Tricksters and Angels

Chapter 2

2

July, 2012

Abilene, Texas

“I just got another demand from Reverend Billy Paul,” Hiram Beecher said, shaking a huge fist at the notebook computer and its collage of photos from the Rio Chama de Milagro Shrine in New Mexico. “He wants us to investigate this supposed new Christian healing shrine in New Mexico. He thinks it might be an opportunity for us.”

He was standing in the boardroom of the Brothers of the Lord, a worldwide Christian ministry, whose regional headquarters for the Southwest United States was in Abilene, Texas. The top floor offices looked down on historic Cypress Street, once busy with cars and pedestrians visiting its small shops. But the district was still as empty and dusty as it was during the first year of the Great Recession. Clustered around him were the eleven other members of the board, all of them waiting for Brother Beecher to tell them what he wanted.

Beecher enjoyed his position of power in the Brotherhood. He was a giant, florid man, in his mid-60s, as hard as the oilrigs he had worked on as a teenager in Gregg County in Eastern Texas, and as tough as the Airborne Rangers he’d joined at the height of America’s war effort in Vietnam. His clothes were plain; his dark beard was flecked with gray like his hair. The last two fingers were missing from his left hand. They had been mangled by twisted parachute lines during a jump into Laos. He’d cut them off, bandaged the hand and completed his clandestine mission.

“What does he want, Brother Beecher?” Sam Conklin asked. He was the youngest board member. He was shorter than Beecher and not as thick. “I hear the shrine heals the sick and gives peace to all who visit. It’s located near the ruins of a sacred mission, where God's priests were slaughtered by heathens.”

Beecher was surprised that Conklin knew a lot about something he had never heard of. Conklin was headstrong at times, blurting out whatever he thought instead of watching and waiting, but Beecher needed his connections to the oil and cattle wealth in central Texas.

“He wants as much information as we can find on this shrine,” said Beecher. “The New Mexico region is part of our responsibility for the Brothers of the Lord. I’ll take the lead on investigating the shrine’s healing powers. I want the rest of you to find out who owns the land. Is it for sale? When did the shrine start?”