The Devil in Pew Number Seven (10 page)

Instead, his hostility only served to solidify Daddy’s standing in the community. Mr. Watts found himself on the wrong side of the general consensus, upstaged by a young preacher. It would be an understatement to say that this reality didn’t sit well with a man who was accustomed to having his way, which explains why, when Mr. Watts declared war against our family, he wasn’t about to back down.

Even if he had to take matters to the next level.

* * *

On December 4, 1974, my parents were entertaining guests at the parsonage. Brother Billy Sellers, a member of the elder board; his wife, Edna; and their two children, Renee and Billy Wayne, followed us home after the Wednesday evening service for some extended fellowship. Plates brimming with shortbread and oatmeal cookies and coffee brewing in the pot were waiting to be enjoyed. And the best thing about having company, at least as far as I was concerned, was the suspension of my regular bedtime.

With Christmas around the corner, Momma, who loved to entertain, had dolled up our house as best she could on a meager pastor’s salary. A modestly decorated Christmas tree, displayed in front of the picture window in the living room, was visible to all who traveled Sellerstown Road. Matching green and red Christmas dish towels hung from the stove-door handle, while white, solitary electric candles graced the front windowsills.

To complete the arrangements, my parents bought me one of those faux brick fireplaces made from 100 percent cardboard—the kind that featured a plugged-in, glowing fire to maximize the effect. I, of course, had insisted that they buy it. How else could Santa come into our home to deliver our gifts? We didn’t have a “real” fireplace with a chimney, so Santa would just have to figure out how to make this one work.

I had full confidence he’d work something out.

I even pinned our stockings to the imitation mantel.

With Bing Crosby crooning “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” the adults settled in to sip coffee and talk about grown-up stuff. Momma was seven months pregnant, so she and Edna had plenty of baby-oriented talk to keep them happily preoccupied. Brother Billy and Daddy compared notes about an upcoming missions trip to Colombia in South America, scheduled just days away. The ongoing threats also had to be on their minds, since Brother Billy was one of Daddy’s right-hand men at the church.

As the adults visited, I danced circles around the oval braided rug sprawled out on the floor adjacent to my imitation fireplace, entertaining Renee and Billy Wayne. Laughing and playing with friends was strong medicine for my soul. During those carefree moments of play, I could forget about the fear that constantly gnawed at the edges of my still-frayed nerves.

At least for a few wonderful moments.

I had been so emotionally impacted by the bombing nearly four months before that I dreaded the thought of Daddy leaving us for his trip. It scared me to death. I needed him. I relied upon his strength. Although exhausted from the duties of being a pastor, Daddy spent countless nights rocking me in his arms until I finally drifted asleep. His courage in the face of adversity comforted me. He was the glue that held our family together. And now he was planning to travel thousands of miles away.

I remember telling my mother over and over again, “Momma, Daddy’s
not
coming back. I just
know
he’s never coming back. He shouldn’t go on that trip!”

She’d take me by the arms and look me tenderly in the eyes. “Becky, don’t say that. Daddy
is
coming back.”

“No, Momma, he’s not. Something’s gonna happen—”

“Honey, don’t worry yourself. He’s gonna be fine.”

Whether or not she shared my fears with him, I cannot say. But to be seven months pregnant, her body already bearing enough strain, listening to me ramble on about Daddy not coming home
ever again
, had to be unsettling. While she had every confidence to believe he’d return unharmed, what if she received prank phone calls in the middle of the night? What if there was another attack on our house in his absence? What if the phone lines were cut again?

If something
did
happen, how could she, pregnant and with a frightened four-year-old in tow, get help? Should she take me somewhere to stay while Daddy was gone? Would that look like running? Or would it be the better part of wisdom? If Momma hadn’t been considering these questions, she would soon have plenty of reason to do so. While we were enjoying Christmas music and treats, Mr. Watts and an accomplice, veiled behind the thick cloak of darkness, entered our yard.

Chapter 6

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

They came.

Sometime after the sun traded places with the moon on that chilly December evening, two men approached our house, unnoticed and unhindered. There was no five-foot privacy fence to scale or high-tech laser-beam trip-wire system to sidestep. We didn’t have a hungry Rottweiler for them to evade. My puppy, Tina, hardly qualified as a serious threat to would-be housebreakers. Our yard was nothing but wide-open space with no security measures whatsoever.

And so they came.

Knife in hand, Mr. Watts and his accomplice entered our property while my family and I were singing Christmas carols and eating dessert with friends. They crept toward the back of our house, slashed our phone line, and then crippled the recently replaced mercury-vapor light. That done, they took up a position twenty-five yards away in a soybean field that paralleled the length of our backyard. The field was owned by Mr. Watts’s brother-in-law Bud Sellers who, like Mr. Watts, despised Daddy.

We never heard a sound as Mr. Watts and his sidekick prepared to wage their latest assault on us. In some ways I’m surprised we didn’t hear them coming. You see, the country possesses a variety of quietness that’s vastly different from what passes for quiet in suburbia. In the suburbs when the sun goes down, quiet has a persistent dronelike quality to it: a cadence of soft sounds driven by traffic on a nearby freeway, as tires hum a dull tune to the pavement; a concert of heat pumps or air conditioners cycling on and off; people coming and going at all hours of the night; and the occasional siren wail of an emergency vehicle reverberating in the distance.

When someone in the suburbs is walking about at night, the chorus of muted tones that passes for quiet provides a degree of covering for their movements. Not so in the country. Country quiet at night is different. In Sellerstown, the quiet was so vacuous, so devoid of sound, you could almost hear the ocean waters lapping against the sandy beaches thirty-five miles away. The stillness in Sellerstown rivaled the soundless moon. About the only noise was the occasional bark of a dog somewhere down the street. There was no highway drone, no sirens screeching, no constant whirling of heat and air units providing comfort to street after street of residences slammed together like sardines in a can.

Adding to the hushed serenity was the fact that most of the people living on Sellerstown Road were farmers who maintained a strict schedule: early to bed, early to rise. When the sun retired, a peaceful, dreamy tranquillity settled in for the night. You’d think that, with this intense quietness, we might have heard the night-light executed once again in the backyard, extinguished once again.

We didn’t.

Obviously, our merriment inside the home trumped the sound of mischief out back. Even Tina failed to raise the alarm. In spite of her terminal cuteness, Tina displayed her lack of worthiness as a watchdog. She didn’t even raise an ear or offer a series of whimpers signaling that trouble was afoot. At 9:28 p.m., a match was struck, igniting dynamite strategically strapped to a small tree five feet above ground. Seconds later, with the thunder of a bomb and the force of a missile, our house trembled down to the foundation.

The explosion could be heard for miles around.

We screamed. We cried. We covered our ears with the palms of our hands to stop the ringing that hurt as bad as if we had been standing beside a jackhammer without proper ear protection. And the Sellers children, Renee and Billy Wayne, and I rushed to the safety of the outstretched arms of our parents.

In spite of her efforts to calm us, I could sense Momma was distressed that her guests were now drawn into the epicenter of terror that had been, for the most part, our private pain.

Sometime during the chaotic seconds following the detonation, Daddy discovered that the phone was dead. Once again, he knew what had to be done. He had to venture out into the darkness, unsure of whether someone might take a shot at him, and run to Aunt Pat’s to call the law. This time, at least, Brother Billy was able to stay with us while Daddy sought help.

Deputy Sheriff Bill Smith and Detective George Dudley, both of whom had investigated the first bombing, raced to the parsonage and determined there was, thankfully, little structural damage to our property. And, while nobody was physically harmed, nothing could be done about the damage to our mental states. I have no idea how any of us could have fallen asleep that night after the police left. I never asked, but I’m sure Renee and Billy Wayne had as much difficulty sleeping after the explosion as I had.

The next morning Detective Dudley returned to finish sealing off the crime scene. Aided by the sunlight, he conducted a more thorough investigation to identify the type and placement of the bomb. As Daddy and the detective surveyed the blast site, Mr. Watts and Bud Sellers, owner of the property, walked up. It was clear they hadn’t come to offer words of concern or sympathy.

Quite the opposite.

Mr. Watts, arms folded high across his chest,
15
staring through his thick, black-rimmed glasses, had the nerve to inquire whether it was against the law to shoot off dynamite on your own property—not that he was admitting any involvement, mind you. Detective Dudley responded that it was, in fact, against the law.

Standing within a few feet of Mr. Watts, Daddy somehow managed to retain his composure. To think that this man, our neighbor, a fellow churchgoer, and someone with children of his own, would terrorize a pregnant woman, a four-year-old child, and their guests, I would have been livid—on steroids. Or, at least I would have been less than kind had I been in Daddy’s shoes. But Daddy practiced what he preached.

When Daddy preached about loving your enemies, those words didn’t roll off his tongue with ease. By God’s grace, Daddy was a living example of what Jesus meant. Granted, anybody with a Bible and an audience could preach about loving your adversaries. But as a practical matter, I’d say it’s impossible, apart from God at work in your heart, to love your enemy when he’s setting dynamite next to your house, putting everyone you love at risk.

I’m amazed that Daddy didn’t wrestle Mr. Watts to the ground on the spot—if not out of anger, just to put the fear of God into him. In a man-to-man contest, Mr. Watts was no match for Daddy, who, standing five inches taller, towered over Mr. Watts like an elm tree. Daddy’s strapping shoulders, muscular forearms, and powerful hands could have put Mr. Watts in a headlock faster than the drop of a hat.

But Daddy didn’t fight back. He believed that a soft answer turned away wrath.

He was a firm believer in the power of forgiveness.

* * *

The fact that Daddy responded with love to those who were persecuting us wasn’t lost on Larry Cheek, a reporter from the
Fayetteville Times
. While there was scant media coverage after the first bombing—perhaps because the local news organizations figured it was an isolated event—several days after this second blast, the press picked up the story. Mr. Cheek showed up personally to cover the emerging conflict in Sellerstown.

Walking around the parsonage with the reporter in tow, Daddy identified the first blast site. Daddy said, “Last week’s dynamite hit out behind the house,
16
in the field. Folks heard the blast more than a couple of miles away. That didn’t do any damage, except to our nerves. It scared two children who were visiting us real bad too.”

Next, Daddy walked over to the house to show how the bombing had damaged the exterior. With Mr. Cheek taking copious notes, Daddy articulated his greatest fear, namely that Momma and I would be harmed, saying, “Trouble is, we don’t know what they’re liable to do next, or when. My wife’s seven months pregnant and Becky, here, is four. I sure wouldn’t want to see anything happen to them.”

Daddy wasn’t the type of person to embellish things. He was plainspoken, preferring to stick to the facts. He didn’t know the first thing about media “spin”—that fine art of twisting the details of an event to cast a more favorable light on your side of the story while positioning the opposing side in a negative light. If anything, he was the master of the understatement.

Daddy could have made a big deal out of how we were having difficulty sleeping at night. He could have told the reporter that we suspected every car that went by the house, especially after sundown; that we never knew whether someone was sneaking into our yard to lay some sort of trap for us; or that the fear we tasted played upon our imaginations around the clock. Yet he chose not to elaborate on the toll that this harassment was taking.