An elderly gentleman on his way to Woodville had dropped King off right in the middle of Main Street Bethel.  He slapped the side of the truck as he slung his bag over his shoulder and waved off the old man.  Just standing in the road, his brow began to drip with sweat.  But before taking a single step he inhaled an intentional, deep draught of air.  It was his first as Bethel’s new, wet behind the ears Baptist preacher.  Then he took a few ginger steps, felt the sticky tar pull at the soles of his well-worn Red Wings, and decided to stop standing in the middle of the road.

It was the summer of 1963 and the pages of King’s life had been turning like a novel left rustling in the evening breeze on the porch, pitching forward and back again.  He wasn’t even sure what page he was on.  In the midst of those pages, some 30-odd years in, Joseph King arrived in Bethel, Texas fresh from Southwestern Theological Seminary with white skin, white shirt and only the occasional dark thought.  He had taken the long way around to get to the small town that would be his new home – a bus to Beaumont and a handful of hitched rides along sleepy state and county roads crowded by thick, second-growth, longleaf pine forests.

Dingy truck stops, coagulated cherry pie and a comfortable pace should have put King at ease.  The tattered edges of country folk, the smell of oily overalls, stale sweat and cigarettes would have normally calmed him.  But the scrub oak and mesquite of his childhood were being replaced with the hundred foot tall cypress and sweet gum of the Piney Woods, and the woods felt as if they kept too many secrets for King’s liking.  Four years without alcohol, and keeping secrets, especially from himself, was something he felt he was loosing the ability to do, and it scared him.

Downtown Bethel, comprised mostly of brick and stone buildings built after the bonanza days of the local timber industry, appeared to be getting on just fine.  The north side of Main Street included a café and a beauty parlor, but the south side was more developed so he headed there first.  Cedar posts supported a tin awning that extended the entire length of the raised and pocked cement walk.  Grateful for the shade he stretched out the crease in his legs and broke into an awkward gate until he fell eventually into a loose and comfortable mosey along the storefronts.

As he drew near the end of the paved walk he noticed that farm road 633 came in from the west of town, but made a jig north along the old abandoned rails before finally crossing them and continuing east.  But where the road would have been if continued in a straight line, a dirt and gravel road lingered like the remnants of a dry river bed.  Stilted and crossways, a confused huddle of small wooden houses lined each side of the dry, forgotten riverbed like driftwood caught in a barbed-wire fence.  Corrugated tin and occasional wood shingles, rifled together and overlapping, formed a single, living roof that was low enough King could almost see past the whole piled-up mess from his perch on the raised walk.  And someone must have gotten a hold of a good deal of red paint and not been afraid of sharing it, King thought, as he noticed the same tint used to seal countless wooden surfaces up and down the train-car-calamity.  He started to wonder what could justify such a stark contrast between where he stood and the other side of the tracks, but he knew the answer as he asked it.

For a moment he lost his resolution and felt the surge of a lonely doubt rising like bile.  “Cow shit,” King muttered.  “I’m not cut out for this.  Jesus,” he found himself torn somewhere between profanity and prayer.  “How the hell am I supposed to talk about you to these people?”  The alien landscape crowded in and he stopped to steady himself on a smooth-worn cedar support.  The oil of a thousand hands different than his own had left the wood almost glossy enough to see his reflection.  King pulled his hand away, wiped the dripping sweat on his pants leg.  The sidewalk came to an end and King had no urge to stand exposed under the searing heat during the dead part of the day, so he cast about and headed back the way he had come, still moving his lips, but without any breath of speech.  Soon he realized he was losing the argument, not to mention looking insane to anyone inclined to watch.  So he stopped and made an effort to brighten himself.

On the west end of the walk the tin awning gave way to the groomed shade of a huge pecan tree, and just beyond that the gleaming white clapboard of First Baptist Bethel.  He daubed his brow again with his shoulder and sleeve to soak up the sweat stinging his eyes and started for the church that would soon be his to shape and grow, like it or not.

King banged on the white, double doors of the church and stepped back.  At a glance it appeared to be the oldest building in town, other than possibly a few of the nearby houses. It was one of the original wooden buildings, neither burned down nor later built over.  The craftsmanship from the doors all the way up to the steeple rendered it a classic example of a late nineteenth century, frontier Baptist church.  The parapet surrounding the bell tower, which was open in all four directions, was decorated with hand carved trim and lattice.  He waited a moment longer before banging on the doors again and then tried the latch.  Apparently no one was home, but the doors weren’t locked either.

“Hello?  Anybody home?”  He took a moment at the entrance to let his eyes adjust to the dim light.  Then he stepped forward on squeaky floorboards and ran his hand along the top of the back pew.  No dust, and by the grain it looked to be walnut.  He marveled.  Each and every pew handmade from old growth walnut.

“Pardon me, boss.  May I help ya’?”

King winced at the title and tone of the address that struck a raw chord in his gut, but turned to address a lanky, black gentleman about his own age.  “Hello, sir.  Sorry, I guess I let myself in.”

“Oh ain’t no difference, boss.”

“Please,” King started, “you can call me Joseph.”

“Yes sir, boss.  Joseph it is.  You can call me Scrivener.”

“Scrivener, really?”

“Yes, sir, as I was the first in my family who learnt to read and write.  My parents kept on a bragging ‘bout me to everybody they met until one proper learnt gentlemen commented one day, ‘Why he’s a bonafide scrivener now isn’t he.’  Yes sir, boss.  From that day on I’ve been known as Scrivener.  But some people, they just call me Scriv.”

“Well Mr. Scrivener, I’m pleased to meet you, but I’m afraid my name doesn’t really have a story behind it.  Not a story original to me anyhow.”  King tried hard to relax.  The thought briefly surprised him, but he wanted to sound like he belonged here.  “I’m sure I could cook ya’ up a sermon on my namesake from the Old Testament though.  That is if you don’t mind being bored something awful.”

“Jumping crawdaddies.  You must be the new preacher man.  ‘Scuse me, sir, for loafing about!  I’ve been instructed to hurry you off to Miss Munter as soon as I done found ya’.  And found ya’ I reckon I have.”

“Yes sir, you have.” King’s tension redoubled as control over his arrival started to slip away.  “Miss Munter?”

“Yes sir, boss.  I been given the strictest orders to bring ya’ straight away, and there ain’t be no sidestepping Miss Munter, no sir.”

King started to envision some crusty, older German matriarch seated in her recliner like a oyster in its shell, fanning herself and hiding multiple folds of skin under a floral print day-dress whose insufficient pleats had been stretched to form fitting.  “Uh, Mr. Scrivener…”

“This way boss, I mean, pardon me, sir.  I mean Mr. Joseph…”

“King.  It’s Joseph King.  My full name, that is.”

Taking his elbow Scrivener guided King back out the door.  “Mr. King!  I like the sound of that.  It’s real Scriptural.  Get on aside, the King is a coming!  Well Mr. Joseph, Miss Munter lives right around back.”

King resisted.  “Mr. Scrivener, really.  I’m sure there’s no hurry.  I just got to town, and I ain’t planning on leaving already.  I don’t need to bother Miss Munter during the heat of the day and all.”

“Oh it ain’t no bother, boss.  No bother a’tall.”  Then Scrivener winked an exaggerated double-wink and jabbed King with a bony elbow.  The whole gesture seemed clownish to King and made him even more uncomfortable.  “Besides, boss.  We show up just now wearing the right kinda smiles we just might be sitting down to some pie fresh off the sill.”  Scrivener slapped his thigh and took up King’s elbow again.

King had never known too many black folk and never understood the roles between them and whites, roles deemed inherent and indispensable among those from the South.  Color meant no difference to him, only character.  An idiot was an idiot in any color.  But his contempt for any and all phony, imposed status had gotten him into trouble years ago, and he just as soon not revisit it.  Nothing for it at the moment, he followed the curious Scrivener to meet the imposing Miss Munter.  With effort, he submitted himself to the locale and tried on a humbleness he deemed fitting for such introductions.