Have A Little Faith In Me by Brad Vance Read Free Book Online Page B

time,” praying or doing Bible study or his homework.
    But mastering a musical instrument starts with mangling a musical instrument.  Norman would sit in the living room and practice after all his other tasks were complete.  But there were so many wrong notes, so many false starts, that it got on his father’s nerves. 
    “Go on up to your room and do that,” his father said, not looking up from his account books.
    Norman was stunned.  Until now, being sent to his room was punishment.  That room was a monastic cell with no posters, no music, and no books other than the Bible and a copy of “Left Behind.”
    But he didn’t argue.  He took his guitar and his lesson book and went upstairs.  He had one of the musician’s first formative experiences – what it sounds like, what it feels like, to play alone in a small, empty room.  To make mistakes with nobody to hear, to judge.  And then even, one day, to softly and tentatively sing the words to the song he was playing, to do something that he hadn’t asked permission to do, a first tiny rebellion.
     
    Norman had no idea that the six steps up from the church floor to the stage could be such a long and terrifying journey.
    “I don’t know,” the Reverend said, shaking his head at his mother’s suggestion.  “It might give the boy a big head, having all those people applaud him.”
    Faith wasn’t to be stymied.  Norman’s progress in the nine months since they’d started had been uncanny.  “If they’re applauding him for doing good Christian music, and they will, because he’s that good, well…  If you want him to use this gift to serve God, you’d better get him up on the church stage before some other stage lures his soul.”
    The camera frightened Norman more than the thousands of people who were waiting for him to perform.  The cold, impersonal eye broadcasted a gigantic version of him onto the screen above the stage, so that even the faithful in the far reaches of the balcony could see him up close.
    Faith saw his nerves when he looked at the camera.  She walked over and stood by the cameraman, smiling, so that it was her that Norman saw.  He smiled back, relieved, and sat down on the little stool in front of the microphone.
    He launched into “I’ll Fly Away,” singing the lyrics in his sweet, high, nine-year-old voice, his fingers deftly plucking the notes.  He didn’t just play with technical facility, but with such feeling for the sad song, an old man’s song, really, about waiting for death, that for one blasphemous moment Faith wondered if there was such a thing as reincarnation after all, and that Norman was an old soul reborn.
    Norman didn’t know about getting old and thinking about death, but something in the song spoke to him anyway.  As he sang it, he looked up at the skylight in the ceiling, a hundred feet above him, and thought about what it might be like to be a bird, to just…take off, to just go.  He looked at his grandmother and for some reason he thought about how sad it was to be a bird in a cage, and that’s what he sang about.
    When he finished, the church roared its applause, coming to their feet.  He felt a surge of ecstasy, a chemical response to some pheromone released into the air by that many people expressing so much enthusiastic approval. 
    Until that day, he’d played at being a fireman, or an astronaut, or a policeman, from one day to the next.  But after that day, there was no more pretending.  He knew now what he would be.

CHAPTER 8 – YOU HELPED THIS HAPPEN
     
    As the years went by, Norman had more and more time to himself.  “Family time” evenings with his father weren’t possible when Reverend McCoy was gone so often, as he took taking a larger and larger place on the national stage.  The Defense of Marriage Act wasn’t the end of the battle against the gay agenda – not by far. 
    No, the gays were insidious; they would continue to undermine the family, the gays and all the