Dancing-with-Baptists-Createspace-Final--A4

DANCING WITH BAPTISTS
The two walked and hitchhiked for hours and never found the shrine. It was Chap
who had first spotted the young girl on the side of the road doubled over and bleeding
from her forehead. Chap knelt and prayed for her. Greg helped her onto a wet patch of
yellow Pintoi flowers that was partially hidden from the road. Moving the injured and
pregnant girl off the dangerous shoulder happened just in time. A sputtering convoy kicked
up shells, rocks, and dust and left tracks over the hula-hoop sized wet ground where the
young mother’s water had broken.
Chap took off his shirt and laid it on the ground next to the new mother. He bent
over and placed the tiny one on it. The mother looked away. Many Vietnamese believed
that if you show attention to a baby it alerts evil spirits and they will come to kill the baby.
Greg was the first to hear the next trucks. He and Chap ducked in the grass
alongside the young Asian Madonna and child. As soon as the last olivedipped-in-mud
truck roared by, the barrel of an assault rifle nudged through the leaves of a dark green
bush. Next an RPK machine gun pushed through a neighboring bush. One was pointed at
Greg and the other at Chap’s chest where the cross had been moments earlier. The
Chaplain and the young surgical tech froze as a missed-matched uniformed teenager and a
head-bandaged preteen followed their weapons out of the bushes.
The teenager expertly swung his shoulderstrapped weapon around to his back and
picked up the fatigue-wrapped newborn. Chap’s cross dangled from the pocket of the jacket.
Standing guard, the preteen’s dark eyes revealed his internal vote to kill the roadside delivery
team. Greg and Chap slowly backed away from the bloody four. Chap raised his right hand
and prayed. “Lord Jesus, we pray for these young souls.”
As Greg and Chap continued to back away, the teenager helped the young mother
to her feet and within seconds they were gone. The only sign of new life and possible death
was the placenta on the aluminum plants.
Three clicks down the road, both men paused and took a moment. The shirtless
Chaplain and the bloody surgical tech spent the rest of the way back in collective silence.
CHAPTER 2
The Near Northside, Houston, Texas
November 1951
Greg was not born a Baptist. He married into the Faith at age four. That was the year
his mother wed Jack the Baptist. Greg’s mother and Jack Baker were both divorced. Divorce
was an ugly business in postWorld War II Houston, but an almost unheard of circumstance
at small Trinity Street Baptist Church.
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