Excerpt: Family Secrets

CHAPTER ONE
"Keep it up there like that, Jeb. That's right" shouted the Reverend Carlisle from the ground below. He shaded his eyes with his hand.
"I still don't see why you want to set up a tent when we have a perfectly good church not a mile away, " shouted Jeb Saunders from the ladder as he helped set up the giant tent that was to hold the Willow Bend Tent Revival and prayer meeting.
"I just think a tent helps us appreciate the simpler things in life," answered the reverend. We can bring the congregation back in to the church when we've go them fired up again." Reverend Carlisle walked back to his trailer with a satisfied grin. He believed in doing many things the old way. one of those things was getting people closer to nature and by doing so, helping them feel closer to the Lord. Attendance had been dipping in the congregation for the past couple of years before the Reverend Robert Carlisle came to town. He was brought in when the previous preacher Reverend Joseph Stevens had to leave the area due to a family emergency.
The family emergency was that he had gotten one of his female congregants in a "family way," much to the chagrin of his wife.
Reverend Carlisle didn't judge the man. Lord knows, he had some sinful days in his past. Though he couldn't understand why a man with a loving wife and his own congregation would do something so careless as to put it all in jeopardy like that. And then, in the end, Reverend Stevens lost it all. The congregation, his wife, even Marcy Dill, the young woman with whom he dallied. The child was put up for adoption, and though Marcy was 18, she was still living at home. Her father got a restraining order against Reverend Joseph Stevens by way of his Smith and Wesson. Though law enforcement in the small town of Willow Bend, population 5,403, was honest, trustworthy and reliable, the residents often preferred to take matters into their own hands. Sheriff Miles Baker was okay with it if someone wanted to protect their family with the showy display of artillery as long as the threats were not actually carried out.

Reverend Carlisle walked up the steps of his trailer, turned and looked around. In the background behind his trailer was a chain link fence that separated the property from the woods which consisted of eucalyptus trees. From his front porch, the view was a large empty field dotted with a few trees and some fences signifying the beginning and end of property lines. As he looked over the yellowed grass and weeds covering the field, he thought how this was about as rural a surrounding as he had been in recent years and was not at all the suburbia where he grew up with his brother and sister and parents. Though he grew up in the same home for most of his life, the Reverend Robert Carlisle had preferred to be less stationary. He rarely stayed in one place more than a year or so. The reverend turned back around and entered his trailer.
It was a single wide with décor from the 1970’s, though it was clean, almost new looking. The reverend started up the tea kettle on the propane burning stovetop, cleaned out the white coffee mug with the fancy gold cross printed on the side, rinsed it out in the sink and put it in the dish drainer to dry while his water got hot. He did the same with the spoon on the countertop. He opened another cupboard and scanned the assortment of teas and coffees. Reaching up, he chose the Orange spice, took out a bag and put it in the mug he retrieved from the dish drainer. Just as the tea kettle began to whistle, he turned off the stove, grabbed a dish cloth and poured the water into the mug. Tea in hand, the reverend Robert Carlisle sat down on the booth at the kitchen table that also became a full sized bed when folded away, and gazed out the window.