Maybe he wouldn’t ask her if she felt silly, but he’d say something.
She’d see she wasn’t getting him, so then she’d take off her belt and slowly undo her skirt, watching him all the time, and let it fall. She’d back off a little bit and put her hands on her hips so he could see her good.
“Norma, child, cover your nakedness.”
No, sir, that wasn’t going to stop her. She was coming around the desk now. She’d stepped out of the skirt and was taking off the blouse, all the way off, coming toward him now without a stitch on.
He had better stand up, or it would be hard to talk to her.
Mr. Manly rose from the chair. He reached out to place his hands on Norma’s bare shoulders and, smiling gently, said, “Child, ‘If ye live after the flesh ye shall die’—Romans, eight, thirteen—‘but if ye mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.’ ”
From the doorway Bob Fisher said, “Excuse me.”
Mr. Manly came around, seeing the open door that had been left open when the two went out; he dropped his hands awkwardly to the edge of the desk.
Bob Fisher kept staring at him.
“I was just seeing if I could remember a particular verse from Romans,” Mr. Manly said.
“How’d you do with Harold and Raymond?”
“It’s too early to tell. I want to see them again in the morning.”
“They got work to do.”
“In the morning,” Mr. Manly said.
Bob Fisher thought it over, then nodded and left the office. Walking down the hall, he was thinking that the little preacher may have been trying to remember a verse, but he sure looked like a man about to get laid.
Lord, give me these two, Mr. Manly said to the window and to the yard below. Give me a sign that they understand and are willing to receive the Lord Jesus Christ into their hearts.
He didn’t mean a tongue of fire had to appear over the two boys’ heads, or they had to get knocked to the ground the way St. Paul did. All they had to do was show some interest, a willingness to accept their salvation.
Lord, I need these two to prove my worthiness and devotion as a preacher of your Holy Writ. I need them to show for thirty years service in your ministry. Lord, I need them for my record, and I expect You know it.
Sit them down this time. Maybe that would help. Mr. Manly turned from the window and told them to take chairs. “Over there,” he said. “Bring them up close to the desk.”
They hesitated, looking around. It seemed to take them forever to carry the chairs over, their leg chains clinking on the wooden floor. He waited until they were settled, both of them looking past him, seeing what there was to see at this lower angle than yesterday.
“I’m going to tell you something. I know you both had humble beginnings. You were poor, you’ve been hungry, you’ve experienced all kinds of hardships and you’ve spent time in jail. Well, I never been to jail before I got sent here by the Bureau”—Mr. Manly paused as he grinned; neither of them noticing it—“I’ll tell you though, I’ll bet you I didn’t begin any better off than you boys did. I was born in Clayburn County, Tennessee—either of you been there?”
Raymond shook his head. Harold said nothing.
“Well, it’s in the mountains. I didn’t visit Knoxville till I was fifteen years old, and it wasn’t forty miles from home. I could’ve stayed there and farmed, or I could have run off and got into trouble. But you know what I did? I joined the Holy Word Pentacostal Youth Crusade and pledged myself to the service of the Lord Jesus. I preached over twenty years in Tennessee and Kentucky before coming out here to devote the rest of my life to mission work—the rest of it, five years, ten years. You know when your time is up and the Lord’s going to call you?”
Harold Jackson’s eyes were closed.
“Harold”—the eyes came open—“you don’t know when you’re going to die, do you?”
“No-suh, captain.”
“Are you ready to die?”
“No-suh, captain. I don’t think I ever be ready.”
“St. Paul was ready.”
“Yes-suh.”
“Not at first he wasn’t. Not until the Lord knocked him smack off his horse with a bolt of lightning and said, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecuteth me?’ Paul was a Jew-boy at that time and he was persecuting the Christians. Did you know that, Raymond?”
“No, I never knew that.”
“Yes, sir, before he became Paul he was a Jew-boy name of Saul, used to put Christians to death, kill them in terrible ways. But once he become a Christian himself he made up for all the bad things he’d done by his own suffering. Raymond, you ever been stoned?”
“Like with rocks?”
“Hit with big rocks.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Harold, you ever been shipwrecked?”
“I don’t recall, captain.”
Mr. Manly opened his Bible. “You boys think you’ve experienced hardships, listen, I’m going to read you something. From two Corinthians. ‘Brethren, gladly you put up with fools, because you are wise…’ Let me skip down. ‘But whereas any man is bold…Are they ministers of Christ?’ Here it is ‘…in many more labors, in lashes above measure, often exposed to death. From the Jews’—listen to this—‘five times I received forty lashes less one. Thrice I was scourged, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was adrift on the sea; on journeyings often, in perils from floods, in perils from robbers, in perils from my own nation…in labor and hardships, in many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.’ ”
Mr. Manly looked up. “Here’s the thing, boys. St. Paul asked God three times to let him up from all these hardships. And you know what God said to him?” Mr. Manly’s gaze dropped to the book. “He said, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee, for strength is made perfect in weakness.’ ”
Now Mr. Manly sat back, just barely smiling, looking expectantly from Raymond to Harold, waiting for one of them to speak. Either one, he didn’t care.
He didn’t even care what they said, as long as one of them spoke.
Raymond was looking down at his hands, fooling with one of his fingernails. Harold was looking down too, his head bent low, and his eyes could have been open or closed.
“Strength—did you hear that, boys?—is made perfect in weakness.”
He waited.
He could ask them what it meant.
He began thinking about the words. If you’re weak the Lord helps you. Or strength stands out more in a weak person. Like it’s more perfect, more complete, when a weak person gets strong.
No, that wasn’t what it meant.
It meant no matter how weak you were you could get strong if you wanted.
Maybe. Or else it was the part just before which was the important part. God saying My grace is sufficient for thee. That’s right, no matter what the temptaion was.
Norma Davis could come in here and show herself and do all kinds of terrible things—God’s grace would be sufficient. That was good to know.
It wasn’t helping those two boys any, though. He had to watch that, thinking of himself more than them. They were the ones had to be saved. They had wandered from the truth and it was up to him to bring them back. For…‘whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his ways will save his own soul from death’—James, five-something—‘and it will cover a multitude of sins.’ ”
That was the whole thing. If he could save these two boys he’d have nothing to worry about the rest of his life. He could maybe even slip once in a while—give in to temptation—without fear of his soul getting sent to hell. He wouldn’t give in on purpose. You couldn’t do that. But if somebody dragged you in and you went in scrapping, that was different.