Heaven Forbid Read online

  “Not really.” Passion squelched the urge to sigh and instead turned and looked out the window. The night was dark and cloudless, the air warm.

  “The doc is happy. Tonight’s special offering was well over ten thousand dollars. The church was hanging on by a wing and a prayer, everything past due, folks not paid. If this keeps up all week, Gospel Truth will be back in the black. God is good.”

  This time Passion couldn’t stifle her annoyance, which came out as a snort.

  “Look, what is it? Just spit it out, okay? As if I don’t already know.”

  “My beloved,” Passion said, mimicking the seductive whisper Stan had used on her and other females in the audience. She knew how well those tactics worked. She was once the female in his congregation, hanging on to Stan’s every word, ready to do all that he had asked. In fact, she’d done what he’d asked, and what his interpretation of the Bible had demanded, for five, long years. Passion had done the work. Now she wanted the reward.

  “Can you live right for God, for me?” Passion shifted in her seat to look directly at Stan as she threw his words back in his face. “What about you, Stan? Can you live right by God? Can you honor your wife, our vows, and our marriage bed? Because your old-time religion preaching has got me as horny as hell and—”

  “Watch your language, woman of God.”

  “Horny as hell,” Passion repeated for emphasis. “I want you in my bed tonight, Stan. And I want us to make mad, passionate love to each other the way God intended, the way marriage ought to be.”

  “There’s more to marriage than screwing.”

  “That may be true, but those other things aren’t on my mind right now.” Sex is…and pink panties. She knew the underwear conversation would have its day, but Passion wanted to handle one problem at a time and right now—her wet panties were the priority.

  Stan muttered under his breath.

  “Excuse me? What did you just say?”

  “I said you’re just like her.”

  “Oh, no, he didn’t,” Passion whispered to the trees whizzing by as they sped down the highway. “I am not just like Carla,” she continued, knowing Stan was referring to his ex-wife. “If I were, I’d be in another man’s bed right now, instead of here supporting your monkish ass!”

  “I said watch your language! No wife of mine is going to talk like that!”

  “I’ll talk however I want, Stan. I’ve already got a daddy and you ain’t him!”

  “Not in my car you won’t!”

  “Kiss my ass!”

  “What?” Stan turned widened eyes on his wife.

  “Now that I think about it, will you please kiss my ass, as well as the surrounding area!” Passion began to laugh hysterically at the irony of the statement. “Please, pretty please with a cherry on top,” she eked out between gales of laughter. “Kiss my ass and my assets, Doctor Stan Lee!”

  Between the pressure from Passion and the phone call from his church secretary he’d received earlier, it was too much. Stan quickly decelerated, changed lanes, and with his foot steadily on the brake, eased onto the highway’s shoulder.

  “Stan, what are you doing?” Passion asked, wiping laughter-induced tears from her eyes.

  “I’m putting you out.”

  “Whew, you’re about to crack me up again. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  The car came to a stop. Dust from the gravel billowed around them. Stan kept his hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead as he spoke. “I’ve asked you to stop cursing, and you insist on being disrespectful and disobedient. Now get out.”

  Passion crossed her arms and shook her head, convinced that her husband had now lost his mind along with his libido.

  Stan sat for a second longer before snapping off his seat belt, opening his car door, and marching over to Passion’s side of the car. “Get out.”

  “What are you going to do, Stan, leave me here on the side of the highway?”

  “That’s where most trash ends up, isn’t it?” Stan reached into the car, undid Passion’s belt, and grabbed her arm.

  “Let go of me, fool!”

  “Get out of the car!”

  Passion grabbed a hold of the steering wheel, leaning her body away from the door. She was determined to stay in the car.

  Stan was just as determined to get her out of it. He grabbed her leg and pulled. Passion started kicking. “Let go of my leg!” Her skirt rode up to around her waist as she continued kicking and screaming. One kick landed on Stan’s thigh, another one precariously close to his manhood. Stan grabbed Passion’s ankles with one hand and with the other, reached under his wife’s buttocks and pulled her out of the car. Passion managed to stay on her feet and immediately tried to get back in the car. Stan grabbed her around the waist, swung them both around, and pushed Passion several feet away from him.

  Heaving for breath, Stan turned and walked toward the driver’s side of the car. But he didn’t get far. Two hundred pounds of pissed-off female jumped on his back, and arms became death grips as Passion held on for dear life.

  “You’re not going anywhere without me,” she panted. “Understand that, nucka. Nowhere!”

  Stan tried to turn and loosen Passion off his back at the same time. Had there not been a rut hidden in the grass, he might have been successful. But his foot hit the crease in the earth, and both he and Passion fell to the ground. The only thing missing from the picture was a voice crying “timber!” They landed with a thud and began wrestling and rolling in the grass. Passion pummeled Stan with her fists while he hid his face and deflected her blows. Using his foot as leverage, he once again grabbed her arms and rolled them over until he was on top. “No wife of mine will talk like a trollop,” he huffed, using the word his grandmother flung regularly at the girls in the neighborhood where he grew up. He felt a strange sense of empowerment—and arousal—as memories of wrestling with someone else came into his mind.

  Passion’s head hit a rock. “Ow!” Her scream brought Stan back from the crazy place his mind had gone. He suddenly became aware of his surroundings and realized with horror that not only was he, a prominent man of God who’d just preached the Word to hundreds, wrestling with his wife on the side of the Interstate, but also that in a hideously sadistic way, he was enjoying it. I’m losing it. I’ve got to get a grip!

  Stan became very aware of Passion’s presence underneath him. “Passion, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me. Are you all right?” His deep chocolate eyes bore into Passion’s lighter ones, darkening even more as his body responded of its own volition to Passion’s softness and heavy breathing from the wild-world-of-wrestling episode they’d both just re-created.

  “Shh, Passion, don’t cry. I didn’t mean this. I didn’t mean any of this.” Stanley kissed Passion’s eyes, where tears pooled at the corners before sliding into her ears. “I’m sorry, darling.” He kissed her nose and mouth.

  Suddenly, Passion didn’t feel the pebbles or grass beneath her. She only felt Stan’s hard body on top of hers and knew this may not be where she wanted it, but this was what she wanted. Her premenopausal hormones were like those of a raging teenager, and at the moment she didn’t care that her behavior matched them. She shamelessly opened her mouth, sucking Stan’s tongue in, grinding into his manhood, pressing his head more firmly down on hers. Stan gave as good as he got, both of them now totally oblivious to everything but each other. Neither of them heard the car that drove up and parked just behind their rented Cadillac. It was the red lights, however, that got their attention. Both of their eyes flew open as they sensed flashing lights and heard hard-soled shoes stepping onto the gravel. Stan rolled over and Passion scooted to her knees, rearranging her skirt and trying desperately to rise quickly in her three-inch heel. The other shoe rested on its side near the pavement.

  Stan and Passion looked up sheepishly at the cop, a hysterical laugh lodged in their throats.

  “What in the Sam tarnation is going on here?” the senior officer asked in a Texan
twang as he approached, keeping a hand on the butt of his gun. His partner stood next to the patrol car talking into the car radio.

  Stan and Passion could only imagine how ridiculous they looked, and the officer’s question made it clear that they had some explaining to do. As Stan whipped up a creative explanation to appease the cop, something about going through with a bet and a dare, Passion’s mind whirled with what had just happened. She’d witnessed something from her husband that she hadn’t seen much of outside the pulpit—passion. Passionate anger to be sure, but it was passion nonetheless. Considering the circumstances, she should have been angry, but instead Passion was hopeful. Maybe tonight would be different than the others. She ignored the warning bells going off in her head and held on to the desire pulsating throughout her body. Perhaps tonight, she thought, she’d know her husband—in the biblical sense of the word!

  5

  A Stranger’s Confession

  “He did what?” Mama Max paced her living room floor much as Passion had the day before.

  “I know it sounds bad, Mama Max, but I started it.” Remembering how the night ended, Passion almost laughed. It wasn’t the best sex she’d ever had, but Passion knew that if she could ever teach Stan to properly use what God had given him, she’d be in seventh heaven.

  “Ain’t no such thing as a woman starting nothing that ends with a hand upside your head.”

  “Wait a minute, now. He didn’t hit me, Mama Max.”

  “Hit, pushed, shoved—he put his hands on you, didn’t he?”

  Among other things. Belatedly, Passion remembered she was talking to a revered mother of the church and forced her thoughts away from last night’s bedroom antics, the first such experience in a little more than three months.

  “You’re right, Stan should not have threatened to kick me out of the car, and he most definitely shouldn’t have made good on his threat and landed us both on our hind ends. But everything worked out all right.”

  “How you figure?”

  “Because Stan and I were intimate last night, Mama Max. For the first time in a very long time.”

  “Humph, you young women amaze me.”

  Passion knew that there was no changing Mama Max’s mind, so she didn’t try. “I just called to thank you, Mama Max. God must have heard you. I also called to see if you wanted to share a light dinner before church tonight. Since Stan is with your husband—”

  “Who told you Stan was with Obadiah?”

  “You mean he isn’t? Stan left here over an hour ago, said he had a meeting. I just assumed it was with Reverend Doctor O.”

  “No, child, Reverend Doctor was in his study most of the night and is there right now. He’s been bombarding the throne of grace on behalf of these backslidin’ saints here in Palestine. If Stan shows up here, I’ll have him call you.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll try his cell phone. And on second thought, I need to watch my waistline. I’ll just have some of the salad Miss Nettie had delivered last night.”

  “All right, baby.”

  Passion pressed the END button and immediately called Stan. When the call went to voice mail, she didn’t leave a message.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” Stan squirmed uncomfortably in the tight quarters.

  “How long has it been since your last confession?”

  “I’m not Catholic. I just want to confess my sins before you and the Lord. I saw this church and stopped.”

  “Very well. What is the grievance against God that you’ve committed?”

  “I pushed my wife.”

  “You pushed your wife?”

  “Yes, I was trying to get her out of the car.”

  “How badly was she hurt?”

  “I didn’t hurt her—I mean, not physically. But I’ve never laid a hand on a woman in my life. She just kept pushing my buttons, has been pushing them for months. And that’s not all, Father.”

  “Go on.”

  “I had sex.”

  “I see. With whom, son?”

  “My wife!”

  There was a long pause before the priest continued. “Your wife.”

  Stan nodded, unable to answer for fear of breaking down and crying “like a bitch,” as he’d heard a teenager at church say while among his schoolmates, a phrase he himself would never voice because he didn’t allow profane words to come out his mouth. He also knew that if he opened his mouth, he might confess his other sins, the ones that had haunted him for more than forty years.

  “And having sex with your wife is a sin because…,” the priest prompted.

  “Because I’m supposed to live holy! How am I going to lead a backslidden congregation back to Christ if I’m sweating between my wife’s legs? Father God, forgive me! And give me strength to withstand the wiles of the devil!”

  Father Flannigan took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. The Catholic population was quite small in Palestine, most confessions boringly routine. Kelly Munson confessed weekly to gambling on the boats in Louisiana. Her son, Patrick, owned up to cheating on his school exams and having lustful thoughts about his school’s head cheerleader, and Jim O’Reilly admitted giving in to the pleasures of alcohol, often making this confession while reeking of liquor. Admitting affairs was fairly common, as was guilt for lying, cheating, and stealing. For the most part, these admissions were perfunctory, confessed again and again. But this man, this stranger’s confession, was different. Father Flannigan perceived a deep hurt in this man’s heart and pain from his past, pain so severe it clouded his judgment to the point that he felt it was wrong to make love to his wife.

  “As a man of the cloth, you know the word of God,” Father Flannigan said. When the stranger on the other side of the partition remained silent, he continued. “And you probably also know that the marriage bed is undefiled, that sex was given to married couples as a way to show their love for each other. It is a totally blessed act in the eyes of God.”

  “It is a necessity to be used for procreation only,” Stan countered. “This was a mistake. I’ve got to get out of here.” Stan ran away from the priest and from the power of that which he hadn’t confessed.

  “Wait, son!”

  Father Flannigan heard the outer door slam. He crossed himself and prayed for the tortured soul of the man who’d entered his chamber.

  6

  A Secret Place

  Mama Max hummed a lively tune of “Old Time Religion” as she prepared another loaf of banana nut bread. The revival had ended, and to everyone’s profound relief, it had been a huge financial success, partly due to an anonymous donation of twenty thousand dollars that Nettie had confided to Mama came from her son, Gospel Truth’s former pastor, Nate Thicke. Nobody could question that the revival was timely and had led to financial prosperity, as least for the time being. Mama Max knew that only time would tell whether it would lead to spiritual prosperity for the Gospel Truth members and whether such growth was temporary or permanent.

  “Give me that old time religion,” she sang as she squished the last of the bananas and began folding them into the batter. “Old time religion like it used to be. Yes, Lord.” Mama Max felt good this morning. This feeling was much different than it had been just a month ago, when collectors threatened to turn off the church’s electricity, or a week ago, when she fretted over who might or might not come to the revival, and definitely different than the sinking feeling she’d had after the Reverend Doctor preached his first sermon as pastor of Gospel Truth.

  Mama Max had had gas all morning on that particular Sunday, a sure sign of trouble if there ever was one. Nevertheless, she’d dressed up in her Sunday best, a spiffy long dress bursting with flowers in primary colors, and a red straw hat boasting flowers as well. She was greeted warmly, probably reminding more than a few attendees of their grandmothers. The church was almost full, she remembered, and the choir had “sang their way on up to heaven” as Mama Max’s father used to quip. But shortly after the side door opened and her hus
band entered the sanctuary, the atmosphere changed. Mama Max had immediately gotten the sinking feeling that things weren’t going to go over very well. That her husband walked into the church carrying an oversized broom was her first clue. The title of his sermon, “Sweeping Satan out the Church,” was her second.

  Nobody would argue the point that the reverend doctor being back in the pulpit agreed with his health. Until he was called out of retirement, Reverend Doctor O seemed to have one ailment after another: high blood pressure, heart palpitations, arthritis, back pain. But from the time Nettie Johnson called with the request that Mama Max’s husband come out of retirement to save a church, Obadiah had been the picture of health.

  That first Sunday Obadiah preached was no exception. He brought forth the word of God with fervor, shaking the rafters with his booming voice. Looking back, Mama Max thought he would have hailed down fire and brimstone for real if he’d been able to. As it was, his sermon sufficed, as he admonished the people to “get right with God or get left behind.” But when he brought out the new Gospel Truth Member Manual, the massive document that even she hadn’t known about, well, that’s when Mama Max’s gas started acting up for real!

  “Whew, it’s long,” Nettie had leaned over and whispered as she began thumbing through the pages. When asked by the reverend, she’d offered her advice on what she felt were the “dos and don’ts” of godly living. She knew others had been questioned and had contributed their two cents as well. Nettie had no idea, however, that their suggestions were going to become a behavioral bible of sorts, a rules-and-regulations manual to be followed without question. But Reverend Doctor O was making this fact plain, bellowing the threat that members were to adhere to the Word, or else. Nettie swallowed hard as she read some of the page headlines, knowing even as strict as it appeared, the handbook was probably for the best.

  “Lord have mercy,” Mama Max said softly as she read the table of contents. “Even Jesus better stay up in heaven. ’Cause if he comes down here to Gospel Truth Church, the Reverend Doctor might not think him holy enough to get back in!”