If You Really Knew Me (Anyone Who Believes Book 1) Read online

  IFYou

  REALLY KNEW ME

  A Novel

  By

  Jeffrey McClain Jones

  Book 1 of the series

  Anyone Who Believes

  If You Really Knew Me

  Copyright © 2015 by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author.

  John 14:12 Publications

  www.john1412.com

  Cover photos from ShutterStock and Dollar Photo

  Cover Design by Gabriel W. Jones

  For Dave Frederick: a fearless champion of truly free grace.

  Opening Prayer

  Dixon Claiborne uncrossed his legs and planted his feet flat on the floor. Somewhere, in the fuzzed echoes of educational memory, he had learned that this posture enhanced concentration, or something. Actually, maybe that was for typing.

  He inhaled with purpose, sighing out his exasperation about letting his mind wander. Perhaps as an act of penance, he clasped his hands together—fingers interlaced—and wedged his nose between his thumbs, his head bowed and eyes closed. This posture came from another region of his early indoctrination. Sunday school, of course. Who was his kindergarten Sunday school teacher? No. He refused to follow that rabbit trail.

  “Lord,” he said aloud, half prayer and half expletive.

  “Lord, you gotta help me to concentrate here.” Then, noticing a lack of humility to this demand, he edited. “I mean, I need your help. Show me how to pray.” He paused here to fend off an internal critic that thought it was pretty lame to pray for help with praying. Dixon subdued that rebellion quickly.

  “Lord, lead me in my efforts to bring glory to you, to do your work, to protect your church from deception, to deliver us from . . .” His voice faded when the phrases all sounded too familiar and his anxiety level overpowered his confidence in the effect of praying at all.

  “But I know this is right. I know you are true and men are all deceivers,” he said, jump-starting his petition again. “Lord, let your truth come out. Let me say it right. Don’t let me get my own ideas or interests mixed up in this. Yes, have your way, Lord. Not my way, but yours.”

  He paused to wonder whether he hadn’t hit it right on the head with that. As he did so, he looked at the corner of his office, where a gap in the paneling revealed the painted drywall beneath. That snippet of pale blue dug into his mind and expanded into wondering whether he should stay at this medium-sized church, with its limited budget and aging congregation.

  And that was it for praying, at least for that afternoon. He had to meet with the committee before the big meeting that night, when the whole town, and hopefully national media, would be watching.

  Rising from the old nylon couch that used to be the centerpiece of his living room at home, Dixon stepped over to his desk. He wore his new navy blue suit, white dress shirt and red and blue striped tie. The words “power suit,” would never part his lips, but that’s what he was wearing. His fit, six-foot-three, physique wore it well. He grabbed his cell phone off the corner of the desk and punched the wakeup button to check for messages. That’s when he realized that he had been praying for only about three minutes, or at least trying to pray. An unspoken curse aimed at himself punctuated his turn toward the plain oak door of his office. The wood grain on that old door formed the figure of a woman, crippled by some distorting disease, one shoulder larger than the other, her neck twisted to the side, her head bowed as if ducking. The image appeared twice, mirrored where the wood had been cut and glued together to build the door.

  Once through that door, he said to his secretary, “I’m heading home now, Connie.”

  The compact woman at the reception desk, with the dyed black hair, looked up at him and smiled. Her admiration beamed at Dixon, even if he didn’t pause to notice. “Okay, I’ll stay here a bit longer and then get ready for the meeting myself,” she said, her voice the perfect tone for a preschool teacher, as usual.

  “Good luck tonight.” She nearly shouted this, as the outer office door eased shut behind the retreating pastor.

  Home Sweet Home

  A low May sun sharpened every leaf and grass blade in the yard. Sara Claiborne sat on the cushioned patio chair with her toes splayed, waiting for the fire engine red polish to dry. The curlers in her hair were her mother’s idea. The fiery nail polish was hers. She rarely suffered an indignity from her mother that she didn’t counter with some small retaliation.

  Who cares what the daughter looks like, anyway? she thought. It’s not like he’s running for president or something, needing the perfect family as a backdrop for his campaign, along with the bunting and banners. That was it. She felt like so much decoration. Now she was asserting her own sense of taste into that familial décor. She was, in fact, getting the idea that her parents had ambitions, if not political, at least on a bigger scale, a bigger stage.

  She wasn’t going to have to be on stage, was she? That would definitely prove that this was more than church, more than worshipping God. Or, rather, less.

  Behind her, she heard a vigorous slide of the patio door, complete with the vacuum hiss as the out-of-doors penetrated the seal of the air-conditioned house. Out stepped her twelve-year-old brother, Brett, sucking on an orange Popsicle with exaggerated gusto. His mother’s voice sounded from behind him, siren-like but inarticulate to Sara’s more distant ear.

  “I can get ready in a couple of minutes.” Brett yelled back into the house.

  That same distant voice, somewhat muted, said one more thing, but Brett cut that off by sliding the door shut. He didn’t need to catch every syllable to know the point.

  Rounding the chair on which Sara sat, Brett slurped his desert and commented. “I see you’re painting your toes (slurp). I bet Mom doesn’t know.”

  Sara’s first instinct, to threaten her little brother, bowed to her need for an ally. “She’s really about to lose it, isn’t she?” Sara said.

  Brett slurped and nodded. “What do you think the big deal is about this meeting?” He shifted easily into ally mode. On the verge of teen age, Brett had begun to allow a bit more respect for his older sister, whom he had discovered was something of a queen among the teenagers. Guys, especially, worshipped Sara. Though Brett couldn’t catalog them accurately, he knew that she had qualities that attracted attention, like the gawking looks of gapers at a toll way collision. Still too young, and too much a brother, to really see, nevertheless he knew that her face, her body, her clothes and her attitude commanded respect among her peers. He knew power when he saw it.

  “I don’t know.” Sara exhaled. “It must be something big. I mean, meeting at Calvary, instead of our church, and making sure that the press are gonna be there.” She began to pick at the curlers in her hair, like a small boy picks at a scab, knowing that he shouldn’t, but driven by some unstoppable urge to do what is forbidden. Of course, that forbidden thing lay right at the feet of her tense and over-attentive mother.

  “I bet it’s the stuff he’s been finding about that kooky healer,” Brett said. Brett was good at games of strategy, a solid chess player for his age. Sara was more book smart, knowing how to please people according to the stated rules, not so perceptive of what lay behind the rules and facades. Brett’s speculation struck her as more likely than the political nightmare she had been window-shopping.

  “That could be it,” Sara said. “Do you really think he’s so bad?” She was willing to let down her guard a bit more, with n
o adults around.

  “Heck, he thinks he’s like an angel or something,” Brett said, catching a line of drips with a particularly lengthy inhalation.

  “Hmmm. Yeah, I guess that is pretty weird,” Sara said, one curler now entirely free from her golden hair. She smiled slightly at the sun glistening through her freshly washed hair. “I wonder why Dad has to be the one to say something about him, though.”

  Brett withdrew his left foot just before a drip landed on his white sock, the orange droplet turning a spot on the light gray pavement dark as blood. “He’s a leader. A lot of people listen to what he says. He has that radio show and all.”

  Hearing the respect in her little brother’s explanation warned Sara to lower the intensity of her questioning. “I wonder what he’s gonna say about those people. There must be more to it than just that they’re weird.”

  The patio door slipped open again. This time Brett’s mother confronted him from short range. “Okay, kiddo, you get in here and get dressed. Drop the Popsicle in the sink. You can get another one when we get home tonight.”

  Kristen Claiborne, the mother of these two catalog model children, wore a pink silk blouse over a white slip, her skirt waiting to be added later, after she had sat down for the last time before leaving, minimizing wrinkles. She thought of things like that . . . all the time.

  Brett and Sara both silently added the concession of a second Popsicle as further evidence of the magnitude of the evening. No one ever purposely threw away good food in that house. That she was willing to sacrifice even that pointy remnant of a frozen desert bespoke desperation. Both of the children experienced a slight elevation in adrenalin at that tip-off.

  “Ooookaaaay,” Brett said, his voice twisting toward his lowest register in expression of his victim status. He knew he was overplaying the sacrifice demanded of him, but habits like that are hard to overcome at a moment’s notice.

  Kristen’s attention turned to her daughter who was facing away, but whose half-liberated hair glowed over the top of the patio chair. “What are you doing now, Sara?” It wasn’t an information gathering type of question, more of an inquisition.

  Sara stood, realizing her mistake, but hoping to use it to avoid a direct confrontation over the nail polish. “I’m sorry. I was just talking to Brett, not even thinking about what I was doing. I think it’s pretty well curled, though,” she said, as she slipped past her slender mother still standing in the door, the two women fitting stomach-to-side in a space that the average American would have to occupy alone.

  Kristen turned to watch her daughter mince through the kitchen, catching a flash of red that a vigilant mother recognized immediately. Even as the words—full of angst and authority—formed in her mind, she waited a beat and recognized something else, a battle not worth fighting. Instead of a yell, a sigh whispered through her lips, and she just shook her head and closed the patio door, flipping the latch to lock it.

  Getting the Platform Ready

  At the edge of the stage, Kyle Mauler pushed the Bluetooth headset close against his right ear, to be sure he was hearing correctly. “You said what isn’t gonna be ready?”

  “The video clip from the meeting in L.A. isn’t loading, it looks to be corrupted, or something.” This reply sounded pinched, a machine-like attempt at patience tempering the answer.

  “‘Corrupted or something?’” Kyle said in disgusted disbelief. He swore, cutting the phone call off in the middle of his short string of four letter words. His voice faded just as someone approached him from behind.

  “How are we doing, Kyle?” That too perky inquiry came from a tall, athletic man in a new blue suit.

  “Oh, it’s all under control, Pastor,” Kyle said, spinning the truth without a microsecond of forethought.

  “Good to hear. We’re countin’ on your magic tonight, buddy.”

  Kyle simply smiled in return, editing and deleting verbal responses as automatically as the hand movements of a deli sandwich maker at lunch hour. He headed for the control room to check on that video clip. Though he wasn’t the man to explain the theological importance of what that clip contained, he knew that the movers and shakers behind this meeting wanted that evidence to seal their case against the bad guys, whoever they happened to be this week.

  Skipping down six stairs to the main floor and striding up the aisle nearest him, Kyle pulled his phone from his pocket to see who was calling him now. Claire, his fiancée. That one he would ignore. He needed to stay focused on what he was doing here. This was a big stage, a public opportunity to show what he could do, the sort of spectacle he could produce. Up the narrow stairs to the control booth he hopped, beginning to feel a bit winded. There was something to be said for running systems and events at a smaller venue, like Pastor Claiborne’s church. But, then, if he was in charge over here, at Calvary, he wouldn’t be the one doing so much running.

  On the other end of the cell call, Claire Sanchez hit “End” before Kyle’s voicemail kicked in. She shook her head and stared at the screen on her phone, trying to think of who else to call. She brushed the black hair hanging over her right cheek behind her ear again, her dark brown eyes still locked on the phone.

  “Sara,” she said aloud. “She’ll answer.” But she hesitated. Calling the pastor’s daughter might not be fair to her, putting her in the middle, or even lining her up against her father. No, that wouldn’t be right.

  Claire grunted her frustration and lowered the phone to her lap. She sat sideways in a big recliner at her mother’s house, where she would live for the next few months, before the wedding. For the first time, she glanced at the possibility that a wedding might not be in her immediate future. That Kyle didn’t take her call in the middle of setting up for the big event wasn’t the problem, or even a particular symptom. No, what had begun to sprout inside her soul had been planted long before this latest season in the life of her home church.

  Instead of following that growing apprehension, Claire swung her bare legs off the arm of the chair, pushing herself up to her feet and hurrying to her room, to begin dressing for the meeting. In spite of her misgivings about the reason for the meeting and the coming campaign, she would have to attend. Maybe she could talk to someone there, to try to get the leaders to think some more about what they were doing, before going any further.

  One hand shuffled through her closet and grabbed the first acceptable dress from the array before her. The twenty-six-year-old ignored any concern for style or presentation. She was on her way to confront an impending disaster, not primping for a date, or even for a typical church service.

  Back in the control room at Calvary Church, Kyle looked at the scrambled tapestry of colored lines that appeared on the multi-media workstation screen. “Did you try this on any other computers?” he said to the bearded tech sitting in front of him.

  That tech, Randy Morris, looked at his younger friend next to him for the answer to that question. Pete Stolzer, a twenty-year-old with a Denver Broncos hat hung backward over his bushy head, just shrugged.

  “Ah, that’s a negative,” Randy said, translating that gesture.

  “Well, let’s see if we can get it running in a different media player or a different operating system and maybe convert it to a format that works on this machine.” As Kyle lined up that strategy he barely suppressed his frustration at the incompetent help he’d been saddled with.

  Pete and Randy both nodded calmly, as if pleased with Kyle’s suggestion, no sign of an apology, no urgency evident. When Pete picked up a silver DVD from the desk in front of him, Kyle spun and headed back out of the booth, counting to ten silently in hopes of exiting before he verbally assaulted anyone.

  Down on the stage, Dixon Claiborne stood behind a large metal and glass podium, turning left and right for the stage and lighting crew to set the illumination levels for the TV cameras. His prominent jaw and fat-free face lost and gained defining shadows as the tech crew fiddled with the lights. The host church had their own cameras with which
they projected an image of the speaker onto a twenty-foot screen above his head. But the cameras for which Dixon now prepared were from local network affiliates and even national news channels. The crews hauling those cameras maneuvered around each other, laying cables and testing equipment in the aisles and the first two rows of the center section. Seating there had had been replaced by video monitors, computers, and a wide array of men and women wearing jackets with logos from networks and TV stations, people who rarely attended church meetings of any kind.

  Having satisfied the lighting mavens, Dixon paused to squint into the relative darkness of the seating area, trying to count the number of TV cameras present. Then he looked up the aisle for any indication of a crowd gathering at the doors to the huge auditorium. They would certainly come. Who could resist the coalition of prominent local preachers declaring that they had evidence that a famous Hollywood billionaire, and reputed healer, was not who he claimed? Dixon knew he didn’t have to say everything that he believed to be true of this cult leader. He was counting on the secular media to do more of the digging for him, collapsing the false church behind that famous friend of the stars.

  Dixon inhaled a relaxing breath that filled his broad chest and straightened his spine. Now, everything was in place.

  Translation Please

  Earlier that day, Jonathan Opare buckled his right sandal, stood up and stamped his foot lightly to settle the tan leather footwear in place. He pulled a bright orange, blue and yellow striped shirt over his head, covering the more mundane blue Chelsea Football Club jersey he had been wearing all morning, as he ate his breakfast and read his Bible. The blue of the jersey showed in two inches of the V where the brightly colored shirt stood open slightly on his chest, as he intended. He was dressing for lunch with one of the assistant pastors from his church, as well as for a city-wide meeting of several area churches. The ornate shirt over his dark slacks constituted his usual worship attire.