SEVERAL TIMES DURING THE DAY, MIKE TRIED TO REMEMBER additional details of his dream, but nothing came. He arrived home to a message from Peg that she’d gone shopping with a friend and wouldn’t be back before he left for his meeting at the Craig Valley church. Mike fixed a salad before leaving to pick up Sam. He put on a coat and silk tie so he would look like a lawyer.
The sun was barely above the tree line when Mike turned onto the driveway to the Miller house. Sam stepped onto the front stoop and waved as he approached.
“Did Papa send you a letter last night?” the old man asked as soon as he sat down in the passenger seat of the car.
Mike had heard so many of Sam’s off-the-wall comments that he responded without thinking the old man was crazy.
“Is that what you saw?” Mike asked.
“Yep. It had your name on it in big print.”
“Did you open it?”
“Nope. It wasn’t addressed to me, but the return address was Craig Valley Gospel Tabernacle.”
Mike told about his dream in the night as he drove down McAfee Road.
“It was so vivid, I didn’t think there was a chance I would forget any part of it.”
“You’re like a little baby that has to be told the same thing over and over before it understands. Papa is teaching you a lesson. You should have listened to me about the notebook. As you get more mature, you’ll get better at remembering. Then the hard part is interpreting what Papa shows you.”
“I’ll use my PDA.”
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
Mike took the device from his pocket and showed it to Sam.
“Oh, yeah, but that thing is no good if your batteries are dead. My notebooks don’t need batteries.”
“I keep it charged. If I start having dreams with meanings, they are going to be high-tech.”
Mike told Sam about Danny Brewster’s memorial service.
“That’s good,” Sam said when he finished. “It makes me look forward to meeting Danny myself.” Sam paused. “And it makes me feel better about you being my lawyer.”
“Why? I lost Danny’s case, and he went to prison where he was murdered.”
“Yep, but there’s no condemnation from Papa. That’s the important thing.”
They rode in silence for several miles.
“What kind of reception are we going to get from the deacons?” Mike asked.
“Larry is one of my sons, so everything should be fine. He was in a hurry when I called him, and we didn’t have a long conversation.”
“I didn’t know members of your family attended the church.”
“Yep. Including you, I have ten sons,” Sam answered. “Papa has bunches of sons, and sometimes He lets me help raise them.”
“Spiritual sons.”
“Yep, isn’t that the most important part of being an earthly papa?”
They made several turns. The Craig Valley area contained several clusters of houses.
“Is the church near the Rea home place?” Mike asked, referring to the oldest house in Barlow County.
“Yep. Less than a mile past it on a side road.”
They passed the Rea home, a weathered log cabin built in 1758. A marker along the road gave a brief history of the site where Scottish immigrants first settled in the county.
“Turn at the next right,” Sam said.
It was a paved road. The church, a small, rectangular, concrete-block building painted lime green, was a short distance on the left. A wooden sign with black letters on a white background proclaimed the name of the church. Underneath the name was a place to identify the pastor. It was painted over with new white paint. Two pickup trucks and an older-model car were parked out front. To the side of the building, a large flat place had been cleared and trenches for concrete footings had been dug. Wooden stakes with strings surrounded the work area.
“That’s where they’re going to build,” Sam said.
Mike parked beside one of the pickup trucks. They went to the front door of the church, a double brown door that looked too flimsy to withstand a hard kick.
“You take the lead and introduce me,” Mike said.
Sam pushed open the door. The inside of the church was as plain as the outside. Rows of wooden pews rested on a floor covered with thin, cheap carpet. A raised platform with two steps leading to it contained a single chair and a wooden pulpit. There was a piano to the left of the platform, but no area for a choir.
“They use one of the adult Sunday school rooms for deacon meetings,” Sam said. “It’s behind the sanctuary.”
They walked down the aisle, through a door to the right of the platform, and entered a short hall. No one was in sight. Sam opened a door. Mike followed. Inside, he saw four African-American men on their knees around a table. They stopped praying and stood. The tallest of the men stepped forward and extended his hand to Mike.