The account that received the forty thousand dollars belonged to Pastor Dennis Marsh, and when the banker said the name over the telephone, my husband Clifford sat down hard on the arm of the sofa. I stood in the living room in Greenville with the receiver in my hand, seventy six years old, and I thought of every Tuesday night for twelve years, the pot roast, the prayers, the pastor sitting in the big chair by the window, telling us how blessed we were. Gary had not been stealing alone. He had been carrying the money to the man who preached to us.
We told no one. Clifford and I sat up that night and wrote down everything, the giving account, the dates, the deacon who had helped us manage it, the pastor who had arranged it, the small amounts that began in February and grew like weeds. In the morning we called the bank and the sheriff and a lawyer, the same woman who had handled the sale of our furniture store. By Tuesday afternoon a plan was in place, and an investigator from the State Law Enforcement Division was sitting in our kitchen drinking coffee.
On Tuesday night, the small group arrived at seven as always. Ricky and Lashonda came first, with the youngest of their four children asleep on his father shoulder. Then four other couples. Then Gary, hugging Clifford for a long time, saying, “Brother, whatever you need.” The investigator sat in the den with the door ajar. Clifford stood up in front of the fireplace, took a deep breath, and told our friends that we had not lost a penny, that we had lied, and that we had done it because someone was stealing from us.
A lie told in a living room gave one couple the Tuesday to bring their friends back to the truth in Greenville.
I gave my terms from the arm of the sofa in the living room, with the whole small group sitting in a stunned half circle. “Gary, we are not going to shout at you. You are going to sit in that chair and wait for the man in the den. Pastor Marsh will be visited tonight at the parsonage by the same investigator. And all the rest of you are free to leave, or to stay. But I want you to know that two people in this room, Ricky and Lashonda, came to us when they thought we had nothing. They brought a casserole and three hundred dollars. That is what a church looks like.”
Gary did not sit. His face had turned the color of putty. “Maggie, I only moved it for Pastor,” he said. “He told me the Lord would forgive it, that it was for the missions, and that you would never feel it. I have eleven kids in the youth group. I thought if I said no he would take it out of me.” He began to weep. “I have been a deacon for twenty years, and I was afraid of my own preacher. I let him use me. I let him use your trust.”
He did not wait for the end. Gary seized the leather folder in which he had brought the giving records, ran to the front door, and flung it open, meaning to run for his car. On the porch stood Ricky, who had slipped out when Clifford began to speak. He was six feet four, built like the engine blocks he lifted at the BMW plant, with the sleepy child still on his shoulder. He did not raise a hand. He simply stood in the doorway, filling it, and said, quietly, “Mr. Gary, the baby is sleeping.”
Gary stopped on the threshold, with the cold night air coming in around him and the porch light buzzing with moths. The folder slipped out of his hand and dropped onto the welcome mat. Lashonda stepped around her husband, picked it up with two fingers, and handed it to the investigator, who had come out of the den at last. Gary sank onto the porch swing and covered his face. Behind me in the living room, the other couples sat very still. One of the wives began, softly, to pray. It was not a prayer for us. It was a prayer for him.
The money consequences were clean. The bank blocked the transfer and restored every dollar taken from the giving account, and the State Law Enforcement Division charged Pastor Marsh with embezzlement, breach of trust and exploitation of vulnerable adults. Gary cooperated and was given probation, with a repayment plan. The one point nine million dollars we had claimed to lose was, of course, safe in the bank, and I will tell you what we did with a part of it, because Ricky and Lashonda earned it, with a casserole and an envelope and the kindness of people who have very little.
In the name of Ruth, the mother of Clifford, who passed in 2015 and who never let a stranger leave her house hungry, we started the Ruth Holloway Fund. It pays for emergency help, small business loans and protection against church giving fraud for working families, in Greenville, Pickens and Anderson counties. In the first year we helped sixty three families, and the first check went to a four bedroom house with a porch for Ricky, Lashonda and their four children, with the deed in their names.
We hold small group in our living room again on Tuesday nights, with a new pastor and eight couples. Ricky sits on the floor with the baby on his lap, and Lashonda brings a casserole, and the older children do their homework at the kitchen table while we pray, and nobody minds at all. Clifford and I sit in the two good chairs. After the prayers, Clifford passes the plate of cookies, and when it reaches Ricky he takes two. I watch his big hand with the cookie in it, and I think, here is a friend. Here is the one who came when we had nothing.