Chase the Rain

By Joe Brooks

A sleepy passenger wrestles in seat 4C of Shepherd Air Flight 4316, the last flight out of New Orleans. F. Jordan Landham, once Hopeland Morning Journal's two-time winner of Tennessee journalism's most prestigious award, now contemplates the journey back to his hometown; this time, as a potential pastor. As he travels alone, he carried both physical luggage and a lifetime of inner baggage. Can he overcome his fears? Can he set his doubts aside before 11 a.m. Sunday morning? What about the revenge-seeking tactics? And that private battle no one sees? What about the memories of the past? And after the shooting stops, can he practice Christ's forgiveness while his own blood runs down the gilded edges of his Bible?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329609914

Book preview

Chase the Rain

Chase

the

Rain

Joe Brooks

Copyright 2013 by Joe Brooks

Chase the Rain by Joe Brooks

SECOND EDITION

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-9837229-3-9

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The poems included in this work are the original creations and property of Joe Brooks.

The song, Breaking Free is written by Kyle Joseph Brooks, with expressed permission to use the lyrics, which is performed by the band, Hope Rising.

All of Me by Louis Armstrong is also referred to in this work. Herman Melville's Moby Dick is used in brief quotation.

All rights reserved. This book is protected by the copyright laws of the United Stated of America. This book may not be copied or reprinted for commercial gain or profit. The use of short quotations or occasional page copying for personal or group study is permitted and encouraged. Permission will be granted upon request. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations in books and critical reviews. For information, email Joe Brooks at [e-mail].

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For Lisa

and the gains

that grace left

behind.

Acknowledgements

I wrote this book like I ride my bike. The literary road I traveled had many turns and re-starts, but not without SAG support, (Support and Gear). Thanks, Lisa, for the support you gave. You called this story 'good," and that's why I didn't throw it out and start over. Now here we are dear, at the finish line. You may now douse me with Gatorade® if you wish.

My son Kyle permitted me to use a song he wrote called Breaking Free. The song is one of many he regularly performs with his band Hope Rising. The members are Kyle, our other boy Graham Brooks, Heath Dills, and Ian and Tanner Gwaltney.

Our daughter-in-love Tecla Lynn Brooks' pictures are on the back cover. The top picture was taken during the storm that knocked down the hickory tree in our back yard. The author's photo is also her contribution from Tecla Brooks Photography.

Throughout the writing process, I was coached by Benjamin Moses Brooks. When the temptations of pen and paper drew Papa back to the wooden writing desk, Benjamin kept me focused on life's real priorities; wagon pulling, swing pushing, and finding the color red, or, shall we say, wed, (let the reader understand).

I am grateful for the editorial work of my friends Wayne Wilson and Carolyn Ford. Also, special thanks to Foresight Publishing's CEO Cathy Segarra and Jeff Olson, who designed the cover. Any remaining mistakes are my own but their careful eyes helped me write gooder.

Robert Larry Dude Burriss, retired, of the Biloxi Police Department provided expertise about weaponry. Norma, 'Mrs. Dude" Burriss, along with Dude, have been my boy's adopted grandparents for many years.

Phillip Henderson took my Sharpie®-drawn version of Hopeland, Tennessee and created a map.

I'm grateful today for my Dad and Mom and their faithful service to the Lord and His churches they served for 50 years. To Jimmy and Helen, Diane and Virgil, Kathy and Bobby, all my nieces and nephews, great nieces and great nephews, to Gail Rymer, my mother in law, and to our whole family, I say thanks for your love and support.

During a two-year self-imposed banishment from pastoral work, I briliantly disguised myself as a journalist for the Cleveland Daily Banner. The disguise hid my addiction to newsprint, ink, and adrenaline while I researched life inside a community newspaper. Thanks to all the journalists, past and present, which function under freedoms provided by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

For several years, I was brilliantly disguised as a student, first, at Clear Creek Baptist Bible College in Pineville, Kentucky and then, at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. I thank the professors from these two schools from the bottom of my attention-deficient heart and mind.

For my ministry colleagues, friends, and brothers, Revs. Allan Lovelace and Sammy Parris, thanks for the love for the ministry we have shared these past years. Also, for the depth of love you've shown for our Lord by loving His church, I am grateful.

Lastly, but definitely not least, to my dear friend Lew Shaffer of Sonshine Ministries in Azle, Texas. Hopefully, Bro. Lew, this book will fulfill the promise I made to you some seven years ago.

"Christ brought us together through

his death on the cross.

The cross got us to embrace, and

that was the end of the hostility."

- Ephesians 2:17, The Message

Chapter 1

Spring, 2013: Kenner, Louisiana

Louis Armstrong International Airport

I

n a plane on the ground, there sat a preacher. As the plane prepared for takeoff, he sat in seat 4C and wrote in his journal. It was the least he could do. It was the most he could do at this ungodly hour.

Of all the people, why me?

He wrote the words in shorthand between the blue lines of a hand-held reporter's notebook. The shorthand and the notebook were evidence of a talent and possession he retained from the life he left behind. He had used an endless number of reporter's notebooks throughout his career in journalism.

Any city's newspapers are known as the first draft of history. The pre-draft of the first draft is found in the reporter's handwritten notes. His former employer kept the decade's worth of reporter's notebooks locked away in a stale and rusting filing cabinet in the back of the newspaper offices. In and of themselves, the notebooks told the stories of his occupational history with the Hopeland Morning Journal.

The notebooks told the public thoughts and private words of government officials. He had written about death and dying in small town East Tennessee. The stories recounted the brutalities of the city and county government meetings. The city's utilities battles, the water wars, were all there, too.

F. Jordan Landham had told about the rising hunger from the city's undernourished people, of the exposed victims of hate. He displayed the exploited victims in graphic word pictures. The word pictures were worth more than a thousand cameras could capture on pixilated, digitalized memory cards. He also wrote about the unusual displays of generosity from beings acting humanly toward other human beings.

The newspaper was the public journal of the city's soul and it all began in small, handheld notebooks. The stories were the conscience of a city. People often told him that if it weren't for him and his reporting, the city of Hopeland, Tennessee would be a trash dump and not the city of hope it had become.

The newspaper and its star reporter did have enemies in and around the city. But, the enemies never lasted long. Even in the changing, disruptive age of fast-speed Internet, there was a maxim that still held true three times weekly in Hopeland, Tennessee: Never fight with those who buy ink by the barrel.

The enemies in Hansberry County and the surrounding cities soon learned, though, the verbal swords and written petitions were no match against the 1st Amendment News Media Associates, Inc. in Atlanta and the Hopeland Morning Journal. 1st A, as the mother company was called, provided their star reporter with the weaponry of ink. Tractor trailers made swift deliveries filled with spools of clean, fresh recycled paper from Bowater, just up the road in Charleston.

For the rest of his life, though, it looked as if the reporter's notebooks would contain only his private journal. The notebook received the marks and scratches from a blue fine point pen he held with his right hand. The notebook lay open and solitary on the tray in its extended and unlocked position.

As he stared through the window pane, he could see the airport terminal lobby he'd left behind. He watched from his peripheral vision as three different people over a 30-minute period, came, sat, and left the seat where he sat. He had sat in that same seat some 30 long minutes ago.

The number of people now occupying his former terminal lobby seat were the same number of changes in the offices he'd dealt with from the Reuter's News Services in New York over the past four years.

And that's why he was now headed North, but not as far as New York. Nobody at Reuter's knew his name any more. Bosses changed. Philosophies were updated. The hire they were so excited about four years ago would seek other employment.

From where he sat, he saw nameless and numberless people walk the terminal halls. Some walked beside their families. Couples walked arm in arm. Some walked alone carrying small bags.

People hugged and cried. Some were even happy to follow the blue carpeted hallway through the tunnel that led into the airplane where he sat. Before they left, they laughed and shook hands with loved ones they left behind.

People were still walking through the terminal, checking their own flight schedules. They drank their cafe au lait with extra cream and sugar if they wanted. They found their own way through the halls and shops at Louis Armstrong International Airport. They went wherever they wanted to go.

He looked again at the flight agenda and ticket stub as it lay in the empty seat beside him. He read again, the final destination. Of all the places, why there? He asked silently, then, he wrote the sentence into the journal.

It wasn't his fault that he was a preacher. It wasn't his fault that the plane was late for takeoff. It wasn't his fault that he was headed to a place roughly a 1,000 miles short of the glory he'd planned.

For someday.

It could have been this day. He could have made a different connecting flight when they arrived in Atlanta. Were it up to him, a few years earlier, he would have been headed farther north toward New York, not even giving a thought to the small town in East Tennessee where he was headed, just like he planned long ago.

But, the decisions, or so it seemed, were out of his direct control. The providential currents guiding the course of his life were both heavenly and earthly. "Of all the times, why now?" He wrote.

The moments of self-imposed, introspective questions were rare for the preacher. He paused his writing shortly and watched the other examples of free and liberated humanity as they boarded the plane after him. Some sat in seats in front of seat 4C while others sat behind him.

The moments of journal writing were ones where he served as his own reporter. He told the news of what's important about his personal life. The pieces of paper with blue lined pages were bound together at the top with silver wire. Reporter's Notebook was stamped on the tough, rugged light brown