“Naw, I just picked this place to impress you. I’m just a humble preacher with a nice car.” Madison laughed as he downplayed his local fame. The fact was that with nearly a thousand people attending Community Chapel, and more joining each week, he really was becoming known in the community, and it was kind of nice. After all, if people were going to follow someone, it might as well be someone with his head screwed on straight, who could provide a moral compass for the community. So, yeah, he did like the attention and the status that came along with it.
They had just pushed away from their 2nd pasta bowl when Shani came back to the table - this time without her green apron on. “Hi again. I just wanted to say ‘bye. They’re letting me leave a little early since it’s slowing down.”
“Okay, Shani. By the way, how’s that little angel of yours?” Madison said.
“She’s good. Thanks for asking. She’s a handful, that’s for sure, but she’s real good. Well,” she said, awkwardly as if she wanted to stay but knew she shouldn’t, “I should go. It was nice meeting you, Dave. I hope you enjoy your visit,” she said.
Dave, always the charmer, dabbed his mouth with his napkin and stood again, “The pleasure was all mine, Shani Andrews. Maybe I’ll see you in church.”
“Okay, yeah, that would be great.” She smiled and glanced at Pastor Enright, turned and left.
Madison shook his head and took a final sip of water as Dave sat down. “What?” Dave smiled. “Can’t a guy be a gentleman?”
“You? What a hound dog. ‘The pleasure was all mine?’ Now that’s rich.”
“Hey, I saw you over at that table with the church people. You can lay it on pretty thick when the need arises. Am I wrong?” Dave challenged as he put a twenty and a ten on top of the bill as they rose to leave.
“Touche’, buddy.”
Chapter 4
The only daughter of Pastor Billy and Eerlene Boyles of Ponca City, Oklahoma, Jill Boyles Enright, had literally grown up in Abundant Word Fellowship, the church Billy and Eerlene pioneered as an Assembly Mission in 1973 when she was six years old. Jill Boyles had her momma’s dark brown hair and green eyes and her daddy’s natural charm, which helped her win the Miss Ponca City and Miss Kay County titles while in senior high, and nearly made it to the finals of the Miss Oklahoma pageant. She and Madison met as freshmen in college and were married exactly one year after graduation at Abundant Word, with Pastor Billy officiating and Dave Bean standing up for the groom. They received the call to California in October of the same year to serve the struggling Community Chapel in Almond Grove. In the beginning, the newlyweds sacrificed physically and emotionally, surrendering the formative years of their relationship on the altar of the ministry. The tall handsome blond with aspirations of changing the world and the green eyed belle with the Okie drawl might have been the all-American couple, if not for the mistress with the steeple on the roof. But, like most marriages, the Enrights settled into a workable pattern of life - Madison, the increasingly busy Pastor, and Jill, the strong, godly, faithful Christian woman that her parents had raised her to be.
Jill pushed number two on her cell phone speed dial. On the second ring she heard the familiar, “Hey, J.”
“Hi, Mad. You and the drop-out staying out of trouble?”
“Green? Yeah, he’s already gone. Hey, he’s actually thinking about moving up here. Can you believe that?”
“What’s the deal? He disappears for two years and then shows up to let us know he’s moving here?”
“Well, he didn’t say it was a done deal. I’m not sure he knows what he wants. Just looking for the next adventure, probably.”
“God love him... When we gonna see ya?”
“Pretty soon. Got a little more work on the sermon - maybe five-ish?”
“Billy’s got karate, so we’re just gonna do Taco Bell or something. Oop, there’s the bell, gotta go, love you.” Jill snapped the pink phone shut and slid it into her bag as elementary students burst from every door of the Mary J. Singleton school, running to awaiting cars, vans, buses, and crossing guards. William Madison Enright looked just like his daddy - tall and thin for his age with thick blond hair and blue eyes. Sure to be a lady killer like the old man, Jill thought to herself. Billy spotted the yellow Xterra and made a beeline across the grass, Spiderman backpack in tow.
“Mom, Jenny said I stink and I have cooties and I said ‘uh-uhh,’ and she said I do, too,” Billy announced as he hurled his gear into the car and buckled into the back seat. The energy level always ramped up when her oblivious little energy bar was around.
“Well, don’t mind Jenny, she just likes you.”
“Gross. She’s the one who has cooties, not me, that’s what I think.”
“Homework today, little man?” Jill said as she pulled into traffic.
The question didn’t register, and they made it most of the way home in silence - the little guy’s mind trying to get a handle on something just outside his grasp, when finally he asked, “Mom?”
“Yes, Billy.”
“What are cooties, anyway?”
“Well,” Jill thought as she turned onto their street, “Your daddy used to have them, I know that.”
“Dad?”
“M-hmm... I guess,” she added as she pulled to a stop in their driveway. “Cooties are something that people you like sometimes have.”
“Gross,” he offered, flying from the car, open door in his wake.
Chapter 5
After spending part of the afternoon with his old buddy, Dave Bean caught a flight out of Oakland back to San Diego, retrieved his black CTS-V at the short-term lot and picked his way through evening traffic back up I-5 to his condo in La Jolla. Although he could have afforded almost anything in the county, the furnished 2nd floor ocean view unit at Crow’s Nest Villas had everything he thought he needed at the time. Both decks overlooked the white sand at La Jolla Cove Beach, where the waves of the Pacific crashed to shore just a few hundred yards from his back gate, offering surfing, jogging, or chasing whatever might draw his attention - blond, brunette or redhead.
Dave stood on the deck watching the sun set into the Pacific Ocean, an experience he never tired of and one that had helped keep him sane over the past decade as he gave body and soul to a business that could never love him back. It had been a year since the sale closed, the FTC finally approving terms drawn up by a room full of lawyers. All he had to do was sign his name a couple of hundred times, including a non-compete form that forbade him from reentering the market for a minimum of six years, which he laughed as he signed. The cash and stock from the sale had left him embarrassingly rich and, after hand-signing healthy bonuses to his senior team from his own checking account, the fast-paced, sexy life of Mr. David Bean, software mogul, ended even more quickly than it started. He walked away. With investment counsel, he was able to set up healthy foundation trust accounts for a few charity works he admired, moved from Phoenix to La Jolla, and tried to figure out what might still be out there for him. Twelve months of waiting, surfing, thinking and jogging had brought him to this place, a spur-of-the-moment visit with Madison and the idea that maybe the next chapter of his life might need to include people. Real people.
The doorbell rang signaling the arrival of dinner, which Dave ate in silence while clicking mindlessly through the endless channel selection on the satellite receiver and plasma monitor. The kung-pao chicken and steamed rice seemed to help Dave piece together a myriad of disjointed thoughts. “You’re lonely, Dave, you need relationships, stable people. Maybe a girlfriend.” He nodded to himself, not talking out loud, but fully engrossed in dialogue nonetheless. “Actually, buddy, you need more than a girl. You don’t realize it, but you need God.”
“Oooh.” This time he did speak out loud. “That hurt.” He took another bite of the spicy chicken and pointed his chopsticks at Chris Berman, as if the accusation had been made on Sports Center. “I’ve been down that road, remember? Didn’t work out too good, if you re
call. You were there.” Dave’s conscience had been there. It didn’t agree with his hardheaded decisions at that juncture either.
“And, while we’re at it,” Dave’s conscience put forth, “after you find God, you need a job, a mission, something to occupy your time and passion. This free and easy stuff is nice in theory, but, gimme a break, are you really going to sit around eating Chinese food talking to yourself the rest of your life?”
With that, Dave tossed his chopsticks into a mostly devoured take-out box and sat back with a slight huff. To nobody in particular he said, “Mad’s got it made. Simple as that. Great wife, job he loves, he helps people, and he’s doing God’s work...” Dave looked up at the ceiling, wondering if he was too far gone to send that flag up the pole one more time.
After a long while, he tried to compose his thoughts out loud. “God,” he said, “I’ve been a jerk. I know it - you know it. I haven’t thanked you for anything; I’m just a selfish ass. I’ve always thought that, if we ever crossed paths again, you’d just take everything away. I’m an idiot.” “Humph,” he grunted. “You could take all this away in a second if you wanted. Why haven’t you? I certainly don’t deserve it. I’ve done nothing to merit having all this sh--. Excuse me, all this stuff.” He paused, gathering his senses after nearly cussing in a prayer, “I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t want to be like Madison. He’s doing his thing, and it’s not me, we both know that. But, if there is something I can do, something real, something that can make my life count for more than just a few software programs, I want to do it. And, I don’t know, I’m lonely. I guess, with the business, I never thought about it, but God, Lord, I sure would like to find someone, not like before, but someone... special. I don’t even know what I’m asking, I know you’re not a genie and the perfect woman isn’t going to just appear, but Lord, I don’t want just any girl, she needs to be...” he thought through a meaningless list of criteria and then just said, “I don’t know... you pick... uh... Amen.”
He hadn’t said much, in fact, there was a truckload of choices and decisions parked behind every sentence of his prayer, but somehow it seemed like enough. And, as he sat there on his couch, just him, Chris Berman and a couple of boxes of take-out Chinese, the weight from nearly twenty years of running from God seemed to slip from his shoulders, and he felt like he had finally done something right. “It’s a start,” he said, yawning in the direction of the ESPN Baseball Update.
When he opened his eyes he realized sunlight was coming into the room through the etched glass panels of the east-facing front door. At some point, he had gone to sleep and fallen over on the couch, spending the rest of the night using the paper plate of steamed rice as a pillow. He sat up with a cake of rice stuck to the right side of his face, little white grains embedded in the cracks and crevices of his ear like seeds in a pomegranate. If he had a dog, his sticky, rice-covered face would have been irresistible fare. Kenny Maine had replaced Chris Berman at the Sports Center desk and, other than the kung-pao mess he’d made on the beige leather sofa, all seemed right with the world.
After a shower, Dave called his real estate agent and made an appointment to put his condo on the market.
Chapter 6
Jill Enright sometimes said her husband was “eternally driven,” speaking of the fact that he was up and gone by 5:30 am every day and on the go, non-stop, till he came to bed sometime around 11:00 pm. What she referred to as eternally driven, he saw as “driven by eternity,” never wanting to slow down in the quest to grow the biggest church on the West Coast. If he had a visible flaw, it was that he was good at almost everything and didn’t mind being pushed to the front of any meeting to lead or expound upon the issue at hand. In the past decade, the name Madison Enright had become synonymous with successful, motivated, upstanding Bay Area living. He was the Chaplain of the City Council and Sheriff’s department, a regular speaker at the Oakland Raiders Chapel services, on the board of the Chamber of Commerce and president of the Ministerial Association. From the top of his youthful blond head to the tips of his Steve Madden loafers, Madison Enright was in a ministerial league of his own.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he said to Jill as they met for a quick bite at Hershel’s Deli Friday at noon. “I got a call today from Dr. Cross at RLU.”
“Holy Cross?” Jill smiled. Dr. Leon Cross (Holy Cross to the upperclassmen when he wasn’t in the room) was an associate professor back in the late 80’s and had been promoted to Dean of the Bible department in 1993. A scholar of the first order, Dr. Cross was instrumental in landing the extended exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls collection at the RLU Library. Over the course of the exhibition, more than 20,000 people visited the Dallas campus to view the collection, making Dr. Cross something of a hero among the administration of the college as fundraising increased exponentially during the next year.
“He’s putting together a national conference in Dallas next February, and he wants me to be the keynote speaker. Is that too much?” he exclaimed. Madison was a regular attendee of national conferences and always had his eye on the platform, but he never thought they would reach out to him. “I mean, they’ll have all the biggies there - and me! It’s unreal.”
“Wow, sweetie, that’s great. You deserve it you know,” Jill said. “Recognition long deserved.”
“I don’t know about that, but...” He pushed the salt and pepper and little banner announcing double-chocolate brownies out of the way and took her hand. Fiddling with her platinum wedding band, he said, “Jill, I feel like it’s all been worth it. I know I haven’t been the easiest guy to live with, and I’ll never be half the Pastor your dad was, but,” he smiled and shook his head slightly, “it’s working,” he nodded. “It really is. My ministry is becoming what we always wanted.”
“Aw, honey,” she said, putting her other hand over his, “you’ve never had to prove anything to me. No, you’re not my dad - thank God you’re not!” She laughed. “But he isn’t you, either.” Jill cocked her head slightly, looking deeply into her husbands eyes. “You’ve got something special, Mad. You’re God’s man. You’re going to make a difference in this world. I just know it. I’m really, really proud of you.” A quiet moment passed between them.
“And you know what else,” she said as she pulled her hands free and reached for a menu, “I’m as hungry as a five-belly heifer.”
“I love it when you speak Okie,” he said as he picked up his own menu. “Turns me on.”
Still distracted by the invitation to Dallas, Madison got an idea while Jill still had her eyes on the menu. “Hey, J, let’s celebrate tonight. Just you and me.”
“What?”
“Yeah, we’ll celebrate my step into the Big Time. We’ll go over to the city and the whole thing, I’ll make reservations. What do you think?”
“I might could get someone to stay with Billy. It is a school night, though,” Jill said, thinking out loud. “Yeah, it could work.”
Chapter 7
Madison called their favorite restaurant and spent the rest of the afternoon awash in his own importance, mentioning his role at the upcoming conference to no less than five people in various meetings.
Back in the sanctity of his own office, he opened his iBook and blocked out the time in his calendar, sent a few quick emails to the church board and some friends letting them know about the invite, and then had to consciously reign himself in. “Okay, okay, enough, ” he thought. “What am I going to do, take out a full-page in the Chronicle? Geez.” He scolded himself and then allowed his mind to wander forward again to the scene at the Dallas Convention Center as he stood in the wings and listened to Dr. Cross at the podium microphone. “We are honored this evening to welcome one of our own to the podium. A Pastor, speaker and expert on family ministry who, fifteen years ago, took a struggling church of 27 people and turned it into one of the fastest growing, active ministries on the West Coast. Many of our speakers this week need no introduction, and, from what I’ve seen an
d heard, our keynote speaker will be counted among that group sooner rather than later.” Madison pictured the room, a basketball arena, floor draped and filled with folding chairs, all occupied, the stands on three sides packed with people, a 200-voice conference choir on the risers behind the pulpit, and, when his name was announced, the applause nearly lifted him out onto the stage. “And, it is my pleasure to introduce him to you first. Please welcome, Pastor Madison Enright!”
“I’ve got to pray,” he said to himself, awakening from the daydream. He shut the lid to his computer and bowed his head, sliding from his chair to his knees he interlocked his fingers and closed his eyes tight. “I have a chance here to really do something great,” he said out loud. “It’s what I’ve been hoping for, what I’ve been praying for my whole life. Not this exactly, but what this could lead to - a national ministry, a writing contract, becoming a leader of, of leaders!” The words sounded more like a person talking to himself than a man pouring his heart out to God, because, in Madison’s current self-absorbed condition, that’s all it was. He was just mailing it in, and he knew it. “Man, what am I doing? That’s weak.” He got back into his chair and absentmindedly picked up a pen from the desk. Twiddling the pen in his fingers, his mind wandered away from the conference and back again. Slowly he got a glimpse of something, a word, vague at first, then, slowly it began to crystallize in his mind, whether it was from the Lord, or just something deep in his head that was vying for attention amidst the commotion, he wasn’t sure. But gradually it became clear as he doodled on a pad of sticky notes a series of circles and squares and the letters, R-E-P-E-N-T.
“M-hmm,” he murmured to himself and sat quietly for a few minutes. The sun was fading into the west on a beautiful northern California day, and he was alone with his thoughts and this one-word ultimatum. Repentance wasn’t beneath Madison Enright - it just wasn’t something he took very personally any more. Sure, as a kid, he repented from every cuss word and vile thought. Even now, he preached it every week, but that gun was aimed at the congregation, not the one person in the room that had set his life apart for God’s work. He was no saint. Once in a while he might visit websites on Friday that he preached were taboo on Sunday, and his mind would sometimes take him places Jesus suggested they shouldn’t go, but to Madison, vice was a curiosity that he easily justified as victimless distraction for a stress-filled position like his. These things weren’t healthy for most men, he knew that on many levels, he just had the unique ability to control it - keep it in perspective. Nobody would be able to understand that. After a brief personal inventory, Madison decided to put repentance back on the shelf.