“Wow,” Sam said. They all ran and crammed into the Subaru.

“I don’t know whose got him, but they want me to meet them at Pinkies at 6:30,” Tommy said. “Alright, who knows how to shoot?” he said.

Elvis raised one hand off the wheel.

“I’ve shot many cats with my bee-bee gun,” he said.

“Babe, that doesn’t count,” said Sam.

“Don’t mess with me, babe! I’m stressed out!” Elvis said, and he swerved violently to miss a pothole.

“Okay. Let’s just do this. I’ll put them on the center console, everybody close your eyes and point to one.”

Sam went first.

“Nice. Sam. You got the Dirty Hairy Special,” said Tommy.

“Brooke. You’re next.” Brooke closed her eyes and got the Glock.

Tommy chose the other Glock.

“That leaves Elvis with the Desert Eagle,” Tommy said.

Elvis was quiet, pondering whether the Desert Eagle was a worthy choice for him. Brooke scooted closer to Tommy in the backseat.

“Tommy, I’m actually scared. We’re not going to have to shoot anyone are we? Are they going to be shooting back? I don’t know how to even hold a gun.” She started crying.

He took her hand and kissed it, held her close.

And said, “When I’m scared, my dad always tells me the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Do you know that one?” he asked. She shook her head.

“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were three boys from the book of Daniel who refused to bow down to the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar made of himself. So he threw them in a furnace heated seven times hotter than usual. The flames were so hot it even killed the soldiers that were ordered to take them down to it. But when King Nebuchadnezzar looked, he saw four men walking around in the fire, unharmed. And when they came out of the furnace there was no sign the fire had even touched them. We can fight whatever is in front of us because everything is possible for him who believes.”

She smiled and said, “Please don’t be a preacher.”

When they pulled up in front of the store they sat in silence for a minute and stared at the giant pencil logo.

“Talk to me, Goose,” said Elvis.

“Ah, I don’t know now. There are still people in the parking lot. I didn’t expect it to be out in the open like this. We can’t just go in there, guns blazing, somebody will call the cops,” Tommy said.

“But we have to meet them by 6:30, that’s what the note said,” said Brooke.

“I know. I know,” said Tommy.

“Alright. New plan. We’ll do a trade. Derek for the bag of guns and if anything goes wrong, we will just run and scream and someone will call the cops. Right?” Tommy said.

But then instantly regretted it. Because getting the cops involved would mean his dad would go to jail, but that couldn’t be worse than Derek dying. Everyone agreed. They all slowly got out of the car, taking in their surroundings. “Everybody goes in. Everybody comes out,” Tommy said. Brooke smiled at him. They approached the front of the store with the double doors and there, hung a ‘closed’ sign. Tommy looked at the others. And they nodded in agreement, and he knocked on the door. About five minutes later a man with salt and pepper hair, about 6’ 2’, and a handlebar mustache opened the door with a grin on his face. He opened the door to welcome them in. “Amen,” the man said. “Welcome, I am Bill.”

Around his neck Tommy noticed was a black skull. “And you must be Tommy.” Bill had done his research.

“And you must be Tommy’s friends,” Bill said.

“Where’s my brother?” Tommy barely got the words out.

“Derek is out at the moment, but I do expect him back at any time. Would you care to wait on him?” The kids walked into Pinkies.

“What do you mean he’s out?” Elvis said.

The supplies Derek was getting to sell, where it was coming from, it was all coming from here.

The kids walked further and further into the store.

“What Bill means to say is, Derek is out running some supplies right now. So feel free to go run and scream to the cops but if you do, I’m afraid it won’t be just your dad going to jail but it would also be your brother,” said Robert.

Robert was closing the curtains all around the front windows as Bill went behind the counter and started separating rows of cocaine with someone’s credit card, they both did several lines. The kids stood extremely still. Tommy reached down for Brooke’s hand. Bill inhaled sharply and stood straight up with an arched back.

“You know Tommy, we are the same. Because we don’t fear those that can destroy the body, we fear those that can destroy the soul. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Bill looked at Tommy for what seemed to be too long. And he walked right over to him and grabbed his face in his hands. Brooke gasped.

“I died and behold. I am alive forever more. Do you hear me? I died. On a slab. In a hospital. In Hell’s Creek, West Virginia. And they brought me back! They brought me back! And we, you and I, both know, that all those who fear death are subject to lifelong slavery.” Bill said with a nod.

Tommy continuously shook his head up and down with tears streaming down his face.

“Jesus Christ,” Tommy said.

“Yes,” Bill said. “Jesus Christ. I want you all to follow me. C’mon.”

They reluctantly followed Bill and Robert to the back room. Robert grabbed the bag of guns away from Tommy, dumped them out and started playing with them at the table like a toddler.

“Pew. Pew. Pow.”

Bill glided into the middle of the room and said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest.”

The four didn’t know what to do within the room so they just stood together in a huddle near the door until Bill got behind them and pushed them farther into the room, not allowing them to sit.

Sam started to hysterically cry.

Brooke started whispering to her, “It’s going to be okay, shhhh.”

“Listen, man, you have your guns. And you have Derek. So please. Just let us go, okay? Okay?”

Bill wasn’t even listening to Elvis’s pleas; it was like he was having his own conversation that no one else was a part of.

“Whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow through them!”

“Fuck my life, man,” Elvis said. And it was like he saw Elvis for the first time but really saw him.

“I can feel it. Your heart…Your heart is far from me,” Bill said while pointing at Elvis. Elvis backed up as far as he could against the wall.

“You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men!” Sam’s cries turned into sobs and she and Brooke held each other.

Tommy grabbed Brooke’s hand and told her, “Brooke, be strong. Remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They walked through the fire because God loved them so much.”

Bill turned around immediately and the whole room took in a breath, even Robert.

“What did you say,” said Bill.

“Nothing. I..”

“No! I want to know what you said!” Bill screamed.

“I told Brooke to remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. That God loved them so much that they walked through the fire,” Tommy said, shaking.

“I know that story,” Bill said, with a blank look in his eyes. “The one where the three boys wouldn’t bow before the golden image of King Nebuchadnezzar. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it.” He said slowly.

He quickly grabbed a gun off the table and aimed it at Tommy’s head. The girls screamed and moved away; Elvis dropped to the floor. Robert looked entertained.

“The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes,” Bill said, his face determined.

“Please don’t do this. I gave you guns. I don’t know what more you want,” said Tommy.

“Bow to me,” Bill said.

“Wh-What?” said Tommy.

“I said ‘Bow to me’, now! All of you!”

All of them got on their knees, even Robert, all of them except Tommy.

“No,” he said.

“Why not?” said Bill with his head tilted.

Tommy knew this was a test, from Bill, from God, right now at this point, was there any difference?

And finally, Tommy said, “God will protect me because I live by faith not by sight.” He said shaking.

Bill let out a sigh and said, “If that's true, God will protect you from this.”

And Bill pulled the trigger.