This is the continuation of Jerome’s story after the lights went out. If you missed the last edition or any before they can be accessed here or on “The Stories” Page:

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Today Oliver picks up where Jerome left off.

The Good Shepherd Pt. 5

I remember sitting beside Poppie in his last wheezes. Nannie had dropped dead two days before in the kitchen. There was no one to call. No one would come anyway. So I managed to drag her body into the bedroom and close the door. I cried a thousand tears that night, but even my little girl wailing couldn’t cover over Poppie’s labored breathing from the other room.  Without his oxygen he could do little more than sit and stare at the candle I kept lit on the mantle-piece in place of the television. He still thumbed his Bible pretending to read in the dark.

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:…

 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:…

 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:…

 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross….

 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:…

 That at the name of Jesus…”

He gasped between the quotations and always finished with “He’s comin’ soon little girl. Don’t give up.”

I stayed until I couldn’t stand the smell anymore. Three days maybe four.

Poppie had taught me the woods. I had a pack and a little tent. I knew I wasn’t going to survive in the city. So I walked straight out  along the edges of 101 until it met with 68 then over towards the old 32.

I met Jolly’s boys (I never called them Bone Brothers, what a dumb name) one day while I was fishing the hollows with a hook and string and a bit of bread. The first thieving we did was for hunting and fishing supplies.  I wanted a hunting pack but when Jolly realized it was quicker to steal food than hunting gear I ended up with a juvy chain gang. Still Poppie always said “You work with what you got.”

When the Good Shepherd came I pretty much thought it was God giving me a break. When the cops came and killed all my friends and arrested the only man who ever tried to help us I realized it was a punishment… just slow like God usually works.

I watched between the roots where the good shepherd had hidden me. I watched them strip off his clothes and march him off towards town barefoot and naked. When they’d gone I went and gathered my stuff. My tent was all covered with bits of brains and bones. The cops had taken all the food. But my pack inside my tent was safe. My boots were still inside.

I thought about heading deeper into the woods, but the key Jerome had given me was burning in my pocket. I headed towards town keeping well off the roads. He never told me which church it was I was supposed to hide in. Most of that first night I hunkered in shadows and ran between beams of moonlight. I tried three church doors before I found the right building.

I wandered through the deserted building. Something made me take my shoes off at the sanctuary door. I remembered the story of Moses and holy ground. Thinking maybe if I played it right God would let my people go, bring Jolly and the others back and let the Good Shepherd go.

I walked up to the altar steps feeling the plush carpet smoosh between my bare toes and I knelt down. “Jesus I’m sorry about what I let the boys do. I guess we deserved what we got, but Jerome… you sent him. Now he’s in trouble all because of us. Help him.”

That’s when I saw the dress in the box under the cross.  It had blue flowers on a white background and a pin on the lapel that read, “helps committee”. It even fit. I found a matching pair of shoes in the bottom of the box. It was God’s plan and my choice.

I started visiting the jailhouse the next day. I introduced myself as Virginia, but no one cares what your name is when your pretty. They just trust your eyelashes. A few bats of the baby blues and I was in like Flynn. I had brought extra blankets the first day. The second day I brought a thermos of tea. The third I brewed up some coffee for Jerome and an extra thermos for the deputies.

“You all work so hard.” I cooed “It’s just not right that I bring coffee for the pastor and not for you fine men in blue.”

Word circulated that the pastor was going to be tried for treason against the town council on Monday next. The deputies told me that under martial law the penalty for helping the Bone Brothers would be death for the Good Shepherd.

On Sunday I brewed two thermoses of coffee and went for my usual visit. I had also sawed half way through my right heel. The guard smiled at me as I walked into the station holding up the thermos of coffee for the deputies.

“We just love it when you visit us Virginia!” the crew chief  smiled.

I screamed as my heel came unglued. Hot coffee splattered the protective glass as the thermoses smashed against the walls where I flung them. I made sure to cushion my fall with the powdered creamer I had taken from the church. Fine white powder exploded beneath my left hip mixing with the puddles of hot brown liquid congealing around my dress.

He didn’t notice when I lifted his keys from the belt. I made sure I lamented loudly about my only good shoes as he mopped up the floor with towels from the back. He insisted I go in and visit while he cleaned up. I unlocked Jerome’s cell. I put paper in the latch of the doorway into the cell block. Then I put the deputy’s keys back on his desk.

“I’m just too upset to visit today deputy. I’ll come back tomorrow.” I hobbled out of the station.

It was midnight when Jerome knocked softly on the church door. I was packed and ready to go. It’s time someone else was told about Tyson and his martial law in Winchendon.

This is the fourth installment of Jerome’s story. What will happen before the end? not just the end..THE END?  If you’ve missed the adventure you can catch up here.

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The Good Shepherd Pt. 4

Oliver is the girl who sleeps behind the organ at the church. I have hidden her there these last two months. The world  went dark in January. It went mad in May. I keep thinking of My daughter’s last words to me.

“You said in times of trouble it’s  the minister’s job to release the blessing and the peace of God over a community.”

Oh how I have failed my community. How I have failed my God. I have preached myself to exhaustion but no one has listened. Those I thought true believers have been unmasked. The leopard’s have shown there spots of hopelessness raking their claws of self-preservation through the fabric of society. The town is in shreds and this little white church and its rag-tag remnant is all that’s left of the island of decency and even that is hidden beneath the veneer of  gunpowder and lead.

It was towards the end of March that I made my first trip into Sandy Hollow to find the Bone Brothers. The gang of wild boys had been attacking our town for over a month and a war between them and Tyson’s men in blue was imminent. I couldn’t sit back and just watch grown men kill little boys anymore. So I left mother, Anna and our precious spring gardens in the care of Silhouette. I traipsed with nothing more than my Bible and a bag of food into the Hollow.

My Grandfather used to take the cousins fishing in the backwoods to the North and West of Winchendon. Then it was hundreds of square miles of swampy marsh and forest crisscrossed by dirt roads and cart paths carved out of the woods during the Revolutionary War. Buried here and there in the enormous watery wilderness was the occasional  homestead or dairy farm. Otherwise it had been a deserted land perfect for hunters and anglers, frequented by both.  The years had seen some development of the Hollow. Tarred roads had replaced some of the dirt tracks  but miles of ancient wilderness still gave the Bone Brothers ample places to hide far from the prying eyes and killing guns of Tyson’s men.

It took me most of the day to walk to my Granddad’s fishing hole. I prayed along the way that God would grant me favor and let me run into the renegade troupe. I knew in the natural my chances were slim but faith told me I didn’t need chance.

I stood over the half-frozen waterway near the intersection of two of the oldest cart roads. I remembered Grandad stringing my pole. I could see him pushing the helpless worm on the hook and casting my line into one of the deep pools on the opposite bank.

“What now?” I asked Heaven.

I felt a sharp pain in my back. My knees buckled. My vision went white then black. Voices caked with the blood at the back of my head ran like wintry rivers through my mind. Then I awoke. My vision pulsated with the rhythm of the bleeding lump at the posterior of my skull. I leaned over and vomited on the pine-needly snow.

A fire chuckled to the left of me and lit a circle of silent dirty faces gathered to its warmth. An older teen stepped from the dark of the pine bower prison into the light. His skin was as dark as the gathering night. This was Jolly, the Bone Brother’s leader.

“I thought we should kill you but Oliver said you might do us a solid if we let you live.”

“Do you a solid? Who says that?” I felt my sarcasm rising.

“We could still kill you.” He lashed back but I could see the young black man was uncertain. Jolly was the guts of the crew but Oliver was the brains.

Maybe Jolly should have killed me. It might have ended differently had he. He didn’t. It didn’t. Now Oliver sleeps behind the organ and all my little Bone Brothers are dead, killed by Tyson and his men. I worked for over a month to convince the Brothers to come in. I Gained their confidence. I brought them food every week in a cart I pulled through the late winter snow to Grandad’s creek. They went from hitting me over the head to blindfolding me on the walk to their camp.That was Oliver’s suggestion. She paid dearly for “getting me an in”.

Oliver is one of “the girl bothers”.  She is the Wendy to Jolly’s lost boys. Maybe I’ve gone the extra mile for her because she reminded  me of Renee at that age. Her curly brown hair was always arranged in an intentionally messy bun that said “I care how I look. I just want you to think I don’t”. Unlike the men of the clan her face was always washed. Her clothes were neat. Her wit was sharp and her mind was ordered. She was sixteen. Her grandparents died after a month without food and medicine. At that point Oliver, real name Olivia, had taken to the woods. She came across Jolly and his fledgling band quite by accident but proved her worth by helping them catch their first game. When hunger and numbers made hunting implausible it was she who arranged the first raids. Her successful strategies kept her in leadership even when she opposed Jolly’s more violent offensives.

I preached to her. I preached to all of the starving waifs. I preached even harder from my pulpit at the Parish. I saw the Bone Brothers responding. I was shocked by the ease of their acceptance. I saw my congregation dwindling. I was shocked by their rejection of the classic faith. While the Bone Brothers engulfed the message of the cross as if it were a gourmet dinner many of the faithful in my own congregation treated the Word as if it were  a mouldered crust. Many of their lives  no longer found a place for the Good News to rest.  When I preached that the Good news was good news even in bad times I lost townspeople and gained   Bone Brothers. When I preached the need to endure to the end I lost my neighbors but stopped the Bone Brothers from raiding.

May first was the day I was followed. The daffodils were up. The way to Grandad’s creek was lined with forsythia in full bloom. Spring warmth had replaced winter chill. My cart felt light with hope and heavy with food. At the creek Oliver blindfolded me and led me to the pine bower. The Brothers had not raided in almost three weeks. I had been working with the town council on bringing the gang in peacefully. Everyone but Tyson seemed willing. The Sheriff’s blood lust had grown with his hunger for power. If only I had a few more weeks I may have been able to outmanouevre  the badge and gun. As it was I was the one on the wrong side of the Quarterback sneak.

As soon as my blindfold was off that day the gunshots started. Bone Brothers crumpled in explosions of blood. Jolly fell with a shriek on top of Marcus a twelve-year-old orphan. The gang leader’s eye oozed vitreous jelly and blood.  Tyson’s men were firing from every angle. Oliver and I were only saved because we were nearest the  river’s edge. The deputies had no approach from that angle and most of the Bone Brothers were between us and the snipers.

I dragged the girl into the swirling icy water. It was spring-swift and cold with the last of the winter melt but deep enough to hide us. She struggled.

I shook her and said “Choose to live!”

Then I took her under, baptized her into the world’s end, that place between the valley of the shadow of death and the Blessed Hope. We hid in a bass pool beneath the roots of an ancient oak. I left her there when Tyson called me out.

“When I’ve gone, go to the Parish.Hide until I come.” I pressed my church key into her hand and waded to the deadly safety of the Bone Brother’s last stand and Tyson’s waiting custody.