The old man on the telephone was named Ezekiel Marsh, and he was eighty four years old, and for thirty one years he had been the pastor of Grace Fellowship in Shreveport, Louisiana. He said he had been looking for Pastor Dale for twelve years. His voice was low and tired and kind. “Mrs. Grady,” he said, “if the man who preaches in your church is called Dale Rudd, I would be most grateful if you did not confront him. He is not who he says he is. Please wait for me. I will be on a bus tonight.”
I read through the folder from the truck while I waited. There were newspaper clippings from the Shreveport Times, yellowed and soft. A photograph of a younger Pastor Dale, thinner, with dark hair, standing in front of a half built sanctuary. The headline said, BUILDING FUND OF GRACE FELLOWSHIP MISSING, PASTOR VANISHES. Under it, a story about two hundred and ten thousand dollars gathered from the dimes and dollars of four hundred members, most of them elderly, most of them poor. The pastor had left in the night. He had not left a note. The church had closed within the year.
At the bottom of the folder was a page in the writing of my husband. Odell had gone to Shreveport in March, on a Tuesday, without telling me, in the old truck. He had found Brother Marsh, and he had sat with him in his kitchen for three hours. His notes were careful and brief. “Dale Rudd was born Dwight Rudd. Used the name Whitlock in Louisiana. Left Grace Fellowship 2012. Two other churches since. Same pattern. Marsh has the proof.” At the bottom he had written, in letters pressed so hard that the pen had torn the paper, “Protect Lucille.”
A quiet man who writes in the margins of his Bible may leave behind the best sermon of his life.
Ezekiel Marsh came on Friday morning on a Greyhound bus, in a black suit that was too big for him and a hat from another decade. I met him at the station in Florence with a thermos of coffee. He was a small, bent man with enormous hands. Over biscuits at my kitchen table he laid out his case, a thin folder of bank records, canceled checks signed in the hand of Dwight Rudd, and a letter from the Louisiana Attorney General that said the investigation was open. “I have prayed for twelve years,” he said, “to see this man brought to account, and not to see him hurt. I think the Lord has a sense of humor.”
I called the one person in town I trusted without question, a retired deputy named Willie Pugh who sat in the pew behind me. Willie came over at once in his uniform pants and a clean white shirt, listened to the whole story with his hat on his knee, and said very quietly, “Lucille, I am going to call a friend at the state Attorney General in Montgomery.” By Saturday noon, two investigators were in my living room, and by Saturday night they had a warrant. They did not want to make an arrest in front of the congregation, and neither did I. We agreed on a plan.
On Sunday morning I sat in my usual pew, third from the front on the left, in my navy dress and the pearl brooch of Odell. Pastor Dale preached on generosity. He was good at it. He had the whole room in his hand, and I will confess I almost felt sorry for him. Near the end of the service he stepped down from the pulpit with a pledge card and spoke of the new sanctuary. “Let us honor our fallen brothers,” he said, looking directly at me. “Let us give.” The deacon took up a collection. And at that moment, the side door of the sanctuary opened.
Brother Marsh stood in the doorway in his oversize suit with his hat in his hands. He did not say a word. He did not need to. Pastor Dale looked up, and I watched his face go through three expressions in the span of a second, recognition, disbelief, and a kind of terrible weariness. His fingers loosened. The pledge cards fluttered to the carpet. Behind Brother Marsh two men in plain jackets stepped quietly into the aisle, and a hush rolled over the congregation like a wave over a dock.
He did not run. I think he had been waiting to be caught for twelve years. He walked down from the platform, took off his robe, folded it over the rail of the pulpit, and went to meet the investigators in the aisle. Willie Pugh put a gentle hand on his elbow. They took him out through the side door without handcuffs, as a courtesy. Not a single person in that church said a word. Then an old man in the back row began to hum a hymn, quietly, and the whole room joined him, rising slowly to their feet.
The state of Alabama charged him with fraud and theft by deception. Louisiana added its own counts. The court in Shreveport ordered all assets frozen, and in the end about ninety thousand dollars was recovered, which was distributed to the families of Grace Fellowship, many of whom wept when the checks arrived. The church in Florence audited its own books, found everything in order, and hired an interim pastor, a young woman with a ready laugh named Rebecca Tate. The first Sunday she preached, the pews were fuller than I had seen them since the funeral of Odell.
I did not sign the pledge card. Instead I used a portion of the forty eight thousand dollars to establish a scholarship in the name of Odell Grady, for a graduate of Florence High School who plans to study theology or teaching. Brother Marsh came back to Alabama in June to hand out the first award. He stood at the pulpit in a new gray suit that fit, and he said, “Odell Grady wrote in the margin of his Bible, Never give a dime. I would like to add a line. Do give a heart.” Then he looked at me, and we both smiled.
