The arrival of a special agent should have urged Reverend Donovan to action.
He was composing his sermon, seeking a parallel between the parable of the wedding banquet and the problems of the 21st century, when someone knocked on his church door. An unfamiliar woman waited outside the sanctuary, one with dark, bobbed hair, bronze skin, and a clean, youthful face. She was pretty but restrained. Her starched white blouse and navy skirt were much too formal for a mountain town like Redding, where people rarely gussied up on Sunday much less midweek. Clearly, she was a foreigner to rural NorCal.
She introduced herself as Special Agent Lopez from the California Department of Justice and asked to interview him. About what, he thought, but offered her a pew. Despite her formal clothes and stiff manners, she didn’t look like a G-woman—more polite and petite than the action heroes in movies. Donovan would have taken her for a civil servant from the state Capitol three hours south.
“Nice space,” she said, eyeing the high ceilings, stained glass, and organ, but she missed the frayed cushions and the bits of wafer ground into the carpet.
“It’s high maintenance, but it adds atmosphere,” Donovan said.
“You must pack the pews.”
“On Easter and Christmas.”
“A shame people don’t practice the faith more… religiously.”
“During summer weekends, it’s tough to compete with jet skiing and motor boating.”
“Still, time was, people would put off fun and games to attend to their souls.”
The young woman was aiming to ingratiate herself, acting at being much older than she was, but she looked and sounded more like an undergraduate trying to charm a graying professor, so Donovan merely nodded to urge her toward her true purpose.
“Reverend, I want to ask about one of your… members, I think you’d call him. Greg Abbott?”
“He’s been a parishioner since before I was posted here three years ago.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Greg is prominent in the community. Grew up here. Owns the hardware store downtown. Involved in a number of civic organizations.”
“What about his character?”
“You mean his personal life? He’s a family man, three boys, likes to hunt.”
“Have you noticed any violent tendencies in him?”
She stared at a program from the last week’s services stuffed among the hymnals, which listed all the church elders, including Abbott. “Not in church.”
“What about elsewhere?”
Most likely, she was referring to that incident at the City Council a few weeks back, where several people got heated about a proposal to replace a redwood grove with a housing complex. Some indulged in inflated rhetoric. He’d read Abbott’s quotes in the local paper about “people before plants” but had lived in town long enough to know that disagreements about development were nothing newsworthy. “What tendencies do you mean?”
She kept her gaze fixed on him in a way that felt intimate. “Seditious ones.”
“Does the state government investigate sedition?”
“Mr. Abbott has been active in several online forums advocating for extremist views— secession from the state of California, establishment of a new Christian one.”
As casually as he could, Donovan extracted the old church program, folded it into halves, then quarters, then eighths so all the print would be indecipherable, and placed it under his thigh. “We don’t discuss such things during services.”
“What about in private?”
“I’m obliged to keep private conversations as private.”
“I’m not asking you to violate the confessional.”
Based on her last name and her complexion, Donovan assumed she was Latin, which would likely mean she also grew up in the Catholic Church, where confession was obligatory.
“My faith doesn’t practice that tradition.”
“Then why can’t you share information to protect the safety of the state?”
“Much like doctors and lawyers, ministers have a professional duty to keep confidentiality.”
“Reverend,” she said and smiled. “This is a conversation, not an interrogation. I’m not asking you to betray any secrets, only for information on one of your parishioners.”
She’d picked up on the correct terminology, which suggested she was quick witted, and her attempts to put him at ease confirmed it. Still, her appeal could not change his professional duties, and he said so.
“Why is the state so concerned about what people write online?”
She leaned forward in the pew as though to share some confidence, giving him a whiff of lavender soap. He wondered if she used her femininity to disarm people, and if the state had sent someone so young for the same purpose, or if this was a low priority assigned to a junior agent. “I’m sure you’re aware that recently some Christians are expressing insurrectionary ideologies.”
Even a casual reading of the news would confirm this, so Donovan merely nodded.
“Some of which are encouraged by the church.”
“Not by this one.”
“I’m not accusing you,” she said, “only I don’t know about your politics.”
“They don’t inform my preaching.”
“But you’d tell me if Mr. Abbott supported violence…”
Her cell phone rang, giving Donovan a moment to consider his answer. How could he instruct his congregants to apply the lessons of Christ in an era and an environment He could never have imagined. What would Jesus say about the internet, with its plethora of distractions, or about consumer culture, with its constant temptations? Would He forbid his followers from engaging with the modern world or merely caution them about its excesses? And how could Christ teach about the conflicts of the present day when he couldn’t conceive of indoor plumbing or electricity much less child porn and school shootings?
“Have you studied early American history?” Donovan asked.
Lopez said all agents learned Constitutional law in the bureau’s training.
“Then you know this,” he gestured to the sanctuary, “isn’t just a place of worship, it’s a refuge. People come here for God’s protection. However, even the Almighty can’t shelter them if their pastor acts as an informant.”
“Reverend,” she said, with a tinge of condescension. “I’m trying to protect your community, but I can’t do that without people like yourself. You may have heard that citizens helped to identify a number of the Capitol rebels.”
“I can’t be a witness against my neighbors.”
“I don’t want to lock up Mr. Abbott, only to… reeducate him about his government.”
“One which grants him freedom of religion and speech.”
“So you won’t help?”
Impatience was making Donovan sharp, so he looked to the altar. “Not in the ways you’re asking. But I can counsel Greg—and others—about succumbing to bitterness and hatred.”
She stood and stared down at the Reverend. “That’s not what I need. If you can’t tell me anything about his activities, then please keep this conversation private, too. We don’t want to drive him further into conspiracy.”
“Of course,” Donovan said and stood to see her out. “I treat all communications as equally sacrosanct.”
***
After she left, Donovan returned to drafting his sermon, but their conversation distracted him. He’d handled that interrogation appropriately—no one would confess to a pastor who’d report their misdeeds. Even legally he felt in the right, having read about several ministers who were subpoenaed to testify in trials and refused to do so on religious grounds. The courts had repeatedly ruled in favor of ecclesiastical independence from state interference.
Still, he often complained about people cherry picking verses from the Bible to justify their actions, and wasn’t invoking an ancient tradition of sanctuary doing the same thing? Instead of rationalizing, he decided to investigate. He typically avoided social media since it tended to bring out the worst tendencies in people, and he’d never even looked for the dark web—if it existed. Still, he searched all the links he could find online for Abbott and found a few like those the agent had referenced, with some inflated rhetoric about “freedom from oppression” and “government overreach,” but nothing he’d describe as seditious. Until he linked to a discussion forum, where Abbott referred to “a coming rebellion against a corrupted state.” Did that foretell a plot? Donovan needed to escape the confines of his own everyday to find answers.
Although his parishioners might think it blasphemous, Donovan often sought God in nature. There His majesty was more evident than in the cathedrals built by men. It was what appealed most to him about the North State: the Great Outdoors was always close by. So in lieu of lunch, Donovan changed into boots and drove to a nearby trail.
As he wound his way through the evergreens and streams that lay just outside the city’s borders, he recalled his last conversation with Greg Abbott. They’d been standing on the steps to the sanctuary as the first blooms of spring perfumed the air with sage and lily. Abbott was promoting a local movement to segregate the rural north of California from L.A. and San Francisco, which he compared to Sodom and Gomorrah.
“We have nothing in common with those people,” he’d said. “They’re all socialists and eco-terrorists.”
“Environmentalists believe equally that they’re in the right.”
“Tree huggers took away my daddy’s job.”
Although it predated his arrival in town, Donovan had heard about Abbott’s family history. His father had worked in the logging industry, which until the 1980s provided many jobs in the region. Then conservationists turned up to end clear cutting. They’d staged tree sits, spiked redwood trunks, and chained themselves to bulldozers as if the woods were their birthright. Ever since, the spotted owl had divided the town, which housed both die-hard outdoorsmen and lifelong woodsmen.
“Bad as that time was,” Donovan told Abbott, “it happened years ago. Since then—”
“This state has been overrun by hippies and ruled by leftists who want to protect every tree as if they’re our children.”
“Politics breeds conflict,” Donovan said, “but it’s not a call to literal battle.”
“Then how do we resist such blasphemy?”
“As the Bible teaches us: with faith, hope, and love.”
A worthy lesson for many members of the congregation. In the last year, Donovan had witnessed protests at the City Council meetings, disruptions of the school board, even pickets at the election office. Contrary to the stereotypes about liberal Southern California, with its surfers and dope smokers, the North state leaned conservative. Many locals flew the state flag of Jefferson outside their homes, its gold pan and twin Xs representing their alienation from Hollywood and Haight Street. They likewise resisted any impingement by the government on local land use.
Such ideals also made people more inclined to attend church services. However, lately those loyalties had been twisted toward earthly ends by politicians and pastors alike. Frequently, Donovan heard perversions of the Lord’s teachings from televangelists and extremists, all of whom worshipped money and fame. They talked about God’s gifts of natural resources as if they were a personal inheritance. He feared that Greg Abbott had fallen under their influence.
Walking there among those mature evergreens, and smelling the decay of fallen pine needles, Donovan understood both arguments. The trees needed protection, but so did the people. Surely some compromise existed between total preservation and total destruction?
As he rounded a bend and the trees parted, his sympathies veered. From that overlook, he could see a hundred miles at least across the dense forest, clear to the massive peak of Mount Shasta, which rose from the plain like a Medieval cathedral—so high that clouds often caught around its summit, and a crown of snow lay atop the upper slopes year round.
Studying it, Donovan found the inspiration to connect his words to modern lives.
***
That Sunday, his sermon riffed off of Romans 12:2. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Taken in context, it warned against responding in kind to belligerence. To Donovan, it was a reminder about morality and an appeal to traditional values.
Even as he preached, Donovan used the height of the lectern to study his congregation. His intent was not to please but to persuade them, yet as the sermon continued Abbott’s expression shifted from open to angry. He sat stiff and still, his posture suggesting resistance. He usually projected a military rigor, but that day he looked even more rigid than usual.
After services, Donovan noticed Abbott talking to several other men in the church basement during the coffee and pastry hour. He couldn’t hear more than snatches of their conversation, and was frequently distracted by other people coming up to chat, but Abbott looked animated, scowling and gesturing with his hands. When Donovan approached, they quieted.
“Good morning,” the minister said.
The other men nodded but remained silent. Among them were two other church elders, James Simonsen and Peter Drummond. Their expressions looked as stiff and uncomfortable as their church clothes.
“Weeks like this make me thankful to live in such a beautiful part of the country,” Donovan said.
After tepid affirmations from the others, Abbott asked about the sermon. “You said to overcome evil with good.”
“Jesus did.”
“But how can we when the state corrupts our way of life?”
Up close, Abbott looked pale and pudgy, as though he hadn’t stepped outside in months, despite the beauty that surrounded them. Was he spending all his time in the dark corners of the internet, with its plots and conspiracies, unenlightened by any reason or order? During the pandemic, so many people cut the cords of their friendships for online companionship.
“Jesus lived among sinners,” Donovan said. “Yet he taught them to act in this world as they would in the hereafter.”
“There’s a big gulf between earth and heaven.”
“Both are the work of the Creator.”
“Creator?” Greg said. “Why not just say God?”
Silently, Donovan chided himself for his choice of words even as he affirmed that the term was used throughout the Bible. All three men looked suspicious, staring with doubt, so Donovan invited Abbott to join him on a walk among the trees later in the day, hoping that nature might provide some salve that the virtual world could not. Abbott suggested another locale.
“I’m meeting some church friends downtown tonight,” he said. “You should join us.”
As Donovan glanced around that plain basement, wondering which of his other parishioners were aligned with Abbott, he saw an opportunity. If the congregants could share coffee and sweet rolls with decorum, perhaps that spirit extended beyond the church property. “That sounds wonderful.”
***
They gathered on the lawn outside the county courthouse, which sat amid half a dozen other government buildings. It rose six stories, the tallest for many blocks—a typical modern structure of blockish concrete and reflective glass, projecting cold state authority and indifference.
Of the dozen people assembled, the Reverend recognized half, including Simonsen and Drummond. He greeted them all as he would before services and tried to recall how many he’d seen in the pews that morning. His memory confirmed only a few others, meaning his message had not reached most of its target audience.
Several of the men studied the minister as if evaluating his loyalties. All dressed in black or dark blue, leaving only their faces visible. Yet they were also established family men with nearby homes and businesses, meaning they should have a sense of civic belonging. Gathered like this, they felt more like a mob.
Rarely had Donovan felt so much like an outsider, one detached from the city’s history and the loyalties that grew from it. Having a wife who volunteered at 4-H and a son who attended the high school did not make them locals. So he nodded to several to break the tension.
No one else appeared downtown, which typically emptied out after dinner hour on a Sunday, the locals all preparing for work, the tourists all returning to their hometowns. Inside the courthouse only a few lights shone, likely for security. Not even cars sputtered past, just a distant train that rumbled across the trestle over the river. The air had cooled, with a breeze that made Donovan shiver, yet it carried a scent of pine that soothed him.
Once the last daylight had faded and before the streetlamps had taken over, Abbott climbed the building’s front steps and addressed his compatriots. “We all know why we’re here,” he said. “The liberals want to destroy our way of life. If no one opposes them, everything we know and love will be lost.”
Several of the others murmured in assent, including both the church elders. Had Donovan so lost touch with his own congregation that such ideas had spread among them without his knowing?
“The staties came calling earlier this week,” Greg said, and stared at his pastor. “Wanted to know what we’re plotting. Think it’s us who plan to take away their livelihood.”
How had Abbott learned about the visit? Donovan hadn’t shared it with anyone. Likely because with her formal clothes and manners Agent Lopez would stand out like a penguin in town. Also, he had to admit, young Latin women were a rarity that far north in the state, making her more conspicuous.
“Let’s show them the difference between conservative and conservation,” Greg said.
From out of the darkness, someone grabbed several torches and lit them. In their flickering light, Donovan saw faces not just determined but enraptured.
“WAIT,” the Reverend said, stepping between the pack and the courthouse. “No one benefits from lawlessness. There are—”
“You said to overcome evil with good,” Abbott said.
“Yes, Jesus did, but this is not—”
As he spoke, the others encircled the building. Donovan looked for one who showed some hesitancy, someone to whom he could appeal for support, but mob mentality had set in. One man touched his torch to the foundation, but it would not catch on the concrete and glass.
“Think of what you’re about to do,” Donovan said. “This is a CRIME.”
Abbott turned to him with a leer. “That’s the beauty of it,” he said. “With no courthouse, they can’t persecute us.”
“This is MADness,” the minister said. “SINful madness.” He rarely used that word or that tone with his congregation, but he needed a moral high ground to redirect the mob.
At the sound of glass breaking, Donovan turned to see a large hole in the plate glass window at ground level.
“This is a unforgivable,” he said. “No man has the right—”
Before he could finish, Abbott threw his torch into the lobby where it ignited some pamphlets. As the flames grew, the others followed his lead, breaking windows and hurling their torches in as if they were twigs on a campfire. Soon the interior glowed like a beacon with the flickering of destruction. A fire alarm began to wail inside, pulsing and shrill.
For the first time, Donovan doubted his refusal to help the state agent. Had he known this would be the outcome, would he have broken confidentiality? No church stricture required him to protect his parishioners, only the conventions of the law as enforced by men.
The flames had spread to the entire first story. Likely no one remained inside that late on a Sunday night. But what if some custodian worked the swing shift, or a guard through the night? To stand by while someone was injured or killed by this anarchy would be unforgivable. Donovan watched and listened for evidence of workers but saw only the mob, who stood around as though they’d lit a bonfire in the woods and were enjoying its warmth.
Where was help? Surely someone else would notice the flames, hear the alarm, and call the fire department to extinguish them. Although it was likely too late to save the courthouse, several evergreens stood nearby as well. The flames could spread into a forest fire, leaping from limb to limb, imperiling the entire town. He listened for a siren in the distance, watched for strobing lights, but sensed only the smoke pooling and choking off his breath.
Then another light fell on his face as Abbott held up a cell phone to film the conflagration, with the pastor in the foreground.
“Smile, Reverend,” he said. “You’re one of us now.”
Donovan reached out to block the image, but Greg pushed aside his hand and kept filming. In desperation, the minister said, “What are you going to do with that? Put it online? You’ll incriminate everyone here.”
“Maybe I’ll show it to your friend from the state,” he said. “Inform on you like you did on us.”
“I said nothing,” the minister said. “My ethics—”
The wail of a siren in the distance distracted him. As it drew closer, the men dispersed into the dark night, but Donovan remained. He could not scurry off like a criminal, nor pretend he hadn’t played a role. He was supposed to be a leader of these men, a spiritual counselor, yet the power of the pulpit had failed him. He hadn’t detected the rebellion spreading among them, even after the agent had warned him.
As firefighters aimed their water cannons at the conflagration, a local police officer pulled Donovon across the street. Sgt. Montgomery wasn’t a member of the church, but they’d met and spoken before at local events. The Sergeant addressed him with respect and noted his office, yet he interrogated the minister about what he’d seen or heard that might have ignited such an inferno, which had spread to the second and third floors of the building.
“I…” Donovan said. “… must confess…”
Even as he spoke the words, Donovan knew they sounded false. How could he justify his role in an insurrection with priestly privilege? And was his true impulse to protect his parishioners—or himself? Already, he’d forsaken any moral authority.
[Image Credit : Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash]
David Hagerty has published more than 70 short stories in print and online, including several in Close To The Bone. He also authored the Duncan Cochrane mystery series about crime and dirty politics in his hometown of Chicago. Read more of his work at: https://davidhagerty.net/.
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