Acest prezent Intunecat

didn’t like it. Now I’m preaching the Word and he still doesn’t like it. He
pulls a lot of weight in that church, so I guess he thinks he can dictate what
comes across that pulpit.”
“Well, he can’t!”
“Not in my case, anyway.”
“So why doesn’t he just go somewhere else?”
Hank pointed his finger dramatically. “That, dear wife, is a good question!
There seems to be a method in his madness, like it’s his mission in life to
destroy pastors.”
“It’s just the picture they keep painting of you. You’re just not like that!”
“Hmmmm … yes, painting. Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
Hank drew a breath, sighed it out, then looked at her. “We had some
visitors last night. They—they painted a slogan on the front of the house.”
“What? Our house?”
“Well … our landlord’s house.”
She got up. “Where?” She went out the front door, her fuzzy slippers
scuffing on the front walk.
“Oh, no!”
Hank joined her, and they drank in the view together. It was still there, real
as ever.
“Now that makes me mad!” she declared, but now she was crying.
“What’d we ever do to anybody?”
“I think we were just talking about it,” Hank suggested.
Mary didn’t catch what he said, but she had a theory of her own, the most
obvious one. “Maybe the Festival … it always brings out the worst in
everyone.”
Hank had his own theory but said nothing. It had to be someone in the
church, he thought. He’d been called a lot of things: a bigot, a heel-dragger,
an overly moral troublemaker. He had even been accused of being a
homosexual and of beating his wife. Some angry church member could have
done this, perhaps a friend of Lou Stanley the adulterer, perhaps Lou himself.
He would probably never know, but that was all right. God knew.