35
RAFF EXITED HENRY'S Guns and Shooting Gallery and walked on down Oak Street as fast as he could without breaking into a run. He turned onto Bledsoe Street and continued until he reached the entrance to the Sunderland Office Building. He squeezed into the elevator, which was crowded with employees returning from their lunch hour. Arriving at the executive office floor, he waved away a staffer trying to hand him a file folder, went into his office, closed the door, fell into a swivel chair, and speed-dialed Bill Robbins.
The answering machine announced that the journalist was in the field on assignment and would be back the next day. He didn't like cell phones: "It scares the birds." Raff then remembered that Robbins was with a small group of ecologists visiting the Red Hills, just north of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. They were going to explore a backcountry tract containing remnant old-growth pine savanna and hardwood-clad ravines.
Raff left a message, "Hey, Bill, must talk. Please call. Urgent."
There was nothing left for him to do for the while except try to calm down. He walked back out of his office, collected the file folder, walked back in, and put it on top of papers already stacked on his desk. He stared at the pile several minutes, keeping his hands folded in his lap. Then he got up and walked over to the window. Looking out at nothing in particular, he mentally rehearsed his bizarre encounter with Reverend Wayne LeBow. That resulted in no new insights. After a while he sat down again at his desk. This time he buried himself in paperwork.
Late that night, while Raff was getting ready for bed and distracting himself with a WBC welterweight championship fight on television, Robbins finally called. He said he was dead tired, begged off, and offered to come over first thing the next day.
Early the next morning they met for breakfast in the first-floor cafeteria of the Sunderland Office Building. As soon as they were settled, Raff said, "I think I just got a death threat." He then gave as verbatim as possible an account of his conversation with Wayne LeBow.
"Well, congratulations. You just met the Sword of Gideon," Robbins said. "I remember I warned you about those people before. Now it looks like they think you're a pretty important guy around here and want to do some pushing around. I know that outfit a little. Rob Davis, on Channel Eight News, talks about them once in a while. LeBow is your classical egomaniac rabble-rouser of the kind that spring up like mushrooms around here. He's actually pretty well educated. He spent a couple of years at Auburn University, can you believe that? With a major in religion studies. He's not a real minister, at least not ordained by any place I ever heard of. He's actually a guard captain at the Monroeville Prison. I hear he's always jabbering at the inmates about finding Jesus. He just took over a little church near there. What's its name?"
"Church of the Eternal Redeemer, I think he said."
"Yeah. Well, anyway, LeBow's a piece of work. But you know, he's not that far out down here in South Alabama. A lot of the country people, not to mention working folks in and around Mobile too, have more or less the same ideas. Jesus is coming in our lifetime, and we better be ready. It's called the Rapture. The ones who've been saved will go right up bodily, Jesus leading the way. LeBow's just taken the prophecy to the extreme. What's worrisome is he's getting aggressive and he's pulling in a lot of followers. That little church is packed every Sunday. He's building a cult, is what he's doing. Shall we call them the LeBowites? They're itching to go to war with the devil. Heaven knows what happened to the original pastor. Rob Davis probably knows the story. I'll try to remember and ask him, or maybe you can go talk to him yourself, if you want."
Raff was breathing hard and sucking air through his teeth. This discourse was not helping him relax at all. He pushed back his chair to get more leg room and squeezed his eyes shut.
"Anyway," Robbins pressed on, "it's an old evangelical tradition with a military twist. Ever heard of Billy Sunday, the big-time evangelist back in the twenties? He'd say--I actually heard him on an old record--'I'll fight sin till I can't use my arms no more, and then I'll bite it, and when I got no teeth left, I'll gum it.' Great stuff! There's a difference here, though, and I don't want to make too much light of it. The radical fringe folks like the Sword of Gideon are always dangerous. A few of them can turn violent on a dime. Either that or they're violent nutcases from the start. There have been quite a few murders and even mass suicides in this country and elsewhere. The Sword of Gideon fits the pattern another way, at least for down here. Like a lot of religious fringe groups, it recruits mostly from poor whites who feel that they've been cheated some way or other. They're the most alienated group in the South right now. Basically, it's the same old same old. They'll get justice any way they can, even if that means getting violent. Social justice anyway, if you can't get economic justice."
"Now that you mention it," Raff said, opening his eyes and pulling himself up in the chair, "the guy with LeBow looked like a real thug. I just assumed he was a bodyguard, or a muscleman of some sort. I wondered why he was there. He sure wasn't any altar boy."
"Yeah, let's make a distinction here if you haven't already thought of it yourself. The way I see it, there are rednecks and then there are redneck white trash. The large part of the population who call themselves rednecks, and laugh about it, are good people--really solid, mostly working-class citizens. But the white trash, they're the underclass. They're the ones with the abandoned automobiles in the front yard and mongrel dogs living off kitchen scraps and running around all over the place--the kind you accidentally squash on the highway and nobody cares. The men like to hang out at strip joints, drink a lot of beer and whiskey--anything they can afford for the night. They'll pull out a knife and cut you if you insult them--which, by the way, you can do just looking at them or their girlfriends too long. They're racists, of course. But mostly they're just proud, and broke, and mad all the time."
"Yeah, I guess the best way to get in big trouble with one is either to kick his motorcycle or come on to his girlfriend. It's part of our tradition down here."
"But, you know," Robbins went on, "and maybe this is your point. They're proud but they're not monsters. Make friends with one of them, he'll give you the shirt off his back--maybe. My point is that they got no education, and they're easily led by anyone who says he speaks for God. If you want to see a big concentration of them, go to the Monroeville Prison. They've all been saved by Jesus up there."
Raff added, "The Klan comes to my mind--you know, these people from the same breed that made up the foot soldiers of the old Klan. The difference, I think, is that the Klan preached raw racism, and groups like the Sword of Gideon are more into religious bigotry." Robbins affirmed his agreement by pointing both index fingers at Raff. He said, "Except the Klan and the fighting Born Agains you're dealing with are racial and religious bigots both, just in different proportions."
"Anyway," Raff said, "the question I need to put to you right now is, should I worry? Are LeBow and his gang going to be dangerous for me personally, with all that 'Jesus kills' stuff? What do you think, should I do anything, go to the police? I've been guessing maybe not. LeBow didn't actually threaten me with anything. He just gave me a hellfire sermon."
"Rob Davis tells me that LeBow's given that little spiel to a few others--academics, high school principals, local politicians. So you're not alone. The fact that it was a sermon of a sort, with a 'Come to Jesus' tag line, makes me think he may not be talking to you at all. He's trying to impress his followers. You know, the crusader, tough guy for Jesus. He's saying to his people, See how I can push those big-shot liberal atheists around."
"That makes sense," Raff said. "But are they dangerous? Have they actually attacked anybody?"
"Well, you know, yes, they're dangerous. I say that because there have been a number of beatings and unsolved murders and disappearances. LeBow and his church members haven't been charged with any of it, not yet anyway. And the victims have been, so far as I've heard, just apostates--you know, rivals or defectors. Not outsiders like you."
Raff said, "Sounds like a power struggle. Maybe that's why LeBow is getting so aggressive. That would explain that tattooed guy he brought along. He's desperate."
"Could be. In any case, I'd be careful. I'd talk to Rob Davis about the whole thing, if I were you. You might also want to file a report with the police and let LeBow know about it if you ever run into him again. Who knows? Maybe somebody's trying to kill him."