The Devil in Pew Number Seven by Rebecca Nichols Alonzo Read Free Book Online

there was nothing ominous about the Sellerstown community. No dark, sinister clouds lying low like a shroud in the sky. No sudden heaviness in the air. No uneasy feeling, premonition of impending doom, or even a lone black vulture circling overhead, keeping watch in anticipation of death.
    My parents didn’t have the slightest reason to turn back. They didn’t know about Willie Sellers, who settled disputes with a gun. Besides, they had a host of reasons for pressing on. They had been called, they had their marching orders, and now they were headed to Sellerstown to do the Lord’s work. It would be up to God to reap a harvest of souls.
    As they had done before the start of every revival, once they arrived in Sellerstown, my parents planned to meet their local contact, survey the hall where the revival services would be held, and then find a place to stay for the duration of the meetings. They knew a member of the congregation might provide accommodations in his home. Plan B usually meant setting up housekeeping in a nearby, inexpensive motel—though they soon discovered Sellerstown had none.
    Although I can’t say for sure, they probably drove toward their destination with the windows rolled down. It was, after all, a typical sunbaked day in Sellerstown. The mid-eighty-degree temperatures were the by-product of an August sun standing high and proud in the sky as if it were about to receive an award. Without air conditioning in their 1964 Plymouth, a brown sedan which had seen better days, it’s safe to say they would have invited the token breeze to bring some relief.
    Within a minute of turning onto Sellerstown Road, they passed Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, a humble white, cinder block structure, no larger than a four-car garage, planted like a cemetery headstone in a small plot. A clutch of tall trees surrounded the property like sentries, with just enough of a clearing to permit parking on the grassy side yard.
    This, they would learn, was where the black folk attended, with room for no more than forty or fifty worshipers. Most of the members worked as hired help on the local farms in this agricultural community.
    As the church took its place in their rearview mirror, they smelled, then saw, a tobacco barn fifty paces from the road. A gentle wind filled the air with the sweet, almost fruity scent of drying tobacco and a hint of freshly turned earth. As picturesque as a page torn out of Southern Living , rows of perfectly planted cornstalks, too numerous to count, awaited their turn for harvest in the unhurried patchwork of farmland beyond the barn.
    Behind a trailer at the far end of the field, laundry pinned to clotheslines swayed as the grayish white lengths of rope drooped under their loads. Directly across the street on the right-hand side of Sellerstown Road, a second church appeared: the Free Welcome Holiness Church. The modest one-story, redbrick building, accented with six windows, backed up to cornfields and felt instantly inviting, even though the white front doors remained closed.
    Adjacent to the church stood a newly constructed, almost-completed parsonage. Daddy had been informed that the church had been without a pastor for some months and the sheep were scattering without a shepherd. Perhaps the congregation, twelve women and one man, thought building a residence for the minister would attract a new candidate to fill the pulpit. Whatever their motivation, building the homestead certainly was a giant step of faith for such a small church family to undertake.
    My hunch is that Daddy, having served in the Navy and out of habit, might have cruised the length of Sellerstown Road, conducting an informal reconnaissance of the area before stopping inside the church. A preliminary survey would give him a better feel for his audience during Sunday’s revival. It was just as likely to prompt a few local metaphors with which to illustrate his message.
    If so, Daddy and Momma would have counted an