Power in the Blood

By Bernard LoPinto

Power in the Blood is the story of Tim Rathbone, a failed young minister who returns home to Dayton Crossing hoping to find renewal working with his former pastor, Stan Richmond, in the Dayton Crossing Christian Tabernacle, the CT.
When he finds the elderly couple who raised him dead, a despondent Tim finds he has only two people to depend on: Freddi, who knows too well the dark side of Dayton Crossing, and her mobster father Jimmy.
As he learns about the corruption rampant in his home town and the church he has revered all his life, Tim also arrives at the truth about his father’s suicide, twenty years before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bernard LoPinto
• Release date: Dec 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301725793

Bernard LoPinto

I grew up in the Long Island, NY, suburbs, earning a BA in English and an MS in Education. I taught in public schools for seventeen years and in prisons for eighteen years, all the while honing my skills as a writer. My copy and photography have appeared in local newspapers in Central New York, on the web, and in one anthology. In between, there have been stints in wedding photography, men's fashion, delicatessen, and, of course, my nine years as a minister, from which many of my ideas spring. My years in the strict Pentecostal church and working with criminals in correctional education have taught me the importance of holding on to oneself, with periodic reinventions. Being a writer is one of those reinventions. When not writing, I can be found motorcycling through the hills of Northeastern Pennsylvania with my lovely wife Jeanne.

Book preview

POWER IN THE BLOOD

Bernard LoPinto

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Bernard A. LoPinto

Honesdale, PA

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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All biblical quotations are from the King James Bible

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

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Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Acknowledgements

I could not have done this without the help and support of many friends:

Clara Gillow Clark who read every word and whose comments and encouragement kept me going.

The members of The Writers’ Circle of the Wayne County Arts Alliance for their friendship and support.

Sam Bradley for her technical assistance when I needed to know about blood pressures and EMT stuff, and for her encouragement when I needed that, too.

Shawn Bailey for the cover, a lover of writing, and one who has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous religion.

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Dedicated to my beautiful Jeanne, who lived the ride and came through it with me.

Chapter 1

I didn’t remember the last time I saw my father alive, and even though it stood right at the Thruway exit, I didn’t recognize the motel my mother had taken me to the night before the explosion. That was the night she left my father, Ben. The night he killed himself.

I pulled up to the tollbooth where a sleepy-looking kid of about twenty took my ten dollars and gave me back very little change. Then I turned the motor home onto the shoulder of the road and parked. It was Sunday morning, and I knew that the Dayton Crossing Christian Tabernacle would be in service for at least the next few hours. The services at the Dayton Crossing Christian Tabernacle were known for being lively and long, so there would be plenty of time for me to change into the one suit I owned and get ready for my return home.

After I changed, I checked myself out in the narrow mirror that hung in the motor home. All the time I was growing up, people had told me how much I resemble my father and it always ticked me off. They say I’m just as tall and thin, with the same mop of straight brown hair, the same dark brown eyes, and the same slouch. I’ve seen photos of my father and me together, but I don’t see any resemblance. Besides, I’m not like him. I don’t quit—not exactly, anyway. Though I do get fired a lot.

The suit needed some help, but I figured I could make it work. If I kept my tie pulled up tight, no one would see that my collar button was missing. And keeping the jacket closed hid the stain on my tie. But then I bent over to tie my shoes, and I heard a ripping sound, like a seam giving out. I pulled off the jacket to inspect the damage. It wasn’t a seam; the fabric had given way. I sat there for a moment, disgusted. It’s like everything I own is junk—the suit, this ancient motor home, given to me because it wasn’t worth the effort to try to sell.

And here I was, on my triumphal return home. Right. Just like the junk I owned, I was a complete failure. My church had put me through Bible College and supported me over the last ten years, expecting that I would be a church planter, a spiritual pioneer, leading souls to Christ, building the Kingdom of God on Earth. Instead, I had spent the time moving from ministry to ministry, either getting fired or moving on just before the ax fell. Seven churches in six years meant constantly having to explain what went wrong at my last posting. And that's how I returned home to Dayton Crossing, out of excuses and my only money the change from the toll both. My reputation within the denomination was shot, and I had lost my faith in my brother ministers, too, having experienced what passes for ministry in so many churches.

The one place I still had faith in was Dayton Crossing Christian Tabernacle. I was certain that the only true men of God left were Senior Pastor Stan Richmond and his Associate Pastor, Gabe Wilkins, Sr. With my dad, they had pioneered the Christian Tabernacle—we called it the CT—nearly thirty years ago. I was born into that church, spent practically every waking hour there. And even after my dad killed himself, I never lost faith in my pastors. That church had been my place of safety when I was an adolescent, trying to make sense out of what had happened in my life, while, at the same time, trying unsuccessfully to fit in. It had been Pastor Richmond who first recognized the call of God on my life and suggested I enter the ministry. Of course, I took his word for it because I would never doubt the man that God had placed over me as my pastor.

All through the years I spent in Bible College and all the time after, while I was trying to find the one church God had called me to, the CT was faithful in its support, sending me a monthly stipend. Sometimes there were even checks from Pastor Richmond's personal account. They had great hopes for me, and their faith and support never wavered, no matter how many times I failed. And fail was all I did.

So now I was coming home because I was sure that, if I was ever going to get myself right with God and his ministry and regain my faith, I was going to do it working under these great men of God in this wonderful church. I was just concerned about getting past my own shame. I was not proud of some of the things I had done.

I could have sat there all day, pitying myself, but I had come back to Dayton Crossing for a reason, and I wasn’t going to get anything done moping. I pulled out the closest thing I had to a clean pair of jeans and my one good sweater and, as well-dressed as I was going to be, pulled back onto the road and headed off for the church.

Dayton Crossing was a factory town during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one of four villages and one city that make up The Valley. Its location, right on the canal, with the railroad running through the middle of town, made it and the rest of The Valley prosperous for decades, a world leader in the manufacture of office furniture, carpets, and fire arms.

Now, the railroad tracks have been paved over, the canal carries mostly pleasure boats, and only The Arms remains. Since the 1950's, Dayton Crossing, the seat of Dayton County, has limped along, suffering worse than the rest of the state in the hard times but never profiting in the good. The north side of the village is made up of old Victorian houses, many rotting away, the remnants of the glory days of the Crossing's prosperous years. The streets form an orderly grid and carry the names of presidents: Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. That's where we lived when my father was alive, right across from Central Park. It was the nicest part of the village.

The south side, where my mother and I lived after my dad died, is comprised of houses built just before World War II, mostly two-story, white shingle houses with porches and tiny strips of grass that passed for front lawns. The streets are cut at strange angles, some little more that alleys, and are numbered. My mom and I lived there after my dad died.

Route 5, the main drag through the village, is built over the old railroad tracks. At the first stoplight, I got this urge to make the left down Lincoln Street that leads to Central Park. I wasn’t sure I could stand to go there. I had avoided the place all the time I was growing up, after we moved to the South Side. Even when I went back for my mother's funeral, I made sure not to go down that street.

In taking his own life, my father, Ben Rathbone, had also destroyed my life and my mother’s. The insurance wouldn't pay on a suicide, so we had no money. And my mother was permanently disabled from the injuries she sustained in the explosion. Worse was the guilt she felt for leaving him that night and taking me with her. She was never much of a parent to me after that. When she wasn't locked in her room praying for forgiveness, she was wandering around the neighborhood, muttering about God's forgiveness and the sins of all mankind. She was the Crazy Woman of the South Side, and I was her pitiable little boy. I hated it.

So even though I knew the place had been totally rebuilt and didn’t look anything like what it had been, I wasn’t sure I was prepared to go back to where the old house had stood. I was back in Dayton Crossing to try to rebuild my life, and I wasn’t going to get anything out of reviving the ghosts of people who couldn’t help me when they were alive.

I didn’t see that the light had turned green until I heard the horn from the car behind me. Without even thinking, I spun the wheel to the left, and went down toward the park. Despite any misgivings I had, I was into it now, so I found a big enough space and pulled over.

It was easy to spot the new house. Like most of the homes on the North Side, ours had been a 19th-Century Victorian with a wrap-around porch and clapboard siding. This new house was a modern two-story colonial with a brick facade and a garage attached by a covered breeze way. I was thankful that it looked so different that it aroused no feelings in me. It was as if I had never lived on that street at all. I pulled the motor home around the corner and got back on Route 5, heading east, toward the church. I felt the cold sweat run down my back. I knew I had to get back there, but I felt ashamed to go back as a failure.

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The congregation built the new church after I left Fort Dayton, but I knew where it was. I had seen an article about it in the denominational magazine a year earlier and recognized the location, about a mile east of the village on a high cliff overlooking the river. The article called it the largest of all the Community Tabernacles in the nation, with seating for 5,000 worshipers in the main sanctuary and two overflow rooms that each held over a thousand. The overflow rooms doubled as children’s church, youth group, and fellowship rooms. There was a professional-grade kitchen, a sound room for the radio ministry, and a broadcast-quality TV studio for the television ministry. There was even a fleet of covered stretch golf carts with drivers to shuttle elderly members back and forth to their cars.

The service had been on for only an hour, and the parking lot was full. I had to park the motor home at the end of the lot, about a quarter mile away. I walked slowly through the cool September air. Even after coming all this way, I wasn't in a hurry to go inside and face my church.

* * * *

The main entrance of the church faced the parking lot. The area over the front door was covered so no one had to stand in the rain entering or exiting the church. I entered and stood in the biggest church lobby I had ever seen. The ceiling was two-stories high, dominated by a crystal chandelier twenty-five feet in diameter. To the right was a wall of wood and glass doors. I walked through one and found myself standing where I had a good view of the entire sanctuary. Pastor Richmond had finished his sermon, and people were making their way forward for prayer at the altar while the organ played softly.

The sanctuary sloped down toward the front like a movie theater; a gray carpet with maroon trim covered the entire floor. I tried to count the rows of pews but quit at twenty-five. These were broken into four sections in a semi-circle around the main platform. The platform was about fifty feet across, also semi-circular with three steps leading up to it. The pulpit was front and center with the choir on risers behind. There had always been a choir, but this one was at least two hundred voices, and every singer was dressed in a gray robe with the same maroon trim. The back wall of the sanctuary was covered in light-colored stone, the kind that makes for good acoustics.

I watched Pastor Richmond leave the pulpit and take his place on the top step in his standard dark suit and red tie as I had seen him do every Sunday of my life, but in this new setting, with crystal chandeliers hanging every twenty feet, backed by that huge choir and a pipe organ, he took on a stature I had never seen before. It was as if the power of God had surrounded him, was radiating from him. At that moment, I knew I was where I belonged and that everything was going to work out for me. I had come home.

I remembered the prayer line as the best part of the service. People would go up to Pastor Richmond asking him to pray over them for some need or for a word from God. In the aisles and in the pews, groups got together and lifted each other up in prayer. It was a great time of communion between the saints. We are all saints in God's eyes, and at this moment in the service, He had His hand on every one of us. It had been like that in the old church that I remembered, the small, clapboard building, erected just after World War I on the edge of the village, and it was the same in this grand building with one wall made entirely of glass giving a panoramic view of the river and the valley.

Just as the first people got up to the front, I saw someone walk up the steps of the platform and stand about twenty feet to Pastor Richmond’s left. It was Annie, his daughter, whom I hadn’t seen in ten years. Her straight brown hair had grown to her waist, and she wore a long denim skirt and a white, long-sleeve, button down shirt. She pulled herself up tall and straight and held out her hands to the first person lined up in front of her. A middle-aged woman stepped up to her, and Annie leaned in close to listen as the woman spoke. Then a great sadness came over Annie’s face, and she placed her right hand on the side of the woman’s face and whispered something to her. She placed her left hand on the back of the woman’s neck and raised her right hand in prayer, her voice rising above the organ music. The woman’s body started to shake. The shaking intensified until the woman started to sway, and an usher who had been standing nearby took hold of her and gently lowered her to the floor. Then Annie stood over the woman, continuing to pray loudly in tongues—the language of angels that mortals cannot understand—her holy hands reaching for heaven.

I watched three or four people go up to Annie, and every one of them hit the floor like this, slain in the Spirit. One tall, fat guy teetered backward like a felled oak tree, and the usher, who stood about five-foot-four, caught him and almost fell with him.

Then a balding man in a gray suit approached Annie followed by a woman wearing a blue satin dress. First the man spoke into Annie's ear to be heard over the music. Then Annie spoke to both of them. The man waved his hand at the choir, and a teenage girl with long blond hair stepped off a riser. She seemed reluctant at first, but Annie extended her hand, and the girl went to her. As the man and woman—I figured they were the girl's parents—stood close by, Annie first spoke to the girl and then placed her hands on the side of the girl's face. As Annie prayed, the girl began to shake and, like the ones before her, she went to the floor.

I could tell that Annie touched people the same way she'd held my hand at my father’s funeral when we were both seven years old. Even then she knew the power of a touch. Annie’s prayer line was a lot longer than her father’s.

After nearly an hour, the lines started to dwindle, and I figured I’d get on the end and get up to Pastor Richmond. Then with everyone gone, we could talk the same way my dad and Brother Wilkins would talk with pastor at the pulpit after each service. I didn’t see Brother Wilkins anywhere in the sanctuary, but I knew he was somewhere around. I hoped the three of us would go back into Pastor's office, wherever that was in this new church, and talk about my future at the CT.

I had gotten about halfway down the aisle, when I heard someone call, Timmy! Only two people ever called me that, and when I turned around, they were both standing right behind me. Amos and Margaret Mattson who became my substitute parents after my father died. Whenever my mother was too sick or too crazy to take care of me, or whenever I got in trouble in school—which was often—Amos or Margaret would pick me up and take me to their home. Sometimes, if my mother was particularly bad, I wouldn’t even bother to go home after school. I’d just ride my bike over to their farm and stay the night. I had my own room, and they had even bought me clothes to keep there. They were the closest thing to a real family I ever had, and they were the people I least wanted to see at that moment.

But Margaret had her arms around me and was kissing me all over. Timmy, she said, it’s so good to see you. We’ve missed you so much. Then she stopped and punched me in the chest, and not too lightly. When you stopped writing you scared the daylights out of us. Where did you go? You had no right to worry us like that.

Then Amos said, It’s never a good idea to make her angry, Timmy. I know. Then he hugged me. They were both over 85, but Amos was as tall and felt as strong as I had ever known him to be. His hair was still thick, though it was now completely white. His blue eyes were still bright and sharp, the kind that could cut right through you. He served as the local police investigator for over forty years, and when I was young, some of the older policemen who had worked with him told me that he could be an intimidating man, though I had never experienced that side of him. He had always been gentle—fatherly—to me.

Margaret was less well. She carried a small oxygen bottle over her shoulder with a cannula under her nose. She seemed smaller, and her hair was thinner than I remembered. Her skin looked as thin as tissue paper, and I was afraid she’d break if I held her too tightly. But she still had the tremendous smile that covered her whole face and that soft voice which, sometimes, was the only one I'd listen to.

Oh, you! Margaret said and playfully slapped Amos on the arm as I had seen her do a thousand times. Then she grabbed my hand and started to pull me toward the back of the sanctuary. I was surprised at how strong she was, but she was always like that, a little bit of a woman who barely came up to her husband’s chest, shooting fire and iron from her eyes. You have to come home for supper and tell us everything. And you look so skinny! Haven’t you eaten this week? As she pulled me toward the doors of the sanctuary, I looked back and was surprised to see Pastor Richmond was gone from the platform, and I had missed my chance to see him.

As soon as Margaret took my hand, I felt the familiar peace I had always felt around her and Amos. They had supported my decision to leave for Bible college just weeks after I graduated high school, despite my mother's raving that I was abandoning her, though in her self-indulgent guilt, she had abandoned me years before. Every day she repented leaving my father that night, causing him to end his own life. I guess it was easier for her to mourn him like that than to try to make a life for herself and her son. Couple that with the physical injuries she suffered in the explosion, which kept her bed-ridden much of the time, and she was no mother to me at all. Our house had become unlivable for me, so when the college told me that I could start in July, rather than late August, I jumped at the opportunity to leave.

And now here were Amos and Margaret wanting to know all about what had happened after that. They expected me to tell them all about my years moving from church to church, when the Christian Tabernacle was sending me support, and I was busy getting myself fired.

There was only one thing for me to do, lay it all out and hope they would understand. They deserved nothing less, and I knew they would respect nothing less. As we stepped outside the church, I put my arms around both of them. I have a lot to tell you, I said.

Associate Pastor Wilkins must have been waiting for us because we no sooner stepped onto the concrete when he hurried up to us, grabbed me away from Margaret, gave me a tight hug, and pulled my face down to his and gave me a kiss on the cheek, the usual greeting in churches where the rule is Greet the brethren with a holy kiss.

Tim, lad, how are you? I’m so happy to see you. Welcome home. His eyes darted back and forth between me, Amos and Margaret, his voice booming. He hadn’t changed much in the ten years I’d been gone, except that he seemed to have gained even more weight. He was about five-foot-five and must have weighed two hundred-fifty pounds. The skin on his red face seemed as stretched as his shirt. As usual he wore a shabby suit, and his shirt collars turned up, fighting against his double chin. His thinning black hair was slicked back and showed his freckled scalp. The most distinguishable thing about him was his voice, always round, always rolling, and always joyous.

He said a curt hello to Amos and Margaret. Margaret mumbled something in return. Amos looked out toward the parking lot. Wilkins said, Why don't you come to the house, Tim? We have so much to talk about. Then we can come back for the evening service and spend time with Pastor Richmond. He was sorry he couldn't stay to speak with you, but he was called away on an urgent matter. He's eager to speak with you, and Annie's looking forward to seeing you, too.

At the mention of Annie, my heart started pounding, but I had promised to stay with Amos and Margaret, and I started to tell Wilkins so. Then Amos stepped forward. Hold on, Gabe, he said. Our boy's coming with us.

Wilkins smiled. I'm sure you're eager to catch up with Tim, Amos, but the congregation has supported him all these years, and we need an accounting of his activities and progress in the service of the Lord. We want to know what we spent our money on, so to speak. After that, you'll have all eternity with him.

Brother Wilkins, Amos said, sarcasm dripping off Brother, "I don't give