Chapter 4 - The Parish CouncilThe basement fellowship hall of the First Baptist Church of Oakridge smelled of industrial floor wax, damp hymnals, and the sweet, lingering steam of fifty cups of Maxwell House coffee brewed in a thirty-cup aluminum percolator that had been purchased during the Nixon administration.
It was seven o'clock on Thursday evening.
The church had not called a special business meeting since 2014, when the youth minister was caught using the church van to haul unauthorized pine straw to the flea market in Jesup.
Now, eighty people sat on the brown metal folding chairs arranged in six curved rows beneath the exposed fluorescent fixtures.
Reverend Marcus Mercer sat at the center of the folding table on the small riser, wearing his dark charcoal pastoral suit with an open collar, his hands folded over a leather-bound King James Bible. To his right sat Harrison Calloway—thirty-four now, thick around the neck, wearing a three-piece tweed suit that looked as though it had been tailored for an older man, his hair slicked down with high-gloss pomade, a gold signet ring glinting on his left pinky finger.
To the reverend's left sat my father.
David Vance had put on his Sunday suit—the one he had bought for my high school graduation in 2013, with the lapels that were an inch too wide and the sleeves that were slightly short at the wrists, revealing his thick, work-roughened forearms.
I stood at the back of the hall, leaning against the cinderblock wall beside the coat racks.
I was still in uniform.
I had not taken off the green tunic. The ribbons remained straight across my left pocket, the bronze star with the V catching the hum of the fluorescent tubes. Beside me stood Mr. Greer, wearing a clean white shirt and his postal tie, holding the cigar box and the six bank books under his arm like an executioner carrying the block.
"Brothers and sisters," Reverend Mercer began, his voice carrying that smooth, practiced, baritone tremor that had lowered four hundred coffins into the sand of the county cemetery. "We are gathered in an hour of extraordinary spiritual confusion. For four years, this congregation has carried our sister Diane Vance in our collective prayers. We have asked the Lord to soften the heart of an errant child. We have believed—in good faith, based on representations made to the deacon board—that a great domestic tragedy had occurred in our midst."
He looked down the center aisle.
His eyes passed over the deacons in the front row—men who had avoided my father at the feed store for forty months, men who had lowered their voices when David Vance walked into the barber shop on Saturday mornings—and settled squarely on me where I stood by the coat racks.
"We have learned today," Mercer continued, his voice dropping into a register of cold, administrative severity, "that the information provided to this church was not merely inaccurate. It was a calculated deceit."
Harrison Calloway shifted in his metal chair. His patent leather loafers squeaked against the linoleum.
"Pastor," Calloway interrupted, raising one large, soft hand. "I don't think it's appropriate for this body to conduct a judicial inquiry into a private family misunderstanding. Diane Vance has been a pillar of the women's missionary union for thirty years. Her family—"
"Her family is sitting in the Chatham County jail, Harrison," my father said from the riser.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't look at Calloway. He spoke to the third row of folding chairs, where Mrs. Gable sat with her handkerchief balled into a tight white knot between her thumbs.
"She’s in cell four," David said. "With two women who were picked up for writing bad checks at the Piggly Wiggly. She was arraigned at two o'clock this afternoon by Judge Holloway. The bond was set at ten thousand dollars."
"David," Calloway muttered, his face turning an alarming shade of dark magenta. "We are prepared to post the bond through the Calloway Timber land account. There is no need for this public spectacle."
"You won't post a nickel, Harrison," a voice barked from the back of the hall.
Mr. Greer stepped away from the cinderblock wall.
He walked down the center aisle, his leather service shoes making a solid, rhythmic clack-clack-clack on the floorboards that silenced the murmuring in the sixth row.
He stopped three feet from Calloway’s chair, reached into his canvas pouch, and pulled out a single sheet of paper—a certified deed of conveyance from the Clinch County courthouse, dated August 14, 2022.
"Read paragraph three, Harrison," Mr. Greer said, dropping the document onto the table directly over Calloway’s leather portfolio.
Calloway didn't touch it.
"Read it aloud, son," Mr. Greer commanded. "Or I will have the reporter from Channel Eleven—who is currently sitting in the gravel lot outside with her camera running on the inverter—come in through that fire door and read it into her evening broadcast."
Reverend Mercer reached out and pulled the paper toward him.
The minister adjusted his reading glasses. His face, usually set in that serene, pastoral mask of universal benevolence, went completely rigid.
" 'Assignment of Royalty Interest,' " Mercer read, his voice trembling slightly. " 'Assignor: Diane Vance, as Custodial Trustee for Emily Vance, a disqualified beneficiary under Section 4 of the Last Will and Testament of Thomas Vance... Assignee: Calloway Timber & Land Syndicate, LLC... Consideration: Thirty-six thousand dollars in commercial credit toward the purchase of the eastern parcel on Black Creek...' "
The minister looked up. He took off his glasses. He looked at Harrison Calloway with the cold, absolute disgust of a shepherd who has discovered that the bell-wether has been leading the sheep into the slaughter chute for twenty percent of the tallow.
"You took her inheritance, Harrison?" Mercer whispered.
"It was a business transaction!" Calloway gasped, jumping to his feet, his chair screeching backward against the concrete. "Diane brought the papers! She had the death certificate from the trust company! She said the girl was in federal custody and that the family needed to liquidate the non-performing assets to pay for her legal defense!"
"You knew where she was, Harrison," I said from the back of the hall.
My voice was not loud, but in the low-ceilinged basement, it had the weight of an iron anchor dropping through thirty fathoms of coastal mud.
I walked down the aisle.
The deacons did not look into my eyes; they looked at my boots, they looked at the creases in my trousers, they looked at the gold eagle on my saucer cap.
I stopped beside Mr. Greer, six inches from Calloway’s right elbow.
"You received three postcards from me, Harrison," I said. "Between June of twenty-two and January of twenty-three. Sent from the port of embarkation at Beaumont, Texas. I told you that if you ever came near my father's fence line with your timber cruisers again, I would have the staff judge advocate at Fort Stewart file a civil racketeering petition against your father's firm."
Calloway swallowed hard. His throat made a dry, clicking sound.
"You were just a girl," he whispered.
"I was a second lieutenant of the United States Army, Harrison," I said. "And you were a thirty-year-old clerk who was too frightened of his own father to tell him that the girl from Sycamore Lane didn't want his swamp land."
I turned to Reverend Mercer.
"Pastor," I said.
The minister stood up, his Bible clutched against his ribs like a shield. "Yes, Captain?"
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"Remove my name from the secret prayer list," I said. "And put my mother’s name on the legal docket. Because tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, the United States Postal Inspection Service is filing twelve counts of mail fraud against the Calloway Syndicate for the conversion of federal military communications."
I turned on my heel, took my father by the arm, and walked out of the church basement into the cool, dark Georgia night.
