CHAPTER 8
The two riders had only been going for a short moment when Chet beckoned Matthew to come along side of him. Despite the fact that they were bumping along through the grass, Chet decided to question his young cohort. “I was puzzlin’ over somethin’. What is it that brings a city man out here? You after the gold that’s running in the hills?”
“No. The gold didn’t draw me, not that I wouldn’t enjoy having a bit of it myself. But the reason for us to come has to do with the need for churches out here. I’ve been told in many of these towns that have been springing up overnight the last thing to get set up is a church. That’s what we have come here for.”
“You mean to say that you is a preacher? A gospel spreader?”
“Yes Sir. I am a pastor looking for a place to preach.”
Chet let this idea run in his head for a moment before continuing. After giving Matthew a new visual appraisal, he questioned on. “But aren’t you a bit wet behind the ears to be a preacher? Under all that dirt you can’t be none but 18 or even less maybes. You’re just a kid.”
The familiar tide of frustration of not being taken seriously because of his boyish face began to rise in his mind. He had learned since his conversion to keep this emotion in check and use his direct approach to quell the sentiment. But he was not quit up to the task. “Don’t judge the book by the cover,” came Matthew’s response with a slightly biting tenor.
Chet raised an eyebrow at the unexpected retort. “Settle down the feathers there, Son. I didn’t lay down no disrespect for you. Just talkin’ as I see it.”
With a sigh, Matthew could see his shortcoming. He shook his head at himself. “You’re right,” he admitted. “I know I’ve got the look of a kid all over me. It has been a life long curse for me. I am in fact on the verge of twenty-five. My birthday is just a month and a couple of days off.”
“Sure ‘nough, that ain’t a kid’s age.”
“I got a new query for you” continued Chet after a moment’s pause, “mind if I ask you?”
“You can ask anything you want,” Matthew responded with an effort of being more welcoming.
“What is it that made you want to be preacher?”
Having been asked this question a number of times, Matthew understood that it usually came from those who were not very serious about faith. “Are you a religious man, Chet?”
Without looking Matthew’s way, Chet hesitated as he weighed the question in his own mind. “I don’t attend church, if that’s what you mean. I did when I was a pup of a boy with my mama. I do have trouble with believin’. I mean, I’m thinkin’ there is a God and all, but sometimes I wrestle with it. Wouldn’t be surprised if my grave marker is goin’ to read, ‘Chet Garret, Dead and Gone, Still Ain’t Sure’.”
Matthew understood his companion’s response. He too had those similar thoughts when he was a boy. His mother had also brought him to church when he was a youngster, but only when his father wasn’t home. The last time he had gone to church was when he was eleven years old. Afterwards he and his mother returned home to find his drunken father waiting for them. His father was furious that breakfast hadn’t been waiting for him, so he proceeded to beat his wife. When Matthew tried to intervene, his father turned on him and beat him mercilessly.
Even now Matthew thought it was strange how thoughts can jump into the mind in times like that. As his father hit him, three words from the pastor’s morning’s service began to echo in his mind, “…your heavenly Father.”
Later that same day when his father was passed out on his bed and his mother was out on an errand, Matthew crept into the room with a long piece of wood he had gathered from the empty lot across the alley. Standing next to his father he stared down at his father while a blazing hatred burned in his young heart. Filled with fury that had been growing for years, he raised the stick as high as he could above his head and swung with all his might at his dad’s head. Again and again he swung, until the blood starting to stain the stick. His mother had returned home and come into the room and stopped him just short of murdering his own father. Never again did his father touch him or his mother after that day. The reality was that his father had never really been the same.
Matthew was never the same again after that event also. The years of abuse had culminated in his retaliation that didn’t end with his attack on his father. He continued this war with the rest of the world. In his heart he had reasoned that if his “heavenly Father” was anything like his own father, then he didn’t want anything to do with Him. In fact, he had doubted that there even was such a person.
“I understand your thoughts on the matter,” offered Matthew. “When I was growing up I felt the same way. But let me assure you, there is a God. You may have a hard time believing in Him, but He doesn’t have a hard time believing in you. Truth is, He loves you very much.
“It’s people like you that compelled me to want to become a preacher. I want others to know of the great God who loves us and can give us a hope in this life and the next. God is real, and He surely does love you and me.”
Even as he spoke the words, he felt a pang of guilt as he remembered how he had just that day been struggling with these issues once again. Though spoken by him, the words seemed to be like water being poured onto a wilted flower patch. He soaked them up for himself and reveled in their encouragement.
There was no need to point out to Chet where Matthew had been shot from the horse. Chet pulled up to a stop.
“Looks like you had a pretty good bounce or two here,” conjectured Chet.
Matthew could see the evidence only too well also. The grass had been flattened and turned up in a long swath that his body had made.
Looking up to Matthew, Chet looked him over once again. “There ain’t no right for you to be up and walkin’, Son. Perhaps it was mighty big hand that kept you alive.”
“Up to slipping from the saddle, I don’t remember any of it. But the way the ground looks here, I would say you are right.”
Without dismounting Chet walked his horse slowly around the area of Matthew’s fall. Stopping his horse he pointed to the ground, “There’s that gun you dropped during your tumblin’.” He stepped from the saddle and picked it up and looked it over. He blew on it a couple of times, spinning the revolver. “It ought be just fine. Here take it.”
When Matthew had possession of it again, he held it in both hands for a moment as he examined it with his eyes. “Is there a secret to shooting this?”
“Well, there ain’t no secret to it. Pull back the hammer and pull the trigger.”
“What hammer?” inquired Matthew.
“Look at the back of that gun… Hey!” Chet said with a raised voice when Matthew turned the gun to look at it and inadvertently pointed the gun right at Chet. “Don’t point the business end of that gun at nobody ‘less you ready to shoot him.”
Matthew flushed with red as he realized his mistake. “I’m sorry, Chet. Like I said, I don’t really know my way around a gun.”
“Well then, climb on down and we’ll do a quick learnin’ time,” offered Chet.
“Shouldn’t we keep going after my wife?” Matthew said this while looking towards the line of trees in the distance, obviously anxious to be getting on with the chase.
“Look, you ain’t got a chance in hell… I mean… I ain’t spent a whole lot a time with no preacher.” Chet backpedaled, feeling embarrassed with his choice of words.
“Chet, just be yourself. I won’t drop dead at the sound of a curse. Besides, you won’t be answering to me on that final day.”
“Okay, then I’ll just keep to my way of speakin’. But all the same, you is a preacher, and that needs some sort of respect and all. What I’m tryin’ to tell you is that if you end up facin’ it up with those men that took your wife and all, then you better be knowin’ how to talk their way, and they talk with a gun. Besides, it won’t take but a few moments.”
Reluctantly Matthew slipped awkwardly out of the saddle and took up a position next to Chet for a lesson on using the gun. Chet pointed out the basics of the gun emphasizing the importance of not pointing the gun at him again. The last thing he did was have Matthew shoot the gun at a distant rock.
“What you want to do is act like that barrel is your finger and you are pointin’ at somethin’. That’s it. Now, slowly…”
Suddenly there was an unexpected explosion as the gun bucked in Matthew’s hand. The gun flew up into the air as Matthew reflexively threw his hand up and released the gun. The gun flew in an arch up over their heads and fell to the ground directly below Chet’s horse, and when it hit the ground the gun went off again sending a bullet careening off the ground about two feet from Chet. Chet jumped in the air, and Matthew’s knees buckled as he threw both arms up to cover his head. Meanwhile Chet’s horse took two hops straight up and bolted for safer ground, leading Matthew’s horse in his wake. While the dust was still flying Chet let out a string of curses to strip the wax from any ear.
Matthew looked around dumbly at the fleeing horses while flushing scarlet once again with embarrassment. Riding a horse, tracking someone, and shooting guns were nothing but a mystery to him. He had never felt so inept in his life.
“What in the blazes are you doin’! Are you sure you ain’t sent to kill me off today!?” Chet went on for thirty seconds more accosting Matthew with a verbal licking that no one had done or dared to do since his childhood. Had he not been so thoroughly humiliated, Matthew could easily have joined in on the verbal battlefield and held his ground quit well. Instead he stood sheepishly taking the abuse as it rained down upon him.
“Don’t everybody know that you never go throwin’ a loaded gun around like it were some sort of toy? What were you thinkin’?”
“I didn’t expect it to go off like that. I am sorry about nearly shooting you in the foot. I did warn you that I don’t really know my way around a gun.”
Ignoring Matthew’s suggestion that the responsibilities for the circumstances were to be partly carried by both parties, Chet continued in his blame casting, “And to top it all out, you run the horses off.”
With that Chet stepped out in the direction of the horses and called over his shoulder to Matthew who was still standing in place, “Let’s get goin’ and get back our horses.” Stopping suddenly, Chet turned on his heels and spoke in a low voice, “Pick up that gun very carefully and holster it. I don’t want to see you handling that gun less your life depends on it, and I am no less than a hundred miles from you.”
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