Short story: Smiting Sinners

Good vs. evil vs. minding your own business in the Blue Ridge mountains. Can a respected preacher-man succeed in calling a wayward brother to repentance? And, is anybody ever going to do something about "Uncle"  Ralph?

Scheduled for publication in Life Will Surprise You in the End: More Short Stories by David Satterlee (2004)

Smiting Sinners

By David Satterlee

 

Just below Brown Cemetery, Wiley Roy was joined by the Reverend Pastor Bobby Thrasher from the Johns Creek Churches. You know the place: right where Johns Creek joins up with Caney Fork. Most of Wiley Roy’s friends didn’t go to the Baptist church there. Wiley Roy mostly didn’t go to the Methodist church across the road.

It didn’t much matter. The early risers, and anybody who still were in want of waking up, usually went to the Baptist Church. The late risers, and those in the mood for a kinder and gentler sermon, went across the road to the Methodist. Some years back, the Baptist Reverend Bobby had agreed to also preach the Methodist sermon while their Pastor healed up from a broke leg. The leg turned to gangrene and the Pastor died, so Bobby became the Reverend Pastor Thrasher some years ago and it just stuck.

Besides, serving both congregations paid enough to let Bobby make it his full-time calling. The arrangement worked out well for everybody involved except for faithful Carl Henson, who put up a fuss about it being sacrilegious or something. But, within three months, Carl and seven of his sheep drowned in high water. Everybody decided that God had smite him for being such a poor shepherd and blessed Bobby for being such a good one.
One afternoon, Wiley Roy Quinn was walking down Ragged Mountain, heading towards his cabin up Johns Creek. There was plenty of time to get there before dusk and he wasn’t hurrying. Fact of the matter, Wiley Roy never did like to hurry — all the more so now that he was toting a bushel sack of corn.
“How you doin’ Reverend Bobby?”