The Devil in Pew Number Seven Read online

  Take James Tyree, for example.

  A cattle farmer by trade, before he met my father, James had no use for church, primarily because there were those in the church who had no use for him. His mother, Betsy, had told James that he was going to hell for all the years he had lived like a heathen, which, no doubt, had something to do with his love of cigars and alcohol. He’d be the first to admit that his affinity for alcohol drove him to drink just about anything he could get his hands on.

  To say that James enjoyed smoking cigars would be an understatement; they were his constant companion. Unless he was eating, sleeping, or in the shower, he had a stogie in his mouth. While the Bible doesn’t specifically teach that smoking is a sin, in Betsy’s book it was one of those outward signs of “heathen” behavior.

  But more than these “sins of the flesh,” there was another reason why James was going to hell, or so his mother believed. James had been divorced. Compounding his “sin” was the fact that he had remarried. Betsy didn’t believe in second marriages. Living under a cloud of condemnation by his mother, convinced that he was beyond the reach of the Cross, it’s not surprising that James avoided going to church.

  Shortly after Daddy arrived in town, he caught wind of James’s story—a story that was not too far from that of his own journey. Rather than write James off as a lost cause or a modern-day leper, Daddy slipped on his work boots and pursued James while he was out tending to his fields. I have no idea how Daddy developed his approach to pastoring. Somehow, somewhere along the way, he knew that to be effective in growing the church, he had to walk among the people, meet them on their turf, and accept them the way they were.

  As he worked side by side with James, Daddy’s goal was to befriend this man. He knew he had to earn the right to be heard if the walls around James’s heart were ever to come down. On a number of occasions they spent hours digging holes to construct a post-and-wire electric fence. Daddy would say, “I’ll be over in a little while,” and then arrive at the work site before James. His enthusiasm to serve was infectious, although at first James wasn’t quite sure how to size up the new preacher. As they labored, Daddy told James about his path to faith in Jesus—how he, too, had tasted the wild life, watched his first marriage dissolve, drunk heavily, and been disinterested in the things of God.

  This wasn’t what James had expected to hear. The tattoo on Daddy’s forearm, an indelible embarrassment left over from his Navy days, wasn’t what James expected to see. And the unconditional love and lack of condemnation he experienced from the “preacher man” wasn’t something he anticipated feeling, either. To James, Daddy was more like a brother than a pastor. Their lives had such a surprising amount in common, James liked to say, “We were clicking on the same clock.”35

  Naturally, when Daddy went on to explain that his story didn’t end with the drinking and skirt chasing, James was all ears. The moment God had changed Daddy’s heart, he became a new man. Pausing long enough to make eye contact, his shirt matted with sweat and dirt, Daddy told him, “Brother James, God can do the same thing for you36 that He did for me.” With that, Daddy invited James to church the following Sunday. He was convinced that no one—not even James—was beyond the saving grace of Jesus.

  James came.

  So did his wife, Eleanor.

  Like a thirsty man drawn to water, James came forward that morning in response to Daddy’s invitation to receive Jesus. At the end of the sermon, standing at the altar while Momma played “The Old Rugged Cross” on the organ, James gave his heart to the Lord. It wasn’t long before Eleanor, who had likewise lived under her mother-in-law’s condemnation, came to faith.

  In the months and years following his conversion, James became one of the head deacons in the church, typically sitting on the platform while Daddy preached. And while they worked closely on church matters, the bond of friendship they shared spilled out into the week—sometimes in hilarious ways.

  Like the time James invited Daddy to earn some extra cash on a job in Clinton, not far from Sellerstown. Daddy’s construction skills would come in handy, and our family needed the cash, so he agreed. Always one to pull a joke, James arrived with five other men to pick up Daddy in a black hearse. With care, they backed the hearse down the driveway and parked it close to the house adjacent to the carport. They thought Mr. Watts was probably doing backflips when he looked out the window and saw a hearse across the street. You know, he thought his dream had come true; the pastor was finally gone. Daddy and James laughed so hard imagining that they might have pulled a fast one on Mr. Watts that they almost had a wreck on the way to the job.

  Together, Daddy and James nurtured a sense of community within the church family, with plenty of fishing and hunting trips and church picnics. Outdoor activities were a way of life for those in the fellowship. And when James would go fishing with Daddy, the playful banter between them was always part of the action.

  James typically sat in the back of the boat to steer while Daddy cast his line from the front. On one occasion, trying to keep a straight face, James ran the front of the boat into the trees, prompting Daddy to say, “Um, Brother James, can you back up a little?” James burst out laughing so hard over teasing the pastor, his face turned red. Being a good sport, Daddy laughed too. The bond of brotherhood between Daddy and James ran deep.

  More than that, these early seeds of friendship, which had been sown in James as well as in the hearts of those in our church, set the stage for the people’s unwavering allegiance and commitment to their pastor. The devotion they shared was such that they’d be willing to lay down their lives for each other.

  Mr. Watts knew this.

  Not only had he witnessed James’s conversion and the impact of Daddy on the church, but two of Mr. Watts’s own sons, Lee and Elwood, responded to the gospel message that Daddy preached. Both had asked Christ into their hearts and, over the years, like James, found a real friend in Daddy. Elwood even traveled with Daddy on an out-of-state camping and fishing trip. Such a bond of friendship with his own sons easily could have infuriated Mr. Watts.

  I’m sure Mr. Watts wondered how his own family could enjoy the company of his enemy. And now, after the overwhelming vote to retain Daddy as pastor in spite of the persecution, Mr. Watts watched in disbelief as “his” church slipped further from his fingers. Carrying out three bombings in one year hadn’t been enough.

  Pacing and planning, watching and waiting, Mr. Watts appeared to be biding his time while the various branches of the law put Sellerstown under their collective microscope. After the heat of their scrutiny had passed, Mr. Watts struck again.

  * * *

  I played.

  In spite of the attacks, or perhaps because of them, during the summer of 1975 I lost myself in a make-believe world of activity. Those who knew me as a child knew I was equally happy playing the part of a tomboy or a prissy little girl. I loved playing with Barbies about as much as I enjoyed grabbing the waist of my best friend, Missy, as we rode on the back of her motorcycle through the strawberry fields adjacent to Mr. Watts’s house. She was fearless of him, even though she knew what he was capable of doing. Naturally, I had to be fearless, too. Four years older than me, Missy got her first motorcycle at age seven. That summer, Missy was nine and I was five.

  Riding together, both of us barefoot and without helmets, we’d zoom through the fields to the woods to build a fort. We lived in the country, where nobody checked on such things as underage children riding a motorcycle. Besides, it was our street, and we pretty much did what we wanted. When we’d get to the woods, we’d set up camp, burn sticks and leaves, munch on whatever snack we brought from home, and then brush our teeth in the stream. We’d sit there and talk for hours.

  I’m not sure how it came up, but as we sat together by the stream not long after the third bombing, Missy wondered why I was unusually sad. I told her that my dog, Tina, had been missing for several days. That’s when Missy broke the news to me. She said she had heard that Mr. Watts ha
d poisoned Tina and buried her remains in his tobacco barn.

  I found that news almost too much to handle. I had heard that Mr. Watts had poisoned other dogs on my street before—often using enough poison to kill a horse, according to the veterinarian who conducted an autopsy of one victim. But little Tina? Why would Mr. Watts want her dead? It’s not like Tina was a serious watchdog who might alert us to the presence of an intruder. Was Mr. Watts really such a coldhearted man that he’d kill Tina just to spite us?

  Wanting proof that Mr. Watts had been so heartless, we hopped on Missy’s motorcycle and headed to his barn. Although it was the middle of the afternoon, long shadows swallowed the rows of drying tobacco leaves in sheaves of darkness. The thin shafts of light angling rays of sunshine through the slats of barn-wood siding did little to illuminate the cavernous belly of the barn. We realized that, without a flashlight, finding a freshly dug grave would be difficult.

  With our toes in the black dirt, fearful that we might be caught trespassing, we worked quickly to identify any signs of a grave. The creaking and groaning of the aging structure freaked us out. Still, we inched forward, studying the earthen floor just inside of the door. Before our eyes fully adjusted to the dim light, I walked into an overhead cobweb straining under the weight of dust. My heart catapulted into my throat. I stifled a scream, wanting to appear brave to impress Missy, even though I had been ready to leave before we had arrived. At the same time, I just had to know whether or not my Tina was buried here. We pressed further into the near darkness.

  Afraid of being discovered, we retraced our footsteps after several fruitless minutes of searching in the shadows. I knew that, even if we had found Tina’s final resting place, there was no way I could confront the man who had robbed me of one of the sweetest parts of my life.

  With the barn being our only clue as to where Tina might have been buried, we gave up the chase. In my heart I accepted the fact that Mr. Watts’s barn marked Tina’s gravesite. I looked back one last time as Missy and I zipped down the dirt road. I knew I had to find a way to forgive Mr. Watts for yet another transgression.

  * * *

  The summer marred by Tina’s death was also the summer I got “married” several times. When I was in my girlie mood, I’d wrap a towel around my head like a make-believe wedding veil, pick some of Momma’s best flowers—which always got me into a heap of trouble—and then set out to find Billy Wayne, my five-year-old groom-to-be. I think Billy Wayne played along with my fantasy wedding plans because he had a crush on me, as I had on him.

  Sometimes we’d pretend to get married in my backyard. Other times I’d find Billy Wayne playing at his house and would conduct the ceremony there. Anywhere was fine with me. But the most fun was when I’d drag him to church, where we’d find Daddy working and ask him to marry me and Billy Wayne. Trying not to laugh during this solemn moment, Daddy would pick up a hymnbook—pretending it was a Bible—and then go through a ceremony with us.

  One day when Daddy got to the “You may now kiss the bride” part, I looked over at Billy Wayne’s freckled face and said, “Billy Wayne, take that sucker out of your mouth so you can kiss me!”

  Billy’s eyebrows shot up so high, they almost collided with the top of his head. His eyes exploded into two round saucers of fear. Having played along with this ridiculous playdate long enough, he shook his head left to right as if to say no and then ran out of the church as if the devil were in hot pursuit. I called after him, “Wait, Billy Wayne, wait! Come back here this instant!”

  I don’t think his cold feet at the altar stopped me from asking him to marry me the next day. My grandmother thought the fact that I wanted to get married all the time was so cute that she took the time to make a miniature wedding dress with a veil for me. Now that I had the real thing, I put Momma’s towels back and got married in style.

  * * *

  As I continued to grieve the loss of Tina, Daddy tried to comfort me with the thought that there would be an armed night guard watching our home. Although I never told him, I had developed a habit of lying on my right side in bed to give me an easy view of my room. I knew that if I rolled over and faced the wall, I’d be giving an intruder the advantage of a surprise attack.

  I knew I had to be prepared for anything.

  The uncertainty of not knowing if and when we’d be struck with another bombing was bad enough, but not being able to get immediate relief by looking around to be sure no one was standing in my room terrified me. Making matters worse, my imagination worked overtime after Tina’s death. Having concocted so many scary “what if” scenarios, I found myself wrestling with the same question every night:

  Will I be here in the morning?

  Then again, I knew the violence Mr. Watts planned could hit us while I was awake, too. It had happened during December while we were enjoying Christmas with friends. And, it occurred again on September 16, 1975. I remember that rainy night all too well. My grandparents on Daddy’s side were visiting us from Alabama, so I was allowed to stay up late. Huddled around the television, laughing and enjoying one another’s company, we were oblivious to the impending blast.

  At 9:20 p.m., about an hour before the night guard arrived, a fourth explosion rattled our home. The dynamite, attached to a pole six feet above ground, was set in the soybean field behind our home. Thankfully, we were physically unharmed, although the bomb ripped up a ten-foot square of the field.

  Perhaps the scariest part was the timing of the bomb and the knowledge that the law hadn’t been able to stop the attacks. As Daddy told the press, “You can see how closely they are watching us.37 If they can find one hour of darkness when there is not a watch, they’ll hit us. We’ve had every agency you can get. These people are still at large.”

  Having experienced a taste of Mr. Watts’s wrath, Daddy’s parents tried to get him to resign and move home. No doubt that was part of Mr. Watts’s revised strategy. If the church wouldn’t release their controversial pastor, maybe Daddy’s kin would apply enough pressure to break Daddy’s resolve if Mr. Watts struck while they were guests in our home. In spite of their pleas to leave, Daddy didn’t feel released from his calling to Sellerstown—and said so. He would stay and fight the good fight on his knees.

  Knowing Daddy’s mother, my grandma Erma Ruth Nichols, as I did, I knew that pacifist approach wouldn’t sit well with her. Frankly, I was surprised she didn’t grab a frying pan and go over to Mr. Watts’s house, knock on his door, and let him have it. That was the way she had expressed herself before she found Jesus. Grandma was a strong woman, so strong she gave birth to seven children at home without the benefit of anesthesia—except for when she gave birth to Daddy, who weighed more than eleven pounds. If Daddy wouldn’t leave, Grandma was the sort of woman who believed he should do whatever was necessary to protect our home.

  On the other hand, when it came to retaliating for this fourth bombing in a year, I remember my grandfather, William Franklin Nichols, arguing, “That man’s not worth the powder or lead it would take to kill him. He’s worthless. Don’t waste a bullet on him. He’s nothing more than a sorry good-for-nothing anyway.”

  Not that Daddy would consider revenge—killing or otherwise. Daddy had faced that fork in the road before. Thanks to his friends who restrained him from taking matters in his own hands after the third bombing, he didn’t want to risk being sent to jail himself. Instead, Daddy wanted to lead the Sellerstown community with a life that exhibited biblical forgiveness, not vigilante justice.

  I’m sure Daddy imagined that our prayers would be answered and that Mr. Watts would wave the flag of surrender. Or that at least we’d wake up one day and see a For Sale sign in the front yard of Mr. Watts’s house, indicating he was fed up and was moving on since we had no plans to surrender. Neither option materialized. It’s probably a good thing that Daddy didn’t know what Mr. Watts had planned next.

  Chapter 9

  Hearing Voices

  The voices of despair beckoned.

  Sp
ewing nothing but falsehood, a chorus of ominous voices began to haunt Daddy day and night. The sinister utterances, which harmonized with the agenda of hell itself, resonated within his head and told him he would be destroyed. His mission was over. He was a failure. He would never win. These champions of fear and paranoia, like weeds threatening to choke off the life of every good thing around them, said he would lose everything he had worked for in Sellerstown.

  He yearned to silence the voices.

  In his heart, Daddy knew they were all lies.

  And while they were nothing but vacuous fabrications from the pit to be ignored, as the voices persisted, so did Daddy’s spiral into a depression. He would walk through the house confessing out loud the words of 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” Nevertheless, he became obsessed with each car that passed by the parsonage. Every time one approached or he heard footsteps outside, he would race to the windows to see what mischief might be imminent. If we happened to be gathered in a room at night with the lights on when Daddy heard these sounds outside, he would hush everyone. He’d ask us to turn off the lights, stay away from the windows, and remain quiet until he checked out the situation.

  After all, the question haunting Daddy wasn’t if Mr. Watts would strike again. The question was, when would the next attack occur? Night after night, as the deep orange sun sank into the horizon, Daddy dreaded the ominous feeling that tonight might just be the night when a string of anonymous midnight callers would waken him from his sleep . . . or that his home would be bombed again . . . or that one of his children or his wife would be harmed.