I (Almost) Shot the Pastor

By A. R. Dellequa

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669878094

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Copyright © 2023 by A. R. Dellequa.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 05/17/2023

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1     James Returns Home

Chapter 2     James Goes to See His Mom

Chapter 3     James Embraces Civilian Life with His Best Friend

Chapter 4     Wednesday Night Bible Study

Chapter 5     A Night Out

Chapter 6     The Pastor’s Regrets

Chapter 7     The Meeting

Chapter 8     The Hotel

Chapter 9     Sunday Morning Service

Chapter 10   The Truth

CHAPTER 1

JAMES RETURNS HOME

D ETECTIVE SWANNIE PEERED over the rims of his knockoff gazelle glasses, and there I sat, in a cloud of smoke, making a mound of ashes as I inhaled more than a dozen Newport cigarettes back to back. I just sat there, cool as Cool Hand Luke. I wasn’t moved; nor was I shaken by the icy glare from either detective.

Answer the goddamn question and put that fuckin’ cigarette out! he barked while spitting sour cream and chive crackers all over me. Why did you shoot all those innocent Iraqis? he demanded as he violently slammed his fist on the table, causing the mound of ashes to form a plume into the air, making it absolutely impossible to breathe inside of this congested waste of space. Don’t just sit there with that smug-ass look on your face as if you are the one in control, the detective commanded.

I leaned back on the chair’s two legs and placed my head up against the wall and began to count the dead flies rolled up in a nearby cocoon. Seemingly, I felt the exact same way. I answered him with total assurance. God is in control, not man, and it is he that makes every knee bow and every tongue confess. I took a long pause and another drag from my Newport before I began to slowly utter my confession. I cleared my throat and began to speak directly into the mic without a quiver in my voice. Yeah, I shot them mothafuckas.

Before I could get another word out, the detective angrily interrupted me.

"We know you shot ’em. We want to know why, James . . . Why?" Detective Swannie demanded as he loomed over me like Goliath over David.

I just stared straight through him, and for a few seconds, I began to daydream, and I could hear my father’s voice faintly saying to me, "Always say what you mean, and for the love of God, son, mean what you say. But more than that, please always remember this—the battle on this earth resides inside of the man, and it belongs to the creator. Other men will try to control you and it. God knows you and understands you and all of your fears, your pains, your sicknesses—all that makes you happy and sad. There is absolutely nothing that he can’t fix—if it’s supposed to be fixed. Sometimes he will allow a thing or a situation or even a person to be broken but with a purpose. When it is called by me to teach, he or she must first be taught, and the creator will use anything or anyone just to draw one soul closer to it. All you have to do is answer the knock at the door when you hear the knock."

I took another long drag from my cigarette and proceeded to give my account as to what had happened that day, even though I knew that this day, the truth would not set me free. Then I reluctantly began to say, I was not a killer before I sold my soul to the military—so I thought. I honestly believed that enlisting would be the answer to my financial problems. I just wanted to be the best provider for my family. I wanted to be raised high and hailed with compliments and gifts of appreciation from my family. How was I supposed to know that the creator was honing the natural inner instinct that he had placed inside of me, conceived in his mind when he was constructing my physical and spiritual makeup from before birth? The blueprint of me that existed solely in his mind? I am simply a pawn, a student called to teach, preparing to teach my first lesson. Did you ever serve your country? I inquisitively asked the detective this as I looked through the smoke. After you made your first kill, did your mouth water and thirst for more?

This ain’t about me. You need to hurry the hell up and spit it out before the creator returns to claim us all, the detective said with a stitch of sarcasm in his voice as he chuckled.

So calmly and Billy D. Williams like, I blew smoke across the table into both of their faces and thought, These two punk-ass fake Dick Tracy wannabes. Their weak aggression had no effect on me. Basic training had broken me into two pieces, made me secretly want my momma. These two hams couldn’t crack eggs.

Basic training was a grueling ten weeks, rain or shine. It scrutinized the minds of young boys and transformed that frail frame and mind of mine into believing that I could be all that it was made to be, just like the army TV commercials insinuated, which was what had given me the not-so-bright idea of enlisting into the military to begin with. That catchy jingle, coupled with my need for money, played against my ignorance and began to lure me in. I had never thought it would train me to become a murderer. My mind and body and a portion of my soul had been altered to be all that I was reprogrammed to be to suit the needs of the U.S. Army. I didn’t belong to me anymore.

It had been just about a year since I first stepped foot onto this foreign man’s land. I received this one letter in particular. It was then that I first laid eyes on those heart-drenching words written by my wife. They appeared to have been scribbled quickly across the paper like chemtrails; they just floated in midair. They were just there.

I don’t want to be married anymore.

Just seeing those words and imagining them forming as she scribbled them violently out the tip of her pen did more to me psychologically than blowing off a man’s head. My body went limp. All that I could do to keep from falling apart was to just sit still, stare out into the openness of an adjacent empty field, watch the silence of sound move in slow motion, and pretend to be stronger than the force of gravity. I held back the tears of a clown. The thought of Ellen not being a part of me, even an intricate part of my spirit, fueled and coerced my desire to perfect my skill to kill. Death was becoming the new me.

The buzz of a fly whizzing by my ear broke my dreamlike state, and I coughed with congestion into the microphone, breaking up the trans-like silence in the police office’s makeshift interrogation room. I was reluctantly offered water and a used tissue to wipe the sweat beads from my brow and upper lip.

"Burrrp . . ."

Get on with the damn confession so that I can get home to my wife, murderer! the pudgy detective who hardly spoke at all suddenly chimed in.

As I reached out to grab the water a second time with my right hand, I blocked a flying box of tissue with my left. I laughed comically at the dumpy, overweight detective, and I kindly reminded them both, Calm down, Detectives! Let’s not forget who is in control.

I took a moment to gather my thoughts, along with taking a few deep breaths. I slid closer to the recorder and waited for the instruction to proceed. I’d matured a tremendous amount since the day before I left, and being obedient to that inner voice had become priceless. What it commands of you can place more weight on a man than one could ever imagine, much like having to transport two fifty-pound buckets of water uphill on the end of a nimble stick while balanced about the neck, back, and shoulders at 4:00 a.m.

Coincidentally, the bus that was transporting the scruffy-looking pack of travelers from the coast—headed inland to Richmond, Virginia, and other places—hit a bump in the road. It caused me to wake up panting and breathing heavily. My forehead was pouring with sweat. I was being stared at by a little Hispanic girl who clutched her grandmother’s arm tightly in the seat across the aisle from me. I must have startled her.

These damn dreams just won’t allow me to get any rest. I wonder if I was talking in my sleep. I’m sure I was, and I usually do when I sleep good and hard, I thought.

I’d had all sorts of recurring dreams ever since I was a small boy, as young as three years old. However, I’d continued to have them but more frequently since I joined the military. They were relentless. Considering all the killing that I had done and the visuals they had left in my mind, which they accurately projected, I was unstable and volatile. I was about to explode. I was capable of leaving the streets stained with blood to torture the consciousness of the strongest man’s mind and keep him awake at night, tossing and turning from the darkest hours after midnight, long over into the day.

I stood and stretched out the kinks from my back. I was in pain from being knotted up in that old, cheap, congested aisle seat of this grungy Greyhound bus. I turned and headed straight for the rear of the bus to use the restroom. I hobbled and wobbled with every hill, high and low, that the bus made. I needed to splash a little water on my face and wash away any signs of psychosis.

I turned back and yelled at the bus driver, How much further do we have?

About an hour and a half or so, the bus driver replied while gripping the steering wheel with both hands, trying to glance up into the mirror at me and keep his eyes on the road.

Cool, I said. I’m really looking forward to seeing my mom, I briefly shared with a little old man who sat right beside the bathroom.

That back row was so packed that I could barely squeeze through the door of the bathroom because of suitcases and other belongings on the floor that made it hard to open the door. The old man just smiled and gummed a banana. I didn’t think he spoke any English.

After a long flight with the most amazing view of the Atlantic Ocean and a slow-rolling bus ride to Richmond, Virginia, I was officially back on home soil. There was no large welcoming parade to greet me. It was just my wife, Ellen, which was okay. I was semi-cool with it. It didn’t feel like I was this Purple Heart–deserving man of honor, and I sure as hell didn’t feel like some stellar role model to be hoisted up on shoulders and paraded around the city. I was no jolly good fellow. Nonetheless, I was just thankful to be back home.

As sure as the sun rises in the east and remotely settles in the west, Ellen and I needed to talk. We didn’t need to talk about the letter (yet). We just needed to talk about anything, just to become reacquainted with each other. I wanted to become consumed with the actual sound of her again instead of remembering the sound of her on paper. Communication is the essence of any friendship, and our friendship had become reduced to recycled paper, faded ink, perfume, stamps, and small talk. In her letters, she tried to keep me up to date with all the events that were going on back in the other world and some things that had much to do with nothing, the things that my eyes were held captive from seeing and my mind from imagining.

I hadn’t been around a woman for two years, and this set the stage, at least in