Late last week in the late afternoon, I drove around one neighborhood of Pearlington over near the Pearl River to pick up one of our village staff. He was at the home we have built for one of our neighbors. This neighbor had loaned us his four wheeler to pull pods from the swamp and kept an eye on our Village while we were in evacuation from Gustav.
I parked along the side of the road by the house, trying to get as much truck out of the road as I could without driving into the ditch. I leaped over the ditch and walked up the steps to the rear of the house to see how the interior work is coming along. Thankfully, Eddie had built the new house with enough elevation to stay high of the water this time.
While I stood there looking in, an older man slowly ambled over to talk to me from the house next door.
"Hello, how are you doing? My name is Henry.”
He took my hand and said, “I’m doing as well as I can, my name’s Ab, Eddie’s Dad.”
“Eddie is a fine guy.”
I swatted at a stinging on the back of my neck, smashing a large mosquito with my hand. As I looked at the large bloody spot on my open palm Ab laughed and asked, “Do you know you just killed one of Mississippi’s State birds?”
I imagine because of my drawl he then asked, “Where are you from?”
“I came down from Chattanooga last spring. I’m a Georgia boy though, from Rome.”
“Rome. I know that town for some reason. But, Chattanooga, that’s a nice town too. I used to push barges up the Mississippi. Sometimes we would push them up the Tennessee River. Always though it was odd how that river ran back down into Mississippi and up to Chattanooga. “
“Yes, Ab, I remember reading how after winning the battle of Nashville, the Union Army chased General Forrest down the river to Mississippi and across Alabama to Guntersville. I think that is where Forrest headed south to the Alabama River and up towards Rome.”
"I really hated those trips. There are so many recreational boating lanes and those small boats out on the water. They just ignore those heavy barges. I always feared I’d hit some knucklehead who was not paying attention. Those barges don’t even feel a boat like those when they hit it. You hit one of them with a barge and its kind of like that bug you swatted. Boy I'd hate to hit one of those boaters.”
“I pushed them on the Cumberland, too – up though Paducah, Kentucky. That was worse than the Tennessee River, the channel is so narrow. I never liked those trips.”
“We all really appreciate what you all from the Presbyterian Church are doing for us in Pearlington. That Jeremy, your work site manager is a fine young man. Chris is too. They are both good boys. A lot of us just wouldn’t have made it if you hadn’t come. I lost everything and just about all my hope. In fact, this is the second time my wife and I lost everything. But you know, I’ve come to realize it doesn’t matter. I don't have much left anyway, my health is gone. I have really bad lungs and heart. These cigarettes have done me in. I’ve tried to stop but I just can’t. I wonder what they put in them? I’ll tell you, as far as I am concerned as long as my wife and I have each other we will be OK. The house and furniture just don’t matter.”
“Ab, I think I understand what you mean about that.”
"I’ll tell you though, some of the folks you helped didn’t need it. You know there is a really bad drug problem in Pearlington. There always has been. It goes back a long way, before Katrina. Some of those folks whose houses you rebuilt houses have enough money from the drugs to build everybody in Pearlington a house.”
“You know Ab, I read in the paper about that cocaine bust over on 604. One of my friends lives over on 5th street, I think it is, off 7th Avenue where they hang out selling drugs on the corner at Whites Road. Sometimes they actually almost block the road to traffic. One day my friend’s wife was coming back from work and those guys gave her a hard time. She said she just drove on through. One of them waved a gun at her and she just picked up the one she had on the seat just in case, and waved it in the rear view mirror, almost daring them to try something. She has a lot of sass in her.“
“I can imagine it Mr. Henry. You know though, it is a bad feeling to be in a situation where you realize in the next moment you may have to shoot someone. It happened to me once a few years ago and I still get a bad feeling about it. I got into a fix so deep that I had already pulled the slack out of the trigger and I knew the next thing was going to be somebody getting killed. It made a terrible feeling in my stomach that I can’t forget.”
“Really? What happened?”
“I was driving over to New Orleans on US 90. I drove by my wife’s brother-in-law’s house that sits on the highway just past Slidell. As I drove by I saw a guy with a can and hose at the back of the brother-in-law’s car. Another man was standing by the driver’s door fiddling with the window. An old Econoline Ford panel truck sat across the road and I figured it was theirs.”
“I wasn’t about to let them mess up his car, so I drove past them a little bit and pulled over onto the side of the road. I had my old shotgun with me, a Winchester my Dad gave me. It wasn't a great gun but it worked really fine then. I still have it but Katrina ruined it, the action doesn’t work now. I put a couple of double ought buckshot shells in the gun. Then I got out of the car and started walking towards them.”
“Hey! You boys had best just leave that car alone now. I want you to get back in that van and get out of here.”
"They took a look at me and started walking towards me. That’s when I started getting nervous.”
"You boys hear me, this gun is loaded. You just keep on coming toward me and I’ll have to use it."
"They kept coming and got up within maybe twenty feet. I said, 'I’m warning you if you take another step towards me I’m shooting.'"
“It was a terrible thing, I knew right there that this situation had only two ways to end. We were hanging on the moment of decision. If they made another move I was going to have to let loose with my shotgun.”
“Aw mister, what’s the problem? We ran out of gas and just need a gallon or two to get on down the road to a service station.”
“They just stood there a while lookin' down the barrel of my shotgun, thinking of what to do next.”
“You boys don’t fool me with that line. You passed three stations back in Slidell. I’m telling you that you’d better get back in that van and go back to Slidell and get some gas there, or move on towards New Orleans. In fact, I’m telling you to get in the van and get out of here now because as soon as you get in, I’m going back to Slidell and calling the police. So you’d best put some distance between me and you.”
“I was sweating up a storm with dread of what was going to happen next. It was a bad, cold feeling, I’ll tell you the acid in my stomach was churning. I knew what that buckshot would do if I pulled the trigger.”
“Thank the Lord, they decided I meant business, moved backwards to their van, got in and took off. I don’t know how I’d have been able to stand it if I’d had to shoot. I would have because it was surely me or them. I feel the dread now just as I did then.”
* * *
As with so many encounters down here, the one with Ab left me unsettled on my drive back to Gulfport. It brought back to me some words that I’d written several years earlier, and dread I'd felt because of it.
“Let us make man in our own image.…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them, and blessed them and (gave them) dominion over…every living thing upon the earth, and saw that it was very good.
“I tell you my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear, fear him who, after he has killed, has the power to cast into hell, yes I tell you, fear him!
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” And he said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with your mind. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the laws and the prophets.' ”
These words persuade me strongly that a piece of God is in every person. No, I would say God as a whole is in every person, as far-fetched as that sounds. This creates a difficult problem for us. It means to kill a person is to kill God, or to strike against God, or at least against a part of God. From Adam until now, constantly and impudently we have vied with God for dominion over the one thing He holds dear to Himself alone, the power to give creativity (life) and death.
We justify struggling with Him for this power, proclaiming it His way. We justify killing by stating it is “in defense of God and Faith.” In defense of God? In defense of Faith?” How does one defend a Faith that rests not on the influence or power of another person or country or on freedom itself, but only upon what is in one’s heart? What is Faith but internally held conviction unfettered by worldly power? It is based not on fact or reason, but on belief in forgiveness and salvation. Faith stands in conflict with fact and reason. Faith cannot be subjugated except by oneself. And so, does God really need a defense by us? Or, do we just treasure life over Faith?
In a fit of selfish pretension we often justify killing by joining to our statement the words “in defense of liberty and country.” We send our sons to kill or be killed in defense of liberty and country. Or we say, this man killed my wife, or this man raped my daughter, or this man betrayed my country, I want his blood, execute him. We do this in spite of the greater two commandments Jesus spoke, and in spite of God’s reservation of vengeance to Himself.
In my opinion, Jesus in that quote above emphasized and extended the interpretation of the Law. Jesus proscribes killing, how can you love and honor God, or your neighbor, and kill him?
Let’s ask the question, “who has demanded the death of sons that has the authority to demand such a thing?” I recall two sons, Isaac and Jesus. I believe that every time we kill, by our own hands or by proxy, we strike against God. We can’t kill God, but perhaps we dare to bruise His compassion.
If you have children that you love, especially teenagers, you know how it feels when one of them does or says something especially cruel that hurts you. Must God feel that way when we kill His creation? How many times have we bruised God’s compassion in this way? 100-fold times, a million-fold times, a billion-fold times, perhaps more? Yet God persists in one endeavor, to hold open arms and say to us “I have allowed you to exact your killing on Me as Man to show you that I alone have dominion over life and death. I have forgiven you of this wrong before you were born.”
No sin is beyond absolution except denial of Faith. This is where my Faith lies; in the persistent enigma of unjustified forgiveness of reprehensible, evil acts.
I just pray I never face the test that Ab found for himself that night on the road to New Orleans.
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