Scene One — The Dream
Rain hammered the windshield like a drummer with something to prove.
The night road was slick as glass, wipers working hard but not hard enough. Thomas leaned forward, chin over the wheel, squinting past the smear of oncoming light. His wife said something—soft, familiar—and the tires hissed so loud he couldn’t make it out. He tilted his head just a little to catch it, like you do when you already know the answer and want to hear it anyway.
Headlights exploded in his lane.
Impact. Screech. The metallic howl of twisting steel. The smell—hot oil, smoke, copper. Her hand in his one moment, gone the next. His daughter’s backpack burst open, spilling pens and a purple hairbrush across the floorboard like they could outrun the dark.
Then, silence. The kind that rings in your teeth.
He lurched awake in his apartment armchair, lungs pumping like he’d been running all night. Afternoon sun sliced the room into bars through crooked blinds. In the corner, a television laughed without him—some sitcom with a laugh track that sounded like a crowd of ghosts who’d paid good money to be there.
The wall clock said 3:45. Wednesday. Bible study at 6:30.
“Of course it’s Wednesday,” he said to the empty room, and the empty room wisely kept its opinions to itself.
He stood, joints popping like a bag of microwave popcorn, and did the same thing he always did after the dream: counted. Keys, wallet, phone, wedding ring he still kept in the dish by the door. He touched it, didn’t put it on. Some habits are prayers you don’t admit you’re praying.
Scene Two — Burnout and the Call
The yellow legal pad on his desk was a confession written in his own handwriting: three lonely words—Be kind today—scrawled at the top like a dare. No outline. No text. Nothing that would take him past twenty minutes of recycled warmth and pleasant nods.
They were starting to notice. Polite smiles had gotten tighter. A deacon’s “Great word, Pastor,” came with the sort of pause you use when you’re trying to keep a door open that wants to close. A teenager asked him last week, “Why that passage?” and he’d answered like a politician, which is to say he hadn’t.
He pulled a commentary off the shelf—Keener, thick as a brick—and flipped it open. No underlines. No margin notes. Back when he cared, his books bled ink. Greek words circled. Arrows between ideas. Questions that turned into sermons that turned into altar calls that turned into newsletters with his face on them.
Now the book just looked at him like, “Sir, I live here, rent-free; the least you could do is read me.”
“You can’t keep mailing it in,” he told the quiet. Saying it out loud gave it weight. “Not fair to them. Not fair to you.”
His laptop chimed.
Subject: Pastor Wanted — New Jordan Christian Church (Mississippi Delta)
Small congregation. Competitive salary. Parsonage included.
He read it twice. Less than fifty people. Housing covered. Out where the land went flat and the time went slow and nobody had an opinion about whether his blazer should be navy or charcoal for television. A place a man could breathe, fish, sleep. A place you could wear the jacket of ministry while the fire stayed politely seated in the back.
The ache behind his sternum eased a notch. If his therapist were here, she’d raise an eyebrow and ask him to notice that. She’d use words like “avoidance” and “grief rhythms.” He would nod and then do what he always did: choose the door that looked like rest.
He clicked the number in the email. The phone rang.
“New Jordan Christian Church, this is Deacon Harlan.”
The voice had that Delta molasses to it—thick, sweet, slow enough to make you trust it. Thomas put a smile in his voice because people can hear that over the phone. “Afternoon, Deacon. Thomas Gray calling about your posting.”
A beat. Then a laugh that felt like a front porch. “Thomas Gray? The Thomas Gray? From the National Christian Television Network?”
“That’s in my past,” he said, easy. You keep certain doors shut; the wind is nosy.
“Well now,” Harlan said, “if you want it, the job’s yours.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. We’ve had others. They didn’t stay.” A small sigh rode the line. “Maybe you ought to talk to our last pastor before you decide. Bradley Chaney. I’ll text you his number.”
“What should I know that’s not in the posting?”
“Parsonage is in good shape,” Harlan said. “Simple. New roof last year. No attic—just rafters and sky. Less to fuss with. Fishing’s good two bends down—Brother Levi swears by a spot where the cypress knees bunch up. Also, Sister Berniece cooks like she’s trying to get into heaven on flavor alone.”
Thomas looked at the yellow pad. Be kind today stared back at him like a challenge he had not earned. “Tell me about the people.”
“Working folks,” Harlan said. “Cotton gin, school cafeteria, a mechanic who can raise dead engines, a nurse who’s been to more funerals than one person should. We grieve slow in New Jordan. We celebrate slow, too. But we mean it.”
“And the others—the ones who left?”
Harlan’s voice thinned. “I’d like you to hear that from Reverend Chaney.”
“Alright,” Thomas said. “Send the number.”
“It’s on the way. And Pastor Gray?”
“Yes?”
“Welcome already.”
The call ended. The text arrived like a faithful usher: BRADLEY CHANEY — (662)…
Thomas stared at the number a second longer than he meant to. Then he pressed Call.
Scene Three — The Warning
Bradley answered on the second ring the way men answer when they don’t have patience for third rings. “Yeah.”
“Reverend Chaney, this is Thomas Gray. Harlan said—”
“You taking New Jordan?” Bradley’s voice sounded like gravel wet with rain. Tired, but alert.
“Thinking about it.”
“I left to save my life.”
Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose. “Meaning?”
“Demons,” Bradley said, like he was reciting Tuesday’s grocery list. “Not metaphor. Not preacher seasoning. Real.”
“What did you… encounter?” Thomas asked, tone neutral as a judge.
“It shows up how it wants. Sometimes bold, mostly quiet. It works on a man. Makes a house heavy as wet wool. Makes a sanctuary feel like a mouth, and you step into it anyway because Sunday came whether you were ready or not.”
Thomas let the silence do a little work. “You think maybe the Delta gets in people? Old stories, old griefs. Pressure makes folks hear bells that ain’t there.”
Bradley gave a small, humorless chuckle. “You used to preach like a man on fire. Not because of cameras. Because you believed. Now you sound like a man who wants a quiet corner and a fishing pole.”
“I didn’t call for a character evaluation,” Thomas said, pleasantly. That was the thing about a smooth voice—you could say anything with it and folks would thank you.
“No charge,” Bradley said. Then softer: “When you hear the bells, pray.”
“Bells?”
“Church ain’t got a bell. You’ll hear it anyway. Like glass singing. If you go, don’t go pretending. It eats pretense. Either flee or fight. Anywhere in the middle, and it’ll break you.”
“Or it’s mold in the vents,” Thomas said. “I’ve seen churches with a lot of mold and not enough HVAC budget.”
Bradley didn’t bite. “Good luck, Thomas. You’ll need more than that.”
The line clicked dead.
Thomas looked at the phone, put it face-down on the desk, and laughed once—not amused, more like a cough with opinions. “Demons,” he said to the empty room, and the empty room came back with the same energy it had before: none.
He texted Harlan: Thanks. I’ll come down this weekend. — T.G.
Scene Four — Arrival in New Jordan
Two weeks later, he drove south into a horizon so straight it looked drawn with a ruler. Fields went on until they changed their minds. Barns leaned like old men telling better stories than the truth. Cypress trees rose from flat water, their knees knuckling up through a green skin.
He stopped at a barbecue shack with smoke curling from a rusted drum. The pitman had forearms like faith and a smile that made you behave. “You the new preacher?” he asked, not really asking.
“That depends,” Thomas said. “Is the new preacher the kind of man who gets a discount for complimenting the chef?”
“Sir, you just preaching to the choir.” The pitman slid a plate across—ribs, slaw, beans that had seen butter and weren’t mad about it. “My mama watched you on that Christian network. Said you preached like you were late for something important.”
“Your mama is a woman of discernment,” Thomas said, and ate until the day got softer around the edges.
At a country store with a hand-painted sign promising minnows, hoop nets, and the sort of wisdom you can’t Google, he bought a plastic bucket he didn’t need but felt like he should. The owner rang him up on a register that had outlived at least three marriages. “Two bends down, where the cypress knees bunch up,” he said. “Brother Levi fishes there. He’s half blind, but the fish don’t know it. Also: we ain’t got a bell at New Jordan, but folks swear they hear one sometimes.” He shrugged. “Wind does what it wants.”
“Doesn’t it just,” Thomas said, and put the bucket in the passenger seat like a promise he might keep.
Late afternoon, the sign appeared: NEW JORDAN CHRISTIAN CHURCH. The building sat back from the road, clapboard weathered to honest gray, steeple cocked like it was eavesdropping. The cemetery beside it leaned with memory, stones tilting like people trying to hear.
On the steps, a tall, spare man with a river-mapped face raised both hands as if he’d been waiting for a bus that finally came. “Pastor Gray. Josiah Harlan. You made it.”
“I did,” Thomas said, because sometimes the smallest possible truth was the right size.
“Parsonage is right there,” Harlan said, nodding toward a small white house cuddled up close to the sanctuary. “Simple. Sound. New roof. No attic—just rafters and sky. Less to fuss with.”
The sanctuary door opened and a woman stepped into the light like the light knew better than to argue. Late thirties, smooth brown skin, hair pulled back neat, posture that said apologies were rationed. “Alisha Freeman,” she said, offering her hand. “I run outreach—pantry, tutoring, hospital visits, rides to work, all the quiet things that fall apart if no one holds them.”
“Thomas Gray,” he said, and took her hand. It was firm without trying. Her eyes were steady in the way of people who don’t flinch when life swings first.
“We stocked the parsonage,” Alisha said. “Eggs, bread, coffee. Clean towels. There’s a list by the phone with numbers you’ll need—mine’s at the top. If it’s broken, we fix it. If you don’t like it, we change it.”
“That’s more kindness than I deserve,” he said, and meant it.
“We’re simple here,” she said. “Not stingy.” A small smile. “You here to rest or to work?”
“Both,” he said. “If I can manage it.”
“Good,” she said. “Because rest without work turns into hiding. And work without rest turns into pride.”
“Now see, that’s a whole message right there,” Thomas said, because sometimes you recognize a sermon wearing plain clothes.
Harlan cleared his throat gently, shepherding them toward the sanctuary. “A couple deacons and two of our church mothers want to pray with you.”
The sanctuary kept cool like old buildings do, as if they learned a trick from shade. Colored glass sent aside-glances of blue and amber across wooden pews. The deacons and church mothers gathered near the front. They formed a circle around Thomas without making it feel like a trap.
Harlan prayed like a man introducing a friend to another friend. “Lord, thank you for sending Pastor Gray. Give him rest. Give him strength. Give us ears to hear and hands to help.”
“Amen,” Thomas said. It came out softer than it used to. Honest, though. He’d take honest over loud these days.
As the prayer thinned into the air, a slender breath of cool moved down the aisle. The ceiling fans were already turning. No vent hummed. One of the church mothers turned her head like she heard a door open in a place with no doors.
From outside—or inside—it was hard to say—a note brushed the edge of hearing. Clean. Pure. Like a fingertip run around the rim of a crystal glass.
Nobody reacted. Thomas didn’t even turn his head. He put that sound in the drawer in his mind labeled Probably Nothing and closed it firmly.
They walked the parsonage like you do a new house, pointing at the places where life would happen. In the kitchen, a note sat on the counter in careful loops: Trash Thursday. Water heater is moody—jiggle the switch. Brother Levi mows. Call Alisha for everything else. Welcome home. There was a tiny heart at the end that made the word home behave itself.
“You eat yet?” Alisha asked.
“Barbecue and God,” he said. “I’m full on both.”
She laughed. “Check that water heater before you shower. It keeps its own calendar.”
He looked out the back window at a pecan tree that had seen three generations of children climb it and learned all their names. He could see himself under that tree with coffee and a rod and nothing urgent enough to chase him.
“Service Sunday at ten,” Harlan said. “Sunday school at nine. We’ll spread the word, but the word already outran us.”
“It’s fast,” Alisha said. “It has good shoes.”
“Who told it to wear heels?” Thomas asked.
“That’d be Sister Berniece,” Alisha said. “She dresses the rumor and sends it downtown.”
They smiled, and for a second the day was just three people being pleased at the same time. A rare, sturdy thing.
Scene Five — Miller’s Roadhouse & Grill
He wasn’t ready to go home to a house that didn’t know him yet. Miller’s Roadhouse & Grill sat a few miles down, a hand-painted sign with two neon catfish doing laps in the window. From the parking lot, a kick drum thumped under a Hammond’s warm hum. The door opened to fried okra, peppery catfish, and the kind of laughter that tells you the jokes are free.
A band worked the corner—guitar, upright bass, drums with brushes, a wiry keyboard player in a Panama hat who looked at his instrument like it owed him money. Families took up long tables. Older men nursed coffee like it might confess something. Teenagers pretended not to care and failed with enthusiasm.
Thomas slid into a booth against the wall. The waitress poured sweet tea without asking. She had a scarf tied over her hair and the smile of a woman who could warn you and compliment you in the same sentence.
“You’re not from here,” she said, friendly as a cousin.
“Just moved in today,” Thomas said. “New pastor at New Jordan Christian Church.”
Her eyebrows rose; the smile tilted. “Ahh. So you’re the preacher at the church the devil’s in residence.”
“That’s the story?”
“That’s the story,” she said, topping his glass. “You’ll see for yourself soon enough.” She drifted away like she hadn’t just tossed a match on dry grass.
He ate slow, because the food asked him to. The catfish was crisp outside, tender inside; the hush puppies cracked like laughter when he bit them; the greens had seen vinegar and understood the assignment. The band slipped into a slow twelve-bar, and the room found the beat with its feet.
Mid-meal, the keyboard player squinted across the room, then grinned at the mic. “Hold up now—that’s Thomas Gray. I seen you on NCTN. Preacher, singer, piano player—brother, you got the whole package.”
A handful of heads turned. An older man at the counter said, “Well I’ll be,” in a tone that suggested he had, indeed, been.
Thomas raised a hand. “I get by.”
“Pastor,” the keys man said, “come give the folks something. We won’t tell your bishop if you won’t.” He winked.
Thomas dabbed his mouth with a napkin, considered refusing out of humility, remembered he didn’t owe humility to anyone’s false modesty, and stood. “Alright,” he said. “But if I embarrass myself, y’all gotta clap anyway.”
Laughter. He crossed to the stage with the relaxed gait of a man who knows how to be looked at. The players watched his hands like he might change the weather.
“You boys know ‘Crossroads’?”
The guitarist’s grin flashed like a coin. “Oh, we know it.”
The drummer clicked sticks—one, two—and they fell into a groove with a little danger on it. Thomas leaned into the mic, voice sliding out with the grit of a man who had not slept right in years and knew it.
“I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees…”
He wasn’t testifying. He wasn’t packaging a miracle for mass distribution. He was telling the truth the way blues tells it: with a rhythm that understands how hearts walk, with a melody that knows where the ache lives. The bass rolled under him like a good road. The guitar cried in the corners. The keyboard player tucked a gospel turnaround under the second verse and Thomas smiled to let him know he heard it.
By the third verse, the room clapped on two and four like it had paid for the privilege. A woman near the bar closed her eyes the way you do when something finds you. A teenager recorded it on a phone because that’s what teenagers do when a moment happens; they try to own the replay.
Thomas bent the last note until the light above the stage seemed to tilt and listen.
Applause rose like warm air. The owner—Miller himself, black ball cap, T-shirt that said CATFISH IS AN ATTITUDE—clapped him on the back. “Pastor, that was church without the paperwork.”
The keyboard player squeezed Thomas’s shoulder. “Any night you want a spot, you got one. Thursday’s our open set. Come sit in.”
A couple at a table near the stage chimed in, “Come back, Pastor. Bring that song with you.”
He gave the appropriate modest shrug seasoned with the truth. “We’ll see,” he said out loud.
Inside, a small part of him had already written it on his calendar in pen.
The waitress refilled his glass. “Singing that one here?” she said. “You either real brave, or you don’t know what you stirred up.”
“I’m new in town,” he said. “Ignorance looks good on me.”
She laughed. “It won’t for long.” Then softer, like a favor you hadn’t asked for: “I don’t walk past that cemetery after dark. Not alone.”
A man in a seed cap stopped by the booth on his way out. “Name’s Odell. I fix air conditioners and break ’em sometimes. If you hear bells out there, don’t go chasing them. That’s for kids and fools.”
“Which one you think I am?” Thomas asked.
Odell tipped his cap. “You’ll let us know.” He left like a man who enjoyed an exit.
Thomas finished his tea and let the room hold him a minute longer. It had been a while since a room wanted him for anything but what he could make them believe. This room wanted a song. He could live with that.
As he stepped into the heat, a breeze curled through the parking lot. For a second—one clean second—he heard that glass-singing note again. He told himself it was the neon buzzing. The lie was small, the way aspirin pills are small and still do something.
Scene Six — Sunday Morning
The lot filled early, hats like small churches, dresses bright enough to argue with the sun. Boys tugged at collars, girls pretended not to feel fancy, men leaned on the hoods of trucks like they could steady the day with their shoulders. Word had outrun Saturday by a mile: Thomas Gray was here.
He stood in the side office and watched through the finger-smudged glass. Old habits woke without asking permission. He read the room. Who sat with whom. Who avoided whose eyes. Who held a shoulder because it might shake later. He felt the old stage under his feet, the way you feel a dock flex under you and decide not to look down.
He hadn’t planned to go long. But once the first words came, the cadence found him like a dog finds home.
“You ever notice,” he began, easy as a good chair, “how God will plant you where you didn’t choose—just to grow you in ways you didn’t plan?”
“Mmm-hmm,” from the back, where the good opinions live.
“And you’re standing there looking at the dirt like, ‘This ground is rocky!’”
“Tell it, Pastor!”
“But sometimes rocky ground is where roots grab tight.” He paced two steps, not performer-slick, just comfortable. “Sometimes comfort is shallow soil, and calling is deep.”
“Yes, Lord!”
He glanced at a man with a cane who hadn’t stopped smiling since the second hymn. “You been praying for a replant. God’s been handing you a root system.”
“Whew!”
“Neighbor,” he said, grinning, “turn to somebody and say, ‘I don’t like it, but I’m planted.’”
“I don’t like it, but I’m planted,” the room sang back, with laughter riding the edges like it paid for the ride.
He pulled a story from a sermon he’d built at thirty-five, stitched it to an illustration from one at twenty-eight, and it wore new clothes without pretending it was new skin. The trick wasn’t fresh paint. It was timing—the way you let a silence hang one beat too long and then give it a line that makes it earn its keep.
“You thought purpose was a stage,” he said, voice leaning forward, not shouting, “but sometimes purpose is a plot of dirt nobody else wanted.”
“Say that!”
“You wanted applause. God wanted roots.”
“Teach, Pastor!”
He rode the call-and-response like a man who’d had a license for years. He felt where the laugh would land and where a quiet would do more ministry than a shout. He felt where the old him might have thrown in a “Glory!” and the current him said nothing and let the room carry itself.
Somewhere in the fourth pew, a mother found a hum and set it under his words like bass. Someone else caught it. For a minute and change, the sanctuary became one instrument tuning to itself. He held the moment, didn’t lean on it, didn’t explain it. Let it be.
“Sometimes,” he said, “the ground you hate grows the fruit you need.”
“Help us!”
“You been praying for escape,” he said, “and God’s been handing you endurance.”
“Mmm!”
“And I know that ain’t the prayer you wanted answered.”
He closed clean. No circus tricks. Just a steady amen that settled into people like a good meal. When he looked down at his watch, thirty-three minutes had done their work and asked for nothing else.
They stood and clapped. Not polite—actual relief disguised as appreciation. He shook hands at the door and collected names like seashells. Sister Laverne. Brother Perry. Miss Estelle. Folks who had watched him on TV. Folks who said their aunt had watched him and then told them every line after church like an unauthorized podcast.
Alisha waited. “You talk like you grew up on our porch,” she said, amused.
“Porches are universal. The jokes are regional.”
“Ours say different things.” She tilted her head. “Wednesday we serve dinner with Bible study. You want meatloaf or catfish?”
“Surprise me.”
“I was going to anyway.” The smile reached her eyes and parked.
An older man with a wiry build and a face like barbed wire came next. He took Thomas’s hand and leaned in close enough to borrow a secret. “You don’t even know you’re at war, do you?”
Thomas kept the door-duty smile you can put on like a jacket. “Excuse me?”
“You’ll know soon enough.” The man patted his shoulder like a warning could be a kindness and moved on.
“Brother Whitcomb,” Harlan murmured at Thomas’s elbow. “Veteran. Loves the Lord. Loves opinions even more.”
“I have no experience with people like that,” Thomas deadpanned.
Harlan chuckled. “You’ll do fine.”
After the benediction and the last small talk, Thomas wandered the cemetery edge. The names had a way of reaching from stone to eye. He read a few out loud, because some things deserve to be said, even if nobody is left to claim them. Wind moved through the pecans. Shade stitched itself across the grass. The air felt normal. Nothing to see here. That note on the edge of hearing? If it came, it came too soft to hang a doubt on.
Back at the parsonage, he ate Berniece’s chicken spaghetti standing up, reading the note on the fridge again because it felt like having company. Trash Thursday. Water heater moody—jiggle the switch. Brother Levi mows. Call Alisha. Welcome home. He washed the dish because his mother had raised him during the era when dishwashers were called children.
He sat with his sermon notes at the kitchen table, small shame nibbling like a mosquito you can never quite catch. He’d fed them well with leftovers. He promised himself next week he’d cook.
Promises are free. It’s the keeping that charges interest.
Scene Seven — Nightfall
Late light made the parsonage hallway look longer than it was. He checked locks he didn’t need to check because a man alone rehearses safety like scales. Tea in hand, he sank into the living room chair. The cushions learned his weight. The house caught its breath around him.
On the far wall, a thin seam appeared where no seam had any business. Not light. Not exactly. More like a thread pulled through paint by an invisible needle. It widened into lines that curled and crossed like handwriting trying to remember itself after a long illness.
Not English. Not Greek or Hebrew. Not Coptic, not anything he’d seen stitched into the back of a funeral fan. The script almost meant something and then un-meant it, the way water almost holds your face when you look down and then doesn’t.
He leaned forward, curious more than afraid. The lines throbbed once, like a vein, then thinned, blurred, and were gone. The wall returned to being a wall with the kind of innocence walls always claim after they’ve misbehaved.
A faint smell rode the air—ozone, a snapped-coin scent, like the second after lightning when your skin waits for thunder and reconsiders its choices.
“Long day,” he told the room. The room, being wise, let him have that.
He washed the cup because mothers live rent-free inside good sons. He turned the deadbolt because habits are little liturgies. He stretched out on the bed someone had made with care and did not pray. He hadn’t in years. Truth deserved that much respect.
The house settled into its old bones. Somewhere, a moth tapped glass. In the distance, a dog barked twice and changed its mind.
Then, from above him—where above him was only rafters and sky—footsteps.
Slow. Deliberate. A person’s weight. One. Two. Three.
A pause.
One. Two. Three. The sound came to a stop like it had reached the exact point over his bed and decided to think.
Earlier, Harlan had said with cheerful practicality: No attic—just rafters and sky. Less to fuss with.
Thomas opened his eyes to the dark. He listened. No panic rose. No old reflex came to call down a Name he’d packed in a box labeled Former Address. He had unthreaded belief strand by strand until what remained felt like honesty—bare, but accurate.
He chuckled to himself, small and almost fond. “Demons,” he said, like a man repeating a story he didn’t buy. “We’ll see.”
He rolled to his side and went back to sleep with the untroubled confidence of a man who thinks the worst things are in the past and the next thing is just a Tuesday.
Outside, the pecan leaves whispered like pages turning.
Inside, the house held its breath a little while longer, as if waiting for the new pastor to finish pretending nothing was happening.
